Sympathy Quotes

Some carol of the banjo, to its measure keeping time;
Of viol or of lute some make a song.
My battered old accordion, you’re worthy of a rhyme,
You’ve been my friend and comforter so long.
Round half the world I’ve trotted you, a dozen years or more;
You’ve given heaps of people lots of fun;
You’ve set a host of happy feet a-tapping on the floor . . .
Alas! your dancing days are nearly done.

I’ve played you from the palm-belt to the suburbs of the Pole;
From the silver-tipped sierras to the sea.
The gay and gilded cabin and the grimy glory-hole
Have echoed to your impish melody.
I’ve hushed you in the dug-out when the trench was stiff with dead;
I’ve lulled you by the coral-laced lagoon;
I’ve packed you on a camel from the dung-fire on the bled,
To the hell-for-breakfast Mountains of the Moon.

I’ve ground you to the shanty men, a-whooping heel and toe,
And the hula-hula graces in the glade.
I’ve swung you in the igloo to the lousy Esquimau,
And the Haussa at a hundred in the shade.
The Nigger on the levee, and the Dinka by the Nile
have shuffled to your insolent appeal.
I’ve rocked with glee the chimpanzee, and mocked the crocodile,
And shocked the pompous penquin and the seal.

I’ve set the yokels singing in a little Surrey pub,
Apaches swinging in a Belville bar.
I’ve played an obligato to the tom-tom’s rub-a-dub,
And the throb of Andalusian guitar.
From the Horn to Honolulu, from the Cape to Kalamazoo,
From Wick to Wicklow, Samarkand to Spain,
You’ve roughed it with my kilt-bag like a comrade tried and true. . . .
Old pal! We’ll never hit the trail again.

Oh I know you’re cheap and vulgar, you’re an instrumental crime.
In drawing-rooms you haven’t got a show.
You’re a musical abortion, you’re the voice of grit and grime,
You’re the spokesman of the lowly and the low.
You’re a democratic devil, you’re the darling of the mob;
You’re a wheezy, breezy blasted bit of glee.
You’re the headache of the high-bow, you’re the horror of the snob,
but you’re worth your weight in ruddy gold to me.

For you’ve chided me in weakness and you’ve cheered me in defeat;
You’ve been an anodyne in hours of pain;
And when the slugging jolts of life have jarred me off my feet,
You’ve ragged me back into the ring again.
I’ll never go to Heaven, for I know I am not fit,
The golden harps of harmony to swell;
But with asbestos bellows, if the devil will permit,
I’ll swing you to the fork-tailed imps of Hell.

Yes, I’ll hank you, and I’ll spank you,
And I’ll everlasting yank you
To the cinder-swinging satellites of Hell.

(Poem by Robert William Service)

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

Just as the earth puckered its mouth,
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south.

Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,

its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;

up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all…
he took the fullness that love began.

Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward…this baby that I bleed.

(Poem by Anne Sexton)

Last night I had a dream that you really left me
In this dream I begged to please not ever forget me
I’ll tell you how it began, so this is how it starts
You sat on my bed with tears in your eyes and your hand over my heart
You asked me what I was thinking about at the same time I asked why you were crying
You looked at me and said The doctor says I’m dying
I asked you what you meant and how this could really be
That my father up above would take you away from me
I said NO, this isn’t real, just when I’ve found the one
Baby, Please, I’m sorry for everything I’ve done
Tears rolled from my eyes and landed on your hands
You said Sweetheart, Please, just try to understand
That no matter where I am, on earth or up above you
I’m here for you forever and I’ll always love you
I asked you how long you had left to live but you said you didn’t know
Exactly one week later I cried and watched you go

(by Lisa G. Rodriguez)

It seems that love has died
And walls of anger overbear.
I cannot show my tears;
Nor tell you the reasons why.
My heart grows lonely.
I feel us drifting apart as a boat
On a sea of torment.
I pity myself in silence.
Hurt lies in strange places.
The heart cannot fathom the will to live.
I shed my tears of hurt, and I am angry because you show no concern.
You bottle your hurt; you keep it
Like a Pandora’s box of untold secrets.
You show no emotion; you feel no pain.
My grief is heavy laden upon my soul.
I long to feel your touch; sympathy;love
Shall we weather this storm together
Or shall we continue drifting; blind to
The edge of land that is called love.

(By Tracy O. Whitlock)

You had a talent for bringing special meaning to life,
It was such a pleasure to be your wife.
You helped me to grow and to realize
The fullness and the beauty in our lives.

Every day I counted my blessings.
Then God called, and you went away
Out of this world to a brighter day.
Suddenly my life of gladness
Turned to utter sadness.

My grief wears me down, I shed so many tears,
As I recall your love and devotion through the years.
For your sake and in memory of your name,
I pray for strength to do things the same.

To reach out, to fill the hours with useful ways,
To comfort, to cheer and have no more empty days.
I try to console myself — it was God’s greater plan,
So I must accept it, if I can.

You moved away to His splendid home above,
If there is life after death,
I know you will be waiting there for me,
With love.

Though Heaven and Earth divide us, and the distance is so great,
I count my blessings for the years you were my mate.
I will live my life remembering, while you wait, slumbering.
My beloved, may you rest in peace.

(By Celia Wenig)

Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypres let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave
To weep there!

(By William Shakespeare)