Notes from the Funeral Pyre: Poems About Grief Worth Memorizing
Because some elegies are meant to be carried in your bloodstream.
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Grief takes many forms.
Unfortunately, it’s not linear, pretty, polite, predictable or easy to witness.
But, poetry? Poetry knows how to sit, steadfast, with grief.
In the wake of loss—whether of a person, a love, a dream or a version of ourselves—we often find ourselves without language to articulate the ache we feel.
Poetry becomes the balm and the eulogy. A ritual. A reckoning. A quiet companion when the house has gone still and the heart is in agony.
Below, we’ve curated a collection of beloved verses that know mourning intimately.
Some are meant to be whispered.
Others to be memorized—like spells—to carry in your mouth when memory presses too hard on your ribs and you can’t find words that feel right.
The Dash by Linda Ellis
This deceptively simple poem has traveled through funerals and gravestones, locker rooms and love letters. The Dash is about the hyphen that appears between birth and death on a tombstone—and how that small mark is a summary for every choice we ever made, every triumph, every heartbreak, every silly moment and reckless night.
It’s a poem about presence. About not waiting. And about living a life worthy of a beautiful ending.
"For it matters not how much we own,
the cars…the house…the cash.
What matters is how we live, and love
and how we spend our dash."
Commit it to memory. Carry it with you. Let it whisper in your ear when you hesitate to live authentically.
Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden
Trigger warning: This is grief dressed in full mourning attire. Dramatic, devastating, unapologetically heavy.
Auden’s iconic poem captures the absurdity of the world continuing after someone you love has left it.
“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.”
Best read aloud. With wine. And candles. Let your tears flow in remembrance.
When Great Trees Fall by Maya Angelou
A poem of reverence. For ancestors, mentors, friends, lovers who crack the world open when they leave it, one final act of love in their transition.
We are reminded that while grief may never leave us fully—it also plants something sacred and magical in its wake, even if it’s seemingly impossible, at first, to see through the tears.
“And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.”
Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye
A comforting poem about grief; it’s short, sweet and feels like a ghost kissing you on the forehead before hurrying off on an adventure. It’s how many of us in mourning aspire to feel after the agony subsides.
“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.”
Remembrance Ritual Recommendation
Choose one poem.
Read it out loud by candlelight.
Copy it by hand. Fold it into a locket, a wallet, a drawer.
Read it again.
Let it hurt.
Carry it with you to help you heal.
Grief is love with nowhere to go, as they say; but poetry can help give it a place to rest.
