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The 'four last things' to meditate upon during the four weeks of Advent, in the traditional 'keeping of Advent' are Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. So next week -Judgement - is likely to be as challenging as hard-hitting as this one...
I'm looking forward to the 'Heaven' week, but then, 'Hell'? Give me strength!
Anyway, today's poem;
Sweet Death
The sweetest blossoms die.
And so it was that, going day by day
Unto the church to praise and pray,
And crossing the green churchyard thoughtfully,
I saw how on the graves the flowers
Shed their fresh leaves in showers,
And how their perfume rose up to the sky
Before it passed away.
The youngest blossoms die.
They die, and fall and nourish the rich earth
From which they lately had their birth;
Sweet life, but sweeter death that passeth by
And is as though it had not been:—
All colours turn to green:
The bright hues vanish, and the odours fly,
The grass hath lasting worth.
And youth and beauty die.
So be it, O my God, Thou God of truth:
Better than beauty and than youth
Are Saints and Angels, a glad company;
And Thou, O Lord, our Rest and Ease,
Are better far than these.
Why should we shrink from our full harvest? why
Prefer to glean with Ruth?
And so it was that, going day by day
Unto the church to praise and pray,
And crossing the green churchyard thoughtfully,
I saw how on the graves the flowers
Shed their fresh leaves in showers,
And how their perfume rose up to the sky
Before it passed away.
The youngest blossoms die.
They die, and fall and nourish the rich earth
From which they lately had their birth;
Sweet life, but sweeter death that passeth by
And is as though it had not been:—
All colours turn to green:
The bright hues vanish, and the odours fly,
The grass hath lasting worth.
And youth and beauty die.
So be it, O my God, Thou God of truth:
Better than beauty and than youth
Are Saints and Angels, a glad company;
And Thou, O Lord, our Rest and Ease,
Are better far than these.
Why should we shrink from our full harvest? why
Prefer to glean with Ruth?
My reaction is not as I thought it would be. I don't find this poem depressing, or sad, or troublesome.
Maybe this is because I have just come back from visiting my god-mother, who is 91 years old, and was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year. Altjough she is well enough at the moment, she says she is 'fed up with being alive' and has had a few health incidents this year which have been exhausting for all concerned.
Maybe this is because twenty years ago I was diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder, which in most cases does its stuff within five years 'you have been coming to us for maybe the longest of any of our patients', said the consultants last time I was there; that made me a pause for thought!). So, Death, and possible ways of dying, have been a part of my Life for a long, long time.
Maybe this because I think my mother, in her eighties, found death to be a release from fours years of living after a painful and incapacitating stroke which robbed her of her freedom of movement, her skill of painting, and left her in a good deal of pain and discomfort. I should add that her courage in staying gracious and positive and alert and as active as she could be, was a tremendous example.
Maybe because my grandmother, born in 1891, once spoke briefly of her second (third?) child, who died shortly after birth. 'She was a 'blue' baby - I knew she wouldn't live,' she said. As one of the early women doctors, back in the 1930s, she would have known at once. Her faith and trust carried her through.
In Victorian times, as we all know, death was a common event, and life precarious. Old age could be uncomfortable, hard, painful; maybe, for many, it was better to die before old age overcame all comfort.
I have given a lot of thought to Life and Death, and become reconciled to the idea that Life may be sweet, but cannot be relied upon to remain so indefinitely. Like flowers, we have our season of colour and growth and beauty - but it is a season, unlike grass which remains forever.
Why are we so reluctant to face death? Why have we held on to its sting? Why are we so sure that there is a right time, and a wrong time to die?
