In Memory
of Deacn. William BOIES
who Departed this life
July 9th 1804 in the 83
year of his age.
Behold thyself, by me
Such one was I as thou
And thou in time shall be
Even dust as I am now.
Note first the motif on the tympanum of the stone; it is rare to see a Soul Effigy and a Willow combined on the same stone. The turn of the 18th century was a time of transition from the one to the other, but here we see the two overlapping.
The epitaph is superb, calling upon us, the reader, to look not at the grave (as is usually the case in the classic warning to prepare) but at ourselves. The narrator is doing the same, looking at us, saying “Yes, that is how I used to be.”
These lines are attributed to Bartholomew (Bart) Green, a 16th century Protestant martyr who was burned for treason against Bloody Mary. Visitors to the condemned man’s cell in Newgate asked him lines of poetry, and this quatrain is one of his compositions.
The story is memorialized in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563) and evidently became part of the literary tradition of English Protestants, still relevant in rural Blandford MA 250 years later.
