Dirge Quotes

More often writing soliloquies of suffering and consolation than collective songs like the dirge, elegists have discovered that lyric sequences can provide a powerful means of addressing the tensions between grief's inchoate emotion and social rituals of mourning. ~ Susan Stewart

Every 30 seconds, it transmitted portions of [a Chopin Polonaise] to tell the world that the capital was still in Polish hands. Angered by the unexpected setback, the German High Command decided to pound the stubborn citadel into submission. In round-the-clock raids, bombers knocked out flourmills, gasworks, power plants and reservoirs, then sowed the residential areas with incendiaries. One witness, passing scenes of carnage, enumerated the horrors: 'Everywhere corpses, wounded humans, dead horses . . . and hastily-dug graves.' . . . Finally food ran out, and famished Poles, as one man put it, 'cut off flesh as soon as a horse fell, leaving only the skeleton.' On September 28, Warsaw Radio replaced the polonaise with a funeral dirge.15 ~ Norman Davies

The dying swan, when years her temples pierce, In music-strains breathes out her life and verse, And, chanting her own dirge, tides on her wat'ry hearse. ~ Phineas Fletcher

Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched tribal dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.' ~ Henry Hazlitt

Whether that lady's gentle mind,
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love, as stars do light,
Found sadness where it left delight,

I dare not guess; but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream,

It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.

That garden sweet, that lady fair,
And all sweet shapes and odors there,
In truth have never passed away:
'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they.

For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death or change: their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.

(--Conclusion, Autumn - A Dirge) ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

You have to understand me. There are no half measures here. I am your girl. I will be your woman. But I will never be your victim. If you ever try to turn me into that, I will sing your dying dirge." Her ~ Alex Bledsoe

The air grew colder and thinner as they rode through the mountain passes. The sun was high and bright, but Martise wrapped her shawl tightly around her and pressed against Silhara's back. Gnat kept a steady pace, breathing harder in the thin air. Unlike him, the mountain ponies suffered no effects from the rising elevation and clipped ahead at a swift pace. Patches of snow spilled from embankments onto the rutted paths. A brisk wind moaned a soft dirge as it whipped through the towering evergreens cloaking the mountainside.
Silhara called a sudden halt. Martise peered around his arm, expecting to see some obstacle in their path. The way was clear, with only the Kurmans watching them curiously.
"What's wrong?"
"You're quaking hard enough to make my teeth rattle." He moved his leg back and untied one of the packs strapped to the saddle. "Get down."
She slid off Gnat's back. Silhara followed and pulled one of their blankets from the packet. "Here. Wrap this around you." She had only pulled the blanket over her shoulders when he picked her up and tossed her onto Gnat's back once more, this time in the front of the flat saddle. She clutched the horse's mane with one hand and held on to her blanket with the other. Silhara vaulted up behind her, scooted her back against him and took up the reins.
"Better," he said and whistled to the waiting Kurmans he was ready. Martise couldn't agree more. The blanket's warmth and Silhara's body heat so ~ Grace Draven

Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream. ~ Eric Hoffer

The swan murmurs sweet strains with a flattering tongue, itself the singer of its own dirge. ~ Martial

Time loves a new lay; and the dirge he is playing
Will change for you soon to a livelier strain. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Non-White Arab birthrates will make White Jewish people a minority totally vulnerable to the political, social, and economic will of non-Whites Arabs. A social upheaval is now beginning to occur that will be the funeral dirge of the America Israel we love. ~ David Duke

After all, whistling put everyone at ease. Unless it was a funeral dirge. But he didn't want to think about that." Montague. ~ M.H. Snowy

In the end, one or the other will triumph - a funeral dirge will be sung over the Soviet republic or over world capitalism. ~ Vladimir Lenin

If seasons diseases be, consider human's too, his fate same it's true
Rudest time steels, and murders through fever, pain, amid all in woe.
Swelling then cold, yet numb, in young and old, fearing wildest swell,
See it turns the sweetest singers throats, and morrow, a garland will.

On 'Seasons A Dirge'-A Dirge
For A Diseased Friend Who Died Of Fever In 2013 ~ Nithin Purple

Nothing stood between Sheryl's heart and skin. She was whole in her sorrow, perfectly connected inside and out, soul and body united, swaying with complete abandon to a dirge that only she could hear. ~ Athol Dickson

Charlie started crying, in the convulsive, soundless way that men do. "Don't you understand," he said after composing himself, "that's a funeral dirge for the first wave." We all thought about that, the many lives lost before we even opened our eyes this morning. ~ Suzanne Hayes

Merani
It runs; it flies; it bears me on; it heeds no trail nor spoor;
A raven black behind me croaks with ominous eyes of doom;
Speed thee on and onward fly with a gallop that knoweth no bound,
Fling to the winds my stormy thoughts in raging darkness found.

