I should like to know what was in the verse-writer’s mind when he penned the first line. The word “surprise” pleased me most, though due to a rhyme. It occurred to me that the writer’s mind, through grief, might have been in the same condition as the bedroom artist at Watlington who drew the lady and the cradle and the beautiful winged diver. I believe that this artist would have translated literally into pictorial form the words:-- Kind angels, watch this sleeping dust. He would have shown a neat, grassy churchyard with an immemorial church tower in the background. Scattered over the turf close to the church would be an indistinct crowd of tombstones. Nearer and clearer he would present a new and costly stone, probably in the form of a cross, standing at the top of three or four steps. Many wreaths of rare and costly flowers would lie unfaded at the foot of the steps. On the lowest step two figures of exceptional beauty and dignity would be kneeling without sign of impatience or any other emotion. They would be in the customary costume of these pictures, and the onlooker would marvel what they were doing; and if he knew that they were watching the dust below, he would still conjecture as to what they were to watch against, and how they proposed to resist the attempts of any robbing man, beast, dragon, or other monster. But it is unlikely that any such picture was in the mind of the Ewelme epitaph-writer. He or she had perhaps no distinct image; choosing words that would fit the metre and not be in any way surprising to the religious, he thought of “angels” and of “dust,” and the need of epithets pretty soon suggested “kind” and “sleeping.” Nevertheless, when I read it I came so near to forming an image, rather in the style of the bedroom artist, that it is possible the writer had an image or vision of some sort, and handed it on to me in that early July morning before anyone was on the roads or in the churchyard. There was a much better stone and delicately writ inscription near the east window. The stone, a very thin, shouldered one, had slipped down into the earth, and was less than two feet in height and in breadth. The words were:-- Here lyeth the Body of Margaret Machen who departed this life the 5^{th} of April being aged 20 years Anno Dom. 1675. Here the smallness and prettiness of the thin stone, its being half swallowed up in earth and grass, the fineness of the written, not printed, lettering, the name a poem in itself and half Welsh, the youth of the girl, her death in April more than two hundred years ago, all together produced an effect like that of beauty, nay! which was beauty. Not far off was a ponderous square chest with as much reading on it as a page of newspaper, dated 1869. The sparrows were chittering in the elms. [Illustration: Ewelme Cow Common.]