The Briny Grave
By Henry Lawson
You wonder why so many would be buried in the sea,
In this world of froth and bubble,
But I dont wonder, for it seems to me
That it saves such a lot of trouble.
And there aint no undertaker,
Oh! there aint no order that your friends can give
On the quiet to the coffin-maker,
To a gimcrack coffin-maker,
They make no differ twixt the absentee swell
And the clerk that cut from a shortage,
Oh! there aint no pauper funer-el,
And there aint no impressive cortege.
It may be a chap from the forard crowd,
Or a member of the British Peerage,
But they sew his nibs in a canvas shroud
Just the same as the bloke from the steerage,
As that poor bloke from the steerage.
There aint no need for a gravedigger there,
For you dig your own grave! Lord love yer!
And there aint no use for a headstone fair
When the waters close above yer!
The little headstone where they come to weep,
May be right for the lands dry-rotters,
But you rest just as sound when youre anchored deep
With the pigiron at your trotters,
(Our fathers had iron at their trotters).
The sea is democratic the wide world round,
And it dont give a hang for no man,
There aint no Church of England burial ground,
Nor yet there aint no Roman.
Orthodox and hetrodox by wreck-strewn cliffs,
At peace in the stormiest weather,
Might bob up and down like two brother stiffs,
And rest in one shark together,
And mix up their bones together.
The bare-headed skipper is as good any day
As an authorised shifter of sin is,
And the tear of shipmate is better anyway
Than the tear of the next-of-kin is.
It saves your friends, and it fills your needs,
It is best when all is reckoned,
And she cant come there in her widder weeds,
With her eyes on a likely second,
And a spot for the likely second.