News March 25, 2011
Elizabeth Taylor Fashionably Late to Her Own Funeral
Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor was laid to rest Thursday with her funeral schedule running a bit late, just as she wanted it. Taylor left detailed instructions to make sure she arrived as fashionably late as she always did in life.
Her publicist told UsMagazine: "The service was scheduled to begin at 2 pm, but at Miss Taylor's request, started late. Miss Taylor had left instructions that it was to begin at least 15 minutes later than publicly scheduled, with the announcement, 'She even wanted to be late for her own funeral.'"
Taylor's final farewell was held at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, where Taylor's longtime friend Michael Jackson is entombed. Her closed-casket service was officiated by Rabbi Jerry Cutler and lasted about an hour.
Interestingly, Richard Burton's widow, Sally, bought Burton's adjoining plot and placed a large headstone across the two graves in a move widely interpreted as a deliberate ploy to ensure Elizabeth could not be buried next to her ex-husband.
Famous pal Colin Farrell read Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo" to his dear friend during the service, and her grandson, Rhys Tivey, performed "Amazing Grace" on his trumpet.
The Oscar-winning actress, humanitarian, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and loyal friend will rest in the Great Mausoleum, underneath a reproduction of a Michelangelo angel.
Here's the complete poem read by Farrell:
The Leaden Echo
How to keep -- is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing away?
O is there no frowning of these wrinkles, ranked wrinkles deep,
Down? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still
messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
How to keep -- is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, from vanishing away?
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age's evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death's worst, winding sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;
How to keep -- is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, from vanishing away?
O there's none; no no no there's none:
So be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.
The Golden Echo
Spare!
There is one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun's tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth's air,
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
One. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever's prized and passes of us, everything that's fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matched face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an everlastingness of, O it is an all youth!
O come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear,
gallantry and gaiety and grace,
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners and sweet looks, loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant, girlgrace --
Resign them and then sign them and then seal them and then send them and then motion them with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring sighs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty's self and beauty's giver.
Give beauty back to God, back to God,
Give beauty, give beauty back to God,
Give beauty back to God, back to God,
Give beauty, beauty back to God,
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind what while we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold
What while we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then why should we tread? O why are we so haggard at the heart, so care-coiled, care-killed, so fagged, so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered,
When the thing we freely forfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder
A care kept. -- Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where. --
Yonder. -- What high as that! We follow, now we follow. -- Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,
Yonder.
