"Pyre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leeward, and (carry-ins: two tons of ballast) to have sunk instantaneously—all on board were drowned. The body of Shelley was washed on shore eight days afterwards, near Via Reggio, in an advanced state of decomposition, and was therefore burned on a funeral pyre in the presence of Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron, Mr. Trelawney, and a ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... story is all blood and horror. The desperate leaders of the Commune determined that, if they must perish, Paris should be their funeral pyre. On the night of May 24 the city became a scene of incendiary rage. The Hotel-de-Ville was in flames; the Palace of the Tuileries was burning like a great furnace; the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Ministry of War, the Treasury were lurid volcanoes of flames; on all ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... rent through and through, O Keshava, with the shafts of Dhrishtadyumna. The illustrious and delicate Kripi, cheerless and afflicted, is endeavouring to perform the last rites on the body of her lord slain in battle. There, those reciters of Samas, having placed the body of Drona on the funeral pyre and having ignited the fire with due rites, are singing the three (well-known) Samas. Those brahmacaris, with matted locks on their heads, have piled the funeral pyre of that Brahmana with bows and darts and car-boxes, O Madhava! Having collected diverse other kinds of shafts, that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Because AEneas had jilted her, and so she stabbed herself on a funeral pyre after setting fire to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... he would be dashed to death. When the heroism of "Mucius Scaevola" was represented, a real criminal was compelled to thrust his hand into the flame without a murmur, and stand motionless while it was being burned. Hercules was compelled to ascend the funeral pyre, and there be burned alive. The poor slaves and criminals were compelled to play their parts heroically ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... that I should get to you in time, you realise that? But I'll tell you what I will do for you, with the greatest pleasure. When you are safely dead, I'll avenge you in style. The smoking ruins of Agpur shall be your funeral pyre, as the old fellow said to ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... vain, provided that they loved greatly and give great expression to their humanity. Such is that wild lover of George Sand whose Souvenir, for all its rhetoric, charms like an incantation. The ancients quenched the ashes of the pyre with red wine, as if the blood of the god-given vine could hearten the spirit that yet hovered near. Over my ashes let no wine be poured, but read me such verses high and valiant, that if my soul yet lingers undelivered from the earth's attraction it may be regenerated and set ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... another form of the tradition, which is deemed by some more probable. Croesus is said to have stood on a pyre, intending to offer himself in the flames, to propitiate the god Sandon, that his people might be saved from destruction; but he was prevented, it is ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... mountain, the procession paused till midnight, when, as the constellation of the Pleiades[11] approached the zenith, the new fire was kindled by the friction of some sticks placed on the breast of the victim. The flame was soon communicated to a funeral-pyre on which the body of the slaughtered captive was thrown. As the light streamed up toward heaven, shouts of joy and triumph burst forth from the countless multitudes who covered the hills, the terraces of the temples, and the housetops.... Couriers, with torches lighted at ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... make the common property of gossiping tongues—that I intend to depart. If there should be anything left of me—which is less than probable considering the inflammatory character of the material I design for my pyre—I would be obliged if, without giving anybody any trouble, it could be buried in my garden, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... her beloved brethren and sisters dragged forth and shot or tomahawked. Before the breath had left their bodies she saw the scalps torn from their heads, some of the wounded women kneeling and imploring for mercy in vain. The burning house was the funeral pyre from which the loving spirit of Mrs. Senseman took its flight to eternal rest. Gazing through the windows which the fire now illumined with a lurid glare, she saw Mrs. Senseman surrounded by flames standing with arms folded and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... embracing tenderly her husband dead, Mounts the blazing pyre beside him, as it were a bridal-bed; Though his sins were twenty thousand, twenty thousand times o'er-told, She shall bring his soul to splendour, for her love so large ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... Fra Bartolommeo's life was the impression produced on him by Savonarola.[234] Having listened to the Dominican's terrific denunciations of worldliness and immorality, he carried his life studies to the pyre of vanities, resolved to assume the cowl, and renounced his art. Between 1499, when he was engaged in painting the "Last Judgment" of S. Maria Nuova, and 1506, he is supposed never to have touched the pencil. When he resumed it Savonarola had been burned ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... remnants of his vast army, which had striven on these plains against the Christian soldiery of Thoulouse and Rome. Here it was that Attila prepared to resist to the death his victors in the field; and here he heaped up the treasures of his camp in one vast pile, which was to be his funeral pyre should his camp be stormed. It was here that the Gothic and Italian forces watched but dared not assail, their enemy in his despair, after that great and terrible day of ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... he a noble pyre! Robes of gold shall feed the fire; Amber, gums, and richest pearl On his bed of glory hurl: Trophies of his conquering might, Skulls of foes, and banners bright, Shields, and splendid armour, won When the combat-day ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... grass and the flower, my heart opened wide as the broad, broad earth. I spread my arms out, laying them on the sward, seizing the grass, to take the fulness of the days. Could I have my own way after death I would be burned on a pyre of pine-wood, open to the air, and placed on the summit of the hills. Then let my ashes be scattered abroad—not collected urn an urn—freely sown wide and broadcast. That is the natural interment of man—of man ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... and lost desire, No finger ever traced thy yellow page Save Time's. Thou hast not wrought to noble rage The hearts thou wouldst have stirred. Not any fire Save sad flames set to light a funeral pyre Dost thou suggest. Nay,—impotent in age, Unsought, thou holdst a corner of the stage And ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... filled full of fire, And flashing like a color pyre, All heavened beneath the eye of morning, To sate the ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... the mighty ox, new-slain, Was sprinkled o'er with wine and barley grain; Then one, amid the sound of choral song, The seemly leader of the pastoral throng, With reverent hand brought forth the sacred fire, And prayerful knelt and lit the holy pyre. Amid the roar of sacrificial flame The devotees besought their God by name; And while they worshipped, Hercules unheard, Through flowering, fragrant thickets scarcely stirred By evening's breezes, softly slipped away, His vows fulfilled. The golden orb of day Had ceased to flush the placid ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... Alexandria[591] relate, that the son of Zoroaster was resuscitated twelve days after his (supposed) death, and when his body had been laid upon the funeral