The Pauper's Drive

There's a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly 'round brot

To the churchyard a pauper is going, I wot,

The road it is rough and the hearse has no springs;

And hark to the dirge that the sad driver sings:

Rattle his bones over the stones!

He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns.

Oh where are the mourners? Alas, there are none,

He has left not a gap in the world now he's gone.

Not a tear in the eye of child, woman or man

To the grave with his carcass as fast as you can.

What a jolting and creaking and splashing and din

The whip, how it cracks and the wheels, how they spin!

How the dirt, right and left, o'er the hedges is hurled!

To hurry the pauper, his trip from this world.

Poor pauper, defunct, he has made some approach

To gentility, now he is stretched in a coach;

He's taking a drive in his carriage at last

But it will not be long if he goes on so fast.

But a truce to this strain, for my soul it is sad

To think that a heart in humanity clad,

Should make, like the brutes, such a desolate end

And depart from the light without leaving a friend.

Bear softly his bones over the stones

Though a pauper, he's one whom his Maker yet owns.