"Winding-sheet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... surprising that to see the two pretended mourners bend down the arms which were before extended, and dispose them upon the trunk in such a manner as is usual in corpses. The body being taken down from the cross was received in a fair large winding-sheet, and carried down from Calvary; the whole company attending as before to the stone of Unction. This is taken for the very place where the precious body of our Lord was annointed and prepared for the burial. Here ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... Brown, at his own house in Priesthall (in the parish of Moor-kirk in Kyle) upon one Mabel Weir. After marriage, he said to the bride Mabel, You have got a good man to be your husband, but you will not enjoy him long; prize his company, and keep linen by you to be his winding-sheet, for ye will need it when ye are not looking for it, and it will be a bloody one. Which sadly came to pass in the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... was in that hour when he gave me a parting kiss on our threshold, in the pale gleam of early morning, solemnly glad and in his festal bravery. Yet they could not hinder me from pressing my lips to the hands of the beloved body in its winding-sheet. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... our soldiers who had been killed by Russian balls showed on their corpses deep and broad wounds, for the Russian balls were much larger than ours. We saw a color-bearer, wrapped in his banner as a winding-sheet, who seemed to give signs of life, but he expired in the shock of being raised. The Emperor walked on and said nothing, though many times when he passed by the most mutilated, he put his hand over his eyes to avoid the sight. This calm lasted only a short while; for there was ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the state of servile dependency they were in when they wore the badges of the Lords." It would, he contended, take away "one of the most powerful incentives to virtue, . . . since there would be no coming to honor but through the winding-sheet of an old decrepit lord and the grave of an extinct noble family." Walpole knew well his public and his time. He dwelt most strongly on this last consideration—that the Bill if passed into law would shut the gates ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... of a waterfall, fuller in its rush than at any other season. Silence—a silence so fragile that the step of a single wayfarer on the road would be enough to break it—reigns undisturbed, and covers everything like a winding-sheet. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... to windward and rapidly neared the vessel they could see the flares being carried up the rigging by the sorely beset crew, and knew the extremity of the case; then the next snow squall wrapped them in like a winding-sheet, and all was shut out. But still, on plunged the Aid at great speed, for the new tug-boat Aid is a much faster and more powerful boat than either of the old tugs, the Aid and the Vulcan. Towing the lifeboat well to windward of the wreck, at last the moment arrived, and though not a word ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... monotonous surface of this plain, and then looked upon the chaotic mountains that walled it in, my mind became impressed with ideas of coldness and desolation. It seemed as if everything was dead around us, and Nature was laid out in her winding-sheet. I saw that my companions experienced similar feelings, but no one spoke; and we commenced riding down the pass that led into this ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... pen of the satirist, greedy of gold and power, wrapping himself lovingly in the purple and fine linen of earth, while conscious that ere long the sumptuous draperies of pride must be exchanged for a winding-sheet, Richelieu looked with a jaundiced eye on all about him, and appeared to derive solace and gratification only from the sufferings of others. He had pursued the unfortunate Duc de la Valette with his hatred until the Parliament, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... stillness as of death continued to pervade the apartment where Colonel de Vineuil and Madame Delaherche spent their days, the blinds tight drawn, the lamp continually burning, like a votive candle illuminating a tomb. December had come and wrapped the city in a winding-sheet of snow; the cruel news seemed all the bitterer for the piercing cold. After General Ducrot's repulse at Champigny, after the loss of Orleans, there was left but one dark, sullen hope: that the soil of France might avenge ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... direction exhibits a surface of rocks, or bleak hills, half covered with snow. The traveller looks around and sees no life. He listens and hears no sound. The world appears dead and wrapped in its cold winding-sheet! ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... with the Grape my fading Life provide, And wash my Body whence the Life has died, And in a Winding-sheet of Vine-leaf wrapt, So bury ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of this little misunderstanding was not far to seek. The old crone had brought up her work: videlicet, a winding-sheet all but finished, and certain strips of glazed muslin about three inches deep. She soon completed the winding-sheet, and hung it over two chairs in the patient's sight; she then proceeded to double the slips in six, and nick them; then she unrolled them, and they were frills, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of Germany, and to uphold the faith of the people. "As for me," he added, "I will put myself on my road, for the time of my passing away approacheth. I have longed for this departure, and none can turn me from it; wherefore, my son, get all things ready, and place in the chest with my books the winding-sheet to wrap up my old body." And so he departed with some of his priests and servants to go and evangelize the Frisons, the majority of whom were still pagans and barbarians. He pitched his tent on their territory, and was arranging to celebrate their Lord's supper, when ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... wind, and dispersed like the Hungarians themselves; and the shells falling upon the ramparts; and the last hours of the siege; and the years of mournful sadness and exile; their companions decimated, imprisoned, led to the gallows or the stake; the frightful silence and ruin falling like a winding-sheet over Hungary; the houses deserted, the fields laid waste, and the country, fertile yesterday, covered now with those Muscovite thistles, which were unknown in Hungary before the year of massacre, and the seeds of which the Cossack horses had imported in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... noted relics at the present time are the Holy Coat of Treves,[54] the Winding-sheet of Christ at Besancon, and the Santa Scala at Rome. The last are said to be the steps which Jesus ascended and descended when he was brought before Pontius Pilate, and are held in great veneration. It is sacrilegious ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... "will I drink or eat! I'll spin and weave me a winding-sheet, To wrap me up from the sun's clear light, And hide my form from her wounded sight. In secret then, till my end draws nigh, I will toil for her; and when I die, I'll leave behind, as a farewell boon To the proud young princess, my whole cocoon, To be reeled, ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... Reading gaol by Reading town There is a pit of shame, And in it lies a wretched man Eaten by teeth of flame, In a burning winding-sheet he lies, And his grave has got ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... her hand-and almost unawares, She slipped away from me and joined the dead Back on my heart fell my unanswered prayers, Stunned I took up my child that was so sweet And wrapped her poor form in the winding-sheet ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... suspense with which the book ends is meant to be symbolic. From Kielland's point of view, Norway is yet wrapped in the wintry winding-sheet of a tyrannical orthodoxy; and all that he dares assert is that the chains of frost and snow seem to be loosening. There is a spring feeling in ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... from their temporary panic, and heaped ridicule and odium on Bailly and La Fayette. They aroused the people to vengeance by displaying unceasingly before their eyes the blood of the Champ-de-Mars. The red flag became the emblem of the government and the winding-sheet of liberty. The conspirators figured as victims, and constantly kept popular excitement on the rack, by imaginary stories of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... I speak unkindly, nor call up in the memory of one who may read this book a thought that might excite a pang; but I would ask any such just to go back ten, fifteen, and twenty years, and tell me where, are some of the wealthy, influential men of that time? In the silence of the winding-sheet! How many of them have hastened to death through the agency of whisky? And how few suspected that slowly but surely they were poisoning the wellsprings of life? How many are bankrupts now that might yet be in possession of ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... Helen. "How many a score o' times must I tell thee, Nell, that to lay thy knife and spoon the one across the other is the unluckiest thing in all this world, saving only the breaking of a steel glass [looking-glass], and a winding-sheet in the candle? Lay them straight along this minute, child! Dear, dear; ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... lourd[140] have had a winding-sheet, And helped to put it ower his head, Ere he had been disgraced by the border Scot, Whan he ower Liddel his ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... His shorn face seemed like that of some stone saint, whom no impulse of the flesh can disturb. His cassock fell around him in straight folds like a black winding-sheet, concealing all the outlines of his body. Albine dropped back at the sight of that sombre phantom of her former love. She missed his freely flowing beard, his freely flowing curls. And in the midst of his shorn locks she saw the pallid circle of his tonsure, which disquieted her as if it had ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... deeper it sank. With a despairing scream it made a last futile effort, then it stretched its neck along the snow, and with a sob lay down to die. Further efforts to move it would be thrown away, and Jim knew it. In a few minutes it would be wrapped in its winding-sheet. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... in check; the meaning of the symbolism is remembered and fresh; it is a living language, pregnant and suggestive. Bye and bye, as the mind passes into other phases, the meaning is forgotten; the language becomes a dead language; and the living robe of life becomes a winding-sheet of corruption. The form is represented as everything, the spirit as nothing; obedience is dispensed with; sin and religion arrange a compromise; and outward observances, or technical inward emotions, are ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... thirty years, for fear of being shuffled out of the world prematurely, to make room for the rest of their adventures. The first time Jack carries the Duchess into the Highlands, I am persuaded that some of his second-sighted subjects will see him in a winding-sheet, with a train of kings behind him as ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... tried to rest in that dark bed, But rest I cannot get, For always with the tears you shed, My winding-sheet is wet. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... thy royal beauty Be humble, I pray thee. Here all things die, flower, summer, Youth and life: Soon, soon the day will be, My fair one, when they'll carry thee Faded and pale in a winding-sheet." ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... the more desirable effects it hath wrought for himself, in the rich perquisites acquired by it: witness that silk nightgown, that robe of shame, which, to his eternal dishonour, he publicly wears; that gown which I will not scruple to call the winding-sheet of the liberties of Newgate. Is there a prig who hath the interest and honour of Newgate so little at heart that he can refrain from blushing when he beholds that trophy, purchased with the breath of so many prigs? Nor is this all. His waistcoat ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... mother, stringing pop-corn in the kitchen for the Christmas tree at the school-house, looked out toward noon to see the farm restored, as if by enchantment, to the aspect of other and happier winters; and sorrowfully welcomed the winding-sheet that gave promise of the coming resurrection, when the grass and flowers should rise again from out the naked, charred ground, bright and ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Hulet took great pride in the sonorous tones of his voice, and loved nothing more dearly than to steal up behind a man and startle the unsuspecting one by giving a very loud "Hem." It was a "Hem," however, which helped to make the actor's winding-sheet, for one fine day he repeated the trick, burst a blood-vessel, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... excellently pure than she, the lost, had been. Under that moon was the island of Ancient Slingers, and on the island a house, framed from mullions to chimney-top like the isle itself, of stone. Inside the window, the moonlight irradiating her winding-sheet, lay Avice, reached only by the faint noises inherent in the isle; the tink-tink of the chisels in the quarries, the surging of the tides in the Bay, and the muffled grumbling of the currents in ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... wind shifting from south to north-west; and, for the first time in our lives I suppose, we were anxiously watching and desiring this change, as it was the only chance of saving the thousands of sheep and lambs we now knew lay buried under the smooth white winding-sheet of snow. Before bedtime we heard the fitful gusts we knew so well, and had never before hailed with such deep joy and thankfulness. Every time I woke the same welcome sound of the roaring warm gale met my ears; and we were prepared ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... in Spain the Sueves were extending their ravages; Attila menaced the eastern provinces; the Emperor Valentinian was forced to hide in the marshes of Ravenna, and see the second sack of the imperial capital, now a prostrate power—a corpse in a winding-sheet. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... made, however, more agreeable walking than the boulders. The path had again become precipitous, and kept on mounting, till of a sudden it landed us upon an amphitheatral arena, dominated by high, jagged peaks. One unbroken stretch of snow covered the plateau, and at the centre of the wintry winding-sheet a cluster of weather-beaten huts appealed pitiably to the eye. They were the buildings of the Riuzanjita hot-springs; in summer a sort of secular monastery for pilgrims to the Dragon peak. They were tenanted now, we had been told, by a couple of watchmen. We struck out with freer strides, while ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... left unscathed, to frighten the weak-minded and embitter their existence. A belief in omens is not confined to the humble and uninformed. A general who led an army with credit has been known to feel alarmed at a winding-sheet in the candle; and learned men, who had honourably and fairly earned the highest honours of literature, have been seen to gather their little ones around them, and fear that one would be snatched ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... the pitiless storm beating in their faces, both man and beast lost their way, and, wandering about until all strength was spent, lay down to die in the drifts that quickly hid their bodies from sight. It was many days before they were found, lying together, close wrapped in their winding-sheet ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... the warp, and weave the woof, The winding-sheet of Edward's race. Give ample room and verge enough[383-3] The characters of hell ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... it long," laughed Crispin, as he surveyed him. "There, man, you'll do well enough. Your coat is somewhat tight in the back, somewhat short in the skirt; but neither so tight nor so short but that it may be preferred to a winding-sheet, and that is the ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... earth is filled in crumbles a little bread and sugar-cake and sprinkles water upon the