What poem do you want read at your funeral?

[Globalti]

There's a poem by Geoffrey Winthrop Young, the Edwardian mountaineer, that contains the lines:

"Then they piled rocks and boulders mountain high, with stairs of snow up to Orion's door.

And climbed together singing to the sky; and no one saw them go."

Sniff.

 

[slowmotion]

My sister asked me to read this one by Henry Scott Holland.

Death Is Nothing At All

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 same easy way which you always did,
Put no difference into your tone;
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect, without the shadow of a ghost on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was; there is absolutely unbroken continuity,
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am just waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner.
All is well.

 

[Fnaar]

Oh! Bury me in lycra!
With a bike-shaped brooch above my heart
Take me not by motor-hearse
But pulled by trike, upon a cart

Give my spare parts so some young buck
May make a start upon the road
Take the pannier of life
And balance carefully his load

Clean your rims, my friend! For you may find
When you clear the hilly top
That the brakes of life may seize
And take you to a messy stop

Oh! Bury me in lycra!
So when I get to heaven’s gate
St. Peter in his wisdom
Can take the piss out of my weight

Take my ash, and let it fly,
O’er the land of Shimano
But save some for Italia fair
And the fields of Campagno(lo)

So take this Cateye, let it shine
In the dark, where’er ‘tis found
And fettle not my bottom bracket
Afore ye lay me in the ground

 

[welsh dragon]

Not how did she die, but how did she live
Not what did she gain, but what did she give
These are the units to measure the worth
Of a woman as a woman regardless of birth

 

[Dave the Smeghead]

Don't really care - I will be the one in the box

 

[yello]

My sister asked me to read this one by Henry Scott Holland.

That was read at my dad's funeral. Someone must have chosen it for him though. Or praps he saw it on the telly. The only thing I ever saw him read was the TV Times.

 

[Archie_tect]

Roses are Red
Poppies are Red,
I'm all alone
Now that I'm dead.

 

[Ian H]

I've chosen poems for a couple of funerals over the last few years. The Darkling Thrush was one.
This takes my fancy at the moment for mine:-

THROUGH winter-time we call on spring,
And through the spring on summer call,
And when abounding hedges ring
Declare that winter's best of all;
And after that there's nothing good
Because the spring-time has not come —
Nor know that what disturbs our blood
Is but its longing for the tomb.