The epitaph in question is much in Heywood's humorous and satirical style: it is written in the English ballad-metre, and consists of seven seven-line stanzas, each stanza, as was not unusual with Heywood, ending with the same, or nearly the same, line. It commences thus:
"O Love, Love! on thy sowle God have mercye;
For as Peter is princeps Apostolorum,
So to the[e] may be sayd clerlye,
Of all foolys that ever was stultus stultorum.
Sure thy sowle is in regna polorum,
By reason of reason thou haddest none;
Yet all foolys be nott dead, though thou be gone."
In the next stanza we are told, that Love often made the King and Queen merry with "many good pastimes;" and in the third, that he was "shaped and borne of very nature" for a fool. The fourth stanza, which mentions Erasmus and Luther, is the following:—
"Thou wast nother Erasmus nor Luter;