"Funereal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deceased persons. Among some of the American Indians this was carried to such an extent as utterly to impoverish all the relatives, who, in fact, seem to have accumulated wealth solely for the purpose of funereal display. By a few tribes, like the Natchez, human sacrifice—forcibly of slaves, voluntarily on the part of relatives—was enjoined whenever a prominent man died. In most nations, however, the sacrifices were limited to horses, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... arms, walked beside the bed, led by a page, so that Caesar could mount in case of surprise or attack: before him and behind, both right and left, marched his army, their arms in rest, but without beating of drums or blowing of trumpets: this gave a sombre, funereal air to the whole procession, which at the gate of the city met Prospero Colonna awaiting it with ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... stood behind the door, and he himself sat in stiff funereal state by the window; he held a folded white handkerchief in his folded hands, and was diligently ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... full of cabinets of black lacquer richly decorated with gold and mother-of-pearl. There are sombre carved wood chairs set back against the wall. It is all very costly, but to us it seems uncomfortable and funereal. The chief things that attract us are rows of little red pieces of paper of odd lengths hanging over strings from the ceiling, as if they were drying after a washing-day. The Englishman explains that the Chinaman is ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... line between his brows, and balanced a paper-knife on his finger. He tried to appear composed, but a shiver of impatience ran through him more than once, and the color came and went on his cheek. His mother was by his side, controlling her face to a rigidly funereal expression. But the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... contemplation. Whenever he closed his eyes in short and interrupted slumbers, his mind was agitated by painful anxiety; nor can it be thought surprising that the Genius of the empire should once more appear before him, covering with a funereal veil his head and his horn of abundance, and slowly retiring from the Imperial tent. The monarch started from his couch, and, stepping forth to refresh his wearied spirits with the coolness of the ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... not bear it. A look round the sumptuous burial chamber of the sovereigns below the high altar of the church; a glance at the lesser sepulchral glories of the infantes and infantas in their chapels and corridors, suffices for the funereal third of the trinity of tomb and temple and palace; and though there are gayer constituents of the last, especially the gallery of the chapter-house, with its surprisingly lively frescoes and its sometimes startling canvases, there is not much that ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... you are so unnaturally tall and severe and judicial sitting there on Boyar. You look almost funereal. Please get down. Roll a cigarette and act natural. I'm not going to ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... of constant struggle against financial and social difficulties, of endless work for unresponsive masters; and the labour was not lightened by any of the associations that helped the great masters of the Italian School who had some share of light and honour. The funereal pomp of the Spanish court; the strange climatic conditions of Madrid, where you may pass in a moment from a blaze of sun that scorches to a blast of icy wind that strikes a fatal blow at the lungs; the hard and unattractive landscape; the proud, cruel, ...
— Velazquez • S. L. Bensusan
... Robin Hill had been exciting, sad, embarrassing. Memories of her dead brother, memories of Val's courtship; the ageing of her father, not seen for twenty years, something funereal in his ironic gentleness which did not escape one who had much subtle instinct; above all, the presence of her stepmother, whom she could still vaguely remember as the "lady in grey" of days when she was little and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sepulchre, but not at the same time the idea of the Lord, except so remotely, that it was scarcely, and as it were at a distance, perceived that it was the Lord; because in the idea of a sepulchre there is somewhat funereal, which they hereby removed. Afterwards they cautiously admitted into the sepulchre a sort of atmosphere, appearing nevertheless as a thin vapor, by which they signified, and this with a suitable degree of ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... had done the like, but had not succeeded in procuring the texts in question, probably on account of the impiety ascribed to him by the legends. It was one of the methods of explaining the absence of any religious or funereal inscription ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... themselves with ghastly stories, and we have only to study the facts of the case, and all these artificial clouds will roll away at once. We have an evil heredity behind us in this matter, for we have inherited all kinds of funereal horrors from our forefathers, and so we are used to them, and we do not see the absurdity and the monstrosity of them. The ancients were in this respect wiser than we, for they did not associate all this phantasmagoria of gloom with the death of the body—partly perhaps ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... cause that the pace of the intelligent Carrio was funereal and his expression disconsolate. Even during the short period that had elapsed since the scene in the basilica already described, the condition of the city had altered fearfully for the worse. The famine advanced ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... canvassed the possibilities his sotto-voce ecstasies continued, to the vast amusement, as I perceived, of a sardonic stranger who hovered unsteadily in the background. This ill-omened person was clad in a statesmanlike black frock-coat with trousers of similar funereal shade. A white lawn tie, much soiled, and congress gaiters, much frayed, were appropriate details of a costume inevitably topped off with an army slouch hat that had long lacked the brush. He was immensely long and sallow, wore a drooping