Epitaphs

These little ditties predate recorded history, which always seemed a little odd to me. It is amazing how linguists can reconstruct traditions that were seldom or never written down...anyway, I digress. The epitaph is a short funerary (for a real or imagined individual) poem that presents an image of the dead. They can take on many forms...from a short biography to a curse...from humor to morality play. 

The epitaph can be written however you like.  The most common "formal" English form is the heroic couplet (see above for a definition), but even that is rarely used more often than anything else. 

One well-known example of an epitaph is:  



The epitaph on Robert Frost's head stone reads