Sepulcher

“ Grave d.—A small sepulcher, 11⁄2 feet square by 1 foot deep, contained the remains of an infant, also a few small shell beads. The slabs forming the sides and bottom of this grave bore very distinct marks of fire.
Grave e.—Simply a headstone and footstone, with the skeleton of a very small child between them; head east. On the wrists were some very small shell beads. The earth on the north and south sides had been hardened in order to form the walls.
Grave f.—Stone sepulcher, 6 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 11⁄2 feet deep, with stone in the bottom; skeleton with the head north. ”

“ On alien seraphim that seek with desperate wings,
Flown from their dying orb, the confines of thy heaven;
Yea, still thy whisper moves, and magically stirs
To life the shapeless dust in shattered sepulchers ”

“ Looking with foolish faces on the rush
Of the Great Splendor, when the pulsing hush
Came o’er the hills, came o’er the heavens afar
Where on their cliff of stars the watching seraphs are.
Nor as of old when first the Strong One trod,
The Power of sepulchers—our Risen God! ”

“ Among these ruins are many sepulchers, ranged on each side of a hollow way toward the north part of the city, and extending more than a mile; some being mere heaps of rubbish; others half fallen, exposing their shattered chambers; while one or two remain almost entire. They are built in the shape of square towers, from three to four stories in hight, each forming a sepulchral chamber, with recesses divided into compartments for the reception of the bodies. ”

“ But the angel gently lays a hand upon the shoulder of the little girl—the movement is full of dignity—as if to say, ‘No; she belongs to the other side.’ The frieze below represents the general Resurrection, with the good and the wicked emerging from their sepulchers. Nothing can be more quaint and charming than the difference shown in their way of responding to the final trump. ”

“ The sepulchers are not perpetual, as their villages are only permanent for some years, as long as the wood lasts. The bodies remain in the cemeteries only until the feast of the dead, which usually takes place every twelve years. During this time they do not neglect to honor the dead often. ”

“ I walked down today about 3/4 of a mile below our encampment to observe the manner in which these people inter their dead. I found eight sepulchers near the north bank of the river built in the following manner. four strong forks are first sunk several feet in the ground and rise about six feet high, froming a parrallelogram of 8 by 10 feet. the intervals between these upright forks, on which four poles are laid, are filled up with broad erect boards with their lower ends sunk in the ground and their upper ends confined to the horizontal poles. a flat roof is formed of several layers of boards ”

“ We go to Thy sepulchre, mortal, mourning human creatures, for Thou also wast mortal once. Thou also hast died and hast been buried!"
Thus, in stooping lowly, nearer her fellow-men, she grew nearer Him who stooped lowest of all.
"The whole earth is a sepulchre," she said; "for it was Thine! Not our beloved only; Thou also hast lain in the grave! When we and our beloved lie down in ours, it will be but where Thou hast lain before."
Meanwhile, all the time the earth was bearing her lowly witness to the resurrection in opening buds and nestling birds, and all the renewal of the spring. ”

“ The place of the sepulchre is a wooden monument, made like a little house covered, having a hole in the wall, through which those that go thither for devotion usually put in their hand and take out some of the dust, which they put into water and give to sick cattle or men to drink, upon which they are presently eased of their infirmity and restored to health. ”

“ Those that have least of this earth find a grave in it. Abraham provided, not cities, as Cain and Nimrod, but a sepulchre, [1.] To be a constant memorandum of death to himself and his posterity, that he and they might learn to die daily. This sepulchre is said to be at the end of the field (v. 9) ; for, whatever our possessions are, there is a sepulchre at the end of them. ”

“ In the midst of this grand mausoleum stands the sepulchre of its founder—his effigy, with that of his queen, extended on a sumptuous tomb—and the whole surrounded by a superbly-wrought brazen railing.
There is a sad dreariness in this magnificence, this strange mixture of tombs and trophies, these emblems of living and aspiring ambition, close beside mementos which show the dust and oblivion in which all must sooner or later terminate. Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former throng and pageant. ”

“ Hushed are the grandly speaking lips; Closed are the eyes in drear eclipse; And the sculptured limbs are deathly still, Responding not to the eager will, As we come Bearing the Century, cold and dumb! II.
Lo! we wait Knocking here at the sepulchre’s gate! Souls of the ages passed away, A mightier joins your ranks to-day; Open your doors and give him room, Buried Centuries, in your tomb! For calmly under this heavy pall Sleepeth the kingliest of ye all, While we wait At the sepulchre’s awful gate! [98] III.
Yet—pause here, Bending low o’er the narrow bier! ”

“ By the sea-coast there is a sepulchre of marble on which are engraved all manner of beasts and birds; an effigy is in the midst thereof, and all the writing is in ancient characters, which no one knows now. Men suppose that it is the sepulchre of a king who lived in early timesp.107 before the Deluge. ”

“ I can make thee a lamp of the sepulchre.”
“Content,” responded the Lamp. And the Magician made her one of those strange occult lamps which men find ever and anon when they unseal the tombs of ancient kings and wizards, sustaining without nutriment a perpetual flame. And he bore her to a sepulchre where a great king was lying embalmed and perfect in his golden raiment, and set her at the head of the corpse. And whether the poor fitful Firefly found at last rest in the grave, we may know when we come thither ourselves. ”

“ As far as my eye can tell, the distance between “Skull Hill” and this sepulchre is much the same as between Calvary and the sepulchre that tradition hallows. I send you a sketch that I made on the spot of Gordon’s “sepulchre,” to show you the universal plan of these burial-places. You will see three tombs (their lids are gone) in the inner chamber. At the Holy Sepulchre only Our Lord’s is preserved, tallying with the one I have marked with a cross ”

“ The sepulchre, for long an object of such great veneration, will remain in the open, exposed to the sight of the heavens, the Sun and the Moon. The holy place will be converted into a stable for a herd large and small, and used for profane purposes. Oh, what a calamitous affliction will pregnant women bear at this time. ”

“ Yet, although for reasons already given, I have little doubt that this was the spot of our Saviour’s interment, the assertion that this is the sepulchre itself, wants confirmation; and the marble coffin or sarcophagus, I cannot regard as any thing more than a mere representation of the grave, or the place where the body was deposited; and for this it is by no means happily chosen. This may be the sepulchre, cut on the outside into the form of a little chapel ”

“ Few Masons realize that this Holy Sepulchre, or tomb, is in reality negation and crystallization - matter that has sealed within itself the Spirit of Life which must remain in darkness until the growth of each individual being gives it walls of glowing gold and changes its stones into windows. ”

“ Through a range of sepulchral grots underneath, the humbler denizens of the tomb are deposited,—looking out on each successive generation that visits them, with the same face and features they wore centuries ago. Every plant and tree, that is consecrated to death, from the asphodel-flower to the mystic plantain, lends its sweetness or shadow to this place of tombs; and the only noise that disturbs its eternal calm, is the low humming sound of the priests at prayer, when a new inhabitant is added to the silent city. ”

“ Nor does it signifie much which way the Body be dissolv’d, in regard it comes to the same End without Embalming, and that such Tombs, how splendid soever, are but in effect Cenotaphs or empty Sepulchres, except that they are full of Stench and Rottenness: |Funeral-Expences insignificant without Embalming.| We must therefore look upon it as the most extravagant Vanity to erect Pyramids, Obelisks, Tombs, &c. for preserving an empty airy Name and meer Shadow, while we neglect to keep any Remains of that noble Workmanship the Body, whereby to distinguish Man from Earth and Dust. ”

“ And into this noisome sepulchre living men, women, and children went down to die; to pillow upon the rotten straw, the grave clothes vacated by preceding victims and festering with their fever. Here they lay as closely to each other as if crowded side by side on the bottom of one grave. Six persons had been found in this fetid sepulchre at one time, and with one only able to crawl to the door to ask for water. Removing a board from the entrance of this black hole of pestilence, we found it crammed with wan [8] victims of famine, ready and willing to perish. ”

“ And the spirit of the sepulchre, which all who came there must feel, was one unattainable in sunlit, sweet-smelling cemetery or cool cathedral crypt. It brought the living nearer to the dead; it left the dead more convincingly at peace and rest for ever. ”

“ The sepulchre has faithfully preserved what the memory of man has forgotten and what has been lost in scattered libraries. The tomb alone, opening its sombre lips, has replied to the questions of to-day; it knows what historians do not know ”

“ Priests and priestesses may also follow, unless the Pythian oracle forbids. The sepulchre shall be a vault built underground, which will last for ever, having couches of stone placed side by side; on one of these they shall lay the departed saint, and then cover the tomb with a mound, and plant trees on every side except one, where an opening shall be left for other interments. Every year there shall be games—musical, gymnastic, or equestrian, in honour of those who have passed every ordeal. ”

“ The Holy Sepulchre, the most sacred spot on earth, was in the hands of the heathens; it was despised and defiled—what greater thing could a man do than hasten to its [Pg 71] rescue and wrest it from the grasp of pagans, giants and sorcerers? In the fantastic imagination of the men of that period the Lord's sepulchre was nothing but the earthly realisation of their yearning for the Holy Grail. ”

“ Nothing could well be conceived more dreary, solemn, and sepulchral than that holy place: its distained and time-hallowed walls; the impenetrable mass of darkness that gathered into those recesses which the moonlight failed to reach; its antique and massive tombs, above which reclined the sculptured effigies of some departed patroness or abbess, who had exchanged a living grave for the Mansions of the Blest. ”

“ Then the King cried to his people that they should bring bars wherewith to loosen the doors of the sepulchre, and hasted with them to the place. But coming on their way to the body of Prince Polynices, they took it up, and washed it, and buried that which remained of it, and raised over the ashes a great mound of earth. And this being done, they drew near to the place of the sepulchre; and as they approached, the King heard within a very piteous voice, and knew it for the voice of his son. ”

“ Why we have lost the art of making a road—lost it with the world's greatest models under our very eye. Is it sepulchres of the dead? Why no Christian nation has ever erected a tomb, the sight of which does not set a scholar laughing. Do but think of the Mausoleum, and the Pyramids, and the monstrous sepulchres of the Indus and Ganges, which outside are mountains, and within [520] are mines of precious stones. ”

“ When they are thoroughly dried up, they put them into sepulchres which they make in their houses. In the other provinces, when a chief dies, they make a very deep sepulchre in the lofty parts of the mountains, and, after much lamentation, they put the body in it, wrapped in many rich cloths, with arms on one side and plenty of food on the other, great jars of wine, plumes, and gold ornaments. At his feet they bury some of his most beloved and beautiful women alive ”

“ However, his tomb is in a good state of preservation.
When one enters the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Sepulchre itself is the first thing he desires to see, and really is almost the first thing he does see. The next thing he has a strong yearning to see is the spot where the Saviour was crucified. But this they exhibit last. It is the crowning glory of the place. ”

“ But if the fossil memorials have been correctly interpreted—if we have here before us at the northern base of the Pyrenees a sepulchral vault with skeletons of human beings, consigned by friends and relatives to their last resting-place—if we have also at the portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it indications of viands destined for the use of the departed on their way to a land of spirits ”

“ The most important of these sepulchral monuments which has heretofore been discovered is described as a large mound of earth, formed in the shape of a dome, and constructed with evident design and considerable skill and neatness, considering the rude implements available for the work. The hollow whence the earth was taken is described as forming a well-defined circle round the tomb. ”

“ We passed this day two Indian sepulchres, on a point of rock, with the sparkling waters murmuring round it, and over-shadowed by birch and pine. I landed to examine them. The Indians cannot here bury their dead, there not being a sufficiency of earth to cover them from sight, but they lay the body, wrapped up carefully in bark, on the flat rock, and then cover it over with rocks and stones. This was the tomb of a woman and her child, and fragments of the ornaments and other things buried with them were still perceptible. ”

“ In some of these Etruscan sepulchres, the dead who had lain undisturbed perhaps for thirty centuries, were found still wearing almost the aspect of life, and still clothed in the dresses they had worn when living. The bodies—that crumbled on the first rude touch—were still decorated with these gold jewels of the tomb, massive in appearance but thin as gauze, and which were manufactured expressly to replace the more solid ones, which were in some cases removed after the ceremony of interment was over. ”