"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Shakespeare was a man; that he had moods, that he made mistakes, and, above all, that he knew his art was an art and not an attribute of deity. That is what is the matter with the Germans; they cannot "ring fancy's knell"; their knells have no gaiety. The phrase of Hamlet about "holding the mirror up to nature" is always quoted by such earnest critics as meaning that art is nothing if not realistic. But it really means (or at least its ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... night, the wind, which had veered more to the eastwardly, rose considerably, drowning the clanging knell of the Spit buoy bell and rattling the windows and doors, like some desperate burglar on thoughts of plunder bent trying to effect ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the gate of the city they heard a peal of bells solemnly tolling forth a funeral knell. On inquiring the cause of this, the aged ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... horse und soldiers Vas all de funeral knell; De ring of sporn und carpine Vas all de sacrin bell. Mit hoontin knife und sabre Dey digged de grave a span, From German eyes blue gleamin ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... sounds have a different import to different ears. To mine there is a death knell in these ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... the croking of the Frogge; By the howling of the Dogge; 410 By the crying of the Hogge, Against the storme arising; By the Euening Curphewe bell; By the dolefull dying knell, O let this my direfull Spell, Hob, ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... Good fellows all, The latest of my wealth I'll share amongst you. Wherever we shall meet, for Timon's sake Let's yet be fellows; let's shake our heads, and say, As 'twere a knell unto our master's fortunes, "We have seen better days." Let each take some. (Giving them money.) Nay, put out all your hands. Not one word more: Thus part we rich ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... Nay, he has often leaped up from his lap-board, and, in the strong spirit of exultation, thrust out his leg in attestation of his assertion, slapping it, moreover, with a loud laugh of triumph, that sounded like a knell to the happiness of his emaciated acquaintance. The schoolmaster's philosophy, however, unlike his flesh, never departed from him; his usual observation was, "Neal, we are both receding from the same point; you increase in flesh, whilst I, heaven ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... affectionate brother and son; to the widow and the orphan, whom war's desolating hand cast into the world to tread alone its dreary path. To Uncle Nathan victory and defeat were alike the messengers of woe. Both were the death-knell of human beings; both carried weeping and wailing to ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... existence, how many links of illness, danger, and disaster are always interposed? Unsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of life ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding when the damper falls ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... see the flash of the revolving light on Windmill Rock, and the constant rays from the lightship on the Rips. So that by day or night you could never be lonesome, unless, perhaps, on some thick night, when you could see no light, and could only hear a grating knell from the bell-buoy, and could seem to see, through the white darkness, the waters washing over ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... answers here Mother dear! The tinkle of chapel bell, And the murmur of its knell And the mourners "It is well,' Echo answers here, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... white at the words, "She is my wife!" It was the death-knell of his hopes of securing the fortune for which he had not hesitated to sacrifice every particle of moral principle. When he turned and saw impending retribution in the shape of the two stalwart representatives of the law, a look of cunning came into his ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... can be accomplished, must be as sudden as the danger which it affronts. Even that, even the sickening necessity for hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be vain, self-baffled, and where the dreadful knell of too late is already sounding in the ears by anticipation—even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one particular case, namely, where the agonising appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self-preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of another life besides ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and being, no more is this breathing block But for his use in kinde.—Give out in some bursse or congregation Among the multitude Philautus[271] death. Let all the customarie rights of funerall, His knell or what else, be solemnly observed. Ile take order for his winding sheete, And further, to furnish it with further suertie, Ile have a potion that for twentie houres Shall quench the motion of his breath. Goe, spread, Let me alone to ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... view, whilst the loud and awful death-cry of five hundred helpless beings, imprisoned in the burning vessel, rings in our ears, curdling our blood, and seeming as if it would burst the very vault of Heaven with its appalling tones. It was a fitting knell to be ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... no sound after the echoes of the shot had died away, a spluttering funeral knell. Other natives, laying their spears aside, sprang from behind trees and rocks to the help of their fallen chief. Nobody would harm them; the magic had ceased. They raised him with the greatest solicitude, and bore him off. His head hung on his breast; he ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... should see to it," said Grey. "Elect Fremont, my boy, and the Union will go to pieces. Does the North suppose we will endure a sectional President? No, sir, it would mean secession—the death-knell of the Union. Sir, we may be driven to more practical arguments by the scurrilous speeches of the abolitionists. It is an attack on property, on the ownership of the inferior race by the supremely superior. That ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... and wounded was 7578, and after the capitulation of Port Arthur, the Russian remains were collected and buried to the number of 5400; the real count was supposed to be more than 7000. The possession of this hill by the Japanese sounded the death-knell of the Russian fleet, which was practically wiped out of existence on the 9th of December. We regretted not being able to visit Port Arthur the following week, when a most interesting occasion was to occur,—the ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... of every race, clime, and condition; there is no limit to its expansive adaptability. It is in a special manner voracious in the destruction of other languages; wherever it goes, it sounds the death-knell of all the rest. ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... poor horse lashed through the heavy mire, tired, foaming, panting, while his strong arm urged it on, with whip and spur; I can hear the exulting beating of his heart, that wild refrain that was raging as his death-knell—"Mine! Mine at last!" I could hear it, I say. It rung in my ears all night. He held her in his power; she must be his; hastily, yet carefully he performs his toilet; I dare say he stopped to think which cravat ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... and felt that I was conquered. Still I resolved to make some struggles for my dignity yet, and not submit until defeat was no longer doubtful. People in talking of "unrequited affection," speak of "the knell of departed hopes," but no knell could sound more dreadful to the ears of a girl in her teens—trembling for her scarcely-fledged young-lady-hood—than did the voice of my grandmother, (and it was by no means low), ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... fifteenth century the knell of the Church rang out; it is memorable evermore in history for the discovery of the New World, and the consequent practical demonstration of the falsehood of the whole theory of the patristic and ecclesiastical theology. In the flood only "Noah and his three sons, with their wives, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... capitalistic, or collectivist, provided it keeps the race afoot (the hive and the anthill being as acceptable to her as Utopia), the demonstrations of Socialists, though irrefutable, will never make any serious impression on property. The knell of that over-rated institution will not sound until it is felt to conflict with some more vital matter than mere personal inequities in industrial economy. No such conflict was perceived whilst society had not yet grown beyond national communities ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... city. The salute of twenty-one guns fired by the fleet was joyful music to the people of Quebec. Amid the thundering of the guns from the citadel, the great bell of the Cathedral clanged the death knell to Arnold's hopes. ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... love will everywhere spring up spontaneously; that there is no entering a heart by force, and that every soul is free to name its conqueror; therefore I should have no reason to complain, if you had spoken to me without dissembling; you would then have sounded the death-knell of my hope; but my heart could have blamed fortune alone. But to see my love encouraged by a deceitful avowal on your part, is so treacherous and perfidious an action, that it cannot meet with too great a punishment; I can allow my resentment to do anything. No, no, ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... loved so well Like a full heart is awed to calm, The winter air that wafts his knell Is fragrant ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... grateful for his services. The highest and lowest classes of England cannot be in sympathy with the free North. No dynasty can look the fact of successful, triumphant self-government in the face without seeing a shroud in its banner and hearing a knell in its shouts of victory. As to those lower classes who are too low to be reached by the life-giving breath of popular liberty, we cannot reach them yet. A Christian civilization has suffered them, in the very heart of its great cities, to sink ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... pinions delicate, Past the dark belfry, where a deep-toned bell Sways back and forth, Grief tolling out the knell For thee, my friend, so young and yet so great. Dead—thou art dead. The destiny of men Is ever thus, like waves upon the main To rise, grow great, fall with a crash and wane, While still another grows to wane again, Dead—thou art ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... if shod with steel. I recognize them with a thrill; for they have haunted me many years, and they are speaking to me now. The one is soothing and pleading, and it implores me to write; but the second is like the striking of a revengeful knell. "Confession and Pardon," says the one; "Horror and Remorse," echoes the other. They tinkle and toll thus every midnight, when my hour of penance arrives and I have tried to register my story. It is almost finished now. Let me read ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... that, Theo—seriously?" she gasped; and the repressed eagerness in her tone sounded the death-knell of his dearest ambitions. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... an eight-hours day, by local and trade option! In my opinion I might as well vote for striking the flag on the British Empire at once! It would be the death-knell of all our prosperity." ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is the sorriest thing that enters Hell? None of the sins,—but this and that fair deed Which a soul's sin at length could supersede. These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves Of anguish, while the scorching bridegroom leaves Their ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... Bleoberis, with more other of Sir Launcelot's kin, took on them to ride all England overthwart and endlong, to seek Sir Launcelot. So Sir Bors by fortune rode so long till he came to the same chapel where Sir Launcelot was; and so Sir Bors heard a little bell knell, that rang to mass; and there he alighted and heard mass. And when mass was done, the Bishop Sir Launcelot, and Sir Bedivere, came to Sir Bors. And when Sir Bors saw Sir Launcelot in that manner clothing, then he prayed the Bishop that he might be in the same suit. ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... have endeavored to do my duty," and peacefully breathed his last. His sudden death was immediately announced by the tolling of the bell in the Department of State, and in a few moments the funereal knell was echoed from every church steeple in ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... like, in the East, anywhere in Europe, here in England, it is all the same, an "Auburn" among villages, with thatched cottages, and green pastures, and the cows coming home lowing in the evening, when the curfew tolls the knell of passing day. The grey church tower peeping above the lime trees, and the rooks cawing and wheeling above the old trees. The trim gardens blazing with hollyhocks and large white lilies, and the orchards with the apples shewing ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... would cause more stir than a hundred sheep stolen, or a score of houses sacked. Not of course that the beacon was of the smallest use to any one, neither stopped anybody from stealing, nay, rather it was like the parish knell, which begins when all is over, and depresses all the survivors; yet I knew that we valued it, and were proud, and spoke of it as a mighty institution; and even more than that, our vestry had voted, within the last two years, seven shillings and six-pence to pay for it, in proportion with ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... there have gathered a host of the most interesting, as well as the most brilliant, souvenirs of our literary history. Here were sold, in "the days that tried men's souls," those stirring pamphlets that sounded the death-knell of British tyranny in the New World; and it was from this old corner that the tender songs of Longfellow, the weird conceptions of Hawthorne, the philosophic utterances of Emerson, first found their way to the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... vault was a dungeon grim, And they say that many a chanted hymn Has rung a knell on the moldy air For luckless errant prisoned there, As kneeling monk and pious nun Sang orison at set of sun. A single window, dark and small, Showed opening in the heavy wall, Nor other entrance seemed attained That erst had human footstep gained. I paused before the uncanny place And ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... in the ghost all night, And believed in the day as well; And he vowed, with a sorrowing tearful might, All she asked, whate'er befel, If she came to his room, in her garment white, Once more at the midnight knell. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... our grandmothers had its death knell sounded a few years ago, when John Mercer showed that cotton fabrics soaked in caustic soda assumed under certain conditions a silky sheen, and when dyed took on beautiful and varied hues. The demonstration of this simple fact laid the foundation for the manufacture of a vast variety ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... showed himself humble and most respectful, and when Mademoiselle Fifi's body left the Chateau d'Ville on its way to the cemetery, carried by soldiers, preceded, surrounded, and followed by soldiers, who marched with loaded rifles, for the first time, the bell sounded its funereal knell in a lively manner, as if a friendly hand were caressing it. At night it sounded again, and the next day, and every day; it rang as much as any one could desire. Sometimes even, it would start at night, and sound ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of distant music Floats on the gentle breeze, Its captivating sweetness Bends e'en the proudest knees; Now soft as angel whispers, Then, loud as trumpet's blast It sounds the knell of sorrows And ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... people began to accumulate from all quarters for the sake of the flesh. The elephant was not dead, but was standing about ten yards within the grass jungle; however, in a short time a heavy fall sounded his knell, and the crowd rushed in. He was a fine bull, and before I allowed him to be cut up, I sent for the measuring tape; the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... any appeal to any man. Although I was found guilty by a jury of this court I deem my conduct above reproach. I know how I have been convicted, and will still assert that the first gun fired in anger between this country and America will be a knell ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... for ever with all that makes life bright and precious, and were fronting with calm smile and quiet pulses a grim and desperate conflict, which she well knew could have an end only in the peace of the pall, that long truce, whose signal is the knell and the requiem. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... as Wales, where there are no railroads, merely for the purpose of standing in a ride and knocking over a certain quantity of half-tame fowls. No, no; I ought to have seen it long ago. I had lost him now, and now I knew his value when it was too late. Too late!—the knell that tolls over half the hopes and half the visions ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... broken, cords loosened, and all Set free. Well, I know That I turned my cold face to the wall, Was silent, strove, gasped, then there fell A numbness, a faintness, a spell Of blindness, hung as a pall, On me, falling low, And a far fading sound of a knell. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fathom five thy father lies: Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark, now I hear ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... these, that were his eyes, Of fish-bones are these blue-bells made; His fins of gold that to and fro Waved and waved so long ago, Still as petals wave and wave To and fro above his grave. Hearken, too! for so his knell Tolls all day each ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... answered Rebecca, who thought her own knell of doom had sounded, if he had forgotten Emma ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... danced and sung, The amorous youth around her bowed, At night her fatal knell was rung; I saw, and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... feelings except action, and where that was impossible they took hardly any recognizable shape. When the first boom of the big bell filled the little study in which we sat, I gave a cry, and jumped up from my chair: it sounded in my ears like the knell of my lost baby, for at the moment I was thinking of her as once when a baby she lay for dead in my arms. Mr. Blackstone got up and left the room, and my husband rose and would have followed him; but, saying he would be back in a few minutes, he shut the door and left us. It was half an ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... when he sat beside her in the tiny boudoir of the Square du Roule, and the heavy foot fall of Heron and his bloodhounds broke in on their first kiss, down to this hour which he believed struck his own death-knell, his love for her had brought more tears to her dear eyes than smiles ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... father lies: Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I hear ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... What shall I tell?— Two mournful sisters, And a tolling knell, Tolling ding and tolling dong, Ding ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... swelling, without a gleam above the tarnished gold of their mountings; one entered no Holy Week, everywhere the "Pange Lingua" and the "Stabat Mater" wailed under the arches, and then came the "Tenebrae," the lamentations, and the psalms, whose knell shook the flame of the brown waxen tapers, and after each halt, at the end of each of the psalms, one of the tapers expired, and its column of blue smoke evaporated still under the lighted circumference of the arches, while the choir recommenced the ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... o'er fair women and brave men. A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell. But, hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... after the Curfew has taken its toll from the knell of parting day, and darkness reigns supreme, they will urge on their wild career, illuminated by the dim religious light of a small ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... even in his dying fear One dreadful sound could the Rover hear, A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell, The fiends below were ringing his knell. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... the random runes I wrote At the bottom of the note, (Wrote and freely Gave to Greeley) In the middle of the night, In the mellow, moonless night, When the stars were out of sight, When my pulses, like a knell, (Israfel!) Danced with dim and dying fays O'er the ruins of my days, O'er the dimeless, timeless days, When the fifty, drawn at thirty, Seeming thrifty, yet the dirty Lucre of the market, was the most that ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the funeral train of an entire nation weeping its own ruin and death can be imagined to feel of desolating woe, of majestic sorrow, wails in the musical ringing of this passing bell, mourns in the tolling of this solemn knell, as it accompanies the mighty escort on its way to the still city of the Dead. The intensity of mystic hope; the devout appeal to superhuman pity, to infinite mercy, to a dread justice, which numbers every cradle and watches every tomb; ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... seek, canter ye now ahead!" Carries the ensign Amboires of Oluferne; Pagans cry out, by Preciuse they swear. And the Franks say: "Great hurt this day you'll get!" And very loud "Monjoie!" they cry again. That Emperour has bid them sound trumpets; And the olifant sounds over all its knell. The pagans say: "Carlun's people are fair. Battle we'll have, ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... and wept:—the dark and azure well Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears, And every little circlet where they fell Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres And intertangled lines of light:—a knell 245 Of sobbing voices came upon her ears From those departing Forms, o'er the serene Of the white streams ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... departure; but in this hasty and kindly designed visit there was hidden a fund of cruelty which Lizabetha Prokofievna never dreamed of. In the words "as usual," and again in her added, "mine, at all events," there seemed an ominous knell of some ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... tend to enhance the price of agricultural products; while the free trade and anti-internal improvement policy, would as certainly reduce their value; the two systems were long considered so antagonistic, that the success of the one must sound the knell of the other. Indeed, so fully was Ohio impressed with the necessity of promoting manufactures, that all capital thus employed, was for many ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... not she who shaped my ways, Or works, or thoughts," he said. "I scarcely marked her living days, Or missed her much when dead." But O, his joyance knew its knell When daisies hid ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... pray, and so hurrying to bed, I resolutely shut my eyes. But sleep would not come to me. The ticking of the old clock in the hall seemed every moment to grow louder, as if reproaching me; and when it slowly told the hour of midnight, it smote upon my ear like a knell. ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... from the fire of the rabble soldiery will be bayoneted as they cling to the knees of their destroyers.[64] The common doom of man commuted for the violence of the sword, the bayonet, the sucking boat, and the guillotine, the knell of the nation tolled, and the world summoned to its execution and funeral, will need no preacher to expound the text, Where there is no vision, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... untold Resides in that heavenly word! More precious than silver and gold, Or all that this earth can afford. But the sound of the church-going bell These valleys and rocks never heard, Ne'er sighed at the sound of a knell, Or smiled when a sabbath appeared. Ye winds, that have made me your sport, Convey to this desolate shore Some cordial endearing report Of a land I must visit no more. My Friends, do they now and then send A wish or a thought after me? ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of princes fell, What time the bishop said, 'Sir Bertrand loved ye well; Weep, warriors, for the dead! The knell of sorrow tolls For deeds that were so bright: God save all Christian souls, And his—the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... it shall, before the point of danger is reached, infallibly check the combustion, let off the steam, and blow a whistle or ring a bell, which the proprietor may, if he pleases, regard as the official death-knell of the careless engineer. Human vigilance must not be superseded, but fortified,—as in the case of the watchman watched by the tell-tale clock. The steam-creature must be so constituted as to refuse to work itself down to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... rapidly dissipated by the busy sounds, all through the forest, of the woodman's axe, and by the roar of the stately trees, as they fell down before the enterprising pioneer. The Indian brooded over this in silence, while all of these sounds, delightful to the emigrant, were as a knell of death to his ear. The eloquence of Red Jacket had been exerted in vain, to arrest the progress of the white men. Onward they swept, bidding defiance to all the obstacles in their way. They were ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... the disengaged hand, fell back step by step, till they found the support of a tree- trunk, when they waited for the attack. From time to time the low growls gave warning of the enemy's close presence, and to them each sound was as a death-knell; for what were their knives against a foe so powerful, who had, too, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... church voted a vacation of six weeks. True to his Indian nature, he planned a deer hunt. He turned his footsteps to the wilds of the Running Water (Niobrara River), where his heart grew young and his rifle cracked the death-knell of the deer and antelope. One evening, in the track of the hostile