Comfort those who mourn

Lift those who are no longer with us safely into your loving care, clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

Funeral Blues 

by W H Auden

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 crepe 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.

Winter's Shroud 

by Iona Waters

Chattering leaves danced to their death

in the gusts of autumn wind,
Wending their pathway to eternity perhaps
As they sighed and fluttered their last breath
under the dying embers of a waning sun.
They whispered in excitement while they were dancing
in anticipation of what was yet to come.
 

Cold, rainy tears dripped from forlorn trees,

Bare with longing for the gaiety of their leaves
Now lost to winter’s creeping frosts.
Crackling twigs concealed mice
hurrying to their warm dens
beneath the earth’s encasing, rotting canopy.
 
The trees waited in solemn patience,
not needing to explain their existence,
dark twiggy branches twisted skyward,
Gently flirting with the icy wind.
that breathed eternity over winter's vigil.
 
Breath froze, suspended in the cloying air
as everything drew to a graceful close.
The sky scattered white frozen crystals
that carpeted the earth with an ice shroud.
The trees stood silent, in acceptance of their fate
And the crackling stopped as heart beats fell to nothing.
 
Winter came and we wept.
 
We wept for the dancing leaves
Who had taken secret blessings to their graves.

In Hardwood Groves 

by Robert Frost

The same leaves over and over again!
They fall from giving shade above
To make one texture of faded brown
And fit the earth like a leather glove.

Before the leaves can mount again
To fill the trees with another shade,
They must go down past things coming up.
They must go down into the dark decayed.

They must be pierced by flowers and put
Beneath the feet of dancing flowers.
However it is in some other world
I know that this is way in ours.