Alright you can tell it's cold, it's January, and I'm needing a good ironic garden laugh. The following are real life (or death) cemetery inscriptions. Some ARE funny and other may just be sweetly sad.
"Beneath this grassy mound now rests
One Edgar Oscar Earl,
Who to another hunter looked
Exactly like a squirrel."
- Edgar Oscar Earl, England
“The grass withered - The flower Fadeth" (Isaiah XL 7)
-E.F.H. Hall, 1869
“Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted.”
-Sylvia Plath Hughes (Heptonstall Churchyard-Yorkshire, United Kingdom)
“Leaves have their time to fall,
And Flowers to wither at the North wind's breath,
And Stars to set—but all,
Thou hast all seasons for thine own O Death.”
“We know when Moons shall wane,
When Summer birds from far shall cross the Sea,
When Autumn's hue shall tinge the Golden Grains,
But who shall teach us when to look for thee?”
-James William Morgan 1803–1847 - Old City Cemetery, Lynchburg VA
“So fades the lovely blooming flower,
Frail smiling solace of an hour,
So soon our transient comforts fly
And pleasure only blooms to die.”
-William Percy Morgan 1829–1833 Old City Cemetery, Lynchburg VA
"Here lies a knave,
Where in the grave,
His first good deed,
Was feed the weed."
Ron Obvious from Monty Python's Flying Circus
“As the flowers are all made sweeter by the sunshine and the dew,
so this old world is made brighter by the lives of folks like you.”
-Bonnie Parker (Crown Hill Cemetery; Dallas, Texas)
"Under the sod and under the trees
Lies the body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, there's only the pod:
Pease shelled out and went to God."
-Jonathan Pease, Nantucket Mass.
“Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
-Edgar Allan Poe (Westminster Presbyterian Cemetery; Baltimore, Maryland)
“Oh Lord, I reckon I'm not much just by myself.
I fail to do a lot of things I ought to do.
But Lord, when trails are steep and passes high,
Help me to ride it straight the whole way through.
And when in the falling dusk I get the final call,
I do not care how many flowers they send--
Above all else the happiest trail would be
For You to say to me, "Let's ride, My friend."
Amen”
-Roy Rogers (Sunset Hills Memorial Park, Apple Valley, California)
“We All Do Fade - As A Leaf”
-Martha Rolls, Bryanston Square London 10-28-1858
"Death is a debt to Nature due
Which we have paid and so must you."
-Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia
"Sunset and evening star,And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar."
Alfred Lord Tennyson (written by himself)
“A rose and rosebud half blown
Late flourished near this ground.
A while they bright and lovely shown
And shed their fragrance 'round.
The scythe cut down these flowers fair,
To earth too briefly given.
Though here they fade, their sweetness rare
Exhaled, ascends to heaven.”
- Maria Ball Carter Tucker, 1784–1823, Great-niece of George Washington, and her daughter, Rosalie Tucker, 1804– 1818 Old City Cemetery, Lynchburg VA
"Do not walk on the grass"
Peter Ustinov 1921-2004 (by himself)
"Here lies one Wood
Enclosed in wood
One Wood
Within another.
The outer wood
Is very good:
We cannot praise
The other."
-Beza Wood, who died in Winslow, Maine, in 1837
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