A MONARCH'S LYKE-WAKE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 96, 27 February 1875, Page 11

A MONARCH'S LYKE-WAKE.

and the richly wrought banners, and proud achievements, shook in the cold currents of the winter night, mourners and choristers, priests and acolytes, heralds and officers of the royal household, stole away and left the chapel to its solitary and woeful tenant. Did the atmosphere of that desecrated, but still holy place, scare the fiends from shadowing the coffin with their black wings ? — Did the flaming sword of St. Michael drive them back ? Who shall say P History records a horrible circumstance. The leaden coffin of the monarch had been damaged in the journey to Sion House. In the morning came plumbers to repair the fracture. In shuddering whispers they told how a large black hound had crawled fsoni under the bier, and would hardly be driven away. Then the village gossips, and eke folks of higher condition, remembered the 6ermon of the dauntless Friar Peto on Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn j and how the text recorded the fate of Ahab the wicked king of Isreal.