A library of resources for funerals

Give Me a Doctor

W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

Give me a doctor partridge-plump
Short in the leg and broad in the rump,
An endomorph with gentle hands
Who’ll never make absurd demands
That I abandon all my vices
Nor pull a long face in a crisis,
But with a twinkle in his eye
Will tell me that I have to die.

Epitaph

Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957)

Malcolm Lowry
Late of the Bowery
His prose was flowery
And often glowery
He lived, nightly, and drank daily
And died, playing the ukelele.

In Memoriam Salvador Dali

E.J. Thribb

So.
Hello then
Dali.

You are
A
Fish.

Keith’s mum
Is
Melting.

Tullynoe: Tete-à-Tete in the Parish Priest’s Parlour

Paul Durcan (1944- )

Ah, he was a good man.’
‘He was: he fell out of the train going to Sligo.’
‘He did: he thought he was going to the lavatory.’
‘He did: in fact he stepped out of the rear door of the train.’
‘He did: God, he must have got an awful fright.’
‘He did: he saw that it wasn't the lavatory at all.’
‘He did: he saw that it was the railway tracks going away from him.’
‘He did: I wonder if. . . but he was a grand man.’
‘He was: he had the most expensive Toyota you can buy.’
‘He had: well, it was only beautiful.’
‘It was: he used to have an Audi.’
‘He had: as a matter of fact he used to have two Audis.’
‘He had: and then he had an Avenger.’
‘He had: and then he had a Volvo.’
‘He had: in the beginning he had a lot of Volkses.’
‘He had: he was a great man for the Volkses.’
‘He was: did he once have an Escort?’
‘He had not: he had a son a doctor.’
‘He had: and he had a Morris Minor too.’
‘He had: he had a sister a hairdresser in Kilmallock.’
‘He had: he had another sister a hairdresser in Ballybunnion.’
‘He had: he was put in a coffin which was put in his father's cart.’
‘He was: his lady wife sat on top of the coffin driving the donkey.’
‘She did: Ah, but he was a grand man.’
‘He was: he was a grand man.....’
‘Good night, Father.’
‘Good night, Mary.’

An epitaph upon the celebrated Claudy Phillips, musician, who died very P\poor

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Phillips! whose touch harmonious could remove
The pangs of guilty power and hapless love,
Rest here, distressed by poverty no more,
Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before;
Sleep undisturbed within this peaceful shrine,
Till angels wake thee with a note like thine.

A Rhyme from Lincolnshire

Anon

Sad is the burying in the sunshine,
But bless’d is the corpse that goeth home in rain.

Full Fathom Five

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark! now I hear them—Ding-dong bell.

Of John Davidson

Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978)

I remember one death in my boyhood
That next to my father’s, and darker, endures:
Not Queen Victoria’s, but Davidson, yours,
And something in me has always stood
Since then looking down the sandslope
On your small black shape by the edge of the sea,
– A bullet hole through a great scene’s beauty,
God through the wrong end of a telescope.

An Epitaph

Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

Here lies a most beautiful lady,
Light of step and heart was she;
I think she was the most beautiful lady
That ever was in the West Country.

But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;
However rare - rare it be;
And when I crumble, who will remember
This lady of the West Country?

From Seneca's Thyestes,

Translated by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

Climb at Court for me that will
Tottering favour's slippery hill.
All I seek is to lie still.
Settled in some secret nest
In calm leisure let me rest;
And far off the publick stage
Pass away my silent age.
Thus when without noise, unknown,
I have liv'd out all my span,
I shall die, without a groan,
An old honest country man.
Who expos'd to others eyes,
Into his own heart ne'r pry's,
Death to him's a strange surprise.

Music When Soft Voices Die

Percy Byshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory.
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Old Men

Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

People expect old men to die,
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when. . .
People watch with unshocked eyes –
But the old men know when an old man dies.

From Seneca’s Troas

t\Translated by John Wilmot Earl of Rochester (1647-1680)

After death nothing is, and nothing death;
The utmost Limits of a gasp of breath.
Let the ambitious zealot lay aside
His hopes of Heav'n, (whose faith is but his pride)
Let slavish souls lay by their fear,
Nor be concern'd which way, or where,
After this Life they shall be hurled:
Dead, we become the lumber of the world;
And to that mass of matter shall be swept,
Where things destroy'd with things unborn are kept;
Devouring time swallows us whole,
Impartial death confounds body and soul.
For Hell, and the foul Fiend that rules
The everlasting fiery jails,
(devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),
With his grim grisly dog that keeps the door,
Are senseless stories, idle tales,
Dreams, whimsies, and no more.

Epitaph on a Friend

Robert Burns (1759-1726)

An honest man here lies at rest,
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm'd,
Few heads with knowledge so inform'd;
If there's another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.

Days

Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Dying Speech of an Old Philosopher

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife:
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.

Bibo and Charon

Matthew Prior (1664-1721)

When Bibo thought fit from the world to retreat,
As full of Champagne as an egg's full of meat,
He waked in the boat, and to Charon he said,
He would be row'd back, for he was not yet dead.
‘Trim the boat and sit quiet’, stern Charon replied,
‘You may have forgot, you were drunk when you died.’

Alice is Gone

W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

Alice is gone and I’m alone,
Nobody understands
How lovely were her Fire Alarms,
How fair her German Bands.

O how I cried when Alice died
The day we were to have wed.
We never had our Roasted Duck
And now she’s a Loaf of Bread.

At nights I weep, I cannot sleep:
Moonlight to me recalls
I never saw her Waterfront
Nor she my Waterfalls.

After His Death - for Hugh Macdiarmid

Norman MacCaig (1910-1996)

It turned out
that the bombs he had thrown
raised buildings:

that the acid he had sprayed
had painfully opened
the eyes of the blind.

Fishermen hauled
prizewinning fish
from the water he had polluted.

We sat with astonishment
enjoying the shade
of the vicious words he had planted.

The government decreed that
on the anniversary of his birth
the people should observe
two minutes pandemonium.

Delivery Guaranteed

Kingsley Amis (1922-1995)

Death has this much to be said for it:
There’s no need to get out of bed for it.
Wherever you may be
They bring it to you, free.

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