"Bier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clearness; then—on the same day—we see the outworn frame break down, and follow mournfully two days later the afflicting details of his death. As the generals and admirals of the allied forces stand round the dead hero's form, as the palled bier, draped in the flag of England, is carried from headquarters to the port, as the "Caradoc," steaming away with her honoured freight, flies out her "Farewell" signal, the narrative abruptly ends. The months of the siege which still remained might be left to other hands or lapse untold. ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... 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 the other ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... service, even during their long intervals of absence abroad. Clemens gave orders that everything possible should be done for Patrick's comfort. When the end came, a few days later, he traveled to Hartford to lay flowers on Patrick's bier, and to serve, with Patrick's friends—neighbor coachmen and John O'Neill, the gardener—as pall-bearer, taking his allotted place without ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... o'er thy friend's low bier, Dost shed the bitter drops like rain, Hope that a brighter, happier sphere Will give him to thy ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... did mother stand by her first born's bier and say, "Thank God for Death that bringeth to my beloved eternal Life." Though Bibles were piled as high as Helicon and every son of Adam a white-stoled priest, proclaiming the grave the gate to glorious life, still would Doubt, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Akbar was performed after a simple fashion. His grave was prepared in a garden at Secundra, about four miles from Agra. The body was placed upon a bier. Selim and his three sons carried it out of the fortress. The young princes, assisted by the officers of the imperial household, carried it to Secundra. Seven days were spent in mourning over the grave. Provisions and sweetmeats were distributed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... in the words of Scripture, expressed the thought that ere long she should be laid by his side. Her's was not the bitter, living grief of Patsey; she felt that she was near the grave herself. Tears of gentle-hearted women were not the only tears which fell upon Charlie's bier; his uncles, his elder brothers, and more than one true friend were there. But amid all the strong, contending emotions of those who crowded the humble room, who hung over the coffin, still that youthful form ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... 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, ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... they write texts of the Koran on paper and burn them before the sufferer. The caste bury the dead with the feet pointing to the south. On the way to the grave each one of the mourners places his shoulder under the bier for a time, partaking of the impurity communicated by it. Incense is burnt daily in the name of a deceased person for forty days after his death, with the object probably of preventing his ghost from returning to haunt the house. Muhammadan beggars are fed on the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... power to impart life. When they were carrying the young man out of Nain He had compassion on the widowed mother and came and touched the bier and said, "Young man, I say unto thee, ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... TEARS TO ME; to thee The end of thy probation's strife, The archway to eternity, The portal of immortal life; To me the pall, the bier, the sod; To thee the palm of victory given. Enough, my heart; thank God! thank God! That thou hast ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... barefac'd on the bier Hey no nonny, nonny, hey nonny And on his grave rain'd many ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... I was just waiting till somebody called me off. I've shed more tears than Brutus ever dropped at the bier of Caesar. Wow! some kind person wipe my eyes, please; my hands are too rank to touch my tear-rag," he declared, and Will performed this friendly office, thinking that he deserved it after ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... his loss. A bountiful provision was made for his family; a public funeral was awarded to his remains, and monuments in the principal cities of his native land were erected to his memory. A sorrowing nation lamented over his bier, and Britania, indeed, felt that old England's defender was numbered with ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... risen and stood looking at him amidst a distressing silence. Then, as he was covered up and carried away, Father Fourcade followed the bier leaning on the shoulder of Father Massias and dragging his gouty leg, the painful weight of which he had momentarily forgotten. But he was already recovering his strong serenity, and as a hush fell ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... music from a cafe attracted him; he walked in, vaguely moved by a wish for the distinction of adventure, without the trouble which adventure usually brought with it; spurred too, perhaps, by an after-dinner demon. The cafe was the bier-halle of the 'Fifties, with a door at either end, and lighted by a large wooden lantern. On a small dais three musicians were fiddling. Solitary men, or groups, sat at some dozen tables, and the waiters hurried about replenishing glasses; the air ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... bosoms, bathes their shuddering limbs, Climbs their white shoulders, buoys their streaming hair, And the last sea-shriek bellows in the air.— Each with loud sobs her tender sire caress'd, 230 And gasping strain'd him closer to her breast!— —Stretch'd on one bier they sleep beneath the brine, And their white ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm, With banquet song, and dance, and wine; And thou art terrible,—the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know, or dream, or fear Of agony are thine. 