I'd love to do some rubbings of old gravestone designs and do a hooked rug from them.

My favorite:

I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK

Timallan, I love the verses. Thank you for putting them up. I love the cemetery where I was brought up and still visit - it's so peaceful - but they don't go in for verses in this area.

Dido

I really enjoy reading these verses. I also enjoy reading the obits... Perhaps I am a bit ghoulish. Thanks Tim for the verses. Very poignant.

Thanks Yoyobon, Dido and Lemonhead. I've had heated discussions with my fellow transcribers whether these verses are worth recording. Of course I feel that they are worthy of preservation, even if they don't express particularly original sentiments.

Yoyobon, a friend showed me a picture of a recent stone for an older lady which read: "I love you. AND DON'T YOU FORGET IT!".

What a wonderful pastime. I love these old verses, too. In fact I decided against cremation when I am gone based on the fact that I want a verse on my headstone, too. I do not yet know what I want it to be.

Have you ever thought about this for your own headstone?

Rosefolly

Very interesting question, Rosefolly. There is a woman buried in a local cemetery whose headstone reads: She spoiled her cats . I think this is charming.

Not being a very religious person, I am pretty certain I don't want anything about eternal life, or reunions in heaven. I am very fond, however, of Emily Dickinson's short poem, Ample make this bed, which I think would work well on a tombstone.

My favorite verses are usually ruminations on the passage of time, since I think this is a universal experience for all of us. Perhaps something like : Who knows where the time goes? (apologies to the late Sandy Denny).

If I live to be very old, I have given my family permission to have Crabby Old Man on my monument.

You may recall earlier this year (or perhaps last year), I posted a question about the lost custom of inscribing poetry on sundials. Many of these inscriptions would work very well on gravestones.

I'll have to think about this more. I hope I have a lot more time to think about it!

I have often thought of the first two lines of a poem by Emily Dickinson - "That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet." Although I don't plan to have a tombstone, I would probably choose this to go on it.

Actually, that would go very well on a sundial.

There is one I remember from my childhood-cemetery-creeping days....it was a witch's grave, in our mythology....

Behold stranger
As you pass by
As you are now
So once was I
As I am now
Soon you shall be
Prepare for death
And follow me

Timallan; thanks for the verses. I too am facinated with cemeteries, especially the old ones. I plan on being cremated and have my ashes spread in a forest somewhere but would still like to have a stone next to my husbands. Cemeteries are so important for geneological purposes.
I started a project last year of photographing angels in cemeteries for a coffee table book.
I just found an old cemetery civil war era that someone has taken on as a project and removing all of the brambles and repositioning some of the stones.
It always surprises me when I come accross someone who has a fear of cemeteries.

Siobhan, the Dickinson line you quote gave me goosebumps. Such a beautiful line.

Instar8, the verse you quote reminds of the eerie epitaph for poor Nellie Vaughan (falsely thought to be one of the vampires of New England): I am waiting and watching for you. (Michael E. Bell's Food for the Dead is an excellent account of the New England vampire phenomenon, by the way.)

For me, cemeteries are places of memory. It seems to me that we live in a society which, though often cloyingly sentimental, seems to be in a rush to forget the past. As I get older, I feel this more. As a genealogist I am often shocked at the indifference which many people feel to the personal history of their parents, grandparents, etc. I have met many, many people who do not even know their grandmother's maiden name!