ON INFANTS AND CHILDREN.
The following epitaph on an infant is by Samuel Wesley, the author of the caustic lines on the custom of perpetuating lies on monumental marble, by commemorating virtues which never had an existence,—ending thus:—
If on his specious marble we rely,
Pity such worth as his should ever die!
If credit to his real life we give,
Pity a wretch like him should ever live!
ON AN INFANT.
Beneath, a sleeping infant lies.
To earth whose ashes lent
More glorious shall hereafter rise,
But not more innocent.
When the archangel’s trump shall blow,
And souls and bodies join,
What crowds will wish their lives below
Had been as short as thine!
ON FOUR INFANTS BURIED IN THE SAME TOMB.
Bold infidelity, turn pale and die!
Beneath this stone four infants’ ashes lie:
Say, are they lost or saved?
If death’s by sin, they sinned; for they are here;
If heaven’s by works, in heaven they can’t appear.
Reason, ah, how depraved!
Revere the Bible’s sacred page; the knot’s untied:
They died, for Adam sinned; they live, for Jesus died.
IN MOUNT AUBURN CEMETERY.
On the base of a beautiful recumbent statuette in Yarrow Path is inscribed:—
EMILY.
Shed not for her the bitter tear,
Nor give the heart to vain regret;
Tis but the casket that lies here:
The gem that filled it sparkles yet.
ON A LITTLE BOY IN GREENWOOD CEMETERY.
Our God, to call us homeward,
His only Son sent down;
And now, still more to tempt our hearts,
Has taken up our own.
ON THE TOMBSTONE OF A CHILD BLIND FROM BIRTH.
There shall be no night there.
ON A CHILD FOUR YEARS OLD, WHO WAS BURNED TO DEATH.
“O!”
Says the gardener, as he passes down the walk,
“Who destroyed that flower? Who plucked that plant?”
His fellow-servant said,
“The Master.”
And the gardener held his peace.
AT LITIZ, LANCASTER COUNTY, PA.
Oh, blest departed one!
Whose all of life—a rosy ray—
Blushed into dawn and passed away.
Uhland’s beautiful epitaph on an infant[[28]] has been thus paraphrased:—
Thou art come and gone with footfall low,
A wanderer hastening to depart;
Whither, and whence? we only know
From God thou wast, with God thou art.
Better than this in spirit, by all that makes Christian faith and hope better than vague questioning, and fully equal to it in poetic merit, is the following by F. T. Palgrave:—
Pure, sweet, and fair, ere thou could’st taste of ill,
God willed it and thy baby breath was still;
Now ’mong his lambs thou livest thy Saviour’s care,
Forever as thou wast, pure, sweet and fair.
COPIED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES.
Just with her lips the cup of life she pressed,
Found the taste bitter and declined the rest;
Averse then turning from the light of day,
She softly sighed her little soul away.
The child that sleeps within this silent tomb
Departed at the end of two short years:
Many will wish when the great Judge shall come,
They’d lived no longer in this vale of tears.
This lovely bud, so young, so fair,
Called hence by early doom,
Just came to show how sweet a flower
In Paradise would bloom.
This by Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy:—
Can nurse choose in her sweet babe more to find
Than goods of Fortune, Body, and of Mind?
Lo here at once all this; what greater bliss
Canst hope or wish? Heaven. Why there he is.
ON A TOMBSTONE IN AUVERGNE.
Marie was the only child of her mother,
“And she was a widow.”
Marie sleeps in this grave—
And the widow has now no child.