"Pyre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... myself that the most despicable soodra of India was of as much value in the sight of God as the King of Great Britain." It was from such supplication that he was once roused by the blaze of a Suttee's funeral pyre, on which he found that the living widow had been consumed with the dead before he could interfere. He could hear the hideous drums and gongs and conch-shells of the temple to which Radhabullub had been removed. There he often tried to turn his fellow-creatures to the ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... think from cloistered shades of other days, when out of sad, earth-colored raiment and the habit of dismal speech human sentiment painted pictures while yet the fagots grew apace for their destruction as well as for the funeral-pyre of their scolding and bellowing enemy, Savonarola. For where Fra Angelico, working from the life, could create a San Sebastian so instinct with earthly vitality and earthly bloom that pious Florentine women could not say their prayers in peace in its presence, there were three easels, each ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... Love 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
... sacred wood with Hindoos. It is enjoined in the Shastras that the bodies of the dead should be consumed in a fire fed by logs of bael-tree; but where it is not procurable in sufficient quantity, the natives compound with their consciences by lighting the funeral pyre with a branch from the bael-tree. It is a fine yellow-coloured, pretty durable wood, and makes excellent furniture. A very fine sherbet can be made from the fruit, which acts as an excellent ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... widow, who, far from having mounted any funeral pyre, appeared to enjoy life immensely, ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... thither the domestics scurried swiftly, making preparations. Some were cooking rare pasties of grouse and ptarmigan, goslings and dough-birds; some were setting great tables in-doors and out; and some were piling fagots for the Dragon's funeral pyre. Popham, with magnificent solemnity and a pair of new calves, gave orders to Meeson and Welsby, and kept little Whelpdale panting for breath with errands; while in and out, between everybody's legs, and over or under all obstacles, ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... forms, as is generally believed, one of those twin barrows still existing on the sides of the Sigean promontory, that pass under the name of the tumuli of Achilles and Patroclus. Pope, in translating the passage describing the commencement of the funeral pyre, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... earth and weed from the top of the great stone. Then he retraced his steps and gathered a handful of bleached twigs that the winter floods had left stranded along the margin of the stream. These he arranged methodically on the cleared space; on the top of the tiny pyre he placed ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... Jewish synagogues have their eternal lamps and in their rituals fire and light have played prominent roles. The devout Brahman maintains a fire on the hearth and worships it as omniscient and divine. He expects a brand from this to be used to light his funeral pyre, whose fire and light will make his spirit fit to enter his heavenly abode. He keeps a fire burning on the altar, worships Agni, the god of fire, and makes fire sacrifices on various occasions such as betrothals and marriages. To the Mohammedans ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... convenient 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 see in the scheme. He was quite sure he knew how to cut ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... 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 ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... we make ritual (Feet running before the sleuth-light... And the smell of burnt flesh By a flame-ringed hut In Missouri, Sweet as on Rome's pyre....) We make ropes do rigadoons With copper feet that jig on air.... We are the Mob.... Old as song. Tyre knew us ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... 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 the two ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... armlet the Wanderer fell on the earth, grovelling among the ashes of the pyre, for he knew the gold ring which he had brought from Ephyre long ago, for a gift to his wife Penelope. This was the bracelet of the bride of his youth, and here, a mockery and a terror, were those kind arms in which he had lain. Then his strength was shaken with sobbing, ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... the mellow evening sky, flecked with lines of peach-blossom cloud, whilst in front of us the dark form of Capri seems to float in a golden haze between firmament and ocean. Behind us the dark mass of the Mountain with its breath of ascending smoke seems like an eternal funeral pyre in honour of the Dead, who were spared the horrors of that fearful disaster which overwhelmed the living. Upon the broken tombs and altars the light from the setting sun falls with warm cheerful radiance, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... splintered lances, hewed and ready for the fire, Piled and ranged in perfect order into many a funeral pyre. ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... lights. As if by a simultaneous impulse, my father approached one candle, my uncle approached the other; and just as the moth was wheeling round and round, irresolute which to choose for its funeral pyre, both candles were put out. The fire had burned down low in the grate, and in the sudden dimness my father's soft, sweet voice came forth, as if from an invisible being: "We leave ourselves in the dark to save a moth from the flame, brother! Shall we do less ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on the greedy tongues of fire, To make of those dread mounds a funeral pyre, As raging onward o'er their victims broke, The fearful conflict of the ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... half later, when the navigator gave me a spell, a black cloud on the northern horizon marked the funeral pyre of another of our victims. When I went below, the Captain had just finished playing with his ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... but old in love, Carried her child across the square; Her face was a dim drifting flame To which her pyre of hair Was a ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... men opened up and killed four of them as a kind of hint. After that the ferry company didn't have any trouble. The Yumas moved up river a ways, where they've lived ever since. They got the corpses and buried them. That is, they dug a trench for each one and laid poles across it, with a funeral pyre on the poles. Then they put the body on top, and the women of the family cut their hair off and threw it on. After that they set fire to the outfit, and, when the poles bad burned through, the whole business fell into the trench of its own accord. It was ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... she dwelleth under distant skies, Unhappy one, and vain is all thy prayer. Yet, Oh, them art from Argos: all of care That can be, I will give and fail thee not. Rich raiment to thy burial shall be brought, And oil to cool thy pyre in golden floods, And sweet that from a thousand mountain buds The murmuring bee hath garnered, I will throw To die with thee in fragrance. ... I must go And seek the tablet from the Goddess' room Within.—Oh, do not ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... blow, This stumbling, how I know not, by this stone, This horrid mouth in which my grave is shown, This cave of many shapes, Through which the melancholy mountain gapes, This mountain's self, a vast Abysmal shadow cast Suddenly on my heart, as if 't were meant To be my rustic pyre, my strange new monument, All fill my heart with wonder and with fear, What buried mysteries are hidden here That terrify me so, And make me tremble 'neath impending woe. [A solemn strain of music is heard from within.] Nay more, illusion now doth bear to me The sweetest sounds of dulcet harmony, ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... that this should have been understood as a wrapping of the immense pyre with the cloth. There is nothing in the text to necessitate such a version, but the contrary. Compare "Buddhist Suttas," pp. ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... 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 the national hero ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... 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
... now discovered that Troy could not be taken but by the aid of the arrows of Hercules. They were in possession of Philoctetes, the friend who had been with Hercules at the last and lighted his funeral pyre. Philoctetes had joined the Grecian expedition against Troy, but had accidentally wounded his foot with one of the poisoned arrows, and the smell from his wound proved so offensive that his companions carried him to the isle of Lemnos and left him there. Diomed was now sent to ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... feet turned towards his native country. Then twelve bottles of kerosene were poured over him and he was covered completely with thin slabs of pine wood. For almost another hour the relations and servants kept piling up the funeral pyre which looked like one of those piles of wood that carpenters keep in their yards. Then on top of this was poured the contents of twenty bottles of oil, and on top of all they emptied a bag of fine shavings. A few steps further on, a flame was ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... wind to seek and spring upon the pyre of her lord." Fate and Aphrodite drive her headlong, and in heaven Selene, remembering Endymion, bewails the lot of her sister in sorrow. OEnone reaches the funeral flame, and without a word or a cry leaps into her husband's arms, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... 