Oh God,
To the ailing
Give hope of health,
And to the dying
Hope of life,
To the dead
Give eternal rest.

For we are dust,
Weakly moulded,
And at the touch
Of Time
We stumble and crumble.

Let not our thoughts,
Our only form
Of creation,
Be blown
To the emptiness
Of death.
Let not our hopes,
The flickering lights
Of our distant destiny,
Be swallowed
By the darkness
Of death.

Let not our faith,
The tenuous thread
That we follow,
Abandon us
In the alley ways
Of self-conceit.

Let not Time
Mock us,
Nor timeless oblivion
Erase
Our receding future.

Let not this dying being
Be swallowed
In the loneliness
Of unremitting death,
But let that African silence
Which beckoned him across the oceans
To serve a people at labour
With the pangs of nationhood,
Resound from cherub to cherub
In the heavenly choir;
Let this solitary death?bed darkness
Blossom
Into the eternal splendour
Of the light of life.

For you are
Duration,
Time and Eternity,
The purpose
In the futility,
The essence
In the purposelessness,
The ending of the beginning
And the unending
Of the end.

Gather this wanton dust
And quicken it
At the Resurrection spring.
Let the blood of Thine Anointed
Change this corruption to incorruption
Our weakness to strength
And let us walk
In your light;
For you are merciful.