Famous Short Epitaph Poems
Famous Short Epitaph Poems. Short Epitaph Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Epitaph short poems
by
Henry David Thoreau
Here lies the body of this world,
Whose soul alas to hell is hurled.
This golden youth long since was past,
Its silver manhood went as fast,
An iron age drew on at last;
'Tis vain its character to tell,
The several fates which it befell,
What year it died, when 'twill arise,
We only know that here it lies.
by
Robert Burns
KNOW thou, O stranger to the fame
Of this much lov’d, much honoured name!
(For none that knew him need be told)
A warmer heart death ne’er made cold.
by
Walter de la Mare
Here lies a most beautiful lady,
Light of step and heart was she;
I think she was the most beautiful lady
That ever was in the West Country.
But beauty vanishes, beauty passes;
However rare -- rare it be;
And when I crumble,who will remember
This lady of the West Country.
by
Sir Walter Raleigh
Even such is time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust,
Who in the dark and silent grave
When we have wandered all our ways
Shuts up the story of our days,
And from which earth, and grave, and dust
The Lord will raise me up, I trust.
by
Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;He knew human folly like the back of his hand,And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
by
Robert Burns
THE POOR man weeps—here Gavin sleeps,
Whom canting wretches blam’d;
But with such as he, where’er he be,
May I be sav’d or d—d!
by
Thomas Hardy
I'm Smith of Stoke aged sixty odd
I've lived without a dame all my life
And wish to God
My dad had done the same.
by
Robert Burns
WHOE’ER thou art, O reader, know
That Death has murder’d Johnie;
An’ here his body lies fu’ low;
For saul he ne’er had ony.
by
Ben Jonson
An Epitaph on S [alathiel] P [avy], a child of Q [ueen] El [izabeth's] Chapel by Ben Jonson
by
Robert Burns
HONEST 1 Will to Heaven’s away
And mony shall lament him;
His fau’ts they a’ in Latin lay,
In English nane e’er kent them.
Note 1. Of the Edinburgh High School. [back]
by
Robert Burns
AN HONEST man here lies at rest
As e’er God with his image blest;
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so informed:
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.
by
Thomas Hardy
Here's one in whom Nature feared--faint at such vying -
Eclipse while he lived, and decease at his dying.
by
Robert Burns
YE maggots, feed on Nicol’s brain,
For few sic feasts you’ve gotten;
And fix your claws in Nicol’s heart,
For deil a bit o’t’s rotten.
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
As a boy, reserved and naughty;
As a youth, a coxcomb and haughty;
As a man, for action inclined;
As a greybeard, fickle in mind.--
Upon thy grave will people read:
This was a very man, indeed!
1815.*
by
Louise Bogan
She has attained the permanence
She dreamed of, where old stones lie sunning.
Untended stalks blow over her
Even and swift, like young men running.
Always in the heart she loved
Others had lived, -- she heard their laughter.
She lies where none has lain before,
Where certainly none will follow after.
by
Robert Herrick
Here a solemn fast we keep,
While all beauty lies asleep;
Hushed be all things, no noise here,
But the toning of a tear,
Or the sigh of such as bring
Cowslips for her covering.
by
Robert Burns
HERE lies Johnie Pigeon;
What was his religion?
Whae’er desires to ken,
To some other warl’
Maun follow the carl,
For here Johnie Pigeon had nane!
Strong ale was ablution,
Small beer persecution,
A dram was memento mori;
But a full-flowing bowl
Was the saving his soul,
And port was celestial glory.
by
Edgar Lee Masters
They have chiseled on my stone the words:
'His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him
That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
This was a man.'
Those who knew me smile
As they read this empty rhetoric.
My epitaph should have been:
'Life was not gentle to him,
And the elements so mixed in him
That he made warfare on life,
In the which he was slain.'
While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,
Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph
Graven by a fool!
by
Anne Killigrew
WHen I am Dead, few Friends attend my Hearse,
And for a Monument, I leave my VERSE.
by
William Butler Yeats
Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.
by
A E Housman
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
by
Amy Lowell
Beneath this sod lie the remains
Of one who died of growing pains.
by
John Wilmot
Here lies a great and mighty King,
Whose promise none relied on;
He never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever did a wise one.
by
Thomas Carew
THE Lady Mary Villiers lies
Under this stone; with weeping eyes
The parents that first gave her birth,
And their sad friends, laid her in earth.
If any of them, Reader, were
Known unto thee, shed a tear;
Or if thyself possess a gem
As dear to thee, as this to them,
Though a stranger to this place,
Bewail in theirs thine own hard case:
For thou perhaps at thy return
May'st find thy Darling in an urn.
by
Robert Burns
BELOW thir stanes lie Jamie’s banes;
O Death, it’s my opinion,
Thou ne’er took such a bleth’rin *****
Into thy dark dominion!