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The Curate And The Corpse[A]

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!

The Pot of Milk,[B] and fate
Of Curate Cabbagepate,
As emblems, do but give
The history of most that live.

NOTES:
[A] This fable is founded upon a fact, which is related by Madame de Sevigne in her Letters under date Feb. 26, 1672, as follows:–“M. Boufflers has killed a man since his death: the circumstance was this: they were carrying him about a league from Boufflers to inter him; the corpse was on a bier in a coach; his own curate attended it; the coach overset, and the bier falling upon the curate’s neck choaked him.” M. de Boufflers had fallen down dead a few days before. He was the eldest brother of the Duke de Boufflers. In another Letter, March 3, 1672, Madame de Sevigne says:–“Here is Fontaine’s fable too, on the adventure of M. de Boufflers’ curate, who was killed in the coach by his dead patron. There was something very extraordinary in the affair itself: the fable is pretty; but not to be compared to the one that follows it: I do not understand the Milk-pot.”

[B] This allusion to the preceding fable must be the “milk-pot” which Madame de Sevigne did “not understand” (vide last note); Madame can hardly have meant the “milk-pot” fable, which is easily understood. She often saw La Fontaine’s work before it was published, and the date of her letter quoted at p. 161 shows that she must so have seen the “Curate and the Corpse,” and that, perhaps, without so seeing the “Dairywoman and the Pot of Milk.”