"Bier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perchance, a tear, Even while the people laughed that held him dear But yesterday. He died,—and not in grace, And many a black-robed caitiff starts apace To slander him whose Tartuffe made them fear, And gold must win a passage for his bier, And bribe the crowd that guards ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... the bier borne on men's shoulders and a little company of mourners, the peasantry of the neighborhood, the men wearing smock-frocks. They were awaiting the clergyman at the lichgate. Mr. Kingsley appeared at the moment in his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... bewailest The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your bier? ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... within a room Prepared for her, and sees her maidens come, Before a weird procession wrapped in palls, That soundless glide within and fills the halls. Before her now they place a sable bier Beside the fount; and Ishtar, drawing near, Raised the white pall from Tammuz's perfect form. The clay unconscious, had that mystic charm Of Beauty sleeping sweetly on his face,— Of agony or sorrow left no trace: But, oh! that awful wound of death was there With ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... who waked the world to speak, And voiceless hangs the world beside his bier, Our words are sobs, our cry or praise a tear: We are the smitten mortal, we the weak. We see a spirit on earth's loftiest peak Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear: See a great Tree of Life that never sere Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... the forest, felling trees for Misenus's bier, the doves of Venus descended and aided him to find the tree, from which ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... 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 dying Veddah's exhortations stepped forward, and ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... They prepared a sort of litter, and the curate and the coachman carried him. Hearing what they were about, Mrs. Ramshorn hurried into the garden to protest, but protested in vain, and joined the little procession, walking with Helen, like a second mourner, after the bier. They crossed the lawn, and through a double row of small cypresses went winding down to the underground passage, as if to the tomb itself. They had not thought of opening the door first, and the place was dark and sepulchral. Helen hastened to ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... from Verner's Pride towards the church at Deerham came the long funeral train—mutes with their plumes and batons, relays of bearers, the bier. It had been Mr. Verner's express desire that he should be carried to the grave, that no hearse or ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... last look and died to the eyes of earth, hearing perhaps the symphony of our sobs. As her last sigh issued from her lips,—the effort of a life that was one long anguish,—I felt a blow within me that struck on all my faculties. The count and I remained beside the bier all night with the two abbes and the curate, watching, in the glimmer of the tapers, the body of the departed, now so calm, laid upon the mattress of her bed, where once she had suffered cruelly. It was my first ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... why don't you get done with it and die? You are rich; go buy yourself a bier, and I will knead you a honey-cake for Cerberus. Here, take this garland. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... him in his grave, the old dead year! His life is lived—fulfilled his destiny. Have you for him no sad, regretful tear To drop beside the cold, unfollowed bier? Can you not pay the ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Friend! forever loved, forever dear! What fruitless tears have bathed thy honor'd bier! What sighs re-echo'd to thy parting breath, While thou wast struggling in the pangs of death! Could tears retard the tyrant in his course; Could sighs avert his dart's relentless force; Could youth and virtue claim a short delay, Or beauty charm the spectre from his prey; Thou still hadst lived ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... came you but here To conjure a book from a dead woman's bier? Sain you, and save you, be wary and wise, Ride back with the book, or you'll pay for your prize. Back, back. There's death in the track! In the name of my master I ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... stage, weeping and wailing and clasping a small child to her breast. An older woman, covered with rags and similarly shaken with sobs, followed her, both of them waving olive branches as they passed around the bier on which lay the covered bodies of the slain, and lifted up their voices in mournful outcry: "For the sake of common humanity," they wailed, "by all the universal laws of justice, be moved to pity by the undeserved death of these young men! Give to a lonely wife and mother ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... The wondrous nature of that girl now dead. Hast thou ne'er heard that they who once become Faithful to death are masters over death? And here and there on earth a woman lives Whose eyes proclaim the mighty victory won. Give me thy hand and lead me to the bier: Thou know'st it is not all of death ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... also a custom of the Egyptians, during or after their repasts, to introduce a wooden image of Osiris, from one foot and a half to three feet in height, in the form of a human mummy, standing erect, or lying on a bier, and to show it to each of the guests, warning him of his mortality, and the transitory nature of human pleasures. He was reminded that some day he would be like that figure; that men ought "to love one another, and avoid those evils which tend to make ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... 