Sickness sore, long time I bore
Physician's skill in vain,
Till God revealed his tender love
And took away my pain.
And now, I at my anchor ride,
With many of the fleet;
Once more, again, I will set sail
My Saviour Christ to meet.
* * * * *
Susan Tomkins, here she lies;
Nobody laughs, and nobody cries.
Where she's gone, or how she fares,
Nobody knows, and nobody cares.
* * * * *
Here lies the body of Mary Ann Lowder,
Who died while drinking a seidlitz powder.
Called from earth to her heavenly rest,
She should have waited till it effervesced
* * * * *
In Charlestown, Virginia:
She was taken sick the 11th of June,
And only lived ten days;
But she has gone to rest in heaven above,
To sing her Saviour's praise.
* * * * *
Westfield, New Jersey:
The dame that rests beneath this tomb
Had Rachel's beauty, Leah's fruitful womb,
Abigail's wisdom, Lydia's faithful heart,
Martha's just care, and Mary's better part.
* * * * *
Here lies the body of Mary Ann Ford,
We _trust_ her soul is with the Lord,
But if she's missed of eternal life,
It's better than being John Ford's wife.
* * * * *
Here lies the body of Mary Ann Bent,
She kicked up her heels, and away she went.
* * * * *
From Smithfield, Rhode Island, 1796:
While she was at a brook,
And where she did not like to go,
She from her friends was sudden took,
Seized with a fit she's subject to.
Her body in the water lay,
Her weeping husband found the same,
The means was used without delay
To call her back, but all in vain.
Her life to God she did resign,
And angels bore her soul away.
The grave her body now confines
Shall rise triumphant the last day.
Epitaphs on Occupations.
On an old woman who kept a pottery-shop in Chester, England:
Beneath these stones lies old Kathering Gray,
Changed from a busy life to lifeless clay;
By earth and clay she got her pelf,
But now is turned to earth herself.
Ye weeping friends, let me advise,
Abate your grief and dry your eyes,
For what avails a flood of tears?
Who knows but in a run of years,
In some tall pitcher or bread pan,
She in her shop may be again?
* * * * *
On an undertaker:
Here lies Rob Master. Faith! 'twas very hard
To take away an honest Robin's breath;
Yes, surely Robin was full well prepared,
For he was always looking out for _death_.
* * * * *
Nell Bachelour, an Oxford pie woman:
Here into the dust
The mouldering crust
Of Eleanour Bachelour's shoven;
Well versed in the arts
Of pies, custards, and tarts,
And the lucrative skill of the oven.
When she lived long enough
She made her last puff,
A puff by her husband much praised,
Now here she doth lie
And makes a dirt pie,
In hopes that her crust shall be raised.
* * * * *
On a tramp:
Here lies one that once was born and cried,
Lived several years--and then--and then he died.
* * * * *
A photographer:
Here I lie, taken from life.
* * * * *
A lawyer:
Entombed within this vault a lawyer lies
Who, fame assureth us was just and wise,
An able advocate and honest too;
That's wondrous strange, indeed, if it be true.
* * * * *
Another lawyer:
See how God works his wonders now and then,--
Here lies a lawyer, and an honest man.
* * * * *
A tailor:
Fate cuts the thread of life, as all men know,
And Fate cut his, though he so well could sew.
It matters not how fine the web is spun,
'Tis all unravelled when our course is run.
* * * * *
Here lies an editor.
* * * * *
On a horse thief:
He found a rope and picked it up,
And with it walked away.
It happened that to tother end
A horse was hitched, they say.
They took the rope and tied it up
Unto a hickory limb.
It happened that the tother end
Was somehow hitched to him.
* * * * *
A wood-cutter at Ockham, Surrey:
The Lord saw good; I was lopping off wood,
And down fell from the tree;
I met with a check, and I broke my neck,
And so Death lopped off me.
* * * * *
A parish clerk:
Here lies within this tomb, so calm,
Old Giles; pray sound his knell;
Who thought no song was like a psalm,
No music like a knell.
* * * * *
On a parish clerk who loved backgammon, and was succeeded in office by a
Mr. Trice:
By the chance of the die,
On his back here doth lie
Our most audible clerk, Master Hammond;
Tho' he _bore many men_
Till threescore and ten,
Yet, at length he by death is backgammoned.
But hark! neighbors, hark!
Here again comes the clerk;
By a hit very lucky and nice,
With death we're now even
He just stepped to heaven,
And is with us again in a Trice.
* * * * *
A sailor:
Whether sailor or not, for a moment avast,
Poor Tom's mizzen topsail is laid to the mast;
He'll never turn out, or more heave the lead;
He's now all aback, nor will sails shoot ahead.
He ever was brisk, and tho' now gone to wreck,
When he hears the last whistle, he'll jump upon deck.
* * * * *
An old school-mistress, in Dorchester:
Here lies the body of Miriam Wood, formerly wife to John Smith.
A woman well beloved of all
her neighbors for her care of small
folks' education, their number being great,
that when she died she scarcely left her mate:
So wise discreet was her behaviours
that she was well esteemed by neighbors.
She lived in love with all to die
So let her rest to eternitye.
* * * * *
On a maid of honor:
Here lies (the Lord have mercy on her)
One of Her Majesty's maids of honour:
She was young, slender, and pretty;
She died a maid--the more's the pity.
* * * * *
Here lies poor stingy Timmy Wyatt,
Who died at noon and saved a dinner by it.
* * * * *
In Memory of Mr. Joseph Crapp; shipwright who died ye 26th of
November 1770 Aged 43 years.
Alass Frend Joseph
His End was Allmost Sudden
As thou the mandate came
Express from heaven
his foot it slip--And he did fall
help, help he cries--& that was all.
* * * * *
In the old church of Wrexham there was (in 1858) a tablet with the
following inscription:
Here lieth, underneath these stones,
The Beard, the Flesh, and eke the Bones
Of Wrexham's Clerk, old Daniel Jones.
* * * * *
On an architect:
Lie heavy on him, earth, for he
Laid many a heavy load on thee.
* * * * *
On a watchmaker, 1802, Æt 57:
Here lies in horizontal position,
the outside Case of George Routleigh, Watchmaker.
Integrity was the Mainspring, and prudence the
Regulator,
Of all the actions of his life.
Humane, generous, and liberal,
his hand never stopped
till he had relieved distress.
So nicely regulated were all his Motions,
that he never went wrong,
except when set a-going
by people
who did not know his Key:
Even then he was easily
set right again.
He had the art of disposing his time so well,
that his Hours kept running on
in a continual round of pleasure,
till an unlucky Minute put a stop to
his existence.
He departed this life
in hopes of being taken in hand
by his Maker;
and of being thoroughly Cleaned, Repaired,
Wound up, and Set a-going
in the world to come.
* * * * *
Over the grave of a Shropshire blacksmith:
My sledge and anvil lie declined,
My bellows too have lost their wind;
My fire's extinct, my forge decay'd,
And in the dust my body's laid:
My coal is out, my iron's gone,
My nails are drove, my work is done.
* * * * *
A bone collector:
Here lies old Jones,
Who all his life collected bones,
Till death, that grim and bony spectre,
That all-amassing bone collector,
Boned old Jones, so neat and tidy,
That here he lies all bona fide.
Miscellaneous Epitaphs.
Essex, England:
Here lies the man Richard,
And Mary his wife,
Whose surname was Prichard:
They lived without strife;
And the reason was plain,--
They abounded in riches,
They had no care nor pain,
And his wife wore the breeches.
* * * * *
In Llangowen Churchyard, Wales:
Our life is but a summer's day:
Some only breakfast, and away;
Others to dinner stay, and are full fed;
The oldest man but sups, and goes to bed.
Large his account who lingers out the day;
Who goes the soonest, has the least to pay.
* * * * *
Middletown, Connecticut, 1741:
Under this stone
Lies my dear son
Which was an infant flower;
Whose dust God keeps
Ev'n while he sleeps,
Until the rising hour.
* * * * *
Many a cold wind o'er my body shall roll
While in Abraham's bosom I'm a feasting my soul.
* * * * *
The rising morn can't assume
That we shall end the day,
Death stands waiting at the door
To bear our souls away
* * * * *
Here lies I,
Killed by a sky-
Rocket in my eye.
* * * * *
From the Baltimore _Sun_:
He heard the angels calling him
From the celestial shore,
He flapped his wings and away he went
To make one angel more.
* * * * *
Shall all we die?
We shall die all.
All die shall we?
Die all we shall.
* * * * *
How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest,
They sleep not in their regimentals,
Such things being here not deemed essentials.
* * * * *
It was a cough that carried him off,
It was a coffin they carred off in.
* * * * *
On an infant eight months old:
Since I have been so quickly done for,
I wonder what I was begun for.
* * * * *
Little Johnny had a purple monkey
Climbing up a yellow stick,
Little Johnny licked the purple paint off,
And it made him deathly sick.
They stirred him up with calomel,
They tried to move his liver,
But all in vain, his little soul
Was wafted o'er the River.
* * * * *
Potterne in Wiltshire:
Here lies Joseph Trowlup
Who made yon stones roll up;
When death took his soul up,
His body filled this hole up.
* * * * *
From Massachusetts, where a sorrowing and pious parent inscribed the
following two lines to the memory of his dead child:
We cannot have all things to please us,
Poor little Tommy's gone to Jesus.
A sympathetic reader, mistaking the point of the lament, added the lines:
Cheer up, dear friend--all may yet be well,
Perhaps poor little Tommy's gone to Hell.
* * * * *
New Berne, North Carolina:
Ingenious youth, thou art laid in dust.
Thy friends, for thee, in tears did burst.
* * * * *
York, Maine:
Although this stone may moulder into dust,
Yet Joseph Moodey's name continue must.
* * * * *
In Biddeford churchyard, Devon:
The wedding-day appointed was,
And wedding clothes provided;
Before the nuptial day, alas!
He sickened and he die did.
* * * * *
Lines written by a lady to console herself for the death of her father:
It will not do to give way
To _des_pair and grief,
For according to God's ordination
Our trials in life are trifling and brief,
Compared to eternal damnation.
* * * * *
Lord Coningsby:
Here lies Lord Coningsby, be civil,
The rest God knows--so does the devil.
* * * * *
1767:
Tho' Boreas' blasts and boistrous waves
Have tost me to and fro,
In spite of both, by God's decree,
I harbor here below,
Where I do now at Anchor ride
With many of our fleet,
Yet once again I must set sail
My Admiral Christ to meet.
* * * * *
In Corley Churchyard, Warwickshire, England:
These hillocks green and mouldering bones
These gloomy tombs and lettered stones,
One admonition here supply:
Reader! art thou prepared to die?
* * * * *
Sleep soft in dust, wait the Almighty's will,
Then rise unchanged, and be an angel still.
* * * * *
Two children in Dorchester (a double inscription):
Abel--his offering accepted is
His body to the grave, his soul to blis
On Octobers twentye and no more
The yeare was sixteen hundred forty-four.
Submite submitted to her heavenly king.
Being a flower of that eternal Spring,
Near three years old, she died in heaven to wait,
The yeare was sixteen hundred forty-eight.
* * * * *
1808:
Boreas' blasts and Neptune's waves
Have tossed him to and fro,
But, by the sacred will of God,
He's anchored here below.
* * * * *
On a tombstone in New Jersey:
Reader, pass on!--don't waste your time
On bad biography and bitter rhyme;
For what I _am_, this crumbling clay insures,
And what I _was_, is no affair of yours!
* * * * *
From Portland, Oregon:
Beneath this stone our baby lies,
It neither cries nor hollers,
It lived but one and twenty days,
And cost us forty dollars.
* * * * *
This world is a prison in every respect,
Whose walls are the heavens in common;
The jailor is sin, and the prisoners men;
And the fetters are nothing but women.
* * * * *
Cornwall:
Forty-nine years they lived as man and wife,
And what's more rare, thus many without strife;
She first departing, he a few weeks tried
To live without her, could not, and so died.
Both in their wedlock's great Sabbatic rest
To be where there's no wedlock was blest,
And having here a jubilee begun
They're taken hence that it may ne'er be done.
* * * * *
Here lies a Mother and two Babes,
Who God has shortly called to their graves,
In heaven we hope they are blest
There to remain in eternal rest.
* * * * *
At Augusta, Maine:
--After Life's Scarlet Fever I sleep well.
* * * * *
Here lies John Ross,
Kick'd by a hoss.
* * * * *
Mammy and I together lived
Just two years and a half;
She went first--I followed next,
The cow before the calf.
* * * * *
I laid my wife beneath this stone
For her repose and for my own.
* * * * *
Beneath this stone a lump of clay,
Lies Arabella Young;
Who on the 24th of May,
Began to hold her tongue.
* * * * *
Here rests an old woman who always was tired,
For she lived in a house where no help was hired;
Her very last words were, "My friends I am goin'
To a land where there's nothin' of washin' or sewin',
And everything there shall be just to my wishes,
For where they don't eat there's no washin' of dishes;
The land with sweet anthems is constantly ringin',
But having no voice I'll get clear of the singin'."
She folded her hands, her latest endeavor,
And whispered, "Oh nothin', sweet nothin forever."
