Funerals

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.

Uphill

Does the road wind up hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.

 

But is there for the night a resting-place?

A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

You cannot miss that inn.

 

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?

Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?

They will not keep you standing at that door.

 

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weary?

Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

Yes, beds for all who come.

 

Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894)

From the antique

The wind shall lull us yet,

The flowers shall spring above us:

And those who hate forget,

And those forgot who love us.

 

The pulse of hope shall cease,

Of joy and of regretting:

We twain shall sleep in peace,

Forgotten and forgetting.

 

For us no sun shall rise,

Nor wind rejoice, nor river,

Where we with fast-closed eyes

Shall sleep and sleep for ever.

 

Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894)

Life is but a stopping place

Life is but a stopping place

A pause in what’s to be

A resting place along the road

To sweet eternity.

We all have different journeys,

Different paths along the way

We all were meant to learn some things

But never meant to stay…

Our destination is a place

Far greater than we know.

For some the journey’s quicker

For some the journey’s slow.

And when the journey finally ends,

We’ll claim a great reward,

And find an everlasting peace,

Together with the Lord

 

Anon

Death is not the end

Death is not the end

but the beginning

of a metamorphosis.

For matter is never destroyed,

only transformed

and rearranged –

often more perfectly. 

Witness how in the moment of the caterpillar’s death

the beauty of the butterfly is born

and released from the prison of the cocoon

it flies free.

 

Peter Tatchell

There’s a certain slant of light

There’s a certain slant of light,

On winter afternoons,

That oppresses, like the weight

Of cathedral tunes.

 

Heavenly hurt it gives us;

We can find no scar,

But internal difference

Where the meanings are.

 

None may teach it anything,

‘Tis the seal, despair,-

An imperial affliction

Sent us of the air.

 

When it comes, the landscape listens,

Shadows hold their breath;

When it goes, ‘t is like the distance

On the look of death.

 

Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

Andrea Jackson The Holistic Celebrant

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