The Works of Peter Pindar [i.e. John Wolcot] :: :: University of Virginia Library

In the last war French pris'ners often died
Of fevers, colds, and more good things beside:
Presents for valour, from damp walls and chinks,
And nakedness, that seldom sees a shirt;
And vermin, and all sorts of dirt;
And multitudes of motley stinks,
That might with smells of any clime compare
That ever sought the nose or fields of air.

As coffins are deem'd necessary things,
Forming a pretty sort of wooden wings
For wafting men, to graves, for t'other world;
Where anchor'd (doom'd to make no voyages more),
The rudders of our souls are put ashore,
And all the sails for ever furl'd.

A carpenter, first cousin to the may'r,
Hight master Screw, a man of reputation,
Got leave, through borough int'rest, to prepare
Good wooden lodgings for the Gallic nation:
I mean for luckless Frenchmen that were dead;
And very well indeed Screw's contract sped.

His good friend Death made wonderful demands,
As if they play'd into each other's hands;

As if the carpenter and Death went snacks—
Wishing to make as much as e'er they cou'd
By this same contract coffin wood,
For such as Death had thrown upon their backs.

This carpenter, like men of other trades
Whom conscience very easily persuades

400

To take from neighbours useless superfluity;
Resolv'd upon an œconomic plan,
Which shows that in the character of man
Economy is not an incongruity.
I know some monarchs say the same—whose pulses.
Beat high for iv'ry chairs and beds and bulses.

For lo, this man of œconomic sort
Made all his coffins much too short,
Yet snugly he accommodates the dead—
Cuts off, with much sang froid, the head,
And then to keep it safe as well as warm,
He gravely puts it underneath the arm;
Making his dead man quite a Paris beau!—
Hugging his jowl en chapeau bras.