Rhymes By William Stewart Rose |
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| VI. | SONNET VI.
On witnessing a Sussex peasant's funeral. |
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103
SONNET VI. On witnessing a Sussex peasant's funeral.
I seldom drop a tear or heave a sigh,Seeing herse freighted from ancestral hall,
At hatchment, pompous cavalcade, or pall:
But on ‘maimed rites’ have looked with other eye.
One Sunday, I stood propt against a wall,
To let a motley troop afoot go by,
In faded garments clad of different dye;
And marked in them a peasant's funeral.
No ‘inky cloak’ did the chief mourner borrow,
To make of seeming grief a short display:
His woe was not to be put off to-morrow;
His sables not the trappings of a day:
A black smock-frock, the livery of sorrow,
And labour—like his lot—was his array.
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