"Carrion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not worth striking, But fawne with slavish flattery on damn'd vices, So great men act them: you clap hands at those, Where the true Poet indeed doth scorne to guild A gawdy Tombe with glory of his Verse Which coffins stinking Carrion; no, his lines Are free as his Invention; no base feare Can shape his penne to Temporize even with Kings; The blacker are their crimes he lowder sings. Goe, goe, thou canst not write; 'tis but my calling The ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... To stop my sport Vain were thy cant and beggar whine, Though human spirits of thy sort Were tenants of these carrion kine!" ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Our birth dies in infancy, and our infancy dies in youth, and youth and rest die in age, and age also dies and determines all. Nor do all these, youth out of infancy, or age out of youth, arise so as a Phoenix out of the ashes of another Phoenix formerly dead, but as a wasp or a serpent out of a carrion or as a snake out of dung." We can comprehend how an audience composed of men and women whose ne'er-do-weel relatives went to the theatre to be stirred by such tragedies as those of Marston and Cyril Tourneur would themselves ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... be at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe." In effect, happiness is a relative term, which we can alter as we please by altering the amount which we demand from life. "Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... chance of death. You guard your dirty skins by wrecking ships upon the rocks. You dare not pit yourselves against a breathing victim. Like carrion-crows you sit to a ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... himself with his one eye.... Maybe you don't believe it? Well, I'll tell it out and prove it. I have got sure word by running messenger that came cross-cutting over the ridge of the hill.... That carrion that came in a coach, pressing to bring away the Princess before nightfall, giving himself out to be some great one, is no other than Taig the Tailor, that should be called Taig the Twister, down from his mother's house from Oughtmana, ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... confined itself to its natural food, the farmer's grain, the tax which it levies on the country would still be such as no free people ought to endure. But it confines itself to nothing. As Waterton says: "After dining on carrion in the filthiest sink, it will often manage to sup on the choicest dainties of the larder, where like Celoeno of old vestigia foeda relinquit." It kills chickens, plunders the nests of little birds, devouring ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... A carrion crow, perceiving a brood of fourteen chickens under the care of the parent-hen, on a lawn, picked up one; but on a young lady opening the window and giving an alarm, the robber dropped his prey. In the course of the day, however, ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... believe without seeing the footprint tracings in the sand. They are nearly all night workers, finding the days too hot and white. In mid-desert where there are no cattle, there are no birds of carrion, but if you go far in that direction the chances are that you will find yourself shadowed by their tilted wings. Nothing so large as a man can move unspied upon in that country, and they know well how the land deals with strangers. There are hints to be had here of the way in which ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... went past to market twice a-week in the same old carts and driving much the same quality of carrion. The string of overloaded spring-carts, buggies, and sweating horses went whirling into town, to 'service', through clouds of dust and broiling heat, on Sunday morning, and came driving cruelly out again at noon. The neighbours' sons rode over in the afternoon, as of old, and hung up their ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... plagues and epidemics. I do not know that this way may not be preferable to cremation, which leaves in the air about the Ghat a faint but disagreeable odour. The Ghat is a place by the sea, or river shore, where Hindus burn their dead. Instead of feeding the old Slavonic deity "Mother Wet Earth" with carrion, Parsees give to Armasti pure dust. Armasti means, literally, "fostering cow," and Zoroaster teaches that the cultivation of land is the noblest of all occupations in the eyes of God. Accordingly, the worship of Earth is so sacred among the Parsees, that they take all possible ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... has been my watch. Dark have been my forebodings, standing first on one foot and then on the other, through the night hours, preyed upon by visions, holding my eyelids open by my will, while strange thoughts like vultures over their carrion, wheeling about above me, assail me, tear me with their beaks and talons. Dark looms the cloud bank through the black portals of the river. The fog holds the bleared eyes of the morning. And I, stiff with watching, suspect some evil. Some foul play is in the mountains, ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... I, That lying, by the violet, in the sun, Do, as the carrion does, not as the flower, Corrupt with ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... to advance took the trouble to inform him of the surrender of the capital; he learnt it from an intercepted French despatch. From the same despatch Moore learnt that to the north of him, at Saldanha, on the river Carrion, there lay a comparatively small French force under the command of Soult. The information was enough for Moore, heart-sick at the mockery to which his army had been subjected, and burning for decisive action. He turned northwards, and marched ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... give you my word of honour as a gentleman and an old man, that when my book of travels shall appear it shall not contain so much as the name of Gruenewald. And yet it was a racy chapter! But had your Highness only read about the other courts! I am a carrion crow; but it is not my fault, after all, that the world is such ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Espana]. I understand that two of them will be of no use for this next year, as they will have to be laid aside. Thus it will be necessary, that the navigation on that route may not cease, that ships be built continually. Although the Mariscal Grabiel de Rribera and Captain Juan Pablo de Carrion are each building a ship, they will not be able to support them, and will be obliged to sell them at the port of Acapulco on the first voyage, for the Piru trade. Although they could be bought in these islands on the account of your Majesty's ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... grotesque enough; the banquet of birds and beasts who feed on the skin of Pharsalia is even worse. [66] The details are too loathsome to quote. Suffice it to say that the list includes every carrion-feeder among flesh and fowl who ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... "Carrion crows were about in the dawn that followed. One of my own comrades lay very badly wounded, and when he wakened out of his unconsciousness one of these beastly birds was sitting on his chest waiting for him to die. That ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... "like the carrion crows at judgment! Halt!" he ordered, for already I had taken the first step. "When I need to send a havildar," said he, "to ask my men's permission, I will call for a havildar! To the rear where you belong!" he ordered. And I went round to the rear, knowing something of Gooja Singh's sensations, ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... Revolution. Thousands of us learnt to be interested in him as the 'good Arthur,' 'the excellent Arthur,' of Thomas Carlyle, a writer who had the art of making not only his own narrative, but the sources of it, attractive. Even 'Carrion-Heath,' in the famous introductory chapter to the Cromwell, is invested with a kind of charm, whilst in the stormy firmament of the French