A library of resources for funerals

Upon a Child

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

Here she lies, a pretty bud,
Lately made of flesh and blood:
Who as soon fell fast asleep
As her little eyes did peep.
Give her strewing's, but not stir
The earth that lightly covers her.

Epitaph

Katherine Phillips (1632-1664)

On her Son H.P. at St. Syth’s Church where her body also lies interred

What on Earth deserves our trust?
Youth and Beauty both are dust.
Long we gathering are with pain,
What one moment calls again.
Seven years childless marriage past,
A Son, a son is born at last:
So exactly lim’d and fair,
Full of good Spirits, Mien, and Air,
As a long life promised,
Yet, in less than six weeks dead.
Too promising, too great a mind
In so small room to be confined:
Therefore, as fit in Heaven to dwell,
He quickly broke the Prison shell.
So the subtle Alchemist,
Can’t with Hermes Seal resist
The powerful spirit’s subtler flight,
But t’will bid him long good night.
And so the Sun if it arise
Half so glorious as his Eyes,
Like this Infant, takes a shrowd,
Buried in a morning Cloud.

Upon little Hector Phillips

Katherine Phillips (1632-1664)

Twice forty months of wedlock did I stay,
Then had my vows crowned with a lovely boy,
And yet in forty days he dropped away,
O swift vicissitude of human joy.

I did but see him and he disappeared,
I did but pluck the rosebud and it fell,
A sorrow unforeseen and scarcely feared,
For ill can mortals their afflictions spell.

And now, sweet babe, what can my trembling heart
Suggest to right my doleful fate or thee?
Tears are my muse and sorrow all my art,
So piercing groans must be thy elegy.

Thus whilst no eye is witness of my moan,
I grieve thy loss, ah boy too dear to live,
And let the unconcerne?d world alone,
Who neither will, nor can refreshment give.

An off’ring too for thy sad tomb I have,
Too just a tribute to thy early hearse;
Receive these gasping numbers to thy grave,
The last of thy unhappy mother’s verse.

On the Death of a Child

D.J. Enright (1920-2002)

The greatest griefs shall find themselves inside the smallest cage.
It's only then that we can hope to tame their rage,

The monsters we must live with.
For it will not do
To hiss humanity because one human threw
Us out of heart and home. Or part

At odds with life because one baby failed to live.
Indeed, as little as its subject, is the wreath we give -

The big words fail to fit.
Like giant boxes
Round small bodies.
Taking up improper room,
Where so much withering is, and so much bloom.

Bells for John Whiteside's daughter

John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)

There was such speed in her little body,
And such lightness in her footfall,
It is no wonder her brown study
Astonishes us all.

Her wars were bruited in our high window.
We looked among orchard trees and beyond
Where she took arms against her shadow,
Or harried unto the pond

The lazy geese, like a snow cloud
Dripping their snow on the green grass,
Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,
Who cried in goose, Alas,

For the tireless heart within the little
Lady with rod that made them rise
From their noon apple-dreams and scuttle
Goose-fashion under the skies!

But now go the bells, and we are ready,
In one house we are sternly stopped
To say we are vexed at her brown study,
Lying so primly propped.

Elegy for Jane (My student, thrown by a horse

by Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,
A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.

Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.

My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.

On the Death of His Son Vincent

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)

Waking at morn, with the accustomed sigh
For what no morn could ever bring me more,
And again sighing, while collecting strength
To meet the pangs that waited me, like one
Whose sleep the rack hath watched: I tried to feel
How good for me had been strange griefs of old,
That for long days, months, years, inured my wits
To bear the dreadful burden of one thought
One thought with woeful need turned many ways,
Which, shunned at first, and scaring me, as wounds
Thrusting in wound, became, oh! almost clasped
And blest, as saviours from the one dire pang
That mocked the will to move it.

To Two Bereaved

Thomas Ashe (1836-1889)

You must be sad; for though it is to Heaven,
'Tis hard to yield a little girl of seven.
Alas, for me, 'tis hard my grief to rule,
Who only met her as she went to school;
Who never heard the little lips so sweet
Say even ‘Good-morning,' though our eyes would meet
As whose would fain be friends! How must you sigh,
Sick for your loss, when even so sad am I,
Who never clasp'd the small hands any day!
Fair flowers thrive round the little grave, I pray.

Child Burial

Paula Meehan (1955- )

Your coffin looked unreal,
fancy as a wedding cake.
I chose your grave clothes with care,
your favorite stripey shirt,

your blue cotton trousers.
They smelt of woodsmoke, of October,

your own smell was there too.
I chose a gansy of handspun wool

warm and fleecy for you. It is
so cold down in the dark.
No light can reach you and teach you
the paths of wild birds,

the names of the flowers
the fishes, the creatures.
Ignorant you must remain
of the sun and its work,

my lamb, my calf, my eaglet,
my cub, my kid, my nestling,

my suckling, my colt. I would spin
time back, take you again

within my womb, your amniotic lair,
and further spin you back

through nine waxing months
to the split seeding moment

you chose to be made flesh,
word within me.
I’d cancel the love feast
The hot night of your making.
I would travel alone
to a quiet mossy place,

You would spill from me into the earth
drop by bright red drop.

