"Pyre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... done, and the dead Rajah was laid with his feet turned towards his native country. Then twelve bottles of kerosene were poured over him and he was covered completely with thin slabs of pine wood. For almost another hour the relations and servants kept piling up the funeral pyre which looked like one of those piles of wood that carpenters keep in their yards. Then on top of this was poured the contents of twenty bottles of oil, and on top of all they emptied a bag of fine shavings. A few ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... distance in the scullery ready to catch. Then he would smash the house lamp on the staircase, a fall with that in his hand was to be the ostensible cause of the blaze, and then he would cut his throat at the top of the kitchen stairs, which would then become his funeral pyre. He would do all this on Sunday evening while Miriam was at church, and it would appear that he had fallen downstairs with the lamp, and been burnt to death. There was really no flaw whatever that he could ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... gentle guest The Dreamer confided his past sins and his penitence, while he laid upon the glowing coals the year's accumulation of exercise books, and the like, which had served their purpose and were finished and done with, and watched the devouring flames leap from the little funeral pyre ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... melodious music disturb the quiet of the evening, and the noise of drums is echoed from the walls of the pagodas. The corpse is borne on a bier covered with a white sheet, and men of the caste of body-burners arrange it on the pyre, a pile of wood stacked up by the waterside. Then they set fire to the dry shavings, and the wood pile crackles. Thick clouds of smoke rise up and the smell of burned flesh is borne ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... of our desire. Loved are these confines as immortal clime, And dear the hearth-flame as the altar fire; When fate accomplished wins her utmost bourne, And fulness ousts for aye fair images, Will doting mem'ry from their funeral pyre Rise phoenix-wise and earth-sick spirits yearn For fragrant flower, and sward, and changeful trees, For storied rose, and sweet poetic morn, For sound of bird, and brook, and murmuring bees, For luckless fancies of illusion born, What ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... she not be, And thus escape the eternal pyre, No pirate's heart would dance with glee Like mine, to ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... ponderous blows of his iron logic. He pushed me away from all I had esteemed reliable in the universe, till I seemed to stand on the verge of creation. There I hung with the strength of terror. Then I found poet Campbell true to nature, where he speaks of hope standing intact ''mid Nature's funeral pyre.' I insisted upon 'hoping,' in spite ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... to make the common property of gossiping tongues—that I intend to depart. If there should be anything left of me—which is less than probable considering the inflammatory character of the material I design for my pyre—I would be obliged if, without giving anybody any trouble, it could be buried in my garden, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... convict their delicious drink of responsibility for that Munich State Opera House Horror and everything else. Reports from confidential investigators in Munich confirmed this. It had, of course, been impossible to interview the two thousand men and women who had turned the Opera House into a pyre for their own immolation, but none of the tiny minority who had kept their sanity and saved ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... hall, Till well I know yon midnight festival Of swarming stars, and them that lonely go, Bearers to man of summer and of snow, Great lords and shining, throned in heavenly fire. And still I await the sign, the beacon pyre That bears Troy's capture on a voice of flame Shouting o'erseas. So surely to her aim Cleaveth a woman's heart, man-passioned! And when I turn me to my bed—my bed Dew-drenched and dark and stumbling, to which near Cometh no dream nor ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... then lull Pestilence to sleep:— Pile high the pyre of expiation now, A forest's spoil of boughs, and on the heap Pour venomous gums, which sullenly and slow, When touched by flame, shall burn, and melt, and flow, 4130 A stream of clinging fire,—and fix on high A net of iron, and spread forth below A couch of snakes, and scorpions, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... 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 ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... or perhaps, as Meleagros, retired for a while in disgust from the sight of men; wedded at eventide the violet light (Oinone, Iole), which he had forsaken in the morning; sank, as Herakles, upon a blazing funeral-pyre, or, like Agamemnon, perished in a blood-stained bath; or, as the fish-god, Dagon, swam nightly through the subterranean waters, to appear eastward again at daybreak. Sometimes Phaethon, his rash, inexperienced son, would take the reins and drive the solar chariot too near the earth, causing ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... Sardanapalus in making his palace his own funeral pyre and burning himself upon it, is also attributed to the king ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... reluctantly. They had 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
