'An Anthology of Epitaphs.'

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 288, 6 December 1890, Page 4 (Supplement)

'An Anthology of Epitaphs.'

Here are a few more examples to add to our Anthology of English Epitaphs. 'Ib would not be complete, , writes one correspondent, 'without the following lines— perfect of their kind—from Beaumont and Fletcher':— Lay a garland on my hearse of the dismal yew; Maidens, willow branches bear; say I die true : My love was false, but I was firm from my hour of birth: Oα my buried body lie lightly, Mother Earth. And have all the 'P.M.G.' correspondents forgotten Matthew Arnold's exquisitely touching tribute to, or epitaph on, hie friend Hugh Clough 1 But Thyris never more we twain shall see See him come back and cut a smoother reed, And blow a strain the world at last shall heed For Time, not Corydon, hath conquered thee. Here are some beautiful epitaphs from recent contemporary works. The authoress of ' John Halifax, Gentleman, , wrote :— And when I lie in the green kirkyard, With the sods above my breast. Say not that she did well or ill— Only she did her best. A Bismarckian epitaph might be taken from the late Margaret L. Wood's ' Lyrica and Ballads :'— Let none affirm he vainly fell And paid the barren cost Of having loved and served too well A poor cause and a lost This is how Christina Rosseti treats the theme in her latest volume :— When I am dead, my dearest. Sing no sad song for me. Plant thou no roses at my head Nor shady cypress tree. Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember. And if thou wilt, forget. The following stanza by Oliver Wendell Holmes admirably focuses, as it were, the wholesome sweetness and light that has so richly suffused all his works : And when, one cheerful evening past. The nurse, long waiting, comes at last. Ere on her lap we lie In wearied Nature's sweet repose. At peace with all her waking roes. Our lips shall murmur ere they close— Good-night, but not good-bye. And, to conclude, here is Robert Louis Stevenson's self-chosen epitaph. What a brisk, healthy spirit rings in the lilt of it :— 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 he the verse ye grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter is borne from the fctti,