"Pyre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... believed, one of those twin barrows still existing on the sides of the Sigean promontory, that pass under the name of the tumuli of Achilles and Patroclus. Pope, in translating the passage describing the commencement of the funeral pyre, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... at the age of fifty-five, his tender gaze still fixed on the misty peals of Raja-hood, he suddenly found himself transported to a region where earthly honours and decorations are naught, and his salaam-wearied neck found everlasting repose on the funeral pyre. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... crowned with laurel; and he himself, arrayed in a purple robe, girt after the manner of the Romans, held a lighted torch. He had just raised it with both hands towards heaven, and was about to set fire to the pyre, when some men were seen approaching at a gallop. Great silence and expectation followed. On their coming up, they leaped from their horses and saluted him with the title of Consul for the fifth time, and presented letters to the same purport. This added joy to the solemnity, which ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... also to Mr. Manns and courtoisement Miss Williams [The well-known vocalist Miss Anna Williams]. The "Funeral Pyre of Joan of Arc" will, I trust, have done ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... 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 me ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... solemn stars that light The dread infinitudes of night, Mid wintry solitudes that lie Where lonely Hecla's toweling pyre Reddens an awful space of sky With Thor's eternal altar fire! Worn with the fever of unrest, And spent with years of eager quest, Beneath the vaulted heaven they stood, Pale, haggard eyed, of garb uncouth, The seekers of the ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... distance of twenty stades. Then the King, convinced that the oracle was accomplished and despairing of any means of escape, to avoid falling alive into the enemy's hands constructed in his palace an immense funeral pyre, placed on it his gold and silver and his royal robes, and then, shutting himself up with his wives and eunuchs in a chamber formed in the midst of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... white monk went behind him. He came from the feast at Berg Rese's house, drenched with blood, with a gaping axe-wound in his forehead. And he whispered: "Denounce him, betray him, save his soul. Leave his body to the pyre, that his soul may be spared. Leave him to the slow torture of the rack, that his soul may have ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... the constellation of the Pleiades[11] approached the zenith, the new fire was kindled by the friction of some sticks placed on the breast of the victim. The flame was soon communicated to a funeral-pyre on which the body of the slaughtered captive was thrown. As the light streamed up toward heaven, shouts of joy and triumph burst forth from the countless multitudes who covered the hills, the terraces of the temples, and the housetops.... Couriers, with torches lighted at the ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... had no necessity to keep a reserve of thought for the after evening; supper was the final consummation, the glorious funeral pyre of day. One could be merry till bedtime without an interregnum. Nay, if in the ardour of convivialism one did,—I merely hint at the possibility of such an event,—if one did exceed the narrow limits of strict ebriety, and open the heart with a ruby key, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was of a settled melancholic turn of mind, having lost in early youth a very peculiar wife. One day, whilst out hunting, he happened to pass a funeral pyre, upon which a Brahman's widow had just become Sati (a holy woman) with the greatest fortitude. On his return home he related the adventure to Sita Rani, his spouse, and she at once made reply that virtuous women die with their husbands, killed ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... the occasion of the divine retribution. They are 'a spark.' It is they who light the pyre, not God. The prophet here protests in God's name against the notion that He is to be blamed for punishing. Men are their own self-tormentors. The sinful man immolates himself. Like Isaac, he carries the wood and lays the pile for his ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... is no 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 ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... depth, Threw up a gory sea. In piteous tones Howled the wild dogs; the Vestal fire was snatched From off the altar; and the flame that crowned The Latin festival was split in twain, As on the Theban pyre (22), in ancient days; Earth tottered on its base: the mighty Alps From off their summits shook th' eternal snow (23). In huge upheaval Ocean raised his waves O'er Calpe's rock and Atlas' hoary head. The native gods shed tears, and holy sweat Dropped from the idols; gifts in temples fell: Foul ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... laughs aloud at Gudrun's frantic grief, but later her joy turns into sorrow, and she determines to share Sigurd's death. In vain they try to dissuade her; donning her gold corselet, she pierces herself with a sword and begs to be burned on Sigurd's funeral pyre. In dying she prophesies the future, telling of Gudrun's marriage to "Atli" and of the death of the many men which will ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... flowers budded newly; and the dew Had taken fairy phantasies to strew Daisies upon the sacred sward last eve, And so the dawned light in pomp receive. For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre Of brightness so unsullied, that therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine 100 Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; The lark was ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... you, my dear, 'e was that pertic'ler I couldn't do with 'is fads, not at fancy prices, I couldn't. I 'ad to tell 'im to gow, for Mussy's syke, where 'e'd git 'is own French cook, and 'is own butler to black 'is 'arf-doz'n pyre o' boots all at once for 'im." This was the recognised fiction by which Mrs. Rogers accounted for the departure of any of her lodgers. Lest it should seem to speak badly for her willingness and for ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... quite welcome," said Kitty. "I don't know what in the world I shall do with them. There'll be boxes and bales and barrels—enough to bury me and all my troubles. I might build me a funeral pyre!" ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... heat lay heavier again On her despair, until her body frail Shrank like the snow that watchers in the vale See narrowed on the height each summer morn; While her dark glance burnt larger, more forlorn, As if the soul within her, all on fire, Made of her being one swift funeral-pyre. Father and mother saw with sad dismay The meaning of their riches melt away; For without Lisa what would sequins buy? What wish were left if Lisa were to die? Through her they cared for summers still to come, Else they would be as ghosts without a home In any ...
— How Lisa Loved the King • George Eliot
... surged the press of the furious populace. It was all that Duke John and his officers could do to keep the prisoners in ward, and to prevent them from being torn limb from limb (as had perhaps been fittest), and tossed alive into the flaming funeral pyre of Castle Machecoul, which, lighted by a hundred hands, presently began to flame like ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... passed on through storm and through calm, The perplexed winds changed their course, time after time, and the sea moaned. I asked thee, "Does thy sleep-tower stand somewhere beyond the dying embers of the day's funeral pyre?" No answer came from thee, only thine eyes smiled like the edge of a sunset cloud. It is night. Thy figure grows dim in the dark. Thy wind-blown hair flits on my cheek and thrills my sadness with its scent. My hands grope to touch the ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... and carnage, encamped on the plain outside of the walls, exulting in the entireness of their vengeance. Moscow, the gorgeous capital, was no more. The dwellings of the city became but the funeral pyre for the bodies of the inhabitants. The Tartars, intoxicated with blood, dispersed over the whole principality; and all its populous cities, Vladimir, Zvenigorod, Yourief, Mojaisk and Dmitrof, experienced the same fate with that of Moscow. The khan then ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... beneath them, save for the one staring rectangle that marked a pyre. But dawn shimmered opalescent ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... furiously when he climbed in under the wheel of his car. He held Joan very close and watched that blazing funeral pyre in wordless sorrow as the bereaved girl dropped her head to ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent
... first; how lucky that they still used candle-light! It would make the task much simpler—the funeral pyre already lighted. She moved one of the tall candelabra to the desk, sitting for a long time quite still, her chin cupped in her hands, staring down at the bits of paper. She could smell the wall-flowers under the window as though they ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... 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
... wouldst spare me pain? Then, Go. Each tiny, lapping flame of fire That fed its tongue on thee, would scorch The life-blood in my heart until Upon the funeral pyre, I'd throw My worthless ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... themselves, one of whom was of the same age as the King, and the other two aged thirty-five years. They showed great courage. They went forth richly dressed with many jewels and gold ornaments and precious stones, and arriving at the funeral pyre they divided these, giving some to their relatives; some to the Brahmans to offer prayers for them, and throwing some to be scrambled for by the people. Then they took leave of all, mounted on to a lofty place, and threw themselves ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... tried to drown the thought of this 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 ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the courteous, indulgent Sir Donald Randolph, with his wealth of cultured, intellectual power, was such a cruel, heartless, moral idealist as to approve of his daughter's immolation on this slow-torturing funeral pyre? ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... little Ile aux Vaches, to-day the platform of the Pont-Neuf, in the presence of the king and all his court. A popular legend asserts that as the figure of the grand-master, Jacques de Molay, disappeared finally in the smoke and flame of his pyre, he was heard, in a solemn voice, to summon his executioners to meet him before the bar of God, the Pope within forty days and the king within the year. Certain it is that both these potentates died ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... tribune of the orators. This was now named the Rostra Julia, and from it, on the occasion of the funeral of the murdered dictator on the 19th or 20th March, B.C. 44, Mark Antony pronounced the celebrated oration which wrought so wonder-fully on the passions of the excited populace. A funeral pyre was hastily improvised, and the unparalleled honor accorded to the illustrious dead of being burned in view of the most sacred shrines of the city. A column with the inscription 'parenti patriae' was afterwards erected here to commemorate the event. At a later period Augustus ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... Great ships are landing warriors upon the palace roof and in the Fields of Jetan. The men of Helium and Gathol are marching through Manator. They cry aloud for the Princess of Helium and swear to leave Manator a blazing funeral pyre consuming the bodies of all our people. The skies are black with ships. They come in great processions from the east and ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wave of fiery hot feeling passed through our country flaming up like a beautiful sacrificial pyre. It was no longer a duty to offer one's self and one's life—it was supreme bliss. That might easily sound like a hollow phrase. But there is a proof, which is more genuine than words, than songs, and cheers. That is the expression in the faces of the people, their uncontrolled spontaneous ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... Alexander to Persia. On a stated day, at Susa in Persia, Kalanos gave up his aged body by entering a funeral pyre in view of the whole Macedonian army. The historians record the astonishment of the soldiers who observed that the yogi had no fear of pain or death, and who never once moved from his position as he was consumed in the flames. Before leaving for his cremation, Kalanos had embraced all ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... the son of Oineus, having gathered together from many cities huntsmen and hounds; for not of few men could the boar be slain, so mighty was he; and many an one brought he to the grievous pyre" (W. Leaf). ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... undue anxiety Eliminated from desire, Could feverish fears and fancies be Consumed on some funeral pyre, Like holy hecatomb or sacrifice, 'Twould be accepted ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... what torture meant. Again he surged, and surged again, the cedars crackled, the red fiends danced. Another effort, the rawhide parted and he stood erect. With both hands freed he felt new strength, new hope. He tried to free himself from the pyre, but his feet were fettered, and he fell among his captors. Two or three of them seized him, but he shook them ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... one—I mean the inflaming details of his crime, and the lurid theatricality of his exit do it—and the duplicate crime follows; and that begets a repetition, and that one another one and so on. Every lynching-account unsettles the brains of another set of excitable white men, and lights another pyre—115 lynchings last year, 102 inside of 8 months this year; in ten years this will be habit, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Athens, nought availed The Macedonian's triumph, or the chain Of Rome; the conquering Osmanli failed, His myriad hosts have trampled thee in vain. They for thy deathless body raised the pyre, And held the torch, but Heaven ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... 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
... weapons against him; and this dauntless soldier of the Cross received the crown of martyrdom which he had prayed might be his. His slayers fell upon his body, stripped it of clothing, mutilated it, and cast it into the now flaming chapel, a fitting funeral pyre for the first martyr of the Huron mission. The entire village was given to the flames, and the smoke of the burning cabins and palisades rolled over the forest. A small village not far away, on the trail to Ossossane, shared the same fate. The ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... of thousands, have died that the Republic might live. The emblems of mourning have darkened White House and cabin alike; but the fires of civil war have melted every fetter in the land, and proved the funeral pyre of slavery. It is for you, Representatives, to do your work as faithfully and as well as did the fearless saviors of the Union in their more dangerous arena of duty. Then we may hope to see the vacant and once abandoned seats around us gradually ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... the remains, whereon I pointed to the smouldering ashes of one of the great fires. He went to it and kneeling down, said a prayer in broad Scotch, doubtless one that he had learned at his mother's knee. Then he took some of the ashes from the edge of the pyre—for such it was—and threw them into the glowing embers where, as he knew, lay all that was left of those who had sprung from him. Also he tossed others of them into the air, though what he meant by this I did not understand and never asked. Probably it was some rite indicative of expiation or ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 are known ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... pant, For hopeless, sweet eternity? What God unhonour'd hitherto in songs, Or which, that now Forgettest the disguise That Gods must wear who visit human eyes, Art Thou? Thou art not Amor; or, if so, yon pyre, That waits the willing victim, flames with vestal fire; Nor mooned Queen of maids; or, if thou'rt she, Ah, then, from Thee Let Bride and Bridegroom learn what kisses be! In what veil'd hymn Or mystic dance Would he that were thy Priest advance Thine earthly ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... the balcony of the city hall; the people who had sought refuge in the main church were put to the sword and their bodies mutilated; and the priest was burnt alive in the church, the furniture of the edifice constituting his funeral pyre. ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... she piled them conscious of the sacrificial flames. And Isaac had been saved; whereas it was impossible that the catching of any ram in any thicket could save her. But, nevertheless, she arranged the drapery with all her skill, piling the fagots ever so high for her own pyre. In the meantime Conway Dalrymple painted away, thinking more of his picture than he did of one woman ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... looked at the orange glow that marked the funeral pyre of the ship. He had a decision to make; stay here with the capsule or ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... thought she over- played it a little. He was conscious of an odd sense of disappointment in her. "Have you never been out to St. Cloud? No? I never go there without feeling a terrible pity for those poor prodigals who stood beside its funeral pyre and saw their folly stripped down to the starkest of skeletons while they waited. The day of glory is short, Mr. Schmidt, and the night that follows is bitterly long. They say possession is nine points of the law, but what do nine points mean to the lawless? The rich man of to-day may be the beggar ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... little band of grateful heroes carried back their ghastly load to Jabesh, and burned the mutilated bodies there, employing an unfamiliar mode, as we may suppose, by reason of their mutilation and decomposition, and then reverently gathering the white bones from the pyre, and laying them below the well-known tamarisk. Saul's one good deed as king sowed seeds of gratitude which flourished again, when the opportunity came. His many evil ones sowed evil seed which bore fatal fruit; and both were seen in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... rallied from the cholera collapse and could probably be saved by stimulants and warmth. This suspended animation is common enough in cholera. Why, the Brahmins have a regular ritual for dealing with cases of recovery on the funeral pyre—purification after defilement by the corpse-washers or something of the sort. These stupid oafs ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... knew not, this bewildered crowd That up her streets in silence hurrying passed, What manner of death should make their anguish loud, What corpse across the funeral pyre be cast, For none had spoken it; only, gathering fast As darkness gathers at noon in the sun's eclipse, A shadow of doom enfolded them, vague and vast, And a cry was heard, unfathered of earthly lips, What of the ships, O Carthage! Carthage, what of ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... wings 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, ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... farewell to the world, and the Angel of Death has seized his spirit. Cease, any longer, to be deluded by the shadowy pleasures of life." At the conclusion of this ceremony, which lasted for three days, the corpse was consumed on a pyre of sandal, camphor, and aromatic woods, and the ashes scattered to the winds.[5] The widow of the king was sometimes burnt along with his remains, but compliance with the custom was ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... dogs he casts two on the pyre, in order to leave for himself seven. And in many places he uses the ternary, quinary, and septenary number, especially the number nine ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... came upon the dagger. It was a beautiful toy, but she pushed it aside resentfully. Its magic was not for her. She gathered up her tokens with trembling fingers, resisted the impulse to sit down and weep over them, laid them in the grate, and flung a bunch of lighted matches into the pyre. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... He 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 ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... 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 ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... to be the mood of all England. When Anne and her uncle set forth in the summer sunset light the great hill above them was dark with the multitudes thronging around the huge pyre rising in the midst. They rested for some minutes at the cottage indicated before the arrival of Sir Philip, who rode up accompanying the coach in which his three ladies were seated, and which was quite large enough to receive Dr. Woodford ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I, "that will do to-morrow. I've been thinking we might make the brushwood into a pyre and burn his body—and those other things. Then what will happen with ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... huts on the mimaluse, or "death islands" of the Columbia; 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 hereditary war-chief ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... embitter his resignation. You can guess not the extent of the sacrifice, the bitterness of the pang, when, averting his head, he dropped those relics on the hearth. The evidence of the desultory ambition, the tokens of the visionary love,—the same flame leaped up to devour both! It was as the funeral pyre of his youth! ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ambitious at the grave. He threw neither garments nor odors upon the funeral pyre, but the arms and the war-horse of the departed were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... putting in all the virtues of Howkawanda, and those that he might have had if he had been spared to them longer, while the women cast dust on their hair and rocked to and fro howling. Younger Brother crept as close to the pyre as he dared, and whined in his throat as the fire took hold of the brush and ran ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... Blue Bonnet had helped Annabel select a much thumbed Cicero (there had been some difficulty in choosing), longing with all her heart for the day when her own Geometry could be added to the funeral pyre. ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Polycarp when he was martyred at the stake (Martyr. Polyc. c. 16). Similarly Lucian represents himself as spreading a report, which was taken up and believed by the Cynic's disciples, that a vulture was seen to rise from the pyre of Peregrinus when he consigned himself to a voluntary death by burning. It would seem that the satirist here is laughing at the credulity of these simple Christians, with whose history he appears to have had at least a ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... gods of human beings, the process even beginning in their lifetime. There a man wins local fame as an ascetic with abnormal powers, or a wife, because Alcestis-like she sacrificed herself for her husband and immolated herself on his pyre. Miracles occur at their shrines, and the surviving relatives who guard them wax rich off the offerings brought. "In the course of a very few years, as the recollection of the man's personality becomes ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... has shown that changes were made in this text at a much later day for the purpose of gaining Vedic authority for a cruel system, of which even so late a work as the Code of Manu makes no mention, and (page 205 Ibid.) he quotes another passage from the Rig Veda which directs a widow to ascend the pyre of her husband as a token of attachment, but to leave it before the burning ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... shone on the fresh grass and the flower, my heart opened wide as the broad, broad earth. I spread my arms out, laying them on the sward, seizing the grass, to take the fulness of the days. Could I have my own way after death I would be burned on a pyre of pine-wood, open to the air, and placed on the summit of the hills. Then let my ashes be scattered abroad—not collected urn an urn—freely sown wide and broadcast. That is the natural interment of man—of man whose Thought at least has been among the immortals; interment ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... cannon's mouth blow fire, Your fame to raise, Upon its blaze, Alas! ye do but light your funeral pyre! Tempting Fate's stroke; Ye fall, and all your glory ends in smoke. Safe in my chair from wounds and woe, My fire and smoke from mine own ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... 