Elsie Marshall

12th April 1908 - 2nd September 2002


Welcome

Poem

For mercy, pity, kindness, mirth ………….

Read by Gwen Rowntree

We remember Elsie for her patience, tolerance, non-complaining, her sense of duty, looking after her parents and her lovely sense of humour.

Poem

Pied Beauty …………. Gerard Manley Hopkins

From Joanna

Poem

Jewels in my hand……… Sasha Moorsom

Poem

I fall asleep .. Samuel Butler

Reading

They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it………. William Penn

Poem

All Things pass ……………. Lao-Tzu (6th century BC)

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They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it.

Death cannot kill what never dies.

Nor can spirits ever be divided, that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friendship.

If absence be not death, neither is theirs.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.

For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent.

In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure.

This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

WILLIAM PENN, from More Fruits of Solitude


All Things pass

A sunrise does not last all morning

All things pass

A cloudburst does not last all day

All things pass

Nor a sunset all night

All things pass

What always changes?

Earth...sky...thunder...

mounatin...water....

wind...fire...lake...

These change

And if these do not last

Do man's visions last?

Do man's illusions?

Take things as they come

All things pass

Lao-Tzu (6th century BC)

Jewels in my hand

I hold dead friends like jewels in my hand

Watching their brilliance gleam against my palm

Turquoise and emerald, jade, a golden band

All ravages of time they can withstand

Like talismans their grace keeps me from harm

I hold dead friends like jewels in my hand

I see them standing in some borderland

Their heads half-turned, waiting for my arm

Turquoise and emerald, jade, a golden band

I’m not afraid they will misunderstand

My turning to them like a magic charm

I hold dead friends like jewels in my hand

Turquoise and emerald, jade, a golden band.

Sasha Moorsom January 25th 1931 - June 22nd 1993