The Grave Digger's Lunch

The Grave Digger’s Lunch


Come sit a’side me, Bessie,
with yore hair as red as Punch,
an’ I’ll unwind some yarnin’
'bout the grave digger’s lunch.

(For if there be a lesson here
there’s sure to be a bunch--
An’ such a little thing it were,
some ol’ grave digger’s lunch.)

I walked a'day, as well I do,
An’ pass th’ bury-yard.
Its stones in grass forgotten be,
its path long hid an’ hard.

I wend me way that very day,
around, behind an’ low--
th’ narrow path an’ short way 'round
where naught but deer may go.

An’ I look beside th’ thicket
where blue fire seize me eye!
A sapphire or a diamond
wink’t ‘neath the brambles by.

So’s I leaves th’ path so narrow,
through briers struggles I,
to where th’ sun alert me
to a treasure ‘neath d’rye.

Now you gues’t it wern't no treasure,
'cos I’m as poor as you--
but hear me out a measure
as me tale be almost through.

For all’a cuts an' scratches,
an’ thorns what combed m’hair,
when I laid me hand upon it
found an ol’ blue bott’l there.

So sets me on a fallen log,
an’ hold th’ glass to light.
How blue an’ clear an’ ancient!
Whole it been, all smooth an’ right.

A hun’ert years or more, I gues’t
it lay below th' hill--
where no one pass'd in all 'at time,
an’ no one walks there, still.

Above, th’ grave stones held their ground,
an’ offered me th’ hunch---
Th' lonely bott’l’s all that stay’d
from th’ last grave-digger’s lunch.

He may’a dined on mutton,
or some chicken wit’ some cheese,
or wit’ a bit’a bread or fruit,
as merry as he please!

Or may naught but beer he takes,
while he set amid the stones,
an’ lay his shovel down a way,
to rest among the bones.

Maybe a pipe, or maybe none--
I fear we’ll ne’er know--
But last he throws th’ swig away
an’ takes shovel up to go.

A hun’ert years, like I ha’ said,
Since he has plied his trade.
But when the digger breath'd his last,
Who then took up the spade?

Does his lo’ phantom sit and dine,
o’er his bones beneath a tree,
an’ quench his thirst on other drink?
A mystery, it be.

I do not know, nor can I say.
The bott’l was his own.
A likely guess, as good as none
I made, an’ took it home.

It’s as I tell ya, Bessie,
Truer words you’ll ne’er find.
It ain’t as much as what we done,
But what we leaves behind.