passing-bell

Anon their loud alarums he doth hear; And now his grief may be compared well To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell.

On Hunting 2007

Well, at last he rung the bell: O, thought I, that it was my passing-bell!

Pamela 2006

But before the week was over the passing-bell rang out, and a thrill of sympathy ran through the village, and the neighbours looked into each other's faces, and their kind eyes filled with tears as they said --

The Village by the River H. Louisa Bedford

Eight long years have slipped by since that night, and in that time a passing-bell has tolled for the Philippines which we found then.

A Woman's Impression of the Philippines Mary Helen Fee

But there is no arbitrary isolation of one theme from another; they mingle and inter-penetrate throughout, to the music of Pan's flute, and of Love's viol, and the bugle-call of Endeavour, and the passing-bell of Death.

Poems of To-Day: an Anthology Various

She, standing there invisible, recites in tones like the knell of a passing-bell the fate of a man haunted by

The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust'

I mean that our old and long-tried cook, Bathsheba, who had been an heirloom in the family, suddenly fell in love with the older sexton, who had rung the passing-bell for every soul who died in the village for forty years, and took it into her head to marry him, and desert our kitchen for his little brown house under the hill.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 Various

Now since she is dying, let us ring her passing-bell; for when she is dead, we that live to see it intend to ring out.

The Riches of Bunyan Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

"He is tolling a passing-bell for the beautiful almond-blossoms, that are destroyed by the rain," she said to Giannita.

The Miracles of Antichrist: A Novel 1915

"Though the tolling of this bell", says Ellacombe, "has been prescribed for four distinct occasions, modern custom has limited it to two: first, after the death of the parishioner, to which the term passing-bell has been incorrectly transferred; and the second time during the procession of the funeral from the house of the deceased to the church-gate or entrance."

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 2: Assizes-Browne 1840-1916 1913