"Winding-sheet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... minutely elaborate, flanked at each wing by a low tower supporting a heavy stone spire cut into facets, like a pine-apple. At Paray there is none of the puerile ornament and heavy richness that we see at Poitiers. The barbaric dress of the little toy church of Notre Dame la Grande gives way to the winding-sheet of a flat wall, but the exterior is none the less remarkably impressive with its solemn simplicity of outline. And those two square towers, pierced with narrow windows and overlooked by a round tower resting so calmly, so firmly on an open arcade ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... an ax 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: True love doth ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... 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 ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... in reference to a brass Spanish spittoon and an ebony pen handle that I had seen down at Ylajali's. Ah, yes, all was transitory, just like grass that was kindled. It all ended in four planks and a winding-sheet. "Winding-sheets to be had from Miss Andersen's, on the right of the door...." And all this was tossed about in my head during the despairing moment when my landlady was about to thrust ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... her in a clean night-gown. Without saying what I meant to do with it I had begged a square of white cambric from Mam' Chloe, and set about notching it with a pair of blunt scissors. Mariposa had described a winding-sheet minutely to me, and I meant that my dead doll-baby should be decently laid out. The notching took a tedious time, and the bows of the blunt scissors left purple furrows upon thumb and fingers. Uncle Ike had given me an ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... than those of life,— 'Tis a neighbourhood that knows no strife. They are noiselessly gathered—friend and foe— To the still and dark assemblies below: Without a frown or a smile they meet, Each pale and calm in his winding-sheet; In that sullen home of peace and gloom, Crowded, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... 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 winding-sheet! So sharp he pulls at the bridle-rein The mare stands straight on her trembling feet Before she cowers to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... deceased king should be divided among those who were his attendants when he died. Having secured this plunder, these people disappeared, and it was with the utmost difficulty that assistance enough could be procured to wrap the body in a winding-sheet, and to bring a hearse and horses to bear it away to the abbey where it was to be interred. Examples like this—of which the history of every monarchy is full—throw a great deal of light upon what is called the principle of loyalty in the hearts of ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... 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 ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... stream. Make of it, soiling not, spoiling not, a petticoat fair with its bodice fine, which I will embroider and fill with flowers.'—'Madame, the child is no longer here; what is to be done?'—'Then make of it a winding-sheet in which ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Bixiou, who frequented the Bohemian regions where Philippe was still occasionally to be found, to persuade that shameless son to play, if only out of pity, a little comedy of tenderness which might wrap the mother's heart in a winding-sheet of illusive happiness. Bixiou, in his capacity as an observing and misanthropical scoffer, desired nothing better than to undertake such a mission. When he had made known Madame Bridau's condition to the Comte de Brambourg, who received him in a bedroom hung with ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... far away an answer, an echo perhaps of their wailing, or, it may be, the cry of the dogs of St. Margaret's, came ululating over the deep. Then silence again, vast and unnatural, settling over the gloomy land like a winding-sheet. ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... 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
... starving Winter-lapse! Ice-bound, hunger-pinched and dim; Dormant roots recall their saps, Empty nests show black and grim, Short-lived sunshine gives no heat, Undue buds are nipped by frost, 30 Snow sets forth a winding-sheet, And all hope ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... many other witnesses, were further examined, and deposed, That Iennet Preston, the Prisoner at the Barre, being brought to M. Lister after hee was dead, & layd out to be wound vp in his winding-sheet, the said Iennet Preston comming to touch the dead corpes, they bled fresh bloud presently,[Y3a] in the presence of all that were there present: Which hath euer beene held a great argument to induce a Iurie to hold him guiltie that shall be accused of Murther, and hath seldome, or neuer, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall; Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming over all; Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest, glittering ice in his hair, Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his glassy ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... 