"Wail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an elevation of feeling and mortification of the flesh. The interior is a hollow cross, and we wander among the instruments of martyrdom itself; the variegated windows cast on us red and green light, like blood and corruption; funeral songs wail about us; under our feet are mortuary tablets and decay; and the soul soars with the colossal columns to a giddy height, tearing itself with pain from the body, which falls like a weary, worn-out garment to the ground. But when we behold the exteriors of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Beneath my mother's blessed face, And through each sweet remembered word, This sweetest undertone is heard: "My child! my child! our God is sweet, In Life — in Death — kneel at his feet — Sweet in gladness, sweet in gloom, Sweeter still beside the tomb." Why should I wail? Why ought I weep? The grave — it is not dark and deep; Why should I sigh? Why ought I moan? The grave — it is not still and lone; Our God is sweet, our grave is sweet, We lie there sleeping at His ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... the windy elms, has come to be an essential part of the establishment, like the gardens and park and stables and home-farm and, one might add, the church and village. This sentiment differs, too, from the heron-sentiment, which serves to keep that bird with us in spite of the annual wail, rising occasionally in South Devon to a howl, of human trout-fishers. It is a traditional feeling coming down from the far past in England—from the time of William the Conqueror to that of William of Orange and the decay ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... to the conclusion that it would only cost two or three dollars to embalm her dead husband, and so she telegraphed "Yes." It was at the "wake" that the bill for embalming arrived and was presented to the widow. She uttered a wild, sad wail, that pierced every heart, and said: "Sivinty-foive dollars for stoofhn' Dan, blister their sowls! Did thim divils suppose I was goin' to stairt a Museim, that I'd be dalin' in such ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... rapid, the noise so great and confusing, I could not distinguish whether we were even fired upon from the rear, but I marked a red flash at one of the windows in our front, and heard behind me a sharp wail of agony. ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... has written songs which, as songs for the voice, have hardly been surpassed by Tennyson himself. The Sands of Dee and The Three Fishers, if not poetry of quite perfect kind, have that incommunicable and indescribable element of the cantabile which fits them to the wail of a sympathetic voice perhaps even better than any songs of the most finished poetry. A true song must be simple, familiar, musically suggestive of a single touching idea, and nothing more. And this is just the mysterious quality of these songs ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... voice of a woman, breaking the stillness of the summer evening. She had just come to the door of the little cabin, where she was now standing, anxiously scanning the space before her, while a baby's plaintive wail rose and fell within with wearying monotony. The log cabin, set in a gall in the middle of an old field all grown up in sassafras, was not a very inviting-looking place; a few hens loitering about the new hen-house, a brood of half-grown ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... auditory." "Since that time," he sagely adds, "I have noted most of the people that come to the playhouse resemble those ignorant asses who, visiting stationers' shops, their use is not to inquire for good books, but new books." And then comes the ever-recurring wail of the playwright, Elizabethan as well as Georgian, respecting the taste of audiences. "Should a man," he says, "present to such an auditory the most sententious tragedy that ever was written, observing all the critical laws, as height of style, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... last words, Preston bowed his head, his wife sobbed aloud, and the black people gave out a low cry, as sad as the wail which their own mourners breathe over the dead. Fixing his eyes on a tall, stalwart negro in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... evergreen shrubs, where often I remain for hours. It is almost like death to mount to my favorite spot, the path is so steep and stony; but it is new life, when I arrive there, to sit in the shadow of the pines and listen to the plaintive wail of the wind as it surges through their musical leaves, and to gaze down upon the tented Bar lying in somber gloom (for as yet the sun does not shine upon it) and the foam-flaked river, and around at the awful mountain splashed here and there with broad patches of snow, or reverently ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... to be lost. By comparing dates, bulletins, and notes, it results that at the precise minute when McClellan telegraphed his wail concerning the large numbers of the enemy and the formidable fortifications of Williamsburg, the rebels were evacuating them, pressed and expelled therefrom by Hooker, Kearney, and Heintzelman. Oh Napoleon! Oh spirits not only of Berthier and of Gneisenau, ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... A wail from Ariadne's room gave warning that the child had wakened, as she not infrequently did, terrified by a bad dream. Lydia fled in to comfort her, and later, when she came back, leading the droll little figure in its pink ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... into the Conemaugh vale, And see the rising waters, and hear the bitter wail; The swollen streams now empty their contents in the lake, The waters rise to kiss the skies and walls of ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... I beg you all to consider that that fault is not a slight one. It is said in the Book of Revelation, "Behold He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him[11]." We, my brethren, every one of us, shall one day rise from our graves, and see Jesus Christ; we shall see Him who hung on the cross, we shall see His wounds, we shall see the marks in His hands, and in His feet, and in ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... and then went out quietly, and Agatha lay still in her chair beside the stove. It snapped and crackled cheerfully, but save for that there was a restful quietness, and the room was cosily warm, though she could hear a little icy wind wail about the building. It swept her thoughts away to the frozen North, and she realised what it had cost her to keep faith with Gregory as she pictured a little snow-sheeted schooner hemmed in among the floes, and two or three worn-out ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... family around him,— for three of these wives had stalwart sons,—he told them of his desire to become a Christian, and what he would have to do before the Missionary would consent to baptize him. At once there was a "row." The women began to wail, and the sons, who generally treated their mothers with neglect and indifference, now declared, with a good deal of emphasis, that their mothers should not be sent away, and thus degraded in the eyes of the people. From what I afterwards ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... rightly come to the marriage of her daughter, who can deny? But what will she say when she knoweth my purpose? And of the maiden, what shall I say? Unhappy maiden whose bridegroom shall be death! For she will cry to me, 'Wilt thou kill me, my father?' And the little Orestes will wail, not knowing what he doeth, seeing he is but a babe. Cursed be Paris, who ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... alms-house reports; city missionaries' explorations, and the testimony of the abandoned and sin-blasted, who, about to take the final plunge, have staggered back just for a moment, to utter the wild shriek of their warning, and the agonizing wail of ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... Mountains Kiama Etheline Aileen Kooroora Fainting by the Way Song of the Cattle-Hunters Footfalls God Help Our Men at Sea Sitting by the Fire Bellambi's Maid The Curlew Song The Ballad of Tanna The Rain Comes Sobbing to the Door Urara Evening Hymn Stanzas The Wail in the Native Oak Harps We Love Waiting and Wishing The Wild Kangaroo Clari Wollongong Ella with the Shining Hair The Barcoo Bells Beyond the Forest Ulmarra The Maid of Gerringong Watching The Opossum-Hunters In the Depths of a Forest To Charles Harpur The River and the Hill ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... angel sitting high in glory Heard this shrill wail ring out from Purgatory: "Have mercy, mighty ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... the only mode of preserving his name from infamy, was to possess himself of Evelyn's large fortune. Just as he clasped me in his arms, and vehemently declared his deathless affection for me,—his contempt and hatred of his poor childish bride,—I heard a strange sound that was neither a wail nor a laugh, a sound unlike any other that ever smote my ears, and looking up, I saw Evelyn ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Cain, What hast thou done? Upon the blighted earth I hear a melancholy wail resounding; Among the blades of grass where flowers have birth I hear a new-born tone mournfully sounding. It is thy brother's blood Crying aloud ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... mountains from all countries and ages but their own. It is a great picture, painted on clouds instead of canvass, and invested with colours as gorgeous as its shades are dark. Its pathos has a wild sobbing in it, an AEolean tremulousness of tone, like the wail of spirits. And than Ossian himself, the last of his race, answering the plaints of the wilderness, the plover's shriek, the hiss of the homeless stream, the bee in the heather bloom, the rustle of the birch above his head, the roar of the ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... dive, the carriage swayed as if it would fly in pieces, slithered along, and with a jerk steadied itself. Harz lifted his voice in a shout of pure excitement. Mr. Treffry let out a short shaky howl, and from behind there rose a wail. But the hill was over and the startled horses were cantering with a free, smooth motion. Mr. Treffry and Harz ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... would not weep. If I could, I would not. For a year, lady, after Senlac, I sat like a stone. I hardened my heart like a wall of brass, against God and man. Then, there upon the Flat-Holme, feeding on shell-fish, listening to the wail of the sea-fowl, looking outside the wan water for the sails which never came, my heart broke down in a moment. And I heard a voice crying, 'There is no help in man, go thou to God.' And I answered, That were ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... foreshadowing of the coming life brightened her purple, pinched-up, withered face, which, as in all new-born children, bore such a ridiculous likeness to extreme old age. No tone of the all-expressive human voice thrilled through the unconscious wail that was her first utterance, and in her wide-open meaningless eyes had never dawned the beautiful human soul. There she lay, as you and I, reader, with all our compeers, lay once-a helpless lump of breathing ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... corrected in the same manner; for when we speak of Greek dances, we always mean choric dances. Perhaps the nearest approach to the effect of what we call music was made by Aeschylus, in the last scene of his "Persians," when Xerxes and the chorus end the play with one continued wail of sorrow. In this instance the words take second place, and the actual sound is depended ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... what ought to be, but what cannot be done: certainly, cannot be done! for there are well known "treaty stipulations," and the lawmakers expect him, generally on foot, to pursue, overtake, and severely punish the well-mounted savage. Fatal error! every southerly wind brings with it a wail of the dying border man, and Mexico will yet, ere the present "long parliament" closes, present her wrongs before the proper source, the master—not the man. But we have digressed once or twice into extraneous topics: they germinated from ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... ringing through the quiet street, driving the colour out of her face in an instant. Springing up from her chair, she hurried to the window that overlooked the pavement, and saw that people had come to their doors with dismayed faces, for a woman was standing on the causeway, raising that terrible wail. ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... wait, how vainly! for a token— A sigh, a touch, a whisper from the past; Alas, I listen for a word unspoken, And wail for arms ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... boys grew superstitious To hear the mourners wail. The great man, self-degraded, So sighed his contrite tale In notes that failed for sobbing, To feel Heaven's sentence well, That took away his Isaac ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... the cry. He disappears in the eddying whirlpool. A hundred human beings are struggling for life, buffeting the current, raising their arms, catching at sticks, straws, planks, and timbers. "Help! help! help!" they cry. It is a wild wail of agony, mingled ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... it; all Parisian youths and maidens who are disappointed in love come there to bail out when they are full of tears; yea, many stricken lovers make pilgrimages to this shrine from distant provinces to weep and wail and "grit" their teeth over their heavy sorrows, and to purchase the sympathies of the chastened spirits of that tomb with offerings of immortelles ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... discern the personality and operation of the Holy Spirit, and pour out to him their gold and frankincense and myrrh. Just as the people of Bethlehem, who had turned the unborn Savior from their door were soon made to wail by the king's order of assassination, so the thousands of nominal churches which now reject the work of the Holy Spirit from their doors will soon wail under the awful tribulation that is rapidly coming on all the earth. Oh, if the Protestant churches could only see the ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... progeny Forbid the smiling courtesy of love The holy suit which fain it would convince; Yet, since love's argument was first on foot, Let not the cloud of sorrow justle it From what it purpos'd; since, to wail friends lost Is not by much so wholesome-profitable As to rejoice at ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... but slight, increasing as the keraphyllocele enlarges. Should this be the case, other symptoms present themselves. The coronet is hot, and tender to the touch, sometimes even perceptibly swollen, and percussion over the wail is met with flinching on the part of the animal. In other cases one is led to suspect the condition by the prominence of the horn of the wall of the toe. This is distinctly ridge-like from the coronet to the ground, while on either side of it the quarters appear to have ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... Venus, and all Cupids wail, And men whose gentler spirits still prevail. Dead is the Sparrow of my girl, the joy, Sparrow, my sweeting's most delicious toy, Whom loved she dearer than her very eyes; 5 For he was honeyed-pet and anywise ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... it is a common thing for the wake wail to be sung over the boddy each night it be in the house as also for a rushlight to be kept alight from sunset to sunrise and for the death watchers for to tend the dead throw the night owther in the same room ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... the room in a breath's space. She stood outside listening a few seconds and darted back to the open door, speaking through it. They could hear below commotion, exclamations, the wail of ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... It was the Voice of Universal Nature, animate and inanimate, mourning over the agony of the God of Love. In that strain was heard the voice of man, the sighing of the winds, the moaning of the sea, the murmur of the trees, the wail of bird and beast, all blending in extraordinary unison, and all speaking ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... wail of the locomotive whistle broke rudely through her revery and brought her to a sudden realization that if she didn't bestir herself, Mrs. Wescott would be at the station with no one to ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... or die there without attracting any attention whatsoever. Let us profit by the advantages of civilization. There are fifty or sixty deaths every day; if you have a mind to do it, you can sit down at any time and wail over whole hecatombs of dead in Paris. Old Goriot has gone off the hooks, has he? So much the better for him. If you venerate his memory, keep it to yourselves, and let the rest of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... that afternoon through a country much like that we had passed over in the morning, we heard from a native hut the sound of the mournful Hawaiian wail, "Auea! auea!" (pronounced like the word "away" long drawn out). To our inquiry if any one was dead within, a woman answered, "No, but that some friends had come from a distance on a visit." I have frequently seen two Hawaiian friends ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... south and the west, to behold the sun again. The palanquin, with its ringing bells, goes round once more; the voices of the jewellers sing again in the market-place the song of the emerald, the song of the sapphire; men talk on the housetops, beggars wail in the streets, the musicians bend to their work, all the sounds blend together into one murmur, the voice of Babbulkund speaking at evening. Lower and lower sinks the sun, till Nehemoth, following it, comes with his panting slaves to the great purple garden of which surely thine own country ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... cried the voice, and a dreadful chattering of teeth ended in a long-drawn wail of ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... suffering himself to be made a puppet by it, is a sadly weak proceeding. Most thoughtful men have probably some dark fountains in their souls, by the side of which, if there were time, and it were decorous, they could let their thoughts sit down and wail indefinitely. That long Byron wail fascinated men for a time; because there is that in Human Nature. ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... found it was as he expected. He cried out in an angry voice, Mr Vigors, I'll thank you to leave Gossett alone. At the sound of the voice, Vigors turned round with his colt in his hand, saw Jack's face at the window, and, impressed with the idea that the re-appearance was supernatural, uttered a wail and fell down in a fit—little Gossett also, trembling in every limb, stared with his mouth open. Jack was satisfied, and immediately disappeared. He then went aft to the cabin, pushed by the servant, who was giving some orders from the captain to the officer on deck, and entering ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... at the Palace!—he had forgotten it. Flare of lights, wail of violins, a painted, silken crowd, laughter, whispers, magpie chattering, wine, and the weariness of the dance, when his soul would long to be with the night outside, with the rising wind and the shining stars. He half determined not to go. What mattered the offense ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... again, and oh! we are so happy. Do not go away again. You are a man; you do not know, you cannot understand all a woman feels. She must sit and wait, and hope, and pray for the safe return of husband or brother or sweetheart. The long days! Oh, the long sleepless nights, with the wail of the wind in the pines, and the rain on the roof! It is maddening. Do not leave us! Do not leave me! Do not leave Helen! Say ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... great gale rushing on that Christmas Eve round the stout Norman towers was not more strong than the breath of the despair which shook her life. She could not sleep—who could sleep on such a night, the herald of such a morrow? The wail and roar of the wind, the crash of falling trees, and the rattle of flying stones seemed to form a fit accompaniment to the turmoil ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... its dreary proportions were so in keeping with the vast prospect. There were no recesses along its roughly boarded walls for vagrant and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. No projection for the wind by night to grow musical over, to wail, whistle, or whisper to; only a long wooden shelf containing a chilly-looking tin basin and a bar of soap. Its uncurtained windows were red with the sinking sun, as though bloodshot and inflamed from a too-long unlidded existence. The tracks of ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... much time for it. The children are fond of Algernon and he remembers the funny things they say and tells them—(it's the first time he ever had anything amusing to say on any subject!)—Peter Osgood wanted The Wail of the Sandal Swag, and a little girl asked for Timothy Squst. (If that's how you spell it. It rhymed with 'crust.') The children aren't the only funny ones. A man came in this afternoon and asked for Edith Breed, and ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... chose to grow gray crunching bones in a cavern, he had no business to be luring a girl into his companionship. "It is the most horrible of virgin-sacrifices," said Will; and he painted to himself what were Dorothea's inward sorrows as if he had been writing a choric wail. But he would never lose sight of her: he would watch over her—if he gave up everything else in life he would watch over her, and she should know that she had one slave in the world, Will had—to use Sir Thomas Browne's phrase—a "passionate prodigality" of statement ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... some fraction of me, happily Floats through the window even now to a tree Down in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale, Not like a peewit that returns to wail For something it has lost, but like a dove That slants unswerving to its home and love. There I find my rest, and through the dark air Flies what yet lives in me. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... indistinct as the outlines of the clouds which seemed to be wandering at random overhead. He remembered his childhood, his mother; he remembered her death, how they had carried him in to her, and how, clasping his head to her bosom, she had begun to wail over him, then had glanced at Glafira Petrovna—and checked herself. He remembered his father, at first vigorous, discontented with everything, with strident voice; and later, blind, tearful, with unkempt grey beard; he remembered how one day after drinking a glass too much ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... eyes to see her beauty, a heart to know her worth, Would fling the charm of song o'er the green robe of the North Lily said, sweet friend there's one, And his name is Herbison, Who sings of Northern Erin in sunlight and in storm, Of the legend and the tale, Of the banshees awful wail, Of Dunluce upon the sea, of the castle ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... up the children," said she, "Arthur's never does. It's odd, for his voice is much heavier, of course. But I can never take really high notes without hearing a wail from either Bud or Dot. And that's not ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... there came from the door a curious nasal wail, men and women singing in unison, and seemingly afraid to trust their voices. As for the people in the room no one tried to join in this part of the service—no one except Honnor Cunyngham, who appeared ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... knowledge, for its dusky little body was covered with red blotches and its tiny face twisted all awry. I told the women to heat water, thinking that possibly this might be a case of convulsions, which a hot bath would mitigate; but before it was ready the poor babe uttered a thin wail and died. ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... the last two days and nights in her room; nevertheless she had felt no fear; the thunder of the cannon and the wail of the wounded had inspired her with mournful resignation rather than with fear. As, at one time, she stood at the window, a shell burst near the house, and shattered the window-panes ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... wail. Into her burning eyes merciful tears rushed, and sinking on her knees she rested against the railing, shaken by a storm of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... He embodied, materialized, the wind, the voice of the sea, the angry, hot scent of certain flowers, of the white lily, the tuberose, the hyacinth. He created figures for light, for darkness, for a wail, for a laugh, and set them in array all around him in the blackness. But none of these imagined figures could cause the horror which he felt. He drove away the whole pack of them with a silent cry, a ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the yawning jaws .. awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer, and so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... loved, but the story we cannot unfold; They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold; They grieved, but no wail from their slumber will come; They joyed, but the tongue of ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... of earthly vicissitude are spoken and felt here in the sequence of words. Perpetual black-and-white through time; then the settled life and untreacherous peace of eternity. Everywhere in the song the note of heavenly hope interrupts the wail of disappointment, and the chorus returns to transport the soul from the land of emotional whirlwinds to ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... just see some of them!" she would wail to herself. "If I could just see mother or father or anybody from New York! Oh, I know I shall never see New York again, or Broadway or Fifth Avenue or Central Park—I never—never—never shall!" And she would grovel among her pillows, burying her face and half stifling herself lest her ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... this also, madam!" said I, while Anthony looked from her to me with shining eyes. At this moment we started, all three, as borne to our ears came the distant rumble of thunder, followed by a fierce wind-gust that rattled crazy door and lattice and, dying in a dismal wail, left behind the ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... The fretful wail of a sick baby sounded at intervals from the tent. The banjo-playing had stopped on their arrival. It was nearly noon when the six children came straggling out of ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... faint bleat, as of a new-born lamb, high above her head; she started and looked up. Then a wail from the cliffs, as of a child in pain, answered by another from the opposite rocks. They were but the passing snipe, and the otter calling to her brood; but to her they were mysterious, supernatural goblins, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... breezes scarcely move the leaves of the trees, but in those days of calm the wind stores up his forces for a mighty storm. On this dark, fearful night he blew his fiercest blasts. The wild beast was affrighted from his lair and rushed down with a moan, or the mountain eagle screamed out a wail, indistinctly heard through the moaning sounds. During the whole night, which was black as wickedness, the wind howled in mournful cadence, or went sobbing along the sand. As the hours wore on we seemed to hear, in every shriek of the blast, the strange tongue of some long-departed ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... rose to a perfect wail, but came down a note or two as Mother hastily reached in the press and drew out a tall, old demijohn and poured a liberal dose of the desired medicine into a glass. She added a dash of red pepper and a few drops of peppermint. This treatment of the Squire's dram in Mother's estimation ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... servants of the United States falls into three periods: Before 1829, 1829-65, and 1865-83. In the first period they were commonly treated as permanent officials. Rarely had they been removed for partisan purposes, although it had been the wail of Jefferson that "few die, and none resign." Appointments had often been given as the reward for past services, but none had felt a need for a general proscription of officials upon the entry of ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... dwelling had— Dark, doleful, dreary, like a greedy grave That still for carrion carcases doth crave, On top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly owle, Shrieking his baleful note, which ever drave Far from that haunt all other cheerful fowl, And all about it wandering ghosts did wail ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... long throb on the air, almost a wail of regret, from the human voices of the violins. The cornet seems to run off in the distance, and the horns have a sob in their last notes. The dancers stop with languid reluctance. Floyd Grandon leads his wife along as if he would take her down ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... a general wail arose, and Mrs. Wing fainted entirely away. Madam Sooty-back was quite satisfied with the effect she had produced, and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... I'll warrant it'll be a devil's carnival, too. Isn't Mr. Cyril Henshaw going to play his own music? Oh, I know I'm hopeless, from your standpoint, but I can't help it. I like mine with some go in it, and a tune that you can find without hunting for it. And I don't like lost spirits gone mad that wail and shriek through ten perfectly good minutes, and then die with a gasping moan whose home is the tombs. However, ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... though he may be, Far o'er the watery track must he travel, Long must he row o'er the rime-crusted sea— Plod his lone exile-path—Fate is severe. Mindful of slaughter, his kinsman friends' death, Mindful of hardships, the wanderer saith:— Oft must I lonely, when dawn doth appear, Wail o'er my sorrow—since living is none Whom I may whisper my heart's undertone. Know I full well that in man it is noble Fast in his bosom his sorrow to bind. Weary at heart, yet his Fate is unyielding— Help ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Indians and subdue it for wife and child, it was the noiseless nocturnal cougar that filled their imaginations with the last degree of dread. To them its cry—most peculiar and startling at the love season, at other times described as like the wail of a child or of a traveller lost in the woods—aroused more terror than the nearest bark of the wolf; its stealth and cunning more than the strength and courage and address of the bear; its attack more than the rush of the majestic, resistless bison, or the furious pass with ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... pace, gradually advanced until within a hundred yards of the Moorunde tribe. Here the men came to a full stop, whilst several of the women singled out from the rest, and marched into the space between the two parties, having their heads coated over with lime, and raising a loud and melancholy wail, until they came to a spot about equi-distant from both, when they threw down their cloaks with violence, and the bags which they carried on their backs, and which contained all their worldly effects. The bags were then opened, and pieces of glass and shells taken out, with which ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... happened, however, the wee white baby had not a dull life of it at all; when its teeth were not troubling it, and when it was not very hungry, it had quite a merry time. It was devoted to the children, and even when it was sending forth its wail for more food and some real mother's love, it would stop crying and give a clear hearty little laugh if Flossy shook her head of tangled red-brown hair in front of it, or if Snip-snap, the mongrel terrier, stood on his hind-legs and begged ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... as the hero sprang; even Ua, with the clustering curls. She loved the chief; she did hope that when his steps were stayed by the sea, and he had mingled his moan with the wild waters' wail, that he would turn once more to the inland groves, where she would twine him wreaths, and soothe his limbs, and rest his head upon her knees; but he has leaped for death, he comes up no more. And Ua wailed for Kaaialii; and as the chief rose no more from out ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... vague anxiety possessed almost every one present, there came from the staircase without a sudden cry of woe—a woman's shriek, long and shrill, ominous as the wail of the banshee. There was a rush to the door, and the women crowded, out in a distracted way. Lady Laura was fainting in her husband's arms, and George Fairfax was standing near her reading ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... finger. The gloom grew, calling out the lights into strength, but the concourse did not thin: it only gathered in numbers, and the long, moaning hoot of an out-going tramp filled the air as though with a wail of sorrow at departure. Lascars in coal-begrimed tunics joined in with the rest, adding their voices to the babel, and round-hatted sailors from the Royal Indian ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... had had its desired effect. All her wrongdoings, her crowning outrage of his noble intentions, had been forgotten in the one little plaintive appeal she had managed to breathe in a minor wail throughout that treacherous letter, treacherous alike to her husband and to her lover. Just as Kate had always been able to do with every one about her, she had blinded him to her faults, and managed to ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... groans, Curses and threats for their confusions. Her darts, and arrows, some of them had slain: Others her dogs eat, painting her disdain, After she had transformed them into beasts: Others her monsters carried to their nests, Rent them in pieces, and their spirits sent To this blind shade, to wail their banishment. The huntsmen hearing (since they could not hear) Their hounds at fault, in eager chase drew near, Mounted on lions, unicorns, and boars, And saw their hounds lie licking of their sores Some yearning at the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... o'er all the other gods prevail; You, one against a hundred though it be, Balance all Europe in the other scale. Them liken I to those who, in the tale, Mountain on mountain piled, presumptuously Warring with Heaven and Jove. The earth clave he, And hurled them down beneath huge rocks to wail: So take you up your bolt with energy; A happy ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... what mournful tones are these? What are these sad solemn accents That transpierce my very heart, That cut through me like a dagger? Learn who thus disturbs the flowing Of my grief's most tender channels. Who but I should so lament? Who but I should wail ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... they want what you cannot buy? It does with the other fellow. Do you for their comfort yourself deny? So does the other fellow. Would you wail aloud if your babe should die For the lack of care you could not supply? Well, it's that way, too, as he travels by, That ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... back fire; and whether the ranch hands are near or far, stock must never be allowed to drive before a blizzard. The woman with iron in her blood will meet all fate's challenges halfway and master every emergency. The kind that has a rabbit heart and sits down to weep and wail should not essay adventures in the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... silently suggestive of haunting, evil things. The face of the moon, as it rose, lost the ruddy hue which had coloured it nearer the horizon, and its paling disc was swept by black and ragged storm clouds. The wind moaned through the trees like the wail of a lost soul, and there was a stealthy, monotonous lapping of the dark ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... started about, club poised for swift action, for, out-stealing from the shadows crept strange and dismal sound, a thin wail that sank to awful groaning rumble, and ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... in a coarse, enveloping pinafore opened the door. Her hands and arms were red and dripping and from a dim region at the rear came the smell of dishwater. Down the narrow, precipitate stairway floated an infant's thin, protesting wail and Jane felt a sick sense of ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... with scorn as he made his report—the colonel simply could not understand the situation. All these men! "What are you—soldiers?" he flung at the wretched group. And one answered, "No, my officer. We are not soldiers, we are the cooks." At that there was a wail. "Ach! Who, then, will the breakfast cook for my general? He will schrecklich angry be for ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Past the despairing wail— And the bright banquets of the Elysian Vale Melt every care away! Delight, that breathes and moves forever, Glides through sweet fields like some sweet river! Elysian life survey! There, fresh with youth, o'er jocund meads, His merry west-winds blithely leads The ever-blooming May! Through ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... supreme power she had over the man who had so abjectly shown her such inflammable love. She knew, too, of his vanity, and hit him caressingly on the spot. The cry of "he and none other," combined with a beseeching wail that he should open his heart to an affectionate and faithful love, was more likely to conquer than any admission of wrong. Could she forget the oft-repeated declaration that his ruling principle was that he would have no divided affection? ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... "Seek for pardon and mercy at the throne of the Almighty; that is your place. Away with you from the scenes of this life, in which you can nevermore have part." And as the old gentleman uttered these words in a tone still stronger than before, a feeble wail seemed to pass through the air and die away in the blustering of the storm, which was just beginning to rage. Crossing over to the door, the old gentleman slammed it to, so that the echo rang loudly through the empty anteroom. There was something so supernatural almost in ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... her face; before Mrs. Blake could reach her she had fainted. That good woman was always ready for any emergency. She very calmly laid her down on the floor and proceeded to bring her back to consciousness. The children raised a dismal wail; but this she instantly quieted by marching ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... appealing—and who dare say, in vain?—from man to God. Her lips were opened to speak; but the words that should have come from them reached God's ear alone; for in an instant Peter struck her down, the dark mass closed over her again, ... and then wail on wail, long, wild, ear-piercing, rang along the vaulted roofs, and thrilled like the trumpet of ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... shrieked his wife, and her wail aroused Roberjot once more from his stupor. He opened his eyes and looked once more ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... ever down with the mitre and the crown, With the Belial of the Court and the Mammon of the Pope; There is woe in Oxford halls: there is wail in Durham's Stalls: The Jesuit smites his bosom: the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... melodious wail from the instrument, then lightly ran up the chromatic scale and paused on an upper note for an instant before he began, with perfect certainty of idea and marvellous modulations and transitions in the expression of it, to make music that steeped the Tenor's ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the sound of a winter storm which woke me in the night. Wind and rain lashing the house filled me with miserable memories and apprehensions; I lay thinking of the savage struggle of man with man, and often saw before me no better fate than to be trampled down into the mud of life. The wind's wail seemed to me the voice of a world in anguish; rain was the weeping of the feeble and the oppressed. But nowadays I can lie and listen to a night-storm with no intolerable thoughts; at worst, I fall into a compassionate sadness as I remember those I loved and whom ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... animal suddenly seemed to make a dart backward several yards farther from the shore, but with its head getting lower, till the water rose above its ears, and as it still glided farther, less and less was visible, till only its wail-producing ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... hour heard no kindred wail, No holy knell thy requiem rung; Thy mourners were the plaided Gael; Thy ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... a wail from Amy Benyon," she said. "She wants me to go to them for Easter and comfort her. Look what she writes: "You must come, dear. I must be helped through, I must have a refuge. How in the world I ever did such a thing I don't know! But I did and I can't help it ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... the woman would ask her husband if it had been "a good day for killings," almost made me wail aloud. ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... Venza was near the head of the incline. Some of the women and children were on it. A woman screamed. Her child had slipped from her hand; bounded up over the rail and fallen. Hardly fallen—floated down to the ground, with flailing arms and legs, landing in the dark ferns unharmed. Its terrified wail came up. ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... Andrew Ffoulkes, has fallen into the hands of a fanatic. Armand is hopelessly compromised . . . to-morrow, perhaps he will be arrested . . . after that the guillotine . . . unless . . . oh! it is horrible!" . . . she said, with a sudden wail of anguish, as all the events of the past night came rushing back to her mind, "horrible! . . . and you do not understand . . . you cannot . . . and I have no one to whom I can turn . . . for help . . . or even for sympathy ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... youth had taken the ox and gone off with it. When the man got there and found that his ox was gone, he began to weep and wail, for he was afraid that when his old woman got to know she would be the death of him. But all at once it came into his head to go home and get the other ox, and drive it to the town, and take good care that his old wife knew nothing about it. So he did this; he ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... tail of mine? I got that when a car Came near to crushing Bobbie-boy—it gave us all a jar; I knocked him off the track in time, but one wheel caught my tail And cut it short; it hurt, of course, and I let out a wail— (The cur that I had hoped to fight Across the street, was ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... occur that a passionate master, heated with wine,—mad with himself and all about him, pours out his vengeful ire on the head and back of some helpless slave, and leaves him weltering in his blood! How often may be heard the agonized wail of the slave mother, deploring the departure of some innocent child that has been lost in gambling, while ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... speak my mind about his faults, and I am willing he shall speak his about mine, if I have any. And, true enough, maybe I have; but I reckon they'll bear inspection—I have that idea, anyway. A manly fellow! You should have heard him whine and wail and swear, last night, because the saddle hurt him. Why didn't the saddle hurt me? Pooh—I was as much at home in it as if I had been born there. And yet it was the first time I was ever on a horse. All those old soldiers admired my ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... cannot prise open a man's heart with a crowbar, as it were, and force Himself inside. The door opens from within. 'Behold! I stand at the door and knock.' There is an 'if.' 'If any man open I will come in.' Hence the beseeching, hence the wail of wisdom that cries aloud and no man regards it; of love that stands at the entering in of the city, and pleads in vain, and says, 'I have called, and ye have refused.... How often would I have gathered ... and ye would not.' Oh, brethren! it is an awful responsibility, a mysterious prerogative, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... up to him with a wail of distress. 'He is dead, he is dead!' she cried; 'he was sitting here just now, talking to me—and all of a sudden he fell down and became rigid.... My God! can nothing be done to help him? And mamma not here! Pantaleone, Pantaleone, the doctor!' she went on suddenly in ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... shouted at them, thrust stupefied figures in amongst them, pushed others, dazedly cowering in their homes, out through doors and ground-floor windows. At intervals the earth stirred and heaved, and then with a simultaneous cry, rising in one long wail of terror, they jammed together in the middle of the street, so close-packed a man could have walked on ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... flashes of light there was no other movement, and no sound. Dark figures stood motionless. The lonely howl of a sledge-dog ended in a wail of pain as some one kicked it into terrified silence. The hollow cough of Mukee's father was smothered in the thick fur of his cap as he thrust his head from his little shack in the edge of the forest. ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... standing a mass of shadow except for one moonlit wall, for all the family were gone to the governor's ball. Then, as I live, that white cat of Margery Key's led me in that mad chase around Beverly's house, and when I came to the north side of it I saw a candle gleam in a window and heard a baby's wail, and knew 'twas where his infant daughter was tended, and as we swept past out thrust a black head from the window, and a screech as savage as any wild cat's rent the peace of the night, and I believe that the child's black nurse took us, no doubt, for ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... and choked with sobs—a sort of wail, the most irritating of all sounds where real sorrows are to be borne and real work to be done. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... kitten, sole remnant of a large litter. An aggressive clock with a boldly painted frame was beating loudly. Beneath the floor the oft-repeated gnawing of a mouse or rat went on, distractingly. From the other side of the road, in spite of double-windows and closed doors, came the wail ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... my memory, arrayed itself with all its first distinctness. Methought I stood a weeping infant by my father's hearth; by the cold and blood-stained hearth where he lay dead. I heard the childish wail of Alice, and my own cry arose with hers, as we beheld the features of our parent, fierce with the strife and distorted with the pain, in which his spirit had passed away. As I gazed, a cold wind whistled by, and waved my father's hair. Immediately I stood again in the lonesome ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... as a deep wail and a more piteous cry for mercy smote upon her ears, Pinky sprang across the street and into the hovel. The sight that met her eyes left no hesitation in her mind. Holding up with one strong arm the naked body of the poor child—she had drawn the clothes ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... there hidden under that despairing wail?—It was the parting of the last strand of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... transported them all to the Island of Dead Men, and there held them as captives. Their war canoes circled the island like a fortification, through which drifted the sobs of the imprisoned women, the mutterings of the aged men, the wail of little children. ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... spoke a frightful noise was heard,—not thunder, it was too prolonged for that; it was a deep, sullen roar, heard above the wail of the wind like the boom of Niagara Falls. Very soon the children saw for themselves what it meant. The ice was ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... Speak to me one moment; for mercy's sake speak to me!' and she drew him, half against his will, into the chamber, and throwing herself at his feet, broke out into a childlike wail. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Bobby's wail came to her as the car began to disappear. "We'll wait for you," came the parting message ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... went alone to the steps of the palace, and began to weep and to wail. It so happened that as Prince Lionheart had that day gone out hunting, the Princess was all alone, and having a tender heart, she no sooner heard the old woman weeping than she came out to see what ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... to a wail. She turned suddenly to Koltsoff. "Of course you understand that you must leave us as soon as possible." Koltsoff, who had arisen, eyed her sullenly. She turned to Jack, who met her eyes straight. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... of Canada, where it was probably brought in a lot of cabbage. It is the caterpillar of a white butterfly with black spots on its wings. In Europe, this butterfly is preyed on by two or more parasites, which keep it somewhat in check; but its remarkably rapid increase in this country, causing a wail of lamentation to rise in a single season from the cabbage growers over areas of tens of thousands of square miles, proved that when it first appeared it had reached this ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory |
