Funeral Poetry and Readings
Famous writers and poets became famous because they are able to capture deep feelings and hope in words that touch us. It is often appropriate to open the service with a reading to set the tone and to close with another to wrap up the flow of sentiments and send the guests off with a note of sweetness or hope. Below is a small selection of some of the memorial poems and readings that I have gathered. If one of these isn’t quite appropriate, I have many others.
Bread and Music by A.D. Hope
(Hope composed this for his own funeral when he was about 90 years old)
Music I heard with you was more than music,Exodus
When I am dead, believe me Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
This is my last desire,
That gentle earth receive me
And not the lordly fire.
My mother and my father
Went through the gate of flame
But I myself would rather
Go back the way I came
Let the deep mold which bore me
Enfold me in the grave
And, as from men before me,
Take back the gifts it gave.
Prayer of Saint Francis
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
To Live in Hearts We Leave Behind Is Not To Die by Lyn Bryant
Remember me on quiet days,
While rain drops whisper on your pane.
But in your memories have no grief.
Let just the joy we knew remain.
Remember me when evening stars
Smile down on you with quiet eyes.
Remember me if once you awake
To catch a glimpse of red sunrise.
Remember me when spring walks by.
Think once of me when you are glad.
When you are happy, so am I.
And when your thoughts do turn to me,
Know that I would not have you cry.
But live for me and laugh for me,
And while you live,
I shall not die.
A Part of Our Family
We will always love him, we will always care
We will still whisper his name, in our daily prayer
He’s not just a memory or part of the immediate past
He is part of our family, as long as it shall last.
We loved him then, we love him now, we know we always will.
We’ll love him as each day goes by, until our own hearts are still.
When I come to the end of the road
Miss Me – But Let Me Go – Author Unknown
And the sun has set for me
I want no rites in a gloom-filled room
Why cry for a soul set free?
Miss me a little, but not too long
And not with your head bowed low
Remember the love that we once shared
Miss me but let me go.
For this is a journey that we all must take
And each must go alone
It’s all a part of a greater plan,
A step on the road to home.
When you are lonely and sick at heart
Go to the friends we know
And bury your sorrows in doing good deeds
Miss me, but let me go.
Finding You in Beauty by Walter Rinder
The rays of light filtered through
The sentinels of trees this morning.
I sat in the garden and contemplated.
The serenity and beauty
Of my feelings and surroundings
Completely captivated me.
I thought of you.
I discovered you tucked away
In the shadows of the tress.
Then, rediscovered you
In the smiles of the flowers
As the sun penetrated their petals
In the rhythm of the leaves
Falling in the garden
In the freedom of the birds
As they fly searching as you do
I’m very happy to have found you,
Now you will never leave me
For I will always find you in the beauty of life.
One at Rest
Think of me as one at rest
For me you should not weep
I have no pain, no troubled thoughts
For I am just asleep.
The living, thinking me that way
Is now forever still
And life goes on without me
As time forever will.
If your heat is heavy now
Because I’ve gone away,
Dwell not long upon it friend
For none of us can stay.
Those of you who liked me
I sincerely thank you all
‘and those of you who loved me
I thank you most of all.
The answer to life’s riddle
In life I never knew,
I go with hope that now I will
And even so will you.
O, foolish, foolish me that way,
I who was so small,
To have wondered, even worried
At the mystery of it all.
And in my fleeting lifespan
As time when rushing by,
I found some time to hesitate,
To laugh, to love, to cry.
Matters it now if time began,
If time will ever cease?
I was here, I used it all
And now I am at peace.
That Man Is a Success adapted from Ralph Waldo Emerson
That man is a success
Who has lived well,
Laughed often and loved much;
Who has gained the respect
Of intelligent men
And the love of children;
Who has filled his niche
And accomplished his task
Who leaves the world better than he found it,
Who has never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty
Or failed to express it;
Who looked for the best in others
And gave the best he had.
Death is nothing at all,
Death Is Nothing At All by Henry Scott Holland
I have only slipped away
Into the next room.
I am I, and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That we are still.
Call me by my old familiar name,
Speak to me in the easy way
That you have always used.
Put no difference in your tone,
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we have always laughed
At the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Let my name be ever the household word
That it always was,
Let it be spoken without effect,
Without a trace of shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was;
There is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
Because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval somewhere very near,
Just around the corner.
All is well.
This Heritage – Author Unknown
They are not dead,
who leave us this great heritage
Of remembered joy.
They still live in our hearts,
In the happiness we knew,
In the dreams we shared.
They still breathe,
In the lingering fragrnace windblown,
From their favorite flowers.
They still smile in the moonlight’s silver
And laugh in the sunlight’s sparkling gold.
They still speak in the echoes of words
We’ve heard them say again and again.
They still move,
In the rhythm of waving grasses,
In the dance of the tossing branches.
They are not dead;
their memory is warm in our hearts,
comfort in our sorrow.
They are not apart from us,
But a part of us
For love is eternal,
and those we love shall be with us
throughout all eternity.
A Parting Guest by James Whitcomb Riley
(In this short poem, Riley describes a human being departing this life as if he were leaving a party with thanks and gratitude to his/her hosts)
What delightful hosts are they--- There Is No Death by Bishop Brent -1862-1926
I am standing on the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.
Life and Love!
Lingeringly I turn away,
This late hour, yet glad enough
They have not withheld from me
Their high hospitality.
So, with face lit with delight
And all gratitude, I stay
Yet to press their hands and say,
"Thanks. --So fine a time! Good night."
She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch her until at length she is a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, “There, she’s gone!”
Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and she is just as able to bear her load of living weight to her destined harbor.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her, and just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There, she’s gone! There are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here, she comes!”
And that is dying.