help with funeral speech?

Question

I am having to do a reading at my Dads funeral on Friday (His brother was supposed to be doing it - but now can't make the funeral). Therefore I am very short on time, obviously I will pay my own tribute to my dad but I also want to read out maybe a poem that has connections to The Navy or the Sea (as he was ex navy) anyone know anything that may be fitting ? any help really appreciated as I am in a blind panic now

Thank you sunshine, didn't realise that - not very up to date on the Navy stuff x

Answer 1

Remember your dad was a unique person. He was a unique person is and is therefor a tragedy to loos. He can not be
replaced by anybody else. Tell that.

Answer 2

Hi lulu,

I'm going to look over my poetry shelves, and see if I can find a few poems for you to consider, but for now, I'll say that this poem by Laura Jensen is lovely. . . it may not be what you expect, but give it an open-minded read.

In the context of a funeral for a man who was "a part" of the sea, this poem reads like the sea is mourning, and refusing to behave in any of the expected ways, because she's lost something dear to her.

I'm sorry about your father.

SHE WILL NOT DRESS HERSELF
Laura Jensen

The days come an go like waves
on pebbles. She the sea will not
wear the coat made from flame,
made from the flag of combustion.
She will not dress herself in fire.
Nor can she wear the galloping world
she dreams of. The days do not touch her,
she has the shell of a snail. She cannot
see clearly the way her wounds are shaped.
She will not dress herself, she will not dream.
She cannot see her way clearly
over the cold cinders. To sleep
she ventures out under a rowboat
to a ship at sea.
The nights come and go in the waves
beneath the ship, she will not wear
the canvas sails, she will not dress herself
in salt. The nights do not touch the sea.
The sea touches night in her rest.

Answer 3

One day I found my dad asleep
An enchanted spell forever more
Never to rise or to ever see
The future I’ve been waiting for

Heaven please take him in
To your blue seas and sweet harbors
Where he can feel at home again
And grant him all his past prayers

Lord please pass this on to him
That he is loved by all who knew
His greater deeds while he still was here
I’m sure they number quite a few

The grand sunsets in the afterlife
Upon the shining blue grey sea
Remind him of his days with us
And please don’t let him forget me


I wrote that, last minute so if it's not so good sorry, but am not a very informated person so am not so sure what the navy is all about. I hope this helps tho... hehe

Answer 4

Californian poet Robinson Jeffers wrote a beautiful meditative poem on the course of a human lifespan and its inevitable mortality by using the night as the guiding motif. The poem makes reference to an August night (which happens to be this month), and Jeffers employs imagery relating to oceans and sailors that might fulfill your needs. The poem is entitled (no surprises here) "Night."

I couldn't find an online link to this specific poem, but it's a poem worth iterating here, despite its length (from Robinson Jeffers Selected Poems, Vintage: 1965). If it's too long, there are some beautiful excerpts of which you could make use. The last two stanzas in particular deal with images pertaining to the sea.

Night
by Robinson Jeffers

The ebb slips from the rock, the sunken
Tide-rocks lift streaming shoulders
Out of the slack, the slow west
Sombering its torch; a ship's light
Shows faintly, far out,
Over the weight of the prone ocean
On the low cloud.

Over the dark moutain, over the dark pinewood,
Down the long dark valley along the shrunken river,
Returns the splendor without rays, the shining of shadow,
Peace-bringer, the matrix of all shining and quieter of
shining.
Where the shore widens on the bay she opens dark wings
And the ocean accepts her glory. O soul worshipful of
her
You like the ocean have grave depths where she dwells
always,
And the film of waves above that takes the sun takes also
Her, with more love. The sun-lovers have a blond favorite.
A father of lights and noises, wars, weeping and laughter,
Hot labor, lust and delight and the other blemishes.
Quietness
Flows from her deeper fountain; and he will die; and she
is immortal.

Far off from here the slender
Flocks of the mountain forest
Move among stems like towers
Of the old redwoods to the stream,
No twig cracking; dip shy
Wild muzzles into the mountain water
Among the dark ferns.

O passionately at peace you being secure will pardon
The blasphemies of glowworms, the lamp in my tower,
the fretfulness
Of cities, the cressets of the planets, the pride of the
stars.
This August night in a rift of cloud Antares reddens,
The great one, the ancient torch, a lord among lost children,
The earth's orbit doubled would not girdle his greatness,
one fire
Globed, out of the grasp of the mind enormous; but to you
O Night
What? Not a spark? What flicker of a spark in the faint
far glimmer
Of a lost fire dying in the desert, dim coals of a sand-pit
the Bedouins
Wandered from at dawn...Ah singing prayer to
what gulfs tempted
Suddenly are you more lost? To us the near-hand mountain
Be a measure of height, the tide-worn cliff at the sea-gate
a measure of continuance.

The tide, moving the night's
Vastness with lonely voices
Turns, the deep dark-shining
Pacific leans on the land,
Feeling his cold strength
To the outmost margins: you Night will resume
The stars in your time.

O passionately at peace when will that tide draw shoreward?
Truly the sprouting fountains of light, Antares, Arcturus,
Tire of their flow, they sing one song but they think
silence.
The striding winter giant Orion shines, and dreams darkness.
And life, the flicker of men and moths and the wolf
on the hill,
Though furious for continuance, passionately feeding,
passionately
Remaking itself upon its mates, remembers depp inward
The calm mother, the quietness of the womb and the egg,
The primal and the latter silences: dear Night it is
memory
Prophesies, prophecy that remembers, the charm of the
dark.
And I and my people, we are willing to love the four-score
years
Heartily; but as a sailor loves the sea, when the helm is
for harbor.

Have men's minds changed,
Or the rock hidden in the deep of the waters of the soul
Broken the surface? A few centuries
Gone by, was none dared not to people
The darkness beyond the stars with harps and habitations.
But now, dear is the truth. Life is grown sweeter and
lonelier,
And death is no evil.


Another poem that more directly addresses the sailor's life would be a rather well known poem by John Masefield entitled "Sea-fever." Although rhythmically it might lean more towards sing-songy sentimental wistfulness. Tonally, It's not as complex in my opinion as "Night," but it's arguably more accessible. Link to follow:

http://www.bartleby.com/103/98.html

My recommendation is to look over the selections you've received thus far and read aloud any of the poems you think would serve as suitable homages to your father. It's important that you feel connected to the poem so that your recitation is comfortable for you.

If you haven't read a poem out loud before (and my apologies in advance if I'm telling you something you already know), remember to read in the natural rhythms dictated by your own voice and the syntactic patterns of spoken English, i.e., pause only where it seems to make sense to do so, not necessarily at the end of every line break.

I'm sure whatever you choose to orate will be a fitting tribute.

Answer 5

So sorry for the loss of your father :(. I had a friend who lost her father who was a sailor and a very amusing chap who liked a laugh asked her to read "the boy stood on the burning deck" (the rude version) to lighten things a little. and he went out to the captain pugwash theme!!!! one of the nicest funerals i have been to as everyone was smiling.

If you don't want to do something like that, why not read the hymn "for those in peril on the sea"?

hope everything goes well.

Answer 6

O Captain My Captain, By Walt Whitman

I.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red!
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

II.

O captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up! For you the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills:
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths, for you the shores a-crowding:
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.


III.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won!
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Answer 7

1

Answer 8

You might try Dylan Thomas' "And Death Shall Have No Dominion":

"And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry in their ears, nor waves break loud
on their sea shores..."

To me, this brief poem acknowledges and accepts death as a real part of life, but denies it any permanence or finality.

Answer 9

lulu,
my sincere sympathy on your loss
it is difficult to cope with the death
of someone you lost.

In the Navy
My dad was in the navy
this is just one of some memories
now he is someone
who is gone
he is now asleep
but your love I will keep
my love for you I will miss
includes a kiss.

Answer 10

Check a naval website - most of the forces have their own prayer. Good luck.