Hearse

A hearse is a large vehicle, originally a horse carriage but later with the introduction of motor vehicles, a car, used to carry the body of a deceased person in a casket at a funeral, wake, or graveside service. They range from deliberately anonymous vehicles to heavily decorated vehicles.

Quotes

• Dido, my deare, alas! is dead,
  Dead, and lyeth wrapt in lead.
  O heavie herse!
  • Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender (1579), November Eclogue

• Underneath this sable herse
  Lyes the subject of all verse.
  • Ben Jonson, "Epitaph on the Countesse Dowager of Pembroke" (Lansdowne MS. 777)

• On all the line a sudden vengeance waits,
  And frequent herses shall besiege your gates.
  • Alexander Pope, "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" (1717; revised 1720)

• Not even your Britain's groans can pierce
  The leaden silence of your hearse.
  • Sir Walter Scott, Marmion (1808), Introduction to Canto I, lines 108–9