grave. A provision of bread, sweetmeats and water is also left upon it for the soul of the departed. [233] In the Central Provinces the body of a man is covered with a white winding-sheet and that of a woman with a red one. If the death occurs during the lunar conjunction known as Panchak, four human images of flour are made and buried with the dead man, as they think that if this is not done four more deaths ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... furnish it with a more curious collection, in its sort, than any of our other museums contain. Of all the saints in our calendar, there is not one of any notoriety who has not supplied her with a finger, a toe, or some other part; or with a piece of a shirt, a handkerchief, a sandal, or a winding-sheet. Even a bit of a pair of breeches, said to have belonged to Saint Mathurin, whom many think was a sans-cullotte, obtains her adoration on certain occasions. As none of her children have yet arrived at the same height of faith ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... rejoined the Exquisite, "this here is called a Sark o' Fegus, implying the domicile, or rather, the winding-sheet of the dead, as the sark or chemise wound itself round the fair forms of the daughters of O'Fegus, a highland Chieftain, from whom descended Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; and thence originated the name subsequently given by the highland laird's successors, to the dormitory ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... stood with the palm of genius on the one hand and a shameful ending in the hulks upon the other; and, on high upon the Sinai of the prophets, beheld no Dead Sea covering the cities of the plain—the hideous winding-sheet of Gomorrah. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... . . they'll remarry Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider Make a thin ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... consciousness returned, unutterably sweet; was it the voice of an angel coming to bear her hence? Once again! and now her ear caught—and still again—a voice of earth, clear; and it had power to start her up from under the snow, that was surely weaving and thickening her virgin winding-sheet. God in heaven! once again! Strong, clear and powerful, it pealed through the arches of the forest, overtopping the tempest. It was a voice she knew, and if aught might, it would have called her back from death; as ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... emitting a strong phosphorescent glow like the glow of a glow-worm, saving that it was in a perpetual state of motion. She wore a quantity of white drapery swathed round her in a manner that perplexed me sorely, until I suddenly realised with a creeping of my flesh that it must be a winding-sheet, that burial accessary so often minutely described to me by the son of the village undertaker. Though interesting, I did not think it at all becoming, and would have preferred to see any other style of ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... ever, as it stood, sunny but desolate, under the dazzling light of the September noon. This association was a little like the one that later established itself for me between the sad falsetto of the Arab songs, the snowy splendor of their mosques and the winding-sheet whiteness of ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... this second-sight in her company replied, and said, if yon be he, unless he marry within six months, he'll never marry. The Lady asked, how did he know that ? he said, very well, for I see him, saith he, all inclosed in his winding-sheet, except his nostrils and his mouth, which will also close up within six months; which happened even as he foretold; within the said space he died, and his brother Duncan Macpherson this present Clunie succeeded. ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... this great end, partial defeat, And jibings of the ignorant worldly-wise, Than laud and triumph won with shameful blows. The dead Past lies in its dead winding-sheet; The living Present droops with tearful eyes; But far beyond ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... town. Once more they had to bivouac in the open, and rations, tents, and blankets were still behind. When the day broke over the Shenandoah Mountains the country was white with snow, and the sleeping soldiers were covered as with a winding-sheet. After a hasty meal an attempt was made to surround the village, and to cut off the retreat of the garrison. The outflanking movements, made in a blinding storm, failed in combination. The roads were too bad, the subordinate ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... his eyes and composed his limbs," said Bianchon. "When the certificate has been officially registered at the Mayor's office, we will sew him in his winding-sheet and bury him somewhere. What do you think ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... is broken. I have just seen her in her winding-sheet; her face is quite pale now with purple shadows. Oh! I want my children! my ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... her seat, opens a window at the head of the cot (the dead will not escape through the iron grating), and paces the floor, while Harry and Daddy sponge the body, lay it carefully down, and fold it in the winding-sheet. "Poor master,—God has taken him; but how I shall miss him! I've spent happy days wid 'im in dis place, I have!" says Bob, as they lay his head on the hard pillow. He gazes upon him with affection,—and says "Mas'r 'll ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... thee to-morrow