Somite

“ In another moment, the livid lips and sunken eye of the clay-cold corpse recall our thoughts to earth and to ourselves again. And while we think of mortality, sin, death, and the grave, we feel the prayer rise in our bosom, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!”
If there be a moment when Christ and salvation, death, judgment, heaven, and hell, appear more than ever to be momentous subjects of meditation, it is that which brings us to the side of a coffin containing the body of a departed believer. ”

“ On the other hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, when breathing forth supplications, as if in some representative character, for the whole human race prostrate before God, places such a death in the very van of horrors: "From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from SUDDEN DEATH—Good Lord, deliver us." Sudden death is here made to crown the climax in a grand ascent of calamities ”

“ On Easter Sunday the life-drama was as good as finished. For the Resurrection was shadowy and overcome by the shadow of death, the Ascension was scarce noticed, a mere confirmation of death.
What was the hope and the fulfilment? Nay, was it all only a useless after-death, a wan, bodiless after-death? Alas, and alas for the passion of the human heart, that must die so long before the body was dead.
For from the grave, after the passion and the trial of anguish, the body rose torn and chill and colourless. ”

“ Shall drop a tear and dwell upon the dead!
Poor wretched Outcast! I will weep for thee,
And sorrow for forlorn humanity.
Yes I will weep, but not that thou art come
To the stern Sabbath of the silent tomb:
For squalid Want, and the black scorpion Care,
Heart-withering fiends! shall never enter there.
I sorrow for the ills thy life has known
As thro' the world's long pilgrimage, alone,
Haunted by Poverty and woe-begone,
Unloved, unfriended, thou didst journey on:
Thy youth in ignorance and labour past,
And thine old age all barrenness and blast! ”

“ A death in the parish during the Christmas tyde, is a token of many deaths in the year. I remember such a circumstance being spoken of in a village of Somerset. Thirteen died in that year, a very unusual number. Very many attributed this great loss of life to the fact above stated.
4. When a corpse is laid out, a plate of salt is laid on the chest. Why, I know not.
5. None can die comfortably under the cross-beam of a house. I knew a man of whom it was said at his death, that after many hours hard dying, being removed from the position under the cross-beam, he departed peaceably. ”

“ Imagine to yourself a person, whose soul has just departed. Behold that pale corpse, which is still upon the bed, the head fallen upon the breast; the hair dishevelled and bathed in the sweat of death; the eyes sunken; the cheeks hollow; the face of ashy paleness; the tongue and the lips of a leaden hue; the body cold and heavy. Those who see it grow pale and tremble. How many there are who, upon seeing a relation or friend in this condition, have changed their life, and have left the world! But still more dreadful is it when the body begins to decay. ”

“ There are several passages in Scripture which speak of Death as sleep and which taken alone might suggest a long unconsciousness, a sort of Rip Van Winkle life, sleeping for thousands of years and waking up in a moment at the Judgment Day, feeling as if there had been no interval between. But a little thought will show it is a mere figure of speech taken from the sleeping appearance of the body. "The sleep of Death" is a very natural expression to use as one looks on the calm, peaceful face after life's fitful fever and the long pain and sickness of the death-bed. ”

“ When some mortal disease seizes him what a fright is he in! Terrors take hold of him as waters, as if he were surrounded by the flowing tides. He trembles to think of leaving this world, and much more of removing to another. This mingles sorrow and wrath with his sickness, as Solomon observes, Eccl. v. 17. These terrors put him either [1.] Into a silent and sullen despair; and then the tempest of God's wrath, the tempest of death, may be said to steal him away in the night, when no one is aware or takes any notice of it. ”

“ For near at hand there lay such countless woes, Such up-heaped horrors as no tongue can tell, Where helpless Pity's ineffectual throes Made that long shambles seem one ghastly hell, And all the broken, battered, blood-stained rows Of dead seem blessed in that they sleep so well ”

“ Without thine edict;—if before the time,
I count it gain. Who does not gain by death,
That lives, as I do, amid boundless woe?
Slight is the sorrow of such doom to me.
But had I suffered my own mother’s child,
Fallen in blood, to be without a grave,
That were indeed a sorrow. ”

“ Sleeping the sleep of the babe unborn—the pure and the perfect rest:
Aye, and is it not better than this fitful fever and pain?
Aye, and is it not better, if only the dead soul knew?
Over your grave the tempest may roar or the zephyr sigh;
Over your grave the blue-bells may blink or the snow-drifts whirl,—
Dead Ashes, what do you care?—they break not the sleep of the dead.
They that were friends may mourn, they that were friends may praise ”

“ They called me dead. My sisters and their companions rent their garments and covered their heads with ashes. Unconscious of their grief, I passed beyond the shadows of this world, beyond these voices and sorrows, into the pure light of a spiritual realm.
Dead, indeed! I lived most when I seemed to live least. Death is nothing but a name for a change of condition. ”

“ With what shapeless terror does the plague fill the feeble little camp! With what awful solemnity must the dead body invest the frail, small hut! What wailing cries take the place of all the cheerful sounds, and with what hurried dread is the corpse committed to an unremembered grave! ”

“ And the tempests hide their terrors in the calmest summer sky.
The cradle means the coffin, and the coffin means the grave;
The mother's song scarce hides the ~De Profundis~ of the priest;
You may cull the fairest roses any May-day ever gave,
But they wither while you wear them ere the ending of your feast.
So this dreary life is passing — and we move amid its maze,
And we grope along together, half in darkness, half in light;
And our hearts are often burdened by the mysteries of our ways,
Which are never all in shadow and are never wholly bright. ”

“ Or, it may be, with demons, who impair The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey In melancholy bosoms, such as were Of moody texture from their earliest day, And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay, Deeming themselves predestined to a doom Which is not of the pangs that pass away; Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb, The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom. ”

“ Hie thee back, thou find'st not here Corpse or coffin, grave or bier; The Dead Alive is gone and fled— Go thou, and join the Living Dead! 'The Living Dead, whose sober brow Oft shrouds such thoughts as thou hast now, Whose hearts within are seldom cured Of passions by their vows abjured ”

“ The mournful trees in the cemetery timidly creaked under the strokes of the wind and stretched their bare branches to the speechless clouds. The branches were now and then caught by the crosses, and then a dull, shuffling, awful sound passed over the churchyard....
The devil was whistling, and he thought:
“I wonder how the dead feel in such weather! No [259] doubt, the dampness goes down to them, and although they are secure against rheumatism ever since the day of their death, yet, I suppose, they do not feel comfortable. ”

“ And his frightful death. The forces of darkness
Covered with clouds the corpse of the Lord,
The shining radiance; the shadows darkened
55 Under the cover of clouds. Creation all wept,
The king’s fall bewailed. Christ was on the rood.
Finally from afar came faithful comrades
To the Savior’s side, and I saw it all.
Bitter the grief that I bore, but I bowed me low to their hands;
60 My travail was grievous and sore. They took then God Almighty,
From loathsome torment they lifted him. The warriors left me deserted,
To stand stained with blood. I was stricken and wounded with nails. ”

“ So are wont to be changed the faces of those who are dying.
Hot and red on his lips still burned the flush of the fever,
As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had besprinkled its portals,
That the Angel of Death might see the sign, and pass over. ”

“ Fulfils with awe the soul's despair unweeping:
Myriads of habitants are ever sleeping,
⁠Or dead, or fled from nameless pestilence!
Yet as in some necropolis you find
⁠Perchance one mourner to a thousand dead,
So there: worn faces that look deaf and blind
⁠Like tragic masks of stone.With weary tread,
Each wrapt in his own doom, they wander, wander,
Or sit foredone and desolately ponder
⁠Through sleepless hours with heavy drooping head. ”

“ Apocalypse Chapter 16
The seven vials are poured out. The plagues that ensue.
16:1. And I heard a great voice out of the temple, saying to the seven angels: Go and pour out the seven vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.
16:2. And the first went and poured out his vial upon the earth. And there fell a sore and grievous wound upon men who had the character of the beast: and upon them that adored the image thereof.
16:3. And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea. And there came blood as it were of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea. ”

“ Hence it is that nobody has depicted its contrasts in stronger relief, nor as visibly shown the decay and bloom of life at one time the dull flabby corpse, a genuine clinical mass, empty of blood and substance, livid, blue and mottled through suffering, a clot of blood on the mouth, the eye glassy and the feet and hands clayish, swollen and deformed because death seized them first ”

“ As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.” If, therefore, there is no resurrection, these dead are destined to sleep in unconsciousness forever. ”

“ Only the dead with hands uplifted, the dead in frozen rest, the dead with the smile of death, or the hate of death, or the terror of death written upon their faces, seemed to watch and to wait in the chamber of the sepulchre. ”

“ You and I and every man and woman in this world whom sin has known—alas! that there should be so many—have looked into his marble face, have felt the touch of his pitiless hands, and the cold despair of his unloving embrace. For there is Death spiritual and Death physical, and many of us who bear no traces of our past in the present of to-day, have fought our grim battle with the death—the—death——”
And then my father’s words died away upon his lips, and the whole congregation knew what had already thrown me into an agony of terror. ”

“ The sorcerer perceived the mourner, and approached the spot where he was lying.
“Wherefore, fond wretch, dost thou grieve thus, for what is now a hideous mass of mortality—mere bones, and nerves, and veins? Nations have fallen unlamented; even worlds themselves, long ere this globe of ours was created, have mouldered into nothing; nor hath any one wept over them: why then should thou indulge this vain affliction for a child of the dust—a being as frail as thyself, and like thee the creature but of a moment?” ”

“ One sees a ghastly figure of emaciation and decay; the eyes lying deep in their sockets, in a frightful stage of decomposition, and the whole frame exhibiting the power of death over the flesh of the Saints, but suggesting that, while patiently submitting to the worst that worms can do, it rests in hope and speaks out of the very grave—“I know that my Redeemer liveth.” ”

“ Tears, wailing, heart-rending death-scenes, the smell of carbolic acid, the cracking of the bones of those seized with cramp, the disgusting symptoms, the incessant tolling of the death-bell, the interment—no, the huddling away—of the dead, for in such cases there is no funeral pomp. All the order of life given up ”

“ I see them with their faces in the dust in the dark days of plague and sudden death, when cheeks are wan and lips are white for lack of bread. I hear their prayers, their sighs, their sobs. I see them kiss the unconscious lips as their hot tears fall on the pallid faces of the dead. ”

“ But it seems probable that in the minds of many suicides there has been, below any religious faith, or philosophical dogma, the deeply-rooted conviction that death was a sleep and permanent rest, an eternal oblivion in the grave, and they consequently came to regard it as the grand solatium for present heart-breaking grief of mind, or intolerable pain of body. ”

“ The saints of God, the prophets of God, have died in exile and in prison, have been tortured on the rack and broken on the wheel, and burnt to ashes at innumerable stakes; they have been destitute, afflicted, tormented, in their lives—stoned, beheaded, sawn asunder, in every form of hideous death; they have rotted in miry dungeons, have starved on desolate shores, have sighed out their souls into the agonising flame. ”

“ Thus, outcast from the abodes of men and the house of God, “the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean! Unclean! All the days wherein the plague shall be in him, he shall be defiled; he is unclean; he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall be his habitation.”—Lev. xiii, 45, 46. How dreadful the figure thus presented to the senses of Israel, of the loathsomeness of sin in God’s sight, and of its ruinous effects upon the sinner! ”