"Funeral pyre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a page of glory bright, Her present a blaze of splendor, You may turn o'er the leaves of the jewell'd tome, You'll not find the word surrender; For sooner than lay down her trusty arms, She'd build her own funeral pyre, And the flames that give her a martyr's fate Will kindle ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... did not wish to leave the corpses of the slain to be dug up and scalped by the savages. He therefore erected a large funeral pyre, placed the bodies upon it, and they were soon consumed to ashes. Some litters were made of long and flexible poles, attached to two horses, one at each end, and upon these the wounded were conveyed over the rough and narrow way. The Indians, thus far, ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... "A high funeral pyre is erected of dry wood, on which the body of the dead is laid, and in course of time after igniting the faggots the corpse is consumed. While this cineration is going on vultures and carrion fowl not infrequently ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... 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 mother of as mighty men. Thou wilt arise invincible, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... of Sardanapalus in making his palace his own funeral pyre and burning himself upon it, is also attributed to the king who was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... to the wharf to see them fire an enormous flat-boat piled mountain-high with cotton. A dozen bales had been broken open and the whole floating funeral pyre stood shrouded in spotless white which leaped into flames as it ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... mythology the wife of Balder, the sun-god; distinguished for her conjugal fidelity, threw herself on the funeral pyre of her husband, and descended to the shades along with him; when the pair were entreated to return, he sent his ring to Odin and she her ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... flecked with lines of peach-blossom cloud, whilst in front of us the dark form of Capri seems to float in a golden haze between firmament and ocean. Behind us the dark mass of the Mountain with its breath of ascending smoke seems like an eternal funeral pyre in honour of the Dead, who were spared the horrors of that fearful disaster which overwhelmed the living. Upon the broken tombs and altars the light from the setting sun falls with warm cheerful radiance, flushing stone and brick-work with a ruddy ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... 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
... A longish building of "wattle and dab," much like the northern farmhouses, a high roof, and chimneys resembling those of the "oast houses" in Kent, combine with the rural surroundings to suggest "farm buildings" rather than the "funeral pyre," and all that is horrible is left ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... 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)
... "benefit of their church." The 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
... upon the other in the middle of the room. Each had a perceptible thickness and a rounded loglike edge; and when the time came for turning in on top of the lot, I was always reminded of the latter end of a Grecian hero, the structure looked so like a funeral pyre. When to the above indispensables were added clothes, camera, dry plates, books, and sundries, it made a collection of household gods quite appalling to consider on the march. I had no idea I owned half so much in the world from which it would pain me to be parted. ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... last he took conclusion, That there as first Arcite and Palamon Hadde for love the battle them between, That in that selve* grove, sweet and green, *self-same There as he had his amorous desires, His complaint, and for love his hote fires, He woulde make a fire*, in which th' office *funeral pyre Of funeral he might all accomplice; And *let anon command* to hack and hew *immediately gave orders* The oakes old, and lay them *on a rew* *in a row* In culpons*, well arrayed for to brenne**. *logs **burn His officers with swifte feet they renne* *run And ride ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of 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 a man named Thespesius, who had fallen from the roof ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... ferry company didn't have any trouble. The Yumas moved up river a ways, where they've lived ever since. They got the corpses and buried them. That is, they dug a trench for each one and laid poles across it, with a funeral pyre on the poles. Then they put the body on top, and the women of the family cut their hair off and threw it on. After that they set fire to the outfit, and, when the poles bad burned through, the whole business fell into the trench of its own accord. It was the neatest, automatic, self-cocking, ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... of Quetzalcoatl from the embers of his funeral pyre to the planet Venus has led several distinguished students of Mexican mythology to identify his whole history with the astronomical relations of this bright star. Such an interpretation is, however, not only contrary to results obtained by the general science of mythology, but it is ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... winter: Vittoria had been seen in Milan. Both Lena and Wilfrid spontaneously guessed her to be the guilty one. He made a funeral pyre of the gifts and gave his sister the ashes, supposing that she had guessed with the same spirited intuition. It suited Adela to relate this lover's performance to Lena. "He did well!" Lena said, and kissed Adela for the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and stars turn pale, On Nature's funeral pyre, O'er all Spain's glory shall prevail, An ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... is loaded with heavy charges of papers and carried off by clerks; the little mad old woman marches off with her documents; the empty court is locked up. If all the injustice it has committed and all the misery it has caused could only be locked up with it, and the whole burnt away in a great funeral pyre—why so much the better for other parties than the parties in ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... was not ambitious at the grave. He threw neither garments nor odors upon the funeral pyre, but the arms and the war-horse of the departed were burned and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a pale new moon—the last moon that human eyes will ever rest upon—and the stars are most brilliant. Even in the clear plateau air of South America I have never seen them brighter. Possibly this etheric change has some effect upon light. The funeral pyre of Brighton is still blazing, and there is a very distant patch of scarlet in the western sky, which may mean trouble at Arundel or Chichester, possibly even at Portsmouth. I sit and muse and make an occasional note. There is a sweet ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that scene of fire and butchery. She saw 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
... 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, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Because AEneas had jilted her, and so she stabbed herself on a funeral pyre after setting ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... one who would lay down life itself to aid you, you will call on me, wheresoever I may be, fearless and undoubting. For, from the festive board, or the nuptial bed, from the most sacred altar of the Gods, or from the solemn funeral pyre, I will come instant to thy bidding. 'Lucia needs Paullus,' shall be words shriller than the war-trumpet's summons ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... furiously when he climbed in under the wheel of his car. He held Joan very close and watched that blazing funeral pyre in wordless sorrow as the bereaved girl dropped her head to ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent
... 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 bundle of merchandise, especially of cotton, wool or hay, packed with a cover, or fastened with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... to the Manes, with sacrifice to the gods, nor with studying the Veda. In all these she has no part. Her religion is to serve her husband (III. 205. 23), and to die, if worthy of the honor, on his funeral pyre. Otherwise the epic woman has religious practices only in visiting the holy watering-places, which now abound, and in reading the epic itself. For it is said of both practices: "Whether man or woman read this book (or 'visit this holy pool') he or she is freed from sin" (so in III. 82. 33: "Every ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... eventually rescued by the French, while the Indians, decamping after their carnival of blood, carried two hundred wretched victims back to their lodges. Then followed the work of demolishing Fort William Henry, and soon its blazing ruins, a funeral pyre for the slaughtered garrison, lit up the summer night, and cast a lurid flame soon to kindle ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the thought of this fatal determination in wine, ended the feast with the mortal mess; and embracing one another, after they had jointly deplored the misfortune of their country, some retired home to their own houses, others stayed to be burned with Vibius in his funeral pyre; and were all of them so long in dying, the vapour of the wine having prepossessed the veins, and by that means deferred the effect of poison, that some of them were within an hour of seeing the enemy inside the walls of Capua, which was taken the next morning, and of undergoing ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... tongues of fire, To make of those dread mounds a funeral pyre, As raging onward o'er their victims broke, The fearful conflict of the fire ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... years still lingers there to raise To weary hearts and tired eyes that beacon of old days. Perhaps but stay; 'tis gone! and yet once more it lifts as though To meet our tardy blundering steps, and seems to MOVE, and lo! Whirls by us in a rush of sound,—the vanished funeral pyre Of hopes and fears that twenty years burned in ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... could we ask than 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
... charnel-house. Skirting for nearly a league the blue waters of the Caribbean, its smoking ruins became the funeral pyre of 30,000, not one of whom lived long enough to tell adequately a story that will stand grim, awful, unforgotten as that of Herculaneum, when the world is older ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... he approached the last line of tents, with the open land beyond. The horses of the herd, which had been driven to this side to avoid the funeral pyre, were shifting nervously, the scent of burning ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... the Romans affected the rose; the Greeks amaranthus and myrtle: the funeral pyre consisted of sweet fuel, cypress, fir, larix, yew, and trees perpetually verdant lay silent expressions of their ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... smiled and laughed as part of the ceremony, the executioners also smiling. The old people were supposed to laugh with joy at the