Perhaps some of the world’s greatest writers have already written the words to express what is in your heart.
Here are some selected verses and quotations for some of the most famous poets (and Shelly’s famous poem in its entirety).
Sympathy Poem Excerpts
He kept at true good humour’s mark
The social flow of pleasure’s tide:
He never made a brow look dark,
Nor caused a tear, but when he died.
~Thomas Love Peacock
There’s no use in weeping,
Though we are condemned to part:
There’s such a thing as keeping
A remembrance in one’s heart…
~from Parting by Charlotte Bronte
Look for the rainbow
that gracious thing,
made up of tears and light.
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge
This world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible, as music,
But positive, as sound.
~ Emily Dickinson
Every blade in the field —
every leaf in the forest —
lays down its life in its season
as beautifully as it was taken up.
~Henry David Thoreau
Though nothing can bring back the hour
of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.
Like a bird
Singing in the rain,
Let grateful memories
Survive in time of sorrow.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
Once of the most famous poems on death is by Percy Shelley simply entitled Bereavement. Here it is in its entirety.
How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner
As he bends in still grief o’er the hallowed bier,
As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner,
And drops to perfection’s remembrance a tear;
When floods of despair down his pale cheeks are streaming,
When no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming,
Or, if lulled for a while, soon he starts from his dreaming,
And finds torn the soft ties to affection so dear.
Ah, when shall day dawn on the night of the grave,
Or summer succeed to the winter of death?
Rest awhle, hapless victim! and Heaven will save
The spirit that hath faded away with the breath.
Eternity points, in its amaranth bower
Where no clouds of fate o’er the sweet prospect lour,
Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower,
When woe fades away like the mist of the heath.