about midnight
Which doth surmount our common talke As farre as dross doth lead . Churchyard . Here 's a few flowers ! but about midnight more : The herbs that have oil them cold dew o ' the night Are strewings fitt ' st for graves -- You were as flowers now withered ; even so These herblets shall , which we upon you strow . CYMBELINE . AMONG the beautiful and simple-hearted customs of rural life which still linger in some parts of England are those of strewing flowers before the funerals and planting them at the graves of departed friends . These , it is said , are the remains of some of the rites of the primitive Church ; but they are of still higher antiquity , having been observed among the Greeks and Romans , and frequently mentioned by their writers , and were no doubt the spontaneous tributes of unlettered affection , originating long before art had tasked itself to modulate sorrow into song or story it on the monument .