The Pauper’s Drive
By T. Noel
(English poet of the Chartist period)
There’s a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot;
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 carcase as fast as you can.
“Rattle his bones over the stones;
He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns!”
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!
The pauper at length makes a noise in the world.
“Rattle his bones over the stones;
He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns!” ...
You bumpkin, who stare at your brother conveyed;
Behold what respect to a cloddy is paid,
And be joyful to think, when by death you’re laid low
You’ve a chance to the grave like a gemman to go.
“Rattle his bones over the stones;
He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns!”
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.