Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Grave (The)
And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor; but no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day.
Deut. XXXIV. 6.
By Nebo’s lonely mountain,
On this side Jordan’s wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,
There lies a lonely grave;
But no man built that sepulcher,
And no man saw it e’er,
For the angels of God upturned the sod
And laid the dead man there.
Cecil Frances Alexander—Burial of Moses.
Inn of a traveller on his way to Jerusalem.
Translation of the Latin on the monument of Dean Alford. St. Martin’s Churchyard, Canterbury.
Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down;
Where a green grassy turf is all I crave,
With here and there a violet bestrewn,
Fast by a brook or fountain’s murmuring wave;
And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave!
Beattie—The Minstrel. Bk. II. St. 17.
Here’s an acre sown indeed,
With the richest royalest seed.
Francis Beaumont. On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey.
One foot in the grave.
Beaumont and Fletcher—The Little French Lawyer. Act I. Sc. 1.
See yonder maker of the dead man’s bed,
The sexton, hoary-headed chronicle,
Of hard, unmeaning face, down which ne’er stole
A gentle tear.
Blair—The Grave. L. 451.
The grave, dread thing!
Men shiver when thou’rt named: Nature appalled,
Shakes off her wonted firmness.
Blair—The Grave.
Nigh to a grave that was newly made,
Leaned a sexton old on his earth-worn spade.
Park Benjamin—The Old Sexton.
The grave is Heaven’s golden gate,
And rich and poor around it wait;
O Shepherdess of England’s fold,
Behold this gate of pearl and gold!
Wm. Blake—Dedication of the Designs to Blair’s “Grave.” To Queen Charlotte.
Build me a shrine, and I could kneel
To rural Gods, or prostrate fall;
Did I not see, did I not feel.
That one G
O Heaven, permit that I may lie
Where o’er my corse green branches wave;
And those who from life’s tumults fly
With kindred feelings press my grave.
Bloomfield—Love of the Country. St. 4.
Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years.
Sir Thomas Browne—Hydriotaphia. Ch. V.
He that unburied lies wants not his hearse,
For unto him a tomb’s the Universe.
Sir Thomas Browne—Religio Medici. Pt. I. Sec. XLI.
I gazed upon the glorious sky
And the green mountains round,
And thought that when I came to lie
At rest within the ground,
’Twere pleasant that in flowery June
When brooks send up a cheerful tune,
And groves a joyous sound,
The sexton’s hand, my grave to make,
The rich, green mountain turf should break.
Bryant—June.
I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard, than in the tombs of the Capulets.
Burke—Letter to Matthew Smith.
Perhaps the early grave
Which men weep over may be meant to save.
Byron—Don Juan. Canto IV. St. 12.
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—Vision of Judgment. St. 10.
What’s hallow’d ground? Has earth a clod
Its Maker mean’d not should be trod
By man, the image of his God,
Erect and free,
Unscourged by Superstition’s rod
To bow the knee.
Campbell—Hallowed Ground.
But an untimely grave.
Carew—On the Duke of Buckingham.
The grave’s the market place.
Death and the Lady. Ballad in Dixon’s Ballads. The Percy Society.
The solitary, silent, solemn scene,
Where Cæsars, heroes, peasants, hermits lie,
Blended in dust together; where the slave
Rests from his labors; where th’ insulting proud
Resigns his powers; the miser drops his hoard:
Where human folly sleeps.
Dyer—Ruins of Rome. L. 540.
Etsi alterum pedem in sepulchro haberem.
(Julian would learn something) even if he had one foot in the grave.
Erasmus. Quoting Pomponius, of Julian. Original phrase one foot in the ferry boat, meaning Charon’s boat.
Alas, poor Tom! how oft, with merry heart,
Have we beheld thee play the Sexton’s part;
Each comic heart must now be grieved to see
The Sexton’s dreary part performed on thee.
Robert Fergusson—Epigram on the Death of Mr. Thomas Lancashire, Comedian.
Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.
Gray—Elegy in a Country Churchyard.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Await alike th’ inevitable hour,
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Gray—Elegy in a Country Churchyard.
Fond fool! six feet shall serve for all thy store,
And he that cares for most shall find no more.
Joseph Hall—Satires. No. III. Second Series.
Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined,—
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind.
Fitz-Greene Halleck—Burns. St. 32.
Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days;
None knew thee but to love thee
Nor named thee but to praise.
Fitz-Greene Halleck—On the death of J. R. Drake.
Graves they say are warm’d by glory;
Foolish words and empty story.
Heine—Latest Poems. Epilogue. L. 1.
Where shall we make her grave?
Oh! where the wild flowers wave
In the free air!
When shower and singing-bird
’Midst the young leaves are heard,
There—lay her there!
Felicia D. Hemans—Dirge. Where Shall we Make her Grave?
A piece of a Churchyard fits everybody.
Herbert—Jacula Prudentum.
The house appointed for all living.
Job. XXX. 23.
Teach me to live that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed.
Bishop Ken—Evening Hymn. The same is found in Thomas Browne—Religio Medici. Both are taken from the old Hymni Ecclesesiæ.
Then to the grave I turned me to see what therein lay;
’Twas the garment of the Christian, worn out and thrown away.
Krummacher—Death and the Christian.
I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial-ground God’s Acre. It is just.
Longfellow—God’s Acre.
This is the field and Acre of our God,
This is the place where human harvests grow!
Longfellow—God’s Acre.
I see their scattered gravestones gleaming white
Through the pale dusk of the impending night.
O’er all alike the imperial sunset throws
Its golden hues mingled with the rose;
We give to each a tender thought and pass
Out of the graveyards with their tangled grass.
Longfellow—Morituri Salutamus. L. 120.
Take them, O Grave! and let them lie
Folded upon thy narrow shelves,
As garments by the soul laid by,
And precious only to ourselves!
Longfellow—Suspiria.
There are slave-drivers quietly whipped underground,
There bookbinders, done up in boards, are fast bound,
There card-players wait till the last trump be played,
There all the choice spirits get finally laid,
There the babe that’s unborn is supplied with a berth,
There men without legs get their six feet of earth,
There lawyers repose, each wrapped up in his case,
There seekers of office are sure of a place,
There defendant and plaintiff get equally cast,
There shoemakers quietly stick to the last.
Lowell—Fables for Critics. L. 1,656.
As life runs on, the road grows strange
With faces new,—and near the end
The milestones into headstones change:—
’Neath every one a friend.
Lowell. Written on his 68th birthday.
We should teach our children to think no more of their bodies when dead than they do of their hair when cut off, or of their old clothes when they have done with them.
George MacDonald—Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood. P. 481.
Your seventh wife, Phileros, is now being buried in your field. No man’s field brings him greater profit than yours, Phileros.
Martial—Epigrams. Bk. X. Ep. 43.
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie;
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
Milton—Epitaph on Shakespeare.
There is a calm for those who weep,
A rest for weary pilgrims found,
They softly lie and sweetly sleep
Low in the ground.
Montgomery—The Grave.
(Bodies) carefully to be laid up in the wardrobe of the grave.
Bishop Pearson—Exposition of the Creed. Article IV.
Pabulum Acheruntis.
Food of Acheron. (Grave.)
Plautus—Casina. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 11.
Yet shall thy grave with rising flow’rs be dressed,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast;
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
There the first roses of the year shall blow.
Pope—Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady. L. 65.
The grave unites; where e’en the great find rest,
And blended lie th’ oppressor and th’ oppressed!
Pope—Windsor Forest. L. 317.
Ruhe eines Kirchhofs!
The churchyard’s peace.
Schiller—Don Carlos. III. 10. 220.
Never the grave gives back what it has won!
Schiller—Funeral Fantasy. Last line.
To that dark inn, the Grave!
Scott—The Lord of the Isles. VI. L. 26.
Bear from hence his body:
And mourn you for him: let him be regarded
As the most noble corse that ever herald
Did follow to his urn.
Coriolanus. Act V. Sc. 6. L. 143.
The sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d,
Hath op’d his ponderous and marble jaws.
Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 4. L. 48.
They bore him barefac’d on the bier;
*****
And in his grave rain’d many a tear.
Hamlet. Act IV. Sc. 5. L. 164.
Lay her i’ the earth;
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring!
Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 261.
Has this fellow no feeling of his business that he sings at grave-making?
Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.
Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 73.
Gilded tombs do worms infold.
Merchant of Venice. Act II. Sc. 7. L. 69.
Let’s choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Richard II. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 148.
Taking the measure of an unmade grave.
Romeo and Juliet. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 70.
The lone couch of his everlasting sleep.
Shelley—Alastor. L. 57.
O heart, and mind, and thoughts! what thing do you
Hope to inherit in the grave below?
Shelley—Sonnet. Ye Hasten to the Dead!
The grave
Is but the threshold of eternity.
Southey—Vision of the Maid of Orleans. Bk. II. (Originally the 9th book of Joan of Arc; later published as separate poem.)
There is an acre sown with royal seed.
Jeremy Taylor—Holy Living and Dying. Ch. I.
Kings have no such couch as thine,
As the green that folds thy grave.
Tennyson—A Dirge. St. 6.
Our father’s dust is left alone
And silent under other snows.
Tennyson—In Memoriam. Pt. CV.
Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound.
Watts—Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Funeral Thoughts. Bk. II. Vol. IX. Hymn 63.
…The low green tent
Whose curtain never outward swings.
Whittier—Snow-bound.
But the grandsire’s chair is empty,
The cottage is dark and still;
There’s a nameless grave on the battle-field,
And a new one under the hill.
Wm. Winter—After All.
… In shepherd’s phrase
With one foot in the grave.
Wordsworth—Michael.