Have you heard of the new crematorium at Woking,
Where funeral fires, `tis proposed, will be smoking;
Where corpses, consigned from all parts of the nation,
Will be burnt by the new fashioned mode of cremation?
The people of Woking are all up in arms,
Protesting most loudly, and filled with alarms:
And now wonder. Oh! Horror, the thought is vexation,
Our deceased ones consumed by the fires of cremation!
The babe that we dandled so loving from birth,
And cherished so fond as the dearest on earth:
The sickening thought will not bear contemplation,
To burn his dear flesh in the fires of cremation.
Let funeral pyres blaze on Indian soil;
From its practice in England our feelings recoil;
And we should do best as a civilized nation,
To help our new subjects abolish cremation.
In our atmosphere rural we've no wish to spread
The stench that arises from burning our dead.
Earth closets, we're told, are the best sanitation;
No, thank you, we beg to decline your cremation.
Anon
Quoted in full in Brian Parsons: `Committed to the Cleansing Flame - The development of cremation in nineteenth century England' 2005 (pp74-75)
Bone Idle
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