He often would ask us
 That, when he died,
 After playing so many
 To their last rest,
 If out of us any
 Should here abide,
 And it would not task us,
 We would with our lutes
 Play over him
 By his grave-brim
 The psalm he liked best—
 The one whose sense suits
 “Mount Ephraim”
 And perhaps we should seem
 To him, in death’s dream,
 Like the seraphim.
 
 As soon as I knew
 That his spirit was gone
 I thought this his due,
 And spoke thereupon.
 “I think” said the vicar,
 “A read service quicker
 That viols out-of-doors
 In these frosts and hoars.
 That old-fashioned was
 Requires a fine day,
 And it seems to me
 It had better not be.”
 Hence, that afternoon,
 Though never knew he
 That his wish could not be,
 To get through it faster
 They buried the master
 Without any tune.
 
 But t’was said that, when
 At the dead of next night
 The vicar looked out,
 There struck on his ken
 Thronged roundabout,
 Where the frost was graying
 The headstoned grass,
 A band all in white
 Like the saints in church-glass,
 Singing and playing
 The ancient stave
 By the choirmaster’s grave.
 
Such the tenor man told
 When he had grown old.