"Bier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flag for the soldier's bier Who dies that his land may live; O, banners, banners here, That he doubt not nor misgive! That he heed not from the tomb The evil days draw near When the nation, robed in gloom, With its faithless ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... about Siegfried. Turning to the horse, Grane, and putting her hand lovingly upon him, Bruennhilde took off his bridle. "Now, Siegfried, we join thee," she cried, and giving her great war-cry, Bruennhilde sprang upon the horse, and together they leaped upon the burning bier. Instantly the flames roared and flared high and seemed to seize upon the Hall of the Gibichungs, while all the company fled, crowding close together. When the fire was at its worst, the river Rhein overflowed its banks and rolled upon the land, ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... of an eye; 'tis the draft of a breath From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud, Oh, why should the spirit ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Nor was a wizard but who wasted skill Over his case, nor leach could heal his ill. Then he abandoned arms abandoned him Who gave and took salutes so fierce and grim; And now lies prostrate drooping haughty crest; For who lives longest him most ills molest. Then see him, here he lies on bier for bet;— Who will a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... end of their day's work. The body of the deceased followed, wrapped in a knotted shroud and partially covered with what looked like a coloured shawl, but was, I think, the flag from a saint's shrine. Four bearers carried the open bier, and following came men of high class on mules. The contrast between the living and the dead was accentuated by the freshness of the day, the life that thronged the streets, the absence of a coffin, the weird, sonorous chaunting of the mourners. The deceased must have been a man of mark, ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... entombed city the volcano from a dozen vents yet poured its steaming vapors in long, curling wreaths, that mounted thousands of feet aloft, like smoking incense from a gigantic censer above the bier ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... all the people to weep and lament this man, and to honor his dead body with the usual solemnities; that is, by rending their garments, and putting on sackcloth, and that things should be the habit in which they should go before the bier; after which he followed it himself, with the elders and those that were rulers, lamenting Abner, and by his tears demonstrating his good-will to him while he was alive, and his sorrow for him now he was dead, and that he was not taken off with his consent. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... distinguished by one of those tributes of delicate feeling, of good taste, and sincere respect which from time to time remind us of the virtues and dignity of the old French nobility. Following the Marshal's bier came the old Marquis de Montauran, the brother of him who, in the great rising of the Chouans in 1799, had been the foe, the luckless foe, of Hulot. That Marquis, killed by the balls of the "Blues," had confided the interests of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... song, impregnated with the smell of putrefying foliage and of sweat. From under the feet of the machilla carriers a cloud of mauve butterflies rose like flowers to strew themselves over her soft body. It was as if the machilla had suddenly become a bier. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... all its terrors. The decease of every individual is announced to the community by solemn music from a band of instruments. Outward appearances of mourning are discountenanced. The whole congregation follows the bier to the graveyard, (which is commonly laid out as a garden,) accompanied by a band, playing the tunes of well-known verses, which express the hopes of eternal life and resurrection; and the corpse is deposited in the simple grave during the funeral service. ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... executioner's assistants came to fetch him; he was placed lying on a bier and carried out in that position. On the way he met the criminal lieutenant of Orleans, who once more exhorted him to confess his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... high blank walls in a clearing of the forest, with perhaps a great column of evil-smelling smoke drifting in oily waves over the corner of the wall, telling of the sad rites that were going on within. I could fancy heavy-eyed mourners dragging a bier up to the gates, with a silent form lying upon it, waiting in pale dismay until the great doors were flung open by the sombre rough attendants of the place; until they could see the ugly enclosure, ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... bier knelt a winged figure, in act of stealing the rigid form, and to the awful yet strangely beautiful face of the messenger of gloom, she had given the streaming hair, the sunken, cavernous but wonderfully radiant eyes of Moritz Retzsch's ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... gods fly [thither]. Septet hath made Unas fly to heaven to be with his brethren the gods. Nut,[1] the Great Lady, hath unfolded her arms to Unas. She hath made them into two divine souls at the head of the Souls of Anu, under the head of Ra. She made them two weeping women when thou wast on thy bier (?). The throne of Unas is by thee, Ra, he yieldeth it not up to anyone else. Unas cometh forth into heaven by thee, Ra. The face of Unas is like the [faces of the] Hawks. The wings of Unas are like [those of] geese. The nails of Unas are like the claws of the god Tuf. There is no ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... it that, as we approach death, all the first fair feelings of young life come back to us mysteriously? Thus I have heard, or read, that in some country of old, children scattering flowers preceded a funeral bier." ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wall. Thrice Achilles shouted mightily, and thrice the horses of the Trojans shuddered for fear and turned back from the onslaught,—and thrice the men of Troy were confounded and shaken with terror. Then the Greeks drew the body of Patroclus out of the dust and the arrows, and laid him on a bier, and Achilles followed, weeping, for he had sent his friend with chariot and horses to the war; but home again he welcomed him never more. Then the sun ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... the vowel e, this is changed in the 2d and 3d singular to i (ie): cwean to say, stem cwi-; beran to bear, stem bier-. But this mutation[3] had taken place long before the period of O.E., and belongs to the Germanic languages in general. It is best, however, to class the change of e to i or ie with the changes due to umlaut, since it occurs consistently ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... birch canoe in capsized suspension between two trees; or a whole bunch of snow-shoes depending fruit-like beneath the fans of a spruce; or a tangle of steel traps thrust into the crevice of a tree-root; or a supply of pork and flour, swathed like an Egyptian mummy, occupying stately a high bier. These things we have passed by reverently, as symbols of a ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... savage beasts his mangled relics tear, Or screaming vultures scatter through the air: Nor could his mother funeral unguents shed; Nor wail'd his father o'er the untimely dead: Nor his sad consort, on the mournful bier, Seal'd his cold eyes, or ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... eye, Crutch'd on his staff, who trembles tottering by? As wrung from out the shatter'd heart, one groan Breaks the deep hush alone! Crush'd by the iron Fate, he seems to gather All life's last strength to stagger to the bier, And hearken——Do those cold lips murmur "Father?" The sharp rain, drizzling through that place of fear, Pierces the bones gnaw'd