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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by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...-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
...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
Bradstreet, Anne
...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
Lindsay, Vachel
...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 mourni...Read more of this...
by
Jonson, Ben
...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...Read more of this...
by
Jonson, Ben
...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 ...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...d,
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
McGonagall, William Topaz
...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 sil...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
....
. . 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 th...Read more of this...
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