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, as if death ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... the Maori word tapu is 'sacred'; tabut is a Malay word, and is rendered 'the Ark of the Covenant of God'; taboot is a Hindoo word signifying 'a bier,' 'a coffin,' or 'the Ark of the Covenant'; ta is the Sanscrit word 'to mark,' ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... was heard within the apartment like the falling of a plate, or glass, and immediately after my friend's voice called angrily and eagerly for his niece. She entered the room hastily, and so did I. But it was to see a spectacle, compared with which that of my benefactor stretched on his bier would have been a ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... being able to contain so vast a multitude. The people of Assisi, having observed a commotion in the crowd, began to fear that an attempt was being made to deprive them of their sacred treasure: accordingly they rushed to the bier, took possession of the Saint's body, entered the church, locked the doors, and interred the body, without allowing any of the clergy, religious, or people to enter. In consequence of this event, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... from afar off, others declared that he lay in his bed raving and tossing with fever, but this or that, he was not present at her burial. Her own kin—who were fishers—laid the light coffin on a bier made of oars, and carried it with psalm singing to the grave. It was Andrew who threw on the coffin the first earth. It was Andrew who pressed the cover of green turf over the small mound, and did the last tender offices that love could offer. Oh, so ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... to comfort her, chanted a sutra over the bier of her lost playmate, and bestowed upon it a high-sounding Buddhist kaimyo which Kano carved, in his finest manner, upon a wooden grave post. In time, the artist forgot the episode. Mata never forgot. Often in the long hours ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... Land-under-Wave, where out of the moon's light and the sun's Seven old sisters wind the threads of the long lived ones, Land-of-the-Tower, where Aengus has thrown the gates apart, And Wood-of-Wonders, where one kills an ox at dawn To find it when night falls laid on a golden bier: Therein are many queens like Branwen, and Guinivere; And Niam, and Laban, and Fand, who could change to an otter or fawn And the wood-woman whose lover was changed to a blue-eyed hawk; And whether I go in my dreams by woodland, ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... an impressive funeral. All the British pilots, and five hundred of their men marched, and the bier was followed by a battalion of French troops. Over and around the little French graveyard aviators flew dropping flowers. In later days less ceremony attended the last scene of an ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... wear robes lined inside with fur. A rich robe is lined with fine material, but the common thing is white lambskin. Well, these fellows simply become turn-coats for the time, and put on their fur robes inside out, and thus were in the fashion. The coffin itself was laid in a magnificent bier towering high, surmounted by a gilt top piece, hung with silks, and borne by ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... the pavement of the choir and that of the nave were covered with a black carpet. The pulpit, also draped in black and decorated with the Imperial eagle, and from which was pronounced the funeral oration over the marshal, was situated on the left in front of the bier; on the right was a seat of ebony decorated with Imperial arms, bees, stars, lace, fringes, and other ornaments in silver, which was intended for the prince arch-chancellor of the Empire, who presided at the ceremony. Steps were erected in the arches of the aisles, and corresponded ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... satisfaction and sorrow, at Barnum's Hotel that her husband was too ill to attend the funeral, and must keep his room and fire; she needed his comfort and devotion in her sorrow, but upon her dead mother's bier seemed to stand the injunction against that fateful hat he had brought with him; and yet she pitied him that he must stay alone, unknown, unrelated, chattering with the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... aisle, and is also the work of Peter, Prior from 1195 to 1225. In the western bay is the original Norman window, the others being filled with modern tracery of Decorated style. In this aisle is a large aumbry and recess, where the bier and lights used at funerals were stored. There is also a holy-water stoup in the third bay. At the west end are the remains of the stairway which led to the dormitory. The stairway is built into the wall, which, at this particular spot, is nearly ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... the eight leagues which separated him from his last resting-place. There he died in atrocious agonies, and after a very painful operation, endured with unalterable courage and calmness; he had ordered to be placed in front of his bed the bier in which his body was to lie and the crucifix which his father, Charles V., at his death in the monastery of Yuste, had held in his hand. During a reign of forty-two years Philip II. was, systematically and at any price, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... victory, they sat themselves down about the rood, and with earnest thought raised their voices in song until the ninth hour, when they had new joy, gloriously gained. 870 For many came there, no small multitude, and among the press of men close by on a bier they brought one who was dead, a young man, lifeless; and it was ...
