DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5073#0151
140
SMYRNA.
looked like a white cloud bending down gently in
fragrant blessing over the people. Despite our fatigue
we had little sleep that night; for the whole population
was in the streets, firing pistols, squibs, and crackers,
without one moment's cessation, throughout that night
and the next day.
Another but a sadder sight passed our windows on
Easter Sunday morning, — the funeral of a young girl,
the only child of a widowed Greek doctor, who is rich
and much respected in the city; the funeral was there-
fore conducted in the grandest style. The procession
commenced with a score of little boys, dressed in scarlet,
canying crosses and candles; then thirty priests, all
robed in the richest brocades and the peculiar black
cap of the Greek Church, one of them singing a sweet
and solemn chant; then came the Archbishop, robed in
brocade and mitred, carrying a gold crozier, a boy
bearing his train; and after him the coffin — uncovered
— painted white, and supported by bands of white satin
riband: within it lay the young girl (embalmed, they
said), and the face painted enough to conceal the ter-
rible colour of Death, the body dressed in white satin,
with a wreath of orange blossoms on her head, and
strewn over with white roses, buds, and leaves. About
a hundred gentlemen followed, wearing white hat-
bands, foremost among them the poor father, bowed
down with grief— and no wonder, for the girl was very
lovely; one could fancy her sleeping to the measured
sounds of the sweet chant sung by the boys who pre-
ceded her and by the rich-voiced priest —
"A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young !
For her, the fair and debonnaire, that now so lowly lies ;
The life upon her dark brown hair, but not within her eyes —
The life still there upon her hair, the death upon her eyes!"
SMYRNA.
looked like a white cloud bending down gently in
fragrant blessing over the people. Despite our fatigue
we had little sleep that night; for the whole population
was in the streets, firing pistols, squibs, and crackers,
without one moment's cessation, throughout that night
and the next day.
Another but a sadder sight passed our windows on
Easter Sunday morning, — the funeral of a young girl,
the only child of a widowed Greek doctor, who is rich
and much respected in the city; the funeral was there-
fore conducted in the grandest style. The procession
commenced with a score of little boys, dressed in scarlet,
canying crosses and candles; then thirty priests, all
robed in the richest brocades and the peculiar black
cap of the Greek Church, one of them singing a sweet
and solemn chant; then came the Archbishop, robed in
brocade and mitred, carrying a gold crozier, a boy
bearing his train; and after him the coffin — uncovered
— painted white, and supported by bands of white satin
riband: within it lay the young girl (embalmed, they
said), and the face painted enough to conceal the ter-
rible colour of Death, the body dressed in white satin,
with a wreath of orange blossoms on her head, and
strewn over with white roses, buds, and leaves. About
a hundred gentlemen followed, wearing white hat-
bands, foremost among them the poor father, bowed
down with grief— and no wonder, for the girl was very
lovely; one could fancy her sleeping to the measured
sounds of the sweet chant sung by the boys who pre-
ceded her and by the rich-voiced priest —
"A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young !
For her, the fair and debonnaire, that now so lowly lies ;
The life upon her dark brown hair, but not within her eyes —
The life still there upon her hair, the death upon her eyes!"