Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, EVAN TOM, by ARTHUR GLYN PRYS-JONES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

EVAN TOM, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Old evan tom the sexton
Last Line: Marching them up the stairs.
Subject(s): Death; Funerals; Wales; Dead, The; Burials; Welshmen; Welshwomen


I

OLD Evan Tom the sexton
Was three-score years and ten,
He'd put away more people
Than he'd ever see again:
Two hundred he had laid to rest
In this benighted spot ...
And a man who lives on funerals
Has none too bright a lot.

II

Old Evan Tom the sexton
Had done his work so well ...
The parish had to buy a field
From William Jones, 'The Bell':
But Evan, in his wisdom,
Had kept the last plot free—
'I'm following on some day,' he said,
'So here's the place for me...'

III

'For fifty years I've tended them,
From pauper up to clerk—
And everything's been decent here ...
No hauntings after dark:
Three parsons and two squires,
And ministers a few—
But if I'm buried somewhere else
I don't know what they'll do!'

IV

Old Evan Tom the sexton
Was a man who kept his word:
I'm sure he's up in the yew tree now,
Like a wise, old, watchful bird—
With his weather-eye fixed on the lot of them
Watching them grave by grave—
(And a double look at the squires perhaps
To see that they behave).

V

Some day the Angel Gabriel
Shall take them unawares,
The good ones and the bad ones,
The ripe wheat and the tares ...
And if one could be free then
And quit of one's own affairs ...
I'd give a lot to see old Tom
Marching them up the stairs.





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