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, ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... . they'll remarry Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider Make a thin curtain for ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... wind, anything to be seen but the driving snow. Long she listened, but the cry came no more, and naturally she concluded that imagination had fooled her. In the morning, not very many yards away from the door, half-covered by its snowy winding-sheet, lay the stiff-frozen body of a young man. There had been the breakdown of some vehicle down the road the previous evening, and he had thought to make his way to Moffat on foot. Of what do men think when they are lost ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... older and excessively emaciated. A winding-sheet, fastened round her head, hangs with her white hair down to the very extremities of her legs, thin as sticks. The brilliancy of her teeth, which are like ivory, makes her clayey skin look darker. The sockets of her eyes are full of gloom, and in their ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... where many meet! The snow shall be their winding-sheet, And every turf beneath their feet Shall ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... Sitting amid the shrouds and rattlings, in the tranquillity of the moonlight, composing melodies scarcely formed in his mind, he seemed almost an apparition, suggesting dim reminiscences of him who shot the albatross. He was as a mystery in a winding-sheet ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... exposed places, in squares and streets, as deep as they lie when sheep are "smoored" on the sides of Sundhope or Penchrist in the desolate Border-land. All day London had been struggling under her cold winding-sheet, like a feeble, feverish patient trying to throw off a heavy white counterpane. Now the counterpane was dirty enough. The pavements were three inches deep in a rich greasy deposit of mud and molten ice. ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... of the cove were considerably higher than on the other side. The wreck lay close in, driven high upon the narrow shelf of rocks and sand at the base of the sheer ascent. Sand had heaped up around her hull and flung itself across her deck like a white winding-sheet. Surprisingly, the vessel was a very small one, a little sloop, indeed, much like the fragile pleasure-boats that cluster under the Sausalito shore at home. The single mast had been broken off short, and the stump of the bowsprit was visible, like a finger beckoning for rescue ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... honor sweet.— And thus he fell!-'Tis doubly meet, Our flag should be his winding-sheet, Proud banner of the free! Oh, let his honored form be laid Beneath the loved Palmetto's shade; His praises sung by Southern maid, While flows the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... will tell 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 to ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... 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 mention of these ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... deeper and 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
... 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 glorious with the ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... 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 sleep around ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... 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 want, and it is a pure chance ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... father, whose soul abides in peace with God, he cherished it till evil days came upon this land. 'Be your gifts to this mosque neither of silver nor copper, but of tears and prayers,' said my father, Ebn Abdalla, ere he unrolled his green turban and wound himself in it for his winding-sheet. 'Though it be till the Karadh-gatherers return, yet shall ye replace nor stone nor piece of wood, save in the gates thereof, till good days come once more, and the infidel and the Turk be driven from the land.' Thus spake my father. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... our sister; would I had given Both her white hands to death, bound and locked fast In her last winding-sheet, when I gave thee ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... now occupied, 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 ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... there are no passers-by; and there is no sound, except that 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
... appalled me. It seemed to chill the beating of my heart; I grew cold from head to foot. Still the boat held its course steadily, swept onward by the resistless current; still the willows nodded their fantastic farewells. Along the level meadows far and wide the white mist lay like a vast winding-sheet; now and then through the stillness I heard, or seemed to hear, a moan—a mournful wail, as of some spirit just released from earthly bonds, and forced to leave its dear ones behind. The moonlight looked cruel, and the water very, very cold. Someone had told me that death by drowning was swift and ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... weave the woof, The winding-sheet of Edward's race. Give ample room and verge enough[383-3] The ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... driver's notice, I hesitate even yet to reveal myself; but the araba stops, and I can observe the driver's frightened expression as he suddenly becomes aware of the presence of strange, supernatural objects. At the same moment I rise up in my winding-sheet-like covering; the man utters a wild yell, and abandoning the araba, vanishes like a deer in the direction of his companions. It is an unenviable situation to find one's self in; if I boldly approach them, these people, not being able to ascertain ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... dead, he arranged the winding-sheet himself, in his own fashion; then he lighted a cigarette, and set out