, to take fresh hold - we bore our
burthen onward, through the moonlight, and, at last, laid Zenobia on the floor
of the old farm-house. By-and-by, came three or four withered women, and stood
whispering around the corpse, peering at it through their spectacles, holding up
their skinny hands, shaking their night-capt heads, and taking counsel of one
another's experience what was to be done.
    With those tire-women, we left Zenobia!
 

                           XXVIII. Blithedale-Pasture

Blithedale, thus far in its progress, had never found the necessity of a
burial-ground. There was some consultation among us, in what spot Zenobia might
most fitly be laid. It was my own wish, that she should sleep at the base of
Eliot's pulpit, and that, on the rugged front of the rock, the name by which we
familiarly knew her - ZENOBIA - and not another word, should be deeply cut, and
left for the moss and lichens to fill up, at their long leisure. But
Hollingsworth (to whose ideas, on this point, great deference was due) made it
his request that her grave might be dug on the gently sloping hill-side, in the
wide pasture, where, as we once supposed, Zenobia and he had planned to build
their cottage. And thus it was done, accordingly.
    She was buried very much as other people have been, for hundreds of years
gone by. In anticipation of a death, we Blithedale colonists had sometimes set
our fancies at work to arrange a funereal ceremony, which should be the proper
symbolic expression of our spiritual faith and eternal hopes; and this we meant
to substitute for those customary rites, which were moulded originally out of
the Gothic gloom, and, by long use, like an old velvet-pall, have so much more
than their first death-smell in them. But, when the occasion came, we found it
the simplest and truest thing, after all, to content ourselves with the old
fashion, taking away what we could, but interpolating no novelties, and
particularly avoiding all frippery of flowers and cheerful emblems. The
procession moved from the farm-house. Nearest the dead walked an old man in deep
mourning, his face mostly concealed in a white handkerchief, and with Priscilla
leaning on his arm. Hollingsworth and myself came next. We all stood around the
narrow niche in the cold earth; all saw the coffin lowered in; all heard the
rattle of the crumbly soil upon its lid - that final sound, which