epitaffee

(Selected epitaphs)

"Under bare Ben Bulben's head
In Drumcliff churchyard, Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector here
Long years ago. A church stands near.
By the road, an ancient cross.
No marble, no  conventional phrase.
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life
On death
Horseman pass by."
(WB Yeats)

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
(John Keats)

"Here lies in a horizontal position the outside case of
George Routledge
Watchmaker.
Integrity was the mainspring and prudence the regulator of all the actions of his life. Humane, liberal, generous, his hand never stopped till he had relieved distress. So nicely regulated were his movements that he never went wrong, except when set going by people who did not know his key. Even then he was easily set right again. He had the art of disposing of his time so well till his hours glided away and his pulse stopped beating. He ran down November 14th 1801 aged 57. In hopes of being taken in hand by his Maker, thoroughly cleaned, repaired, wound up, and set going in the world to come, when time shall be no more."
(Epitaph in a churchyard at Lydford, Devon. As quoted in The Friendship Book Of Francis Gay 2001.)

"Beside this lake
Beneath these trees
Lies all that's left
Of Samuel Pease.
Pease ain't here.
It's just his pod.
He shelled out his soul
Which flew to God."
(Apocryphal. A version of this is said to be found in a graveyard in Natucket, Massachusetts commemorating Jonathan Pease and dating from the 1880s.)

"Here lies the body of Owen Mulkare
Died eating at a hamburgher fair.
With the pushin and shovin
He fell into the oven
And here he rests medium rare."
(My brother Barn wrote the above when he was a child.)

"Beneath this slab John Brown is stowed.
He watched the ads and not the road."
(Humorous verse by Ogden Nash.)

"Nash's ashes."
(Ogden Nash's suggested epitaph for himself.)

"I told you I was sick."
(Spike Milligan's suggested epitaph for himself.)

"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Suggested epitaph for the universe by British humourist Douglas Adams in his Hitchikers Guide To The Galaxy books. It was the title of the fourth book in the series)

"A power is passing from the earth
To Breathless nature's dark abyss
But when the great and good depart
What is it more than this:
That man who is from God sent forth
Doth yet again to God return.
Such ebb and flow must ever be.
Then wherefore should we mourn/"
(William Wordsworth's epitaph for William Wilberforce who was instrumental in persuading the British Empire to abandon slavery.)

"Here lies,
Dust, Ashes, Nothing."
(An anonymous Cardinal of the Catholic Church. I found this in Rome. By the Cardinal's instructions, there is no name on the grave.)

"Cast a cold eye
On life
On death
Horseman f*** off."
(James Healy)