help with epitaph please

[WayneS]

I have just lost a very good friend and Godfather to cancer and I have been asked to say a few words at his memorial later this week about his love for sailing etc.

I would like to include a verse/poem that pays tribute to those passed souls who loved the sea. Can anybody give me pointers as to where I can find such verses.

Thanks in advance

Wayne

 

[claymore]

Wayne
Sorry to hear of your loss
I was at the funeral of a sailing man and a friend read from the 'Wreck of the Hesperus' which was moving and somehow apt
regards
John S

What care we - tho' white the Minch is,
What care we boys, for wind or weather?

 

[Skyva_2]

Tennyson - 'Crossing the Bar' might serve. I believe the bar he refers to was Salcombe?

http://charon.sfsu.edu/TENNYSON/crossingbar.html

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

Whatever you choose, I hope it goes well for you.
Keith

 

[Chris_Stannard]

Can't think of a poem but I liked the line form the Queen Mother's funeral:

Death is not an end but an horizon beyond which we cannot see.

It struck me that this was appropriate to all who sail and love the sea.

Second thoughts, the last verse of John Masefield's Sea Fever might be appropriate

" I must go down to the sea again to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover,
And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over."


Chris Stannard

 

[pugwash]

Check it out: I don't think it's Salcombe, more likely somewhere in the Solent because he spent so much time on the Isle of Wight. Padstow also puts in a bid, I believe.

 

[Rosa]

Wayne, condolences,
This might be appropriate,
Rosa

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 as when I saw her,
the diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her.
At the moment when someone at my side says “she is gone”, there are others who are watching her coming and other voices take up a glad shout “there she comes !”
And that is dying

Bishop Brent