"Wail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then, my Life, my Breath! Return, my Comforter! Hear my bitter wail of woe, lead me back to my home. Have pity on my loneliness! Restore Thy love to me, bring me once again to the cleft of my rock, and let me hide myself in the shadow of ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... wintry night the low wail of a new-born infant was heard issuing from a bundle of ragged clothing which some poor creature had laid down on the doorstep of a house in a small by-street not many squares from our own. The house was occupied in part by a man named Varick, who had a wife and several children. This ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... all, men. Pretty cold night, this—minus thirty-eight. Only a quarter of a mile covered to-day. Everybody suffering in their feet, and so weak—and starving—and freezing." All at once the voice became a wail. "My God! is it never going to end?... Sh—h, steady, what was that? Who whimpered? Was that Ward Bennett? No whimpering, whatever comes. Stick it out like men, anyway. Fight it out till we drop, but no ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... girls and boys, For bits of brass And broken glass, (these four lines being spoken in a breathless hurry) A penny or a vial-bottell . . . . (this being drawled out in an endless wail). ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... spoke, the other spirit mourn'd With wail so woful, that at his remorse I felt as though I should have died. I turn'd Stone-stiff; and to the ground, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... they're bringing Forms that graced the peaceful vale; Youthful herdsman, gaily singing! Thus they'll chant thy funeral wail. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... And the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane To our cheering sent us back— Their shots along the deep slowly boom: Then ceased, and all is wail As they strike the shatter'd sail, Or, in ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... her place. "Oh you incredible little waif!" She brought it out with a wail of violence; after which, with another convulsion, she ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... voice is heard no more By windy Illium's sea-built walls; From the washing wave and the lonely shore No wail goes up as Hector falls. On Ida's mount is the shining snow, But Jove has gone from its brow away, And red on the plain the poppies grow Where Greek and Trojan ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... sings, yet so does wail? O 'tis the ravished Nightingale. Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu, she cries, And still her woes at Midnight rise. Brave prick song! who is't now we hear? None but the lark so shrill and clear; Now at heaven's gates she claps her wings, The Morn not waking ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... turn away. Between the two impulses he was presently pacing the room; and since there was no one who appeared to have any interest in what he might say, he began muttering to himself. I would catch a phrase: "The fate of woman!" And again: "The price of life!" I would hear the terrible, explosive wail: "O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh!" And it would wring a cry out of the depths of Carpenter's soul: "Oh, ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... Mun Bun set up a wail. It seemed that his shoes were brand new and he was very proud of them. He would not consider eating ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... my dear Spenser, doth not require tears and lamentations. Dry thine eyes; rebuild thine house: the queen and council, I venture to promise thee, will make ample amends for every evil thou hast sustained. What! does that enforce thee to wail ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... and wagon of the flying division disappeared over the hill toward health and home, a despairing wail went up from the doomed 350 left in this condition of indescribable horror. 'We are abandoned to die!' they cried; 'we are deserted by our own comrades in the hour of danger and left ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... to conceive the intensity of anguish with which an ancient Roman generally regarded the thought of banishment. In the long melancholy wail of Ovid's "Tristia;" in the bitter and heart-rending complaints of Cicero's "Epistles," we may see something of that intense absorption in the life of Rome which to most of her eminent citizens made a permanent separation from the city and its interests a thought almost as terrible as death ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... ringing, it echoed and reechoed along the mountain; now pleadings, as though a soul in darkness prayed a gleam of light; again rising, swelling exultingly, as in glad triumph, only to die away once more to that moaning wail, seeming at last to ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... is right?" Wilford asked, for now that the time drew near when the little crib at home would be empty, the nursery desolate, with no fretful, plaintive wail to annoy and worry him, he began to feel that after all that cry was not so very vexing as he had imagined it to be; that he might miss it when it was gone, and wish back the little creature which had been so ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... their place shall serve me, and sustain Their plagues, their torments suffer, sorrows bear, And they his absence shall lament in vain, And wail his loss and theirs with many a tear:' Thus talking to herself she did ordain A false and wicked guile, as you shall hear; Thither she hasted where the valiant knight Had overcome and slain ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... set a 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 ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... the flood in quest of gain And beat for joyless months, the gloomy wave. Let such as deem it glory to destroy, Rush into blood, the sack of cities seek; Unpierced, exulting in the widow's wail, The virgin's shriek ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... me a lulling chant, O Anthem-Maker, Out of the fall of lonely seas and the wind's sorrow. Behind are the burning glens of the sunset sky Where, like blown ghosts, the seamews Wail their desolate sea dirges. Make now of these a lulling chant, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... seized the fire tongs. The cat's wail had roused Hotchkiss, who was wide-awake at once. He took in my offensive attitude, the tongs, the direction of my gaze, and needed nothing more. As he picked up the candle and darted out into the hall, I followed him. He made directly for the staircase, and part way up he turned off to the ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... over the half rigid parchment. I saw that Ellen had gone; but presently she came again, hesitating, flushing red, and put into my hands the other half of our indenture. She carried Pete, the little dog, under her arm, his legs projecting stiffly; and now a wail of protest broke from Pete, squeezed too tightly in ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... been brought back again by magic. They have no tongues, the Esemkofu, for had they tongues they would cry aloud to mortals the awful secrets of the dead, therefore, they can but utter a wailing like that of a babe. Surely one may hear them in the forests at night as they wail "Ai!—ah! Ai—ah!" among the ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... time Eaglenose and Umqua had appeared upon the scene, and added their testimony to that of their chief. While they were still engaged in explanation, a low wail from Softswan turned their attention to the ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... the dimly lighted corner by the canopy, came a little piteous wail; then another followed, and was lost in the singer's voice. During a long phrase on the harpsichord, sharp and tinkling, the singer turned his head towards the dais, and there came a plaintive little sob. But he, instead of stopping, struck a sharp chord; and with ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... that there is a banshee at Borris—though no living witness, I believe, has heard its warning wail. But as we sat in the beautiful library, and watched the dying light of day, a lady present told us a tale more gruesome than many of those in which the "psychical" inquirers delight. She was sitting, she said, in an upper room of an ancient mansion here in Carlow, in which she lives, ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... heard his mother's wail, Once more uplifted on the gale, Moaning The Red who ne'er returned— His cheeks with sudden passion burned; And darkly frowned that valiant man, As through his quivering body ran The lightnings of impelling ire And impulses of fierce desire, That surged, ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... Doorm: "Well, if he be not dead, Why wail ye for him thus? ye seem a child. And be he dead, I count you for a fool; Your wailing will not quicken him: dead or not, Ye mar a comely face with idiot tears. Yet, since the face is comely—some of you, Here, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... boy lay quietly while the nurse completed the dismemberment of the ragged coat, the apology for a shirt, and the bit of twine which served in lieu of suspenders. But the moment she began on the trousers, the wail was renewed. ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... unfathomable deeps a dirge Swells sobbing through the melancholy air: Where Love has entered, Death is also there. The wail outrings the chafed, tumultuous surge; Ocean and earth, the illimitable skies, Prolong one note, a mourning for the dead, The cry of souls not to be comforted. What piercing music! Funeral visions rise, And send the hot tears raining down our cheek. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... once more, and disappeared into the vehicle; Nurse Honor made one more rush, and uttered another 'Ohone' over Abbe Phelim, who followed into the carriage; the door was shut; there was a last wail over 'Lanty, the sunbeam of me heart,' as he climbed to the box seat; the harness jingled; coachman and postilions cracked their whips, the impatient horses dashed out at the porte cochere; and Arthur, after endeavouring to dispose of his legs, looked about him, and saw, opposite ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... confidence for a time, as the shades of evening fell fast, and all below in the deep ravine grew black, but he was startled again by a low rushing noise that came down the valley, followed by a piteous wail which sent a chill through him, and made the hands which held the ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... 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 at dinner, and spilling ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... attention, food is eaten by those present. Fires are kept burning within the house and also outside, and after each meal the people strike one another's legs with firebrands in order to forget their grief. Members of the family, who begin to wail immediately after his death, continue to do so constantly for seven days, and they wear no red garments until after the tiwah feast which constitutes his second funeral. The coffin is buried in the ground or placed on a crude platform, and, when this work is finished, thorough ablution in water ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... 100 And gilds the horrors of the deepen'd glooms. —Here oft the Naiads, as they chanced to play Near the dread Fane on THOR'S returning day, Saw from red altars streams of guiltless blood Stain their green reed-beds, and pollute their flood; 105 Heard dying babes in wicker prisons wail, And shrieks of matrons thrill the affrighted Gale; While from dark caves infernal Echoes mock, And Fiends triumphant shout from every rock! —-So still the Nymphs emerging lift in air 110 Their snow-white shoulders and their azure hair; ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... varnished cloth; they were disputing violently amid thick clouds of smoke from their pipes. The second and third floors were the quietest. Here through the open doors came the sound of a cradle rocking, the wail of a baby, a woman's voice, the rattle of a spoon against a cup. On one door she read a placard, MME GAUDRON, CARDER; on the next, M. MADINIER, MANUFACTURER ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... the wail of a man in torture burst from him. It woke more than one sleeper in the distant chambers of the Chateau, making them start upon their pillows to listen for another cry, but none came. Bigot was a man of iron; he retained self-possession enough to recollect the danger of rousing ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... wail for a few seconds more before two patrolmen and a sergeant came up on