A Funeral Note
Life on a lonely pillow,
The thoughts of the morrow to sleep at last;
Not a drum was heard at his funeral.
Of a funeral note,
Darkly as the dead of the night;
But its deep heart is full of dead men bones.
Fruits,
Sweet rejoice;
The flowers of that garden say it all.
Of error, ignorance and strife;
Like the barbarians at play,
Where the earth takes the dead away.
Of error, ignorance and strife;
Like a corpse within its grave,
Ready for the earth to swallow it.
Hear and hail,
Wear and wail;
Like the earth's decaying leaves where,
Life's lonely pillow shares the funeral note.
To all the overgrown sons,
To all the overgrown daughters,
With flowers and azure moss;
The impulse of your strength is like,
The Atlantic's level powers at sea.
Uncontrollable!
Like mourners with sad songs;
Their eyes are heavy and dim,
Broken with remorse like that orbed maid;
Where the moving-star shines dead,
And the thoughts of man die easily.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Ode to the West Wind
I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odors plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Oh, who is afraid of life
Oh, who is afraid of life
The passion the sorrow and the strife?
In front of my window the multitudes are asleep
Sheltered so easily in their beds
Happy in their sleep as if they were dead
Yet I am alone and not dead
I wish not to lie in bed
Dead, dead, dead
Dead without any company
Here alone on my bed
with all these gracious thoughts about the world
These thoughts are fed by the sun
O life there is about you
This deep sense of sweet being
I would not have been without you here
Yet, you without me would have been the same
So let me stay, and stay more with you
Sweetness, joy, breath and rebirth
Keep away the death
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The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna
Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lantern dimly burning.
No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him.
Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow!
Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him,--
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring:
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But left him alone with his glory.
poem by Charles Wolfe
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Night Funeral in Harlem
Night funeral
In Harlem:
Where did they get
Them two fine cars?
Insurance man, he did not pay--
His insurance lapsed the other day--
Yet they got a satin box
for his head to lay.
Night funeral
In Harlem:
Who was it sent
That wreath of flowers?
Them flowers came
from that poor boy's friends--
They'll want flowers, too,
When they meet their ends.
Night funeral
in Harlem:
Who preached that
Black boy to his grave?
Old preacher man
Preached that boy away--
Charged Five Dollars
His girl friend had to pay.
Night funeral
In Harlem:
When it was all over
And the lid shut on his head
and the organ had done played
and the last prayers been said
and six pallbearers
Carried him out for dead
And off down Lenox Avenue
That long black hearse done sped,
The street light
At his corner
Shined just like a tear--
That boy that they was mournin'
Was so dear, so dear
To them folks that brought the flowers,
To that girl who paid the preacher man--
It was all their tears that made
That poor boy's
Funeral grand.
Night funeral
In Harlem.
poem by Langston Hughes
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Death Is a Mockery of Life
Death is a mockery of life
They who have lived it through, are dead
So what about death can be said
It lingers in the living room after the funeral
They who have lived it through are dead
We do not speak of death too much
It lingers in the living room after the funeral
We try not to think about the lonely grave
We do not speak of deah too much
It is always raining in the grave yard
We try not to think about the lonely grave
Where no one seems to be, but only was
It is always raining in the grave yard
Some flowers grow between the tombstones
As nature doesn’t care about it, live or death
Just carry on as usual
Some flowers grow between the tombstones
So what about death can be said
Just carry on as usual
Death is a mockery of life
poem by Ina SchrodersZeeders
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Electric Funeral
Reflex in the sky warn you you're gonna die
Storm coming, you'd better hide from the atomic tide
Flashes in the sky turns houses into sties
Turns people into clay, radiation minds decay
Robot minds of robot slaves
lead them to atomic rage
plastic flowers, melting sun,
fading moon falls upon
dying world of radiation,
victims of mad frustration
Burning globe of oxy'n fire,
like electric funeral pyre
Buildings crashing down to a cracking ground
Rivers turn to wood, ice melting to flood
Earth lies in death bed, clouds cry water dead
Tearing life away, here's the burning pay
Electric Funeral
Electric Funeral
Electric Funeral
Electric Funeral
And so in the sky shines the electric eye
supernatural king takes earth under his wing
Heaven's golden chorus sings,
Hell's angels flap their wings
Evil souls fall to Hell, ever trapped in burning cells!
song performed by by Iced Earth
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Electric Funeral
Reflex in the sky warn you you're gonna die
Storm coming, you'd better hide from the atomic tide
Flashes in the sky turns houses into sties
Turns people into clay, radiation minds decay
Robot minds of robot slaves lead them to atomic rage
plastic flowers, melting sun, fading moon falls upon
dying world of radiation, victims of mad frustration
Burning globe of oxy'n fire, like electric funeral pyre
Buildings crashing down to a cracking ground
Rivers turn to wood, ice melting to flood
Earth lies in death bed, clouds cry water dead
Tearing life away, here's the burning pay
Electric Funeral
Electric Funeral
Electric Funeral
Electric Funeral
And so in the sky shines the electric eye
supernatural king takes earth under his wing
Heaven's golden chorus sings, Hell's angels flap their wings
Evil souls fall to Hell, ever trapped in burning cells
song performed by by Black Sabbath
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Problem With Living Too Long
A godlier man, there never lived -
My dear old Uncle Fred,
And throngs should fill the funeral home
When word comes that he's dead.
For the numbers at the funeral home
Are a measure of one's worth;
The sum of all the lives one's touched
While here upon the earth.
But few will visit the funeral home
When my Uncle passes on,
For he's lived so long that those he's touched
Are already dead and gone.
The Diadochi
When word was brought that Alexander was dead
In Babylon, gossips said it was not true;
For if that demigod spirit had shed
So vast a corpse, its corruption then through
The whole world would reek; men from Carthage
To India would pause and sniff the air,
That by the stench declared the End of Age
Like an incense-wafted funeral prayer.
Yet he was dead, and in time earth did stink
With the metal tang of blood. Forty years
His funeral games were held, and men did think
His dying crueler than his life. More tears
And blood they shed, his diadem to strive,
Than he had spilled in Asia, when alive.
poem by Mark Sauer
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Eletric Funeral
Reflex in the sky warn you youre gonna die
Storm coming, youd better hide from the atomic tide
Flashes in the sky turns houses into sties
Turns people into clay, radiation minds decay
Robot minds of robot slaves lead them to atomic rage
Plastic flowers, melting sun, fading moon falls upon
Dying world of radiation, victims of mad frustration
Burning globe of oxyn fire, like electric funeral pyre
Buildings crashing down to a cracking ground
Rivers turn to wood, ice melting to flood
Earth lies in death bed, clouds cry water dead
Tearing life away, heres the burning pay
Electric funeral
Electric funeral
Electric funeral
Electric funeral
And so in the sky shines the electric eye
Supernatural king takes earth under his wing
Heavens golden chorus sings, hells angels flap their wings
Evil souls fall to hell, ever trapped in burning cells!
Fairies wear boots (black sabbath)
Goin home, late last night
Suddenly I got a fright
Yeah I looked throught the window and surprised what I saw
Fairy boots were dancin with a dwarf, all right now!
Fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
Yeah I saw it, I saw it, I tell you no lies
Yeah fairies wear boots and you gotta believe me
I saw it, I saw it with my own two eyes, well all right now!
