Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Funeral
It is but waste to bury them preciously.
Chaucer.
The nodding plums,Which makes poor man’s humiliation proud;Boast of our ruin! triumph of our dust!
Dr. Young.
Groans and convulsions, and discolour’d faces,Friends weeping round us, blacks, and obsequies,Make death a dreadful thing; the pomp of deathIs far more terrible than death itself.
Nat. Lee.
The only kind office performed for us by our friends of which we never complain is our funeral; and the only thing which we most want, happens to be the only thing we never purchase—our coffin.
Colton.
Of allThe fools who flock’d to swell or see the show,Who car’d about the corpse? The funeralMade the attraction, and the black the woe;There throbb’d not there a thought which pierc’d the pall.
Byron.
Why is the hearse with scutcheons blazon’d round,And with the nodding plume of ostrich crown’d?The dead know it not, nor profit gain;It only serves to prove the living vain,How short is life; how frail is human trust!Is all this pomp for laying dust to dust?
Gay.
But see! the well-plumed hearse comes nodding on, stately and slow;But tell us, why this waste?Why this ado in earthing up a carcassThat’s fallen into disgrace, and in the nostrils smells horrible?
Blair.
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year?And bear about the mockery of woeTo midnight dances, and the public show!
Pope.
Thus, day by day, and month by month, we pass’d;It pleas’d the Lord to take my spouse at last.I tore my gown, I soil’d my locks with dust,And beat my breasts—as wretched widows must.Before my face my handkerchief I spread,To hide the flood of tears I did—not shed.
Pope.
