"Bier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 communion with death. I remained the whole of that night with my eyes fixed on Henriette, ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... Over his case, nor leach could heal his ill. Then he abandoned arms abandoned him Who gave and took salutes so fierce and grim; And now lies prostrate drooping haughty crest; For who lives longest him most ills molest. Then see him, here he lies on bier for bet;— Who will a shroud ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... Brunswick Street, where they divided, some turning into Brunswick, while others rode toward Hillton. Dan Wright did not die in the street, however. Torn and riddled as his body was, he lingered a few days in agony in the city hospital before death released him. "And the king followed the bier; and the king lifted up his voice and wept; and the king said, 'Died ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... orderly celebration of funeral obsequies, by dividing the mourners into two bodies, each alternately singing their part, and the whole at times joining in full chorus.... ... The body of the deceased, dressed in grave clothes, and ornamented with flowers, was placed on a bier, or some elevated spot. The relations and keepers (singing mourners) ranged themselves in two divisions, one at the head, and the other at the feet of the corpse. The bards and croteries had before prepared ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... recalled 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
... 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, or dun, or shore, Or on the unpeopled waves with kings to pull ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... has 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, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... year, Strew around my Rose's bier, Calmly may the dust repose Of my pretty, faithful Rose! And if yon cloud-topp'd hill[103] behind This frame dissolved, this breath resign'd, Some happier isle, some humbler heaven, Be to my trembling wishes given; Admitted ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Manila funeral, before the American advent, was a whimsical display of pompous ignorance worth seeing once. There was a hideous bier with rude relics of barbarism in the shape of paltry adornments. A native driver, with a tall "chimney pot" hat, full of salaried mournfulness, drove the white team. The bier was headed by a band of music playing a lively march, and followed by a line of carriages containing the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... fascinated eyes, passed across his fancy; even the contact with his own race and his thoughts of their wrongs recalled to him the tomb of the soldier Atherly and the carven captive savage supporter. He could not pass the upright supported bier of an Indian brave—slowly desiccating in the desert air—without seeing in the dead warrior's paraphernalia of arms and trophies some resemblance to the cross-legged crusader on whose marble effigy SHE had girlishly perched herself as she told the story of her ancestors. Yet only ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... on, returnless year! The track behind thee is with glory crowned; The turf where thou hast trod is holy ground. Pass proudly to thy bier! ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... triumph! and so near The closing act, and humble bier; This thy ambition? this thy pride? Far better thou had'st ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... circumstances combined to make the funeral one of unusual interest, so much so much so that fat old Mrs. Potter from Deerwander created a sensation at the cemetery. She was so anxious to get where she could see everything to the best advantage that she crowded too near the bier, stepped on the sliding earth, and pitched into the grave. As she weighed over two hundred pounds, and was in a position of some disadvantage, it took five men to extricate her from the dilemma, and the operation made a long and somewhat ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... while before the storm, in pursuit of some buffaloe and had not seen them enter the rivene; when this gust came on he returned in surch of them & not being able to find them for some time was much allarmed. the bier in which the woman carrys her child and all it's cloaths wer swept away as they lay at her feet she having time only to grasp her child; the infant was therefore very cold and the woman also who had just recovered from a ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... squatted himself on a stone beside the bier, and with his cutlass unbuckled and laid on the sand, and sleeves rolled up, began his work as if he had a chafing-mat to make for the dead-eyes of the frigate's lower shrouds, and, though in a ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... went not; for death had visited the palace, and old King Ring was stretched upon his bier, while the bards around sang ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... circumstance was practised in these judicial combats. In the midst of the lists they placed a bier.