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.
The tide recedes
But leaves behind
Bright seashells on the sand
The sun goes down
But gentle warmth
Still lingers on the land
The music stops
And yet it echoes on
In sweet refrains
For every joy that passes
Something beautiful remains
Ursula (Pankow) Delfs
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 long’d to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894)
…and I will leave,
But the birds will stay, singing:
and my garden will stay, with it’s green tree,
with it’s water well.
Many afternoons the sky will be blue and placid,
and the bells in the belfry, will chime,
as they are chiming this very afternoon,
The people who have loved me will pass away,
and the town will burst anew every year
But my spirit will always wander, nostalgic,
in the same peaceful corner of my garden
Juan Ramon Jimenez (1881 – 1958)
As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill,
So my body leaves no scar
On you, nor ever will.
When wind and hawk encounter,
What remains to keep?
So you and I encounter
Then turn, then fall to sleep.
As many nights endure
Without a moon or star,
So will we endure
When one is gone and far.
Leonard Cohen
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
John Donne (1572 – 1631)
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