— The Elene of Cynewulf • Cynewulf
... splendid obsequies of the Tsar, nothing was more touching than the placing of a wreath upon his bier by a deputation of peasants. It can be best described in their own words. The Emperor was lying in the Cathedral wrapped in a robe of ermine, beneath a canopy of gold and silver cloth lined with ermine. "At last we were inside the church," says the narrative. ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... year. Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compel me to disturb your season due; For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rime. He must not float upon his watery bier Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the meed of some melodious tear. Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring; Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string. Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse— So may some gentle Muse With lucky words ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... who had parted from him with a careless good-by but yesterday; who had been so full of plans and projects of his hopes and ambitions for the future. Now everything was at an end. There he lay, cold and stiff upon the bier. Falkenried stood at the window in his own room; even this fatal accident had not moved him from his icy calm; he had long looked upon death as a happy release. Life was ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... 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 ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... her hero. A wail of sorrow arose. Chriemhild threw herself weeping on the body of her murdered husband. "Alas!" she cried "thy shield is not hewn by swords: thou hast been foully murdered. Did I but know who has done this, I would avenge thy death." Chriemhild ordered a magnificent bier for her royal hero, and demanded that an ordeal should be held over the corpse. "For it is a marvellous thing, and to this day it happens, that when the bloodstained ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... lid there's a sounding-board; and what in all things makes the sounding-board is this—there's naught beneath. And yet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter. Hast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the capital the King and Queen, dressed in mourning, were awaiting the bier in tears. The Princess, after a posthumous title had been conferred upon her, was buried with great magnificence a few miles to the east of the city, while Ch'un-yue remained in the capital, living in ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... to be guilty of idolatry in any form or shape and not to let blasphemous speech pass their lips, and he taught them the order of transporting his bier,[404] thus: "Joseph, being king, shall not help to bear it, nor shall Levi, who is destined to carry the Ark of the Shekinah. Judah, Issachar, and Zebulon shall grasp its front end, Reuben, Simon, and Gad its right side, Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... the strange whim and the fancy of the Prince, and the toils and perils he had gone through to satisfy himself; then she said to him, "Hasten away, my son! for if my three daughters meet you I would not give a farthing for your life; half-alive and half-roasted, a frying-pan would be your bier and a belly your grave. But away with you as fast as a hare, and you will not go far before you find ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... any that comes anear, That lies on its moveless breast; The grumbling water shall be his bier, And ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the 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 ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... to her!" And after that he spoke no other word, but walked in silence and tearless by Severo's side till they came to the room where Beatrice lay in her last sleep. The women that were about the bier drew away, and the God of Love took Dante by the hand and drew him a little nearer to where the girl lay, and Love stooped down and kissed the white face of Beatrice—kissed her on the forehead and on the lidded eyes and on the pale lips. Dante heard the voice of ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... income? To her alone he brought his degraded mass of humanity day after day; and though never personally unkind to her, or to the little boy that died, she was enabled by the might of her tearless agony beside that tiny bier, to cut the last tie that bound her to the blear-eyed creature sobbing on the other side. The last tie? Ah, woe was she! The coming time brought into her desolate life the frail link she must now take up; ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... a strange thing is the human heart! With its youth, and its joy and fear! It doats upon creatures that day-dreams impart,— Full sorely it grieves when their beauties depart, And weeps bitter tears over their bier. ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... women, of all ages, close by which my horse passed, was entirely occupied with a single topic, and that so vehemently that I heard the leading words of the discussion. "Mourning—becoming—what fashion?—how long?—O Ciel!" Thus do follies weave themselves round the bier of death! ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cortege enters the town of Ashfield, it passes the home of that fatherless boy, Arthur, for whom Adele had shown such sympathy. The youngster is there swinging upon the gate, his cap gayly set off with feathers, and he looking wonderingly upon the bier. He sees, too, the sad face of Adele, and, by some strange rush of memory, recalls, as he looks on her, the letter which she had given him long ago, and which till then had been forgotten. He runs to his mother: it is in his pocket,—it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... there was another pair of eyes that I remember,—it is really wonderful how the thoughts jump from one thing to another! A funeral passed through the street; a young and beautiful woman lay on a bier, decked with garlands of flowers, and attended by torches, which quite overpowered my light. All along the street stood the people from the houses, in crowds, ready to join the procession. But when the torches ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... forth and bury him. Death's peace Rest on his memory! Mercy by his bier Sits silent, or says only these few words— Let him who is without sin 'mongst ye all Cast ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... night, he was carried upon a bier, hung betwixt two mules, upon which the coffin with the King's body was laid, covered with a covering of cloth of gold, and at every corner of the bier was placed a high crystal lanthorn with lighted tapers in it. He was attended ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... before by a tedious absence. Everything, doubtless, O best of parents! was administered for your comfort and honor, while a most affectionate wife sat beside you; yet fewer tears were shed upon your bier, and in the last light which your eyes beheld, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... colored coachman sawed and pounded and planed under Malcolm's occasional direction. He was building a barge like the one described in Tennyson's poem of the Lily Maid of Astolat. From time to time, Lloyd, who was to personate Elaine, was called to stretch herself out on the black bier in the centre, to see if it was long enough or high enough or wide enough, before the final nails were ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... excess, he did not like strangers to see him at it. But the 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 him, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... on German plain Once my own, but ne'er again, Thou wilt be to mem'ry dear Till they place me on my bier.'[194] ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... the King's son fell, Upon the bier now lies his body; My master him avenged full well, But got thereby ...
— Axel Thordson and Fair Valborg - a ballad • Thomas J. Wise
... fall from Heaven; Human are the great whom we revere: No true crown of honour can be given, Till we place it on a funeral bier. ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... little cemetery was under direct machine-gun fire during the day, the regiment gathered, bareheaded and silent, to bury its comrade. Six of the dead soldier's friends lifted the bier, and bore it tenderly down the steep slope and over the bridge across the sap. The regiment followed and gathered round the ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... discarded lace curtain to keep off the flies. They had no ice, and no money to pay an undertaker for opening the little grave in Calvary, where their first baby lay. All night she sat by the improvised bier, her tears ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... he knew his own dog from head to tail and back again, was even more astonished than the rest. Had old Mother Hubbard and her far-famed dog risen from their honored graves and, presenting themselves before our friends, repeated the dear old programme, from the cupboard so bare, to the bier so sad, with the fruits and the flue, the tripe and the pipe, the wig and the jig, and all the other fondly remembered marvels between—scarcely could the effect ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... wrap the samite red And lock it in yellow gold, And when o'er my bier the mass is said, Let the flag ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... feathery ferns, casting their silent shadows on the checkerberry leaves, and all those sweet, wild, nameless, half-mossy things, that live in the gloom of forests, and are only desecrated when brought to scientific light, laid out and stretched on a botanic bier. Sweet old forest days!—when blue jay, and yellow hammer, and bobalink made his leaves merry, and summer was a long opera of such music as Mozart dimly dreamed. But then came human kind bustling beneath; wondering, fussing, exploring, measuring, treading down flowers, cutting down ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... one he replied: 'I have not been sent to curse, but to be a mercy to mankind.' He visited the sick, followed any bier he met, accepted the invitation of a slave to dinner, mended his own clothes, milked his ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... twenty or thirty men in flat caps trimmed with fur and gabardines of cotton velvet, purple, or yellow, or pink, chanting psalms as they march, with the body of the dead man wrapped in linen cloth and carried on a rude bier on their shoulders. They seem in haste, (because the hour is late and the burial must be made before sunset), perhaps a little indifferent, or almost joyful. Certainly there is no sign of grief in their looks or their voices; for among them ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... is moving off towards the hacienda of San Carlos— the Indians who carry the bier marching in solemn silence. On that bier two corpses are laid side by side—the Spaniard Don Fernando de Lacarra by the side of his ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... heard ye yon pibroch sound sad in the gale, Where a band cometh slowly with weeping and wail? 'Tis the chief of Glenara laments for his dear; And her sire, and the people, are call'd to her bier. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... shielded, And who its sceptre wielded, Who freely fed and paid us, With mail and swords array'd us, Now lies on bier extended, His life by treachery ended— To us be like disaster, Save ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... carelessness natural to their age. Indeed, they were astonished to see their noble mansion still in mourning, and their mother and themselves in mourning also, though a melancholy voice had said to them one day, when they were shown a bier covered with funereal pall, "Children, you ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... 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 Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... their efforts to displacing the monolith. Wooden wedges were carefully driven in, and presently the huge stone was moved and slid down the props prepared to receive it. The sarcophagus having been opened, showed the first bier hermetically sealed. It was a coffer adorned with paintings and gilding, representing a sort of shrine with symmetrical designs, lozenges, quadrilles, palm leaves, and lines of hieroglyphs. The cover was opened, and Rumphius, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... assembly; raise high your hymnal voices, open the doors of My house and its inner shrines: place near to the altar, which holds the Body of My Son, what is left of that brother or sister; finally, cover him a bier with costly palls, for at last he triumphs: crowd it with lamps and candles, circle round him, overthrown as he is, with helping crowds of servants. Do more. Repeat the votive offering of My Son. Make the richest feast, and ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... Susan's bier, He seem'd a most despairing swain; But bluer sky brought newer tie, And—would he ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... 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 body conveyed ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... 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 past shall strive. Let him never dream that his bullet's scream went wide ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... so great that the memory of it reached posterity. (44) The funeral procession was unusually impressive; no less than thirty-six thousand warriors, their shoulders bared, marched before his bier. (45) Ahab is one of the few in Israel who have no portion in the world to come. (46) He dwells in the fifth division of the nether world, which is under the supervision of the angel Oniel. However, he is exempt from the tortures inflicted ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... 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
... it boot me, that some learned eye May spell my name on gravestone, by and by? As to the flowers they promise for my bier, I'd rather, living, scent their perfume here. And thou, posterity!—that ne'er mayst be— Waste not thy torch in seeking signs of me! Like a wise man, I deemed that I was bound The money for my ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Church, the corpse of a child had just been laid out. It was in a costly open bier, covered with red velvet and richly ornamented with gold lace. The corpse was strewed over with flowers, decorated with a crown, and covered with fine white gauze. The priests, in sumptuous robes, conducted ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... aught might comfort / the wife of Siegfried there. They drew the knight's attire / from off his body fair, From wounds the blood, too, washed they / and laid him on the bier. Then from all his people / a ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... heap 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 ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... 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
... dipped his wing in a barrel of beer— We wish you all a Happy New Year! Give us now money to buy him a bier And if you don't, we'll bury him here! ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... occurred. The survivors, to preserve themselves from infection, generally had the bodies taken out of the houses and laid before the doors, where the early morn found them in heaps, exposed to the affrighted gaze of the passing stranger. It was no longer possible to have a bier for every corpse—three or four were generally laid together; husband and wife, father and mother, with two or three children, were frequently borne to the grave on the same bier; and it often happened ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Quintus Metellus, well disposed to reform, had appeared with shield and sword. An officer of ability and experience acquired in the Spanish wars, Decimus Brutus, was entrusted with the command of the armed force; the senate assembled in the senate-house. The bier with the corpse of Antullius was deposited in front of it; the senate, as if surprised, appeared en masse at the door in order to view the dead body, and then retired to determine what should be done. The leaders of the democracy had gone from the Capitol to their houses; Marcus Flaccus had spent ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... bore himself in the funeral procession the next day, and we know now why he walked behind his father's bier with that elastic gait, that buoyant and springy step. He had expected to find in the woman he had insulted, an implacable adversary, and was prepared to meet her enmity with disdain. But a single glance in the Corso ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... bier, borne by the undertaker's men, passed through the west door, the delicious rays of a winter sun fell on the faces of the women and the roses lying on the coffin. Grouped on either side of the ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... maddeningly. Impish hands plucked at her garments, dragged her hair. She was hurried this way and that, bruised, torn, and tossed helpless upon a sea of liquid brass. Through vast avenues lined with yellow, immobile Chinese faces she was borne upon a bier. Oblique eyes looked into hers. Knives which glittered greenly in the light of lamps globular and suspended in immeasurable space, were hurled ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... be found wherever the Celtic race has settled. In Spain they are especially prevalent in Galicia and Asturias. There the estantigua or "ancient enemy" appears to those soon to die. These spirits, or almas en pena, appear wearing winding-sheets, bearing candles, a cross, and a bier on which a corpse is lying. Don Quijote in attacking the funeral procession probably thought he had to do with the estantigua. Furthermore, Said Armesto in his illuminating study "La Leyenda de Don Juan" proves that the custom ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... thou that wert so fair and dear That death would fain disown thee, grief made wise With prophecy thy husband's widowed eyes, And bade him call the master's art to rear Thy perfect image on the sculptured bier, With dreaming lids, hands laid in peaceful guise Beneath the breast that seems to fall and rise, And lips that at love's call ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... talents; but the poetess adds that he did not possess “the reasoning mind” Honora required. In 1821 his body was, on the petition of the Duke of York, brought to England. “The courtesy and good feeling,” remarks Dean Stanley of the Americans, were remarkable. The bier was decorated with garlands and flowers, as it was transported to the ship. On arrival in England the remains were first deposited in the Islip Chapel, and subsequently buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey, where the ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... the bier was surrounded by the clergy, the "De Profundis" burst forth from the depths of the ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... sad, oh! so sad, since tidings flashed across the continent telling the friends of General Sutter to mourn his loss. In tender and loving thought I have followed the remains to his home, have stood by his bier, touched his icy brow, and brushed back his snowy locks, and still it is hard for me to realize that he is dead; that he who in my childhood became my ideal of all that is generous, noble, and good; he who has ever awakened the warmest gratitude of my nature, is to be laid away ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... body was opened it was found that his heart was absent. The scene is nominally inside a church: in the background is a procession of clergy and choristers with their cross and candles. In the centre is the bier with the corpse lying on it. The body is opened and the crowd looks on in feverish though suppressed excitement. St. Anthony is pointing towards the dead man: and the crowd realises that the heart is absent—ubi thesaurus ibi cor. Numbers of people have dropped on to their knees, others kiss the ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... 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, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it through the darkness, was a hint of his own failing strength, just in time. The first night after the washing of the body, he bore stoutly enough the tax which affection seemed to demand, throwing the incense from time to time on the little altar placed beside the bier. It was the recurrence of the thing—that unchanged outline below the coverlet, amid a silence in which the faintest rustle seemed to speak—that finally overcame his determination. Surely, here, in this alienation, this sense of distance between ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... the effect of which would be that for two-and-forty hours after 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 and Mary Lamb
... human pride!— The mighty chiefs sleep side by side. Drop upon Fox's grave the tear, 'Twill trickle to his rival's bier," etc. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... funeral procession slowly wended its way along the road toward the place of sepulture, the route being lined on either hand by a continuous crowd of people of the humbler classes, who knew that it would be hopeless for them to attempt to file past the bier while it stood in the great square before the palace, the time allowed for this being only sufficient to permit the nobles and the more affluent classes to pay this last tribute to their dead king; those, therefore, who could not do this adopted the alternative ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... to-day. A voice is heard within thy marble walls, A voice lamenting for the youthful dead; For o'er the relics of her forest boy The mother of dead Empires weeps. And lo! Clad in white robes the long procession moves; Youths throng around the bier, and high in front, Star of our hope, the glorious cross is reared, Triumphant sign. The low, sweet voice of prayer, Flowing spontaneous from the spirit's depths, Pours its rich tones; and now the requiem swells, Now ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... back into the Paradou, without even turning her head. Night was fast falling, and the garden was but a huge bier of shadows. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... ez dry ez a lime kiln, and Doolittle, and Lee, and Raymond, and Beauregard, and Cowan, and Stephens, and Thurlow Weed, and Vallandigham, and Governor Sharkey, and a host uv others, all uv wich ranged theirselves around the bier. ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... saved the situation. He saved it, undisguisedly, for his own sake; for he had no zest for helping to carry a bier over the Folgefond. They made a litter of alpen-stocks and the mackintosh, and so between them carried Urquhart down the mountain. No need to dwell on it. They reached the hotel at Odde about midnight, but halfway to ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... seen, in night and storm, Rooms o'erflow with firelight warm, 40 Which, outside the window-glass, Doubled all the cold, alas! Till each ray that on her fell Stabbed her like an icicle, And she almost loved the wail Of the bloodhounds on her trail. Till the floor becomes her bier, She shall feel their pantings near, Close upon her very heels, Spite of all the din of wheels; 50 Shivering on her pallet poor, She shall hear them at the door Whine and scratch to be let in, Sister ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... friend's low bier, Sheddest the bitter drops like rain, Hope that a brighter, happier sphere Will give him to ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... his tomb." To this the marshal agreed; the governor marched out of the place at the head of his garrison, passed through the besieging army, went and knelt down before Du Guesclin's corpse, and actually laid the keys of Chateauneuf-Randon on his bier. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... choined de Toorners; De ladies coomed in to see; Dey poot dem in de blace for de gals, All in der gal-lerie. Dey ashk: "Vhere ish der Breitmann?" And dey dremple mit awe and fear Ven dey see him schwingen py de toes, A trinken lager bier. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... but virtue alone and meritorious works serve man on his bier and gain him eternal glory. O you Frenchmen, see the cause and the end in ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... divest this event of 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 ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... culminating period of the summer season, it is natural that the civic mind should turn itself to the contemplation of sweet rural things, including shady groves, lunch-baskets, wild flowers, sandwiches, bird songs, and bottled lager-bier. ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... cowled 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: Earth's bruised heart beat in the throbbing strings, And ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... glimmered as if a tissue of liquid air were spread between them and the darkness. There was a break in the night outside, a livid streak of dawn; the objects in the room took curious unintelligible shapes, the billiard-table in its white cloth became a monstrous bed, a bier, a gleaming mausoleum. And with the dawn Tyson on his sofa had dropped into a doze, and thence into a sleep. The night's orgy of emotion had left his features in a curious moral disarray; once or twice a sort ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... to the screen. The smoking wick in the night-lamp near Cambray's head illumined his ghastly face. Marie had already seen one such pallid countenance—that of the old servant Henry when he lay dead on his bier. ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... opposition. She had a brother in the East, who would be summoned to take care of the property. This consideration for the living pursued her, even while the dead man's presence still awed the hushed house; it was in her thoughts as she stood beside his bier and adjusted the flowers on his breast, which no longer moved for or against these vanities; and it stayed with her even in the solitude ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... the centre of the room a bier was dressed, and on either side of it stood lighted tapers of brownish wax, in tall black and gold candlesticks. At the foot, some distance apart, two low-seated rush-bottomed high-backed prie-dieu had been placed. Upon the one on the left a little nun ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet |
