In Salem, Massachusetts, yesterday, we spent a half an hour wandering around the old burying ground. There are some seventeenth and eighteenth century stones there, and I could have spent a couple of hours looking at them. While I’m most interested in the carving, the inscription on one of the stones caught my attention:
In Memory of
Miss SALLY GRANT,
daughter of Cap. SAMUEL
& Mrs. ELIZABETH GRANT,
who died Sept. 16th 1789:
in the 26th year of her age.
I long[,] she faintly cries[,] to lose my breath
And gently sink into th’embrace of death
Adiue [sic] vain World[,] a long adiue[,] I go
Where joys that have no bound forever flow.
I have been unable to find a source for the short verse on this gravestone. It sounds like it might be a verse from a late eighteenth century spiritual song or hymn, perhaps remembered not quite accurately.