C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917. Funeral
It is but waste to bury them preciously.Chaucer.
1 The nodding plums, Which makes poor man’s humiliation proud; Boast of our ruin! triumph of our dust!
Dr. Young.
2 Groans and convulsions, and discolour’d faces, Friends weeping round us, blacks, and obsequies, Make death a dreadful thing; the pomp of death Is far more terrible than death itself.
Nat. Lee.
3 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.
4 Of all The fools who flock’d to swell or see the show, Who car’d about the corpse? The funeral Made the attraction, and the black the woe; There throbb’d not there a thought which pierc’d the pall.
Byron.
5 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.
6 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 carcass That’s fallen into disgrace, and in the nostrils smells horrible?
Blair.
7 What though no friends in sable weeds appear, Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year? And bear about the mockery of woe To midnight dances, and the public show!
Pope.
8 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.
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