WHAT THE SEXTON SAID
by: Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)
- OUR dust will be upon the wind
- Within some certain years,
- Though you be sealed in lead to-day
- Amid the country's tears.
-
- When this idyllic churchyard
- Becomes the heart of town,
- The place to build garage or inn,
- They'll throw your tombstone down.
-
- Your name so dim, so long outworn,
- Your bones so near to earth,
- Your sturdy kindred dead and gone,
- How should men know your worth?
-
- So read upon the runic moon
- Man's epitaph, deep-writ.
- It says the world is one great grave.
- For names it cares no whit.
-
- It tells the folk to live in peace,
- And still, in peace, to die.
- At least, so speaks the moon to me,
- The tombstone of the sky.
"What the Sexton Said"
is reprinted from A Handy Guide for Beggars Especially those
of the Poetic Fraternity. Vachel Lindsay. New York: Macmillan,
1916. |
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POEMS BY VACHEL LINDSAY |
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