Mourner

“ You may talk and talk to the grief-stricken one who bends over the corpse in the coffin about death being a transition from a world of woe to a world of weal, and the distressed one may try to cherish the thought and proclaim belief, but the tears cease not to flow, the pain and anguish written upon every feature of the mourner refuse to give place to joy and gladness. ”

“ Their bright hues and a child's beaming face are the only cheerful things which a mourner whose wounds are still bleeding freshly beside a coffin can endure to see, and I might compare flowers to the sound of bells. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Death comes in an instant and changes that bright creature in her white and rich attire into a black-robed mourner. He takes off the bridal ornaments and clothes her with the colours of bereavement. There is darkness in the once cheerful room, and the waiting-women sing their long dirges. ”

“ The dead speak from their coffins—from their very graves—and verily the heart of the true mourner hath ears to hear. Gloves and rings are the valedictories of the dead—their vales, or parting tokens, received by the mourners, at the hand of some surviving friend. ”

“ And, from the Book of Life, let the mourner turn to the works of his God; there the eye, which has been pained with the sight of disorder and confusion, will be soothed with beauty and excellence; the ear, wearied with the din of folly and falsehood, will gladly open to sounds of gentle harmony from the gay birds, the patient cattle, the flowing waters, the rustling leaves. ”

“ For the head mourner, a child of remarkable gifts, could actually make the tears run down her cheeks,—as real ones as if she had been a grown person following a rich relative, who had not forgotten his connections, to his last unfurnished lodgings. ”

“ People of sense, of course, manage to dress without going to extremities in either direction. We see many a pale-faced mourner whose quiet mourning-dress tells the story of bereavement without giving us the painful feeling that crape is too thick, or bombazine too heavy, for comfort. Exaggeration is to be deprecated in mourning as in everything. ”

“ And alien tears will fill for him Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourner will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn. ”

“ Tears are as necessary to the afflicted as showers are to the parched earth, and are the best and sweetest remedy for excessive grief.
To the mourner we would say--Weep on; nature requires your tears. They are sent in mercy by Him who wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus. The man of sorrows himself taught us to weep.
We once heard a very beautiful volatile young lady exclaim, with something very like glee in her look and tone, after reading a letter she had received by the post, with its ominous black bordering and seal--"Grandmamma is dead! We shall have to go into deep mourning. ”

“ The chief mourner seized and punished him, and bade him repeat:
"Pray God send the soul to heaven!
Pray God send the soul to heaven!"
Away went the boy, and met a dog and a cat going to be hung, but his cry rang out!
"Pray God send the soul to heaven! ”

“ The poor are accustomed to mourn, the graciously poor mourn graciously. We are apt to think, Blessed are the merry; but Christ, who was himself a great mourner, says, Blessed are the mourners. There is a sinful mourning, which is an enemy to blessedness— the sorrow of the world; despairing melancholy upon a spiritual account, and disconsolate grief upon a temporal account. There is a natural mourning, which may prove a friend to blessedness, by the grace of God working with it, and sanctifying the afflictions to us, for which we mourn. ”

“ A mourner, during the first three days, he does not leave the house of mourning and not to the graveyard. From here and onward, if someone in his neighborhood has a relative die, he follows the funeral bier to go to the graveyard but does not sit with the consolers, but rather in the place of the mourners. ”

“ The wealthier the deceased, the greater the outward signs of sorrow—a kind of feeling which, at any rate, bears some approximation to that of civilized life. During the season of mourning, the mourner wears a dark-colored skin cap, conically shaped on the top, with certain ornaments affixed to it. ”

“ What sobs, what prayers of mourners do I hear?
What mean those tapers pale, that chanted knell?
Dost thou, O Death, thus whisper in mine ear
For the last time? On the grave's brink I break
My earthly slumbers; and to life awake!
2.
Soul, spark most precious of a flame divine,
Immortal dweller in a frame that dies,
Hush these alarms: for freedom shall be thine. ”

“ A mourner that did not perform his mourning within seven (days) , whether accidentally or purposefully, fulfills it (the mourning) for all of the thirty, aside from the tearing. That if he did not tear during the time of his warmth (his raw emotion) , he may tear only within seven (days) , except for his father and mother, for whom he tears even after seven. ”

“ Some mourners at least have the consolation of mourning real dead—real dead whom they have seen stiffen into death, whose last words they have received, whose last agonies they have tried to soothe, for whom they have done everything they could. ”

“ Death will be an occasion of sorrow to our friends that love us. When man goes to his long home the mourners go about the streets—the real mourners, and those, as now with us, distinguished by their habits as they go along the streets,—the mourners for ceremony, that were hired to weep for the dead, both to express and to excite the real mourning. ”

“ Ah, what are thy feelings, whilst gazing on those, Who unconsciously smile in their balmy repose,— The pangs which thy grief-stricken bosom must prove Whilst gazing through tears on those pledges of love, Who murmur in slumber the dear, cherish'd name Of that sire who has cover'd his offspring with shame,— Of that husband whom justice has wrench'd from thy side Of the wretch, who the laws of his country defied? Poor, heart-broken mourner! thy tears faster flow, Time can bring no oblivion to banish thy woe; The sorrows of others are soften'd by years. ”

“ Mid the trodden turf is an open grave,
And a funeral train where the wild flowers wave,
For a manly sleeper doth seek his bed
In the narrow house of the sacred dead,
And the soil hath scantily drank of the tear,
For the red-brow'd few are the mourners here.
They have lower'd the prince to his resting spot,
The deep prayer hath swell'd, but they heed it not ”

“ Till pale faced mourners shall my grave surround,
And many a faithful friend who loveth me,
Shall seek me in the morning, but I shall not be. XXIII.
For my poor heart is often full of grief—
All seems so dark around me. ”

“ The chief mourners, at best, are generally true mourners, for they have lost a brother with whom “they sat but yesterday at meat;” and whilst they are comparing memories, recalling how merry they had many a day been together, and the solemn tones of that sublime music float upon the air, we can imagine the freed and satisfied soul wafted on those harmonious breathings to its heavenly home; and our hearts are melted, our imaginations exalted, our faith invigorated, and we come away the better for what we have seen. ”

“ I have read of mourners in ancient days, who clothed themselves in sackcloth, scattered dust upon their heads, ate their bread mingled with ashes, and took up their abode on the bleak mountain tops, reproaching heaven and earth aloud with their misfortunes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We see them drive back—briskly now, and as though the grief were left behind with the coffin—to the darkened house, and we see the mourners alight and re-enter to draw up the blinds with a sigh of thinly-disguised satisfaction, and to turn with a natural if humiliating relief to life and the things of life again. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Your burials will be, as once were ours, without the toll of holy knells, without tears, sobs, or wailing mourners, without friends, without relations, and you will die transfixed upon the same rock of universal human pain! ”

“ Come hither, ye who see
Your blooming babes around you smile,
A blissful company,
And of those childless mourners think
With sympathizing pain,
And sooth them with a Saviour's words,
"Your dead shall rise again." ”

“ The lone churchyard is dark and dim,
And the mourners raise a funeral hymn:
“Open, dark grave, and take her;
Though we have loved her so,
Yet we must now forsake her,
Love will no more awake her:
(Oh, bitter woe!)
Open thine arms and take her
To rest below!
“Vain is our mournful weeping,
Her gentle life is o’er ”

“ We now come naturally to the burial of the dead, and the various ceremonies which accompany the time of mourning. Although the relatives seem so careless about the sick person, they really keep a watch, and, as soon as death actually takes place, they announce the fact by loud cries. The women are the principal mourners, and they continue to sob and shriek and moan until they are forced to cease from absolute exhaustion. ”

“ I crave their pardon and tell them that, as I take it, ‘tis a good sign for the happiness of the living. And so it is. It’s nature.’
‘Perhaps the mourners learn to look to the blue sky by day, and to the stars by night, and to think that the dead are there, and not in graves,’ said the child in an earnest voice. ”

“ The fact that professional mourners were hired for funeral occasions indicates that mourning was a ritual, not an evidence of sorrow. Moderns may mourn the dead out of respect and because of bereavement, but the ancients did this because of fear. ”

“ Mourn′ing, grieving: lamenting.—n. the act of expressing grief: the dress of mourners, or other tokens of mourning.—ns. Mourn′ing-bride, the sweet scabious; Mourn′ing-cloak, an undertaker's cloak, formerly worn at a funeral; Mourn′ing-coach, a closed carriage for carrying mourners to a funeral; Mourn′ing-dove, the common American turtle-dove.—adv. Mourn′ingly.—ns. Mourn′ing-piece, a picture intended to be a memorial of the dead; Mourn′ing-ring, a ring worn in memorial of a dead person; Mourn′ing-stuff, a lustreless black dress fabric, as crape, cashmere, &c., for making mourning clothes. ”

“ The head-stone, reared by the hand of pious affection, instead of pointing to the remains it was erected to commemorate, stands over the graves of strangers, and we shed our tears over those whom we never knew; while the sexton and the grave-digger grin at us behind the neighbouring tomb-stones, chinking the silver in their pockets, and laughing to think that the paupers whom they shoved into “our” grave on the previous night in a “huggermugger” way should be wept over by the broken-hearted mourner whom they have thus cheated. ”

“ Hence Mourners in some Cities demean’d themselves after the same manner that in other Countries express’d Joy, and what was esteem’d Rejoycing in some was in others a token of Sorrow: For Example, in some Places it was customary to wear short Hair, where long was a token of Mourning, but in others, where long Hair was in Fashion, Mourners were accustom’d to shave themselves. ”

“ The mourners do not speak nor look up, but sit there like statues, and talk of the dead in solemn phrases and with bated breath, but entering into the minute and sometimes most immodest details. The mourning lasts one or two years for parents, husband or wife, and brothers and sisters ”

“ They shall use all the most solemn expressions of grief; they shall cast dust on their heads, in indignation against themselves, shall wallow themselves in ashes, as having bid a final farewell to all ease and pleasure; they shall make themselves bald (v. 31) , with tearing their hair; and, according to the custom of great mourners, those shall gird themselves with sackcloth who used to wear fine linen, and, instead of merry songs, they shall weep with bitterness of heart. ”

“ At the funeral of a rich man from sixty to a hundred of these hired mourners are present, wailing and beating their breasts. In cases of real grief it is customary for women of whatever rank to sit unveiled in the dust. ”

“ When any person dies the mourners commence a great lamentation and manifest apparently the most extravagant grief. The corpse is first wrapped in a number of cloths with aromatics and perfumes; it is then conveyed to the place of interment, followed by a large cortege of the relatives and friends of the deceased, the females who accompany the funeral procession being dressed in a long black cloak with a hood which covers the head. ”

“ Those who were left behind, too ill to join the funeral procession, heard not always the returning footsteps of the muffled mourners, for sometimes Death again entered the house while they were absent ”

“ They will dance a good deal, sing a good deal, make love, but sermonize very little. Any body’s and every body’s notion of a well conducted funeral is that there must be a hearse and a corpse, and chief mourners and mourners by courtesy, many old people, much solemnity, no levity, and a prayer and a sermon withal. Three-fourths of the Quaker City’s passengers were between forty and seventy years of age! ”