"Wailing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the power of prayer by refusing to believe that his prayer was answered, even though the prophecy was unintelligible. And later, when the passionate cadences of the spirit were in English, and were found to be only trite or foolish words, repeated and repeated in a wailing chant by some sincere, hysterical woman, he still believed that a new day of Pentecost had dawned upon a sinful world! "For," said he, "when I asked for bread, would God ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... and groped up the dark staircase. No one had lit the small oil lamp on the premier, but light from burning houses flashed in at windows; a child had been killed by the fragment of a shell, and the mother was loudly wailing; some were peering out of their doorways; they stared at Marie, who crept up like a ghost. In this rookery the young couple had kept themselves apart, and had no friends. But it was instinctively known that something had happened ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... found that his cries were drowned by the louder voices of the elements. The wailing of the wind among the ancient ruins was much more full of sound than his cries; and, now and then, the full-mouthed thunder filled the air with such a volume of roaring, and awakened so many echoes among the ruins, that, had he possessed ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... the tall man gently lowered the white form under the cruel water; he staggered a moment in the swift stream, recovered himself, raised her, white as death, and the voices of the wailing tune came: ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... lording, honoured wight, What avails you to weep so? What your wailing, what your woe? I may ne'er your darling be, For your father hateth me; All your kin thereto agree. For your sake I'll pass the sea, Get me ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... then, compared with Bologna, London is tranquillity itself. It is fair to say that really nervous and irritable people find the country worse than town. The noise of the nightingales is deplorable. The lamentations of a cow deprived of her calf, or of a passion-stricken cow, "wailing for her demon lover" on the next farm, excel anything that the milkman can perpetrate, and almost vie with the performances of the sweep. When "the cocks are crowing a merry midnight," as in the ballad, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... senses. Providence had protected her. Durade had grown rich—wild—vain—mad to pit himself against the coolest and most skilful gamblers in Benton—and therefore his end was imminent. Allie lay in the dark, listening to Benton's strange wailing roar, sad, yet hideous, and out of what she had seen and heard, and from the mournful message on the night wind, she realized how closely associated were gold and evil and men, and how inevitably they must lead to lawlessness and to bloodshed ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... whether, as usual, sulking in the cabin of his yacht, or in one of his fitful and extravagant appearances in the world of society, I had, of course, no means of guessing. The place had an air of solitude that daunted even a solitary like myself; the wind cried in the chimneys with a strange and wailing note; and it was with a sense of escape, as if I were going indoors, that I turned away and, driving my cart before me, entered the ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... that?" she asked with a start, for a wild shrill cry rang suddenly out of the stillness, and the hillside returned the sound in a doleful wailing before it died away. ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... relinquished the cup, took her lamp and climbed the stairs. Her good night was as mournful as a funeral march. Thankful, left alone, tried to read for a time, but the wailing wind and squeaking shutters made her nervous and depressed, so, after putting the key under the mat of the side door for Heman Daniels, who was out attending a meeting of the Masonic Lodge, ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... thin blade and all those present covered their eyes with their cloaks, when a wailing voice called on the executioner to delay yet a moment. The High King uncovered his eyes and saw that a woman had approached driving a cow ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... silence within the house, and a prolonged clamor—a sort of witches' chorus, with wailing and shrieking without. Once a heavy branch was torn from one of the great elms, and came thundering down on the roof. This proved the finishing touch for poor Virginia. She went into violent hysterics, and was carried ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... listen to the cause of his detention at the hospital. It was more than enough that he had been out walking with her,—with her, in the dead of night. That seemed the only fact she cared to grasp, and that she crooned over with bitter wailing until his patience ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the city's black shrouds, processions, torches, silent seas of faces and bared heads, the dirges and the bells, the dim-lit churches, wailing organs, fierce invectives from the altar, and the perfume of flowers piled in heaps by silent hearts—to all these ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... specimen of the way in which Confucius turned occurring matters to account, in his intercourse with his disciples. As he was passing by the side of the Tai mountain, there was a woman weeping and wailing by a grave. Confucius bent forward in his carriage, and after listening to her for some time, sent Tsze-lu to ask the cause of her grief. 'You weep, as if you had experienced sorrow upon sorrow,' said Tsze-lu. ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... to her in consideration of her great age and the vital importance she seemed to attach to it. I never shall forget his describing her when first she saw it, appearing for a moment petrified at sight of it, and then tottering forward and falling down on her knees, and weeping and wailing over these poor remains of the royalty of her country as if it had been the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Now with the wailing of the violin her soul grew hungry and sad, and a strange, unchildish fear crept over her, a fear of the years to come—so long and endless they would be, always coming, coming, one after another; and here she was, never to stop living, and every day doing something that ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... vengeance and equity. I presumed, O Providence! upon whetting out the notches of thy sword and repairing thy partialities. But, oh, vain trifling! here I stand on the brink of a fearful life, and learn, with wailing and gnashing of teeth, that two men like myself could ruin the whole edifice of the moral world. Pardon—pardon the boy who thought to forestall Thee; to Thee alone belongeth vengeance; Thou needest not the hand of man! But it is not in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... together for the last days, when "miseries were coming upon them," the prospect of which might well drench them in tears and fill them with terror. If these admonition and warnings were heeded there, would not "the South" break forth into "weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth?" What else are its rich men about, but withholding by a system of fraud, his wages from the laborer, who is wearing himself out under the impulse of fear, in cultivating their fields and producing their luxuries? Encouragement ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... have been better than most boys, and it may be that his father was a better driver than leader for his little ones. Some fathers are. In any event, when Master M. was ten years old there came another opportunity for weeping and wailing, and Master M. was submitted to the mortification of lying on the damp ground all day while he listened to a parental lecture; and this, too, after ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... forth without Carlisle, and she prepared herself for death. There was weeping and wailing and wringing of hands of many lords and ladies, and few in comparison there present would bear any armour ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... sea-plain. The Kami of the Sun and the Kami of the Moon proceed at once to their appointed task, but the Kami of force, though of mature age and wearing a long beard, neglects his duty and falls to weeping, wailing, and fuming. Izanagi inquires the cause of his discontent, and the disobedient Kami replies that he prefers death to the office assigned him; whereupon he is forbidden to dwell in the same land with Izanagi and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the entire party of the Sioux was in confusion. We saw them running about, mounting, heard them shouting and wailing. ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... not one shore alone, whose surge Came wailing to her like a dirge; The surf, the waves of every sea, Everywhere, moaned ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... fiercely upon the woman. She almost felt as if she could have choked her. She seized her by the shoulders without ceremony. The ayah ceased her wailing for a moment, then recommenced in a lower key. Muriel pulled her to her feet, half-dragged, half-led her to her own room, thrust her within, and locked the door upon her. Then ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... home, as was sooth indeed. She threw the door open, and unladed the ass of all his wares, and first of the youngling, whom she shook awake, and bore into the house, and laid safely on the floor of the chamber; nor did she wait on her wailing, but set about what was to be done to kindle fire, and milk a she-goat, and get meat upon the board. That did she, and fed both herself and the child plenteously: neither did she stint her of meat ever, from that time forward, however ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... ash together, and thereon shall the Mighty lie; Nor gold nor steel shall be lacking, nor savour of sweet spice, Nor cloths in the Southlands woven, nor webs of untold price; The work grows, toil is as nothing; long blasts of the mighty horn From the topmost tower out-wailing o'er the ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... reserves of destructive hate and cruelty in our common human soul. In war all things are permissible. To murder, to maim, to destroy, to deceive, to make hideous waste of fertile land, to cause weeping and wailing amongst the innocent—these are the necessities of warfare. They are the commonplace incidents of war. There are others. It brings to the surface strata of human nature to which culture has never descended. It ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... the stifling blackness of the southern night had these voices ever failed to bring back to my memory the snowy wastes of the North, and the icy, wailing storm-wind, and the ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... crowd surged back from the door and formed on either side of the path, leaving an opening down the centre. A tall half-breed with a shock of wavy black hair stepped from the doorway, raised his violin, and adjusting it into position, struck up a lively tune to the accompaniment of the wailing of a broken concertina played by another half-breed who preceded the newly married couple. Neykia wore a silk handkerchief over her head, a light-coloured cotton waist open at the throat, a silk sash over one shoulder, and a short skirt revealing beaded leggings and ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... as holy and enchanted, As e'er beneath a wailing moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover." Poetical Works, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... and immoral nation." All his life long he recognized the faults and errors of the new civilization. All his life long he labored diligently and lovingly to correct them. To the dark prophecies of Carlyle, which came wailing to him across the ocean, he answered with ever hopeful and cheerful anticipations. "Here," he said, in words I have already borrowed, "is the home of man—here is the promise of a new and more excellent social state than ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... upper lake. Over the mountains came the sonorous yet wailing, swinging yet rapt, intonation of the negro at ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... juicy this spring, eh? They heven't dree-ernt her yet," said Dave with a malicious grin. "See there, now, young Tom Tallington," he cried, stepping past the lad, and, picking up a couple of eggs in spite of the wailing of their owners, as they came napping close by, the cock bird in his glossy-green spring feathers, and a long pendent tuft hanging down from the back ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... syllabling Into a heart caught-up to hear That inmost pondering Of bird-like self with self. We stood, In happy trance-like solitude, Hearkening a lullay grieved and sweet— As when on isle uncharted beat 'Gainst coral at the palm-tree's root, With brine-clear, snow-white foam afloat, The wailing, not of water or wind— A husht, far, wild, divine lament, When Prospero his wizardry bent Winged ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... great trouble, Wotan. As I was coming by the river I heard them weeping and wailing. Black Alberich has stolen their gold, and I promised them that I would tell you about it. Perhaps you ...
— Opera Stories from Wagner • Florence Akin
... visions, passing the night; Passing, unloosing the hold of my Comrades' hands; Passing the song of the hermit bird, and the tallying song of my soul; Victorious song, Death's outlet song, yet varying, ever-altering song; As low and wailing, yet clear, the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night, Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy. Covering the earth, and filling the spread of the heaven, As that powerful psalm in the night, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Sikabij (plur. of Sikbaj, marinated meat elsewhere explained); Fararij (plur. of farruj, a chicken, vulg. farkh) and Dakakij (plur. of Gr. dakujah,, a small Jar). In the first line we have also (though not a rhyme) Gharanik Gr. , a crane, preserved in Romaic. The weeping and wailing are caused by the remembrance that all these delicacies have been demolished like a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... hoarse murmurs of a gathering sea— As brooks that howling through black gorges go, Groans sullen, hollow, and eternally, One wailing Woe! Sharp Anguish shrinks the shadows there; And blasphemous Despair Yells its wild curse from jaws that never close; And ghastly eyes for ever Stare on the bridge of the relentless River, Or watch ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... sails alternately eclipsed and exposed a star. But I afterwards had reason to believe that I had really seen her, for when we had arrived within about a mile of the spot where I supposed her to be, a faint, wailing cry, as of people in the last extremity of despair, came pealing distinctly to us across the black water, and about a quarter of an hour later we suddenly found ourselves among a quantity of floating ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... honey-golden travertine; between them, as I looked one way, a deep strip of sea; when I turned, the purple gorges of the Apennine; and all about the temple, where I sat in solitude, a wilderness dead and still but for that long note of wailing melody. I had not thought it possible that here, in my beloved home, where regret and desire are all but unknown to me, I could have been so deeply troubled by a thought of things far off. I returned with head bent, that voice singing ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... sky. And next there was turmoil and uproar, and a flashing of swords, and they tore the youth from her arms, and stabbed him, but with a cry she snatched the dagger from his belt, and drove it into her snowy breast, home to the heart, and down she fell, and then, with cries and wailing, and every sound of lamentation, the pageant rolled away from the arena of my vision, and once more the past shut to ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... brought into the clearing about the camp. Lolla, at the sight of John, lying against a tree, his arms and his feet bound, gave a cry of rage, and, snatching her arms from her guardians, ran toward him, wailing. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart
... they could only have starved miserably within the town, or have hindered him from saving it for his sovereign; but to them it was dreadful to be driven out of house and home, straight down upon the enemy, and they went along weeping and wailing, till the English soldiers met them and asked why they had come out. They answered that they had been put out because they had nothing to eat, and their sorrowful, famished looks gained pity for them. King Edward sent orders that not only should they go safely through ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... before the judgment-seat, and there is no appeal, but only hanging is in store for you. While the wretched man's heart is thus filled with woe and only the sorrowing Muses bedew their cheeks with tears, in his strait is heard on every side the wailing appeal to us, and to avoid the danger of impending death he shows the slight sign of the ancient tonsure which we bestowed upon him, begging that we may be called to his aid and bear witness to the privilege bestowed upon him. Then straightway touched with pity we run to meet ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... the glamourie They have stolen my wee brother, Housed a changeling in his swaddlings For to fret my own poor mother. Pules it in the candle light Wi' a cheek so lean and white, Chinkling up its eyne so wee Wailing shrill at her an' me. It we'll neither rock nor tend Till the Silent Silent send, Lapping in their awesome arms Him they stole with spells and charms, Till they take this changeling creature Back to its own fairy ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... upon the path. If she has made blunders in the past, if she has weighted herself with a burden which she must bear to the end, she must but bear the burden bravely, and labour on. There is no use in wailing and repentance here: the next world is the place for that; this life is too short. By our errors we see deeper into life. They help us." She waited for a while. "If she does all this—if she waits patiently, if she is never cast down, never despairs, never forgets her end, moves ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... Presently came Achille Cazaio with a wet sword, and harried the unarmed old man, wantonly driving him about the poplars, pricking him in the quivering shoulders, but never killing him. All the while the steward screamed with a monotonous shrill wailing. ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... great wailing, driving gust of storm at that moment, as if it wanted to sweep them off their feet, but it was a welcome blast, for it was the occasion of a strong arm being flung round Phoebe, to restrain that fluttering cloak. 'Storms shall only blow ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spent in feasting and rejoicing among the relations of the successful warriors; but sounds of grief and wailing were heard from the hills adjacent to the village: the lamentations of women who had lost some relative ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... him Jeanne had already returned from the little fountain with her handkerchief dripping, and was bathing his temples with fresh water. She was the only one who kept her wits about her. Madeleine had raised her master's head and was wailing aloud. ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... would sleep tonight beneath a wilderness of flowers. Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of death for the return of health, whispered ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of scalping their fallen foes. The exclamations they uttered while thus employed, showed the delight they took in the dreadful work. "Our brothers are avenged! our brothers are avenged!" they kept shouting. "Their mothers, and wives, and children will not mourn alone; there will be grief and wailing also in the lodges of the Sioux. They will no longer be able to boast that they are the great warriors of the plains. We have conquered them; we have slain them; we have their scalps to show." Nearly an hour thus passed; so ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... place where Saint-Simon describes the death of Monseigneur, son of the king, and the court hypocrites are wailing their ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... earth," that have "waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies," "shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, and saying, Alas, alas that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls! For in one hour so great riches is ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... hammock you will hear this goat-sucker lamenting like one in deep distress. A stranger would never conceive it to be the cry of a bird. He would say it was the departing voice of a midnight murdered victim or the last wailing of Niobe for her poor children before she was turned into stone. Suppose yourself in hopeless sorrow, begin with a high loud note, and pronounce "ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha," each note lower and lower, till ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... incident of the women who, wailing and lamenting, followed Jesus out of the city. It is quite fitting that in this Gospel, in which womanhood is so exalted, a place should be found for this picture. It is not to be supposed that these were the loyal friends who had followed Jesus on his journeys and helped to ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... to move like some phantom army of misery, a column of ragged shadows, and disappeared at once in the darkness and rain. For a moment there shone in the gloom and amid the tossing trees the solitary light of their guide, for a moment one could hear amid wailing a tremulous hymn, 'He who casts himself on the care of the Lord....' Then the storm broke out again in what seemed like the ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... the unrestrained language of admiration and worship, the unrestrained yielding to the impulses, the anxieties, the pitiable despair and agonies of love, the subordination to it of all other pursuits and aims, the weeping and wailing and self-torturing which it involves, all this is so far apart from what we know of actual life, the life not merely of work and business, but the life of affection, and even of passion, that it makes the picture ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... stackyard, in the old trees, the crows were complaining bitterly with their hard clap-clap tongues, and now and then a great crashing warned of the death of some old storm-scarred veteran of the wood. But it was fine, the music of the storm, the blatter of the snow and the wailing cry of the wind, before a ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... sunk into his chair, buried his face in his hands, and sat trembling and speechless. Never for an instant had Alida taken her eyes from him; and now, with a long, wailing cry, she exclaimed, "Thank ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... alternating with it the Mazatlan's whistle began to roar, like a hoarse shout for help. Between these sounds could be heard the renewed clamour upon the decks, the shouting, the screaming, and the rush of many feet; the little children clung about the knees of their mothers, shrieking and wailing monotonously, "Oh, mama—oh, mama!" rolling their eyes fearfully ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... tenement dwellers went on that day. Ames's hirelings, with loaded rifles, assisted the constables and city police in the miserable work, themselves cursing often because of the keen blasts that nipped their ears and numbed their well-cased limbs. More than one tiny, wailing babe was frozen at the breast that dull, drab afternoon, when the sun hung like a ghastly clot of human blood just above the horizon, and its weird, yellow light flitted through the snow-laden streets like gaunt spectres of death. More than ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... eye shall now behold Him, Robed in dreadful majesty; Those who set at nought and sold Him, Pierced and nailed Him to the tree, Deeply wailing, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... sense in the bringing up of her only child. Living near a butcher, she noticed that the boy mimicked the cries of the pigs. She then removed to the gate of a cemetery; but, noticing that the child changed his tune and mocked the wailing of mourners, she struck her tent and took up her abode near a high school. There she observed with joy that he learned the manners and acquired the tastes of a student. Perceiving, however, that he was in danger of becoming lazy ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... leave him, and sauntered slowly, wrapt in thought, as far as the pinewood. Which he had threaded for a good half-mile, when, the fifth hour of the day being well-nigh past, yet he recking neither of food nor of aught else, 'twas as if he heard a woman wailing exceedingly and uttering most piercing shrieks: whereat, the train of his sweet melancholy being broken, he raised his head to see what was toward, and wondered to find himself in the pinewood; and saw, moreover, before him running through a grove, close set with underwood ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... him before he knew it. Its glaring eyes blinded him. And if it had not screamed at him Fatty would never have escaped. It was the terrible screech of the monster which finally made Fatty jump. It was a frightful cry—like six wildcats all wailing together. And Fatty leaped to one side of the road just before the monster ...