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, ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... did not 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 seats, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... they are the ancestors of the European gypsies and that Rom or Romany is nothing more than a variant of Dom. In the ironical language of the proverbs the Dom figures as "the lord of death" because he provides the wood for the Hindu funeral pyre. He is ranked with Brahmans and goats as a creature useless in time of need. A common and peculiarly offensive form of abuse is to tell a man that he has eaten a Dom's leavings. A series of proverbs represents him as making friends with ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the savages had thought it a sign from Heaven. For a moment their clamor had ceased. The two scouts could plainly see the poor man behind a red veil of flame. Suddenly the white leader of the raiders approached the pyre, limping on his wooden stump, with a stick in his hand, and prodded the face of the victim. It was his last act. Solomon was taking aim. His rifle spoke. Red Snout tumbled forward into the fire. Then what a scurry among the Indians! They vanished and so ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... filled to leeward, and (carry-ins: two tons of ballast) to have sunk instantaneously—all on board were drowned. The body of Shelley was washed on shore eight days afterwards, near Via Reggio, in an advanced state of decomposition, and was therefore burned on a funeral pyre in the presence of Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron, Mr. Trelawney, and ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... remains in the house guns are fired, drums are beaten and flutes (sharati) are played. It is a noteworthy custom that the body is not retained in the house for an even number of nights, the usual time being three nights. If it is intended to burn the body on a masonry pyre (jingthang), a bull (u masi kynroh) is sacrificed. If the body is placed in a coffin (ka shyngoid), a pig named u'niang shyngoid is sacrificed, and if it is intended to adorn the pyre with flags, a fowl called a u'iar ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... advancement, but at the age of fifty-five, his tender gaze still fixed on the misty peals of Raja-hood, he suddenly found himself transported to a region where earthly honours and decorations are naught, and his salaam-wearied neck found everlasting repose on the funeral pyre. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... on the river bank, Neighbors on horseback, and the slaves, With teeth as white as eyeballs, rank on rank, Watched on the pyre the form wrapped in a shroud, Lonely among the lolling tongues of flames— The smoke streamed, trailing in a saffron cloud, The greedy noise of fire grew loud, Then, "whiff," the shroud burned with a flare: ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... Nothing could equal the zeal of Trelawny in carrying our wishes into effect. He was indefatigable in his exertions, and full of forethought and sagacity in his arrangements. It was a fearful task; he stood before us at last, his hands scorched and blistered by the flames of the funeral-pyre, and by touching the burnt relics as he placed them in the receptacles prepared for the purpose. And there, in compass of that small case, was gathered all that remained on earth of him whose genius and virtue were a crown of glory to the world—whose love ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... winds with base lucre and pale melancholy!— In the flames of the pyre these, alas! will be vain, Mix your sage ruminations with glimpses of folly,— 'Tis delightful at times to be ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... of their quarrel filled the hearts of both armies with fear, and they agreed to make a truce in order to bury their chiefs. As it was customary at that time to burn the bodies of the dead, both corpses were laid upon the funeral pyre side by side. When the wood was all burned, the ashes were put into separate urns, for the Greeks used to tell their children that these brothers hated each other so much that even their ashes ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... enough to be able to mourn him bitterly. Enough, he died at ninety; and just as I arrive at Puteoli comes a message that I am his sole heir. His freedmen knew I was coming, embalmed the body, and wait for me to go to Rome to-morrow to give the funeral oration and light the pyre. He has left a fortune fit to compare with that of Crassus[21]—real estate, investments, a lovely villa at Tusculum. And now I—no, we—are wealthy beyond avarice. Shall we ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... for the answer; again he was at the window of the burning room. Too late! The flames were already devouring what the smoke had smothered; their wretched pallet was a funeral pyre. He had hardly time ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... 