A Group for the appreciation,recording, and study of funerary monuments erected in churches and other places of worship in Europe.
Please refer to the Church Monuments Society website for typical examples.
The Group also invites pictures of brass monuments.
Other interesting aspects of church monuments can be found on other Flickr Groups such as:Church Monument Materials,Church Monument Signatures,Church Monument Costumes,and Funerary Symbolism, and also two Groups dedicated to Nicholas Stone and Michael Rysbrack.
George Herbert
Church-Monuments
While that my soul repairs to her devotion,
Her I entomb my flesh, that it betimes
May take acquaintance of this heap of dust;
To which the blast of death's incessant motion,
Fed with the exhalation of our crimes,
Drives all at last. Therefore I gladly trust
My body to this school, that it may learn
To spell his elements, and find his birth
Written in dusty heraldry and lines;
Which dissolution sure doth best discern,
Comparing dust with dust, and earth with earth.
These laugh at jet and marble put for signs,
To sever the good fellowship of dust,
And spoil the meeting. What shall point out them,
When they shall bow, and kneel, and fall down flat
To kiss those heaps, which now they have in trust?
Dear flesh, while I do pray, learn here thy stem
And true descent; that when thou shalt grow fat,
And wanton in thy cravings, thou mayst know
That flesh is but the glass, which holds the dust
That measures all our time; which also shall
Be crumbled into dust. Mark here below
How tame these ashes are, how free from lust,
That thou mayst fit thyself against thy fall.
