I am standing upon that foreshore

[Badger]

I am standing upon that foreshore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails in the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, "There! She's gone!" "Gone where?" "Gone from my sight, that's all." She is just as large in mast and spar and hull as ever she was when she left my side; just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of her destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at that moment when someone at my side says, "There! She's gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

 

[BlueSkyNick]

This is a wonderful piece of prose, which I always find very emotional.

My mother had asked for it to be read at her funeral, which we duly arranged, two years ago.

Then I have been to two more friends funerals since, both of which had the same reading.

 

[penultimate]

Also heard it at a sailing friend's funeral. Was it not written by Victor Hugo during his time in Guernsey?

 

[PeteCooper]

It was read at the funeral of my Sister in Law earlier this year. It is lovely.

 

[claymore]

Bishop Brett.

 

[Badger]

It is a passage from Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo. It was read at my fathers funeral 2 weeks ago and it has stuck with me. I think for a yachtsman it is the perfect farewell.

 

[BlueSkyNick]

claymore is right too, there are two versions in circulation.

The vicar and funeral director provided us with the words by Bishop Brett, the reader obtained the words by Victor Hugo. Unfortunately, there was a difference between what was printed in the Order of Service and what was read out aloud.

Only very minor differences but caused a little embarrassment.

 

[dulcibella]

Just a teeny bit ponderous and over-egged? Perhaps it doesn't translate well. I'd prefer to leave on the last cruise with Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar":

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 tho' from out our bourn 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.

 

[Greenwichman]

Read movingly yesterday at the Thanksgiving Service for a Lymington yachtsman. The Order of Service attributed it to 'The Ship' by Dr Harold Blake Walker, but I have yet to check that out.

 

[alan_d]

The most plausible attribution that I have come across is that it is A Parable of Immortality by Henry Jackson Van Dyke (1852-1933).

See here and here.

Alan