Epitaph by Percy Bysshe Shelley

This short poem serves as an inscription for two close friends who passed away and were buried side by side. Shelley expresses a wish for their graves—and the memories of them—to remain together, reflecting the inseparable bond they shared in life. It's a four-line plea for loyalty that endures beyond death.

The tone is quiet, solemn, and tender—a voice gently yet firmly requesting on behalf of the dead. There’s no display of grief, no weeping. Instead, Shelley resembles a lawyer for the departed, calmly explaining why the two should be together. The neat AABB rhyme scheme lends the piece a feeling of settled resolution rather than raw mourning.

Shelley wrote this epitaph before he drowned in July 1822, and his wife, Mary Shelley, first published it in *Posthumous Poems* (1824). We don't know the specific occasion for the poem—it might have been for actual friends or simply a reflection on the value of loyal friendship. Throughout his short life, Shelley experienced intense and sometimes tumultuous friendships, including with fellow poets like Leigh Hunt and John Keats, whose early death in 1821 deeply affected him. The epitaph form was a classical genre that Shelley was familiar with from Greek and Latin poetry, and this poem resembles a refined Greek epigram: concise, balanced, and meant to be inscribed on stone. Its four lines convey the essence of a much longer elegy.