moustache vaguely ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... to visitors i' church-time," she said abruptly, in a deep funereal voice. "Mappen you'll ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... deprived of its fires. Thou, Icarus, dost conceal thy rising countenance; and {thou}, Erigone, raised to the heavens through thy affectionate love for thy father. Three times was she recalled by the presage of her foot stumbling; thrice did the funereal owl give an omen by its dismal cry. Yet {onward} she goes, and the gloom and the dark night lessen her shame. In her left hand she holds that of her nurse, the other, by groping, explores the secret road. {And} now she is arrived at the door of the chamber; and now she ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Spenser's Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, 1595, describes the part figuratively played in Sidney's obsequies by the turtle-dove, swan, phoenix, and eagle, in verses that very closely resemble Shakespeare's account of the funereal functions fulfilled by the same four birds in his contribution to Chester's volume. This resemblance suggests that Shakespeare's poem may be a fanciful adaptation of Roydon's elegiac conceits without ulterior significance. Shakespeare's concluding 'Threnos' is imitated ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... not know its hazards faro is a funereal game. The dealer slides one card and then a second from the box. The case-keeper moves a button or two on his rack. The dealer in the meantime is paying winners and collecting chips from losers, all with the utmost listlessness. In his high chair above ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... I paddled the boat upstream, and again suffered it to glide, with the river's slow, funereal motion, downward. Silas Foster had raked up a large mass of stuff, which, as it came towards the surface, looked somewhat like a flowing garment, but proved to be a monstrous tuft of water-weeds. Hollingsworth, with a gigantic effort, upheaved a sunken log. When once free of ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the prediction of the Oracle, that foretold he would be put to death by his daughter's son, was fulfilled. The fame of his grandson, after his remarkable adventures, having reached the ears of Acrisius, he went to Larissa to see him, at the time Teutamis was celebrating funereal games in honour of his father. To this city Perseus had repaired with the view of distinguishing himself among the combatants. Here he accidentally killed, with a quoit, an old man, who was found to be his grandfather Acrisius, and ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... was her sin, her remorse passing through the streets of Paris in all that solemn pomp, that funereal magnificence, that public mourning reflected even in the clouds; and the proud girl rebelled against the affront that circumstances put upon her, fled from it to the depths of the carriage, where she remained with closed eyes, overwhelmed, while old ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the cots of quarantine hospitals. Wiser those who sought refuge in the purity of the pine forests, or in those near Gulf Islands, whence the bright sea-breath kept ever sweeping back the expanding poison into the funereal swamps, into the misty lowlands. The watering-resorts became overcrowded;—then the fishing villages were thronged,—at least all which were easy to reach by steamboat or by lugger. And at last, even Viosca's ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... for your birthday, and 'sweets to the sweet' as some one remarked on a more funereal occasion," he said, stooping to kiss her. "Dear little son Eric, it is very jolly to have you to myself for once. No disrespect to Aunt Jean and old Tom, but two is company." "What lovely flowers!" exclaimed Erica. "How good of you! Where ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... which she was to plunge. Like all high-spirited creatures she had no love for any form of gloom. And there is nothing in nature that can compare with the American pinewoods for gloom. Stately, magnificent, if you will, but funereal ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... part well. Jovial, funereal, violent, tender, impetuous, affectionate, he assumed at will a deep or a piping voice; he sighed, he roared, he laughed, he wept. He could transform himself, like the man in the fairy-tale, into a flame, a river, a ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... To science none belongs, and none to art. Oh! Muse, of blackest tint, why shrinks thy breast. Why fears t' approach the Caesar of the West! Dispel thy doubts, with confidence ascend The regal dome, and hail him for thy friend: Nor blush, altho' in garb funereal drest, Thy body's white, tho' clad in sable vest. Manners unsullied, and the radiant glow Of genius, burning with desire to know; And learned speech, with modest accent worn, Shall best the sooty African adorn. An ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... parents brought so proudly back from Italy! I have succeeded in locating two statues evidently imported at that time. They grace the back steps of a rather shabby villa in the country,—Demosthenes and Cicero, larger than life, dreary, funereal memorials of the follies of ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... saddle, lay for a long time gazing tranquilly at the stars, which shone with an intensity of lustre peculiar to that region of the southern hemisphere, while the yelling cries of jackals and the funereal moaning of spotted hyenas, with an occasional distant roar from the king of ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... son's got a hump-back," said Mrs. Pullet, who felt as if the whole business had a funereal aspect; "it's more nat'ral to send him ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... hand, The well-framed code that sway'd the sacred land; With rites mysterious served the Power divine, Prepared the altar and adorn'd the shrine, Responsive hail'd, with still returning praise, Each circling season that the God displays, Sooth'd with funereal hymns the parting dead, At nuptial feasts the joyful chorus led; While evening incense and the morning song Rose from his hand or ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... had gone through the motions of life, but felt as though he were standing aside, a spectator mind watching its own body from a distance. The gathering of his friends and associates last night, the night before the duel—that silent, funereal group of people—it had seemed completely unreal ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... beyond the walls. The windows were narrow, and darkened by heavy transom bars and small diamond panes while the view without, looking upon Whalley Nab, was obstructed by the contiguity of a tall cypress, whose funereal branches added to the general gloom. The room was one of those formerly allotted to their guests by the hospitable abbots, and had undergone little change since their time, except in regard to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the force of these words through our Caucasian sanctimoniousness. We can think of God's Kingdom and righteousness only in the light of the pietistic. The minute they are mentioned we strike what I have already called our artificial pose, our funereal frame of mind. I am not flippant when I say that in the mind of the Caucasian the first step toward seeking the Kingdom of God and righteousness is in pulling a long face. We can hardly think of righteousness ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... friends to stay to dinner; so there were only Lady Kirkbank, who was too tired to be lively, and Montesma, who was inclined to be thoughtful. Lesbia's absence, and the idea that she was ill, gave the feast almost a funereal air. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... prevailing fashion. On the streets of San Francisco, however, Bret Harte was always a notable figure, from the fact that the average man wore "slops," devoid alike of style or cut, and usually of shiny broadcloth. Broad-brimmed black felt hats were the customary headgear, completing a most funereal costume. ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... the river, eighty feet above its surface, commanding a view of those in the boat, and those waiting on the shore. Seen from this height, the lamps in the canoe glare like fiery eye-balls; and the passengers, sitting there so hushed and motionless, look like shadows. The scene is so strangely funereal and spectral, that it seems as if the Greeks must have witnessed it, before they imagined Charon conveying ghosts to the dim regions of Pluto. Your ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... plodded on as before, taking two and a half hours to walk three miles. About a mile from Cholen there is an extraordinary burial-ground, said to cover an area of twenty square miles. (?) It is thickly peopled with the dead, and profuse vegetation and funereal lichens give it a profoundly melancholy look. It was chosen by the Cambodian kings several centuries ago for a cemetery, on the advice of the astrologers of the court. The telegraph wire runs near it, and so the old and the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... fezzes and dark, baggy long underwear with buttons and vestigial lapels. As he approached them, Dewforth saw that the fezzes were actually felt hats with the brims atrophied or rotted away, and the funereal long-johns were the weatherbeaten remains of those suits which are designed for Young Men On The Way Up. As though by tacit agreement of long standing, these men did not look directly at Dewforth as he passed, nor he ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... The remains of ancient funereal art, in Etruria or Attica, usually show us the semblances of the dead lying at endless feasts, or receiving sacrifices of food and wine (as in Egypt) from their descendants, or, perhaps, welcoming the later dead, their friends who have just rejoined ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... the train descend; solemnly and in silence, as if the rites at which they were about to assist had been those of funereal, and not of nuptial, solemnization. Indeed, to look upon those wild and fierce faces by the ruddily-flashing torchlight, which lent to each a stern and savage expression; to see those scowling visages surrounding a bride from whose pallid cheeks every vestige of color, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of the solemn landscape. Nor was the landscape always solemn. There were long openings, now and then, to right and left, of emerald-green savannah, with the dazzling blue of the Gulf far beyond, waving a thousand white-handed good-byes as the funereal swamps slowly shut out again the horizon. How sweet the soft breezes off the moist prairies! How weird, how very near, the crimson and green and black and yellow sunsets! How dream-like the land and the great, whispering river! The profound stillness and breath reminded the old German, so he ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... silver case and selected a fresh cigarette, which, however, he did not light. Inspector Badger produced a funereal notebook, which he laid open on his knee; and the rest of us settled ourselves in our chairs with no little curiosity to hear ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... love light mirth, light tears, and all That know the heart of shameful loves, or pure; That know delights depart, desires endure, A fevered tribe of ghosts funereal, Widowed of dead delights gone out of call; List, all that deem the glory of the rose Is brief as last year's suns, or last year's snows The new suns melt from off ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... Lupin came down dressed quietly, and looking a perfect gentleman, except that his face was rather yellow. Carrie, by way of encouragement said: "You do look nice, Lupin." Lupin replied: "Yes, it's a good make- up, isn't it? A regular-downright-respectable-funereal-first- ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... world. I trust that you, my dear children, will not only remember that you are brothers and sisters, but that you will cherish for each other the most tender affection. Ever bear in mind that discord among you will be attended with the most funereal results, and that it will be destructive of the prosperity of the state. By peace and tranquillity alone ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... from under the ill-fitting door tickling his bare flesh in the most immodest fashion, he roused himself from this lethargy, and was about to raise himself from the floor, when the lights went out—went out without a moment's warning, and he found himself engulfed in the most funereal darkness. To say he was startled is to put it very mildly—he was absolutely terror-stricken—far too terror-stricken to think of moving now, and least of all of getting up and groping for the matches. Indeed, when he came to think of it, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... that penetrated the thigh; Monsieur Portel, lieutenant in the Eclaireurs Franchetti, wounded in the neck and right foot; Monsieur Bernard, a merchant, killed; Monsieur Giraud, a stockbroker, also killed. Fresh names are added to the funereal list every moment. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... Cork. It was a cheerful place at the time I am speaking of, for there was plenty of entertaining and truly genial hospitality. The general depression caused by famine, fever, and Fenians hardly affected the great town, and after those funereal shadows had once passed, Cork was as gay as ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... party was sinister. The approach of winter had stripped well-nigh all the leaves from the great oaks in the park, whose dark branches now stood up against a gray sky, like branches of funereal candelabra. A light fog seemed to indicate rain; through the melancholy boughs of the thinned wood the heavy carriages of the court were seen slowly passing on, filled with women, uniformly dressed in black, and obliged to await the result of a chase which they did not witness. The ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... length of passage, up and down many stairs. Dust-clouds rose from the uncarpeted floors and choked me; incontinent Echo coughed answering ricochets to my footsteps in the gathering darkness, and added emphasis to the funereal gloom of the dwelling. Nowhere was there a vestige of furniture—nowhere a ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... she were actually present; and I reiterated to myself the words she had uttered in my ear at the church porch: 'Unhappy man! Unhappy man! What hast thou done?' I comprehended at last the full horror of my situation, and the funereal and awful restraints of the state into which I had just entered became clearly revealed to me. To be a priest!—that is, to be chaste, to never love, to observe no distinction of sex or age, to turn from the ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... were about to enjoy that rare, delicious treat—a conceited braggart publicly exposed and overwhelmed by himself. Among these spectators was Josh's best friend, Arkwright, seated beside Margaret Severence, and masking his satisfaction over the impending catastrophe with an expression of funereal somberness. He could not quite conceal from himself all these hopes that had such an uncomfortable aspect of ungenerousness. So he reasoned with himself that they really sprang from a sincere desire for his friend's ultimate good. "Josh needs to have his ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... spite of ourselves. The hoarse sound of the short German bugles pierces the night with four lugubrious notes in a minor key, funereal, deathly. It is their charge. Yells, oaths, and vociferations are heard in front of us. Our Captain commands us to fire by volleys: "Aim! Fire!" "They must have felt something," drawls out some one of us in a nasal, Montmartre-like ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... and a provision was included that when a lodge was given the body of an outsider for burial it would furnish coffin, hearse, tomb, minister and marshal at a price of fifty dollars all told.[86] The mortuary stress in the by-laws, however, need not signify that the lodge was more funereal than festive. A negro burial was as sociable as an ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... chamber, and look out upon the newly-mantled trees, the green fields, and the bright river flashing in the sunshine. The heart of Irene took courage again. The cloud which had lain upon it all winter like a funereal pall dissolved, and went floating away and wasting ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... a sad thing when one is compelled to consider the existing as accomplished and completed. Armories, galleries and museums to which nothing is added have something funereal and ghostly about them; the mind is restricted in such a limited field of art. One becomes accustomed to regard such collections as completed, instead of being reminded of the necessity of constant acquisition ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... barrenness, that never, never, never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and fade and faint into vague perspective; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum; this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal plumes of palms; yonder desolate declivity where the swine of the miracle ran down into the sea, and doubtless thought it was better to swallow a devil or two and get drowned into the bargain than have to live longer in such ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... still hides itself in odd nooks and corners of estranged Irish minds. But he has none of the saving grace of his country or family. A solemn voice that seems to come from the depths of some divine despair, and from the recesses of his innermost organs, together with a certain funereal aspect in the close-shaven face, gives him an air that suggests the cypress and the cemetery. But with deadly want of humour, he spoke of the possibility of his spending the remainder of a blameless life in penal servitude, and was deeply wounded when the uproarious ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... world here assume such alarming proportions that the club languishes owing to numerous resignations, few attend church because one of the rival faction plays the organ, and the evening promenade beneath the trees along the bund is transformed from a pleasant family gathering into a funereal procession. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... of the farm, dancing their sarabandes in the snow, howling like so many devils, shrieking and showing their long white teeth, and demanding in unmistakable terms something or somebody to devour; their yells, their cries of rage, of victory, and of love, intermingled with the funereal song of the screech-owl, and the lugubrious melodies which the current from the blast without caused in the large open chimneys,—was the concert, which from December to April lulled the inmates of St. Hibaut to sleep; music ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... with stormier wings above the watch-fire spread [Ep. 2. Whence from Ida toward the hill of Hermes leapt the light that said Troy was fallen, a torch funereal for the king's triumphal head. Dire indeed the birth of Leda's womb that had God's self to sire Bloomed, a flower of love that stung the soul with fangs that gnaw like fire: But the twin-born human-fathered sister-flower bore fruit more dire. ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the mess began to collect round the fireplace with the funereal expressions customary whenever a mess-dinner ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... retired to an inner apartment, whence he emerged by-and-by dressed in a shabby-genteel costume of somewhat funereal aspect, and with the lower part of his face rasped like a French roll, and somewhat resembling ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... 21st of August, 1872, was about the gloomiest morning I ever saw. Rain was falling, the clouds hung low over our heads like a lid to the box-like chasm in the black, funereal granite enclosing us, while the roar of the big rapid seemed to be intensified. We felt like rats in a trap. Eating breakfast as quickly as possible, we got everything together again on the shelf and lowered the boats. Though the river was not ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... and burn On heights most Godlike; and divine, Immortal bays thy funereal urn Shall ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... the funereal aspect of the room, into which, since he last stood there, undertakers seemed to have stolen. The curtains of the window were festooned with long weepers of crape. The four corners of the red cloth on the round table were knotted ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... eyes which no longer wept, but which had once wept copiously. She was always ready with an everlasting: "Nothing's the matter, mademoiselle!" uttered in the tone that covers a secret. She adopted dumb, despairing, funereal attitudes, the airs by which a woman's body diffuses melancholy and makes her very shadow a bore. With her face, her glance, her mouth, the folds of her dress, her presence, the noise she made at work in the adjoining room, even with her silence, she enveloped mademoiselle ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... that we might form a history of this fear of death, by tracing the first appearances of the SKELETON which haunts our funereal imagination. In the modern history of mankind we might discover some very strong contrasts in the notion of death entertained by men at various epochs. The following article will supply a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... knew you were in training,' I answered. 'Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell's candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... never called upon, in the way of his own trade, to make funereal garments. Men, when they are bereaved of their friends, do not ride in black breeches. But he had all a tailor's respect for a customer with a dead relation. He felt that it would not become him to make ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... funereal visage, I long to repeat the Dauphin's undignified offense. I would like to see this royal parcel of melancholy jump and dance; change that ever-frowning and mournful aspect of his. Indeed, I would like to treat him to one of the anecdotes that made the ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... carrying the litter of Amfortas and the shrine of the Grail, while they chant, in question and response, a song of reproachful tenor. "Whom do you bring, with tokens of mourning, in the dark casket?" "The funereal casket holds the hero into whose charge the very God entrusted Himself. Titurel we bring." "Who slew him, whom God Himself held in His care?" "The killing burden of age slew him, when he no longer might ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... draped in black, and all the windows were funereal. The ancient reception-room was half closed, and the famous East room, which is approached by a spacious hall, had been reserved for the obsequies. There are none present here but a few silent attendants of the late owner of the republican palace. Deeply ensconced ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... strength they possess over the other just enumerated people, improve their natural ferocity of aspect by artificial helps. Their shields are black; their bodies painted: [240] they choose the darkest nights for an attack; and strike terror by the funereal gloom of their sable bands—no enemy being able to sustain their singular, and, as it were, infernal appearance; since in every combat the eyes are the first part subdued. Beyond the Lygii are the ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... they not live as far apart as possible, and each be a man by himself? What he sought was the most energetic nature; and he wished to go to Oregon, not to London. "In every part of Great Britain," he wrote in his diary, "are discovered traces of the Romans, their funereal urns, their camps, their roads, their dwellings. But New England, at least, is not based on any Roman ruins. We have not to lay the foundations of our houses on the ashes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Jeanne, in that same year of Cesare's death. The Duchess of Valentinois withdrew to La Motte-Feuilly, and for the seven years remaining of her life was never seen other than in mourning; her very house was equipped with sombre, funereal furniture, and so maintained until her end, which supports the view that she had conceived affection and respect for the husband of whom she ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... The broad basins of water and the tall evergreen hedges gave it a funereal look, and the damp-stained marble causeways by the pools might have been made of tombstones. The gray and weather-beaten walls and towers without, the dark and massively-furnished rooms within, the deep, mysterious recesses ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... much kindness; the duty which excites me has no limit. Although my love pleads [lit. interests itself] for this conqueror, although a nation worships him, and a King praises him, although he be surrounded with the most valiant warriors, I shall endeavor to crush his laurels beneath my [funereal] cypress. ...
— The Cid • Pierre Corneille
... work of some sort, pulling away with a will, they soon reached the mouth of the river Brass. The river is here pretty broad; its banks, as far as the eye can reach, covered with tall mangroves, their dark foliage imparting a sombre and almost funereal aspect to the scenery. After the boats had pulled about ten miles up the Brass, they reached a sort of natural canal which connects the Brass with the Nun. On passing through this, they entered the Nun, when they hove to for dinner,—a meal not at ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... is answered, "there will always be this weakness in our human nature; we shall for ever, in spite of reason, take pleasure in doing funereal honor to the corpse, and writing sacredness to memory upon marble." Then, if you are to do this,—if you are to put off your kindness until death,—why not, in God's name, put off also your enmity? and if you choose to write your lingering affections upon stones, wreak also your delayed ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... up the question of her position at supper, but there was no difficulty in the arrangement made between them. The one gala evening of grand dresses—the evening which had been intended to be a gala, but which had turned out to be almost funereal—was over. Even Michel Voss himself did not think it necessary that Marie should come in to supper with her silk dress two nights running; and he himself had found that that changing of his coat had ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... the belfry rang forth with startling resonance, and twelve o'clock struck upon the stillness. Then followed upon the bells a solemn and funereal melody. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... show it as plainly as that?" he replied, somewhat ruefully. "Well, I'll admit that, funereal as I may look, it's not a circumstance to the way I feel. That's partly why I came here—to see you and ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... sustaining with, a firm hand the torch that was to consume on the sacred pile (according to her religion) both Assyrian and Greek; all these combinations are the result of the purest sentiments, the noblest art. The last words of Myrrha on the funereal pyre are in good keeping with the grand conception of her character. With the natural aspirations of a Greek, her thoughts turn at this moment to her distant clime; but still they come back at the same time to her lord, who is beside her, and blending almost in one sigh ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... somehow. Lind walked with his companion along to the steps, descended, and jumped into a gondola, and presently they were shooting out into the turbulent green water that the wind drove against the side of the boat in a succession of sharp shocks. Seated in the little funereal compartment, they could talk without much fear of being heard by either of the men; and Calabressa began his tale. It was not romantic. It was simply a case of bribery; the money to effect which had certainly not come out of Calabressa's shallow pockets. ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... poem of "The Actor," 1762. And something he might have added touching the absurd old fashion of robing the queens of tragedy invariably in black, for it seemed agreed generally that "the sceptred pall of gorgeous tragedy" should be taken very literally, and should "sweep by" in the funereal fashion of sable velvet. "Empresses and queens," writes Mrs. Bellamy, the actress, in 1785, "always appeared in black velvet, with, upon extraordinary occasions, the additional finery of an embroidered or tissue petticoat; the younger actresses in cast gowns of persons ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... twelve, my weary soul On earth shall cease to dwell, As sign of which the chapel bell shall toll Its slow funereal knell. Then seek me, if you will, and you shall find Upon the altar stair The prison-house my soul will leave behind, Kneeling ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... and in private do not pretend to be otherwise, should openly announce their intention of retiring at once into the family tomb, is a problem not easily solved. The public has so long listened to these funereal solos that if a few of the poets thus impatient to be gone were to go, their departure would perhaps be attended by that resigned speeding which the proverb invokes on ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... led through Grizzly Canon, by this time clothed in funereal drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasined feet in the red soil, stood in Indian file along the track, trailing an uncouth benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare, surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... some of those shrubs or trees that grow like our junipers, some six feet high, in form like a miniature poplar, with the darker foliage of the yew. I do not know the name of the plant, but I have often seen it in such funereal places. ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... indistinct. She was haunted by a vision of her sister, sitting on a horse-hair sofa before an air-tight iron stove in a small room with high, bare white walls, a chromolithograph on each, and at her side a marble-topped table surmounted by a glass vase containing funereal dried grasses; the only literature, Frank Leslie's periodical and the New York Ledger, with a strong smell of cooking everywhere prevalent. Here she saw Madeleine receiving visitors, the wives of neighbours and constituents, who told her ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... surveyed himself in the glass, trying ineffectually to dodge the barber's persistent whisk-broom, he decided that he did look a bit funereal. And when he appeared at the supper table that evening he wore an ambitious four-in-hand tie of red and yellow. There was going to be no funeral or anything that looked like it, ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... sentiments of the philosophy and piety of all ages concerning life and death; we began with Confucius, and we ended with Benjamino Franklino. But as if these ideas of mortality were not sufficiently depressing, the funereal Signor P——had collected into earthern amphorae the ashes of the most famous men of ancient and modern times, and arranged them so that a sense of their number and variety should at once strike his visitor. Each jar was conspicuously labelled with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... "Macleod of Dare." As we sailed across the Sound in the evening from Oban to Auchincraig, the sky was full of torn rain-clouds flying swiftly and catching the lurid hues from the sunset, whilst the distant mountains and cliffs of Mull were of that dark purple which seems melancholy and funereal in landscape, though it is one of the richest colors in the world. It was dangerous weather for sailing, being very squally, and in the year 1852 I knew nothing about the management of sailing-boats; but the men were not imprudent, and after coasting under the cliffs of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... a quarter past five, when TALBOT interposed, and with most funereal manner moved to report progress. HENEAGE almost mechanically lowered his head and had started to butt at TALBOT as he had upset GEDGE when he was providentially stopped and convinced that further struggle with obstruction was hopeless. So, Clause I. agreed to, Bill talked out. MAKINS, growing ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... massive men with drooping blond mustaches—ideal characters for the roles of pirates—tended to squeeze tears out of their eyes at odd moments. When the ship was twelve hours on its way, the atmosphere inside it was funereal. The spearmen did not even gorge themselves on the food with which the yacht was stocked. And when a Darthian gentleman lost his appetite, ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... amused, was severely handicapped by the presence of her daughters. Olive, at the best of times, could do little more than laugh; and as Alice never had anything to say to the people she met at her mother's house, the silences that hung over the Mount Street dinner-table were funereal in intensity and length. From time to time questions were asked relating to the Castle, the weather, and ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... were unaccountably low. He had forgotten his country for an entire day, and rushed up to the house ten minutes before the appointed hour, his spirits as high as a boy's on his way to the cricket field. But his apple had turned to ashes in a funereal gown, and there seemed no colour ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... flashes upon our vision the beautiful, the significant, the permanent in the scenery of Italy. The features which he loved best, or which for other reasons caught his eye, are those that we still see. There are the oak and the opaque ilex, the pine and the poplar, the dark, funereal cypress, the bright flower of the too-short-lived rose, and the sweet-scented bed of violets. There are the olive groves of Venafrum. Most lovely of sights and most beautiful of figures, there is the purple-clustered vine of vari-colored ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... death-mask of papier-mache on the back of his head with appropriate funereal drapings ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... everything seemed to smile before and around me. Turning a corner of the hedge, I met a peasant whom I recognised. All at once it seemed as if a veil spread over my sight, all my hopes and joy suddenly vanished, a funereal idea took possession of me, and I said, taking the hand of the man, who had not ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... walls are beautifully ornamented with frescos, which were very bright when first discovered, but have rapidly faded since the admission of the air, though the graceful and joyous designs, flowers and fruits and trees, are still perfectly discernible. The room must have been anything but sad and funereal; on the contrary, as cheerful a saloon, and as brilliant, if lighted up, as one could desire to feast in. It contained several marble sarcophagi, covering indeed almost the whole floor, and each of them ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the palace-halls, Since at my side ye come, a suppliant train, Companions of this offering, counsel me As best befits the time: for I, who pour Upon the grave these streams funereal, With what fair word can I invoke my sire? Shall I aver, Behold, I bear these gifts From well-beloved wife unto her well-beloved lord, When 'tis from her, my mother, that they come? I dare not say it: of all words I fail Wherewith to consecrate unto my sire These sacrificial honours on his ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... and condolences she found on her little hall table when, escorted to the door by Mr. Willett, she went home at half-past eight, just to make some slight change in her toilet, which, as it stood, was too funereal for so festive ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... remarked Mitford in a funereal tone, which, however, was meant to be confidential. "Bless your heart, I've seen that woman under all circumstances, but although she's timid by nature, an' not over strong in body, I've never seen her give in or fairly cast down. No doubt she was pretty low last night, poor thing, but that was ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... recognise. His physiognomy often indicates the class to which he belongs. He has sometimes a peculiar formation of mouth, which you may notice as the result of his affectation in speaking. His voice, too, is frequently indicative of his fault. It is pathetic, joyous, funereal, strong, weak, squeaking, not according to its own naturalness, but according to the affectation of his mind. And these variations are generally the opposite of what they ought to be. They neither harmonise with the subject spoken ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... Europe, and is said to derive its name from the Island of Cyprus. It was introduced into England many years before Shakespeare's time, but is always associated in the old authors with funerals and churchyards; so that Spenser calls it the "Cypress funereal," which epithet he may have taken from Pliny's description of the Cypress: "Natu morosa, fructu supervacua, baccis torva, foliis amara, odore violenta, ac ne umbra quidem gratiosa—Diti sacra, et ideo funebri signo ad domos posita" ("Nat. ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... was no moon, and the stars had been quite put out under the wet 'blanket of the night,' which impenetrable muffler overspread the sky with a funereal darkness. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... overture of "Struensee," that funereal strain, and then that peasant dance, so full of dash and colour; and then the mournful burden which returns, the duo of the violoncellos. Ah! monsieur, the violoncellos, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... was a broad bleak space, comprising the whole table land and southern slope of the Esquiline hill, broken with many deep ravines and gulleys, worn by the wintry rains, covered with deep rank grass and stunted bushes, with here and there a grove of towering cypresses, or dark funereal yews, casting a deeper shadow over the gloomy solitude. So rough and broken was the surface of the ground, so numerous the low mounds which alone covered the ashes of the humbler dead, that they were long in reaching the vicinity ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... little Autumn flower, with purple clad, Dost thou thus weep the death of Summer fair? Funereal, truly, is thy colour sad, And ever serves ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 2 • Various
... but as I chanced to see the articles you must forgive my disgust. This black has filled my soul with funereal images, just as white would have cheered me. Do you always wear those ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... rang and the door was closed, and then the husband and wife were together. "A dreadful communication has just been made to me," said Lord George in his most solemn and funereal voice;—"a most ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... night they kept silent record beside us, measuring out the golden light of summer in their tiny balances, and doling out the pittance of winter sunshine with niggardly reluctance. They hastened to the end of our joys, and moved with funereal slowness through the appointed times of our sorrow. They ruled every season, pervaded every day, recorded every hour, and, like misers hoarding a treasure, doled out our birthright of leisure second by second; so that, being rich, we were always impoverished; inheritors of vast fortune, we were ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... due to the unique genius of Greece. Demeter became the deity most familiar to the people, nearest to their hearts and endowed with most temples; every farm possessing her rural shrine. But the Chthonian, or funereal, aspect of Chibiabos, or of Persephone, is due to a mood very distinct from that which sacrifices pigs as embodiments of the Corn Spirit, if that be the real origin of ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... by these spiritualist and superstitious ideas; they expressed a symbolism derived from mythical ideas of the constitution of the world, of its organism, elements, and cosmic legends. This assertion might be verified by all funereal, religious, and civil monuments, among all peoples of the earth, in their most rudimentary form down to those of our times, and above all in India, China, Central Asia, in Africa, and particularly in Egypt, in America, in Europe, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... resolution of all, John," said Clara; "and if such a day should come round, I should be the happiest of living creatures—I should not have a grief left in the world—if I had, you should never see or hear of it—it should lie here," she said, pressing her hand on her bosom, "buried as deep as a funereal urn in a cold sepulchre. Oh! could we not begin such a life to-morrow? If it is absolutely necessary that this trifle of money should be got rid of first, throw it into the river, and think you have lost it amongst ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... conditions. O Frenchmen! O my countrymen! Let not your enemies, with their desolating doctrines, degrade your souls, and enervate your virtues! No, Chaumette, no! Death is not "an eternal sleep!" Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement of immortality!" I leave to the oppressors of the People a terrible testament, which I proclaim with the independence ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread, dragging through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which lay a granite block. The waggoner ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the light heart. He gave his senses their way, and well did they serve him. Thus his eyes—and no more modern man in anxious search of "impressions" was ever so simple and so masterly: "Mr. Vholes gauntly stalked to the fire, and warmed his funereal gloves." "'I thank you,' said Mr. Vholes, putting out his long black sleeve, to check the ringing of the bell, 'not any.'" Mr. and Mrs. Tope "are daintily sticking sprigs of holly into the carvings and sconces of the cathedral stalls, as if they were sticking them into the button- ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... over the summit of the shadow, would have been able to see the eighth circle of his poem; the funereal Boulevard Montmartre. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... with the great masters. As was to be expected, my son had for Welsh music a strong natural sympathy. He held that "Men of Harlech" was one of the greatest of all battle hymns, and that "Morfa Rhuddlan," the ancient Cymric dirge, had never been surpassed as a piece of funereal music. Some of the old Welsh hymn tunes he regarded as unique in their wistfulness and devout aspiration; and as for Welsh choral singing, he thought it was matchless ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... brother, a long-legged stutterer whom they called Ariston in jest, was the most funereal fellow on the planet; he suffered from acute necromania; anything connected with coffins, corpses, wakes and candles roused his enthusiasm. He would like to have been a gravedigger, the priest of a religious confraternity, a cemetery warden; ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... remarked it,' said he, smiling. 'Here we are at this funereal tree again. All roads lead to Rome, and ours appears to conduct us perpetually to this tree. It 's the only dead ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
