Non twee funeral poem

[Francounder]

Does anyone have a suggestion for something not too sentimental and cloying for a funeral poem? Don't want anything religious and don't want anything that implies the person is still here, or will be reunited later.

@Francounder

Thank you for all your kind suggestions. Anything that suggests the dead are just out of sight or can be found in the breeze or will be going to 'heaven' is definitely out.

I agree, I hate that one which goes on about nothing has changed, ‘Talk to me’ etc. By H Scott-Holland I think.

Once while chatting about these things DH said ‘never be under the misapprehension that I am in the next room’. Quite right, and your dad sounds to be of a similar frame of mind.

Sorry for your loss.

I thought immediately of Tennyson’s Crossing The Bar too, but on re-reading it, the last lines about the Pilot are religious.

The Dirge without Music by edna st Vincent Millay posted above is truly wonderful I think.

I had The Thousandth Man by Rudyard Kipling at DH's funeral but unfortunately it doesn't work trying to make it Woman! I suggest it just in case. It said everything for me.

I had Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night for my dad. It fit perfectly for him as he was a larger than life character and lived 10 years longer than first predicted. Appreciate its not for everyone though.

There are two that I like for funerals, one is the Joyce Grenfell already mentioned and the second is the Physicists Eulogy.

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever. And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives. And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly.
Aaron Freeman “You Want A Physicist To Speak at your Funeral”

MIL had Afterwards, by Thomas Hardy, at her funeral.

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
"He was a man who used to notice such things"?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
"To him this must have been a familiar sight."

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should
come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone."

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at
the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
"He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom,
"He hears it not now, but used to notice such things?"

@toomuchlaundry thank you, that is perfect. I too am arranging my dads funeral

An extract from No Matter What
Small said: “But what about when you’re dead and gone? Would you love me then? Does love go on?”
Large held Small snug as they looked out at the night, at the moon in the dark and the stars shining bright.
“Small, look at the stars – how they shine and glow. Yet some of those stars died a long time ago. Still they shine in the evening skies… love, like starlight, never dies”.

Instructions
by Arnold Crompton:

When I have moved beyond you in the adventure of life,
Gather in some pleasant place and there remember me
With spoken words, old and new.
Let a tear if you will, but let a smile come quickly
For I have loved the laughter of life.
Do not linger too long with your solemnities.
Go eat and talk, and when you can;
Follow a woodland trail, climb a high mountain,
Walk along the wild seashore,
Chew the thoughts of some book
Which challenges your soul.
Use your hands some bright day
To make a thing of beauty
Or to lift someone’s heavy load.
Though you mention not my name,
Though no thought of me crosses your mind,
I shall be with you,
For these have been the realities of my life for me.
And when you face some crisis with anguish.
When you walk alone with courage,
When you choose your path of right,
I shall be very close to you.
I have followed the valleys,
I have climbed the heights of life

We had The Lake Isle of Innisfree at dad's funeral last year

@Divebar2021

I like the Joyce Grenfell poem although it is short.

I like this. My mum is under palliative care and not expected to see Christmas. She is the generation who found Joyce a real giggle. So I'm going yo nick this when the time comes x

Not a poem, but I want this at my eventual funeral:

In the wake of a human being’s death, what survives is a set of afterglows, some brighter and some dimmer, in the collective brains of all those who were dearest to them. And when those people in turn pass on, the afterglow becomes extremely faint. And when that outer layer in turn passes into oblivion, then the afterglow is feebler still, and after a while there is nothing left.

Because bodily death is so clear, so sharp, and so dramatic, and because we tend to cling to the caged-bird view, death strikes us as instantaneous and absolute, as sharp as a guillotine blade. Our instinct is to believe that the light has all at once gone out altogether. I suggest that this is not the case for human souls, because the essence of a human being — truly unlike the essence of a mosquito or a snake or a bird or a pig — is distributed over many a brain. It takes a couple of generations for a soul to subside, for the flickering to cease, for all the embers to burn out. Although “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” may in the end be true, the transition it describes is not so sharp as we tend to think.