horses. It took somewhat more time than that for Malone to convince the sergeant that he didn't have time to go down to the station to prefer ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... there was one to whom it was the synonyme of all that gave beauty or gladness to life; and ere the bells had ceased to sound, or the eager crowd to huzza, her heart was still. With her last quivering sigh had mingled the wail of ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... ("John, cut wood!"). Tree frogs and crickets clacked and drummed and hoo-hooed, guaribas poured their awful discord into the air, and on one bright breathless night there sounded over and over a call freighted with wretchedness and despair—the wail of that lonely owl known to the bushmen as "the mother of the moon," whose dreadful cry portends evil to those who ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... spectator, for it seemed so slight an effort. He was long-winded, and was still bounding about in the double-shuffle and the pigeon-wing, his shadow on the wall nimbly following every motion, when the violin's cadence quavered off in a discordant wail, and Leander, the bow pointed at the waterfall, exclaimed: "Look out! Somebody's thar! Out thar on ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Navaho raised a shrill quavering wail that carried like the howl of a coyote. Again the reverberating echoes ran up the precipices and slowly died out far above, and again no response came from the top ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... sacked and burning village; The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns; The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage; The wail of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... knew that the Egyptian Government regarded him as a rebel and an imposter. But continually striking her forehead and invoking heaven to witness her innocence and unhappy plight, she began to weep and at the same time wail mournfully as women in the East do after losing husbands or sons. Afterwards she again flung herself with face on the ground, or rather on the carpet with which the inlaid floor was covered, and ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... winds blew,[ai] As glad to waft him from his native home; And fast the white rocks faded from his view, And soon were lost in circumambient foam: And then, it may be, of his wish to roam Repented he, but in his bosom slept[34] The silent thought, nor from his lips did come One word of wail, whilst others sate and wept, And to the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... thy bloody business thou wast thyself nowhere to be seen. In the vouts and abysses of thy unstained palace, thou hidst thyself from the eye of history, and perhaps humanely sat covering thine ears with thy hands to shut out the sound of the wail and woe around thee. But this Herod—let me not call him by so humane a name. No: let all the trumpets of justice sound his own to everlasting infamy—Charles the Ninth of France! And let his ambassador that is ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... the tiller, Just above his head; "Sing, O Eyvind Skaldaspiller," Then Earl Eric said. "Sing the song of Hakon dying, Sing his funeral wail!" And another arrow flying Grazed his coat ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... unworthiness and impurity, as well as that of their people, they uttered their spiritual desires, and their aspirations and disappointments and indignations and humiliations, in strains that make their great writings sound like one long, impassioned, rhythmic wail through the bars of a dungeon. Gloomy, wrathful, and intense, their utterances are grand and pathetic and sublime; but the beautiful plays through them, and gilds their highest points as the white crests do the billows ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... have more babies," says the Bishop. Even if they are anemic and rickety, ill-nourished and deformed, and even if the mothers, already overburdened and underfed, die in giving them birth? To the average thinking woman, this wail for large families, coming as it always does ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... is this indiwidual"—indicating Sprowl. "But it is wery unjust to be cursing him, for it vas not his fault. It vas my legs and Toby's that conweyed him; and he had a handkersheaf over his face for a wail." ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... he thought it was his ears ringing; then he made out the rising, shrieking wail and fall of the emergency siren, steps running, shouting voices, the slow clang of the doors. Someone was pushing at him, babbling words in Lhari, but he heard them through an ever-increasing distance: ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... or three hundred of them in all, perhaps more, in the Loucheux village and the remainder of the Eskimo encampment, but all of them in unison, if not in accord, raised their voices in a tremulous wail which fairly made ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... no doubt that Katie would have said it again, had not her mother closed the scene with a prolonged wail of censure. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... young gentleman, as he slammed the door and so shut off the wail. "Damn 'em, they worry Charles to death. If he would only stick to quinze and picquet, and keep clear of the hounds*, he need ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... said nothing, brushing his way through the clamorous mass and directing his staggering steps toward Tyee. The old squaw raised the wail, and one by one the women joined her as they swung in behind. The men crawled out of their trenches and ran back to gather about Tyee, and it was noticed that the Sunlanders climbed upon ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... sung. As Tua's pure and lovely voice floated over them the listeners seemed to see that lover, daring all in his desire, creep into the solemn sanctuary of the temple. They saw Hathor appear in her wrath and smite him cold in death. They saw the beauteous priestess with her lamp, and heard her wail her life away upon her darling's corpse; saw, too, the dead borne by spirits over the borders ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... fetch them, the dinner had run away! Then the tiger family set up such a wail and lament over ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle, Book Two • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... 