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| "Shattered" by Hilary J. England, 2012 |
I had many thoughts of
the poems of Longfellow when I was creating this, in particular,
"Footsteps of Angels."
"Footsteps of
Angels" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
FOOTSTEPS
OF ANGELS
When the hours of Day
are numbered,
And the voices of the Night
Wake the better soul, that slumbered,
To a holy, calm delight;
Ere the evening lamps
are lighted,
And, like phantoms grim and tall,
Shadows from the fitful firelight
Dance upon the parlor wall;
Then the forms of the
departed
Enter at the open door;
The beloved, the true-hearted,
Come to visit me once more;
He, the young and
strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell and perished,
Weary with the march of life!
They, the holy ones
and weakly,
Who the cross of suffering bore,
Folded their pale hands so meekly,
Spake with us on earth no more!
And with them the
Being Beauteous,
Who unto my youth was given,
More than all things else to love me,
And is now a saint in heaven.
With a slow and
noiseless footstep
Comes that messenger divine,
Takes the vacant chair beside me,
Lays her gentle hand in mine.
And she sits and gazes
at me
With those deep and tender eyes,
Like the stars, so still and saint-like,
Looking downward from the skies.
Uttered not, yet
comprehended,
Is the spirit’s voiceless prayer,
Soft rebukes, in blessings ended,
Breathing from her lips of air.
Oh, though oft
depressed and lonely,
All my fears are laid aside,
If I but remember only
Such as these have lived and died!
I created this in
response to the sadness of having recently attended yet another funeral for a
young person (he was just 19, and he drowned during a day of innocent fun with
some friends at the local river), and to the pain of having to gaze into
another coffin and see the monumental loss and tragedy it is and was. The
thought of these types of tragedies sometimes overwhelm me. All that had
spanned in front of him, all of the potential for beauty and truth, all of his
talent, all of his love, were all gone in an instant.
The others that went
before him paraded through my mind, the suicide, the murder victim, the car
accident, the drug overdose, the lingering death from cancer. Before,
they were living and vital and burning bright and now, they had been reduced to
a set of circumstances...their wings clipped off in mid-flight. I began
to sway under the burden of thought of how fragile our existence is. We
can never lose control of our life, because we never have that. We can
disorder our lives with the way we live, or reorder it again, but never control
it. That is just a myth and a fantasy, a slick and very glib lie told by
people who are secretly scared witless.
When I walk among
their graves, I feel such a mixed emotion. We all wind up there
eventually, despite our best and vainest attempts to keep death away.
But, where are our dead friends really? That is the mystery that
propels us forward, despite of what we believe or do not believe. The
answer is in the recesses of this universe. Inside, we know somehow some
mysterious force holds the answer to that eternal question, and keeps the
inhabitants of this world in never-ending turmoil as they seek it. Some
find it, and find peace, or so they claim. Others openly proclaim they
cannot. Most of us fall somewhere between those two extremes...ever
plodding away, ever searching, secretly yearning, quietly hoping, sometimes
even daring to believe. I suppose that might be the core essence of
faith, the seed of it. What grows from there depends on the type of
faith, and each individual must explore that solitary road on their own.
