The Curate and the Corpse by Jean de La Fontaine

Name: The Curate and the Corpse
Author: Jean de La Fontaine

A dead man is carried in a coach toward his burial, attended by the Reverend John Cabbagepate, who performs the full rites with apparent diligence. Yet the curate’s cheerful thoughts are fixed on the payments he expects for prayers, wax lights, and other funeral charges. He imagines spending the proceeds on a fine cask of wine and new petticoats for his beloved niece and chambermaid. The coach suddenly overturns and is smashed, ending these plans: John lies with a broken head beneath the coffin, and the dead parishioner carries his priest with him toward the tomb. The curate’s fate, like that of the Pot of Milk, represents the history of most people.

By Jean de La Fontaine · First published 1678 · Genre: Fable, Satire, Narrative Poetry · 760 words

First lines

A dead man going slowly, sadly, / To occupy his last abode, / A curate by him, rather gladly, / Did holy service on the road. / Within a coach the dead was borne, / A robe around him duly worn, / Of which I wot he was not proud -- / That ghostly garment call'd a shroud. / In summer's blaze and winter's blast, / That robe is changeless -- 'tis the last. / The curate, with his priestly dress on, / Recited all the church's prayers, / The psalm, the verse, response, and lesson, / In fullest style of such affairs. / Sir Corpse, we beg you, do not fear / A lack of such things on your bier; / They'll give abundance every way, / Provided only that you pay. / The Reverend John Cabbagepate / Watch'd o'er the corpse as if it were / A treasure needing guardian care; / And all the while, his looks elate, / This language seem'd to hold: / 'The dead will pay so much in gold, / So much in lights of molten wax, / So much in other sorts of tax: ' / With all he hoped to buy a cask of wine, / The best which thereabouts produced the vine. / A pretty niece, on whom he doted, / And eke his chambermaid, should be promoted, / By being newly petticoated. / The coach upset, and dash'd to pieces, / Cut short these thoughts of wine and nieces! / There lay poor John with broken head, / Beneath the coffin of the dead! / His rich, parishioner in lead / Drew on the priest the doom / Of riding with him to the tomb!

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Genres

Fable — The poem is a concise moral tale in the La Fontaine tradition, using an ironic incident to illustrate a general lesson about human expectations and fate.
Satire — It satirizes clerical greed through the curate's cheerful calculations about funeral fees, wine, and clothing while supposedly performing solemn religious duties.
Narrative Poetry — The work recounts a complete sequence of events in verse, moving from a funeral procession through the coach accident to its moral conclusion.
Moral Poetry — Its final lines explicitly universalize the curate's fate as an emblem of the way hopes and schemes are overturned in human life.

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The Curate and the Corpse is listed on Textopian as a fable by Jean de La Fontaine, dated 1678 CE.

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Work type: Fable
Author: Jean de La Fontaine
Date: 1678 CE
Language: English
Genres: Fable, Satire, Narrative Poetry, Moral Poetry, Comic Poetry
Length: 760 words
Structure: 1 section, 4 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

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