"Wailing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wiping her face with her apron. As she passed her master, he lifted the goose and hit her over the head with it as hard as he could. The bird smashed to pieces, and the woman, covered with gravy and seasoning, fled back, wailing, to the kitchen. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... 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 time. The man fled to the forest, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... perspiration and a certain ventilation of the skin may take place. Perfect simplicity, not only in material and trimming, but in the whole plan of the little garments will testify to good taste and common sense, and at the same time tend to eliminate much fretfulness and wailing. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... as the hours went by and she found no other game, she grew so blue and discouraged that she really couldn't contain herself any longer. Perhaps it did her good to have a cry. For two hours the land-looker lay in his bunk and listened to a wailing that made his heart fairly sink within him. Now it was a piercing scream, now it was a sob, and now it died away in a low moan, only to rise again, wilder and more agonized than ever. He knew without a doubt that it was only ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... fell upon a figure huddled crouching upon the seat, but in the very act of tumbling forward from off it. He caught it with one arm, set down the light, raised its head, and in the wild, worn, death-pale features and wandering eyes, knew the face of his son. He uttered one wailing groan, which seemed to spend his life, gathered him to his bosom, and taking him up like a child, almost ran to the house with him. As he went he heard at his ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... occurred about an hour before our departure, was, that hearing a mighty wailing in the market-place where once Hans and I had been tied to stakes to be shot to death with arrows, I went out to see what was the matter. At the gateway I was greeted by the sight of about a hundred old women plastered all over ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... thrown back to the men-hir; she is there, still calm but ghastly white, a pistol in each hand. Around her, through the wet smoke, rise and fall with sickening thuds the clubbed muskets of three or four men, and then one by one these sink to the ground too. With a wailing groan like a man in a nightmare, he sees the inevitable end and rushes to place his body before hers. A bullet shatters his sword-blade; now none are left around them but the begrimed and sinister faces ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... desire: the former has its foundation in the scene which is present, while the latter hovers betwixt recollection and hope. Let me not be understood as affirming that everything flows in one unvarying strain of wailing and complaint, and that the voice of melancholy is always loudly heard. As the austerity of tragedy was not incompatible with the joyous views of the Greeks, so that romantic poetry whose origin I have been describing, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... 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
... and her timbers groaned dismally; and, as she was by turns borne aloft on the waves crested with foam and precipitated headlong into the gulphs that yawned between, great was the terror, loud the wailing, and frightful the turmoil. In vain the mariners exerted their strength and skill. No efforts on their part could enable the vessel to resist the fury ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... they are still far behind the Russian peasants, who have their house spirits, who are of considerable use. These spirits take persons, houses, cattle, and chattels of every description under their care. They are heard wailing before a death. One of them rouses the inmates of a house if fire or robbery be threatened. Pestilence and war are foretold by such spirits lamenting in the meadows. Here we have useful spirits, worth having—not like our ones, capable of communicating only by means of knocks and through ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... stalwart? And well I wot that it is not GOD'S will that we so do. For the prophet says: "Lord, I shall keep my strength to Thee," so that he might sustain GOD'S service till his death-day, and not in a little and a short time waste it, and then lie wailing and groaning by the wall. And it is much more peril than men suppose. For S. Jerome says that he makes an offering of robbery who outrageously torments his body by over-little meat or sleep. And S. Bernard says: "Fasting ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... and of impatient attitude, but kept hiding her head all the evening with an angry, struggling movement. —— said, "This is not Dian;" and I replied, "No; now we see the Hecate." But the damp, cold wind came sobbing, and the waves began wailing, too, till I was seized with a feeling of terror, such as I never had before, even in the darkest, and most treacherous, rustling wood. The moon seemed sternly to give me up to the daemons of the rock, and the waves to mourn a tragic chorus, till I felt their ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... be weeping and wailing my absence. Poor old soul; she don't deserve it, but I couldn't stay. Good gracious, there would have been the expense of a funeral, and I'm sure that's something to ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... 