Grave

“ For the grave could not be filled in,—endlessly, endlessly, masses of earth, soaked by holy blood of martyrs, rolled upon the coffin, and yet the grave remained open,—the lid of the coffin trembles, quivers, opens, burst by the giant breast, which is still alive and teeming with strength,—and the bells boom and boom, flung to and fro by the tempest of vengeance, of requital, of a distant hope fervid with victory. ”

“ The grave that covers up and buries the past, inters not all pain and sorrow with the dead, but leaves a portion behind, that the living may feel what they once suffered—the agonizing shriek, and the heart-rending cry, ring for ages after upon our ears;—such sounds disturb not the silent chambers of the dead! ”

“ A fearful sight; the tall figure distended with the corruption of the grave, the nose fallen off, the wandering, vacant eyes, with the glaze of death on them, the sallow flesh patched with green masses of decay; the wolf-grey hair and beard have grown in the tomb, and hang matted about the shoulders and breast; the nails, too, they have grown. ”

“ I never had but one true-love, In cold grave she was lain. 2 ‘I’ll do as much for my true-love As any young man may; I’ll sit and mourn all at her grave For a twelvemonth and a day.’ 3 The twelvemonth and a day being up, The dead began to speak: ‘Oh who sits weeping on my grave, And will not let me sleep?’ 4 ‘Tis I, my love, sits on your grave, And will not let you sleep ”

“ Am I more loathsome to thee, than the Grave,
That thou dost seek to shield thee there, and shun
My Love? But to the Grave I'll follow thee-
He looks not, minds not, hears not; barbarous Man,
Am I neglected thus? Am I despis'd? ”

“ What was it at home in the cemetery, compared with this huge grave! If she had ever felt oppressed in a grave (but she never did feel oppressed) she had only to sit upright or stand and she saw in a moment all the surrounding world: all the other graves, the ruddy-painted cross with the white iron figure of the Christus, the whole sky, and her cheerfulness was at once restored. But here! if you felt oppressed, standing upright was of slight service to you. ”

“ I know not what dear departed form, whose grave is already sunk as deep as itself, I may not, like a dream, raise up on its burial place and show anew to your tearful eyes, and of how many dead a single grave may be the reminder. ”

“ The little grave is a sacred place. The Lord of glory has passed into the sepulchre, and from it he has opened up the path of life. Hope blooms there, and hearts-ease and amaranth blossom amid the shadows that linger over it, and Jesus watches his treasures and counts his jewels in the little graves. ”

“ We are tempted to figure the author of The Grave as a morose and melancholy solitaire—musing amid midnight churchyards—stumbling over bones—and returning home to light his lamp, inserted in a gaping skull, and to write out his gloomy cogitations. ”

“ The Grave,
The voiceless Grave shall be to thee a friend
Who breaks no promise and no trust betrays.
—What hand our virtues decks with fadeless bloom,
Throwing fresh fragrance o'er their timid buds? ”

“ The very stones seemed to shape themselves into the faces of the dead, as if from the hard granite had started out the grey and eyeless faces of all the children of crime who had suddenly stept from that gloomy scaffold into the grave. ”

“ After all, the promises are so far away, and the dead are so near—the echoes of words said to have been spoken more than eighteen centuries ago are lost in the sounds of the clods that fall on the coffin, And yet, compared with the orthodox hell, compared with the prison-house of God, how ecstatic is the grave—the grave without a sigh, without a tear, without a dream, without a fear. ”

“ Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie,
(For the deep grave is aye the poet’s friend)
During long nights when sleep is far from thee,
Shall whisper : “Ah, thou didst not comprehend
The dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak”—
And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek. ”

“ If the grave—and it was not a grave, remember, like ours, but a cave, with a stone at the door of it, that anybody could roll away for entrance—if the grave was there, why, in the name of common-sense, did not the rulers put an end to the pestilent heresy by saying, ‘Let us go and see if the body is there’? ”

“ The keys of hell and death—The Grave, dread thing!
Men shiver, when thou art nam'd! Nature appall'd
Shakes off her wonted firmness.—Ah! ”

“ O that thou wouldst hide me in the grave! The grave is not only a resting-place, but a hiding-place, to the people of God. God has the key of the grave, to let in now and to let out at the resurrection. He hides men in the grave, as we hide our treasure in a place of secresy and safety ”

“ And when my grave, then by all forgotten,
has not a cross nor stone to mark its place,
Let men plow and with a spade scatter it,
And before my ashes return to nothing,
May they be the dust that carpets your fields. ”

“ Some young children sported among the tombs, and hid from each other, with laughing faces. They had an infant with them, and had laid it down asleep upon a child's grave, in a little bed of leaves. It was a new grave--the resting-place, perhaps, of some little creature, who, meek and patient in its illness, had often sat and watched them, and now seemed, to their minds, scarcely changed. ”

“ THE door of Death is made of gold
⁠That mortal eyes cannot behold;
But when the mortal eyes are closed,
And cold and pale the limbs reposed,
The soul awakes and, wondering, sees
In her mild hand the golden keys:
The grave is heaven's golden gate,
And rich and poor around it wait. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those villagers isolated at the grave Where the candles burn in the daylight, and the painted wreaths Are propped on end, there, where the mystery starts. The naked candles burn on every grave. On your grave, in England, the weeds grow. But I am your naked candle burning, And that is not your grave, in England, The world is your grave. And my naked body standing on your grave Upright towards heaven is burning off to you Its flame of life, now and always, till the end. It is my offering to you; every day is All Souls' Day. ”

“ Where shall we find a grave for you?
They thought of a spirit as brave as light,
And they bore him up to a lonely height,
And they laid him there, where he loved to be,
On a mountain gazing o'er the sea! ”

“ Now there's a grave—your foot is half upon it,
It looks just like the rest, and yet that man
Died broken-hearted.
LEONARD.
⁠'Tis a common case,
We'll take another: who is he that lies
Beneath yon ridge, the last of those three graves;—
It touches on that piece of native rock
Left in the church-yard wall. ”

“ The grave is not clogged with the multitude of dead bodies that are daily thrown into it, but is still an open sepulchre, and cries, Give, give. Hell also has enlarged itself, and still has room for the damned spirits that are committed to that prison. ”

“ There was a grave just closed. Not one seemed near,
To pay the tribute of one long—last tear!
How very desolate must that one be,
Whose more than grave has not a memory! ”

“ The grave is brighter, and grander, and more glorious than this world with no tent for marchings, with no harbor from the storm, with no place of rest from this scene of greed, and gouge, and loss, and gain. God pity the man or the woman who has no home! ”

“ Through your souls the rapture and freshness diffuse,
Which erst, in life’s morning, they shed over mine—
O, your hearts would confess, it is all but divine.
******
I know it—the grave which to me you assign,
Is black in the shade of your dreary church-wall,
Where nettle and hemlock their rankness combine,
And the worm and the sullen toad loathsomely crawl.
O! where is the primrose, so meet for adorning
The grave of a minstrel cut off in his bloom?
O! where is the daisy, to shed in the morning
The tear it has gather’d by night, for my doom? ”

“ The grave is not filled with earth, but a framework covered with a heavy thatch of palm-leaves is placed over the dead and the earth is piled to a depth of two feet on that. As the body is lowered into the grave the relatives begin a quavering chant and all present seem to feel deeply the loss of their kinsman. ”

“ And now a new wave of approaching humanity. The impossible becomes possible, the students crowd past us and gather about the grave. The coffin is lifted over our heads and into the noose of the dull gravedigger. ”

“ To-morrow when twilight creeps Along the hill to the old church-yard, O'er the grave where mother sleeps, When the dusky shadows gather, They'll lay your boy in his grave, For nearly betraying the country He would give his life to save. ”

“ I have but a few words to say—I am going to my cold and silent grave—my lamp of life is nearly extinguished—I have parted with everything that was dear to me in this life, and for my country's cause with the idol of my soul, the object of my affections. My race is run—the grave opens to receive me, and I sink into its bosom. ”

“ The Sun, that was before the sun, set once within a grave, the maidens bearing myrrh, preventing dawn, sought as the day, and unto one another cried, Come ye, O friends, let us with scents anoint the body that life-bringing is, and buried is, the flesh, that raiseth fallen Adam, that lieth in a grave. ”

“ A few creep into their beds of dust under the burden of old age and the gradual decays of nature. In short, the grave is the place appointed for all living; the general rendezvous of all the sons of Adam. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Like other men, I have particular fancies about the place of my burial; having lived chiefly in a mountainous region, I rather cleave to the conceit, that a grave in a green churchyard amongst the ancient and solitary hills will be a sublimer and more tranquil place of repose for a philosopher than any in the hideous Golgothas of London. ”

“ I reflected on many a country walk in England, culminating in a visit to an old church and graveyard, and the tracing of the names and dates of people long since passed away. It is somewhat strange. When we are in an old graveyard and looking at the graves of people who have died centuries ago we feel, instead of grief, a sort of quiet satisfaction, and that even when those whose burial is recorded are of our own name and family. We dare not even contrast our feeling with the poignancy that is attached to a new grave—with its garish stone, fresh clods, and wilted flowers. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Then she grew wroth, saying she would ne'er return; but I answered, 'Who cares?' Think, mai Suttu--I, Shâhbâsh, said that to my fairy for thy sake, and thou hast suspicions. Nay, smite me, but I said more. I said--what did I not say?--till--till she smote me on the forehead, so--and I died. Yea, I died as much as a man may and yet live. So--so--she dug a grave for me--for she would not the jackals had my beauty. Yea, a grave! See you, it was not much of a grave--a poor grave, such as a woman's hand could make. ”

“ A grave in the frozen mould.
Sing hey, sing ho, for the winds that blow,
And a grave deep down in the ice and snow,
A grave in the land of gold.”
Day after day of darkness, the whirl of the seething snows ”

“ We shall not rest together, love,
When death has wrench'd my heart from thine;
The sun may smile thy grave above,
When clouds are dark on mine!
I know not why, since in the tomb
No instinct fires the silent heart—
And yet it seems a thought of gloom,
That even dust should part;
That, journeying through the toilsome past,
Thus hand in hand and side by side,
The rest we reach should, at the last,
The shapes we wore divide;
That the same breezes should not sigh
The self-same funeral boughs among,—
Nor o'er one grave, at daybreak, die
The night-bird's lonely song! ”

“ The grave was called the place of darkness, where there was neither knowledge, or device, or wisdom, and was that to which allusion was made in saying, that those in the graves shall hear the voice of God, and shall live. ”

“ There certainly men would live forever, and laugh at death and the grave. There they could have no such thoughts as are associated with the village graveyard,—that make a grave out of one of those moist evergreen hummocks! ”

“ Who gather round, and wonder at the tale
Of horrid Apparition, tall and ghostly,
That walks at dead of night, or takes his stand
O'er some new open'd grave; and (strange to tell!)
Evanishes at crowing of the cock. ”