We mourn.
We remember.
We applaud.
We give thanks.
The
Mournes
I shall not go to
heaven when I die. But if they let me be I think I'll take a road
I used to know That goes by Slieve-na-garagh and the sea. And all
day breasting me the wind will blow, And I'll hear nothing but the
peewit's cry And the sea talking in the caves below. I think it
will be winter when I die (For no one from the North could die in
spring) And all the heather will be dead and grey, And the
bog-cotton will have blown away, Ant there will be no yellow on
the whin. But I shall smell the peat, And when it's almost dark
I'll set my feet Where a white track goes glimmering to the hills,
And see, far up, a light --Would you think Heaven could be so
small a thing As a lit window on the hills at night?-- And come in
stumbling from the gloom, Half-blind, into a firelit room. Turn,
and see you, And there abide.
If it were true, And
if I though that they would let me be, I almost wish it were
tonight I died."
-------------------------------------------------------
From Helen Waddell, a
Biography by Felicitas Corrigan. London, 1986, pp 222-223.
Helen Waddell
(1889-1965), who grew up in Northern Ireland near the Mourne
Mountains, sent one of her poems to Gladys Bendit(pen-name John
Presland) with this undated covering letter:
"I think it was
written in January of 1925. I'd come home to Ireland from Paris,
very sleepless and weary, with a mass of material without form or
cohesion: and I'd been at Kilmacrew for three weeks at
Christmastime, and dragged myself away from it to an attic flat in
St. Edmund's Terrace [London] . . .I went to bed, defeated and
doubting, and as I lay in the dark it seemed as if I heard a voice
speaking, and it was saying this fragment of verse, and in the
morning I remembered & wrote it down.
Searching my entire
lunch-hour, after several false tries, checked all references in
this biography to Mounre (which did not include this page!). Just
as I was about to give up, flipped the pages and there it was,
finally. A lovely poem, I can see why Michael loved it.
Rosemary, at
the Library of Congress
Sonnet
125
Would it mean
anything to me to be honored like some extremely important person?
Haven't I seen people with shallow values ("form and favour")
lose everything and even more than everything by pursuing shallow
compliments and praises, ignoring (or foregoing) real love? Let me
be devoted in your heart, and please accept my offering, which is
poor, but costs nothing (you won't owe me anything in return, in
other words); My offering is the best I can make it and isn't
diluted with second-best materials; It's a fair exchange between
you and me. Go away, treacherous, untrustworthy person! A person
with solid values (family and friends -- not fame and money,
e.g.), when most criticized, is least vulnerable to your attack
(or anyone else's)
Interpretation by
Delda W.
The Inscription on
Dame Judi's Wedding Band
He will weep you, an
'twere a man born in April.''
I have to give credit
to Jan Malley, who steered me to the Shakespeare Library site
(Stratford, England). I e-mailed them to request a translation (I
tried to sound scholarly about it) and they fired back within
hours. The reference is to April being the month with lots of
showers. The Jacobs bio says MW said to JD that if her performance
(as Viola in Twelfth Night) was good that night... and then he
quotes the line above. It means, "I will weep [because I'm so
moved] as if I were born in April." In other words, I'll shed
copious tears. Cressida's response is that she will come up like a
nettle in May. FWIW, it's Cressida's uncle, Pandarus, who speaks
the line about April -- not Troilus.
New
May 2003
Sandy H, Indiana, USA
A photo I took last week in London, in the garden in front of
St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden, of the bush that was planted in
Michael William's memory. Unfortunately, the plaque isn't
very legible. It says, "Remembering Dear Michael Williams, KSG,
1935 - 2000" Yes, that's right, 2000 not 2001. KSG must stand for
Knight of St. Gregory, that papal knighthood he was awarded the
day before he died. I don't know what kind of bush it is, and
unfortunately it had just bloomed and the dead blooms were still
on it. I walked around the garden -- there were about only four
other memorial plaques.
A Special Thank You to Sandy H. for sharing this photo with
us.
