Ballade of Burial
The sunlight sways the summer sky,
Quivers with breath each quicken’d blade,
The birds with one another vie
To move to mirth the grove and glade,
While yonder solemn cavalcade
Winds o’er the glebe in gloom august,
Chanting a dead man’s serenade,
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
A smile is mated to a sigh,
One flashes ere the other fade,
Farce arm-in-arm with tragedy,
So struts the motley masquerade.
Youth deems for joy the world is made,
Till disappointment deals disgust,
Disease defiles the last decade,
Ashes to ashes, dust to dast.
Within the grave our earnest eye
Beholds a brother’s body laid,
Around us sombre hirelings ply
The unctuous usage of their trade.
Beneath the hedgerow laughs a maid,
Held in a lover’s arm robust;
One day for her it shall be said,
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Envoi.
Life, dost thou still possess the shade
Of him in earth so rudely thrust?
Canst thou the sentence yet evade,
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust?
Cotsford Dick.