revivification which was in store for them in a future state. So, too, the Hindoo widows used to laugh when seated on the funeral pyre ready to be burnt. So, too, is explained (by Reinach) the laughter of Joan of Arc when she made her abjuration in front of the faggots which were to burn her to death. Her laugh was caused by the thought of her escape from ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... withered autumn leaves! Call everything that grieves, And build a funeral pyre above his head! Heap there all golden promise that deceives, Beauty that wins the heart and then ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... be it,' imparted unto Madri the mantra of invocation. And on Madri were raised by the twin Aswins, the twins Nakula and Sahadeva. And (one day) Pandu, beholding Madri decked with ornaments, had his desire kindled. And, as soon as he touched her, he died. Madri ascended the funeral pyre with her lord. And she said unto Kunti, 'Let these twins of mine be brought up by thee with affection.' After some time those five Pandavas were taken by the ascetics of the woods to Hastinapura and there introduced to Bhishma ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... alios) after 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 again, the soul passing into another body. Hence ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... try to describe no more, save that the funeral pyre, which the murderers had raised to hide their crime, had not reached them, not ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... themselves, one of whom was of the same age as the King, and the other two aged thirty-five years. They showed great courage. They went forth richly dressed with many jewels and gold ornaments and precious stones, and arriving at the funeral pyre they divided these, giving some to their relatives; some to the Brahmans to offer prayers for them, and throwing some to be scrambled for by the people. Then they took leave of all, mounted on to a lofty place, and threw themselves into the middle of the fire, which was very great. ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... as well as she expected, however, for though just in the act of setting fire to a funeral pyre, the Professor dropped his torch, metaphorically speaking, and made a dive after the little blue ball. Of course they bumped their heads smartly together, saw stars, and both came up flushed and laughing, without the ball, to resume their seats, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... 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
... picturesque suggestion that they are the ancestors of the European gypsies and that Rom or Romany is nothing more than a variant of Dom. In the ironical language of the proverbs the Dom figures as "the lord of death" because he provides the wood for the Hindu funeral pyre. He is ranked with Brahmans and goats as a creature useless in time of need. A common and peculiarly offensive form of abuse is to tell a man that he has eaten a Dom's leavings. A series of proverbs represents him as making friends ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... come to possess a personality as such inanimate objects will, having been our faithful companions and our reliance for many a hundred difficult miles, and it seemed like desertion to abandon them so carelessly to destruction. We ought to have had a funeral pyre. The flags of the boats, which Mrs. Thompson had made and which had been carried in them the entire way, were still to be disposed of, and that of the Dean was generously voted to me by the Major, Jack, and Jones, who had crew claims to it; that of the Nellie Powell was awarded ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Townsend, a pilot of the Ganges, and tradition has it that he and Job Charnock, who, as an officer of the East India Company, founded Calcutta in 1690, saved a pretty young Hindu widow from ascending her husband's funeral pyre and committing suttee. Tradition states further that Job Charnock and his bride "lived lovingly for many years and had several children," until in due time she was buried in the mausoleum at St. John's, ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... 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 mere logic of form for fragments ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... 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 ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... full of the longing to enjoy the happiness of youth, he left his own withered body by magic and entered the body of the Brahman youth. So the Brahman youth came to life on the funeral pyre and stood up. And a cry of joy arose from all the relatives: "See! The boy ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... that "being of religious origin, cremation is mostly denoted in China by clerical terms, expressive of the metamorphosis the funeral pyre is intended to effect, viz. 'transformation of man'; 'transformation of the body'; 'metamorphosis by fire.' Without the clerical sphere it bears no such high-sounding names, being simply called 'incineration of corpses.' ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... town, the two soldiers who had been detailed as guards following close behind him. He looked back, saw the sinking blaze of the funeral pyre, shuddered and ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the streets with funerals.... Alike, slaves and plebeians were suddenly taken off amidst lamentations of their wives and children, who, while they mourned the dead, were themselves seized with the disease, and, perishing, were burned on the same funeral pyre." ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... on flight against the fading dawn The flames' red wings soar upward duskily. This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead That sparkled so the day I saw it first, And darkened slowly after. I am she Who loves all beauty—yet I wither it. Why have the high gods made me wreak their wrath— Forever since my maidenhood to sow Sorrow and blood about me? Lo, they keep Their bitter care above me ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... has milk-white 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 do thou take note from me, my good Egnatius. ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... towers and clambering perilously on the roofs, surged the press of the furious populace. It 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 ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... dragon as it lay stiff in death beside its conqueror. Afterwards, led by Wiglaf, seven chosen earls entered the cave and brought forth all the treasure, while others busied themselves in preparing the funeral pyre. ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... woman's anger does not die away suddenly. The assembled frogs, rejoicing in the newly fallen rain, held high festival; and if you listened attentively the voice of the cricket might be heard, like the undying crackle of Ravana's[1] funeral pyre. Amid the sounds might be distinguished the fall of the rain-drops on the leaves of the trees, and that of the leaves into the pools beneath; the noise of jackals' feet on the wet paths, occasionally that of the birds on the trees shaking the water from their drenched ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... in their funeral pyre, With such devotion to their ecstasy, That life knows no such rapture as to die; And die they do; for earthly life has naught Match'd with that burst of nature, even in thought; And all our dreams of better life above But close in one eternal ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... men who claimed that what had happened in Jailpore would be repeated in Bholat and elsewhere. There was no need, these maintained, to march and join hands with other rebels. Each unit was sufficient to itself. Each city would be a British funeral pyre. Why march? ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... 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 ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... perceive that you suspect me; you think that I seek to put you to some proof, but by the ashes of that funeral pyre whence my ancestor arose a god, I swear to you that I speak ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... pulseless evening as the two men gazed in moody silence at the approaching night. The sky had taken on that deep blue velvet softness of Italian beauty, and the low, red west of the dying day might have been reflected from some funeral pyre in distant, mystic India. A murmur of drowsy birds came from the darkening trees—a few hushed, plaintive notes, wistfully calling in ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... superhuman effort, M'liss dragged the prisoner past the blazing mattress, through the doorway into the passage, and drew the door, which opened outwardly, against him. The unhappy guard, still blazing like a funeral pyre, after wildly beating the air with his arms for a few seconds, dashed at the broken window, which gave way with his weight, and precipitated him, still flaming, into the yard below. A column of smoke and ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... land and hoard ever defended from all his foes, furthered his folk's weal, finished his course a hardy hero. — Now haste is best, that we go to gaze on our Geatish lord, and bear the bountiful breaker-of-rings to the funeral pyre. No fragments merely shall burn with the warrior. Wealth of jewels, gold untold and gained in terror, treasure at last with his life obtained, all of that booty the brands shall take, fire shall eat it. No earl must carry memorial jewel. ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... and night the corpses lay festering in the street, their bodies torn by vagrant dogs, and not until a pestilent exhalation began to rise from them were they gathered up and hauled by cartloads to a place in the southern suburbs, where a great funeral pyre was erected and the bodies were burned ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... that helmsman bold? The captain saw him reel, His nerveless hands released their task, He sank beside the wheel. The wave received his lifeless corse, Blackened with smoke and fire. God rest him! Never hero had A nobler funeral pyre! ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... fishing, and the enjoyments of literature, until, worn out with sensuality, he died in his sixtieth year, B.C. 78. A grand procession of the Senate he had saved, the equites, the magistrates, the vestal virgins, and his disbanded soldiers, bore his body to the funeral pyre, and his ashes were deposited beside the tombs of the kings. A splendid monument was raised to his memory, on which was inscribed his own epitaph, that no friend ever did him a kindness, and no enemy a wrong, without ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... his ship, With horse and harness, As on a funeral pyre. Odin placed A ring upon his finger, And whispered in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... "Rudra, the place 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... flight. The flight of Congress may be regarded as a blessing. But Congressmen do not brighten. PUNCHINELLO listens in vain for the swan song of SUMNER, and looks longingly, without being gratified by the spectacle of the oratorical funeral pyre of NYE. Almost the only gleam of humor he discerns in his weekly wading through the