A Husbandman
The following lines on an agriculturist were written by Canada’s lyrist, C. G. D. Roberts:
He who would start and rise
Before the crowing cocks—
No more he lifts his eyes,
Whoever knocks.
He who before the stars
Would call the cattle home—
They wait about the bars
For him to come.
Him at whose hearty calls
The farmstead woke again,
The horses in their stalls
Expect in vain.
Busy, and blithe, and bold,
He labored for the morrow;
The plow his hands would hold
Rusts in the furrow.
His fields he had to leave,
His orchards cool and dim;
The clods he used to cleave
Now cover him.
But the green, growing things
Lean kindly to his sleep;
White roots and wandering strings—
Closer they creep.
Because he loved them long
And with them bore his part,
Tenderly now they throng
About his heart.
The Vienna Freie Fresse, found in Austrian cemeteries some curious epitaphs, translated as follows:
On a carter killed in a runaway:
“The road to eternity is not long. He started at 7 o’clock and arrived at 8.”
On a man of letters:
“Here lies the best man in the world. He deprived himself of sleep to bestow it upon others.”
One tomb bears a bas-relief depicting a peasant impaled on the horns of a bull. Below is the inscription:
“It was a bull’s horn that sent me to Heaven. I died in a moment, leaving wife and child. Oh, bull, bull! To think that I owe to you everlasting repose!
This does not speak well for the married life of F. K.:
“Here rests in God F. K., who lived 26 years as a man and 37 years as a husband.”