Read "The Choirmaster's Burial" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
HE often would ask us / That, when he died, / After playing so many / To their last rest, / If out of us any / Should here abide, / And it would not task us, / We would with our lutes / Play over him / By his grave-brim / The psalm he liked best- / The one whose sense suits / "Mount Ephraim"- / And perhaps we should seem / To him, in Death's dream, / Like the seraphim.
As soon as I knew / That his spirit was gone / I thought this his due, / And spoke thereupon. / "I think," said the vicar, / "A read service quicker / Than viols out-of-doors / In these frosts and hoars. / That old-fashioned way / Requires a fine day, / And it seems to me / It had better not be."