pyre. Phlegon says,[592] that a Syrian soldier in the army of Antiochus, after having been killed at Thermopylae, appeared in open day in the Roman camp, and spoke to several. And Plutarch relates,[593] that ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... the great chiefs of the Achaians. Now let one of these be your champion, to fight with me, Hector: and I call Zeus to witness, that if he slay me, you shall let him carry off my armor, but give my body to the Trojans, that they may render to me the honor of the funeral pyre. But if the Far-Darter shall grant me glory, that I may slay him, then will I strip him of his armor, and hang it in the Temple of Apollo; but his lifeless body I will give back to the long-haired Achaians, that they may bury him, and build him ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... with his feet turned towards his native country. Then twelve bottles of kerosene were poured over him and he was covered completely with thin slabs of pine wood. For almost another hour the relations and servants kept piling up the funeral pyre which looked like one of those piles of wood that carpenters keep in their yards. Then on top of this was poured the contents of twenty bottles of oil, and on top of all they emptied a bag of fine shavings. A few steps further on, a flame was glimmering in a little bronze ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... pile of lightwood on the river bank, Neighbors on horseback, and the slaves, With teeth as white as eyeballs, rank on rank, Watched on the pyre the form wrapped in a shroud, Lonely among the lolling tongues of flames— The smoke streamed, trailing in a saffron cloud, The greedy noise of fire grew loud, Then, "whiff," the shroud burned with a flare: The dead man's eyes looked down Like china moons upon the crowd. They saw him slowly shake ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... of the wagon—under the Mexican's manacled feet; and then brands and embers were thrust underneath. Pike turned sick with horror and helplessness at the sight, for he knew instantly what it meant. The wagon was to be the wretched Manuelito's funeral pyre. They meant to burn him to death by inches. Suddenly a bright flame leaped up from the bottom of the stack of fuel; broader, brighter, fiercer it grew until it lapped up over the floor of the wagon. A scream ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... lately done by the barbarians after the defeat of the consuls Manlius and Czepio, determined to have it all burned in honor of the gods. He had a great sacrifice prepared. The soldiers, crowned with laurel, were ranged about the pyre; their general, holding on high a blazing torch, was about to apply the light with his own hand, when suddenly, on the very spot, whether by design or accident, came from Rome the news that Marius had just been for the fifth time elected consul. In the midst of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... persevering enemy; his mortal part is consumed by fire, the fiercest of elements; his shade (eidolon), like those of other men, descends to the realms of Hades, while the divine portion himself (autos) mounts from the pyre in a thunder-cloud, and the object of Hera's persecution being now accomplished, espouses youth, the daughter of his ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the purpose of gaining Vedic authority for a cruel system, of which even so late a work as the Code of Manu makes no mention, and (page 205 Ibid.) he quotes another passage from the Rig Veda which directs a widow to ascend the pyre of her husband as a token of attachment, but to leave it before ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... to the first, and eternal fame to the last," answered Montreal, calmly. "Rienzi will be restored; that brave phoenix will wing its way through storm and cloud to its own funereal pyre: I foresee, I compassionate, I admire.—And then," ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to occur the next day. It was to be the funeral of a private citizen—the honor of a public funeral-pyre was not to be his. Brutus would say a few words, and Antony, as the closest friend of the dead, would also speak—the body would be buried and all would go on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... our wishes into effect. He was indefatigable in his exertions, and full of forethought and sagacity in his arrangements. It was a fearful task; he stood before us at last, his hands scorched and blistered by the flames of the funeral-pyre, and by touching the burnt relics as he placed them in the receptacles prepared for the purpose. And there, in compass of that small case, was gathered all that remained on earth of him whose genius and virtue were a crown of glory ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... to that disastrous night when he was drowned in the Mediterranean. Nonsense, again,— sheer nonsense! What, am I babbling about? I was thinking of that old figment of his being lost in the Bay of Spezzia, and washed ashore near Via Reggio, and burned to ashes on a funeral pyre, with wine, and spices, and frankincense; while Byron stood on the beach and beheld a flame of marvellous beauty rise heavenward from the dead poet's heart, and that his fire-purified relics were finally buried near his child in Roman ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with his master. When one of them came forward, he was immediately strangled. Then the same question was put to the women servants, and if one of them consented, she was feasted until the day when the funeral pyre awaited the corpse. She was then killed and her body burned with that of her master. There were, however, some tribes that buried ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... forked and furious, the fiery flung flashes, Gleam o'er the sad wreck like a funeral pyre; And louder and louder each thunder clap crashes. The air in a ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... of the fifth act we witness the nuptial fêtes. Religious dances and processions circle around the pyre laid for a marriage sacrifice. Dejanira, hidden in the throng, watches in an agony of hope for the miracle to ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... bright and smiling, with its pretty houses standing in their well-kept gardens, now razed, demolished, annihilated, nothing left of all its beauties save a few smoke-stained walls. The church was burning still, a huge pyre of smoldering beams and girders, whence streamed continually upward a column of dense black smoke that, spreading in the heavens, overshadowed the city like a gigantic funeral pall. Entire streets had been swept away, not ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... would fear to approach the camp." Suddenly the space is filled with smoke, the tent-curtains shrivel up in flames, and the Pasha and his comrades find themselves encircled in what they well know is their funeral pyre. Vainly the invader implores mercy, and assures the Tiger of his warm regard for him and all his family; vainly he endeavours to break through the fiery fence that girds him round; a thousand spears bore him back ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... which forms, as is generally believed, one of those twin barrows still existing on the sides of the Sigean promontory, that pass under the name of the tumuli of Achilles and Patroclus. Pope, in translating the passage describing the commencement of the funeral pyre, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... garments of gold gleam at times like the pyre Of the west, when the sun in a blaze doth expire; Now tinged like the orange, now flaming with fire! Half the crimson of roses and purple ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... that they are Pollione's children. Adalgisa appears, and Norma announces her intention to place her children in the Virgin's hands, and send her and them to Pollione while she expiates her offence on the funeral pyre. Adalgisa pleads with her not to abandon Pollione, who will return to her repentant; and the most effective number in the opera ensues,—the grand duet containing two of Bellini's most beautiful inspirations, the "Deh! con te li prendi," and the familiar "Mira, O Norma," whose strains ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... the starry firmament, the hero broad of breast, the master of all wild beasts, and of all mankind. Twelve labours is he fated to accomplish, and thereafter to dwell in the house of Zeus, but all his mortal part a Trachinian pyre shall possess. ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... incredible, but remember that it was Regulus. Yet now that his son is dead, he is mad with grief at his loss. The boy had a number of ponies, some in harness and others not broken in, dogs both great and small, nightingales, parrots and blackbirds—all these Regulus slaughtered at his pyre. Yet an act like that was no token of grief; it was but a mere parade of it. It is strange how people are flocking to call upon him. Every one detests and hates him, yet they run to visit him in shoals as though ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... here Faggots, pine-nuts, and withered leaves, and such Things as catch fire and blaze with one sole spark; Bring cedar, too, and precious drugs, and spices, And mighty planks, to nourish a tall pile; Bring frankincense and myrrh, too, for it is 280 For a great sacrifice I build the pyre! And ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the morn: Apollo's upward fire Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre Of brightness so unsullied, that therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run To warm their chilliest bubbles ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... charms by which they think they can kill their enemies. Thus fire is brought from the pyre on which a corpse has been burnt, and on this the operator pours water, and with the charcoal so obtained he makes a figure of his enemy in a lonely place under a pipal tree or on the bank of a river. He then takes an iron bar, twelve finger-joints long, and after repeating his charms ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... turn: this sudden blow, This stumbling, how I know not, by this stone, This horrid mouth in which my grave is shown, This cave of many shapes, Through which the melancholy mountain gapes, This mountain's self, a vast Abysmal shadow cast Suddenly on my heart, as if 't were meant To be my rustic pyre, my strange new monument, All fill my heart with wonder and with fear, What buried mysteries are hidden here That terrify me so, And make me tremble 'neath impending woe. [A solemn strain of music is heard from within.] Nay more, illusion now ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... was nothing but a horrible and magnificent funeral pile, a monstrous pyre which lit up the whole country, a pyre where men were burning, and where He was burning also, He, He, my prisoner, that new Being, the new ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... lamp on the staircase, a fall with that in his hand was to be the ostensible cause of the blaze, and then he would cut his throat at the top of the kitchen stairs, which would then become his funeral pyre. He would do all this on Sunday evening while Miriam was at church, and it would appear that he had fallen downstairs with the lamp, and been burnt to death. There was really no flaw whatever that he could see in the scheme. He was quite sure he knew how ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... hero buckles on his rune-covered sword again, and goes forth to battle with the monster. He slays it, indeed, but is blasted by its fiery breath, and dies after the encounter. His companions light his pyre upon a lofty spit of land jutting out into the winter sea. Weapons and jewels and drinking bowls, taken from the Fire Drake's treasure, were thrown into the tomb for the use of the ghost in the other world; and a mighty barrow was raised upon ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... seen to issue from the body of Polycarp when he was martyred at the stake (Martyr. Polyc. c. 16). Similarly Lucian represents himself as spreading a report, which was taken up and believed by the Cynic's disciples, that a vulture was seen to rise from the pyre of Peregrinus when he consigned himself to a voluntary death by burning. It would seem that the satirist here is laughing at the credulity of these simple Christians, with whose history he appears to have had ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... wife after the manner of the Romans. The clubs of Paris took up the subject, and talked for a while of the burials of antiquity. Ancient things were just then becoming a fashion, and some persons declared that it would be a fine thing to re-establish, for distinguished persons, the funeral pyre. This opinion had its defenders and its detractors. Some said that there were too many such personages, and the price of wood would be enormously increased by such a custom; moreover, it would be absurd to see our ancestors in their urns in the procession ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... I knew the meaning of that sky. I knew that down over the western edge of the world blazed a huge funeral pyre on which my past was being changed to harmless ashes; while in the east flames were already lighted beneath the on-coming crucible of destiny, from whose purifying heat a new love arose. Farther into obscurity would sink the one; up and on would come the other; and so the sky was ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... In natures such as hers, this hope is not allied to the phoenix, and, once crushed, knows no resurrection; consequently she cheated herself with no vain expectation that the mighty wizard, Time, could evoke from corpse or funeral-pyre even a spark to cheer the years that were thundering ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... lote, that sods The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds, Around the sleepy water and its reeds, Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods. Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer's dead! The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre, Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire: While from the east, as from a garden bed, Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon—like some Great golden melon—saying, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... knows that he can no longer deceive anyone, neither mankind nor Him whose name he profanes by this last sacrilege, he yet exclaims, "O Christ! I shall suffer even as Thou." It is only by the light of his funeral pyre that the dark places of his life can be examined, that this bloody plot is unravelled, and that other victims, forgotten and lost in the shadows, arise like spectres at the foot of the scaffold, and escort the assassin to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... attempt to make a hole in the walls? This could only be determined at the moment and the place themselves; but it was certain that the abduction must be made that night, and not when, at break of day, the victim was led to her funeral pyre. Then no human intervention ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... the rite of the Hirpi is complete, except that red-hot stones, not the pyre of pine-embers, is used in Fiji. Mr. Thomson has heard of a similar ceremony in the Cook group of islands. As in ancient Italy, so in Fiji, a certain clan have the privilege of fire-walking. It is far enough from Fiji to Southern ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... worn out by weakness and disease, ere they reach Benares with its Balm of Gilead which they seek; but many other aged or afflicted ones die happier for the knowledge that they have reached their Holy City, and that their ashes, after the quick work of the morrow's funeral pyre, will be thrown on the waters of the Ganges. "Rama, nama, satya hai" (The name of Rama is true): so I heard the weird chant as four men bore past me the rigid red-clad figure of a corpse for the burning. No coffins are ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... have spoken honorably, my daughter, but in that honorable dwells grief. But