Obituary poetry

The genre consists largely of sentimental narrative verse that tells the story of the demise of its typically named subjects and seeks to console their mourners with descriptions of their happy afterlife.

[4] In 1870, Mark Twain wrote an essay on "Post-mortem Poetry",[5] in which he remarked that: and collected examples, such as the following, occasioned by the death of Samuel Pervil Worthington Doble, aged 4 days.

G. Washington Childs,[6] sometimes called "The Laureate of Grief", was another well known exponent; he was one of the chief authors of the verse appearing in the Philadelphia Public Ledger that was noticed by Twain.

[7] Lydia Sigourney,[8] while not confining her work to the genre, frequently contributed to it:[9] Ere sin has seared the breast, Or sorrow waked the tear, Rise to thy throne of changeless rest, In yon celestial sphere!

Twain's character of "Emmeline Grangerford", appearing in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was inspired by the genre, and in large measure by Moore's verse.