The Church Mouse
By John Betjeman
Here among long-discarded
cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open
hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looks
I
nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I
spend my days
Behind this Church of England
baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two
oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers
me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is
sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is polish for the
floor.
Christmas and Easter may be feasts
For
congregations and for priests,
And so may Whitsun.
All the same,
They do not fill my meagre
frame.
For me the only feast at all
Is Autumn's
Harvest Festival,
When I can satisfy my want
With
ears of corn around the font.
I climb the eagle's
brazen head
To burrow through a loaf of bread.
I
scramble up the pulpit stair
And gnaw the marrows
hanging there.
It is enjoyable to taste
These
items ere they go to waste,
But how annoying when one
finds
That other mice with pagan minds
Come into
church my food to share
Who have no proper business
there.
Two field mice who have no desire
To be
baptized, invade the choir.
A large and most
unfriendly rat
Comes in to see what we are at.
He
says he thinks there is no God
And yet he comes ...
it's rather odd.
This year he stole a sheaf of
wheat
(It screened our special preacher's
seat),
And prosperous mice from fields away
Come
in to hear our organ play,
And under cover of its
notes
Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.
A Low
Church mouse, who thinks that I
Am too papistical,
and High,
Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong
To
munch through Harvest Evensong,
While I, who starve
the whole year through,
Must share my food with
rodents who
Except at this time of the year
Not
once inside the church appear.
Within the human world
I know
Such goings-on could not be so,
For human
beings only do
What their religion tells them
to.
They read the Bible every day
And always,
night and morning, pray,
And just like me, the good
church mouse,
Worship each week in God's own
house,
But all the same it's strange to me
How
very full the church can be
With people I don't see
at all
Except at Harvest Festival.
Song Index
Rev120707