Diary Of A Church Mouse

Here among long-discarded cassocks,

Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,

Here where the vicar never looksI nibble through old service books.

Lean and alone I spend my

Behind this Church of England baize.

I share my dark forgotten

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

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

Is Autumn's Harvest Festival,

When I can satisfy my

With ears of corn around the font.

I climb the eagle's brazen

To burrow through a loaf of bread.

I scramble up the pulpit

And gnaw the marrows hanging there.

It is enjoyable to

These items ere they go to waste,

But how annoying when one

That other mice with pagan

Come into church my food to

Who have no proper business there.

Two field mice who have no

To be baptized, invade the choir.

A large and most unfriendly

Comes in to see what we are at.

He says he thinks there is no

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

Come in to hear our organ play,

And under cover of its

Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.

A Low Church mouse, who thinks that

Am too papistical, and High,

Yet somehow doesn't think it

To munch through Harvest Evensong,

While I, who starve the whole year through,

Must share my food with rodents

Except at this time of the

Not once inside the church appear.

Within the human world I

Such goings-on could not be so,

For human beings only

What their religion tells them to.

They read the Bible every

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

How very full the church can

With people I don't see at

Except at Harvest Festival.