Quaint Epitaphs | Page 7

to missle?Had they blown the engine whistle.
Here lies the remains of?John Hall grocer.
The world is not worth a fig?I have good _raisins_ for saying so.
Amanda Lowe.
She loved me and my grandchildren reverenced her. She bathed my feet and kept my socks well darned.
A bird, a man, a loaded gun.?No bird, dead man, thy will be done.
IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.
AT ST. MARY LE BONE.
Queen Elizabeth.
(By Laureate Skelton.)
Fame blow aloud, and to the world proclaim,?There never ruled such a royal dame!?The word of God was ever her delight,?In it she meditated day and night.?Spain's rod, Rome's ruin, Netherland's relief,?Earth's joy, England's gem, world's wonder,?Nature's chief.?She was and is, what can there more be said,?On earth the chief, in Heaven the second made.
IN HARROW CHURCHYARD.
(Ascribed to Lord Byron.)
Beneath these green trees rising to the skies,?The planter of them, Isaac Greentree lies!?A time shall come when these green trees shall fall,?And Isaac Greentree rise above them all.
SURREY, ENGLAND.
The Lord was good I was lopping off wood?And down fell from a tree.?I met with a check that broke my neck?And so God lopped off me.
Here lies John Higley whose father and mother were drowned in their passage from America. Had they both lived they would have been buried here.
ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND.
Here lies Martin Elmrod.?Have mercy on my soul, good God?As I would do were I Lord God?And you were Martin Elmrod.
Here lies Thomas Smith?And what is somewhat rareish,?He was born bred and hanged?In this e'er parish.
Here I lie at the chancel door?And I lie here because I am poor;?For the farther in the more you pay,?But here I lie as warm as they.
PICKERING CHURCHYARD.
Death comes to all, none can resist his dart?At his command the dearest friends must part.?A mournful widow who this truth doth own?In gratitude erects this humble stone.
CHILDWELL, ENGLAND.
Here lies the body of
John Smith.?Buried in the cloisters?If he don't jump at the last trump,?Call, Oysters!
ENGLAND.
If Heaven be pleased when sinners cease to sin,?If Hell be pleased when sinners enter in,?If earth be pleased when ridded of a knave,?Then all are pleased for Coleman's in his grave.
Samuel Gardner was blind in one eye and in a moment of confusion he stepped out of a receiving and discharging door in one of the warehouses into the ineffable glories of the celestial sphere.
To the memory of Ric Richards who by a gangrene first lost a toe, then a leg and lastly his life.
Ah cruel Death to make three meals of one,?To taste and eat, and eat till all was gone.?But know thou tyrant when the trump shall call,?He'll find his feet, and stand where thou shalt fall.
Poet & Shoemaker.?Joseph Blackett.
Stranger behold interred together?The lords of learning and of leather.?Poor Joe is gone but left his _awl_?You'll find his relics in a stall.?His works were neat and often found?Well stitched and with morocco bound.?Tread lightly where the bard is laid;?He cannot mend the shoe he made.?Yet he is happy in his hole?With verse immortal as his soul;?But still to business he held fast?And stuck to Pheabus to the _last_.?Then who shall say so good a fellow?Was only leather and prunello??For character he did not lack it?And if he did't were shame to Blackett.
Poor Betty Conway, she drank lemonade at a masquerade, So now she's dead and gone away.
Robert Master, Undertaker.
Here lies Bob Master. Faith! t'was 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.
Taken from "The Lady's Magazine and Musical Repository," Jan., 1801.
Epitaph on a Bird.
Here lieth, aged three months the body of Richard Acanthus a young person of unblemished character. He was taken in his callow infancy from the wing of a tender parent by the rough and pitiless hand of a two-legged animal without feathers.
Though born with the most aspiring disposition and unbending love of freedom he was closely confined in a grated prison and scarcely permitted to view those fields of which he had an undoubted charter.
Deeply sensible of this infringement of his natural rights he was often heard to petition for redress in the most plaintive notes of harmonious sorrow. At length his imprisoned soul burst the prison which his body could not and left a lifeless heap of beauteous feathers.
If suffering innocence can hope for retribution, deny not to the gentle shade of this unfortunate captive the humble though uncertain hope of animating some happier form; or trying his new fledged pinions in some happy elysium, beyond the reach of
_Man_?the tyrant of this lower world.
On three children.
"Who plucked my choicest flowers?" the gardener cried?"The Master did," a well known voice replied.?"'Tis well they are all his" the gardener said,?And meekly bowed his reverential head.
Beneath this stone in sound repose?Lies William Rich of Lydeard Close.?Eight wives he had yet none survive?And likewise children eight times five,?From whom an issue vast did pour?Of