—By its side stood the accuser and the accused; one at the head and the other at the foot of the bier, and leaned there for some time in profound silence, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a notice the previous morning, the old churchyard was thrown open, and a coffin was borne over the early grass that seem'd so delicate with its light green hue. There was a new made grave, and by its side the bier was rested—while they paused a moment until holy words had been said. An idle boy, call'd there by curiosity, saw something lying on the fresh earth thrown out from the grave, which attracted his attention. A little blossom, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... narrow panes; and the shivering mourners muffled themselves in their dark hoods, while they knelt devoutly on the hard bare pavement of the chapel. Oliver de Worsthorn, the old seneschal, knelt at the foot of the bier; his white locks covered his thin features like a veil, hiding their intense and heart-withering expression. He felt without a stay or helper in his last hours—a sapless, worthless stem in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... bending o'er the rugged bier The soldier drops the mournful tear, For life departed, valour driven, Fresh from the ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... empire, which had been extended for so long; and that, on the strength of the ancient authority of their general, they might exact the usual tribute from their subjects. So, the lifeless corpse was carried away by them in such a way that it seemed to be taken, not in a funeral bier, but in a royal carriage, as if it were a due and proper tribute from the soldiers to an infirm old man not in full possession of his forces. Such splendour did his friends bestow on him even in death. But ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... which it seemed possible that the body of Le Maitre might again be seen. They looked and looked until they were tired with looking. The body had, no doubt, floated up under some cake of ice, and from thence would speedily sink to a bier of sand at the bottom ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... 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
... pistol; I will shoulder the gun; I will away to the hills. My brother, heart of thy sister, thou shalt be avenged!"' A vocero declaimed upon the bier of Giammatteo and Pasquale, two cousins, by the sister of the former, is still fiercer and more energetic in its malediction. This Erinnys of revenge prays Christ and all the saints to extirpate the murderer's whole race, to shrivel it up till it passes from the earth. Then, with a sudden ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... hurt with horn of stag, it brings thee to thy bier, But barber's hand shall boar's hurt heal; ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... youths in equestrian armour, the procession arrived at the great market-place; at this spot, filled by his achievements and almost by the sound as yet of his dreaded words, the funeral oration was delivered over the deceased; and thence the bier was borne on the shoulders of senators to the Campus Martius, where the funeral pile was erected. While the flames were blazing, the equites and the soldiers held their race of honour round the corpse; the ashes of the regent were deposited in the Campus Martius beside the tombs ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... soon Rosalia, as I bade her, shall Be here. Oh, Heaven! vouchsafe to me the power To do this last stern act of justice. Thou Who called the child of Jairus from the dead, Assist a stricken father now to raise His sinless daughter from the bier of shame. And may her soul, unconscious of the deed, Forever walk the azure fields ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... stately white teepee, seen from afar, both grave and monument, there lay the fair body of Taluta! The bier was undisturbed, and the maiden looked beautiful as if sleeping, dressed in her robes of ceremony and surrounded ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... who had married her principally for the sake of John Ferrier's property, did not affect any great grief at his bereavement; but his other wives mourned over her, and sat up with her the night before the burial, as is the Mormon custom. They were grouped round the bier in the early hours of the morning, when, to their inexpressible fear and astonishment, the door was flung open, and a savage-looking, weather-beaten man in tattered garments strode into the room. Without a glance or a word to the cowering women, he walked up to the white silent figure which had ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the next laughing and talking without the least appearance of concern. In this manner the remainder of the day on which they assemble is spent, and all the succeeding night. On the next morning the body is shrouded in their cloth, and conveyed to the seaside upon a bier, which the bearers support upon their shoulders, attended by the priest, who having prayed over the body, repeats his sentences during the procession: When it arrives at the water's edge, it is set down upon the beach; the priest renews his prayers, and taking up some ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... keineswegs abstossend schlecht schmeckt, ist den Bube gewohnlich nur eine Delikatesse welche mit Andacht schluckweise genossen wird. Wenn ein Arbeiter bei uns einen Schluck Branntwein oder ein Glas Bier geniesst um sich zu starken, so findet das Jeder in der Ordnung; der Bube jedoch, welcher splitternackt tagelang in feuchten Bergwaldern umher klettern muss, soll beliebe nichts als Wasser trinken!" Eine Africanische Tropen. insel Fernando Poo, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the maiden kept Her vigils pale and lone; While darkly have her ringlets swept The chapel's sculptur'd stone; And when the vesper-hymn was sung Around the warrior's bier, With cross and banner o'er him hung, What splendour crown'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... aristocratic blood, or ample 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; and in the first bitter realization ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... thou know 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... behold, a dead man was carried out, an only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a great multitude from the city was with her. [7:13]And seeing her, the Lord had compassion on her, and said to her, Weep not. [7:14]And approaching he touched the bier, and those who bore it stopped. And he said, Young man, I tell you, arise! [7:15]And the dead sat up, and began to speak; and he gave him to his mother. [7:16]And fear seized all; and they glorified God, saying, ...
— The New Testament • Various
... friends, dear friends, when it shall be That this low breath is gone from me, And round my bier ye come to weep, Let one most loving of you all Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall! ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... stood by the main entrance to town. The Chief Justice ordered this image to be removed. "Certainly," replied the people politely, "we will take it down ourselves this very evening." So they did, but they laid it upon a bier and marched in a long procession through the old State House. Here, in the Council Chamber, the Governor and his Council were deliberating. Shouts came up from below, "Liberty, Property, and no Stamps!" and "Death to the man who offers a piece of stamped paper to sell!" "Beat an alarm," ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... mad. I saw my baby die And all around me were my husband's friends Who spoke in terms of polished elegance. With formal platitudes and commonplace Regarding me as something curious, A vulgar, noisy creature, lacking taste And proper self-control. While on its bier Lay all the joy that life in promise held. Dead, and my heart within it. (Weeps) (Shylock turns to go, looks back after a step ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... deft are your hands! Take ye the stalks of the war blossoms, the spears of the kindreds, and knit them together to make a bier for our War-duke, for he is weary and may not go afoot. Thou Ali, son of Grey; thou hast gone errands for me before; go forth now from the garth, and wend thy ways toward the water, and tell me when thou comest back what thou hast seen of the coming of the wain-burg. ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... seeking—as inevitably and inexorably as fate—should pause, stand steadfast, and look it in the face, without fear. She cannot disguise it, or wrestle with it, or fly from it Let her meet it as she would meet death—solemnly, calmly, patiently. Let her draw nigh and look upon the bier of her life's dead hope, until the pale image grows beautiful as sleep; then cover it—bury it—if she can. Perhaps it may one day rise from the grave, wearing a likeness no ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... to buy my mother's bread!"— The captain started—who mourns not a dear, The dearest! mother!—"Where is she, wolf-cub?" he said Still gruffly. "There, d'ye see? not far from here." "Haste! make it hers! then back to swell their bier." ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... service, and rose to the rank of brevet major general, through the courage and ability he had shown at Fort Henry, at Fort Donelson, at Chickamauga, and in Sherman's March to the Sea. Charles Morris McCook was killed at the first Bull Run in 1861, while in his Freshman year at Gam-bier. His father saw him overwhelmed by the enemy and called out to him to surrender; but he answered "Father, I will never surrender to a rebel," and was shot down by one of the Black Horse Cavalry. John J. McCook served in the campaigns of the West and with Grant from the battle of the Wilderness onward ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... fiend might have been master of the household with both parties, since he himself had mated them. And here is another, who went, last Twelfth Night, to visit two Welsh lasses who were turning their shifts, and instead of enticing them to wantonness in the form of a fair youth, to one he took a bier, to make her thoughts more serious; to the other, he went with the tumult of war in a hellish whirlwind, to make her madder than before; and this was quite needless. Nor was this all; for after he had entered the maiden, and had thrown her about, and sorely ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... lately despatched to Paris on an errand of peculiar delicacy. The agents had failed in their mission, and Von Stroebel was not tolerant of failure. Perhaps if he had known that within a week the tapers would burn about his bier in Saint Stephen's Cathedral, at Vienna, while his life and public services would be estimated in varying degrees of admiration or execration by the newspapers of Europe, he might not have dealt so harshly with his ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... monks; many artists and German students were present, and joined in psalms composed by the Abbe Liszt. The whole function was most solemn, as if the pious spirit of the departed had entered the whole assembly. Around the bier were gathered Protestants as well as Roman Catholics; the coffin bore the many orders which the artist had received, but was never seen to wear; and at the feet lay the crown of laurels which his Roman brethren reverently offered to their acknowledged chief." The body lies in the chapel of St. Francis ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... 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 of saying requiem masses for the ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... long defile commenced; and every one went to the entrance of the church to sprinkle some drops of holy-water on the bier, and press the hand of the old actor, who, broken by grief, and having hardly strength to hold his hat, leaned ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... home, filled with thoughts of the girl, to put on his mourning clothes and take his decorous place in the circle that watched his uncle's bier. ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... come and lay the flowers of my Northern home upon the bier of this son of Virginia, this good citizen, this patriot, this man who, I am proud to believe, held even me in his affection. And when gentlemen here speak of the terror and the mystery of death, I tell them that to such a man death has no terrors, and that to the good man it has ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... difficulty. Mavis and Dale were just inside the door; and Mr. Silcox close by, whispering, and pointing out several lords and ladies near the chancel steps. The service was long but very beautiful, with giant candles burning by the draped bier, organ music that seemed to swell and rumble in the pit of one's stomach, and light voices of singing boys that made one vibrate as if one had been turned into glass—all stirring one to a quite meaningless regret, not for the man who lay ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... was put upon a bier that same day, and conveyed to St. Paul's Church in London, and there exhibited to the public for a long time, with guards and torch-bearers surrounding it. An immense concourse of people came to view his remains. ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Ministers and the cabinet following on foot, the former in full uniform, and a great train of carriages reaching along the whole Calle San Francisco, from the church to the square. The body, dressed in a general's uniform, was carried upon a splendid bier, and was so perfectly embalmed, that he seemed not dead, nor even asleep, but lying in an attitude of repose. The expense of this operation will probably prevent its ever becoming very common; and certainly there are but ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... constitutionally insensible to the virtues of a cocked-hat. In provincial France, the solemnities are sufficiently hideous, but are few and cheap. The friends and townsmen of the departed, in their own dresses and not masquerading under the auspices of the African Conjurer, surround the hand-bier, and often carry it. It is not considered indispensable to stifle the bearers, or even to elevate the burden on their shoulders; consequently it is easily taken up, and easily set down, and is carried ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... to die with us, the whole band of elegiac poets raise the dismal chorus, adorn his herse with all the paltry escutcheons of flattery, rise into bombast, paint him at the head of his thundering legions, or reining Pegasus in his most rapid career; they are sure to strew cypress enough upon the bier, dress up all the muses in mourning, and look themselves every whit as dismal and sorrowful as an undertaker's shop.' He returned to the subject in a 'Chinese Letter' of March 4, 1761, in the 'Public ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... moment the door of the room flew open and four rabbits as black as ink entered carrying on their shoulders a little bier. ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake's shock, the ocean's storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet song, and dance, and wine,— 10 And thou art terrible!—The tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier; And all we know, or dream, or fear, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... expressed desire, Trenager's funeral was observed with all the ancient ceremonies. His mates from the numerous villages around carried him all the way on his bier to Pentrath; carried him by the sea-shore, singing hymns as they went. A great crowd of men and women were in the procession, and the old church at Pentrath was full to overflowing. Jacob's forefathers ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... covered with flowers, the form of Paralus remained until the third day. The procession, which was to attend the body to the funeral pile, formed at morning twilight; for such was the custom with regard to those who died in their youth. Philothea followed the bier, dressed in white, with a wreath of roses and myrtle around her head, and a garland about the waist. She chose this beautiful manner to express her joy that his pure spirit had ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... Her father an' her brothers dear Gard make to her a bier; The tae half was o' guid red gold, The tither ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... 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 tribute of ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... few works which the volcanic genius of Michel Angelo could bring itself to finish in marble. In this chapel, directly in front of this marvellous group, the body of the dead Pope, embalmed and clad in Pontifical robes, is laid on a sumptuous bier, amid a blaze of tapers, with sentinels from the Swiss guard at his feet, leaning on their long halberds, and officers of the household in official costume, and all that imposing mixture of sacred and profane which Rome knows so well how to use upon all great occasions. And here, day after ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... again! I love that martial music which swells, not as from the indifferent lips of clarions, now 'neath the breath of Antony and now of Caesar, but rather out of the single hearts of men who love me. Yet—and now I will speak low, as we do speak o'er the bier of some beloved dead—yet, if Fortune should rise against me and if, borne down by the weight of arms, Antony, the soldier, dies a soldier's death, leaving you to mourn him who ever was your friend, this is my will, that, after our rough fashion of the camp, I here declare to you. You know ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... Dixon's success in obtaining his hearing we believe to be his choice of the hour in the world's history in which to demand a hearing. Queen Victoria, who had reigned so long and honorably, had just summoned by her death all of Anglo-Saxondom to her bier, where in a common sorrow over the departure of a great and good woman they learned anew how that, fundamentally, they were ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... the same man, containing the portrait of the said Francesco di Marco, the creator and founder of that holy place. In the Pieve of the said township, on a little panel over the side-door as one ascends the steps, he painted the Death of S. Bernard, by the touch of whose bier many cripples are being restored to health. In this picture are friars bewailing the death of their master, and it is a marvellous thing to see the beautiful expression of the sadness of lamentation in the heads, counterfeited ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... distinguished by one of those tributes of delicate feeling, of good taste, and sincere respect which from time to time remind us of the virtues and dignity of the old French nobility. Following the Marshal's bier came the old Marquis de Montauran, the brother of him who, in the great rising of the Chouans in 1799, had been the foe, the luckless foe, of Hulot. That Marquis, killed by the balls of the "Blues," had confided ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the church-aisles Sabbath-days, Where the dusky twilight plays; Round the altar, o'er the bier, Preaching more ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a pause] This morning we interr'd him. He was borne By twelve youths of the noblest families, And all our host accompanied the bier. A laurel deck'd his coffin; and upon it The Rheingraf laid his own victorious sword. Nor were tears wanting to his fate: for many Of us had known his noble-mindedness, And gentleness of manners; and all hearts ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... lobby above. There was a policeman in the room who seemed to be simply watching the body, and who rose from his seat when the gentlemen entered. Two or three of the servants followed them, so that there was almost a crowd round the dead man's bier. There was no further tale to be told. That Melmotte had been in the House on the previous night, and had there disgraced himself by intoxication, they had known already. That he had been found dead that morning had been already announced. They could only stand ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... reverie. I thought of the poor queen, whom I had seen in her beauty, glory, and happiness, yesterday carted to the scaffold, pursued by the execrations of a people, to-day lying headless on the common sinners' bier—she who had slept beneath the gilded canopy of the throne of ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... their heads reverently, but the soldiers in line, with guns reversed, stood erect and motionless as figures in stone, while the bier of the dead was being carried through open ranks to the waiting caisson. The coffin was covered with a flag, and upon it lay his chapeau, gauntlets, sash, and sword. His boots, with their toes reversed, hung ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... than your Great-Aunt Paulina would bemoan your piteous end? Who would come to place with reverent, sorrowing hands the tribute of a floral design such as a Broken Column or a Gate Ajar upon your lowly bier? ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the external, visible, audible service: the catafalque, a bier-like erection, all black and yellow, guarded by yellow flames on yellow candles—the grave movements, the almost monstrous figures, the rhythm of the ceremonies, and the wail of, the music of forty voices singing as one—all that ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... too many prominent men mingled with the throng to make such a proceeding safe or possible. On the first day of November the church bells were tolled, as if for a funeral, and when a large crowd had gathered near Samuel Leavitt's store, a figure called the Goddess of Liberty was brought out on a bier, with Thomas Pickering, John Jones, Jotham Lewis and Nehemiah Yartridge acting ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis
... sleep out under tents during the night, the walls of Assisi not 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, an impenetrable veil ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... how Mansana 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 from the eyes of Theresa Leaney, as ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... the verse Exuliabunt saneti in gloria, and the prayer Deus qui es tuorum gloria servorum. And when all had said Amen, the Abbot himself, with a little bar of iron, began first to move the lid of the stone coffin; and then the workmen and others easily lifted it off upon the bier, and thus the tomb was laid open; and there appeared within it a coffin of wood fastened-down with gilt nails, the hair of the coffin being entirely gone, and great part of the wood decayed also. Within this coffin ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... the hope which sustained her through those years of suffering, and kept her eyes ever upward turned to the promise of the great day of deliverance. A congregation of some hundreds assembled to see the unique sight of so many girls mourning for a teacher and following the bier to the border of the village. The girls and their parents showed their appreciation of Ai Do and her work by presenting a large banner to the school in her memory. It was unveiled on their behalf by the elders of the Church, and above the names of one hundred girls who had been ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... no common person, and reluctantly obeyed, one taking his cloak and wrapping it round the corpse, whilst others took their scarves and bound their spears together, and placed her on them as a bier, the torches, reeking with flame, casting over her a lurid glow. And thus they hurriedly passed away, with a circle of shields and glittering spears protecting the ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... the litter at the side of the body, which they now proceeded to raise. As they were in the act of depositing it on this temporary bier, the plumed hat fell from the head, and disclosed, to the astonishment of all, the scalpless crown completely saturated in its own ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... "They made a bier of the broken bough, The sauch and the aspine grey, And they bore him to the Lady Chapel, And ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... influential man of his opponents, offered to submit to him, David received him with kindness and made him a friend. And when Abner was treacherously killed by Joab, David publicly mourned for him, following the bier, and weeping at the grave. The historian says concerning this: "And all the people took notice of it and it pleased them: as whatsoever the king did pleased all the people. For all the people understood that day that it was not of the king to slay Abner the son of Ner." His policy was to conciliate ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... that it had been copied from the quicksilver jars, exported from Idria to Peru. On the return of the procession to the church, a hymn, with harp accompaniment, is sung to the Virgin, as the figure is carried under the arches of flowers. The bier of the Saviour is then deposited in the church, where it is ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... watch by night, In the dim twilight You may hear a requiem singing; And the people hear Above his bier A small bell clearly ringing. And if ye wait Until midnight late, You may hear the great bell toll: But none can tell Who tolls that bell If it sounds for Olaf's soul. With tapers clear, Which Christ holds dear, O'er the corpse so still reclining, By ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... 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 ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... from this world's noise and strife To the deep quiet of celestial life! Depart!—Affection's self reproves the tear Which falls, O honour'd Parent! on thy bier;— Yet Nature will be heard, the heart will swell, And the voice tremble with ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... watched the funeral 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 small a mound! ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... of spectators, mainly belonging to the gamin category, were standing around the officiating priests and curiously looking on. We went towards the spot, and found that the burial service was being performed over the body of a young priest. The body lay on its back on the open bier, clad in full canonicals and with the long tasselled cap of the secular clergy on his head. We stood and gazed with the others, when suddenly I saw the dead man's head slightly move! A shiver, I confess, ran through me. A moment's reflection, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... man. It was a very simple affair, far different from the splendid ceremony which would have been accorded him if he had died near a city or of a less contagious malady. There were no hired mourners, no fine trappings on the bier, no wild women whose quavering "joy-cries" (zaghareet) rent the ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... interesting, but in no wise terrifying or horrible. Presumably poor young Trooper Priddell was no more dangerous or dreadful in the spirit than he had been in the flesh.... Fortunate young man! Were he only on sentry-go outside the peaceful mortuary and Damocles de Warrenne stretched on the bier within, to await the morrow and its pomp and ceremony, when the carcass of the dead soldier would receive honours never paid to the living, sentient man, be he never so worthy, heroic, virtuous and deserving. Oh, to be lying in there at rest, to be on ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the knight killing the Eastern man and hacking off his head with a sword. This violent proceeding disarranged the turban out of which fell the black stone. The knight picked it up and hid it about him. Next Godfrey saw this same knight, grown into an old man and being borne on a bier to burial, clad in the same armour that he had worn in the battle. Upon his breast hung the black stone which had now a hole bored through the top ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... who bewailest The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your bier!' ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the latter, all things rejoice in the warmth and splendor of his smile. When he sinks nightly, shorn of his ambrosial beams, into the former, sky and earth wrap themselves in mourning for their departed monarch, the dead god of light muffled in his bier and borne along the darkening heavens to his burial. How naturally the phenomena of human fate would be symbolically interwoven with all this! Especially alike are the exuberant joy and activity of full life and of day, the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... come in vain, And genius given, and knowledge won in vain; And all which I had culled in woodwalks wild, And all which patient toil had reared, and all Commune with thee had opened out—but flowers Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier, In the same coffin, ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... suffered severely from its monotonous horrors. Monteiro and Gamitto (p. 232) give an illustration of what is known in the Cazembe's country as "Gomati:" The Mchua or gong-gong of Ashanti has a wooden handle connecting the cones. Our palhabote had brought up the chief Mashel's bier, and to-day we have the satisfaction of seeing it landed. A kind of palanquin, covered with crimson cloth and tinsel gold like a Bombay "Tabut," it had three horns or prominences, two capped with empty black bottles, and the central bearing the deceased's ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... my last retreat, Let not the mourners howl along the street— Let not my soldiers in the train be seen, Nor banners float, nor lance or sabre gleam— Nor yet, to testify a vain regret, O'er my remains let costly shrine be set, Or sculptur'd stone, or gilded minaret; But let a herald go before my bier, Bearing on point of lance the robe I wear. Shouting aloud, 'Behold what now remains Of the proud conqueror of Syria's plains, Who bow'd the Persian, made the Christian feel The deadly sharpness of the Moslem steel; But of his conquests, riches, honours, might, Naught sleeps ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various
... are entombed. So the custom is to bury within twelve hours every one who dies. The Chevra Kadisha look upon such a deed as a Mitzvoth. If a poor woman dies, one of these kind women at once goes to wash the corpse and lay it out ready to be put on the bier—then when all the relatives and friends of the deceased have given vent to their sorrow by weeping, some men and some scholars belonging to the Chevra Kadisha voluntarily carry the bier on their shoulders ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... this been done than the procession arrived, stopped before the temple, and the men commenced building a huge square pile of wood; on this they placed a bier, on which lay the corpse of an old man, decked with ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... bone, and lays his foot upon it, Gnawing and growling: so the ruffians growl'd, Fearing to lose, and all for a dead man, Their chance of booty from the morning's raid, Yet raised and laid him on a litter-bier, Such as they brought upon their forays out For those that might be wounded; laid him on it All in the hollow of his shield, and took And bore him to the naked hall of Doorm, (His gentle charger following him unled) ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... all those that heard the news. And a fortnight later, on the 17th of December, they all stood at Charing Cross, to see the funeral procession wind down from the north road, and set down the black bier for its last momentary rest on the ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... of servants—may the tear That sorrow trickled o'er thy parting bier, Prove to thy happy shade our fond regard, And all thy virtues find ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... of them will play the best trick on her husband. One causes him to believe he is a monk, and he goes and sings mass, the second husband believed himself to be dead, and allows himself to be carried to that mass on a bier; and the third sings in it quite naked. (There is a very similar story in Campbell's "Popular Tales of the West Highlands.") It is also found, says Le Grand, in the "Convivales Sermones," tome i. p. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... forever lov'd, for ever dear, What fruitless tears have wash'd thy honour'd bier; What sighs re-echoed to thy parting breath, Whilst thou wert struggling in the pangs of death. Could tears have turn'd the tyrant in his course, Could sighs have check'd his dart's relentless force; Could youth and virtue claim a ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... died.—Great sorrow. August 26th, there was soldier's funeral; poor Kleist's coffin borne by twelve Russian grenadiers; very many Russian Officers attending, who had come from the Camp for that end; one Russian Staff-Officer of them unbuckling his own sword to lay on the bier, as there was want of one. King Friedrich had Kleist's Portrait hung in the Garnison Kirche. Freemason Lodge, in 1788, set up a monument to him," [Kriele, pp. 39-43.]—which still stands on the Frankfurt pavement, and is now in sadly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... orbit, dead march, muffled drum; mortuary, undertaker, mute; elegy; funeral, funeral oration, funeral sermon; epitaph. graveclothes^, shroud, winding sheet, cerecloth; cerement. coffin, shell, sarcophagus, urn, pall, bier, hearse, catafalque, cinerary urn^. grave, pit, sepulcher, tomb, vault, crypt, catacomb, mausoleum, Golgotha, house of death, narrow house; cemetery, necropolis; burial place, burial ground; grave yard, church yard; God's acre; tope, cromlech, barrow, tumulus, cairn; ossuary; bone ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... conjecture he was right. When the starved and exhausted malamutes dragged their silent burden into the Northwest Mounted Police outpost barracks at Crooked Bow twenty-four hours later, an ax and a sapling bar were required to pry Francois Breault from his bier. Previous to this process, however, Sergeant Fitzgerald, in charge at the outpost, took possession of the soiled envelope pinned to Breault's red scarf. The information it bore was simple, and yet exceedingly definite. Few men ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... 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 ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... Then he rode upon them fiercely, whereupon instantly they scattered and disappeared, and, sword in hand, Sir Launcelot entered the little chapel. All was dark within, save that a little lamp hung from the roof, and by its dim light he could just espy how on a bier before the altar there lay, stark and cold, a knight sheathed in armor. And drawing nearer Sir Launcelot saw that the dead man lay on a blood-stained mantle, his naked sword by his side, but that his left hand had been lopped off at the wrist by a mighty sword-cut. ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... not high honor,— The hillside for a pall, To lie in state while angels wait With stars for tapers tall, And the dark rock-pines like tossing plumes, Over his bier to wave, And God's own hand, in that lonely land, To ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... the church, beyond the great Rood, they saw the candles flare about a bier. Before that was a little white altar with a priest saying his mass in a whisper. The high altar was all dark, and behind a screen in the north transept the nuns were singing the Office for the Dead. King Richard ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... and borne down by the strife And the tumult of passion; the tremulous toy Of each transient emotion of grief or of joy. But to watch her pronounce the death-warrant of all The illusions of life—lift, unflinching, the pall From the bier of the dead Past—that woman so fair, And so young, yet her own self-survivor; who there Traced her life's epitaph with a finger so cold! 'Twas a picture that pain'd his self-love to behold. He himself knew—none better—the things to be said Upon ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith |
