The Dash Poem by Linda Ellis: Meaning, Story, and How You Can (and Can’t) Use It

The Dash by Linda Ellis is one of the most requested poems at modern funerals and memorial services. Unlike most poems on this site, we cannot print it here: The Dash is under copyright, and Linda Ellis actively enforces it. You can read the official full text on her website, lindaellis.com. What this page offers instead is what the poem means, the story behind it, honest guidance on using it at a funeral, and public-domain alternatives that carry the same message and that you can print freely.

What The Dash is about

The poem opens at a funeral. A man stands up to speak about his friend, and instead of listing accomplishments, he points to the headstone — to the two dates on it, the year of birth and the year of death — and to the small dash carved between them. That little mark, he says, is what actually matters. The dates belong to the calendar; the dash holds everything the person ever did, everyone they loved, every kindness and every ordinary day of an entire life.

From that image the poem turns toward the listener. It asks, in essence: you are living your own dash right now — are you spending it well? Would you change how you treat people, how quickly you anger, how often you say what those around you mean to you, if you really understood how short the line between the dates is? It closes by imagining your own eulogy, and asking whether you would be proud of how the speaker describes the way you spent your dash.

That is the whole engine of the poem: one visual metaphor — the idea of “the dash between the dates” — expanded into a gentle, direct challenge to live deliberately. It is less an elegy than a call to action, which is exactly why it works so well at funerals.

Why it resonates at funerals

Most funeral poems console the mourner: they say the loved one is at peace, or still present, or waiting beyond. The Dash does something different — it honors the dead by challenging the living. At a service, it reframes grief as gratitude for a life well spent and turns the congregation’s attention to their own remaining time. Celebrants often place it near the end of a service for precisely this reason: people leave not just mourning a death but resolving to live differently. It suits celebrations of life especially well, and it works for any relationship — friend, parent, grandparent, colleague — because its subject is not one person’s story but the shape of every life.

The story behind the poem

Linda Ellis wrote The Dash in 1996 while working in the corporate offices of a media company in Atlanta. By her own account she was struck by how many people around her seemed to be racing through their working lives without pausing to live them, and the poem poured out quickly. It was read on a nationally syndicated radio show soon after, and the response was immediate and enormous — listeners called in wanting copies, and the poem began an email-forward life that long predated social media. It has since been read at countless funerals, graduations, and memorial services, spawned books and films built around its message, and made Ellis one of the rare living poets known to millions by a single work.

Can I read The Dash at a funeral or print it in an order of service?

This is the question we get most, so here is honest, practical guidance. The Dash is copyrighted (© Linda Ellis, 1996), and it is well known among funeral professionals as one of the most actively enforced poems in existence — Ellis and her licensing agents have a long public history of pursuing unauthorized reproductions, including those by churches, newsletters, and well-meaning individuals.

In practice, that breaks down like this:

Reading it aloud at a service is generally tolerated, and Ellis’s official site offers guidance and licensing for public readings. If you simply stand up at a funeral and read the poem from a legally obtained copy, you are in the territory most rights holders accept; if you want certainty, request permission through her site — it is straightforward.

Printing it in an order of service, program, or memorial card is reproduction, and that does require permission. Do not photocopy it, do not paste it from the internet into a program, and be aware that funeral homes have been pursued for exactly this. Licenses for printed use are available via her official channels.

Posting it online — on a memorial page, social media, or a tribute site — is also reproduction and also requires permission. This is the use most commonly enforced.

None of this is meant to scare you off the poem; it is a beautiful piece and reading it at a service is a lovely choice. Just source the text from lindaellis.com and get permission before putting it in print. We do not offer a printable version of this poem, and you should be wary of any site that does.

Public-domain alternatives that carry the same message

If you want the spirit of The Dash — a life measured by how it was lived, not how long — in a poem you can print freely in a program, these public-domain pieces do the work beautifully.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Requiem, which he wrote as his own epitaph, distills a whole life into eight calm lines about a person who lived gladly and is content with how it ended:

And this traditional verse, long used on headstones and memorial cards, makes the same turn toward the living that gives The Dash its power — it measures a life by love and memory rather than by dates:

You may also want Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep — the most widely read funeral poem of all, fully public domain — or our complete collection of funeral poems, where every public-domain text is printed in full and free to use in your order of service.