Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Undertakers
Ye undertakers, tell us,
’Midst all the gorgeous figures you exhibit,
Why is the principal conceal’d, for which
You make this mighty stir?
Blair—The Grave. L. 170.
There was a man bespake a thing,
Which when the owner home did bring,
He that made it did refuse it:
And he that brought it would not use it,
And he that hath it doth not know
Whether he hath it yea or no.
Sir John Davies—Riddle upon a Coffin.
Why is the hearse with scutcheons blazon’d round,
And with the nodding plume of ostrich crown’d?
No; the dead know it not, nor profit gain;
It only serves to prove the living vain.
Gay—Trivia. Bk. III. L. 231.
Diaulus, lately a doctor, is now an undertaker; what he does as an undertaker, he used to do also as a doctor.
Martial—Epigrams. Bk. I. Ep. 47.
There’s a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot;
To the churchyard a pauper is going I wot;
The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs,
And hark to the dirge that the sad driver sings—
Rattle his bones over the stones,
He’s only a pauper whom nobody owns.
Thomas Noel—The Pauper’s Drive.
The houses that he makes last till doomsday.
Hamlet. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 66.