if the son of Peleus must be gratified, and you must escape blame, Ulysses, kill not her; but leading me to the pyre of Achilles, strike me, spare me not; I brought forth Paris, who destroyed the son of Thetis, having ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... that Troy could not be taken but by the arrows of Hercules. They were in possession of Philoctetes, the friend who had been with Hercules at the last, and lighted his funeral pyre. Philoctetes had joined the Grecian expedition against Troy, but had accidentally wounded his foot with one of the poisoned arrows, and the smell from his wound proved so offensive that his companions carried him to the Isle of Lemnos and left him there. Diomedes ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... taught the widowed wife to burn herself on the pyre of her dead husband? And who has ever taught love ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... took awy in 'is coffin if I'd a kep' 'im; but Lor' bless you, my dear, 'e was that pertic'ler I couldn't do with 'is fads, not at fancy prices, I couldn't. I 'ad to tell 'im to gow, for Mussy's syke, where 'e'd git 'is own French cook, and 'is own butler to black 'is 'arf-doz'n pyre o' boots all at once for 'im." This was the recognised fiction by which Mrs. Rogers accounted for the departure of any of her lodgers. Lest it should seem to speak badly for her willingness and for ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... that Goethe has changed the story considerably and for the better. How infinitely nobler is his idea of uniting the maiden with her divine lover on the flaming pyre from which both ascend to heaven! It may also be observed that Goethe substitutes Mahadeva, i.e. Siva, for Dewendre[90] and assigns to him an incarnation, though such incarnations are known only ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... festivals. Every Agharia has a guru or spiritual guide who whispers the mantra or sacred verse into his ear and is occasionally consulted. The dead are usually burnt, but children and persons dying of cholera or smallpox are buried, males being placed on the pyre or in the grave on their faces and females on their backs, with the feet pointing to the south. On the third day the ashes are thrown into a river and the bones of each part of the body are collected ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Crete). The Francois Vase (Archaeological Museum, Florence). Consulting the Oracle at Delphi. The Discus Thrower (Lancelotti Palace, Rome). Athlete using the Strigil (Vatican Gallery, Rome). "Temple of Neptune," Paestum. Croesus on the Pyre. Persian Archers (Louvre, Paris). Gravestone of Aristion (National Museum, Athens). Greek Soldiers in Arms. The Mound at Marathon. A Themistocles Ostrakon (British Museum, London). An Athenian Trireme ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... sweet! I saw thee in thine anguish! tortured, prone. Rent with earth-throes, garmented in fire! Each wound upon thy breast upon my own. Sad city of my love and my desire. Gray wind-blown ashes, broken, toppling wall And ruined hearth—are these thy funeral pyre? Black desolation covering as a pall— Is this the end, my love and my desire? Nay, strong, undaunted, thoughtless of despair, The Will that builded thee shall build again, And all thy broken promise spring more fair. Thou mighty ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... and a half later, when the navigator gave me a spell, a black cloud on the northern horizon marked the funeral pyre of another of our victims. When I went below, the Captain had just finished playing ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... night; thou shalt see earth moaning under foot and mountain-ashes descending from the hills. I take heaven, sweet, to witness, and thee, mine own darling sister, I do not willingly arm myself with the arts of magic. Do thou secretly raise a pyre in the inner court, and let them lay on it the arms that the accursed one left hanging in our chamber, and all the dress he wore, and the bridal bed where I fell. It is good to wipe out all the wretch's traces, and the priestess ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... close beneath. Such an hour is the present. I am aware that this hour makes me guilty of high treason and may send me to the block; but nevertheless I will not be silent. The fire which burns in my breast consumes me. I must at length give it vent. My heart, that for years has burned upon a funeral pyre, and which is so strong that in the midst of its agonies it has still ever felt a sensation of its blessedness—my heart must at length find death or favor. You shall hear ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... from Heaven's high arch shall rush, Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush, 375 Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall, And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all! —Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm, Immortal NATURE lifts her changeful form, Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, 380 And soars and shines, another ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... fundamental principles of wall-decoration are clearly understood in this the most complex composition yet attempted by the painter. Another thoroughly studied design is Sophronio and Olindo on the Funeral Pyre delivered by Clorinda.[11] The action has more than usual force and movement, and the undraped figures are drawn with severe exactitude. Presiding over the whole series, in the middle of the ceiling, is an allegorical figure of Jerusalem ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... with AEneas; but he steals away from Carthage, and Dido, on a funeral pyre, puts an end to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... teeth, grins for ever and aye. An he be in court, when counsel excites tears, he grins. An he be at funeral pyre where one mourns a son devoted, where a bereft mother's tears stream for her only one, he grins. Whatever it may be, wherever he is, whate'er may happen, he grins. Such ill habit has he—neither in good taste, well assumed, nor refined. Wherefore ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... had neither shovel nor any other appliance wherewith to dig a grave, and it was obviously impossible to do so with our bare hands alone. We at length decided to burn both the bodies, and I forthwith set about the construction of a funeral pyre. Fortunately, we had the forest close at hand; the ground beneath the trees was abundantly strewn with dry leaves, twigs, and branches, and thus I had not far to go for fuel. By the time that darkness closed in I had ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... bright example of the prototype of this class—the pious AEneas? How creditable was his behavior when he looked back over the black water on the trail of flame stretching from the funeral pyre where Dido lay burning! ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... out-of-character, blackguardly behaviour which has brought the hero to his death. Similarly the conception of the character and position of Brynhilt is entirely disfigured and rendered inane in the Nibelungenlied: of that superb demi-goddess of the Scandinavians, burnt on the pyre with her falcons and dogs and horses and slaves, by the side of the demi-god Sigurd, whom she has loved and killed, lest the door of Valhalla, swinging after him, should shut her out from his presence; of ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... very few minutes there was little doubt about its being a genuine bonfire and no paltry makeshift. Selina, a Maenad now, hatless and tossing disordered locks, all the dross of the young lady purged out of her, stalked around the pyre of her own purloining, or prodded it with a pea-stick. And as she prodded she murmured at intervals, "I KNEW there was something we could do! It ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... atonement is, a bloody day On Vigrid's hundred miles of plain; there will they fall, But fall not unavenged, for there the evil die Forever, but the fallen good arise again, Refined, from out the flaming pyre to higher life. 'Tis true the star-crown, pale and withered, falleth down From heaven's temple; earth too, sinks beneath the sea, But brighter is it born again, and joyous lifts Its flower crowned head from out the seething waves,— ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... she cried. "Let's make a funeral pyre in the yard and burn it, and our suits and the dogs' collars and everything. Let's burn everything we've got that ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... were jerked apart, and revealed what seemed to be a funeral pyre. Branches were piled on the window-seat, and on the top, wrapped in an eiderdown quilt, with a laurel wreath bound round his head, lay David. Jock, with bare legs and black boots, draped in an old-fashioned circular waterproof belonging to Mrs. M'Cosh, stood with arms folded ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... of tears,"—whither ten Kooleen Brahmins will bear him; and as often as they set down the bier to feed the dead with a morsel of moistened rice, other Brahmins shall sing his wisdom and his virtues, and celebrate his meritorious deeds. When his funeral pyre is lighted, his sons, and his sons' sons, and his daughters' husbands, and his nephews, shall beat their breasts and rend the air with lamentations; and when his body has been consumed, his ashes shall be given to the Ganges,—all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... outcast. Her pretty clothes are taken from her, and she is required to do the menial work of the family; this is the Indian protest against the abolishing of the suttee, or the burning of widows on the funeral pyre of their husbands,—cruelties prevented by English rule, as are also the practice of child suicide and the passing of the Juggernaut car over the prostrate ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... dear Joan, how you must have suffered! Yet I envy you—I do, on my soul! Life becomes ennobled by actions such as yours. And Alec must never know what you have done for him. That is both the grandeur and the pathos of it. Joan, my precious, your namesake was burnt on the pyre for a King's cause, yet her deed would rank no higher than yours if the world might be allowed to judge between you. But do not dream that your romance is ended. Saperlotte! Old Dame Nature is a better dramatist than that. If she has contrived so much for you in a little ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... with legs aloft Against the sky,—until the charioteers, Hardly restraining the impetuous team, Released him, covered so with blood that none,— No friend who saw—had known his hapless form. Which then we duly burned upon the pyre. And straightway men appointed to the task From all the Phocians bear his mighty frame— Poor ashes! narrowed in a brazen urn,— That he may find in his own fatherland His share of sepulture.—Such our report, Painful ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... little book which you read here with Monsieur Codere entitled, 'Maniere de bien penser dans les Ouvrages d'Esprit,' written by Pyre Bonhours. I wish you would read this book again at your leisure hours, for it will not only divert you, but likewise form your taste, and give you a just manner of ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of logs and turf blazed in the hall fireplace, a funeral pyre, on which Christian cast one basketful after another of letters, papers, ball-cards, hunt cards, pamphlets, old school-room books, stray numbers of magazines, all the accumulated rubbish that life, like the leader in a paper-chase, strews in its trail; all valueless, yet all steeped ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... be that the courteous, indulgent Sir Donald Randolph, with his wealth of cultured, intellectual power, was such a cruel, heartless, moral idealist as to approve of his daughter's immolation on this slow-torturing funeral pyre? ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... of the armlet the Wanderer fell on the earth, grovelling among the ashes of the pyre, for he knew the gold ring which he had brought from Ephyre long ago, for a gift to his wife Penelope. This was the bracelet of the bride of his youth, and here, a mockery and a terror, were those kind arms in which he had lain. Then ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... consumptive frame of Madeleine did not long survive the blow that Louis had prepared for her—not, indeed, in the sense of a guilty and blood-stained hand, but with the merit of an Abraham who, at the command of Heaven, prepared a funeral pyre for his child. Madeleine could scarcely weep; the grief of nature was calmed by the impulses of grace, and she felt in her heart a holy joy in the sublime destinies of her son. Could we, in the face of the holy teachings ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... [the Icelanders'] belief that the higher the smoke rose in the air the more glorious would the burnt man be in heaven."— Ynglinga Saga, 10 (quoted by E.). Cf. the funeral pyre of Herakles. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... day draws near its end, And on the plain a man and his friend Sit feeding an odorous sage-brush fire. A lofty butte like a funeral pyre, With the sun atop, looms high In the cloudless, windless, saffron sky. A snake sleeps under a grease-wood plant; A horned toad snaps at a passing ant; The plain is void as a polar floe, And the ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... the burial of Haki on a funeral-pyre ship, Inglinga Saga; the burial of Balder, Sinfitli, ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... pyre, Life's ashen, light residuum Lay soft, and, spent the cleansing fire, The urn held ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... think of what may benefit me! If ever I behold the sons of Pritha return to the city, I shall again be emaciated by renouncing food and drink, even though there be no obstacle in my path! And I shall either take poison or hang myself, either enter the pyre or kill myself with my own weapons. But I shall never be able to behold the sons of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... lull Pestilence to sleep:— Pile high the pyre of expiation now, A forest's spoil of boughs, and on the heap Pour venomous gums, which sullenly and slow, When touched by flame, shall burn, and melt, and flow, 4130 A stream of clinging fire,—and fix on high A net of iron, and spread forth below A couch of snakes, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... in what great reverence people of this locality hold the sacred river Ganges. If one of their relatives dies, he said, and they have not the means of taking the ashes to the Ganges, they powder a piece of bone from his funeral pyre and keep it till they come across some one who, some time or other, has drunk of the Ganges. To him they administer some of this powder, hidden in the usual offering of pan[1], and thus are content to imagine that a portion of the remains of their deceased ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... keeping with the little touches of characterisation which we can also notice in this book. In the second line Aeneas pursues his way certus, even while he gazes at the flames of Dido's funeral pyre, not knowing what they meant. He presides at the games with the dignity of a Roman magistrate, and reproachingly consoles the beaten Dares with words which seem to reflect his late experience at Carthage ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... canyon to a large bar on which they found among unmistakable evidences of a plundered camp both white man's and Indian's hair. A great ash heap containing calcined bones was undoubtedly the funeral pyre of white men and red men alike, and some yelling savages upon the upper bluff confirmed the tragedy which Captain Merritt's party had ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... who build their own fame's funeral pyre, Derided by the scornful throng like ice deriding fire. I'm sorry for the conquering ones who know not sin's defeat, But daily tread down fierce desire ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... achievement of Wagner. The exquisite trio of the Rhine maidens swimming and singing in a picturesque forest scene; the death of Siegfried, and the procession that slowly carries his body by the light of the moon up the hill; and the burning of the funeral pyre at the end, until it is put out by the rising waters of the Rhine bearing the maidens on the surface; these scenes, with the glorious music accompanying, cannot be matched by any act of any other opera. Nevertheless, as a whole, "Siegfried" is, in my opinion, the grandest part of the ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... of the dead, in the same belief held by the Pampas;[14] and even of the late Brahmanic custom of sacrificing the widow (suttee), in the practice of the Natchez Indians, and in Guatemala, of burning the widow on the pyre of the dead husband.[15] The storm wind (Odin) as highest god is found among the Choctaws; while 'Master of Breath' is the Creeks' name for this divinity. Huraka (hurricane, ouragon, ourage) is the chief god in Hayti.[16] ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... saw the red glare of the burning monastery reflected from end to end of the Campagna, like the glow of some gigantic pagan funeral pyre, saw also the quiet departure of Cardinal Bonpre and his "foundling" Manuel from Rome. Innocent of all evil, their escape was after the manner of the guilty; for the spies of the Vatican were on guard outside the Sovrani Palace, and one priest ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... makes the summer warm and fair? The Weather! What causes winter underwear? The Weather! What makes us rush and build a fire, And shiver near the glowing pyre— And then on other days perspire? ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... going on a long journey, and his friends escort him as far as they can; shoes are bound on his feet, the Hel-shoes, for Hel is the name of the region of the dead. Gifts are given to him; horses, male and female attendants, hawks and hounds, are burned with him on the pyre, and his wife voluntarily accompanies him; all these he is to have with him ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... is the same; their ways Unlike, and their desire: Like flames that gladden wedding days, And flames upon the pyre. 16 ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... why should he not have his earthly reward in love, one short, full hour of the delight he had denied himself, and then, even upon the suttee stone, that little memorial of the burning alive of the young widow upon the funeral pyre of the beloved husband, drive the diamond hilted dagger through the soft breast in worship of his god, and through his own heart that he might follow his beloved quickly as ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... in O. Eng. balu, cf. Icelandic bol), evil, suffering, a word obsolete except in poetry, and more common in the adjectival form "baleful." In early alliterative poetry it is especially used antithetically with "bliss." (2) (O. Eng. bael, a blazing fire, a funeral pyre), a bonfire, a northern English use more common in the tautological "bale-fire," with sometimes a confused reference from (1) to evil. (3) (A word of doubtful origin, possibly connected with "ball "), a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Circe's isle, we dragged our vessel up on to the beach, and lay down to sleep on the shore. At break of day I sent my comrades forth to bring the body of Elpenor from the palace. We took it out to a rocky place on the shore, and cut down trees to build a funeral pyre. There we burned the body and performed the funeral rites, and we built a tomb and placed an oar at ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... tears," answered she, "over Baldur's pyre. What gain I by the son of man, be he live or dead? Let Hela ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... enthusiastically respond; that Mrs. Shuster's mortification may drive her to such vulgar vengeance as will disgust Larry beyond repair; that the lion may not be too moth-eaten to seize his chance and the lady, and that Pat may then scramble down from the pyre of self-sacrifice. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... For only I saw what I shall see when dead, A kingly flower of knights, a sunflower, That shone against the sunlight like the sun, And like a fire, O heart, consuming thee, The fire of love that lights the pyre ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... unhurt amid the wreck of the sacrificial pyre. A ray of hope shot up in his heart. Scrambling out of the ruins, unobserved and unpursued, he fled down the nearest lane with the utmost speed. Anxious to obtain shelter, he, without even a thought, climbed a garden ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... of Sardanapalus in making his palace his own funeral pyre and burning himself upon it, is also attributed to the king who ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... passing through the streets of Foo Chow my attention was directed to a gayly-dressed woman seated in a chair decked with flowers. I was informed that she was a Chinese widow who was about to sacrifice herself upon the pyre in accordance with the custom of the country. I subsequently learned that when this woman reached the place appointed for the ceremony, she found an immense assemblage, including many mandarins and her own brother, the latter ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... now Bares the sharp and glittering knife; On that mournful pyre, oh hapless sire! Must he take his darling's life? Will fails not, though his eyes are dim, God gave ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... Thus all escaped save four.' In graver mood That chief resumed: 'A Norland King dies well! His bier is raised upon his stateliest ship; Piled with his arms; his lovers and his friends Rush to their monarch's pyre, resolved with him To share in death, and with becoming pomp Attend his footsteps to Valhalla's Hall. The torch is lit: forth sails the ship, black-winged, Facing the midnight seas. From beach and cliff Men ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... stretched them in canoes with paddles and fishing implements by their side; and the Kalamaths, who burned them with the maddest saturnalia of dancing, howling, and leaping through the flames of the funeral pyre. Over sixty or seventy petty tribes stretched the wild empire, welded together by the pressure of common foes and held in the grasp of the ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... all the virtues of Howkawanda, and those that he might have had if he had been spared to them longer, while the women cast dust on their hair and rocked to and fro howling. Younger Brother crept as close to the pyre as he dared, and whined in his throat as the fire took hold of the brush and ran crackling ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... and their speech follow, they would release themselves from great heartache and fear. 'Thou, indeed, as thou art sunk in the sleep of death, wilt so be for the rest of the ages, severed from all weary pains; but we, while close by us thou didst turn ashen on the awful pyre, made unappeasable lamentation, and everlastingly shall time never rid our heart of anguish.' Ask we then this of him, what there is that is so very bitter, if sleep and peace be the conclusion of the matter, to make one fade away in ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... that seemed to come from inside that next house," Merritt admitted. "It'll certainly be his funeral pyre. The house is all aflame, and ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... many hands (he had no few, This God of gifts and charity), The marble race, that smiled on me, I mocked, and said, "O God unthroned, Lone exile from the faith you owned, No priest to bring you sacrifice, No censer with its breath of spice, No land to mourn your funeral pyre. O King, whose subjects felt your fire, Now dead, now stone, without a slave, Unfeared, unloved, you have no grave. Poor God, who cannot understand, And what of your fair Eastern land, What dark brows brushed your dusky feet, ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... unto me, O ye who have been to me as sons in these the last days of mine old age. When my spirit leaves this withered shell, as it is about to do, ye shall build a funeral pyre, lay my body thereon, and put fire thereto; for by fire are all things purified, and on the wings of the flames shall my spirit mount and soar away to those Happy Isles where is neither sin, nor sorrow, nor suffering, nor any other evil thing. ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... live in holes under the ground; Nor did he look once more to Ida's plain, Nor tow'rd Valhalla, and the sorrowing Gods; For well he knew the Gods would heed his word, And cease to mourn, and think of Balder's pyre. But in Valhalla all the Gods went back From around Balder, all the Heroes went; And left his body stretch'd upon the floor. And on their golden chairs they sate again, Beside the tables, in the hall of Heaven; And before each the cooks who served them placed New messes of ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... but at the age of fifty-five, his tender gaze still fixed on the misty peals of Raja-hood, he suddenly found himself transported to a region where earthly honours and decorations are naught, and his salaam-wearied neck found everlasting repose on the funeral pyre. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... emotions, a striving to understand the riddles behind the impulsive body. One sees why Dido is not, like Apollonius' Medea, simply driven to passion by. Cupid's arrow—the naive Greek equivalent of the medieval love-philter—why Pallas' body is not merely laid on the funeral pyre with the traditional wailing, why Turnus does not meet his foe with an Homeric boast. That Vergil has penetrated a richer vein of sentiment, that he has learned to regard passion as something more than an accident, to sacrifice ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... in steep cloud-fastnesses,— Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun whose pyre Blazed with momentous memorable fire;— Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these? Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight Conjectured in the lamentable night?... Lo! the soul's sphere ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... was all that Duke John and his officers could do to keep the prisoners in ward, and to prevent them from being torn limb from limb (as had perhaps been fittest), and tossed alive into the flaming funeral pyre of Castle Machecoul, which, lighted by a hundred hands, presently began to flame like a volcano to ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Fell darkness dire, Vague terror, shapeless dole. Forever climbing ghats of fire I struggled to a goal Where, lone upon the suttee pyre, I saw my life's long-lost desire— The widow of ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... seclusion why desire?— Thus Thetis' care her blooming Son conceal'd, Ere yet commenc'd that Contest dire, When mournful gleam'd the funeral pyre, Thro' ten long years, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... the chasm of flying years The pyre of Dido on the vacant shore; I see Medea's fury and hear the roar Of rushing flames, the new bride's burning tears; And ever as still another vision peers Thro' memory's mist to stir me more and ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... body had lain unanimated unusually long, beguiled his wife, made her believe that he was certainly dead, and that it was disrespectful and indecent to keep him so long in that state. The woman therefore placed her husband on the funeral pyre, and consumed him to ashes; so that, continues the philosopher, when the soul of Hermotimus came back again, it no longer found its customary receptacle to retire into. [92] Certainly this kind of treatment appeared to furnish an infallible criterion, whether the seeming ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... thou didst try Thy gleaning wing through human years, And met, ay, knew the sigh Of men who pray, the tears That hide the woman's star, The brave ascending fire That is youth's beacon and too soon his pyre,— Yea, all our striving, bateless and unseeing, That builds each day our Heaven new. More deep in time's unnearing blue, Farther and ever fleeing The dream that ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... slander and abuse, I should advise him to pay no attention to the state of his mouth nor to attempt to remove the stains from his teeth with oriental powders: he would be better employed in rubbing them with charcoal from some funeral pyre. Least of all should he wash them with common water; rather let his guilty tongue, the chosen servant of lies and bitter words, rot in the filth and ordure that it loves! Is it reasonable, wretch, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... fiery hot feeling passed through our country flaming up like a beautiful sacrificial pyre. It was no longer a duty to offer one's self and one's life—it was supreme bliss. That might easily sound like a hollow phrase. But there is a proof, which is more genuine than words, than songs, and cheers. That is the expression in ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... this, To sweep with a bird's free motion Through leagues of space to a resting place, In a vast and vapory ocean— To pass away from this life for aye With never a dear tie sundered, And a world on fire for a funeral pyre, While the stars looked ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a prejudice against that craft,' her ladyship acquiesced. 'Beranger—let me see—your favourite Frenchman, Franks, wasn't it his father?—no, his grandfather. "Mon pauvre et humble grand-pyre," I think, was a tailor. Hum! the degrees of the thing, I confess, don't affect me. One trade I imagine to be no worse ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Burning-Ghat, Oh, Lallji, my desire, And now a faint and lonely flame Uprises from the pyre. The thin grey smoke in spirals drifts Across the opal sky. Would that I were a wife of thine, And thus with thee could die! How could I know That thou wouldst go, Oh, Lallji, my desire? The lips I missed The flames have kissed ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... of natural affinity that only those are safe who pray for a heavenly hand to lead them. Because they depended on themselves and not on God there are thousands of women every year going to the slaughter. In India women leap on the funeral pyre of a dead husband. We have a worse spectacle than that in America—women innumerable leaping on the funeral pyre of ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... and saw upon a pyre a copper kettle with four handles, and in it were his forty calves. He stuck his oaken stick through the handles and raised the kettle, poured off the water, pushed the calves' feet back into the kettle, lifted it to his shoulder, and ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... climax, but an anticlimax. The end of Frankenstein is well conceived, but that of the Demon fails. It is ridiculous to conceive anyone, demon or human, having ended his vengeance, fleeing over the ice to burn himself on a funeral pyre where no fuel could be found. Surely the tortures of the lowest pit of Dante's Inferno might have sufficed for the occasion. The youth of the authoress of this remarkable romance has raised comparison ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... about three in the afternoon, expecting it would rain. But a strong wind blowing full upon the funeral pile, and setting it all in a bright flame, the body was consumed so exactly in good time, that the pyre had begun to smolder, and the fire was upon the point of expiring, when a violent rain came down, which continued till night. So that his good fortune was firm even to the last, and did as it were officiate at his funeral. His monument stands ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... stoodst before my face, my Lord, Naked I was, and men at arms prepar'd The glowing pyre whereon thy jealousy Had doomed my youthful body to be burned! Calm wast thou then; no quiver moved thy face, Untroubled by thy deed. Dost ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... little harmless flames in sun and shadow, and the spires of the Carrara range were giant flames transformed to marble. The memory of that day described by Trelawny in a passage of immortal English prose, when he and Byron and Leigh Hunt stood beside the funeral pyre, and libations were poured, and the Cor Cordium was found inviolate among the ashes, turned all my thoughts to flame beneath the gentle ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... and she had given him no sons, and the daughters she had given him had gone their own ways with men of their own choosing and he didn't know what had become of any of them. And the village people—they would start picking the Crown apart to sell the jewels, one by one, before the ashes of his pyre ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... Queen, Artemisia, at Halicarnassus, upon the AEgean's eastern shore, and that became at once one of the few great wonders of the ancient world. This was intended to do honor to the loved and illustrious dead, and this it did as no grave or pyre could do. This was also intended to protect the lifeless form from ruthless robbery and reckless profanation, and it performed this task so well that for near two thousand years no human eye beheld the mortal part of Mausolus, and no human hand disturbed its ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... to-day the platform of the Pont-Neuf, in the presence of the king and all his court. A popular legend asserts that as the figure of the grand-master, Jacques de Molay, disappeared finally in the smoke and flame of his pyre, he was heard, in a solemn voice, to summon his executioners to meet him before the bar of God, the Pope within forty days and the king within the year. Certain it is that both these potentates ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... of their quarrel filled the hearts of both armies with fear, and they agreed to make a truce in order to bury their chiefs. As it was customary at that time to burn the bodies of the dead, both corpses were laid upon the funeral pyre side by side. When the wood was all burned, the ashes were put into separate urns, for the Greeks used to tell their children that these brothers hated each other so much that even ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... triumphal gateway, according to the senate's decree. There were present and took part in carrying him out the senate and the equestrian class, the women of his family, and the pretorian guard; and nearly everybody else in the city was in attendance. When the body had been placed on the pyre in the Campus Martius, all the priests marched about it first; and then the knights, all the magistrates and others, and the heavy-armed force for garrison duty ran around it; and they cast upon it all the triumphal decorations ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... say that Thetis snatched his body from the pyre and conveyed it to the island of Leuke, at the mouth of the Danube, where he ruled with Iphigeneia as his wife; or that he was carried to the Elysian fields, where his wife was Medea or Helen. He was worshipped in many places: at Leuke, where he was honoured with offerings and games; in Sparta, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... like the Theban pair, with maddening gripe, And fold each other in a last embrace! Each press with vengeful thrust the dagger home, And "Victory!" be your shriek of death:—nor then Shall discord rest appeased; the very flame That lights your funeral pyre shall tower dissevered In ruddy columns to the skies, and tell With horrid ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... at them wistfully, as if they were going to the holocaust, as we might imagine the great mother of the Maccabees watched half with pain, half with pride, wholly with resignation, her sons mount the funeral pyre. ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... the epidemic frenzy of anchoritism, and impelled the Circumcellionist multitudes to extort the boon of martyrdom from reluctant tribunals, may be admitted capable even of the madness of a voluntary aspiration to the stake and pyre of the witch. Certain it is that many of the convicts boasted of their interviews with the Devil, and seemed to be, if they were not, possessed with the conviction of having actually partaken of the orgies imputed to them. Had they really been there in ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... attempted. The Arickaras offered what they considered fair terms; to barter one horse, or even two horses, for a prisoner. The mountaineers spurned at their offer, and declared that, unless all the horses were relinquished, the prisoners should be burnt to death. To give force to their threat, a pyre of logs and fagots was heaped up and kindled into ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... the mob have made Rome the funeral pyre of their idol. In the sky a comet appeared. It was his soul on its way ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... poisoned shaft of Philoctetes. In the fourth or fifth century of our era a late poet, Quintus Smyrnaeus, described Paris's journey, in quest of a healing spell, to the forsaken OEnone, and her refusal to aid him; her death on his funeral pyre. Quintus is a poet of extraordinary merit for his age, and scarcely deserves the reproach of laziness affixed on him by ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... child-wives of India need to be rescued and protected, but no more than many adult wives in Bible lands need protection from drunken and brutal husbands. The heathen wife seeks death on her husband's funeral pyre, but the Christian wife is often sent to death by a bullet in her brain, or a knife in ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... formed by the Senate, the high priesthood, the knights, the army, and the whole population skirted the Circus Flaminius and the Septa Julia, and by the Via Flaminia reached the ustrinum, or sacred enclosure for cremation. As soon as the body had been placed on the pyre the "march past" began in the same order, the officers and men of the various army corps making their evolutions or decursiones. This word, taken in a general sense, means a long march by soldiers made in a given time and without quitting the ranks; ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... death, and by this chiefly they think to incite men to valour, the fear of death being overlooked." Later he adds, that at funerals all things which had been dear to the dead man, even living creatures, were thrown on the funeral pyre, and shortly before his time slaves and beloved clients were also consumed.[1155] Diodorus says: "Among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevailed that the souls of men were immortal, and after completing their term of existence they live ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... the major sadly, "but the thousand pangs and aches and heart-sickenings! I would sooner see my child on the funeral pyre of a husband she loved, than living a merry life with one ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... d'Ansene, one of those "children of Aimeri" who have sought fortune away from Narbonne, and one of the captives of Roncesvalles. Garin is only to be delivered at the cost of his son's life, which Vivien cheerfully offers. He is actually on the pyre, which is kindled, when the pagan hold Luiserne is stormed by a pirate king, and Vivien is rescued, but sold as a slave. An amiable paynim woman buys him and adopts him; but he is a born knight, and when grown up, with a few allies ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... seas, A ship of gold lay on a sea of fire; Each sail and rope and spar, as in desire, Mutely besought the kisses of a breeze; Low laughter told the mariners at ease; Sweet sea-songs hymned the red sun's fun'ral pyre: Yet One, with eyes that never seemed to tire, Watched for the storm, ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens |
