Anonymous Poem

While works like Thomas Hoods’ “The Death-Bed,” Percy Russell’s “Premature Burial,” and Seba Smith’s “The Life-Preserving Coffin” all addressed the Victorian fear of hasty internment with a staid sobriety, other works, including an anonymous limerick in the first issue of Burial Reformer and this anonymous poem from the British Medical Journal printed below, tackle the subject with a levity Hood, Russell, Smith, and their peers would have found vulgar.

 
In our graveyards with winter winds blowing
There’s a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing
But can it be said
That the buried are dead
When their nails and their hair are still growing?[1]

Works Referenced

 

 "Anonymous Poem." British Medical Journal, 13 November 1982.
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[1] "Anonymous Poem."