Colin F. Jones

FAREWELL

Though I accept that you have gone away
To a place beyond the distance of my dreams
Everyday I cannot help but pray
For you still live in all my thoughts it seems
Each day you come and creep into my soul
I feel you there inside; a part of me
Growing there into your loving whole
That I throughout your stay can comfort thee
Oh! Wonderful you are in my pretence
You are my link with heaven and with God
You are my vision of my consequence
For in my heart you lie; not in the sod;
For you will live here where you cannot die
For my lips farewell but my heart can’t say goodbye.

Farewell is not a word for those who live,
‘Tis better said to those we love who die
And yet in woe the farewells that we give
Seem absent from the mourners’ weeping eye
Then why goodbye to someone we have lost
By this, is love from our hearts thus farewelled?
Do we by this remove the painful cost?
That in our minds remains there so compelled
We must not try to keep what we don’t own
And say goodbye lest we yet mourn ourselves
For with release our truer love is shown
In dusting all the dust from self’s vain shelves
Thus when I die please simply say farewell
Lest your fond heart entraps me as your hell

Oft love becomes a conflict with self-sorrow
For the seed of loss oft grows a loveless flower
Things lost today we cling to for tomorrow
And call it love as grass might call it shower
We mourn ourselves in losing someone near
Their absence leaving spaces to be filled
Within our dismal bodies lacking cheer
For how else can we mourn a loved one killed
Time repairs but dulls our sense of loss
Yet never dulls the memory of his face
It is a narrow threshold that we cross
Between our love and our self-serving grace
Though selfish love is as love really is
We must concede that all our love is his

Then my good friend I bid you now farewell
I cut the tie that keeps you from your way
And be it that you’ll live in Heaven or Hell
In this fair place you can no longer stay
Goodbye I say but you’ll not be forgotten
I’ll feel your breath upon me in the wind
And see your body firm from top to bottom
Among the branches of the forest trees
Go my love seek out those precious places
Make flowers grow and all the things that please
And I will see you in my mind that traces
The better things that sooth me like the breeze
Farewell my love, ‘til the day we again do meet,
When those who love me lose what they can’t keep