Best Loved Hymns and Readings. Martin Manser
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be not proud
John Donne’s ‘Death, be not Proud’ ranks among the most familiar of his Holy Sonnets probably written around 1610-11. It is often quoted at funerals as a refutation of death’s triumph over life. Donne himself had no doubt about the certainty of his own eventual resurrection, even having himself painted wearing a shroud and standing upon a funeral urn as he might appear at the Last Judgement.
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so: For those whom thou think’st 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 souls’ delivery. Thou’rt 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 swell’st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.
John Donne (c.1572-1631)
Henry Scott Holland was an English clergyman who served as Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral in the years 1884-1911. Although he also published sermons, various books on faith and a biography of Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, it is for this simple message of comfort to the bereaved that he is usually remembered. It is sometimes encountered in slightly altered form to include the lines ‘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.’
Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you, Whatever we were to each other, that we still are. Call me by my old familiar name, Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in your tone, Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was, Let it be spoken without effect, Without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant It is the same as it ever was. There is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, For an interval, Somewhere very near, Just around the corner All is Well.
Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918)
Do not go gentle into that good night
This fierce protest by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas against placid acceptance of death is often quoted as a spur to those who surrender themselves to complacency and resignation. Thomas himself famously drank himself to death, leaving the world as passionately and recklessly as he had lived.
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.
Dylan Thomas (1914-53)
Do not stand at my grave and weep
Authorship of the following piece, which has become a favourite consolatory reading at funeral services, has been disputed and it has been variously identified as a Native American funeral prayer or an item from a Victorian magazine. It would appear, however, to have been written in 1932 by the US poet Mary Elizabeth Frye. It became more widely known in the latter part of the twentieth century through its exposure after a copy of it, addressed to his parents, was found in the pocket of Steven Cummins, a British soldier killed on active service in Northern Ireland.
Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circling flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die.
Mary Elizabeth Frye (b.1904)
Matthew 6:25-34 ranks among the most highly regarded passages from the Bible when judged as literature. A reminder to all the faithful to abandon worldly concerns and to trust themselves instead to God’s bounty, it offers substantial consolation to those who are disillusioned or disappointed in their hopes of material gain.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
Drink to me only with thine eyes
This love poem by Ben Jonson was first published in the miscellany entitled The Forest (1616). Today it is a popular choice of reading at wedding celebrations.
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I’ll not look for wine. The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine; But might I of Jove’s nectar sup, I would not change for thine.
I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee As giving it a hope that there It could not wither’d be; But thou thereon didst only breathe And sent’st it back to me;