stroke of death

Bacon, if he was the author of An Essay on Death, says, 'I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.'

From Life of Johnson, Volume 2 1765-1776 by George Birkbeck Norman Hill

Then, in whatever terrible pang that such sudden stroke of death visits, it flung itself backward, the girths snapping from its distended belly.

From Trail's End by George W. (George Washington) Ogden

Then call it not our cruelty, nor crime; Deem us not deaf to woe, nor blind to beauty, That, thus constrain'd, we speed the stroke of death.

From Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 The Works of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., in Nine Volumes by Samuel Johnson

At the moment of transformation, Hamet was seized with a sudden languor, and his faculties were suspended as by the stroke of death.

From Almoran and Hamet by John Hawkesworth

And was not this last the worst blow—must it not prove the stroke of death?

From An Antarctic Mystery by Frances Cashel Hoey