watery and windy wastes of the Congressional Globe is a comic coruscation ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... murder. The freedman and his companions had broken it up and fed the flames with withered boughs, the torn garments of the murdered man, and dry sea-weed. A blaze soon rose, and a body was carefully placed upon the wretched funeral pyre. It was the corpse of the great Pompey. One of the Imperator's veterans aided ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... might have been sung by the troubadours of France. Rajput maidens of noble blood scorned the throne of Muslim conquerors. Litters supposed to carry captive women poured out warriors armed to the teeth. Men and women in saffron robes and bridal garments mounted the great funeral pyre, and when the conquering Allah-ud-din entered the silent city of Chitore he found no resistance and no captives, for no one living was left from the great ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... drowned, or were mangled by sea-monsters. The only ones to obtain an endurable death, considering the sufferings round about, were such as killed one another or themselves before any calamity befell them. These did not have to submit to torture, and as corpses had the burning ships for their funeral pyre. The Caesarians, who saw this, at first so long as any of the foe were still able to defend themselves would not come near; but when the fire began to consume the ships and the men so far from being able to do any harm to an enemy could not even help themselves, they eagerly sailed ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... stole over the gardens of the Priory, at sunset. It was the close of one of the most exquisite days of Spring. A calm had settled over the country with the passing away of the sun-god. His attendant winds and voices had been sacrificed on his funeral pyre. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... fond 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, on ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... this was the Fourth Book of the Aeneid, and the most lamentable, heartrending story of Dido's love for Aeneas, of his desertion of her, of her grief and death upon the funeral pyre. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... let three little centuries pass; let the funeral pyre but be kindled, and quite burn itself out; and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... secretly from Rome," said one senator to another, as the Consultore passed them, "that they have found themselves a new diversion before the palace of the Vatican, and that some of our great ones here are burned in effigy to instruct the populace. A pile of Fra Paolo's writings doth light the funeral pyre; and all that he hath written or may hereafter write is ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... volume of smoke obscured the fires afar off, a dull crash (deadened by the distance) travelled to his ear, and the next moment, the towers on which he gazed had vanished from the scene, and one intense and sullen glare seemed to settle over the atmosphere,—making all Rome itself the funeral pyre of THE ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... A voice of wail went through the palaces of Asgard when Balder was slain by the mistletoe dart. Hermod rode down to the kingdom of Hela, or Death, to ransom the lost one. Meantime his body was set adrift on a floating funeral pyre. Hermod would have succeeded in his mission, had not Lok, the Spirit of Evil, interposed to thwart him. For this, Lok was bound in prison, with cords made of the twisted intestines of one of his own sons; and he will remain imprisoned until ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... overturned one of its walls for a distance of twenty stades. Then the King, convinced that the oracle was accomplished and despairing of any means of escape, to avoid falling alive into the enemy's hands constructed in his palace an immense funeral pyre, placed on it his gold and silver and his royal robes, and then, shutting himself up with his wives and eunuchs in a chamber formed in the midst of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... There is not one which has not made her subject to man. Men may rejoice in them because they make man the head of the woman. I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself on the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, "Thus saith the Lord," ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the graves of France's defenders. Far ahead I could discover groups of men with shovels, hastily burying those who remained. To the right a lazy column of dense smoke rose reluctantly in the heavy air. I fancied it came from a funeral pyre; we certainly smelled tar and petrol. The ground beneath rocked with the thundering of the distant cannon, and as one peal burst louder a flock of jet black crows mounted heavenward, mournfully cawing in ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... from the funeral pyre, Life's ashen, light residuum Lay soft, and, spent the cleansing fire, The urn ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... great object of their dread. They thought that if they could lay it in ashes, making it the funeral pyre of all its inmates, the weaker forts would be immediately abandoned by their garrisons in despair, or could easily be captured. An expedition was formed, consisting of more than a hundred Indian warriors, and accompanied it is said by two Frenchmen. Boone had sent three men back to the ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... borne in solemn state, the corpse (i.e. the book) is carried with slow procession, with the moaning music of flutes and fifes, the screaming of fiddles, and the thumping and mumbling of a cracked drum, to the open grave or the funeral pyre. A gleaming line of blazing torches and twinkling lanterns wave along the quiet streets and through the opened fields, and the snow creaks hoarsely under the tread of a hundred men. They reach the scene, and a circle forms around the consecrated spot; if the ceremony is a burial, the defunct is ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Mantuan there in sober triumph sate, Composed his posture, and his look sedate: On Homer still he fixed a reverent eye, Great without pride, in modest majesty, In living sculpture on the sides were spread The Latian wars, and haughty Turnus dead: Eliza stretched upon the funeral pyre, Aeneas bending with his aged sire: Troy flamed in burning gold, and o'er the throne Arms and the Man in golden ciphers shone. Four swans sustain a car of silver bright, With heads advanced, and pinions stretched for flight, Here, like some furious prophet, Pindar rode, And seemed to ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... yesterday such deeds— To-day such doom! Now whirled upon the earth, Now his limbs dashed aloft, they dragged him, those Wild horses, till, all gory, from the wheels Released—and no man, not his nearest friends, Could in that mangled corpse have traced Orestes. They laid the body on the funeral pyre, And, while we speak, the Phocian strangers bear, In a small, brazen, melancholy urn, That handful of cold ashes to which all The grandeur of the beautiful hath shrunk. Within they bore him—in his father's land To find ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... 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
... rise of morn, at dewy eve, in the shadows of night, under the watchful eye of one whom it were superfluous to call Demon—combined with the struggle of parental Poverty to turn it, when completed, to the right account, may be as the sprinkling of a few drops of sweet water on my funeral pyre. I ask no more. Let it be, in justice, merely said of me, as of a gallant and eminent naval Hero, with whom I have no pretensions to cope, that what I have done, I did, in despite ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... 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, What warm hearts on your marble beat, With many a prayer unanswered?" ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... coldness and with downcast eyes, saying that she could no longer be his wife, after having dwelt in the zenana of the demon. Sita assured him of her innocence; but on his continuing to revile her, she ordered her funeral pyre to be built, since she would rather die by fire than live despised by Rama. The sympathy of all the bystanders was with Sita, but Rama saw her enter the flames without a tremor. Soon Agni, the god of fire, appeared, bearing the uninjured Sita in his arms. Her innocence thus ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... interesting and historic, and there's a Peel-tower in ruin. Indeed, all is in ruin at Lincluden Abbey; but that makes it the sweeter and sadder. And as we came, the red of the crumbling sandstone burned in the fire of sunset like a funeral pyre heaped with roses. The melancholy, crowding trees and the delicate groups of little bushes were like mourners coming with their children to look ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... nameless world, away in remotest space, which has suddenly kindled, blazed, smouldered, darkened, and vanished forever from its place, is perhaps a solemn symbol of the fate of our own planet; hinting at a time when the earth, too, shall make itself a funeral pyre, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Brynhild whom Segurd found, clad in helm and byrne, the warrior maid, who gave him counsel "the deepest that ever yet was given to living man," and "wrought on him to the performing of great deeds;" who, when he died, raised high the funeral pyre and lay down on it beside him, crying, "Nor shall the door swing to at the heel of him as I go in beside him!" We are of a race of women that of old knew no fear, and feared no death, and lived great lives and hoped great hopes; and if today some of us have fallen on ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... Iris, Priam conveys the body of his son back to Troy, where his mother, wife, and the other Trojan women utter a touching lament. Then a funeral pyre is built, and the Iliad of Homer closes with ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... of the king of blood and the pope of gold. We know how they ended. Jacques de Molay, from his funeral pyre, adjured them both to appear before God within the year. Ae to geron sithullia, says Aristophanes. "Dying hoary heads ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... the departure of AEneas, the unhappy queen resolved to put an end to her life. She bade her servants erect in the inner court yard of her palace a lofty pile of wood, called a funeral pyre, and upon it to place an image of AEneas as well as the arms he had left behind him. Then mounting the pyre, to which flaming torches had been applied, she stabbed herself with her false lover's sword, and ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... twelve months. His wife comes to the cemetery to perform the obsequies of her son, who had died from the bite of a serpent. The two determine to burn themselves with the corpse of their son. When Haricchandra, after placing his son on the funeral pyre, is meditating on the Supreme Spirit, the lord Hari Naraya[n.]a Krish[n.]a, all the gods arrive headed by Dharma (righteousness) and accompanied by Vicvamitra. Dharma entreats the king to desist from his rash enterprise, ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous |
