Loss Birthday Friendship Love & Marriage Inspirational Seasonal
Comfort Poems Death
The Comfort Poems Death title given to this web page incorporates the comfort element even more than most. We have selected these especially for this reason and pray that this is so! We offer our condolences at this sad time!
The most oft quoted comforter is this, by Rossiter W Raymond who was a mining engineer and a writer/poet on the side.
Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only the horizon, and the horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
This is the ending of the poem...the full poem is given later. Rossiter Raymond was around from 1840 until 1918 and Bishop Brent from 1862 until 1929 but who came up with the concept of death only being an horizon? It is suspected it was the older Raymond and that Brent took the concept and made it clearer
This Comfort Poems Death piece is by Bishop Brent
A ship sails and I stand watching till she fades on the horizon and someone at my side says She is gone.
Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large now as when I last saw her.Her diminished size and total loss from my sight is in me, not in her.
And just at that moment, when someone at my side says she is gone, there are others who are watching her coming over their horizon and other voices take up a glad shout -There she comes!
That is what dying is. An horizon and just the limit of our sight.
Lift us up O Lord, that we may see further.
Comfort Poems Death
Carly Simon took Rossiter Raymond's concept and words and wrote this song
I've been doing a lot of thinking About growing older and moving on Nobody wants to be told that they're getting on And maybe going away For a long, long stay But just how long and who knows And how and where my spirit will go Will it soar like jazz on a saxophone Or evaporate on a breeze Won't you tell me please That life is eternal And love is immortal And death is only a horizon Life is eternal As we move into the light And a horizon is nothing Save the limit of our sight Save the limit of our sight
Here on earth I'm a lost soul Ever trying to find my way back home Maybe that's why each new star is born Expanding heaven's room Eternity in bloom And will I see you up in that heaven In all it's light will I know you're there Will we say the things that we never daredIf wishing makes it so Won't you let me know That life is eternal And love is immortal And death is only a horizon Life is eternal As we move into the light And a horizon is nothing Save the limit of our sight Save the limit of our sight
The concept of death being a horizon could be used as a theme to the funeral using Raymond's short quote, Brent's words of wisdom and Simon's lyrics in the order of service or eulogy and even playing the song at the end of the service And finally,
here is the full poem by Rossiter Raymond
Comfort Poems Death
O God, who holdest all souls in life; and callest them unto thee as seemeth best: we give them back, dear God, to thee who gavest them to us. But as thou didst not lose them in the giving, so we do not lose them by their return. For not as the world giveth, givest thou, O Lord of souls: that which thou givest thou takest away: for life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only the horizon, and the horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.
