Funeral Readings and Poems

By Becky Brown

To find solace from grief, we have always turned to the written word. With poetry and prose spanning continents, religions and cultures, this moving anthology examines loss, celebrates lives well lived and offers words of consolation.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning clothbound pocket-sized classics with gilt edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is edited by Becky Brown.

Helpfully divided into different sections, Funeral Readings and Poems features many famous poems such as ‘Funeral Blues’ by W. H. Auden and ‘How do I Love Thee?’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, alongside comforting prose from the likes of Louisa May Alcott and Kenneth Graham.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Mar 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781529065398

Book preview

Preface

Becky Brown

Choosing a reading for a funeral or memorial service can feel incredibly daunting. A life, no matter how long or how short, is not an easy thing to sum up. Nor is the passing away of a loved one a universal experience that can be captured in one neatly all-embracing famous poem. The circumstances in which we lose people are many and various – whether it is a quiet slipping away in the extremity of old age, defeat after a hard-fought illness or a sudden bereavement – and each elicits an entirely different mode of grief.

The way we mourn as individuals is so complex and so personal that the chance of finding something truly right, a reading that captures every feeling, every angle and facet, can seem almost impossible. Yet the idea that someone else – whether a poet, writer or dramatist – might be better placed to speak accurately and perfectly to our personal pain, or offer a greater form of comfort than we can draw from our friends and families, can seem even more unlikely.

However, when we delve into the works of our great writers, there are many words of wisdom and solace to be found. Words as powerful, moving and thought-provoking today as when the ink first dried on the paper. The readings in this volume span centuries, continents, cultures, languages and religions. The writers – from William Shakespeare to Lucy Maud Montgomery, Rumi to Virginia Woolf – weave the ageless and universal thread of grief through the individual fabrics of their place and time. Their responses are as numerous as our own, channelling everything from bone-deep sorrow to white-hot anger, offering insight and consolation in equal measure. Each reading, whether written two thousand years ago or only a decade hence, has been chosen for the strength and truth of its feeling.

To help you find exactly the right words, the anthology is divided into five sections, each collecting together poems and prose with a similar tone and sentiment. Firstly, ‘Funeral Blues’, for readings that convey the overwhelming impact of grief, that mourn frankly and openly, without fear or moderation. Then, travelling from what is lost to what remains, ‘Love Lives Beyond’ for readings about the living impact of those no longer with us, and that speak to the importance and power of remembering. In ‘A Summing Up’ are words to celebrate a life well-lived, that rejoice in the pleasure of being on the earth, and that explore what it truly means to live. Moving on from happiness in life to peace beyond it, ‘If Death is Kind’ brings together readings that contemplate a better place – whether a heaven, an afterlife, a reincarnation or simply an end to suffering. And, finally, ‘Freedom’, for the distant end of grief, for the gentle relief of acceptance and letting go, for acknowledging the world in its new shape. Amongst them is an extract from A. C. Swinburne’s poem The Garden of Proserpine:

We thank with brief thanksgiving

Whatever gods may be

That no life lives for ever;

That dead men rise up never;

That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea.

There is something moving and meaningful in those lines. In the acceptance of life, death and everything between. Of the sense of a full circle with the beginning and the end flowing together, and finding peace.

FUNERAL BLUES

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W. H. Auden (1907–1973)

from To Delia: On Her Endeavouring to Conceal Her Grief at Parting

Hard is that heart, and unsubdued by love,

That feels no pain, nor ever heaves a sigh;

Such hearts the fiercest passions only prove,

Or freeze in cold insensibility.

Oh! then indulge thy grief, nor fear to tell

The gentle source from whence thy sorrows flow,

Nor think it weakness when we love to feel,

Nor think it weakness what we feel to show.

William Cowper (1731–1800)

‘So, we’ll go no more a-roving’

So, we’ll go no more a-roving

So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,

And the soul wears out the breast,

And the heart must pause to breathe,

And Love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,

And the day returns too soon,

Yet we’ll go no more a-roving

By the light of the moon.

Lord Byron (1788–1824)

The Walk

You did not walk with me

Of late to the hill-top tree

By the gated ways,

As in earlier days;

You were weak and lame,

So you never came,

And I went alone, and I did not mind,

Not thinking of you as left behind.

I walked