Funeral poems for children

Question

I am buying my two year old son later this week. I cannot find a suitable (perhaps slightly light hearted) poem for reading at the funeral ( I am an atheist). Can any member please suggest anything

With truly many thanks

Martin

Trellis · Accepted Answer

Hello Martin,

I am very sorry to hear of the death of your son.

A. A. Milne wrote some poems that a two year old would like.

I like this one a lot, "Vespers":
http://ingeb.org/songs/littleby.html

this one is nice, "The King's Breakfast":
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/txt/562.txt

more here:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/index_poet_M.html#Milne

and here:
http://ingeb.org/aa_milne.html

here is one (not by Milne) for you, for now:

'They Say'

They say
Love grows
When the fear of death
Looms.

They say
Courage looms
When the fear
Of never loving again
Disappears
In the smell of the enemy
Who crushes us so much
We can only fight.

Love and courage grow together
When the flesh is rawest
And the spirit charged.
And distorted within the nightmare
We see the possibility
Of a future.

-- Ben Okri

Pieter · Answer

Dizziness
By Domokos Szilagyi , translation by Pieter

I don’ t feel dizzy
up at twenty metres
on the eights floor.
I don’t feel dizzy
at two thousand metres
in a plane.

I feel dizzy
in front of a
two metre deep grave.

Anonymous · Answer

0Jesus Christ0-

Anonymous · Answer

This was a life that had hardly begun
No time to find your place in the Sun
No time to do all you could have done
But we loved you enough for a lifetime

No time to enjoy the world and it's wealth
No time to take life down off the shelf
No time to sing the songs of yourself
Though you had enough love for a lifetime

Those who live long endure sadness and tears
But you'll never suffer the sorrowing years
No betrayal, no anger, no hatred, no fears
Just love - Only love - In your lifetime.

Mary Yarnell

Funeral poems for children

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