in search of ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... corse, my comrades, bear, This bridegroom blithe to meet, He in his wedding trim so gay, I, in my winding-sheet.' She spoke, she died, her corse was borne The bridegroom blithe to meet, He in his wedding trim so gay, She ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... were permitted to revisit the earth, by appearing to me, binding himself by this contract that the vision should be unaccompanied by the smallest smell of sulphur or flash of blue flame, and that instead of the indecorous undress of a slovenly winding-sheet, he would wear his usual garments, and the familiar brown great-coat with which, to use his own expression, he "buttoned his bones together" in his life. I remembered that laughing promise when, years after it was given, the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... being untried and very young, she slipped to her knees and fell unconscious, with her face upon her outstretched arms. And there she lay whilst the silence of the coming dawn fell upon the earth, and wrapped itself in a soft winding-sheet about him who lay asleep upon his couch of death, at the foot of which stood his friend, looking ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... added; which renders us not a menaced Nation in extreme jeopardy and need, but a paralytic Solecism of a Nation; sitting wrapped as in dead cerements, of a Constitutional-Vesture that were no other than a winding-sheet; our right hand glued to our left: to wait there, writhing and wriggling, unable to stir from the spot, till in Prussian rope we mount to the gallows? Let the Hereditary Representative consider it well: The Decree of Priests? ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... web that we weave is complete, And the shuttle exchanged for the sword, We will fling the winding-sheet O'er the despot at our feet, And dye it deep in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 474 - Vol. XVII. No. 474., Supplementary Number • Various
... 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
... going to his carriage, he saw several hodmen lounging about, who were carrying mortar for some repairs that were being made at the palace. The physician called them, and bade them go tell the lord-Steward that the king's coffin must be saturated with spirits of wine, and his winding-sheet also. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... he felt wings, and rising 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, in ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... winter scarce to be distinguished under the snow-covered ice. The prospect in every 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
... I own to me's a secret yet. Ali Baba, we've been long together through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'tis hard to part when things are dear, bar silver, piece cloth, bottled beer, then steal away with this short warning: choose thine own winding-sheet, say not good-night here, but in some brighter binding, sweet, bid me good morning.]—ALI ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... the feast was 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 paces followed all my crowd ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... to his family, and the latter by a desire to succeed to the Crown, had formed a plot against James's life. Several warnings, besides that of the Highland seeress, the King received, but he heeded them not, and, like most of the doomed, was in unnaturally high spirits, as if the winding-sheet far up his breast had ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... 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
... be, Mr. Perkins!" said the maiden solemnly, and somewhat approaching the person whom she addressed. "I have already more than once declined the honor you propose to do me. I now repeat to you that I will sooner marry the grave and the winding-sheet than be your wife! My mother mistakes me and all my feelings. For your own sake, if not for mine, I beg that YOU will not mistake them; for, if the strength is left me for speech, I will declare aloud ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... with her came the angel they call Death. My child will be restored to me I said, Death took 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
... crushed under the foot of Time since then; but this has been 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 ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... 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 ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... the older one. I do not know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy. What need was there of unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion to modern censure? what hapless stationer could dream of Burton ever becoming popular?—The wretched Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton of Stratford church to let him white-wash ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... here was an addition of the old man's own! The passage quoted had been of death and its possible significance, and it was just a sigh, a fear, the old man had breathed after it: How high has the winding-sheet encompassed ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... 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
