Lies the subject of all verse:
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's'mother;
Death! ere thou hast slain another,
Learned and fair, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.

And the other is the epitaph of a certain unknown Elizabeth:--

Wouldst thou hear what man can say
In a little?--reader, stay.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die;
Which in life did harbour give,
To more virtue than doth live.
If at all she had a fault,
Leave it buried in this vault:
One name was Elizabeth,
The other let it sleep with death:
Fitter, where it died, to tell,
Than that it lived at all. Farewell!

Most people have heard of the brief epitaph inscribed on a tombstone
in the floor of Hereford Cathedral, which inspired one of the
sonnets of Wordsworth. There is no name, no date, but the single
word MISERRIMUS. The lines, written by herself, which are inscribed
on the gravestone of Mrs. Hemans, in St. Anne's Church at Dublin,
are very beautiful, but too well known to need quotation. And
Longfellow, in his charming little poem of Nuremburg, has preserved
the characteristic word in the epitaph of Albert Durer:--