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Poems About Death and Dying

Reading · 8 min read · First published 2004 · Updated November 2026

A single lit candle against a black background
Photo by Jarl Schmidt on Unsplash

Famous poems about death from well-known poets and writers.

Poems can say what ordinary words cannot. Read slowly, and read aloud if it helps. Every poem on this page is in the public domain in the U.S., and each one is credited to the book it first appeared in.

Choosing a poem for a eulogy? If pen and paper suit you, the eulogy workbook guides you one page at a time.

Looking for a poem to read at a service? See Funeral Poems for short, uplifting and religious choices with reading times. For a line to write in a card, see Grief Quotes.

To One Shortly to Die

From all the rest I single out you, having a message for you,

You are to die—let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate,

I am exact and merciless, but I love you—there is no escape for you.

Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you just feel it,

I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it,

I sit quietly by, I remain faithful,

I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor,

I absolve you from all except yourself spiritual bodily, that is eternal, you yourself will surely escape,

The corpse you will leave will be but excrementitious.

The sun bursts through in unlooked-for directions,

Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, you smile,

You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick,

You do not see the medicines, you do not mind the weeping friends, I am with you,

I exclude others from you, there is nothing to be commiserated,

I do not commiserate, I congratulate you.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1881-82 edition)

Poems of comfort and remembrance

Remember

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you plann'd:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Rossetti, from Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862)

Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,

And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,

And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crost the bar.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from Demeter and Other Poems (1889)

Death, Be Not Proud (Holy Sonnet 10)

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

John Donne, from Holy Sonnets (published 1633)

Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun

Fear no more the heat o' the sun,

Nor the furious winter's rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages:

Golden lads and girls all must,

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o' the great;

Thou art past the tyrant's stroke;

Care no more to clothe and eat;

To thee the reed is as the oak:

The scepter, learning, physic, must

All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,

Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;

Fear not slander, censure rash;

Thou hast finished joy and moan:

All lovers young, all lovers must

Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!

Nor no witchcraft charm thee!

Ghost unlaid forbear thee!

Nothing ill come near thee!

Quiet consummation have;

And renownèd be thy grave!

William Shakespeare, a song from Cymbeline (Act 4, Scene 2; first printed 1623)

Requiem

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

Robert Louis Stevenson, from Underwoods (1887)

The Chariot ("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.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,

And I had put away

My labor, and my leisure too,

For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,

Their lessons scarcely done;

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed

A swelling of the ground;

The roof was scarcely visible,

The cornice but a mound.

Since then 't is centuries; but each

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses' heads

Were toward eternity.

Emily Dickinson, first published in Poems, Series 1 (1890), under the title "The Chariot." This is the 1890 published text. Later scholarly editions restore a stanza that the first editors left out and change some wording and punctuation.

Peace, My Heart

Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet.

Let it not be a death but completeness.

Let love melt into memory and pain into songs.

Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.

Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.

Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment, and say your last words in silence.

I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way.

Rabindranath Tagore, from The Gardener (1913), poem 61

Poems for a pet

From "The Power of the Dog"

Kipling's full poem is honest and hard, and parts of it may be too painful for someone in fresh grief, so I have used only one verse.

When the body that lived at your single will,

With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!),

When the spirit that answered your every mood

Is gone—wherever it goes—for good,

You will discover how much you care,

And will give your heart to a dog to tear!

Rudyard Kipling, "The Power of the Dog," from Actions and Reactions (1909)

From "Epitaph to a Dog"

Byron wrote this for his Newfoundland dog, Boatswain, who died in 1808. Most of the poem is bitter toward people, so only the closing lines are used here.

To mark a friend's remains these stones arise;

I never knew but one—and here he lies.

Lord Byron, "Epitaph to a Dog" (also called "Inscription on the Monument of a Newfoundland Dog"), 1808

A note on pet poems. You may be looking for "The Rainbow Bridge," which is often shared after the loss of a pet, or "Do not stand at my grave and weep." Both are left out here because their rights are unclear.

Want to weave a poem into your goodbye? The eulogy workbook offers help with writing it on paper.

Sources

Written by Words to Comfort

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