... on, "you are just like La Guerine, Pere Guerin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know at Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, to see her standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a winding-sheet spread out before the door. Her illness, it appears, was a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the doctors could not do anything, nor the priest either. When she was taken too bad she went off quite alone to the sea-shore, so that the customs officer, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... disquieting signs of resurrection even when Damaris, arrayed in the sheen of silken sunlight, greeted him at the staircase foot, and an alarming disposition finally to fling away head-cloth and winding-sheet when she petulantly broke in upon Miss Verity's faded memories of Canton Magna with the flattering assertion that time had run backward with him ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... dawn and sunset, and, minding all the goodly ships and the jolly lads as are a-sleeping down below, at such times, Mart'n, it do seem to me as if all the good and glory of 'em came aloft for eyes to see awhile—howbeit, 'tis a noble winding-sheet, pal, from everlasting to everlasting, amen! And by that same token the wind's veering, which meaneth a fair-weather spell, and I must trim. Meantime do you rouse Master Adam." And here, setting hands to mouth, Godby roared high ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... City Council. Many houses were draped in black, and the grief of the citizens manifested itself on every side. All the way to Mount Hope Cemetery the snow whirled blindingly around us, while the masses that had fallen covered the earth as far as we could see a fitting winding-sheet for the one who had gone. Under the fir-trees around her open grave I obeyed "Aunt Susan's" wish that I should utter the last words spoken over her body as she was laid ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... sombre, notwithstanding its high lights and the extraordinary whiteness of the winding-sheet. In spite of its reliefs, the painting is flat. It is a picture of blackish grounds on which are disposed broad strong lights of no gradations. The colouring is not very rich: it is full, well-sustained, and clearly calculated to be effective from a distance. ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... paternal respect with which his officers universally regarded him. But ere he could say 'Hold!' an aged Highlander, who lay beside Callum Beg, stopped his arm. 'Spare your shot,' said the seer, 'his hour is not yet come. But let him beware of to-morrow.—I see his winding-sheet high ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... and her maidens sit in her bower, And they stitch at a winding-sheet; And they weep as the breath ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... 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 converted into jugglers' tricks, by which men are enabled to enjoy their pleasures ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... shows the plank which your 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
... waves sunder The flying rollers with frothy feet. One gleam like a bloodshot sword-blade swims on The sky-line, staining the green gulf crimson, A death stroke fiercely dealt by a dim sun, That strikes through his stormy winding-sheet. ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... his winding-sheet, By organized hypocrisy Hurled from his happy wine-clad seat, Stilled his kind heart and hushed his glee; His very name daren't mention we, That good old friend who brought such zest, And set our tongues and spirits free: I drink—in what?—the ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... covering now, But and my winding-sheet; The dew it fall nae sooner down Then my resting place ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... Few and evil were the days of his pilgrimage with me; but we had begun to know and like each other well. I cannot remember to have borne a heavier heart, than when I turned away from his corpse, half shrouded in a winding-sheet of drifting snow-flakes—seeing nothing certain in my own future, save ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... 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 ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... 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 ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... other extinguishes them all. The world is suddenly converted into the arched vault of a cave. Out of the night falls a dust of pale spots, which hesitate between sky and sea. These spots, which are flakes of snow, slip, wander, and flow. It is like the tears of a winding-sheet putting themselves into lifelike motion. A mad wind mingles with this dissemination. Blackness crumbling into whiteness, the furious into the obscure, all the tumult of which the sepulchre is capable, a whirlwind under a catafalque—such is the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... forth the key which Hilda had given him, and unlocked the cyst, and there lay the white winding-sheet of the dead, and a scroll. Harold took the scroll, and bent over it, reading by the mingled light of the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a dream; like the dream that I had had the night after the storm when I woke with sweat cold on me. The fog pinioned me like a clammy winding-sheet; I could see nothing; I was too chilled to feel; I was as alone and powerless as a lost canoe in the ocean; but somewhere on earth or in air I heard a company of men pass me by. The sounds were unmistakable. I heard the swish of wet leaves, the pad of feet, and even the creak of the ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... magic lantern; no pantomimic transformation; no eccentricity of dreamland ever equalled it! When last seen, the valley was clothed in all the rich luxuriance of autumnal tints, and alive with the twitter and plaintive cry of bird-life. Now it was draped in the pure winding-sheet of winter, and silent in the repose of Arctic death. Nothing almost was visible but snow. Everything was whelmed in white. Only here and there a few of the sturdier clumps of bushes held up their loads like gigantic wedding-cakes, and broke the universal sameness of the scene. One raven was the ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... pleasures be Wrapp'd in the winding-sheet with thee: 'Tis we are dead, though not i' th' grave: Or, if we have One seed of life left, 'tis to keep A Lent for thee, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... 