"Mournful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... can't say, mum, but 'e 'ad it, and when 'e'd gone I took the lamp in to the poor young gentleman wot was lyin' all 'uddled up on the sofa—'e said 'thank you' in a muffled voice that mournful, and I made up the fire and waited a minute but 'e didn't say no more, so I come away, an' in a few minutes the 'ouse seemed chock-full o' people. Where ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... friends; or to sit alone in the large drawing-room, expecting visitors; and working at a huge piece of worsted by the fire, on the sofa, hard by the great Iphigenia clock, which ticked and tolled with mournful loudness in the dreary room. The great glass over the mantelpiece, faced by the other great console glass at the opposite end of the room, increased and multiplied between them the brown Holland bag in which the chandelier hung, until you saw these brown Holland bags fading ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Pomp and Magnificence. It is entirely out of your Power to give the pitied Leander the least Relief; your Father's House is a Nunnery, he has his Locks and Keys to secure you, and his Spies for Intelligence; but I advise you to send the unfortunate Youth an Answer to his mournful Epistle." Upon this, Theodora immediately call'd for Pen, Ink and Paper, and wrote ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... her mind from the first to marry Jean Jacques, and she deported herself accordingly—with modesty, circumspection and skill. It would be the easiest way out of all their difficulties. Since her heart, such as it was, fluttered, a mournful ghost, over the Place d'Armes, where her Gonzales was shot, it might better go to Jean Jacques than anyone else; for he was a man of parts, of money, and of looks, and she loved these all; and to her credit she loved his looks better than all the rest. She had no real cupidity, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with thy pitiful dirge, Thou need'st to be mournful and moan! The wrath of thy terrible surge ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... loss; the man who killed it was condemned to expiate the crime with his own life; and nothing less than a public funeral could, as it was thought, do justice to its memory. The remains of the bird were laid on a bier, which was borne by two slaves; musicians went before it, playing mournful airs; and an infinite number of persons, of all ages and conditions, brought up the rear of the ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... rest. He had taken the precaution to open both doors of the cabin wide, after his hosts were safely asleep, letting in the moonlight and a little breeze that smelled keenly of pine woods. Now and then a faint bird-note broke the hush, or the mournful quaver of a screech-owl. The situation was not without picturesque piquancy ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... tree tops came the mocking laughter of the eagle; and out of the depths, through long, shadowy arcades, the mournful hootings of the great white owl—fit music ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... instead of meeting the calamity with measures of relief, he sought to stifle every important inquiry; when he called that a partial and temporary evil which was both long-lived and universal, he could not look on such a mournful crisis, in which public misfortune was insulted by ministerial apathy, without hailing any prospect of change in the system that produced such a state of feeling. What, he asked, could be said of the ignorance which could attribute the distress ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... eleventh of February, and, on the following morning, anchored at Greenwich. [672] She was received with many signs of joy and affection: but her demeanour shocked the Tories, and was not thought faultless even by the Whigs. A young woman, placed, by a destiny as mournful and awful as that which brooded over the fabled houses of Labdacus and Pelops, in such a situation that she could not, without violating her duty to her God, her husband, and her country, refuse to take her seat on the throne from which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Odin came in, and when he had heard from Frigga the whole story, he looked even more mournful than she had done; neither did the cloud pass from his face when he was told of the oaths ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... own people, hiding in wild glens, starving in corries, or going hopelessly to the death. He heard the cry of the Border foray, the shouts of the famished Scots as they harried Cumberland, and he himself rode in the midst of them. Then the tune fell more mournful and slow, and Flodden lay before him. He saw the flower of the Scots gentry around their King, gashed to the breast-bone, still fronting the lines of the south, though the paleness of death sat on each forehead. "The ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... I arrived might have been Winchelsea when the sun goes down on all our wrath and arguments. No one in the streets ... empty buses crawling along. Black boards up at every shop window. All the gas half-mast high as well as the flags. I never saw such a mournful city, but why should they turn the ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Stuart was the favourite of misfortune. As Brantome has said of her, "Whoever desires to write about this illustrious queen of Scotland has, in her, two very, large subjects, the one her life, the other her death," Brantome had known her on one of the most mournful occasions of her life—at the moment when she was ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... spot are huge piles of sawed lumber—Monteith's axe-razors did the shaving—surrounding an enormous mill surmounted by a smokestack of wrought iron topped with a bird-cage spark arrester, the whole flanked by a runway emerging from the lake, up which climb in mournful procession the stately bodies of fallen monarchs awaiting the cutting irony of the saw. Farther along, on another clearing, stands a square building labelled "Office," and still farther on, guarded by sentinel trees and encircled ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... who scorn the thrilling tale Of Carolina's high-souled daughters, Which echoes here the mournful wail Of sorrow from Edisto's waters, Close while ye may the public ear— With malice vex, with slander wound them— The pure and good shall throng to hear, And tried ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... fir-cones are designated oysters, and in Sussex the Arabis is called "snow-on-the-mountain," and "snow-in-summer." A Devonshire name for the sweet scabriosis is the mournful-widow, and in some places the red valerian (Centranthus ruber) is known as scarlet-lightning. A common name for Achillaea ptarmica is sneezewort, and the Petasites vulgaris has been designated "son before the father." ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... loved fine clothes, and preferred her own will to any guidance. We do not know whether this contented the city of Rheims; similar reasoning however seems to have silenced France. Nobody uttered a protest, nor struck a blow; the mournful procession of Tours, where she had been first known in the outset of her career, the prayers of Orleans which she had delivered, are the only exceptions we know of. Otherwise there was lifted in France neither voice nor ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... melancholy accounts of the cruel work which his troubles were making with that frame which once might have seemed to be of iron. The robust animal spirits which could hardly be kept down in former days had now changed into a mournful and even a moping temperament. His son, Horace Walpole, gives a very touching picture of him in these decaying years. "He who was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow—for I have frequently known him snore ere they had drawn his curtains—now never ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... all her pretty ribbons and frills. Every day she dressed as if for a fete, and took a mournful pleasure in reflecting how her ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... was found in the drifts. In the grove he only saw several glistening wolves' eyes, but nowhere discovered any traces of people or horses. The meadow between the woods and road now sparkled in the shiny light of the moon, and upon its white mournful cover he really espied dark spots, but those were only wolves that quickly vanished at ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Profundis.—There will probably be general consent to the omission of this alternate, as being what the Maryland Committee naively call it, "too mournful a psalm" ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... with the same gorgeous colouring which it had worn on the evening of the funeral. The sight reminded me of the sad incident, and I wondered whether we were to have a sadder one yet. I sat for some time lost in mournful thought, when there was a slight stir in the cot, and I heard little Fisher's voice ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... a carol, mournful, holy, Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her blood was frozen slowly, And her eyes were darken'd wholly, [19] Turn'd to tower'd Camelot; For ere she reach'd upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died, The ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... meet with Him, and the sadness which it experiences at not contemplating Him in a full light, become the principal facts of its existence. But doubt adopted as a doctrine realizes in its own way, equally with atheism properly so called, life without God, the mournful subject of our ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... wood is dim and lonely, Still the plashing fountains play, But the past with all its beauty, Whither has it fled away? Hark! the mournful echoes say, Fled ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... about a Mexican fooneral where the hearse is a blanket with two poles along the aige, the same as one of these battle litters; of the awful songs the mournful Mexicans sings about departed; of the candles they burns an' the dozens of baby white-pine crosses they sets up on little jim-crow stone-heaps along the trail to the tomb; meanwhiles, howlin' ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... the suggestion with mournful hauteur. "There! For the once I forgive you. Let the subject never be mentioned between us again. We will tactfully turn to a topic of interest. My memories of last evening, at first hazy and somewhat disconcerting, now merely amuse me. Following the pleasant Spanish custom, I went a-serenading, ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... was in a ferment as he passed through. Hundreds of refugees with mule carts and wheelbarrows laden with their household goods, were leaving the town in anticipation of the German advance. They made a mournful procession as they passed out of the town along the south road with babies crying and children clamoring about the clumsy, overladen vehicles. He saw many boys in khaki here and there and it cheered and inspired him to know that his country was represented in the fighting. ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... eats tender and well flavoured, tasting like veal, but the old ones are more tough and stringy than bullbeef. They are not carnivorous, and subsist altogether on particular flowers and grass. Their bleat is mournful, and very different from that of any other animal: it is, however, seldom heard but in ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... disrespectfully, at this, and the girl watched her with a mournful face. 'My dear child, you are too delightful! You are trying to reform her? by Beethoven and Bach, by Rubens ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... themselves in the coach, and drove away, over stumps and stones, into the depths of the forest. The little robber-girl was about the same size as Gerda, but stronger; she had broader shoulders and a darker skin; her eyes were quite black, and she had a mournful look. She clasped little Gerda round the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... in the centre containing the body. Some of the catafalques were spread with white table-cloths, flowers, candles, fruit, and biscuits, which the friends and relations (mostly women and children) of the defunct were discussing in anything but a mournful manner. A visit to a departed one's grave is generally an excuse for a picnic ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... with a tone of feeling. "It has been a mournful business from the first, and I do not see how it ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... siege was stilled; nothing betrayed that a vast army was encamped near us; their bivouac fires were even imperceptible; and the only sound we heard was the great bell of Ciudad Rodrigo as it struck the hour, and seemed, in the mournful cadence of its chime, like the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... came, when I was to set out. I had taken my leave of my fellow-servants overnight; and a mournful leave it was to us all: for men, as well as women servants, wept much to part with me; and, for my part, I was overwhelmed with tears, and the affecting instances of their esteem. They all would have made me little presents, as tokens of their love; but I would not take any thing ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... dull and dreary, And chilly winds and eerie Are sweeping through the tall oak trees that fringe the orchard lane. They send the dead leaves flying, And with a mournful crying They dash the western window-panes with slanting lines of rain. My little 'Trude and Teddy, Come quickly and make ready, Take down from off the highest shelf the book you think so grand. We'll travel off together, To lands ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... by the company, the dark-complexioned troubadour will probably be called upon for another song, and the following mournful ballad will ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... in these terms, contrasted with the mournful realities of the case, sharpened the anguish of fear and suspense throughout the whole city; and Maximilian with his friends, unable to bear the loud expression of the public feelings, separated themselves from the tumultuous crowds, and adjourning to the seclusion of their college ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... harassed by family misfortunes, other annoyances came. The mournful story of Chatterton's fate was painfully mixed up with the tenour ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... the voyage. He accepted the cigars which Donovan pressed on him, and was civil to Miss Daisy, but he made no pretence of enjoying himself. Mr. Phillips was in high spirits the whole time. He fell in love with Miss Daisy the moment he saw her. But there was nothing mournful or despairing about the way the great passion took him. He never brooded in silence over the hopelessness of his prospects; though as a subordinate officer in the merchant service, he had not much chance of marrying one of ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... became too dreadful to be borne, the monk retraced his way and climbed with difficulty up the steep sides of the crater, till he gained the summit above, where a comparatively free air revived him. All night he wandered up and down in that dreary vicinity, now listening to the mournful roar and crackle of the fire, and now raising his voice in penitential psalms or the notes of that terrific "Dies Irae" which sums up all the intense fear and horror with which the religion of the Middle Ages clothed the idea of the final catastrophe of humanity. Sometimes prostrating himself with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... for the most celebrated epicure from the most luxurious city in the world, no less a person than Philoinus of Sybaris, would pass a stern judgment on his delicate dishes. Go, Knakias, tell them to serve the supper. Are you content now, my impatient guests? As for me, since I heard Phanes' mournful news, the pleasure of the meal is gone." The Athenian bowed, and the Sybarite returned to his philosophy. "Contentment is a good thing when every wish can be satisfied. I owe you thanks, Rhodopis, for your appreciation of my incomparable native ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... little, Evelyn gazing with mournful eyes upon the lovely grounds and beautiful scenery ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... side, both mournful and dejected, as though they had been cast up by the tempest alone on some deserted shore. He looked at Sonia and felt how great was her love for him, and strange to say he felt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be so loved. Yes, it was a strange ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Is his emporium, his home. He wonders if when he is gone Will people look with mournful pride On him done up and classified, And the right ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... the Goddess of the morning; and his statue is related to have had the peculiar faculty of uttering a melodious sound every morning when touched by the first beams of day, as if to salute his mother; and every night at sunset to have imparted another sound, low and mournful, as lamenting the departure of the day. This prodigy is spoken of by Tacitus, Strabo, Juvenal and Philostratus. The statue uttered these sounds, while perfect; and, when it was mutilated by human violence, or by a convulsion of nature, it still retained the property ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... went off, screaming a mournful note through the building. He threw on the light switch, flooding the room with whiteness, and started through the papers, one by one, in the folder. No time to read. Flash retinal photos were hard to superimpose and keep straight, but ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... in was full of mournful solemnity. On the work-table, covered over with a white cloth, there were five or six small balls of cotton in a silver dish, near a large ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... fondness for minor keys and wailing cadences common to the monotonous chants of cannibals and savages generally, to such war-songs as the wild, implacable "Marseillaise," and to the favorite tunes of low—spirited Christian pessimists. That mournful "China," which one of our most agreeable story-tellers has justly singled out as the cry of despair itself, was often sung at The Poplars, sending such a sense of utter misery through the house, that poor Kitty Fagan would cross herself, and wring her hands, and think of funerals, and wonder ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... let my counsel sway you in this case. Your daughter here the princes left for dead; Let her awhile be secretly kept in, And publish it that she is dead indeed: Maintain a mourning ostentation; And on your family's old monument Hang mournful epitaphs, and do all rites That appertain unto a ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... ducks are gone, and the plaintive notes of the whip-poor-will are hushed as the increasing breeze rustles the leafy drapery of the forest. The gulls wheel round still, but in more rapid and uncertain flight, accompanying their motions with shrill and mournful cries, like the dismal wailings of the spirit of the storm. A few drops of rain patter on the boats, or plump like stones into the water, and the distant melancholy growl of thunder swells upon the coming gale. Uneasy glances are cast, ever and anon, towards clouds and shore, and grumbling ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... strangers, and to which suffering and self-denial have been familiarised from the first, acquires a solidity and an elevation which no other discipline could have bestowed, and which, in the present case, communicated a striking but mournful peculiarity to the manners, even to the voice of the child. We paused before a narrow, crazy door, which she opened by means of a latch, and we forthwith began to ascend the steep and broken stairs, which led upwards to the sick man's room. As we mounted flight after flight towards the garret ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... in the West, where the heavy gray clouds are insistent, Where the sky stoops to gather the earth into mournful embraces, Where the country lies saturate, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... said, slowly and solemnly, "is to heal, not to judge. But," he added, in a mournful tone, "you give me an idea of what a splendid man Felix Brand might have been if he had not so perverted and ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... This inexpressibly mournful sense that, after all, Verena, in her exquisite delicacy and generosity, was appointed only to show how women had from the beginning of time been the sport of men's selfishness and avidity, this dismal conviction accompanied Olive on her walk, which lasted all the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... in every aspect in which I had seen him, but strongest and most persistent of all was the vision of the figure in the deep-armed chair, bowed in mournful thought, or with arm outstretched to my uncle, and voice trembling with suppressed ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... too often the case, became the conqueror. Michael, too, dipped his finger in the sauce, and applied it to the tip of his tongue, and immediately the cock perched on the spardan announced the circumstance in a mournful clarion. Instantly his mind received a new light to which he was formerly a stranger, and the astonished dupe of a landlady now found it her interest to admit her sagacious lodger into a knowledge of ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... that box by a person certainly no friend to Mr. Rowan—certainly not very deeply interested in giving him a very impartial jury. Feeling this, as I am persuaded you do, you cannot be surprised, however you may be distressed, at the mournful presage with which an anxious public is led to fear the worst from your possible determination. But I will not, for the justice and honor of our common country, suffer my mind to be borne away by such melancholy anticipation. ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... with whom we drove at once to the convent, found the ceremony over. The vicinity of the convent was all astir, and we saw a number of ladies, and heard some good music from a fine band, which, although the airs were gay, must, we thought, have had a mournful sound in the ears of the poor renouncing soul, henceforth to be immured within those gloomy walls. But no one appeared to care for her, all was life and gayety without, one would have thought some marriage ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... song whose thunderous chime Eternal echoes render— The mournful Tuscan's haunted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... as he skims along, Uttering his sweet and mournful cry; He starts not at my fitful song, Nor flash of fluttering drapery. He has no thought of any wrong, He scans me with a fearless eye; Stanch friends are we, well-tried and strong, ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... mine with the sacred Maro's art To wake to sympathy the feeling heart, Like him the smooth and mournful verse to dress In all the pomp of exquisite distress ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... told that she so much as heard, as she rose to greet the visitor. Garbed from head to foot in the deep, violet-coloured stuff which is the mourning of Turkish women, her little pointed slippers showing beneath the hem of her frock, and only her dark, mournful eyes visible between the top of the shrouding yashmak and the edge of her sequined snood, she made a pathetic picture as she stood there waiting to greet ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... at some distance from the sea. The castle was built upon a hill, at a little distance from the town. It has long since ceased to be habitable, but the ruins still remain, giving a picturesque but mournful beauty to the eminence which they crown. They are often visited by travelers, who go to see the place where the great hero and ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... bare, not old enough to be picturesque, but too old to look neat and comfortable, on that wind-swept, storm-beaten cliff. Its grey walls, marked with patches of damp and lichen, looked like a tear-stained face, out of which the two upstairs windows stared like mournful eyes. Downstairs, in one room, there was a little sign of comfort and adornment; crimson curtains hung at the window, inside which a few flowers grew in pots. Keeping well under the hedge of elders which surrounded the cwrt or front garden, Cardo passed ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... intellectual of face and upright of bearing, the shoemaker of the garret in Paris. Yet, no one could have looked at him twice, without looking again: even though the opportunity of observation had not extended to the mournful cadence of his low grave voice, and to the abstraction that overclouded him fitfully, without any apparent reason. While one external cause, and that a reference to his long lingering agony, would always—as on the trial—evoke this condition ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... had pierced, sitting all alone by himself on a rock, with his feathers ruffled, and a film coming over his great, clear, bright eye,—and, ever full of compassion, she had taken him to nurse, and had travelled for a day with him in her arms; and the mournful look of his regal eyes now came into her memory. "Yes," she said to herself, "he is like my poor eagle! The archers have wounded him, so that he is glad to find shelter even with a poor maid like me; but it was easy to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... know those moments of temptation when virtue has failed to reward us and we regret having obeyed her! Who has not felt this weakness in hours of trial, and who has not uttered, at least once, the mournful exclamation of Brutus? ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... her stories with a new elaborate attention. He laughed heartily at the very faintest glimmer of a joke. Through it all Grace maintained an unreleased solemnity, a mournful superiority, a grim forbearance. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... in the shadows of the staircase. Then, muttering, "Poor gentleman, he had the toothache last night; and p'r'aps he's only just got a wink o' sleep. Pity to disturb him for the sake of them grizzling conductors. I'll let him sleep his usual time," she bore the tea-pot downstairs with a mournful, almost poetic, consciousness, that soft-boiled eggs ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... sworn in this last sad interview no man ever knew. In the beginning, the king, who remained in the next room, heard the raging voice of the prince uttering wild curses and bitter complaints; then his tones were softer and milder, and touchingly mournful. In half an hour the king entered the cabinet. The prince stood in the middle of the room, and Laura opposite to him. They gazed into each other's wan and stricken faces with steady, tearless eyes; their hands were clasped. "Farewell, my prince," said Laura, with a firm voice; ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... assisted the faithful woman in cultivating for the last three years, where I had so often braved the tormenting mosquitoes, black flies, and intense heat, to provide vegetables for the use of the family. Even the cows, that had given a breakfast for the last time to my children, were now regarded with mournful affection. A poor labourer stood in the doorway of the deserted house, holding my noble water-dog, Rover, in a string. The poor fellow gave a joyous bark as my ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the mournful chant of a singer rose clearly out of the evening stillness, penetrating and yet curiously soft—a plaintive little desert air of haunting melancholy, vibrant with passion. It stopped abruptly as it had begun and Craven was glad when it ended. It chimed too intimately with ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... her a dwelling, broad and passing large, costly and great, where, with her maids, she since dwelt joyless. She liked for to go to church and did this willingly. Where her love lay buried, thither she went all time in mournful mood (how seldom she gave that over). She prayed the good God to have mercy on her soul. With great fidelity she bewept the knight full oft. Uta and her meiny comforted her all time, but so sorely wounded was her heart, that it booted naught, whatever ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... of the world, preferment's golden queen, Neckar's fair daughter, Stael the 'Epicene'! Bright o'er whose flaming cheek and pumple nose The bloom of young desire unceasing glows! Fain would the Muse—but ah! she dares no more, A mournful voice from lone 'Guyana's' shore, Sad Quatremer, the bold presumption checks, Forbid ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... hours before the sun had been merely a red ball on the edge of the desert. Now it was low in the sky, but bitterly hot. And their mournful glances presaged the horror that was coming in ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... Tom—a thousand thanks. "A friend in need is a friend indeed." You have lightened my mind of a heavy cargo of care by your kind offer, made with the frankness of a sailor, and which I must gratefully accept. And now that I have finished my long and mournful yarn, it is your turn; and to tell the truth, Tom, I am exceedingly anxious to hear all about you. ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... 1 Now let our mournful songs record The dying sorrows of our Lord; When he complain'd in tears and blood As one forsaken ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... sitting in the inglenook stirring the soup and singing a mournful song, because she had never felt so full of joy. The old man Youshko had just brought in a bundle of wood and laid it on the hearth. It seemed just the same as on that winter's afternoon when they saw the children dancing round their snow man; but what ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... filled with sorrow / and his heart was sad. Then saw his mournful visage / a knight to help full glad, Who could not well imagine / what 'twas that grieved him so. Then begged he of King Gunther / the tale of this his ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... escaped on that occasion, for he was then in Paris, on account of the solemnization of his marriage with Charles's sister, which marriage the papists had contrived, in order to draw as many protestants into that city as possible, that they might have them in their power. See the account of this mournful event at large in Sully's ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... handkerchief, "if it had been anywhere else I could have borne it, but that," resignedly, "was the reason mamma settled on it. She found out how I loathed the very thought of it, and then she decided immediately. And don't you remember those mournful girls, Dolly, who used to walk out like a funeral procession, and how we used to make fun—at least, how you used to make fun of the lady ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... however, gradually became more rough and broken. Knobs of gray gneiss, crowned by mournful cedars, intrenched upon the arable land, and the dark-blue gleam of water appeared through the trees. Our road, which had been approaching the Sound, now skirted the head of a deep, irregular inlet, beyond which extended a beautiful promontory, thickly studded with ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... rich-flavored fruit, nestling in the trellis-work on the garden wall, hidden beneath its long green leaves—this small vegetable production, that a dormouse would nibble up without a thought, was sufficient to recall to the memory of this great monarch the mournful shade of the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... his ancient passion for play. We must linger a little over the still brilliant period of his middle life, whilst his hearing was spared; whilst his wit remained, and the charming manners on which he had formed a science, continued; and before we see him in the mournful decline of a life wholly given to ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... who, it seems, died a short time before he was taken: he sometimes mentions this circumstance, and it occasions a momentary gloom; but this his natural gaiety soon dissipates: he sings, when asked, but in general his songs are in a mournful strain, and he keeps time by swinging his arms: whenever asked to dance, he does it with great readiness; his motions at first are very slow, and are regulated by a dismal tune, which grows quicker as the dance advances, till at length he ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... came out of the tunnel at the other end he caught a glimpse of the distant castle-keep, and the well-remembered walls beneath it. The experience so far transcended the intensity of what is called mournful pleasure as to make him wonder how he could have miscalculated himself to the extent of supposing that he might pass the spot ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... This is worth coming to; the instrument seems but the organ of the man's own feelings; its mournful tones are only a paraphrase of his sighs; its brilliant arabesques are but the playful expression of his own delight with every thing and every body! His cheek is warm, his eyes sparkle, his hands detonate thunder and lightnings from the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... in silence before the light grating where the antelopes were inclosed. The birds, too, awakened his compassion. The ostriches and cassowaries looked mournful enough in the shade of their solitary exotic; but the parrots and smaller birds in a long cage, without even a green leaf or twig, were absolutely pitiful, and Madou thought of the Academy Moronval and of himself. The plumage of the birds was dull and torn; they told a tale of past battles, ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... "Low and mournful be the strain, Haughty thought be far from me; Where a captive lies in pain Moaning by the tropic sea. Sole estate his sire bequeathed— Hapless sire to hapless son— Was the wailing song he breathed, And his chain when life ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... people who walked and worked in the broad sun, there were captives dwelling in darkness, never seen from birth to death. Into those prisons the moon shone, and the prisoners crept to the windows and looked out with mournful eyes at the white globe which betrayed no secrets and comprehended all. Perhaps even in people like Mrs. Royce and his brother Bayliss there was something of this sort—but that was a shuddery thought. He dismissed it with a quick movement of his hand through the water, which, ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... we shall be happy as the season. What although some sad and solemn thoughts come suddenly across us, the day is not at nightfall felt to have been the less delightful, because shadows now and then bedimmed it, and moments almost mournful, of an unhymning hush, took possession of field or forest. We are all alone—a solitary pedestrian; and obeying the fine impulses of a will, whose motives are changeable as the cameleon's hues, our feet shall bear us glancingly ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... came the hearse bearing the late Bishop's remains, with four horses, all draped, and the Wawanosh girls followed, one of them bearing a banner with the words, "She is not dead, but sleepeth;" then the hearse, and members of the family and other mourners—a long mournful procession. A vault had been prepared, and the coffins, covered with flowers, were laid within it, and the latter part of the Burial Service read. Thus the good, kind-hearted, self-sacrificing Bishop, the first Bishop of this wild Missionary diocese, and his afflicted ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... the obstinacy of parliaments, or the desire of liberty on the part of peoples. Some were lying calmly, as if their last moments had been as peaceful as when little children they laid themselves down to sleep; others twisted and contorted with looks of horror and anguish fixed upon their mournful faces, which bespoke agonies attending the departure of life like to the travail pains with which it had been ushered into existence. Seymour with a sad heart stooped and turned over the body of his friend, lifting his face once ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the reverend, as a rule, talked very cheerily; but, ah! me, how sorrowfully he would sing! There was one psalm—penitential I presume—of about twenty-two verses, an especial favorite. This was probably, the most soul-depressing melody that has been chanted since the days of The Captivity. The mournful tone bore you down irresistibly; Mark Tapley would have subsided into melancholy gloom, before the slow versicles were half dragged through. But the parson was not the only musical culprit, nor the worse, by many degrees. It would be absurd to expect much cheerfulness here; a hoarse roar breaks ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Bill! here we are left among savages; may be we shall never get away, but have to spend all the days of our lives with them," I cried out in a mournful tone. Bill began to ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... his body. Then, machete in hand, he looked over the edge of the pyramid. There was some noise in the camp, but most of the soldiers seemed to be at rest. Lights flickered here and there, and the ruined city, showing only in fragments through the darkness, looked more ghostly and mournful than ever. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... chapel are less attractive. It stands, it may be, in some poverty-stricken corner or court of a town or city. Whatever picturesqueness it may have had once has long since vanished. Unlovely decay, an air of desolation, symptoms of neglect, present a mournful sight, and one wonders how much longer the poor relic will remain. Many places of the kind have already been swept away; others have been renovated, enlarged, and kept more worthy of their use. Not all the Meeting Houses ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... the trenches are a number of square towers, and the whole has the appearance of a regular fortification. Inquiring into the origin of this extraordinary entrenchment, I learned from two of the townspeople the following particulars, which, if true, furnish a mournful picture of the enormities of African wars. About fifteen years ago, when the present King of Bambarra's father desolated Maniana, the Dooty of Sai had two sons slain in battle, fighting in the king's cause. He had a third ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... let me oft, retired by day, In dreams of passion melt away, Allow'd with thee to dwell: There waste the mournful lamp of night, 40 Till, Virgin, thou again delight To ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... Mr. Temple, "who art thou that thus disturbest the last mournful rites of the dead, and rudely breakest in upon the grief ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... and on one side, the French officers were driven across the deck. A blow from Captain Savage's cutlass brought their chief on his knee. At that moment a piercing shriek arose high above the din of battle. How mournful! how full of agony it sounded! We had not before perceived a woman standing alone and unharmed among the wounded, the dead, and the dying, for not one of those who ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... Israelites, and, after prayer and fasting, had sent them forth to free their country from the Philistines. Shiloh, the sanctuary, was then lying desolate, just as Jerusalem now lay in ruins; and yet better times had come. But very mournful was that fast day at Mizpeh, as the Jews looked along the hillside to their own holy mountain crowned by no white marble and gold Temple flashing back the sunbeams, but only with the tall castle of their enemies towering over the precipice. They could not sacrifice, because a sacrifice could only ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to steadiness of hand or calmness of the nerves. He was less pleased than ever when he heard that Giovanni's seconds were his own father and the melancholy Spicca, who was the most celebrated duellist in Italy, in spite of his cadaverous long body, his sad voice, and his expression of mournful resignation ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... I am not ill," exclaimed George, in a hurried voice; "I feel much better in the open air:" then, in a mournful tone, he added, "Are you sure, Master West, that ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... in Council—for Cornaro and I, we had discussed the matter of the royal residence together, thinking it suited not with the Queen's dignity to remain longer in the fortress—a most mournful palace for one so young and who hath need of some distraction about her to keep her from oversadness. But Rizzo, being Chief of Council, would hear naught of the Queen's return to the Palace. Fabrici also ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... say good-by, Miss Maddison," he said, with a mournful air. "I—I've enjoyed my visit very much," he added, as he timidly ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... not where she was. Come speedily, cried she, that I may let you out. All is confusion here, and I fear this will be the last of our days. Ah! how would you have us go? replied Ebn Thaher, with a mournful voice. Come near, I pray you, and see in what condition the prince of Persia is. When, the slave saw him in a swoon, she ran for water in all haste, and returned ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... his throat. He stood watching the figure of Tess moving away, and regarded intently the great boots, the ragged skirt, the beautiful ringlets and the proud young head set so well upon the sloping shoulders. Dan's mind reverted to another girl, no older than the squatter, and with a sigh mournful enough he turned back to ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... reach the Isle of Cyprus, which might comfort Lusignan for the loss of Palestine. By the command of the sultan, the churches and fortifications of the Latin cities were demolished: a motive of avarice or fear still opened the holy sepulchre to some devout and defenceless pilgrims; and a mournful and solitary silence prevailed along the coast which had so long resounded with ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... however, you would have a false idea of the military hospital if you thought of it as a place of mournful desolation. Doubtless our earlier patients regained their spirits more quickly, having no years of suffering behind them. But the quiet and serious resignation which reigns in the hospital of to-day does not exclude a certain sweetness; the wounded man appreciates the intelligent and devoted ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... preached the Gospel, the Sea-farers strengthened their ship and launched into the deep after the third Eastertide, and having comforted the people, because they were grieved and mournful at their departure, they left them in the keeping of the risen Lord, ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... But a highly probable explanation may be given of the manner in which such a belief originated. These reptiles unquestionably emit very loud and singularly plaintive cries, compared by some travellers to the mournful howling of dogs. The earlier and credulous travellers would very naturally associate tears with these cries, and, once begun, the supposition would be readily propagated, for error and myth are ever plants of quick growth. The belief ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... this blessed testimony strait and narrow, indeed, to those that received it. However, God owned his own work, and this testimony did effectually reach, gather, comfort, and establish the weary and heavy-laden, the hungry and thirsty, the poor and needy, the mournful and sick of many maladies, that had spent all upon physicians of no value, and waited for relief from heaven, help only from above; seeing, upon a serious trial of all things, nothing else would do but Christ himself; the light of his countenance, a touch of his garment, and help from his hand, who ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn |
