Sudden death

“ Sudden death, unconnected with outward and accidental causes, may occur in various ways. Very violent impressions on the feelings sometimes abruptly check the movements of the heart, and produce a mortal swoon. ”

“ Sudden death, is sudden glory. Methinks it is falling a sleep indeed, or rather a translation. But all this must be left to our heavenly Father. He knows what is best for us and others. Let it be our care to have all things ready. Let the house of our hearts, and our temporal affairs be put in order immediately, that we may have nothing to do but to obey the summons, though it should be at evening, cock-crowing, or in the morning. Physicians that are always attending on the dying, one would imagine should in a peculiar manner learn to die daily. May this be your daily employ! ”

“ Nor, on the other hand, if it were no accident, but one of his habitual transgressions, will it be the more habitual or the more a transgression, because some sudden calamity, surprising him, has caused this habitual transgression to be also a final one? Could the man have had any reason even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there would have been a new feature in his act of intemperance—a feature of presumption and irreverence, as in one that by possibility felt himself drawing near to the presence of God. ”

“ Sudden death there is still in the world, a bright adventure—that lightning yesterday might have killed all or any of us, but such death is a rare thing and a clean thing. There is none of the distressful bearing-down to death through want, anxiety, and illness ill-tended and misunderstood, that was the common experience in the past. ”

“ Thirdly, I will consider that all sudden, unexpected deaths that have happened, and daily do happen, are remembrancers of this truth given me by our Lord, that I may fear and prepare myself; for death that strikes every man may likewise strike me. And therefore when I see or hear it said that some die suddenly by the sword, some by the hands of their enemies, and others lying down to sleep in good health slept the last sleep of death, out of all this I should draw fear and warning, for that it may possibly happen that such a kind of sudden death shall light upon me. ”

“ What is to be thought of sudden death? It is remarkable that, in different conditions of society it has been variously regarded as the consummation of an earthly career most fervently to be desired, and, on the other hand, as that consummation which is most of all to be deprecated. ”

“ Among the things that are looked upon as more especially singular, though of frequent occurrence, is sudden death, a thing that, in fact, is the greatest happiness of life, and, as we will shew, only a natural occurrence. ”

“ A poultice of tea-leaves was tied over the left ear, as if for the relief of pain, and a post-mortem examination showed death to have resulted from an effusion of blood on the brain. A verdict of ‘sudden death from natural causes’ was returned. Thus closed a life which had not yet lasted fifty years, and held the promise of even more than it had already performed. ”

“ To me it spells the promise of my unspoken longings, my whispered prayers." Noting his hearer's growing bewilderment, he laid a hand familiarly upon her arm. "No matter how I tell you, it will be a blow, for death is always sudden; it always finds us unprepared." ”

“ The first is this: that many people are likely to exaggerate the horror of a sudden death, (I mean the objective horror to him who contemplates such a death, not the subjective horror to him who suffers it,) from the false disposition to lay a stress upon words or acts, simply because by an accident they have become words or acts. If a man dies, for instance, by some sudden death when he happens to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely regarded with peculiar horror ”

“ DEATH. In cases of sudden death interment should be deferred till signs of putrefaction begin to appear, especially when no gradation of disease has preceded, as in cases of apoplexy, hysterics, external injuries, drowning, suffocation, &c. No sooner has breathing apparently ceased, and the visage assumed a ghastly or a death-like hue, than the patient, after his eyes are closed, is too often hurried into a coffin, and the body, scarcely yet cold, is precipitated into the grave. So extremely fallacious are the signs of death that the semblance has been frequently mistaken for the reality. ”

“ It is to be observed that cases of sudden and unexplained death are, on the one hand, the cases most likely to furnish a large percentage of death-trance; and, on the other, are just those in which the anxiety of friends or the over-zealousness of a coroner is liable to lead to premature anatomization. Nor does it even follow that, because the body happily did not wake while being dissected, the spark of life was therefore extinct. ”

“ A progressive paralysis terminates in from four to five hours in death; the death is generally so gradual that it is difficult to know when the event occurs, but in one case there were violent movements of the body, and sudden death. ”

“ Others say that a sudden death is a bad death, as, for instance, to be killed in some disaster, or to be drowned, or to fall from a high building and be killed. And then some say that the worst thing is to die of some horrible disease, like the plague or some other contagious malady. ”

“ As a medical man, you will be able to enlighten me. Is death by hanging a painful death?’ She had put it so politely that I felt bound to answer her. ‘If the neck happens to be broken,’ I said, ‘hanging is a sudden death ”

“ The sudden and terrific appearance of Death, who, starting from behind a curtain, significantly stares at him through an eye-glass. One of the candles is thrown down, and a wine-glass jerked out of the hand of the suicide, who, from a broken sword and a hat with a cockade, seems intended for some ruined soldier of fashion. A female servant, alarmed at the report of the pistol, rushes into the apartment. Below, these verses:
Death smiles, and seems his dart to hide,
When he beholds the suicide.
2. The Good Man, Death, and the Doctor. A young clergyman reads prayers to the dying man ”

“ And a man with death's dews on his forehead, and blood on his coat and his cheek;
"I am dying — I feel death upon me — but yet, even yet, if God wills
I may crawl on my knees to the doctor's — yes, this is the last of the hills! ”

“ A shot, a cry, a struggle, and a fainting woman's kiss;
Life's blood let 'mid the grasses—and all a world was lost,
And no one may ever know how he paid the cost.
He is lost in the crowd of the dead, in the night-time of death,
A name on a stone left to tell that he ever drew breath.
So desperate body die there, with your soul's long release,
And, unhappy spirit, God grant you Eternity's peace! ”

“ The mad pulse beat back the baffled life with a low sob.
And so the stark and naked soul unfolded its wings to the dimness of Death!
A lonely, unknown Death.
A Death that left this dumb living body as his endless mark. ”

“ At last I could only imagine that the fever must have been on me before I started for my drive; that the sounds I heard from the inside of the hearse must have proceeded from men whom we flew by from time to time on the road; that my illness coming on had made me a little light-headed; that the roll in a ditch with a clattering, broken coffin, and summersaults innumerable down a bank with a dead body, had made me, in a moment of agonising terror, fancy that the corpse had spoken, and foolishly imagine that jaws stiff in death were trying to articulate. ”

“ Wave rolling after wave was all that answered back again.
But night and morn and noon they prayed—oh blessed voice of prayer!
That God would bring their trembling souls out of this great despair.
Again the fatal die was cast; a man of powerful frame
Slowly and with reluctant step to the dread summons came.
Large drops of anguish on his brow—his lips were white with fear—
Oh 'tis a dreadful death to die! Is there no succor near? ”

“ In a throat as dry as a wounded man’s, her breath soon failed, and her eyes dimmed like the eyes of the dying. Death seemed, indeed, to lurk between each laboured heart-beat and the next, and all the time she ran as, once started, those who are pursued must run until the end. ”

“ His eyes with the hollow sockets stare round with an empty chillness.
He bears a scythe in his hands. It is Death with his icy message.
Clutching the bulky book, the host is in peaceful slumber,
When Death draws near to him softly, and peacefully near him lingers. ”

“ CHAPTER VI Vengeance IT strikes a chill through me, even yet, to recall the awful horror of that instant. The fer-de-lance—death in a few heartbeats, and such a death!—a death that melts a man into an abomination! ”

“ Then, as well as he could, the dying man stretched forth his arms, wherein flesh and blood alike were lacking, and with all the strength remaining in his bones embraced her who was the cause of his death. ”

“ Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death
The second Death, that never dies,
That cannot die, when time is dead:
Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries,
Eternally uncomforted.
Dark Angel, with thine aching lust! ”

“ Does a dead Man talk and walk? I wish I may never meet with more frightful Ghosts than you are. Pa.Ay, indeed, you make a Jest of it; but for all that, you kill poor me, and more cruelly too, than if you stuck a Dagger in my Breast. For now I, poor Wretch as I am, die a lingering Death. Ma.Prithee tell me, how many Women with Child have miscarried at the Sight of thee? Pa.My Paleness shews I have no more Blood in my Body than a Ghost. ”

“ For how can they be after death if they be in death, especially when we do not even call them dying, as we call those in sleep, sleeping; and those in languor, languishing; and those in grief, grieving; and those in life, living? And yet the dead, until they rise again, are said to be in death, but cannot be called dying. ”

“ They are dying daily, and continually wasting: Destroyed from morning to evening. Death is still working in us, like a mole digging our grave at each remove, and we so continually lie exposed that we are killed all the day long. [3.] Their life is short, and in a little time they are cut off. It lasts perhaps but from morning to evening. ”

“ When wearied and wounded to death he sinks down there; once more is heard completed, as if 'twere ghostly tones from the far off unapproachable distance, that dream-like melody for the first time ringing out full and perfect in death, and the notes fade and die softly, as the life-blood ebbs away. ”

“ Death, which after the haemorrhage had appeared as the beautiful winged boy who is so easily mistaken for the god of love—Death, who had incited me to write saucy, defiant verses about him, now confronted me as a hollow-eyed, hideous skeleton. ”

“ Dead, and at full length he lay, enshrouded—the genius and the demon of the scene. Alas! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance distorted with the plague, and his eyes in which Death had but half extinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such interest in our merriment as the dead may take in the merriment of those who are to die. ”

“ We have sinned, we know it, and this place is death and Hell."
"Death comes," the voice pealed, "and death is not a dream or a forgetting. Death is real. But I, too, am real, and whom I will I save. I see the scheme of things, and in it no place for me, the brain and the body against me. ”

“ What sort of death would one meet with widely-opened eyes, parted lips, and brows bent as though to rally fast-flying courage? Not a peaceful death surely. I brought my black coat to my aid. "My dear lady, you must not think of such things. Death is but a sleep, you know. Why anticipate a nightmare?" ”

“ Death seemed reaching out its bony hands to clutch me by the throat. The next instant my blood froze with terror, for out of the night there came to me, lying there in the inky blackness of my room, a long drawn animal-like cry. ”

“ Each tree a flaming angel for a torch.
Oh! oh! the air is full of murder!—Not yet,
O Death, not yet! I am too young to die!
See, Heaven, my heart is beating still with blood.
When that the heart is bloodless, ’twill be time
To die!
Icelin.Come, father, come; why do you shriek
So much?
Dansberg. I shriek because I die.
Gorm. Beware! ”

“ Elsje and I had frequently spoken of dying, but only when a vigorous mood permitted us to do so without sadness or apprehension. For the worst thing about death is not the actual dying, but the breath of horror that it sometimes casts upon our sensibilities. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Into their grave, grew heavy, deep and still.
* * * * *
And so, ’tis said, if to that fairy thorn-tree
You dare to go, you see her ghost so lone,
She prays for love of her that you will aid her,
And give your soul to buy her back her own.
p. 95THE SUICIDE’S GRAVE This is the scene of a man’s despair, and a soul’s release
From the difficult traits of the flesh; so, it seeking peace,
A shot rang out in the night; death’s doors were wide;
And you stood alone, a stranger, and saw inside.
Coward flesh, brave soul, which was it? One feared the world,
The pity of men, or their scorn ”

“ The reasonableness of suicide in the first case is obvious, if Death is not annihilation. I should catch you up. In the second, all the Hereafters in the Universe would be no worse for me than Life in the dark, without you, here and now. ”