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.
Contents: Transcript in an unidentified neat and legible hand, entitled "Epitaph on Mrs. Clarke" (p. 109) ("Epitaph. I." [p. 111]). The poem, which is annotated "This Lady, the Wife of Dr. Clarke, Physician at Epsom, died April, 27, 1757; and is buried in the Church of Beckenham, Kent" on the title page, is part of a section called "Poems", which is separately paginated and has its own table of contents (p. 129), in a volume entitled Gray's Poems. The book carries the bookplate of Gray's friend and biographer William Mason.