Serenity Prayer
God, Grant me the Serenity
to accept the things
I cannot change…
Courage to change
the things I can
and Wisdom to
know the difference.
New Dawning
There is no night without a dawning,
No winter without a spring
And beyond death’s dark horizon
Our hearts once more will sing.
For those who leave us for a while
Have only gone away
Out of a restless careworn world
Into a brighter day.
If I should ever leave you,
Whom I love
To go along the silent way…
Grieve not.
Nor speak of me with tears.
But laugh and talk of me
As if I were beside you there.
(I’d come… I’d come,
Could I but find a way!
But would not tears and
And grief be barriers?)
And when you hear a song
Or see a bird I loved,
Please do not let the thought of me
Be sad… for I am loving you
Just as I always have…
You were so good to me!
There are so many things
I wanted still to do…
So many things I wanted to say
to you… Remember that
I did not fear… It was
Just leaving you
That was so hard to face.
We cannot see beyond…
But this I know:
I loved you so…
’twas heaven here with you!
Isla Paschal Richardson
Little Angels (2)
(Change the name, age and gender for your own situation)
God sent an angel to the earth…
The sweetest angel too
and for such a tiny little thing,
she had so much to do.
She knew she did not have
much time upon this earth to stay,
so she did not waste a second;
she got started right away.
Her eyes were bright and sparkly,
she took in every turn.
She did not miss a single thing,
because Angel came to learn!
God sent her here to touch the
hearts of those He could not reach…
She taught them courage, strength and faith,
because Angel came to teach.
Her tiny little body
was so full of God above,
you felt it when you held her,
because Angel came to love.
In eleven short months she managed
what many never will.
When she went home to Jesus,
her purpose was fulfilled.
She learned and taught, loved and played,
she learned her lessons well.
I know He was so proud of her
when she went home to dwell.
But when I miss her oh so much,
I can almost hear Him say,
“Please understand, her work was done…
Angel did not come to stay.”
If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop to build’em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And, which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling
Love Lives On
Those we love are never really lost to us—
we feel them in so many special ways:
through friends they always cared about
and dreams they left behind,
in beauty that they added to our days,
in words of wisdom we still carry with us
and memories that never will be gone.
Those we love
are never really lost to us—
for everywhere their special love lives on.
Love Doesn’t End With Dying
Love doesn’t end with dying
Or leave with the last breath.
For someone you’ve loved deeply,
Love doesn’t end with death.
John Addey
Crossing the Bar
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 or 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 crost the bar.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
My Candle Burns At Both Ends
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends It gives a lovely light!
Edna St.Vincent Millay
Love Doesn’t End With Dying
Love doesn’t end with dying
Or leave with the last breath.
For someone you’ve loved deeply,
Love doesn’t end with death.
John Addey
Epitaph on a Child
Here, freed from pain, secure from misery, lies
A child, the darling of his parents’ eyes:
A gentler Lamb ne’er sported on the plain,
A fairer flower will never bloom again:
Few were the days allotted to his breath;
Now let him sleep in peace his night of death.
Thomas Gray
Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night
Do not go gently into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
Dirge Without Music
I am not resigned to the shutting away of
loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look,
the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses.
Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know.
But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than
all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
If Death is Kind
Perhaps if death is kind, and there can be returning,
We will come back to earth some fragrant night,
And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending
Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white.
We will come down at night to these resounding beaches
And the long gentle thunder of the sea,
Here for a single hour in the wide starlight
We shall be happy, for the dead are free.
Sara Teasdale
The White Chariot
During your journey on your final flight home.
White wings will carry you and you will be flown.
To the pearly gates of Heaven, where they will usher you in.
To the feet of your Lord, your Saviour, and your friend.
He will hold you in his arms and the angels will sing.
As another one of His children is delivered by white wings.
Julie Johnson
Don’t Grieve For Me
Don’t grieve for me, for now I’m free,
I’m following the path God laid for me.
I took his hand when I heard his call,
I turned my back and left it all.
I could not stay another day,
To laugh, to love, to work, to play.
Tasks left undone must stay that way,
I’ve found that peace at the end of the day.
