Explore "Peter and Alexis" by Dmitri Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A coffin of pinewood tree Stands ready prepared for me; Within its narrow wall I'll await the trumpet call.
This was the song of certain heretics, the raskolniks called-"The Coffin-liers. " "Seven thousand years after the creation of the world," said they, "the second coming of Christ will take place; and should it not happen we will burn the Gospels themselves; as for the other books it is not worth believing them. " And they left their houses, lands, goods, and cattle, and every night went out into the fields and woods, put on clean shirts and shrouds, laid themselves in coffins hollowed out of tree trunks, and saying mass waited, expecting at every moment the trumpet call of the Judgment. Such was their idea of "meeting Christ."