Summary: Written not long before 31 January 1758 presumably at the request of John Clerke to commemorate his wife Jane who died 27 April 1757 aged 31. Inscribed on a mural tablet in St George's parish church, Beckenham, Kent, 1758. First published, as "An Epitaph copied from a Tomb-stone in a Country Church Yard", in The Gentleman's Magazine, October 1759.
References: Smith (ed.), Index (1989), item GrT 41, 83; Toynbee/Whibley (eds.), Correspondence (1971), letter no. 266, vol. ii, 559-561 (subscription required)
Contents: Autograph of an 18-line version, here untitled and beginning "Lo! where this little Marble weeps" in a letter to Edward Bedingfield, 31 January 1758.