"Winding-sheet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was enveloped in a grey winding-sheet, impenetrable, all-pervading; a dense mass of vapour ceaselessly rolling onward, yet never rolling past. It was as if the mountain had become entangled in the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... out of the fifty-two the cherry-tree stands thus glorified, a vision of beauty prolonged somewhat by the want of synchronousness of the different kinds. Then the petals fall. What was a nuptial veil becomes a winding-sheet, covering the sod as with winter's winding-sheet of snow, destined itself to disappear, and the tree is nothing but a common ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... weave the woof, The winding-sheet of Edward's race; Give ample room and verge enough The characters of hell to trace: Mark the year, and mark the night, When Severn shall re-echo with affright The shrieks of death through Berkley's roofs that ring, Shrieks of an ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... warp and weave the woof, The winding-sheet of wit and sense, Dull garment of defensive proof, 'Gainst all that ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... stern peaks of the Puy de Dome mountains, a while ago seen like giants, appeared like rolling hillocks; but here and there a little white streak showed that the snow still lingered and would linger on until the frosts of autumn bound it in chains to await the universal winding-sheet of winter. Climate varied with the varying altitude of the route. Here, on a last patch of mountain ground, were a man or two and a woman or two and odd children, reaping and binding; there, after a few minutes' ascent, on another sloping patch, ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... teeth; the meagre, birdlike neck, and the hand raised in a gesture of menace. Twenty years have elapsed since he was brought back to the light, this master of the world. He was wrapped thousands of times in a marvellous winding-sheet, woven of aloe fibres, finer than the muslin of India, which must have taken years in the making and measured more than 400 yards in length. The unswathing, done in the presence of the Khedive Tewfik and the great personages of Egypt, lasted two hours, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... members, to the house of the dead. Within that coffin is the bright promise of youth, the strength of early manhood, parental expectations and love—all blighted by the breath of the destroyer, and laid in as sad a winding-sheet as ever wrapped a tenant of the grave. Oh! how great the woes of intemperance appear, when these appalling realities dash earthly hopes, and send the wretched victim away to that world "from whose bourne no traveller returns!" So thought many as the lifeless ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... ever proved a permanent blessing to the race. The highest culture hitherto attained apart from Christianity was incapable of saving its devotees from ruin. Greece and Rome were never more cultured, in a popular sense, than when they began to go down in death. Materialistic culture was their winding-sheet, and "A Religion of the Flesh" should be their epitaph. As Christlieb has truly said: "Wherever civilization is not made to rest on the basis of moral and religious truth it can not attain to any permanent existence, and is incapable of preserving the ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... 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 my ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... proved bitterly cold. In February the snow fell thickly, and one morning the school woke to find a white world. In Dormitory 9 matters were serious, for the snow had drifted in through the open window and covered everything like a winding-sheet. It was a new experience for the girls to see dressing-tables and wash-stands shrouded in white, and a drift in the middle of the floor. They set to work after breakfast with shovels and toiled away till nearly school-time before ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... in the presence of those phantoms enveloped in the same winding-sheet, was terribly afraid of making a mistake; and, as a matter of fact, that had happened to many others, for the precautions were always taken with scrupulous care. His heart beat fast. Little Marie tried to breathe hard and make the ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... world that shall endure and 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 ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... were too worldly,—for, as he said, he had "already journeyed far beyond them." There were two letters, I remember, for which he had no words, but he made me understand that I was to place them on his heart within his winding-sheet. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... 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
... Reading gaol by 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 has ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... my grave were growing green, A winding-sheet drawn ower my e'en And I in Helen's arms ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... 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 of the wreck, at last the moment arrived, and though not a word was spoken ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... called more abundant life. The Lord saw into both worlds—saw Martha and Mary on the one side weeping, on the other Lazarus waiting for them in peace. He would do his best for them—for the sisters—not for Lazarus! It was hard on Lazarus to be called back into the winding-sheet of the body, a sacrifice to their faithlessness, but it should be done! Lazarus should suffer for his sisters! Through him they should be compelled to believe in the Father, and so be delivered from bondage! Death should have no more dominion ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... make a third attempt to frighten the United States Minister and his family. He selected Friday, August 17th, for his appearance, and spent most of that day in looking over his wardrobe, ultimately deciding in favour of a large slouched hat with a red feather, a winding-sheet frilled at the wrists and neck, and a rusty dagger. Towards evening a violent storm of rain came on, and the wind was so high that all the windows and doors in the old house shook and rattled. In fact, it was just such weather as he loved. ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... wife, our sister; would I had given Both her white hands to death, bound and locked fast In her last winding-sheet, when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... thrill shot 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 of life ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... 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' ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... corse that hangs on the roadside tree —A murderer's corse it needs must be—, Sever the right hand carefully:— Sever the hand that the deed hath done, Ere the flesh that clings to the bones be gone; In its dry veins must blood be none. Those ghastly fingers white and cold, Within a winding-sheet enfold; Count the mystic count of seven: Name the Governors of Heaven.[2] Then in earthen vessel place them, And with dragon-wort encase them, Bleach them in the noonday sun, Till the marrow melt and run, Till the flesh is pale and wan, As a moon-ensilvered cloud, As an unpolluted ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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
