This book is a study of the neglected genre of funeral poetry. It considers Lutheran verse written to console bereaved parents in the light of the debate surrounding parental attachment and loss in early modern Europe. The poems are analyzed against the background of classical and early modern works on rhetoric and poetics, and their therapeutic and didactic functions are discussed. The book concludes with a close comparative study of two poets: Paul Fleming (1609-40) was an unmarried man working in the neo-Stoic tradition, whereas Margarethe Susanna von Kuntsch (1651-1717) wrote from the bitter experience of losing thirteen of her fourteen children. Funeral booklets have attracted considerable attention from historians, but they have not been investigated thoroughly as sources of literature, and little has been written on the depiction of children or parent-child relationships in these publications. This study bridges these gaps, building on existing work on rhetoric, poetics and consolation.