Tode

“ Beauty and innocence in Death's embrace,
It seemed a mournful thing to waken them.
Another prayer arose—and he, whose faith
Had power o'er Nature's elements, to seal
The dripping cloud, to wield the lightning's dart,
And soon, from death escaping, was to soar
On car of flame up to the throne of God,
Long, long, with labouring breast, and lifted eyes,
Solicited in anguish. On the dead
Once more the prophet gazed. ”

“ Do the dead return? Are the dead indeed dead? You have nailed down the coffin-lid; you have seen the coffin as it sunk into the grave; you have heard the rattling of the clod,—but is that all? Is the beloved one whom you have given to the grave, indeed dead, or only more truly living in a new body, formed of refined matter, invisible to our gross organs? Is that which we call soul, only the result of a particular organization of gross matter, or is it the real, eternal substance of which all other matter is but the servant and the expression? Do the dead return? ”

“ Know that when the time of your death has arrived, those most dear, will be the first to thrust you out. And what will be your real home? A grave will be the home of your body until the day of judgment; and your soul will have to go to its long home, either to paradise or to hell. ”

“ Death, which after the haemorrhage had appeared as the beautiful winged boy who is so easily mistaken for the god of love—Death, who had incited me to write saucy, defiant verses about him, now confronted me as a hollow-eyed, hideous skeleton. ”

“ Such familiarity with death may harden some natures—surely there was the semblance of utter callousness of heart in many such scenes, where dead men were hurried into the graves with scarce a foot of earth above the rotting clay. ”

“ Gaunt, slinking dingoes snap and snarl,
Watching his slowly-ebbing breath;
⁠Crows are flying,
⁠Hoarsely crying
Burial service o’er the dying—
Foul harbingers of Death.
Full many a man has perished there,
Whose bones gleam white from the waste of sand—
⁠Who left no name
⁠On the scroll of Fame,
Yet died in his tracks, as well became
A son of that desert land. ”

“ When the faithful hand of the living does not desert the hand of the dying,
When the twitching lips press lightly on the forehead of the dying,
When the breath ceases and the pulse of the heart ceases,
Then the corpse-limbs stretch on the bed, and the living look upon them,
They are palpable as the living are palpable.
The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight,
But without eyesight lingers a different living and looks curiously on the corpse. ”

“ Only the dead with hands uplifted, the dead in frozen rest, the dead with the smile of death, or the hate of death, or the terror of death written upon their faces, seemed to watch and to wait in the chamber of the sepulchre. ”

“ The pious tones which once with a holy inspiration had gushed from the pure fount of his soul—tones to which he had himself listened in silent devotion but a few weeks before,—resounded now in mourning over his grave; and sad and sorrowful, though at the same time sweetly consolatory, still echo far and wide to the hearts of all:
“Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord, now and for ever. ”

“ I wish to die with thee, if fate brings thy turn to perish first, and not to prolong my span of life at all, when once dismal death has cast thee to the tomb.
"For if thou chance to close thy eyes for ever, a victim to the maddened attack of the men-at-arms;—by whatsoever doom thy breath be cut off, by sword or disease, by sea or soil, I forswear every wanton and corrupt flame, and vow myself to a death like thine; that they who were bound by one marriage-union may be embraced in one and the same punishment. ”

“ In a shroud of mourning liest thou among the woes,
My senses in a horrid darkness trapped expire.
Thy hands are bound, my freedom’s gone; eternal throes
Of death have chained my mind upon a funeral pyre. ”

“ Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth. [240] Let this prayer therefore, O my God, be as my last gasp, my expiring, my dying in thee; that if this be the hour of my transmigration, I may die the death of a sinner, drowned in my sins, in the blood of thy Son; and if I live longer, yet I may now die the death of the righteous, die to sin; which death is a resurrection to a new life. Thou killest and thou givest life: whichsoever comes, it comes from thee; which way soever it comes, let me come to thee. ”

“ We did our miseries mix,
O then why was not I allow'd with thee to die:
Free from grief and killing pain,
I had never sought in vain,
Sought my life where death I find,
In thy tombe, but not so kind. ”

“ Do you want to become another Courtlandt Allerton and go rocking down the avenue—a grimacing, tailor-made sepulcher?—the pompous obsequies of a dead intellect?—a funeral on two wavering legs, carrying the corpse of all that should be deathless in a man? ”

“ His eyes with the hollow sockets stare round with an empty chillness.
He bears a scythe in his hands. It is Death with his icy message.
Clutching the bulky book, the host is in peaceful slumber,
When Death draws near to him softly, and peacefully near him lingers. ”

“ And so in this sense of the words, this exitus mortis, the issue of death, is liberatio in morte, A deliverance in death; Not that God will deliver us from dying, but that hee will have a care of us in the houre of death, of what kinde soever our passage be. ”

“ We talk about the dead by our fire-sides.
And then for our immortal part, we want
No symbols, Sir, to tell us that plain tale:
The thought of death sits easy on the man
Who has been born and dies among the mountains:
LEONARD. Your dalesmen, then, do in each other's thoughts
Possess a kind of second life: no doubt
You, Sir, could help me to the history
Of half these Graves? ”

“ He can count separately how many of his soul's affections the knife she stabbed it with has slain, how many yet mourn over the tombs which he has built for these: he can tell, too, of some that still watch around his bed, bright sometimes with ecstatic passion of melancholy and crowning his mournful head with vine. All these living forgive her transgressions: when will she look upon them, that the dead may live again? ”

“ A servant much devoted to his master, on his return from a journey, found his lord dead and prepared for burial. Full of grief, he cast himself on the deceased, and kissing his pallid lips poured forth a whirlwind of sighs. The breath thus emitted penetrated to the lungs of the corpse, inflated them, and the dead opened his eyes, winked, and sat up. ”

“ We have sinned, we know it, and this place is death and Hell."
"Death comes," the voice pealed, "and death is not a dream or a forgetting. Death is real. But I, too, am real, and whom I will I save. I see the scheme of things, and in it no place for me, the brain and the body against me. ”

“ Hie thee back, thou find'st not here Corpse or coffin, grave or bier; The Dead Alive is gone and fled— Go thou, and join the Living Dead! 'The Living Dead, whose sober brow Oft shrouds such thoughts as thou hast now, Whose hearts within are seldom cured Of passions by their vows abjured ”

“ Those who have been accustomed to dream of death as the end of all whom its shadowy portals inclose, alone are prepared to appreciate the awful and startling reality of this strange scene, breaking apart, as it did, like a rope of sand, all the preconceived opinions of countless ages on the existence and destiny of the living dead. ”

“ Death is sufficiently terrible in itself, and the grave in its best form has enough of horror to make the stoutest heart quail at the thought, but nothing I have seen or read of can equal the Campo Santo for the most loathsome and disgusting mode of burial. ”

“ I thought of the graves more hopeless fur than them that entomb the dead,—the graves where lay the livin' dead. Dead souls bound to still breathin' bodies, dead hopes, ambitions, dead dreams of usefulness and respectability, happiness, dead purity, faith, honor, dead, all dead, all bound to the still breathin' body, by the festerin', putrid death-robes of helplessness and despair. ”

“ I seat myself beside the men who pass along among the tombs, and in untimely season I assume the form of the dead; and if I catch any one, I at once destroy him with my sword. But if I cannot destroy him, I cause him to be possessed with a demon, and to devour his own flesh, and the hair to fall off his chin. ”

“ Bury the Dead, bury the Dead, Out of our sight! But there are other Dead That will not buried be, That walk about in glaring day With noiseless tread. And stalk at night; Unburied Dead, unburied Dead, Ever in sight. Dear friendships snapt in twain. Sweet confidence betrayed, Old hopes forsworn, old loves worn out, Vows pledged in vain. There is no flight, Ye living, unrelenting Dead, Out of your sight. ”

“ Many there be who yet do grace their dead with a salt platter putten upon the breast of the corpse, and all those friends who do view the dead and it be the common custom for all so to do, do first touch the corpse on the face or hands and then lay their own hands upon the platter first having full and free forgiven the dead any fault or ill-feeling they had in life held as a grudge again the dead. ”

“ Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, right reverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day. ”

“ It was soon done, for the murderers had hurried their victim into a shallow tomb. In a few minutes the body of the dead man was exposed to view. Decay had not commenced, and death had given fresh depth and beauty to the serenity which had been their habitual expression in life. ”

“ If they visit where there is a dead body, or accompany a funeral, show them the dead body as covered with earth in the grave, or an animal that has been killed, and say, “God destroyed them because of wickedness.” ”

“ The dead must bury their dead. And, thus pondering from personal to general thoughts, the turmoil of his feelings gradually calmed, and a restful melancholy, vague and tender, filled the aching void in his heart. ”

“ What will the righteous do upon rising from the grave?
“Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.” Isa. 26:19.
20. In what words will their triumph over death and the grave be expressed?
“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” 1 Cor. 15:55.
21. How long will they live?
“Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.” ”

“ Necromancy draws forth its signs by the stars of Death, which we call Evestra, which are prophetical spirits, signing the body of the sick, and dying man with red, blue, and purple spots, which are certaine signs of death, in the third day of their rising. ”

“ Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death
The second Death, that never dies,
That cannot die, when time is dead:
Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries,
Eternally uncomforted.
Dark Angel, with thine aching lust! ”

“ As I die I ask only that my body be buried where it may rest by the side of my master when he passes away, so that when we meet in the regions beyond I shall be with you once again.’ When she had so said she died. ”

“ Perhaps we imagine that he is only feigning death, and will yet arise and speak before fastened within the coffin; or we may experience a faint, tormenting part of that awful thought of burying one alive, and our tortured imagination conceives of the unutterable horror of his waking within the tomb. ”

“ Thou should have laid me my in quiet grave,
Sorrowing calm;
And I with folded palm.
But now above thine own behold I rave!
With all thy life before thee so to die,
Unseasonably!
"Whom the gods love die young;" ”

“ On the other hand, those who buried their dead believed that the spirit of the dead man dwelt in some fashion in the tomb, or at least hovered around the body, waiting, perhaps, for a reincarnation, and capable of using the weapons, the utensils, and the foods of its former life. ”

“ The desire is almost universal, that, when summoned to lie down in the grave, the dead may never be disturbed, by the hand of man—that our remains may return quietly to dust—unobserved by mortal eye. There is no part of this humiliating process, that is not painful and revolting to the beholder. Of this the ancients had the same impression. Cremation and embalming set corruption and the worm at defiance. ”

“ The common observer is struck with dejection at the spectacle. He contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. ”

“ And of the touching piety of the living toward the dead? There is no joyful occasion where the dead are not called to our remembrance, and their blessing and the blessing of heaven invoked. In joy and in sorrow, we think of our dead always. ”

“ Since the period of which I now write, I have often witnessed the closing scene of mortality, and various are the opinions I have heard, as to which point of time, between the moment of death and the first appearance abroad of the survivors in their mourning apparel, is the saddest, the most afflicting, or the most trying—whether the moment of dissolution, the first appearance of the undertaker, the laying out in the apparel of death, the bringing of the coffin, the last frantic kiss and look, the screwing down, the carrying out, the dull thud of the clay upon the coffin lid. ”