We’ve all heard the expression, “Dead man walking” which prison guards customarily shout out loud when a condemned man is led onto “Death Row.”  But this expression might well have originated in a poem composed by Thomas Hardy in 1909 aptly titled, “The Dead Man Walking” which says in part:

“They hail me as one living, but don’t they know

That I have died of late years, untombed although?

I am but a shape that stands here, a pulseless mould,

A pale past picture, screening ashes gone cold.

Not at a minute's warning, not in a loud hour,

For me ceased Time’s enchantments in hall and bower.

There was no tragic transit, no catch of breath,

When silent seasons inched me on to this death ....”

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hebrews%206:1-8&version=31