Poems for funeral tributes and eulogies can be great source of comfort grieving loved ones. They are somehow able to express more than we can with our everyday words. Sharing a poem is a great opportunity to offer hope and encouragement to everyone present. If you can find a funeral poem that reminds you of your loved one and is a comfort to you, it will also comfort others.

You can also use sympathy poems for funeral tributes.

Presenting Funeral Poems and Readings

It can be little nerve wracking to speak at a funeral. Having a special poem to read can really help. It can also help to keep these tips in mind:

• Brief moments of silence are okay
• Pauses are important and can give you an opportunity to look up at your audience
• Remember to breathe
• Keep a tissue handy, just incase you tear up
• Aim to read slowly and calmly

Most poems have natural breaks in them where you can pause to take a breath. You do not want to read the poem too fast or become winded, it will affects the tone of your voice.

You may even want to mark the places in the poem where you will pause and look up.

Poems for Funeral Tributes

All Is Well

• Death is nothing at all,
• I have only slipped 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 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.
• Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
• Let my name be ever the household world that it always was,
• Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it.
• Life means all that it ever meant.
• It it 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,
• Just around the corner.
• All is well.
• By Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918)
• Canon of St Paul's Cathedral

Light a Candle

And I will light a candle for you.
To shatter all the darkness and bless the times we knew.
Like a beacon in the night
The flame will burn bright and guide us on our way.
Oh, today I light a candle for you.
The seasons come and go, and I'm weary from the change.
I keep on moving on, you know it's not the same.
And when I'm walking all alone
Do you hear me call your name?
Do your hear me sing the songs we used to sing?
You filled my life with wonder, touched me with surprise,
Always saw that something special deep within your eyes.
And through the good times and the bad,
We carried on with pride.
I hold onto the love and life we knew.
And I will light a candle for you.
To shatter all the darkness and bless the times we knew.
Like a beacon in the night
The flame will burn bright and guide us on our way.
Oh, today I light a candle for you.

by Paul Alexander

I Thought of You Today

I thought of you with love today but that is nothing new
I thought about you yesterday and days before that too,
I think of you in silence I often speak your name
All I have are memories and your picture in a frame
Your memory is my keepsake with which I’ll never part
God has you in His keeping I have you in my heart.

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• Birth is a beginning
• And death a destination
• But life is a journey
• A going -- a growing
• From stage to stage
• From childhood to maturity
• And youth to age.
• From innocence to awareness
• And ignorance to knowing;
• From foolishness to discretion
• And then perhaps, to wisdom.
• From Weakness to strength
• Or strength to weakness
• And, often, back again.
• From health to sickness
• And back we pray, to health again.
• From offense to forgiveness,
• From loneliness to love,
• From joy to gratitude,
• From pain to compassion,
• And grief to understanding --
• From fear to faith.
• From defeat to defeat to defeat --
• Until, looking backward or ahead,
• We see that victory lies
• Not as some high place along the way,
• But in having made the journey, stage by stage.
• A sacred pilgrimage.
• Birth is a beginning
• And death a destination.
• But life is a journey,
• A sacred pilgrimage --
• Made stage by stage --
• To life everlasting.

More free poems for funeral tributes here.

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