The Choirmaster’s Burial – a poem by Thomas Hardy

1. He often would ask us 2. As soon as I knew

That, when he died, That his spirit was gone
After playing so many I thought this his due,
To their last rest, And spoke thereupon.
If out of us any ‘I think,’ said the vicar
Should here abide, ‘A read service quicker
And it would not task us, than viols out-of-doors
We would with our lutes in these frosts and hoars,
Play over him That old fashioned way
By his grave-brim requires a fine day,
The psalm he liked best— And it seems to me
The one whose sense suits it had better not be.’
‘Mount Ephraim’— Hence, that afternoon
And perhaps we should seem Though never knew he
To him, in Death’s dream, that his wish could not be,
Like the seraphim. To get through it faster
they buried the Master
without any tune.

3. But ’twas said that, when

At the dead of next night
The vicar looked out,
There struck on his ken
Thronged roundabout,
Where the frost was graying
The headstoned grass,
A band all in white
Like the saints in church-glass,
Singing and playing
The ancient stave
By the choirmaster’s grave.

Such the tenor man told

When he had grown old.

Thomas Hardy 02/06/1840 – 11/01/1928

His heart is buried at Stinsford Parish Church, Dorset

His ashes are buried at Poets Corner, Westminster Abbey