Sunday, May 15, 2011

An important lesson


A couple of weeks ago, while trying to find some amusing pictures for a Cinco de Mayo post, I happened upon a selection of funny Mexican gravestones (it seems to be a well-established national genre).

I couldn't help but be reminded of this classic bit of Belloc. [And I am glad to have just now found a free edition of his poems to download in PDF.]



Lord Finchley

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the duty of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.


Hilaire Belloc  (1870-1953)



3 comments:

JES said...

God, I'd give anything to be well-read enough (broadly and deeply read enough) to say that something reminded me of someone like Belloc.

A shame that the trend towards cremation and warehouse-style cemeteries seems to be putting an end to the art of creative epitaphs. I can't remember -- have you come up with a preference for your own, given the option?

Froog said...

Perhaps I have an untypical childhood reading experience (my family were more bookish than most, certainly than most of the working class; and in high school I became the school librarian to get out of doing games - so had the opportunity to read everything), but I think Belloc is pretty well-known in the UK. His two collections of children's verse, The Bad Child's Book of Beasts and More Beasts for Worse Children, are, I think, much more widely read than Eliot's Practical Cats.

Froog said...

Funnily enough, I addressed the question of possible epitaphs a couple of times in the early days of this blog, here and here. Perhaps it's time I returned to the topic.