John Keats, great poet, who died in 1821 (and I think his birthday was Sunday), wrote his own epitaph, which is now rightly famous:
“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
But actually, the full epitaph reads like this:
This Grave
contains all that was Mortal
of a
Young English Poet
Who
on his Death Bed
in the Bitterness of his Heart
at the Malicious Power of his Enemies
Desired
these words to be engraved on his Tomb Stone
“Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.”
“the Malicious Power of his Enemies” …
Woah. A bit of bitterness there.
As children, the O’Malley siblings had to memorize William Butler Yeats’ epitaph, in order to get our allowance of 50 measly cents. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, could knock that epitaph out of my brain.
It is:
Cast a cold eye
On life On death
Horseman pass by
Damn. Now that is something. I could ponder that forever.
There are a couple of other relatively famous epitaphs I am familiar with – (I used to plan out, as a teenager, what I wanted on my tombstone – Finally, I settled on “After life’s fitful fever, she sleeps” – Shakespeare – I was insane. I was 15 years old, picking out the best epitaph for myself.)
Anyway, speaking of Shakespeare, here is his epitaph, written on his grave in Stratford-on-Avon:
Good friend for Jesus’s sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here
Blest be the man that spares these stones
And cursed be he that moves my bones
Got it, Bill. We won’t move your bones. We promise.
Other epitaphs I know by heart – I don’t know if any of my readers out there also have an interest in this kind of thing – but if you do, feel free to pipe up.
Jack Dempsey’s epitaph was (and I LOVE this):
A Gentle Man and a Gentleman
Robert Frost has as his epitaph (and this is certainly something to keep me up at night, pondering):
I had A Lover’s Quarrel With The World
Emily Dickinson, like Keats, wrote her own. It says it all:
Called Back
F. Scott Fitzgerald has, as his epitaph, the famous last line of Gatsby:
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
(Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind having that as my epitaph either … Must make a note of it.)
Sir Christopher Wren, architect, has as his epitaph (he is buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral – his greatest achievement):
“Lector Si Monumentum Requiris Circumspice” (Reader, if you seek his monument, look about you).
Thomas Jefferson wrote his own:
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson,
author of the Declaration of American Independence,
of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom,
and father of the University of Virginia.
(Very eloquent that he did not mention being President of the United States.)
And of course, the epitaph of the Unknown Soldier, which everybody knows:
Here Rests in
Honored Glory
An American
Soldier
Known But to God
And finally – Jack London – who has this as his epitaph:
The Stone the Builders Rejected
(The end of that phrase in the Bible is: “…has become the capstone.” But London only put the first part on his tombstone.)
I love graveyards and epitaphs. I want mine to be “See, I told you I was sick.”
But the one that breaks my heart is the one on my boss’s granddaughter’s grave (she died in the womb at term): “So small, so sweet, so soon.”
Lisa – I love your proposed epitaph! hahahaha
I want mine to be “I’m with stupid” with the requisite arrow.
Carl Switzer, the guy who played Alfalfa on “Our Gang,” was shot at the age of 31 over a stupid $50 reward for a lost dog. His headstone at the Hollywood Forever cemetary has a dog on it.
He was also the one who opened the floor over the pool in It’s a Wonderful Life. And there’s your useless movie trivia of the day!
Another famous epitaph:
“Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live, and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
“This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies, where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
It’s too bad that I let my subscription to The Economist lapse. A few years ago, they had a fantastic piece on epitaphs in their Christmas issue. I remember forwarding it to my friends when it came out – I wonder if I still have an electronic copy somewhere.
Jung’s tombstone is in Latin but translated it means:
Bidden or unbidden
God is present
I love that.
guess what Mel Blanc’s is? I saw his grave in L.A.
Mitchell? Is that you? Or is it Alex??
Doug, I was just thinking about that poem, because I was thinking about alliteration, because I was thinking about Annabel Lee (in her sepulchre there by the sea–in her tomb by the sounding sea) because I was thinking about Poe because it was Halloween.
My dad drove my mom and me and my daughter around to a bunch of country cemetaries once so we could look at graves of his family members. I know that sounds weird and morbid but we had a great time. But there was one headstone that was kind of memorable: it was the grave of a boy who was crippled in some way, and on the stone it said, “I’m walking now like you.” My daughter looked around nervously.
Blanc’s has to be “That’s all, folks.”
My Grandfather, who was a coal miner for 50 years(and a king of a man), has this epitaph:
“He toiled in darkness, but now rests in the light.”