I posted this a while ago. I don’t know if you remeber but I read this at Palmer’s Wake months ago…
It has really affected me… it comforts me. Take a gander and read.
lb
Prudentius: Hymn For Burial Of The Dead
“We are incompatible elements joined,
mortal and immmortal. They fuse
in the heat of the Lords forge. Mankind
is fashioned thus. For a time it stays
but the weld, which cannot hold, gives way,
for spirit yearns to rise to the sky
while flesh, which is earth, is drawn to obey
gravity’s stern decree. We die,
and our contrary portions come undone,
but God is good and even yet
will not abandon anyone
who is His servant. Bodies rot
in congeniual mire, and in the grave
the spirit is trapped that, lighter, fights
to rise, assert itself, and live.
For a time, the universe hesitates
but flesh feels a sudden warming. Then
those cold bones twitch and corpses sigh,
reanimated, and rise again,
borne by the heavenly breezes, to fly.
This life is all decline and loss,
fading beauty, waning strength,
and wasting diseases, leaving us
piteous ruins, and yet at length
heaven shall make us whole, repair
our derelict frames, restore, improve,
and make us perfect everywhere.
Why do we mourn, then, those we love
with foolish lamentations? No,
no tears! What we bury here in the earth
is only the seed from which will grow
a fresh green plant. In this rebirth
we cannot doubt, for we believe
in heaven. We gaze down into a hole
in the gentle earth that we see receive
our dead, who issued, body and soul,
from the mouth of God. In faith and trust
we commit to Him who does not forget
His creatures these remains, that dust
the winds may scatter but God shall yet
revive and reassemble. We
will live again and breath His breathe…”