Thou odious box, as I look on thee,
I wonder wilt thou be unlocked for me?
No, no! forbear!—yet then, yet then,
’Neath thy grim lid lie the men—
Men whom fortune’s blasted arrows hit,
And send them to the pauper’s pit.

O, dig a grave somewhere for me,
Deep, underneath some wither’d tree;
Or bury me on the wildest heath,
Where Boreas blows his wildest breath,
Or ’mid some wild romantic rocks:
But, oh! forbear the pauper’s box.

Throw me into the ocean deep,
Where many poor forgotten sleep;
Or fling my corpse in the battle mound,
With coffinless thousands ’neath the ground;
I envy not the mightiest dome,
But save me from a pauper’s tomb.

I care not if ’twere the wild wolf’s glen,
Or the prison yard, with wicked men;
Or into some filthy dung-hole hurled—
Anywhere, anywhere! out of the world!
In fire, or smoke, on land, or sea,
Than thy grim lid be closed on me.

But let me pause, ere I say more
About thee, unoffending door;
When I bethink me, now I pause,
It is not thee who makes the laws,
But villains who, if all were just,
In thy grim cell would lay their dust.

But yet, ’twere grand beneath yond wall,
To lay with friends,—relations all;
If sculptured tombstones were never there,
But simple grass with daisies fair;
And were it not, grim box, for thee
’Twere paradise, O cemetery.

Decorative image

A. APPLEYARD, PRINTER, CHURCH GREEN, KEIGHLEY.