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 the mournful wave as year on year it flows, And ask each other, with parch'd lips that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... of repentance. Soon may Death, the great enemy of mankind, add one more ghastly victim to the lifeless piles that lie heaped together in every clime and on every shore; and when my death- knell shall sound will it be the signal of a spirit wailing in the regions of the lost, or rejoicing in the bright realms of everlasting bliss? It is for me, and me alone to decide. Perhaps it is for this that my life has been spared—that I might make a firm and decided choice; and shall I still draw back? shall I still ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... lip, to keep from weeping. In the silvery night, alone with him, miles from any other human being, she felt woefully helpless and forlorn. The years slipped away. She was a little child, and her heart was wailing for the mother whose body lay on the hillside near the deserted cabin in Brown's Park. What could she do? How could she save herself from the evil shadow that would blot the sunshine from ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... sounded the wailing shout of a dustman. It was like the voice of a soul condemned to purge itself ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... considerable truth in this complaint, but the voice of this solitary aristocrat was as of one crying in the wilderness. The whole of the educated classes—men of old family and parvenus alike—were, with few exceptions, too much engrossed with place-hunting to attend to such sentimental wailing. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Sariola, On the herds and flocks of Louhi!" Thus the wicked hostess answered: "All my power has departed, All my strength has gone to others, All my hope is in the deep-sea; In the waters lies my Sampo!" Then the hostess of Pohyola Home departed, weeping, wailing, To the land of cold and darkness; Only took some worthless fragments Of the Sampo to her people; Carried she the lid to Pohya, In the blue-sea left the handle; Hence the poverty of Northland, And the famines of Pohyola. Wainamoinen, ancient minstrel, Hastened to the broad-sea's ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... damp ground, frequently brought on fevers; and sickness, at all times a great calamity, was infinitely more so to the pioneer. It must have been appalling in the woods. Many a mother has carried her wailing, languishing child in her arms, to lessen the jolting of the wagon, without being able to render it the necessary assistance. Many a family has paused on the way to gather a leafy couch for a dying brother or sister. Many a parent has laid ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... piety and polka, and its castanet-like clapping of the hands. Then there are quieter prayer-meetings, with pious invocations, and slow psalms, "deaconed out" from memory by the leader, two lines at a time, in a sort of wailing chant. Elsewhere, there are conversazioni around fires, with a woman for queen of the circle,—her Nubian face, gay head-dress, gilt necklace, and white teeth, all resplendent in the glowing light. Sometimes the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... alas! alas! SLAVE. There's no need for wailing; you cause much injury to your eyes. In adversity, if you use fortitude of mind, ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... up was like scourging a crowd of fagged-out children to school. All her limbs and sundry muscles whose existence she had never realized before were like separate children, each aching and wailing: "I ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... in 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
... snow whirled across it and cut the dreary scene in half. Then the light died out suddenly, and she and the little girls drew their chairs close up to the stove. The house was very quiet, but she could hear the mournful wailing of the wind about it, and now and then the soft swish of driven snow upon ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... its borders, whilst the spirits of the passing and repassing crowds were in no wise affected by the memorials of death attending their exits and entrances. And with the surging human tide that was ever flowing in this thoroughfare the funeral processions must constantly have mingled, the wailing of the hired mourners rising sharply above the din of harsh voices, the creaking of clumsy wooden wheels and the braying of the heavily laden asses. Now over all reigns a decorous silence, such as we moderns deem fitting for a cemetery; only the hum of insects breaks ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... mountain-pass, Couched on the rock, and tented neath the sky, Who saw from Mizpah's heights the tangled grass Choke the wide Temple-courts, the altar lie Disfigured and polluted—who had flung Their faces on the stones, and mourned aloud And rent their garments, wailing with one tongue, Crushed as a wind-swept bed of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... upon me as Moa and I entered, but she did not move. The thirty-odd passengers were huddled in a group. Solemn, white-faced men, frightened women. Some of them were sobbing. One Earth-woman—a young widow—sat holding her little girl, and wailing with uncontrolled hysteria. The child knew me. As I appeared now, with my gold-laced white coat over my shoulders, the little child seemed to see in my uniform a mark of authority. She left her ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... roar of winds and waves she heard a wild, sorrowing voice, that seemed to call for help. Long she listened, thinking it was but the echo of their own plaintive song, but high above the music still sounded the sad, wailing cry. Then, stealing silently away, she glided up through foam and spray, till, through the parting clouds, the sunlight shone upon her from the tranquil sky; and, guided by the mournful sound, she floated on, ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... me long ago When I was a little lad That when the night went wailing so, Somebody had been bad; And then when I was snug in bed, Whither I had been sent, With the blankets pulled up round my head, I'd think of what my mother said, And wonder what boy she meant. And, "Who's been bad to-day?" I'd ask Of the wind that hoarsely blew, ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... have neither the strength nor the brains to resent it. Of course there are some superior persons in this world who never were young. Mr. Pedagog, I doubt not, was ushered into this world with all three sets of teeth cut, and not wailing as most infants are, but discussing the most abstruse philosophical problems. His fairy stories were told him, if ever, in words of ten syllables; and his father's first remark to him was doubtless an inquiry as to his opinion on the subject of Latin and Greek ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... prophet Thun, who was clad in seaweed and had no Temple, but lived apart from men. All his life he had lived on a lonely beach and had heard for ever the wailing of the sea and the crying of the wind in hollows among the cliffs. Some said that having lived so long by the full beating of the sea, and where always the wind cries loudest, he could not feel the joys of other men, but only felt the ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... 