"Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care . . ."
Shakespeare
OUR WORLD NEEDS A LULLABY
I had a tune running through my mind yesterday and kept singing the first lines:
“Sleep my love and peace attend thee. . ,
All through the night.”
I wasn’t even sure I had the lyrics down correctly and made a quick computer
search and found:
Singable English lyrics . . . written by Sir Harold Boulton in 1884:
Sleep my child and peace attend thee,
All through the night,
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping
Hill and vale in slumber sleeping,
I my loving vigil keeping,
All through the night.
While the moon her watch is keeping
All through the night
While the weary world is sleeping
All through the night
O’er thy spirit gently stealing
Visions of delight revealing
Breathes a pure and holy feeling
All through the night.”
For some reason I have a strange, but familiar connection to this Welsh lullaby. I would often think of it and just hum or sing the tune that brought me some inner peace.
We had a neighbor who dearly loved his wife and when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s he was by her side through all the phases of this condition. He was with her each day to the very last, talking to her, supporting her with his presence. It must have been extraordinarily hard for this man, a man who had been a GI prisoner of war in WWII, to see his love, a woman who now perceived him as a stranger, being assaulted by this condition that steals one’s mind. But he never wavered, every day he sat with her, keeping his vigil until death came quietly and took her away.
I loved this man and wanted even after the funeral to reach out to him and let him know how I loved him so for honoring his wife. For some unknown reason as I thought of him, I equated this quiet presence of him at her bedside to a mother singing her child to sleep. And then ever so softly this tune crept into my mind.
So I wrote a note to him and let him know that our family loved and supported him for his example of caring for his wife. Still the tune lingered, and that inner voice told me to add the first verse to end my sympathy note, I did and sent it on to my neighbor.
At the next neighborhood event he approached me and told me how much he appreciated the note, going a step further and telling me this was the song that he and his wife sang to their children each night at bedtime. He told me how much it meant that I had included just the right tune at just the right time.
I had never known that, from his wife in her earlier years when she was fine-- and I had not been told this by him at any time. Some strange force from the nether world had reached me and let me know the perfect ending for my note of condolence.
And again today, this song calls to me. I wish I could magically play this tune to all who survived Helene as that dreadful hurricane swept through our Southern states tearing our world asunder. I am far from the worst devastation, but my heart is with those who have survived, perhaps lost their loved ones and now must rebuild their world. I am holding this song in my heart, hoping it can cross miles between us and a sudden calm will come so that those left behind will be able to steal a few moments of peaceful sleep, a respite from the horror they have survived.
So, I think the words, hoping in some supernatural way they will reach the weary and forlorn living in the path of this dreadful storm that cut through our country:
“Sleep my friends and peace attend thee,
All through the night,
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping
Hill and vale in slumber sleeping,
I my loving vigil keeping . . .
コメント