WHY NOT?
I knelt before the altar-rail
One holy festal morning,
As to and fro the sexton moved,
The holy place adorning.
Now vases, bright with ruby hues,
He places on the altar,
And now the flowers! O gorgeous sight!
“Good sexton,” I did falter,
“But for one instant let me smell
Those odors which, like vapor
From censer, rising, lift—” “Smell! marm—
They’re only made o’ paper!”
And now the golden candlesticks,
With candles like to rockets,
Lighting afar, quoth he: “Tin, marm:
The candles are in the sockets!”
Yet there I see a hundred more
With blessed tapers burning.
O happy bees! Lo! here he comes,
From sacristy returning,
With basket filled with precious load
Of many more for decking
The candelabra round the “throne.”
Said I, his pathway checking:
“Oh! lift for me the basket-lid;
I’ll only humbly peer in
And see the blessed wax!” “Sakes! marm
Not wax, but only stearine!”
Oh! sparkle brightly, olive star,
In lamp inscribed with Latin:
“Sweet oil! whose unction—” “Guess not, marm:
The gas is turned on that ’un!”
“Devotion dims my pious view,
And speech within me throttles,
To see those sacred relics—” “Them?
Them’s ’pothecary bottles!”
“Now don’t you go a-pokin’ round
Your nose to find ‘abuses’;
We’ll let you know we has these things
Because—because we chooses!”