Tag: Mendel (John)

  • John Mendel Monument, Union Dale Cemetery

    An ordinary stone, but with an interesting German epitaph. Unfortunately the last two lines are buried in the ground, and Father Pitt was unwilling to dig for them.

    Ja du hast jetzt überstanden
    Manche schwere harte Stunden,
    Manchen Tag und manche Nacht
    Hast du in Schmerzen zugebracht.

    Standhaft hast du sie ertragen
    Deine Schmerzen, deine Plagen…

    Old Pa Pitt’s German is sketchy at best, but this is how he translates it:

    Yes, now thou hast withstood
    many heavy, hard hours;
    many a day and many a night
    hast thou spent in pain.

    Steadfast hast thou borne it,
    thy pain, thy plague…

    This appears to be one of those circulating funerary poems of the nineteenth century that were like Facebook memes today: they keep showing up on monuments in slightly different wording, and nobody knows where they came from.