'One cannot wail properly in this cave,' he said, 'it is much too damp. You had better take the body to the storehouse. It will sound much finer there.' So the bear carried his wife's body to the storehouse, while he himself went back to the cave to cook some pap ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... nor will they fulfil the promise that they pledged thee when they still were marching hither from horse-pasturing Argos; that thou shouldest not return till thou hadst laid well-walled Ilios waste. For like young children or widow women do they wail each to the other of returning home. Yea, here is toil to make a man depart disheartened. For he that stayeth away but one single month far from his wife in his benched ship fretteth himself when winter storms and the furious sea imprison him; but for us, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... after the scene in the arbor, and all was mourning in the so lately happy, hospitable house; everybody looked through tears. There were subdued breathings, a low murmur, as of many listeners, a voice of prayer, and the wail of a funeral hymn,—and then the heavy tread of bearers, as, beneath the black pall, she was carried over the threshold of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... is no 'wine, woman, and song' over there. The 'wine' is stale beer, the 'woman' is a degraded money-making machine, and the 'song' is the wail of the outraged innocent. The political backers have got it down to what has been called a 'cash-register, commutation-ticket basis,' called so from the fact that in some of these places they issued tickets, on the plan of a commutation ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... had a plainsman's ear as well as a plainsman's eye. As he listened, through the wail of the wind borne along the distance, he caught the words of a song, low and pleading like ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... darlings what died for it! My darlings—Aylorff, my husband!" There was a wail rose up off her words, like the smoke of incense curling, circling around her. "My darlings what ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... dying down to its last wail when Gray looked up and caught sight of her coming. His mind had been full of her. To him certain pieces of music always meant certain people, and the Serenade could bring him nothing but Johnnie Consadine's face. His startled eyes encountered ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... 16, 1717, finds her in her agony; the blest candle is lighted; the faithful brother priest is kneeling by her bed; the solemn wail of the privileged few of the grateful poor is carried in mournful cadence from the ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... voices lifted a wail, And a hundred glad voices piped on the gale: 'Time is short, life is short,' they took up the tale: 'Life is sweet, love is sweet, use to-day while you may; 40 Love is sweet, and to-morrow may fail; Love is ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... unkingly. Rather was it the wail of a criminal on being told that the executioner waited without. His ruddy cheeks blanched, and his hands were outstretched as if in a piteous plea for mercy. There was a tumult of objurgations in the outer passage; but this King in spite of ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... are rolling heavy, Fitful gusts distend his sail; See the whirlpool's foaming eddy, Hear the seagull's mournful wail. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... a man as he, separate from all others and alone with his life, but to question the Fate that impelled him, now in this tone and now in that? What remained for such unsatisfied, joyless strength but the stern, wild laughter of fiends that the question could not be answered—and the deep wail of Fate, which also is sung in his music, that such strength should have the ruggedness of endurance but not the gracefulness of Faith? How I wished you ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... agony before the little dog scrambled to his feet and gave further employment to his voice in a frenzy of profanity. At the same time the subterranean diapason of a demoniac bass viol was heard; it rose to a wail, and rose and rose again till it screamed like a small siren. It was Gipsy's war-cry, and, at the sound of it, Duke became a frothing maniac. He made a convulsive frontal attack upon ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... down the stream, which flows for many miles through a magnificent canyon. Not one of the regiment returned or was ever heard of. When all hope had departed from the wives, children, and friends left behind at Trinidad, information was sent to Santa Fe, and a wail went up through the land. The priests and people then called this stream "El Rio de las Animas Perditas" ("The river of lost souls"). Years after, when the Spanish power was weakened, and French trappers came into the country under the auspices of the great fur companies, they adopted ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... Nature free, and filled the sky with silvery haze, and called home the stork and crane, summoning forth the tender buds, and clothing the bare branches with delicate green. "Balder is the mildest, the wisest, and the most eloquent of all the AEsir," says the "Edda." A voice of wail went through the palaces of Asgard when Balder was slain by the mistletoe dart. Hermod rode down to the kingdom of Hela, or Death, to ransom the lost one. Meantime his body was set adrift on a floating funeral pyre. Hermod would have succeeded in his mission, had not Lok, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... My prisoner uttered a wail of anguish. One would have thought the ape's trifling booty an inestimable treasure, for he rode so furiously toward Ciacco that the ape dropped the melon and scampered up a neighbouring tree. But my blood was up. I was not to be defrauded of my prey, and as the traveller was on the point of ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... was tapped for dropsy; his condition grew worse; in the evening of September 13, 1806, he died. He was the greatest liberal of his age; the greatest friend of liberty. The Irish poet bade the Irish banshee wail for him on whose burning tongue, truth, ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... hopes of those who loved the reformed Church as well as they loved their country were sadly blasted by the apostasy of their leader. From the most eminent leaders of the Huguenots there came a wail, which must have penetrated even to the well-steeled heart of the cheerful Gascon. "It will be difficult," they said, "to efface very soon from your memory the names of the men whom the sentiment of a common religion, association in the same perils and persecutions, a common ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... monarch's palace, when Sped from the bower that lord of men, Up from the weeping women went A mighty wail and wild lament: "Ah, he who ever freely did His duty ere his sire could bid, Our refuge and our sure defence, This day will go an exile hence, He on Kausalya loves to wait Most tender and affectionate, And as ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... their chief. On the receipt of this intelligence, all the men of our house left it and repaired to one adjoining, where a great "drink" was held, while the women indulged in a loud, low, monotonous, heart-breaking wail, which they kept up for several hours. Mr. COOK and myself agreed that things looked almost as bad for us as they well could, and when, towards morning, the men returned to our house, my Chinese boy clung to me in terror and—nothing happened! But certainly I do not think I have ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... wicked wight Her 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 and howle"— ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... know it's almost within sight and sound of the sea; and the voice of the wind among the pines—dark, straight ranks of pines like soldiers in mourning, standing in a bloodstained sea of heather—seemed to me like the wail of ghostly pipes playing a Highland lament. Wandering among the wavy graves and piled cairns of the different clans who gave their lives in vain for Prince Charlie, I was with Basil all alone, for those ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... step. There was a long piercing wail of the whistle that was smothered as the engine entered the snow-shed. The girl on the platform stood motionless a moment. Then one of her hands dropped from her breast, and with it came a faded spray of purple lilac. She stepped quickly to the rail and tossed it back into the twilight. Wade ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... seven of the malcontents had been carried bodily overboard; and as for the remainder, when they found their tongues again, it was to bellow to the saints and wail upon Lawless to come back ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... awful stench and dismal wail Come from the broiling souls, Whilst Satan with his fireproof tail Stirs up the ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... are loud in their wail! And Mary-Axe orphans all trembling and pale! For the Alderman glory has melted away, As mists are dispersed by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... 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 men hauling a sled ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... for, as Goethe said, work makes the comrade, and democracy might have a chance of becoming a reality instead of a party phrase. After three years' service down the sewers or at the smelting works, our men of leisure would no longer raise their wail over national degeneracy or the need of maintaining the standard of hardihood by barrack-square drill. As things are now, it is themselves who chiefly need the drill. "Those who live at ease," said Professor James, "are an island on a stormy ocean." In the summing up ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... metamorphosed into birds were HONOURED AS ANCESTORS by the Athenians.(1) Thus the unceasing musical wail of the nightingale and the shrill cry of the swallow were explained by a Greek story. The birds were lamenting their old human sorrow, as the honey-bird in Africa still repeats the name of her ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... he was so crooked he could not reach the top of his wife's head in any other way, Dr. Pipt began shaking the bottle. But not a grain of powder came out. He pulled off the cover, glanced within, and then threw the bottle from him with a wail of despair. ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... send me away!" the golden-haired girl broke out, in a voice that was positively a wail, and clasping a pair of pretty, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... struck her hands together wildly. Her voice had in it a wail of suffering that sent a thrill to the heart ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... divine Stradivarius! Played on by ancient maestros until the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate, young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed from his dying hand to the cold virtuoso, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... homogeneity are not to be predicated of 'anything that's merely ours and mortal.' We have missed the whole teaching of history if we wail aloud because Greek and Roman culture succumbed to barbarism, out of which mediaeval Christianity emerged; because the revival of learning diverted arts and letters in each Occidental nation from their home-plowed channels; because Protestant ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... To-ot! The shrill 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 ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... listen to the song. He abruptly left the room, and went out once more into the cool night-air and the darkness. But even here he was not allowed to forget the sorrow he had been vainly endeavoring to banish, for in the far distance the pipes still played the melancholy wail of Lochaber. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... indifference, now showed such eager appreciation of music; it eased the pain he suffered by transferring it to an ideal world, and his own grievous sorrow made the music so real that it gave him an enjoyment of extraordinary vehemence. When it was all over and Isolde had given her last wail of sorrow, Arthur was so exhausted that he could ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... A wail of fear went up from the wreck and was echoed from the beach, but by the blessing of Providence she kept afloat until we made our way under her bowsprit and rescued ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wail deride! The solemn sorrow dies in scorn; And lonely in the waste I hide The tortured heart that would forewarn. And the happy, unregarded, Mocked by their fearful joy, I trod: Oh! dark to me the lot awarded, Thou ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... went to sleep—HOW, I don't know. Then Dad sat beside him, and for long intervals would stare silently into the darkness. Sometimes a string of the vermin would hop past close to the fire, and another time a curlew would come near and screech its ghostly wail, but he never noticed them. Yet ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... horns, While his poor spindle-shanks he scorns— But, lo! he hears the hunter's cries, And, frighten'd, o'er the champaign flies— His swiftness baffles the pursuit: At length a wood receives the brute, And by his horns entangled there, The pack began his flesh to tear: Then dying thus he wail'd his fate: "Unhappy me! and wise too late! How useful what I did disdain! How grievous that which ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... victim uttered a wail, at the third a piercing shriek. Garofoli lifted his hand; Ricardo stopped with raised whip. I thought Garofoli was going to show mercy, but ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... Duryodhana had said unto me. I also pointed out to them the lake that the king had entered. Then Ashvatthama, O king, having heard those words from me, cast his eyes on that extensive lake and began to wail in grief, saying, "Alas, alas, the king knows not that we are still alive! With him amongst us, we are still quite able to fight with our foes!" Those mighty car-warriors, having wept there for a long time, fled away at ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the night, A wail that dies when the wind roars? We heard it first on Shipley's Hill, It faded ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... Waitstill's mind. He was gay and young and thoughtless; how had he managed to do this wild thing?—and had he done all decently and wisely, with consideration for the girl's good name? The thought of all the risks lying in the train of Patty's youth and inexperience brought a wail of anguish from Waitstill's lips, and, dropping the beads and closing the drawer, she stumbled blindly down the stairway to the kitchen, intent upon one thought only—to find her sister, to look in her eyes, feel the touch of her hand, and assure ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with that wail our hearts were turned, and somewhat backward hung The press of men: we bade him say from whence his blood was sprung, And what he did, and if indeed a captive we might trust; So thus he spake when now all fear from off his heart ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... tree to push majestically up toward the open sky. Because she did not cry out was no sign that she was not hurt; and because she did not wither and die of her wounds was only proof of her strength of soul. The weak wail and the weak succumb; the strong persist—and a world of wailers and weaklings calls ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... felt the savage splendor of it. The wildness of this place, its solitude, its distance from mankind, supported me. The cry of a night bird out on the prairie told that it, too, was preying, or being preyed upon; and, as if being stirred by this, a panther sent his wail across the night. I listened for a mate to answer, but she did not. A large, whitish moth flying out of the shadows passed clumsily within a few inches of my face, its wings swishing as a bird's; and it, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... strayed in the glade; (Oh, my soul! but the milk is blue!) She strayed and strayed and strayed and strayed (And I wail and I cry Wa-hoo!) ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... to many objects; Like perspectives which, rightly gaz'd upon, Show nothing but confusion; ey'd awry, Distinguish form: so your sweet Majesty, Looking awry upon your lord's departure, Find shapes of grief more than himself to wail; Which, look'd on as it is, is nought but shadows Of what it is not. Then, thrice-gracious Queen, More than your lord's departure weep not: more's not seen; Or if it be, 'tis with false sorrow's eye, Which for things ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... away ... to the north. He could hear the breath coming, a mere whimper among the tree-tops. The whimper became a whine.... Reaching the pinewood, the note slid into a moan, that rose slowly to a thin wail as the breath fled up the corridor with the towering walls. The wail fell to ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... waltz from the ballroom I heard, When I called him a low, sneaking cur. And the wail of the violins stirred My brute anger with visions of her. As I throttled his windpipe, the purr Of his breath with the ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... whole house sounded a wail that rose as they listened and mounted to a shriek. In spite of her desire to remain cool and ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... to dislocation, better Than raised to take a life which Henry bad me Guard from the stroke that dooms thee after death To wail in deathless flame. ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... inclined their bodies, they inclined also their ears, after the strained manner of listeners who feel anguish at what they hear. A voice, shrill and human, pierced the night like a needle, then, with a wail of a tortured soul, died away amid discordant raspings: the voice of a phonograph. It was their own, or had been until one overconfident day, when the Flying Heart Ranch had risked it as a wager in a foot-race with the neighboring Centipede, ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... full as the room was of beds and tenants, on the morning of the twenty-second, there arose a wail upon the air, and this mundane sphere had another inhabitant, and my room another occupant. I left after that, and when I came back the house was fuller than it was before, and my hostess gave me to ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... privileges of the good city of Paris that anybody may be born, or live, 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. Father 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 us ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... over the camp the lights glimmer in the tents, and as I sit at my desk in the open doorway, there come mingled sounds of stir and glee. Boys laugh and shout,—a feeble flute stirs somewhere in some tent, not an officer's,—a drum throbs far away in another,—wild kildeer-plover flit and wail above us, like the haunting souls of dead slave-masters,—and from a neighboring cook-fire comes the monotonous sound of that strange festival, half pow-wow, half prayer-meeting, which they know only as a "shout." These fires are usually enclosed in a little booth, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... chamber, Death! Come to the mother, when she feels, For the first time, her first-born's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, 5 And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake's shock, the ocean's storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet song, and dance, and wine,— 10 And thou art terrible!—The tear, The groan, the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... birth a blight was on his body and on his mind. With difficulty his almost imperceptible spark of life had been screened and fanned into a dim and flickering flame. His childhood, except when he could be rocked and sung into sickly sleep, was one long piteous wail. Until he was ten years old his days were passed on the laps of women; and he has never once suffered to stand on his ricketty legs. None of those tawny little urchins, clad in rags stolen from scarecrows, whom Murillo loved to paint begging or rolling in the sand, owed less ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... long delay in the waiting-room, which was also the restaurant. It was full of strange noises and figures and odors—the shuffling of feet, the clash of crockery, the explosion of nervous German voices, mixed with the smell of beer and ham, and the smoke of cigars. Through it all pierced the wail of a postman standing at the door with a letter in his hand and calling out at regular intervals, "Krahnay, Krahnay! "When March could bear it no longer he went up to him and shouted, "Crane! Crane!" and the man bowed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was, indeed, lost. They ate their belated supper in silence, half expecting that he would, after all, come walking in upon them. Doctor Joe was grave and preoccupied. Several times, now he, now David, went out into the night to stand and listen in the storm, but all they heard was the wail of wind in ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... a distance of half a cable's-length away, and both ships quickened up their speed, by such small degrees as to be imperceptible, to nine knots, which was as fast as the cruiser's consort could steam. Presently a long, dismal wail came floating across the water from the Union, and Douglas saw that she wished to attract his attention to a signal which she ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... A kind of death-wail arose, during which, to hide untimely laughter, I retreated to a large drawer, in the stern of the vessel, called a cabin. There my ears could distinguish the loud entreaties of the crew vainly urging my attendants to propose a day's delay. Then one of the garrison, accompanied by the Captain who ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... hold the keys That open realms no conqueror can subdue, And where the monarchs of the earth must fain Solicit to be subjects: Heaven and Hades, Lands of Immortal light and shores of gloom. Eternal as the chorus of their wail, And the dim isthmus of that middle space, Where the compassioned soul may purge its sins In pious expiation. Then advance Ye children of all sorrows, and all sins, Doubts that perplex, and hopes that tantalize, All the wild forms ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... began to cry and wail, and the tears started from her eyes, whereupon she began blowing her nose with her apron, and as she tugged at her nose it grew so long, so long, that ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... lived to see him return, though with plaintive wail he often declared to his daughter-in-law that this was impossible. He lived, but he never returned to that living life which had been his before he had taken up the battle for Lady Mason. He would sometimes allow Mrs. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... sat on one of the unpainted benches of the shady stoop, holding a baby in her arms. As Martin had said, slow tears of helpless misery were rolling down her cheeks, while from the bundle that she held came the worn-out, tired wail of a ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was very dry. The wind and the wires took up the story with a long lamenting wail. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... away across the grass and sat down under a tree, holding her head high to keep her tears back, for they hurt. Her thoughts came in a tumult, tender, passionate, incoherent, mixed with the child's wail. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... artistic subject this scene has been seldom treated. I have seen two pictures which represent it. One is a fresco by Giovanni di San Giovanni, which, having been cut from the wail of some suppressed convent, is now in the academy at Florence. The other is a ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... go!" said the pin; "be good enough to remember what I said, and if you can't endure to hear of anybody sitting and looking at a wail, it's no use my going ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... words left her lips, arose a piercing wail from across the street, in which three lusty young throats united—Lucy, Kitty, and John, each outscreaming ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... sudden that seconds had already elapsed before Marion Grimston uttered the cry that rent her like the wail of some strong, primordial creature without ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... stream is Lethe's water wan Unsought of any man: Grass Ceres sowed by alien hands is mown, And now she seeks Persephone alone. The gods have all gone up Olympus' hill, And all the songs are still Of grieving Dryads, left To wail about our woodland ways, bereft, The endless summertide. Queen Venus draws aside And passes, sighing, up Olympus' hill. And silence holds her Cyprian bowers, and claims Her flowers, and quenches all ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... arm, and the sharp part of the hook scraped the skin from her hollow cheek. It paused an instant on the level of her chin, then descended into the upturned chest of the child. With a scream, Scraggy dragged the boy back, and a wail rose from the tiny lips. Crabbe turned, cursing audibly, and stumbled up the steps to the stern of the boat. The woman heard him fall in his drunken stupor, and listened again and again for him to rise. Her face was white and rigid as she ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... those sublime regions. It was sent, by two messengers, throughout the country, and passed from hand to hand, these messengers shouting, as they went, the war-cry of the clan, which was echoed from rock to rock. And then arose the cry of the coronach, that wail, appropriate to the dead, but uttered also by women, as the fiery cross roused them from their peaceful occupations, and hurried from them their ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... earth in white, The snowy plain the wild wolves tread. They wail for the cheering warmth of spring As I bewail ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... she declared. "You must take it in turns to have your own way. It is not fair that the eldest should always arrange everything, but on the other hand Joan and Alwyn will get nothing at all if they begin to wail and complain in that most grumbling and unpleasant tone of voice. I think it is a disgrace if you're all so selfish that you can't agree. You must each be prepared to give up a certain amount, for among eight children it is quite impossible for every one to be first ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... had risen in their seats, men were hurrying down the aisles, while a peculiar human murmur or wail persisted like an undertone beneath the confusion of noises, striking the very note of my own feelings. Above the heads of those about me I saw Krebs being carried off the platform.... The chairman motioned for silence ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... evening, instead of a rival organization from Wells, which the Colonel often imported upon private and public occasions. Jerry Dugan was getting old, too, like the Judge and the Honourable Joe. He had not lost the peculiar wail and lilt from his fiddling, but he had made few recent additions to his repertoire. Just now the band concert in front of Odd Fellows' Hall was winding up with his old favourite: ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... plainly stated. "The people of this country ought never to be satisfied so long as a single penny of rent is paid for a sod of land in the whole of Ireland." And they never will be satisfied, with or without rent. Their dissatisfaction has enabled Mr. Healy to put money in his purse. The wail of a great people whose Parliament will not be allowed to rob from all and sundry is accounted for towards the close of the article. There will be trouble "as soon as the Dublin Legislature becomes hard pushed for money, which will be desperately ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... great crescent palace between the 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 ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... became an agonising wail; the painful shrieking of a lover before the mutilated corpse of his affections. With unsteady hands he touched the limbs lying in confusion around him; the head, the torso, the arms that had snapped in twain; above aught else the bosom, now caved in. That bosom, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... other, though it is probable that a sight of a fresh store of bodily aliment, which was soon after exposed in order to gain access to the roof, might have led to some further inferences, had more time been given to conjectures. But at this moment a new wail proceeded from the maidens who plied the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... embodied, visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind? Cogito, ergo sum. Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, I am; and lately was not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The answer lies around, written in all colours and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious Nature: but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God-written Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning? We sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and Dream-grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest century, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... who can pray without hope? One prays when there is hope. When there is none, we surrender ourselves to God and wail. "My God!" cried her heart, "why shouldst thou separate me thus from him I love? Why deny me the love of others? Thou dost not deny me the sun, nor the air, nor dost thou hide the heavens from my sight. Why dost thou deny me love, when it is possible to live without sun, without air, and without ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... even above the strident shrill of the scolding and the abrupt command of the man's voice and the frightened wail of the littlest girl, rose the cry of Felicia's own anger. Did I say her employer was the angriest woman in the world? I was mistaken. The angriest woman in the world was ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... anger that is not helpless expresses itself in some other way than crying; and the same is true of hunger, pain and discomfort. Crying is the reaction appropriate to a condition where the individual cannot help himself—where he wants something but is powerless to get it. The helpless baby sets up a wail that brings some one to his assistance; that is the utility of crying, though the baby, at first, does not have this result in view, but simply cries because he is hungry and helpless, uncomfortable and {145} helpless, thwarted and helpless. The child cries less as he grows ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... caught the attention of the room. The musicians added their voices to the jangle, and the minor half- inarticulate wail, the dull regular thudding of the bass drum were savage. The song fluctuated and died; the dancer dropped ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... as a low hum, hardly to be distinguished from the distant howling of the wind. Then it slid up scale until the thin wail became an ululating scream torturing the ears, dragging out of hiding those fears of a man confronting the unknown in ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... 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 sleeping-drawers, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield |
