My dad got very ill when i was 12, then degenerated and died when I was 23. I was full of teenage angst and rebellion, but he seemed to accept his fate; made me very angry. Although I didn't study English beyond O level (old duffer), my English teacher was a distant friend of my brother's and acted as a kind of mentor. Through him, I raged with Dylan Thomas:
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT - dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Also, an anonymous one printed in a mountaineering magazine during the same period of my life.
On Deaths of Friends
I want to stand my highland stream
Which tears its banks with peat brown flow
That long outlives those thoughts of man
Made cold and bleak by winter snow
My thoughts run down to sunny days
The mossy bank, the saxifrage
The cooling drink, the wet-worn stone
I sit, and think, forget my rage.
I was an angry teenager wasn't I ? Interesting, how I still know the words 25 years later.
Also, the poem I tried to read at Dad's funeral. Look at the first letter of each line; he was a huge fan of Lewis Carroll and used to read this to me as a child. My first name is Alice.
A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky - Lewis Carroll
A BOAT beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July --
Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear --
Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream --
Lingering in the golden dream --
Life, what is it but a dream?