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HUGH EVANS

Prieste

Dyed atte Datchette

May—anno Domi 14—

Aged—

“There’s Pippins and Cheese—to Come.”

How simply, yet how beautifully, does this epitaph shadow forth the fruitfulness of the future! How delicate, and yet how sufficing, its note of promise!—

“THERE’S PIPPINS AND CHEESE—TO COME.”

Pippins! Does not the word, upon a tombstone, conjure up thoughts of Hesperian gardens—of immortal trees, laden with golden fruit; with delicious produce, the growth of a soil where not one useless weed takes root, where no baneful snake rustles among the grass, where no blight descends, no canker withers? Where we may pluck from the consenting boughs, and eat, and eat—and never, as in earthly things, find a worm at the core, a rottenness at the heart, where outside beauty tempted us to taste? “There’s pippins to come!” The evil and misery gathered with the apple of death will be destroyed—forgotten—by the ambrosial fruit to be plucked for ever in immortal orchards!—

“THERE’S PIPPINS AND CHEESE—TO COME!”