Sentence examples for burthen from inspiring English sources

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after many a summer dies the swan.

He quotes Edgar Allan Poe: "Now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes up a burthen so heavy… that it can be thrown down only into the grave".

In the next line, by way of further variation, we find that there are six stresses: The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath You cannot read line three without placing emphasis on both of the first two words - and this is an effect perfectly consonant with the meaning of the poem.

The metrical template - ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum ti-tum - would lead you to expect an emphasis on the word "to": The vapours weep their burthen to the ground But that would sound idiotic.

The fate of the most vulnerable people – in children's homes, prisons, care homes, rehabilitation centres, adult care homes and probation services – is increasingly in the hands of private providers, just as they were when known as orphans, felons, the lame and the halt, and the aged, who have "borne the heat and burthen of the day".

The Habeas Corpus Act, passed that year, was to end forever what the lawmakers described as the "great and manifold mischeifes and inconveniencies" of that tribunal, which had "beene found to be an intollerable burthen to the subjects".

Given that God had endowed the human mind with freedom, said Thomas Jefferson, "all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness".So it is sad to find that according to most people who study the subject, the cause of religious liberty is treading water at best, retreating at worst.

"Taxes are of late Years greatly encreased among us, and now it is said we are to be burthened with the Payment of new Duties," a distressingly sober and spiritless Saunders observed.

Running for the Illinois state legislature, he said he stood "for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burthens" – a Jacksonian bromide that was expected.

Even Tommy is scared enough to take on a nasty strike-breaking job on behalf of the White Russians and the British establishment, thus adding to the burthens on brother Arthur, still fighting so many wars on so many fronts, now faced with ideological betrayal.

Later, he scored a success in another of Massine's own parts, the Miller in The Three-Cornered Hat, but the ballet that Massine created for him in 1951, Donald of the Burthens, proved a disappointment.