Go onward! onward! cleaving through roaring wind and rain
Over many a mount and many a plain, short'ning my days of pain;
Seek not shelter, my flying steed, from scorching skies or storm;
Pity not thy rider sad, by self-immolation worn.

I bid farewell to parents, kin, to friends and sweetheart dear
Whose gentle voice did soothe my hopes to a hot and bitter tear.
Where the night falls, there let it dawn, there let my country be;
Only the heavenly stars above my open heart will see.

The sighs that burn, that rend the heart to stormy waves I hurl;
To thy inspired, wild maddened flight, love's waning passions whirl.
Speed thee on, and onward fly, with a gallop that knoweth no bound,
Fling to the winds my stormy thoughts, in raging darkness found.

In foreign lands thou lay me low, not where my fathers sleep;
Nor shed thou tears nor grieve, my love, nor over my body weep;
Ravens grim will dig my grave and whirlwinds wind a shroud
There, on desert plains where winds will howl in wailings loud.

No lover's tears but dew divine will moist my bed of gloom;
No dirge but vultures' shrieks will sou ~ Nikoloz Baratashvili

Let them be spattered in humiliation, be spattered in corruption; let them hear the dirge that spills from my lips, once those of a human being but no longer. The angel who deceived me, the men who treated me like an animal. you've all made me into a Phantom. ~ Mizuki Nomura

I speak without reservation, from what I know and who I am. I do so with the understanding that all people should have the right to offer their voices to the chorus whether the result is harmony or dissonance. The worldsong is a colorless dirge without the differences that distinguish us, and it is that difference which should be celebrated not condemned. ~ Ani DiFranco

By fairy hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung. ~ William Collins

The days of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burke's grand dirge over them; they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a youth and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touch so much as her little finger or the hem of her robe. ~ George Eliot

You want to know the story? I'd be happy to tell you. I think I have just enough caloric energy stored up to make it through the telling of the tale. It's short. I am monstrously fat. I am a glutton. My wife was disgusted and repulsed. She gave me six months to lose one hundred pounds. I joined Weight Watchers . . . see it there, right across the street, that gaunt storefront? This afternoon was the big six-month weigh-in. So to speak. I had gained almost seventy pounds in the six months. An errant Snickers bar fell out of the cuff of my pants and rolled against my wife's foot as I stepped on the scale. The scale over there across the street is truly an ingenious device. One preprograms the desired new weight into it, and if one has achieved or gone below that new low weight, the scale bursts into recorded whistles and cheers and some lively marching-band tune. Apparently, tiny flags protrude from the top and wave mechanically back and forth. A failure--see for instance mine--results in a flatulent dirge of disappointed and contemptuous tuba. To the strains of the latter my wife left, the establishment, me, on the arm of a svelte yogurt distributor whom I am even now planning to crush, financially speaking, first thing tomorrow morning. Ms. Beadsman, you will find an eclair on the floor to the left of your chair. Could you perhaps manipulate it onto this plate with minimal chocolate loss and pass it to me. ~ David Foster Wallace

I fear the democratization of plastic surgery, when it's so cheap that everyone - the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker - goes under the knife and winds up looking like these tightly pulled, slightly surprised-looking society and celebrity aliens from Planet Botox. . . . When I was young, I could have bottled up my self-loathing and filled a mile of train cars with it. Now that I'm old, I can't think of anyone I'd rather be than me. . . . That's what we need now: surgeons who can slice away the self-consciousness, the fear, the loneliness, and inject a little hope instead. A little love. Or a doctor who implants only high spirits, penchants for practical jokes, or the ability to cha-cha even to a dirge beat. ~ Lorna Landvik

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Child of shadows, once born of flesh
Un-winged, amidst fear and agony

'Fraid of the lurking and yet to come
Oblivious, to the code of chivalry.

Voids in his desire were unveiled, as
Love taught him; death with dignity.

