Cemetery

“ The Final Retrospect There is a new grave in the cemetery today. An hour ago the sad-hearted mourners, with fast-falling tears, looked for the last time upon that familiar face. The light has gone out of the eye, and the sound of the voice is stilled forever. ”

“ Steady the trot to the cemetery, duly rattles the death-bell, The gate is pass’d, the new-dug grave is halted at, the living alight, the hearse uncloses, The coffin is pass’d out, lower’d and settled, the whip is laid on the coffin, the earth is swiftly shovel’d in, The mound above is flatted with the spades—silence, A minute—no one moves or speaks—it is done, He is decently put away—is there any thing more? ”

“ To visit her grave in the beautiful hillside cemetery outside Lisieux, and watch the endless stream of pilgrims who come on every day of the year from all parts of the world to ask her help, to deposit letters explaining their needs, and lay on her tomb for blessing the clothes of babies or the food of the sick, is to understand what the shrine of a mediæval saint must have been like. ”

“ Apart from the interest attached to these two lowly tombs and the memories aroused by their touching epitaphs, no Englishman can visit this secluded spot and look without deep feeling upon the last resting-places of his countrymen, who have died so many hundred miles from home and friends. The cemetery is kept in order and neatness, and flowers grow upon nearly all the graves. ”

“ Most powerful of all in its favor is the prevention of premature burial. All these are on the side of cremation, and against it is but one—sentiment. It seems more beautiful to lay our friends to rest, softly pillowed, shrouded in satin, inclosed in rose-wood, covered with flowers, and of anything beyond we refuse to think. We erect the imposing marble, set out the blossoming plant, and carry flowers to the spot. The cemetery appeals more strongly to the sentiment than does the crematory. ”

“ There's always a kind of jumped-up unhomelike look about a new cemetery, with its raw gravel paths and its rough green sods, and the machine-made marble angels that look like something off a wedding-cake. ”

“ Separated from the race-course by a narrow bamboo-edged road is the Happy Valley Cemetery—an acre of beauty sacred to the eternal sleep of dead Europeans. I know of no other cemetery so beautiful in all our world. ”

“ Passing through an old cemetery, where obelisks of granite, without a word of inscription, have stood for nearly three hundred years; where old tombs have fallen to pieces in the lapse of time, and human bones protrude amid the decaying masonry; while, over all, the rich vegetation of the semi-tropical climate throws a kindly concealing veil of beauty, we come out into groves of exquisite fragrance. ”

“ The graves are neatly bordered with grass, and planted with flowers, and many of the crosses have withered wreathes hanging upon them. In summer it is a beautiful place; in fact, the very name of cemetery in German—Friedhuf or Court of Peace—takes away the idea of death; the beautiful figure of the youth, with his inverted torch, makes one think of the grave only us a place of repose. ”

“ The almost imperceptible shading-off of winter into spring is signaled by tufts of freshly springing grass on the sunny side of a grave-stone; the birds build betimes among the tree-branches of the cemetery. Your grave-maker is always a merry fellow, who cares no more for carved cross-bones than for the clay-pipes so artistically crossed in shop-windows. ”

“ This cemetery, austere, remote, dark cypresses breaking the line of its turf, with no flower nor Western symbol of remembrance and hope, records the British respect for whatever form the aspiration towards God takes in the human heart. ”

“ Everything is done just as it is in a cemetery for people and not one thing is left out,” replied Duke. “If you should walk through, you would see on some of the graves the playthings the dogs liked when alive.” ”

“ Âtma drew breath more freely when they were through the city gates, and the bearers stepped out more quickly over hard stretches of sand and waste hillocks set with thorn and caper bushes toward the little cemetery which the musician had chosen. A few gnarled jhand trees decked with coloured snippets of cloth tied there by many mourners, a few nameless roly-poly concrete graves, a sprinkling of tiny turrets showing where someone was laid--someone whose resting place was unknown to all save the women who came thither every week to mourn--marked the spot. ”

“ These vaults have a resemblance to houses—sometimes to temples; are built of marble, generally; are architecturally graceful and shapely; they face the walks and driveways of the cemetery; and when one moves through the midst of a thousand or so of them and sees their white roofs and gables stretching into the distance on every hand, the phrase 'city of the dead' has all at once a meaning to him. Many of the cemeteries are beautiful, and are kept in perfect order. ”

“ Generally a cemetery is a dreadful place, with headstones and footstones and shafts and tombs scattered about, and looking like a field full of granite and marble stumps from the clearing of a petrified forest. ”

“ HIGHGATE CEMETERY.
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eyes and folded arms, seems musing over the flowers which Affection has planted on their graves. In a dimly-lighted, breathless City churchyard, such images are not seen: our affections are there fettered—the imagination is chained down, and endeavours in vain to soar heavenward. If we call up the dead, they seem to sit weeping with bent head and folded wings among the dark shadows of the mouldering monuments on which the sunlight seldom falls. ”

“ But I love above all in this cemetery the deserted portion, solitary, full of great yews and cypresses, the older portion, belonging to those dead long since, and which will soon be taken into use again; the growing trees nourished by the human corpses cut down in order to bury in rows beneath little slabs of marble those who have died more recently. ”

“ In various parts of the cemetery I observed several worn-out, wooden, triangular monuments on the totter; while others were lying prostrate on the grass—the “hic jacet” being exactly as applicable to each of themselves as to that departed being, whose life and death they had vainly presumed to commemorate. Although the inscriptions recorded by these frail historians were scarcely legible, yet roses and annual flowers, blooming on the grave, plainly showed that there was still in existence some friendly hand, some foot, some heart, that moved with kindly recollection towards the dead. ”

“ Thy footsteps to a slope of green access."
The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. "It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place." ”

“ To dream of being in a beautiful and well-kept cemetery, you will have unexpected news of the recovery of one whom you had mourned as dead, and you will have your title good to lands occupied by usurpers. ”

“ As if they wished that the dead should participate in the joy of the living, garlands of green boughs, intermingled with flowers, were suspended from the gates of the cemetery, which stretched from the church to the side of the Rue de l’Horloge. ”

“ The cemetery is on three sides of the entrance and enclosed by a high brick wall. I stood a moment at the inner official entrance, hardly knowing which way to turn; but seeing a number of staring people in a corridor on my right that faced one great division of the cemetery, I was turning into it mechanically when a policeman waved me back with the information that the entrance was at the other end. But not until I had seen, stared, and gasped. In an alcove was a figure, almost upright, that, in the first dazed seconds I took to be a wax-work, but immediately knew to be a dead woman. ”

“ One enclosure surrounding a monument was adorned with cypress, arbour vitæ, roses, and honeysuckles, and this was a relief to the eye while the feet were treading the hot dusty walks or the parched grass. The first principle of a cemetery was here violated, necessarily, no doubt, but by a sad necessity. The first principle of a cemetery—beyond the obligation of its being made safe and wholesome—is that it should be cheerful in its aspect. For the sake of the dead, this is right, that their memories may be as welcome as possible to survivers ”

“ So beautiful a cemetery must be haunted by Gouls! and they want not for intelligence; having heedlessly suffered my guides to expire, I will apply for directions to them, and as an inducement will invite them to regale on these fresh corpses. ”

“ They were dreamers—and they dreamt themselves into the cemetery." ”

“ And so the inhabitants turn out en masse, and march with slow steps, for about half a mile, to the cemetery. It is a dark, silent stream of people, filling the street, and carrying everything slowly before it; the only sounds being the chanting of the choir, and the repetition of prayers. We 42follow to the cemetery, which is crowded with graves, each headed by little iron or wooden crosses, hung with immortelles. The procession divides and disperses down the narrow paths, a few only of the friends of the deceased standing near the grave. ”

“ The making of even “high art” goods must rest the 101nerves, like the “perpetual motion” of my Scotch mother’s knitting needles!
In the distance the cemetery looked like a large field, glaring with poppies and cornflowers that it was puzzling to find so late in this cold climate. As we approached, however, the picturesque scene proved to come from dyed wool left to dry on the tombstones, which were, themselves, of a turban-like shape. ”

“ They walked about the bazaar and went to the mosque, but nobody saluted them or invited them to come in and rest.
“What a large cemetery!” exclaimed the young man.
265“What does the man mean,” thought the old farmer, “calling this largely populated city a cemetery?”
On leaving the city their way led through a graveyard where a few people were praying beside a tomb and distributing chapatis and kulchas to passers-by, in the name of their beloved dead. They beckoned to the two travelers and gave them as much as they would. ”

“ Nevertheless, there is a certain frame of mind to which a cemetery is, if not an antidote, at least an alleviation. If you are in a fit of the blues, go nowhere else. ”

“ Amongst the most interesting of these relics of ancient times, connected with religion is the remarkable care and attention paid to the grave-stones and funeral honours of their deceased connexions. The cemetery is the public walk of every hamlet, and the affection borne to a brother when living seems to render even a bright verdure on his grave a grateful prospect. ”

“ The Cemetery lies embosomed in a sunny opening of the rocks below the Hermitage, where nature and art combined—the former predominating so much by means of a noble amphitheatre of rocks—have given to the spot a quiet, pleasing interest. Outside the Cemetery, a winding path leads to the High Rocks, the road to which the inhabitants have recently improved. ”

“ By its air of reverend quiet, its redolence of dusty death, in the marshalled lines of its sleeping occupants, and in the labels that briefly name the dead author and his work, an ancient repository of books, such as a college library, suggests the, perhaps, hackneyed similitude of a great cemetery. Here and there, among the vast majority of the undistinguished dead, we detect names that are still familiar. Here and there are the monuments of men who have at least been the ancestors of a surviving family of scholars and scientists. ”

“ When the distance between the house of the deceased and the cemetery is considerable, a common, perhaps I should say a uniform, practice is, that those friends of the mourning family who reside in the neighbourhood of the burying place assemble in a group at a convenient turning of the road, and wait till the funeral procession reaches the spot; they then silently fall into their places and follow the corpse to the grave. I like the analogy none the less that it is taken, not from a time of mirth, but from a time of weeping. ”

“ Here we find a rural cemetery in a green field bordered with trees, in which the venerable patriarch buried his wife nearly four thousand years ago, while we, with all our boasted improvements, are in the present day thrusting the dead together in countless thousands, in the very heart of our close and over-crowded cities—where the living have scarcely room enough to breathe, and the dead of to-day are crammed amongst the remains which have been disinterred to give them a short lodgment ”

“ Every cemetery will keep registers of the dead buried there, and in these registers it is hoped that it will be possible, with the assistance of his kin, to enter the age, parentage, and birthplace of each known man. ”

“ Here every house has its marketable cemetery, and you see grief in the rough, and ascending to the most delicately chiselled smoothness. Your marble mason is a very different stamp of man from the maison de deuil assistant, and my entrance into the establishment I sought, was greeted with a certain rough respect by the man in attendance, who was chiselling an angel’s classic nose. ”

“ If the men intended going to a certain grave at night, late in the afternoon a woman, in deep mourning, would walk round the part of the cemetery in which the grave was situated, and contrive to detach the wires from the guns. Loose stones were placed on the walls of the grave-yard, so as to make scaling the walls almost an impossibility; this [Pg 76] was useless when the custodian had a house with a window looking into the burial-place. ”

“ As soon as the hack was out of sight, we returned to the highway, and, after a brisk walk, we reached the graveyard.
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CHAPTER V.
The resting places of the dead are localities which I do not much care to visit in the night. In the day time it is different; there is a holy calm about a cemetery then which impresses me with a feeling of rest, and I can really enjoy an hour or two in quiet contemplation of the monuments and humble head-stones of a large burial ground. ”