Amen
A Correspondent of the Athenæum, 1865, writes:—“While some philosophers seek information in the Far West, and others in the not-much-nearer East—one, perchance, reducing eccentric arrow heads to a civilised alphabet; another metamorphosing emblematic pitch-forks, tom-cats, &c., of 2,000 A.M. into sensation novels of the period; a third studying the customs and annals of pre-historic America by the aid of Aztec pots and pipkins—it has been the happy lot of the undersigned, with no greater effort than a short railway journey and a pleasant walk, to light upon a treasure of antiquity, which may not be without interest to some of your readers. The internal evidence of the following lines is sufficient to show what they purport to be—viz. the epitaph of an accomplished parish officer at Crayford, in Kent. They run as follows:—
“Here lieth the body of
Peter Isnell
(30 years Clerk of this Parish.)
“He lived respected as a pious and mirthful man, and died on his way to church to assist at a wedding on the 31st day of March, 1811; aged seventy years.
“The inhabitants of Crayford have raised this stone to his cheerful memory and as a tribute to his long and faithful services.
“The Life of this Clerk was just threescore and ten,
Nearly half of which time he had sung out Amen;
In his Youth, he was married, like other young men,
But his wife died one day, so he chanted Amen.
A second he took, she departed, what then?
He married and buried a third with Amen.
Thus his joys and his sorrows were Trebled, but then
His voice was deep Bass as he sung out Amen.
On the horn he could blow as well as most men,
So his horn was exalted in blowing Amen;
But he lost all his Wind after threescore and ten,
And here with three Wives he waits till again
The trumpet shall rouse him to sing out Amen.”