THE BURIAL OF THE BACHELOR
NOT a laugh was heard, not a frivolous note,
As the groom to the wedding we carried;
Not a jester discharged his farewell shot
As the bachelor went to be married.
We married him quickly that morning bright,
The leaves of our prayer-books turning,
In the chancel's dimly religious light,
And tears in our eyelids burning.
No useless nosegay adorned his chest,
Not in chains but in laws we bound him;
And he looked like a bridegroom trying his best
To look used to the scene around him.
Few and small were the fees it cost,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow,
But we silently gazed on the face of the lost
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
We thought as we hurried him home to be fed,
And tried our low spirits to rally,
That the weather looked very like squalls overhead
For the passage from Dover to Calais.
Lightly they'll talk of the bachelor gone,
And o'er his frail fondness upbraid him;
But little he'll reck if they let him alone,
With his wife that the parson hath made him.
But half of our heavy task was done,
When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
And we judged by the knocks which had now begun
That their cabby was rapidly tiring.
Slowly and sadly we led them down,
From the scene of his lame oratory;
We told the four-wheeler to drive them to town,
And we left them alone in their glory.
Anonymous.