fleshless by despair, And the heart's horror ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... there was a cry through the house: "Your Aunt Anne is dead! Your Aunt Anne is dead!" and all the bells began to toll, and she was in the Chapel again and great crowds surged past her. Aunt Anne's bier borne on high above them all. She cried aloud, and woke to find Mr. Magnus standing at her side; one glance at him told her that he was in ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... of the foliage and garlands of flowers originally painted in bright colours upon it—in which they had sewed it securely, so that it looked not unlike an Egyptian mummy. A board resting on two cross pieces of wood served as a bier, and, the body being placed upon it, was carried by Herode, Blazius, Scapin and Leander. A large, black velvet cloak, adorned with spangles, which was used upon the stage by sovereign pontiffs or venerable necromancers, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... that comes anear, That lies on its moveless breast; The grumbling water shall be his bier, And never a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to a form of divination. On the first night after the death the nearest relation of the deceased sleeps with his head on the corpse, hoping thus to dream of the sorcerer who has done the mischief. Next day the corpse is placed on a sort of bier supported on men's shoulders. The friends of the deceased gather round and call out the names of suspected persons to see whether the corpse will give any sign. At last the next of kin calls out the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... churchyard in which the nettles grew, and where the parish graves were made, the clergyman had not arrived; and the clerk, who was sitting by the vestry-room fire, seemed to think it by no means improbable that it might be an hour or so, before he came. So, they put the bier on the brink of the grave; and the two mourners waited patiently in the damp clay, with a cold rain drizzling down, while the ragged boys whom the spectacle had attracted into the churchyard played a noisy game at hide-and-seek among the tombstones, or varied their amusements by jumping backwards ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... of victory, a grateful country mourned his loss. A bountiful provision was made for his family; a public funeral was awarded to his remains, and monuments in the principal cities of his native land were erected to his memory. A sorrowing nation lamented over his bier, and Britania, indeed, felt that old England's defender was numbered ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... "lych," derived from the Anglo-Saxon lie, or the German leiche, means a body, especially a dead body, a corpse. The term lych gate is the old name given to a churchyard gate with a porch or covering, under which a bier may be rested while the introductory portion of the Burial Service is being read. Such gates are quite frequently found in England, and ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... age there is, and who shall wish its end[dd]? Yet e'en on this her load misfortune flings, To press the weary minutes' flagging wings; New sorrow rises as the day returns, A sister sickens, or a daughter mourns. Now kindred merit fills the sable bier, Now lacerated friendship claims a tear; Year chases year, decay pursues decay, Still drops some joy from with'ring life away; New forms arise, and diff'rent views engage, Superfluous lags the vet'ran on the stage, Till pitying nature signs the last release, And bids afflicted ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... place by torch light. The corpse was carried with the feet foremost on an open bier covered with the richest cloth, and borne by the nearest relatives and friends. It was preceded by the image of the deceased, together with those of ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... came northward toward Londinium a funeral train, on the way to the cemeteries that lined the road outside the town, weaving in and out among the checkered shadows, stately and slow and solemn in its pomp of death. There was a bier, draped with a pall of sable velvet, and drawn by four white horses, pacing slow. Slaves and clients went on foot before and behind it; and beside it there walked a man, tall and of lordly bearing. His hand rested on the bier's edge; his face, bowed upon ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... same family had before been laid. The two bearers speedily unlocked the door, reverently conveyed the body of the child into the interior, and, unseen by any one, laid it uncovered in one of the open stone receptacles nearest the central well. In two minutes they reappeared with the empty bier and white cloth, and scarcely had they closed the door when a dozen vultures swooped down upon the body and were rapidly followed by others. In five minutes more we saw the satiated birds fly back and lazily settle down again upon the parapet. They had left nothing behind but a ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... along conversing in this way, when they saw descending a gap between two high mountains some twenty shepherds, all clad in sheepskins of black wool, and crowned with garlands which, as afterwards appeared, were, some of them of yew, some of cypress. Six of the number were carrying a bier covered with a great variety of flowers and branches, on seeing which one of the goatherds said, "Those who come there are the bearers of Chrysostom's body, and the foot of that mountain is the place where ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... say why this man has been brought," said the Hakim slowly, and as he looked down he saw the occupant of the bier start and tremble; but did not raise ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... methods have long been employed in the treatment of inflammatory conditions, it is only within comparatively recent years that their mode of action has been properly understood, and to August Bier belongs the credit of having put the treatment of inflammation on a scientific and rational basis. Recognising the "beneficent intention" of the inflammatory reaction, and the protective action of the leucocytosis ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... lost, and lone; And when with keener pangs we bleed to know That hands beloved have struck the deepest blow; That friends we deemed most true, and held most dear, Have stretched the pall of death o'er pleasure's bier; Repaid our trusting faith with serpent guile, Cursed with a kiss, and stabbed beneath a smile; What then remains for souls of tender mould? One last and silent refuge, calm and cold— A resting place for misery's ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... mind like theirs corrupted to its grave.[bh] But who hath seen me writhe, or heard me rave? 180 Perchance in such a cell we suffer more Than the wrecked sailor on his desert shore; The world is all before him—mine is here, Scarce twice the space they must accord my bier. What though he perish, he may lift his eye, And with a dying glance upbraid the sky; I will not raise my own in such reproof, Although 'tis clouded by ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... ludicrous to her. She could hardly restrain a smile of triumph, changing it into a sad smile of grief, in reply to her kinswoman's condolences. The coffin was already lying in state on the bier; it was covered with brocade and flowers. The princess, as kinswoman of the late general, bent low, and first laid on the dead body the wreath ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... of the bier there was a bench, and there I sat me down, and resting my elbows on my knees I took my dishevelled head between my frozen hands. My thoughts were all of her whose poor murdered clay was there encased above me. I reviewed, I think, each scene of my life where it had touched on hers; I evoked ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... Her sottish husband, who had married her principally for the sake of John Ferrier's property, did not affect any great grief at his bereavement; but his other wives mourned over her, and sat up with her the night before the burial, as is the Mormon custom. They were grouped round the bier in the early hours of the morning, when, to their inexpressible fear and astonishment, the door was flung open, and a savage-looking, weather-beaten man in tattered garments strode into the room. Without a glance or a word to the cowering women, he walked up ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... who, having heard of his father's death, came to join in the funeral solemnities. Richard followed the train until they arrived at the abbey. It was the Abbey Fontevraud, the ancient burial-place of the Norman princes. Arrived at the abbey, the body was laid out upon the bier, and the face was uncovered, in order that Richard might once more look upon his father's features; but the countenance was so distorted with the scowling expression of rage and resentment which it had worn during the sufferer's ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... stoops him o'er his father's shroud, his lips salute the bier; He communes with the corse aloud, as if ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... and died in three days thereafter. He returned home on March 20, 1579, to find himself poor. As he said, he could not "live to study," but had "to study to live." He became a practising lawyer, but he did not like the profession. He feared "the bar would be his bier;" it absorbed time which he thought should be dedicated to better ends. We think we find the expression of his heart in the lines of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... ance at London tower, "Where I was wont to be, "I never mair suld gang frae hame, "Till borne on a bier-tree." ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... we who loved him, what have we to lay For sign of worship on his warrior-bier? What homage, could his lips but speak to-day, Would he have ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... rescue! rescue! bear him hence Into the leaguer near; Pour balsam in his glorious wounds, And weep above his bier. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... new-comer was not a stranger for long, for the jester, surprised at the sudden silence, looking up, and perceiving a gentleman attired not altogether unlike himself, thought fit to come to life again, and, springing from his bier, rushed towards the stranger, embraced and kissed ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... which has drawn us together this morning, you met in your accustomed hall, and expressed the feelings which such an event might well inspire. You then adjourned to assist in performing the last solemn rites over the bier of your departed friend. Clad in mourning, you attended his remains from his residence to the steamer, and, embarking with them, transported them over the waters of that noble bay which our venerable friend had crossed so often, ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... opposition in smell between the incense with which the parties respectively fumigate the altars of the ancient house. I suppose there is a difference. Yesterday the parabaloni came to blows over a body they were out burying, and in the struggle the bier was knocked down, and the dead spilled out. The Greeks, being the most numerous, captured the labarum of the Latins, and washed it in the mud; yet the monogram on it was identical with that on their own. Still I suppose there was ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... uncovered heads, we behold the mass of flowers and wreaths, and our minds go back to Eighteen Hundred Eighty-five, when the body of the chief citizen of Paris lay in state at the Pantheon and five hundred thousand people passed by and laid the tribute of silence or of tears on his bier. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... superbly gilt, was girded to his side, as he used to wear it when in the field. Thus magnificently attired, the body was enclosed in a coffin which was covered with black velvet and decorated with a cross of white damask. It was then placed on a sumptuous bier in the centre of the great hall of the palace. Here the duchess made great lamentation over the body of her lord, in which she was joined by her train of damsels and attendants, as well as by the pages and esquires and ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... request made him the previous week by the Spanish ambassador. He felt as if that same voice came from the bier and begged him for one more hymn to the dead. In spite of his emotion, he offered to ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... with much hard force, scenes in the story of S. Zenobius, of Florence, of whom we read in chapter II. In one he restores life to the dead child in the midst of a Florentine crowd; in the other his bier, passing the Baptistery, reanimates the dead tree. Giotto's tower and the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio are to be seen on the left. A very different picture is the Cosimo Rosselli, No. 1280 his, a comely ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... to the remains of his late unhappy captive. The body was arrayed in royal robes, and laid on a bier; and was carried, by the nobles who had remained faithful to him during his imprisonment, into the city. It is uncertain where Montezuma ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... "Papoose on the old Squaw's Back" is a tiny star, Alcor, very close to the star Mizar which forms the bend in the handle of the Big Dipper. To see this tiny star is a test for eyesight. The Sioux Indians say that the Big Dipper is four warriors carrying a funeral bier, followed by a train of mourners. The second star in the train (or the star in the bend) is the widow of the slain brave, with her little child, or the Little Sister, weeping ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... is now a-dying! And if she goes, my tears will never stop; For as a player, I can't squeeze out one drop: I am undone, that's all—shall lose my bread— I'd rather, but that's nothing—lose my head. When the sweet maid is laid upon the bier, Shuter and I shall be chief mourners here. To her a mawkish drab of spurious breed, Who deals in sentimentals, will succeed! Poor Ned and I are dead to all intents; We can as soon speak Greek as sentiments! Both nervous grown, to keep our ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... handkerchief wrapped under his chin, and fastened over his head, and then all the bystanders after him repeated aloud the profession of the true faith. By this time some of his relatives had gathered round him, and had begun the usual lamentations, when the bier was brought, and the dead ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... hours: the expiring year Already feels old Winter's icy breath; As with cold hands, he scatters on her bier The faded glories of her Autumn wreath. As fleetly as the Summer's sunshine past, The Winter's snow must melt; and the young Spring, Strewing the earth with flowers, will come at last, And in her train the hour of parting bring. But, ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... which the captain entered, with ten sailors, six musicians, and myself. We found horses and mules waiting for us on the shore, and we soon reached the house of death, before which a great many tar barrels were burning, and in the centre stood a bier, upon which the coffin was placed. A number of mourners, among whom were twelve or fifteen ladies, now greeted us. We returned their salutations and entered the brilliantly lighted saloon, hung with black, where sat the mother and daughter of the dead man, dressed in the deepest mourning. ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... anchored, Eliduc conceived the idea of taking Guillardun, whom he regarded as dead, to a certain chapel in a great forest quite near his own home. Setting her body before him on his palfrey, he soon came to the little shrine, and making a bier of the altar laid Guillardun upon it. He then betook him to his own house, but the next morning returned to the chapel in the forest. Mourning over the body of his lady-love, he was surprised to observe that the colour still remained in her cheeks and lips. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... time Morgiana had warmed some water to wash the body, Ali Baba came with incense to embalm it, after which it was sewn up in a winding sheet. Not long after, the joiner, according to Ali Baba's orders, brought the bier, which Morgiana received at the door, and helped Ali Baba to put the body into it; when she went to the mosque to inform the imaum that they were ready. The people of the mosque, whose business it was to wash the dead, offered to perform their ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... and search his wounds and Accolon's both; but Sir Accolon died within four days, for he had bled so much blood that he might not live, but King Arthur was well recovered. So when Accolon was dead he let send him on an horse-bier with six knights unto Camelot, and said: Bear him to my sister Morgan le Fay, and say that I send her him to a present, and tell her I have my sword Excalibur and the scabbard; so they departed ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... looked after him a few moments in bewilderment, then laid the corpse upon two wheels, which they placed on poles, and bore him off on this improvised bier. This time the ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... ceremony. He thought of it while the notes of the organ swelled forth, while the blue flames of the burning incense danced, and while the butts of the soldiers' muskets sounded from time to time on the flagstones, as the men stood around the bier and followed the orders of the officer ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... exhibiting it, and placing the body on the litter on which he had been brought to the tent, they carried it to the banyan tree, where the rest of their tribe, with the horrible devil-dancers, were still assembled. Mr Fordyce, Nowell, and I followed. They halted with the bier, and one of them stepping forward, addressed the tribe, pointing occasionally with great significance at the body. The countenances of many of them exhibited great astonishment; still more so, when six of those who had been listening to the ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean-storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm, With banquet-song, and dance, and wine: And thou art terrible—the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier; And all we know, or dream, or ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... monks might march with bier and shroud Down streets plague-spotted toward some cleansing pyre;— Yet, lo! strange lilies bloomed in lightless cells, And passionate spirits burst their clayey shells And sang the stricken hope that bleeds and clings: ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... steered his steamer Many a year through the Sound of Mull, He that was never a Celtic dreamer, But a captain of captains masterful: O Death, thou madest the world more dull When you nailed him down in his narrow bier, And sent his ghost into Charon's hull; But where are ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... is the wailing; then with many a tear They lay him on the bed, and o'er him throw His purple robes. These lift the massive bier; Those, as of yore—sad ministry of woe— With eyes averted, hold the torch below. Oil, spice and viands, in promiscuous heap, They pour and pile upon the fire; and now, The embers crumbling and the flames asleep, With draughts of ruddy wine ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... died, his coffin is said to have taken up a position, suspended in the air, about three feet from the ground. Whereupon his son-in-law, falling on his knees beside the bier, reminded the departed spirit of the great principles of which he had been such a brilliant exponent in life—and the coffin ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... her return, warmed some water to wash the body, and at the same time Ali Baba perfumed it with incense, and wrapped it in the burying clothes with the accustomed ceremonies. Not long after the proper officer brought the bier, and when the attendants of the mosque, whose business it was to wash the dead, offered to perform their duty, she told them it was done already. Shortly after this the imaun and the other ministers of the mosque ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... his jewels and burg. Let us set out in haste now, the second time to see and search this store of treasure, these wall-hid wonders, — the way I show you, — where, gathered near, ye may gaze your fill at broad-gold and rings. Let the bier, soon made, be all in order when out we come, our king and captain to carry thither — man beloved — where long he shall bide safe in the shelter of sovran God." Then the bairn of Weohstan bade command, hardy chief, to heroes many that owned their homesteads, hither to bring firewood from ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... set the country free, we'll place Our fresh victorious wreaths upon his bier. Oh, my dear friends, 'tis not your cause alone!— I with the tyrants have a cause to fight, That more concerns myself. My Bertha's gone, Has disappear'd,—- been carried off by stealth,— Stolen from amongst us by their ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... yet who was the first to trace, as with an invisible hand, a sketch of the nocturnal funeral train, proved vain. Each one's fancy silently carried out the picture further; they saw the body itself on the stretcher; the bier was depicted with distinctness as if it were a concrete token of the mysterious deed; a carpenter even drew it in chalk in bold strokes on the wall of the court-house. A woman who suffered from ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... seemed possible that the body of Le Maitre might again be seen. They looked and looked until they were tired with looking. The body had, no doubt, floated up under some cake of ice, and from thence would speedily sink to a bier of sand at the bottom ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... The bier will be received by the troops formed in line presenting their arms and the officers, drums, and colors saluting. After this the procession will begin, the troops marching by platoons in inverted order and with arms reversed to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... experiences connected with his last evening's adventure which were working very strongly in his mind. It was borne in upon him irresistibly that he had been dead since he had seen Helen,—as dead as the son of the Widow of Nain before the bier was touched and he sat up and began to speak. There was an interval between two conscious moments which appeared to him like a temporary annihilation, and the thoughts it suggested were ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... upstarted sheer As phantom from the pane thereby A corpse-like countenance, with eye That iced me by its baleful peer - Silent, as from a bier . . . ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... natural world, and to see in them all, signs and tokens that into every corner and far-off region of the universe His loving hand reaches, and His sustaining power goes forth. Into what province of nature did He not go? He claimed to be the Lord of life by the side of the boy's bier at the gate of Nain, in the chamber of the daughter of Jairus, by the grave of Lazarus. He asserted for Himself authority over all the powers and functions of our bodily life, when He gave eyes to the blind, hearing to the deaf, feet to the lame. He showed that He was Lord over the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... when they beheld that gracious lady stiff in death. And of a truth, if her corpse was actually exposed in the chapel of the Eremitani, as we have some right to assume, the spectacle must have been impressive. Those grim gaunt frescoes of Mantegna looked down on her as she lay stretched upon her bier, solemn and calm, and, but for pallor, beautiful as though in life. No wonder that the folk forgot her first husband's murder, her less than comely marriage to the second. It was enough for them that this flower of surpassing loveliness had been cropped by villains ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... When he returned, I asked him to sing to me what he had sung in the church, and he at once complied, singing the "Gloria Patri" in a very clear and sweet voice. After mass was over, the church bell began to toll and an empty lighted bier came out of the church. It was preceded by three acolytes bearing a long cross and two large lighted candlesticks, and followed by a crowd of people. They were no doubt going to call at a house for the ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... was performed after a simple fashion. His grave was prepared in a garden at Secundra, about four miles from Agra. The body was placed upon a bier. Selim and his three sons carried it out of the fortress. The young princes, assisted by the officers of the imperial household, carried it to Secundra. Seven days were spent in mourning over the grave. Provisions and sweetmeats were distributed among the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white; When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer's green all girded up in sheaves, Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard, Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake And die as fast as they see others grow; And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence Save breed, to brave him ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... middle of the room, on a funeral bier, lighted by six large wax tapers, which cast a melancholy light around, lay the body of the dead girl. The window admitted the morning light; and the autumn wind, tearing the dead leaves from the trees in the garden, scattered them over the inanimate form of Berta, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... and the multitude afterwards demolished the ornaments, images, and altarpieces as well as the monasteries and religious houses in Perth—an example quickly followed by others throughout the country. In Scott's novel, The Fair Maid of Perth, the church is the scene of the trial by bier-right to discover the slayer ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... kind domestic tear Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier; By foreign hands ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... of the moon. He will receive special requests not to harrow up the feelings he only meant to bind up in balm. He may be informed of an aversion, more or less extensive, to naming the grave or coffin and what it contains, though he only puts one foot by pall or bier to plant the other in paradise. If he turn the everlasting verities he is intrusted with to events transpiring on the public stage, though he never sided with any party in his life, and has no more committed himself to men than did his Master, some will be grieved ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Her father an' her brothers dear Gard make to her a bier; The tae half was o' guid red gold, ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... Rough was the road toward which it tended and gloomy the valley with gaping tombs. And through this dark valley did the sad note of the funeral dirge sound and with great sobbing and wailing did the mourners march beside the bier whereon lay the dead son of the widow. Thus did the march of Life and the march of Death make toward each other and the way was wide enough but for one of them to pass. On, on they marched, the one passing to the hilltop and blue sky, the other to the bat-ridden place of corruption. ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... up the bier, and all went forth, and down the hill toward the fen. They laid the corpse within the barge, and ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... After this, they betook themselves to prepare for the king's funeral; and Archelaus omitted nothing of magnificence therein, but brought out all the royal ornaments to augment the pomp of the deceased. There was a bier all of gold, embroidered with precious stones, and a purple bed of various contexture, with the dead body upon it, covered with purple; and a diadem was put upon his head, and a crown of gold above it, and a sceptre in his right hand; and near to the bier ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... death of his only son, Casimir. This was the third anniversary. At the funeral feast, Grazian had informed his good friends, boon companions, clergy, scholars, singers, and buffoons, that every year this festival of mourning would be celebrated in Mitosin Castle, just as when the bier still stood in the hall, and the comrades came one by one to offer the dead a beaker and then drink the same to his happy resurrection; for mourning mingles in Hungary's rejoicings, so ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... sadness with the Cowslip is copied by Mrs. Hemans, who speaks of "Pale Cowslips, meet for maiden's early bier;" but these are exceptions. All the other poets who have written of the Cowslip (and they are very numerous) tell of its joyousness, and brightness, and tender beauty, and its "bland, yet ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... falls back. Astonishment, awe. This coarse Dutchman has suppressed the incident of the bystanders holding their nose, to which the Giottesques clung desperately. This is not a moment to think of stenches or infection. Entombment: Night. The platform below the cross. A bier, empty, spread with a winding-sheet, an old man arranging it at the head. The dead Saviour being slipped down from the cross on a sheet, two men on a ladder letting the body down, others below receiving ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... violent effort she recovered herself. But the firm step, the fearless, hopeful face with which she had approached the coffin of her dead lover were very different from the blind manner in which she stumbled back to his bier, and the hand which a second time raised the lantern trembled so that its wavering light shed an added weirdness on the still face, so strange to her eyes, and stranger ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... in my childhood, was the funeral of General Ashley, one of our townsmen, who had served as colonel, I think, in the War of the Revolution. I was then in my sixth year. It was a military funeral; and the procession, for a long distance, filled the wide street. The music, the solemn march, the bier borne in the midst, the crowd! It seemed to me as if the whole world was at a funeral. The remains of Bonaparte borne to the Invalides amidst the crowds of Paris could not, [14] I suppose, at a ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... more than mortal swiftness, I ran down The sleepy sea-bank, till I came upon The rear of a procession, curving round The silver-sheeted bay: in front of which Six stately virgins, all in white, upbare A broad earth-sweeping pall of whitest lawn, Wreathed round the bier with garlands: in the distance, From out the yellow woods, upon the hill, Look'd forth the summit and the pinnacles Of a grey steeple. All the pageantry, Save those six virgins which upheld the bier, Were stoled from head to foot in flowing black; One walk'd abreast with me, and veiled his brow, ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... drop a tear O'er the beauteous Hero's bier! Brave youth, and comely 'bove compare, All golden shone his burnish'd hair; Valour and smiling courtesy Play'd in the sun-beams of his eye. Clos'd are those eyes that shone so fair, And stain'd with blood his yellow hair. Scottish ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to faint, like Esther before Ahasuerus, tells the king her woes. She had five brothers, Renard has devoured every one; she had five sisters, but "only one has Renard spared; all the rest have passed through his jaws. And you, who lie there on your bier, my sweet sister, my dear friend, how plump and tender you were! What will become of your poor unfortunate sister?"[209] She is very near adding in Racine's words: "Mes filles, soutenez votre reine ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... deep pits, sunk for mining purposes, which are scattered over the Bar in almost every direction. I rose quietly and looked from the window. About a dozen persons were carrying an unpainted coffin, without pall or bier (the place of the latter being supplied by ropes), up the steep hill which rises behind the Empire, on the top of which is situated the burial-ground of Rich Bar. The bearers were all neatly and cleanly dressed in their miner's costume, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... the lord of the men who are raised up; [the lord] who cometh forth from out of the darkness, and whose forms of existence are of the house wherein are the dead. Hail, ye two hawks who are perched upon your resting-places, who hearken unto the things which are said by him, who guide the bier to the hidden place, who lead along Ra, and who follow [him] into the uppermost place of the shrine which is in the celestial heights! [Hail,] lord of the shrine which standeth in the middle of the earth. He is I, and I am he, and Ptah hath covered his sky with crystal. [Hail] Ra, ...
— Egyptian Literature
... became prodigious, and it required an effort to get the mangled corpse upon this funeral bier; but it was then a shout from the mob that rent the air announced, both the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... direction of McElvina the wounded English were carried up by their former antagonists to the small town at the foot of the castle, where surgical assistance was to be obtained. Seymour was placed on a sort of bier that had been constructed for him, Emily and her companions riding by his side; and the cavalcade wound up the hill, the rear brought up by Mr Hardsett and the remainder of the English crew. In two hours all were at their respective destinations; ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... were once at London Tower, Where I was wont to be I never mair should gang frae hame, Till borne on a bier-tree ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... school-children shed tears for Bin- Khakan. Then his son Nur al-Din Ali arose and made ready his funeral, and the Emirs and Wazirs and high Officers of State and city-notables were present, amongst them the Wazir al-Mu'in bin Sawi. And as the bier went forth from the house some one in the crowd of mourners began to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... said to him, "O dervish, whither are you going? return, or you must perish miserably." He did not heed what he said, but entered the desert on foot and proceeded. On our reaching the palm plantation of Mahmud, fate overtook the rich man, and he died. The dervish went up to his bier and said, "I did not perish amidst hardship on foot, and you expired on a camel's back." A person sat all night weeping by the side of a sick friend. Next day he died, and the invalid recovered!—Yes! many ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... kindly kneeling, May I beg a votive tear? Woman, with her pure appealing, Is my angel at the bier. Let me have but one such linger, Praying Christ to help and save, Let me have but one dear finger Place ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... leave money enough to pay for his funeral. Juste and I had great difficulty in saving him from the ignominy of a pauper's bier, and we alone followed the coffin of Z. Marcas, which was dropped into the common grave ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... awaited the body, and covered the coffin with their laurels. The ceremony was at an end. The torches were extinguished; the crowd dispersed. But, by the light of two candles still burning on the altar, might be seen the form of a small, now middle-aged woman who had flung herself upon the bier, whilst a pale young man knelt ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... who beside an infant's bier Long since resigned all hope to hear The sacred name of "Mother" bless Her childlessness, Now from a people's sole acclaim Receives the heart-vibrating name, And "Mother, Mother, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... had forbidden, at his court To speak to me of anything unpleasant. "Yea, die!" said Channa, "Look around and see!" Along the road a funeral procession Moved slowly, solemnly and mournfully And on the bier a corpse, ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... was drawn closer to the king who wept bitterly at the news of his father's death though it gave him a crown, whose fiercest burst of vengeance was called out by an insult to his mother, whose crosses rose as memorials of his love and sorrow at every spot where his wife's bier rested. "I loved her tenderly in her lifetime," wrote Edward to Eleanor's friend, the Abbot of Cluny; "I do not cease to love her now she is dead." And as it was with mother and wife, so it was with his people at large. All the self-concentrated ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... in various parts of the kingdom, but is now almost totally disused; when unmarried women died, they were usually attended to the grave by the companions of their early years, who, in performing the last sad offices of friendship, accompanied the bier of the deceased with garlands tastefully composed of wreaths of flowers and every emblem of youth, purity, and loveliness, that imagination could suggest. When the body was interred, the garlands were borne into the church, and hung up in a conspicuous station, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... will hear the song of the cloister robbery; of Herr Carl who was sick to death; when the young nun entered the corpse chamber, sat down by his feet and whispered how sincerely she had loved him, and the knight rose from his bier and bore her away to marriage and pleasure in Copenhagen. And all the nuns of the cloister sang: "Christ grant that such an angel were to come, and take ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... relics, cadaver; carcass; mummy. Associated words: cadaverous, cadaveric, necrophilism, necrophilous, carrion, necrophobia, necrogenic, necrogenous, necrotomy, necropsy, coffin, bier, catafalque, vespillo, cremate, cremation, crematory, crematorium, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... die with us, the whole band of elegiac poets raise the dismal chorus, adorn his herse with all the paltry escutcheons of flattery, rise into bombast, paint him at the head of his thundering legions, or reining Pegasus in his most rapid career; they are sure to strew cypress enough upon the bier, dress up all the muses in mourning, and look themselves every whit as dismal and sorrowful as an undertaker's shop.' He returned to the subject in a 'Chinese Letter' of March 4, 1761, in the 'Public Ledger' (afterwards Letter ciii of 'The Citizen of the World', 1762, ii. 162-5), which contains ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Church of St. Denis. While the general form of the monument is much like that of the Visconti in the Certosa at Pavia, the figures of the dead couple are quite different from the Italian manner. Below on a bier the two nude bodies are stretched in all the realism possible, and the heads are noble and touching in expression. Above, on the upper part of the monument, where in Italy the patron saint or some other ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... "highly esteemed" in country papers? In small places, doubtless, death wears for the community a more tragic mein than in cities, where it is more frequent and where we knew not him that lies on his bier next door but one away. In the country places this man who is now no longer upright and quick was a neighbour to all. And the provincial writer of obituaries follows a high authority, another rustic poet, deathless and known throughout the world, who sang of his Hoosier ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... in state at his house above the harbour where we landed, and we were invited to assist at the obsequies. His viscera were removed, and his remains, properly speaking, were laid on an elegant palanquin or hanging bier, highly perfumed; around which, and through the apartment, odorous oils were burning. Several of his old friends came to see him, and complimented him highly on the state of his looks and his good condition in various respects. They presented him with numerous and tasteful gifts, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... if e'er Thou shouldst press the soldier's bier, And the muffled drum should beat To the tread of mournful feet, Then this crimson flag shall be Martial cloak and shroud ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... thing that he notices is the dream of a servant of Ratleig, the notary, who, being set to watch the holy relics in the church after vespers, went to sleep and, during his slumbers, had a vision of two pigeons, one white and one gray and white, which came and sat upon the bier over the relics; while, at the same time, a voice ordered the man to tell his master that the holy martyrs had chosen another resting-place and desired to be transported ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... empire has been acquired by men who knew their duty and who had the courage to do it, who in the hour of conflict had the fear of dishonor always present to them.'" With the solemnity of the chant the young voice went on while the flag-covered casket was lifted from car to bier. "'For the whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Death's relentless claim We read thy mercy by its sterner name; In the bright flower that decks the solemn bier, We see thy glory in its narrowed sphere; In the deep lessons that affliction draws, We trace the curves of thy encircling laws; In the long sigh that sets our spirits free, We own the love that calls ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of figures in brown burnouses marched quickly, with a sharp rustling of many slippered feet moving in unison, and golden spears of rain seemed to pierce the white turbans of the men who carried the bier. As they marched, fifty voices rose and fell wildly in a stirring chant, exciting and terrible as the beat-beat of a tom-tom, sometimes a shout of barbaric triumph, sometimes a mourning wail. Then, abruptly, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... bowed their heads reverently, but the soldiers in line, with guns reversed, stood erect and motionless as figures in stone, while the bier of the dead was being carried through open ranks to the waiting caisson. The coffin was covered with a flag, and upon it lay his chapeau, gauntlets, sash, and sword. His boots, with their toes reversed, hung over the saddle of a riderless horse, led behind the caisson. The solemn tones of fife ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... neighbors were hastily collected, and the ordinary rites of sepulture were now about to be paid to the deceased. It was the approach of this humble procession that arrested the movements of the trooper and his comrade. Four men supported the body on a rude bier; and four others walked in advance, ready to relieve their friends from their burden. The peddler walked next the coffin, and by his side moved Katy Haynes, with a most determined aspect of woe, and next to the mourners came Mr. Wharton and the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... De Ramesay and the other officers of the garrison following to their resting-place the lifeless remains of their illustrious commander-in-chief. No martial pomp was displayed around that humble bier, but the hero who had afforded at his dying hour the sublime spectacle of a Christian yielding up his soul to God in the most admirable sentiments of faith and resignation, was not laid in unconsecrated ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... acquainted she had been made ere this, When to her son, her first-born, she gave the farewell kiss, And when afar she hastened beside her mother's bed, It followed all her faring with warning fraught and dread; It filled her with foreboding when standing by the bier: More sheaves to gather hopeth the harvester austere. So soon she saw her husband, that man of strength, succumb, She said with sorrow stricken: I knew that it would come!" She thought that he was chosen by God from earth to go, Would check, her hands upthrusting, ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... sought all the powerful men, kings and earls, and the richest barons, who in the fight were slain, and deprived of life-day; he caused them to be buried with great pomp. But he caused three kings to bear Luces the emperor, and caused a bier to be made, rich and exceeding lofty; and caused them soon to be sent to Rome. And greeted all the Rome-people with a great taunt, and said that he sent them the tribute of his land, and eft would also send ...
— Brut • Layamon
... raise or to bear up. Barm is a something borne up; and thus there is much more real relation than is commonly supposed by those who make puns, between the beer which a man takes down his throat and the bier upon which that process, if carried to excess, generally lands him, for they are both derived from the root signifying bearing up; the one thing is borne upon men's shoulders, and the other is the fermented liquid ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... of Henning and the Cock.] Suddenly, however, Henning the cock appeared, followed by his two sons, Kryant and Kantart, bearing the mangled remains of a hen upon a bier. In broken accents the bereaved father related how happily he had dwelt in a convent henyard, with the ten sons and fourteen daughters which his excellent consort had hatched and brought up in a single summer. His only anxiety had been caused by the constant prowling of Reynard, ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... longer stay was made. The station house and platform and the street behind were blocked with men who had gathered in from the lumber camps and from down the line. One of their number came up, bearing a large wreath of the costliest flowers brought from the far south, and laid it on the bier. The messenger stood there a moment and then said, hesitatingly, "The men would like to see him again, if ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... When the dead man is praised on his journey—"Bear, bear him along, With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm seeds not here To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier. Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!"—And then, the glad 55 chaunt Of the marriage—first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.—And then, the great march Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an arch Naught can ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Ursula herself is being shot by Julian, who is not more than six feet distant; but she meets her fate with a composure as perfect as if instead of the impending arrow it was a benediction. On the right is her bier, under a very pretty canopy. Wild ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... prevailing custom, and to show that he had not been murdered, the corpse was placed in the doorway. A small coffin of cedar-wood, painted red and black, stood on a bier, and showed the dead child dressed in a white shroud. He had a garland on his head, woven of the plant of death, the strong-scented Apium or celery. In his mouth he had an obol as ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... zwar recht verwassert aber keineswegs abstossend schlecht schmeckt, ist den Bube gewohnlich nur eine Delikatesse welche mit Andacht schluckweise genossen wird. Wenn ein Arbeiter bei uns einen Schluck Branntwein oder ein Glas Bier geniesst um sich zu starken, so findet das Jeder in der Ordnung; der Bube jedoch, welcher splitternackt tagelang in feuchten Bergwaldern umher klettern muss, soll beliebe nichts als Wasser trinken!" Eine Africanische Tropen. insel Fernando Poo, Dr. Oscar Baumann, Edward Holzer, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... family, and one from which the faithful wife scarcely recovered. The son at Harvard felt his loss greatly, and it was some time before he felt able to resume his studies. The elder Roosevelt's work as a philanthropist was well known, and many gathered at his bier to do him honor, while the public journals were filled with eulogies of the man. The poor mourned bitterly that he was gone, and even the newsboys were filled with regret over his taking away. In speaking of his parent, President Roosevelt ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... forever lov'd, for ever dear, What fruitless tears have wash'd thy honour'd bier; What sighs re-echoed to thy parting breath, Whilst thou wert struggling in the pangs of death. Could tears have turn'd the tyrant in his course, Could sighs have check'd his dart's relentless force; Could youth and virtue claim a short delay, Or beauty charm ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... of the spirit weighed heavily upon him. He seemed to see upon that naked bed the wasted, fever-stricken body of the dearest friend he had ever known. It was as though Ferriss were lying in state there, with black draperies hung about the bier and candles burning at the head and foot. Death had been in that room. Empty though it was, a certain religious solemnity, almost a certain awe, seemed to bear down upon the senses. Before he knew it Bennett found himself kneeling at the denuded bed, his face buried, his ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... mother, Gertrude Jordan was nine years old. She had crept into the death chamber and sat by the bier for three hours. Perhaps her seclusion from the world and association with people dated from that hour. As she was leaving the death room, the clock on the wall struck, and a cock ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... drinking it she should appear cold and lifeless; and when the bridegroom came to fetch her in the morning, he would find her to appearance dead; that then she would be borne, as the manner in that country was, uncovered on a bier, to be buried in the family vault; that if she could put off womanish fear, and consent to this terrible trial, in forty-two hours after swallowing the liquid (such was its certain operation) she would be sure to awake, as from ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... aught foul mean seam moan knot rap bee wrap not loan told cite hair seed night knit made peace in waist bread climb heard sent sun some air tares rain way wait threw fir hart pause would pear fair mane lead meat rest scent bough reign scene sail bier pray right toe yew sale prey rite rough tow steal done bare their creek soul draught four base beet heel but steaks coarse choir cord chaste boar butt stake waive choose stayed cast maze ween hour birth horde ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... Francesco di Marco, the creator and founder of that holy place. In the Pieve of the said township, on a little panel over the side-door as one ascends the steps, he painted the Death of S. Bernard, by the touch of whose bier many cripples are being restored to health. In this picture are friars bewailing the death of their master, and it is a marvellous thing to see the beautiful expression of the sadness of lamentation in the heads, counterfeited with great art and resemblance ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... two rails from a neighboring fence, and formed a bier by laying across some boards from the bottom of the boat. And thus we bore Zenobia homeward. Six hours before, how beautiful! At midnight, what a horror! A reflection occurs to me that will show ludicrously, I doubt not, on my page, but must ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... eulogy, or lamentation, whichever it might be called, and gave vent to her emotions in such language as was suggested by her feelings and the occasion. At intervals the speaker was interrupted by general and loud bursts of sorrow, during which the girls around the bier of Cora plucked the plants and flowers blindly from her body, as if bewildered with grief. But, in the milder moments of their plaint, these emblems of purity and sweetness were cast back to their places, with every sign of tenderness and regret. Though rendered less connected ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... bearers of the dead must approach within thirty feet of it—they turned and went back to one of the prayer-houses within the gates, to pray for the spirit of their dead. The bearers unlocked the Tower's sole door and disappeared from view within. In a little while they came out bringing the bier and the white covering-cloth, and locked the door again. Then the ring of vultures rose, flapping their wings, and swooped down into the Tower to devour the body. Nothing was left of it but a clean-picked skeleton when they flocked-out again ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... men—one of them the landlord of the inn. They had formed a sort of rude bier of the frame of a chaise a porteurs, and by taking a very round-about course homeward were able to follow a tolerably level path and carry their burden with a certain decency. To Rowland it seemed as if the little procession would ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... marched from their various committee-rooms to the Custom-house. The quay porters were present to the number of 500, and presented a very orderly, cleanly appearance. They were comfortably dressed, and walked close after the hearse bearing Larkin's name. Around this bier were a number of men bearing in their hands long and waving palms—emblems of martyrdom. The trades came next, and were led off by the various branches of the association known as the Amalgamated Trades. The plasterers made about 300, the painters 350, the boot and shoemakers mustered ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... introduced to my friends as 'the baron.' His comical figure and clumsy behaviour gave them food for mirth, which degenerated into a positive orgy of merriment when 'the baron' thought it necessary, before we started on our night journey to Reichenhall, to take us to a Bier-Brauerei some distance away, so that we should see that side of Munich life. It was pitch dark and there was no light provided, except a stump of a candle to light 'the baron,' who had to go down himself to fetch the beer from the cellar. The beer certainly tasted particularly ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... in the tender heart Make a grave for the joys of the Past! Let never a tear fall hot on their bier, But hurry them in as fast As we bury the Beautiful out of our sight, Ere corruption and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... facchini, wearing tunics of white, with caps and capes of red, and bearing the society's long, gilded candlesticks of wood with lighted tapers. Priests follow them chanting prayers, and then comes the bier,—with a gilt crown lying on the coffin, if the dead be a babe, to indicate the triumph of innocence. Formerly, hired mourners attended, and a candle, weighing a pound, was given to any one who chose to carry ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... and thi schon: for the place that thou stondest on is lond holy and blessed. And the monkes clepen that place Bezeleel, that is to seyne, the schadew of God. And besyde the highe awtiere, 3 degrees of heighte, is the fertre [Footnote: Bier.] of alabastre, where the bones of Seynte Kateryne lyzn. And the prelate of the monkes schewethe the relykes to the pilgrymes. And with an instrument of sylver, he frothethe the bones; [Footnote: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt |
