Gold Coast, Brisbane
Tweed & Byron Bay

MY PLEDGE TO YOU
In this time of bereavement, let me quietly talk with you to craft a service that will honour the loved one you've lost and to help you through the service. Together we will make it all you want it to be.

WHAT IS A CELEBRANT?

Celebrants are Professional Officiants who Create Personal Ceremonies to Honor and Celebrate Life's Milestones: Weddings, Commitments, Gay and Lesbian Ceremonies, Renewals of Vows, Baby Namings, Adoption Ceremonies, Coming-of-Age Ceremonies, Birthdays, Special Achievements, Divorce Ceremonies, Survivor Ceremonies, Rites of Passage, Funerals, Memorials, and Civic and Corporate Ceremonies.

These poems have been selected because of their suitability for funerals. They are numbered purely for easy reference if you return to this page.

• FP1. When Tomorrow Starts Without Me
• FP2. Autumn Rain
• FP3. After Glow
• FP4. I'm Free
  
• FP5. Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep
  
• FP6. Because I Could Not Stop For Death
  
• FP7.
  
• FP8. If
  
• FP9. I Have A Rendevous With Death
• FP10. In Memory
• FP11. Nothing Gold Can Stay
• FP12 Not In Vain
• FP13. Resignation
• FP14. The Road Not Taken
• FP15.To Sleep
• FP16.He/She is Gone
  

FP1. When Tomorrow Starts Without Me
By David Romano
When tomorrow starts without me,
and I"m not there to see,
If the sun should rise
and find your eyes all filled with tears for me,
I wish so much you wouldn't cry
the way you did today,
While thinking of the many things we didn't get to say.

I know how much you love me, as much as I love you,
And each time that you think of me,
I know you'll miss me too;
But when tomorrow starts without me,
please try to understand
That an angel came and called my name,
and took me by the hand,
And said that I am ready,
it is time to rise above,
And that I'd have to leave behind
all those I dearly love.

But as I turned to walk away, a tear fell from my eye,
For all life, I'd always thought, I didn't want to die.
I had to much to live for, so much yet to do,
It seemed almost impossible that I was leaving you.
So when tomorrow starts without me, don't think we're far apart,
For every time you think of me, I'm right here, in your heart.
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FP2. Autumn Rain
Do not stand by my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints upon the snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain and
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
I am that swift uplifting rush,
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand by my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die.
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FP3. After Glow
I’d like the memory of me
to be a happy one.
I’d like to leave an after glow
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.
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FP4. I’m Free
Don’t grieve for me, for now I’m free
I’m following the path well laid out you see.
I took death's hand when I heard it call
I turned my back and left it all.

Perhaps my time seemed all too brief
Don’t lengthen it now with undue grief.
Lift up your hearts and peace to thee
Life's been good to me and now I'm set free.
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FP5. Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep
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 birds 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.
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FP6. Because I Could Not Stop For Death
Because I Could Not Stop For Death
He kindly stopped for me---
The Carriage held but just Ourselves---
And Immortality.

Since then---tis Centuries---and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses Heads
Were toward Eternity---
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FP7. He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven
by W. B. Yeats
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
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FP8. If
by Rudyard Kipling
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 and 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!
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FP9. I Have A Rendevous With Death
Alan Seeger (1888-1916)
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.
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FP10. In Memory
by Joyce Kilmer
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.
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FP11. Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost (1875-1963)
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
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FP12. Not In Vain
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
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FP13. Resignation
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
There is no Death! What seems
so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.

Day after day we think
what he/she is doing
In those bright realms of air;
Year after year,
his/her tender steps pursuing,
Behold him/her grown more fair.

We will be patient,
and assuage the feeling
We may not wholly stay;
By silence sanctifying,
not concealing,
The grief that must have way.
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FP14. The Road Not Taken
Robert Lee Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, 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 traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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FP15 To Sleep
John Keats
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.
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FP16 He/She is Gone
Anonymous
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.
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