If my parting has left a void,
Then fill it with remembered joy.
A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss,
Ah, yes, these things too I will miss.
Be not burdened with times of sorrow,
I wish you the sunshine of tomorrow.
My Life’s been full, I savoured much,
Good friends, good times, a loved one’s touch.
Perhaps my time seemed all too brief,
Don’t lengthen it now with undue grief.
Lift up your heart and share with me,
God wanted me now, He set me free.
If I Should Die Before the Rest of you
If I should die before the rest of you
Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone
Nor, when I’m gone, speak in a Sunday voice,
But be the usual selves that I have known.
Weep if you must
Parting is hell.
But life goes on.
So sing as well.
God’s Garden
God looked around his garden
And he found an empty place.
And then he looked down upon the earth,
And saw your tired face.
He put his arms around you,
And lifted you to rest.
God’s garden must be beautiful,
He always takes the best.
He knew that you were suffering,
He knew you were in pain,
He knew that you would never
Get well on earth again.
He saw the road was getting rough,
And the hills were hard to climb.
So he closed your weary eyelids,
And whispered “Peace be thine.”
It broke our hearts to lose you,
But you didn’t go alone,
For part of us went with you,
The day God called you home.
Gone From My Sight
I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white
sails to the morning breeze and starts
for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come
to mingle with each other.
Then, someone at my side says;
“There, she is gone!”
“Gone where?”
Gone from my sight. That is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull
and spar as she was when she left my side
and she is just as able to bear her
load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone
at my side says, “There, she is gone!”
There are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad
shout;
“Here she comes!”
And that is dying.
Henry Van Dyke
Letting Go of You
I know I have to let you go.
How I will I do not know.
I know that it’s your time to die.
What I don’t know is how to say goodbye.
I’ll miss you so much I don’t know what to do.
I guess I’ll just end this poem with a goodbye and an I love you.
Jenna Leigh Walters
Requiem
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you gave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Robert Louis Stevenson
I Did Not Die
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet white doves in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there, I did not die.
Mary E. Frye
All is Well
Death is just an open door
I have only slipped away
into the next room.
I am I, and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
that we still are.
Call me by my old familiar name,
speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference in your tone,
wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was,
let it be spoken without effect,
without the trace of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
it is the same as it ever was;
there is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval,
somewhere very near; safe and secure, all is well.
Cannon H. Scott Holland
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae
Afterglow – Unknown
I’d like the memory of me to be a happy one.
I’d like to leave an afterglow of smiles when life is done.
I’d like to leave an echo whispering softly down the ways,
Of happy times and laughing times and bright and sunny days.
I’d like the tears of those who grieve, to dry before the sun;
Of happy memories that I leave when life is done.
What Is This Thing That Man Call Death
What is this thing that men call death,
This quiet passing in the night?
‘Tis not the end, but genesis
Of better worlds and greater light.
O God, touch thou my aching heart,
And calm my troubled, haunting fears.
Let hope and faith, transcendent, pure,
Give strength and peace beyond my tears.
There is no death, but only change,
With recompense for vict’ry won.
The gift of Him who loved all men,
The Son of God, the Holy One.
Gordon B. Hinckley
I Have A Rendezvous With Death
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade
When Spring comes round with rustling shade
And apple blossoms fill the air.
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath;
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow flowers appear.
God knows ’twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
Alan Seeger
Miss Me But Let Me Go
When I come to the end of the road
and the sun has set for me
I want no rites in a gloom filled room.
Why cry for a soul set free?
Miss me a little – but not too long,
and not with your head held low
Remember the love that we once shared.
Miss me – but let me go.
For this is a journey that we all must take,
and each must go alone
It’s all a part of the Master’s plan,
a step on the road to home.
A Prayer
Heavenly Father hear my prayer,
Guide our Father with tender care,
Dear shepherd don’t leave him alone,
Love him in heaven, as we do at home.
Your Life Was Full of Loving Deeds
Your life was full of loving deeds,
Forever thoughtful of our special needs,
Today and tomorrow, my whole life through,
I will always love and cherish you.
Old Irish Toast
May you have food and raiment,
A soft pillow for your head,
May you be forty years in heaven
Before the devil knows you’re dead.
To Sleep
O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting, with careful
fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas’d eyes,
embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the “Amen,” ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,–
Save me from curious Conscience,
that still lords
Its strength for darkness,
burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly
in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed
Casket of my Soul.
John Keats
In Memory
Serene and beautiful and very wise,
Most erudite in curious Grecian lore,
You lay and read your learned books, and bore
A weight of unshed tears and silent sighs.
The song within your heart could never rise
Until love bade it spread its wings and soar.
Nor could you look on Beauty’s face before
A poet’s burning mouth had touched your eyes.
Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder;
Love is a poignant and accustomed pain.
It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder;
It is a linnet’s fluting after rain.
Love’s voice is through your song;
above and under
And in each note to echo and remain.
A red rose is His Sacred Heart,
a white rose is His face,
And His breath has turned the barren
world to a rich and flowery place.
He is the Rose of Sharon,
His gardener am I,
And I shall drink His fragrance
in Heaven when I die.
Joyce Kilmer
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
A Prayer
Heavenly Father hear my prayer,
Guide our Father with tender care,
Dear shepherd don’t leave him alone,
Love him in heaven, as we do at home.
Remember
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more, day by day,
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that I once had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Christina Georgina Rossetti
Little Angels (1)
When God calls little children to dwell with Him above,
We mortals sometime question the wisdom of His love.
For no heartache compares with the death of one small child
Who does so much to make our world, seem wonderful and mild
Perhaps God tires of calling the aged to his fold,
So He picks a rosebud, before it can grow old.
God knows how much we need them, and so He takes but few
To make the land of Heaven more beautiful to view.
Believing this is difficult still somehow we must try,
The saddest word mankind knows will always be “Goodbye.”
So when a little child departs, we who are left behind
Must realize God loves children, Angels are hard to find.
“If Tears Could Build A Stairway”
If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane.
I would walk right up to Heaven and bring you back again.
No farewell words were spoken, No time to say “Goodbye”.
You were gone before I knew it, and only God knows why.
My heart still aches with sadness, and secret tears still flow.
What it meant to love you – No one can ever know.
But now I know you want me to mourn for you no more;
To remember all the happy times life still has much in store.
Since you’ll never be forgotten, I pledge to you today~
A hollowed place within my heart is where you’ll always stay.
Author: Unknown
She Is Gone
You can shed tears that she is gone
or you can smile because she has lived.
You can close your eyes and pray that she’ll come back
or you can open your eyes and see all she’s left.
Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her
or you can be full of the love you shared.
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.
You can remember her and only that she’s gone
or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.
You can cry and close your mind,
be empty and turn your back
or you can do what she’d want:
smile, open your eyes, love and go on.
David Harkins
He Is Gone
You can shed tears that he is gone,
or you can smile because he lived,
You can close your eyes and pray that he will come back,
or you can open your eyes and see all that he has left.
Your heart can be empty because you can’t see him
or you can be full of the love that you shared,
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.
You can remember him and only that he is gone
or you can cherish his memory and let it live on,
You can cry and close your mind be empty and turn your back,
or you can do what he would want:
smile, open your eyes,
love and go on.
David Harkins
Mother’s Day Acrostic Poem
“M” is for the million things she gave me,
“O” means only that she’s growing old,
“T” is for the tears she shed to save me,
“H” is for her heart of purest gold;
“E” is for her eyes, with love-light shining,
“R” means right, and right she’ll always be,
Put them all together, they spell “Mother,”
A word that means the world to me.
I Don’t Believe In Death
I don’t believe in death
Who comes in silent stealth
He robs us only of a breath
Not of a lifetime’s wealth
I don’t believe the tomb
Imprisons us in earth
It’s but another loving womb
Preparing our new birth
I do believe in life
Empowered from above
Till freed from stress and worldly strife
We soar through realms above
I do believe that then
In joy that never ends
We’ll meet all those we’ve loved, again
And celebrate our friends.
Pauline Webb
‘Tis Better To Have Loved and Lost – Alfred Lord Tennyson
I hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
