"Carrion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me as the bird of prey gloats over the poor beast that is soon to become carrion beneath its claws? You have not counted me out as equal to so much land, and calculated on me as a balance at your banker's? Ah, Mr Gresham," she continued, seeing that he stared as though struck almost with awe by her strong language; "you little guess ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... vagabond on the face of the earth! And when, at last, your sinful race is run, and your guilty soul has been ushered into that dreaded eternity you have plucked upon it, may your polluted carcass become the prey of the carrion-crow and the buzzard, and the wild beasts of the desert wilderness howl a requiem over your bones! Go now, and meet your doom! Go with the curse of wretched innocence ever abiding upon you! Go with the canker-worm ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... that carrion there!" he accused me. He jerked down a section of white curtain and whirled it over the stiffening body. "If you must grieve, grieve for Miss Nefer! Exiled, imprisoned, locked forever in the past, her mind pulsing faintly in the black hole of the dead and ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... time; but I need 'ardly tell you he gave it up as a bad job, and went an' did what some folks call a worse instead. He didn't get much show 'ere, I can tell you; that little foreign snipe won't either, nor yet any other carrion that think they want my blood. I'd empty this shooter o' mine into their in'ards as soon as look at 'em, I don't give a curse who they are! Just as well I wasn't brought up to your ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... course of the journey we passed a large estancia, the road to which was marked by the dead bodies and skeletons of the poor beasts who had perished in the late droughts. Hundreds of them were lying about in every stage of decay, those more recently dead being surrounded by vultures and other carrion-birds. The next canada that we crossed was choked up with the carcases of the unfortunate creatures who had struggled thus far for a last drink, and had then not had sufficient strength left to extricate ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Will to take me to his friend that I might hear more, and plainly told him my reason. Whereat he drew a very long face, and said he thought better of me than to consort with such vile carrion as these traitors to her Majesty. Nevertheless he took me to his friend to hear what he had ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... wind as it shakes the reeds below the branch in which the corpse is lying. The object of this aerial tomb is evident enough, namely, to protect the corpse from the dingo, or native dog. That the ravens and other carrion-eating birds should make a banquet upon the body of the dead man does not seem to trouble the survivors in the least, and it often happens that the traveler is told by the croak of the disturbed ravens that the body of a dead Australian is lying in the ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... at this carrion! One may as well see upon whom our friend here has put his mark." So saying he stooped and turned over the man, the first of the two who had fallen. He lay half in a stagnant pool of water, and was quite dead, as we could see, for the moon fell clearly ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... "It was this carrion. 'Got you this time, sir,' said he, grinning his fat beef-steak British grin. 'Clipped your wings ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... the mountain-side, And there upon the stones The old gaunt wolf and carrion crow Shall ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... fall. Neither the Spanish Government nor the British agent who had caused Moore to advance took the trouble to inform him of the surrender of the capital; he learnt it from an intercepted French despatch. From the same despatch Moore learnt that to the north of him, at Saldanha, on the river Carrion, there lay a comparatively small French force under the command of Soult. The information was enough for Moore, heart-sick at the mockery to which his army had been subjected, and burning for decisive ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... swift horror and enduring caution. The two Dukes had been despatched, sorely against their will, in chase of this man. Was it to their hands that he had yielded up his life and by their doing that he lay like carrion? It might well be that he had sought refuge in this cottage, and having found there death, not comfort, had been flung forth a corpse. I pitied him; although he had been party to a plot which had ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... "Ah! you carrion meat," shouted Phormio, shaking his fists under the helpless creature's nose. "Honest men have their day at last. There's a gay hour coming before Zeus claps the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... learnt to be interested in him as the 'good Arthur,' 'the excellent Arthur,' of Thomas Carlyle, a writer who had the art of making not only his own narrative, but the sources of it, attractive. Even 'Carrion-Heath,' in the famous introductory chapter to the Cromwell, is invested with a kind of charm, whilst in the stormy firmament of the French Revolution the star of Arthur Young twinkles with a mild effulgency. The autobiography of such ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... you to come yourself, Harding, when I only asked you for a troop. Come in; you shall have some supper in half an hour, and Fritz will take care of your men. Throw all that carrion out," he went on, as we entered the hall, strewn with corpses. "We'll give them a truce to take ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... holds Phuromachus, Who used to swallow everything he saw, Like a fierce carrion crow who roams all night. Now here he lies wrapped in a ragged cloak. But, O Athenian, whosoe'er you are, Anoint this tomb and crown it with a wreath, If ever in old times he feasted with you. At last he came sans teeth, with eyes worn out, And livid, swollen eyelids; clothed in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... on a long tramp through the woods and along the sides of the canyons. There were plenty of berry bushes growing in clusters; and all around these there were fresh tracks of bear. But the grizzly is also a flesh-eater, and has a great liking for [v]carrion. On visiting the place where Merrifield had killed the black bear, we found that the grizzlies had been there before us, and had utterly devoured the carcass, with cannibal relish. Hardly a scrap was left, and we turned our steps toward ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... up at Bear Portage and had supper. Afterward, three breed boys with their scent for happenings in the bush, as unerring and mysterious as the buzzard's scent for carrion, turned up from nowhere, and at the same time a fourth came nosing under the bank in a crazy dugout filled with grass. So soft was the arrival of the last that Garth was not aware of it, until he happened to catch sight ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... his way oft by the refraining of the bernacle, and dieth at last after vain travails, and hath no reward after his death for the service and travail that he had living, not so much that his own skin is left with him, but it is taken away, and the carrion is thrown out without sepulture or burials; but it be so much of the carrion that by eating and devouring is sometimes buried in the wombs of ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... spirit that makes man's body and blood Sacred, to crown when life and death have ceased His heavenward head for high fame's holy feast; But as one swordstroke swift as wizard's rod Made Caesar carrion and made Brutus God, Faith false or true, born patriot or born priest, Smites into semblance or of man or beast The soul that feeds on clean or unclean food. Lo here the faith that lives on its own light, Visible ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... banquet of birds and beasts who feed on the skin of Pharsalia is even worse. [66] The details are too loathsome to quote. Suffice it to say that the list includes every carrion-feeder among flesh and fowl who assemble ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... took the track of a fox for that of a dog, and even at times lost her way, a thing that had never been in her youth. Owing to the weakness of her health she no longer hunted calves and big sheep as she had in old days, and kept her distance now from mares with colts; she fed on nothing but carrion; fresh meat she tasted very rarely, only in the spring when she would come upon a hare and take away her young, or make her way into a peasant's ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of gold. The gypsy girl will want it as her dowry. I shall not leave her for you, you white-faced porcelain tribe! I shall take her away to some place where they will not say 'Away gypsy! off gypsy! Kiss my hand, eat carrion, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... sometimes watched it with my binocular. There was, I thought, a good chance of its being able to rear its young, unless the damp proved injurious, as there was no dog or cat at the cottage, and there were no carrion crows or sparrow-hawks at that spot. One morning about five o'clock on going out I spied a fox-terrier, a poaching dog from the neighbouring village, rushing about in an excited state a hundred yards or so below the cottage. He had scented the birds, and presently ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... if a shade too methodically at times, the racking torments of hunger and thirst, the dreary importunity of the rain, the loathsomeness of the all-invading mud, the sickening horror of the carrion smells, the pathetically inadequate relaxations ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... said her companion coolly, "for it is the blood of a fanatic traitor. Think not of it." He turned at the threshold and cast a careless glance back into the tobacco house. "Woodson, get rid of this carrion, and bring these men quietly to the great house, where your ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... searching canvass of their claims, That none shall bait the ballot. I'll spread my choice Upon the main and general of those Who, moved of holy impulse, pulpit-born, Protested 'twere a sacrilege to burn God's gracious images, designed to rot, And bellowed for the right of way for each Distempered carrion through the water pipes. With such a sturdy, boisterous exclaim They did discharge themselves from their own throats Against the splintered gates of audience 'Twere wholesomer to take them in at mouth Than ear. These shall burn first: their ignible And seasoned ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... know I cannot abide those foul carrion rascals you make use of," said Elizabeth, with an ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forthwith turned his steed, and riding back a few paces, found Crabshaw rising from the ground. When he asked what was become of his horse, he answered in a whimpering tone, "Horse! would I could once see him fairly carrion for the hounds—for my part, I believe as how 't is no horse, but a devil incarnate; and yet I've been worse mounted, that I have—I'd like to have rid a horse that was foaled ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... with another parallel case. Mariana, the classical historian of Spain, tells the story of the ill-starred marriage which the King Don Alonso brought about between the heirs of Carrion and the two daughters of the Cid. The Cid bestowed a princely dower on the sons-in-law. But the young men were base and proud, cowardly and cruel. They were tried in danger, and found wanting. They fled before the Moors, and once, when a lion broke out of his ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... intoxication of the cycle, awaited in new thirst like a hunter in the gap, where he could escape from the cycle, where the end of the causes, where an eternity without suffering began. He killed his senses, he killed his memory, he slipped out of his self into thousands of other forms, was an animal, was carrion, was stone, was wood, was water, and awoke every time to find his old self again, sun shone or moon, was his self again, turned round in the cycle, felt thirst, overcame ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... often dropping for fatigue, night and day—day and night: he had made his last meal; he laid him down to die—and already the premonitory falcon flapped him with its heavy wing. Ha! what are all those carrion fowls congregated there for? Are they battening on some dead carcase? O, hope—hope! there is the smell of food upon the wind: up, man, up—battle with those birds, drive them away, hew down that fierce white eagle with your ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... The doctrine of the Lamas is so obnoxious to the Gorkhalese, that, under pretence of their being thieves, no Murmi is permitted to enter the valley where Kathmandu stands, and by way of ridicule, they are called Siyena Bhotiyas, or Bhotiyas who eat carrion; for these people have such an appetite for beef, that they cannot abstain from the oxen that die a natural death, as they are not now permitted to murder the sacred animal. They have, therefore, since the conquest, retired as much as possible ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... to the chapel itself, a scent of carrion makes you start. You look, against the will of your smart and ostentatious guide, through a half-open door, and see another sight—a room, dark and foul, mildewed and ruinous; and, swept carelessly into a corner, a heap of dirt, rags, bones, waifs ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... when we saw hovering in the air a number of birds, while others were flitting about the trees or perched on the boughs. As we drew nearer, we recognised among them numberless turkey buzzards, vultures, and other carrion fowl, while a pack of wolves were roaming about, disputing with the feathered tribe for ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... faster even than the fleeing Hunsa: and if the decoits came—for already they would be making ready for the road—this beautiful god, with eyes like stars and a voice of music, would be killed, would be no more than the Bagree lying on the road who was but carrion. In her heart was a new thing. The struggle with Hunsa, the fright, even the horribleness of the blood upon her knife, was washed away by a hot surging flood of exquisite happiness. The Hindu name for love—"a pain in the heart"—was veritably hers in its intensity; the sahib's arm ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... who sits by the side of you in council, and count how many times a day this aim of human life is indicated to you by your councillors. Better would it be for you, like swallows, to fly low down than, like kites, to make lofty circles over carrion. ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... listen. How should I forget The day I saw him first? (You know the one.) I had been laughing in the market-place With others like me, I the youngest there, Jostling about a pack of mountebanks Like flies on carrion (I the youngest there!), Till darkness fell; and while the other girls Turned this way, that way, as perdition beckoned, I, wondering what the night would bring, half hoping: If not, this once, a child's sleep in my garret, At least enough to buy that two-pronged coral The others ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... under the banner of complete solidarity, we will march forward, a solid phalanx against which no force can stand. Now that our own house is swept clean of vermin—rid forever of carrion like Lenster ...
— The Clean and Wholesome Land • Ralph Sholto
... Indians, in a small canoe, to examine the course of this river, a certain distance up. On entering the stream, they saw a great number of birds, which they took at first for turkeys, so much they resembled them, but which were only a kind of carrion eagles, vulgarly called turkey-buzzards. We were not a little astonished to see Mr. de Montigny return on foot and alone; he soon informed us of the reason: having ascended the Kowlitzk about a mile and a half, on rounding a bend of the stream, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... deadly handed Clifford slew my Steed: But match to match I haue encountred him, And made a prey for Carrion Kytes and Crowes Euen of the bonnie beast he loued ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... well that no arrests ever would be made.) Then he would go to a political meeting and say that the peaceful condition of Ireland was shown by the small number of criminal cases returned for trial at the Assizes; and would bitterly denounce the "Carrion Crows" (as he designated the Ulster members) for trying to blacken ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... father in Al-Islam of Mohammed?" "Abraham, the Friend of God." Q "What is the Faith of Al-Islam?" "The professing that there is no god but the God and that Mohammed is the apostle of God." Q "What is thy first and thy last?" "My first is man's seed in the shape of foul water and my last filthy carrion: the first of me is dust and the last of me is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... he snarled, "you'd better just stow your gab. You're lucky to be here yourself, let alone botherin' your thick head about anybody else, and you can kiss the Book on that! Do you know why you ain't with them carrion?" He jerked his thumb toward the beach. "It's because Solomon Anderson's your friend. Thrackles would have killed you in a minute 'count of his bit hand. I got you your chance. Now don't you be a fool, for I ain't goin' to stand between you ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... plant is the trillium erectum, which with the trillium recurvatum, is now to be found in the woods hereabouts. The flowers of the trillium erectum are ill scented, carrion scented, if you please. Now the botanists have found that this odor, which is so unpleasant to the human nostrils, does the plant a real service by attracting the common green flesh-flies, such as are seen in the butchershops in the summer-time. They ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... which drove away every image of natural repose, it seemed as if their departed spirits still hovered within the bodies which they had lately abandoned. But alas! too soon the harbinger of fading and helpless mortality would speed to dispel the melancholy charm. The carrion birds were now hurrying to claim the undisputed inheritance of that prey which a short time since had been the receptacle of so many feelings and affections, while a thousand hearts were doomed to weep for the occasion ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... and in silent pantomime showed that Mick had not been gone over yet. With her free hand she gathered her one skirt over her dirty, skinny knees and danced with rage by the side of my bed. She looked like the parody of some carrion creature seen in the nightmare of a starving man. The most terrible thing about her was her amazing silence; the mad dance of her stockinged feet on the bare boards made ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... did I seat myself, and even beside the carrion and vultures—and I laughed at all their bygone ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the centre of the carrion crowd that gathers about the body of any disabled motor. The chauffeur, a countryman like his master, was enjoying himself vastly with a surreptitious cigarette and sardonic mutterings on the cause of his scattered spokes; the ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... wall until he came to the barrier, seemingly oblivious of the carrion reek which told of a snake-devil's den somewhere about. And he raised his arm high, bringing the point of his spear gratingly along the carved surface. Nor did it seem to Dalgard a futile gesture, for Sssuri lived and breathed, stood free and armed in the city ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... a few heads of handsome buffalo clover, the first I had ever seen, and some sprays of penstemon, till I came again to the six-barred gate and the Quincy road. At that point, as I now remember, the air was full of vultures (carrion crows), a hundred or more, soaring over the fields in some fit of gregariousness. Along the road were white-crowned and white-throated sparrows (it was the 12th of April), orchard orioles, thrashers, summer tanagers, myrtle and paim warblers, cardinal grosbeaks, mocking-birds, kingbirds, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... bakers, good-looking fellows with square leather aprons, their sleeves rolled up, and flour in their hair and eyebrows. They were weighing out bags of fresh, nutty bread, which seemed to bring a fragrance of life into that nauseating ambient of sea-carrion. Waiting for their turn, the fish-women were blarneying with customs men or idlers who stood about looking at the big fish with the curiosity of landlubbers. Meanwhile, other women were coming in on foot from down the coast, carrying their baskets on their heads or ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... matrons, and the holy virgins they call vestals, and the rabble, shouted in derision, deeming it rare sport, forsooth, to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale and tremble at sight of that piece of bleeding clay! And the praetor drew back as if I were pollution, and sternly said, "Let the carrion rot! There are no ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... and he's here for no good whatsoever to Oakshotts. But he's worse than hot stuff, William. He's a dangerous criminal, and he's going to put you out of his path pretty soon as if you was no more than a carrion crow, unless you climb down ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... also has its poetry. Its shadowy domains hold lessons no less magnificent, and the most putrid carrion is to Fabre a "tabernacle" in which a divine comedy ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... funeral pyre is erected of dry wood, on which the body of the dead is laid, and in course of time after igniting the faggots the corpse is consumed. While this cineration is going on vultures and carrion fowl not infrequently pounce down upon the body, and tear away pieces of flesh from the ghastly, smoking corpse. These charred parts of the body they carry away to their nests to feast upon at leisure. But oftentimes dire results follow; the ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... more upon the ground, panting like a fish; and I saw rising in his face the same dusky flush that had mantled on my father's. 'I feel ill,' he gasped, 'horribly ill; the swamp turns around me; the drone of these carrion flies confounds me. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... right, Miss Porter," he said, "but I do not think that any of us need worry about our carrion-eating acquaintance. The chances are that he is some half-demented castaway who will forget us more quickly, but no more surely, than we shall forget him. He is only a beast ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to leave them and give the world an account of what he had learned. Men like George Morland have lived for a time with Gypsies. Matthew Arnold elaborated Glanvill's tale in a sweet Oxford strain. All these things delight us. Some day we shall be pleased even with the Gypsy's carrion- eating and thieving, "those habits of the Gypsy, shocking to the moralist and sanitarian, and disgusting to the person of delicate stomach," which please Mr. W. H. Hudson "rather than the romance and poetry which the scholar-Gypsy enthusiasts are fond of reading into him." Borrow's Gypsies are ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... contaminating the atmosphere; the entrails lay decaying in the hot sunshine, the bones and heads were left lying on the pavement, where they attracted swarms of flies. Pestilence would surely break out in the city unless they made haste to rid themselves of all that carrion, of that stratum of impurity, which, in the Rue de Minil, the Rue Maqua, and even on the Place Turenne, reached a depth of twelve inches. The Prussian authorities had taken the matter up, and their placards were to be seen posted about the city, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... birds, my lass, and droning flies: They're proper Whigs, are birds and flies,—or else The Whigs are proper crows and carrion-bugs. ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... For as everyone in the world has been delighted with his own evil, so after death he is delighted with the stench to which his evil corresponds. In this respect the evil may be likened to rapacious birds and beasts, like ravens, wolves, and swine, which fly or run to carrion or dunghills when they scent their stench. I heard a certain spirit crying out loudly as if from inward torture when struck by a breath flowing forth from heaven; but he became tranquil and glad as soon as a breath flowing forth from ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... what haue we here, a carrion death, Within whose emptie eye there is a written scroule; Ile reade the writing. All that glisters is not gold, Often haue you heard that told; Many a man his life hath sold But my outside to behold; Guilded timber doe wormes infold: Had you beene ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... last she looked up at him, and her eyes were black with hate. "Well, I do, Paul. I would like to kill one man on earth—a useless, vicious weakling, too feeble to deserve a fine death—a rotting carrion spoiling God's world and encumbering my path! I would kill him if I could—and more than ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... elsewhere, and hold it to be unnecessary to expose their skin to the bullets of white men. On the other hand, we did not molest the hyenas; the harm which they now and then did by the theft of a sheep was more than compensated for by their usefulness as devourers of carrion. They are shy, cowardly beasts, which do not readily attack anything that is alive; but in the character of unwearied sanitary police they scour field and forest for dead animals. In the list of beasts not to be spared stood at first the hippopotamuses, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... are a species of crow. But they differ from the carrion crow and raven, in not feeding upon dead flesh, but upon corn and other seeds and grass, though, indeed, they pick up beetles and other insects and worms. See what a number of them have alighted on yonder ploughed field, almost blackening it over. They are searching for grubs and ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... many a soul; Stout hearts were sad and cowards cried for peace. The vulture, perched hard by the eagle's crag, Loud cawed his fellows from afar to feast. Ill-omened bird—his carrion-cries were vain! Again our veteran eagles plumed their wings, And forth he fled from Montezuma's shores— A dastard flight—betraying unto death Him whom he dazzled with a bauble crown. Just retribution followed swift ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... sister, thanks! the men have bled, Their wives and their children faint for bread. I stood in a swampy field of battle; 30 With bones and skulls I made a rattle, To frighten the wolf and carrion-crow And the homeless dog—but they would not go. So off I flew: for how could I bear To see them gorge their dainty fare? 35 I heard a groan and a peevish squall, And through the chink of a cottage-wall— Can you guess ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... beauty which afterwards made her celebrated in all lands, "but after all, you, cousin James, have some right to make it. For, but for you and our good Sholto there, this little ewe lamb would have been carrion indeed!" ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... the morning in bringing up my journal; interrupted by two of these most sedulous visitants who had objects of their own to serve, and smelled out my arrival as the raven scents carrion—a vile comparison, though what better is an old fellow, mauled with rheumatism and other deplorables? Went out at two and saw Miss Dumergue and other old friends; Sotheby in particular, less changed than any one I ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... British, French, Australian, German deserters, who lived there underground, like ghouls among the mouldering dead, and who came out at nights to plunder and kill. In the night, an officer said, mingled with the snarling of carrion dogs, they often heard inhuman cries and rifle-shots coming from that awful wilderness. Once they (the Salvage Company) had put out, as a trap, a basket containing food, tobacco, and a bottle of whisky. But the following morning ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... "'Kick the carrion aft!' I heard the inhuman brute say to his followers. 'Let the "white trash" see the dog's carcass! He will then believe what I have said, Name of God! and know what is ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... by the river in the spring, and, when the river retired into its banks, became a series of mud flats, described as "mere quagmires of black dirt, stretching along for miles, unvaried except by the limbs of half-buried carrion, tree trunks, or by occasional yellow pools of what the children called frog's spawn; all together steaming up vapors redolent of the savor of death." In the previous year—not an unusually bad one—one-ninth of the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Venice, Turin, actors and singers were praised to the skies and loaded with wealth and favours, while the tatterdemalion players who set up their boards in the small towns at market-time or on feast-days were despised by the people and flung like carrion into unconsecrated graves. The impression Odo had gathered from Don Gervaso's talk was of the provincial stage in all its pothouse license; but here was a spectacle as lofty and harmonious as some great religious ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... during their lifetime, but after their death, too, the hand of the Church fell heavily on all those who had strayed beyond her pale; their bodies were dragged from their graves and thrown into the carrion-pit. A man whom the Church had excommunicated was buried in the cemetery of a German convent. The Archbishop of Mayence ordered the exhumation of the body, threatening to interdict divine service in the convent if his command were disobeyed. But the abbess, Hildegarde ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... here, like paid gladiators of old, to cut each other's throats in earnest while attacking and defending a sham fortress, raised in the arena for the diversion of those who set us on to the butchery and promise to pay the survivors? Are we to provide a feast of carrion for a flock of vultures and unclean beasts of prey, when we need only stand together, and be true to ourselves and to each other, to accomplish one of the greatest acts in history? The vultures will leave ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... heads, or like ibises with a slow lagging flight, and sometimes sweep over the desert like gray shapeless shadows, or glide across the sand like snakes; or they would creep out of the tombs, howling like hungry dogs. I have often heard them barking like jackals or laughing like hyenas when they scent carrion, but to-night is the first time I ever heard them shrieking like furious men, and then groaning and wailing as if they were plunged in the lake of fire and suffering ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you are dead carrion," he said coldly. His weapon was raised. Hilary was caught between two fires, exposed to the searing blasts that would issue at ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... scarcely have expected to find the smallest specimens of the feathered tribe inhabiting the same region as the mighty, coarse-feeding condor; but whereas the latter pounces down on his carrion banquet into the plains below, the little humming-bird seeks his food from the bright flowers which clothe the mountainside, or the minute ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... it. Yet even in those black outbursts he felt that he must cling to her as his only hope of saving himself. He had made another mistake in lighting a campfire during the morning. Any fool ought to have known that the smoke would draw his hunters as the smell of carrion does a buzzard. ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... "Carrion crows were about in the dawn that followed. Not many of them, but they came flopping about the dead bodies, and the living, with hungry beaks. One of my own comrades lay very badly wounded, and when he wakened out ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... part of me, part of my body, which nourished him day by day. He was mine when the birth-pang tore me, mine when he lay on my heart, When the sweet mouth mumbled my bosom and the milk-teeth made it smart, Babyhood, boyhood, and manhood, and a glad mother proud of her son— See the carrion birds, too gorged to fly! Ah! Brothers, what have ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... made incessant warfare against them, and his gun could be heard as early as five o'clock in the morning, while the shots would often come pattering down harmlessly on my greenhouse. There came a time when some thieving carrion crows were robbing my half-tame wild duck's nests of their eggs, and Jarge was, of course, detailed to tackle them. Weeks elapsed without any result; the depredations continued, and the men began to chaff him; finally Bell "put the lid ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... match for any single rook, I never saw any fighting between them. Possibly the crow feels its loneliness and realises that in case of trouble none of its brothers are there to see fair play. Yet carrion crows, like herons, are among the rook's most determined enemies, and cases of rookeries being destroyed by both birds are on record. On the other hand, though the heron is the far more powerful bird of the two, heronries have likewise been scattered, and ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... for the clouds of steam, which rise from the wooded valleys after rain. Again, I am so obstinate that I should require very good evidence to make me believe that there are two species of Polyborus (317/2. Polyborus Novae Zelandiae, a carrion hawk mentioned as very common in the Falklands.) in the Falkland Islands. Do the Gauchos there admit it? Much as I talked to them, they never alluded to such a fact. In the Zoology I have discussed the sexual and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... where such thoughts come readiest to gray-haired men and innocent boys. I tell you, cousin, this precious right is the very cause that our poor country is so lawless and bloody, that yon poor silly sparrow would fain be caged for fear of the kites and carrion-crows.' ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the fate of a place the abode of serpents, and of carrion, of toads and frogs, solely chosen to avoid expense. Such was the bad taste of the King in all things, and his proud haughty pleasure in forcing nature; which neither the most mighty war, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... father meant his children to have. I know her, Mr. Vanstone! She is a nameless, homeless, friendless wretch. The law which takes care of you, the law which takes care of all legitimate children, casts her like carrion to the winds. It is your law—not hers. She only knows it as the instrument of a vile oppression, an insufferable wrong. The sense of that wrong haunts her like a possession of the devil. The resolution to right ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... stag, if we must needs leave his carcase for the carrion crows? If 'tis practice with your bow you want, why, have we not that in abundance on ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... prison. At the top of this trap the boys could see a strip of blue sky and the outlines of the graceful tops of some bulbous stemmed palms but nothing else. Once a vulture sailed across the strip and sighting the two boys came lower to investigate. The sight of the carrion bird made both of ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Derby that year, methought I saw Hilary as I passed the sign of the 'Carrion Crow:' the dead bird dangles from the top of a tall pole stuck in the sward beside a booth. I lost him in the crowd then. But later on in autumn, while rambling round the Chace, there came on a 'skit' of rain, and I made for one of his barns for shelter. There was Hilary in ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... harvest of a few minute seeds; so that this district is a poor one both for soft and hard billed birds. Hawks of several genera, in moderate numbers, are there, but generally keep to the marshes. Eagles and vultures are somewhat unworthily represented by carrion-hawks (Polyborinae); the lordly carancho, almost eagle-like in size, black and crested, with a very large, pale blue, hooked beak—his battle axe: and his humble follower and jackal, the brown and harrier-like chimango. ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... hand me forth a cup of cold water." The girl said she would go to the spring and fetch it. "Nay, give me the cup, and suffer me to help myself. Neither manacled nor lame, I should merit burial in the maw of carrion crows, if I laid this task upon thee." She gave him the cup, and he turned to ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... look you, wife, the riotous old knight Hath o'rerun his annual revenue In keeping jolly Christmas all the year: The nostrils of his chimney are still stuft With smoke, more chargeable then Cane-tobacco; His hawks devour his fattest dogs, whilst simple, His leanest curs eat him hounds carrion. Besides, I heard of late, his younger brother, A Turkey merchant, hath sure suck'de the knight By means of some great losses on the sea, That, you conceive me, before God all is naught, His seat is weak: thus, each thing rightly ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god, kissing carrion—Have you a daughter? Polonius. I have, my lord. Hamlet. Let her not walk i' the sun. Conception is a blessing; but not as your daughter may ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... air rich or poor, they never think at that age what it costs to clothe 'em. I never found with my boys that they'd done climbing for crows' eggs till such time as they bought their own breeches. After that trees were nought but lumber, and crows were carrion." ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... No Government, Equal Labor, fair and generous as each appears, are poor bitter things when prosecuted for themselves as an end."—"I say to you plainly there is no end to which your practical faculty can aim so sacred or so large, that if pursued for itself, will not at last become carrion and an offence to the nostril. The imaginative faculty of the soul must be fed with objects immense and eternal. Your end should be one inapprehensible to the senses; then it will be a god, always approached,—never touched; always ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Princess shuddered; for she knew too well that such an atrocity was easy and common enough. She knew it well. Why should she not? The story of the Cid's Daughters and the Knights of Carrion; the far more authentic one of Robert of Belesme; and many another ugly tale of the early middle age, will prove but too certainly that, before the days of chivalry began, neither youth, beauty, nor the sacred ties of matrimony, could protect ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... no trace of eggs in the purse of the Arum. They came convoked by the odour of a decaying body, their supreme delight; an intoxication seized them, and they rushed into the eddying swarm to take part in a festival of carrion-eaters. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... smell at the tails of other dogs and void their urine sideways, and lastly, like our domestic favourites, however refined and gentlemanly in other respects, they cannot be broken of the habit of rolling on carrion or on ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... of those bones, picked bare by the carrion birds, at the foot of the cliff. "It seems to be one of the mysteries of the day," he said. "Commonplace enough, no doubt, if one only had ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... for thee, Christopher, we know what ye be, and the less said the better. And as for he—well, there—(lowering her voice) 'tis said 'a was a poor parish 'prentice—I wouldn't say it for all the world—but 'a was a poor parish 'prentice, that began life wi' no more belonging to 'en than a carrion crow." ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... to the reader that the birds here described are Rooks (corvus frugilegus). I have allowed myself to speak of them by their generic or family name of Crow, this being a common country practice. The genus corvus, or Crow, includes the Raven, the Carrion Crow, the Hooded Crow, the ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... and an old man, that when my book of travels shall appear it shall not contain so much as the name of Grunewald. And yet it was a racy chapter! But had your Highness only read about the other courts! I am a carrion crow; but it is not my fault, after all, that the world is such a ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... done so quickly, it was so inevitable, that Peter could only stand and blink. He thought, sickly, that the very earth should shudder away from the soiling touch of that appalling carrion. But the earth was the one thing that would receive Jake unprotestingly. He lay on his face, his arms outflung, and from the gaping hole between his shoulders a dark stream welled. The indifferent earth, the uncaring grass, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... or feathers when these are at hand. Rooks dig in pastures and ploughed fields for grubs, and in doing so must continually encounter roots and fibres. These are used to line its nest. What more natural! The crow feeding on carrion, dead rabbits, and lambs, and frequenting sheep-walks and warrens, chooses fur and wool to line its nest. The lark frequents cultivated fields, and makes its nest, on the ground, of grass lined with horsehair—materials ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... carrion,] This description of the English is founded on the melancholy account given by our historians of Henry's army, immediately ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... summer, and nothing at all in the winter, they die fast. You have only to drag the carcass to an outhouse at a little distance from the town, and with your rifle watch during the night. The wolves will come down to prey upon the carrion, and it is hard if you do not kill your couple during the night, and then you are rewarded by the commune. I do not know what the price is now, but when the King of Holland was in possession of Belgium it was one hundred francs for a male, and three hundred francs ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... most obscene, May have designs upon the Dove; Its carrion taste was never keen On the Millennial reign of Love; And I, for one, am stiff with fear About our little friend's career, Lest that disgusting fowl should maul And eat it, olive-branch ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... barred and deserted. I had no company save a couple of ravens who, after assuring themselves, with that infernal cunning of theirs, that I carried no gun, became as friendly as could be expected of such solemn fowls. They are always in pairs—incurably monogamous; whereas the carrion crow, for reasons of its own, has a fondness for living in trios. This menage a trois may have subtle advantages and seems to be a step in the direction of the truly social habits of the rook; it enables them to fight with more success against their enemies, the ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... of the horses. Mountains of sand. Hopeless view. Speculations. In great pain. Horses in agony. Difficulty in watering them. Another night of misery. Dante's Inferno. The waters of oblivion. Return to the pass. Dinner of carrion. A smoke-house. Tour to the east. Singular pinnacle. Eastern ranges. A gum creek. Basins of water. Natives all around. Teocallis. Horrid rites. A chip off the old block. A wayside ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... crow sat upon an oak, Fol de rol, de rol, de rol, de ri do, Watching a tailor cutting out his cloak Sing heigh ho! the carrion crow, Fol de rol, de rol, de rol, ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... take them back. Ha! they fly across the hall, and with them every bond betwixt you and the worshipful order whose sign and badge they are! Now lead him out on the heath afar from the house where his carrion can best lie, and hew his scheming head from his body as a warning to all ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... terms with the kite?" I asked, "and fly with them to raid his own eyrie? Yes, I will join with you, and march with you till I have delivered you to, perhaps, a score of the warriors of my own people. Then I will aid them in making carrion ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... cattle, and with them flocks of birds of a black colour with an olive shade. They are of the genus Crotophaga,* and follow the cattle. (* The Spanish colonists call the Crotophaga ani, zamurito (little carrion vulture—Vultur aura minuta), or garapatero, the eater of garaparas, insects of the Acarus family.) We had often seen them perched on the backs of cows, seeking for gadflies and other insects. Like many ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the dolorous city of damned souls The Florentine with Vergil took his way, A dismal marsh they passed, whose fetid shoals Held sinners by the myriad. Swollen and grey, Like worms that fester in the foul decay Of sweltering carrion, these bad spirits sank Chin-deep in stagnant slime and ooze ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various |
