"Corpse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the rock now.... Why, that was the outline of a human body! It was a corpse; it was a drowned man, cast up by the sea! I went clear up ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the corpse gaunt jackals rend and shake, And ply their horrid task; One half still hangs impaled upon the stake, Loud laughter's ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... mounted on the cornice of the cupboard, at the farther end of the apartment, where he seemed to have taken refuge. He sat motionless, with his eyes fixed on the corpse, his attitude and looks ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... had been Sir Frederick Mobray, a fatigue party were rolling into a trench, and carelessly covering with earth from the battered redoubts, along with the bodies of negroes and horses, and of barrels of spoiled pork and beef, the naked corpse of him who had ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... heart to walk about in this ghastly place can read the last sad moments of almost every corpse. Here one sees a blue-coated Austrian with leg shattered by a jagged bit of a shell. The trouser perhaps has been ripped open and clumsy attempts been made to dress the wound, while a great splotch of red shows where the fading strength was exhausted before the flow of life's stream could be checked. ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... essence of all decay. That this organic law should rule in every living structure is a necessity inherent in the actual conditions of the creation. And wherever we look in the realm of physical man, even "from the red outline of beginning Adam" to the amorphous adipocere of the last corpse when fate's black curtain falls on our race, we shall discern death. For death is the other side of life. Life and death are the two hands with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... contemplated, or supposed his mother to contemplate, was the danger of defeat, and for that he reserved his consolations. He bade her fear nothing; for that without doubt he would return with victory, and with the ensigns of the dignity he sought, or would return a corpse. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... once more, and fell upon an object so fearful and startling that they both fell back amazed. A woman was standing before them, tall, upright, and bareheaded; her long black hair falling over a face as white and ghastly as a three days' corpse; her wild countenance rendered more terrible by the blue glare of the lightning shining on the rain that streamed from every lock of her hair and every shred of her garments. She looked like some wild ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... and flung open the next door, slamming it hurriedly again to blot out what it exposed. Why didn't they keep them covered? Why didn't they show a card outside? Must he examine every grisly corpse ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... time, and I made no doubt that once his limbs were freed he would try to kill me. The others were still asleep while I tiptoed over to his corner. At first sight I got a fearsome shock, for I thought he was dead of suffocation. He had worked the gag out of his mouth, and lay as still as a corpse. But soon I saw that he was sleeping quietly, and in his slumbers the madness had died out of his face. He looked like any other sailorman, a trifle ill-favoured of countenance, and dirty ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... later it was known that Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, an eminent justice of the peace who had taken the depositions of Oates against Coleman, had disappeared. Search was made; and Godfrey's corpse was found in a field near London. It was clear that he had died by violence. It was equally clear that he had not been set upon by robbers. His fate is to this day a secret. Some think that he perished by his own hand; some, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... terrible that it stunned sensibility. The first feeling was the least, and men wanted to get strength to feel. Other griefs belong always to some one in chief, but this belonged to all. Men walked for hours as though a corpse lay in their houses. The city forgot to roar. Never did so many hearts in so brief a time touch two such boundless feelings. It was the uttermost of joy and the uttermost of sorrow—noon and midnight without a space between. We should not mourn, however, because ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... three miles off; and that he had afterwards been seen entering a house in the village where the widow lived, from which he had never returned. It was next affirmed, that a tradesman, passing the church-yard about twelve at midnight, had seen four men carry a dead corpse into ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... downs beside the dead body). Yes, sacred relics of a man beloved! Thou lifeless corpse! Here, on thy death-cold hand, Do I abjure all foreign ties forever! And to my country's cause devote myself. I am a Switzer, and will act as one With my whole heart and soul. [Rises. Mourn for our ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... expenditures as aforesaid and for the coffin, the latter usually made by some local carpenter, there were costs for notifying the countryside, costs for mourning bands, sitting up with the corpse, and the fee for the funeral sermon. If burial was in the churchyard, there was the cost of digging and filling the grave. The cost of a winding sheet of Holland (coarse unbleached linen), in 1652, was 100 pounds of tobacco. The cost of the funeral sermon ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... the nation ain't dead, though it's been givin' a lifelike imitation of a corpse for several years. It can't die while it's got Tammany for its backbone. The trouble is that the party's been chasm' after theories and stayin' up nights readin' books instead of studyin' human nature and actin' accordin', as I've advised in tellin' how to hold your district. In two Presidential ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... he may not sleep in any house but his own official residence, which is called the "anointed house" with reference to the ceremony of anointing him at inauguration. He may not drink water on the highway. He may not eat while a corpse is in the town, and he may not mourn for the dead. If he dies while in office, he must be buried at dead of night; few may hear of his burial, and none may mourn for him when his death is made public. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... simplicity of government and worship; but it lies in none of these, desirable as they are. The body may be as to its organs perfect and entire, wanting nothing; but simply because the Spirit has been {142} withdrawn from it, it has passed from a church into a corpse. As one has powerfully stated it: "When the Holy Spirit withdraws, . . . he sometimes allows the forms which he has created to remain. The oil is exhausted, but the lamp is still there; prayer is offered and the Bible read; church-going is ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... far; and it was agreed that Delisle should be allowed to struggle with and overthrow one of them while the rest were at some distance. They were then to pursue him and shoot him through the heart; and after robbing the corpse of the philosopher's stone, convey it to Paris on a cart, and tell M. Desmarets that the prisoner had attempted to escape, and would have succeeded if they had not fired after him and shot him through the body. At a convenient place the scheme was executed. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... myself, if I cannot prevail with you to prefer amity and concord to quarrel and hostility, and to be the benefactor to both parties, rather than the destroyer of one of them, be assured of this, that you shall not be able to reach your country, unless you trample first upon the corpse of her that brought you into life. For it will be ill in me to loiter in the world till the day com wherein I shall see a child of mine, either led in triumph by his own ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... should be injured or devoured by animals. If the mother died in childbirth her offspring was buried alive with her. When a man attained puberty, he was bound to submit to certain ceremonies, some of them painful, and dictated by phallic superstitions. Funeral rites were simple: the corpse was either burnt, with howls and superstitious functions, or it was placed in the hollow trunk of a tree in a sitting position, with the chin supported by the knees, as was the custom with Peruvian mummies; and the belief in another world prompted them to place the weapons and utensils ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... throng'd legions; and charge home upon him. Perhaps, some arm, more lucky than the rest, May reach his heart, and free the world from bondage. Rise, Fathers, rise! 'Tis Rome demands your help; Rise, and revenge her slaughter'd citizens, Or share their fate! The corpse of half her senate Manure the fields of Thessaly, while we Sit here, delib'rating' hi told debates, If we should sacrifice our lives to honour, Or wear them out in servitude and chains. Rouse up, for shame: Our brothers of Pharsalia Point at their wounds, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... cantonists, penal recruits, and "captives." However, it soon became clear that those who had fallen under the walls of Sevastopol had sealed by their death not the honor but the dishonor of the old regime of blood and iron. Beneath the rotting corpse of an obsolete statecraft, built upon serfdom and maintained by soldiery and police, the germ of a new and better Russia began ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... through the water as the ship parted. The sight pleased her, for she knew he must sink down to her home. But suddenly she remembered that men cannot live in the water, and that he would only reach her father's palace a lifeless corpse. No; he must not die! She swam to and fro among the drifting spars, forgetting that they might crush her with their weight; she dived and rose again, and reached the prince just when he felt that he could swim no longer ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... have just swallowed a dose of powerful bane, and in accordance with instructions upon the label, have come out of my hole to die. Will you kindly direct me to a spot where my corpse will prove ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... of his relatives and friends and even by other and hired mourners, who had that as their trade. In their lamentation they inserted a melancholy song, with innumerable extravagant things in praise of the dead. They bathed, smoked, and shrouded the corpse, and some embalmed it in the manner of the Hebrews, with certain aromatic liquors; and thus did they bury ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... our boys saw the dead body of their friend. The face of poor Daubeny looked singularly beautiful with the placid lines of death, as all innocent faces do. It was the first time they had seen a corpse; and as Walter touched the cold cheek, and placed a spray of evergreen in the rigid hand, he was almost overpowered with an awful sense of the ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... come in time to spare you what you have already suffered, my son. But we did only enter the doors as the fall of the rafter announced that some catastrophe had happened. I feared to find you already a corpse." ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... sure, it is possible to conceive a still higher species of drama, a tragedy which deals with man only in the abstract, with man in himself, in his mysterious relation to God and Nature; a comedy which lays nationalities themselves in their coffin and gaudily dresses up the corpse. But it is still an open question whether, under such a general domination of the idea of humanity as is presupposed in that case, art can continue to exist at all; and at any rate the time of this spirit-like ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... a custom among the warriors of Rome that when one fell in battle, each soldier in his command cast a shovelful of earth on the corpse. Thus a mighty mound ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Berlin. In order that we may not be accused of taking the laudatory plums out of this German pudding and leaving out all criticisms and accusations, let us quote in full the passage in which he dances in anticipation on London's corpse:— ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... the corpse had grown cold, heavy steps were heard on the staircase, and Dick and Laura entered, one with a quantity of cockatoo-like flutterings, the other steadily, like a big and ponderous animal. At a glance they saw that all was over, and in silence they ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... propped in his hands, smiling, like the alien he was, upon the ice at sea and the untimely blue loom of the main-land and the vaguely threatening color of the sky. I could not begin, wishful as I might be for his wise counsel: but must lie, like a corpse, beyond all feeling, contemplating that same uneasy prospect. I wished, I recall, that I might utter my errand with him, and to this day wish that I had been able: but then could not, being overwhelmed by this new and convincing ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... corvette or two; then the work would go forward. Only a little while to wait, and then they would bring their beloved chief back to France and to his own again. Had he not written: "Come for me, mon brave. They say they have orders to shoot me. Come; better carry my corpse away than that I should rot here for years to come." They would come. But this year went by and another; one by one the Old Guard died off, smaller and smaller had drawn the circle. The vile rock called St. Helena still remained impregnable. On a certain ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... indeed—as beautiful as she was wise—and when she got near the town she thought to herself, "If people see me, they may steal me away, as they did my sister, and then I shall never find her again. I will therefore disguise myself." As she was thus thinking she saw by the side of the road the corpse of a poor old beggar woman, who had evidently died from want and poverty. The body was shrivelled up, and nothing of it remained but the skin and bones. The Princess took the skin and washed it, and drew it on over her own lovely face and neck, as one draws ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... My name was bright; Men weep, and tell How Olaf fell. Thy death is near; Thy corpse, I fear, The crow will ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... in icicles on each side of his cracked blue lips, his eyelids inflamed with the glare of snows, the principal part of his costume consisting of a sheepskin coat looted with difficulty from the frozen corpse of a camp follower found in an abandoned cart, took a more thoughtful view of events. His regularly handsome features, now reduced to mere bony lines and fleshless hollows, looked out of a woman's black velvet hood, over which was rammed forcibly a cocked hat ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... was trying to think of.... These generations, my generation, my son's generation, are working to bury with infinite tenderness the gorgeously dressed corpse of the old Spain.... Gentlemen, it is a little ridiculous to say so, but we have set out once more with lance and helmet of knight-errantry to free the enslaved, to right the wrongs ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... darkness, I fell again to reviewing the weird succession of events. I am not by nature superstitious, but in the black silence I could well imagine a staring succession of eyes, beginning with the dilated pupils of Whitney and passing on to the corpse-like expression of Mendoza, but always ending with the remarkable, piercing, black eyes of the Indian woman with the melancholy- visaged son, as they had impressed me the first time I saw them and, in fact, ever since. Was it a freak of my mind, or was ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... in the prose 'Satyricon' ascribed to Petronius, whom Nero called his Arbiter of Elegance. The tale was known in the Middle Ages from the stories of the 'Seven Wise Masters.' She went down into the vault with her husband's corpse, resolved to weep to death or die of famine; but was tempted to share the supper of a soldier who was watching seven bodies hanging upon trees, and that very night, in the grave of her husband and in her funeral garments, married her new ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... with his uncle's permission, he rode forth. And he came to a wood, and far within the wood he heard a loud cry, and he saw a beautiful woman with auburn hair, and a horse with a saddle upon it, standing near her, and a corpse by her side. And as she strove to place the corpse upon the horse, it fell to the ground, and thereupon she made a great lamentation. "Tell me, sister," said Peredur, "wherefore art thou bewailing?" "Oh! accursed Peredur, little ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... should have had a little science on my side, which counts for a great deal. We turned him out of the Club for brutality towards the old grandmother he lives with—turned him out in public. Such a scene! I shall never forget the boy's face. It was like a corpse, and the eyes burning out of it. He made for me, but the others closed up round, and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gets, and who sleeps on whatever spot he finds. Him the gods know for a Brahmana who is afraid of company as of a snake; of the full measure of gratification (from sweet viands and drinks) as of hell; and of women as of a corpse.[1026] Him the gods know for a Brahmana who is never glad when honoured and never angry when insulted, and who has given assurances of compassion unto all creatures. One in the observance of the last ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... grandmother come to her end the same way," said Mrs. Smith, "only with her it was the Bible reader as didn't shut the door through being so set on shewing off her reading. And my granny, a clot of blood went to her brain, and her brain went to her head and she was a corpse inside ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... paper always sends me out on special occasions to report big funerals. I'm very good at that sort of thing. I seem to have a flair for funerals somehow. I've never done a show like this before, but if I can only persuade myself to believe that there's a corpse about, I'll do it better than anybody else. I make a specialty of quoting the more literary parts of the Burial ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... might have no uneasiness from them, nor any horror for death, as if people were polluted with the touch of a dead body, or with treading upon a grave. In the next place, he suffered nothing to be buried with the corpse, except the red cloth and the olive leaves in which it was wrapped. Nor would he suffer the relations to inscribe any names upon the tombs, except of those men that fell in battle, or those women who died in some sacred office. He fixed eleven ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Company. Many incidents of the siege, utterly unknown to ordinary readers of history were recalled last night, and many things that have hitherto been dubious, or apparently unaccountable explained away. The story of the finding of the snow-covered and hard-frozen corpse of the unfortunate General and his Aide-de-Camp, was told with much pathos, as were details of his burial. The references to descendants of then existing families still residents in Quebec, were extremely interesting, because ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... another word. All your thoughts are lies. If Kari had died, I should have followed him. You would have had my corpse, not me. And if I had learned that you were the cause of his death, I should have killed you while you were asleep. I have given my all to my husband, even my conscience. I can go on living, even if he should not always care so much ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... round finger, like the handle of a jug, and won't point at you when they're lecturing, and the skin's like an old coat on gaffer's shoulders—or, Chloe! just like, when you look at the nail, a rumpled counterpane up to the face of a corpse. I declare, it's just like! I feel as if I didn't a bit mind talking of corpses tonight. And my money's gone, and I don't much mind. I'm a wild girl again, handsomer than when that——he is a dear, kind, good old nobleman, with his funny old ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to all intents and purposes, dead upon this continent. The form of it still lingers in our midst, it is true, and in the Protestant parts of Europe its ritual survives, and pious hearts, which would be pious in spite of it, still cling to its dead corpse as if it were alive, and kindle their sacred fires upon the altar of its wellnigh forsaken sanctuaries. We should count it no gain to us, however—the extinction of this old and venerable faith—if we had no high and certain assurance that a nobler and sublimer religion was reserved for our ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... his bedside without food or sleep for seven days and nights, and then began to prepare his corpse for burial. First she bathed it with her tears, then with salt water from the sea, rain water from the clouds, and lastly water from the spring. Then she smoothed his hair with her fingers, and brushed it with a silver brush, and combed it with the golden comb which the water-nymphs had used to comb ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... unconquerable aversion for every kind of food, and the vomiting was incessant. The last three days of his life he complained that a fire was burning in his breast, and the flames that burned within seemed to blaze forth at his eyes, the only part of his body that appeared to live, so like a corpse was all the rest of him. On the 17th of June 1670 he died: the poison had taken seventy-two days to complete its work. Suspicion began to dawn: the lieutenant's body was opened, and a formal report was drawn up. The operation was performed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... affects the entire body, and gives rise to excruciating pains. The head is affected by singing, roaring, disagreeable noises in the ears, the pulse is feeble, but quick, the nails are of a bluish color, the tongue is coated white, the eyes are sunken, and the patient has a corpse-like appearance; the temperature of the body rapidly falls, the surface becomes deathly cold, and, unless the disease is promptly arrested in its course, speedy dissolution follows. The disease is rarely prolonged beyond twenty-four hours, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... at least 200 B.C. onwards. Further it seems probable that the founder or an early teacher of the sect was an ascetic called Lakulin or Lakulisa, the club-bearer. The Vayu Purana[495] makes Siva say that he will enter an unowned corpse and become incarnate in this form at Kayarohana, which has been identified with Karvan in Baroda. Now the Vayu is believed to be the oldest of the Puranas, and it is probable that this Lakulin whom it mentions lived before rather than after our era ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... that corpse, that crock!—It is no use, no use," the wretched miscreant added slowly, after his first hurried exclamations; "I did the deed, I did it! guilty, guilty." And, notwithstanding all Mr. Sharp's benevolent interferences, and appeals to judge and jury on the score of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... company wi' t' butler, and a couple of footmen, and Dan Scholes, one o' t' grooms. Now theer worn't a word said at t' inquest about what that lot—five on em, mind yer—found when they reached t' dead corpse—not one word! But ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... a remarkable parallel and still more remarkable contrast between these two groups of disciples at the graves of their respective masters. John the Baptist's followers venture into the very jaws of the lion to rescue the headless corpse of their martyred teacher from a prison grave. They bear it away and lay it reverently in its unknown sepulchre, and when they have done these last offices of love they feel that all is over. They have no longer a centre, and they disintegrate. There was nothing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... master and Sultan of the world, has redeemed his vow. God is great, and Mohammed is his prophet. Allah!" Some time after this event, a foreign-looking tree was seen to peep out of the spot where a corpse must have been deposited in that stormy night, when the rage of the elements yielded to the pitiless fury of man, and it thus explained in some degree this part of the inscription, "the date-tree shall ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... a Gard'ner's corpse, 'tis said, In answers can but ill succeed; And dogs that hear when they are dead, Are very cunning ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... are, no doubt, best described as paper-games. In The Wrong Box, for instance, there is something very like the card-game commonly called 'Old Maid'; the odd card is a superfluous corpse, and each dismayed recipient in turn assumes a disguise and a pseudonym and bravely passes on that uncomfortable inheritance. It is an admirable farce, hardly touched with grimness, unshaken by the breath of reality, full of fantastic character; the strange funeral procession is ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... aversion to every thing noble, these ragamuffins directed their outrages particularly against the statue of the founder of the church, whose grim black trunk stands in the vestibule, deprived of its head. One almost regrets that the figure did not possess the miraculous power of revenge which the corpse of Campeador[19] exerted when the Jew plucked his beard, and fall headlong of its own accord into the thick of its assailants. The remains of Mad. de Sevigne, and of the Grignan family, however, were safe from their violence, as the adherents of the castle had ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... interest you," she said. "I'll bet when I read this you won't lay there and pertend you don't hear. If you do it's because somethin's wrong with your brains, that's all I got to say. Sick or well, it's news to stir up a corpse." ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... the dead body of Dante, adorned with poetic insignia, upon a funeral bier, and had it borne on the shoulders of his most distinguished citizens to the place of the Minor Friars in Ravenna, with such honour as he deemed worthy of such a corpse And here, public lamentations as it were having followed him so far, he had him placed in a stone chest, wherein he still lieth. And returning to the house in which Dante lately lived, according to the Ravennese custom he himself ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... with an irreverent roughness. A sharpened stake had hitherto served it for a pillow. It was now withdrawn, held in its place by several volunteers, and a fellow with a heavy mallet (the sound of which still haunts me at night) drove it home through the bosom of the corpse. The hole was filled with quicklime, and the bystanders, as if relieved of some oppression, broke at once into a ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The corpse sat up, and for a dead man he showed considerable life. Painfully he rose, and stood staggering on his feet, big, pale, shaken, with a bump the size of an egg on the side of his head, but with such shining blue eyes! He put out a big hand ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... what it was, I was amazed to discover the body of a male slave, still dressed in the uniform of the servants of the palace, but rapidly decomposing. It was the faint sickening odour emitted from the corpse that had greeted our nostrils when we ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... mats, &c. (it will not injure the finest fabrics), and by placing in dishes or other vehicles, into which hot water should be poured. It has no smell, but quickly removes all smells. In cases of death it is most valuable; the corpse may be kept perfectly sweet by merely dusting into ears, nose, mouth, under arm-pits, feet, &c., or when any moisture exudes. It will preserve features and skin fresh as in life for many weeks, and keep the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... steep road down to the plain—called the Monkey's Ladder—was a river, for a thaw had set in. But Hazel did not mind that, though her boots let in the water, as she minded the atmosphere of gloom at old Samson's blind house. She would never, as Abel always did, 'view the corpse,' and this was always taken as an insult. So she waited in the road, half snow and half water, and thought with regret of Undern and its great fire of logs, and the green rich dress, and Reddin with his force and virility, loud voice, and strong teeth. He ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... prevented her from using her hands, they could not hinder her from exercising her tongue, which she wagged against him with all the virulence of malice. She asked, if he were come to butcher his brother, to insult his father's corpse, and triumph in her affliction? She bestowed upon him the epithets of spendthrift, jail-bird, and unnatural ruffian; she begged pardon of God for having brought such a monster into the world; accused him of having brought his father's grey hairs with ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and to enquire, and my mother said: "If you will take me to the chapel where the first part of the service was read, I will find the grave". To humor her whim, he led her thither, and, looking round for a moment or two, she started from the chapel, followed the path along which the corpse had been borne, and was standing by the newly-made grave when the official arrived to point it out. Her own explanation was that she had seen all the service; what is certain is, that she had never been to Kensal Green before, and that she walked ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... jogged along singing and counting them. Presently I looked back after him, and saw him strip and lay his clothes by the side of the road. My heart was in my mouth in an instant, I stood like a corpse; when, in a crack, he was turned into a wolf. Don't think I'm joking: I would not tell you a lie for the ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... part. Tamely I heard the Southrons' brag: I said, 'Their wrongs have made them smart.' At length they struck our ancient flag,— Their flag as ours, the traitors damned!— And braved it with their patchwork-rag. I rose, when other men had calmed Their anger in the marching throng; I rose, as might a corpse embalmed, Who hears God's mandate, 'Right my wrong!' I rose and set me to His deed, With His great Spirit fixed and strong. I swear, that, when I drew this sword, And joined the ranks, and sought the strife, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... too sentimental a phrase. I should have said, acting out a murder. You can't very well murder a dead man. The fellow he was killing already was a corpse. ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... in the appearance of these remote Southern towns. If a railroad is built through one of them, it infuses some enterprise; the social corpse is galvanized by the fresh blood of civilization that pulses along the farthest ramifications of our great system of commercial highways. At the period of which I write, no railroad had come to Troy. If a traveler, accustomed ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... cutting off the Jewish Hercules' hair. And you, who, if you will listen to me, will be a great artist, must enter into the subject. What you have to show is the power of woman. Samson is a secondary consideration. He is the corpse of dead strength. It is Delilah —passion—that ruins everything. How far more beautiful is that replica—That is what you call it, I think—" She skilfully interpolated, as Claude Vignon and Stidmann came up to them on hearing her talk of sculpture—"how ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... progress of the intellect. But here they tormented without stimulating. The waters were troubled; but no healing influence descended. The agitations resembled the grinnings and writhings of a galvanised corpse, not the struggles ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the express car; it hadn't been disturbed. [The fact is that without my suspecting it a prodigious mistake had been made. I was carrying off a box of guns which that young fellow had come to the station to ship to a rifle company in Peoria, Illinois, and he had got my corpse!] Just then the conductor sung out "All aboard," and I jumped into the express car and got a comfortable seat on a bale of buckets. The expressman was there, hard at work,—a plain man of fifty, with a simple, honest, good-natured face, and a breezy, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... end—with what outrage? I would show my contempt and preserve my dignity by submitting without a struggle—I despised this odious plot. At last there were voices, footsteps; I found it very hard to carry out my resolution and refrain from stifled cries and kicks. I was lifted up and carried, like a corpse, with many stumbles, by men who sometimes growled as they hastened along. From time to time somebody murmured, "Take care." Then I was deposited into a boat. The world seemed to be swaying, splashing, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... and when, clothed in the simple habit of his order, his body was laid out in his cell, the native neophytes crowded in with flowers, while the Spanish soldiers and sailors pressed round in the hope of being blessed by momentary contact with his corpse. He was laid beneath the mission altar beside his beloved friend Crespi; but when, in after years, a new church was built, the remains of both were removed and ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... shook her head. "When I was a little girl, Katherine, I read in a book about the old Romans, how a wicked daughter over the bleeding corpse of her father drove her chariot. She wanted his crown for her own husband; and over the warm, quivering body of her father she drove. When I read that story, Katherine, my eyes I covered with my hands. I thought such a wicked woman in the world could not be. Alas, mijn kind! often ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... out of the manse of Dour. He went down to the farm towns and into the village huts and lifted the dead. He harnessed the horse in the cart, and swathed the body in sheets. He dug the graves, and laid the corpse in the kindly soil. He nursed the sick. He organised help everywhere. He went from house to stricken house with the high assured words of a messenger ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... some twine, with a pig of iron ballast which had been used in one of the boats. As there was no sign of a breeze, with these he went below, and for the first time since his death opened the captain's state-room. We brought the corpse into the main cabin, and placing it on the canvas, without loss of time Jim began sewing it up. The old man's kind face had scarcely changed. We took one respectful last look at it, and then Jim, drawing the canvas over it, ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... bumpety-bump, swearing all the way. You see, he was a very great general and was allowed to swear all he pleased. He got his head cut off, so there's a warning for you boys never to swear. Well, Grandpa got off of his fiery steed and looked everywhere for the corpse's head. He had the body all right, but what good was a body without a head? He couldn't find it anywhere. The rest of the army came up and helped in the search, but 'twasn't any use. That general's head had disappeared as if by magic. At first it was thought they might trace ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... story of a punctiliously polite Greek, who, while performing the funeral of an infant daughter, felt bound to make his excuses to the spectators for "bringing out such a ridiculously small corpse to ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... anything red below the skin. The organs, no longer stimulated by the blood, leave off work altogether. The brain goes to sleep, the muscles relax, consciousness ceases, and you behold the poor body, from which the soul seems to have departed, give way on all sides, and fall to the ground like a corpse. This is not exactly death, but it is yet an interruption of life. It would be death if nature did not get the upper hand again, and send back the ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... pale as a corpse when he jumped off his wheel and had no excuse to make for his defeat. Taylor's performance undoubtedly stamps him as the premier 'cycle sprinter of the world, and, judging from the staying qualities he exhibited in his six days' ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... waistcoat, with a rough-edged collar. Robinson knew resistance was useless. He was jammed in the jacket, pinned tight to the collar, and throttled in the collar. Weakened by fever, he succumbed sooner than the torturers had calculated upon, and a few minutes later No. 19 would have been a corpse if he had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... dead and gone, My corpse laid under a stone My fame shall yet survive, And I shall be alive, In these my works for ever, My ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... past,' rejoined Bazarov; 'and as regards the future, it's not worth while for you to trouble your head about that either, for I intend being off without delay. Let me bind up your leg now; your wound's not serious, but it's always best to stop bleeding. But first I must bring this corpse to his senses.' ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... his son Otian, and of Praxaspes (the honest minister) and his little boy; throughout the whole incident of the gentle lady whose fate melts even the Vice to tears; and in the outburst of a mother's grief over her child's corpse. We quote the last. ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... an adjoining court; and, altogether, it seemed a squalid and ugly place to live in, and a most undesirable one to die in. At the conclusion of our labors, the young woman asked us if we would not go into another chamber, and look at the corpse, and appeared to think that we should be rather glad than otherwise of the privilege. But, never having seen the man during his lifetime, I declined ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sang the vassal bard by night, Beneath his high-born lady's light That from her turret shone. Next morning in the forest glade His corpse was found. Her brother's blade Had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... paying for it. And now the opportune moment had arrived for the final denouement. Sheriff Jones—the mourned and lost and murdered and much-lamented Sheriff Jones—whose tragic death had fired the hearts of all the Missouri border, now put in an appearance and showed himself a mighty lively corpse, and led his posse into the town. The flag of the lone star of South Carolina, blood-red, and on which was inscribed the motto, "Southern Rights," floated beside the Stars and Stripes. The monster posse, with loaded cannon, marched into the city and in front of the Free ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... eternally," said the Friar. He bent down again and raised the old man's head tenderly. Then his face grew sterner and whiter. "He is dead," he said. "The Christ he denied receive him into His mercy." And he let the corpse fall gently back and closed the glassy eyes. The bystanders had a momentary thrill. Death had lent dignity even to the old Jew. He lay there, felled by an apoplectic stroke, due to the forced heavy meal, the tinsel gleaming grotesquely on his white ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... with the feldsher and much preferred by the peasantry, stood the snakharka, a woman, half witch, half quack, who was regarded by the moujiks with the greatest veneration. By means of herbs and charms, she could accomplish any cure short of restoring life to a corpse. "The snakharka and the feldsher represent two very different periods in the history of medical science—the magical and the scientific. The Russian peasantry have still many conceptions which belong to the former. The majority of them are now quite willing, under ordinary circumstances, ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... (death's too rich prize) the corpse interr'd Of Joshua Sylvester Du Bartas Pier; A man of arts best parts, to God, man, dear; In foremost rank ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... terror holds, Yet one fear presses on my mind, That death should on me helpless play A satire of the bitter kind. For much I fear that o'er my corpse The scalding tears of friends shall flow, And that, too late, they should with zeal Fresh flowers upon my body throw. That fate sardonic should recall The ones I loved to my cold side, And make me lying in the ground, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... buried at Sans-Souci, in the Tomb which he had built for himself; why not, nobody clearly says. By his own express will, there was no embalming. Two Regiment-surgeons washed the Corpse, decently prepared it for interment: "At 8 that same evening, Friedrich's Body, dressed in the uniform of the First Battalion of Guards, and laid in its coffin, was borne to Potsdam, in a hearse of eight ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... were forgotten. All pranked out and bedizened as he was, the puissant knight plunged into the gulf; but his exertions were fruitless, and he gave up the search. His love for the maiden living and breathing did not prompt him to drown himself for her corpse. With hasty steps he regained the Tower, where he doffed his ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... money. The Cholos made it a condition that they should be buried in coffins, which is not common with the lower classes in Peru. The Indian complied with this condition. When a Cholo died, a coffin was sent to his residence. If too short, the corpse was bent and forced into it. The interment then took place according to the ritual of the Church. On the following night the Indian who had contracted for the burials repaired with a confidential servant to the churchyard, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... slave's; you can see his spirit; he has a keen look, as a gentleman should, and a high, full-blooded one to boot; none of your shrinking feminine glances when you are going to war! A noble pike-man that, and a noble corpse, for that matter, if a ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... immemorial have opened up the gates of learning. True, the black-board vaunted itself with the heavy results of the last lesson in "fractions"; but the school was no more. The spirit had fled: It was a corpse. ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... the Capital, and discuss them with envious friends for weeks in advance. And if the prearranged programme is not scrupulously carried out, we feel that we have been defrauded. It was the regret of Aunt Sophronia Hallett's life that, on her Washington excursion, she had not seen the "Diplomatic Corpse." She saw the President and the Monument and Congress and "the relics in the Smithsonian Institute," but the "Corpse" was not on view; Aunt Sophronia never ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... caused him to fall, but that he was seized and kept upon his legs by the policeman. He had not time, however, to recover his steadiness, when he was felled to the ground by a blow from a stone, which sent him to the ground a corpse. A general assault with every description of rude and formidable weapons, now commenced upon the unfortunate constabulary. Their imbecile and uncautious officer fired his pistol and in a moment afterwards was knocked ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... fallen slaves, who had sold their lives so dearly. Another of his fellows was found at a short distance, mortally wounded and about to bid adieu to life. In the yard lay the keeper of the horses, a stiffened corpse. Six of the slaves ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... amid the strife, Horses trampling out his life: Scarce can his retreating force Find and save his mangled corpse. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... convenient hours, always before sunrising, or after sunsetting, with the privity[80] of the churchwardens, or constable, and not otherwise; and that no neighbors nor friends be suffered to accompany the corpse to church, or to enter the house visited, upon pain of having his house shut up, or ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... the city of ghosts, while from others—and thus was the death of Wickham Place—the spirit slips before the body perishes. It had decayed in the spring, disintegrating the girls more than they knew, and causing either to accost unfamiliar regions. By September it was a corpse, void of emotion, and scarcely hallowed by the memories of thirty years of happiness. Through its round-topped doorway passed furniture, and pictures, and books, until the last room was gutted and the last van had rumbled away. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... all han's around!" bawled the irrepressible Milt Baker. "There ain't ho corpse in that dust, ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... Mrs. Hunter! She crossed to her carriage, followed by the shopman loaded with purchases for a party. The door was quickly slammed to, and she drove away; and Barton returned home with a bitter spirit of wrath in his heart to see his only boy a corpse! ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... when she came back from the choir practice and viewed the interesting corpse. "I shouldn't have dared! No, nothing in this world would have induced me to seize the creature by its tail. It's a huge one too, with such wicked-looking teeth. What a wonder you weren't bitten! You shall have one of those Partridge Wyandottes for your very own. Choose whichever you ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... What object was that, gliding into the room like a ghost, on whom all eyes were strained with a terrible fascination? Was it a ghost? It appeared ghastly enough for one. Was it one of Jan's "subjects" come after him to the ball? Was it a corpse? It looked more like that than anything else. A corpse bedizened ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... more decently, more kindly, more humanely, more wisely than the parents, say, of Mary B, who, when they found out her condition, put her out of the house, into which she was brought back two days later a corpse, fished out from the East River? Didn't Edith's father act more nobly, more wisely even from a purely selfish point of view than the father of Bridget C, who kicked his daughter out penniless into the street, where he had to see her ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... creep up to and surround the doomed village; they raise the war-cry shortly before sunrise, and, as the villagers fly, they tell them by the touch. If the body feels warm after sleep, unlike their own dew-cooled skins, it soon becomes a corpse. They advance with two long knives, generally matchets, one held between the teeth. They prefer the white arm because 'guns miss fire, but swords are like the chicken's beak, that never fails to hit ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... company moved in solemn procession towards the chapel, where the mass and requiem were chanted, and the corpse of the Lady Eleanor, inclosed in a stone coffin, was lowered to its resting-place, in the vault ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scalped and left for dead; that the Eastern mail happening to come along shortly after, found the body and placed it upon the boot of the coach; that before arriving at Fort Larned they found that instead of carrying a corpse, as it was at first supposed, they carried a living man. This man was taken to a hospital and got well. He raised a family of children and his sons, some of them live in or around Independence, Missouri. This man, Mr. ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... absorbed as they were in mournful sorrow, started with surprise. Both gazed at the organ loft; and there, before the great instrument, sat the graceful figure of Joy Irving. The rector's face grew pale as the corpse in the casket; the withered cheek of the Baroness turned a sickly yellow, and a spark of anger dried ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the end of a year I sought that infant cherished, That highly respectable Gondolier Was lying a corpse on his humble bier - I dropped a Grand Inquisitor's tear ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... make a healthy-looking corpse, Jack. For I tell you my time is nearly up; I've felt it in my bones this six months. I've seen ghosts in my dreams, and felt as if they were around me when I was awake. It's no use, Jack, when a chap's time comes he has got ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... sin. Its disciples are those who rail and snarl at everything that is noble and good, to whom a joke is an assault and battery, a laugh is an insult to outraged dignity, and the provocation of a smile is like passing an electric current through the facial muscles of a corpse. ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... return, I spent an hour very pleasantly in the National Academy, in the same building as the National Gallery. Many of the paintings here are of a fine order. Oliver Cromwell looking upon the headless corpse of King Charles I., appeared to draw the greatest number of spectators. A scene from "As You Like it," was one of the best executed pieces we saw. This was "Rosalind, Celia, and Orlando." The artist did himself ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... fell. In September the fever increased and upon the Negroes devolved also the duty of removing corpses. In the course of their work they encountered much opposition; thus Jones said that a white man threatened to shoot him if he passed his house with a corpse. This man himself the Negroes had to bury three days afterwards. When the epidemic was over, under date January 23, 1794, Matthew Clarkson, the mayor, wrote the following testimonial: "Having, during the prevalence of the late malignant disorder, had almost daily ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... corpse remains for several hours with its living neighbors, who say: "That is nothing. We shall all soon ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... long interval, it seems he had never quitted the trumpeter's side, but had stood sentinel over his corpse, scaring away the birds of prey, heedless ...
— Minnie's Pet Horse • Madeline Leslie
... Ahuna began to pine away and get more like a corpse every day. In desperation he appealed to Kanau. I happened to be present. You have heard what sort of a ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... what shall be done? Still spreads the fire! A quarter of Rome in ashes lies already, And like a blackened corpse: and screaming mothers, Hugging their babes, dash through the fearful flames, And old men totter gasping through the blaze Or fall scorched to the ground. Stifled with smoke The population from their houses reel. Meantime the Christians, prophesying ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... which has immemorially prevailed among the Battas, of delaying the burial of every person who during his life had a claim to the title of Rajah (of which each village has one) until some rice, sown on the day of his death, has sprung up, grown and borne fruit. The corpse, till then kept above ground among the living, is now, with these ears of rice, committed to the earth, like the grain six months before; and thus the hope is emblematically expressed that, as a new life arises from the seed, so another life shall begin for man after his death. During ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... to kill any one; I might as well be at Ship Island, where Butler has sentenced Mrs. Phillips for laughing while the corpse of a Federal officer[7] was passing—at least, that is to be the principal charge, though I hope, for the sake of Butler's soul, that he had better reasons. Shocking as her conduct was, she hardly deserved two years' close confinement in such a dreadful place as that, because she happened to have ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... mine!" he hissed, "when your corpse lies mouldering in a dishonoured, traitor's grave." The young man was chained to a heavy table, but with a sudden wrench, he freed himself, raised both arms, and was about bringing down his manacled hands upon the tyrant miscreant—and that blow would ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... "fly, fly,"—and she gave him one look; but, great God! what an object presented itself to her at that moment. A man stood before her absolutely hideous with horror; his face but a minute ago so healthy and high-colored, now ghastly as that of a corpse, his hands held up and clenched, his eyes frightful, his lips drawn back, and his teeth locked with strong and convulsive agony. He uttered not a word, but stood with his wild and gleaming eyes riveted, as if by the force ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... no corpse exhibited; if all the marble slabs are unoccupied, strange as it may seem, the visitors turn hastily away with an expression of disappointment or discontent. There was no fear of their doing so, however, on the morrow of the ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... I put it in my pocket, little caring what infamous stuff it contained. If I had been curious enough to read it and my guests had seen it, I would have you know that I would have gone in pursuit of you, and at this moment you would have been a corpse. I am quite well, and have no symptoms of any complaint, but I shall not lower myself to convince you of my health, as your eyes would carry contagion as well as your ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... blue cuirass of the Teuton and the silver Milanese armor of Zbyszko. The bell rang in the chapel for early mass, and at the sounds of the bell flights of crows again flew from the castle roofs, flapping their wings and crowing noisily, as if in joy at the sight of blood and the corpse lying motionless in the snow. Rotgier looked at it once and again during the fight, and suddenly began to feel very lonesome. All the eyes that were turned upon him were those of enemies. All the prayers, wishes and silent ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... to Tom Garret, at the Millbridge, and tell him Captain Cluffe's dhrownded over the weir, and to take the boat-hook and rope—he's past the bridge by this time—ay is he at the King's House—an' if he brings home the corpse alive or dead, before an hour, Captain Puddock here will give him twenty guineas reward.' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... patch of moonlight, fifty feet or so in from the road, lay Sir John de Bury, his eyes closed, his face upturned, motionless—to all appearances a corpse. De Lacy sprang down and knelt ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... suddenly deserted. The body remained a long time at the door of the house, whilst the canons of the Sainte Chapelle and the priests of the parish disputed about the order of precedence with more than indecency. It was put in keeping under care of the parish, like the corpse of the meanest citizen of the place, and not until a long time afterwards was it sent to Poitiers to be placed in the family tomb, and then with an unworthy parsimony. Madame de Montespan was bitterly ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... hidden, but very near. A moment later, Gloster enters, black as night, hisses his monstrous charge, and before noon of that same day poor Hastings is a headless corpse. ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... leaping into the stream, turned about and fired down towards the prison. The attack was more sudden then he had expected, but he did not lose his presence of mind. The shot would serve a double purpose. It would warn the men in the barrack, and perhaps check the rush by stopping up the doorway with a corpse. Beaten back, struggling, and indignant, amid the storm of hideous faces, his humanity vanished, and he aimed deliberately at the head of Mr. James Vetch; the shot, however, missed its mark, and killed ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... dull and cold; snow threatened, should the weather moderate. Overhead was a suspended drift of gray clouds. The earth was stark as a corpse in utter silence. The stillness of the frozen air was like the stillness of death and despair. A fierce blast would have given at least the sense of life and fighting power. "Suppose she dies," thought Jerome—"suppose ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... instigator of the crime, and dies. Brynhild rejoices at the sound of Gudrun's wailing. Gudrun cannot find relief for her grief, the tears will not flow. Men and women seek to console her by tales of greater woes befallen them. But still Gudrun cannot weep as she sits by Sigurd's corpse. At last one of the women lifts the cloth from Sigurd's face and lays his head upon Gudrun's lap. Then Gudrun gazes on his blood-besmirched hair, his dimmed eyes, and breast pierced by the sword: she sinks down ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... seemed hardly to know what had occurred. He shrank away from those attending him, cowered upon the ground and uttered unintelligible remonstrances. His face, swollen by blows and stained with gouts of blood, nevertheless showed white beneath his disheveled hair—as white as that of a corpse. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... was in store for him. In a damp, dark back-room, on a wretched bedstead covered with a horsecloth, with a rough felt cloak for a pillow, lay Tchertop-hanov. He was not pale now, but yellowish green, like a corpse, with sunken eyes under leaden lids and a sharp, pinched nose—still reddish—above his dishevelled whiskers. He lay dressed in his invariable Caucasian coat, with the cartridge pockets on the breast, and blue Circassian trousers. A Cossack cap with a crimson ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... gentleman swore that Simon had said in his presence that "he was tired of life." His landlord affirmed that Simon, when paying him his last month's rent, remarked that "he should not pay him rent much longer." All the other evidence corresponded—the door locked inside, the position of the corpse, the burned papers. As I anticipated, no one knew of the possession of the diamond by Simon, so that no motive was suggested for his murder. The jury, after a prolonged examination, brought in the usual verdict, and the neighborhood ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... said that Henry the First sitting in a window of his chateau on the river Dyle one night, saw floating on the dark water the corpse of this young martyr, where the ruffians had thus thrown her, and "the pale radiance from her brow illuminated the whole valley." Calling to his consort, Marguerite of Flanders, he pointed out to her the wondrous sight, and hastening forth they drew her dripping body from the dark slimy water and ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... I noticed a corpse-like smell in Hassel's cabin, which was empty. On closer sniffing and examination it turned out to be the dead rat, a big black one, unfortunately a male rat. The poor brute, that had starved to death, had tried to keep itself alive by devouring a couple of novels that lay in a locked drawer. ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... Not even for a day will I remain under this roof, even if—which is doubtful—I should be suffered to do so. I put myself under the protection of your Holiness, until such time as I can set forth on my sad journey to Rome. At Surrentum I must abide until the corpse of my brother can be conveyed to its final resting place—as I ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... spoke, sir," he apologised. "I thought you wus one o' these 'ere la-de-dah blokes out fur an arrin'. Wot did you say your corpse wus?" ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... night. In the ruined house Kunda Nandini sat by her father's corpse. She called "Father!" No one made reply. At one moment Kunda thought her father slept, again that he was dead, but she could not bring that thought clearly into her mind. At length she could no longer call, no longer think. The fan still moved in her hand in the direction where her father's ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... neither we nor they knew; for we were not convicted of having either done or said anything which the law could take hold of, for they took us up in the open street, the king's highway, not doing any unlawful act, but peaceably carrying and accompanying the corpse of our deceased friend to bury it, which they would not suffer us to do, but caused the body to lie in the open street and in the cartway, so that all the travellers that passed by, whether horsemen, coaches, carts, or waggons, were fain to break out of the way to go by it, that they might not ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... and carry up this corpse, Singing together. Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes Each in its tether Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, 5 Cared-for till cock-crow; Look out if yonder be not day again Rimming the rock-row! That's the appropriate country; ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning |
