Famous Epitaphs Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Epitaphs poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous epitaphs poems. These examples illustrate what a famous epitaphs poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Conrad Siever

...-spy
To move in the chemic change and circle of life,
Into the soil and into the flesh of the tree,
And into the living epitaphs
Of redder apples!...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee


Elliott Hawkins

...h is the Kingdom of Heaven."
And now, you world-savers, who reaped nothing in life
And in death have neither stones nor epitaphs,
How do you like your silence from mouths stopped
With the dust of my triumphant career?...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee

Epitaphs

...Her Mother's Epitaph

Here lies
A worthy matron of unspotted life,
A loving mother and obedient wife,
A friendly neighbor, pitiful to poor,
Whom oft she fed, and clothed with her store;
To servants wisely aweful, but yet kind,
And as they did, so they reward did find:
A true instructor of her family,
The which she ordered with dexterity,
The public meeting...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne

Epitaphs For Two Players

...I. EDWIN BOOTH

An old actor at the Player's Club told me that Edwin Booth first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California. There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided with crude assembly rooms for strolling players.


The youth played in the blear hotel.
The rafters gleamed with glories strange.
And winds of mourning Elsinore
Howling ...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

On Elizabeth L. H

...Epitaphs: i


WOULDST thou hear what Man can say 
In a little? Reader stay. 
Underneath this stone doth lie 
As much Beauty as could die: 
Which in life did harbour give 5 
To more Virtue than doth live. 
If at all she had a fault  
Leave it buried in this vault. 
One name was Elizabeth  
The other let it sleep with death: 10 
Fitter where it di...Read more of this...
by Jonson, Ben


On Salathiel Pavy

...A child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel 
Epitaphs: ii


WEEP with me all you that read 
This little story; 
And know for whom a tear you shed 
Death's self is sorry. 
'Twas a child that so did thrive 5 
In grace and feature  
As Heaven and Nature seem'd to strive 
Which own'd the creature. 
Years he number'd scarce thirteen 
When Fates turn'd cruel 10 
Yet three fill'd zodiacs had he b...Read more of this...
by Jonson, Ben

Richard Bone

...ished,
All in ignorance of its truth.
But later, as I lived among the people here,
I knew how near to the life
Were the epitaphs that were ordered for them when they died.
But still I chiseled whatever they paid me to chisel
And made myself party to the false chronicles
Of the stones,
Even as the historian does who writes
Without knowing the truth,
Or because he is influenced to hide it....Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee

The Inauguration of the Hill o Balgay

...manating from the green bushes
And beautiful flowers there,
Then they can through the burying-ground roam,
And read the epitaphs on the tombstones
Before they go home.
There the lovers can wander safe arm in arm,
For policemen are there to protect them from harm
And to watch there all day,
So that no accident can befall them
In the Hill o' Balgay.
Then there's Harry Scott's mansion,
Most beautiful to be seen,
Also the Law Hill, likewise the Magdalen Green,
And the silvery Tay...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz

The Waste Land

...l, v. vi:
 ".
. . they'll remarry
 Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider
 Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs."
412. Cf. Inferno, xxxiii. 46:
 "ed io sentii
chiavar l'uscio di sotto
 all'orribile torre."
Also F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 346:
"My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my
thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within
my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its
element...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

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