"The earth shall be dissolved . . . . / Than when we first begun" These are verses from the hymn "Amazing Grace."
"What have we to do with thee, thou Jesus . . . ?" Matthew 8: 29: "And behold, they cried out, 'What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?'" (The speakers are demons, whom Jesus is about to drive out of two men and into a herd of swine.)
"sift ye as wheat" Luke 22: 31: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat . . . " (Jesus, speaking to his disciple Simon Peter, at the Last Supper.)
"a land of darkness and the shadow of death" Job 10: 20–22: "Are not the days of my life few? / Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort / before I go whence I shall not return, / to the land of gloom and deep darkness, / the land of gloom and chaos, / where light is as darkness."
stiletto a small dagger, having a slender, tapering blade; or, a small, sharp-pointed instrument for making holes in cloth, etc. (Cassy's stiletto might plausibly be either, but the second sense seems more likely.)
flambeaux (French) lighted torches.
Bryant i.e., William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), U.S. poet and journalist.
curveting making leaps, as in equestrian exhibitions (a curvet is a movement where the horse rears, then lifts both back legs into the air just before the front legs come down); here, the implication is that the horses and riders are anxious to be off on the hunt.
"Into thy hands I commend my spirit!" Jesus' dying words on the cross; see Luke 23: 46: "Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!' And having said this he breathed his last."
"instrument of torture" i.e., the Cross.
Eternal Rock i.e., Christ, the "Rock of Ages" (see, for example, I Corinthians 10: 4: "[A]nd all drank the same supernatural drink. For they drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ").
