Beside the sacred shelf on which he one day hoped to sleep.
One fatal afternoon it chanced that Spriggins’s youngest son,
Whose un-Christian age was seven, and whose Christian name was John,
Obtained the key to that small room, and found that sacred store
Of the ashes of his fathers, which he ne’er had seen before.
This Johnny was a clever boy, much given to research,
His very nose turned up, with interrogatory perch;
His head—excuse the slang—was very level, you’ll surmise,
But ’twas level where his bump of veneration ought to rise.
He knew they were his relatives, within those vases packed,