AEt. 25
O what is life, 'tis like a flower
That blossoms, and is gone;
It flourishes its little hour,
With all its beauty on;
Death comes, and, like a wintry day,
It cuts the lovely flower away.
B. Day, Lowell
This broken tombstone must have been for a life cut short. Probably a woman - a young mother or wife? There are no clues to the identity of the person buried here. Benjamin Day was the stone carver, who worked out of Lowell, Massachusetts.
This pretty epitaph made me stop and take a photograph. Through Google I was able to find that these lines are from a hymn written by Jane Taylor "O What is your life?", from the hymnal The Voice of Praise: A collection of hymns for the use of the Methodist Church, 1873, hymn number 869.
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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Tombstone Tuesday ~ A Lovely Mystery", Nutfield Genealogy, posted April 4, 2017, (http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/04/tombstone-tuesday-lovely-mystery.html: accessed [access date]).
Heather, I'm amazed daily by what we can research now with Google and other search engines--stuff we'd never have dreamed of finding before the internet came along. It's always fascinating to see the ways our stories can be enriched.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is amazing what I find. However, I wish I could find the name that was on the top of this gravestone.
ReplyDeleteIs there a sexton or caretaker you can get a cemetery map or plot listing from?
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