How Sweet to Die in a Small Town
How sweet to die in a small town! There no unfeeling and blase aenemic, Sucking a limp and listless cigaret, Mangles you with a rough obituary, A few crude lines, all wrong, Wrung o'er the phone from hospital or morgue. Nor are you hustled to the slab still warm, To lie with noisome lilies over you, In darksome silence till your burial hour, When a few hectic friends dash up, Leap from their shuddering cars and almost miss Your slide into the hearse.
Naively they ask how much you left, nor join The thin line leading to your resting place, Which they shall never see. In the great hive where you were naught before Henceforth you're less than nothing.
Not so in Portage, Boscobel or Bem; There kindly neighbors reverently call, Bringing the sweeter flowers of hedge and home To your own parlor where you lie in peace, And bless your calm, upturned seraphic face. Old women tread about, and too the men Revolve your frailities, in which they see Their own reflected and condoned.
Under the kindly hillside sod and clean, Warmed with the sun and sweetened by the wind, They lay you down, and then for many a day Your virtues form the theme of evening talk, And you become a legend.
How fine and deep such sleep! How sweet to die in a small town!