Page 21 - Graveyard
P. 21

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:—
   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26