Poems for a Celebration of Life

Words for the service, the program, and the card.

Planning your own farewell? Choose the poem you want read, or write one. Note who should read it. It is one of the most personal choices you can leave behind.

Planning for someone you love? You do not have to find the perfect poem. You have to find one that sounds true. Read a few aloud. You will know.

How to choose

Read three or four aloud, to yourself or to someone else. The right one stops you. If nothing does, write your own. The section at the end shows how, and the homemade poem is usually the one people talk about afterward.

Poems you can print and read

These are in the public domain. Print them in the program, read them at the service, put them on the card. No permission needed.

Crossing the Bar

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1889

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,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

Remember

Christina Rossetti, 1862

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.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Song

Christina Rossetti, 1862

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.

Requiem

Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor; home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

Death, be not proud

John Donne, 1633

Death be not proud, though some have callèd thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better than thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more, death, thou shalt die.

Because I could not stop for Death

Emily Dickinson, 1890

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 't is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

A Psalm of Life

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1838

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!—
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,—act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Prospice

Robert Browning, 1864

Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle's to fight ere a guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness, and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace, then a joy,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!

O Captain! My Captain!

Walt Whitman, 1865

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Farewell

Anne Brontë, 1848

Farewell to thee! but not farewell
To all my fondest thoughts of thee:
Within my heart they still shall dwell;
And they shall cheer and comfort me.

O beautiful, and full of grace!
If thou hadst never met mine eye,
I had not dreamed a living face
Could fancied charms so far outvie.

If I may ne'er behold again
That form and face so dear to me,
Nor hear thy voice, still would I fain
Preserve for aye their memory.

That voice, the magic of whose tone
Could wake an echo in my breast,
Creating feelings that, alone,
Can make my trancéd spirit blest.

That laughing eye, whose sunny beam
My memory would not cherish less;—
And oh, that smile! whose joyous gleam
No mortal language can express.

Adieu! but let me cherish still
The hope with which I cannot part.
Contempt may wound, and coldness chill,
But still it lingers in my heart.

And who can tell but Heaven, at last,
May answer all my thousand prayers,
And bid the future pay the past
With joy for anguish, smiles for tears.

Fear no more the heat o' the sun

William Shakespeare, from Cymbeline, 1623

Fear no more the heat o' th' sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta'en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o' th' great;
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor th' all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renowned be thy grave!

Gone From My Sight

attributed to Luther F. Beecher, 1904 (also called The Ship)

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to meet and mingle with each other.
Then some one at my side says: "There! she's gone!"
Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all.
She is just as large in the mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side,
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of her destination.
Her diminished size is in me, and not in her.
And just at that moment, when some one at my side says: "There! she's gone!"
there are other eyes that are watching for her coming
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout,
"There she comes!" And that is—dying.

Death Is Nothing at All

Henry Scott Holland, 1910, from the sermon The King of Terrors

Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

Poems to look up

These are still under copyright, so we list them rather than reprint them. Search the title and author. Reading one aloud at a private service is fine.

• Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep, Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1932
• Do not go gentle into that good night, Dylan Thomas, 1951
• Funeral Blues, W. H. Auden, 1938
• The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry, 1968
• Epitaph, Merrit Malloy, 1975
• She Is Gone, David Harkins, 1981
• When Great Trees Fall, Maya Angelou, 1990
• Turn Again to Life, Mary Lee Hall
• Miss Me But Let Me Go, author unknown
• The Dash, Linda Ellis, 1996
• To Those I Love, Isla Paschal Richardson
• God's Garden, Melissa Shreve
• Pardon Me for Not Getting Up, Kelly Roper (humorous)
• Death Is a Journey, Sri Chinmoy
• Is My Soul Asleep?, Antonio Machado, translated by Robert Bly

Write your own

It does not have to rhyme. A shape that works: four lines about what they did every day, two lines about something they said, two lines about what you will keep doing because of them, one line to them. Read it aloud twice. Cut anything you stumble on.

Four prompts to get started:

1. Start with a thing they did every day. The coffee, the crossword, the walk, the phone call.
2. Say one true thing about them that only you would know.
3. Say what you will keep doing because of them.
4. End with what you would say if they walked in right now.

Reading tips

• Keep each reading under two minutes.
• Print it in 14pt for the reader, and keep a second copy in someone's pocket.
• Ask the reader a few days ahead. Tell them it is fine to stop and breathe.
• If the reader is not sure they can get through it, ask a second person to stand beside them.

Preview the collection

Related resources

• Bible Verses
• Music Playlist
• Obituary Template

Find help near you

An officiant or celebrant can weave the readings into the service. Find Officiants and Clergy