Slain

“ Is slaughter'd at his crib, he slaughter'd me. ⁠500
Such was my dreadful death; carnage ensued
Continual of my friends slain all around,
Num'rous as boars bright-tusk'd at nuptial feast,
Or feast convivial of some wealthy Chief. ”

“ All, therefore, who have been murdered, you, the instigator of the deed, have slain. Nor indeed does the hand of the butcher glow save at the instigation of your tongue; and that terrible heat of the breast is inflamed by your words to take the blood of others,—blood that shall take a just vengeance upon him who shed it. ”

“ Hid be thy strand ’neath the snows everlasting,
Frozen the waters that over thee break!
Come to defend, O thou God of all mercies,
Cause of the righteous and home of the weak.
Slain is our leader, and he who has slain him,
Prince of the foemen, will reign in his stead. ”

“ Every old man and woman was killed, slain with a sword, or hacked to death, or speared. Babies, and little children were brained against the walls of the houses; strong men—fathers, lovers, sons—had been murdered with every wantonness of savagery conceivable. ”

“ His eye-balls were stretched from their sockets, and fixed upon vacancy, with an expression of terror, greater than that with which death himself, riding triumphant as he was over that field of the slain, could have filled those of so brave a man. ”

“ Hot blood will err sometimes. A man may strike another, and the stricken strike back again, and the result be a homicide, to put it at the worst. But what then? Shall we the neighbours make it worse still? Shall we think so poorly of each other as to suppose that the slain man calls on us to revenge him, when we know that if he had been maimed, he would, when in cold blood and able to weigh all the circumstances, have forgiven his manner? Or will the death of the slayer bring the slain man to life again and cure the unhappiness his loss has caused? ”

“ Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but 'I,' And that bare vowel 'I' shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. I am not I, if there be such an 'I'; Or those eyes shut that make thee answer 'I.' If be be slain, say 'I'; or if not, 'no.' Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe. ”

“ My heart goes out to all the slain, to those heroic corpses sleeping far away from home and kindred in unknown and lonely graves, to those poor pieces of dear, bleeding earth that won for me the blessings I enjoy to-day. ”

“ They shall bring thee down to the pit, and thou shalt die the deaths of them that are slain in the midst of the sea.—They shall bring thee down to a dishonored oblivion, and materially and religiously thou shalt die the deaths of those slain in the roaring waves of anarchy. ”

“ They had looked on while innocent and gentle women and children were ruthlessly slaughtered, but the sight of one of their own number slain was one that aroused all their fiercest feelings of revenge, and ere it could be well said that they had had time for thought swords and daggers were flashing in the light, the fair, flower-bestrewn earth was streaming with blood, and mangled bodies of dead and dying creatures, some still clasping their simple offerings, that pleaded for good-will, in their stiffening hands, were piled in awful heaps around the camping ground. ”

“ I kill, and I make alive. I wound, and I heal. There is no one who can deliver out of my hand. 32:40 For I lift up my hand to heaven, And say, As I live forever, 32:41 if I whet my glittering sword, My hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to my adversaries, and will recompense those who hate me. 32:42 I will make my arrows drunk with blood. My sword shall devour flesh with the blood of the slain and the captives, from the head of the leaders of the enemy. 32:43 Rejoice, you nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants. ”

“ BRAHMA If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame. They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. The strong gods pine for my abode, And pine in vain the sacred Seven; But thou, meek lover of the good! Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. ”

“ It is by no longer an interval than this that we precede one another. Death visits each and all; the slayer soon follows the slain. It is an insignificant trifle, after all, that people discuss with so much concern. ”

“ There is a great slaughter made in the midst of thee, many slain, and great men. It is probable that, when the city was taken, the generality of the inhabitants were put to the sword. Then did the wounded cry, and they cried in vain, to the pitiless conquerors; they cried quarter, but it would not be given them; the wounded are slain without mercy, or, rather, that is the only mercy that is shown them, that the second blow shall rid them out of their pain. ”

“ What aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops, 2Thou that art full of uproar, a tumultuous city, a joyous town? Thy slain are not slain with the sword, nor dead in battle. 3All thy rulers are fled together, Without the bow they are bound; All that are found of thee are bound together, they are fled afar off. ”

“ From the strange mixture of the material and spiritual common to men in that barbarian condition, the bodies or the blood of the slain appear to be the essentials of these requirements. Thus, also, the utmost horror is felt at decapitation, or at the severing of limbs from the body after death. ”

“ Neither has any one come back to them with the bodies of their slain, or bringing anything save a message describing the manner of their death. And some there are who have not even been vouchsafed this record, or been enabled to learn how their husbands fell, as they were buried beneath a heap of slain in the thick of battle. ”

“ Shall the priest and the prophet be slain In the sanctuary of the Lord? ש⁠21The youth and the old man lie On the ground in the streets; My virgins and my young men Are fallen by the sword; Thou hast slain them in the day of Thine anger; Thou hast slaughtered unsparingly. ת⁠22Thou hast called, as in the day of a solemn assembly, My terrors on every side, And there was none in the day of the Lord's anger That escaped or remained; Those that I have dandled and brought up Hath mine enemy consumed.'
⁠א 3I am the man that hath seen affliction By the rod of His wrath. ”

“ If a man were slain in battle, it was an old custom to place his body against a tree or rock in a sitting position, always facing the enemy, to indicate his undaunted defiance and bravery, even in death. ”

“ The mortalest enemies do not deny burial; when I have performed my last duties to the corpse with kisses, with tears, command me to be slain besides him, so that these, my fellows, for our good meaning and our true hearts to THE LEGION, may have leave to bury us. ”

“ But albeit this first appearance of the hugeness thereof [Pg 256] yielded sights enough to entertain our men's eyes; yet the pitiful object of so many bodies slain and dismembered could not but draw each man's eye to see, and heart to lament, and hands to help, those miserable people; whose limbs were so torn with the violence of shot, and pain made grievous with the multitude of wounds. ”

“ If no relative of the slain man wishes to fight a duel with the murderer, the murderer shall clear himself before the bishop with the ordeal of boiling water, and pay the wergeld, and make peace with the relatives of the slain man, and they shall be compelled to accept it. ”

“ Are you ready, sir?
DUKE.
Ay; prithee, sing.
[Music]
SONG CLOWN.
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown.
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there!
DUKE.
There 's for thy pains. ”

“ The torrents of blood, the groanings of the falling, the shouts of the surviving, the heaps of slain, wheels bathed in blood, horses with their riders thrown headlong down, owing to the number of corpses, the ground a scene of general confusion, blood, and bows, and arrows, hoofs of horses and heads of men lying together, a human arm and a chariot wheel and a helmet, a breast pierced through, brains sticking to swords, the point of a dart broken off with an eye transfixed upon it. ”

“ On every side we are surrounded with swords; on every side we dread the danger of death which is close at hand. Some come back to us with their hands cut off; we hear of some as being [Pg 158] taken prisoners, and of others as slain. ”

“ Every thing that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, ’Tis time to part. ”

“ Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men
That for a fantasy and trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! ”

“ When a man died far from home, frequent solemn invocations were made for his soul, which, it was thought, could hear and understand what was said by friends even in distant lands. At the burial of one that was slain in battle, his comrades marched three times round the burning pile or grave, shaking their arms, and throwing swords, bridles, belts, and other articles into the fire or grave after the body. ”

“ CHAP. 3.
1 Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not; [24] 2 The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the pransing horses, and of the jumping chariots. 3 The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear: and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of dead bodies; and there is no end of their bodies ”

“ All their company is such as were slain, fallen by the sword; a vast congregation there is of such, who had caused terror in the land of the living. But as the death of those to whom they were a terror put an end to their fears (in the grave the prisoners rest together and hear not the voice of the oppressor, Job iii. 18) , so the death of these mighty men puts an end to their terrors. Who is afraid of a dead lion? Note, Death will be a king of terrors to those who, instead of making themselves blessings, make themselves terrors, in their generation. ”

“ An old man was seated upon the monument of the slaughtered presbyterians, and busily employed in deepening, with his chisel, the letters of the inscription, which, announcing, in scriptural language, the promised blessings of futurity to be the lot of the slain, anathematized the murderers with corresponding violence. ”

“ What! cometh love and goeth
Like the dark night's empty wind,
Because thy folly soweth
The harvest of the blind?
Hast thou slain love with sorrow?
Have thy tears quenched the sun?
Nay even yet to-morrow
Shall many a deed be done.
This twilight sea thou sailest,
Has it grown dim and black
For that wherein thou failest,
And the story of thy lack?
Peace then! for thine old grieving
Was born of Earth the kind,
And the sad tale thou art leaving
Earth shall not leave behind.
Peace! for that joy abiding
Whereon thou layest hold
Earth keepeth for a tiding
For the day when this is old. ”

“ No one touched the grey-headed murderer, who knelt down—not to pray, but to look into his son's eyes—and to examine his lips—and to feel his left breast—and to search out all the symptoms of a fainting-fit, or to assure himself—and many a corpse had the plunderer handled on the field after hush of the noise of battle—that this was death. ”

“ Oh! if one spot did fully his pure soul In heaven hath he wip'd it clean away, With this his sweet unfeigned oraison. SECOND MURDERER.
'Tis true— The King to us hath ever been most kind, We've serv'd and gained honours under him; 'Twould have disgrac'd the name of Murderer Had we to cold death sent him unprepar'd. For e'en the rigid law itself allows To most crimes most daring, most atrocious, A time to pray, a time to ask for mercy. FIRST MURDERER.
Why how now? Hast thou forgot thine errand, Wast sent here to prate thus, Or to fulfil thy promise? ”

“ Slowly, at last, came the step of the dead, heavily ascending the stairs;—he entered—I rushed to meet him, and the long pent up agony of my soul burst forth in madness uncontrolled. ‘Monster!—murderer!—destroyer of thy father and thy brother! why comest thou thus to torture and not kill? why is thy bloody hand for ever raised, p. 220and yet forbearing to fall? If thine aim be vengeance, strike—strike—strike—thou blood-bespotted horror! and rend from hope and from life those who dared to make thee what thou art!—Strike, thou silent, sullen thing! ”

“ To wake once more to killing, killing, killing.
Give me the hunter's hand, the patriot's fervour
To hold death naught, or for my land to serve her,
Slay and still slay, with heart that holds no sorrow
For these dead men and all their carnal horror.
Was I not one who loved my land for growing
Sweet, eager life, and pretty things all blowing?
How glad these hands to give their toil, how willing,
That now, O God ! grow strong in killing, killing. ”

“ Never shall ye eat in blood your shameful feasts through sin defiled with blood. For most he injureth himself and his soul's honour whoso shall slay another with the sword. Verily! in no wise shall his heart have joy in his reward! For many times more heavily will I avenge man's life upon his murderer, because his sword hath prospered in violence and blood, and his hands in death. ”