* * * * *
At Kensington, N. H.:
A live Dog is better than a dead Lion.
* * * * *
Come drop a tear as you pass by,
As you are now so once was I,
As I am now you soon must be,
Prepare for death and follow me.
* * * * *
A zealous locksmith died of late,
And did arrive at heaven's gate:
He stood without, and would not knock,
Because he meant to pick the lock.
* * * * *
Here lies Matthew Mudd,
Death did him no hurt;
When alive he was _mud_,
Now he's nothing but dirt.
* * * * *
Here lies I and my three daughters,
Kill'd by drinking Cheltenham waters;
If we had stuck to Epsom salts,
We'd not been a lying in these here vaults.
* * * * *
Here lies William Smith,
And what is somewhat rarish,
He was born, bred and
Hanged in this parish.
* * * * *
On Thomas Woodcock:
Here lie the remains of Thomas Wood_hen_,
The most amiable of husbands and excellent of men.
N. B. His real name was Wood_cock_, but it Wouldn't come in
rhyme.--_His widow._
* * * * *
On Dr. Walker, author of "English Particles":
Here lie Walker's particles.
* * * * *
An Irish epitaph:
Here lies the body of Jonathan Ground,
Who was lost at sea and never found.
* * * * *
On a coroner who hanged himself:
He lived and died
By _suicide_.
* * * * *
On Dr. Fuller:
Here lies Fuller's earth.
* * * * *
On a brewer:
Poor John Scott lies buried here;
Tho' once he was _hale_ and _stout_,
Death stretch'd him on his _bitter bier_.
In another world he _hops_ about!
* * * * *
Here lieth Richard Dent
In his last tenement.
* * * * *
Here lies Tommy Day,
Removed from over the way.
* * * * *
In New Jersey:
Julia ----
Died of thin shoes, April 17th, 1839, aged 19 years.
* * * * *
On a covetous person:
Of him within, nought e'er gratis was had,
That you read this so cheap now makes him sad.
* * * * *
On John Shaw, an attorney:
Here lies John Shaw,
Attorney-at-law,
And when he died
The Devil cried
"Give us your paw,
John Shaw,
Attorney-at-Law,
Pshaw! Pshaw!"
* * * * *
From Philadelphia:
In memory of Henry Wang, son of his Father and mother, John and
Maria Wang.
Died Dec. 31st, 1829, aged 1/2 hour. The first deposit of this
yard.
A short-lived joy
Was our little boy.
He has gone on high,
So don't you cry.
* * * * *
Against his will
Here lies George Hill
Who from a cliff
Fell down quite stiff
When it happen'd is not known
Therefore not mentioned on this stone.
* * * * *
Here lies my wife in earthly mould,
Who, when she liv'd, did naught but scold;
Peace, wake her not, for now she's still,
She had, but now I have my will.
* * * * *
This turf has drunk a widow's tear,
Three of her husbands slumber here.
It may be interesting to state that the tearful widow was still
living with a fourth partner.
* * * * *
Here lies Sir JOHN GUISE:
No one laughs, no one cries:
Where he's gone, and how he fares,
No one knows, and no one cares.
* * * * *
On a celebrated cook:
Peace to his hashes.
* * * * *
"Underneath this ancient pew
Lie the remains of Jonathan BLUE;
His name was BLACK, but that wouldn't do."
* * * * *
"Here I lie, and no wonder I am dead,
For the wheel of a wagon went over my head."
* * * * *
Here lies the body of MOLLY DICKIE, the Wife of HALL DICKIE,
tailor
Two great physicians first
My Loving husband tried,
To cure my pain----
In vain,
At last he got a third,
And then I died.
* * * * *
As I am now, so you must be,
Therefore prepare to follow me.
Written under:
To follow you I'm not content,
How do I know which way you went.
* * * * *
The manner of her death was thus:
She was druv over by a Bus.
* * * * *
On Jonathan Fiddle, written by Ben Johnson:
On the twenty-second of June
Jonathan Fiddle went out of tune.
* * * * *
On John Cole, who died suddenly, while at dinner:
Here lies Johnny Cole,
Who died, on my soul,
after eating a plentiful dinner.
While chewing his crust,
He was turned into dust,
with his crimes undigested--poor sinner.
* * * * *
Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery free,
Who long was a bookseller's hack.
He led such a damnable life in this world
I don't think he'll ever come back.
* * * * *
She lived genteely on a small income.
* * * * *
Here lies my poor wife, much lamented
She's happy, and I'm contented
* * * * *
On Burbridge, the tragedian: