Good night, sweet Jedi, noble, wise, and true.

Good night, sweet Jedi, noble, wise, and true.

So gentle was he, and too quickly gone.

O Fate, what hast thou brought into my life—

How shall I live when all I love have died?

Yet all things die, and all things pass away,

And all is like the sweeping of the stars

As one doth pass through lightspeed’s rapid blaze.

We know ‘tis true: no mortal does not know

That all are born to feed insatiate death.

But O, what grief we meet along the way:

The knowledge something beautiful is lost,

The deep regret for all unspoken words—

Profound remorse for healing never giv’n.

To wish to hold the dead one’s hand again,

To picture a love’s smile, and know it gone:

These are the pains that human life doth bring,

The heartache and the thousand nat’ral shocks,

That fresh is heir, too. Death shall not be tam’d,

It shall not lose its victory or sting,

Yet it shall never have the best of us

If in our living we have truly liv’d.

To love with bliss, to fight for righteousness,

To heed adventure’s call, to cry with joy,

To laugh amidst life’s greatest heights and depths:

This is the living that doth conquer death,

So ev’n though it shall come, we shall not fear’t.

These lessons let my master’s death teach me,

That my life shall esteem his memory.

~excerpt from The Jedi Doth Return, by Ian Doescher