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 fringe of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... groups form as usual. Lightwood, Boots, and Brewer, flutter like moths around that yellow wax candle—guttering down, and with some hint of a winding-sheet in it—Lady Tippins. Outsiders cultivate Veneering, M P., and Mrs Veneering, W.M.P. Lammle stands with folded arms, Mephistophelean in a corner, with Georgiana and Fledgeby. Mrs Lammle, on a sofa by a table, invites Mr Twemlow's attention to a book ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... white, and over all fell a veil of fine white tulle. A more beautiful sight I can never see than that young, lovely girl in her last sleep with the emblems of youth, purity and swift decay forming her pillow, and winding-sheet. Over this was placed a film of glass that rested upon the bottom and sides of the thin lining that covered the bottom and lower sides of the grave. The remainder of the procession of young girls then came forward and dropped their rosebuds upon it, completely hiding ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... presented for the use of the asylum, and which had belonged to a little girl of my own age who had died of consumption. The thought of arraying myself in this dress to approach the holy table frightened and revolted me as much as if I had been sentenced to drape myself in a winding-sheet. And yet it was the prettiest dress of all—white muslin beautifully embroidered. It had been ardently coveted by the other children, and had been given to me as a sort of reward of merit. And I dared not explain the cause of my unconquerable repugnance. Who would have understood me? I should only ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... but like a bull that meets its enemy with lowered horns, the brave car's bonnet seemed to defy the wind and face it squarely. We swept on toward the snow-reaches whence the wind-torrent came. Soon we were on the flat plateau of the Causse, where last year's faded grass was frosted white, and a torn winding-sheet wrapped the limbs of a dead world. There was no beauty in this death, save the wild beauty of desolation, and a grandeur inseparable from heights. Before us grouped the mountains of Auvergne, hoary headed; and looking down we could see the twistings of the road we had travelled, whirling away ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... 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
... of which she mourns the loss with open jaws and hanging tongue? The Devil is always cheated in these legends, and one wonders how it was that he did not show more cleverness in making his bargains. The cathedral still claims to possess precious relics—of the Passion, the Holy Winding-sheet, the robe of the Blessed Virgin and the blood-stained cloth in which the body of Saint John the Baptist was wrapped. These involve a yearly pilgrimage from the nearer places, and a great feast every ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... gazed upon him in wonder who he could be, she saw through the misty winding-sheet that enfolded him a death's head. But when she looked at him who sat at the foot of the coffin, she hid her face, for it was an evil creature ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... survive this world. All else we possess and pursue shall fade and perish, our moral character shall alone survive. Riches, honours, possessions, pleasures of all kinds: death, with one stroke of his desolating hand, shall one day strip us bare to a winding-sheet and a coffin of all the things we are so mad to possess. But the last enemy, with all his malice and all his resistless power, cannot touch our moral character—unless it be in some way utterly mysterious to us that he is made under God to refine and perfect it. The Express Image ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... I wish my grave were growing green, A winding-sheet drawn ower my e'en And I in Helen's arms lying On ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... your nut-brown bride, Between ye and the wa'; And sae will I o' my winding-sheet, That ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... uncovered for a purpose or encountered by chance, I have not once, not as often as once, discovered other remains than those of the Hive-bee: the imperishable wings, still connected in pairs, the cranium and thorax enveloped in a violet shroud, the winding-sheet which time throws over these relics. To-day as when I was a beginner, ever so long ago; in the north as in the south of the country which I explored; in mountainous regions as on the plains, the Philanthus follows an unvarying diet: she must have the Hive-bee, always the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... "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, and ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... It was connected with all that was most serious and all that was most delightful in life. It is difficult, indeed, to realize the delight which it gave, and the earnestness with which it was followed at this period, when it seemed, as by a miracle, to fling off the winding-sheet which had long wrapped its stiffened limbs, and to come forth with new ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... was cold, Its round neck white as lilied chalice; In short, a thing of faultless mould, Fit for a maiden empress' palace. So round and round—I knew no better— I fluttered, nearer to the heat; Methought I saw an offered letter— Now I but see my winding-sheet. ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... this circular motion? It is this: the brief contact of the spinnerets has given a starting-point for a thread, which the Spider must now draw from her silk warehouse and gradually roll around the captive, so as to swathe him in a winding-sheet which will overpower any effort made. It is the exact process employed in our wire-mills: a motor-driven spool revolves and, by its action, draws the wire through the narrow eyelet of a steel plate, making it of the fineness required, and, with the same movement, winds ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... far from his home and his people, and so young to die in a strange land—There it is again." Here he appeared listening to some sounds from without. "Oh, wirra, wirra, I know it well!—the winding-sheet, the winding-sheet! There it is; my own eyes saw it!" The tears coursed fast upon his pale cheeks, and his voice grew almost inaudible, as rocking to and fro, for some time he seemed in a very stupor of grief; when at last, in a faint, subdued tone, he broke into one of those sad and plaintive ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... completed. Two hours went by, no word came from the Count nor from the Baron; nobody appeared to act for them, and Rastignac had already been obliged to pay the priest. Sylvie asked ten francs for sewing the old man in his winding-sheet and making him ready for the grave, and Eugene and Bianchon calculated that they had scarcely sufficient to pay for the funeral, if nothing was forthcoming from the dead man's family. So it was the medical student who laid him in a pauper's coffin, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... pleasures be Wrapt in the winding-sheet with thee; 'Tis we are dead, though not i' th' grave; Or if we have One seed of life left, 'tis to keep A Lent for thee, to ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... 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 garment. Streaming over her neck and shoulders were thick masses ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... reached the city in the gray of the morning; a thick fog lay like a winding-sheet upon the face of nature. The broad river, the lofty rocks, every object, great and small, was hidden ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and nodding crest, They bore him to his dreamless rest, A cold and abject thing; Before the whisper of whose name Strong hearts had quailed in fear and shame, While nations knelt to fling The victor's laurel at his feet; Now gorgeous pall and winding-sheet, Were all that royalty could bring To mark the despot and the king: In solemn state they swept the glowing strand, To meet the conclave ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... most intrepid and the most indifferent were affected; they passed on quickly with averted looks. But before them, around them, there was nothing but snow: this immense and dreary uniformity extended farther than the eye could reach; the imagination was astounded; it was like 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 funeral verdure, the motionless aspect of their gigantic black ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... 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 we ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... his heart had been extracted and embalmed according to his command; but the dissolution of the convents made sad havoc among the royal tombs of Scotland, and two churches had risen and fallen above his marble tomb before it was discovered among the ruins in 1819, and his remains were found in a winding-sheet of cloth of gold, and the breastbone sawn through. Multitudes were admitted to gaze on them, and there were many tears shed, for, in the simple and beautiful words of Scott, "There was the wasted skull which once was the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 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 want no ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... 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 ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... Debreschescourt died in his sleep. His tiny body—the placid, massive, baby head still one broad smile, the rest of him wrapped round together like a chrysalis—was put to rest finally, in a fold of the winding-sheet of a very aged person, deceased ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... drifted a white and waving mist. It shrouded him, chilly as a winding-sheet. There was no shore, no sea—only a hiss and rustle in the silence; and this still thing at ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... Kurtz—Kurtz—that means short in German—don't it? Well, the name was as true as everything else in his life—and death. He looked at least seven feet long. His covering had fallen off, and his body emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from a winding-sheet. I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving. It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless crowd of men made of dark and glittering bronze. I saw him ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... 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
... high places, had lain down in the rock-hewn cubicle of the inner chamber, and, certainly in sorrow, brought forth a daughter. Here was the secret at once of the genial, all-embracing maternity of this new strange Artemis, and of those more dubious tokens, the lighted torch, the winding-sheet, the arrow of death on the string—of sudden death, truly, which may be thought after all the kindest, as prevenient of all disgraceful sickness or waste in the unsullied limbs. For the late birth ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... When the procession arrived at the grave, which had been previously dug, the constables arranged themselves around it to keep the crowd off, upon which the shell was laid on the ground, and the body of the unfortunate deceased taken out. It had on a winding-sheet, drawers, and stockings, and a quantity of blood was clotted about the head, and the lining of the shell entirely stained. The body was then wrapped in a piece of Russia matting, tied round with some cord, and then instantly dropped into the hole, which was about five feet in depth: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... of his Parliamentary career. I see men talking to Mr. Carson that belong to an opposite side of politics. I confess that I never see him pass without an internal shudder. Just as the sight of an abbe gave M. Homais, in "Madame Bovary," an unpleasant whiff of the winding-sheet, there is something in the whole appearance of Mr. Carson that conveys to me the dank smell of the prison, and the suffocating sense of the scaffold. Do you remember that strange, terrible day in the "Derniere Incarnation ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... lightning homeward; Gallops only for a moment, When he halts his foaming courser At the cabin of his father. In the court-yard stood the mother, Thus the wicked son addressed her: "Faithful mother, fond and tender, Hadst thou slain me when an infant, Smoked my life out in the chamber, In a winding-sheet hadst thrown me To the cataract and whirlpool, In the fire hadst set my cradle, After seven nights had ended, Worthy would have been thy service. Had the village-maidens asked thee: 'Where is now the little cradle, Wherefore is the bath-room empty?' ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... seem, every too constant buzzing visitor encroaches on its domain, and is drawn to its silken vortex, and is eventually shed below as a clean dried specimen; for this is an agalena spider, which dispenses with the winding-sheet of the field species—epeira and argiope. Last week a big bumble-bee-like fly paid me a visit and suddenly disappeared. To-day I find him dried and ready for the insect-pin and the cabinet on the window-sill beneath the web, which affords at all times ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... thou, that I will leaue my Kingly Throne, Wherein my Grandsire and my Father sat? No: first shall Warre vnpeople this my Realme; I, and their Colours often borne in France, And now in England, to our hearts great sorrow, Shall be my Winding-sheet. Why faint you Lords? My Title's good, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... 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 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 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. Upon ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... for a moment at this frontispiece to see that there is here something very much out of the common. It is engraved in the best seventeenth-century style, and represents, apparently, the head and bust of a dead man wrapped in a winding-sheet. The eyes are shut, the mouth is drawn, and nothing ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... figure of a man was seen stealing over the snow, which lay like a winding-sheet on the solitary waste; his cautious steps were heard on the frozen snow as it crisped beneath his tread. It was the beggar who had accosted Anielka. On a rising ground he turned to gaze on the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... poor vanquished wretch—the aggressor, let us hope, in the interests of justice—was closely wrapped in a silvery cocoon, which, unlike the cocoon the caterpillar weaves for itself, was also its winding-sheet. ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... his death in the presence of the sick 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 word, to which the criminal ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... 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 uphold a ruffian's name before. ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... 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 fluids ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... 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
... 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 ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... steel! So near and yet so far, for hardly had the Tecumseh gone a length to the westward of the sentinel buoy, than the fate, already outlined, overwhelmed her, and her iron walls became coffin, shroud, and winding-sheet to Craven and most of the brave souls with him, and all so suddenly that those who had seen the disaster could hardly realize ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... with memories of lost hours and loves, and of his neighbour's sorrows that he cannot lessen, and wisdom that brings not consolation? Hard is it to die, because our delicate flesh doth shrink back from the worm it will not feel, and from that unknown which the winding-sheet doth curtain from our view. But harder still, to my fancy, would it be to live on, green in the leaf and fair, but dead and rotten at the core, and feel that other secret worm of recollection ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... stretched itself, it grew upright, it assumed an erect attitude, it took the outlines of a human being. From head to heel a casing housed it in, a casing that might have been anything at that hour of the night and in that strange place—a shroud, if you like, a winding-sheet—anything; and it is without shame that I confess to a creep of the most disagreeable sensation I have ever known as I stood at Hardenberg's side on that still, foggy night and watched the stirring of that nameless, formless shape standing gaunt and ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... breath of wind stirred the leafless branches, whose huge 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, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... of skulking and misery, in the vain hope of obtaining employment in the Imperial service. The date of his death is given by Broome (Hist. of Beng. Army, p. 467) as 6th dune, 1777: it is added that his last shawl was sold to pay for a winding-sheet, and that his family were plundered of the last wreck of their possessions. But the detail of this year's events and their consequences requires a ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... would 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 unincumbered farms, the possessors of peaceful homes, but for that ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... leaving us Shades precisely as we were; the residue, being dust, is useless; or is it your theory that Shades batten on ashes? Pluto's realm is not so barren, nor asphodel so scarce with us, that we must apply to you for provisions.—What with this winding-sheet and these woollen bandages, my jaws have been effectually sealed up, or, by Tisiphone, I should have burst out laughing long before this at the stuff you talk ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... edifices of those ludicrous sculptures that seem so incongruously foreign to the proper use and character of such places. The painter had set himself, with, I doubt not, fair moral intent, to exhibit a skeleton wrapped up in a winding-sheet; but, like the unlucky artist immortalized by Gifford, who proposed painting a lion, but produced merely a dog, his skill had failed in seconding his intentions, and, instead of achieving a Death in a shroud, he had achieved but a monkey grinning in a towel. His contemporaries, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the clear blue sky, So calm no cloud was seen to fly, Hast gaz'd on snowy plain, Where Nature slept so pure and sweet, She seem'd a corse in winding-sheet, Whose happy soul had gone to ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... The freeman struck for hearth and home, Or any other man! And Longstreet with his fierce brigade Stood in the red redan; He waved his saber o'er his head, Or any other man! Ah! few shall part where many meet, In battle's bloody van; The snow shall be their winding-sheet, Or any other man!" ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... 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 ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... 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 ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... appear and reveal future events. Slowly and reluctantly the Earth goddess arises from her prolonged sleep. Her face is pallid as the newly fallen snow, her head crowned with glittering icicles, and her form enveloped in a great white winding-sheet. In answer to the god's inquiries about the future, she bids him question the Norns and Brunhilde. After a few obscure prophecies he allows her to sink down into her grave once more, for he now knows that one of the Volsung race has won the magic ring, and is even now on his way up the ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... 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 ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... him up the stairs, and Lydia felt curiously outside it all, as if they were playing the play without her. Anne came in then and looked solicitously at the guttered candles of which one was left with a winding-sheet, like a tipsy host that had drunk the rest under the table, and appeared to be comforting the others for having made such a spectacle of themselves to no purpose. Lydia was so sleepy now that there seemed to be several Annes and she heard ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... 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 ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was driving before it a host of melancholy snow-laden clouds. Threateningly they swept over white ground and sullen wood, and the earth seemed awaiting another fold of its winding-sheet; cypress, spruce and fir, close side by side and motionless, were passive in their attitude of uncomplaining endurance. The stumps above the snow were like floating wreckage on a dreary sea. In all the landscape there was ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... length, and faintly illuminated by the pale light that came from the window, lay a sack of canvas, and under its rude folds was stretched a long and stiffened form; it was Faria's last winding-sheet,—a winding-sheet which, as the turnkey said, cost so little. Everything was in readiness. A barrier had been placed between Dantes and his old friend. No longer could Edmond look into those wide-open eyes which had seemed to be penetrating the mysteries of death; ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... adulterous bed. At morn I looked, and saw him not among the youths; I heard his father mourn, his mother weep; For none returned that went with her. The dead Were in her house; her guests in depths of hell: She wove the winding-sheet of souls, and laid Them in the urn ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society |
