Sunday, May 17, 2009

"Night Etarnal Seals His Eyes"

This Newport gravestone has a verse from Catullus, translated by Joseph Addison. Whoever requested it may have encountered the verse in the works of Samuel Johnson.
In Memory of
John, Son of Will
iam & Susanna
Bourk died July
ye 29th. 1777 aged
14 Months.
When once the short
Liv'd Mortal dies,
A Night Etarnal 
Seals his Eyes.

John Bourk, Newport, RI, 1777

2 comments:

VJESCI said...

"some are born to endless night"

Robert J. said...

I came across a good graveyard poem for the seaport towns like Newport and Marblehead: The House-Top Walk by Charles Thompson. (I'd always heard them called Widows' Walks.)

It's not a literary masterpiece, but it is a nice little collection of lines reminding us that "some are asleep in the graveyard there / And some in the wandering sea."