The Day is Ended

This Saturday poem reflects recent deaths, both of those famous, and also local and known to me. Apologies to the Reverend John Ellerton, for reasons which are obvious.

The Day is Ended

The day draws in and now is ended
And now with darkness we are blest
Shadows fleeting, and death ascended
Now is the time of eternal rest

No more the wakefulness unsleeping
The candle flickers, and ends the light
Through friends the memory live is keeping
As each moves into that dark night

And on each continent and island
Tears falling, grief upon such day
The voice that sang is now so silent
And the life has gone so far away

But the dawn comes, sun is waking
New births cry out at sight of sky
And hour by hour fresh lips are making
The sounds of life, so loud and high

And so the cycle turns, that never
May we find life truly pass away

Babies born, children grow as ever
Life is reborn from humble clay