Requiem Comments

I wrote the poem 'Hunting A Snack: Snack Time', with the first line of my poem as a quotation tribute, to the last line of the poem 'Requiem', by Robert Louis Stevenson.

The poem is written on the side of his tomb. The number of times as a kid I straddle RLS tomb and sat in solitude looking down Mt. Vaea to Apia, across the lagoon, over the reef and out into the mighty Pacific Ocean.

so much in so few words, ... and you got to be 60 or 70 years old to appreciate it

Home From The HIll with Robert Mitchum. Great movie.

great 10++++++++++++++//

This be the verse you grave for me; " Here he lies where he longed to be, Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill." //beautiful

When responding to a post that used " sexed, " (I then used the first 3 letters; present tense) , it was changed to two asterisks. A site that cannot handle the common word for gender, when used as a reference to an original post, seems to be fearful of words.

I can never read this poem without getting teary eyed.

I love this poem. I memorized when I was in High School and have never forgotten it!

Senator McCain was a man of honor whose sense of duty to country never wavered. He was a patriot

John McCain is dead. Long live John McCain.

I admired John McCain and even though I am an Independent and Democrat at heart, I would have voted for him if he had kept Lieberman as his running mate. I knew Obama was young and could have waited 4 years (or maybe eight) in order to be elected.

I am now watching the funeral of John McCain. This is the poem he read for his father and it will be read over him. Appropriate.

This poem was read by John Wayne(!) in the John Ford film They Were Expendable. Read for a fallen comrade, it is a very moving scene.

At the end of the day we all arrive at this place. It's where the light become too frail. It's when the mystery of the world gives way to an empty awareness that nothing can keep us going. It's to those who finally get themselves beneath the wide and starry sky of faith. Too those who love us we are remembered. The mansion out in the open country is welcome as it is really a house of eternal vision where nothing can long be left unrestored and plagued with the light of eternity.

I always felt that Bob could have sexed up the last line of his requiem by omitting 'the' before 'hunter, ie: .....'And hunter home from the hill'....

President Franklin Roosevelt had the last three lines engraved on his tombstone

I don't know what Stevenson's personal beliefs were, but to me this poem expresses the immortality of the soul. Glad did I live... - the poet has experienced all the essential things this life has to offer. ... and gladly die, and I lay me down with a will - and is now ready to enter the world of eternity. Here he lies where he longed to be... Home is the sailor... Home is the hunter... - having cast off the 'material garment' of the body, the soul has now reached its true home, its sanctuary, the home of the spirit; the home of immortality.

I don't know what Stevenson's personal beliefs were, but to me the poem speaks of the immortality of the soul. Glad did I live... - the writer has experienced in life, and gained from it, all the essential things this life has to offer. ...and gladly die, And I lay me down with a will - and is now ready to continue his journey into the world of eternity. Here he lies where he longed to be... Home is the sailor... Home is the hunter... His true home is the world of the spirit; the world of immortality; having traversed this material realm, the poet is now ready to enter his true home.

Compelling simplicity of a man facing death, that of all that one may proclaim about the life now ending, the regrets and unfulfilled hopes, the achievements and failures, he simply proclaims his gladness both to live and to die, and to be buried at home. Nothing more, nothing less. Intriguing and discomforting.