_Huxley_
The followers of Professor Huxley and the Christian world at large read
with interest these lines, which have been engraved upon his tomb:
And if there be no meeting past the grave,
If all is darkness, silence, yet ’tis rest.
Be not afraid ye waiting hearts that weep,
For God still giveth His beloved sleep,
And if an endless sleep He wills so best.
_André_
When Dean Stanley was invited to send an inscription for the André
Monument at Tappan, it was a delicate and difficult task to avoid
wounding the sensitiveness of either country, and he showed good taste
not only in the composition of the English inscription, but also in the
selection of the Latin one. In the latter case, however, the Dean was
more happy in what he omitted than in what he admitted. He selected this
very appropriate verse from Virgil: “Sunt lacrimæ rerum, et mentem
mortalia tangunt.” But the whole of the beautiful quotation stands
(Æneid i, 461–2):
“——Sunt hic etiam sua præmia laudi;
Sunt lacrimæ rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt,”
which Dr. Anthon translates: “Even here has praiseworthy conduct its own
reward, (even here) are there tears for misfortunes, and human affairs
exert a touching influence on the heart.” What a bitter sarcasm the
verse would have breathed if it had been cut in the André monument!
_Stevenson_
The inscription on the tomb of Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson, the
Scottish poet and novelist, who died at Apia, Samoa, on December 3,
1894, reads:
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
“Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”
The grave of an Indian apostle, St. Acpinquid, is on a high hill at
York, Me. He was converted and passed fifty years in preaching to the
sixty-six Indian tribes of the country, and died on the 1st of May,
1662, at the age of ninety-four. His funeral was conducted with great
pomp, and the Indians sacrificed 25 bucks, 67 does, 3 ermines, 22
buffaloes, 110 ferrets, 832 martins, 240 wolves, 82 wildcats, 482 foxes,
620 beavers, 500 fishes, 99 bears, 36 moose, 50 weasels, 400 otters, 520
raccoons, 112 rattlesnakes, 2 catamounts, 900 musquashes, 69 woodchucks,
1500 minks and 58 porcupines. His tombstone bears the inscription:
Present, useful; absent, wanted;
Lived desired; died lamented.
_Prince Christian_
The cross erected over the grave of Prince Christian Victor in the
Pretoria Cathedral burial-ground is one of early Irish design with kerb
of granite, and the railing is of metal from old British guns. The
inscription records that the Prince was a grandson of Queen Victoria,
and on the three sides of the base are inscribed texts with the various
campaigns of the Prince:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ “I have fought a good fight.” │
│ │
│Hazara 1891│
│Mirwagai 1891│
│Isazar 1892│
│ │
│ “I have kept the faith.” │
│ │
│Ashanti 1895│
│Soudan 1898│
│ │
│ “I have finished my course.” │
│ │
│Natal 1889│
│Transvaal 1900│
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The designs have been carried out from suggestions made by Princess
Christian.
The epilogue to Dryden’s “Tyrannic Love,” intended to be spoken by
Eleanor Gwyn, when she was to be carried off by the pall-bearers, closes
as follows:
As for my epitaph, when I am gone,
I’ll trust no poet, but will write my own:
Here Nellie lies, who though she lived a slattern,
Yet died a princess, acting in St. Cath’rine.
Thus we have the real character of the actress, and the character she
represented in the play.
This inscription on a Connecticut tombstone: “Here lies the body of
Jonathan Richardson, who never sacrificed his reason at the altar of
Superstition’s god, and who never believed that Jonah swallowed a
whale.”
An enthusiastic materialist put a headstone over the grave of his wife
in a cemetery at Nievre, France, upon which there is the following
inscription: “Deprived of all vitality, here lie the remains of the
material that formed Madame Durand. No cards and no prayers.”
Hibernicisms, it seems, sometimes find their way into France. Upon a
tombstone in the cemetery of Pagny-la-Violle may be read the following
inscription: “To the memory of Claudine Menu, wife of Stephen Etienne
Renard, died January 28th, 1855, aged 44 years, regretted by her four
children, Anne, Pierre, François and Barbe, all dead before her.”
When “Tom” Corwin, disappointed and discouraged by the poor result of
his mission to Mexico, was on the point of sailing for home he wrote to
a cousin in Ohio, saying that he had accomplished all that he could, and
when he got back to his country he should want something to do. He
suggested that he had in youth some skill in imparting knowledge, and
might teach a country school. But in case he should die before he
arrived at home, he asked that no costly monument should be placed above
him, and that a simple stone should bear only this inscription: “Thomas
Corwin, born July 29, 1794; died ——. Dearly beloved by his family;
universally despised by Democrats; useful in life only to knaves and
pretended friends.”
The greatest smoker in Europe died at Rotterdam, and left behind him the
most curious of wills. He expresses the wish in his last testament that
all the smokers of the country be invited to attend his obsequies, and
that they smoke while following in the funeral cortége. He directs that
his body be placed in a coffin, which shall be lined with wood taken
from old Havana cigar boxes. At the foot of his bier, tobacco, cigars,
and matches are to be placed. And the epitaph which he requests shall be
placed upon his tombstone is as follows:
HERE LIES
TOM KLAES,
The Greatest Smoker in Europe.
He Broke His Pipe
July 4, 1872.
Mourned by his family and
all tobacco merchants.
STRANGER, SMOKE FOR HIM!
In the city of Amsterdam, Holland, is an epitaph with words signifying
in English “exactly” under a carving of a pair of slippers. The
inscription is over the grave of a rich old man, who, believing that he
would only live a certain number of years, divided his fortune into
yearly instalments, determined to have a good time. He calculated about
right, and when he was dying he paid all his debts and found that he had
nothing left but a pair of slippers.
The _Florenca Illustrated_ of Leopoldo del Migliore, a famous
antiquarian, informs us that the first inventor of spectacles was Signor
Salvino Armato, which is confirmed by the inscription on his tomb:
QUI GIACE
SALVINO D’ARMATO DEGLI ARMATI
DI FIRENZE
INVENTORE DEGLI OCCHIALI
DIO GLI PERDONIE A PECCATA
ANNO D MCCCXVII.
[Here lies Salvino Armato D’Armati of Florence, the inventor of
spectacles. May God pardon his sins. The year 1317.]
_Condell and Heminge_
In the church-yard of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, are interred
two of the personal friends and stage associates of Shakespeare, Henry
Condell and John Heminge, to whom the world owes a debt for the loving
trouble they took in collecting the works of the great bard and
publishing them in book form. With a modesty somewhat uncommon in that
age, they refused to be regarded as editors, but, in their own words,
they “but collected (the plays) only to keep the memory of so worthy a
friend alive, as was our Shakespeare, by the offer of his plays to your
most noble patronage.” On the front of the granite monument of these two
Elizabethan actors is a tablet with the following inscription:
“To the memory of John Heminge and Henry Condell, fellow actors and
personal friends of Shakespeare. They lived many years in this parish
and are buried here. To their disinterested affection the world owes all
that it calls Shakespeare. They alone collected his dramatic writings
regardless of pecuniary loss, and without the hope of any profit, gave
them to the world. They thus merited the gratitude of mankind.”
On the left tablet is the following:
“The fame of Shakespeare rests on his incomparable dramas. There is no
evidence that he ever intended to publish them, and his premature death
in 1616 made this the interest of no one else. Heminge and Condell had
been co-partners with him at the Globe Theatre, Southwark, and from the
accumulated plays there of thirty-five years with great labor selected
them. No men then living were so competent, having acted with him in
them for many years, and well knowing his manuscripts. They were
published in 1623 in folio, thus giving away their private rights
therein. What they did was priceless, for the whole of his manuscripts,
with almost all those of the dramas of the period, have perished.”
_Shakespeare’s Doctor_
Under this heading the _Allgemeine Wiener Medizinische Zeitung_ says
that a gravestone in the church-yard of Fredericksburg bears an
inscription which is thus translated:
“Here lies Edward Heldon, a medical and surgical practitioner, the
friend and companion of William Shakespeare, of Avon. He died after a
short illness in the year of our Lord 1618, in the seventieth year of
his age.”
In St. Stephen’s church-yard, Launceston, Cornwall, is an epitaph whose
quaintness reminds us of the appeal in the inscription on the gravestone
of Shakespeare, in the Stratford Church, though without its blessing and
menace:
’Tis my request
My bones may rest
Within this chest
Without molest.
In Ickworth Church, Suffolk, is the following tribute to Lady Elizabeth
Mansel:
Just in the noon of life—those golden days
When the mind ripens ere the form decays,
The hand of fate untimely cut her thread,
And left the world to weep that virtue fled,
Its pride when living, and its grief when dead.
_Little Ruth_
Little Ruth, when she was living,
Had the best of Nature’s giving,
Innocent spirit, sober face,
Every charm of childhood’s grace;
Here this picture brings her back,
That remembrance may not lack
Something dear to feed upon
Now that our desire is gone.
If her memory fail to make
Calm within for her sweet sake,
Only wait a few more years,
Till enough is told of tears,
And our thought of her shall bring
Joy instead of sorrowing.
In the cemetery at Staten Island: “In Loving Memory of Arthur Winter,
Dear Child of William Winter and Elizabeth Campbell Winter.
“Cold in the dust the perished heart may lie,
But that which warmed it once can never die.”
Inscriptions from Mount Auburn Cemetery:
“Shed not for her the bitter tear,
Nor give the heart to vain regret;
’Tis but the casket that lies here,
The gem that filled it sparkles yet.”
“Dust to its narrow house beneath,
Soul to its place on high,
They that have seen thy look in death,
No more may fear to die.”
“The mother gave in tears and pain,
The flowers she most did love;
She knew she should find them all again
In the fields of light above.”
“Here to thy bosom, mother earth,
Take back in peace what thou hast given;
And all that is of heavenly birth,
O God, in peace recall to heaven.”
“She lived unknown, and few could know
When Mary ceased to be!
But she is in her grave, and O!
The difference to me.”
“Not mortals now but cherubs bright,
They’ve left this world for realms of light.”
“There’s music in the courts above,
And hope to light thee on,
And memory for thy name on earth,
To live since thou art gone.”
“No pain, no grief, no anxious fear
Invade thy bounds. No mortal woes
Can reach the peaceful sleeper here,
While angels watch her soft repose.”
“When the last trumpet’s awful voice,
This rending earth shall shake;
The opening graves shall yield their dead,
And dust to life awake.”
“Thou art gone to the grave:
We no longer behold thee,
Nor tread the rough paths of the world by thy side,
But the wide arms of mercy are spread to enfold thee,
And sinners may die, for the Saviour has died.”
“Beneath this stone, in death’s embrace,
Thy body finds a resting place;
Sleep sweetly here, thou precious dust;
Grave, be thou faithful to thy trust,
Till Jesus calls and bids thee rise;
Then join thy spirit in the skies.”
“Each day of life demands a night’s repose,
And death is but a well-proportioned sleep;
So thy sweet life hath reached its destined close,
And wearied nature now her rest doth keep,
Waiting the dawn of a celestial morn;
For thou, loved sleeper, in thy day didst lend
To life new beauty, and with grace adorn
The Christian wife, the mother, sister, friend.”
Uhland’s beautiful epitaph on an infant was once pronounced by a critic
in _Blackwood_ to be untranslatable. The following version, attempted
many years ago, is perhaps rather a paraphrase than a translation, and
yet it follows pretty closely the words as well as the spirit of the
original:
Thou art come and gone with footfall low,
A wanderer hastening to depart;
Whither, and whence? we only know
From God thou wast, with God thou art.
Better than this in spirit, by all that makes Christian faith and hope
better than vague questioning, and fully equal to it in poetic merit, is
the following by F. T. Palgrave:
Pure, sweet and fair, ere thou couldst taste of ill,
God willed it, and thy baby breath was still;
Now ‘mong His lambs thou livest thy Saviour’s care,
Forever as thou wast, pure, sweet and fair.
Another infant epitaph is striking in its simplicity and very solemn in
its teaching:
Beneath this tomb an infant lies,
To earth whose body lent,
Hereafter shall more glorious rise,
But not more innocent.
When the archangel’s trump shall blow,
And souls to bodies join,
What crowds shall wish their lives below
Had been as short as thine!
_Longfellow and Brooks_
Of all the marbles that fill Westminster Abbey with the glory of great
memories, says Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, not one speaks a language so
eloquent as the bust of Longfellow. For it announces itself as a pledge
of brotherhood recorded in the most sacred shrine of a great nation with
which we have sometimes been at variance, but to whose home and race our
affection must ever cling, so long as blood is thicker than water. The
seemingly feeble link of a sentiment is often stronger than the
adamantine chain of a treaty.
It is the province of literature, especially poetry, which deals with
the sentiments common to humanity, to obliterate the geographical and
political boundaries of nations, and make them one in feeling. The
beautiful tribute of Englishmen to an American poet, giving him a place
in their proudest mausoleum, by the side of their bravest, best,
noblest, greatest, is a proof of friendship and esteem so genuine that
it overleaps all the barriers of nationality.
To this tribute to Longfellow is now added a gracious memorial, by
English people, of Phillips Brooks, in St. Margaret’s, Westminster, the
parish church of the House of Commons. Dean Farrar, in speaking of the
bishop’s unique personality, said he was “of all modern ecclesiastics
the most famous.” The memorial window, remarkable for its highly
artistic features, presents several impressive scenes, with texts
representing the joyful, cheerful side of Christianity. Underneath are
the words, “In Memory of Phillips Brooks, D.D., Bishop of Massachusetts,
honored and beloved, A. D. 1894,” and again, below this, is a quatrain
in Latin elegiacs, written by the late Dr. Benson, formerly Archbishop
of Canterbury:
Fervidus eloquio, sacra fortissimus arte,
Suadendi, gravibus vera Deumque Viris,
Quæreris ad sedem populari voce regendam,
Quæreris—ad sedem rapte Domumque Dei.
Thus freely Englished by the son of the writer:
True priest of God whose glowing utterance stayed
The failing feet, the heart that was afraid,
Pastor and Friend, beloved, most desired,
Thy people called thee, but thy God required.
Tennyson’s epitaph on Sir John Franklin, the Arctic explorer, in
Westminster Abbey:
Non hic nauta iacet fortissimus: ossa nivalis
Arctos habet, sed pars non moritura viri
Navigat inmensum auspiciis melioribus æquor
Limina non nostri dum petit alta poli.
[Not here: the white North has thy bones, and thou,
Heroic sailor-soul,
Art passing on thine happier voyage now,
Toward no earthly pole.]
Fixed in the wall of Freshwater Church as a memorial to Lionel Tennyson
is a marble tablet on which these lines are inscribed:
Truth for truth is truth he worshipt, being true as he was brave;
Good for good is good he follow’d, yet he looked beyond the grave;
Truth for truth, and good for good! The good, the true, the pure, the
just!
Take the charm “for ever” from them, and they crumble into dust.
The signature “A. T.” is not needed to show whose was the pen that
traced them.
Sir Vincent Eyre, a retired Major-General of the Indian army, found the
grave and tombstone of Keats, the poet, who died in Rome in 1821, and
who was buried in the old cemetery for English Protestants, wholly
neglected. The inscription on the stone: “Here lies one whose name was
writ in water,” was almost illegible from dirt and decay. He made a
collection, repaired the grave, cleaned the tombstone, and placed a
medallion of Keats on the wall near the grave, with the following
acrostic:
Keats, if thy cherished name be writ in water,
Each drop has fallen from a mourner’s cheek,
A sacred tribute such as heroes seek,
Though oft in vain, for dazzling deeds of slaughter,
Sleep on not less for epitaph so meek.
Longfellow on Bayard Taylor:
Dead he lay among his books,
The peace of God was in his looks.
As the statues in the gloom
Watch o’er Maximilian’s tomb,
So these volumes from their shelves.
Ah! his hand will never more
Turn their storied pages o’er!
Never more his lips repeat
Songs of theirs, however sweet!
Let the lifeless body rest,
He is gone who was its guest;
Gone as travellers haste to leave
An inn, nor tarry until eve.
Traveller, in what realms afar,
In what planet, in what star,
In what vast aerial space
Shines the light upon thy face?
In what gardens of delight
Rest thy weary feet to-night?
Among the shortest epitaphs are “Resurgam,” “Miserrimus,” and Shelley’s
“Cor cordium;” and, in a very different spirit, such as Thorpe’s Corpse,
Finis Maginnis. A military epitaph on the tomb of a Captain in the
cemetery of Montparnasse:
“Carry arms! Present arms!
“In place! Rest!...”
In the Witchurch graveyard, Dorsetshire, is this concatenation of names:
Arabella Jennerenna Raqustenna Amabel Grunter, daughter of John Grunter.
In Axminster church-yard:
Anna Maria Matilda Sophia Johnson Thompson Kettelby Rundell.
_Grateful Memory_
It is related of the poet Uhland that the King of Prussia offered him
the Order _Pour le Mérite_, with flattering expressions of royal regard.
Uhland, however, declined to accept it. While he was explaining to his
wife the reason which moved him to refuse the distinction, there was a
knock at the door. A working-class girl from the neighborhood entered,
and presenting Uhland with a bunch of violets, said, “This is an
offering from my mother.” “Your mother, child?” replied the poet; “I
thought she died last autumn.” “That is true, Herr Uhland,” said the
girl, “and I begged you at the time to make a little verse for her
grave, and you sent me a beautiful poem. These are the first violets
which have bloomed on mother’s grave; I have plucked them, and I like to
think that she sends them to you with her greetings.” The poet’s eyes
moistened as he took the posy, and putting it in his button-hole he said
to his wife, “There, dear woman, is not that an order more valuable than
any King can give?”
Over a sarcophagus in an English church are two winged angels, in
attitude as if just descended from heaven, and holding by either side a
scroll upon which is written in golden letters the following legend:
“In holiness and purity live, and in a high enlightened love, do ye to
others as we would that they should do unto you. Peace be with you.
Amen.”
_From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage_
In Santa Croce’s holy precincts lie
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even in itself an immortality,
Though there were nothing save the past, and this,
The particle of those sublimities
Which were replaced to chaos: here repose
Angelo’s, Alfieri’s bones, and his,
The starry Galileo, with his woes;
Here Machiavelli’s earth returned to whom it rose.
_Somebody’s Darling_
The first and last stanzas of an exquisite little poem by Miss Marie
Lacoste, of Savannah, Georgia, commemorating an incident unfortunately
too common in both armies during the sectional conflict, are as follows:
Into a ward of the whitewashed walls,
Where the dead and the dying lay—
Wounded by bayonets, shells, and balls—
Somebody’s darling was borne one day.
Somebody’s darling! So young and so brave,
Wearing still on his pale sweet face,
Soon to be hid by the dust of the grave,
The lingering light of his boyhood’s grace. ·
Somebody’s watching and waiting for him,
Yearning to hold him again to her heart:
There he lies—with the blue eyes dim,
And smiling, childlike lips apart.
Tenderly bury the fair young dead,
Pausing to drop on his grave a tear;
Carve on the wooden slab at his head—
“_Somebody’s darling lies buried here._”
_Bismarck_
“I have only one ambition left, I should like to have a good epitaph.”