night, if the King let me live." And the King said to himself, "By Allah, I will not kill her, till I hear the rest of the story!" So they lay together till morning, when the King went out to his hall of audience and the Vizier came in to him, with the winding-sheet under his arm. Then the King ordered and appointed and deposed, without telling the Vizier aught of what had happened, much to the former's surprise, until the end of the day, when the Divan broke up and he retired ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... winding-sheet, I'll admit," said Maggie, "but not quite dead, I trust;" and, putting down her light, she attempted to extricate her governess, who continued to apologize for what she had done. "Not that I cared so much about your celebrating America; but I couldn't sleep ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... domes and shadowy towers Glass in deep waters. Over this he went Dark, and still Darkness listened for his foot Inaudible, itself being but a dream. Straight to Mount Savo went he, gnawed by time, And thus, "O mountain buffeted of storms, Give me of thy huge mantle of deep snow To frame a winding-sheet." The mountain knew him, Nor dared refuse, and with his sword Canute Cut from his flank white snow, enough to make The garment he desired, and then he cried, "Old mountain! death is dumb, but tell me thou The way to God." More deep each dread ravine And ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... it With a stark winding-sheet, and bitter herbs: I think there are no roses in the grave, Or if there are, they all are withered now Since my ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... lips; he sunk on the seat beside him. The left hand rested droopingly upon the piles of public papers and official documents, and the fingers played with them, as the bedridden dying sufferer plays with the coverlid he will soon exchange for the winding-sheet. But his right hand seemed to feel, as through the dark, for the recovered son; and having touched what it sought, feebly drew Leonard near and nearer. Alas! that blissful PRIVATE LIFE—that close ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and she never will be found but in her winding-sheet," returned Joyce, whose lamentable and unusual state of excitement completely overpowered her customary quiet respect and plain good sense. "And, ma'am, I am glad that you have come up; for what I was about to say to my ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... but it had lacked this blue sky and fragrant atmosphere; it lacked these trees and flowers, these myrtle bushes, and these songs of the nightingale, and upon a few summer days had followed long, dull winter months with their cold winding-sheet of snow, with their benumbing masses of ice, and the fantastic flowers painted on the windows by the frost. And yet, and yet, there had been a sun which shone into her heart warmer than this bright sun of Italy, and the thought of which ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... on the window, through which a pale, dull light was creeping in—a joyless light it was, and enough to make a body shiver. I felt more like weeping than rejoicing, and my heart took to aching when I saw her there so white and patient, more like a girl who was waiting for a winding-sheet than for a bridal veil. But she smiled brave-like, when I sat down on her ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... nothing but a cosy and soothing retreat for students and lovers. But now—see how different! These great spreading, gnarled branches are hands, claws—monstrous and menacing; those leaves no longer bright remind me of a hearse's plumes; their rustling—of the rustling and switching of a pall or winding-sheet. The trunk, black, sinuous, towering, is assuredly no piece of timber, but something pulpy, something intangible, something antagonistic, mystic, devilish. I turn from it and shudder. Then my mind reverts to the elm—the elm on which Sir Algernon hanged himself. I remember it is not ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... the purple of Pride, The trappings which dizen the proud? Alas! they are all laid aside; And here's neither dress nor adornment allowed, But the long winding-sheet, and the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... high into the air, he precipitated himself furiously against the brazen gate, was hurled back, and started out of his sleep just as he was on the point of touching the ground. He opened his eyes in dismay. A ghastly figure, wrapped in a winding-sheet, drew back the curtains of his bed. He recognised the features of his old father, who, gazing upon him for a moment, said, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... lasting pleasure to associate, in imagination, with spectres, wraiths, and airily-malicious shadows, I will not cross your fancy. To a person of solid nerves a banshee may be an entertaining companion, and an apparition in a well-worn winding-sheet may be a pretty toy. For all I know, it may be a delight to you to find your hair standing on end at the unexpected appearance of a dead woman in a black cloak between you and the person with whom you are engaged in animated conversation. All ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... silence of all silences, where wait Fame's unblown years whose choir my soul would greet! Graves, nor dead Time, are sealed so dumb in fate, For Death and Time must pass on echoing feet. No grass-locked vault, no sculptured winding-sheet, No age-embalmed hour with mummied wing, Is bosomed in such stillness, vast, complete, As wraps the future, and no prayer may bring From that unfathomed pause ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... must have written something on her tombstone, and now running without any fear among the half-open coffins, among the corpses and skeletons, I went toward her, sure that I should find her immediately. I recognized her at once, without seeing her face, which was covered by the winding-sheet, and on the marble cross, where shortly ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... and citizens to the amount of twenty-five. From the community it is hidden. To the dissolute and bad, the thing remains a frightful mystery. Between the criminal and them, the prison-wall is interposed as a thick gloomy veil. It is the curtain to his bed of death, his winding-sheet, and grave. From him it shuts out life, and all the motives to unrepenting hardihood in that last hour, which its mere sight and presence is often all- sufficient to sustain. There are no bold eyes to make him bold; no ruffians to ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... to bring with it a board, of the just height of his body. "These being got, then without delay a choice painter was got to be in readiness to draw his picture, which was taken as followeth.—Several charcoal fires being first made in his large study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead bodies are usually fitted, to be shrouded and put into ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... her lips, and in the slight hectic spot which tinged her otherwise leaden complexion, gave evident indications of a galloping consumption. An air of gave extreme haut ton, however, pervaded her whole appearance; she wore in a graceful and degage manner, a large and beautiful winding-sheet of the finest India lawn; her hair hung in ringlets over her neck; a soft smile played about her mouth; but her nose, extremely long, thin, sinuous, flexible and pimpled, hung down far below her under lip, and in spite of the delicate manner in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... my readers—especially my juvenile readers—from supposing that it was our purpose that night to undress and calmly lie down in, or on, the pure white winding-sheet in which the frozen world of the Great Nor'-west had been at that time wrapped for more than four months. Our snow-bed, like other beds, required making, but I will postpone the making of it till bed-time. Meanwhile, let us follow the steps of Lumley, who, being taller and stronger than ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... that if life is a battle, it is not a slaughter-house where ferocious beasts wrangle over their prey, but a wrestling with the divine, under whatever form it may present itself—truth, beauty, or love? Who knows whether this expiring nineteenth century will not arise from its winding-sheet to make amende honorable and bequeath to its successor one manly word ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... cogitations. Lastly, her dreams are so chaste that she dare tell them: only a Friday's dream is all her superstition; that she conceals for fear of anger. Thus lives she, and all her care is that she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stuck upon her winding-sheet. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... a ghost before, he naturally was terribly frightened, and, after a second hasty glance at the awful phantom, he fled back to his room, tripping up in his long winding-sheet as he sped down the corridor, and finally dropping the rusty dagger into the Minister's jack- boots, where it was found in the morning by the butler. Once in the privacy of his own apartment, he flung himself down on a small pallet- bed, and hid his ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... of aromatic herbs, and Nicodemus had purchased many perfumes which were necessary for embalming the body of Jesus from her. She procured the more precious kinds from other places, and Joseph went away to procure a fine winding-sheet. His servants then fetched ladders, hammers, pegs, jars of water, and sponges, from a neighbouring shed, and placed them in a hand-barrow similar to that on which the disciples of John the Baptist put his body when they carried it off ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... amongst us. "Laertes, the father of Odysseus, is alone with none to care for him living or dead," said she to us. "I must weave a shroud for him against the time which cannot now be far off when old Laertes dies. Trouble me not while I do this. For if he should die and there be no winding-sheet to wrap him round all the women of the land would ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... and spade, Bring me a winding-sheet; When I my grave have made, Let winds and tempests beat: Then down I'll lie, as cold as clay. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... shadows reflected upon the dazzling white covering of snow, lay so perfectly still, that it seemed as if Nature had suspended her operations, that life and motion had ceased, and that she was sleeping in her winding-sheet, upon ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... affected; they passed quickly on with averted looks. But before them and around them there was nothing but snow; this immense and dismal uniformity extended farther than the eye could reach; the imagination was astounded: it seemed a vast winding-sheet which Nature had thrown over the army. The only objects not enveloped by it were some gloomy pines, trees of the tombs, with their funereal verdure and their gigantic and motionless trunks completing the solemnity of a general mourning, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... doomed feet must tread; but save me from the they-sayers of society, whose knives are hidden in a velvet sheath, whose bridge of death, is woven of flowers; and who spread, with invisible poison, even the spotless whiteness of the winding-sheet. ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... is provided with a square of canvas with eyelets, which serves as a carpet on which he lies at night, as a stretcher on which, when wounded, he is carried to the place where he can have his injuries attended to, and which, when he is killed, is used as a winding-sheet. The medical organization of the army is as thorough as the military. And the results attained justify the solicitude displayed. From month to month the percentage of wounded who are able to return to the front has been augmenting steadily, and the death-rate has decreased correspondingly. ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... being exhumed forty days after his interment, they found on his corpse all the indications of an arch-vampire. His body was red, his hair, nails, and beard had all grown again, and his veins were replete with fluid blood, which flowed from all parts of his body upon the winding-sheet which encompassed him. The hadnagi, or bailli of the village, in whose presence the exhumation took place, and who was skilled in vampirism, had, according to custom, a very sharp stake driven into the heart of the defunct Arnald Paul, and which pierced his ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... of that very lack of expression. From Fabriano, at our feet, was spread to the east, the broad plain that lies twixt the Esino and the Masone, as far as Mount Comero, which, in the distance, lifted its round shoulder from the haze of sea. To the west the country lay under the same winding-sheet of snow as far as eye might range, to the towers of distant Perugia, to the Lake Trasimeno—a silver sheen that broke the white monotony—to Etruscan Cortona, perched like an eyrie on its mountain top, and to the line of Tuscan hills, like heavy, low-lying ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... of Him awhile That, with a coffin for a boat, Rows daily o'er the Stygian moat, And for our table choose a tomb: There's dark enough in any skull To charge with black a raven plume; And for the saddest funeral thoughts A winding-sheet hath ample room, Where Death, with his keen-pointed style, Hath writ the common doom. How wide the yew-tree spreads its gloom, And o'er the dead lets fall its dew, As if in tears it wept for them, The many human families That ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... became his winding-sheet, the waters were his tomb; But, for his fame, the ocean sea was ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... be necessary to explain to the reader by what means the life of our celebrated cur was preserved. When Smallbones had thrown him into the canal, tied up, as he supposed, in his winding-sheet, what Mr Vanslyperken observed was true, that there were people below, and the supposed paving-stone might have fallen upon them: the voices which he heard were those of a father and son, who were ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... I, Thy servant, come to Thee for succour. My purpose lies in the land of Qaf and my road is full of peril. Lead me by it.' Then he took a handful of earth and cast it on his collar, and said: 'O earth! be thou my grave; and O vest! be thou my winding-sheet!' Then he took the middle road and went along it, day after day, with many a silent prayer, till he saw trees rise from the weary waste of sand. They grew in a garden, and he went up to the gate and found it a slab of beautifully worked marble, and that near ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... professed object of the pulpit, and if it does not teach that, what in Heaven's name does it teach? This anointed man of God speaks of moral duty to God and man. He teaches man from the cradle to the coffin; and when that aged form is gathered within its winding-sheet, it is the pulpit that says, "Dust to dust and ashes ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... made no reply; but taking D'Artagnan by the hand, he led him to the coffin, and showed him, under the thin winding-sheet, the black wounds by which life had escaped. The captain turned away his eyes, and, judging it was useless to question Grimaud, who would not answer, he recollected that M. de Beaufort's secretary had written more than he, D'Artagnan, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt and trousers, with bare feet. He has a yellow look in the spectral darkness of a candle that has guttered down until the whole length of its wick (still burning) has doubled over and left a tower of winding-sheet above it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his whiskers and his beard—the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the scum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is, foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... grave were growing green, A winding-sheet drawn ower my e'en, And I in Helen's arms lying On fair ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... know it? You go upstairs in the accustomed way, fearing nothing; but when you open the door you find the air dark with dust and the floor with tea-leaves, and nothing looking as it ought to look. Prone on its face on the bed, covered with a winding-sheet, lies your overthrown looking-glass; and underneath it, in a shapeless mass, are huddled together all the things that you hold dearest upon earth. You thrust in your hand to get something that you ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... the perpetrators of the outrage were never discovered. There is a tradition, however, and many shepherds in this district believe it, that on certain nights the ghost of Buckerly is seen wandering on the banks of the Loddon, with a winding-sheet covered with blood, and that those who look upon the apparition are sure to be overtaken by ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... like not the look of this mist. My grandsire hath told me of a mist that lay like a winding-sheet on everything for two days, and this seemeth to me to be of that kind. It were not wise ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... defiance still further to modern liberalism, great store of relics was sent in; among these, pieces of the true cross, of the white and purple robes, of the crown of thorns, sponge, lance, and winding-sheet of Christ,—the hair, robe, veil, and girdle of the Blessed Virgin; relics of St. John the Baptist, St. Joseph, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Paul, St. Barnabas, the four evangelists, and a multitude of other saints: so many that the bare ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... person—as, for example, one of them remarking to the cura in a very natural and quiet voice in his uncle's presence (who still fully retained his feeling and hearing): 'See, Father, it would be wise for you to consecrate the winding-sheet, for I think that he is about to die soon.' The same indifference is to be observed in a criminal condemned to any punishment. He is seated on his heels on a bamboo bench, smoking. Every few moments the religious enters to give him a Christian ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... without delay a choice painter was got to be in readiness to draw his picture, which was taken as followeth:—Several charcoal fires being first made in his large study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and, having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead bodies are usually fitted to be shrouded and put into their coffin or grave. ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... through Philip, and for an instant he stood rigid. What was that he saw out in the gray gloom of Arctic desolation, creeping up, up, up, almost black at its beginning, and dying away like a ghostly winding-sheet? A gurgling cry rose in his throat, and he went on, panting now like a broken-winded beast in his excitement. It grew near, blacker, warmer. He fancied that he could feel its heat, which was the new fire of life ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... winding-sheet! Now shall I need thee shortly. Dear my lord, Let me hear once more, what ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... water from a silver bowl over the slender body. Two sisters of the king then shrouded the corpse in a sitting posture, overlaid it with perfumes and odoriferous gums, frankincense and myrrh, and, lastly, swaddled it in a fine winding-sheet. Finally it was deposited in a golden urn, and this again in an-other of finer gold, richly adorned with precious stones. The inner urn has an iron grating in the bottom, and the outer an orifice at its most pendent point, through which by means of a tap or stop-cock, the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... possession of his palace, and were daily revelling there, thrusting his son Telemachus aside, and insisting that Penelope should choose one of them as her husband. She could only put them off by declaring she could wed no one till she had finished the winding-sheet she was making for old Laertes, her father-in-law; while to prevent its coming to an end she undid by night whatever she wove by day. Telemachus had gone to seek his father, but came home baffled to Eumaeus' hut, and there ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... realized; his honor was secure; nobody outraged by even an incredulous smile the purity of Clemence's winding-sheet; and the world did not refuse to their double grave the commonplace consideration that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... faltered, and, reeling back, fell upon the timbers. A sob, a faint moaning sound, answered only by the dull, heavy surge of the waters below, as they lapsed against the timbers of the pier. Another moan—a shudder of all the limbs, and then the fog rolled down upon him like a winding-sheet. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... over I said that I desired to walk in the gardens with the princess Otomie, and we went out and wandered under the solemn trees, that are draped in a winding-sheet of grey moss which, hanging from every bough as though the forest had been decked with the white beards of an army of aged men, waved and rustled sadly in the keen night air. But alas! we might not be alone, for after us at a distance of twenty ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... his lowly lot while living, is anxious that some little respect may be paid to his remains. Sir Thomas Overbury, describing the "faire and happy milkmaid," observes, "thus lives she, and all her care is, that she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stucke upon her winding-sheet." The poets, too, who always breathe the feeling of a nation, continually advert to this fond solicitude about the grave. In The Maid's Tragedy, by Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a beautiful instance of the kind describing the capricious melancholy ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving |
