Emma L. Nixon Grave, Old St. Luke’s


A grave of a girl who did not quite live to eleven years old. The Nixon family was prominent in the congregation of Old St. Luke’s, and this is one of the more elaborate memorials in the churchyard. The epitaph, which takes up both sections of the base of the headstone, seems to be original, not one of those circulating funerary poems we usually find on graves of the late 1800s: an Internet search finds the poem mentioned only in connection with this particular monument—transcribed in a text tour of the burial ground by Mr. Charles Nixon, and now here.

Her form is missing from its place,
And will not come for calling;
God only calleth back his own,
Why should our tears be falling?

The echo of the childish notes,
Have ceased their happy ringing.
We cannot catch a sound that floats,
From where she now is singing.


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