Rites

A priest was called in to give last rites to the dying man.

Let no one lightly discuss the subject of rites.

Carried through many nations and seas, I have come to these miserable funeral rites, brother.

The Master said, "If a man be without the virtues proper to humanity, what has he to do with the rites of propriety? If a man be without the virtues proper to humanity, what has he to do with music?"

"Sychaeus was her lord, in happier time / the richest of Phoenicians far and wide / in land, and worshipped by his hapless bride. / Her, in the bloom of maidenhood, her sire / had given him, and with virgin rites allied."

Many of the ancestral rites of this tribe have been lost over time.

Due rites to Venus and the gods I bore, / the work to favour, and a sleek, white steer / to Heaven's high King was slaughtering on the shore.

So to his shade, with funeral rites, we rear / a mound, and altars to the dead prepare, / wreathed with dark cypress. Round them, as of yore, / pace Troy's sad matrons, with their streaming hair. / Warm milk from bowls, and holy blood we pour, / and thrice with loud farewell the peaceful shade deplore.

"Thence Corybantian cymbals clashed and brayed / in praise of Cybele. In Ida's wood / her mystic rites in secrecy were paid, / and lions, yoked in pomp, their sovereign's car conveyed."

Awed by the vision and the voice divine / ('twas no mere dream; their very looks I knew, / I saw the fillets round their temples twine, / and clammy sweat did all my limbs bedew) / forthwith, upstarting, from the couch I flew, / and hands and voice together raised in prayer, / and wine unmixt upon the altars threw. / This done, to old Anchises I repair, / pleased with the rites fulfilled, and all the tale declare.