Poems for Funerals
Find classic, modern, and contemporary poems to read or share at funerals, in memorial services, or in sympathy cards, including poems about grief, death, hope, family, and comfort.
Classic Poems to Read at Funerals
“Inarticulate Grief” by Richard Aldington
Let the sea beat its thin torn hands…
“Because I could not stop for Death (479)” by Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death –
“Forever” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
I had not known before…
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold...
“Loss” by Winifred M. Letts
In losing you I lost my sun and moon…
“Dirge Without Music” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts…
“[Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape]” by Rainer Maria Rilke
Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape…
“Under the Harvest Moon” by Carl Sandburg
Under the harvest moon...
“I Have a Rendezvous with Death” by Alan Seeger
I have a rendezvous with Death…
“Crossing the Bar” by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Sunset and evening star…
“Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night…
“Warm Summer Sun” by Mark Twain
Warm summer sun…
“A Meeting” by Edith Wharton
On a sheer peak of joy we meet…
“O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done…
“Song of the Open Road, I” by Walt Whitman
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road…
Contemporary and Modern Poems to Read at Funerals
“Orchids Are Sprouting From the Floorboards” by Kaveh Akbar
Orchids are sprouting from the floorboards…
“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master…
“sorrows” by Lucille Clifton
who would believe them winged...
“the dark tree, the cold sea” by Emily Fragos
although I know you can never be found…
“A Journey” by Nikki Giovanni
It’s a journey… that I propose… I am not the guide…
“Rituals for Ash” by Cindy Williams Gutiérrez
We will smudge…
“For Keeps” by Joy Harjo
Sun makes the day new…
“It Was Like This: You Were Happy” by Jane Hirshfield
It was like this…
“What the Living Do” by Marie Howe
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days…
“The Comfort of Darkness” by Galway Kinnell
Darkness swept the earth in my dream…
“Wolf’s Trees” by J. D. McClatchy
If trees fall in a wood and no one hears them…
“What Changes” by Naomi Shihab Nye
My father’s hopes travel with him…
“Ever” by Meghan O’Rourke
Even now I can’t grasp “nothing” or “never”…
“Untitled [This is what was bequeathed us]” by Gregory Orr
This is what was bequeathed us…
“Etta’s Elegy” by Maureen Seaton
This is where the poem holds its breath…
“Question” by May Swenson
Body my house…
“Eulogy” by Kevin Young
To allow silence…
More Poems about Grief
“After Words” by Kimberly Blaeser
Because the smallness of our being…
“Life” by Joe Brainard
When I stop and think about what it’s all about…
“A New Law” by Greg Delanty
Let there be a ban on every holiday…
“On a Day, In the World” by Brenda Hillman
We had a grief…
“Where the Sky Meets the Earth” by W. Todd Kaneko
A man can’t die where there is no earth…
“What Came to Me” by Jane Kenyon
I took the last…
“Epitaph” by Jim Moore
He stole forsythia…
“Past Barabbas” by Roger Reeves
The funeral past and also I loved him…
“Token Loss” by Kay Ryan
To the dragon…
“Meanwhile the elephants” by Mark Wagenaar
have retired now that the circus…
More Poems about Loss
Poems about Losing a Parent
“Black Snow [I came home]” by Carl Adamshick
I came home…
“OBIT [Memory]” by Victoria Chang
Memory—died August 3, 2015. The…
“Elegy, Surrounded by Seven Trees” by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Ordinary days deliver joy easily…
“The Blue Dress” by Saeed Jones
Her blue dress is a silk train is a river…
“Lament” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Listen, children…
“The courage that my mother had” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
The courage that my mother had…
“Only as the Day Is Long” by Dorianne Laux
Soon she will be no more than a passing thought…
“Little Father” by Li-Young Lee
I buried my father…
“Kissing My Father” by Joseph O. Legaspi
Three days into his wake my father has not risen…
“At Night” by Stanley Plumly
When did I know that I’d have to carry it around…
“Poem Begun on the Day of My Father’s funeral and Completed on the first Day of the New Year” by Dean Rader
Light the last light and lift…
“Metamorphosis” by James Richardson
The week after you died, Mom…
“Like Any Messiah Taken Unaware by Death” by Aisha al-Saifi
Like any Messiah taken unaware by death…
“Sitting at Night on the Front Porch” by Charles Wright
I’m here, on the dark porch, restyled in my mother’s chair…
Poems about Losing a Child
“Portrait of a Father After His Son’s Memorial Service” by Rigoberto González
There’s a man who sits on a bench…
“My Mother and Lucille Clifton Have Tea” by Parneshia Jones
They meet over tea and potato chips...
“To Theodore” by George Marion McClellan
Such are the little memories of you…
“Little Box” by Marilyn Nelson
Someone has died, who will never see the black…
Poems about Losing a Friend
“Poof” by Amy Gerstler
Here on my lap, in a small plastic bag…
“Travelling” by William Wordsworth
This is the spot:—how mildly does the sun…
“Consolation” by Robert Louis Stevenson
Though he, that ever kind and true…