Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968). rn The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.

The Pauper’s Drive

T. Noel

(English poet of the Chartist period)

THERE’S a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot;

To the churchyard a pauper is going, I wot;

The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs,

And hark to the dirge that the sad driver sings:—

“Rattle his bones over the stones;

He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns!”

Oh, where are the mourners? alas! there are none;

He has left not a gap in the world now he’s gone,

Not a tear in the eye of child, woman, or man—

To the grave with his carcase as fast as you can.

“Rattle his bones over the stones;

He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns!”

What a jolting and creaking, and splashing and din;

The whip how it cracks! and the wheels how they spin!

How the dirt, right and left, o’er the hedges is hurled!

The pauper at length makes a noise in the world.

“Rattle his bones over the stones;

He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns!”…

You bumpkin, who stare at your brother conveyed;

Behold what respect to a cloddy is paid,

And be joyful to think, when by death you’re laid low,

You’ve a chance to the grave like a gemman to go.

“Rattle his bones over the stones;

He’s only a pauper, whom nobody owns!”

But a truce to this strain—for my soul it is sad,

To think that a heart in humanity clad

Should make, like the brutes, such a desolate end,

And depart from the light without leaving a friend.

Bear softly his bones over the stones;

Though a pauper, he’s one whom his Maker yet owns.