"Mourner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fancied he had secured secrecy by eluding questions and giving orders at the latest possible moment. The concourse in the church and churchyard was no welcome sight to him, since he could not hope that the tall figure of the chief mourner could remain unrecognized. Worthy man, did he think that Wrapworth needed that sight to assure them of what each tongue had wagged about for many ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to a sum of money now. Would Mrs. Davenport and the little child go home with Mary? The latter brightened up as she urged this plan; but no! where the poor, fondly loved remains were, there would the mourner be; and all that they could do was to make her as comfortable as their funds would allow, and to beg a neighbour to look in and say a word at times. So she was left alone with her dead, and they went to work ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... man said, "the last time I seen you uns I remember well ez ye war a-settin' on the mourner's bench." For there had been a great religious revival the previous year and many had been pricked in conscience. "Ye ain't so tuk up now in contemplatin' the goodness o' God an' yer sins ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... noticed that he leaned a trifle on a stick he carried; and I fancy Mr. Brympton noticed it too, for the red spot came out sharp on his forehead, and all through the service he kept staring across the church at Mr. Ranford, instead of following the prayers as a mourner should. ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... was attended with great pomp. The body was conveyed from Somerset House to its place of repose in the Abbey, and attended by a great procession. King Charles walked as chief mourner. Two earls attended him, one on each side, and the train of his robes was borne by twelve peers of the realm. The expenses of this funeral amounted to a sum equal ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... attitude one of mute, unfathomable despair,—for the instant even Mrs. Corfield, with all her constitutional contempt for youth, felt hushed, as in the presence of some deep human tragedy, at the sight of this poor sorrowful child, this miserable mourner of fifteen. Instead of speaking in her usual quick manner, the sharp-faced little woman, poor Pepita's "crooked stick," went up to the girl quietly and softly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... once a poor man in Scotland, who, when he died, was buried in a graveyard in Edinburgh, his only mourner being a little Scotch terrier. On two mornings the sexton found the dog lying on his master's grave and drove him away, but the third morning was cold and wet and the dog was allowed to remain. From that time, for twelve years and a ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... the gate. They had met accidentally upon the sidewalk, and Mr. Loretz must of necessity make some allusion to the letter he had received from the minister that day acquainting him with the allotment which had made of him so hopeless a mourner. The good man hesitated a moment before making response: then he took both the hands of Loretz in his, and said in a deep, tender ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... This part was entirely arranged by the undertaker. The monstrous custom of forbidding ladies to follow their dead had not yet occurred even to the idiots of the nation, and Mr. Peyton and his daughter were placed in the second carriage. The first contained Griffith Gaunt alone, as head mourner. But the Peytons were not alone: no other relation of the deceased being present, the undertaker put Mr. Neville with the Peytons, because he was heir to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... consoling had been to the mourner in his loneliness the apparition of his dead love restored to life, every time his eyes had fallen upon Molly during these last few blessed days; but this new development was only like ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... gallantly, upon the deep, Is gone to tell the madd'ning foe, Tho' vict'ry laid our Nelson low, We still have chiefs as greatly brave, Proudly triumphant on the wave? Dear to thy Country shall thou be, Fair mourner! and her sympathy Is thine; for, in the war's alarms, Thou gav'st thine hero from thine arms; And only ask'd to sigh alone, To look to heav'n, and weep him gone. Oh! soon shall all thy sorrow cease, And, to thine aching bosom, peace Shall quick return;—another tear To love ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... the seventh from that in which the fatal battle had been decided, Thaddeus, at the first beat of the drum, rose from his pallet, and, almost unassisted, put on his clothes. His uniform being black, he needed no other index than his pale and mournful countenance to announce that he was chief mourner. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... mourner was touched; she bowed down her head upon the hand that held her so kindly in its sisterly grasp, and wept soft, sweet, human tears full of grateful love, while she whispered, in her own low, plaintive voice, "My white sister, I kiss you in my heart; ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... books—but then, how weak, how cold is their love! It is a moonbeam playing on ice! Whence come these European babblers of Tharsis—these nightingales of the market-place—these sugared confections of flowers? I cannot believe that people can love passionately, and prate of their love—even as a hired mourner laments over the dead. The spendthrift casts his treasure by handfuls to the wind; the lover hides it, nurses it, buries it in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... seldom met him after my election, and never had any conversation with him. Though he was offended at my failure to take sides with him in his controversy with the President, and our intimacy ceased, I could never forget his generous conduct to me; and for his sad death there was no more sincere mourner in the State. ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... misgivings indeed, but with a deliberation and healthfulness of judgment which most of his readers will approve as allowed to overrule them, has spread before us at length, from the most sacred privacy of the stricken mourner, heart-exercises and scenes in the death-chamber, such as engage with most painful, but still entrancing sympathy, the very soul of the reader. We know not where, in all our literature, to find matter like this, so bedewed and steeped in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... The funeral pageant moves,—a dozen carriages preceded by mourners on foot, clad in white, their heads covered, their feet bare, their grief insupportable, so that an attendant is at hand to sustain each mourner howling at the wheels of the hearse. An orchestra heads the procession; the air is flooded with paper prayers that are cast hither at you to appease the troubled spirit. They are on their way to the cemetery among the hills toward the sea, where the funeral rites are observed as rigorously ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... bit on his fork and regarded it sadly. "This fish reminds me uv a fun'ril," he observed, "an' yonder lad looks to be chief mourner," he nodded ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... noticed a peculiar glory in the Cathedral. The dark cave shone as white flesh and youth can shine through the veils of a mourner. ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... they, as I had deemed, But fair as yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, To mourner, lover, poet, ever seemed; Something too deep for joy, too high for sorrow, Thrilled in their tones and from their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... but a stone behind: he hung over the taffrail like a dead thing. A steady foot-fall slapped his ear. He raised his white face and filmy eyes, and saw Lieutenant Fitzroy marching to and fro like a sentinel, keeping everybody away from the mourner, with the steady, resolute, business-like face of a man in whom sentiment is confined to action; its phrases and its flourishes being literally terra incognita to the ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Aunt Melvy, bending over the fire to light her pipe; "I been habin' divisions for gwine on five year. Dat's what made me think I wuz gwine git religion; but hit ain't come yit—not yit. I'm a mourner an' a seeker." Her pipe dropped unheeded, and she gazed with fixed eyes out ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... gold, with a golden crown upon the head, and a golden ball and sceptre lying in the nerveless hands, they carried it to Calais, with such a great retinue as seemed to dye the road black. The King of Scotland acted as chief mourner, all the Royal Household followed, the knights wore black armour and black plumes of feathers, crowds of men bore torches, making the night as light as day; and the widowed Princess followed last of all. At Calais there was a ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... all to fitters, and lyes, taking the height of his fortune with a Syringe. He's chin'd, he's chin'd good man, he is a mourner. ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... of an old cemetery stands the theatre known as the Gymnase Dramatique. A suggestive fact for the moralist. Death replaced by Momus; the mourner's tears succeeded by the quips and cranks of an Achard, by the wreathed smiles of a Rose Cheri. Where the funeral once took its slow and solemn way, rouged processions pass, tinsel heroes strut, and vapour. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... and hearse with the coffin under the driver's box, and John Storm (as the only discoverable mourner) with the undertaker on the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... cause of submission to Keeper's preference. Sometimes Emily would delight in showing off Keeper—make him frantic in action, and roar with the voice of a lion. It was a terrifying exhibition within the walls of an ordinary sitting-room. Keeper was a solemn mourner at Emily's funeral and never ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... flies level as the missiles of the ancient inhabitants across the beaked promontory which has formed the scene of this narrative, scarcely alighting except against the upright sides of things sturdy enough to stand erect. One person only followed the corpse into the church as chief mourner, Jocelyn Pierston—fickle lover in the brief, faithful friend in the long run. No means had been found of communicating with Avice before the interment, though the death had been advertised in the local and other papers in the hope that it might ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... discharge of his duty upon that important station, which thus proved fatal to them both. Few historic parallels are so complete. Sir Peter Parker, living until 1811, survived both his illustrious juniors, and at the age of eighty-two followed Nelson's coffin, as chief mourner at the imposing obsequies, where the nation, from the highest to the lowest, mingled the exultation of triumph with weeping for the loss ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... it awakens no more; "Friends that are gone" it can never restore; Yet e'en to the mourner one hope it may bring, 'Tis the type of Eternity's ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... down in the parlor Like a sleepless mourner grieves, And the seconds drip in the silence As the rain drips from ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... for ever lost, In dreams deny me not to see thee here! And Morn in secret shall renew the tear Of Consciousness awaking to her woes, And Fancy hover o'er thy bloodless bier, Till my frail frame return to whence it rose, And mourned and mourner lie united in repose. ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... permitted, purchased a wide tract of land and made it into a cemetery. I owned also some very profitable marble works on one side of the gateway to the cemetery, and on the other an extensive flower garden. My Mourner's Emporium was patronized by the beauty, fashion and sorrow of the city. In short, I was in a very prosperous way of business, and within a year was able to send for my parents and establish my old father very comfortably as a receiver of stolen goods—an act which ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... crouched the old Indian woman, alone and forsaken in her despair,—the one mourner out of all for whom ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... deemed an antidote against contagion. It must be acknowledged that there are also in this print some things which, though they gave the artist an opportunity of displaying his humour, are violations of propriety and customs: such is her child, but a few removes from infancy, being habited as chief mourner, to attend his parent to the grave; rings presented, and an escutcheon hung up, in a garret, at the funeral of a needy prostitute. The whole may be intended as a burlesque upon ostentatious and expensive funerals, which were then more customary than they are ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... was not only wrong, but dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness. ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... then, O mourner, thy confidence in thy Lord! Have patience, fret not, despair not, and a day shall come to thee like that which came at last to the mourners in Bethany—it may be here, it may not be until we meet Him beyond the bounds of time, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... without delay; Swift through the town he trod his former way, Through streets of palaces, and walks of state; And met the mourner at the Scaean gate. With haste to meet him sprung the joyful fair. His blameless wife, Aetion's wealthy heir: (Cilician Thebe great Aetion sway'd, And Hippoplacus' wide extended shade:) The nurse stood near, in whose ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... laid beside the Americans. Teresa, a shivering, sobbing little figure in the garb of an insurgent soldier, was supported by big Graydon Bansemer. There was no service except the short army ritual; there was no priest or pastor; there was but one real mourner—a pretty, heart-broken girl who lay for hours beside the ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,— The punctual stars will vigil keep,— Embalmed by purifying cold; The winds shall sing their dead-march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud. ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... long shone with unclouded splendor, and the air is so wonderfully clear that even the most distant mountain-peaks are distinctly visible, rain is not long delayed; and who can laugh heartily a long time without finally shedding tears like a mourner? ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the mourner's tear, How dark this world would be. If when deceived and wounded here, We could not ...
— A Complete Edition of the Works of Nancy Luce • Nancy Luce
... both the major and his son thought, too, and tried their best to solace the lonely mourner and to persuade her to sit down ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... ruling pow'rs who blest our arms, Prepare the sacrifices to the Gods, And grateful songs of tributary praise.— Gotarzes, fly, my Brother, find Evanthe, And bring the lovely mourner to ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... girl, borne out of herself into a strange, unimagined experience of beauty and harmony and power, into a newly awakened sympathy, too, with each dreamer and lover and mourner whose lay she sang, it was as if old things had passed away and all things were become new. And presently, as they drifted on in the flooding moonlight, leaving the lights of the city behind them, she could see the small, low glimmer of a gondola-lamp gliding from out ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... did not hear the concluding sentence, but sought the room; the door would not close, and he heard a low sobbing sound from within; he paused, but his step had aroused the mourner—"Come in, Mary; come in; I know how it is," said a young voice; "he is dead; one grave for mother and son—one grave for mother and son! I see your shadow, dark as it is; have you brought a candle? It is very fearful to be alone with the dead—even ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... understand his duty, and put both understanding and spirit into him, so that I hope he will do well. [Much surprised to hear this day at Deptford that Mrs. Batters is going already to be married to him, that is now the Captain of her husband's ship. She seemed the most passionate mourner in the world. But I believe it cannot be true.]—(The passage between brackets is written in the margin of the MS.)—Thence by water to Billingsgate; thence to the Old Swan, and there took boat, it being now night, to Westminster Hall, there to the Hall, and find ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... survivor,—a brother, apparently,—is anxious to know whether the dead will ever come back again. The situation reminds one of Gilgamesh seeking out Eabani,[1152] with this difference: that, whereas Gilgamesh, aided by Nergal, is accorded a sight of his friend, the ordinary mourner must content himself with the answer given to him. But what Gilgamesh is not permitted to hear,[1153] the mourner is told. A description is given him of how the dead ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... churches,—christian maidens, even at the feast of roses, clad in white, with shining veils, sought, in long procession, the places consecrated to their religion, filling the air with their hymns; while, ever and anon, from the lips of some poor mourner in the crowd, a voice of wailing burst, and the rest looked up, fancying they could discern the sweeping wings of angels, who passed over the earth, lamenting the disasters about to ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... tucked in his boot, and a red sash around him, said if it could be proved that Wheeler was a drinking man it would be a hard blow at religion, but he didn't know as he cared a blank anyway. The elder went in the express office and the crowd fell back to give the chief mourner a chance to look at the late lamented. There was a different expression on every face. Some looked as though they were glad he had been caught in the act, while others wore a mournful expression, as though they had been suddenly bereaved. He was pale, yet determined, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... was crowded with people, led by curiosity to this interesting scene. The dog never appeared to take any notice of these strange visitors, and no rude hand attempted to interrupt the little mourner in his melancholy office. The verdict of the coroner's inquest was,—"Died ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... "Mourner, that dost deserve thy mournfulness, Call thyself punished, call the earth thy hell; Say, 'God is angry, and I earned it well; 'I would not have him smile and not redress.' Say this, and straightway all thy grief grows less. 'God rules at least, I find, as prophets tell, ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... not only by his old comrades in arms: men who scarcely knew him by sight spared some regret to the favorite hero of the Light Dragoons. Mark Waring, in the loneliness of his dreary chambers, gnashed his teeth in bitterness of envy; for he guessed who would be the chief mourner. Arnaud de Chateaumesnil's remark was characteristic. Hearing that his old opponent had fallen in the front of the battle, he struck his hand impatiently on his own crippled limbs, muttering—"Sang-dieu! Il avait toujours la main heureuse." Harry Molyneux can not trust his voice to speak of ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... in return for such surpassing grace, Poor, blind, and naked, what canst thou impart? Canst thou no offering on his altar place? Yes, lowly mourner; give him all thy heart: That simple offering he will not disown,— That living incense may ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... made up my mind to run down here and have a look round; and here I am. My surroundings I will describe later. I told you I had decided not to go to poor old Major Lessing's funeral for various reasons. I have a horror of humbug; and to pose as sole and chief mourner at the funeral of a man who had made me his heir by a fluke, and if he had lived an hour longer would have altered his will, seemed humbugging, to my mind. Also the funeral service, beautiful as it appears to those who can believe ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... she hung with ornaments like the shrine of a saint, and, beaming all over with smiles, looked so ridiculous that the handsome bridegroom reddened to the roots of his hair with shame. Just as they entered the church, a coffin, on which lay a sword, and which was followed by a single mourner, who from his manners and dress seemed to belong to the class of nobles, was carried in by the same door. The wedding guests drew back to let the funeral pass on, the living giving precedence to the dead. The solitary mourner glanced by chance at Quennebert, and started as if the sight ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... self-reproach; but that was no balm to my wound. So I left the house; so I never returned to the law; so all impetus, all motive for exertion, seemed taken from my being; so I went back into books. And so a moping, despondent, worthless mourner might I have been to the end of my days, but that Heaven, in its mercy, sent thy mother, Pisistratus, across my path; and day and night I bless God and her, for I have been, and am—oh, indeed, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sods had been cast on, the last word spoken, she walked her way back, happy in being alone, unnoticed. She was grateful to the chief mourner for letting her go as she had come. That helped her to her sense of purification, the haven out of the passions, hardly less quiet than the repose into which the dear dead woman, his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... no mourner's gloom, No tolling bell in the steeple, But in one swift breath a painless death For a million billion people. What greater bliss could we ask than this, To sweep with a bird's free motion Through leagues of space to a ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... O mourner by the ever-mourning deep, Full as the sea of tears! imperial heart, King in thy sorrow over all who weep! O wrestler with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... the trumpet's peal, Can break the hallow'd silence here; For ling'ring footsteps only steal, To weep the mourner's bitter tear. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... was still neglected, and he wrote a pretty vague little song about an earthly mourner and a fresh presence that set him thinking of the story of Persephone and how she passed in the springtime up from the shadows ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... smoked. "Ah, then I must have some of them; and I will ask you to send me a box," said Longfellow, and he wrote down his name and address. The cigar-dealer read it with the smile of a worsted champion, and said, "Well, I guess you had me, that time." At a funeral a mourner wished to open conversation, and by way of suggesting a theme of common interest, began, "You've ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... restrained himself from saying, 'trust a Scot again;' but his manner had vexed and pained James, who returned to Malcolm, and left him no more till called by necessity to his post as King Henry's chief mourner, when the care of him was left to Patrick Drummond and old Bairdsbrae; and Malcolm was a very tranquil patient, who seemed to need nothing but the pleasure of looking at the ring on his finger. The weapon had evidently touched no vital part, and he was decidedly on the way to recovery, when on ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... When with green turf the little grave she spread, "Not lost, but gone before," she meekly said. And now they sleep together 'neath the willow The same dew drops upon their silent pillow. Return, O mourner, from this double grave, And praise the God who all her graces gave. Follow her faith, and let her mantle be A cloak of holy ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... here where the widower rested in the evening—here where he taught his children the virtues of their dead mother. Sometimes he gazed at the azure skies, and strange fancies beguiled the mind of the mourner. When he saw the sun sink to the west, gilding the world with its glorious rays, he mused on the creeds of many lands. He fancied he saw a heaven and a God, and traced in the lines of light the patriarchal ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... fashion to put on mourning for nearest relatives, which will make a saving to this town of L20,000 per annum." It also states that a funeral had been held at Charlestown at which no mourning had been worn. At that of Ellis Callender in the same year, the chief mourner wore in black only bonnet, gloves, ribbons, and handkerchief. Letters are in existence from Boston merchants to English agents rebuking the latter for sending mourning goods, such as crapes, "which are not worn." ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... opportunity, cried, "O consul, thy son lies dead in the camp;" which made a great impression upon all others who heard it, yet in nowise discomposed Horatius, who returned merely the reply, "Cast the dead out whither you please; I am not a mourner;" and so completed the dedication. The news was not true, but Marcus thought the lie might avert him from his performance; but it argues him a man of wonderful self-possession, whether he at once saw through the cheat, or, believing it as true, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... knightly than sacerdotal, that all through his life he seemed to think only that it was more blessed to give than to receive. And all that wealth which he gained in the wars he dispersed among his sisters and the poor of his parish, living unmarried till his death like a true lover and constant mourner (as shall be said in place), and leaving hardly wherewith to bring his body to the grave. At whom if we often laughed once, we should now rather envy him, desiring to be here what he was, that we may be hereafter where he ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... parent's voice shall bless no more; The bridegroom, who has hardly pressed His blushing consort to his breast; The husband, whom through many a year Long love and mutual faith endear. Thou canst not name one tender tie, But here dissolved its relics lie! Oh! when thou see'st some mourner's veil Shroud her thin form and visage pale, Or mark'st the Matron's bursting tears Stream when the stricken drum she hears; Or see'st how manlier grief, suppressed, Is labouring in a father's breast, - With no inquiry vain pursue The ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... stood Convicted. For my own part, I was not present at any of them; nor ever had I any Personal prejudice at the Persons thus brought upon the Stage; much less at the Surviving Relations of those Persons, with and for whom I would be as hearty a Mourner as any Man living in the World: The Lord Comfort them! But having received a Command so to do, I can do no other than shortly relate the chief Matters of Fact, which occurr'd in the Tryals of some that were Executed, in an Abridgment ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... were borne to the grave by his fellow-students, and followed by the Vice-Principal of the College, and by the Bishop of Newfoundland, as chief mourner. The Burial Service in the church (St. Thomas's) was conducted by the Rev. Mr. Wood, and in the cemetery by the Rev. Mr. Mountain, the Principal of the College. The quiet solemnity of the service was in keeping with the life and death ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray
... premises. I fetched thence a slate and some mortar, put the slate on the hollow, secured it with cement, covered the hole with black mould, and, finally, replaced the ivy. This done, I rested, leaning against the tree; lingering, like any other mourner, beside a ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... last letter, dated in April, found me a mourner, as did your first. I have lost out of this world my brother Charles, of whom I have spoken to you,—the friend and companion of many years, the inmate of my house, a man of a beautiful genius, born ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the Hebrew poet describes the nothingness of man in the face of the vast world. The lot of the Hamlets and of the Renes is more enviable than that of the "Mourner" of the ghetto. They at least taste of life before becoming a prey to melancholy and delivering themselves up to pessimism. They know the charms of living and its vexations. The disappointed son of the ghetto lays no stress on gratifications and pleasures. In the name of the supreme moral law ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... names; 'Tis our Jehovah fills the heavens; as long As he shall reign Almighty, we are strong: We, by devotion, borrow from his throne; And almost make Omnipotence our own: We force the gates of heaven, by fervent prayer; And call forth triumph out of man's despair. Our lovely mourner, kneeling, lifts her eyes And bleeding heart, in silence, to the skies, Devoutly sad—then, bright'ning, like the day, When sudden winds sweep scatter'd clouds away, Shining in majesty, till now ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... His raven hair cast gloomy shadows, and his mournful eyes pierced you with a sudden sorrow. He was too low-spirited to chase butterflies, weave daisy-chains, and dance with Goldilocks among the flowers. He liked better to play at a mimic funeral, and deck himself as chief mourner, in a friar's robe with sable plumes. He could never understand why laughing Goldilocks should object to making believe die, and be buried in the large jewel-coffer, which ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... lordship of Chatham was borne by Colonel Barre, attended by the Duke of Richmond and Lord Rockingham. Burke, Savile, and Dunning upheld the pall. Lord Camden was conspicuous in the procession. The chief mourner was young William Pitt. After the lapse of more than twenty-seven years, in a season as dark and perilous, his own shattered frame and broken heart were laid, with the same pomp, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the presence of this august mourner that Manvers was found by Don Luis Ramonez after mass. He had been present at the ceremony, but not assisting, and had his crucifix open in the palm of his hand when the other rose from ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... statue; at the puff of smoke that crept upward when the gun went bang, at the sunlight on the church tower, at the birds flying so high and so joyous above its battlements. And all at once she saw Aunt Petherick—the blackest mourner there, with crape veils trailing to the ground, a red face down which the tears streamed in rivers; sobbing so that the sobs sounded like the most violent hiccoughs; really almost as much noise as ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... unfortunate woman. He gave his horse to a spearman as he dismounted, and, approaching the unhappy female, asked her, in the most soothing tone he could assume, whether he could assist her in her distress. The mourner made him no direct answer; but endeavouring, with a trembling and unskilful hand, to undo the springs of the visor and gorget, said, in a tone of impatient grief, "Oh, he would recover instantly could I but give him air—land and ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... man raise, To her name, for after daies, Some kind woman, born as she, Reading this like Niobe, Shall turn marble, and become, Both her mourner and her tomb." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... Lord Delacour's relations and my own had not made such lamentations upon the occasion that I was stunned. I couldn't or wouldn't shed a tear; and I left it to the old dowager to perform in public, as she wished, the part of chief mourner, and to comfort herself in private by lifting up her hands and eyes, and railing at me as the most insensible of mothers. All this time I suffered more than she did; but that is what she shall never have the satisfaction of knowing. I determined, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... long way from the church to Pere la Chaise. When the remains were lowered into the grave, some Polish earth, which Chopin had brought with him from Wola nineteen years before and piously guarded, was scattered over the coffin. There is nothing to show what part, save that of a mourner, Delphine Potocka took in his funeral. But though it was the famous Viardot-Garcia whose voice rang out in the Madeleine, it was hers that had sung him ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... bacon, or half a pound of lard, they spoke in subdued, sorrowful voices, as though they were in the bed-chamber of a dying man. There were always two or three lachrymose women in front of the chilled heating-pan. Beautiful Lisa meantime discharged the duties of chief mourner with silent dignity. Her white apron fell more primly than ever over her black dress. Her hands, scrupulously clean and closely girded at the wrists by long white sleevelets, her face with its becoming air of sadness, plainly told all the neighbourhood, all the inquisitive gossips who streamed ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... and had, in the days of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill, been foremost among the supporters of the throne. He was now old, and had been recently tried by the most cruel of all calamities. He had followed to the grave a son who should have been his own chief mourner, the gallant Ossory. The eminent services, the venerable age, and the domestic misfortunes of Ormond made him an object of general interest to the nation. The Cavaliers regarded him as, both by right of seniority and by right of merit, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... (De Serm. Dom. in Monte iv): "Knowledge befits the mourner, who has discovered that he has been mastered by the evil which he coveted as ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... The fair mourner looked at him doubtfully, and then she looked at his namesake, and apparently the poetic justice of the thing ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... passion, yet it creates necessities which are peremptory as those of any passion. One of the incidents of the curse he was suffering was that he knew the certainty of the coming of a day when he must be a mourner for whomsoever he should take into his heart, and in this way expiate whatever happiness the indulgence might bring him. Nevertheless the craving endured, at times a positive hunger. In other words, his was still a human ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... cheerful wisdom and instructive mirth, See motley life in modern trappings dress'd, And feed with varied fools th' eternal jest: Thou who could'st laugh where want enchain'd caprice, Toil crush'd conceit, and man was of a piece; Where wealth, unlov'd, without a mourner dy'd; And scarce a sycophant was fed by pride; Where ne'er was known the form of mock debate, Or seen a new-made mayor's unwieldy state; Where change of fav'rites made no change of laws, And senates heard before they judg'd a cause; How would'st thou shake at Britain's modish tribe, Dart ...
— English Satires • Various
... felt, on that occasion, that it cannot be expressed in words, that men cannot realise it." The following passage written by Goethe when he was thirty, might have been written by Guinicelli or by Dante: "You appeared to me like the Madonna ascending into heaven; in vain did the abandoned mourner stretch out his arms, in vain did his tearful glance plead for a last return—she was absorbed in the splendour surrounding her, longing only for the crown hovering above her head." "I long to be purified in triple fire so ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... an' told me some o' the steps down which he had stumbled, an' how slippery the'd been when he'd tried to climb back. I confided to him a lot o' my own mishaps, an' he got purty near up to the mourner's bench, when all of a sudden he gets bitter. "You're just like all the rest," sez he, "you make all kinds of allowance for a good lookin', proud sort, like Silver Dick; but a feller like me—you allus give the verdict again a feller like me, an' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... The only real mourner shut herself up in her own room, whither Theodora begged Violet to follow her. She found her stretched on her bed, abandoned to grief. It was the sense of orphanhood; the first time she had come so close to death and its circumstances, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shall time with funeral tread The heavy death-drum of the beaten hours, Following, sole mourner, mine own manhood dead, Poor forgot corse, where not a maid strows flowers; When I you love am no more I you love, But go with unsubservient feet, behold Your dear face through changed eyes, all grim change prove;— A new man, mock-ed with misname of old; When shamed Love keep his ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, in fact, in this case as in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the hills, which, with individual variations, made a mourner of Ariadne, a by-word of Vashti, and a corpse of the Countess Amy. There were rencounters accidental and contrived, stealthy correspondence, sudden misgivings on one side, sudden self-reproaches on the other. The inner ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... brought himself to confess that he had been selfish and lazy, but then when a man has a great sorrow, he should be indulged in all sorts of vagaries till he has lived it down. He felt that his blighted affections were quite dead now, and though he should never cease to be a faithful mourner, there was no occasion to wear his weeds ostentatiously. Jo wouldn't love him, but he might make her respect and admire him by doing something which should prove that a girl's 'No' had not spoiled his life. He had always meant to do something, and Amy's advice was quite ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... the concealments, the faithlessness, the desertion, the parting! And now,—now the chief actress in this drama that had touched him so nearly lay buried in a New England grave, with his own Adele her solitary mourner! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... princely brothers of Pomerania—all in long velvet mantles, and their faces covered with black crape up to the eyes. [Footnote: Note of Duke Bogislaff XIV.-The three accompanied him to the grave; but who will walk mourner beside my bier? Ah! that long ere this I had lain calmly in my coffin, and looked up from the little window to my Lord, and rested in the God of my ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... general night, A certain few who stood aloof had said, "See you upon the horizon that small light— Swelling somewhat?" Each mourner shook ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... is told of Confucius, who, having attended a funeral, presented his horse to the chief mourner. When asked why he bestowed this gift, he replied: "I wept with the man, so I felt I ought to ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... we arrived at the grave, when those who were preparing to lower the coffin in it discovered that it had not been dug large enough to receive it. This of course created a very awkward pause while it was made larger, and the chief mourner utilised it by gently remonstrating with the clerk for his carelessness. In reply he gave a solemn shake of his head, cast one eye into the grave and the other at the chief mourner, and merely remarked, "Putty ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... occasion. 'You never did such a thing,' Tsze-kung remonstrated, 'at the funeral of any of your disciples; is it not too great a gift on this occasion of the death of an old host?' 'When I went in,' replied Confucius, 'my presence brought a burst of grief from the chief mourner, and I joined him with my tears. I dislike the thought of my tears not being followed by anything. Do it, my child [7].' On reaching Wei, he lodged with Chu Po-yu, an officer of whom 1 顏讎由. See Mencius, V. Pt. I. viii. 2. 2. 靈公. 3 see the 史記, 孔子世家, ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... Sardanapalus; but the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal blazes and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to pro- vide wood, pitch, a mourner, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... first confin'd To speak in broken verse the mourner's mind. Prosperity at length, and free content, In the same numbers gave their raptures vent; But who first fram'd the Elegy's small song, Grammarians squabble, and ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... affecting, very. Nothing more dismal could have been desired by the most fastidious taste. The gentleman of a vocal turn was head mute, or chief mourner; Jinkins took the bass, and the rest took anything they could get.... If the two Miss Pecksniffs and Mrs. Todgers had perished by spontaneous combustion, and the serenade had been in honour of their ashes, ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... as "Lucy Gray" or "Alice Fell" we see that he starts by standing much closer to the level of the subject than his great predecessor does. Wordsworth is the benevolent philosopher sitting in a post-chaise or crossing the "wide moor" in meditation. Mr. Hardy is the familiar neighbour, the shy mourner at the grave; his relation is a more intimate one: he is patient, humble, un-upbraiding. Sometimes, as in the remarkable colloquy called "The Ruined Maid," his sympathy is so close as to offer an absolute flout in the face to the system of Victorian morality. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Lady Dasher," hazarded I. She evidently did not agree with me, for she looked about her mournfully, with a down-drawn visage, just as if we were all attending a funeral, of which she was the chief mourner. ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... not like a mourner bowed For honor lost an' dear ones wasted, But proud, to meet a people proud, 155 With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted! Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt, An' step thet proves ye Victory's daughter! Longin' for you, our sperits wilt Like shipwrecked ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Fogeyism is being lowered to his last resting place, Pettifoggism, being his chief mourner, will be so overwhelmed with grief that he will tumble into the same grave. How then to hasten the demise of this venerable Humbug is the question. Some are for letting him die a natural death, others ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... comedy,—tearing his hair on the anniversary of the death, like a well-paid mourner. Of course, somebody has accused him again of the murder. He will have to tear his hair every time he is accused, in order to keep up appearances. He knows, and he alone knows, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... circlet was not only a badge of rank, but a pledge of affection—a token of honour and royal favour, which elevated her above the throng of beauties who filled the courts of the palace. Had she arrayed herself in sackcloth, had she appeared as a mourner, an afflicted suppliant, she would probably have found the royal voluptuary more anxious to banish one who disturbed his pleasures, than to redress the grievances ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... "Thank you," such a mourner wrote me the other day, "for having understood the cruelty of our fate, and having pitied us. Thank you also for having exalted the pride that is mingled with our unutterable sorrow." Simply that, and no more; but she might have been speaking for ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... fashioned place, but you forgot all 'bout dat when Brother Thomas got in de pulpit and preached dem old time sermons 'bout how de devil gwine to git you if you don't repent and be washed in de blood of de Lamb. De call to come up to de mourner's bench brought dem Negroes jus' rollin' over one another in de 'citement. Soon dey got happy and dere was shoutin' all over de place. Some of 'em jus' fell out. When de 'tracted meetin' closed and de baptizin' dey come, dat was de happiest ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... sweeping past; yet on the stream and wood, With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred, As by a mourner's sigh; and on yon cloud That floats so still and placidly through heaven, The spirits of the seasons seem to stand— Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form, And Winter with his aged locks—and breathe, In mournful cadences that come ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... thou Fly to that Paradise—my Lalage, wilt thou Fly thither with me? There Care shall be forgotten, And Sorrow shall be no more, and Eros be all. And life shall then be mine, for I will live For thee, and in thine eyes—and thou shalt be No more a mourner—but the radiant Joys Shall wait upon thee, and the angel Hope Attend thee ever; and I will kneel to thee And worship thee, and call thee my beloved, My own, my beautiful, my love, my wife, My all;—oh, wilt thou—wilt thou, Lalage, Fly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... escorted by Major George Peter's company. The General's horse was led behind the hearse, where his son walked as chief mourner, followed by two heroes of the Revolution, Major Benjamin Stoddert and Colonel Philip Stuart. Light Horse Harry Lee, who had been wounded at the time General Lingan was killed, was still ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... vain it was explained to Romeo Augustus that Mephibosheth's life had become a burden; that common humanity demanded his departure. In vain Philemon offered three fish-hooks and a jackknife by way of solace. In vain Solomon was sure his father would present a calf to the mourner for a pet. ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... be added—for Wentworth, as chief mourner, stepped forward and offered his arm to the unhappy father, which, even at that moment, and in that presence, Mr. Grey could ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... your griefs may slumber and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain. It is too late! A funeral train comes gliding by your bed, in which Passion and Feeling assume bodily shape and things of the mind become dim specters to the eye. There is your earliest Sorrow, a pale young mourner, wearing a sister's likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed sweetness in her melancholy features and grace in the flow of her sable robe. Next appears a shade of ruined loveliness, with dust among her golden ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... in the year 1727, 'so miserably poor that he was actually buried at the public expense.' His brother Captain Annesley attended the funeral as chief mourner, and assumed the title of Baron Altham, but when he claimed to have this title registered he was refused by the king-at-arms, 'on account of his nephew being reported still alive, and for want of the honorary fees.' Ultimately, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... indifference, as a schoolboy strikes off the heads of the poppies in the corn fields. The ceremony observed at this fetish, had a great resemblance to an Irish wake; and could the mourners have been able to obtain the requisite supply of spirits, there is very little doubt that there would not have been a mourner present, who would not have exhibited himself in the state of the most beastly intoxication. The lament of the relatives of the deceased was doleful in the highest degree, and no sounds could be more dismally mournful than those shrieked ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... tenderness of affection returns again to the loved name, and the grief of the mourner repeats the word "dead." But this monotony of sorrow is the least part of the effect, which lies rather in the prominence given by either repetition to the most moving circumstance of all—the youthfulness of the dead poet. The attention of the discursive intellect, impatient of reiteration, ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... dream of the humiliation in store for me. The next day I found that Matches was to have a funeral after school, and that I—I, who hated her—was to take the part of chief mourner. The boys took off my spangled jacket and dressed me up in some clothes that belonged to Elsie's big Paris doll. They left my own little cap on my head, but covered it and me all over with a long crape veil that ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... face was wet with tears. She trembled in eagerness to express her sympathy. The mourner sat with bowed head, rocking her body heavily to and fro, and crying out in a high, strained voice that sounded like a ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... black and unrecognisable, rose up trembling to follow their dead from the church to the grave. Everybody saw with wonder that their place was contested, and that somebody else, a man whom no one knew, thrust himself before them, and walked alone in the chief mourner's place. As for Lucy, who, through her veil and her tears, saw nothing distinctly, this figure, which she did not know, struck her only with a vague astonishment. If she thought of it at all, she thought it a mistake, simple enough, though a little startling, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... and valentine, and told her they should be hers at his death. Miss Keene excited as an old maid is over anybody's love affair, wanted to take over the house-keeping as well as the doing of the flowers, in order to leave the mourner free to enjoy the full luxury of her state. The governess, assumed to be above love affairs, was very strict with Frances, holding her to tasks set on purpose to prevent her from teasing her eldest sister. But Frances had informed the servants overnight that ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... scandal which so sensational an affair must make would mar his career, his life, his young daughter's life! Larry's suicide with this girl would make sensation enough as it was; but nothing to that other. Such a death had its romance; involved him in no way save as a mourner, could perhaps even be hushed up! The other—nothing could hush that up, nothing prevent its ringing to the house-tops. He got up from his chair, and for many minutes roamed the room unable to get his mind to bear on the issue. Images kept starting up before him. The face of the man who handed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
