Mother Theresa

©  Copyright 1999  Richard Brodie

 
The idea for this came to me as I was reading through a book entitled Remains Concerning Britain, by William Camden, the Learned published in 1657, where I came across a rather amusing Epitaph from the tombstone of a certain medieval Scrooge.  Since Mother Theresa was our era's most admired exponent of the gospel of Christian redemption, I thought what more fitting epitaph, for such a messenger of hope and charity, than one which is an anagram of the epitaph of this despised and long forgotten sinner from perhaps as far back as the 13th Century (archaic spellings preserved in the original):
 

             Upon an Usurer

  Here lyes he underneath this stone,
  That whilst he liv'd did good to none.
  And therefore at the point to dye,
  More cause had some to laugh then cry.
  His eldest sonne thought he had wrong,
  Because he lingred out so long,
  But now he's dead, how ere he fares,
  There's none that knows, nor none that cares.
 
  Here on this site rests Mother Theresa.

  O nun, beneath the earthen pall,
  Who by thy works did thus to all:
  Negated hate, negated sin;
  One touching, solemn heroine.
  Courageous nun! She understood;
  One hundred thousand acts of good
  Have crowned thee, saint of godly worth,
  Who sleeps here underneath the earth.