Dancing by the Light of the Moon

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Dancing by the Light of the Moon Page 23

by Gyles Brandreth


  I want you to get outside and have some real fun.’

  Her anger now spent, she walked out through the hall

  And while Vincent backed slowly against the wall

  The room started to swell, to shiver and creak

  His horrid insanity had reached its peak

  He saw Abercrombie, his zombie slave

  And heard his wife call from beyond the grave

  She spoke from her coffin and made ghoulish demands

  While, through cracking walls, reached skeleton hands

  Every horror in his life that had crept through his dreams

  Swept his mad laughter to terrified screams!

  To escape the madness, he reached for the door

  But fell limp and lifeless down on the floor

  His voice was soft and very slow

  As he quoted ‘The Raven’ from Edgar Allan Poe:

  ‘and my soul from out that shadow

  that lies floating on the floor

  shall be lifted?

  Nevermore …’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Funeral BluesPoems at the end of the road

  ‘You live and learn,’ said the playwright and poet, Noël Coward, before adding tartly, ‘Then, of course, you die and forget it all.’ Death is inevitable. The Grim Reaper is always waiting in the wings. Resistance is futile. As Shakespeare succinctly puts it in Hamlet: ‘All that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity.’ ‘It’s not that I’m afraid to die,’ said Woody Allen famously, ‘I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’

  For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

  Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

  In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

  For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.

  Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

  For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.

  The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

  Psalm 90, verses 4–10

  Now that I have achieved the three-score-years-and-ten promised in the Book of Psalms, I am taking a more personal interest in death. I have to: people keep reminding me how old I am. I have been asked to be the ‘new face’ of the Stannah Stairlift; I have been invited to sponsor home-delivered easy-to-digest ready-meals for ‘senior seniors’; in a TV commercial I am now the voice of the Tena Flex-Plus Supersoft Incontinence Pad. (According to the advertising agency, my voice is exactly what the product requires: it is ‘smooth, mature, absorbent’.)

  I take a personal interest in death befitting someone of my age, and I take a professional interest, too. One of my forebears was a Kenyon and, in Britain and around the world, the Kenyons have been leaders in the undertaking business since the 1870s. For some years, I have been the proud host of the annual British Funeral Directors’ Awards saluting the work of the best of the best in the dying trade. (The evening ends with the two big prizes: one is for the Crematorium of the Year – the ‘Crème de la Crem’ award – and the other is the Lifetime Achievement award for ‘Thinking outside the Box’.) I go to a lot of funerals, too. And I have had to organize two or three, as well. It isn’t easy.

  Saying goodbye is never easy. A funeral is inevitably a sad event – even when the deceased has been blessed with a long and a good life. When it is the funeral of someone who has died young, it is simply heartbreaking. As we approach our own point of departure, here are some poems of consolation and condolence: poems to help you reflect on those you have liked and loved and lost, poems to learn by heart to speak at a funeral or a memorial gathering.

  Death, be not proud

  by John Donne

  (1572–1631)

  Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

  Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

  For those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow

  Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me;

  From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

  Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

  And soonest our best men with thee do go,

  Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

  Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

  And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;

  And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

  And better than thy stroke; why swellst thou then?

  One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

  And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.

  Epitaph on a Friend

  by Robert Burns

  (1759–96)

  An honest man here lies at rest,

  As e’er God with his image blest:

  The friend of man, the friend of truth,

  The friend of age, and guide of youth:

  Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,

  Few heads with knowledge so inform’d:

  If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;

  If there is none, he made the best of this.

  Music, when soft voices die

  by Percy Bysshe Shelley

  (1792–1822)

  To——

  Music, when soft voices die,

  Vibrates in the memory –

  Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

  Live within the sense they quicken.

  Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

  Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;

  And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

  Love itself shall slumber on.

  Crossing the Bar

  by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  (1809–92)

  Sunset and evening star,

  And one clear call for me!

  And may there be no moaning of the bar,

  When I put out to sea,

  But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

  Too full for sound and foam,

  When that which drew from out the boundless deep

  Turns again home.

  Twilight and evening bell,

  And after that the dark!

  And may there be no sadness of farewell,

  When I embark;

  For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place

  The flood may bear me far,

  I hope to see my Pilot face to face

  When I have crost the bar.

  From ‘Song of Myself’ in Leaves of Grass

  by Walt Whitman

  (1819–92)

  I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,

  I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

  I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

  If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

  You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

  But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

  And filter and fibre your blood.

  Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

  Missing me one place search another,

  I stop somewhere waiting for you.

  Everything passes and vanishes

  by William Allingham

  (1824–89)

  Everything passes and vanishes;

  Everything leaves its trace;

  And often you see in a footstep

  What you could not see in a face.

  Song

  by Christina Rossetti

  (1830–94)

  When I am dead, my dearest,

  Sing no sad songs for me;

  Plant thou no roses at my head,

  Nor shady cypress tree:

&n
bsp; Be the green grass above me

  With showers and dewdrops wet;

  And if thou wilt, remember,

  And if thou wilt, forget.

  I shall not see the shadows,

  I shall not fear the rain;

  I shall not hear the nightingale

  Sing on, as if in pain:

  And dreaming through the twilight

  That doth not rise nor set,

  Haply I may remember,

  And haply may forget.

  Death is nothing at all

  by Henry Scott Holland

  (1847–1918)fn1

  Death is nothing at all.

  It does not count.

  I have only slipped away into the next room.

  Nothing has happened.

  Everything remains exactly as it was.

  I am I, and you are you,

  and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.

  Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

  Call me by the old familiar name.

  Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.

  Put no difference into your tone.

  Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

  Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.

  Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

  Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.

  Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

  Life means all that it ever meant.

  It is the same as it ever was.

  There is absolute and unbroken continuity.

  What is this death but a negligible accident?

  Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

  I am but waiting for you, for an interval,

  somewhere very near,

  just round the corner.

  All is well.

  Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.

  One brief moment and all will be as it was before.

  How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

  Now When the Number of My Years

  by Robert Louis Stevenson

  (1850–94)

  Now when the number of my years

  Is all fulfilled, and I

  From sedentary life

  Shall rouse me up to die,

  Bury me low and let me lie

  Under the wide and starry sky.

  Joying to live, I joyed to die,

  Bury me low and let me lie.

  Clear was my soul, my deeds were free,

  Honour was called my name,

  I fell not back from fear

  Nor followed after fame.

  Bury me low and let me lie

  Under the wide and starry sky.

  Joying to live, I joyed to die,

  Bury me low and let me lie.

  Bury me low in valleys green

  And where the milder breeze

  Blows fresh along the stream,

  Sings roundly in the trees –

  Bury me low and let me lie

  Under the wide and starry sky.

  Joying to live, I joyed to die,

  Bury me low and let me lie.

  Requiescat

  by Oscar Wilde

  (1854–1900)fn2

  Tread lightly, she is near

  Under the snow,

  Speak gently, she can hear

  The daisies grow.

  All her bright golden hair

  Tarnished with rust,

  She that was young and fair

  Fallen to dust.

  Lily-like, white as snow,

  She hardly knew

  She was a woman, so

  Sweetly she grew.

  Coffin-board, heavy stone,

  Lie on her breast,

  I vex my heart alone,

  She is at rest.

  Peace, Peace, she cannot hear

  Lyre or sonnet,

  All my life’s buried here,

  Heap earth upon it.

  Parta Quies

  by A. E. Housman

  (1859–1936)

  Good-night; ensured release,

  Imperishable peace,

  Have these for yours,

  While sea abides, and land,

  And earth’s foundations stand,

  and heaven endures.

  When earth’s foundations flee,

  nor sky nor land nor sea

  At all is found

  Content you, let them burn:

  It is not your concern;

  Sleep on, sleep sound.

  Idyll

  by Sieg fried Sassoon

  (1886–1967)

  In the grey summer garden I shall find you

  With day-break and the morning hills behind you.

  There will be rain-wet roses; stir of wings;

  And down the wood a thrush that wakes and sings.

  Not from the past you’ll come, but from that deep

  Where beauty murmurs to the soul asleep:

  And I shall know the sense of life re-born

  From dreams into the mystery of morn

  Where gloom and brightness meet. And standing there

  Till that calm song is done, at last we’ll share

  The league-spread, quiring symphonies that are

  Joy in the world, and peace, and dawn’s one star.

  ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ from Carousel

  by Oscar Hammerstein II

  (1895–1960)

  When you walk through a storm

  Hold your head up high

  And don’t be afraid of the dark

  At the end of a storm

  There’s a golden sky

  And the sweet silver song of a lark

  Walk on through the wind

  Walk on through the rain

  Though your dreams be tossed and blown

  Walk on, walk on

  With hope in your heart

  And you’ll never walk alone

  You’ll never walk alone

  Walk on, walk on

  With hope in your heart

  And you’ll never walk alone

  You’ll never walk alone

  When I Have Fears

  by Noël Coward

  (1899–1973)

  When I have fears, as Keats had fears,

  Of the moment I’ll cease to be

  I console myself with vanished years

  Remembered laughter, remembered tears,

  And the peace of the changing sea.

  When I feel sad, as Keats felt sad,

  That my life is so nearly done

  It gives me comfort to dwell upon

  Remembered friends who are dead and gone

  And the jokes we had and the fun.

  How happy they are I cannot know

  But happy I am who loved them so.

  Funeral Blues

  by W. H. Auden

  (1907–73)fn3

  Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

  Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

  Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

  Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

  Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

  Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.

  Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

  Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

  He was my North, my South, my East and West,

  My working week and my Sunday rest,

  My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

  I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

  The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

  Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

  Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

  For nothing now can ever come to any good.

  If I Should Go Before the Rest of You

  by Joyce Grenfell

  (1910–
79)

  If I should go before the rest of you

  Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone,

  Nor when I’m gone speak in a Sunday voice

  But be the usual selves that I have known.

  Weep if you must, Parting is hell,

  But Life goes on, So sing as well.

  Do not go gentle into that good night

  by Dylan Thomas

  (1914–1953)

  Do not go gentle into that good night,

  Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

  Because their words had forked no lightning they

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

  Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

  And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

  Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  And you, my father, there on the sad height,

  Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  On the Death of Harold Wilson

  by Mary Wilson

  (1916–2018)fn4

  My love you have stumbled slowly

  On the quiet way to death

  And you lie where the wind blows strongly

  With a salty spray on its breath

  For this men of the island bore you

  Down paths where the branches meet

  And the only sounds were the crunching grind

  Of the gravel beneath their feet

  And the sighing slide of the ebbing tide

  On the beach where the breakers meet

  The Good

  by Brendan Kennelly

  (born 1936)

  The good are vulnerable

 

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