Finding the right words to express the depth of your loss can be challenging. Poetry has long served as a means to capture complex emotions, offering solace and understanding in times of grief. Here are seven poignant poems or excerpts that can be included in funeral notices, obituaries, or eulogies, providing comfort and a sense of connection during these difficult times.
1. "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep" by Mary Elizabeth Frye: "Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there; I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow, I am the diamond glints on snow."
2. "Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden: "He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong."
3. "Remember" by Christina Rossetti: "Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay."
4. "Crossing the Bar" by Alfred Lord Tennyson: "Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea."
5. "Afterglow" by Helen Lowrie Marshall: "I’d like the memory of me to be a happy one. I’d like to leave an afterglow of smiles when life is done. I’d like to leave an echo whispering softly down the ways, Of happy times and laughing times and bright and sunny days."
6. "To an Athlete Dying Young" by A.E. Housman: "The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high."
7. "The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry: "When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds."
These poems offer a variety of sentiments, from celebrating a life well-lived to providing comfort in nature's enduring beauty. Including poetry in a death notice can create a lasting tribute that resonates with both personal meaning and universal emotion.
For more verse ideas, check out our helpful book of verses
here.
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