Sioux and Pawnees, he found himself near a camp of the savage Sicaugu. He was weak and alone. They ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... widow's heart did throb, And thus she heard their burden go, "Marry, mar-marry, mar-Guillot!" Bells were not then left to hang idle: A week,—and they rang for her bridal But, woe the while, they might as well Have rung the poor dame's parting knell. The rosy dimples left her cheek. She lost her beauties plump and sleek, For Guillot oftener kick'd than kiss'd, And back'd his orders with his fist, Proving by deeds as well as words, That servants make the worst ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... struck two, and now the drums commenced rolling, and the death-knell resounded from the church-steeple. An awful silence reigned in the whole city of Braunau. All the houses were closed; all the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... scaffold are without effect, and the exhortations of the priests are heard with coldness, a wanton look and a tender promise often perform wonders. The bell which sounded the hour of assignation has often rang the knell of the most sacred principles and most steadfast resolutions. But should you either fail to gain the mastery over the minds of these women, or fear to be yourselves entangled in the nets which you wish to spread for others, in these cases you must have recourse to the holy father ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... seemed to fill up the silence like a knell, and give to my homeward journey a terror and a pang which proved that however I had deceived myself, hope had not quite given up its secret ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... across the room. Her soul was in her ear. She could hear and feel the step totter, and it shook her as it went. All sounds were trebled to her. Then it struck on the stone step of the staircase, not like a step, but a knell; another step, another and another; down to the very bottom. Each slow step made her head ring and her ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... man poised his knife. Trent hesitated no longer, but shot him deliberately through the heart. He jumped into the air and fell forward upon his face with a death-cry which seemed to find an echo from every hut and from behind every tree of Bekwando. It was like the knell of their last hope, for had he not told them that he was fetish, that his body was proof against those wicked fires and that if the white men came, he himself would slay them! And now he was dead! The last barrier of their superstitious hope was broken down. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... noise? A clatter as of falling boards. There is a sound as of hammering. At first it seems to Romeo Augustus like Mephibosheth's death-knell. Thud, thud, thud, go the blows. Drawn almost against his will, Romeo Augustus stealthily approaches the window. He glances fearfully out. What does he see? His father pounding busily, making—what is he making? Can it be? It is—it ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... crisp lights and shadows of the moonlit woods, until suddenly the bell rings out the hour from far-away Chailly, and he starts to find himself alone. No surf-bell on forlorn and perilous shores, no passing knell over the busy market-place, can speak with a more heavy and disconsolate tongue to human ears. Each stroke calls up a host of ghostly reverberations in his mind. And as he stands rooted, it has grown once more so utterly silent that it seems to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The death-knell of Democratic rule in Minnesota was rung in that election. The whole Republican State ticket was elected, with Gov. Ramsey at its head, and he was the first Governor to tender troops to President Lincoln for the suppression of the Rebellion. The result was gratifying, although ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... of Ogier, and great numbers more volunteered to march under so distinguished a leader. He flew to the succor of his father, repelled the invaders, and drove them in confusion to their vessels. Ogier then hastened to the capital, but as he drew near the city he heard all the bells sounding a knell. He soon learned the cause; it was the obsequies of Geoffroy, the King. Ogier felt keenly the grief of not having been permitted to embrace his father once more, and to learn his latest commands; but he found that his father had ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... athwart the face of light Float the clouds of sullen Night! Odin's warriors watch for me By the earth-encircling sea! The water's dirges howl my knell; ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... the people. Looking at a country such as that, is there any man who hears me who does not feel that if, in order to satisfy a greedy appetite for aggrandizement, coming whence it may, Belgium were absorbed, the day that witnessed the absorption would hear the knell of public right and public law in Europe? But we have an interest in the independence of Belgium, which is wider than that—which is wider than that which we may have in the literal operation of the guarantee. It is found in the answer to the question whether, under the circumstances of the case, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... the croaking of the frog, By the howling of the dog, By the crying of the hog Against the storm arising; By the evening curfew bell, By the doleful dying knell, O let this my direful spell, Hob, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... the city seemed a speck of light below, There 'twixt heaven and earth suspended as the bell swung to and fro; And the sexton at the bell-rope, old and deaf, heard not the bell, Sadly thought, "That twilight curfew rang young Basil's funeral knell." Still the maiden clung more firmly, and with trembling lips so white, Said, to hush her heart's wild throbbing: ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... dripped into Allan's consciousness. Beyond them, he could hear movements, exclamations. But they meant nothing to him. Only the one thought tolled, knell-like, within him. "We seven are the only ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... syllable; and the flask that had been filled for him stood upon the table untouched. He sat with his eyes fixed upon the stranger, and his skin as pale as a corpse. Betty was in the same state of immovable terror. Every word that fell from his lips was a death-knell—every drop of his red drink was as much liquid fire—and every ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... of Mrs. Adoniram Judson, who kindled the lights of salvation amid the darkness of Burmah?—or of Mrs. Hemans, who poured out her holy soul in words which will forever be associated with hunter's horn, and captive's chain, and bridal hour, and lute's throb, and curfew's knell at the dying day?—and scores and hundreds of women, unknown on earth, who have given water to the thirsty, and bread to the hungry, and medicine to the sick, and smiles to the discouraged—their footsteps ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... them in a different direction, but not one so peculiarly perilous. From this they made a turn to the left into a lane that would have led them back again to a little village, through which they had already passed, the bell of which was already sounding their death-knell. The constabulary, by turning into the narrow lane at the left, unconsciously approached the very ambush into which the people, or rather their more disciplined leaders, had intended to decoy them. ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... male participant was to carry all before him in cyclonic style, to dazzle and overwhelm the breathless and bewildered lady by the blinding rapidity of his showered attentions. By mutual consent nothing binding was ever implied in this form of acrobatic sentiment and the knell was sounded when either party paused for breath. When a rush began all bystanders withdrew as a matter of etiquette and waited for the dust to subside, much as, in the Simian days of the race, the lesser monkeys sat on ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... word Fell upon my ears Like the knell of a funeral bell. I had fondly expected A whispered "yes" that Would steal into my soul Like the song of an angel From some distant Aidenn. I arose and brushed off The knees of my trousers. "Farewell," I said; "you have ruined my life." "Nonsense," she replied in the cold, cutting ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... this adjusting sense is lamentably lacking. For humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals. What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh! What healthy exultation, what genial mirth, what loyal brotherhood of mirth attends the friendly sound! Yet in labeling our life and literature, as the Danes labeled their Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... silent street, plunged into the eddying stream, and kept an onward course, without pause, without hindrance, without fatigue. With him I shouted, sang, laughed, exulted, wept. Nor did I retire to rest till, in imagination, I heard the bell of York Minster toll forth the knell ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to Ramona in after years, as she looked back over this life, that the news of Father Salvierderra's death was the first note of the knell of their happiness. It was but a few days afterward, when Alessandro came in one noon with an expression on his face that terrified her; seating himself in a chair, he buried his face in his hands, and would neither look up ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... in the house was up, Clarence was mounting the hill in the gusts that had done their work on the trees and were subsiding with the darkness. And just as he was beginning the descent, as the sun tipped the Hillside steeple with light, he heard the knell, and counted the twenty-one for the years of our Ellen—for ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Troy's painted woes: For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell, Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; Then little strength rings out the doleful knell: So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow; She lends them words, and she ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... corridor and down a flight of steps. On the way he picked up two other men, also in khaki, who followed him; the four passed through a series of underground passages, and entered a stone cell with a solid steel door, which they clanged behind them—a sound that was like the knell of doom to poor Jimmie's terrified soul. And instantly Sergeant Perkins seized him by the shoulder and whirled him about, and glared into his eyes. "Now, you ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair |
