With an auspicious and a dropping eye,

With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,

In equal scale weighing delight and dole.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 2.

By fairy hands their knell is rung;

By forms unseen their dirge is sung;

There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,

To bless the turf that wraps their clay;

And Freedom shall awhile repair,

To dwell a weeping hermit there!

William Collins (1720-1756): Ode written in the year 1746.

Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): On the Power of Sound. xii.