Esther Benjamin

Source: Betsy and Al McKee

In Memory Mrs.
ESTHER, wife of MR.
David Benjamin, who
died 4 August. 1768.
in the 24. year of her
age.

 Death’s flying sickle,
cuts the flowers of Time.
And Virtues fairest friends
In youth Expire.

I have seen the identical text chosen for two graves in Chester, Massachusetts: (Sylvester Willcox, d. 1797 and Electa Nooney, d. 1802 in childbirth). It also appears in Dedham MA ca. 1805 (in the last line, “bloom” replaces “youth”). So this verse must have been published and distributed fairly widely across New England over the course of some thirty-five years. Someone composed it (we'll probably never know who) and someone published it (but I haven’t found it in any contemporary anthology or chapbook or almanac).

The imagery of the first line is really quite startling – it is horrifying to think of a deadly sickle flying all around us, unseen as it cuts down the virtuous, the fair, the young. 

It recalls a passage from the great Graveyard Poet Edward Young that also appears in these graveyards:

 Each moment has its sickle...
[Time’s] little weapon in the narrow sphere
Of Sweet domestick comfort ... cuts down
The fair blooms of sublunary Bliss