Of Death and Friendship

An inspiring poem of the after-life, by Henry Scott-Holland:

Death is nothing at all.

I have only slipped away into the next room

I am I and you are you.

Whatever we were to each other

That we are still.

Call me by my old familiar name

Speak to me in the easy way you always used.

Put no difference into your tone

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow

Laugh as we always laughed

At the little jokes we always enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.

Let it be spoken without effort

Without the ghost of a shadow in it.

Life means all that it ever meant

It is the same as it ever was

There is absolute unbroken continuity.

What is death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind

Because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you for an interval

Somewhere very near

Just around the corner

All is well.

Nothing is past; nothing is lost

One brief moment and all will be as it was before 

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

~ Henry Scott-Holland, 1847-1918, Canon of St Paul's Cathedral

'The King of Terrors', a sermon on death delivered in St Paul's Cathedral on Whitsunday 1910, while the body of King Edward VII was lying in state at Westminster. Published in Facts of the Faith, 1919

With thanks to Poetic Expressions