REQUIEM

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

Robert Louis Stevenson

"SO BE MY PASSING"

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies
And from the west,

Where the sun, his day's work ended,

Lingers as in content,

There falls on the old, gray city

An influence luminous and serene,

A shining peace.

The smoke ascends

In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,

Closing his benediction,

Sinks, and the darkening air

Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night

Night with her train of stars.

And her great gift of sleep.

So be my passing!

My task accomplished and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart

Some late lark singing,

Let me be gathered to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,

Death.

William Ernest Henley

PROSPICE

Fear death? to feel the fog in my throat,

The mist in my face,

When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,

The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;

Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:

For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,

Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.

I was ever a fighter, so-one fight more,

The best and the last!

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,

And bade me creep past.

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers

The heroes of old,

Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,

And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,

Shall dwindle, shall blend,

Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,

O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,

And with God be the rest!

Robert Browning

"JOY, SHIPMATE, JOY!"

Joy, shipmate, joy!

(Pleased to my soul at death I cry)
Our life is closed, our life begins,
The long, long anchorage we leave,
The ship is clear at last, she leaps!
She swiftly courses from the shore,
Joy, shipmate, joy!

Walt Whitman