In Axminster church-yard:
Anna Maria Matilda Sophia Johnson Thompson Kettelby Rundell.
Grateful Memory
It is related of the poet Uhland that the King of Prussia offered him the Order Pour le Mérite, with flattering expressions of royal regard. Uhland, however, declined to accept it. While he was explaining to his wife the reason which moved him to refuse the distinction, there was a knock at the door. A working-class girl from the neighborhood entered, and presenting Uhland with a bunch of violets, said, “This is an offering from my mother.” “Your mother, child?” replied the poet; “I thought she died last autumn.” “That is true, Herr Uhland,” said the girl, “and I begged you at the time to make a little verse for her grave, and you sent me a beautiful poem. These are the first violets which have bloomed on mother’s grave; I have plucked them, and I like to think that she sends them to you with her greetings.” The poet’s eyes moistened as he took the posy, and putting it in his button-hole he said to his wife, “There, dear woman, is not that an order more valuable than any King can give?”
Over a sarcophagus in an English church are two winged angels, in attitude as if just descended from heaven, and holding by either side a scroll upon which is written in golden letters the following legend:
“In holiness and purity live, and in a high enlightened love, do ye to others as we would that they should do unto you. Peace be with you. Amen.”
From Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
In Santa Croce’s holy precincts lie
Ashes which make it holier, dust which is
Even in itself an immortality,