Henry Scott Holland · 1919
Death Is Nothing At All
Henry Scott Holland · 1919
Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!
Public domain in the UK and the US · serany.app
What Serany thinks about this poem
Background
Holland preached it at St Paul's Cathedral in May 1910, days after Edward VII died. The famous part is him imagining what the face of someone who has died would say to you.
Meaning
It says the person hasn't gone anywhere, just into the next room. Call them by the same name, laugh at the same jokes, and carry on exactly as before.
Who's it for
Almost any funeral, and it is the reading most families have already heard. Right for someone whose house was full of easy talk and jokes.
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