It seems to me, therefore, that the instinctive although seldom articulated purpose of holding a funeral or memorial service is to reunite the people most intimate with the deceased, and to collectively rekindle in them all, for one last time, the special living flame that represents the essence of that beloved person, profiting directly or indirectly from the presence of one another, feeling the shared presence of that person in the brains that remain, and thus solidifying to the maximal extent possible those secondary personal gemmae that remain aflicker in all these different brains. Though the primary brain has been eclipsed, there is, in those who remain and who are gathered to remember and reactivate the spirit of the departed, a collective corona that still glows. This is what human love means. The word “love” cannot, thus, be separated from the word “I”; the more deeply rooted the symbol for someone inside you, the greater the love, the brighter the light that remains behind.

(Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop)

@TrickyD that Henry Scott-Holland one that is very popular is actually an extract from a longer sermon that's explicitly arguing that it's the WRONG way to think about death -- a tempting-but-erroneous mindset.

I choose this poem by David Hawkins at DMs funeral:-

She Is Gone (He Is Gone)
You can shed tears that she is gone
Or you can smile because she has lived
You can close your eyes and pray that she will come back
Or you can open your eyes and see all that she has left
Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her
Or you can be full of the love that you shared
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday
Or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday
You can remember her and only that she is gone
Or you can cherish her memory and let it live on
You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back
Or you can do what she would want: smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

Obviously you just replace "she" with "he" for a man!

So sorry for your loss

I chose eulogy to a friend by Robert Burns for my father. He was a straightforward Yorkshireman, a teacher, had a brilliant mind and was an atheist through and through. It was so perfect it could have been written for him.

An honest man here lies at rest,
As e’er God with His image blest:
The friend of man, the friend of truth;
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d:
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.

@balzamico I am so sorry for your loss

I found great comfort in this poem, still read it sometimes now and DF died 4 years ago. It was also something I could read at the funeral, didn't want anything too long or complex as might have struggled to read something like that.

I like this as it is about death and renewal/carrying on. And not sentimental.

The Trees by Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;

The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

We had Let me go by Christina Rosseti for my Mum.

@The4teddybears

I like this one , which I heard for the first time recently .

I was going to say the Dash as well. Really made me think when I first heard it

I like afterglow

'I'd like to leave an echo whispering softly down the ways, Of happy times and laughing times and bright and sunny days. I'd like the tears of those who grieve, to dry before the sun; Of happy memories that I leave when my life is done.'

@snowmansballs33

I really like this one by Henry Van Dyke and it's really not depressing, quite uplifting.

This was read at my friend’s funeral by her sister and I found it very moving .

I read this at my DSIL's funeral:

Silent Tear

Just close your eyes and you will see
All the memories you have of me
Just relax and you will find
That i'm still there inside your mind
Don't cry for me now that i'm gone
For i am in the land of song

There is no pain, there is no fear
So dry away that silent tear
Don't think of me in the dark and cold
For here i am, no longer old
I'm in that place that's filled with love
Known to you all, as "UP ABOVE"

“ROADS GO EVER ON” BY J. R. R. TOLKIEN

From “The Lord of the Rings” where Bilbo acknowledges that his journey is complete and gives others a blessing for "a journey new.

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.
Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.
Roads go ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

We used this at my DH’s funeral as he was a LOTR fan.

I send the dash poem. It’s all about what matters is the dash, the bit between your birth and your death.

When I'm an old woman I shall wear purple - Jenny Joseph

My brother read this at my darling mum's funeral 24 years ago. No mentions of death or heaven. A funny irreverent poem that captured my mum's joy of life and how she lived it. It's not for everyone, but certainly brightened the funeral in which we firmly wanted to celebrate mum's life. Friends still say to me how they remember it and how apt it was.
So sorry for your loss