Mid-Term Break

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying—
He had always taken funerals in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

Epitaph for Maria Wentworth

Thomas Carew (1595-1640)

And here the precious dust is laid;
Whose purely-temper'd clay was made
So fine that it the guest betray'd.

Else the soul grew so fast within,
It broke the outward shell of sin,
And so was hatch'd a cherubin.

In height, it soar'd to God above;
In depth, it did to knowledge move,
And spread in breadth to general love.

Before, a pious duty shined
To parents, courtesy behind;
On either side an equal mind.

Good to the poor, to kindred dear,
To servants kind, to friendship clear,
To nothing but herself severe.

So, though a virgin, yet a bride
To ev'ry grace, she justified
A chaste polygamy, and died.

Learn from hence, reader, what small trust
We owe this world, where virtue must,
Frail as our flesh, crumble to dust.

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove;
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love.

A violet by a mossy stone
Half-hidden from the eye;
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh
The difference to me!

A Slumber did my Spirit Seal

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

A slumber did my spirit seal,
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

On the Death of Mistress Mary Prideaux

William Strode (1602-1645)

Weep not because this child hath died so yoUng,
But weepe because yourselves have lived so long:
Age is not filled by growth of time, for then
What old man lives to see th'estate of men?

Who sees the age of grand Methusaleh?
Ten years make us as old as hundreds him.
Ripeness is from ourselves: and then we die
When nature hath obtained maturity.

Summer and winter fruits there be, and all
Not at one time, but being ripe, must fall.
Death did not err: your mourners are beguiled;
She died more like a mother than a child.

Weigh the composure of her pretty parts:
Her gravity in childhood, all her arts
Of womanly behaviour; weigh her tongue
So wisely measured, not too short nor long;

Add only to her growth some inches more,
She took up now what due was at threescore.
She lived seven years, our age's first degree;
Journeys at first time ended happy be;
Yet, take her stature with the age of man,
They well are fitted: both are but a span.

Epitaph on Salomon Pavy, a child of Queen Elizabeth’s Chapel

Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

Weep with me, all you that read
This little story;
And know for whom a tear you shed,
Death's self is sorry.
'Twas a child that so did thrive
In grace and feature,
As Heaven and Nature seemed to strive
Which owned the creature.
Years he numbered scarce thirteen
When Fates turned cruel,
Yet three filled Zodiacs had he been
The stage's jewel;
And did act (what now we moan)
Old men so duly,
As, sooth, the Parcae thought him one,
He played so truly.
So, by error, to his fate
They all consented;
But viewing him since (alas, too late),
They have repented,
And have sought (to give new birth)
In baths to steep him;
But, being so much too good for earth,
Heaven vows to keep him.

2 Samuel 1:19-27, King James Bible

Bible

17 And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and over Jonathan his son:
18 Also he bade them teach the children of Judah the use of the bow: behold, it is written in the book of Jasher.
19 The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!
20 Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.
21 Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain, upon you, nor fields of offerings: for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil.
22 From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty.
23 Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided: they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.
24 Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights, who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel.
25 How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.
26 I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.
27 How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!

My Boy Jack

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

(1914-18)

‘Have you news of my boy Jack?’
Not this tide.
‘When d'you think that he'll come back?’
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

‘Has any one else had word of him?’
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

‘Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?’
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind –
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide.

Men Who March Away

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
Leaving all that here can win us;
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away?

Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye,
Who watch us stepping by
With doubt and dolorous sigh?
Can much pondering so hoodwink you!
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye?

Nay. We well see what we are doing,
Though some may not see—
Dalliers as they be—
England's need are we;
Her distress would leave us rueing:
Nay. We well see what we are doing,
Though some may not see!

In our heart of hearts believing
Victory crowns the just,
And that braggarts must
Surely bite the dust,
Press we to the field ungrieving,
In our heart of hearts believing
Victory crowns the just.

Hence the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
Leaving all that here can win us;
Hence the faith and fire within us
Men who march away.

Easter Monday (In Memoriam E.T)

Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)

In the last letter that I had from France
You thanked me for the silver Easter egg
Which I had hidden in the box of apples
You liked to munch beyond all other fruit.
You found the egg the Monday before Easter,
And said, ‘I will praise Easter Monday now –
It was such a lovely morning’. Then you spoke
Of the coming battle and said, ‘This is the eve.
Good-bye. And may I have a letter soon.’

That Easter Monday was a day for praise,
It was such a lovely morning. In our garden
We sowed our earliest seeds, and in the orchard
The apple-bud was ripe. It was the eve.
There are three letters that you will not get.

In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’