"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... crash sounded the death-knell of one brave, noble heart, and crushed countless hopes as George Marshall's soul went out. The murderous fragment of a shell penetrated his brain, and his life was ended ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... fence, resting their guns upon the lower rail, and the enemy came in sight half a mile distant and started towards them at double-quick, loading and firing as they ran; but before they had traversed half the distance, they had learned that the whistle of every bullet was the death-knell of one, and in many instances of more than one of their number, and coming to a slight ravine, the temptation of its shelter from so fearful a storm proved irresistible, and, turning up course, they fled in dismay, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... soon faded out of sight when the drooping, half-hoisted banner was seen on the turrets of Chateau le Surry, and the clang of a knell came slow and ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... end of Fate, unseen, unguessed, Are these wild throbbings of my heart and breast? Yea, of some doom they tell? Each pulse, a knell. Lief, lief I were, that all To unfulfilment's ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly called the "Renaissance." It was the knell of the architecture ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... she thought of the past. The dreadful reflection, "If I had not done as I did, how different would it have been now!" had been sounding its knell in her heart so often that she had almost ceased to shudder at it. The very nails of her hands had, before now, entered the palms, with the sharp pain it brought. Stealing over her more especially this night, there, as she knelt, her head lying ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... those who drown, perchance, And all their years, a waking dream, Flash pictured by in lightning gleam, His childhood home appears, the mother's glance, The hearth-side smile; the fragrance of the fields: —Now, war's iron knell Wakes the hounds of hell, Whilst o'er the realm her scourge ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... 'that was the object of the present expedition. I fancied it possible—but let us go ring fancy's knell. I'll begin it.' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... inception. Dr. Miller says that Chivalry was formally abolished in the year 1559, when Henry II. of France was slain in a tournament. With us, the edict formally abolishing Feudalism in 1870 was the signal to toll the knell of Bushido. The edict, issued two years later, prohibiting the wearing of swords, rang out the old, "the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise," it rang in the new age ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... come the airy melody of the charming eclogue Phyllida's Love-call to her Corydon, which invites the genius of a Mendelssohn to frame it in music. He might have penned in his prison cell the knell for the tragedy of human life, De Morte. He might have been the shepherd ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... not be ready for the candles just yet,"—and then left the Tower, and went to a little lodging in a back street, where she found her husband, and where they both lay hid while the search for Lord Nithsdale was going on, and where they heard the knell tolling when his friends, the other lords, were being led out to have their heads cut off. Afterwards, they made their escape to France, where most of the Jacobites who had been concerned in the rising were living, as best they could, on small ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sun followed the dawn. Then the world darkened so swiftly that men on their traplines paused in amazement. With the deepening gloom came a strange moaning, and there was something in that sound that seemed like the rolling of a great drum—the knell of an impending doom. It was THUNDER. The warning was too late. Before men could turn back to safety, or build themselves shelters, the Big Storm was upon them. For three days and three nights it raged like a mad bull from out of the north. In the open barrens no living creature could ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... she gasped; and the repressed eagerness in her tone sounded the death-knell of his ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... forests which covered the sides of the mountain were sleeping, lying heavy beneath a weight of sadness. The still air was magically clear and transparent. There was never a sound. Only the melancholy music of a stream—water eating away the rock—sounded the knell of the earth, Christophe went to bed in a fever. It the stable hard by the beasts stirred as restlessly and uneasily ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell! Hark! ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall awhile repair, To ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... was this? Was he deluding himself? Did his over-excited imagination make him hear a death knell pealing for his honour and his hopes, which must be borne to their grave? Yet no! All the citizens and peasants, men and women, great and small, who thronged the salt market, which he had just entered, raised their heads to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... coming down this way now," mused Johnny, sullenly. He hated them by training as much as he hated horse-thieves and sheep; and his companions had been brought up in the same school. Barb wire, the death-knell to the old-time punching, the bar to riding at will, a steel insult to fire the blood—it had ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... should see to it," said Grey. "Elect Fremont, my boy, and the Union will go to pieces. Does the North suppose we will endure a sectional President? No, sir, it would mean secession—the death-knell of the Union. Sir, we may be driven to more practical arguments by the scurrilous speeches of the abolitionists. It is an attack on property, on the ownership of the inferior race by the supremely superior. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... hours she knew, Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew, Nor pastimes of the May; They all were with her in her cell; And a wild brook with cheerful knell ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... annoys, With classic Weston, Charley Coote and Tew, In dismal dance about the mournful yew. But first in notes Sicilian placed on high, Bates sounds the soft precluding symphony; And in sad cadence, as the bands condense, The curfew tolls the knell of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... the King and implores him to give him a ship that he may go back to his own country and family. These words fall like a knell upon the heart of Nausikaa; she is led out ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... it gets a foothold it abides. It is peculiarly suited to the humanities of every race, clime, and condition; there is no limit to its expansive adaptability. It is in a special manner voracious in the destruction of other languages; wherever it goes, it sounds the death-knell ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... Poll, a buxom lass; when I returned A B, I bought her ear-rings, hat, and shawl, a sixpence did break we; At last 'twas time to be on board, so, Poll, says I, farewell; She roared and said, that leaving her was like a funeral knell. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was a dungeon grim, And they say that many a chanted hymn Has rung a knell on the moldy air For luckless errant prisoned there, As kneeling monk and pious nun Sang orison at set of sun. A single window, dark and small, Showed opening in the heavy wall, Nor other entrance seemed attained That erst had human footstep gained. I paused before the uncanny ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... jerk she freed her skirt from his clutch. Then she ran quickly up the stairs. Outside the door of her own room on the first landing she paused for one minute, and from out of the gloom her voice came to him like the knell ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Hark! 'tis the knell of the Browning Society, Wind-bags are bursting all round us to-day; FURNIVALL fails, and for want of his diet he Pines like a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... the capture of Atlanta, and give us the fruits of victory, although the destruction of Hood's army was the real object to be desired. Yet Atlanta was known as the "Gate-City of the South," was full of founderies, arsenals, and machine-shops, and I knew that its capture would be the death-knell of the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... fools of such contingencies? 35 And do we waste in blind misgivings thus The hours when we should act? Then wind and thunder, Which seemed to howl his knell, is the loud laughter With which Heaven mocks our weakness! I henceforth Will ne'er repent of aught designed or done 40 But ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Ellis the words sounded like the knell of doom. The pain was excruciating, but in the rush of sensations it seemed nothing. The real disaster lay in the fact that it put him definitely off the football team. All his work, all his sacrifice ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... has at command, the change in his nature, he adds, "When he walks, he moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks before his treading. He is able to pierce a corselet with his eye; he talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery. He sits in his state, as a thing made for Alexander. What he bids be done is finished with his bidding: he wants nothing of a god but eternity and ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... a chill did that last sentence fall upon the ear of his wife! It was the death-knell to all the fond hopes she had cherished for two peaceful years. For a moment she leaned her head against the wall near which she was standing, and wished that she could die. But thoughts of her children, and thoughts ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... which such an evasion can be accomplished, must be as sudden as the danger which it affronts. Even that, even the sickening necessity for hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be vain, self-baffled, and where the dreadful knell of too late is already sounding in the ears by anticipation—even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one particular case, namely, where the agonising appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of her heart. To try no more to go away, and to try her again, was the reckless conclusion it turned uppermost. And yet again, 'Eugene, Eugene, Eugene, this is a bad business!' And, 'I wish I could stop the Lightwood peal, for it sounds like a knell.' ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... room-mate," answered Rebecca, who thought her own knell of doom had sounded, if he ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the Highland clans, man! I fear my Lord Panmure is slain, Or fallen in Whiggish hands, man: Now wad ye sing this double fight, Some fell for wrang, and some for right; And mony bade the world guid-night; Then ye may tell, how pell and mell, By red claymores, and muskets' knell, Wi' dying yell, the Tories fell, And Whigs ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... so generally abused as frying. The frying-pan has awful sins to answer for. What untold horrors of dyspepsia have arisen from its smoky depths, like the ghosts from witches' caldrons! The fizzle of frying meat is as a warning knell on many an ear, saying, "Touch not, taste not, if you would not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... agonised expression—"Stop, I conjure you! I know what you were going to say; you were about to repeat that which my mother loved to call me—your wife! She did not mean it in mockery, though it sounds so now, like a knell from the lower earth. But one thing, Walter, one request I have to make—you pray sometimes?—the time has been when we have prayed together!—when next you pray, thank God that SHE ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... ring the sacring bell, Keep your hours, and tell your knell, Rise at midnight at your matins, Read your Psalter, sing your latins, And when your blood shall kindle pleasure, Scourge your self ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... sang, it seemed that I heard a death knell rung in mine ear. What is the meaning of ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... he would be allowed to see Daisy for weeks or even months were he at hand, and she would most certainly be in no fit state to return with him to India. That letter had been to Will as the passing knell of all he had ever hoped or desired. Definitely it had told him very little, but he was not lacking in perception, and he had read a distinct and wholly unmistakable meaning behind the guarded, kindly sentences. And he knew when he laid the letter down that in Dr. Jim's opinion his presence might ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Lord Panmure is slain, Or fallen in Whiggish hands, man, Now wad ye sing this double fight, Some fell for wrang, and some for right; But mony bade the world gude-night; Then ye may tell, how pell and mell, By red claymores, and muskets knell, Wi' dying yell, the Tories fell, And Whigs to hell did flee, man. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... again and the frost began to creep after it. Already the bulk of vegetation about them (save the hardy firs and kindred trees and shrubs) were black and dead. The change in climate had tolled the knell of all those plants that had withstood heretofore the rigors of the ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... sprang up, and opened the door of his cell. A dim lamp faintly illuminated the long vaulted galleries, and the monks, like shadows, were gliding to midnight prayer. In the dreariness of the night, with the solemn words sounding in his ear like a warning knell, he came to the satisfactory conclusion that all was vanity, and to the determination that the very next day he would retire from the world, join this holy brotherhood, and bind himself to be a Carmelite friar for life. The day brought counsel, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Marguerite strain her eyes to catch sight of that boat which was bearing him away so swiftly now: she strained her ears, vaguely hoping to catch one last, lingering echo of his voice. But all was silence, save that monotonous clapper, which seemed to beat against her heart like a rhythmic knell of death. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... withdrawing the screen—Well, they have some mercy—they do not let us wait long between the acts of their follies at least—I love a quick and rattling fire in these vanities—Folly walking a funeral pace, and clinking her bells to the time of a passing knell, makes sad ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... that hears afar The coming tempest knell, And folds its tiny leaves in fear,— The ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... These are the men who serve the city in times of peace, save it in times of war, deserve the highest honors in its gift, and leave behind them a record that keeps their memories green. For such an one we lately tolled a knell, my brothers; and as our united voices pealed over the city, in all grateful hearts, sweeter and more solemn than any chime, rung the words that made ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... Spanish fleets had been destroyed and Spain had but one left to protect her own coast cities. The death knell of her once proud colonial empire had sounded. Decrepit as she was, she could not possibly have sent any reinforcements to the Philippines. Besides, the Filipinos would have ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... the time slips by wasted, and hangs drearily on our hands. We have not the spirit to look forward, or the heart to look back. We long to have it all over, and yet every stroke of the clock falls like a cruel knell on our ears. We long that we could fall asleep, and wake to find ourselves on the other side of the crisis ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... awaited the midnight knell, that was to summon her to the innumerable sisterhood of departed Years, there came a young maiden treading lightsomely on tiptoe along the street, from the direction of the Railroad Depot. She was evidently a stranger, ...
— The Sister Years (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... birth, And turn to blessings watched by heaven! Ah seeds, how dearer far than they We bury in the dismal tomb, Where Hope and Sorrow bend to pray That suns beyond the realm of day May warm them into bloom! From the steeple Tolls the bell, Deep and heavy, The death-knell, Guiding with dirge-note—solemn, sad, and slow, To the last home earth's weary wanderers know. It is that worshipped wife— It is that faithful mother![14] Whom the dark Prince of Shadows leads benighted, From that dear arm where oft she ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... of warmth and light The last great knell were knolled; If Death should close mine eyes to-night And all the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... "it [the proposal for unification] is the unification of the white races to disfranchise the coloured races, and not to promote union between all races in South Africa." The passage of the Union Bill sounded the political death knell of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... of sadness came over him as he realized the meaning of the bells. They were the funeral knell of his ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... energy, and their perseverance, the Ministers regarded the fall of Napoleon as a party triumph which could only serve to confirm their power. But the last cannon-shot that was fired on the 18th of June, was in truth the death-knell of the golden age of Toryism. When the passion and ardour of the war gave place to the discontent engendered by a protracted period of commercial distress, the opponents of progress began to perceive that they had to reckon, not with ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... thy father lies: Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... ability and grateful for his services. The highest and lowest classes of England cannot be in sympathy with the free North. No dynasty can look the fact of successful, triumphant self-government in the face without seeing a shroud in its banner and hearing a knell in its shouts of victory. As to those lower classes who are too low to be reached by the life-giving breath of popular liberty, we cannot reach them yet. A Christian civilization has suffered them, in the very heart of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... breiks him bair, Whill flatlies to the ground he fell: Than thought I weel we had lost him there, Into my stomach it struck a knell! Yet up he raise, the treuth to tell ye, And laid about him dints full dour; His horsemen they raid sturdilie, And stude about him ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... hallow-mass time, and To mildness farewell! Its bristles are low'ring With darkness; o'erpowering Are its waters, aye showering With onset so fell; Seem the kid and the yearling As rung their death-knell. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... men, also in khaki, who followed him; the four passed through a series of underground passages, and entered a stone cell with a solid steel door, which they clanged behind them—a sound that was like the knell of doom to poor Jimmie's terrified soul. And instantly Sergeant Perkins seized him by the shoulder and whirled him about, and glared into his eyes. "Now, you little ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... the parroquets were hiding behind the leaves; the monkeys were clustered motionless upon the highest twigs; only out of the far depths of the forest, the campanero gave its solemn toll, once, twice, thrice, like a great death-knell rolling down from far cathedral towers. Was it an omen? He looked up hastily at Ayacanora. She was watching him earnestly. Heavens! was she waiting for his decision? Both dropped their eyes. The decision was not ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... awful reality of his bereavement, and knew that as yet he had suffered nothing. Tears filled his eyes, and he sank upon his father's breast. Sobs and wailings filled the funeral hall, while without the inexorable knell went on, the drums still beat, the cannon roared, all calling for the coffin, for whose entrance ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... which seems to proclaim sorrow within. The great court doors stood open, and a big, rough deer-hound, at the sound of the approaching hoofs, rose slowly up, and began a series of long, deep-mouthed barks, with pauses between, sounding like a knell. One or two men and maids ran out at the sound, and as the travellers rode up to the horse-block, an old gray-bearded serving-man came stumbling forth with "Oh! Master ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... serious things we have, Not knowing them until we know their grave: Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust, Destroy our friends, and after weep their dust: Our own love waking cries to see what's done, While shameful hate sleeps out the afternoon. Be this sweet Helen's knell, and now forget her. Send forth your amorous token for fair Maudlin: The main consents are had; and here we'll stay To see our ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... old clock—I love you well, For your silver chime, and the truths you tell— Your every stroke is but the knell Of Hope, or Sorrow buried deep; Say on—but only let me hear The sound most sweet to my listening ear, The child and the mother breathing clear Within ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... chill of sorrow numbs my thought: methinks I hear the passing knell; As dies across yon thin blue line the tinkling of ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... the dark, sullen, silent ones, brooding over their imaginary or real wrongs, and weeping and moaning piteously—there were the dangerous, careless and happy victims, who filled the dismal cells with their heart-rending peals of wild laughter, that fall upon the heart like the loneliest knell—there were the apparently quiet, religious ones who addressed their Creator in ceaseless, meaningless prayer, crying for forgiveness and mercy, but there was no bright, pretty French child, who called for "Bijou" or her "revenge," and this discouraged Guy very much. Presently addressing the guide, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... walked in, instead of seeing your father, I confronted a haggard, death-stricken young woman sitting up in bed, her great eyes bright with pain, her lips as white as her hollow cheeks, and her long, black hair streaming over the pillow. The very sight of her struck a knell to the little hope I had of soothing your father's sick bed and forgiving him if he had done ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... sweet voice sounded on her ears as the knell of hope. But she faced him again with ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... silence stole o'er those youthful brows of mirth, They knew she spoke of the Bridegroom King—the Lord of Heaven and earth; And e'er fleet time of another year had sounded the passing knell, The maiden Clare and her Bridegroom fair were wedded ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... never greatly cared for social pleasures; he had been too absorbed to enjoy them. But now—in a single moment—Ambition was dethroned. At the time, though his eyes were open, he scarcely realized that the old supremacy had passed. Only long afterwards did he ask himself if the death-knell of his success had begun to toll on that golden morning; because a ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... Trooper who was shot to death by Sentence of the Court Martial was buried in this manner. About one thousand went before the Corps, and five or six in a file, the Corps was then brought with six Trumpets sounding a Soldier's Knell, then the Trooper's Horse came clothed all over in mourning and led by a Footman. The Corps was adorned with bundles of Rosemary, one half stained with blood, and the Sword of the deceased with them. ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... wrought the salvation of the country. The most powerful antagonist to these societies, who worked by means of the press, was Burke, who, toward the end of this year, published his great work on the subject, entitled "Reflections on the Revolution, &c." a work which sounded the knell of the old Whig confederacy. Some of this party yielded at once to the force of his arguments, while others retreated as they saw the development of the principles against which they were directed. In fact, the result of this work was to make the old ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... men, All seeking railway shares and scrip; and when The market rose, how many a lad could tell With joyous glance, and eyes that spake again, 'Twas e'en more lucrative than marrying well;— When, hark, that warning voice strikes like a rising knell. ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... others Mary's radiance seemed a miracle of returning health, to Porter Bigelow it was no miracle. Nothing could have more completely rung the knell of ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... on every side; but they were still attempting to escape in different directions. Scarcely two of them were agreed as to the place whence the sound proceeded. Yet it came on, at stated intervals, a long, deep, melancholy knell, almost terrific in their present condition. Another council was attended with the same results—opinions being as varied as ever. Still that warning toll had some connection with their fellow-men, some link, which, however remote, united them to those who were now slumbering in happiness and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... her voice had a cristalline sonority that pierced Rodolphe's heart like a funeral knell, and filled it with a mournful alarm. He looked at her more attentively. It was no longer Mimi, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... my death-knell?" he asked wearily. "Have I, then, died already, and is it death that is lying so ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... received by his devoted followers as the knell of their hopes. For years they had been engaged labourously in rolling uphill the stone of Sisyphus, making active friendships and seeking a fair trial. That opportunity had come at last. It had been an affair of life or death; the contest ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... marriage what they used to do afterwards. If one finds a pleasant woman," said he, approaching Aminta, "like you, beautiful, intelligent, and I venture to say also full of talent, as you are—we swear we love her, and are really sincere. Reason, however, in the guise of matrimony, hurries to sound the knell of love. At the first peal, it escapes, and whither? The beauty we adore first weeps, and then finds consolation, or rather suffers herself to be consoled. Then, opening her wings like the butterfly, she hurries to find the pleasure she ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On the contrary, I believe that whenever you establish that doctrine, whenever you crystallize that idea in the public mind of this country, you ring the death-knell of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... appear upon their foreheads in gray and cloudy tints, their smile has something fatalistic in it, their motions are solemn. These unhappy beings seem to want to suck the last juices of the life they mean to leave; their eyes see things invisible, their ears are listening to a death-knell, they pay no attention to the minor things about them. These alarming symptoms Marie perceived one evening at Lady Dudley's. Raoul was sitting apart on a sofa in the boudoir, while the rest of the company were conversing in the ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... repeated, in a dazed fashion. Had I not heard that her cousin would marry her into one of the royal families of Europe? This, then, was the knell to all my hopes! This was the reason she answered me so coldly: there was something better in store for her than to be the wife of a ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... in his dying fear One dreadful sound could the Rover hear— A sound as if with the Inchcape bell The devil below was ringing his knell." ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... tumble—Rome and Greece - Their swords are rust, their altars cold! For us, the Children of the Seas, Who ruled where'er the waves have rolled, For us, in Fortune's books enscrolled, I read no runes of hopeless loss; Nor—while YE last—our knell is tolled, Ye ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... of revenue in almost all parishes, and sometimes an important one.[289] Consequently tariffs of fees were drawn up in various places. So much is charged for interment within, so much for burial without the church; so much for a knell according to duration and according to size of the bell; so much for the herse—a sort of catafalque—so much for the pall, the fee varying from that charged for "the best" to that charged for "the worst cloth"; ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... juggler! May the eyes that looked tamely on the death of my fair-haired boy be melted in their sockets with ceaseless tears, shed for those that are nearest and most dear to thee! May the ears that heard his death-knell be dead hereafter to all other sounds save the screech of the raven, and the hissing of the adder! May the tongue that tells me of his death and of my own crime, be withered in thy mouth—or better, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... had been filled for him stood upon the table untouched. He sat with his eyes fixed upon the stranger, and his skin as pale as a corpse. Betty was in the same state of immovable terror. Every word that fell from his lips was a death-knell—every drop of his red drink was as much liquid fire—and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... that he does receive does always owe. And still as time come in it goes away, Not to enjoy, but debts to pay. Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell Which his hour's work, as well as hour's does tell! Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell. ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... their sockets, big, blue veins and cords stood out on her lovely neck, and all the force and vigor of her young life seemed to go out through her pursed lips into the bassoon's system. And then, oh then! as if to mock her idolatry and sound the death knell of her unhappy love, the bassoon recoiled and emitted a tone so harsh, so discordant, so supernatural, that even Aurora's father ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... diedst ere being coffined; but I shall be coffined while yet alive! I stand here by thy tomb, mine Ivan. They have bedded thy noble form in the cold waves of the Dnieper, whose rushing and roaring was thy funeral knell, mine Ivan! I shall dwell by thy grave, and in the deathlike stillness of my cell shall hear the tones of the solemn hymn with which the impetuous stream will rock thee to thine eternal rest! Receive, then, ye sacred waves of the Dnieper, receive thou, mine Ivan, in thy cold grave, thy wife's ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... strange and miserable spectacle to behold the savages of this continent at the time when the knell of their common ruin had already sounded. Civilization had gained a foothold on their borders. The long and gloomy reign of barbarism was drawing near its close, and their united efforts could scarcely have availed to sustain it. Yet, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... melancholy and appalling truth is only the more apparent, and as each new instance multiplies upon us, it becomes too fatally confirmed, until at last we are almost, in spite of ourselves, forced to the conviction, that the first appearance of the white men in any new country, sounds the funeral knell of the children of the soil. In Africa, in the country of the Bushmen, Mr. ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... keeping him somewhere in the neighbourhood—perhaps not in the house—that is the material point. It can hardly be necessary in these days to urge marriages on. I'm sure the country is over . . . Most marriages ought to be celebrated with the funeral knell!" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... national guard of armed men, back to the great and chivalrous State of old Kentucky and away to the shambles of the South—back to a life-long servitude of hopeless despair. It was a long, sad, silent procession down to the banks of the Ohio; and as it passed, the death-knell of freedom tolled heavily. The sovereignty of Ohio trailed in the dust beneath the oppressor's foot, and the great confederacy of the tribes of modern Israel attended the funeral obsequies, and made ample provision for the necessary ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... bell! The knell of tyranny—the mighty voice, That, to the city and the plain—to earth, And listening heaven, proclaims the glorious tale Of Rome reborn, and Freedom. See, the clouds Are swept away, and the moon's boat of light Sails in the clear blue sky, and million stars ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... loved survivors tell How nought from death could save, Till every sound appears a knell, And every ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... Emmy Lou, left sitting at her desk, saw through gathering tears the line of First Readers wind around the room and file out the door, the sound of their departing footsteps along the bare corridors and down the echoing stairway coming back like a knell to her sinking heart. Then class after class from above marched past the door and on its clattering way, while voices from outside, shrill with the joy of the release, came up through the open windows in talk, in laughter, together with the patter of feet on the bricks. ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... have any mode of expressing his feelings except action, and where that was impossible they took hardly any recognizable shape. When the first boom of the big bell filled the little study in which we sat, I gave a cry, and jumped up from my chair: it sounded in my ears like the knell of my lost baby, for at the moment I was thinking of her as once when a baby she lay for dead in my arms. Mr. Blackstone got up and left the room, and my husband rose and would have followed him; ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... ancestors, Which swept the desert shore of that Dead Sea Whereof we got the name of Mortimer, Will I advance upon this castle ['s] walls— Drums, strike alarum, raise them from their sport, And ring aloud the knell of Gaveston! Lan. None be so hardy as to touch the king; But neither spare you ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... churchyard. He left the archdeacon's grounds that he might escape attention, and sauntered among the green hillocks under which lay at rest so many of the once loving swains and forgotten beauties of Plumstead. To his ears Eleanor's last words sounded like a knell never to be reversed. He could not comprehend that she might be angry with him, indignant with him, remorseless with him, and yet love him. He could not make up his mind whether or no Mr Slope was in ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... but calm with the still, iron-bound calmness of death—the only calm one there—Katherine stood; and her words smote on the ear in tones whose appallingly slow and separate intonation rung on the heart like a chill, isolated tolling of some fatal knell. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... carried off ignominiously to prison? Pomponio could have sacrificed his life gladly for the cause he had so much at heart; but to be captured before the blow for liberty had been struck was unbearable. He had been the prime mover in planning the revolt, and well he knew his capture sounded the knell, for no one could take his place ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... could only have been written by a Pole." All that the funeral train of an entire nation weeping its own ruin and death can be imagined to feel of desolating woe, of majestic sorrow, wails in the musical ringing of this passing bell, mourns in the tolling of this solemn knell, as it accompanies the mighty escort on its way to the still city of the Dead. The intensity of mystic hope; the devout appeal to superhuman pity, to infinite mercy, to a dread justice, which numbers every cradle and watches every tomb; the exalted resignation which has wreathed so much ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete than was our bondage to the King. They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... neighboring steeple was striking the ninth hour, and the old man paused in his muttering and sat counting the strokes as the iron tongue pealed them forth; counting them in his fear as if each stroke was a knell, and so indeed to him it was, and many of the chimes we listen carelessly to, would be knells to us, if we knew what would happen twixt them and their ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... "but the undoubted facts that have yesterday and to-day come to my knowledge, render any additional atrocity on the part of our enemies unnecessary. The volley that they fired yesterday on the glacis of Pampeluna, was the death-knell of their own friends. Count Villabuena, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... John Ericsson, the world owes the screw propeller. Americans sent the first steamship across the ocean—the "Savannah," in 1819. Americans, engaged in a fratricidal war, invented the ironclad in the "Monitor" and the "Merrimac," and, demonstrating the value of iron ships for warfare, sounded the knell of wooden ships for peaceful trade. An American first demonstrated the commercial possibilities of the steamboat, and if history denies to Fulton entire precedence with his "Clermont," in 1807, it may still ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... Francis, Francis [4], league on league, shall follow The death-dirge of the Lucy once so dear; From yonder steeple dismal, dull, and hollow, Shall knell the warning horror on thy ear. On thy fresh leman's lips when love is dawning, And the lisped music glides from that sweet well— Lo, in that breast a red wound shall be yawning, And, in the midst of rapture, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... princely in character as in birth, with a long line of humbler disciples, yielded up their lives at the stake. But from the burning pile of Wishart there came one whom the flames were not to silence, one who under God was to strike the death-knell of popery in Scotland. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... resistance to an active or enterprising enemy." In this Mr Finlay does but agree with other able writers; but he and they should have recollected, that hardly had that very year 623 departed, even yet the knell of its last hour was sounding upon the winds, when this effeminate empire had occasion to show that she could clothe herself with consuming terrors, as a belligerent both defensive and aggressive. In the absence of her great emperor, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... batters at the dovecote-doors, Disorderly the women. Alone I stood With Florian, cursing Cyril, vext at heart, In the pavilion: there like parting hopes I heard them passing from me: hoof by hoof, And every hoof a knell to my desires, Clanged on the bridge; and then another shriek, 'The Head, the Head, the Princess, O the Head!' For blind with rage she missed the plank, and rolled In the river. Out I sprang from ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... drear, distressing As the knell Of all hopes worth possessing!' . . . —What befell Seemed linked with me, but how ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... me well; But, when first he breathed his vow, I felt my bosom swell, For the words rang as a knell, And the voice seemed his who fell 10 In the battle down the dell, And who ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... that proviso was interrupted for three administrations, but justice moved steadily onward. In the news that the men of California had chosen freedom, Calhoun heard the knell of parting slavery, and on his deathbed he counseled secession. Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison had died despairing of the abolition of slavery; Calhoun died in despair at the growth of freedom. His system rushed irresistibly to its natural ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... for burials about twenty-seven years ago. At the close of the year 1870 the interments had reached 150,000. From fifteen to twenty interments are made here every day. The deep-toned bell of the great gateway is forever tolling its knell, and some mournful train is forever wending its slow way under the beautiful trees. Yet the sunlight falls brightly, the birds sing their sweetest over the new-made graves, the wind sighs its dirge through the tall trees, and the "sad sea waves" blend ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... no longer the herald of peace, nor the token of joy, for the villagers knew full well that it was tolling the knell of the departed priest, and their hearts were heavy with sorrow for the friend they knew ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... to Ramona in after years, as she looked back over this life, that the news of Father Salvierderra's death was the first note of the knell of their happiness. It was but a few days afterward, when Alessandro came in one noon with an expression on his face that terrified her; seating himself in a chair, he buried his face in his hands, and would neither look up nor speak; ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... doctor spoke, the bell, soothed by a lull of the storm, rang slowly stroke by stroke, and its intermitting toll seemed to testify to the truth of the old man's words. It was as the knell of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... you will grieve for me when I tell you that our baby went away from us quite suddenly this morning, while the Easter bells were ringing so joyfully. They rang the knell of a mother's heart, for they rang my baby's spirit ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... old church bell Tolls forth its death knell, Mournfully to tell The hour has come at last, In heavy sadness past, To bury the dead, And in silence bid. Then the mourners go, All mournfully slow, Every heart beating low The march of the dead. All with soft and gentle tread Unto the sepulchre ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... in his dying fear One dreadful sound he seemed to hear,— A sound as if with the Inchcape bell The evil spirit was ringing his knell. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... 1860 sounded the death-knell of simple pass examination. It was then recommended by a Select Committee of the House of Commons, and the recommendation was adopted, that the competitive method, in its limited form, should be henceforth universally applied ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... been known to perform them," said the astrologer. "I remember to have read, though I forget where, that angels tolled the knell when Saint Isidro ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... raging in Bristol. This terrible 'scourge of God' first appeared about the middle of July and continued for three months, prayer-meetings being held often, and for a time daily, to plead for the removal of this visitation. Death stalked abroad, the knell of funeral-bells almost constantly sounding, and much solemnity hanging like a dark pall over the community. Of course many visits to the sick, dying, and afflicted became necessary, but it is remarkable that, among all the children of God among whom Mr. ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... word was so charged with cordial impatience that it seemed the death-knell of his hope. He stepped inside the room and closed the door, keeping his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... sentiment. Jos was so elated that he told Becky his favourite Indian stories for the sixth time, giving an opening for the lady's "Horn I should like to see India!" But at that critical moment the bell rang for the fireworks, and at the same time tolled the knell of Becky's chances of becoming Mrs. Jos Sedley. For the fireworks somehow created a thirst, and the bowl of rack punch for which Jos called, and which he was left to consume, as the young ladies did not drink it and Osborne did not like it, speedily worked its disastrous ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... lies; Here last September was he laid; Poppies these, that were his eyes, Of fish-bones are these blue-bells made; His fins of gold that to and fro Waved and waved so long ago, Still as petals wave and wave To and fro above his grave. Hearken, too! for so his knell Tolls ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet-song and dance and wine; And thou art terrible—the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know or dream or fear Of agony, ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various |
