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cool pagan-like poems appropriate for parents funeral
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Wild Wooder
216 posts

Re: cool pagan-like poems appropriate for parents
May 29, 2010, 08:57
Just picked up your thread 4leafplanet, and found that and all the replies very moving. I'd like if I may to add another couple of poems.

The first is christian based but applicable to all beliefs and philosophies. It was read at both my father and father-in-law's funerals:

Death is nothing at all
I have only slipped away into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other
That we are still
Call me by my old familiar name
Speak to me in the easy way you always used
Put no difference into your tone
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed
At the little jokes we always enjoyed together
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was
Let it be spoken without effort
Without the ghost of a shadow in it
Life means all that it ever meant
It is the same as it ever was
There is absolute unbroken continuity
What is death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind
Because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you for an interval
Somewhere very near
Just around the corner
All is well.


Canon Henry Scott-Holland, 1847-1918, Canon of St Paul's Cathedral

The second is by Alfred Lord Tennyson and also applicable to all beliefs. It's called Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home!

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourn of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

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