"Headless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... benches on the right Nine headless bodies rose to sight, And on the left, from grim repose, Nine heads that had ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... statues and Babylonia none at all, when a few years ago (1881), what should a French explorer, Mr. E. De Sarzec, French consul in Basra, bring home but nine magnificent statues made of a dark, nearly black stone as hard as granite, called diorite.[S] Unfortunately they are all headless; but, as though to make up for this mutilation, one head was found separate,—a shaved and turbaned head beautifully preserved and of remarkable workmanship, the very pattern of the turban being plain enough to be reproduced by any modern loom.[T] These large prizes were accompanied by a quantity ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... riding a headless horse, and wearing a chain armor, with a triangular shield flung behind his back, and a ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... portion of the body; their heads and shoulders have disappeared with the upper parts of the walls. But they seem to have preserved their vitality: the gesticulations, the exaggerated pantomime of the attitudes of these headless things, are more strange, more striking, perhaps, than if their faces still remained. And they have preserved too, in an extraordinary degree, the brightness of their antique paintings, the fresh tints of their costumes, of their robes of turquoise blue, or lapis, or emerald-green, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... spindle-legs curled up to meet red-gimleted black faces, donkeys headless and legless, or sieves of shrapnel; camels with necks writhed back on to their humps, rotting already in pools of blood and bile-yellow water, heads without faces, and faces without anything below, cobwebbed arms and ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... persuades Men from themselves, to think they be Headless, or other bodies' shades, Hath long and bootless dwelt with me; For could I think she some idea were, I still might love, forget, and have ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... forward in eager expectation. A few blows sufficed to remove the head of the cask. Horror! a sickening stench arose, and there became visible the headless trunk of a human being. That portion of the body which was not immersed in the wine, was putrid. 'Look here!' cried I, in mad triumph, plunging my arm into the cask, and drawing forth the ghastly head of Lagrange. I held aloft the horrid ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Palliser introduced her step-daughter was even a shade shabbier than the rest of the house. The boy had run riot here, had built his bricks in one corner, had stabled a headless wooden horse and cart in another, and had scattered traces of his existence everywhere. There were his little Windsor chair, the nurse-girl's rocking chair, a battered old table, a heap of old illustrated ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... overpowered and sent to Salim Garh in the Emperor's litter. The latter meanwhile was seized by a savage Uzbek, named Balabash, who had been stationed within, and who sawed off the defenceless monarch's head with a knife. Then stripping off the rich robe he cast the headless trunk out of the window, where it lay for some hours upon the sands until the Kashmirian ordered its removal. The date of this tragic event is between the 10th and 30th of November, 1759 (the latter being the day given ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... been in advance of their time, More was looked upon as a dreamer. A dreamer he might naturally seem, who, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, looked for peace, for religious toleration, for justice to the lower classes. But these dreams were destined to be realized long after More's headless body had crumbled to dust, by that learning which he himself so seduously cultivated, and by the decay, too, of some of those ideas for which he died a martyr's death. The growth of the universities, the establishment of grammar schools, the impetus ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... monsters. There they sat, for an instant, sleepily rubbing their eyes with their brazen fingers, while all the snakes on their heads reared themselves on end with surprise, and with venomous malice against they knew not what. But when the Gorgons saw the scaly carcass of Medusa, headless, and her golden wings all ruffled, and half spread out on the sand, it was really awful to hear what yells and screeches they set up. And then the snakes! They sent forth a hundred-fold hiss, with one ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... reduced them to the verge of ruin. But, without thinking of themselves, or how they should be supported in the broken and disastrous condition of their cures, their first effort or chief anxiety was to provide for the now entirely headless Church; and so in Mid- Lent, on the Festival of the Annunciation, March 25th, one hundred years ago, ten of the fourteen clergy remaining in Connecticut quietly assembled in this place, and, after careful, and, we must believe, the most prayerful deliberation, they selected two ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... of those days, (handed down as they have been by their fathers, who were eye-witnesses of the transaction,) and peopling the surrounding gloom with the shades of those whose life-blood erst crimsoned the once pure waters of that now nearly exhausted stream; and whose mangled and headless corpses were slowly borne by its tranquil current into the bosom of the parent river, where all traces ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... started off to play chaupur with King Sarkap. And as he journeyed there came a fierce storm of thunder and lightning, so that he sought shelter, and found none save an old graveyard, where a headless corpse lay upon the ground. So lonesome was it that even the corpse seemed company, and Rasalu, sitting ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... each other for about the space of a second, the headless apparition rising and rising till it seemed to touch the roof of the cave, when it extended its wide arms and made a clutch at the other, and now ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the basin are rooms for religious purposes. These rooms are adorned with the gods of healing, AEsculapius with an acolyte holding a cock, the Dioscuri and their horses, the head of Serapis, and a headless statue of Apollo. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... heads. In that vehicle he saw six monks seated vis-a-vis, apparently enjoying their morning ride. The driver, a curious-looking carl, with a singularly long nose, took, he said, the road along the edge of the river, and continued lashing his three coal-black, headless steeds at a tremendous rate, until a sharp turn hid ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... with horror and despair; With just desert enroll'd in endless fame, Conscious of worth superior, Cibber[63] came. When poor Alicia's madd'ning brains are rack'd, And strongly imaged griefs her mind distract, Struck with her grief, I catch the madness too, My brain turns round, the headless trunk I view! 790 The roof cracks, shakes, and falls—new horrors rise, And Reason buried in the ruin lies! Nobly disdainful of each slavish art, She makes her first attack upon the heart; Pleased with the summons, it receives her laws, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... remarkable one) of the symbolic form of second-sight is that in which the headless apparition of the person whose death is foretold manifests itself to the seer. An example of that class is given in Signs before Death as having happened in the family of Dr. Ferrier, though in that case, if I recollect rightly, the vision did not occur until ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... to court; convicted without defense; sent headless to Charon, and was obliged, on that account, to make a ventriloquial request for a passage across the Styx; so that, in the morning, it was with genuine relief he returned the jewel to its owner and resumed his wonted meagerness of visage ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... which the gore still run, All gashed, and grim, and blackening in the sun. These were the gallant troop that passed before, The Indians' vast encampment to explore, Led by Del Oro, now with many a wound Pierced, and a headless trunk upon the ground. The horses startled, as they tramped in blood; 160 The troops a moment half-recoiling stood. But boots not now to pause, or to retire; Valdivia's eye flashed with indignant fire: Follow! ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... two arms. It was a thrilling moment. Fanny, too, rose. "Put it on a dummy," she commanded. Candles were placed around the dummy, who seemed to step forward out of the shades of the kitchen, and offer its headless body to be hooked and buttoned into the dress. All the room stood back to look and admire. "Wie schoen!" said Elsa's shiny-headed friends, ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... night you could most naturally have said 'Let me see—Joe,—it's two pillows that you always have, isn't it? And a double-fold of blanket at the foot?' You mean that you and Joe have been washed and scrubbed together so familiarly all your young childhood that you could identify Joe's headless body twenty years hence by the kerosene-lamp scar across his back? You mean that you and Joe have played house together so familiarly all your young tin-dish days that even your rag dolls called Joe 'Father'? You mean that since your earliest memory,—until ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... thrilled their hearers with ghostly tales of the dead. Suddenly, in the middle of the story of Torfrida of the Towers—a lady who had strangled her children, and ever afterwards haunted the battlements, headless, and in a night- gown—the door opened softly, and Miss Robinson entered to ask how much longer they would be. Miss Robinson was wearing a white frock, and the effect of her entry was tremendous. I remember, too, another evening when we were playing ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... pall-bearers and followers of a funeral; while upon the cart itself were two figures, in which the horrible and the comic were blended after a most extraordinary fashion. One of them was a Torso, from whose breast and headless neck, and on the stumps of his arms and legs, blood was incessantly dropping, and as fast as it dropped, it was greedily licked up by several persons in Spanish masks and dresses. The mutilated form seemed still to have life in it, for it groaned and gave out hollow sounds of agony and complaint; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... the peasants' houses which are now the only habitations on the Lido; and I suspect that a genteel villa must formerly have stood near the farm-gate, which we found surmounted by broken statues of Venus and Diana. The poor goddesses were both headless, and some cruel fortune had struck off their hands, and they looked strangely forlorn in the swaggering attitudes of the absurd period of art to which they belonged: they extended their mutilated arms toward the sea for pity, but it regarded them not; ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... to which I was attached upon Constantine? It lasted over twelve days of fearful weather, during which no discomfort was spared us. Torrents of rain, rivers in flood, snowfalls, men dying of cold, stragglers whose shouts for help only brought us to them to find them lying headless on the ground, and last of all, a terrible outbreak of cholera, which one of the regiments in the column brought with it from France. And we had the mental agony to boot of being kept ever so long at the foot of a mountain, the Raz el Akbah, which was so sodden that no gun nor vehicle ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... about fourteen miles from Norwich, and now the residence of the dowager Lady Suffield. The spectre of this gentleman is believed by the vulgar to be doomed, annually, on a certain night in the year, to drive, for a period of 1000 years, a coach drawn by four headless horses, over a circuit of twelve bridges in that vicinity. These are Aylsham, Burgh, Oxnead, Buxton, Coltishall, the two Meyton bridges, Wroxham, and four others whose names I do not recollect. Sir Thomas carries his head under ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... too little thought and sympathy to ghosts, who in our old castles and country houses often find no one to appear to from year's end to year's-end. Only now and then is a guest placed in the "haunted room." Then I like to fancy the glee of the lady in green or the radiant boy, or the headless man, or the old gentleman in snuff-coloured clothes, as he, or she, recognises the presence of a spectator, and prepares to give his or her best effects ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... clean off without Filer finding it out on account of the darkness of the night, and the clamour of cannon and musketry mingled with the cries of the wounded. Much it was to Filer's astonishment, then, when the surgeon asked him what he had brought in a headless trunk for; he declared that the lieutenant had a head on when he took him up, for he had himself asked him to take him from the breach, and that he did not know when the head was severed, which must have been done by ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... fearful hail storm must go to grass ere the red glare of the war has passed away. "Where do you hail from?" would be a bootless question to put when the "hail-thrower" begins to administer throes to the breaking ranks. Worse than that; it would probably be a headless question. ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... the body, and all the arm that had encircled her neck. A moment after the eating began, Mr. Rust observed a complete union of the sexual organs, and the eating and copulation went on together. On being forcibly separated the female exhibited signs of fear at her headless mate, and it was with difficulty that they were brought together again. On being suddenly tossed upon the back of the female the male seized her with a grasp from which she could not extricate herself, and immediately the sexual union was renewed, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... just in time to see her fearlessly approaching the prostrate form of a German soldier, the upper extremity of whose body was hidden beneath the top of a tin wash boiler. The child raised the lid, beheld, as we did, a headless human trunk, and fell ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... importance of the late events, his majesty caused two medals to be struck; one of himself, with the usual inscription, and the motto, Aras et sceptra tuemur; the other of Monmouth, without any inscription. On the reverse of the former were represented the two headless trunks of his lately vanquished enemies, with other circumstances in the same taste and spirit, the motto, Ambitio malesuada ruit; on that of the latter appeared a young man falling in the attempt to climb a rock with three crowns on it, under which ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... in white, and without her head, was what she deposed and adhered to, supported by a consciousness of the secret sympathy of her mistress under the withering scorn with which Miss Pole regarded her. And not only she, but many others, had seen this headless lady, who sat by the roadside wringing her hands as in deep grief. Mrs Forrester looked at us from time to time with an air of conscious triumph; but then she had not to pass through Darkness Lane before she could bury herself ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... father's sword, And all the honours 'longing to my crown, I will have heads and lives for him as many As I have manors, castles, towns, and towers!— [Rises. Treacherous Warwick! traitorous Mortimer! If I be England's king, in lakes of gore Your headless trunks, your bodies will I trail, That you may drink your fill, and quaff in blood, And stain my royal standard with the same, That so my bloody colours may suggest Remembrance of revenge immortally On your accursed traitorous progeny, You villains that have slain my Gaveston!— ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... were a little child, he led her through the undergrowth to a spot where the trees were older, and standing at wider distances. Among them was the tree he had spoken of—an elm; huge, hollow, distorted, and headless, with ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... rose up out of the corner nearest the Fianna, and nine heads rose up on the other side of the bed, and they raised nine harsh screeches together, that no one would like to be listening to. And then the hag answered to them, and the headless man answered; and if all of that music was harsh, there was none of it that you would not wish to hear sooner than the music of the one-eyed man. And the music that was sung went near to breaking the bones of their heads; and indeed it is no ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... Nor was the advantage altogether material; there were conjoined intellectual results of no little value. Superstition and the amazing credulity of the old times disappeared. In the first Punic War, Africa was looked upon as a land of monsters; it had serpents large enough to stop armies, it had headless men. Sicily had its Cyclops, giants, enchantresses; golden apples grew in Spain; the mouth of Hell was on the shores of the Euxine. The marches of the legions and the voyages of merchants made all ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... vigour and strength continued unabated with the son of Sualtam, and that in the end he slew the other, and in the sight of all he cut off his head and flung it from the middle Boyne to the shore, and that the headless trunk of Fenla, son of Nectan, floated down-stream to the sea. When the people of the dun saw that, they brake forth west-ward and fled. Then Cuculain and Laeg invaded the dun, and they burst open the doors of the strong chambers, and of the dungeons ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... shape swept by on lightning-braided pinions, 765 Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses: His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed 'twas fading, And hollow Ruin yawned behind: great sages bound in madness, And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding, Gleamed in the night. I wandered o'er, till thou, O King of sadness, 770 Turned by thy smile the worst I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... There were Noah's arks that held animals that would have astonished old Noah himself, and rocking-horses in various stages of dilapidation, from the bright new one with only a scratch on his leg, to the headless and tailless steed that rocked in a melancholy way in the corner. Then there was a swing that hung from the ceiling, and a springy teeter-board that could bounce the little ones quite into the air. These and other treasures were duly inspected by the shy Louie, ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... shaking and the scalp of his head trembling as though it had been touched by ghostly fingers. He passed up the staircase and into the corridor along the walls of which the overcoats and waterproofs hung like gibbeted malefactors, headless and dripping and shapeless. And at every step he feared that he had already died, that his soul had been wrenched forth of the sheath of his body, that he was plunging ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... lowering looks he might see around him—and it is scarcely possible to believe that Sir Patrick Gray for one could have entirely cleared his countenance of every recollection of their last meeting, of the men-at-arms thundering at his heels, and his nephew's body headless on the greensward—Douglas found no change in the King, who received and banqueted him "very royally," thinking if it were possible "with good deeds to withdraw him from his attempt that he purposed to do." After supper the King took his rebellious subject aside, into another room ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... with rude and grotesque work. The delicately-traced patterns carved on the walls, the medallions and pendant ornaments, in stone, of the thirteenth century, are scarcely surpassed at Chartres; side by side with these, there are headless and armless statues of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which have been painted, and tablets (such as we have sketched) to commemorate the ancient founders of the church; and underneath the choir, the crypt of Bishop Odo, the Conqueror's half-brother, with ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... culprit; a true patriot is ordered to take possession of his house until the national pleasure is known; and thus every thing goes on well. Of course, you have heard of the clearance of the prisons. A magnificent work. Five thousand aristocrats, rich, noble, and enemies to their country, sent headless to the shades of tyrants. Vive la Republique! But a grand idea strikes me. You shall see Danton himself, the genius of liberty, the hero of human nature, the terror of kings." The thought was new, and a new thought is enough to turn the brain of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... the black man hasn't brought it up from the bridge! Dher a larna heena**, he did; for it was above the bridge we first seen him: jist for all the world—the Lord be about us—as Antony and me war coming out on the road at the bridge, there he was standing—a headless man, all black, without face or eyes upon him—and then we left the coffin and ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... itself. When we speak of ruins, we mean that a part of the material used in expressing a conception has not resisted climate and age and earthquake and vandalism. Armless, Venus de Milo is still the perfect woman. Headless, Nike of Samothrace is still symbolic of the ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... refuse, however, to believe that this man—a notorious coward—has performed any such feat, and hasten out to the battle-field. There they find not only the headless dragon, but the unconscious Tristram, and the tongue which proves him the real victor. To nurse him back to health is no great task for these ladies, who, like many of the heroines of the mediaeval epics and romances, are skilled ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... that the saint was quoting from the heathen pages of Herodotus, the Father of Lies. Nothing of the kind. He is too conscientious to speak from hearsay of such marvellous matters; he says that he personally went among these headless monocular folk; he says that he spoke to them and lived with them; that he made a study of their morals and social institutions, which, in this particular sermon, he holds up as an example to his two-eyed ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... the door with a bang that shook the house. Shrieks of laughter from wicked Molly and her coadjutor, Grif, greeted this explosion of wrath, which did no good, however, for half an hour later the same cars, all in a heap, were on the steps again, with two headless dolls tumbling out of the cab, and the dilapidated engine labelled, "No. ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... the skull of his father, and took it along with him in his flight, in order that it might not be dishonoured in his absence, for he loved his father with extraordinary tenderness, and cherished his memory as dearly as his own life. The headless body of the venerable chief, like those of his ancestors, had been sent to Benin, in order that its bones might adorn the sacred temple at that place, agreeably to an ancient and respected custom, which has ever been religiously conformed to, and tenaciously held by the Lagos people. But Adooley ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... head upon her breast so that her nose and chin quite disappeared, and she stood before them like some furry headless beast. There was a long pause. Alwin nervously followed the pairs of eyes, noiselessly appearing and disappearing, from floor to ceiling, in every part of the room. Sigurd set his back against the door and carried on a silent struggle with the heavy lumps, hanging ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the assassin was caught, being pressed to death at York Castle for his crimes. Not only have the stains of this bloody tragedy ever since been indelible, but the spirit of Walter Calverley could not rest, having often been seen galloping about the district at night on a headless horse.[28] And, speaking of ghosts which appear in this eccentric fashion, we may note that Eastbury House, near Blandford—now pulled down—had in a certain marble-floored room, ineffaceable stains of blood, attributable, it is said, to the suicide ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... the widow of Brithnod, a famous Northumbrian chieftain. She gave to the cathedral of Ely, where his headless body lay buried, a large cloth, or hanging, on which she had embroidered the heroic deeds of her husband. She was the ancestress of a race of embroiderers, and their pedigree will be found in the Appendix.[573] At this time a lady of the Queen of Scotland was famed for ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... light them home again. Nowhere along the trail did they find their father; he had not been injured in the path, nor could they find where he had fallen over a cliff. So they passed on to the garden; there they found their father's headless body. They searched for blood in the bushes and grass, but they found nothing — no ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... of Moultrassie, the brewer of Chesterfield, who had brought the estate, and then died of melancholy for lack of something to do (and, as was said, not without suspicions of suicide), was supposed to walk in this sequestered avenue, accompanied by a large headless mastiff, which, when he was alive, was a particular favourite of the ex-brewer. To have expected any protection from her escort, in the condition to which superstitious fear had reduced him, would ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... had earned its name in earlier centuries from the bloody deeds of its first owners. No gillie would go within a mile of it, even in bright sunshine. Tinker's carelessness of its ghosts, a headless woman and a redheaded man with his throat cut, had won him the deepest respect of the village, or rather hamlet, of Ardrochan. Twice he had constrained himself to wait in the tower till dusk, in the hope that his fearful, but ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... sorrows of Calvary. His hand resting upon this book, Oliver Cromwell would consolidate the hopes and convictions of Puritanism into a sword which should conquer at Nasby, Marston Moor and Dunbar, leave to the throne of Charles I, a headless corpse, and create, if only for an hour's prophecy, a commonwealth of unbending righteousness. With that volume in their homes, the Swede and the Huguenot, the Scotch-Irishman and the Quaker, the Dutchman and the freedom-loving cavalier, were to plan pilgrimages to the West, and establish ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... dry.' Naseby The Cavaliers and Roundheads fought 1645 In many a field, 'till Naseby brought To Generals Cromwell and Fairfax A crowning victory, though not 'pax.' The King's beheaded, but the State Experiences no headless fate; A commonwealth's forthwith proclaimed And Cromwell's soon Protector named. Dunbar In sixteen-fifty Dunbar sees 1650 The Royal Scots brought to their knees; Worcester And in the second Worcester fight 1651 Cromwell for good asserts his might. And there are ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... drawn by four richly caparisoned zebus, stood a hideous statue with four arms, the body coloured a dull red, with haggard eyes, dishevelled hair, protruding tongue, and lips tinted with betel. It stood upright upon the figure of a prostrate and headless giant. ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... sardine in his oily den, his little house of tin, Headless and heedless there he lies, no move of tail or fin, Yet full as beauteous, I ween, that press'd and prison'd fish, As when in sunny seas he swam unbroken ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... no modern imitation can effect. There are innumerable niches, too, up the whole height of the towers, above and around the entrance, and all over the walls: most of them empty, but a few containing the lamentable remnants of headless saints and angels. It is singular what a native animosity lives in the human heart against carved images, insomuch that, whether they represent Christian saint or Pagan deity, all unsophisticated men seize the first safe opportunity to knock off their heads! In spite ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... was discovered the headless trunk of a young man, and the dead body of a girl who had been his companion ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... out-of-the-way place 'Hard to Come By,' which explains itself. Most romantic of all, the valley where King Charles's army lost a battle long ago is still known as 'Fine and Brave.' There, the country people say, headless ghosts of defeated Cavaliers may still be seen on moonlight nights riding up and down, carrying their own plumed-hatted heads under their arms. All over the county these story places are to be found. The more odd a Cornish name sounds at the first hearing, the more apt it will often ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... conscience makes me firm, The boon companion, who her strong breast-plate Buckles on him, that feels no guilt within And bids him on and fear not. Without doubt I saw, and yet it seems to pass before me, A headless trunk, that even as the rest Of the sad flock pac'd onward. By the hair It bore the sever'd member, lantern-wise Pendent in hand, which look'd at us and said, "Woe's me!" The spirit lighted thus himself, And two there were in one, and one in two. How that may be he knows who ordereth ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... the place of execution on Arbour Hill, Dublin, and he died, as a soldier might, with unshaken firmness and unquailing mien. No lettered slab marks the place of his interment; and his bones remain in unhallowed and unconsecrated ground. Hardly had his headless body ceased to palpitate, when it was flung into a hole at the rere of the Royal Barracks. A few days later the same unhonoured spot received the mortal remains of Matthew Tone. "He had a more enthusiastic nature than any of us," writes his brother, Theobald Wolfe Tone, "and ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... had a taste for the supernatural, there was ample opportunity for its gratification in this haven of tradition. He may have seen the headless man who was accustomed to walk down Green Street to Market Space, with what intention was never divulged. Every old house had its ghost, handed down through the generations, as necessary a piece of furniture as the tester-bed or the sideboard. Perhaps ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... later a body, headless, was found in the river, but it was so decomposed that the Coroner, Dr. Revell, finding no trace of foul play, ordered it buried. It might have been a drowning. Later still, a skull was found near by with a hole in the centre, ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... both hated and despised. He was transferred to London, lodged in the Tower, and executed in a bungling manner by "Jack Ketch"—the name given for several centuries to the public executioner. He was buried under St. Peter's Chapel, in the Tower, where reposed the headless bodies of so many noted saints and political martyrs—the great Somerset, and the still greater Northumberland, the two Earls of Essex, and the fourth Duke of Norfolk, and other great men who figured in the reigns of the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... presses a bag, from which grain escapes, and on it an ox and stag are feeding. A rat is represented on the pediment above, and on either side stand Apollo and Mercury.[90] On the altar of Saintes is a squatting but headless god with torque and purse. Beside him is a goddess with a cornucopia, and a smaller divinity with a cornucopia and an apple. A similar squatting figure, supported by male and female deities, is represented on the other side of the altar.