Epitaph
Towards the end of his life, Elliott suffered much pain and depression. His thoughts often turned to his own death and he wrote his own epitaph:
The Poet's Epitaph
- Stop, Mortal! Here thy brother lies,
- The Poet of the Poor
- His books were rivers, woods and skies,
- The meadow and the moor,
- His teachers were the torn hearts’ wail,
- The tyrant, and the slave,
- The street, the factory, the jail,
- The palace – and the grave!
- The meanest thing, earth’s feeblest worm,
- He fear’d to scorn or hate;
- And honour’d in a peasant’s form
- The equal of the great.
- But if he loved the rich who make
- The poor man’s little more,
- Ill could he praise the rich who take
- From plunder’d labour’s store
- A hand to do, a head to plan,
- A heart to feel and dare –
- Tell man’s worst foes, here lies the man
- Who drew them as they are.
After his death, John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem in his memory, titled Elliott.
A bronze statue of Elliott by Neville Northey Burnard, paid for by the people of Sheffield and Rotherham, was erected in 1854 in Sheffield market-place at a cost of £600. The statue was moved to Weston Park, Sheffield, in 1874, where it remains.
Read more about this topic: Ebenezer Elliott
Famous quotes containing the word epitaph:
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line their name liveth for evermore was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.
“And were an epitaph to be my story
Id have a short one ready for my own.
I would have written of me on my stone:
I had a lovers quarrel with the world.”
—Robert Frost (18741963)
“Here lies John Knott:
His father was Knott before him,
He lived Knott, died Knott,”
—Unknown. Epitaph on John Knott (l. 13)