Poetry for Death and Life

Included on this page are poems, or links to poems, about life and death, to provide comfort, insight, inspiration and perspective.

Links to poems-
Death’s Painful Sting
Invictus
Waking From the Dream
The House by the Side of the Road
The Rose Beyond the Wall
Our Deepest Fear
If I Never Carve a Pumpkin
Desiderata

Poems-
Death is Nothing At All  (A Famous Consoling Death Poem)
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I, and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way,
Which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect.
Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you.
For an interval.
Somewhere. Very near.
Just around the corner.

All is well.