The Holistic Celebrant
I have collected a selection of poems and readings you may like to use during a ceremony, I hope you will find something suitable. I intend to add more regularly.
If I should die and leave you here awhile,
be not like others, sore undone, who keep
long vigils by silent dust.
For my sake, turn again to life and smile,
nerving they heart and trembling hand to do
something to comfort weaker hearts than thine.
Complete these dear unfinished tasks of mine.
And I perchance may therein comfort you.
Mary Lee Hall (1843 – 1927)
I went to a funeral today.
Someone who obviously knew the family well
Stood to ‘say a few words’.
Well, the lady in the coffin was hardly recognisable!
She’d been so unbelievably good at everything
It’s a wonder anyone liked her at all.
So don’t make me a hero when I’m gone.
There’ll be good things about me to miss
And some not so good, which you’ll be better off without
So keep things in balance.
Whatever you do, have a laugh.
I’ve loved tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks
Tummy aching with hilarity
Always made me feel better about things.
So have a good laugh
It’ll do you good –
And don’t make me a hero when I’m gone.
Anon
For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 – 1909), from Atlanta in Calyden (1865)
Is there another world for this frail dust
To warm with life and be itself again?
Something about me daily speaks there must,
And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?
‘Tis nature’s prophesy that such will be,
And everything seems struggling to explain
The close sealed volume of its mystery.
Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace
As seeming anxious of eternity,
To meet that calm and find a resting place.
E’en the small violet feels a future power
And waits each year renewing blooms to bring,
And surely man is no inferior flower
To die unworthy of a second spring?
John Clare (1793 – 1864)
When at heart you should be sad,
Pondering the joys we had,
Listen and keep very still.
If the lowing from the hill
Or the tolling of a bell
Do not serve to break the spell,
Listen: you may be allowed
To hear my laughter from a cloud.
Sir Walter Raleigh, Explorer (1554 –1618)
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