In desire to be and in wanting to live
His wretched soul began to purge,

As he wept at the beauty of night
He commenced to sing his own dirge,

Then born again of fire; ascended,
Like Phoenix must burn to emerge. ~ Zubair Ahsan

Immigration along with nonwhite birthrates will make white people a minority totally vulnerable to the political, social, and economic will of blacks, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Orientals. A social upheaval is now beginning to occur that will be the funeral dirge of the America we love. I shudder to contemplate the future under nonwhite occupation; rapes, murders, robberies multiplied a hundred fold, illiteracy such as in Haiti, medicine such as in Mexico, and tyranny such as in Togoland. ~ David Duke

A little later, as we talked of the Maniot dirges by which I was obsessed, I was surprised to hear this bloodshot-eyed and barefoot old man say: "Yes, it's the old iambic tetrameter acalectic." It was the equivalent of a Cornish fisherman pointing out the difference, in practicality incomprehensible dialect, between the Petrachian and the Spenserian sonnet. It was quite correct. Where on earth had he learnt it? His last bit of information was that, in the old days (that wonderful cupboard!) the Arabs used to come to this coast to dive for the murex. ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor

It was the sound of a thousand hungry children crying, ten thousand widows tearing their hair over their husband's graves, a chorus of angels singing the last dirge on the day of God's death. ~ Christopher Moore

Ramping a jacked-up hell-quad over a dirge-singing pack of goblins with a burned-to-death stuntman at the wheel. I'm ~ Chuck Wendig

I am the blade that is swung by your hand,
Slicing a rainbow's arc,
I am the clapper, but you are the bell,
Tolling the gathering dark.
If you are the singer, then I am the song,
A threnody, requiem, dirge.
You've mad me the answer for all the world's need,
Humanity's undying urge ~ Neal Shusterman

Could a literary life be referred to with the iambic pentameter of, say, harnessing wind power, transplanting hearts or saving the whales. Or did it necessitate the sombre and monotonous dirge of software, priority banking or turbine building. ~ Anita Nair

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated upon the bleak, dark night. ~ Charles Dickens

Lighthearted boys and girls
were harvesting the grapes in woven baskets,
while on a resonant harp a boy among them
played a tune of longing, singing low
with delicate voice a summer dirge. The others,
breaking out in song for the joy of it,
kept time together as they skipped along. ~ Homer

I'm thinking of being a professional mourner. How hard can it be? Tear at your hair, sing a dirge or two, take the rest of the week off. ~ Christopher Moore

Living, just by itself - what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and Boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that's terribly exciting - or he'll come along and nibble your brain. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

Pity is unto the bird that takes refuge and stands on the tall tree with shallow roots to boast with their sweet melodies for they shall sing a harmonious dirge the day the strong storm will arrive. But the birds that shall build their nest on the tall tree deeply rooted in the soil shall smile and sing hallelujah when they see the storm coming from afar ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

It was a something found that had long been sought for by a thousand restless yearnings and vague desires, less of the heart than mind; not as when youth discovers the one to be beloved, but rather as when the student, long wandering after the clew to some truth in science, sees it glimmer dimly before him, to beckon, to recede, to allure, and to wane again. She fell at last into unquiet slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting, shapeless phantoms; and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy cloud, glinted with a sickly ray across the casement, she heard her father settled back betimes to his one pursuit, and calling forth from his Familiar a low mournful strain, like a dirge over the dead. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Male religion entombs women in sepulchres of silence in order to chant its own eternal and dreary dirge to a past that never was. ~ Mary Daly

Done with the whole dark
& the insect dirge
under blue lit lamps.
Done trying to remember

June, first stars & August
when I was Penelope
when I was Eurydice
when July was missing

& I was my own dull shade. ~ Emily Skaja

He was a strong and noble lord with piercing eyes of grey.
He sat upon his noble throne shining like the dawn.
His sword flashed like the brightest star.
He led our people well.
Yet here and now he lays in blood pierced with arrows.
He was the friend of many knights.
He loved the warrior games.
His heart was won by a lady fair for marriage they did wait.
A kindly prince, his duty carried him to another's bed.
And on her death true love returned, finally they wed.
He felt the grief of children lost to murder and to pain.
I was the youngest of his blood.
I'll never be the same.
Here lays my father and my lord.
I know not what to say.
Except my father and my lord was slain here on this day.
Here lays my father and my lord.
I know not what to say.
Except my father and my lord was slain here on this day ... . ~ Laurel A. Rockefeller

With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage. ~ William Shakespeare

From the time an Aiel boy becomes a man he will not sing anything but battle chants, or their dirge for the slain. I have heard them singing over their dead, and over those they have killed. That song is one to make
the stones weep. ~ Robert Jordan

Dirge swelled, then without warning, he turned his head, ~ J.D. Robb

It was now the stormy equinoctial weather that sounds the wild dirge of autumn, and marches the winter in. I love, and always did, that grand undefinable music, threatening and bewailing, with its strange soul of liberty and desolation. ~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The next day, he read to me a freshly composed dirge in which the circumstances of his wife's death and burial were commemorated. He read it in a voice quavering with emotion, and the hand that held the paper was trembling. When he had finished, he asked me whether the verses were worthy of the treasure that he had lost.
"They are," I said.
"They may lack poetic inspiration," he remarked, after a moment's hesitation, "but no one can deny them sentiment - although possibly the sentiment itself prejudices the merits…"
"Not in my opinion. I find the poem perfect."
"Yes, I suppose, when you consider…Well, after all, it's just a few lines written by a sailor."
"By a sailor who happens to be also a poet."
He shrugged his shoulders, looked at the paper, and recited his composition again, but this time without quavering or trembling, emphasizing the literary qualities and bringing out the imagery and music in the verses. When he had finished, he expressed the opinion that it was the most finished of his works, and I agreed. He shook my hand and predicted a great future for me. ~ Machado De Assis

Was he to bray this in profoundest brass
Arointing his dreams with fugal requiems?
Was he to company vastest things defunct
With a blubber of tom-toms harrowing the sky?
Scrawl a tragedian's testament? Prolong
His active force in an inactive dirge,
Which, let the tall musicians call and call,
Should merely call him dead? Pronounce amen
Through choirs infolded to the outmost clouds?
Because he built a cabin who once planned
Loquacious columns by the ructive sea?
Because he turned to salad-beds again? ~ Wallace Stevens

Then there was organ music, a sort of feverish dirge, and then I was stepping out of my shorts and into the shower with Chenault. I remember the feel of those soapy little hands washing my back, keeping my eyes tightly shut while my soul fought a hopeless battle with my groin, then giving up like a drowning man and soaking the bed with our bodies. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Dirge of the dying and the stench of fear,
Black souls repent as hell draws near,
- Percy Pemmeney the smuggler, from Curse of Ancient Shadows. ~ Rod Tyson

A sense of great masses moving at visionary speeds, of giants dancing, of eternal sorrows consoled, of he knew not what and yet he had always known, awoke in him with the very first bass of the deep-mouthed dirge, and bowed down his spirit as if the gate of heaven had opened before him. ~ C.S. Lewis

The End of the Raven
On a night quite unenchanting, when the rain was downward slanting
I awakened to the ranting of the man I catch mice for.
Tipsy and a bit unshaven, in a tone I found quite craven,
Poe was talking to a Raven perched above the chamber door.
'Raven's very tasty,' thought I, as I tiptoed o'er the floor.
'There is nothing I like more.'
[ ... ]
Still the Raven never fluttered, standing stock-still as he uttered
In a voice that shrieked and sputtered, his two cents' worth
'Nevermore.'
While this dirge the birdbrain kept up, oh, so silently I crept up,
Then I crouched and quickly leapt up, pouncing on the feathered bore.
Soon he was a heap of plumage, and a little blood and gore
Only this and not much more. ~ Henry N. Beard

A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

I picked him up and set him against the steering wheel, facing me, his feet on my thighs. The huge lament continued, wave on wave. It was a sound so large and pure I could almost listen to it, try consciously to apprehend it, as one sets up a mental register in a concert hall or theater. He was not sniveling or blubbering. He was crying out, saying nameless things in a way that touched me with its depth and richness. This was an ancient dirge all the more impressive for its resolute monotony. Ululation. I held him upright with a hand under each arm. As the crying continued, a curious shift developed in my thinking. I found that I did not necessarily wish him to stop. It might not be so terrible, I thought, to have to sit and listen to this a while longer. We looked at each other. Behind that dopey countenance, a complex intelligence operated. I held him with one hand, using the other to count his fingers inside the mittens, aloud, in German. The inconsolable crying went on. I let it wash over me, like rain in sheets. I entered it, in a sense. I let it fall and tumble across my face and chest. I began to think he had disappeared inside this wailing noise and if I could join him in his lost and suspended place we might together perform some reckless wonder of intelligibility. I let it break across my body. It might not be so terrible, I thought, to have to sit here for four more hours, with the motor running and the heater on, listening to this uniform lament. It might be good, ~ Don DeLillo

The wailing of the newborn infant is mingled with the dirge for the dead. ~ Lucretius

He would have been a tall boy, but he could never get enough food to put meat on his bones. His mother died next. The people of Lykos did the Fading Dirge for them - a tragic thumping of fists against chests, fading slowly, slowly, till the fists, like her heart, beat no more and all dispersed. The ~ Pierce Brown

Mortality
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passes from life to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, the low and the high,
Shall molder to dust, and together shall lie.
Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
'Tis the wink of an eye - 'tis the draught of a breath -
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud? ~ William Knox

Hey this is Lenore! Yup, it sure is Lenore! Huh, maybe he can't hear me, maybe I should spell it. L-e-n-o-p

There's no p in Lenore , Lenore.

Oh yeah? Then what's this raggamuffin? Pssssssssssss

Aaaaagh! How are you even projecting it at that angle!?! ~ Roman Dirge