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 ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... teeth from the dragon's jaws for sowing, then watch for the time when the night is parted in twain, then bathe in the stream of the tireless river, and alone, apart from others, clad in dusky raiment, dig a rounded pit; and therein slay a ewe, and sacrifice it whole, heaping high the pyre on the very edge of the pit. And propitiate only-begotten Hecate, daughter of Perses, pouring from a goblet the hive-stored labour of bees. And then, when thou hast heedfully sought the grace of the goddess, retreat from the pyre; and let ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... literature, dignifying the life of letters, and gilding philosophy as well as poetry with new glories,—could he have seen all this, how his exultant soul would have rejoiced, even as did Abraham, when, amid the ashes of the funeral pyre he had prepared for Isaac, he saw the future glories of his descendants; or as Bacon, when, amid calumnies, he foresaw that his name and memory would be held in honor by posterity, and that his method would be received by all future philosophers as one of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... back their ghastly load to Jabesh, and burned the mutilated bodies there, employing an unfamiliar mode, as we may suppose, by reason of their mutilation and decomposition, and then reverently gathering the white bones from the pyre, and laying them below the well-known tamarisk. Saul's one good deed as king sowed seeds of gratitude which flourished again, when the opportunity came. His many evil ones sowed evil seed which bore fatal fruit; and both ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... my Lord, since Rome hath no more Caesars. On that day when the populace stood weeping where flames from the funeral pyre did cast their somber smoke against Castor and ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... is quite in keeping with the little touches of characterisation which we can also notice in this book. In the second line Aeneas pursues his way certus, even while he gazes at the flames of Dido's funeral pyre, not knowing what they meant. He presides at the games with the dignity of a Roman magistrate, and reproachingly consoles the beaten Dares with words which seem to reflect his late experience at ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... was nothing but a horrible and magnificent funeral pile, a monstrous pyre which lit up the whole country, a pyre where men were burning, and where He was burning also, He, He, my prisoner, that new Being, the ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... out-of-character, blackguardly behaviour which has brought the hero to his death. Similarly the conception of the character and position of Brynhilt is entirely disfigured and rendered inane in the Nibelungenlied: of that superb demi-goddess of the Scandinavians, burnt on the pyre with her falcons and dogs and horses and slaves, by the side of the demi-god Sigurd, whom she has loved and killed, lest the door of Valhalla, swinging after him, should shut her out from his presence; ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... best they could. Many from want of the proper appliances, through so many of their friends having died already, had recourse to the most shameless sepultures: sometimes getting the start of those who had raised a pile, they threw their own dead body upon the stranger's pyre and ignited it; sometimes they tossed the corpse which they were carrying on the top of another that was burning, and ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... philosopher's spiritual part remained abroad so long that his lady ceased to expect its return. She therefore went through the usual mourning, cut her hair, cried, and finally burned the body on the funeral- pyre. "We can do no more for miserable mortals, when once the spirit has left ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Council of Nice, in the beginning of the fourth century, and the establishment of an orthodox creed, the excommunication of the Jewish Christians, and the establishment of the Church as a state institution. Then the sword and the pyre ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... 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." So saying ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... nation grew only the stronger, and its religion, the flower of hope and trust, developed the more sturdily for its icy covering. Jews were mowed down by fire and sword, but Judaism continued to live. From the ashes of every pyre sprang the Jewish Law in unfading youth—that indestructible, ineradicable mentality and hope, which opponents are wont ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... leave the smouldering pyre: Enough remains to light again: But who am I to dare desire A place beside ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... Alexander left the funeral pyre, he invited many of his friends and chief officers to dinner, and offered a prize to the man who could drink most unmixed wine. Promachus, who won it, drank as much as four choes.[431] He was presented with a golden crown worth ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... Sardanapalus in making his palace his own funeral pyre and burning himself upon it, is also attributed to the king who was overthrown ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... a world quivering as a ship in the storm, the bending heavens as though unbolted and insecure, all foundations apparently shattered and the universe itself as though rushing forward to its funeral pyre. ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... Kooleen Brahmins will bear him; and as often as they set down the bier to feed the dead with a morsel of moistened rice, other Brahmins shall sing his wisdom and his virtues, and celebrate his meritorious deeds. When his funeral pyre is lighted, his sons, and his sons' sons, and his daughters' husbands, and his nephews, shall beat their breasts and rend the air with lamentations; and when his body has been consumed, his ashes shall be given to the Ganges,—all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... joyous, sailed away to meet his friend. But Shelley never came back to his wife and baby boy. A few days after, the waves cast his body up on the beach, and you know the rest—how the faithful Trelawney and Byron made the funeral-pyre and reduced the body ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... rest be loosed I will not live!" Thus all escaped save four.' In graver mood That chief resumed: 'A Norland King dies well! His bier is raised upon his stateliest ship; Piled with his arms; his lovers and his friends Rush to their monarch's pyre, resolved with him To share in death, and with becoming pomp Attend his footsteps to Valhalla's Hall. The torch is lit: forth sails the ship, black-winged, Facing the midnight seas. From beach and cliff Men watch all night that slowly lessening ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... present. I am aware that this hour makes me guilty of high treason and may send me to the block; but nevertheless I will not be silent. The fire which burns in my breast consumes me. I must at length give it vent. My heart, that for years has burned upon a funeral pyre, and which is so strong that in the midst of its agonies it has still ever felt a sensation of its blessedness—my heart must at length find death or favor. You shall ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... said the Phoenix sadly. "The traditional cinnamon pyre of the Phoenix, celebrated in ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... the bank at a quick pace. The strains of anything but 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
... treasury of heat Under east winds crossed with sleet. Plants and birds and 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
... 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
... 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
... awy in 'is coffin if I'd a kep' 'im; but Lor' bless you, my dear, 'e was that pertic'ler I couldn't do with 'is fads, not at fancy prices, I couldn't. I 'ad to tell 'im to gow, for Mussy's syke, where 'e'd git 'is own French cook, and 'is own butler to black 'is 'arf-doz'n pyre o' boots all at once for 'im." This was the recognised fiction by which Mrs. Rogers accounted for the departure of any of her lodgers. Lest it should seem to speak badly for her willingness and for the quality of the attendance at No. 12, she invariably added, "Not but wot ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... Philippi, the Macedonian town where republican Rome fought its last battle, where Cassius leaned upon his sword-point, believing everything lost. Brutus transported the body of his comrade to Thasos and raised for him a funeral pyre; and twenty days later, on the same field, met again that specter of death which had summoned him to Philippi. It was not many years after this victory of the Imperial power that a greater triumph was won at Philippi, when Paul and Silas, cast into prison, sang praises unto God at midnight, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... virtues of Howkawanda, and those that he might have had if he had been spared to them longer, while the women cast dust on their hair and rocked to and fro howling. Younger Brother crept as close to the pyre as he dared, and whined in his throat as the fire took hold of the brush and ran crackling ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... 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
... 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 with a ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... Rome," said one senator to another, as the Consultore passed them, "that they have found themselves a new diversion before the palace of the Vatican, and that some of our great ones here are burned in effigy to instruct the populace. A pile of Fra Paolo's writings doth light the funeral pyre; and all that he hath written or may hereafter write is placed upon ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Aliscans. Vivien is the son of Garin d'Ansene, one of those "children of Aimeri" who have sought fortune away from Narbonne, and one of the captives of Roncesvalles. Garin is only to be delivered at the cost of his son's life, which Vivien cheerfully offers. He is actually on the pyre, which is kindled, when the pagan hold Luiserne is stormed by a pirate king, and Vivien is rescued, but sold as a slave. An amiable paynim woman buys him and adopts him; but he is a born knight, and when grown up, with a few allies surprises Luiserne itself, and holds it till a French army arrives, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... of flying years The pyre of Dido on the vacant shore; I see Medea's fury and hear the roar Of rushing flames, the new bride's burning tears; And ever as still another vision peers Thro' memory's mist to stir me more and more, I say that surely I have lived before And known this joy ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... We had neither shovel nor any other appliance wherewith to dig a grave, and it was obviously impossible to do so with our bare hands alone. We at length decided to burn both the bodies, and I forthwith set about the construction of a funeral pyre. Fortunately, we had the forest close at hand; the ground beneath the trees was abundantly strewn with dry leaves, twigs, and branches, and thus I had not far to go for fuel. By the time that darkness closed in I had accumulated a goodly pile close to the ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... knew and knew not, this bewildered crowd That up her streets in silence hurrying passed, What manner of death should make their anguish loud, What corpse across the funeral pyre be cast, For none had spoken it; only, gathering fast As darkness gathers at noon in the sun's eclipse, A shadow of doom enfolded them, vague and vast, And a cry was heard, unfathered of earthly lips, What of the ships, O Carthage! Carthage, what ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... The child-wives of India need to be rescued and protected, but no more than many adult wives in Bible lands need protection from drunken and brutal husbands. The heathen wife seeks death on her husband's funeral pyre, but the Christian wife is often sent to death by a bullet in her brain, or a knife ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... did not impair the industry of the regulators. A voice was heard proposing a bonfire of the merchandise, and no second suggestion was necessary. All hands but those of the pedler and the attorney were employed in building the pyre in front of the tavern some thirty yards; and here, in choice confusion, lay flaming calicoes, illegitimate silks, worsted hose, wooden clocks and nutmegs, maple-wood seeds of all descriptions, plaid cloaks, scents, and spices, jumbled up in ludicrous variety. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... 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 ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... 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 ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... happiness of ourselves and our friends by any further experiments. I have never wondered since that the Chinese women allow their daughters' feet to be encased in iron shoes, nor that the Hindoo widows walk calmly to the funeral pyre; for great are the penalties of those who dare resist the behests of the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... house-carle was not to blame for his grumbling. The next morning Olaf went to where Hrapp was buried and had him dug up. Hrapp was found undecayed, and there Olaf also found his spear-head. After that he had a pyre made and had Hrapp burnt on it, and his ashes were flung out to sea. After that no one had any more trouble with ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... may she not be, And thus escape the eternal pyre, No pirate's heart would dance with glee Like ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... lights of constellated age A star among them fed with life more dire, Lit with his bloodied fame, whose withering rage Made earth for heaven's sake one funereal pyre And life in faith's name one appointed stage For death to purge the souls of men with fire. Heaven, earth, and hell on one thrice tragic page Mixed all their light and darkness: one man's lyre Gave all their echoes voice; Bade ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of Caesar was to occur the next day. It was to be the funeral of a private citizen—the honor of a public funeral-pyre was not to be his. Brutus would say a few words, and Antony, as the closest friend of the dead, would also speak—the body would be buried and all ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... and within twelve hours. Yet, as she could not bury her, and would not throw her to the sharks, she was minded to give her mistress a royal funeral after the custom of her own Libyan folk. Here was flame, and what pyre could be grander than ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... scene of fire and butchery. She saw her beloved brethren and sisters dragged forth and shot or tomahawked. Before the breath had left their bodies she saw the scalps torn from their heads, some of the wounded women kneeling and imploring for mercy in vain. The burning house was the funeral pyre from which the loving spirit of Mrs. Senseman took its flight to eternal rest. Gazing through the windows which the fire now illumined with a lurid glare, she saw Mrs. Senseman surrounded by flames standing with arms folded and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... me!—Am not I your king? And you would strangle him!— But I am breaking with an inward Fire Shall scorch you off, and wrap me on the wings Of conflagration from a kindled pyre Of lying prophecies and prophet-kings Above the extinguish'd stars—Reach me the sword He flung me—Fill me such a bowl of wine As that you woke ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... smoke, and the glare of ruddy fire. A stifled cry, like one immense groan rose from below—above in the reek and blaze all was silent. But from out that fire I saw—yes, and another saw it too (an English soldier, rushing to add a faggot to the pyre, a token of his hate to the Maid), and it so wrought upon him that he dropped his burden, fell upon his knees and was like to die of the fear—I saw a white dove rise from the smoke wreaths of that ghastly pile, hover a moment, just touched by the glare ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... saw the red glare of the burning monastery reflected from end to end of the Campagna, like the glow of some gigantic pagan funeral pyre, saw also the quiet departure of Cardinal Bonpre and his "foundling" Manuel from Rome. Innocent of all evil, their escape was after the manner of the guilty; for the spies of the Vatican were on guard outside the Sovrani Palace, and one priest after another ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... (ab aliis ... ad alios) after death, and by this chiefly they think to incite men to valour, the fear of death being overlooked." Later he adds, that at funerals all things which had been dear to the dead man, even living creatures, were thrown on the funeral pyre, and shortly before his time slaves and beloved clients were also consumed.[1155] Diodorus says: "Among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevailed that the souls of men were immortal, and after completing their term of existence they live again, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... stranger, harbor'd there, made show Of force, full soon was he laid low; In the brief space of this wild fray, From coals, that strewn around us lay, The straw caught fire; 'tis blazing free, As funeral death-pyre ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... India's sands, [Footnote 5] Full in the sun the Bramin stands; And, while the panting tigress hies To quench her fever in the stream, His spirit laughs in agonies, [Footnote 6] Smit by the scorchings of the noontide beam. Mark who mounts the sacred pyre, Blooming in her bridal vest: She hurls the torch! she fans the fire! To die is to be blest: [Footnote 7] She clasps her lord to part no more, And, sighing, sinks! but sinks to soar. O'ershadowing Scotia's desert coast, The Sisters ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... ever taught the widowed wife to burn herself on the pyre of her dead husband? And who has ever taught love to find bliss ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... put into port! Three whole months before the launching of the Alabama, had that patient little vessel been ploughing the seas, gathering, as it turned out, only additional fuel for her own funeral pyre. A weary voyage to have ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... do everything we can to prevent the grave from leaving any part of us behind {when the Fates will look out for us, even against our wills."} (After these reflections we made ready to pay the last rites to the corpse,) and Lycas was burned upon a funeral pyre raised by the hands of enemies, while Eumolpus, fixing his eyes upon the far distance to gain inspiration, composed an epitaph ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... have spoken honorably, my daughter, but in that honorable dwells grief. But if the son of Peleus must be gratified, and you must escape blame, Ulysses, kill not her; but leading me to the pyre of Achilles, strike me, spare me not; I brought forth Paris, who destroyed the son of Thetis, having ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... never opens his mouth save to 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, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... her ride 'mid mirk and fire, Unfearing din and death, Her eyes upflaming like a pyre, Her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Austerlitz, Jena, Leipsic and Ulm, and then as First Consul and Emperor, sweeping with his unconquerable columns over the sands of Egypt and snows of Russia, until at last the fires and smoke of Moscow bedimmed the horizon of his glory, and lit up the funeral pyre of five hundred thousand of the best soldiers of France, led to their doom by the crazy ambition ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... the curtains were jerked apart, and revealed what seemed to be a funeral pyre. Branches were piled on the window-seat, and on the top, wrapped in an eiderdown quilt, with a laurel wreath bound round his head, lay David. Jock, with bare legs and black boots, draped in an old-fashioned circular ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... which a Welshman had built a castle. I saw all the woods reaching down to the water's edge, and the woods I did not see I remembered; all the larch trees that grew on the hillsides came into my mind suddenly, and I thought what a splendid pyre might be built out of them. No trees had been cut for the last thirty years; I might live for another thirty. What splendid timber there would then be to build a pyre for me!—a pyre fifty feet high, saturated with scented oils, and me lying on the top of it with ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... was comforting and comradely. They piled the dead wood upon it before they lay down; as one resinous branch after another caught fire the trees danced round in giant shadows, as though they were doing a death-dance for their limbs on the funeral pyre. The silence was a complete blank except when a flapping of wings beat the air where some bird changed its night perch, or a parrot squawked hoarsely for a moment, causing a fluttering of smaller wings that soon settled to ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles |
