"Pyre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wickedness and pervading sin, 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
... end that comes To all," quoth Channa; "he upon the pyre— Whose remnants are so petty that the crows Caw hungrily, then quit the fruitless feast— Ate, drank, laughed, loved, and lived, and liked life well. Then came—who knows?—some gust of junglewind, A stumble on the path, a taint in the tank, A snake's nip, half a span of angry steel, A chill, ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... in what great reverence people of this locality hold the sacred river Ganges. If one of their relatives dies, he said, and they have not the means of taking the ashes to the Ganges, they powder a piece of bone from his funeral pyre and keep it till they come across some one who, some time or other, has drunk of the Ganges. To him they administer some of this powder, hidden in the usual offering of pan[1], and thus are content to imagine that a portion of the remains ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... the blazing portal, Over the floor of fire, He seemed, in the terrible splendor, A martyr on his pyre! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Arts, Boston). A Cretan Cupbearer (Museum of Candia, Crete). The Francois Vase (Archaeological Museum, Florence). Consulting the Oracle at Delphi. The Discus Thrower (Lancelotti Palace, Rome). Athlete using the Strigil (Vatican Gallery, Rome). "Temple of Neptune," Paestum. Croesus on the Pyre. Persian Archers (Louvre, Paris). Gravestone of Aristion (National Museum, Athens). Greek Soldiers in Arms. The Mound at Marathon. A Themistocles Ostrakon (British Museum, London). An Athenian Trireme (Reconstruction). "Theseum". Pericles (British Museum, London). An ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... "and ample shall be your reward. You shall not again be subject to the art of the magician. I will commit your members to such a sepulchre; I will burn your form with such wood, and will chaunt such a charm over your funeral pyre, that all incantations shall thereafter assail you in vain. Be it enough, that you have once been brought back to life! Tripods, and the voice of oracles deal in ambiguous responses; but the voice of the dead is perspicuous and certain to him who receives it with an unshrinking ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... "does not satisfy love; it must be paid back in its own coin." "The platform of the altar of love," says Jane Porter, with great accuracy of metaphor, "is constructed of virtue, beauty, and affection; such is the pyre, such the offering; but the ethereal spark must come from heaven that lights the sacrifice." "This passion is," says Dr. South, "the great instrument and engine of nature, the bond and cement of ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... rattle snakes expire; Twisting like tendrils of a hero's pyre? No! dancing in the meteor's hall of power, See, Genius ponders o'er Affection's tower! A form of thund'ring import soars on high, Hark! 'tis the gore of infant melody: No more shall verdant Innocence amuse The lips that death-fraught Indignation glues;— Tempests shall teach ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... business of burning the bodies. This required some organisation. There were official formalities to fulfil, and the materials had to be assembled—the fuel, the improvised furnace, the iron bars, salt and wine and oil to pour upon the pyre. In his artless 'Records' he describes the last scene on the seashore. Shelley's body was given to the flames on a day of intense heat, when the islands lay hazy along the horizon, and in the background the marble-flecked Apennines gleamed. Byron looked on until ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... of lightwood 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: The dead man's eyes ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... 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; ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... who gets a dowry with his wife sells himself for it, as Euripides says,[305] but his gains are few and uncertain; but he who does not go all on fire through many a funeral pile, but through a regal pyre, full of panting and fear and sweat got from travelling over the sea as a merchant, has the wealth of Tantalus, but cannot enjoy it owing to his want of leisure. For that Sicyonian horse-breeder was wise, who gave Agamemnon as a ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... seven dead rats to the funeral pyre by the nettle grove left him bathed in perspiration, and Cossar pointed out the obvious physical reaction of whisky to save him from the otherwise inevitable chill. There was a sort of brigand's supper in the old bricked kitchen, ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Thus must I, with all my power, my science, and loved by one into whose sphere death comes not, even thus must I perish! True, the rich spices, the perfumed woods, the fragrant oils, which would feed the sacred fire of my funeral pyre, would save my mortal remains from that corruption which makes the disgust of death even worse than its dread. A few odoriferous ashes alone would be left for my urn. Yet not the less must I share the common doom of my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... 