Explore "To a Sexton" by William Wordsworth on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Let thy wheel-barrow alone.
Wherefore, Sexton, piling still / In thy Bone-house bone on bone?
'Tis already like a hill / In a field of battle made, / Where three thousand skulls are laid.
-These died in peace each with the other, / Father, Sister, Friend, and Brother.
Mark the spot to which I point!
From this platform eight feet square / Take not even a finger-joint: / Andrew's whole fire-side is there.
Here, alone, before thine eyes, / Simon's sickly Daughter lies, / From weakness, now, and pain defended, / Whom he twenty winters tended.
Look but at the gardener's pride --
How he glories, when he sees / Roses, Lilies, side by side, / Violets in families!
By the heart of Man, his tears, / By his hopes and by his fears, / Thou, old Grey-beard! art the Warden / Of a far superior garden.
Thus then, each to other dear, / Let them all in quiet lie, / Andrew there and Susan here, / Neighbours in mortality.
And, should I live through sun and rain / Seven widowed years without my Jane, / O Sexton, do not then remove her, / Let one grave hold the Lov'd and Lover!