Below are 25 funeral readings in three groups: religious readings, poems and secular readings, and very short pieces for a reader who may struggle to get through something longer. Scripture is listed by book, chapter and verse, so you can find it in whichever translation your family uses. Times are rough, for reading aloud at an unhurried pace of about 120 words a minute.
Read your shortlist aloud before you decide, and choose one to three. Ask the officiant how much time there is and whether their tradition has set texts.
Religious readings
| Reading | Reference | What it says | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Lord is my shepherd | Psalm 23 | Guidance and protection “through the valley of the shadow of death” | About 1 minute |
| I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills | Psalm 121 | Help that keeps watch day and night | About 1 minute |
| A time to every purpose | Ecclesiastes 3:1–8 | Paired seasons of life: birth and death, weeping and laughing | About 1.5 minutes |
| They shall mount up with wings as eagles | Isaiah 40:28–31 | Strength given to the tired | Under 1 minute |
| His compassions fail not | Lamentations 3:22–26 | Mercy that is “new every morning,” from a book of grief | Under 1 minute |
| Nothing can separate us | Romans 8:35–39 | Neither death nor life can separate us from the love of God | About 1 minute |
| Love is patient | 1 Corinthians 13:4–8 | A description of love; often read at weddings too | Under 1 minute |
| A new heaven and a new earth | Revelation 21:1–4 | “God shall wipe away all tears” | About 1 minute |
| The Beatitudes | Matthew 5:3–10 | Includes “Blessed are they that mourn” | Under 1 minute |
| Death, be not proud | John Donne, Holy Sonnet 10 | A 17th-century sonnet that defies death on Christian grounds | About 1 minute |
Translation changes how a passage sounds. The King James Version uses “charity” in 1 Corinthians 13, where most modern translations say “love.” Read the version you will use out loud before choosing.
If the service follows a particular tradition, such as a Catholic funeral Mass or a Jewish service, the priest, rabbi or other officiant may have a set list of readings. Ask before you plan anything else.
Poems and secular readings
| Reading | Author | What it offers | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remember | Christina Rossetti (1862) | A sonnet asking to be remembered | About 1 minute |
| Crossing the Bar (full text below) | Alfred Tennyson (1889) | Death as a calm tide carrying a boat out to sea | Under 1 minute |
| Fear no more the heat o’ the sun | William Shakespeare, from Cymbeline | A song saying the dead are free of every worry | About 1 minute |
| Death is nothing at all | Henry Scott Holland | The dead person speaks: “I have only slipped away into the next room” | About 2 minutes |
| On Death, from The Prophet | Kahlil Gibran (1923) | Prose poem treating life and death as one | Longer; read an excerpt |
| Do not stand at my grave and weep | Author disputed; often credited to Mary Elizabeth Frye | The dead person is in the wind, the snow and the sunlight | Under 1 minute |
| Funeral Blues (“Stop all the clocks”) | W. H. Auden | Raw, public grief | Under 1 minute |
| When Death Comes | Mary Oliver | A life lived fully, facing death with curiosity | About 1.5 minutes |
| When Great Trees Fall | Maya Angelou | How the world feels smaller after a great loss | About 2 minutes |
Holland’s passage is an excerpt from a longer sermon he preached in 1910. It’s often printed as a poem, and the wording varies between versions. He was a clergyman, and the passage ends with a hope of meeting again, so it isn’t fully secular.
Read Rossetti’s “Remember” to the end before choosing it. The last lines tell the listener it is better to forget and smile than to remember and be sad. Some families find that freeing; others don’t want it said aloud.
Auden’s “Funeral Blues” offers no comfort or hope. It suits a family who want grief named plainly.
Very short readings
These take 30 seconds or less. They suit a grandchild, a nervous reader or the very end of a service.
| Reading | Source | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly | Micah 6:8 | About 15 seconds |
| In my Father’s house are many mansions | John 14:1–3 | About 30 seconds |
| Requiem (full text below) | Robert Louis Stevenson | About 30 seconds |
| The Bustle in a House | Emily Dickinson | About 20 seconds |
| Music, when soft voices die | Percy Bysshe Shelley | About 25 seconds |
| Late Fragment | Raymond Carver | About 15 seconds |
Dickinson’s poem describes the morning after a death, the “sweeping up the heart.” Shelley’s is addressed to one person and reads like a love poem, so it may need a word of introduction at a family service.
Three readings in full
These texts are in the public domain in the US, so you can print them in a program.
Psalm 23 (King James Version)
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
Crossing the Bar, by Alfred Tennyson
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.
The “bar” is a sandbar at the mouth of a harbor. Some listeners will hear “my Pilot” as God.
Requiem, by Robert Louis Stevenson
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.
Stevenson wrote it as his own epitaph. It fits someone who loved the outdoors or the sea, and it reads well for a woman with “she” in the second verse, if the family is happy to adapt it.
Printing and permissions
In the US, works published in 1930 or earlier are now in the public domain, so you can print them in full. That covers every Bible passage above in the King James Version, and the poems by Rossetti, Tennyson, Shakespeare, Holland, Gibran, Dickinson, Shelley, Donne and Stevenson.
Modern Bible translations, such as the NIV or NRSV, carry their own permission terms. Check the notice in the front of the Bible or on the publisher’s website before printing a long passage. The poems by Auden, Oliver, Angelou and Carver, and “Do not stand at my grave and weep,” are listed here by title and author only. Reading a poem aloud at a private service is different from printing it in a program or posting a recording online. If you plan to print or post one, ask the funeral home or the poet’s publisher how to get permission.
Outside the US, copyright terms differ.
Choose readings by where they sit in the service
- Opening: something steady and easy to follow on first hearing, such as Psalm 23 or Psalm 121.
- Before the eulogy: a short reading gives people a moment to settle before personal memories.
- After the eulogy: a reflective poem, such as “Crossing the Bar,” gives the room time to breathe.
- Closing or committal: keep it brief. “Requiem,” Micah 6:8 or a blessing from the officiant can end the service without opening a new emotional arc.
A reading should fit what the person believed. If they were religious, scripture may feel necessary. If they weren’t, choose a poem about love, memory or the seasons, and don’t introduce beliefs they didn’t hold. A family with mixed beliefs can pair one religious and one secular reading.
You don’t need a reading at every turn. If the eulogy already carries the weight, music or silence can do the rest.
Choose the reader
Pick someone who knew the person, wants to do it and can read slowly. Give them the text at least a few days ahead. A large-print copy with the pauses marked helps.
If nobody wants to read live, the officiant can read, or someone can record it in advance. The voice notes guide covers recording at home.
Introduce it in one sentence
A short introduction tells people why this text belongs here:
We chose this because Dad spent every summer on the water, and he’d have liked the idea of going home from sea.
Mom read this psalm to us when we were sick. We wanted to read it back to her.
My sister didn’t believe in an afterlife, but she loved this poem’s plainness.
When the family disagrees
Don’t solve it by adding every reading. Choose one reading the whole room can hear, then put another in the printed program or read it at the reception or the graveside. If the disagreement is about older family pain, the piece on sharing difficult family stories may help more than another poem.
Before the service
- Read each piece aloud once with a timer.
- Mark any line that’s hard to follow on first hearing.
- Print a clean, large-type copy for the reader and a spare for the officiant.
- Ask a second person to stand by in case the reader can’t continue.
For the tribute itself, see the eulogy examples and outline.