OK - a couple here from the book- some are very boyish, but here's one by Elizabeth Jennings
What ceremony can we fit
You into no? If you had come
Out of a warm and noisy room
To this, there'd be an opposite
For us to know you by. We could
Imagine you in lively mood
And then look at the other side
The mood drawn out of you, the breath
Deafeated by the power of death.
But we have never seen you stride
Ambitiously the world we know
You could not come and yet you go
But there is nothing now to mar
Your clear refusal of our world.
Not in our memories can we mould
You or distort your character.
Then all our consolation is
That grief can be as pure as this.
Hmmm I like the next one by James Russel Lowe although its boyish- perhaps He coould be changed to She
He seemed a cherub who had lost his way
And wandered hither, so his stay
With us was short, and t'was most meet
That he would be no delve in earth's clod,
Nor need to pause and cleanse his feet
To stand before his god;
O blest world- evermore.
Or this one by Ben Jonson (I like this one)
it is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year.
To fall a log at last, dry, bald and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May
Although it fall and die that night;
it was the plant and flower of Light
In small proportions we just beauties see
And in short measures life may perfect be.
My favourite one is a Robert Frost one, I used it when a friend lost a young child. From memory so may be worth checking via google
Natures first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower
But only so an hour
Then leaf subside to leaf
So Eden sank to grief
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.