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Updated: May 29, 2025
He had passed on foot from the village to the farm-house, and when he opened the little white wicket, and walked along the gravelled avenue that led to the flower-clad porch, the willows on either side seemed to droop lower than willows are used to droop, and the soft September air sighed through the swinging boughs, like the prelude of a dirge.
The funeral orchestra then played a wailing dirge, and the mourning women broke into a concerted and prolonged keen, of the most ear-piercing and heart-rending description. When the fire had quite burned itself out, all that remained of the bones, charred and blackened, was carefully gathered, deposited in a third and smaller urn of gold, and again conveyed in great state to the Maha Phrasat.
But though no concourse of citizens followed the patriots to their humble resting place, though no bands wailed the solemn dirge, and no casket but the earth inclosed their remains, their deeds were not forgotten.
When the boat had gone some fifty yards from the shore he drew out his bugle, kept hidden up to then, and sent the most mournful notes across the water after the departing voyagers. It was so like a funeral dirge that Davy Jones thrust his fingers in his ears; and then shook a fist at the stout bugler; who however kept on with his sad refrain until Allan put a stop to it.
As soon as quiet reigned again, he returned to Marie, and seated himself on a bench. Leaning his head in uncontrollable grief against the slender stem of the rose-bush, he moaned aloud: "Oh, my Emperor, my dear, good Emperor, why did you leave me?" Lightly Marie touched his shoulder in sympathy. The last rays of the setting sun had now departed. The last tones of the dirge had died away.
It is such a poem as Collins might have written, it has the very movement and melody of the "Ode on the Death of Mr. Thomson," and of the "Dirge in Cymbeline," with the same sweetness and tenderness of feeling. Its one conspicuous line, "And fired the shot heard round the world," must not take to itself all the praise deserved by this perfect little poem, a model for all of its kind.
The same custom is referred to in the inscriptions of Cyrus, and it is interesting to note that a similar mode of manifesting grief still prevails in the modern Orient. The refrain forms a regular feature of these dirges, an indication that, as is still the case in the Orient, there was a leader who sang the dirge, while the chorus chimed in at the proper moment.
Still another explanation is that the whole is part of a dirge, to be taken literally, and describing the mourners in house and garden. I venture, though with some hesitation, to prefer, on the whole, the old allegorical theory, for reasons which it would be impossible to condense here. It is by no means free from difficulty, but is, as I think, less difficult than any of its rivals.
The worker emitted a sound like the shriek of a circular saw gone wild. And on the instant all its fellows, and the gigantic guards at the exits, stiffened to rigid attention. Again came the roaring sound, desolate, terrible, at once a call to arms and a funeral dirge.
Think of having to run that gauntlet morbidly curious old women, silly girls, bored men and trying to keep step to that confounded dirge. Wedding march, indeed! They make it sound more like the march of the condemned. Tum-tum-te-dum! Ugh! I tell you, Marjorie, I'm not going to have it. Nor any of this stodgy, grewsome fuss. I mean to have a cheerful wedding." "Humph!" says Marjorie.
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