The dead man’s knell
Is there scarce ask’d for who; and good men’s lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying or ere they sicken.
– William Shakespeare
Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3. Ross says that Macbeth has turned Scotland into a country of death. When the funeral bells sounds, people no longer ask who died, and men’s lives are cut shorter than the time it takes for the flowers in their caps to wither.