[91] On the altar of Beaune are three ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... if he had any, take umbrage at the matter—swore that he had not only seen the ghostly steed pass Vauroque in the dead of night, but that it bore a rider whose head was carried carefully in his right hand. Unfortunately, the headless one passed so quickly that Nikki said he could not distinguish his features—having looked for them first in the wrong place—and so he could not say for certain who the next to die would be; but from the knowing wag of his head the neighbours were of opinion that he knew more than he chose to ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... strange and startling. Susan almost forgot her home-sickness for a while, and found a companion of her own age far more interesting than imaginary conversations with dolls. After they were both tired of jumping, in which exercise Sophia Jane's spare form was by far the most successful, the headless body of the murdered doll was dragged out from behind a box ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... not; but she hath leave to enter. Herc. I shall entrust her only to thy hand. Adm. Thou dost constrain me, king, against my will. Herc. Venture to stretch thy hand, and touch the stranger's. {1190} Adm. I touch her, as I would the headless Gorgon. Herc. Hast thou her hand? Adm. I have. Herc. (lifting the veil) Then hold her safe. Hereafter thou wilt say the son of Jove Hath been a generous guest; view now her face, See if she bears ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... a game two can play at. Mike charged at Jinty with a volley of angry chatter and fierce flappings of his heavy black wings. It was no good trying to get in a word about the headless crocus plants ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... has come now for taking in all these waving things for the night, and the young men and girls of the shops are unhooking them with long poles, or handing them down from step-ladders planted in the middle of the sidewalk. Ranged outside the larger establishments are rows of headless dummies, intended to represent the female form divine, and to show off on their inanimate busts and shoulders the sweetest assortments ever seen of new things in summer fashions. These headless dummies of the Bowery have a very ghastly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... they appeared before me were manifold: one was like a beautiful woman, but she had one foot like an ass's hoof; and another like a man without a head, and a flame of fire coming out of his neck; another like a great dog. These two I bound together, and the dog kept watch over the headless man, and the flame of fire that came from his neck gave light to the workmen by night. There were also dragons, one with three heads, and one with the head of a man. Another had a face that shone with a green light, and hair like ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... the windows of the eyes, and hangs upon the gateway of the lips; she speaks as well in the intricate, yet harmonious lines of the body, and the ever-varying play of the limbs. Look at the torso of Ilioneus, the son of Niobe, and see what an agony of terror and supplication cries out from that headless and limbless trunk! Decapitate Laocooen, and his knotted muscles will still express the same dreadful suffering and resistance. None knew this better than the ancient sculptors; and hence it was ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... transparency, elegant form, and graceful navigation of the Medusae, or Jelly-fishes, render them much admired in their native haunts, and prized for the aquarium. But they are very delicate. How beautiful and remarkable are these headless Discophori, as they float, and propel themselves with involutions of their disks and gently trailing tentacles, and the central peduncle hanging far below, like the clapper of a transparent bell! And yet these wonders ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... Alexander stood upon trodden earth and grass, about them the yet encumbering ruins of an ancient building, pillars and architraves and capitals, broken friezes and headless caryatids. Here was the river, here the ancient street. They breathed in the air, they looked at the sky, but then at Rome. Somewhere a trumpet was fiercely crying. Like an impatient hand, like a spurred foot, it tore the magician's fabric of the ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... with pleasure, They behold the tempting treasure, Headless, in the pan there, lying, Hissing, browning, ...
— Max and Maurice - a juvenile history in seven tricks • William [Wilhelm] Busch
... base of the skull exposed. The cerebrum was partly removed; the external auditory meatus was preserved. Immediately after the decapitation the rooster was left to its supposed death struggles, but it ran headless to the barn, where it was secured and subsequently fed by pushing corn down its esophagus, and allowing water to trickle into this tube from the spout of an oil-can. The phenomena exhibited by the rooster were quite interesting. It made all the motions of pecking, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... occupy myself with the perennial inspection and purchase of raw edibles, when I wished to live in an ideal world and paint a great picture. Mrs. Hobbs would come to my bedside in the morning and ask me if I would like to buy a fowl. When I looked upon the fowl, limp in death, with its headless neck hanging dejectedly over the edge of the plate, its giblets and kidneys lying in immodest confusion on the outside of itself, and its liver 'tucked under its wing, poor thing,' I never wanted to buy it. But one morning, in taking my walk, I chanced upon an idyllic ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Against this a headless, vague aspiration, however universal, is likely to prove quite ineffective. Of course, it is possible to suggest that the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... into the East the doubtful realms of Ninus and Semiramis; changing back Germany into the Hyrcanian Forest; and drawing pictures of the supposed inhabitants of these unexplored regions, Dog-Apes, Satyrs, Cannibals, and Misanthropes, Cimmerians involved in darkness, Amazons, and Headless Men. And all around the Map I coiled the coils, and curled the curling waves of the great Sea Oceanum, with the bursting cheeks of the four Winds, blowing from the four ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... inquest over the headless body the next day, Tuesday. Mr. Graves telephoned me in the morning, and I went to the ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of Jung, for decidedly the only chance the Minister has of his life is to keep continually moving. At last down came the korah with crushing force, and passed right through the animal's neck: the headless trunk tottered for a second, ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... difficult to describe the scene as I found it. About twenty boats were jammed together, forming one confused mass; some bottom up; the bows or sterns of others only visible; mixed up, pell-mell, with huge rafts; and among which were nearly all our advanced little division. Headless trunks, as well as heads without bodies, were lying about in all directions; parties were engaged hand to hand, spearing and krissing each other; others were striving to swim for their lives; entangled in the common melee were our advanced boats; while on both banks thousands of Dyaks were ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... to suppose than an animal whilst lying down determined to rise up in some particular direction; and that after its head had been cut off, an impulse continued to travel very slowly along the nerves to the proper muscles; so that after several hours the headless animal rose ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... had fallen bringing with it a portion of the garden of the imperial villa and burying its statues beneath the debris. It was here that excavations had been begun, and as we entered the cave from the beach, our way was bordered by the fragments of many a column and capital, by broken vases and by headless statues. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... called me hireling but now," replied Henry. "If I am such," pointing to the headless corpse, "I have done enough ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... (i. e., native Chinese) emperor, who (upon finding himself in a dreadfully small minority) retired into his garden with his daughter, and there hanged both himself and the lady. On no account would he have decapitated either; since in that case the corpses, being headless, would in Chinese ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... off many a head they themselves did not receive a wound, and gave a good account of themselves that day. But Alexander distinguished himself, who by his own efforts led off four captive knights in bonds. The sands are strewn with headless dead, while many ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... credible that the movements of a headless frog, when it wipes off a drop of acid or other object from its thigh, and which movements are so well coordinated for a special purpose, were not at first performed voluntarily, being afterwards rendered easy through long-continued ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... anxieties Cot-sen was walking one afternoon through the fort on Hermosa Island which he had gained from the Dutch. His mind began to be disturbed by visions, which he said appeared to him, of thousands of men who placed themselves before him, all headless and clamoring for vengeance on the cruelty and injustice which had been wreaked on them; accordingly, terrified at this vision (or else a lifelike presentation by his imagination) he took refuge in his house and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... his sins falling away with the leaves that flew to the ground as he cried, "Hosanna, save us now!" All through the night his father prayed in the synagogue, but the child went home to bed, after a gallant struggle with his closing eyelids, hoping not to see his headless shadow on the stones, for that was a sign of death. But the ninth day of Tabernacles was the best, "The Rejoicing of the Law," when the fifty-second portion of the Pentateuch was finished and the first portion begun immediately all over again, to show that the "rejoicing" was not ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... younger of Pitfoddells, carried the royal banner in Montrose's last battle. It bore the headless corpse of Charles I., with this motto, "Judge and revenge my cause, O Lord!" Menzies proved himself worthy of this noble trust, and, obstinately refusing quarter, died in defence of his ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... of stone on the temple, but the block was painted blue, so that, as the spectator came up, he saw the temple and the angle of its roof, and then a gap of blue sky and the goddess just alighting on the summit of the temple. From what is left of her, broken and headless, but still beautiful, we can picture her flying through the air—the wind has blown her dress back against her, and you see its folds freshly caught by the breeze. And all this the artist had disentangled from a rough block of stone—so ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... slowly about the house, gathering up blocks, and headless dolls, and tailless dogs, and laying them carefully away in a drawer until little Julia should return to visit the family ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... trying to amuse little Jacques, and prevent him from trotting between the boxes, putting all sorts of undesirable goods into them; and Ulysse had collected his toys, and was pleading earnestly that a headless wooden horse and a kite, twice as tall as himself, of Lanty's ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge |
