Quaint Epitaphs | Page 3

fire to heaven.
Stay, reader, drop upon this stone?One pitying tear and then be gone:?A handsome pile of flesh and blood?Is here sunk down in its first mud.
I was somebody--who? is no business of yours.
My wife from me departed?And robbed me like a knave;?Which caused me broken hearted?To sink into this grave.?My children took an active part,?To doom me did contrive;?Which stuck a dagger in my heart?That I could not survive.
Pious.
Open thine eyes Lord?I come! I come!
Sacred to the memory of three twins.
My glass is run; yours is running.?Remember death and judgment coming.
This stone was got to keep this lot.?Her father bought. Dig not too near.
Grim death took little Jerry,?The son of Joseph and Sereno Howells,?Seven days he wrestled with the dysentery?And then he perished in his little bowels.
NEWFANE.
Oh, little Lavina she has gone?To James and Charles and Eliza Ann.?Arm in arm they walk above?Singing the Redeemer's love.
MASSACHUSETTS.
MALDEN.
Phebe Sprague.
In the sixteenth year of her age,?Natively quick and spry?As all young people be,?When God commands them down to dust,?How quick they drop you see.
MELROSE.
When I am dead and in my grave?And all my bones are rotten,?If this you see, remember me,?Nor let me be forgotton.
WENDELL.
Mary Hardy Goss Hill Sawin.
Orphan of affection and grief, adopted by aunt and
grandsire, nurse of their hospital home.?Wife and widow of Dea John Hills.?Happy wife in rural home of Thomas Sawin eight years.?Often prisinor of calamity and pain.?Exhile of inherited melancholy fifteen years.?Patient waiter on decay and death.?Lover of all who love Jesus.
Here lies the body of Samuel Proctor?Who lived and died without a doctor.
Under these stones lies three children dear;?Two are burried at Taunton and I lie here.
BROMFIELD.
In memory of Stephen Pynchon.
One truth is certain when this life is o'er,?Man dies to live and lives to die no more.
MARSHFIELD.
Julia Webster Appleton.
"Let me go for the day breaketh."
MT. AUBURN.
"An eclipse at meridian."
Here lies one John Witherbee,?A Boston gallant chap was he.?God had no use for such as he,?The devil rejected Witherbee.
Here lies a man beneath this sod,?Who slandered all except his God,?And him he would have slandered too,?But that his God he never knew.
PLYMOUTH.
Here lies the body of Thomas Vernon,?The only surviving son of Admiral Vernon.
Here lies the bones of Richard Lawton?Whose death alas! was strangely brought on.?Trying his corns one day to mow off.?His razor slipped and cut his toe off.?His toe or rather what it grew to,?An inflimation quickly flew to.?Which took alas! to mortifying?And was the cause of Richards dying.
HARVARD.
Dea Lemuel Willard?Died in 1821
When present useful, absent wanted?Lived respected, died lamented.
Bishop Jewel
He wrote learnedly, preached painfully, lived piously, died peacefully.
John Safford.
Crushed as a moth beneath Thy hands?We moulder back to dust.?Our feeble frames cannot withstand?And all our beauty's lost.?This mortal life decays apace?How soon the bubble's broke.?Adam and all his numerous race?Are vanity and smoke.
John Daby.
Tis but a few whole days amount?To three score years and ten;?And all beyond that short account?Is sorrow toil and pain.?Our vitals with laborious strife?Bear up the crazy load,?And drag these poor remains of life?Along the toilsome road.
BOSTON. (Granary Burying Ground.)
Here I lie bereft of breath?Because a cough carried me off;?Then a coffin they carried me off in.
DORCHESTER.
This world's a city, full of crooked streets;?And Death the market place where all men meets.?If life were merchandize that men could buy?The rich would live and none but poor would die.
Of pneumonia supervening consumption complicated with other diseases, the main symptom of which was insanity.
Submit, submitted to her heavenly King?Being a flower of the etheral Spring--?Near three years old she died--In Heaven to wait?The year was sixteen hundred forty eight.
ROWLEY.
Ezekiel Rogers, Minister?Died in 1660.
With the youth he took great pains, and was a tree of knowledge laden with fruit which the children could reach.
Epitaph of Rev. Jonathan Mitchel, pastor of the first church in Cambridge. Died July 9, 1668.
Here lies the darling of his time?Mitchel expired in his prime.?Who four years short of forty seven?Was found full ripe and plucked for Heaven.
SOUTH DENNIS.
Of seven sons the Lord his father gave,?He was the fourth who found a watery grave.?Fifteen days had passed since the circumstance occurred, When his body was found and decently interred.
VINEYARD HAVEN.
John and Lydia, that blooming pair,?A whale killed him and her body lies here.
CHATHAM.
There were three brothers went to sea?Who were never known to wrangle?Holmes Hole--cedar pole?Crinkle, crinkle crangle.
Three brothers started for Holmes Hole in an open boat for cedar poles, and on the passage were killed by lightning, represented by the _crinkle, crinkle, crangle_.
Time was I stood as thou doest now?And viewed the dead as thou doest me.?E'er long thou'l lie as low as I?And others stand to look on thee.
NORTON.
A blacksmith's epitaph composed by himself.
My sledge and hammer lie reclined,?My bellows too have lost their wind,?My fire's extinct, my forge decayed,?And in the dust my vice is laid.?My iron spent, my coal is gone,?My nails are drove--my