When The Rose Is Faded

Today we attended the Requiem Mass for my wife's Aunt Ellen, who died last week in Dennistoun. I felt this poem and flower bouquet were a good representation of hope, love and the spirit of life.

When the rose is faded,
Memory may still dwell on
Her beauty shadowed,
And the sweet smell gone.

That vanishing loveliness,
That burdening breath,
No bond of life hath then,
Nor grief of death.

'Tis the immortal thought
Whose passion still
Makes the changing
The unchangeable.

Oh, thus thy beauty,
Loveliest on earth to me,
Dark with no sorrow, shines
And burns, with thee.

- Poem by Walter de la Mare