River View Cemetery, Seattle, Washington

Some epitaphs, especially on the gravestones of children, can be heartbreaking.  They tell of the parent’s sorrow and the hopes and dreams that were not realized because of the death of the child like the epitaph below found on the elaborately carved gravestone of a child whose name and birth and death dates, along with much of the Victorian symbolism, have been eroded by time and weather:

Tis a little grave, but O have care.

The worldwide hopes are buried there.

How much of light, how much of joy,

Is buried with our darling boy.