So I went to the doctor, see what he could give me
He said son, son, youve gone too far.
cause smokin and trippin is all that you do.
song performed by by Black Sabbath
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Never Mourn At My Funeral
Never mourn at my funeral
Because i'm not dead but sleeping
And relaxing on Abraham's bossom
Never mourn at my funeral
You that come in view to mourning
But within you, you're here to mock
Because my poetry has once expose your secret-deeds
Throw my body where you please
Or let it be dismembered
Never mourn at my funeral
You the insect that bites my daffodils
And you who want my fish to swim on a dry earth
Throw me on a stormy sea
Where Jonah fell
But its a glorious shame
I can never sight the river bank of Joppa
Never mourn at my funeral
You that come in my maker's name
Just to bless my end
Go thy way and search for lust souls
Wear them a garment pure as snow
Before they lie low with me
And journey hell eternal
Never mourn at my funeral
But mourn for we're debtors of death
poem by Adesitimi Taiwo
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Mingom Treatment If Possible
Your morning cried
made me want to die
I like to die with the water hen
with the turtle the porpoises
the fish; even the porcupines
I like to die with the kangaroo emu snakes and opossums
I like to dead with the goanna birds and seagulls butterfish
even pelicans koalas; eaglehawks
I like to dead with all natures brothers and sisters
I love to die with my body in the boughs up high in a tree
I love to die without any black white singing speaking or being at my funeral
I love my bones to be dried out then put in cave; I love to die wrapped in bark
About six or three feet deep dug out
Then the logs put by my sides and branches to make a platform
Put the bark over me and fill in my body with earth
I love to die with singing; dancing and crying around my grave
I like to hear while I’m laying dead the political cultural speakers and fires all night till dawn
I love to die with my Aboriginal freedom colours all around me
I love to have a funeral with live music played by yidaki (didjeridoo)
even a song by our greatest singers; protest cultural singing
I love all my Murri people to come to my funeral; I don’t want one miggloo (white person) there
I love to die and live on in Dreaming I came from
I love to die and be buried in any Murri land
poem by Lionel Fogarty
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Remembrance
I.
Swifter far than summer's flight--
Swifter far than youth’s delight--
Swifter far than happy night,
Art thou come and gone--
As the earth when leaves are dead,
As the night when sleep is sped,
As the heart when joy is fled,
I am left lone, alone.
II.
The swallow summer comes again--
The owlet night resumes her reign--
But the wild-swan youth is fain
To fly with thee, false as thou.--
My heart each day desires the morrow;
Sleep itself is turned to sorrow;
Vainly would my winter borrow
Sunny leaves from any bough.
III.
Lilies for a bridal bed--
Roses for a matron’s head--
Violets for a maiden dead--
Pansies let MY flowers be:
On the living grave I bear
Scatter them without a tear--
Let no friend, however dear,
Waste one hope, one fear for me.
poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Dead End
Well easily with me I show affection,
But it's a creepin up, a creepin up on me in another direction
I love, I write, and I die
And I try to ask no questions,
But the weary one is still me,
Do you think its obsession?
The smoke will find you a choker that matches your coat, not fit to be tied
The mirror it makes it all clearer as you stand alone and cant see your behind
Yea
They tried to tell me I could say that nobody could believe this
Well they tried to tell me I could say nobody could achieve this
The way you stayed of, locked away of
Keeping the flame for yourself,
The way you stayed of, pushin the blame of, reaping the fame for yourself
Oh well, it's a, it's a, dead end
It's a dead end
Oh, it's a dead end lonely day,
Say it's a dead end
It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a dead end day
It's a dead end oh day
And it's a long way, a long way down,
Hey well it's a long way, a long way down
Change is coming a baby,
Don't be startled lady
Every once in a while they do it again
You gonna shake it, shake it,
You know you wanna take it
Back to where you once belonged,
Back beneath the sheets and between the pillow cases
And the snake he races out and he, he tangles into your hair
Funny the fruits you choose
Oh the time you take, the words you loose
And it all goes back to rotation over the back of your hand
Oh the back of your hand, oh the back of your hand
Oh the map is your hand,
it's the back of your hand, the back of your hand
say the back of your hand, oh the map is your hand, it's the back of your hand
stop whining all the time,
don't you find a little secret to yourself always saved your life,
stop listening to the words that you've heard
no one else but yourself will agree with you more
that it's a long, long way
it's a long, long way
and it's a long, long way, a long way down
hey, and it's a long way down,
and it's a lo- oh- oh- ng way down
hey, hey, hey, and it's a long, long, long, long way down,
say say, SCATS
and it's a lo- oh- oh- ng way down, hey and it's a long way dooooown
it's a dead end
it's a dead end oh
it's a dead end lonely day
it's a, it's a dead end
It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a dead end day
It's a dead end oh day
song performed by by Jason Mraz
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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One Day Someone Will Say The Same Of Me
The hearse through the main street is passing slow
With the funeral cars following in a single row
Is the dead person a he or a she?
