Poetry Help: Need a bit of verse for a funeral

[publius8810]

Hi there... I'm new to this forum, so I suppose this will serve as my introduction. Kind of a depressing introduction, but I suppose it'll do.

My father recently passed. I'm trying to find a poem for his memorial folder. Typically, a poem or Bible verse is included which has some significance. Psalm 23 is a common one.

The issue is... My father wasn't a great one. Most "death poems" I've found are either about everlasting life, or how he's in a better place, or how great the deceased was and how much he'll be missed, or they're terribly depressing, talking about how death sucks.

I found what I thought was a good compromise: "Death by Water," from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land.


Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

My family objects. They say it's too depressing. While I agree that it is not an upbeat poem, I'm having trouble finding anything better. I don't think it's appropriate to canonize him in death, but I don't want to use a poem about how terrible he was either.

That Eliot poem, to me, is saying, "The man is dead. His actions in life are being forgotten. He is dissolving into the ocean, as if he never existed. But those left behind should look to him, and recognize that he was once 'handsome and tall,' full of promise. You should learn from his life."

Obviously The Waste Land has many more layers than that, but I think that's a good enough interpretation for my uses.

I'm not set on this poem. I'd prefer the emphasis to be more on the "Consider Phlebas" than on "picked his bones." But I can't find anything better.

Does anyone know of a poem with a similar message... Just different?

Thanks for your help.

[JBI]

Try When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard bloom'd by Walt Whitman, or Lycidas by Milton, or In Memoriam A H H by Tennyson, or even Adonais by Shelley. Those are, I think, the biggest elegies in the language.

Your probably best suited for a cut from Tennyson though, since his work cuts up rather well, and each section can be read alone.

[Petrarch's Love]

Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar" is often used at funerals. I don't know if it would be right for your circumstances or not, though.

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 tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

[mayneverhave]

JBI's suggestions are all good.

Although I love any mention of Eliot, I would hesitate to use him at a funeral. His work, especially out of The Waste Land, might come off a bit abstruse and uncomprehensible in the context.

Perhaps the end of Yeats's "Under Ben Bulben":

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

- These three lines decorate the poet's own gravestone, so as long as you don't have a problem with stealing from Yeats, then use it by all means.

[JBI]

Those aren't good words for a tombstone though... Yeats telling people not to mourn him, and to get on with the future, and not to dwell in the past is hardly applicable outside of Yeats.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Hi, sorry for your loss. I would go with your instinct and side with Eliot, for me anyway. The fact that you have sought this out and expressed it as you did suggests that this is more personal and therefore more appropriate to use than in any suggestions from other people, however good they may be.

[Pecksie]

Hey, sorry about your Dad... I guess the funeral has already taken place, but I suggest you read Shelley's Adonais (already suggested by JBI)... especially these stanzas, which for me at least are incredibly moving:

He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move
Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear
His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear;
Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;
And bursting in its beauty and its might
From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light.