C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Undertaker—Sexton

The houses that he makes last till doomsday.

Shakespeare.

Nigh to a grave that was newly made,
Leaned a sexton old on his earth-worn spade.

Park Benjamin.

Ye undertakers, tell us,
’Midst all the gorgeous figures you exhibit,
Why is the principal conceal’d, for which
You make this mighty stir?

Blair.

Alas, poor Tom! how oft, with merry heart
Have we beheld thee play the Sexton’s part;
Each comic heart must now be grieved to see
The Sexton’s dreary part performed on thee.

Robert Fergusson.

Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making? Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

Shakespeare.

See yonder maker of the dead man’s bed,
The sexton, hoary-headed chronicle,
Of hard, unmeaning face, down which ne’er stole
A gentle tear.

Blair.

Why is the hearse with scutcheons blazon’d round,
And with the nodding plume of ostrich crown’d?
No; the dead know it not, nor profit gain;
It only serves to prove the living vain.

Gay.

There was a man bespake a thing,
Which when the owner home did bring,
He that made it did refuse it;
And he that brought it would not use it,
And he that hath it doth not know
Whether he hath it yea or no.

Sir John Davies.

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