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sir john betjeman - diary of a church mouse lyrics

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
thеy do not fill my meagre frame
for mе 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

- sir john betjeman lyrics

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