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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

EDNA ST VINCENT MILLAY: ‘Time does not bring relief’ and ‘Dirge without Music’ by Edna St Vincent Millay. From Collected Poems, HarperCollins. Copyright © 1917, 1928, 1945, 1955 by Edna St Vincent Millay and Norman Millay Ellis. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth Barnett, literary executor.

DIANA SCOTT: ‘Prayer for the Little Daughter between Death and Burial’ by Diana Scott from Bread and Roses: Women Poets of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Reprinted by permission of Time Warner.

E. J. SCOVELL: ‘Marriage and Death’ by E. J. Scovell from Collected Poems by E. J. Scovell (Carcanet Press, 1988). Reproduced by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.

JO SHAPCOTT: ‘When I Died’ from Her Book Poems 1988–1998 by Jo Shapcott. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber.

LOUIS SIMPSON: ‘AS birds are fitted to the boughs’ by Louis Simpson. Copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission of Louis Simpson.

DYLAN THOMAS: ‘DO not go gentle into that good night’ by Dylan Thomas from The Poems published by J. M. Dent. By kind permission of David Higham Associates.

DEREK WALCOTT: ‘Earth’ from Sea Grapes, published by Jonathan Cape. Used by permission of the Random House Group Ltd.

JEANNE WILLIS: ‘Inside Our Dreams’ from Toffee Pockets, published by the Bodley Head. Used by permission of the Random House Group Ltd.

JULIA WATSON

POEMS AND READINGS FOR WEDDINGS

Words of joy, love, devotion and celebration.

If you’re lost for words for a loved one’s big occasion then, instead of worrying, simply turn to the words of the greats.

Here are collected the very best readings by world-renowned poets, bards, playwrights and novelists who have written passionately, thoughtfully and deeply over hundreds of years about love, marriage and commitment.

Featuring an astonishing range of poems, prose extracts, prayers and songs, these moving readings have been chosen to enhance the occasion whether they be moving, witty, irreverent, thoughtful or heartfelt.

Above all, these words will be recognized as timeless and true.

Penguin Books

THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

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