... collection, in its sort, than any of our other museums contain. Of all the saints in our calendar, there is not one of any notoriety who has not supplied her with a finger, a toe, or some other part; or with a piece of a shirt, a handkerchief, a sandal, or a winding-sheet. Even a bit of a pair of breeches, said to have belonged to Saint Mathurin, whom many think was a sans-cullotte, obtains her adoration on certain occasions. As none of her children have yet arrived at the same height ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... prospect of what must have inevitably happened, had we remained much longer in this place. Such was the economy in some ships that, rather than be at the trouble of interring the dead, their commanders ordered their men to throw their bodies overboard, many without either ballast or winding-sheet; so that numbers of human carcases floated in the harbour, until they were devoured by sharks and carrion crows, which afforded no agreeable spectacle to those who survived. At the same time the wet season began, during which a deluge ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... 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
... his 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
... most intrepid and the most indifferent were affected; they 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 of a general mourning, and of an army dying amid nature ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... 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
... warp, and weave the woof, The winding-sheet of Edward's race. 50 Give ample room, and verge enough The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year, and mark the night, When Severn shall reecho with affright The shrieks of death thro' Berkeley's ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... not mind looking in this direction," whispered Carne, who could never be contented, "I think I could show you, just beyond the murder-stone—yes, and it seems to be coming towards us, as white as a winding-sheet; do ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... was like 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 damp leather ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... 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 ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... 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 ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... majority of taisch tales are dreadful nonsense. Mr. MacCulloch, in his recent work on Skye, has usefully summarized the various types of second-sight as expounded by the very credulous Macleod of Hamera: (1) The seer is aware of a phantom winding-sheet enwrapping the doomed person; (2) he may see the corpse of some one still in life; (3) he may behold a drowning or accidental death; (4) he may hear noises as of a coffin being hammered; (5) he may see a living person dwindle to the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... and fall,— Still the whispering snow-flakes beat; Night and darkness are over all: Rest, pale city, beneath their pall! Sleep, white world, in thy winding-sheet! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... They raised the winding-sheet. There was peace in the face of the dead: a sunbeam fell on it; a swallow in its arrowy flight, darted into the new-made arbour, and in its flight circled twittering over ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... dull light was creeping in—a joyless light it was, and enough to make a body shiver. I felt more like weeping than rejoicing, and my heart took to aching when I saw her there so white and patient, more like a girl who was waiting for a winding-sheet than for a bridal veil. But she smiled brave-like, when I sat down on her ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... this little 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 unrolled them, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... of promise and suspense with which the book ends is meant to be symbolic. From Kielland's point of view, Norway is yet wrapped in the wintry winding-sheet of a tyrannical orthodoxy; and all that he dares assert is that the chains of frost and snow seem to be loosening. There is a ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... my grave were growing green, A winding-sheet drawn ower my een, And I in Helen's arms lying, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... 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 ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... dead, he arranged the winding-sheet himself, in his own fashion; then he lighted a cigarette, and set out in ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... against this. Even Don Sanchez, who was no innocent, did persuade her from it with good strong argument,—showing that, despite his worldliness, he did really love her as much as 'twas in his withered heart to love any one. As for Dawson, he declared he would sooner see his Moll in her winding-sheet than in the king's company, adding that 'twould be time enough for her to think of going to court when she had a husband to keep her out of mischief. And so she refused this offer (but with secret tears, I believe). "But," says she to her father, "if I'm not ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... compartments became a gulf into which fell back again, according to its weight, every vegetable, mineral, or human fragment. Then the lighter sand and ashes fell in their turns, stretching like a gray winding-sheet and smoking over these dismal funerals. And now seek in this burning tomb, in this subterraneous volcano, seek for the king's guards with their blue coats laced with silver. Seek for the officers brilliant in gold; seek for the arms upon which they depended for ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... represents the entombment of the bishop. The middle of the design is occupied by an altar tomb, into which the body, swathed in a diapered winding-sheet, is ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... arms of mine shall be thy winding-sheet; My heart, sweet boy, shall be thy sepulchre, For from my heart thine image ne'er shall go; My sighing breast shall be thy funeral bell; And so obsequious will thy father be, Even for the loss of thee, ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... by the Arms, and run her round the Market-place, till she was ashamed of her Laziness. And what was worse than this, she must not play with the Young Fellows that Day, but stand Neuter, like a Girl doing penance in a Winding-sheet at a Church-door. ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... warp, and weave the woof, The winding-sheet of Edward's race. Give ample room and verge enough[383-3] The characters of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... of 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 ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... afternoon, when all the country-side was ghastly in its winding-sheet of snow, and the clouds hung heavy as a pall over the stricken earth, the little funeral held its way from the lonely farm-house to the village-churchyard. As a last tribute of respect to their mother, the two brothers drove side by side in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • 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 ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... may not see the difference in the fall of the folds at first, but learn how to look, and the folds themselves will become transparent, and you shall see through them the death's shape, or the divine one, making the tissue above it as a cloud of light, or as a winding-sheet. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... he wrapped the object under the old gunny-sack round and round with the rough wool winding-sheet, and, carrying it to the edge of the grave, himself descended clumsily and placed it gently at his feet. The pit was deep, and in getting out he slipped back twice; but he said nothing. Outside, he paused a moment, looking ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... me a pleasant night; you would drive me from this cosy spot! Was it not enough to have wrapped me in my winding-sheet and borne me to the grave? A greater power has lifted up the stone. In vain did your priests drone over the trench they dug for me. Of what use are salt and water, where burns the fire of youth? The earth cannot freeze up love. You made a promise; ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... has been born to the mother after the one who has died, the full period of mourning must be observed for the latter; because it is said that in this case the mother does not tear off her sari or body-cloth to make a winding-sheet for the child as she does when her latest baby dies. The Kumrawats both grow and weave hemp, though they have no longer anything like a monopoly of its cultivation. They make the gons or double bags used for carrying grain ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... for his cold kiss to kill? Have I brought youth, crowned with wild-flowers sweet, With sandals dewy from a morning hill, For his gray, solemn eyes, to fright and chill? Have I brought Scorn the pale, and Hope the fleet, And First Love, in her lily winding-sheet,— And is ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... 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
... week. Don't you 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 whether your Bible or your button-hook rises ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... falling sun: "Is it time to rest? My hands are weary,—my work is done, I have wrought my best; I have spun and woven with patient eyes And with fingers fleet. Lo! where the toil of a lifetime lies In a winding-sheet!" ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... home I sware, And here we were to meet: Wilt thou a narrow coffin share, And part my winding-sheet? ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... hame, my mither dear, Prepare my winding-sheet, And at the back o merry Lincoln The morn I will ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... 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
... ever, in a fury and madness which cannot stop to reason. Dissolution means death, the suicide of Liberty, without a hope of resurrection—death without the glories of immortality; with no sister to mourn her fall, none to wrap her decently in her winding-sheet and bear her tenderly to a sepulchre—dead Liberty, left to all the horrors of corruption, a loathsome thing, with a stake through the body, which men shun, cast out naked on the highway of nations, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... he in 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
... to bid defiance 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 treasures requires twenty-four distinct ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... have had a winding-sheet, And helped to put it ower his head, Ere he had been disgraced by the border Scot, Whan he ower Liddel his men ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... as great, and desire nothing better than the opportunity for them. Caesar would again be the tyrant, and the sword of Brutus would once more fulfil its mission. Richard III. would emerge in his winding-sheet with the same humpbacked character in which he had expired, the Queen of Scots return warm to her gallantries, and the Stuarts repeat those blunders and crimes which terminated in ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... into silence. The peach tree budded, blossomed, and bore its fruit. The swallows and martins came, twittered about the roof, built their nests, reared their young, held their congress along the eaves, and then winged their flight in search of another spring. The caterpillar spun its winding-sheet, dangled in it from the great buttonwood tree that shaded the house, turned into a moth, fluttered with the last sunshine of summer, and disappeared; and finally the leaves of the buttonwood tree turned yellow, then brown, then rustled one by one to ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... gang hame, O mither dear, And shape my winding-sheet, And at the birks of Mirryland town There ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... 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
... 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
... 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 down upon ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... of the poor man Shadrach took place. I had been applied to for a sufficient quantity of cotton cloth to make a winding-sheet for him, and just as the twilight was thickening into darkness I went with Mr. —— to the cottage of one of the slaves whom I may have mentioned to you before—a cooper of the name of London, the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... child Guy 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, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... 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 stare; Hard ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... 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
