I'm outside St Swithun's, Great Dalby, in Leicestershire. It's almost 8pm so the church is, unsurprisingly, locked. I'm I improving myself by reading gravestones outside.
And what an improving set of monuments they are. Almost every one seems to have a cautionary verse of poetry at the bottom. So Mary Pick (who died in 1820) warns me:
Reader! remember as this stone you view,
The transitory life you're passing through.
Thy time's uncertain, death it may be near
And cut thee off before thou art aware.
Well indeed. Next door, her grandfather John (1826) suggests this:
O Reader think of that tremendous day
When Christ thy every action will survey,
And thou receive for deeds transacted here
Celestial glory or intense despair.
It's pretty much like that on row after row of gravestones.
So I was delighted to stumble across Robert Parker (1854) who struck a rather more celebratory note:
My flesh shall slumber in the ground
Till the last trumpet's joyful sound:
Then burst the chains with sweet surprise
And in my Saviour's image rise.
Now that's I sentiment I can really get behind.
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