... the lady stood by the body (shoulder) of the corpse as it lay on the pyre. Botkine makes ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... world-devastation, Muspilli, the "Twilight of the Gods." It is this conquering of the world through the victory of self which Wagner conveys as the highest interpretation of our national myths. As Brunhilde approaches the funeral pyre to sacrifice to the beloved dead, Siegfried, the life—the only tie which still binds her to ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... of which has been stolen while its guardian sleeps, comes out to slaughter his people. The old hero buckles on his rune-covered sword again, and goes forth to battle with the monster. He slays it, indeed, but is blasted by its fiery breath, and dies after the encounter. His companions light his pyre upon a lofty spit of land jutting out into the winter sea. Weapons and jewels and drinking bowls, taken from the Fire Drake's treasure, were thrown into the tomb for the use of the ghost in the other world; and a mighty barrow was raised upon the spot to be a beacon far and wide to seafaring ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... trees in beauty clad, But still that beauty makes us sad, E'en while we may admire, For death has caus'd that sudden bloom Stern death, the tenant of the tomb, Or funereal pyre. ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... which my grave is shown, This cave of many shapes, Through which the melancholy mountain gapes, This mountain's self, a vast Abysmal shadow cast Suddenly on my heart, as if 't were meant To be my rustic pyre, my strange new monument, All fill my heart with wonder and with fear, What buried mysteries are hidden here That terrify me so, And make me tremble 'neath impending woe. [A solemn strain of music is heard from within.] Nay more, illusion now doth bear to me The sweetest sounds of dulcet ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... all the houses that stood about. The castle flared like a torch; the flames leaped in the sky; the houses tumbled to the ground. In that place the king was burned with fire, and all his household who fled to Generth with him. Neither dame nor damsel got her living from that pyre; and on the same day perished the king's wife, who ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... tomb of Mausolus, that was erected by his sorrowing Queen, Artemisia, at Halicarnassus, upon the AEgean's eastern shore, and that became at once one of the few great wonders of the ancient world. This was intended to do honor to the loved and illustrious dead, and this it did as no grave or pyre could do. This was also intended to protect the lifeless form from ruthless robbery and reckless profanation, and it performed this task so well that for near two thousand years no human eye beheld ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... adorned with curious carvings of elephants. We made the acquaintance of its high priest under very peculiar circumstances. We met him at a funeral. It was the cremation of one of his priests. On the outskirts of the village a great crowd surrounded a burning pyre. Two or three cords of rough wood had been piled up, with the body of the priest in its center and the bier on which the body had been brought laid upon its top. The fire was blazing upward, and a deafening beating of tom-toms gave sacredness to the obsequies. The awe-stricken followers ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... ever I behold the sons of Pritha return to the city, I shall again be emaciated by renouncing food and drink, even though there be no obstacle in my path! And I shall either take poison or hang myself, either enter the pyre or kill myself with my own weapons. But I shall never be able to behold the ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... crystal globe filled full of fire, And flashing like a color pyre, All heavened beneath the eye of morning, To sate the hunger of ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... the little box to a quiet corner of the orchard, and made a little pyre of fragrant boughs—for so I interpreted the wish of that young, unquiet spirit—and the beautiful words are now safe, taken up again into the aerial spaces from which ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... ten years old. And we stood in the great square with all the children and all the men of the City, sent to behold the burning. They brought the Transgressor out into the square and they led [-them-] {him} to the pyre. They had torn out the tongue of the Transgressor, so that they could speak no longer. The Transgressor were young and tall. They had hair of gold and eyes blue as morning. They walked to the pyre, and their step did not falter. And of all the faces on that ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... "does not satisfy love; it must be paid back in its own coin." "The platform of the altar of love," says Jane Porter, with great accuracy of metaphor, "is constructed of virtue, beauty, and affection; such is the pyre, such the offering; but the ethereal spark must come from heaven that lights the sacrifice." "This passion is," says Dr. South, "the great instrument and engine of nature, the bond and cement of society, the spring and spirit of the universe. It is the whole ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... maiden on a Brahman casts her eye, devoid of shame, Let her expiate her folly in a pyre ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... every ninth night eight other rings dropped off it, though no one could see how they came; this the greatest of the gods ever wore upon his arm, until the death of his beautiful son Baldur, when, as token of his great love he placed it upon the dead youth's breast as he lay on his funeral pyre. To Frey was given the golden boar, which would run faster than any horse, over the sea or through the air, and wherever it went, there it would be light, because the bristles shone so brightly. To Thor Brok gave the dull-looking hammer, saying, that whatever he struck with it would ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... have made the Universe Had he not glowed with passion's sacred fire; Though man oft turns the blessing to a curse, And burns himself on his own funeral pyre, Though scarred the soul be where its light burns bright, Yet where it is ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... gates of the city. Nine days' space did they labour, and great was the heap from the forest: But on the tenth resurrection for mortals of luminous morning, Forth did they carry, with weeping, the corse of the warrior Hector, Laid him on high on the pyre, and enkindled the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... knowledge of the earliest period. Pre-eminent among these is the discovery, by Mr William Peppe, on the Birdpur estate, adjoining the boundary between English and Nepalese territory, of the st[u]pa, or cairn, erected by the S[a]kiya clan over their share of the ashes from the cremation pyre of the Buddha. About 12 m. to the north-east of this spot has been found an inscribed pillar, put up by Asoka as a record of his visit to the Lumbini Garden, as the place where the future Buddha had been born. Although more than two centuries later than the event to which it refers, this inscription ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... to that suggestion. The same nature which in the fourth century ran into the epidemic frenzy of anchoritism, and impelled the Circumcellionist multitudes to extort the boon of martyrdom from reluctant tribunals, may be admitted capable even of the madness of a voluntary aspiration to the stake and pyre of the witch. Certain it is that many of the convicts boasted of their interviews with the Devil, and seemed to be, if they were not, possessed with the conviction of having actually partaken of the orgies imputed to them. Had they really been there in imagination? Was it that the popular mind had ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... cycle. On the summit of the mountain, the procession paused till midnight, when, as the constellation of the Pleiades[11] approached the zenith, the new fire was kindled by the friction of some sticks placed on the breast of the victim. The flame was soon communicated to a funeral-pyre on which the body of the slaughtered captive was thrown. As the light streamed up toward heaven, shouts of joy and triumph burst forth from the countless multitudes who covered the hills, the terraces of the temples, and the housetops.... Couriers, with torches lighted at the blazing beacon, ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... On a stated day, at Susa in Persia, Kalanos gave up his aged body by entering a funeral pyre in view of the whole Macedonian army. The historians record the astonishment of the soldiers who observed that the yogi had no fear of pain or death, and who never once moved from his position as he was consumed in the flames. Before leaving for his cremation, ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... 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, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... that even when there is no longer any hope, when he is irrevocably sentenced, and he knows that he can no longer deceive anyone, neither mankind nor Him whose name he profanes by this last sacrilege, he yet exclaims, "O Christ! I shall suffer even as Thou." It is only by the light of his funeral pyre that the dark places of his life can be examined, that this bloody plot is unravelled, and that other victims, forgotten and lost in the shadows, arise like spectres at the foot of the scaffold, and escort ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... jilted her, and so she stabbed herself on a funeral pyre after setting fire to it, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... was spent in preparations for the solemn ceremonies of pyre and mound, and the great feast which should mark the reigning of another king in Sogn. The young king himself went about bravely, seeing to everything but speaking little. Helgi watched him anxiously, ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... is he, 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
... of Wihstan bade orders be given, Mood-valiant man, to many of heroes, Holders of homesteads, that they hither from far, [6]Leaders of liegemen, should look for the good one 55 With wood for his pyre: "The flame shall now swallow (The wan fire shall wax[7]) the warriors' leader Who the rain of the iron often abided, When, sturdily hurled, the storm of the arrows Leapt o'er linden-wall, the lance rendered ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... strewing their graves 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 surviving ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... exceptions to the general rule of natural affinity that only those are safe who pray for a heavenly hand to lead them. Because they depended on themselves and not on God there are thousands of women every year going to the slaughter. In India women leap on the funeral pyre of a dead husband. We have a worse spectacle than that in America—women innumerable leaping on the funeral pyre of ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... several paths ran from the point where he stood. He called to his sister again—no reply. He began to run, and came up against the wall. He started again, then stopped. He saw a red light at the end of a long gallery. This light came from the funeral pyre of Francoise and ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... our friend." The bridegroom at once carries his wounded and suffering bride to his own house; and all the people gather round the post for the pleasure of burning it and the demon together. A great pile of firewood has meanwhile been heaped up about it, and the women run round the pyre cursing in shrill voices the wicked spirit who has wrought all this evil. The men join in with hoarser cries and animate themselves for the business in hand by deep draughts of an intoxicant which has been provided for the occasion by the parents-in-law. ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... lurid flashes of lightning darting as it were in mutual enmity from the clashing clouds—the low, distant growling of the coming tempest—the long column of smoke and fire shooting upward from the funeral pyre, and looking like one of the gigantic torches of Pandemonium—the war of the elements combined with the worst effects of frenzied superstition of man—the suddenness and strangeness of the awful scene—all the circumstances produced such an impression ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... is that the mound was built by gradual accretion in the following manner. That when a death occurred a funeral pyre was erected on the mound, upon which the body was placed. That after the body was consumed, any fragments of bones remaining were gathered, placed in a pot, and buried, and that the ashes and cinders were covered by a layer of sand brought from the immediate vicinity ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... whose iron frames had stood This racking waste of famine and of blood, Faint, dying wretches clung, from whom the shout Of triumph like a maniac's laugh broke out:— There, others, lighted by the smouldering fire, Danced like wan ghosts about a funeral pyre Among the dead and dying strewed around;— While some pale wretch lookt on and from his wound Plucking the fiery dart by which he bled, In ghastly transport waved it ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... advent 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
... reindeer pull over the snow; And on the Finns, the gentlest of mankind, Fair men, who live in holes under the ground; Nor did he look once more to Ida's plain, Nor tow'rd Valhalla, and the sorrowing Gods; For well he knew the Gods would heed his word, And cease to mourn, and think of Balder's pyre. But in Valhalla all the Gods went back From around Balder, all the Heroes went; And left his body stretch'd upon the floor. And on their golden chairs they sate again, Beside the tables, in the hall of Heaven; And before each the cooks who served them placed ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... unguess'd want, And so to lie, Between those quivering plumes that thro' fine ether pant, For hopeless, sweet eternity? What God unhonour'd hitherto in songs, Or which, that now Forgettest the disguise That Gods must wear who visit human eyes, Art Thou? Thou art not Amor; or, if so, yon pyre, That waits the willing victim, flames with vestal fire; Nor mooned Queen of maids; or, if thou'rt she, Ah, then, from Thee Let Bride and Bridegroom learn what kisses be! In what veil'd hymn Or mystic dance Would he ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... me a cloven fire Out of death, and it burns in the draught Of the breathing hosts, Kindles the darkening pyre For the sorrowful, till strange brands waft ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... tress 90 Of flowers budded newly; and the dew Had taken fairy phantasies to strew Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve, And so the dawned light in pomp receive. For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre Of brightness so unsullied, that therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine 100 Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; The lark was lost in him; cold springs had ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... by Plato, in the tenth book of "The Republic", one Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian, was slain in battle; and ten days afterwards, when they collected the dead for burial, his body alone showed no taint of corruption. His relatives, however, bore it off to the funeral pyre; and on the twelfth day, lying there, he returned to life, and he told them what he had seen in the other world. Many wonders he related concerning the dead, for example, with their rewards and punishments: but what had impressed ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... jaunty than when he had started. We knew that he was trembling, we knew that he would have blessed us to call him back. But we would not yield, neither would he. Looking in our direction at every step he proceeded and reached the burning ghat. He reached the identical spot where the pyre had been erected in ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... 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 ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... the spirits; each is swathed by that wherewith he is enkindled." "My Master," I replied, "by hearing thee am I more certain, but already I deemed that it was so, and already I wished to say to thee, Who is in that fire that cometh so divided at its top that it seems to rise from the pyre on which Eteocles was put with his brother?" [1] He answered me, "There within are tormented Ulysses and Diomed, and thus together they go in punishment, as of old in wrath.[2] And within their flame they groan for the ambush of the horse that ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... called a Mote, which means something desperately 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 on ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... council were hung, naked, on the balcony of the city hall; the people who had sought refuge in the main church were put to the sword and their bodies mutilated; and the priest was burnt alive in the church, the furniture of the edifice constituting his funeral pyre. ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... memory Of time when thou didst try Thy gleaning wing through human years, And met, ay, knew the sigh Of men who pray, the tears That hide the woman's star, The brave ascending fire That is youth's beacon and too soon his pyre,— Yea, all our striving, bateless and unseeing, That builds each day our Heaven new. More deep in time's unnearing blue, Farther and ever fleeing The ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... pyre dy'nas ty de ny' hy'dra type an'ti type re ly' ty'phus fyke a sy'lum re ply' ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... been borne by herself. The children grew in stature and in strength and when they played in the fields were the admiration of every one that saw them. They were about twelve years of age when the potter died, and his wife threw herself on the pyre and was burnt with her husband's body. The boy with the moon on his forehead (which he always kept concealed with a turban, lest it should attract notice) and his beautiful sister now broke up the potter's establishment, sold his wheel and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... A pyre four feet high was raised, the strips being laid from north to south and east to west alternately, and they dried their blankets ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Sweet-spoken, a fruitful wife; Earth had no thorn, and desire No sting, neither death any dart; What hadst thou to do amongst these, Thou, clothed with a burning fire, Thou, girt with sorrow of heart, Thou sprung of the seed of the seas As an ear from a seed of corn As a brand plucked forth of a pyre, As a ray shed forth of the moon For division of soul and disease, For a dart and a sting and a thorn? What ailed thee then to be born? ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... 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 exclaiming—"'Tis all ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... many hands (he had no few, This God of gifts and charity), The marble race, that smiled on me, I mocked, and said, "O God unthroned, Lone exile from the faith you owned, No priest to bring you sacrifice, No censer with its breath of spice, No land to mourn your funeral pyre. O King, whose subjects felt your fire, Now dead, now stone, without a slave, Unfeared, unloved, you have no grave. Poor God, who cannot understand, And what of your fair Eastern land, What dark brows brushed your dusky feet, What warm hearts on your marble beat, With ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... Burning-Ghat, Oh, Lallji, my desire, And now a faint and lonely flame Uprises from the pyre. The thin grey smoke in spirals drifts Across the opal sky. Would that I were a wife of thine, And thus with thee could die! How could I know That thou wouldst go, Oh, Lallji, my desire? The lips I missed The flames have ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... house built of bricks and a wooden cottage. The flame was prodigious: it soared into the sky like the eruption of a volcano, and the wooden cottage, with its flat logs and blazing roof, looked like a sacrificial pyre consuming the body of some warrior or Viking. In the light of the flames the soft sky, which was starless and flooded with stillness by the large full moon, had turned from blue to green. A dense crowd had gathered ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... frame of Madeleine did not long survive the blow that Louis had prepared for her—not, indeed, in the sense of a guilty and blood-stained hand, but with the merit of an Abraham who, at the command of Heaven, prepared a funeral pyre for his child. Madeleine could scarcely weep; the grief of nature was calmed by the impulses of grace, and she felt in her heart a holy joy in the sublime destinies of her son. Could we, in the face of the holy teachings of the Church, institute a comparison between the mother of the soldier ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... succeed 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 ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Church of the Sant'Apostolli, they left her lying in state before the altar of the Cappella Cornaro, while in the church, outside the chapel, the Ducal guards kept watch. Very still and pale she was in the light of the tall wax candles burning about her and the torches flaring from the funeral pyre, and strange to look upon in the coarse brown cape and cowl of the habit of St. Francis, with a hempen cord for girdle. But the Lady Margherita had tenderly folded the hood away from the beautiful face and head, and in the pale patrician hands a rose lay lightly clasped, and a wealth ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... up the body and carrying it to the ships, while Odysseus drives off the Trojans behind. The Achaeans then bury Antilochus and lay out the body of Achilles, while Thetis, arriving with the Muses and her sisters, bewails her son, whom she afterwards catches away from the pyre and transports to the White Island. After this, the Achaeans pile him a cairn and hold games in his honour. Lastly a dispute arises between Odysseus and Aias over the arms ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... touch: the lote, that sods The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds, Around the sleepy water and its reeds, Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods. Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer's dead! The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre, Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire: While from the east, as from a garden bed, Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon—like some Great golden ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... lights of female love, the most faithful and heroic, offering a beautiful relief to the preternatural malice dividing the two sons of dipus. This malice was so intense, that when the corpses of both brothers were burned together on the same funeral pyre (as by one tradition they were), the flames from each parted asunder, and refused to mingle. This female love was so intense, that it survived the death of its object, cared not for human praise or ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Loring might as well have burned herself on her husband's funeral pyre, Hindoo fashion!" argued Lavendar. "A woman's life hasn't ended at two and twenty. It's hardly begun, and I fear the lady in question will arouse ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... saying, 'So 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 and Vidura. And after introducing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... pine-nuts, and withered leaves, and such Things as catch fire and blaze with one sole spark; Bring cedar, too, and precious drugs, and spices, And mighty planks, to nourish a tall pile; Bring frankincense and myrrh, too, for it is 280 For a great sacrifice I build the pyre! And heap ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... she had given him had gone their own ways with men of their own choosing and he didn't know what had become of any of them. And the village people—they would start picking the Crown apart to sell the jewels, one by one, before the ashes of his pyre stopped smoking. ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... my heart is killing With her gold arrow pain-distilling; The God of Love with torches burning Lights pyre on pyre of ardent yearning. She is the girl for whom I'd die; I want none dearer, far or nigh, Though grief on ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... 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
... Yet now that his son is dead, he is mad with grief at his loss. The boy had a number of ponies, some in harness and others not broken in, dogs both great and small, nightingales, parrots and blackbirds—all these Regulus slaughtered at his pyre. Yet an act like that was no token of grief; it was but a mere parade of it. It is strange how people are flocking to call upon him. Every one detests and hates him, yet they run to visit him in shoals as though they both admired and loved ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... in darkness beneath them, save for the one staring rectangle that marked a pyre. But dawn shimmered ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... pass away Ere the last headaches born of New Year's Day; With blasting breath the fierce destroyer came And wrapped the victim in his robes of flame; The pictured sky with redder morning blushed, With scorching streams the naiad's fountain gushed, With kindling mountains glowed the funeral pyre, Forests ablaze and rivers all on fire,— The scenes dissolved, the shrivelling curtain fell,— Art spread her wings and sighed ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... regale a good appetite with blue points, terrapin stew, filet of sole and saddle of mutton, touched up here and there with the high lights of rare old sherry, rich claret and dry monopole, pause as the dead quail is laid before you, on a funeral pyre of toast, and consider this: "Here lies the charred remains of the Farmer's Ally and Friend, poor Bob White. In life he devoured 145 different kinds of bad insects, and the seeds of 129 anathema weeds. For the smaller pests of the farm, he was the most ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... ineffable theriac! ineffable pigment! admirable antidote! celestial purge! superior to all drugs of the faculty! sweeter than aromatics! stronger than unguents together; thou cleanest the stomach like scammony, the lungs like hyssop, thou purgest the head like pyre-thrig!"[27] ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... dancing battalion of destroying flames! ... For one fleeting breath of time Theos stared aghast at the horrid scene, . . then making a superhuman effort he raised Sah-luma's corpse entirely from the ground and staggered with his burden away, . . away from the burning Shrine, . . the funeral pyre, as it vaguely seemed to him, of a wasted Love and a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... discovered relics of the Mycenaean age—namely, the disposal of the bodies of the dead. They are neither buried with their arms, in stately tholos tombs nor in shaft graves, as at Mycenae: whether they be princes or simple oarsmen, they are cremated. A pyre of wood is built; on this the warrior's body is laid, the pyre is lighted, the body is reduced to ashes, the ashes are placed in a vessel or box of gold, wrapped round with precious cloths (no arms are buried, as a general rule), and a mound, howe, barrow, or tumulus is raised over all. Usually a ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... humble creatures Well accept her rule austere; Titan-born, to hardy natures Cold is genial and dear. As Southern wrath to Northern right Is but straw to anthracite; As in the day of sacrifice, When heroes piled the pyre, The dismal Massachusetts ice Burned more than others' fire, So Spring guards with surface cold The garnered heat of ages old. Hers to sow the seed of bread, That man and all the kinds be fed; And, when the sunlight fills the hours, Dissolves the ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... her red apron and was waving it frantically above her head; but Clayton, still fearing that even this might not be seen, hurried off toward the northern point where lay his signal pyre ready for the match. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... neighborhood is wofully harried by a fire-spewing dragon. Beowulf determines to kill him. In the ensuing struggle both Beowulf and the dragon are slain. The grief of the Geats is inexpressible. They determine, however, to leave nothing undone to honor the memory of their lord. A great funeral-pyre is built, and his body is burnt. Then a memorial-barrow is made, visible from a great distance, that sailors afar may be constantly reminded of the prowess of ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... rain gave prophecy: The nuptial dance of comedy Yields to the funeral train. Assemble where his pyre must burn: Honour his ashes in their urn: And on another day return To hear his ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... perplex me, Sitting by the fire: Just a note, and lo, the change then! Like a child, I turn and range then, Till a shadow starts to vex me— Passion's wasted pyre. So do songs pursue, perplex ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... bit. If I had my way every book in existence would be placed on a huge funeral pyre and conflagrated instantly. Moreover, it would be a criminal offence punishable by the death sentence for any person to bring another of the infernal nuisances into the world. That is my private opinion publicly expressed." ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... shown. As night began to fall, the Manonoans began to dig a huge pit at a village named Maota, a mile from the scene of the battle, and as some dug, others carried an enormous quantity of dead logs of timber to the spot. By midnight the dreadful funeral pyre was completed. ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... was passing through the streets of Foo Chow my attention was directed to a gayly-dressed woman seated in a chair decked with flowers. I was informed that she was a Chinese widow who was about to sacrifice herself upon the pyre in accordance with the custom of the country. I subsequently learned that when this woman reached the place appointed for the ceremony, she found an immense assemblage, including many mandarins and ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... we dragged our vessel up on to the beach, and lay down to sleep on the shore. At break of day I sent my comrades forth to bring the body of Elpenor from the palace. We took it out to a rocky place on the shore, and cut down trees to build a funeral pyre. There we burned the body and performed the funeral rites, and we built a tomb and placed an oar at ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... child consisted in memorizing many verses of the Bible, the "Three R's," and wood-craft. His childhood was strenuous. In his mother's arms he saw the burning of the town of New Ulm, which was the funeral pyre for the women and children of that place when they were massacred by ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... describe no more, save that the funeral pyre, which the murderers had raised to hide their crime, had not reached them, ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... 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 pounce down upon the body, and tear away pieces of flesh from ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... window and looked out. Bonfires were springing up in the open square in front of the Government House. Mixed with the red glare came leaping yellow flames. The wooden benches were piled together and fired, and by each such pyre stood a gesticulating, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... illustrious and delicate Kripi, cheerless and afflicted, is endeavouring to perform the last rites on the body of her lord slain in battle. There, those reciters of Samas, having placed the body of Drona on the funeral pyre and having ignited the fire with due rites, are singing the three (well-known) Samas. Those brahmacaris, with matted locks on their heads, have piled the funeral pyre of that Brahmana with bows and darts and car-boxes, O Madhava! Having collected ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... and barbarous, and then covered his own face with his mantle and wept, remembering how in his own family his grandfather Antigonus and his father Demetrius had experienced similar reverses of fortune. He had the body and head of Pyrrhus decently arranged on a funeral pyre and burned. Halkyoneus, meeting Helenus in poor and threadbare clothes, embraced him kindly, and led him to Antigonus, who said to him, "This meeting, my boy, is better than the other; but still you do not do right in not removing these ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... solemn stars that light The dread infinitudes of night, Mid wintry solitudes that lie Where lonely Hecla's toweling pyre Reddens an awful space of sky With Thor's eternal altar fire! Worn with the fever of unrest, And spent with years of eager quest, Beneath the vaulted heaven they stood, Pale, haggard eyed, of garb uncouth, The seekers of the Hidden Good, The ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... gleam at times like the pyre Of the west, when the sun in a blaze doth expire; Now tinged like the orange, now flaming with fire! Half the crimson of roses and purple ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... Terrific shapes it cannot keep at rest; All the whole heaven a crown of clouds doth wear, And with the curling mist, like streaming hair, This mountain's brow is bound. Outspread below, the whole horizon round Is one volcanic pyre. The sun is dead, the air is smoke, heaven fire. Philosophy, how far from thee I stray, When I cannot explain the marvels of this day! And now the sea, upborne on clouds the while, Seems like some ruined pile, That crumbling down the wind as 'twere a wall, In ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... casts two on the pyre, in order to leave for himself seven. And in many places he uses the ternary, quinary, and septenary number, especially the number nine (I. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the attractive features of the boy, then went on in a still weaker voice, "Listen! I, too, shall be dead before the day comes. Twenty paces from here, on the other side of the brook, there is a big pile of firewood. Bring it here, make a pyre, put our bodies upon it, cover them over, and set fire to the whole—fire, until we are reduced ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... utter slander and abuse, I should advise him to pay no attention to the state of his mouth nor to attempt to remove the stains from his teeth with oriental powders: he would be better employed in rubbing them with charcoal from some funeral pyre. Least of all should he wash them with common water; rather let his guilty tongue, the chosen servant of lies and bitter words, rot in the filth and ordure that it loves! Is it reasonable, wretch, that your tongue should be fresh and clean, when your voice is foul and loathsome, or that, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... he, the all-conqueror, sent word to Tara that he might see her before death. But even that could not be. And she, loyal wife, had only one thought in her heart. 'Can the blossom live when the tree is cut down?' Calm, without tears, she bade his weeping warriors build up the funeral pyre, putting the torch with her own hand. Then, before them all, she climbed on that couch of fire and went through the leaping scorching flames ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the rush of battle he holds scales, and for the golden coin you spend on him he sends you back lifeless shapes of men; they sent out men, the loving friends receive back well-smoothed ashes from the funeral pyre. They sing the heroic fall of some—all for another's wife; and some murmur discontent against the sons of Atreus, and some have won a grave in the land they had ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... was martyred at the stake (Martyr. Polyc. c. 16). Similarly Lucian represents himself as spreading a report, which was taken up and believed by the Cynic's disciples, that a vulture was seen to rise from the pyre of Peregrinus when he consigned himself to a voluntary death by burning. It would seem that the satirist here is laughing at the credulity of these simple Christians, with whose history he appears to have had at least ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... baptism of death. This done, they placed its feet in the water and left it looking very small and lonely. Presently appeared a tall, white-draped woman who took her stand by the body and wailed. It was the dead one's mother. Again the bearers approached and laid the corpse upon the flaming pyre. ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... rush, Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush, 375 Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall, And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all! —Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm, Immortal NATURE lifts her changeful form, Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, 380 And soars and shines, another ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... be," said Ten-Teh from the door. "Pass Upward with a tranquil mind, O stranger from the outer land. The torch which you have borne so far will not fail until his pyre is lit." ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... 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 ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was indefatigable in his exertions, and full of forethought and sagacity in his arrangements. It was a fearful task; he stood before us at last, his hands scorched and blistered by the flames of the funeral-pyre, and by touching the burnt relics as he placed them in the receptacles prepared for the purpose. And there, in compass of that small case, was gathered all that remained on earth of him whose genius and virtue ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... sea, from the shore at Graden-Wester, and far inland from the peak of Graystiel, the most eastern summit of the Caulder Hills. Bernard Huddlestone, although God knows what were his obsequies, had a fine pyre at the moment of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was that pertic'ler I couldn't do with 'is fads, not at fancy prices, I couldn't. I 'ad to tell 'im to gow, for Mussy's syke, where 'e'd git 'is own French cook, and 'is own butler to black 'is 'arf-doz'n pyre o' boots all at once for 'im." This was the recognised fiction by which Mrs. Rogers accounted for the departure of any of her lodgers. Lest it should seem to speak badly for her willingness and for the quality ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... also, my father, given orders that funeral honours be paid to my brother; a pyre rich with woven fabrics and wine and oil and spices, and, from my own share of the Etruscan spoils, I have chosen a vase boldly pictured ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... have done if Charley had been drowned while we were engaged?" she exclaimed, mentally, with horror. Her heart turned to ice, while her cheeks flamed up as if scorched by the blaze of a funeral pyre consuming all her earthly affections. The tears burst ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad |
