Epitaphs

ALL reverence unto Epitaphs,
For high or for the lowly,
Whenever they on graves are writ
By Truth, and so made holy.
Such make, in their deep earnestness,
The living grander-hearted,
And keep the souls, though freed from Time,
Still from our souls unparted.

And many are the Epitaphs
In prose or in verse flowing,
A silent sacred music there
On hoard or marble glowing.
Oh, heavenly the influence,
Angels unseen around us,
While often white rohes, like their own,
Seem to have softly wound us.

Some Epitaphs shrine in their hearts
Beauty divinely tender,
And some throne the sublime in all
Eternity’s own splendor;
But one there is that marries both
Sublimity and Beauty;
Within one little line it lives—
He tried to do his dut11!