— Sleepy-Time Tales: The Tale of Fatty Coon • Arthur Scott Bailey
... of loud speech came up the staircase; he heard the old stones of the castle crack in the frosty night with sharp reverberations, and the bed complained under his tossings. Lastly, far on into the morning, he awakened from a doze to hear, very far off, in the extreme and breathless quiet, a wailing flourish on the horn. The down mail was drawing near to the 'Green Dragon.' He sat up in bed; the sound was tragical by distance, and the modulation appealed to his ear like human speech. It seemed to call upon him with a dreary ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stared into the night. Marie and Henri were at the cabin of the Bordoux, laughing and chattering in the gay abandon of youth. She could hear their snatches of songs, their quips and laughter rising now and again in shrill gusts. Also the wailing fiddle seemed a part of the warm night, and the bird that called in ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... a rock cleft at his side. Just in time. A great grotesque head bore down upon him, many-fanged as a medieval dragon. Between obsidian eyes was a fissure whence emanated a wailing and a foul odor. Hundreds of short, clawed legs slithered on the rocks under a long sinuous body. Then it seemed to leap into the air again. Webs grew taut between the legs, strumming as they caught a strong uphill wind. Again it ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... account. The first thing Mrs. Forrest did was to whisk the half-drowsing infant out of her attendant's arms, clasp it frantically to her breast, and then go parading up and down the room weeping over the wondering little face, speedily bringing on a wailing accompaniment to her own mournful plaint. It was more than Miss ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... coming into broader thoroughfares now. A wailing child's voice fell on her ear. A small crowd of disreputable idlers was hanging round the closed doors of a public-house, waiting eagerly for the opening which would take place at the close of service-time. The wailing child's voice grew more ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... inner house is stirred with shrieks and misery and confusion, and the court echoes deep with women's wailing; the golden stars are smitten with the din. Affrighted mothers stray about the vast house, and cling fast to the doors and print them with kisses. With his father's might Pyrrhus presses on; nor guards nor ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... to be made for the Cid. But when they came within half a league of Osma, they saw the banner of the Cid coming on, and all his company full featly apparelled. And when they drew nigh they perceived that they were weeping, but they made no wailing; and when they saw him upon his horse Bavieca, according as ye have heard, they were greatly amazed. But so great was the sorrow of the Infante that he and all his company began to lament aloud. And Doa Sol, when she beheld her ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... the pious intent of the bearer. He had taken a candle from his pocket, and, with small respect to the "six worlds" of its rings, used the spiked end to improvise a torch. Then an unexpected voice caught his ear; a sad, wailing cry which chilled the heart. Then followed low, rapid, disorderly speech, the meaning of which rendered indistinct by distance could not be made out. Then came the unearthly startling shriek which rang through ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... him that he should be made to know by some signal from her how it was going with her feelings. As he spoke of his danger, there came a gurgling little trill of wailing from her throat, a soft, almost musical sound of woe, which seemed to add an unaccustomed eloquence to his words. When he spoke of his own hope the sound was somewhat changed, but it was still continued. When he alluded to the disposition of his fortune, she was at his feet. "Not that," ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... grateful song resounding over every land; in homage to the blessing-laden blossoms? Lips long used to wailing swell that chorus loudest, for it was the sunshine caught in buttercup or dandelion that turned so many darkened faces in sudden smiles to heaven. Ah! they are the forms wasted and bowed down by anguish, that stoop ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... held this spot to be haunted by the wailing spirit of a woman in a gray robe, who had been poisoned by a jealous lover. La Corriveau gave him sweatmeats of the manna of St. Nicholas, which the woman ate from his hand, and fell dead at his feet in this trysting-place, where they met for the last ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... She went down the steps leading from the veranda to the court-yard, down this walk to the pier, down the pier to the very end, where the little roofed shelter lay out in the ocean, bathed in moonlight, fairylike, unreal. The ocean was a thing of molten silver. The sound of the wailing voices in song came to her on the breeze, agonizing in its beauty. There, beyond, lay Pearl Harbour. From the other side, faintly, you heard the music and laughter from the ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... unmolested to the end. Meantime we are cast down with a mighty proneness along the dust; our shapely anatomy is clothed in a jaunty suit of sackcloth liberally embellished with the frippery of ashes; our days are vocal with wailing, ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... long-wished for hour had come, Yet came, mo stor, in vain, And left thee but the wailing hum Of sorrow and of pain. My light of life, my lonely love, Thy portion sure must be, Man's scorn below, God's wrath above A Chuisle geal ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... brothers, sisters, and sweethearts, franticly ran from place to place, alike hoping and dreading to learn certain tidings of the fate of those so dear to them. All Copenhagen was a city of wo and wailing. Everybody had sustained a loss. Mothers and fathers wept for their brave sons killed, wounded, or prisoners; sisters for their brothers; girls for their lovers; the patriot for his poor conquered country and his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... water enough without my adding to it. I'm going to be quite a Spartan mother, and send my sons to battle with no wailing, only the command: ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... though, Eugene De Luvois, should be yours. There is purpose in pain, Otherwise it were devilish. I trust in my soul That the great master hand which sweeps over the whole Of this deep harp of life, if at moments it stretch To shrill tension some one wailing nerve, means to fetch Its response the truest, most stringent, and smart, Its pathos the purest, from out the wrung heart, Whose faculties, flaccid it may be, if less Sharply strung, sharply smitten, had fail'd to express Just the one note the great final harmony needs. And what best proves ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... their unusual absence. Had they lost their way in the woods? Could they have fallen in with wolves (one of my early bugbears)? Could any fatal accident have befallen them? I started up, opened the door, held my breath, and listened. The little brook lifted up its voice in loud, hoarse wailing, or mocked, in its babbling to the stones, the sound of human voices. As it became later, my fears increased in proportion. I grew too superstitious and nervous to keep the door open. I not only closed it, but dragged a heavy box in front, for bolt there was none. Several ill-looking ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... is sending a storm. The wind is wailing, and the rain is pouring down, pouring down. All down the roof and into the windows like dried peas. Do you hear? The windows of heaven are opened... ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... row'd amidst the roar Of waters fast prevailing: Lord Ullin reach'd that fatal shore,— His wrath was changed to wailing. ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... woe, thou haughty castle, With all thy gorgeous halls! Sweet string or song be sounded No more within thy walls. No, sighs alone, and wailing, And the coward steps of slaves! Already round thy ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... inhabitants seemed to depart. The ministers exhorted their flocks in vain as the tiles and chimneys began to topple into the streets, and the concussions of the artillery were responded to by the universal wailing of affrighted women. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the police credit me—on my word, I do not," said he in a wailing voice. "Just because they have never heard of it before, they think that such a thing cannot be. But I know that I shall never be easy in my mind until I know what has become of my poor man with the sticking-plaster upon ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... usually stiffly-netted hair falling wildly down her back, Steena watching empty space with narrowed eyes and set mouth, calculating a single wild chance. Bat, crouched on his belly, retreating from thin air step by step and wailing like a demon. ...
— All Cats Are Gray • Andre Alice Norton
... O shaken from thine antique throne, And sunken from thy coerule empery, Now that the red glare of thy fall is blown In smoke and flame about the windy sky, Where are the wailing voices that should meet From hill, stream, grove, and all of mortal shape Who tread thy gifts, in vineyards as stray feet Pulp the globed weight of juiced Iberia's grape? Where is the threne o' ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... lived in a cavern away up in the mountain. She said that he kept watch of the game and that sometimes he shut the game in his cavern. Antler said she had often heard the Big Bear above the voice of the storm. And Fleetfoot, listening for his voice, thought he heard it in the wailing of the storm. ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... slowly across the road toward a path winding through the bare harvest fields, where the gleaners are busily at work. From under the tamarisk hedge comes the shadow of a woman; as the white gown disappears and the lodge-keeper carries off her wailing child, the shadow becomes substance and grows erect into the figure of ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... literally abandoned their nearest and dearest, fleeing from spectacles of anguish and risks of infection? How could she guess that such women are the spiritual sisters of poor heathen and savage Hottentot and Malay mothers and daughters, who, sooner than be burdened with the wailing helplessness of infancy and the mumbling fatuity of age, will expose the children dependent on these murderesses, and the hoary heads that once planned and prayed for the welfare of their slayers, to perish of ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... leave my living hand while I am away; but it shall bring me home safe to live to a patriarchal age and then die peacefully in my bed, with my children and children's children of many generations weeping and wailing around me.' ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... thy habitants! All the fair children of creative creeds, All the lost tribes of Fantasy are thine,— From antique Saturn in Dodonian haunts, Or Pan's first music waked from shepherd reeds, To the last sprite when Heaven's pale lamps decline, Heard wailing soft along ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... results,—namely, the enslavement and spoliation of the people; they did not pollute the sacred places like the Syrian persecutor. By the rivers of Babylon the Jews had sat down and wept when they remembered Zion, but their sad wailing was over the fact that they were captives in a strange land. Ground down to the dust by Antiochus, however, they bewailed not only their external misfortunes, but far more bitterly the desecration of their Sanctuary ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... brushwood freshly pulled, And heaped a lofty mound of his own earth Above him. Then we turned us to the vault, The maiden's stony bride-chamber of death. And from afar, round the unhallowed cell, One heard a voice of wailing loud and long, And went and told his lord: who coming near Was haunted by the dim and bitter cry, And suddenly exclaiming on his fate Said lamentably, 'My prophetic heart Divined aright. I am going, of all ways That e'er I went, ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... at that moment a peculiar long-drawn wailing sound came from the open window of the west tower, and a dog lying curled up on the grass in the sun sprang up and began to bark, finishing off with a long, low howl, as it stretched out its neck ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... wailing infant's cry, The babe beneath the sheeliug, Whose song to-night in every sky Will shake ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... him at the thought of heaping back those tons of earth and stone above her, crushing with a frightful weight of inert matter the bodily beauty that he adored. He felt as though her soul hovered about him, wailing to him not to be so cruel, tugging at his garments ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... paying dearly the price of his curiosity; so, being convinced that he had stumbled upon a secret initiation, he decided to get some enjoyment out of the situation. Presently, trumpeting his mouth with his hands, he emitted a long, wailing sound: ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... a time they were sent off to bed, and Sara was left alone with her mother, who now sat knitting before the fire. The wind had risen outside, and was wailing mournfully around the cottage. The young girl shivered to ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... she, wailing, and the lady Goddess heard her. Then in wrath did the fair-garlanded Demeter snatch out of the fire with her immortal hands and cast upon the ground that woman's dear son, whom beyond all hope she had borne in the halls. Dread was the wrath of Demeter, ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... in the open space by the door, and, with Griffin beating time, stretched their mouths to the utmost and gave the Academy Howl with a vim that was deafening, drawing out the final deep growling notes to a weirdly wailing finish that sent Patricia and Elinor into ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... hither, Evan Cameron! Come, stand behind my knee— I hear the river roaring down Toward the wintry sea. There's shouting on the mountain-side, There's war within the blast— Old faces look upon me, Old forms go trooping past. I hear the pibroch wailing Amidst the din of fight, And my dim spirit wakes again Upon the verge ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... in the forlorn streets of a Puritan city—when for one day the cheating tradesmen leave their barbarous shops—to the wailing of unlovely hymns, empty of everything except a degraded sentimentality that would make an Athenian or a Roman slave blush with shame, is enough to cause one to regard the most scandalous levity of Voltaire as something ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... heard the most ghastly noise in the house. It wasn't a shriek, or a howl, or a yell, or anything they could put a name to. It was an undeterminate, inexplicable shiver and shudder of sound, which went wailing out of the window. The officer had been at Cold Harbor, but he felt himself getting colder this time. Eliphalet knew it was the ghost who haunted the house. As this weird sound died away, it was followed by another, sharp, short, blood-curdling ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... you, Grace," said her father, with an estranged manner, and in a voice not at all like his old voice. "What has come upon you and us is beyond reproach, beyond weeping, and beyond wailing. Perhaps I drove you to it. But I am hurt; I am scourged; I am astonished. In the face of this there is ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... steals upon Sigurd asleep and thrusts his sword through him. The dying Sigurd hurls the sword after the fleeing murderer and cuts him in two. To Gudrun, who wakes from sleep by his side, he points to Brynhild as the instigator of the crime, and dies. Brynhild rejoices at the sound of Gudrun's wailing. Gudrun cannot find relief for her grief, the tears will not flow. Men and women seek to console her by tales of greater woes befallen them. But still Gudrun cannot weep as she sits by Sigurd's corpse. At last one of the women lifts ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... Mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Iuliet, All slaine, all dead: Romeo is banished, There is no end, no limit, measure, bound, In that words death, no words can that woe sound. Where is my Father and my Mother Nurse? Nur. Weeping and wailing ouer Tybalts Coarse, Will you go to them? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Burglar Benjamin thrashing at the window: Help. Forbidden action. Help. One shouldnt become a social democrat that way. Wailing: a police trap, to let decent people burn in a fire. Help, help. Fire department comes. Help. Water sprays him. From the frying pan into the fire. He can even jump right now ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... rose temples and palaces, mounds and hills, black with people. Every minaret was a clustering mass of people, who fell one by one into the turbid waters, as heat and terror overcame them. The whole land seemed a-wailing and suddenly there swept a shadow across that furnace of despair, and a breath of cold wind, and a gathering of clouds, out of the cooling air. Men looking up, near blinded, at the star, saw that a black disc was creeping across the light. It was the moon, coming ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... thorns which are the most difficult to bear. The household of the mind is a thrifty one, and only so much is spent as is necessary. There is no squandering on trifles, and its wealth of strength is saved up with miserly strictness to meet the really big calamities. So any amount of weeping and wailing over the lesser griefs fails to evoke a charitable response. But when sorrow is deepest there is no stint of effort. Then the surface crust is pierced, and consolation wells up, and all the forces of patience and courage are banded together to do their duty. Thus great suffering ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... utilised the name of the father with lavish persistence. Her ambition and impudence were boundless, and were the cause of Napoleon bestowing some wholesome discipline upon her, which, like a true heroine, she resented, and sent forth from her exile streams of relentless wailing, adorned by a fluency of venom that would have put the most militant suffragette in our time ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... the time of unwonted and mysterious sounds in the country. The migrating cranes fly so high that by day they are scarcely visible. By night they are only heard, and their hoarse wailing voices, lost in the clouds, sound like the parting cry of souls in torment, striving to find the road to heaven, yet forced by an unconquerable fate to wander near the earth about the haunts of men; for these errant birds have ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... things. The dogs passed over the trampled ground in front of the building, sniffed at the door, circled the building, sniffed at the windows, passed slowly into the empty room when the door was opened for them. Then they drew apart again, and, wailing once more solemnly, headed back along a path which presently brought all into the plain road to the railway station. The procession moved more rapidly now, and presently it had crossed the railway track and turned into the lane which led up to the Big House, the dogs threading without hesitation ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... tent he heard her singing the high, weird chant of the Omaha mourning song and again he was half-minded to go back, though the wailing minor notes, long drawn and mournful, might mean much or they might mean merely a fit of the blues. The others rode on talking and laughing together, and Luck rode with them; but the chant of the Omaha was in his ears and tingling ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... in the wailing cry of La Meffraye in the forests of Machecoul, in the maledictions of Grio, and of the Saga of the ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... majestic glories of noon-day, while the earth exhales a dewy freshness and the air is enchanted by the songs of birds, just wakened from their nests. It recalls the overture of a grand musical drama introducing the joyous melodies, the wailing minors, the noble chords and sublime symphonies ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." There will be separations at the graves of those who lay side ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... against a huge block, absorbed in his thoughts, the low wailing of a woman's voice reached his ears. The sound proceeded apparently from no great distance, but the tone was very soft and low. Gradually, as he listened, he thought he distinguished words, but such words ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... all was with Hardie, and nothing before them but the workhouse or the almshouse: ruined mothers came and held up their ruined children for the banker to see; and the doors were hammered at, and the house as well as the bank was beleaguered by a weeping, wailing, despairing crowd. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... songs resound from the hidden city. In the gypsy camp beside us insomnia reigns. A little forge is clinking and clanking. Donkeys raise their antiphonal lament. Dogs salute the stars in chorus. First a leader, far away, lifts a wailing, howling, shrieking note; then the mysterious unrest that torments the bosom of Oriental dogdom breaks loose in a hundred, a thousand answering voices, swelling into a yapping, growling, barking, yelling discord. A sudden silence cuts the tumult short, until once ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... the bowels of the earth, Strange and varied sounds had birth; Now the battle's bursting peal, Neigh of steed, and clang of steel; Now an old man's hollow groan Echoed from the dungeon stone; Now the weak and wailing cry Of a stripling's agony!— Cold by this was the midnight air; But the Abbot's blood ran colder, When he saw a gasping knight lie there, With a gash beneath his clotted hair, And a hump upon his shoulder. And the loyal churchman strove ...
— English Satires • Various
... ridicule, made him an object of dread even to the leaders of armies and the rulers of nations. In truth, of all the intellectual weapons which have ever been wielded by man, the most terrible was the mockery of Voltaire. Bigots and tyrants, who had never been moved by the wailing and cursing of millions, turned pale at his name. Principles unassailable by reason, principles which had withstood the fiercest attacks of power, the most valuable truths, the most generous sentiments, the noblest and most graceful images, the purest reputations, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his pockets, marching up and down the long room. Polly, who was swallowing hard, as if her throat hurt her, wouldn't look at one of the boys. Little Dick was openly wailing in his ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... nearly four hundred years ago. The finger of Providence still points to it amid wreck and ruin and smoldering ashes as the place where a teeming city with every mark of a splendid civilization shall be the pride of our Western shores. Her wailing Miserere shall be turned into a joyful ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... windy night, about two o'clock in the morning, An Irish lad, so tight, all the wind and weather scorning, At Judy Callaghan's door, sitting upon the paling, His love tale he did pour, and this is part of his wailing: Only say you'll be mistress Brallaghan; Don't ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... morning when she was dressing she heard a peculiar little wailing cry. She listened. The cry was repeated. She listened again, but could not locate the sound. Then, thinking she might be mistaken, she continued with her dressing; but again that piercing wail was borne to her ears. She opened her window and then she ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... our churches, abolished, done away, and out-and-out made an end of the popish horrors, such as wakes, masses for the soul, obsequies, purgatory, and all other mummeries for the dead, and will no longer have our churches turned into wailing-places and houses of mourning, but, as the primitive Fathers called them, "Cemeteries," that is, resting and ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... looked down on the dancer's throat and breast with a mingling of eagerness and horror. Slowly she raised herself, turned, bent forwards quivering, and presented her face to him, while the women twittered once more in chorus. He still stared at her without moving. The hautboy players prolonged a wailing note, and the tomtoms gave forth a fierce and dull murmur almost like a ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... He was begging Wendy to get better quickly, so that he could show her the mermaids. Of course she could not answer yet, being still in a frightful faint; but from overhead came a wailing note. ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... reached up her tiny arms to him, laughing and cooing into his face, he gave a glad cry, crushed his face down to hers, and did what he had not dared to do before—kissed her. There was something about it that frightened the little Melisse, and she set up a wailing that sent Jan, in a panic of dismay, for Maballa. It was a long time before he ventured to kiss ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... Soon the wailing strains of the familiar Irish melody were breathing through the cabin. "Kathleen Mavourneen" followed, and the stranger sat as if fascinated. At "'Way Down Upon the Suwanee River" he dropped his head in his hands and his ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... the mountains, he himself being detained by final arrangements with the authorities, his interest in researches into the arcana of old Cherokee customs had been revived by seeing the sibyl seated on the ground, swaying and wailing and moaning, and casting ashes on her head as if making her mourning for the dead. At the time he had marked the parity of the observance with the Hebraic usage, and he intended to make an examination into the origin of the curious tradition of the identity ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... total to two hundred. On each side of us rode dragoons, and in front and behind were companies of musqueteers to prevent any attempt at rescue or escape. In this order we set off upon the tenth day of September, amidst the weeping and wailing of the townsfolk, many of whom saw their sons or brothers marching off into exile without their being able to exchange a last word or embrace with them. Some of these poor folk, doddering old men and wrinkled, decrepit women, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle |
