Speaking Graves - Glenn Conjurske
Speaking Graves
Introduction: The Presence of Graves
Wherever we go in this sin-cursed world, we meet with graves—not only a grave or two here and there, but hundreds of them, large fields filled with them. And those who ponder a little must be impressed with the fact that for every grave which we see, there must be hundreds of “graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them” (Luke 11:44)—for almost all of the graves which we see are of recent origin. If a stone were to mark the mouldering dust of every man who ever lived, we would be almost overrun with graves.
The Message of the Graves
Now these graves are accustomed to speak. Their message is, “Here is the end of every man. You who are now in health and strength will shortly lie here. Death is coming. You cannot escape it. All of the portion which you now enjoy on the earth will shortly be snatched away from you. Your plans and ambitions will perish. Your soul will fly—where?”
All of this the graves speak by their very existence. The sight of a cemetery by the roadside cries out with this message. But those who step within its gates and walk among the graves will often find the same message engraved in the very stones. Our forefathers were accustomed to engrave solemn messages on their tombstones, an excellent practice which has long since fallen into disuse. But the old stones in the old cemeteries still stand, and, by means of these stones, those whose dust decays beneath them, being dead, yet speak. At various times through the years, I have walked in old cemeteries, reading the inscriptions on the stones—often using all my ingenuity to make out precious messages nearly obliterated by the ravages of time. Besides being a very interesting study of human nature—and human nature ought to be the constant study of every servant of God—this is a solemn experience, and to a saint of God, may be a very blessed one. But I have little reason to expect that the most of human beings will ever engage in such an employment, and it has therefore occurred to me to write down many of those inscriptions, to be able to present them to those who will never read them otherwise. For that purpose, I have recently visited a few old cemeteries, all in the state of Massachusetts, and filled many notebook pages with inscriptions. I here present a number of them to my readers. I only remark first that I present them exactly as I found them, though the poetry is sometimes poor, the grammar wrong, and the spelling bad, or, in some cases, obsolete. The only alteration I venture to make is in the addition of necessary punctuation, which is often missing on the stones. This I do because it has often been impossible to tell if the missing marks, small as they are, were missing from the original engraving, or obliterated by time. I have not, however, changed punctuation which was present, though it is sometimes wrong.
The First Inscription
The last inscription copied in my perambulations is worthy of the first place in this article. It comes from the grave of a girl who died in her third year, in 1796:
Life is uncertain,
Death is sure;
Sin is the wound,
And Christ the cure.
Personal Messages and Reflections on Life
Numerous inscriptions contain precious statements of faith in God and the resurrection, while many others contain warnings to the living of the shortness and uncertainty of life and the certainty of death. Others are personal messages, often full of pathos. I give a few of the latter sort first.
A touching personal message comes from the grave of a seventy-nine-year-old woman, who died in 1824:
Afflictions sore long time I bore,
Physicians’ skill was vain,
Till God was pleased to give me ease,
And free me from my pain.
Telling the same sort of tale is a brown sandstone marker over the grave of a man who died at the age of 80, in 1819:
Our age to seventy years is set,
How short the time, how frail the state,
And if to eighty we arrive,
We rather sigh & groan than live.
On an unusually large white sandstone marker, over the grave of a young wife, who died in 1805 at the age of twenty-nine, we read:
Swift in succession,
Death’s cold hand
My dwelling does invade;
My former wounds
Was sorely, scarcely healed
Before another’s made.
I found no clue from any of the graves around who it was that was snatched from his dwelling before her, whether wife, or child, or some other, but what a picture this grave gives us of this sorrowful scene of death through which we are passing! The same is enforced again in a nearby family plot in the same cemetery, where we find two small brown sandstone markers over the graves of two sisters, who each died in the second year of life. In 1812 died the first, at the age of 1 year, 6 months, and 26 days. Her gravestone is inscribed:
Transient & vain is every hope
A rising race can give.
Her sister died in 1819, at the age of 1 year and 95 days, and her stone is inscribed:
But death came like a wintry day
And cut the pretty flower away.
The same is enforced again in another cemetery, where four little children of the same family lie buried in close proximity. The first was a son who died at the age of five in 1814. His stone reads:
Too dear, too fair, for mortals here,
His Saviour called him home,
Here we are left to shed a tear,
And mourn his early doom.
This is an inscription, by the way, which I found on the tombstones of numerous children. The second child, a babe of four months, died in the following year, and his stone is marked:
Sleep, sleep, sweet babe, & take thy rest,
God called thee home, he thought it best.
The last of the three black slate markers covers the grave of two infant daughters, who died on the 17th and 19th of March, 1819, at the age of eleven weeks. It is inscribed:
Happy the babes who privileged by fate
To shorter labour & a lighter weight,
Received but yesterday the gift of breath,
Ordered tomorrow to return to death.
Expressions of Faith in the Resurrection
Many of the personal inscriptions consist of strong expressions of faith. Some of these were no doubt written by surviving friends or relatives rather than the deceased, and alas, no doubt many of them are no more than wishful thinking, for there are no atheists in death. These expressions of faith are so common, so nearly universal in the old graveyards, that simple folks might be ready to suppose that the whole world must have been Christian in those days. Thus Spurgeon asks, “Where do they bury the bad people? Right and left in our churchyard, they seem all to have been the best of folks, a regular nest of saints; and some of them so precious good, it is no wonder they died—they were too fine to live in such a wicked world as this.” Indeed, some of these inscriptions express no more than wishful thinking, and others may be no more than hypocrisy. On this, Lorenzo Dow says, “Most people wish the public to believe that their friends, if they live like devils incarnate, very wicked and immoral, and even ashamed of religion, and become persecutors of it here, yet when they are dead, posthumous fame must declare they were very pious, and the best of Christians, and are gone straight to heaven, to the abode of the blessed! Is not this exemplified to our minds, if we walk into the church-yard and view those epitaphs on their tombstones, composed by their friends?” Others, however, have the ring of truth about them. Such as they are, I give them. From the stone of a woman who died in 1814 at the age of 48:
My flesh shall slumber in the ground,
Till the last trumpet’s joyful sound,
Then burst the chains with sweet surprise,
And in my Saviour’s image rise.
This excellent piece graces the graves of many in various places. I found it used in a very touching way on two black slate stones, side by side, over the graves of a young husband and wife. He died August 11, 1822, aged 23. She followed him to the grave less than a month later, on September 7, at the age of 20. His stone is inscribed:
My flesh shall slumber in the ground
Till the last trumpet’s joyful sound,
ending with a comma, just as I have given it. Upon her stone, we read:
Then burst the chains with sweet surprise
And in my Saviour’s image rise.
A sixty-three-year-old woman, who died in 1818, tells us:
God, my Redeemer, lives,
And often from the skies
Looks down, & watches all my dust
Till he shall bid it rise.
A deacon who died in 1810, at the age of 80, says:
O thou great author of life & death,
Thy call I follow to the land unknown;
I trust in thee, & know in whom I trust.
Admonitions and Warnings from the Graves
A woman who died at 82 in 1814 says:
Life how short. Eternity how long.
If a woman who lived eighty-two years must thus solemnly testify to the shortness of life, how ought the rest of us to lay it to heart? For as the grave of a boy who died five years later at the age of 16 solemnly declares:
Death enters and there’s no defence.
And a woman who lies near them both, who died at 75 between their deaths, in 1816, thus lifts up her voice to speak to the living:
Whilst living men my grave do view,
Remember here is room for you.
A man who died at the age of 19, in 1822, has been speaking for nearly two centuries, and saying:
Death is a debt to nature due,
Which I have paid, and so must you.
And another who died in 1763 at the age of 63 has spoken for well over two centuries, enforcing the message which all of these graves declare by their very existence:
Thus shall our mouldering members teach
What now our senses learn,
For dust and ashes loudest preach
Man’s infinite concern.
Final Admonitions and Reflections on Life
And a young wife who departed this life in her twenty-fifth year, in 1811, declares:
How soon the thread of life is spun:
A breath, a gasp, a dying groan.
Alarming thought, upon the strings
Of life hangs everlasting things.
A man of 75 years who died in 1827 admonishes:
Are you in health, so once was I,
Pray think of me as you pass by,
As I am now so you must be,
Prepare for death, & follow me.
The same I have seen elsewhere with numerous variations. On the grave of a man of 81 who died in 1800:
Behold, my friend, as you pass by,
As you are now so once was I,
As I am now soon you must be,
Prepare for death and follow me.
And hear I rest my weary head
Till Christ my Lord shall raise the dead.
One stone gives the following homely admonition concerning the uncertainty of life:
Sacred
to the memory of Capt.
C———————— C————————-,
who was suddenly killed
by being thrown from
a waggon, Oct. 24, 1815
aged 61.
Make ev’ry day a critic on the past,
And live each hour as if it were your last.
This man’s wife had died but half a year before him and lies beside him. Her gravestone testifies:
Thrice happy Christian! who, when time is o’er
Enters the realms of bliss, to die no more.
Conclusion: A Walk Among the Dead
I trust I have not wearied the living with these walks among the dead. Nay, I trust I have profited them. “The living know that they shall die” (Eccl. 9:5), but how little do we lay it to heart, until the summons comes. And though I hope to end my earthly career in the air, and not in the ground, yet if the Lord delays his coming, death will summon us all. Let us all lay to heart the solemn admonitions of them who, being dead, yet speak, and we shall be ready.