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, ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... esteemed reliable in the universe, till I seemed to stand on the verge of creation. There I hung with the strength of terror. Then I found poet Campbell true to nature, where he speaks of hope standing intact ''mid Nature's funeral pyre.' I insisted upon 'hoping,' in spite of ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... him. This was done, and the dead Rajah was laid with his feet turned towards his native country. Then twelve bottles of kerosene were poured over him and he was covered completely with thin slabs of pine wood. For almost another hour the relations and servants kept piling up the funeral pyre which looked like one of those piles of wood that carpenters keep in their yards. Then on top of this was poured the contents of twenty bottles of oil, and on top of all they emptied a bag of fine shavings. A few steps further on, a flame was glimmering ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... It's quite impossible that I should get to you in time, you realise that? But I'll tell you what I will do for you, with the greatest pleasure. When you are safely dead, I'll avenge you in style. The smoking ruins of Agpur shall be your funeral pyre, as the old fellow said ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... from the burning pyre One who had loved his wind-swept lyre Out of the sharp teeth of the fire Unmolten drew, Beside the sea that in her ire Smote ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... A Bombay Street The Clock Tower and University Buildings, Bombay Victoria Railway Station, Bombay Nautch Dancers Body ready for Funeral Pyre, Bombay Burning Ghat Mohammedans at Prayer Huthi Singh's Tomb, Ahmedabad Street Corner, Jeypore The Maharaja of Jeypore Hall of the Winds, Jeypore Elephant Belonging to the Maharaja of Jeypore Tomb of Etmah Dowlah, Agra Portrait of Shah Jehan Portrait ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... departure of AEneas, the unhappy queen resolved to put an end to her life. She bade her servants erect in the inner court yard of her palace a lofty pile of wood, called a funeral pyre, and upon it to place an image of AEneas as well as the arms he had left behind him. Then mounting the pyre, to which flaming torches had been applied, she stabbed herself with her false lover's ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... had jilted her, and so she stabbed herself on a funeral pyre after setting fire to it, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... cast into the sacred river close at hand, the Hoogly being one of the outlets of the Ganges. When first brought to the Ghat, a very simple and brief ceremony is held over each body, and then a member of the family of mourners which attend the burning applies the torch to the pyre. The custom is that this service should be performed by the oldest son of the deceased, if there be such a representative. The first time we witnessed such a scene was at the Calcutta Ghat, but our after experience, as to the disposal of the dead, was still more strange, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... 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
... 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 exclaiming—"'Tis ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Sant'Apostolli, they left her lying in state before the altar of the Cappella Cornaro, while in the church, outside the chapel, the Ducal guards kept watch. Very still and pale she was in the light of the tall wax candles burning about her and the torches flaring from the funeral pyre, and strange to look upon in the coarse brown cape and cowl of the habit of St. Francis, with a hempen cord for girdle. But the Lady Margherita had tenderly folded the hood away from the beautiful face and head, and in the pale patrician ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... steep cloud-fastnesses,— Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun whose pyre Blazed with momentous memorable fire;— Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these? Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight Conjectured in the lamentable night?... Lo! the soul's ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... to Dwarka where he breaks the news. Vasudeva with his two wives, Devaki and Rohini, die of grief. Arjuna recovers the bodies of Krishna and Balarama and places them on a funeral pyre. Rukmini along with Krishna's seven other queens throw themselves on the flames. Balarama's wives, as well as King Ugrasena, also die. Arjuna then appoints Krishna's great grandson, Parikshit, to rule over the survivors and, after assembling the remaining women and children, removes ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... mantra of invocation. And on Madri were raised by the twin Aswins, the twins Nakula and Sahadeva. And (one day) Pandu, beholding Madri decked with ornaments, had his desire kindled. And, as soon as he touched her, he died. Madri ascended the funeral pyre with her lord. And she said unto Kunti, 'Let these twins of mine be brought up by thee with affection.' After some time those five Pandavas were taken by the ascetics of the woods to Hastinapura and there introduced ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... daughters she had given him had gone their own ways with men of their own choosing and he didn't know what had become of any of them. And the village people—they would start picking the Crown apart to sell the jewels, one by one, before the ashes of his pyre stopped smoking. ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... replied the Nubian; "for, were your troops once arrived, the people would fear to approach the camp." Suddenly the space is filled with smoke, the tent-curtains shrivel up in flames, and the Pasha and his comrades find themselves encircled in what they well know is their funeral pyre. Vainly the invader implores mercy, and assures the Tiger of his warm regard for him and all his family; vainly he endeavours to break through the fiery fence that girds him round; a thousand spears bore ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... Soonder's body—in heavy silks of gleaming blue—was laid on a bamboo pyre. Dhoop Ki Dhil tenderly sprinkled flower-petals and incense-oils over all, and lighted the four corners for the motherless one, herself. Cadman and Skag watched the clean flames, till only silver ashes were on the ground. And ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... be," said Ten-Teh from the door. "Pass Upward with a tranquil mind, O stranger from the outer land. The torch which you have borne so far will not fail until his pyre is lit." ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... 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
... back, it seemed as if in the wild orgy of Pack Monday Fair he had finally burnt the old garments and put on the new. That day had been the funeral pyre of his old life; and, like Sardanapalus, it had died of its own free will. A glorious end; no anti-climax. But the future was still more glorious. When he watched the morning sun flicker white on the broad Eversham road from the station to the Abbey, ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... on to the beach, and lay down to sleep on the shore. At break of day I sent my comrades forth to bring the body of Elpenor from the palace. We took it out to a rocky place on the shore, and cut down trees to build a funeral pyre. There we burned the body and performed the funeral rites, and we built a tomb and placed an oar at the top ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... of faith and hope ascend! I hail my master—recognise my friend; The old faith wanes,—we light her funeral pyre, Her ashes fall before our holy fire; Come, trample under foot the gods that men have wrought; The rotten, helpless staff is broke, is gone—is naught. Their darkness felt they own, but let them see the light! Their gods of stone, of clay, but vampires of the night! Their dust shall ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... 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 ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... of high desire And faith that leapt from its own quenched pyre Alive and strong as the sun, and caught From darkness light, ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... her ride 'mid mirk and fire, Unfearing din and death, Her eyes upflaming like a pyre, Her fearless ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... our friend." The bridegroom at once carries his wounded and suffering bride to his own house; and all the people gather round the post for the pleasure of burning it and the demon together. A great pile of firewood has meanwhile been heaped up about it, and the women run round the pyre cursing in shrill voices the wicked spirit who has wrought all this evil. The men join in with hoarser cries and animate themselves for the business in hand by deep draughts of an intoxicant which has been provided for the occasion by the parents-in-law. Soon the bridegroom, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... miniature whirlwind of the sort frequent in the desert was slowly circling the grave; and even as they looked it swung immediately over it and there stood for some moments, its tall dust column rising up into the zenith like the smoke of a funeral pyre! Then on they marched and there they left him, sure that by night lions would be roaring him a requiem not unfitting his ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... be, And thus escape the eternal pyre, No pirate's heart would dance with glee Like mine, to see ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... certainly follows Berosus in this part of his history. We may therefore accept it as a fact about which there ought to be no question. Actuated by a feeling which has more than once caused a vanquished monarch to die rather than fall into the power of his enemies, Saracus made a funeral pyre of his ancestral palace, and lighted it with ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... longer any hope, when he is irrevocably sentenced, and he knows that he can no longer deceive anyone, neither mankind nor Him whose name he profanes by this last sacrilege, he yet exclaims, "O Christ! I shall suffer even as Thou." It is only by the light of his funeral pyre that the dark places of his life can be examined, that this bloody plot is unravelled, and that other victims, forgotten and lost in the shadows, arise like spectres at the foot of the scaffold, and escort the assassin to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... luck at mining on the Middle Fork of the American. His party came at last, through a deep canyon to a large bar on which they found among unmistakable evidences of a plundered camp both white man's and Indian's hair. A great ash heap containing calcined bones was undoubtedly the funeral pyre of white men and red men alike, and some yelling savages upon the upper bluff confirmed the tragedy which Captain Merritt's party had been too ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... sleeve across her eyes and stood up. All at once she wheeled upon him like a lioness protecting its young. In her wrath she was as magnificent as the wife of—Aeneas at the funeral pyre of that great captain. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... widow—since thou dost maintain thou art not my husband—then my face hath been looked upon by a man not of mine own people, and I am dishonoured. Fire alone can cleanse me of that defilement—the pyre and the death ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... restrain the rushing steeds, freed the poor broken body—so mangled that not one of all his friends would have known whose it was. They built a pyre and burned it; and now they bear hither, in a poor urn of bronze, the sad ashes of that mighty form—that so Orestes may have his tomb in ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... the widowed wife to burn herself on the pyre of her dead husband? And who has ever taught love to find ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... believed that the Bible's influence was what infidelity says it is, made the funeral pyre for Polycarp, the populace bringing fuel for the fire, and while the flames made a glory of their lambent glare, he cried out: "Six and eighty years have I served him and he has done me nothing ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... the great object of their dread. They thought that if they could lay it in ashes, making it the funeral pyre of all its inmates, the weaker forts would be immediately abandoned by their garrisons in despair, or could easily be captured. An expedition was formed, consisting of more than a hundred Indian warriors, and accompanied ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... the Chinooks, who stretched them in canoes with paddles and fishing implements by their side; and the Kalamaths, who burned them with the maddest saturnalia of dancing, howling, and leaping through the flames of the funeral pyre. Over sixty or seventy petty tribes stretched the wild empire, welded together by the pressure of common foes and held in the grasp of the ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... "Are you one that should be set to judge books? Have you read these that you are about to destroy?" And as the other, paying no attention, knelt down to strike a match and light the pyre, he cried, in a louder voice: "Behold what a thing is war! You have been trained to kill your fellow men; the beast has been let loose in your ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... "departed" is going on a long journey, and his friends escort him as far as they can; shoes are bound on his feet, the Hel-shoes, for Hel is the name of the region of the dead. Gifts are given to him; horses, male and female attendants, hawks and hounds, are burned with him on the pyre, and his wife voluntarily accompanies him; all these he is to have with him in the ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... unto me, O ye who have been to me as sons in these the last days of mine old age. When my spirit leaves this withered shell, as it is about to do, ye shall build a funeral pyre, lay my body thereon, and put fire thereto; for by fire are all things purified, and on the wings of the flames shall my spirit mount and soar away to those Happy Isles where is neither sin, nor sorrow, nor suffering, nor any other evil thing. This shall ye ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... rescue or death. The atmosphere was a little less stifling here, but every now and then a dense cloud of smoke rolled over her and almost suffocated her before the wind drove it upward. The sky was alight with reflected fire. The burning pyre of Dido or Sardanapalus could hardly have made a grander effect—and far away in the east, against the dark undulations of wooded hills there was another light—the tender roseate flush of summer dawn, full of ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... live when Ilion fell, And once to see Troy captured. Leave me, pray, And bid me, as a shrouded corpse, farewell. For death—this hand will find for me the way, Or foes who spoil will pity me and slay. Light is the loss of sepulchre or pyre, Loathed have I lived and useless, since the day When man's great monarch and the God's dread sire Breathed his avenging blast and scathed ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... trafficker; in the rush of battle he holds scales, and for the golden coin you spend on him he sends you back lifeless shapes of men; they sent out men, the loving friends receive back well-smoothed ashes from the funeral pyre. They sing the heroic fall of some—all for another's wife; and some murmur discontent against the sons of Atreus, and some have won a grave in the land they had ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... Townsend, a pilot of the Ganges, and tradition has it that he and Job Charnock, who, as an officer of the East India Company, founded Calcutta in 1690, saved a pretty young Hindu widow from ascending her husband's funeral pyre and committing suttee. Tradition states further that Job Charnock and his bride "lived lovingly for many years and had several children," until in due time she was buried in the mausoleum at St. John's, ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... 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 to ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Amongst you are the great chiefs of the Achaians. Now let one of these be your champion, to fight with me, Hector: and I call Zeus to witness, that if he slay me, you shall let him carry off my armor, but give my body to the Trojans, that they may render to me the honor of the funeral pyre. But if the Far-Darter shall grant me glory, that I may slay him, then will I strip him of his armor, and hang it in the Temple of Apollo; but his lifeless body I will give back to the long-haired Achaians, that they may ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... the common property of gossiping tongues—that I intend to depart. If there should be anything left of me—which is less than probable considering the inflammatory character of the material I design for my pyre—I would be obliged if, without giving anybody any trouble, it could be buried in my garden, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... gave out to the neighbours that they had been borne by herself. The children grew in stature and in strength and when they played in the fields were the admiration of every one that saw them. They were about twelve years of age when the potter died, and his wife threw herself on the pyre and was burnt with her husband's body. The boy with the moon on his forehead (which he always kept concealed with a turban, lest it should attract notice) and his beautiful sister now broke up the potter's establishment, sold his wheel and pots and pans, and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... centuries pass; let the funeral pyre but be kindled, and quite burn itself out; and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... about the death of Dido, as he might have known he was doing (unless he was as great a fool as he is a prig); and he is probably never more disgusting or Pecksniffian than when he looks back on the flames of Dido's pyre and is really afraid that something unpleasant must have happened, though he can't think what the matter can be. But he, one feels sure, would never have lifted up his hand against a woman, unless she had richly deserved it on the strictest patriotic scores, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... hero buckles on his rune-covered sword again, and goes forth to battle with the monster. He slays it, indeed, but is blasted by its fiery breath, and dies after the encounter. His companions light his pyre upon a lofty spit of land jutting out into the winter sea. Weapons and jewels and drinking bowls, taken from the Fire Drake's treasure, were thrown into the tomb for the use of the ghost in the other world; and a mighty barrow was raised upon the spot to be a beacon far and wide to ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... is not the only thing to be desired. They have the world-devastation, Muspilli, the "Twilight of the Gods." It is this conquering of the world through the victory of self which Wagner conveys as the highest interpretation of our national myths. As Brunhilde approaches the funeral pyre to sacrifice to the beloved dead, Siegfried, the life—the only tie which still binds her ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... fairylike brightness of the island in the lagoon. The green leafage of the shrubbery was suffused in tender light; the waters reflected calmly all their drapery, but none of the savage desolation of the pyre in the Court of Honor. Beyond where the gracious pile of the Art Building stretched across the horizon the light clouds of smoke floated, a gray wreath in the night. The seething mass of flame began to abate, to lessen almost imperceptibly, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... I knew the meaning of that sky. I knew that down over the western edge of the world blazed a huge funeral pyre on which my past was being changed to harmless ashes; while in the east flames were already lighted beneath the on-coming crucible of destiny, from whose purifying heat a new love arose. Farther into obscurity would sink the one; up and on would come the ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... for banqueting, The chief adorned his funeral-pyre; Rare gums and spices fed the fire, Perfumes and every precious thing; And songs were sung, and prayers were prayed, And priests danced jubilant all day. But prone the king Ma-anda lay, With ashes on his royal crest, And groaned, and beat upon his ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... to describe no more, save that the funeral pyre, which the murderers had raised to hide their crime, had not reached them, ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... music stole over the gardens of the Priory, at sunset. It was the close of one of the most exquisite days of Spring. A calm had settled over the country with the passing away of the sun-god. His attendant winds and voices had been sacrificed on his funeral pyre. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... anchored, and had the height of the blaze not passed, we should certainly have been glad to seek again the cool of our icy friends outside. Some ships had even been burned at their anchors. We could count thirteen fiercely raging fires in various parts of the city, which looked like one vast funeral pyre. Only the brick chimneys of the houses remained standing blackened and charred. Smoke and occasional flame would burst out here and there as the fickle eddies of wind, influenced, no doubt, by the heat, whirled around as if in sport over the scene ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... desperately on the afternoon which neither of them could ever remember afterwards without a sickness of the soul, "you're simply building a funeral pyre for yourself. You're wrecking your life and my life because of an insane idea. You're letting the pettiest and unworthiest thing in you—a twisted instinct—consume all that's vital and fine. You're worshiping ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... much-abused women of India. There is no woman on earth who reveals, at this present time, more devotion and attachment to her husband than does the Hindu wife. The old system of Sati, whereby a woman immolated herself on the funeral pyre of her dead husband, what was it? It was, indeed, a custom instituted by man, enforced by religious rewards and penalties, with a view to reveal the woman as the abject subject of her husband. And yet she glorified that custom and often transmuted it into the most ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... 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
... that craft,' her ladyship acquiesced. 'Beranger—let me see—your favourite Frenchman, Franks, wasn't it his father?—no, his grandfather. "Mon pauvre et humble grand-pyre," I think, was a tailor. Hum! the degrees of the thing, I confess, don't affect me. One trade I imagine to be no ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the fading dawn The flames' red wings soar upward duskily. This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead That sparkled so the day I saw it first, And darkened slowly after. I am she Who loves all beauty—yet I wither it. Why have the high gods made me wreak their wrath— Forever since my maidenhood to sow Sorrow and blood about me? Lo, they keep Their bitter care above me even ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... 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 members of various ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... 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
... enough to protect it from the jackals and hyaenas; and I therefore determined that, instead of burying it, I would burn it. There was an abundance of fallen boughs and twigs in the adjacent jungle to enable me to build a funeral pyre; and I should have the melancholy satisfaction of actually watching the reduction of the body to impalpable ashes. I therefore took all that remained of poor Ama in my arms and carried it to the top of a bare rocky ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... of the story is all blood and horror. The desperate leaders of the Commune determined that, if they must perish, Paris should be their funeral pyre. On the night of May 24 the city became a scene of incendiary rage. The Hotel-de-Ville was in flames; the Palace of the Tuileries was burning like a great furnace; the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Ministry of War, the Treasury were lurid ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... adored, But chiefly Love; to Love an altar built, Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves, And all the trophies of his former loves; With tender billets-doux he lights the pyre, And breathes three amorous sighs to raise the fire. Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize. The powers gave ear, and granted half his prayer; The rest the winds ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... 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 ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... her faithful and fearless, capable of sustaining with, a firm hand the torch that was to consume on the sacred pile (according to her religion) both Assyrian and Greek; all these combinations are the result of the purest sentiments, the noblest art. The last words of Myrrha on the funereal pyre are in good keeping with the grand conception of her character. With the natural aspirations of a Greek, her thoughts turn at this moment to her distant clime; but still they come back at the same time to her lord, who is beside her, and blending almost in one sigh the two contrary affections ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... of Tamatea threw her arms abroad, "Pyre of my son," she shouted, 'debited vengeance of God, Late, late, I behold you, yet I behold you at last, And glory, beholding! For now are the days of my agony past, The lust that famished my soul now eats and drinks its desire, And they that encompassed my son shrivel alive in ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of their atonement is, a bloody day On Vigrid's hundred miles of plain; there will they fall, But fall not unavenged, for there the evil die Forever, but the fallen good arise again, Refined, from out the flaming pyre to higher life. 'Tis true the star-crown, pale and withered, falleth down From heaven's temple; earth too, sinks beneath the sea, But brighter is it born again, and joyous lifts Its flower crowned head from out the seething waves,— And ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... to thee, Burgomaster! Hail to thee, benefactor! Life burns our deeds within its envious fire, But mem'ry, like a phoenix from the pyre, Rises on stalwart wing to waft ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... enthusiastically respond; that Mrs. Shuster's mortification may drive her to such vulgar vengeance as will disgust Larry beyond repair; that the lion may not be too moth-eaten to seize his chance and the lady, and that Pat may then scramble down from the pyre of self-sacrifice. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... fatal determination in wine, ended the feast with the mortal mess; and embracing one another, after they had jointly deplored the misfortune of their country, some retired home to their own houses, others stayed to be burned with Vibius in his funeral pyre; and were all of them so long in dying, the vapour of the wine having prepossessed the veins, and by that means deferred the effect of poison, that some of them were within an hour of seeing the enemy inside the walls of Capua, which was taken the next morning, and of undergoing ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... were both silent as the object of their criticism bounded down the trail towards them. He had seen the funeral pyre. It was awfully sad, it was awfully lovely, but there was something grand in it! Who could have thought Stacy could be so poetic? But he wanted to tell them something else that ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... there. They bound him in his chair. They tied the babe down in his cradle. They set fire to the house. Heaven send that the reek choked them before the fire touched them! They lie yonder beneath the funeral pyre—our venerable sire and my bonny, ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... you, Aemilianus, he 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, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... rule of natural affinity that only those are safe who pray for a heavenly hand to lead them. Because they depended on themselves and not on God there are thousands of women every year going to the slaughter. In India women leap on the funeral pyre of a dead husband. We have a worse spectacle than that in America—women innumerable leaping on the funeral pyre of a ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... 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
... The sun is sinking low Upon the ashes of his fading pyre, And gray possesses the eternal blue; The evening star is stealing after him, Fixed, like a beacon, on the prow of night; The world is shutting up its heavy eye Upon the stir and bustle of to-day;— On what ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... 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 Carthage ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... fanning her funeral pyre, will there not be sparks flying! Alas, some millions of men, and among them such as a Napoleon, have already been licked into that high-eddying Flame, and like moths consumed there. Still also have we to fear that incautious ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... of sun and soft sea-air, as it appeared upon the close of one tempestuous day. Just before evening the rain-clouds parted and the sun flamed out across the misty Lombard plain. The Castello burned like a hero's funeral pyre, and round its high-built turrets swallows circled in the warm blue air. On the moat slept shadows, mixed with flowers of sunset, tossed from pinnacle and gable. Then the sky changed. A roof of thunder-cloud spread overhead with the rapidity ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... he, that helmsman bold? The captain saw him reel,— His nerveless hands released their task, He sank beside the wheel. The wave received his lifeless corpse, Blackened with smoke and fire. God rest him! Never hero had A nobler funeral pyre! ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... impending storm, the lurid flashes of lightning darting as it were in mutual enmity from the clashing clouds—the low, distant growling of the coming tempest—the long column of smoke and fire shooting upward from the funeral pyre, and looking like one of the gigantic torches of Pandemonium—the war of the elements combined with the worst effects of frenzied superstition of man—the suddenness and strangeness of the awful scene—all the circumstances produced such an impression upon the French as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... boy," said the Phoenix sadly. "The traditional cinnamon pyre of the Phoenix, celebrated in song ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... thy song in flight, So sweet its lingerings are, It seems the liquid memory Of time when thou didst try Thy gleaning wing through human years, And met, ay, knew the sigh Of men who pray, the tears That hide the woman's star, The brave ascending fire That is youth's beacon and too soon his pyre,— Yea, all our striving, bateless and unseeing, That builds each day our Heaven new. More deep in time's unnearing blue, Farther and ever fleeing The dream that ever ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... faithful wife, embracing tenderly her husband dead, Mounts the blazing pyre beside him, as it were a bridal-bed; Though his sins were twenty thousand, twenty thousand times o'er-told, She shall bring his soul to splendour, for her ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... passed by he tired of rich food and baths made sweet with perfumes, and longed for wild hills and the flocks driven by the shepherds. Then one morning he sailed away, and Dido saw his face no more; and in her grief she ordered a tall pyre to be reared of logs of sandalwood and cedar. When all was prepared she came forth with a golden circlet round her head, and a robe of scarlet falling to her feet, till men marvelled at her fairness, and laid herself down on ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... dragged the prisoner past the blazing mattress, through the doorway into the passage, and drew the door, which opened outwardly, against him. The unhappy guard, still blazing like a funeral pyre, after wildly beating the air with his arms for a few seconds, dashed at the broken window, which gave way with his weight, and precipitated him, still flaming, into the yard below. A column of smoke and a licking tongue of flame leaped from the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... seen that Goethe has changed the story considerably and for the better. How infinitely nobler is his idea of uniting the maiden with her divine lover on the flaming pyre from which both ascend to heaven! It may also be observed that Goethe substitutes Mahadeva, i.e. Siva, for Dewendre[90] and assigns to him an incarnation, though such incarnations ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... years, and it haunts us, and follows us, and it gives us no rest. We were a child then, ten years old. And we stood in the great square with all the children and all the men of the City, sent to behold the burning. They brought the Transgressor out into the square and they led [-them-] {him} to the pyre. They had torn out the tongue of the Transgressor, so that they could speak no longer. The Transgressor were young and tall. They had hair of gold and eyes blue as morning. They walked to the pyre, and their step did not falter. And of all the faces on that square, ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... it is radiant with burning lights of female love, the most faithful and heroic, offering a beautiful relief to the preternatural malice dividing the two sons of dipus. This malice was so intense, that when the corpses of both brothers were burned together on the same funeral pyre (as by one tradition they were), the flames from each parted asunder, and refused to mingle. This female love was so intense, that it survived the death of its object, cared not for human praise or blame, and laughed at the grave which waited in the rear for itself, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... and white clouds. A woman's anger does not die away suddenly. The assembled frogs, rejoicing in the newly fallen rain, held high festival; and if you listened attentively the voice of the cricket might be heard, like the undying crackle of Ravana's[1] funeral pyre. Amid the sounds might be distinguished the fall of the rain-drops on the leaves of the trees, and that of the leaves into the pools beneath; the noise of jackals' feet on the wet paths, occasionally that of the birds on ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... strictly natural occurrence, and similar phenomena have been witnessed more than once on like occasions, notably at the martyrdoms of Savonarola and of Hooper. Again, there is the sweet scent, as of incense, issuing from the burning pyre (Sec. 15); but this phenomenon also, however we may explain it, whether from the fragrance of the wood or in some other way, meets us constantly. In another early record of martyrdoms, the history of the persecutions at Vienne and Lyons, a little more than twenty years later, we are told (Euseb. ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... 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 ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... had not died by the gallows or the sword or the bullet, but they had died as commanded, and none had questioned his decree. None asked where or how the thing was done when a fire sprang up in a field, or a quarry, or on a lonely heath or hill-top, and on the pyre were all the belongings of the condemned, being resolved into dust as their owner had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of St. Martin by Bishop Gregory: "Oh 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
... vesicles; and all the weeds, Around the sleepy water and its reeds, Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods. Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer's dead! The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre, Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire: While from the east, as from a garden bed, Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon—like some Great golden melon—saying, "Fall ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... 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 ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... lifted the Hive and shook it upside down over the pyre. A cascade of Oddities, chips of broken comb, scale, fluff, and grubs slid out, crackled, sizzled, popped a little, and then the flames roared up and consumed ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... printing for centuries before the time of Caxton. Many of them also were in manuscript, which must have meant years of labour, and hand-painted pictures illustrating some were occasionally to be found. They were all alike consigned to the same funeral pyre, and thousands of volumes of unascertained, but perhaps considerable, value were thus lost to the world for ever. As the bleak, cold winds from the plains swept down the deserted street at night, and moaned ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... 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, stalked the two ravens Croak ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... 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 ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... loseth His life shall find it": so the Scripture runs. But I so hugged the fleeting self in me, So loved the lovely perishable hours, So kissed myself to death upon their lips, That on one pyre we perished in the end— A grimmer bonfire than the Church e'er lit! Yet all was well—or seemed so—till I heard That younger voice, an echo of my own, And, like a wanderer turning to his home, Who finds another on the hearth, and learns, Half-dazed, that other is his ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... the whole castle about them, the while he sat in the great keep listening to their screams of agonized fear, watching the fire sweep from wing to wing until the whole mighty mass was one enormous and awful pyre, and then, clothing himself in his great-great-grandfather's armor, hanging himself in the midst of the ruins of what had been a proud and noble castle. So ended a great ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... loved, what shall we say of thee? What shall we make of our heart's burning fire, The passion in our lives that fain would be Made each a brand to pile into the pyre That shall burn up thy foemen, and set free The flame whence thy sun-shadowing wings aspire? Love of our life, what more than men are we, That this our breath for thy sake should expire, For whom to joyous death Glad gods might yield their breath, Great gods ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... seclusion why desire?— Thus Thetis' care her blooming Son conceal'd, Ere yet commenc'd that Contest dire, When mournful gleam'd the funeral pyre, Thro' ten long years, on ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... right and reason, for Krishna Himself appeared in a vision promising him Paradise without the burning-pyre if he journeyed to Prayag. This man seeks no God ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... herself to the heart, after she had plentifully bathed it with her tears." Tennyson follows another tradition in which Paris reaches Oenone, who scornfully repels him. He passed onward through the mist, and dropped dead upon the mountain side. His old shepherd playmates built his funeral pyre. Oenone follows the yearning in her heart to where her husband lies, and dies in the flames that ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson |
