Funerary rite

“ And make Love a burial-place.
He is dead, dear, as you see,
And he wearies you and me.
Growing heavier, day by day,
Let us bury him, I say.
Wings of dead white butterflies,
These shall shroud him, as he lies
In his casket rich and rare,
Made of finest maiden-hair. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What happens in our graves poisons our thoughts together with our bodies. The figure of death, in the imagination of men, depends before all upon the form of burial; and the funeral rites govern not only the fate of those who depart but also the happiness of those who stay, for they raise in the ultimate background of life the great image upon which men’s eyes linger in consolation or despair. ”

“ When all is over, when the absolving benediction has been pronounced, and death has triumphed where life took its last stand, the pale pulseless form, wrapped in its most costly vest, is dressed for burial. Wild-flowers are strewn on the dead by the Indian maiden, while the cliffs around mournfully echo back the funeral dirge. How true is human instinct to the awful mystery of the grave! ”

“ At your death-bed how boldly might we comfort and encourage your departing souls! And at your burial, how comfortably might we leave you in the grave, in expectation to meet your souls in heaven, and to see your bodies raised to that glory! ”

“ I watch it silent from the ground,
Until it startled flies the sound
The harsh bolts creaking gave;
A funeral smile salutes me dread,
The only dweller with the dead,
Lends me a hard and rough hand, led
To ope another grave. ”

“ Funeral eloquence has its bright, but it also has its very dark side. It is delightful to see how much can be forgotten and forgiven at the grave, how gently all faults can be passed over or accounted for, how none but the noblest motives can then be imputed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If a prominent citizen died, he never failed to attend the funeral, and, where possible, to join the procession on the way to the cemetery. He would stand by the grave with bowed head, and take in every word of the funeral discourse. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whenever a corpse was borne along the street, in sunshine, rain or snow, whether a pompous train of the rich and proud thronged after it or few and humble were the mourners, behind them came the lonely woman in a long white garment which the people called her shroud. She took no place among the kindred or the friends, but stood at the door to hear the funeral prayer, and walked in the rear of the procession as one whose earthly charge it was to haunt the house of mourning, and be the shadow of affliction, and see that the dead were duly buried. ”

“ Scarce any man, I believe, ever thought of that grave, that did not cast a flower of pity on it, and write over it a sweet epitaph. Gentle lady, so lovely, so loving, so unhappy! you have had countless champions; millions of manly hearts mourning for you. From generation to generation we take up the fond tradition of your beauty; we watch and follow your tragedy, your bright morning love and purity, your constancy, your grief, your sweet martyrdom. ”

“ Our burial places abound in mortuary horrors which, with clumsy fingers, point in the assumed direction of immortality, inspiring hope in a future life by the thought that it, at worst, cannot contain ugliness to equal their own. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ A dead body is shunned. Therefore, a shroud is prepared, and other paraphernalia of burial, in order that the survivors may cease to loathe. At death, there is a sacrifice of wine and meat; when the funeral cortege is about to start, there is another; and after burial there is yet another. Yet no one ever saw the spirit of the departed come to taste of the food.
“These have been our customs from remote antiquity. They have not been discarded, because, in consequence, men no more shun the dead. What you may censure in those who perform the ceremonial is no blemish in the ceremonial itself.” ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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 gloom of death has been heightened by artificial means. Mourning dresses, solemn faces, funeral addresses, the grave,—all have had an unnatural depth of awe added to the natural sense of bereavement. ”

“ Research into funeral rites, of whatever nature, confronts us with much that would be ludicrous were it not so very pitiful, for humanity has displayed a fatal tendency to rush into the committal of ghastly absurdities by way of showing the most sacred kind of grief. Yet, take them all in all, the death laments of the people form a striking and beautiful manifestation of such homage as "Life may give for love to death." ”

“ You have probably never been to a funeral, and if so, you do not know the horrible sound of the first spadesful of earth as they fall, with dull blows, on that which is past feeling and resistance. The friends who stand round the grave shudder as each clod strikes the wood under which lies their beloved dead. Here it was different, for two men got into the grave and held up a grass mat, against which the earth was shovelled while the coffin was protected. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ With the growing taste for privacy and simplicity, many of the foolish demonstrations of grief, expressed in outward display, have been eliminated. It is now a very rare occurrence for the room in which the dead body lies to be filled with wreaths and masses of flowers, for people are beginning to realize that this is a relic of ancient and savage burial customs, and that it is not so much a manifestation of grief as a display of vanity. ”

“ Mourners tearing themselves to raise pity, and set wailings, and at one man's funeral to lament for another, he forbade. To offer an ox at the grave was not permitted, nor to bury above three pieces of dress with the body, or visit the tombs of any besides their own family, unless at the very funeral ”

“ He must be buried as "society" is buried. He must have a fashionable funeral. He must, to the last, bear witness to the power of Mrs. Grundy. It is to please her, that the funeral cloaks, hatbands, scarves, mourning coaches, gilded hearses, and processions of mutes are hired. And yet, how worthless and extravagant is the mummery of the undertaker's grief; and the feigned woe of the mutes, saulies, and plume bearers, who are paid for their day's parade! ”

“ The reason of this is, for man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets. The grave, said Job, is my house, and soon the funeral proclamation must be repeated over us, Dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return. The grave is the home for the body, when once it comes there, as long as there is any dust to cover it, or heavens to surround it, Man lieth down, and riseth not till the Heavens be no more; they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep till death is swallowed up in victory. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Death lifts them in one heave of the casket. More illuminating are the mourners. Dashing thru the sleet in brief poignancy; shrill, old voices that knew the deceased reciting what can only be the obvious. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They saw many funerals everyday, and heard the murmur of the funeral service and the toll of the funeral bell whenever they went out, but it never occurred to them to think that tomb-stones were dismal or funerals impressive; they looked with cheerful living eyes at their natural surroundings, and never thought a bit more of the end of their own lives because they so constantly saw the end of other people’s. ”

“ The mocking and the absurd is stamped upon the funeral preparations. The matter-of-fact solemnity, the careless gravity, of those whose employment it is to furnish the coffin, &c.—the customary compliment of "Such a fine corse!" as if the appearance of the dead were their own doing—the importance attached to the trimmings of the shroud and the nails on the lid—the professional pleasantries, ay, pleasantries! handed down from time immemorial—the utter indifference of their proceedings—all natural enough when we think how familiar the spectacle is to them at which our own blood grows cold ”

“ A lucky place and day have then to be fixed, by fortune-tellers, for the burial, and should these not be forthcoming, the coffin would be placed on a hill till they can be found. Burial is considered of so much importance, that should a man be drowned his spirit would be called back into a figure of wood or paper, and buried with pomp. Before the grave-diggers begin their work, members of the family worship the genii of the mountain, and write letters to these gods, asking them to be so kind as to allow the funeral to take place. ”

“ What tho’ other Ceremonies be perform’d with the greatest Splendor and Exactness, they can give no other Satisfaction than the Decency of Burial, or performing perhaps the Will of the Dead; for the Body will nevertheless stink, corrupt, and it may be startle the nearest Friend to see it a while after? Then shall his Bones not be known, nor his Ashes be distinguish’d from another Mans, nay even from common Earth, so that the parcimonious Heir may well reflect, how vain and needless it would have been to have bestow’d more than a decent Expence on his Funeral. ”

“ He observes a long train of persons in mourning, and remarks the coffin to be covered with a white pall, and that there are chaplets of flowers laid upon the coffin. He inquires whose funeral it is. The answer he receives is, that it is the funeral of a young lady. Unfortunately for him, this reply fails to satisfy his curiosity. He makes up to one who led the procession, and eagerly asks the name of the young lady they are proceeding to bury. When, oh, fatal answer! Love, willing to avenge the victim of his ingratitude and neglect, suggests a reply which had nearly deprived him of life. ”

“ It is singular that a funeral consequent on an unusual death should be attended by greater numbers than an ordinary one. On this occasion, I may safely say, that my little retired burial-ground, and its immediate vicinity, were occupied by thousands. ”