493 FITZ-GREENE ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... barefaced on his bier Six proper youths and tall, And many a tear bedew'd his grave Within ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... niche of that high hall Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did hear That sound the first amidst the festival, And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear; And when they smiled because he deem'd it near, His heart more truly knew that peal too well Which stretch'd his father on a bloody bier, And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell; He rush'd into the field, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... black: on one side Lothario's body on a bier; on the other a table, with a skull and other bones, a book, and a lamp on it. Calista is discovered on a couch, in black, her hair hanging loose and disordered. After soft music, she rises ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... that of a man I believe, covered with a cloth and dressed in cotton clothing, was carried on a bier formed of two planks, with the male relations following. On reaching the grave the Imaum read a service in a monotonous tone, and then the body was lowered till it reached the level of the side chamber, in which it was placed, and inclosed with the planks ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... within a room Prepared for her, and sees her maidens come, Before a weird procession wrapped in palls, That soundless glide within and fills the halls. Before her now they place a sable bier Beside the fount; and Ishtar, drawing near, Raised the white pall from Tammuz's perfect form. The clay unconscious, had that mystic charm Of Beauty sleeping sweetly on his face,— Of agony or sorrow left no trace: But, oh! that awful wound of death was there With its deep mark;—the ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... his poor little body was being made ready for burial, my elder wife, his mother, led me to the side of the bier. Uncovering the child's shoulder, she showed me a strange mark, as if branded upon the flesh by a hot iron. In the red, angry lines I had no difficulty in tracing the head of a bull, the sacred mark of Siva. I said nothing, and indeed commanded my ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... From the lorn heart each sweetening solace gone, Abandoned, friendless, withered, lost, and lone; And when with keener pangs we bleed to know That hands beloved have struck the deepest blow; That friends we deemed most true, and held most dear, Have stretched the pall of death o'er pleasure's bier; Repaid our trusting faith with serpent guile, Cursed with a kiss, and stabbed beneath a smile; What then remains for souls of tender mould? One last and silent refuge, calm and cold— A resting place for misery's gentle slave; Hearts break but once, ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... case, and then when the body was opened it was found that his heart was absent. The scene is nominally inside a church: in the background is a procession of clergy and choristers with their cross and candles. In the centre is the bier with the corpse lying on it. The body is opened and the crowd looks on in feverish though suppressed excitement. St. Anthony is pointing towards the dead man: and the crowd realises that the heart is absent—ubi ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... lives and feels; and in consequence when the body is separated from its spirit, which is what is called dying, man continues to be a man and to live. I have heard from heaven that some who die, while they are lying upon the bier, before they are resuscitated, continue to think even in their cold body, and do not know that they are not still alive, except that they are unable to move a particle of matter belonging ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... forward the dead body of the man of God, and laid it down in the mission house in which he had so often discoursed of Jesus. Around him in that hallowed spot gathered a company more precious to God than ever assembled around the bier of a fallen emperor; there went up to heaven a wail of sorrow as heartfelt as ever was uttered over the grave of son or sire; and the death was as full of sadness and importance as could have been the demise of ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... starve for sympathy. I shall go 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
... no! the day of misfortune, the day of despair was that when I heard the death-bell sound, and they told me— twas for her! when I asked for whom was that funeral bier, and they told me— twas for her! but from that hour I ceased to suffer. It's true, my heart— all there is a devouring fire— my brain— all there is confusion and clouds: but that fire, it was she who first kindled it! but among these gloomy clouds, she is the only object ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... Beside a bier knelt a winged figure, in act of stealing the rigid form, and to the awful yet strangely beautiful face of the messenger of gloom, she had given the streaming hair, the sunken, cavernous but wonderfully radiant eyes of Moritz Retzsch's weird image of Death. A white butterfly ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... hero and deliverer had been given up; they hastened to dig up the corpse; they sewed the head to the body, washed it, put on it some sumptuous clothes, and laid it with his bare sword and staff of command upon a bier covered with white silk; which was borne by the captains Masaniello had appointed. About four thousand priests conducted the procession by the order of the Archbishop, who wavered incessantly between the two parties, and excited more evil ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... still another death which was considered by Gonzales as "fitting to the occasion." The one- eyed Bernardino stuck against the wall of his wine-shop received the charge of six escopettas into his breast. As the shots rang out the rough bier with Tom's body on it went past carried by a bandit-like gang of Spanish patriots down the ravine to the shore, where two boats from the ship were waiting for what was left on earth ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... the bier rested before the altar in the stone chapel by the lake shore, a silent motley procession filed under the granite lintel:—stalwart Swede, blue-eyed German, sallow-cheeked Pole, dark-eyed Italian, burly Irish, low-browed ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... some one he replied: 'I have not been sent to curse, but to be a mercy to mankind.' He visited the sick, followed any bier he met, accepted the invitation of a slave to dinner, mended his own clothes, milked his ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... leaf, Brunton's high moral, Opie's deep wrought grief? Has the mild chaperon claimed thy yielding heart, Carroll's dark page, Trevelyan's gentle art? Or is it thou, all perfect Austen? Here Let one poor wreath adorn thy early bier, That scarce allowed thy modest youth to claim Its living portion of thy certain fame! Oh! Mrs. Bennet! Mrs. Norris too! While memory survives we'll dream of you. And Mr. Woodhouse, whose abstemious lip ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... centre of the nave. It was either the actual body, or, as might rather have been supposed at first glance, the cunningly wrought waxen face and suitably draped figure of a dead monk. This image of wax or clay-cold reality, whichever it might be, lay on a slightly elevated bier, with three tall candles burning on each side, another tall candle at the head, and another at the foot. There was music, too; in harmony with so funereal a spectacle. From beneath the pavement of the church came the deep, lugubrious strain ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... DEATH—within its pale Sad air each angry feeling fades— An evening haze, whose tender veil The landscape's harsher features shades. Ah, Scornful One—thy bier's white hue Stole every earth-stain from thy cheek, And left thee all to MEMORY'S view That HOPE once dared in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... community had the opportunity of discovering the number of her friends. Miserable children with faces which revealed two generations of hunger, homeless boys with vicious countenances, miserable wrecks of humanity, women with bloated faces, came to weep over Nora's bier, and to lay a flower there, and to scuttle away, more abjectly lonely than even sin could make them. If the cats and the dogs, the sparrows and horses to which she had shown kindness, could also have attended her funeral, the procession would have been, ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... the neighbors having been called by 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, the only one to be seen around, had grown exactly on the spot where the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... fear. It would enrage him. She counted on that. He turned back to his wife in a white fury. She leaned toward him, inviting his blows as martyrs welcome the torch that will make their pile of fagots a blazing bier. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... 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 in dying as Breault ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... at Perugia represents the miraculous salvation of three innocent youths, sons of Roman princes; and the death and funeral of the Saint. In the lower part of the picture he is extended on the bier surrounded by monks, women and poor people who weep his loss, while above, his soul is being led to heaven by four angels. The frame of the painting is now divided into twelve fragments, each one containing a small figure of a Saint: ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... 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; 'He ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... floor, the clear voice of the clergyman that headed the procession sounded these words through the cathedral: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth." As the bier advanced, Bearwarden and Ayrault recognized themselves among the pallbearers—the former with grey mustache and hair, the latter considerably aged. The hermetically sealed lead coffin was inclosed in a wooden case, and the whole was draped ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... &c. (lamentation) 839; cypress; orbit, dead march, muffled drum; mortuary, undertaker, mute; elegy; funeral, funeral oration, funeral sermon; epitaph. graveclothes[obs3], shroud, winding sheet, cerecloth; cerement. coffin, shell, sarcophagus, urn, pall, bier, hearse, catafalque, cinerary urn[obs3]. 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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... God rest her bier, How I loved her twenty years syne! Marian's married, but I sit here Alone and merry at Forty Year, Dipping my nose ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... income, and win the undivided respect and esteem of her professional associates. And when from a far country, whither she had gone in hope to escape a fell disease, her lifeless corpse was brought back for sepulture, many of the foremost lawyers of Chicago gathered about her bier and bore emphatic testimony to her virtues as a woman and her attainments as a lawyer. To me no greater work has been done by any American woman. When Alta Hulett unobtrusively, silently but indomitably ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... funeral. All the British pilots, and five hundred of their men marched, and the bier was followed by a battalion of French troops. Over and around the little French graveyard aviators flew dropping flowers. In later days less ceremony attended the last scene of an American ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... May I beg a votive tear? Woman, with her pure appealing, Is my angel at the bier. Let me have but one such linger, Praying Christ to help and save, Let me have but one dear finger Place ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... in his arms, but she pushed him away as if she feared to commit some breach of faith, and turning hastily to the bier she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I should die to-night And you should come to my cold corpse and kneel, Clasping my bier to show the grief you feel, I say, if I should die to-night And you should come to me, and there and then Just even hint 'bout payin' me that ten, I might arise the while, ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... 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 of ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... avoid the enemy, who they feared would attack them in the night. Captain Lewis endeavoured to assume a cheerfulness he did not feel to prevent the despondency of the savages: after conversing gayly with them he retired to his musquitoe bier, by the side of which the chief now placed himself: he lay down, yet slept but little, being in fact scarcely less uneasy than his Indian companions. He was apprehensive that finding the ascent of the river impracticable, captain Clarke ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... gain the favour of God by going with them. He assented and enquired where the funeral was to be held, whereupon they directed him to the place. So he made the ablution and repaired with the other merchants to the place of prayer, where they prayed over the dead, then went before the bier to the burial-place without the city and passed among the tombs till they came to the grave. Here they found that the dead man's people had pitched a tent over the tomb and brought thither lamps and candles. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... Morgiana had warmed some water to wash the body, Ali Baba came with incense to embalm it, after which it was sewn up in a winding sheet. Not long after, the joiner, according to Ali Baba's orders, brought the bier, which Morgiana received at the door, and helped Ali Baba to put the body into it; when she went to the mosque to inform the imaum that they were ready. The people of the mosque, whose business it was to wash ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... 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, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... annoyance that he saw before the side door of the church a tiny litter cheaply decorated with bright paper and red cloth. The yellow candles threw a fitful light over the little image on the bier. It was the image of a child, a thing of wax, clothed in a white dress, with a tinsel crown upon its head. One of the sacristans was drumming a tattoo upon the bells. The padre motioned him to discontinue. He would have his gin-and-water first, and then devotions, lasting twenty minutes. After ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... time, and the corpse at last was suffered to be conveyed away, and was proceeding over the sands of Niwegal towards St. David's, a prodigious fall of rain inundated the whole country; but the conductors of the sacred burthen, on coming forth from their shelter, found the silken pall, with which the bier was covered, dry and uninjured by the storm; and thus the miraculous body of Caradoc was brought into the church of St. Andrew and St. David, and with due solemnity deposited in the left aisle, near the altar of ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... neophyte, he could not be blamed for screaming and kicking against the new existence he was entering, if the instinct of genius gave him any hint of it. Between the font of St. Mary's and the bier at St. Ildefonso's there was scarcely an hour of joy waiting him in his long life, except that which comes from noble ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... and we planned all that we might for going, and after that we two went into the little church where lay Ethelbert the king. There was silence in it, and little light save for two tall tapers which burned at the head of the bier on which he lay, but I could see that all had been made ready against his showing to the people on the morrow. A priest sat on either side of the bier's head, and one of them read softly, so that I had not heard him at first. So I stood and looked in ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... tiny waves, and lulled by their liquid echoes, till I lost myself in a deep sleep, which seemed to be pillowed on a sense of being carried on and on into a realm of silence, and then being lifted and carried, as on a living bier, with new senses waking clearer and clearer, as if naked in the delicate air of a new life, and at last waking and finding myself alone in an open space of forest, shadowed by trees of an unknown grace, and lighted by magic vistas ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... deuce ailed him? I wondered angrily. The thing was almost weird. Of a sudden, with irritation, yet with dread, too, I felt myself on the threshold of a house of tragedy. The man might, from the look of him, have been watching some loved young master's bier. ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... it with a piece of discarded lace curtain to keep off the flies. They had no ice, and no money to pay an undertaker for opening the little grave in Calvary, where their first baby lay. All night she sat by the improvised bier, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... hum of life and the movement of the air, the living man, like the Scaligers, the mailed knight on his charger, lance in rest: but in the church below, under the funereal pall, they could place only the body such as it may have lain on the bier. ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... having been seized with a violent fever, was thought to be dead. They washed him, clothed him, laid him on a bier, and passed the night in prayer by him: the next morning he was seen to move; he appeared to awake from a deep sleep, opened his eyes, and raising his hand towards heaven said, "Ah! Lord, why hast thou sent me back to this gloomy ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... not high honor —The hill-side 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 lay him ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... native subjects of the deceased sovereign, according to ancient custom, expressed their feelings in loud wailing, which echoed mournfully through the still, red air of early daylight. On the following evening the body was placed on a shrouded bier, and was escorted in solemn procession by the government officials and the late king's staff, to the Iolani Palace, there to lie in state. It was a cloudless moonlight; not a leaf stirred or bird sang, and the crowd, consisting of several ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... 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, ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... him, he spied in the distance a long dark line which drew nearer and nearer, and showed itself at last to be all the Shadows, walking in a double row, and carrying in the midst of them something like a bier. They vanished under the window, but soon reappeared, having somehow climbed up the wall of the house; for they entered in perfect order by the window, as if melting through the ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... beside the altar with a friend, To hear him plight his faith to a young bride, A rosy child of simple heart and mind. Yet two short years before, on that same spot, I heard the funeral chant above the bier Of a first wife—a woman bright as fair, Or blessed or cursed with genius, full of fire— Who loved him with a passion high and rare; Whom he had won from paths of fame and art To walk unknown life's quiet ways with him. My mind was with the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which 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. 200, in the "Delices de Verboquet," p. 166; and in the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... rode at a foot's pace in the troop of men-at-arms, all in full armour, which glanced in the light of the sixteen hundred torches which were borne before, behind, and in the midst of the procession, which escorted the bier. Outside the coffin, arrayed in ducal coronet and robes, with the Golden Fleece collar round the neck, lay the exact likeness of the aged Duke, and on shields around the pall, as well as on banners borne waving aloft, were the armorial bearings of all his honours, ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... waters. His Naiad sisters lamented him, and laid their hair,[77] cut off, over their brother; the Dryads, too, lamented him, {and} Echo resounded to their lamentations. And now they were preparing the funeral pile, and the shaken torches, and the bier. The body was nowhere {to be found}. Instead of his body, they found a yellow flower, with white leaves encompassing it ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... mother with the "weeny baby" on her arm lay on a long carpenter's bench, her earthly journey over, and when Rebecca stole in and placed the flowery garland all along the edge of the rude bier, death suddenly took on a more gracious and benign aspect. It was only a child's sympathy and intuition that softened the rigors of the sad moment, but poor, wild Sal Winslow, in her frame of daisies, looked as if she were missed a little ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... at the set of the sun, And enclos'd in a case, which the Silk-worm had spun; By the help of the Hornet, the coffin was laid, On a bier, out of myrtle and ...
— The Butterfly's Funeral - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball and Grasshopper's Feast • J. L. B.
... no! I have seen people at a wedding feast, And following a bier, and so I know How different they look. Now let us do As strangers might, who'd never met before Until by accident within the wood They meet, and one has this, the other that, And so they put together all they have, And thus with joy receive and also give. 'Tis ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... was not a stranger for long, for the jester, surprised at the sudden silence, looking up, and perceiving a gentleman attired not altogether unlike himself, thought fit to come to life again, and, springing from his bier, rushed towards the stranger, embraced and kissed him, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... transient finery, and clothed in the conventual garb; the bridal chaplet taken from her brow, and her beautiful head shorn of its long silken tresses. I heard her murmur the irrevocable vow. I saw her extended on a bier; the death-pall spread over her; the funeral service performed that proclaimed her dead to the world; her sighs were drowned in the deep tones of the organ, and the plaintive requiem of the nuns; the father looked on, unmoved, without a tear; the lover—no—my ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... their myriads lay, Upon Freedom's flag like frozen tears Or petals of the flowers of May, In perfumed softness on their bier. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... far to Margaret's grave, for they laid her in the quiet cloisters of Westminster Abbey, and the King who had been an accessory to her end followed her bier. Hers was not the only life that his act had shortened. Earl Hubert had virtually done with earth, when he saw lowered into the cold ground the coffin of his Benjamin. He survived her just two years, and ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the cortege consisted mainly of priests and the like mounted on mules, and clothed for the most part in black. Black also was the small banner which waved above them, and bore in place of arms the emblem of the Bleeding Heart. But a second glance failed to discover either litter or bier; and a nearer approach showed that the travellers, whether they wore the tonsure or not, bore weapons of one kind ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... his hand, as if thereby to collect his ideas. A barrel of red and a barrel of white wine stood on trestles in the guests' room, and they were already filling the schoppins by hundreds and ranging them on shelves,—honestly filling, not as lager-bier is filled in New York, one third foam, but waiting until the froth subsided, and then pouring to the very brim. In the kitchen there were three fires blazing, stacks of Bratwurst on the tables, great kettles for the sour-krout and potatoes, and eggs, lettuce, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... 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
... the little German. "De vorst kind. He would radder gill a man as drink a glass bier. He gome mighty near gillin' his pest vrient to-day in de gourt-house droben, ven he vas dellin' vat ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... a funeral procession approaches the bank at a quick pace. The strains of anything but melodious music disturb the quiet of the evening, and the noise of drums is echoed from the walls of the pagodas. The corpse is borne on a bier covered with a white sheet, and men of the caste of body-burners arrange it on the pyre, a pile of wood stacked up by the waterside. Then they set fire to the dry shavings, and the wood pile crackles. Thick ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... unto Sir Tristram and said: Fair nephew, I am sorry of your hurts. Gramercy my lord, said Sir Tristram. Then King Mark made Sir Tristram to be put in an horse bier in great sign of love, and said: Fair cousin, I shall be your leech myself. And so he rode forth with Sir Tristram, and brought him to a castle by daylight. And then King Mark made Sir Tristram to eat. And then after he gave him a drink, the which as soon as he had drunk he fell asleep. ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... little panel by the hand of 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 with great art and resemblance to nature. Here there are ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... 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 rhyme. He must not float upon his watery bier Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, Without the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... sound of that sinless name Venus and her unhallowed crew sink with a wild shriek into the earth. The morning breaks, and the solemn hymn of the procession bearing the corpse of Elisabeth sounds sweetly through the forest. As the bier is carried forward Tannhaeuser sinks lifeless by the dead body of his departed saint, while a band of young pilgrims comes swiftly in, bearing the Pope's staff, which has put forth leaves and blossomed—the symbol of redemption and pardon for the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... That I had perished, and beside my bier Thou and thy mother stood, And from relenting eyes let fall a tear Upon me, and ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... of the dead are seen approaching the beautiful garden with a bier on their shoulders. Two bearded men, the only living persons permitted to enter a Tower, come next. Then follow from fifty to a hundred mourners and friends in pure white robes, walking two and two, each couple holding a handkerchief ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... world other 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? Ah, who indeed?" ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... silent shadows on the checkerberry leaves, and all those sweet, wild, nameless, half-mossy things, that live in the gloom of forests, and are only desecrated when brought to scientific light, laid out and stretched on a botanic bier. Sweet old forest days!—when blue jay, and yellow hammer, and bobalink made his leaves merry, and summer was a long opera of such music as Mozart dimly dreamed. But then came human kind bustling beneath; wondering, fussing, exploring, measuring, treading down flowers, cutting ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... followed the nod of Dicky's head, and saw, passing slowly through a street below, a funeral procession. Near a hundred blind men preceded the bier, chanting the death-phrases. The bier was covered by a faded Persian shawl, and it was carried by the poorest of the fellaheen, though in the crowd following were many richly attired merchants of the bazaars. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... away blinded by their tears. It is then that the most indifferent spectator pays that beautiful tribute of weeping for those he may not have loved, nay, hated or despised. All the ill is forgotten, the good alone remembered. A hearse was hardly known in the old days. The coffin was placed on a bier of home construction and carried to the graveyard on the shoulders of four men. The sad funeral procession followed behind, the mourners walking two and two and the rear made up of a straggling company of men, women and children. The minister ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... hung; The sounds of triumph died on every tongue. Yet not the vows thy weeping country pays; Not that high meed, thy mourning sovereign's praise, Not that the great, the beauteous, and the brave Bend in mute reverence o'er thy closing grave; That with such grief as bathes a kindred bier Collective nations mourn a death so dear; Not these alone shall soothe thy sainted shade, And consecrate the spot where thou art laid— Not these alone!—but bursting thro' the gloom, With radiant glory from thy trophied tomb, The sacred ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... waited, the Sixth Regiment, with the colours and music of the several corps, paraded, in Robinson Street, until the standard of the Cincinnati, shrouded in crepe, was waved before the open door of Mr. Church's house. The regiment immediately halted and rested on its reversed arms, until the bier had been carried from the house to the centre of the street, when the procession immediately formed. This was the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... day all the four were buried in solemn state, at the church of the village of Navaretta, Sir Eustace following his brother's bier, at the head of ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could fling him back again. Yes, Valmy was safest. But what account was he to give of his mission? The letter, whether false in its news or true, was a sufficient reason for his return. It was most natural, human, and loving that the faithful servant should stand by the bier of his dead master. It would even be a point in his favour if the King lived. No doubt Tristan had said, 'Test him and he will go over to the Dauphin.' Well, he would give Tristan the lie and prove that Louis came first, living or dead. Yes, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the land 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 ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... 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
... the neighbours far and near, Follow'd with wistful looks the damsel's bier; Sprigg'd rosemary the lads and lasses bore, While dismally the parson walk'd before. Upon her grave the rosemary ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... time When YOUTH kept open house, Nor left untasted Aught of his high emprise and ventures dear, No quest of his unshar'd — All these, with loitering feet and sad head bar'd, Followed their old friend's bier. FOLLY went first, With muffled bells and coxcomb still revers'd; And after trod the bearers, hat in hand — LAUGHTER, most hoarse, and Captain PRIDE with tanned And martial face all grim, and fussy JOY, Who had to catch a train, and LUST, ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... old priest, to comfort her, chanted a sutra over the bier of her lost playmate, and bestowed upon it a high-sounding Buddhist kaimyo which Kano carved, in his finest manner, upon a wooden grave post. In time, the artist forgot the episode. Mata never forgot. Often in the long hours she thought of it now as she watched the girl's face bent always so silently ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... Eve of Peace," in which we see a warrior of middle age, much like Watts himself at that time, who has lost the passion for warfare, sheathing his sword, glad to have it all over. The peacock feather that is strewn on the floor of "The Court of Death," and lies by the bier in "Sic Transit," is fastened to the warrior's casque. "Aspiration," also taken from young Prinsep (1866), is a picture of a young man in the dawn of life's battle, who, wishing to be a standard-bearer, looks out across ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... passage beyond. In the funeral-chamber, besides the other portions of the shrine, we found at one corner a splendid coffin, in the usual form of a recumbent figure, inlaid in a dazzling manner with rare stones and coloured glass. The coffin had originally lain upon a wooden bier, in the form of a lion-legged couch; but this had collapsed and the mummy had fallen to the ground, the lid of the coffin being partly thrown off by the fall, thus exposing the head and feet of the body, from ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... come in vain; 75 And Genius given, and knowledge won in vain; And all, which I had cull'd in Wood-walks wild, And all, which patient Toil had rear'd, and all, Commune with Thee had open'd out, but Flowers Strew'd on my Corse, and borne upon my Bier, 80 In the same Coffin, for the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... his eyes starting from his head, and horror in every feature of his face, still clutching one hand of the old lawyer in his, stretched forward with one advanced stride towards the extemporized bier, and with his other ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... go, rattling down-hill, into Naples. A funeral is coming up the street, toward us. The body, on an open bier, borne on a kind of palanquin, covered with a gay cloth of crimson and gold. The mourners, in white gowns and masks. If there be death abroad, life is well represented too, for all Naples would seem to be out of doors, and tearing to and fro in carriages. Some of these, the common Vetturino ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... effect of which would be that for two-and-forty hours after drinking it she should appear cold and lifeless; and when the bridegroom came to fetch her in the morning, he would find her to appearance dead; that then she would be borne, as the manner in that country was, uncovered on a bier, to be buried in the family vault; that if she could put off womanish fear, and consent to this terrible trial, in forty-two hours after swallowing the liquid (such was its certain operation) she would be sure to awake, as from a dream; and before she should awake, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... no more Defiance high and loud; The wing is broken that could soar Through battle's smoky cloud, And wounded by a coward's spear, His perch is now lost Poland's bier. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... pibroch sound sad in the gale, Where a band cometh slowly with weeping and wail? 'Tis the chief of Glenara laments for his dear; And her sire, and the people, are call'd to her bier. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... die, reigns vanish but virtue alone and meritorious works serve man on his bier and gain him eternal glory. O you Frenchmen, see the cause and ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... hey-day! Of what once blooming joy canst thou find trace Save in the bosom of a cold decay? What violet of Summer's yester sway Usurps these clouds to throne her slender moon? Look on the wrinkling year, the shrunken way, The wintry bier of all that gaudy shone, And gather love ere loveliness wear pall, If thou, when all is gone, wouldst ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... die—O Death, didst thou Heed my vain glory, standing pale by thy dead? There is a spirit who grieves Amid earth's dying leaves; Was't thou that wept beside my brother's bed? For I did never mourn nor heed at all Him passing on his temporal elm-wood bier; I never shed a tear. The drooping sky spread grey-winged through my soul, While ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... mounted and rode 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
... the next sun brake from underground, Then, those two brethren slowly with bent brows Accompanying, the sad chariot-bier Past like a shadow thro' the field, that shone Full-summer, to that stream whereon the barge, Pall'd all its length in blackest samite, lay. There sat the life-long creature of the house, Loyal, the dumb old servitor, on deck, Winking his ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... pride!— The mighty chiefs sleep side by side. Drop upon Fox's grave the tear, 'Twill trickle to his rival's bier," etc. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... song of the cloister robbery; of Herr Carl who was sick to death; when the young nun entered the corpse chamber, sat down by his feet and whispered how sincerely she had loved him, and the knight rose from his bier and bore her away to marriage and pleasure in Copenhagen. And all the nuns of the cloister sang: "Christ grant that such an angel were to come, and take both ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... were once at London Tower, Where I was wont to be I never mair should gang frae hame, Till borne on a bier-tree ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... kissed the ground, continuing in that position till all the procession had passed. There the women remained, not being allowed to go to the grave, and the singing and shouting were continued by boys, who kept running round the bier as it was borne along. On reaching the grave the body was put in with the face toward the east, and covered up with stones and mortar. Then the grave was filled up with sand, a brief prayer was offered—the mourners kneeling—after which the ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... pressure below, Of all the griefs I have mentioned now; But were they together all met in a mass, There's one grief still would all surpass; Hope frees from each woe, while we this side Of the wall abide— At every tide 'Tis an outlet cranny. But there's a grief beyond the bier; Hope will ne'er Its victims cheer, That ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... And if she goes, my tears will never stop; For as a player, I can't squeeze out one drop: I am undone, that's all—shall lose my bread— I'd rather, but that's nothing—lose my head. When the sweet maid is laid upon the bier, Shuter and I shall be chief mourners here. To her a mawkish drab of spurious breed, Who deals in sentimentals, will succeed! Poor Ned and I are dead to all intents; We can as soon speak Greek as sentiments! Both nervous grown, to keep our spirits up. We now ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... facts I could gather with regard to the establishment. I was opening the glass door to breathe the fresh air again, when the entrance of the crowd drove me back into the interior; they were following a bier, on which lay a body, from which the water dripped in a long stream. From one of the hands which were closely clenched, the keeper detached a strip of coloured linen, and a fragment of lace. 'Ah!' said he, 'let me look, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... golden bowl! the spirit flown forever! Let the bell toll!—a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river. And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?—weep now or never more! See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore! Come! let the burial rite be read—the funeral song be sung!— An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young— A dirge for her, the doubly dead in ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... dreary skies, A late-born rose burst into bloom And gazed about with sad surprise, 'Neath fading leaves and dreary skies; Let fall from Summer's bier, it lies In Autumn's pathway 'mid the gloom Of fading leaves and dreary skies, A late-born rose, burst ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... and sofort[h], before, before, r, s, t, z, bier, [h]ig[h]er, bore, soar, four, lower, case, ace, raze, bass, peace, cease, rise, price, justice, prose, sloce, prize, wise, eyes, lies, rise verb, sighs, use, noun, truce, nose, foes, blows, use verb; suit, an event: but s is us'd for z too oft, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... round his last bed kneeling and weeping. The funeral was worthy of a king: there were present the States General of the United Provinces, the Council of State, and the Estates of Holland, the magistrates, the clergy, and the princes of the house of Nassau. Twelve noblemen bore the bier, four great nobles held the cords of the pall, and the Prince's horse followed splendidly caparisoned and led by his equerry. In the midst of the train of counts and barons there was seen a young man, eighteen years of age, who was destined to inherit ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... sycamore-tree, the procession carrying banners furled and decorated with badges of mourning. Silas made a monument then and there in the high noon of a halcyon day: carved on a pine board which had served for a bier was the face of Tabby, surrounded with devices intended to represent the duration of her virtues. His work consoled Columbia, and inspired him to a more ambitious enterprise, namely, the carving of the same in a block of gypsum, which work of art Dexter obtaining sight of declared that it would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... of its water for drinking purposes, and its powers of prolonging life. Nearing the bridge, we met a large funeral, evidently that of a person of high position, from the costly shawls which covered the bier. ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... Maastricht, with Dutch soldiers on the other side. His examination was a little perfunctory, almost apologetic, and he did want to be friendly. You guessed that he was thinking he would like to go around the corner and have "ein Glas Bier" rather than search me. What a hearty "Auf wiedersehen!" he gave me when he saw that I was inclined to ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... critics to have been a resuscitation from the trance that merely simulates death. But the fact that there is a record of his saying in this case, "the child is not dead, but sleepeth," and no record of his saying the same at the bier of the widow's son,[20] is slight ground, yet all the ground there is, against the great probabilities to the contrary, for regarding the latter case as so transcendently different from the former as the actual reembodiment of a departed spirit recalled from another world. Were these the ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... swords, bridles, belts, and other articles into the fire or grave after the body. When a soldier fell fighting in the field, and his body could not be found, he was honoured with the carriage of an empty bier, and funeral ceremonies as if his ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... twenty or thirty men in flat caps trimmed with fur and gabardines of cotton velvet, purple, or yellow, or pink, chanting psalms as they march, with the body of the dead man wrapped in linen cloth and carried on a rude bier on their shoulders. They seem in haste, (because the hour is late and the burial must be made before sunset), perhaps a little indifferent, or almost joyful. Certainly there is no sign of grief in their looks or their voices; for among them it is counted a fortunate thing to ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... and the Funeral Procession slowly files out and begins to fill the Stage. Admetus beside the bier of Alcestis is calling on the Chorus (as representing the citizens of Pherae) to join in the invocations to the dead—when suddenly another Procession appears on the Stage [entering by the Right Side-door, as from the immediate neighborhood]: it is headed by the father and mother of ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... see him tremble, See him gasp for breath. Nay, dear, he does not dissemble, This is really Death. He is weak, and worn, and wasted, Bear him to his bier. All there is of life he's tasted— He has lived ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... hurt with horn of stag, it brings thee to thy bier, But barber's hand shall boar's hurt heal, thereof have thou ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis
... of woman, albe long preserved, * Are borne upon the bulging bier some day.[FN84] How then shall 'joy man joy or taste delight, * Upon whose cheeks shall rest the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... Death would soon be here for her. No, not here, for he would not have Death come into the palace. He lifted Alcestis from the bed and he carried her from the palace. He carried her to the temple of the gods. He laid her there upon the bier and waited there beside her. No more speech came from her. He went back to the palace where all was silent—the servants moved about with heads bowed, lamenting ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... and the Man died. At the funeral the Woman stood at the head of the bier, holding a lighted crimson candle till it was wasted ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... saw born beneath some tenderer sphere Michael, an angel and a little child, Whose loss bows down to weep upon his bier The song ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... met him at a funeral. It was the cremation of one of his priests. On the outskirts of the village a great crowd surrounded a burning pyre. Two or three cords of rough wood had been piled up, with the body of the priest in its center and the bier on which the body had been brought laid upon its top. The fire was blazing upward, and a deafening beating of tom-toms gave sacredness to the obsequies. The awe-stricken followers of Buddha stood at a little distance around, while the flames grew ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... der parsly in power, we shoult be a leetle ahead off dot mofement so, when it shoult be here, we hef a goot 'minadstration to fall beck on. Now, dere iss anoder brewery opened und trying to gombete mit me here in Canaan. If dot brewery owns der Mayor, all der tsaloons buying my bier must shut up at 'leven o'glock und Sundays, but der oders keep open. If I own der Mayor, I make der same against dot oder brewery. Now I am pooty sick off dot ways off bitsness und fighting all times. Also," Mr. Farbach added, with magnificent calmness, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... company arrangements had been made as usually attended the reception of expected visitors. They were slight on the greatest occasion, never extending beyond the production of the China tea-service, and the covering of the bed with a sober and sad drapery. For the rest, there was the bier-like sofa with the block upon it, and the figure in the widow's dress, as if attired for execution; the fire topped by the mound of damped ashes; the grate with its second little mound of ashes; the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens |
