"Piteous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and spake to his own heart: "Ah, hapless pair, why gave we you to king Peleus, a mortal man, while ye are deathless and ever young? Was it that ye should suffer sorrows among ill-fated men? For methinketh there is nothing more piteous than a man among all things that breathe and creep upon the earth. But verily Hector Priam's son shall not drive you and your deftly-wrought car; that will I not suffer. Is it a small thing that ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... shelter of the trees again. A small snake, curving indecisively and with obvious bewilderment amidst the growth, paused to rattle a faint warning, half coiled in case the horse's step meant a new threat, then went on with a rather piteous air of not knowing where to find refuge against this cataclysm of ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... violent end; yet Octavian felt some qualms when his share of the violence was ended. The little cat, headed off from its wonted tracks of safety, had raced unfriended from shelter to shelter, and its end had been rather piteous. Octavian walked through the long grass of the meadow with a step less jaunty than usual. And as he passed beneath the shadow of the high blank wall he glanced up and became aware that his hunting had had undesired witnesses. Three white set faces were ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... than I have to a sick friend who implores me to give him a glass of iced water which the physician has forbidden. No more than a humane collector in India has to those poor peasants who in a season of scarcity crowd round the granaries and beg with tears and piteous gestures that the doors may be opened and the rice distributed. I would not give the draught of water, because I know that it would be poison. I would not give up the keys of the granary, because I know that, by doing so, I should turn a scarcity into a famine. And ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... man would hardly be in more danger in a mid-African village than a foreigner was in the streets of London. There is a contemporary account written by a French gentleman who travelled in England, and who published his observations on what he saw in England, which gives a piteous account of the barbarous incivility to which he, his friends, and his servants were exposed when they walked abroad. The mob that jeered and insulted the master very nearly killed the servant for the ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... hurt nobody," she reasoned, in piteous argument. Her gnarled hands trembled as she worked, and now, with nobody to note her weakness, tears fell unregarded down her face. "There's things I wouldn't ask for, whether or no. Mebbe they'd have to be took away from somebody else; an' I never was one to plead ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... they were slaying men, horses, and cattle, and these actions were accompanied with appropriate sounds. The cattle, particularly, had become sensible of their impending fate, and with awkward resistance and piteous cries, testified that reluctance with which these poor creatures look instinctively on the shambles. The groans and screams of men, undergoing, or about to undergo, the stroke of death, and the screeches ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... wrinkled and small, groped over the coverlet, with nervous twitchings, as every now and then the howls or the pistol-shots of the mob in the streets below them fell on her ear. And at every such movement the lips of the girl by her pillow twitched in piteous sympathy. About half-past twelve there was sharp firing in volleys to the southward of them, that threw the half-conscious sufferer into an agony of supersensitive disturbance. Then there came a silence that seemed unnaturally deep, yet it was only the silence of a summer ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... the most grotesque of our sleeping visions when they are passing; but now that she was awake, relieved from the coercion of his eyes, she was roundly amazed at her own complicity in so stupendous a fiction. What had he made her do? Why had he taken this sin of another's on his own shoulders? Eve's piteous cry of "Philip!" at his entry recurred to her—the intimate nature of her appeal. The scent was promising; but it opened out vistas of a loyalty too fantastic and generous to be true. Her mature cynicism of a girl of the people, disillusioned and abused, flouted the idea. Did she not know "gentlemen" ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Grant thought there was something a little wrong with her head still, just a cobweb not cleared away, because of her crying so, you know. Not so the doctor, for there came a piteous prolonged mew, and up scrambled the kitten, inside one of the legs of the doctor's trousers. She had missed her way, you see, but had chosen a ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... me, Polly," begged Pickering in such a piteous tone that Polly felt little twinges of remorse, and in a minute she was by his ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... cloud upon his handsome face, a shadow on his heart, heavy with thoughts of her, and would he rather it were Maddy there in the bridal room? If so, his burden was hard indeed, but not so hard as hers, and kneeling on the floor, poor Maddy laid her head in the chair, and, 'mid piteous moans, asked God, her Father, to help them both to bear—help her and Guy—making the latter love as he ought the gentle girl who had left home and friends to live with him in a far-distant land; asked, too, that she might tear from her heart every sinful ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... crawled among the ruins. Slowly climbing the sandy trail, we circled a great red bluff with jagged peaks, that had seemed an interminable obstacle. A scant growth of cedar and sage again made its appearance. Here we halted to pass another night. Under a cedar I heard the plaintive, piteous bleat of an animal. I searched, and presently found a little black and white lamb, scarcely able to stand. It came readily to me, and I ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!— Scarce were the piteous accents said, When, with the Baron's casque, the maid To the nigh streamlet ran; Forgot were hatred, wrongs, and fears; The plaintive voice alone she hears, Sees but the dying man. She stooped her ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... at me in piteous appeal, the tears brimming over, her hands stretched towards me with a gesture at once pathetic ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... Donovan followed with one of the oars; and I seized the boat-hook, and started after them. Palmleaf was tearing down toward the water, running for his life. He had lost the musket. Seeing us, he set up a piteous howl of terror. He had distanced his pursuers a little. The savages were now six or eight rods behind; but the dogs were at his heels, and were only kept off him by the sudden facings and savage growls of Guard, who valiantly stemmed the canine avalanche. ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... not to overload his boat. We followed the same plan as before, taking in this time several men, which brought the boat down deep in the water, although we had fewer persons on board than on the first trip. It was piteous to hear the cries of the poor wretches we were compelled to leave behind. Their village had disappeared, and the flames were seizing on every tree and bush up to the inner part of the rocky point. At any moment a fiery shower might come falling ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... the Second. He was not given to loose adventure, and had not won the heart of my Lady Castlemaine, since he had made no love to her, which was not a thing to be lightly forgiven to any handsome and stalwart gentleman. Besides this, he had been so moved by the piteous case of the poor Queen, during her one hopeless battle for her rights when this termagant beauty was first thrust upon her as lady of her bedchamber, that on those cruel days during the struggle when the poor Catherine had found herself sitting ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... crumbled. Awake, I glared upon a page where the words ran crazily about like a disrupted colony of ants. I stammered at the thing, feeling my cheeks blaze, but no two words would stay still long enough to be related. I glanced a piteous appeal to authority, while old Leggett, still standing by, crumpled his shaven upper lip into a professional sneer ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... to take arms against human beings in such a piteous plight, but we stood with our muskets cocked and waited for them ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... emerged from the companion-way. One of them was Alice Merton, and he was moved to such pity by the sight of her white face and evident weakness that he put down his curry-comb and brush and went to help her. Her face was flooded with colour as she raised her piteous blue eyes to him, and her hand shook as he ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... upon them. Their tongues would be drawn down their throats, then pulled out upon their chins. Their jaws, necks, shoulders, elbows, and all their joints would appear to be dislocated, and they would make most piteous outcries of burnings, of being cut with knives, beat, &c. and the marks of wounds were afterwards to be seen." At length an old Irish woman, not of good character, who had given one of those girls some harsh language, and to whom all this diabolical ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... landed upon our stomachs. We grappled in deadly combat; not an article of furniture was left unturned; not one mattress remained upon another. We made night hideous for some moments. We roused the ladies from their virgin sleep, but paid little heed to their piteous pleadings. The treaty of peace, which followed none too soon—the pillow-cases were like fringes and the sheets were linen shreds—culminated in a round of night-caps which for potency and flavor have, perhaps, never been equalled in the history of ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... disported themselves for a time, then came ashore and putting on the little white garments, they became beautiful maidens, and disappeared. But there was one little duck, that remained on the lake and swam about in the most distracted manner, uttering piteous cries. The Prince came from behind the bush and the little duck begged him to give back her garment. He had no sooner done so than before him stood the loveliest maiden ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... going with him to the people who have charge of the girl with whom he is in love, we heard in a small house on a by-street, lamentations mixed with a good deal of sobbing. We inquired what it was, and were told by a woman that we might see there a most piteous sight, in the persons of two strangers, and that unless we were quite insensible to pity, we should be sure ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere
... terror reigned. The gray-headed little man's face matched the hue of his hair. His short arms were grabbing frantically at his horse's neck. His eyes were full of a piteous appeal, and his savage-looking spurs were firmly grappling his steed's flanks. The wretched horse was shaking in every limb. Its eyes were bulging, and the fierce snorts of his gushing nostrils had ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... passing his handkerchief across his lips. There was something in the gesture that attracted Loder. Looking at him more attentively, he saw what his own feelings and the other's conventional dress had blinded him to—the almost piteous panic and ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the piteous shine That home-things wear when there's aught amiss; From the stairway floated the rise and fall Of an infant's call, Whose birth had ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... the prairie in the direction of Sioux Falls or Yankton, contentedly feeding as they went, and with the three big brothers riding slowly behind them. It had always been the same with the sheep. But now there rang continually in her ears the piteous bleating of the little flock she had learned to love through the summer months, and that, lured by a treacherous bell-wether, had passed through the pen, some days before, and crossed the ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... inside a prison, seemed very strange to Nekhludoff. Nekhludoff listened, and at the same time kept looking around him—at the low bedstead with its straw mattress, the window and the dirty, damp wall, and the piteous face and form of this unfortunate, disfigured peasant in his prison cloak and shoes, and he felt sadder and sadder, and would have liked not to believe what this good-natured fellow was saying. It seemed too dreadful to think that men could do such a thing as to take a man, dress him in convict ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... would mean, The eldest son of the noble King Henry the Fourth; of knighthood well and spring; In whom is showed of what stock that he grew, The root is virtue; Called Henry eke, the worthy Prince of Wales, Which me commanded the dreary piteous tale Of them of Troy in English to translate; The siege, also, and the destruction, Like as the Latin maketh mention, For to complete, and after Guido make, (p. 400) So I could, and write it for his sake; Because ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... faithful friend, my poor girl!" he answered, moved by the piteous appeal. "Surely I could hardly be less to one who so bravely saved ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... the bluebird, piping loud, Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee; The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be; And hungry crows, assembled in a crowd, Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly, Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said, "Give us, O Lord, this day our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... and balked desire made his comely, brutal face look absurd and piteous. It was like a wilful child denied the moon. Joe could never resist his emotions. Whether or not Bela had guessed it, ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... that I understood all that she had told me. The sleepless night may have made it worse, but the look that came into her eyes, and the looseness of the fibres not only of her tell-tale wet mouth, but of every muscle of her face was startling and piteous to see. She saw my look and laughed, but her laugh was equally piteous to hear, and when she spoke again her voice had changed too, and was equally piteous. She asked for another. 'No, don't,' I begged, for the pretty girl I had flattered myself I had passed a summer's night with that most young ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... resist her pleading looks and piteous accents. A tear trembled in his eye, and hastily seating himself, he drew her to his knee, folded her for an instant in his arms, laid her head against his breast, kissed her lips, her brow, her cheek; and then putting her from him, ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... still in my ears; but the consciousness of danger, the sense of triumph, the selfishness of happiness, out-clamored it! Destined as it was to return in after-years in tones that always seemed more piteous and more laden with pain and bitterness as that miserable night receded further and further back into the darkness of the past, it came upon me the next morning with something of a feeling of asperity and antagonism. There was yet the risk that the dwarf might re-appear, and as every ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... a piteous state from the sickness, which had cut off hosts of people of all ranks. It lasted seven or nine days in each, and seems to have been a malignant fever. Pericles lost his eldest son, his sister, and almost all his dearest ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Majesty's agents were made to appear the enemies who were starving the French people, out of revenge for the checks imposed by them on the royal authority, it was well known to all the Court that both Her Majesty and the King were grieved to the soul at their piteous want, and distributed immense sums for the relief of the poor sufferers, as did the Duc de Penthievre, the Duchesse d'Orleans, the Prince de Conde, the Duc and Duchesse de Bourbon, and others; but these acts were done privately, while he who had created the necessity took ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... their eyes closed, their legs gave way and they seemed to suffocate. In vain did musical glasses and harmonicas resound, the piano and voices re-echo; these supposed aids only seemed to increase the patients' convulsive movements. Sardonic laughter, piteous moans and torrents of tears burst forth on all sides. The bodies were thrown back in spasmodic jerks, the respirations sounded like death rattles, the most terrifying symptoms were exhibited. Then suddenly the actors of this strange ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... turning on Helen, to deny her human rights, and it seemed to Margaret that all Schlegels were threatened with her. "Were they normal?" What a question to ask! And it is always those who know nothing about human nature, who are bored by psychology and shocked by physiology, who ask it. However piteous her sister's state, she knew that she must be on her side. They would be mad together if the world chose to ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... On the piteous spectacle of the pair spending their evenings in shorthand schools and polytechnic classes, learning bookkeeping and typewriting with incipient junior clerks, male and female, from the elementary schools, let me ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... head, the long ears shot up, and she seemed to sniff the air. She waded through the deeper water to get round a rocky bluff which ran out into the creek. Then she turned and called the little one. The fawn waded until the water reached its knees, then stopped and uttered piteous little bleats. Encouraged by the soft crooning it plunged into the deep water and with great splashing and floundering managed to swim the short distance. Its slender legs shook as it staggered up the bank. Exhausted or frightened, it shrank close to its mother. Together they disappeared in the willows ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... long-absent hope in his heart. No doubt he had heard of some of the earlier miracles; and no doubt the crowd recoiled from him so that he could easily reach Jesus. When he got there he worshipped, or, as Luke puts it, 'fell on his face,' and made his appeal. It would be all the more piteous, because it was spoken in that feeble, hoarse voice characteristic of leprosy, and it was in itself most pathetic. The poor creature has won his way to a surprising confidence, dashed with a yet more surprising diffidence and doubt. He is sure of the power, but not of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... fastened up, much against his will, and his piteous protests no longer added to the girl's agony. She clung to the after rail, and watched the boat, now a tiny dot hard to discern amidst the ripples caused by the inflowing tide. Her intimate acquaintance with the daily happenings of life aboard told her that ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... is so dreadful!" she moaned in piteous tone as she sank upon the cushions of the divan, Adam sitting beside her, her hand tight clasped in his own. "I didn't think Phil would bring all this trouble on us. I would forgive him anything but the way in which he deceived papa. He knew ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... him," said the woman, with a more piteous wail than ever, as she held out the small mummy, which had its head completely concealed by dingy drapery wound round the head of the portable cradle, but seemed to be struggling and crying in a demoniacal fashion under this imprisonment. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... and less influential. Neander says, "The inmost distinction of mediaval experience was an awful sense of another life and an invisible world." A most piteous illustration of the conjoined faith and fear of that age is furnished by an old dialogue between the "Soul and the Body" recently edited by Halliwell, an expression of humble trust and crouching horror irresistibly pathetic in its simplicity.28 A flood of revealing light is given as to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... surgeon whipped on his mittens—the poor man, who was almost fainting with loss of blood, cast another piteous look at me, and said, in an Irish accent, 'Long life to you, dear!—and don't let'm—for what will I be without a leg? ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Ayesha, nay, what is Ayesha? An incarnate essence, a materialised spirit of Nature the unforeseeing, the lovely, the cruel and the immortal; ensouled alone, redeemable only by Humanity and its piteous sacrifice? Say you! I have done with speculations who ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... put into their hands,—from Bartlett as willingly as from Turner, and from Mulready as carefully as from Raphael. They filled the windows of print-sellers, the pages of gift books, with elaborate rubbish, and piteous abortions of delicate industry. They worked cheap, and cheaper,—smoothly, and more smoothly,—they got armies of assistants, and surrounded themselves with schools of mechanical tricksters, learning their stale tricks with blundering avidity. They had fallen—before ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes, God saue the marke, here on his manly brest, A pitteous Coarse, a bloody piteous Coarse: Pale, pale as ashes, all bedawb'd in blood, All in gore blood I ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... at last, awaking in her the old piteous hunger, never wholly stifled, for her father. She turned and clung to him convulsively with an inarticulate murmuring ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... third, who stood captive between, the unfortunate Ser Peppe. The fool's face was paler than its wont, whilst the usual roguery had passed from his eyes and his mouth, fear having taken possession of its room. He met the Duke's cruel glance with one of alarm and piteous entreaty. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... about the time that his disappointment became known to everybody, and the shot told. He gave her a piteous look and slunk off, "just like the dog when he's had a whipping," to use Edith's own expression. Two or three lessons of this description produced their due effect; and when he saw a male Dixon or Gervase ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... pang!" he cry'd, Then to his bosom prest The dying maid, who piteous sigh'd, And sunk to ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... coals began to burn him, the King came to himself and stood up. "Ho! my captain of the guards!" his Majesty exclaimed, stamping his royal feet with rage. O piteous spectacle! the King's nose was bent quite crooked by the blow of Prince Giglio! His Majesty ground his teeth with rage. "Hedzoff," he said, taking a death-warrant out of his dressing-gown pocket, "Hedzoff, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... flung out her hands in a piteous appeal. And Bull recognised the hysteria lying behind ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... dusty, their clothes torn, their faces bruised, boasting maliciously of the blows they had struck their companions, or the insults they had inflicted upon them; enraged or in tears over the indignities they themselves had suffered; drunken and piteous, unfortunate and repulsive. Sometimes the boys would be brought home by the mother or the father, who had picked them up in the street or in a tavern, drunk to insensibility. The parents scolded and swore at them peevishly, and ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... young man, who had studied in the schools of philosophy; 'but, all the same, put the fish in that vessel full of water, and we will take it back to show my father that we have done what we could.' But when he drew near the fish it looked up at him with such piteous eyes that he could not make up his mind to condemn it to death. For he knew well that, though the doctors of his own country were ignorant of the secret of the ointment, they would do all in their power to extract something from the fish's blood. So he picked up the prize of so much labour, ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... over, for when it saw blood upon that cloth——! I put up one short, piteous prayer to Heaven to save me from this terrible end, and lo, ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... she opened her eyes, but it was too late; she no longer had the power of utterance. She glanced from one brother to the other with a piteous, entreating look; her mouth moved convulsively; in the effort to speak, she sat upright for an instant, ghastly and rigid, and then ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... and would be announced. Eagle turned her face above me, the long line of her throat uplifted, and went courageous and smiling on her way. The marquis had adapted himself to the court requirements of the Empire. Noble gentleman of another period, he stalked a piteous masquerader where he had ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... sounded so, because the rifle fire was very close. I went into the room and delivered my message, in French and English, to the wounded men. Immediately there was a general stampede of all who could possibly drag themselves towards the city. It was indeed a piteous procession which passed out of the door. Turcos with heads bandaged, or arms bound up or one leg limping, and our own men equally disabled, helped one another down that terrible road towards the City. Soon all the people who could walk had gone. But there in the room, and along the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... she exclaimed. "Wenonah, the good Mother of God will reward you for your kindness. There is something"—touching her forehead in piteous appeal—"that keeps me from thinking as I ought. But you are sure my little one will come back, like a bird to ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... sudden voice express'd delight, That from his swoon awoke the wondering knight: His name, his country, straight the dames demand, And what strange craft had steer'd his bark to land? He, on his elbow rais'd, with utterance weak, Such as his feeble strength avail'd to speak, Recounts his piteous chance, his name, his home, How up the vessel's side ere while he clomb, And then sunk down in sleep; but who impell'd Its ebon keel, or tissued canvas swell'd, He wist not: faint, and lacking vital heat, He sought some needful aid from looks so sweet. "So brave a knight!—to yield of succour ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... of a large district besides, which are conveniently brought in by railroad. We first went into the recent-accident room, where the unhappy beings who were recently hurt or operated upon were lying. Some of them were the most piteous objects I ever witnessed, and the medical men, under the impression that I was deeply interested in surgery, took pains to exhibit all the horrors. There were a good many of the usual classes of accidents,—broken limbs and mangled frames. There was ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... he helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had made; lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with his stumped fin, then over and over slowly revolved like a waning world; turned up the white secrets of his belly; lay like a log, and died. It was most piteous, that last expiring spout. As when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off from some mighty fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings the spray-column lowers and lowers to the ground—so the last long dying ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... tragedy gleamed in the child's white face. Her face was strained, her eyes had lost the deep softness of their colouring, and there lurked once more in their depths the terror of nameless things. To me the sight of her like this was so piteous that I wasted not a moment in endeavouring to ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to Japan there were several Japanese girls, degraded in aspect and apparently in ill health, who were returning from Singapore. They were shepherded by an evil-looking fellow. The parting of these unfortunates from their girl friends as the vessel was about to start was a piteous sight. An official who called on me in Aichi—I understood that he was the chief of the prefectural police—told me that there were in the prefecture 2,011 girls in 222 houses, and that there were in a year 725,598 customers, of whom 2,147 ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... poor old father. He believed the story of his child's shame, and it was piteous to hear him lamenting over her, as she lay like one dead before him, wishing she might ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of their victims. It was fearful to see those gory forms struggling in the agitated water, those who still lived endeavouring to extricate themselves from the mass of corpses, falling fast, but often rising again with their last energies, streaming with water and blood, and uttering piteous cries and appeals for mercy, which were mocked by the fiends around them. Many women were amongst them; one I noticed carrying a little child, which, struggling forward, she held up to the soldiers as if in appeal. As she ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... into the road, Most piteous to be seen, Which made the horse's flanks to smoke, As they ...
— R. Caldecott's First Collection of Pictures and Songs • Various
... acted no illegal part, nor discovered more ambition than became him. He had defeated the queen's innovations, and secured her accomplices. To draw off our attention from such regular steps, Sir Thomas More has exhausted all his eloquence and imagination to work up a piteous scene, in which the queen is made to excite our compassion in the highest degree, and is furnished by that able pen with strains of pathetic oratory, which no part of her conduct affords us reason to believe she possessed. This scene is occasioned ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... across the low sill. The two men stood breathless. Maria saw the intruder. She sat up, articulating his name. At that piteous sound, betraying him to her brother, the cowardly impulse of many days' growth carried Dr. Dunlap's hand like a flash to his pocket. He fired his pistol directly into Rice's breast, and dropped back through the window to the boat he ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... again. 'Take Faithful and kill him!' He seemed to comprehend. He looked into his master's face and gave a piteous howl, and went to the ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... be thinking of? She did not run. Robbie looked at her in piteous distress; Duncan was beside himself. He cast a beseeching glance at Elsie, a momentary one of resentful anger at his mother, an impatient one at Robbie, the unfortunate messenger of ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... was such a picture of terror and panic that I was almost sorry for him. His fellow-prisoner, too, who stood a good chance of the fag- end of my bullet, was equally piteous ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... was piteous to see, for he was half distraught with fear, and like as a mother whose child had been snatched from her and was being hurried to death, so he, with tears, sobs and screams, kept entreating one moment the crowd and the next beseeching heaven, saying, "Don't ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... the Mathers' piteous prayers, God heeded them not, and the rising tide that was sweeping over them soon drowned their cries. Brattle Street congregation became an honored member of the orthodox communion, the principles which animated its founders spread apace, and the name of Benjamin ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... flickering shadows in the room. In her ears the continued, eternal sound of the great falls had taken on an ominous character. It was like some solemn dirge that rose and fell, unaccountably, like the breathing of a vast force that could reck nothing of the piteous tragedy being enacted. It appeared to be growing ever so much colder again. A few feet away from the stove it was freezing. She sought to look out of the little window but great massing clouds ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... gold, their bodies are now bathed in blood. Some tracts, again, are covered with fallen steeds, mangled with shafts, breathing hard in pain and vomitting blood. Some of them are sending forth soft wails of pain, some are biting the earth with rolling eyes and some are uttering piteous neighs. Portions of the field are covered with horsemen and elephant-warriors fallen off from their animals, and with bands of car-warriors forcibly thrown down from their cars. Some of them are already dead and some are at the point of death. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... shaking of mine arm And thrice his head thus waving up and down, He raised a sigh so piteous and profound As it did seem to shatter all his bulk ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... private office in the wake of the orderly and threw back her veil. Her beautiful face showed the sorrow under which she labored. Suffering had thrown a blight upon it. The freshness and youth seemed to have departed from it. She was a piteous ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... here. Certainly she is looking her very, very best; and in her manner with him there is a gentleness and womanliness only just developed. One would fancy that a sympathetic understanding had established itself between them, as it might if she told him some piteous story about herself which ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... at this period society in Ireland was shaken to its foundations. Terror and dismay pervaded every class; the starving poor suffered so intensely, and in such a variety of ways, that it becomes a hard task either to narrate or listen to the piteous story; it sickens and wrings the heart, whilst it fills the eyes with the testimony of irrepressible sorrow. To say the people were dying by the thousand of sheer starvation conveys no idea of their sufferings; the expression is too general to move our feelings. ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... John! you lazy cuss! Bring forth my horse, Bucephalus!" So spake the man of letters. Straight Black John went through the stable gate, But soon returned with hair on end, While terror wings his speed did lend, And out he sent his piteous wail: "O boss! Old Bucky's lost ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... this minute I shall begin to cry—here, in the open street!" cried Janet hotly. "Oh, you poor dear, you poor dear! A station waiting-room. I never heard of anything so piteous. Oh, how thankful I am that I met you! Tell me honestly, was it about that that you ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... From the old monastery Of Hirschau, in the forest; being sent Upon a pilgrimage to Benevent, To see the image of the Virgin Mary, That moves its holy eyes, and sometimes speaks, And lets the piteous tears run down its cheeks, To touch ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... last!' they said. 'Huitzilopochtli has long cried for his victims. The stone of sacrifice is ready—the knives are sharpened. The wild beasts in the palace are roaring for their feast.' These taunts, which sounded dismally in the ears of the besieged, were mingled with piteous lamentations for Montezuma, whom they entreated the Spaniards to deliver up to them. Cortes was suffering much from a severe wound and from his many anxieties, and he determined to induce Montezuma to exert his authority to allay the tumult. In order to give greater effect to his appearance ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... Ah! who, pale shade, art thou, 3 Sad raving to the rude tempestuous night! Sure thou hast had much wrong, so stern thy brow, So piteous thou dost tear thy tresses white; So wildly thou dost cry, Blow, bitter wind! Ye elements, I ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... soon after, with poor Princess Charming under his arm; she, the while, filling the air with her piteous lamentations ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... address the most piteous entreaties to his cruel parent, but always unavailingly. He had not the spirit to show resentment, even if the elementary principles would have permitted it. The reaction of his life had come. This first great sorrow had completely overwhelmed him, and, like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... moment all the piskies burst into the saddest notes of lamentation, tearing their wreaths and garlands asunder and casting the flowers into the grave. Then one of the midget grave-diggers threw in a shovelful of earth and the most piteous cry of sorrow went up from the small folk, who wailed, "Our Queen is dead! Our ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... do it here," said Rebecca. "I'll do it when—when I'm gone." And she dropped her voice, and looked so sad and piteous, that everybody felt how cruel her lot was, and how sorry they would be ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she said weakly to Katharine. 'Cicely Elliott is sometimes distraught. Believe not that we speak like this among ourselves.' Her eyes wandered in a flustered and piteous way over her girls and she whimpered, 'Jane Gaskell, stand back ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... waiting for the wagon, full of hope, and when it came, and he saw the helmet on King's head and thought it was a crown of glory, his heart beat with joy, and he plead in piteous accents not to be passed by, and the confounded gas bag went on and landed in a cranberry marsh, and the poor, foolish, weak, short-sighted man had to get in his work mighty lively to dodge the sand bags, beer bottles, and rolls of clothing ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... most mournful and piteous object in the sunlight, sluggishly rolling to the swell which ran in transparent volumes over her sides and foamed around the deck-house. Once when her stern rose, I read the name Cecilia ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... thread gloves and lifted her veil, and then, sitting down to the piano, sang the piteous ballad of the Four Marys. Barbara knew nothing of the easy emotions of people of the stage, and she was almost frightened when, looking up timidly at the conclusion of the song, she saw that Mrs. Cameron ...
— Cruel Barbara Allen - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... locked up for the night. My heart bounded as for an instant it occurred to me it would be in my dungeon! No such good fortune! They passed my door. At any rate, my chum should know where I was, so I proceeded to make a demonstration against my door and beseech, in the most piteous way, to be released. Of course, it was no use, but that did not matter; ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... provided by the preceding act. Therefore, it must be accepted gratefully like the dance tune over which Scarpia and his associates declaim before the dreadful business of the second act begins, and the piteous appeal to the Virgin which Tosca makes before she conceives the idea of the butchery which she perpetrates ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... only look at Michael with piteous violet eyes out of which all the defiance had gone. Her slender figure swayed a little, and she leaned against ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... scampered off, but were pursued and overtaken by the better-mounted dragoons; others crept into houses and stables, or flung themselves into ditches; and the majority, seeing no possibility of escape, threw themselves on their knees, and, in piteous accents, implored mercy. This was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... enough; for Roger, coming through the fields with the milk, heard this piteous sobbing, and setting down his cans, parted the branches of the apple tree, saying in his kindest voice: "Why, my Kitty, my Pretty, what is the matter with you? who hurt my little—I—I ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... hear?" for once more the cry for help came so piteous, faint, and despairing that it seemed to go through me from head to heel in one ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... lamentation! What a piteous cry was there! Widows, maidens, mothers, children, Shrieking, sobbing in despair! Through the streets the death-word rushes, Spreading terror, sweeping on— "Jesu Christ! our King has fallen— O great God, ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... broken down the hedge. The lurcher closed in, and drove her thither at tremendous speed. She strained every nerve, and, gaining the ditch, blundered blindly through the gap, and fell, helpless and inert, entangled completely within the treacherous folds of the unseen net. Her piteous cries, tremulous, wailing, heart-rending—similar to the cries of a suffering infant—were borne far and wide on the wind. The keeper soon reached the spot, and, placing his hand over her mouth to stop the cries, tenderly extricated the frightened creature from the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... step forward, with arms outstretched in front of her. A low moan of terror and piteous appeal came from ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... reached it they swarmed over it madly, unheeding of the water beneath. In whole battalions they plunged into the sea, most of them sinking immediately; but some of them swimming about in circles with piteous cries. The sea was discolored with their swarming heads for some distance about ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... to be lost or gained, I spoke out with all the force of which I was capable, surprising and terrifying Marechal Besons to such a point, with my hardihood, that he had not a word to say in order to aid me. When I had finished, M. d'Orleans thanked me in a piteous tone, by which I knew the profound impression I had made upon his mind. I proposed, while he was still shaken, that he should at once send to Madame de Maintenon, to know when she, would grant him an audience; for he had determined to speak to her first of his intention to give up Madame d'Argenton. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... the street. The cook, with her thigh broken by a shell splinter, had been carried into the kitchen. Alpatych, his coachman, Ferapontov's wife and children and the house porter were all sitting in the cellar, listening. The roar of guns, the whistling of projectiles, and the piteous moaning of the cook, which rose above the other sounds, did not cease for a moment. The mistress rocked and hushed her baby and when anyone came into the cellar asked in a pathetic whisper what had become of her husband who had remained in the street. A shopman who entered told her ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... it would be very hard," said Margaret; but Ethel continued, in a piteous tone, a little sentimental, "From hie haec hoc up to Alcaics and beta Thukididou we have gone on together, and I can't bear to give it up. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Oh, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel The dint of pity: these are gracious drops. Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here, Here is himself, marred, as you see, with traitors. 1st Cit. O piteous spectacle! 2d Cit. O noble Caesar! 3d Cit. We will be revenged! All. Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay! Let not a traitor live. Ant. Stay, countrymen. 1st Cit. Peace there! hear the noble Antony. 2d Cit. We'll hear him, we'll follow him, we'll die with him. Ant. Good friends, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... great form fell upon the lamb. The ewe wheeled and charged madly; but at the same instant the eagle, with two mighty buffetings of his wings, rose beyond her reach and soared away toward the mountain. The lamb hung limp from his talons; and with piteous cries the ewe ran beneath, gazing upward, and stumbling over the hillocks and ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts |
