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G r av e y ar d H u m o r | 19
5. From a Graveyard in Cheraw, SC, and elsewhere:—
My name, my country, what are they to thee?
What, whether high or low my pedigree?
Perhaps I far surpassed all other men;
Perhaps I fell below them all,—what then?
Suffice it, stranger, that thou seest a tomb;
Thou know’st its use: it hides—no matter whom.
6. From a Welsh Churchyard:—
Life is an inn upon a market-day:
Some short-pursed pilgrims breakfast and away;
Some do to dinner stay, and get full fed,
And others after supper steal to bed;
Large are the bills who linger out the day,
The shortest stayers have the least to pay.
7. From Llangerrig Churchyard, Montgomeryshire:—
O earth, O earth, observe this well—
That earth to earth shall come to dwell;
Then earth in earth shall close remain
Till earth from earth shall rise again.
8. From the same place:—
From earth my body first arose
But here to earth again it goes,
I never desire to have it more
To plague me as it did before.
9. The following lines, said to have been written by Shakespeare,
are inscribed on a flat stone which marks the spot where he is
buried in the churchyard of Stratford-on-Avon:—