Revolution the star of Arthur Young twinkles with a mild effulgency. The autobiography of such a man could hardly ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... met them fleeing from the town,—my life would pay the forfeit. Alive, I may be of some use to you, and you are welcome to my life in that way,—I am giving it freely. Dead, I should be a mere lump of carrion. Who remembers even the names of those who have been done to death in the Southern States for the ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... way oft by the refraining of the bernacle, and dieth at last after vain travails, and hath no reward after his death for the service and travail that he had living, not so much that his own skin is left with him, but it is taken away, and the carrion is thrown out without sepulture or burials; but it be so much of the carrion that by eating and devouring is sometimes buried in the ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... the first taste of animal food I had had for about ten months. So keen was my appetite that I could have relished any cooked carrion even, if it had come in my way. I also got potatoes, the very skins of which I devoured with great gusto. It was very curious that at this time I preferred salt to sugar, or anything that was sweet, and I used to suck little ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... neck,—twist it, I say! Give her a swift despatch after her leper! But stay,—if he still lives he'll follow her, And so we may ensnare him. Harm her not! Bind her! Away with her to Rimmon's House! Is all this carrion dead? There's one that moves,— A spear,—fasten him down! All quiet now? Then back to our Damascus! Rimmon's face Shall ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... America, where she died. This was a dozen years ago or more. He brought down with him to our haunted house a little cask of salt beef; for, he is always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with him one "Nat Beaver," an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman. Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... carrion bird about the size Of a robin that is generally known through the north as the "whiskey jack," had always hovered about our camps and been very tame when, in the earlier days of our trip, we had refuse to throw away; but now these birds called ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... lips hard to conceal the pain he gave me, and he went on: 'We have a quarter of an hour before the Posse can get down to us. But come they will, and thou canst judge what chance we have to save liberty or life with that carrion lying by us'—and he jerked his thumb at Maskew—'though I am glad 'twas not my hand that sent him to his reckoning, and therefore do not blame thee if thou didst make me waste a charge in air. So one thing we can do is to ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... the blue Flies cannot come at it. Query. Is it not strange, that we see daily the Limbs of Horses hung up in Trees, and they do not stink, but remain good a long while fit for Dogs Meat? If any one will say, that Dogs all delight to eat Carrion, I must deny that; but that every sort of Dog will roll himself in Carrion, when he can find it, ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... accompanied by Middleton, I watched at an alligator's hole with a rifle, but the beast would not come out, perhaps luckily for me, if I missed a stomach shot; that I was prevented from bringing down a carrion vulture, it being illegal to kill those useful scavengers; that I caught some dear little green tree frogs; that I noted how the rice-fields had become a poisonous marsh; that I noticed the extensive strata of ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... lining her nest with down from her breast, and in a short time you will find the whole nest, sides and bottom, lined with a thick covering of down; while the eggs are covered by what I can best describe as a thick movable quilt, which protects them from the cold, and the prying eyes of carrion crows and other poachers. ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... break their teeth with fiery stones, from morning until evening, and during the night they make their teeth grow again, to the length of a parasang, only to break them anew the next morning. Nasargiel explained: "These are the sinners who ate carrion and forbidden flesh, who lent their money at usury, who wrote the Name of God on amulets for Gentiles, who used false weights, who stole money from their fellow-Israelites, who ate on the Day of Atonement, who ate forbidden fat, and animals and reptiles that ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... have instantly my Vulture, Crow, Raven, come flying hither, on the news, To peck for carrion, my she-wolfe, and all, Greedy, ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... skin were growing the rasupa-tree and the shiuri-tree of which the spear-handle used by Okikurumi was made, and the hai-grass by which the tip of the harpoon was tied to the body of it, and the nipesh-tree of which the rope tying the harpoon itself was made; and even the carrion-crows and the dogs and foxes would not eat the bad shark, but only voided their foeces upon him; and at last he rotted ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... bold strain for virtue, truth, mankind, And thy fell shade to infamy resign'd. When frailty leads astray the soul sincere, Let mercy shed the soft and manly tear. When to the grave descends the sensual sot, Unnamed, unnoticed, let his carrion rot. When paltry rogues, by stealth, deceit, or force, Hazard their necks, ambitious of your purse: For such the hangman wreaths his trusty gin, And let the gallows expiate their sin. 140 But when a ruffian, whose portentous crimes, Like plagues and earthquakes ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... first one, and then went bankrupt and turned washerwoman, and then got into trouble about a gentleman's silver-hilted Rapier, for which I lay long in hold, and was sent for five years to the Plantations; and at last here I am, old and fat and good for nothing, but to throw to the crows as carrion—Mother Drum, God save us all! as bold as brass, and as tough as leather, and 'the miserablest old 'oman ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... the tombs, and bring up most hideous tyrants from the dead. Come, brood of monsters, let me bring you up from the deep damnation of the graves wherein your hated memories continue for all time their never-ending rot. Come, birds of evil omen! come, ravens, vultures, carrion-crows, and see the spectacle! come, see the meeting of congenial souls! I will disturb, disquiet, and bring up the greatest monsters of the human race! Tremble not, women; tremble not, children; tremble not, men! ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... They have all the important points of structure of the bladders of the floating English species, and I felt confident I should find captured prey. And so I have to my delight in two bladders, with clear proof that they had absorbed food from the decaying mass. For Utricularia is a carrion-feeder, and not ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... concerning the matter. Besides, every one along the Arizona border hated a wolf almost as badly as they did a cowardly coyote; for while the former may be bolder than the beast that slinks across the desert looking for carrion, its capacity for mischief is a good ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... [Table bay] is fertile, but divided by high and inaccessible rocky mountains, covered with snow, the river Dulce falling into the bay on the east side. The natives are the most barbarous people in the world, eating carrion, wearing the guts of sheep about their necks, and rubbing their heads, the hair on which is curled like the negroes, with the dung of beasts and other dirt. They have no clothing, except skins wrapped about their shoulders, wearing the fleshy side next them in summer, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... sun is thrown into darkness, or one eagle, blind and winged, falls down the rocks and leaves the whole nest to its conqueror. The Arrapahoes would not fight a cowardly Crow, except for self-defence, for he smells of carrion; nor would a Shoshone. ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... It is an impure bird, of somber and funereal color, with a strong beak and a harsh, shrill voice. It scents dead bodies from a great distance, and therefore men fear its voice as a certain augury of an impending death. It feeds upon carrion and enjoys localities ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... you call up our enemies with your noise? (The wailing drops to a moan.) Put out that fire—they can sniff smoke as far as a vulture smells carrion. (CHOCO stamps out the fire.) You, Choco, do you show your face to me, misgotten whelp of a coyote! It was you ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... security, authenticity, and regularity in business, as well as from the interests of commerce and the public health. The object, you say, is not attained. My God! I know it: leave the butcher's trade to competition, and you will eat carrion; establish a monopoly in the butcher's trade, and you will eat carrion. That is the only fruit you can hope for from ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Issy, who declared that Ves Young's rattle-trap wan't fit to do nothin' but haul fish heads to the fertilizer factory, the Calvin beams and boards were piled high on the wagon and with Ves on the driver's seat and Simp perched, like a disreputable carrion crow on top of ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... frequently found stranded on the beaches of Cape Cod and Long Island. Old colonial records are full of the lawsuits growing out of these pieces of treasure-trove, the finder, the owner of the land where the gigantic carrion lay stranded, and the colony all claiming ownership, or at least shares. By 1650 all the northern colonies had begun to pursue the business of shore whaling to some extent. Crews were organized, boats ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... taught him to eat human flesh, which formed the staple of their food. The meat was procured from the graves in the villages they passed through. When Ram Nath was thoroughly educated in this rank the Sadhus deserted him. Since then he had been living on human carrion only, roaming about the country like a hungry vulture. He cannot eat cooked food, and therefore gets two seers of raw meat from the State every day. It is also reported that the Maharaja has now prohibited his being ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... my unworthy eyes should fail to behold the deliverance of that Holy Sepulchre whence my designation is taken. We will travel together, so will thy journey be safer, for these Turks hang like carrion upon the skirts of ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... although Cairnes had to be knocked insensible before the heathen finally mastered him. I believed the obstinate fellow dead, so ghastly white appeared his usually florid face as the victorious savages dragged him roughly past where I lay, flinging his heavy body down like carrion upon the rocks. De Noyan appeared badly cut, his gallant clothing clinging to him in fluttering rags, silent witnesses to the manliness of his struggle. Yet the Chevalier was ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... o'er us; Clay-lands knee-deep spread before us; Mire and ice and snow and sleet; Aching backs and frozen feet; Knees which reel as marches quicken, Ranks which thin as corpses thicken; While with carrion birds we eat, Calling puddle-water sweet, As we pledge the health of our general, who fares as rough as we: What can daunt us, what can turn us, led to ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... Peyronie, who voiced the sentiment of all of us, "'twould take two weeks or more to bring Dunbar up, and what are we to do meantime? Sit here and eat this carrion?" and he looked disgustedly at the mess of unsavory beef on the table, which was, to tell the truth, most odoriferous. "'Tis rank folly to even think of ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... progress, has not grown old with it. For it seems pretty sure that progress means, with many other things, the survival of the unfit and the transmission of unfitness to a generation of old babies; but where men are not disinfected, sterilised, fed on preserved carrion and treated with hypodermics from the cradle to the grave, the good old law of nature holds its own and the weak ones die young, while the strong fight for life and are very much alive ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... Horace, that, trifling and unworthy as this banquet was, my note of directions to this thrice unhappy slave gave the instructions to procure every ingredient necessary to convey to each dish its proper gusto.—Ill-omened carrion that thou art, wherefore placedst thou the pickled cucumber so far apart from the boar's head? and why are these superb congers unprovided with a requisite quantity of fennel? The divorce betwixt the shell-fish and the Chian wine, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... from those roofs, doubtless, many a wistful look was turned in the direction of lovely France. Much had the poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of England be it said—of England, in general so kind and bountiful. Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I have seen the very hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless and a captive; and such, alas! was the fare in those casernes. And then, those ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Bald Eagle; "you and I are somewhat alike, for though I chiefly fish for a living I also kill the young of large animals, and even eat carrion when game is scarce. But as it is unusual for a judge to condemn himself, I think I must go free; and as there are not very many of either of us, it really ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... stop my sport Vain were thy cant and beggar whine, Though human spirits of thy sort Were tenants of these carrion kine!' ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... these "rebel" wings, These glittering clouds of "intellectual" flies Out of the stagnant pools of midnight rise From the old dead creeds, with carrion-poisoned stings They strike at noble and ignoble things, Immortal Love with the old world's out-worn lies, But even now, a wind from clearer skies Dissolves in smoke their coteries ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... means Luther's Catholic critics will resort in order to make out a case against him, we note that one of the most recent disparagers of Luther informs the public that Luther's original name had been Luder. This name conveys the idea of "carrion," "beast," "low scoundrel." When Luther began to translate the Bible, we are told, he changed his name into "Squire George." Once before this, at the time of his entering the university, Catholics note that he changed his name from Luder to Lueder. But these changes of his name, they say, did ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... this teach thee," said the priest, "that the very best doctrine may take its rise in a very impure and disgustful spring, and that excellent morals may be taught by a man who has no morals at all." It is easy enough to see the fallacy here. Had the man known beforehand from what a carrion fountain-head the stream issued, he could not have drunk of it without loathing. Had the priest merely bidden him to look at the stream and see how beautiful it was, instead of tasting it, it would have been quite another matter. And this is precisely the difference between what appeals to our ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... "Wherever carrion is to be found, there you may be sure the vultures will congregate. There is booty to be got here among the hills; and whether the soldiers belong to the well-trained battalions of Chili, or the wretched levies of Peru, they are always prepared, for plunder— ready to make hay while the sun ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... quickly, it was so inevitable, that Peter could only stand and blink. He thought, sickly, that the very earth should shudder away from the soiling touch of that appalling carrion. But the earth was the one thing that would receive Jake unprotestingly. He lay on his face, his arms outflung, and from the gaping hole between his shoulders a dark stream welled. The indifferent earth, the uncaring ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... probably with a similar leaning towards the more liberal religion that the Lalbegis, though themselves Hindus, adopted a Muhammadan for their tutelary saint. In the Punjab Muhammadan sweepers who have given up eating carrion and refuse to remove night-soil rank higher than the others, and are known as Musalli. [241] And in Saugor the Muhammadans allow the sweepers to come into a mosque and to stand at the back, whereas, of course, they cannot ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... abound even in these hoary walls which have echoed to the songs of the bard for more years than man can count. Ah, woe the day; ah, woe the falling off! That I should live to see the sons of Dynevor thus fall away — the young eaglets leaving their high estate to grovel with the carrion vulture and the coward crow! Ah! in old days it was not so. But there are yet those of the degenerate race in whom the spirit of their fathers burns. Come, my sons — come hither with me. I bring you a ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... cellar she had had the end of her crucifix sharpened till it was needle-pointed. She trembled with eagerness. This foul carrion beast had fooled her that he might get her more utterly in his power. For this he had brought her down. He would have her to himself—in some dungeon of Privy Seal's. Her fair hopes ended in ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... sagacity of the moth, closely resembles that peculiar instinct by which the vulture and other birds that prey upon carrion, are able to single out a diseased animal from the herd, which they follow with their dismal croakings, hovering over its head, or sitting in ill-omened flocks, on the surrounding trees, watching it as its life ebbs away, and stretching out their ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... degeneration; but gradually, as the curious devil mastered me, I grew into such harmony with it that I could shut my eyes no longer to the true purpose of its insistence. It was the closed cell about which my thoughts hovered like crows circling round carrion. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... dogs and birds to feed upon; but, says the narrative, before much of it was consumed, it was discovered by a poor family (whose name and residence are given), and by them used as food. Father, mother and six children prolonged life for a week upon this disgusting carrion, and even regretted the loss of it, when the supply failed; and the poor mother said to the person who made the fact public, "the Lord only knows what I will now do for my starving children, since it is gone!" A fortnight earlier a most circumstantial ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... beaten into a hawthorn bush on Bosworth Field, and his defaced, mangled, and ill-shaped body thrown, like carrion, across a pack-horse and driven off to Leicester, and Henry VII., the astute, the wily, the thrifty, reigned in his stead. After Henry's victory over Simnel he came two successive days to St. Paul's to offer his thanksgiving, and Simnel (afterwards a scullion in the royal kitchen) rode humbly ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the highest blessedness he can attain to, consist in drunkenness, gluttony, dishonesty, violence, and impiety? If he had the appetite of a tiger or a vulture, then, thus to wallow in the offal of vice, dive into the carrion of sensuality, abandon himself to revelling in carnivorous crime, might be his instinct and his happiness. But by virtue of his humanity man loves his fellows, enjoys the scenery of nature, takes delight in thought and art, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... in the trenches, digging the flying sap by night and deepening it by day, for officers and men alike. From heaven a host of blue ants could be seen toiling in zigzags forward, ever forward, along the rude water-cuts and through the hills. A waiting carrion from her vantage point on high marked one spot then another where the blue ants disappeared, and again one by one came out of the burrow to hurry down the trench,—each with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... devoured; upon it, with lustrous eyes, stood an enormous vulture, who, as I approached, slowly soared aloft till he alighted on the eastern gate of the amphitheatre, from whence he uttered a hoarse cry, as if in anger that I had disturbed him from his feast of carrion. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... a common pit. If I read Flaubert's meaning right, all human history is there; you may show it by painting on broad canvas a Carthaginian battle-scene or by photographing the details of a modern bedroom: a brief brightness, night and the odor of carrion, a crucified lion, a dying woman, the jeering of ribald mercenaries, the cackle of M. Homais. It is all one. If Flaubert deserved prosecution, it was not for making vice attractive, but for expressing with invasive energy that personal and desperately pessimistic conception of life by which he was ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... are dead carrion," he said coldly. His weapon was raised. Hilary was caught between two fires, exposed to the searing blasts that would issue at the ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... to interfere directly, but sought to soften her, and said beseechingly, "Don't beat the boy quite to pieces, or he won't be able to look for the lost cow. We shall get more profit out of him if you don't quite kill him." "True enough," said the woman, "his carrion won't be worth as much as the good beef." Then she gave him a few more good whacks, and packed him off to look for the cow, saying, "If you come back without the cow, I'll beat you to death." The boy ran from the door sobbing and crying, and went back to the forest where ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... saying he'd shoot me at one time; but I need 'ardly tell you he gave it up as a bad job, and went an' did what some folks call a worse instead. He didn't get much show 'ere, I can tell you; that little foreign snipe won't either, nor yet any other carrion that think they want my blood. I'd empty this shooter o' mine into their in'ards as soon as look at 'em, I don't give a curse who they are! Just as well I wasn't brought up to your profession, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... and Arabs! The rascals have loaded their beasts already, and most probably have gone to hide their plunder, that they may be back and make sure of a second haul, before any of their precious brother vultures, up in the sands, get a scent of the carrion. D—n the rogues; I thought at one time they had me in a category! Well, joy be with them! Mr. Monday, I return you my hearty thanks for the manly, frank, and diplomatic manner in which you have discharged the duties of your mission. Without you, we might not ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... two characteristic features of the Priestly narrative, in the ship grounded on a rock, and in the bow set in the cloud; we have also two characteristic features of the Jehovistic narrative, in the smoking altar of sacrifice, and in the carrion bird. There is therefore manifest connection between the constellation grouping and both the narratives ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... have expected to find the smallest specimens of the feathered tribe inhabiting the same region as the mighty, coarse-feeding condor; but whereas the latter pounces down on his carrion banquet into the plains below, the little humming-bird seeks his food from the bright flowers which clothe the mountainside, or the minute ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... our genealogical tree. The major has succeeded in reining in his horse, but, who cares? the old farmhouse stood a siege in the Great Napoleon's time and could mock at him now. Leave all—all these cooling pieces of carrion, and my dear grandma!" she sneered, "and let us hasten to the house where ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... shoulder, I flashed my sword in their eyes; and not till the crescent of weapons encircled me in one blinding gleam, vain grew defence, vain honor, vain bravery. Of what use was my soul to me thenceforth? I became but carrion prey. I fell, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... him day by day. He was mine when the birth-pang tore me, mine when he lay on my heart, When the sweet mouth mumbled my bosom and the milk-teeth made it smart, Babyhood, boyhood, and manhood, and a glad mother proud of her son— See the carrion birds, too gorged to fly! Ah! Brothers, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... to three grave-pits in the prison-yard three lumps of lifeless clay, that a few short hours before had been three of God's noblest creatures. Like carrion, they were flung into those unconsecrated pits, and strewed with quicklime. For this was British law. The wolf and the tiger leave some vestiges of their victims; but a special ordinance of English law ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... wavelets, and waving with the sportlets for some minutes, when he heard a bellowing on shore, and he looked up to see a cow pawing the ground and running her horns into his clothes. You know how the smell of blood or carrion will cause the mildest mannered cow to get on her ear and paw the ground and bellow. Not that there was any blood or carrion there, but the cow acted that way. She may have got the smell of a Democrat from his clothes. Anyway she made Monterey howl, and ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... rapidly catching light from another—a long stream of moving lights across the white Forum, up the great stairs, to the palace. And, in effect, that night winter began, the hardest that had been known for a lifetime. The wolves came from the mountains; and, led by the carrion scent, devoured the dead bodies which had been hastily buried during the plague, and, emboldened by their meal, crept, before the short day was well past, over the walls of the farmyards of the Campagna. The eagles were seen driving the flocks of smaller ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... "very true— And here, here's charming green, and red, and blue! There's a complexion beats the ROUGE of Warren! See those red lips; oh, la! they seem so nice! What rosy cheeks then, cousin, to entice!— Compar'd to this, all other heads are carrion. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Alf: They say things is middlin' hot here on Runnymede; an' we're in a (sheol) of a (adjective) stink about what to do with our frames to-night. Our wagons is over there on the other track, among the pines. Where did you stop las' night? Your carrion's ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... stones. A grand tropical smell hung low in the air. On the thresholds of the doors, inside the houses, in the middle of the streets, anywhere, everywhere, were old fish, the heads of cattle, drying hides, all sorts of carrion, most of it well decomposed. Back of the town was a low, rank jungle of green, and a stagnant lake. The latter had a delicate ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... relates that Hercules was always very joyful when a vulture appeared to him upon any occasion. For it is a creature the least hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn, fruit-tree, nor cattle; it preys only on carrion, and never kills or hurts any living thing; and as for birds, it touches not them, though they are dead, as being of its own species, whereas eagles, owls, and hawks mangle and kill their own ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... crossed the trail of Numa, the lion, pausing for a moment to hurl a soft fruit at the snarling face of his enemy, and to taunt and insult him, calling him eater of carrion and brother of Dango, the hyena. Numa, his yellow-green eyes round and burning with concentrated hate, glared up at the dancing figure above him. Low growls vibrated his heavy jowls and his great rage transmitted to his sinuous tail a sharp, whiplike motion; but realizing from past ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of a simple thought, Whether for England or her enemies, Went in the night, and in the morning died; Each bleeding piece of human earth that lies Stark to the carrion wind, and groaning cries For burial—each Jesu crucified— Hath surely won the thing he dearly bought, For wrong is right, ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... slow lagging flight, and sometimes sweep over the desert like gray shapeless shadows, or glide across the sand like snakes; or they would creep out of the tombs, howling like hungry dogs. I have often heard them barking like jackals or laughing like hyenas when they scent carrion, but to-night is the first time I ever heard them shrieking like furious men, and then groaning and wailing as if they were plunged in the lake of fire and suffering ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... parts Of the graceful body, gathers the bones, 270 Which the funeral fire aforetime devoured; Then brings altogether the bones and the ashes, The remnant of the flames he arranges anew, And carefully covers that carrion spoil With fairest flowers. Then he fares away, 275 Seeking the sacred soil of his birthplace. With his feet he fastens to the fire's grim leavings, Clasps them in his claws and his country again, The sun-bright seat, he seeks in joy, His own native-land. All ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... to fight for her. Your ships Tossing in the great sunset of an Empire, Dawn of a sovereign people, are all manned By heroes, ragged, hungry, who will die Like flies ere long, because they have no food But turns to fever-breeding carrion Not fit for dogs. They are half-naked, hopeless Living, of any reward; and if they die They die a dog's death. We shall reap the fame While they—great God! and all this cannot quench The glory in their eyes. They will be served ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... though it cannot swim, it manages occasionally to get hold of oceanic birds; in fact, nothing alive which it can master seems to come amiss, and failing to make a meal from something it has caught and killed, the Arctic fox is glad, like foxes in more favoured lands, to feed on carrion. ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... "Trooper Priddell" he was of no account. As a piece of fast-decaying carrion he would be the centre of a piece of elaborate ceremonial! His troop would parade in full dress and (save for a firing-party of twelve who would carry carbines) without arms. A special black horse ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Baron and Tina reach the castle of Jauioz. The old man seats himself near the fire. He is black and ill-favoured as a carrion crow. His beard and his hair are white, and his ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... no better than the croaking of your carrion crow," said the elder lady: "these are not like the songs we used to hear in hall and bower at Dunham Massey. Then "—the old lady forgetting that her own ears had played her false, and her relish for these dainties ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... help liking you, though I know that I should have killed you long ago. I tell you again that if you go into the North there is only one chance in a hundred that you will come back alive. Great God, M'seur, up where you wish to go the very trees will fall on you and the carrion ravens pick, out your eyes! And that chance—that one chance in a ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... the dolorous city of damned souls The Florentine with Vergil took his way, A dismal marsh they passed, whose fetid shoals Held sinners by the myriad. Swollen and grey, Like worms that fester in the foul decay Of sweltering carrion, these bad spirits sank Chin-deep in stagnant slime and ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... disaster sickened many a soul; Stout hearts were sad and cowards cried for peace. The vulture, perched hard by the eagle's crag, Loud cawed his fellows from afar to feast. Ill-omened bird—his carrion-cries were vain! Again our veteran eagles plumed their wings, And forth he fled from Montezuma's shores— A dastard flight—betraying unto death Him whom he dazzled with a bauble crown. Just retribution followed ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... steel or shot 'gainst that charmed life secure, Till cunning France, in last resource, tossed up the golden lure; And the carrion buzzards round him stooped, faithless, to the cast, And the wild hawk of the desert is caught and ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the cicadas whose monotonous note wearies the ear, and from hornets and bees of every description that keep up an incessant hum as they suck Juices from the plants or dive their antennae into the ripe fruit or perhaps into some carrion lying near. The bassoon-like sound never ceases a single instant and tells the listener how innumerable are the populations of insects which live and generate their sort under the shade of their jungle retreat. Other inexplicable ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... preacher's voice. The Auld Lichts in their rusty blacks (they must have been a more artistic sight in the olden days of blue bonnets and knee-breeches) nodded their heads in sharp approval, for though they could swoop down on a heretic like an eagle on carrion, they scented no prey. Even Lang Tammas, on whose nose a drop of water gathered when he was in his greatest fettle, thought that all was fair and above-board. Suddenly a rush of wind tore up the common, and ran straight at the ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... you w—!" vociferated the actor beside himself; and seizing a bottle by the neck raised it high over his head. "Hold me, or else I'll brain this carrion. Don't you dare ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... freighters, and Duke swore again. Five billion Earthmen would read of their "generosity" to Meloa, and any guilt they felt for their desertion would vanish in a smug satisfaction at their charity. Smugness was easy in a world without dust or carrion smell or craters that had ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... every one, Left him there without a lick, Left him for the birds to pick, Left him there for carrion, Vilely from their bosom cast Wisdom, worth and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... and the wild country. I may not be a patriot like Nicholas of Reist, but the old war music seems to leap and burn in my blood when I think of the Turks creeping nearer and nearer to the frontier, and our ancient city full of foreign spies, gathered together like carrion birds before the massacre. It ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... with a swamp at the back. Men and women clad in a single cotton garment lay about smoking cigars. Naked and pot-bellied children played in the mud. On the threshold of the doors, in the huts, fish, bullock heads, hides, and carrion were strewn, all in a state of decomposition, while in the rear was the jungle and a lake of stagnant water with a delicate bordering of greasy blue mud. There was but one hotel, called the Crescent City, which boasted of no floor ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... fear neither man nor beast. But your excellency is aware that nature has gifted us with noses peculiarly open to unusual impressions. We have smelled all the smells known from the far North to the far South, from the stewed rats of Moscow to the carrion that lies mouldering upon the plains of the Crimea; but, if it please your highness, we never smelled Frenchmen before. There was an unearthly odor about them that filled our nostrils, and struck a mysterious terror ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... no more be roused by the blowing of his horn, Our backs no longer he will score; He no more will feed us on cotton-seeds and corn; For his reign of oppression now is o'er. He no more will hang our children on the tree, To be ate by the carrion crow; He no more will send our wives to Tennessee; For he's gone ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... bear had never seen such creatures before, and therefore advanced toward the boat, sniffing the strange scent with aroused curiosity and wondering whether he might take them for friends or foes, food or carrion. ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... Partridges scarce, not preserved, and the hooded crows and birds of prey making life rather hard for them." Mr Danford further speaks of the chamois-eagle as "not rare in the higher mountains." The fisher-eagle "generally distributed." The king-eagle also "not rare." The carrion-vulture "common throughout the country," also the red-footed falcon. At one time and another I have myself seen most of these birds in the Carpathians, which form the ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... he began, "you all know that the pay train is due here this afternoon. You are all eager to get your money—for what? It is a strange fact that gold is the carrion that draws all of the vultures. A few minutes ago you saw one of the vultures here, preparing to get his supposed share of your money away from you. Does Jim Duff care a hang about any of you? Do any of you care anything whatever for Jim Duff? Then why should you be so eager to get into ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... he said, "tell thy master, the King of France, that Gilbert of Crispin defies and scorns him, and that he will hold this castle of Tillieres for his liege and suzerain, Duke William of Normandy, though all the carrion kites of France should flap ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... of godhead, false and foul As fear his dam or hell his throne: but we, Scarce hearing, heed no carrion church-wolf's howl: The corpse be theirs to ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... neighbourhood one Dung-beetle and one alone who also works among carrion. This is Onthophagus ovatus, LIN., a constant frequenter of dead Moles and Rabbits. But the dwarf undertaker does not on that account scorn stercoraceous fare: he feasts upon it like the other Onthophagi. Perhaps there is a twofold diet here: the bun for the adult; the highly-spiced, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... the carrion out, thou sloppy beast! The first time somebody is let in again without my consent, I'll cowhide you within an inch of ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... we can see. To kill these men as you wish, little one, would do nothing. Others of their kind would fill their places. The seekers of gold are like ants. Slay thousands, tens of thousands come on; if once the scent of gain be on the wind it brings men in crowds from all parts, as the smell of carrion brings meat-flies. If they think of seizing the Edera it is because men of business will turn it into gold. The Edera gives us our grain, our fruits, our health, our life; but if it will give money to ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... nor do your smoking sighs, Reach'd from the entrails of your boiling heart, Disturb the quiet of my calmed thoughts: For this I feel, and by experience prove, Such is the force and endless might of love, As never shall the dread of carrion death, That hath envy'd our joys, invade my breast. For if it may be found a fault in me, That evermore hath lov'd your majesty, Likewise to honour and to love your child; If love unto you both may be a fault— But unto her my ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... winnings, besides being severely wounded. This being the natural consequence, the morale to the story can excite no surprise. The robbers who, in hopes of plunder, flocked down at the time of the fete, like sopilotes seeking carrion, hide themselves among the barren rocks of the Pedregal, and render all cross-roads insecure, except ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... valuable disclosures with respect to the smashers' system. I confess that I would have been hanged before I would have done so, after having reaped the profit of it; that is, I think so now, seated comfortably in my inn, with my bottle of champagne before me. He, however, did not show himself carrion; he would not betray his companions, who had behaved very handsomely to him, having given the son of a lord, a great barrister, not a hundred-pound forged bill, but a hundred hard guineas, to plead ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... carrion," said Bob, picking out a good-sized fragment of the fruit upon his knife; "it's what the captain calls ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... should I forget The day I saw him first? (You know the one.) I had been laughing in the market-place With others like me, I the youngest there, Jostling about a pack of mountebanks Like flies on carrion (I the youngest there!), Till darkness fell; and while the other girls Turned this way, that way, as perdition beckoned, I, wondering what the night would bring, half hoping: If not, this once, a child's sleep in my garret, At least enough to ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... with the times, Would only feed us, like the Press, On squalid "mysteries," ugly crimes, Scandals and all that carrion mess, I see no solid reason why Dramatic Art ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... found a large pot of walrus-flesh evidently cooked for me. His wife licked a piece and offered it, but, on his saying something to her, took out another, and, having pared off the outside, gave me the clean part, which, had it been carrion, I would not have hurt these poor creatures by refusing. The men showed me some curious puzzles with knots on their fingers, and I did what I could in return. The little girls were very expert in a singular but dirty amusement, which ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... reasonable fault to be found with Sururab was that the river banks were exceedingly difficult of access. Our camps were getting from bad to worse. That day flocks of huge vultures were to be seen circling overhead as the army advanced. It may have been our approach that disturbed them from their carrion feasts in the devastated villages and the abandoned dervish camps. Omdurman itself must also have long been a choice feeding place ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... black color, usually having one white band across the chest, and another across the back, near the tail. It is a perfect glutton, and most indiscriminate in its feeding; nothing comes amiss to it; it lives chiefly upon carrion, the smaller native animals, and occasionally attacks sheep, principally, however, lambs and the weakly or diseased; even one of its own kind, caught in a snare, is attacked and devoured without mercy. They are very numerous in some localities, and from their smaller size ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... outrages upon the persons of women and children, deserve naught but death. Let them fight like men; we will slay them in fair fight, but we will give no quarter. We will, if God fights for us, sweep the carrion brood from off the ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... these were substituted on occasion rough stones with fuses attached,[5] pieces of red-hot iron, pots of fused metal, or casks full of Greek fire or of foul matter to corrupt the air of the besieged place. Thus carrion was shot into Negropont from such engines by Mahomed II. The Cardinal Octavian, besieging Modena in 1249, slings a dead ass into the town. Froissart several times mentions such measures, as at the siege of Thin l'Eveque on the Scheldt in 1340, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... even for royalty, and were reckoned as thorough French delicacies. There were at that time heronries, as at a later period there were pheasantries. People also ate birds of prey, and only rejected those which fed on carrion. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... the dangerous corpse to the point of rendering it as dry and sonorous as the remains of an old slipper hardened on the refuse-heap by the frosts of winter and the heats of summer. They were working their hardest to render the carrion innocuous. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... not—would lay a hand on him. I will say plainly that I was more than thankful to hand him over to his mother. I had spilt over myself a bottle of some nameless and abominable brew that I'd mistaken for liniment, and my clothes smelt like carrion; also the lean-to I had lived in was so dirty that I scratched from suspicion all day long, except when I was yawning from a week of hardly closing my eyes. Altogether, as I said, I was dog-tired, if it were not from walking, and I might have stayed at Billy Jones's if I had not been crazy to get ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... time, burying themselves in the vague, infinite, unfamiliar depths of a street that follows the same wall, the same trees, the same lanterns, and leads on to the same darkness beyond. The damp, heavy air that they breathed smelt of sugar and tallow and carrion. From time to time a vivid flash passed before their eyes: it was the lantern of a butcher's cart that shone upon slaughtered cattle and huge pieces of bleeding meat thrown upon the back of a white horse; the light upon the flesh, amid the darkness, resembled a purple conflagration, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... that makes man's body and blood Sacred, to crown when life and death have ceased His heavenward head for high fame's holy feast; But as one swordstroke swift as wizard's rod Made Caesar carrion and made Brutus God, Faith false or true, born patriot or born priest, Smites into semblance or of man or beast The soul that feeds on clean or unclean food. Lo here the faith that lives on its own light, ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... pusillanimity to the sepoys whom their cowardice demoralised. Next day the detachment of the 44th which had guarded an exposed position had to be withdrawn, ceding the post of honour to the stauncher sepoys. The camp followers were living on carrion; the commissaries reported but four days' provisions in store, and their inability to procure any more supplies. At length on December 8th the four senior military officers informed the Envoy that it was imperatively necessary he should negotiate ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... him in the streets. It would be necessary to carry the creature continually, and even then a number of these unbidden guests would follow, barking and howling incessantly. Neither distemper nor madness is to be feared from these dogs, though no one cares for their wants. They live on carrion and offal, which is to be found in abundance in every street, as every description of filth is thrown out of the houses into the road. A few years ago it was considered expedient to banish these dogs from Constantinople. They were transported to two uninhabited islands in the Sea of Marmora, ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... cowardly thief. If it were not for mixing the Princess's name with such carrion as he, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... hook and get out fast enough," the old man retorted in the falsetto of age. "Not if I was a strong man with the taste for wine yet in my mouth. But not you. You'll all stay, I wouldn't advise you if I thought you'd go, You can't drive buzzards away from the carrion. Have another drink, my brave sailor-men. Well, well, what men will dare for a few little oyster drops! There they are, the beauties! Auction to-morrow, at ten sharp. Old Parlay's selling out, and the buzzards are gathering—old Parlay who was a stronger man in his day than any of them ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... well as on birds and quadrupeds. Others have adopted fish as their chief food, and the osprey snatches its prey from the water with as much facility as a gull or a petrel; while the South American caracaras (Polyborus) have adopted the habits of vultures and live altogether on carrion. In every great group there is the same divergence of habits. There are ground-pigeons, rock-pigeons, and wood-pigeons,—seed-eating pigeons and fruit-eating pigeons; there are carrion-eating, insect-eating, and fruit-eating crows. Even kingfishers ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... food, Whose chiefs are like feathered birds, Where light is never seen, in darkness they dwell. In the house which I will enter There is treasured up for me a crown, With the crowned ones who of old ruled the earth, To whom Anu and Bel have given terrible names, Carrion is their food, their drink stagnant water. There dwell the chiefs and unconquered ones, There dwell the bards and the mighty men, Monsters of the deep of the great gods. It is the dwelling of Etana, the dwelling of Ner, Of Ninkigal, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... cruelty which shocked and disgusted me. The bodies of the victims were cut in pieces and scattered about the streets, and hundreds of hyenas came down from the neighbouring mountains to feed on the human carrion. I determined to do the best I could to escape from this bloody country, but was constrained to take a part in the civil war, and commanded a force of heavy cavalry in King Tecla's army in the three ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... licence of the truce, I went, last night, to the Christian camp: I had an interview with the Christian king; and when he heard my name and faith, his very beard curled with ire. 'Hound of Belial!' he roared forth, 'has not thy comrade carrion, the sorcerer Almamen, sufficiently deceived and insulted the majesty of Spain? For his sake, ye shall have no quarter. Tarry here another instant, and thy corpse shall be swinging to the winds! Go, and count over ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... along the side of the road, sometimes in proof of its agility and self-satisfaction lifting one hind leg and hopping along on three, and then again going on all four and rushing to bark at the crows that sat on the carrion. The dog was merrier and sleeker than it had been in Moscow. All around lay the flesh of different animals—from men to horses—in various stages of decomposition; and as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the dog could eat ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Muezzin and an imam,[FN32] who prayeth with the true-believers, and a servant of the house of the Lord of the Worlds! "Quoth she, "Why wilt thou forbid me to drink thereof in thy house?" "Because," answered he, "it is unlawful." "O elder," rejoined she, "God hath forbidden [the eating of] blood and carrion and hog's flesh. Tell me, are grapes and honey lawful or unlawful?" Quoth he, "They are lawful;" and she said, "This is the juice of grapes and the water of honey." But he answered, "Leave this thy talk, for thou shall never drink wine in my house." ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... gallipot! thou poisoner by profession! if I thought that the puff of vile breath thou hast left could blight for the tenth part of a minute the fair fame of Catharine Glover, I would pound thee, quacksalver! in thine own mortar, and beat up thy wretched carrion with flower of brimstone, the only real medicine in thy booth, to make a salve ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... disposal of their gambling profits nearer home. All excess of gaming, however, is absolutely prohibited in Persia; and any place wherein it is much exercised is called 'a habitation of corrupted carcases or carrion house.'(20) ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... wolves. The village boys amused themselves by throwing frogs to him, which he caught and devoured; and when a bullock died and was skinned, he resorted to the carcass like the dogs of the place, and fed upon the carrion. His body smelled offensively. He remained in the village during the day, for the sake of what he could get to eat, but always went off to the jungle at night. In other particulars, his habits resembled those already described. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... the tower of the Castle, from which a beam protruded, laden at that moment with a ghastly burden just discernible in the thickening gloom. He named it well when he called it his "flagstaff," and the miserable banner of carrion that hung from it was a fitting pennon for the ruthless Governor of Cesena. Worthy was he to have worn the silver hauberk of Werner von Urslingen with its motto, "The enemy of God, ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... perhaps the darkest plumage of all the eagles. This species does not live up to its name. It feeds largely on carrion, and probably never catches anything larger than a rat. The imperial eagle is common about Mussoorie except in the rains. Captain Hutton states that he has seen as many as fifty of them together in the month of October when they reassemble after ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... barred windows, the heavy rattling chain, the court-martial, the reading of the sentence, the pillory, the gaping crowd, the white shirt worn by the condemned, the man of death, the executioner, with a Prayer Book in one hand and a cord in the other, the ignominious death, the black carrion crows—— ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... her companion coolly, "for it is the blood of a fanatic traitor. Think not of it." He turned at the threshold and cast a careless glance back into the tobacco house. "Woodson, get rid of this carrion, and bring these men quietly to the great house, where your master ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... They are a species of crow. But they differ from the carrion crow and raven, in not feeding upon dead flesh, but upon corn and other seeds and grass, though, indeed, they pick up beetles and other insects and worms. See what a number of them have alighted on yonder ploughed field, almost blackening it over. They are searching for grubs and worms. ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... got closer, he noticed an unpleasant smell, and near the mouth of the den he got a sudden whiff that almost gagged him—a sour, acid, carrion stink like a buzzard's nest. He moved back a little. The hole was wide and fairly high, two or three feet, but too dark to see back into. Still, he had a sense of something stirring there ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... one fine midsummer morning, to the hayfield outside of Brussels, between two Jesuits, followed by a number of a peculiar kind of monks called love-brothers. Those holy men goaded her as she went, telling her that she was the devil's carrion, and calling on her to repent at the last moment, and thus save her life and escape eternal damnation beside. But the poor soul had no ear for them, and cried out that, like Stephen, she saw the heavens opening, and the angels stooping down to conduct her far away from the power of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the members of the Audiencia inform the king of the instructions they have given to Legazpi, and their orders that he should direct his course straight to the Philippines, which they regard as belonging to Spain rather than Portugal. In this same year, Juan de la Carrion, recently appointed admiral of the fleet, writes to the king, dissenting (as does the Audiencia) from Urdaneta's project for first exploring New Guinea, and urging that the expedition ought to sail directly to the Philippines. He says that he ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... Broom of Molly the housemaid. And then, the tiny insect, the ant—that living, silent monitor to unregarding men—doth it not make its own galleries, build with toilsome art its own abiding place? Does not the mole scratch its own chamber—the carrion kite build its own nest! Shall cuckoos and Members of Parliament alone ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various |