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 ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... shallow lagoon of calm, still water. He walked some yards inland. From where he now stood, on the summit of the ridge, he could look either way, and by the faint reflected light of the stars, or the glare of the great pyre that burned on the central island, he could see down on one side to the ocean, with its fierce white pounding surf, and on the other to the lagoon, reflecting the stars overhead, and motionless as a mill-pond. Between them lay the low raised ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... globe filled full of fire, And flashing like a color pyre, All heavened beneath the eye of morning, To sate the hunger ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... fire Out of death, and it burns in the draught Of the breathing hosts, Kindles the darkening pyre For the sorrowful, till strange brands ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... the advent of the king of blood and the pope of gold. We know how they ended. Jacques de Molay, from his funeral pyre, adjured them both to appear before God within the year. Ae to geron sithullia, says Aristophanes. "Dying hoary heads possess ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Khasis lay great stress on its potency in divination for the purposes of religious sacrifices, and that at death it is placed on the stomach of the deceased and is afterwards broken at the funeral pyre. Amongst some of the tribes of the Malay Archipelago also the Gaji-Guru or medicine-man "can see from the yolk of an egg, broken whilst sacramentally counting from one to seven, from what illness a man is suffering and what has caused it." Here we have an almost ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... consisted in memorizing many verses of the Bible, the "Three R's," and wood-craft. His childhood was strenuous. In his mother's arms he saw the burning of the town of New Ulm, which was the funeral pyre for the women and children of that place when they were massacred by Red Cloud ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... did not succeed as well as she expected, however, for though just in the act of setting fire to a funeral pyre, the Professor dropped his torch, metaphorically speaking, and made a dive after the little blue ball. Of course they bumped their heads smartly together, saw stars, and both came up flushed and laughing, without ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... 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.
... sweet! I saw thee in thine anguish! tortured, prone. Rent with earth-throes, garmented in fire! Each wound upon thy breast upon my own. Sad city of my love and my desire. Gray wind-blown ashes, broken, toppling wall And ruined hearth—are these thy funeral pyre? Black desolation covering as a pall— Is this the end, my love and my desire? Nay, strong, undaunted, thoughtless of despair, The Will that builded thee shall build again, And all thy broken promise spring more fair. Thou mighty mother of as mighty men. Thou wilt arise ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... of Madeleine did not long survive the blow that Louis had prepared for her—not, indeed, in the sense of a guilty and blood-stained hand, but with the merit of an Abraham who, at the command of Heaven, prepared a funeral pyre for his child. Madeleine could scarcely weep; the grief of nature was calmed by the impulses of grace, and she felt in her heart a holy joy in the sublime destinies of her son. Could we, in the face of the holy teachings of the Church, institute a comparison between the mother of ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... volumes, twelve of amplest size, Redeem'd from tapers and defrauded pies, Inspir'd he seizes: these an altar raise; An hecatomb of pure, unsully'd lays That altar crowns; a folio common-place Founds the whole pile, of all his works the base: Quartos, Octavos, shape the less'ning pyre, A twisted birth-day ode completes the spire. "Then he, great tamer of all human art! First in my care, and ever at my heart; Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend, With whom my Muse began, with whom shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... people, who all kept shouting Bande Mataram. Sandip was also there. He took up some of the ashes, crying: 'Brothers! This is the first funeral pyre lighted by your village in celebration of the last rites of foreign commerce. These are sacred ashes. Smear yourselves with them in ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... tears,"—whither ten Kooleen Brahmins will bear him; and as often as they set down the bier to feed the dead with a morsel of moistened rice, other Brahmins shall sing his wisdom and his virtues, and celebrate his meritorious deeds. When his funeral pyre is lighted, his sons, and his sons' sons, and his daughters' husbands, and his nephews, shall beat their breasts and rend the air with lamentations; and when his body has been consumed, his ashes shall be given to the Ganges,—all save a certain portion, which shall be made into a paste with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... rituals fire and light have played prominent roles. The devout Brahman maintains a fire on the hearth and worships it as omniscient and divine. He expects a brand from this to be used to light his funeral pyre, whose fire and light will make his spirit fit to enter his heavenly abode. He keeps a fire burning on the altar, worships Agni, the god of fire, and makes fire sacrifices on various occasions such as betrothals and marriages. To the Mohammedans ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... or Josiah, 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, where her husband ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... wind to seek and spring upon the pyre of her lord." Fate and Aphrodite drive her headlong, and in heaven Selene, remembering Endymion, bewails the lot of her sister in sorrow. OEnone reaches the funeral flame, and without a word or a cry leaps into her husband's arms, the wild Nymphs wondering. The lovers are ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the earth and weed from the top of the great stone. Then he retraced his steps and gathered a handful of bleached twigs that the winter floods had left stranded along the margin of the stream. These he arranged methodically on the cleared space; on the top of the tiny pyre he placed ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... kingly power, and she raised him to the throne by her side. As her accepted lover and lord of the festival, he remained for five days, during which the law of the goddess prevailed. Afterwards on the fifth day the god-lover was sacrificed on the pyre. The male ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... was left alive. Then the Kana prepared for the end. He sent the boy Ajeysi with a small band by a secret way, and he escaped to Kailwarra, so that the royal race of Chitor should not become extinct. Then the women of the city, with the noble Padmani at their head, accepted the Johur; "the funeral pyre being lighted within the great subterranean retreat," they steadfastly marched into the living grave rather than yield themselves to the will of the conqueror. All being now ready for the last act of the hideous ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... need it, if guests arrive. And what of the ship? Did you learn whose it is? It takes till pyre-and-fire to get anything out ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... own face with his mantle and wept, remembering how in his own family his grandfather Antigonus and his father Demetrius had experienced similar reverses of fortune. He had the body and head of Pyrrhus decently arranged on a funeral pyre and burned. Halkyoneus, meeting Helenus in poor and threadbare clothes, embraced him kindly, and led him to Antigonus, who said to him, "This meeting, my boy, is better than the other; but still you do not do right in not removing ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... ruddy fire. A stifled cry, like one immense groan rose from below—above in the reek and blaze all was silent. But from out that fire I saw—yes, and another saw it too (an English soldier, rushing to add a faggot to the pyre, a token of his hate to the Maid), and it so wrought upon him that he dropped his burden, fell upon his knees and was like to die of the fear—I saw a white dove rise from the smoke wreaths of that ghastly pile, hover a moment, just touched by the ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... I don't throw them into a waste-paper basket. If destruction is their doomed lot, they perish worthily, and are burnt on a pyre, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... Nimtala Ghat for cremation. Sufficient money was given to the Muchis (low-caste men who serve as undertakers) for purchasing an abundant supply of fuel and ghi (clarified butter) with which a chilla (pyre) was constructed. After the corpse had been laid reverently thereon, Samarendra performed Mukhagni ("putting fire in its mouth," the duty of the eldest son or nearest relative). Fire was then applied on four sides, and when the body had been reduced to ashes, Samarendra bathed in ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... not a tenth Remains. Rather than let him find a place For winter quarters, two hundred thousand Happy families had to forsake their homes In dead of winter, and of the ancient seat Of Russian splendour, Rotopschin made a pyre, A blazing pyre of all its precious things: ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... naturalness. Pious Aeneas had not the least objection to bringing 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
... voice of wail went through the palaces of Asgard when Balder was slain by the mistletoe dart. Hermod rode down to the kingdom of Hela, or Death, to ransom the lost one. Meantime his body was set adrift on a floating funeral pyre. Hermod would have succeeded in his mission, had not Lok, the Spirit of Evil, interposed to thwart him. For this, Lok was bound in prison, with cords made of the twisted intestines of one of his own sons; and he will remain imprisoned until the Twilight of the Gods, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... gold heaped from hoard. — The hardy Scylding, battle-thane best, {16i} on his balefire lay. All on the pyre were plain to see the gory sark, the gilded swine-crest, boar of hard iron, and athelings many slain by the sword: at the slaughter they fell. It was Hildeburh's hest, at Hnaef's own pyre the bairn of her body on brands to lay, his bones to burn, on the ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... build me a pyre Of the whispering skeleton things, And my heart laugheth low with the fire, Laugheth high with the flame as ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... probably in the latter part of the first century. Apparently he was a Roman citizen, and his will is drawn in strict Roman fashion. But its last clause orders the burning of all his hunting apparatus, spears and nets, &c., on his funeral pyre, and thus betrays the Gaulish habit (Bruns, ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... the greedy tongues of fire, To make of those dread mounds a funeral pyre, As raging onward o'er their victims broke, The fearful conflict ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... at the 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 sword, and ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... garland of myrtle leaves. Roses are strewn on the white coverlet, and on the ground. Beside the bier are the offerings of food and drink which the Greeks used to burn along with their dead on the funeral pyre. In the left hand corner lies a shovel for digging the grave that is to receive the ashes. Several men and women are gathered round the bier, mostly in a group near the head of Alcestis. They are her friends, and the servants attending ...
— Evangelists of Art - Picture-Sermons for Children • James Patrick
... Artemisia, at Halicarnassus, upon the AEgean's eastern shore, and that became at once one of the few great wonders of the ancient world. This was intended to do honor to the loved and illustrious dead, and this it did as no grave or pyre could do. This was also intended to protect the lifeless form from ruthless robbery and reckless profanation, and it performed this task so well that for near two thousand years no human eye beheld the mortal part of Mausolus, ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... around and saw upon a pyre a copper kettle with four handles, and in it were his forty calves. He stuck his oaken stick through the handles and raised the kettle, poured off the water, pushed the calves' feet back into the kettle, lifted it to his shoulder, and went back to ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... with their mistress, the dead man's beloved (cf. The Eddic funerals of Balder, Sigfred, and Brunhild, in the Long "Brunhild's Lay", Tregrof Gudrumar and the lost poem of Balder's death paraphrased in the prose Edda); the last message given to the corpse on the pyre (Woden's last words to Balder are famous); the riding round the pyre; the eulogium; the piling of the barrow, which sometimes took whole days, as the size of many existing grass mounds assure us; the funeral feast, where an immense vat of ale or mead is drunk in honor of the dead; the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... has to sing his praise to Venus, and I saw Tichatschek moving towards Elizabeth and addressing his passionate outburst to her, I thought of Schroder-Devrient's warning in very much the same way as Croesus must have thought when he cried, 'O Solon! Solon!' at the funeral pyre. In spite of the musical excellence of Tichatschek, the enormous life and melodic charm ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... a prejudice against 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
... Only to stand for a moment, free, on the barricade, outlawed and joyous, with Death, Freedom's impregnable citadel, opening its gates behind—and to pass through, the red flag uplifted in the sight of all men, with flaming slums and smoking wrongs for one's funereal pyre!" ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... Fair men, who live in holes under the ground; Nor did he look once more to Ida's plain, Nor tow'rd Valhalla, and the sorrowing Gods; For well he knew the Gods would heed his word, And cease to mourn, and think of Balder's pyre. But in Valhalla all the Gods went back From around Balder, all the Heroes went; And left his body stretch'd upon the floor. And on their golden chairs they sate again, Beside the tables, in the ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 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 him back ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... that if any man from this body of ours, having paid his dues, shall depart, there shall come to him from the treasury three hundred sesterces, from which sum fifty sesterces, which shall be divided at the funeral pyre, shall go for the funeral rites. Furthermore, the obsequies shall be ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... 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 love so large ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... the Carrara range were giant flames transformed to marble. The memory of that day described by Trelawny in a passage of immortal English prose, when he and Byron and Leigh Hunt stood beside the funeral pyre, and libations were poured, and the 'Cor Cordium' was found inviolate among the ashes, turned all my thoughts to flame beneath the gentle ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... mound was built by gradual accretion in the following manner. That when a death occurred a funeral pyre was erected on the mound, upon which the body was placed. That after the body was consumed, any fragments of bones remaining were gathered, placed in a pot, and buried, and that the ashes and cinders were covered by a layer of ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... 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 ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... desperately interesting and historic, and there's a Peel-tower in ruin. Indeed, all is in ruin at Lincluden Abbey; but that makes it the sweeter and sadder. And as we came, the red of the crumbling sandstone burned in the fire of sunset like a funeral pyre heaped with roses. The melancholy, crowding trees and the delicate groups of little bushes were like mourners coming with their children to look on at the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... leaves, and such Things as catch fire and blaze with one sole spark; Bring cedar, too, and precious drugs, and spices, And mighty planks, to nourish a tall pile; Bring frankincense and myrrh, too, for it is 280 For a great sacrifice I build the pyre! And heap them round ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... in his ship, With horse and harness, As on a funeral pyre. Odin placed A ring upon his finger, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... da—ahem—darling bit. If I had my way every book in existence would be placed on a huge funeral pyre and conflagrated instantly. Moreover, it would be a criminal offence punishable by the death sentence for any person to bring another of the infernal nuisances into the world. That is my private opinion publicly expressed." So saying Ted picked himself up from the grass and sauntered off toward ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... sleep, or was it safer to attempt to make a hole in the walls? This could only be determined at the moment and the place themselves; but it was certain that the abduction must be made that night, and not when, at break of day, the victim was led to her funeral pyre. Then no human intervention ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... systems crush, 375 Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall, And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all! —Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm, Immortal NATURE lifts her changeful form, Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, 380 And soars and shines, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... flames, whence he rose into the sky as the sun which lights the world. When the Light-God kindles the flames of the dawn in the orient sky, shortly the sun emerges from below the horizon and ascends the heavens. Tlaloc, god of waters, followed, and into the glowing ashes of the pyre threw his son, who ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... day, early in the morning, Madu came to the pyre and shrieked very grievously, and ran away to catch the Policeman who was on tour in ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... stood firm, and volley on volley roared Triumphant Union, soon to be restored, Strong to defy all foes and fears forever. The Ridge was wreathed with angry fire As flames rise round a martyr's stake; For many a hero on that pyre Was offered for our dear land's sake, What time in heaven the gray clouds flew To mingle with the deathless blue; While here, below, the blue and gray Melted minglingly away, Mirroring heaven, to make another day. And we, who are Americans, ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... And soon thereon the mighty ox, new-slain, Was sprinkled o'er with wine and barley grain; Then one, amid the sound of choral song, The seemly leader of the pastoral throng, With reverent hand brought forth the sacred fire, And prayerful knelt and lit the holy pyre. Amid the roar of sacrificial flame The devotees besought their God by name; And while they worshipped, Hercules unheard, Through flowering, fragrant thickets scarcely stirred By evening's breezes, softly slipped away, His ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... "A high 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 ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... pass away Ere the last headaches born of New Year's Day; With blasting breath the fierce destroyer came And wrapped the victim in his robes of flame; The pictured sky with redder morning blushed, With scorching streams the naiad's fountain gushed, With kindling mountains glowed the funeral pyre, Forests ablaze and rivers all on fire,— The scenes dissolved, the shrivelling curtain fell,— Art spread her wings and ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fruitful wife; Earth had no thorn, and desire No sting, neither death any dart; What hadst thou to do amongst these, Thou, clothed with a burning fire, Thou, girt with sorrow of heart, Thou, sprung of the seed of the seas As an ear from a seed of corn, As a brand plucked forth of a pyre, As a ray shed forth of the morn, For division of soul and disease, For a dart and a sting and a thorn? What ailed thee then ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the street, their bodies torn by vagrant dogs, and not until a pestilent exhalation began to rise from them were they gathered up and hauled by cartloads to a place in the southern suburbs, where a great funeral pyre was erected and the bodies were ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... burning day draws near its end, And on the plain a man and his friend Sit feeding an odorous sage-brush fire. A lofty butte like a funeral pyre, With the sun atop, looms high In the cloudless, windless, saffron sky. A snake sleeps under a grease-wood plant; A horned toad snaps at a passing ant; The plain is void as a polar floe, And the limitless sky has a furnace glow. The men are gaunt and shaggy and gray, And their childhood ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... Mexican's manacled feet; and then brands and embers were thrust underneath. Pike turned sick with horror and helplessness at the sight, for he knew instantly what it meant. The wagon was to be the wretched Manuelito's funeral pyre. They meant to burn him to death by inches. Suddenly a bright flame leaped up from the bottom of the stack of fuel; broader, brighter, fiercer it grew until it lapped up over the floor of the wagon. A scream of agony rang through the Pass, answered ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King |