... is anxious that some little respect may be paid to his remains. Sir Thomas Overbury, describing the "faire and happy milkmaid," observes, "thus lives she, and all her care is, that she may die in the spring-time, to have store of flowers stucke upon her winding-sheet." The poets, too, who always breathe the feeling of a nation, continually advert to this fond solicitude about the grave. In The Maid's Tragedy, by Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a beautiful instance of the kind describing the capricious melancholy ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... great pride in the sonorous tones of his voice, and loved nothing more dearly than to steal up behind a man and startle the unsuspecting one by giving a very loud "Hem." It was a "Hem," however, which helped to make the actor's winding-sheet, for one fine day he repeated the trick, burst a blood-vessel, and ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... life-tide visited her heart, and she opened her eyes, seekingly. Through her little window, at which in summer she knew that the honeysuckle leaned in as if peeping and hearkening, she saw the country wrapt in a winding-sheet of snow, through which patches of bright green had begun to dawn, just as her life had begun to show its returning bloom above the wan waves of death.—Sickness is just a fight between life and death.—A thrill of ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... God's extraordinary and immediate grace, men do very rarely put off all the trappings of their pride, till they who are about them put on their winding-sheet. —CLARENDON. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... Reading gaol by Reading town There is a pit of shame, And in it lies a wretched man Eaten by teeth of flame, In burning winding-sheet he lies, And his grave has ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde
... in honour of ancient infernal deities that delight in death are practised in hidden places, and the echo of these reaches him on the sighs of the wind and makes him shudder even as he looks at his beloved. It is an island with a cemetery smell. The chief figure who haunts it is a living man in a winding-sheet. It is, no doubt, Walton's story of the last days of Donne's life that makes us, as we read even the sermons and the love-poems, so aware of this ghostly apparition. Donne, it will be remembered, almost on the eve of his death, dressed ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... closer 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, like guests ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... the monotonous surface of this plain, and then looked 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 led ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... buy, and a painted cist;[116] will the winding-sheet well wax, to enwrap thy corpse; will think of every requisite, as if ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... all silences, where wait Fame's unblown years whose choir my soul would greet! Graves, nor dead Time, are sealed so dumb in fate, For Death and Time must pass on echoing feet. No grass-locked vault, no sculptured winding-sheet, No age-embalmed hour with mummied wing, Is bosomed in such stillness, vast, complete, As wraps the future, and no prayer may bring From that ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... shape to 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 painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood there, in rude ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... of our soldiers who had been killed by Russian balls showed on their corpses deep and broad wounds, for the Russian balls were much larger than ours. We saw a color-bearer, wrapped in his banner as a winding-sheet, who seemed to give signs of life, but he expired in the shock of being raised. The Emperor walked on and said nothing, though many times when he passed by the most mutilated, he put his hand over his eyes to avoid the sight. This calm lasted only a short while; ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... I turned my head to see a bluebird flit gently to the top of a stake in the fence-corner not far away. They were abroad, these harbingers of spring, and I knew that balmy breezes and bursting buds came quickly in their wake. How sweet it was to know that earth's winding-sheet had been rent from her breast once more; that the shackles had been torn from her streams and the fetters loosed from her trees; to feel that where there had been barren desolation and lifeless refuse of last year's math would ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... it a moment by its feet, then let it slide into my arms, and lowered it on to the gravelled path. It was the body of John Emmet, in his winding-sheet. ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... deathwatch ticks! See, see, the winding-sheet! Our dance is done, Our race is run, And we must lie at the alder's feet! Ding-dong! ding-dong! Merry, merry go the bells, Swinging o'er the weltering wave! And we must seek Our deathbeds bleak, Where the green ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... 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 ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... Erda to 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 ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... of Sienna's winding-sheet is described as being cut work (punto tagliato) on linen. This sounds like embroidery of the type now sold as "Madeira work," the pattern being cut ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... the first of the August fogs that was rising. In a few moments the winding-sheet became universally dense; all around the Marie a white damp lay under the light, and in it the ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... Celtic nature, prone to sudden rage, stirred in them. The stranger who an hour before had been indifferent to them now wore the face of an enemy. The lake and the bog—ay, the secret grave yearned for him: the winding-sheet was high upon his breast. "Stay, and it's but once in your life you'll be sorry," the man growled, "and faith, that'll ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... 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 lamp ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sudden 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, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... in one place for people to know him, he would never have been allowed to go so cold and hungry; but he had always to move on, and nobody had time to learn to care about him. So the terrible sunless season threatened to wrap him in its winding-sheet, and lay ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... he had cut a couple of cloths out of the sail, for a winding-sheet. . . . But the pot was near to boiling; and after we had supped on the crayfish and the fruit, he fell to work again, nailing together a rough coffin. He explained that he had served his time in quite a humble way before ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... load of double empire, half the world His own, within a living tomb Press'd down at Yuste,—Spain's great banner furl'd His winding-sheet around him,—while he strove The ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... had supposed. For it showed 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 ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... 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 ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... 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, and better ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare |
