Men like my father cannot die

Men like my father cannot die.

They are with me still,
real in memory as they were in flesh,
loving and beloved forever.

How green was my valley then.

Philip Dunne (1908-1992), U.S. screenwriter.
The narrator (Irving Pichel),
How Green Was My Valley (1941).

Time that is gone

I am leaving behind me fifty years of memory.

Memory . . . Who shall say what is real and what is not? 

Can I believe my friends all gone when their voices are a glory in my ears? 

No. 

And I will stand to say no and no again, for they remain a living truth within my mind. 

There is no fence nor hedge around time that is gone. 

You can go back and have what you like of it . . . 

So I can close my eyes on my valley as it was . . . 

from Huw's opening monologue in the movie, How Green Was My Valley

How Green Was My Valley

I saw behind me those who had gone, and before me, those who are to come. 

I looked back and saw my father, and his father, and all our fathers, and in front, to see my son, and his son, and the sons upon sons beyond. 

And their eyes were my eyes.

As I felt, so they had felt, and were to feel, as then, so now, as tomorrow and forever. 

Then I was not afraid, for I was in a long line that had no beginning, and no end, and the hand of his father grasped my father's hand, and his hand was in mine, and my unborn son took my right hand, and all, up and down the line that stretched from Time That Was, to Time That Is, and Is Not Yet, raised their hands to show the link, and we found that we were one . . .

written by Richard Llewellyn
How Green Was My Valley