Funeral rite

“ The will is not to be looked into, till the funeral rites are performed. Preparations are making for the solemnity; and the servants, as well as principals of all the branches of the family, are put into close mourning. ”

“ The train of withered mourners, the hoary bridegroom in his shroud, the pale features of the aged bride, and the death-bell tolling through the whole, till its deep voice overpowered the marriage words, all marked the funeral of earthly hopes. ”

“ A. Folta. The large attendance at the funeral rites was evidence of the high esteem in which the deceased was held. In their hour of sorrow the mourning family has the condolence of their many friends. ”

“ Which be-wept to the grave did go, With true love showers. There is also a most delicate and beautiful rite observed in some of the remote villages of the south at the funeral of a female who has died young and unmarried. A chaplet of white flowers is borne before the corpse by a young girl nearest in age, size, and resemblance, and is afterwards hung up in the church over the accustomed seat of the deceased. ”

“ Every one knows the soul-subduing pathos of the funeral service, for who is so fortunate as never to have followed some one he has loved to the tomb? But when performed over the remains of innocence and beauty, thus laid low in the bloom of existence, what can be more affecting? At that simple but most solemn consignment of the body to the grave-“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust!”—the tears of the youthful companions of the deceased flowed unrestrained. ”

“ A funeral procession is an imposing spectacle, and, to the uninstructed foreigner, a cheerful one; for there is nothing sad or sombre in the white, or bright-colored, robes of the priests, the white, tinsel-decorated bier, the red and white flags borne aloft, the enormous bunches of gay-colored flowers;—the very mourners in white silk, and with faces apparently unmoved by grief, bring no thought of the object of the procession to the Western mind. ”

“ let the burial rite be read—the funeral song be sung!—
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young—
A dirge for her, the doubly dead in that she died so young. ”

“ How much better to have a small funeral! a funeral remarkable for nothing but its modesty and simplicity, to which only the few are called who knew the dead and loved him, who follow him to his long home with serious thoughts, like thinking men and Christians, remembering that before long they must go with him into the grave and lie down beside him, and who return home to remember his soul before God as often as they kneel down to pray. ”

“ Distressing enough to sensibility this! Are there not real woes (if not in our own families, at least among our own friends and neighbors) sufficient to exercise our sympathy and pity, without introducing fictitious ones into our very diversions? How can that be a diversion which racks the soul with grief, even though that grief be imaginary? The introduction of a funeral solemnity upon the stage is shocking indeed!
Death is too serious a matter to be sported with. An opening grave cannot be a source of amusement to any considerate mind. ”

“ There is a sort of melancholy pleasure to be had out of a funeral, with its pomp and ceremony, but I shrank from a death-bed. ”

“ But after the funeral comes life again,--hard, cold, inexorable life, knocking with business-like sound at the mourner's door, obtruding its common-place pertinacity on the dull ear of sorrow. The world cannot wait for us; the world knows no leisure for tears ”

“ The one buried that day I had known, or she had known me in my boyhood, and it was expected that I would attend. My mother sent the wreath that belongs,—there is both sense and sentiment in flowers at a funeral when they are wreathed by the hands of those who loved the dead, as is still the custom here; none where they are bought at a florist's and paid for with a growl,—and we stood around the coffin and sang the old hymns, then walked behind it, two by two, men and women, to the grave, singing as we passed through the gate. ”

“ I do not know what else people think a funeral should be except quiet. Yet again and again, over the grave of every one of those sad rich men, for whom one should surely feel, first and last, a speechless pity—over the grave of Beit, over the grave of Whiteley—this sickening nonsense about modesty and simplicity has been poured out. ”

“ FUNERAL
Of funerals, the saddest
Is love's that dies unanswered.
The soul has two to bury:
The soul of the beloved
And its own other selfhood.
And a third enters, living,
The funeral flame that wraps them;
His wings a yoke has weighted:
Him the wise lips of lovers
Call in their kisses, Eros,
And gods: the Resurrector.
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content. ”

“ At my arrival here I am saluted by all as risen from the dead, and have had joy given me preposterously and as impertinently as they give it to men who marry where they do not love. If I should now die in earnest, my friends have nothing to pay me, for they have discharged the rites of funeral sorrow beforehand. ”

“ While you are admiring the flowers and trees a funeral enters the gates. The body is carried by four professional bearers and is followed by two priests and the relatives and friends. All the mourners are clothed in white. They walk two by two, no matter how distant may be the house of death, each couple holding a handkerchief as a symbol of their union in sorrow. When the procession reaches the top of the hill the mourners diverge and take seats in the house of prayer, where the sacred fire is burning, or they seat themselves in the beautiful garden for meditation and prayer. ”

“ The funeral was so economical and so private that neither the tongue of repute, identifying the grave from generation to generation, nor the more unerring evidence of shaft or vault guides the footsteps of those who come so late, so late! ”

“ We may notice it clearly, perhaps, only when it has a striking occasion: my small boy and the foundered horse; nursemaids at a funeral, inspecting with all the airs of connoisseurs the grief of this mourner and of that; the thrilling summons we all feel, going soberly on our business, when the running crowds tell us there has been an accident. On such occasions we notice with a certain shock human nature's capacity for taking things at their face-value, for liking them as things good in themselves: is that one a good specimen of a mourner? ”

“ They looked for the signs of death at every door—the sexton, the hearse, the assemblage of black-clad relatives, all that makes up the woful pomp of funerals. They raised their eyes, also, to the sun-gilded spire of the church, and wondered that no clang proceeded from its bell, which had always tolled till now when this figure appeared in the light of day. But none had heard that a corpse was to be borne to its home that afternoon, nor was there any token of a funeral except the apparition of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.
"What may this portend?" asked each man of his neighbor. ”

“ Such a practice as a wake, and the merry-making about the corpse, carry us back to the twilight of the world, with the poor savage in his bewildered misery, pretending that his dead still lived. Our funeral with its black trappings and its elaborate ceremonies is the lineal descendant of a merry-making. Our undertaker is, by evolution, a genial master of ceremonies, keeping things lively at the death-dance. ”

“ There are few ceremonies in life at once so touching, so impressive, so sad, and yet so beautiful as a soldier’s funeral! Ordinary funerals, with their unwieldy hearses and feathers, and the absurd looking mutes, and the “inky cloaks” and weepers of hired mourners, always seem to me like a mockery of the dead; the appointments border so closely on the grotesque; they are so little in keeping with the true, the only view of death that can render life endurable! ”

“ Something is to be given to custom, something to fame, to nature and to civilities, and to the honour of deceased friends; for that man is esteemed to die miserable for whom no friend or relation sheds a tear, or pays a solemn sigh. I desire to die a dry death, but am not very desirous to have a dry funeral; some flowers sprinkled on my grave would do well and comely ”

“ Remembering her many virtues, we are indeed mourners at her grave and in the house of sorrow we would drop the tear of affectionate sympathy.
Sisters, brothers and friends, as we stand in this solemn presence we may hear the voice of this Providence speaking to us.
Not long shall we wait ere we obey the inexorable decree of Death and follow our sister.
How brief and full of mystery is human life! Who can fathom its purpose or discolse its issues. We entered life, as it were, but yesterday; to-day we perform our allotted task and to-morrow we go—who knows whither? ”

“ Then, while the funeral dirge fills the sacred edifice, and the mournful Dies Iræ thrills the hearts of all, each one thinks of his own departed ones, and recalls with indescribable sadness other just such celebrations in the years long past, when those for whom they now invoke the mercy of Heaven were still amongst the living. Then comes, too, the solemn thought that some, perhaps many, of those then present in life and health may be numbered with the dead before All Souls' Day comes round again, and a voice from the depths of the Christian heart asks, "May not I, too, be then with the dead?" ”

“ A public funeral was decreed as a national expression of the pervading grief at the irreparable loss of "two as gallant spirits as ever sacrificed life for the extension of science and the cause of mankind." ”

“ Exaggeration is to be deprecated in mourning as in everything. The discarding of mourning should be effected by slow stages. It shocks persons of good taste to see a widow change into colors hurriedly. If black is to be dispensed with, let its retirement be slowly and gracefully marked by quiet costumes, as the grief, yielding to time, is giving way to resignation and cheerfulness.
Before a funeral the ladies of a family see no one but the most intimate friends. The gentlemen, of course, see the clergyman and officials who manage the ceremony. ”

“ This is none of your funeral is heard quite frequently as an indirect rebuke for intermeddling, with the ludicrous undercurrent of thought, that the troublesome meddler has no right to be crying at a strange man’s funeral. ”

“ At his funeral the rich and great gathered to honor him, and after his body was lowered into its flower-hung grave, the poor peasants came by hundreds with their green boughs or sprigs of fern or wildflowers and filled his grave with them—because they loved him! ”

“ The citizens run in crowds, to mingle their tears with those of the disconsolate mother; they assiduously seek to lessen her grief, by the consolation of those vague and common-place discourses to which profound sorrow little attends; with her they surround the mournful bier, and they deck the obsequies with their mourning and presence; the train of this funeral pomp to them is a show ”

“ An elaborate funeral with flowers, or your lamentations at our death means nothing to us. But your love, kindness, and generosity to us while we are alive are most important. We want to die feeling you will have no cause for remorse over your treatment of us. ”

“ A costly casket, a profusion of flowers and a long funeral procession merely gratify a foolish and ostentatious pride on the part of the survivors, and often entail a heavy burden on the father or husband. ”

“ Then came a funeral—the sheeted corpse on the shallow cot, the brisk-pacing bearers (if he was good, the sooner he is buried the sooner in heaven; if bad, bury him swiftly for the sake of the household—either way, as the Prophet says, do not let the mourners go too long weeping and hungry) —the women behind, tossing their arms and lamenting, and men and boys chanting low and high. ”

“ Again, a funeral always takes my attention and I find myself wondering whether the mourners could be helped or comforted by me, and I note whether the dead is young or old by the funeral trappings, and too often see that it is some tender child, though the grief is as great or greater when it is some dear wife or mother, or may be the father—the stay of some family. ”

“ I can recall no funeral in my time where simple grief and affection have been so openly and spontaneously displayed by so many strangers as well as friends—not even in France, where people are more demonstrative than here. ”

“ Their grief for the dead would not be less sincere if they followed the body of the beloved in their ordinary costume to the grave; nor is the spectacle less imposing divested of all the solemn foppery which attends the funeral of persons who move in respectable society. ”

“ The best sites are reserved for graves; the best wood is used for coffins; the merriest music to our ears is that heard at funerals. But of all funerals of which I have heard, I think this one is the most amusing. A woman about fifty years old, fearing that her 196 son, a worthless spendthrift, would not accord her a grand funeral after her death, hit upon the plan of enjoying one before that event. ”

“ Eternal exequies.—One might fancy to hear a continuous funeral oration beyond the confines of history: we have ever been and are burying all that we love best, our thoughts and hopes, obtaining in exchange pride, gloria mundi, that is, the pomp of the funeral oration. ”

“ Serpents are lying low in the grass--see their heads, you will suffer thereby--your head now lays low in some severe illness. Fate is silent and sad for a time, as in mourning for the sorrows of the good and true. See you the shaft, draped like a funeral pall across the cup? You are also to bury a friend, a worthy minister. The people mourn. ”