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Back Poems and Readings for Funerals Save as PDF
Chapters (98)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. Foreword
  4. REMEMBER ME WHEN I AM GONE AWAY …
  5. ‘Remember me when I am gone away’
  6. Heaven-Haven
  7. Life Goes On
  8. Living Each Day
  9. ‘Death is nothing at all’
  10. Remember Me
  11. ‘I’m here for a short visit only’
  12. ‘No longer mourn for me when I am dead’
  13. If Death is Kind
  14. Fare Well
  15. When I Died
  16. ‘Because I could not stop for Death’
  17. ‘I see myself now at the end of my journey’
  18. Requiem
  19. ‘I thought I’d write my own obituary’
  20. Think of Me Then
  21. The New Path
  22. Footprints in the Sand
  23. The Book
  24. The Legacy
  25. ‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever’
  26. When I Have Fears
  27. A Song of Living
  28. ‘I should like to be buried in a summer forest’
  29. ‘I would not have a god come in’
  30. I’ve Made Out a Will
  31. Coda
  32. Rest
  33. Prayer
  34. A TINY LAMP HAS GONE OUT IN MY TENT …
  35. ‘You must not shut the night inside you’
  36. Prayer for the Little Daughter between Death and Burial
  37. Epitaph on a Child
  38. On the Death of a Child
  39. Four Candles
  40. Too Soon
  41. Requiescat
  42. ‘Promise you won’t forget about me, ever’
  43. HE WAS MY NORTH, MY SOUTH, MY EAST AND WEST …
  44. Funeral Blues
  45. ‘Music, when soft voices die’
  46. ‘As birds are fitted to the boughs’
  47. Farewell, Sweet Dust
  48. Echo
  49. The Kaleidoscope
  50. Verses Written on Her Deathbed at Bath to Her Husband in London
  51. A Widow’s Hymn
  52. ‘Time does not bring relief’
  53. Tomorrows
  54. ‘Never more will the wind’
  55. Marriage and Death
  56. Inseparable
  57. ‘Dear gentle soul, who went so soon away’
  58. In Memoriam E. S.
  59. WORN FEATURES OF ANCESTRAL MOULD …
  60. Highland Graveyard
  61. ‘Another and another and another’
  62. ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’
  63. ‘By ways remote and distant waters sped’
  64. ‘Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore’
  65. Elegy
  66. I Wish You Enough
  67. While I Slept
  68. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’
  69. Coat
  70. ‘The rooms and days we wandered through’
  71. The Friend
  72. ‘You can shed tears that she is gone’
  73. Inside Our Dreams
  74. Traditional Gaelic Blessing
  75. TO EVERY THING THERE IS A SEASON …
  76. ‘To every thing there is a season’
  77. ‘Our revels now are ended’
  78. So Many Different Lengths of Time
  79. ‘Come, fill the Cup’
  80. ‘Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth’
  81. ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels’
  82. ‘Death be not proud’
  83. ‘Home is where one starts from’
  84. Dirge without Music
  85. ‘don’t tell me that I mourn too much’
  86. All Things Pass
  87. Earth
  88. On Death
  89. Gone from My Sight
  90. The Wheel
  91. Live Your Life
  92. Prayer
  93. Old Irish Toast
  94. For My Own Tomb-stone
  95. Notes
  96. Acknowledgements
  97. JULIA WATSON
  98. THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

HILDA DOOLITTLE: For UK and Commonwealth: ‘Never More Will the Wind’ by H. D. from Collected Poems by Hilda Doolittle (Carcanet Press, 1984). Reproduced by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd. For Canada: ‘Never More Will the Wind’ by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) from Collected Poems 1912–1944. Copyright © 1982, by the estate of Hilda Doolittle. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

HELEN DUNMORE: ‘I should like to be buried in a summer forest’ by Helen Dunmore from Out of the Blue: Poems 1975–2001, Bloodaxe Books, 2001.

DOUGLAS DUNN: ‘The Kaleidoscope’ from Elegies by Douglas Dunn. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber.

T. S. ELIOT: ‘Home is where one starts from’ from East Coker, Four Quartets, by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber.

D. J.ENRIGHT: ‘On the Death of a Child’ by D. J. Enright from SelectedPoems by D. J. Enright (Oxford University Press, 1990). Reproduced by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.

VICKI FEAVER: ‘Coats’ from Close Relatives by Vicki Feaver (Secker, 1981). Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

ROBERT FRANCIS: ‘While I Slept’ by Robert Francis from Collected Poems (University of Massachusetts Press). Copyright by Robert Francis, 1976. Reproduced by permission of University of Massachusetts Press.

JOYCE GRENFELL: ‘Life Goes On’ from Hats Off (John Murray). Copyright © the Joyce Grenfell Memorial Trust, 1980. By kind permission of Sheil Land Associates.

ALICE KAVOUNAS: ‘The Friend’ by Alice Kavounas. By kind permission of the author.

THOMAS MERTON: ‘Prayer’ from Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, New York.

A. A. MILNE: Extract from The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne. Copyright © under the Berne Convention. Published by Egmont Books Ltd, London, and used with permission. Copyright 1928 by E. P. Dutton, renewed © 1956 by A. A. Milne. Used by permission of Dutton Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. All rights reserved.

REINHOLD NIEBUHR: ‘The Serenity Prayer’ by Reinhold Niebuhr. By permission of the Estate of Reinhold Niebuhr.

DOROTHY PARKER: ‘Coda’ by Dorothy Parker. For UK and Commonwealth by permission of Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. For Canada: ‘Coda’ from Complete Poems by Dorothy Parker. Copyright © 1999, by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Used by permission of Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

BRIAN PATTEN: ‘SO Many Different Lengths of Time’ from Armada by Brian Patten (HarperCollins Publishers, 1996). Copyright © Brian Patten, 1996. Reproduced by permission of the author c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1 JN.

PETER PORTER: ‘The rooms and days we wandered through’ from ‘An Exequy’ by Peter Porter as published in The Cost of Seriousness (Oxford University Press, 1978). By kind permission of the poet.

KATHLEEN RAINE: ‘Highland Graveyard’ reprinted from The Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine. Copyright © Golgonooza Press.

MICHAEL ROSEN: ‘don’t tell me that I mourn too much’ from Carrying the Elephant by Michael Rosen (Penguin Books, 2002). Copyright © Michael Rosen, 2002. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.