One day someone will say the same of me.
And did that person die young or old
And will her or his life story be told?
To the departed that does not matter 'twould seem
As the dead do not have a sense of self esteem.
The funeral towards the cemetery winds it's way
Up through the main street at noon of day
But on the cortege shoppers no interest show
As in and out of shops they go.
The dead from the Land of the living gone
But life for the living must go on
And the same fate surely awaits you and I
As the dead person in the hearse going by.
poem by Francis Duggan
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Unity Of The Elements
It was a pompous show,
For everyone should know,
The funeral procession
Of a rich man of the town.
Inch by Inch, the funeral cart moved.
Step by step, the mourners walked.
In black costumes, each one was dressed.
Front and back, march passed the crowd.
At the gate of the burning ghat,
The procession came to a halt.
Each one spoke, in praise of the dead
And tears flowed, for what they said.
On the sandalwood bed,
The body was laid,
And his son lit the fire,
That engulfed the funeral pyre.
The dead man's remains,
In the form of ash and bones,
To the sea, were consigned
As a finish, at the end.
At the bottom of the seabed
The bone of a poor man dead
Addressed his bone and said
'Welcome to this silent seabed.'
'The difference, when we were alive
Is no more with us, now let us live,
Not as poor or rich, but as one element,
No hatred feelings to foment.'
From the elements, man comes,
And back to the elements, he goes.
In between arises a low-high status,
That brings a world of differences.
poem by Rajaram Ramachandran
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Requiem Éire
There is a place not far from Yeats' Tower.
No life grows there, no lively tune, nor poets power
Has ever rang of this land. Yet here I may recall,
In remembrance, Roscommon; land of the funeral pall.
Headstones have they planted in every field,
Springing forth from grey faced loins, and thus a graveyard yield.
The dead outnumber the living, the youth long gone from the yard.
Inevitably interred in the adjoining garden, they stamped down hard.
There was a wedding there amongst the old dying firs.
The bride wore white, with flowers from a broken wreath.
A funeral plot the wedding gift- a family grave.
Life was buried there; man, woman and unborn child.
What they had, they gave,
And into the ground they piled.
poem by Keith Moynihan O' Brien
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Spring
Wake up again, sad heart, wake up again !
(I heard the birds this morning singing sweet.)
Wake up again ! The sky was crystal clear,
And washed quite clean with rain ;
And tar below my heart stirred with the year,
Stirred with the year and sighed. O pallid feet
Move now at last, O heart that sleeps with pain
Rise up and hear
The voices in the valleys, run to meet
The songs and shadows. O wake up again !
Put out green leaves, dead tree, put out green leaves t
(Last night the moon was soft and kissed the air.)
Put out green leaves ! The moon was in the skies,
All night she wakes and weaves.
The dew was on the grass like fairies' eyes,
Like fairies' eyes. O trees so black and bare,
Remember all the fruits, the full gold sheaves;
For nothing dies,
The songs that are, are silences that were,
Summer was Winter. O put but green leaves!
Break through the earth, pale flower, break through the earth !
(All day the lark has sung a madrigal.)
Break through the earth that lies not lightly yet
And waits thy patient birth,
Waits for the jonquil and the violet,
The violet. Full soon the heavy pall
Will be a bed, and in the noon of mirth
Some rivulet
Will bubble in my wilderness, some call
Will touch my silence. O break through the earth.
poem by Lord Alfred Douglas
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Voices Of The Night : A Psalm Of Life
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! -
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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The Psalm Of Life
What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!--
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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