sunrise, sunset

Two sad passings to report this Sunday eve: John Mark Stallings, age 46 ... and Skip Caray, who would've been 70 next week.

In their honor, I'm posting the resolution of William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis, arguably the best secular commentary on death ever written. It was my late grandfather's favorite poem, and there's still a copy of it hanging in my parents' house.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

wlh