Epitaph

A burial inscription, often in verse. Philip Reder's Epitaphs (London: Michael Joseph, 1969) collected authentic examples, largely from British gravestones. Here are two:

            Here lies Robert Wallis,
            Clerk of All Hallows,
            King of good fellows,
            And maker of bellows.
  He bellows did make till the day of his death,
  But he that made bellows could never make breath. (p. 53; Newcastle-upon-Tyne)

I poorly lived, and poorly died,
And when I was buried, nobody cried. (p. 89; Lillington)

Dorothy Parker's "Epitaph for a Darling Lady" makes light of the form.