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 ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... some isle of Jumna's silver stream He gives all that they ask to those hard eyes, While mine which are his angel's, mine which gleam With light that might have led him to the skies— That almost led him—are eclipsed with tears Wailing my ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... [Animal sounds.] Ululation. — N. cry &c. v.; crying &c. v.; bowwow, ululation, latration[obs3], belling; reboation[obs3]; wood-note; insect cry, fritiniancy|, drone; screech owl; cuckoo. wailing (lamentation) 839. V. cry, roar, bellow, blare, rebellow[obs3]; growl, snarl. [specific animal sounds] bark [dog, seal]; bow-wow, yelp [dog]; bay, bay at the moon [dog, wolf]; yap, yip, yipe, growl, yarr|, yawl, snarl, howl [dog, wolf]; grunt, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in the pantry, alternately wailing for Mr. Arnold, as he called him, and citing the tokens that had precursed the murder. The house seemed to choke me, and, slipping a shawl around me, I went out on the drive. At the corner by the east wing I met Liddy. Her skirts were draggled with dew to her knees, and ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... on to the hard boards, and found herself sitting, weeping and wailing, by the bedside ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... thy wounds must thou expire! Together, at least, let fade life's enfeebled fire!— How lifeless his look!— still his heart!— Dared he to deal me Buch a smart? Stayed is his breathing's gentle tide! Must I be wailing at his side, who, in rapture coming to seek him, fearless sailed o'er the sea? Too late, too late! Desperate man! Casting on me this cruelest ban! Comes no relief for my load of grief? Silent art keeping while I am weeping? But once more, ah! But once again!— ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... older interpreters suspected that some kind of mourning-garment was meant by lessus, but that he inclines to the interpretation that it signifies a sort of sorrowful wailing ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous
... reality not at all whether any train were caught or missed, filled only with a kind of frenzy to keep moving somehow further into Ireland. In the cab he gave utterance to ridiculous pleasantries. He seized the child from Marion, and held him, wailing piteously, half out of the window, that his eyes might rest on the great gilt characters which adorn the offices of the Gaelic League. It was with rapture that he read Irish names, written and spelt in Irish, above the shops, and saw ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul, when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity, and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay. Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— Lust that had lost its laughter, ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... too, O worshipp'd Graces, Sylvan Gods of this fair shade! Is there doubt on divine faces? Are the blessed Gods dismay'd? Can men worship the wan features, The sunk eyes, the wailing tone, Of unsphered, discrowned creatures, Souls as little godlike ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... long past wailing and whining— I have wept too much in my life: I've had twenty years of pining As ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... was another link in the chain which was to eventually convert a savage into an instrument of untold value to the people of that island. At first Chief could not understand it. He tried to see where the wailing noise came from and pressed closer and closer to George as he played. When George played another tune in quick time he became animated, and slow, plaintive music seemed to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... 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, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... most picturesque member of the system,—abrupt and bold of outline in its hills, and mural in its precipices. And nowhere does it exhibit a wilder or more characteristic beauty than at the tall narrow portal of the Auldgrande, where the river,—after wailing for miles in a pent-up channel, narrow as one of the lanes of old Edinburgh, and hemmed in by walls quite as perpendicular, and nearly twice as lofty,—suddenly expands, first into a deep brown pool, and ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... 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 him hear."—MATT. xiii. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... thinking about this when she heard something that made her first stop her work to listen and then jump up hurriedly, spilling the peas out of her lap. The wailing of a terrified child was coming nearer and nearer. Elliott set down the peas that were left and ran out on the veranda. There was Johnny stumbling up the path, crying at the top ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... to be perfectly quiet; she had begun very calmly; but at that word, suddenly, her calmness failed her. It was too much; and with a sort of wailing cry, which in its forlornness reached and wrung even Mr. Copley's nerves, she broke into a terrible passion of weeping. Terrible! young hearts ought never to know such an agony; and never, never should such an agony be known for the shame ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... to one another, the three darted out of the cavern's entrance. Another terrific shock sent them stumbling and reeling and sprawling down the side of the mountain. Jim heard old Parrish wailing, and, as the shock subsided, groped his way to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... nightingale whose loved ones are lost: comp. Virgil, Georg. iv. 511: "As the nightingale wailing in the poplar shade plains for her lost young, ... while she weeps the night through, and sitting on a bough, reproduces her piteous melody, and fills the country round with the plaints of her sorrow." Lorn and lost are cognate ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... 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
... large floor almost covered with wounded, and among them a woman stumbled about weeping, wailing, boo-hooing and wringing her hands; I caught her ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... below them, rises the melancholy and discordant clamour of our performance. Quickly, the voices of the night awake in earnest protest against it. Roosting shags and waterfowl fly screaming away. In the swamp a bittern booms; and strange wailing cries come from the depths of the bush. On the farm dogs bark energetically, cattle bellow, horses neigh, sheep bleat, pigs grunt, ducks quack, and turkeys gobble. Frightful is the din that goes echoing among the woods. And then the outraged bridegroom gets out his gun, and commences rapid ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... unlike Virginians and Kentuckians. They had black eyes and hair, and their naturally dark faces were burned yet darker by the sun of the Gulf. Yet the dark eyes were bright and gay, sparkling with kindliness and the love of pleasure. The guitars and banjos were playing some wailing tune, with a note of sadness in the core of it so keen and penetrating that it made the water come to Harry's eyes. But it changed suddenly to something that had all the sway and lilt of the rosy South. Men sprang to ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... through the woods, following the well-beaten path that led to Chillicothe, and planning to swing to the east and skirt the town under the cover of darkness. I desired to emerge on the Ohio at a point opposite the mouth of the Big Sandy. For some time we could hear the wailing and howling of the Shawnees in Cornstalk's Town as they mourned for the dead Ottawas, and Patricia was sadly frightened. My ears were tingling for fear they would catch the cry of discovery, but young Ellinipsico was there instead of Black Hoof, ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... galleys ready to strike down the luckless argosy of the merchantman wheresoever she was to be met. But this was not all, as the shore as well as the sea yielded up to them its tribute in the shape of slaves and booty, and Christian mothers trembling in the insecurity of their homes would hush their wailing children with the terror of the names of Barbarossa, of Dragut, or ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... patient, but protesting. His heart recoiled at the thought of the steerage. 'O let me lie down upon the bieldy side,' he cried; 'O dinna take me down!' And again: 'O why did ever I come upon this miserable voyage?' And yet once more, with a gasp and a wailing prolongation of the fourth word: 'I had no CALL to come.' But there he was; and by the doctor's orders and the kind force of his two shipmates disappeared down the companion of Steerage No.1 into the den ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and a time of great wailing, when they carried Har in from the far rocks where they found him. His head was quite broken, and like honey from a fallen bee-tree his brains dripped on the ground. His mother strewed wood-ashes on her head and blackened her face. His ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... to tick off the seconds of the last minute. The wings of the comet spread out vaster and vaster and its now flaming nucleus blazed brighter and brighter. A low, vague wailing sound seemed to be running through the multitudes which thronged the semicircle of moors. It was the first and perhaps the last utterance of the agony ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... truth, the half part of heaven, is denied, as much as when a bitterness in men of talent leads to satire, and destroys the judgment. He is wise, but wise in his own despite. There is an air of infinite grief, and the sound of wailing, all over and through this lurid universe. A vampyre sits in the seat of the prophet, and turns with gloomy appetite to the images of pain. Indeed, a bird does not more readily weave its nest, or a mole bore into the ground, than this seer of ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... cry of the bittern from the reedy, desolate bogs, or in the falling daylight of a cloudy February afternoon to see the plover rise from the tussocks of brown grass at your feet, and go flying and wailing above you, in that broken-winged, broken-hearted way of theirs, or to watch the duck flying home across the sunset, with their ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... wall, deaf and blind to everything but an overmastering dread of his mother's agony which had taken complete possession of him, he did not know. He only knew that after a certain time—an eternity it seemed to him—a bitter, wailing cry came to his ears; a cry that pierced through the thick walls and echoed down the dark passages, although it was neither loud nor long. But there was something in the intensity of the grief that it expressed ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of Dame Lisa, now, was thin and wailing, a curiously changed voice. "There is a cross about your neck. You must ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... 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 dead body ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... scrambling and endeavor there was on the part of the sorrowing ones to return undetected to the Colonel's headquarters his stolen property and belongings. For days thereafter, the garrison resounded to the cracking of the Colonel's knout, and this time the wailing and shedding of tears was undoubtedly more real than any that had been shed previously to that time. These various unfortunate affairs, while harmful enough in themselves, did far greater harm than such incidents would ordinarily warrant, in this respect, that they ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... still smoking cathedral ruins in the hopes of saving some more unfortunates, and our expectations were soon realised. After a walk of a mile and a half, we rounded a corner with the sound of much wailing on all sides, and ran suddenly full tilt into at least two or three dozen Boxers, who have been allowed to do exactly as they like for days. There was a fierce scuffle, for we were down on them in a wild rush before they could ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... was pouring heavily and I took shelter. I felt calmer; I had unpacked myself of words. Rather mournfully I now looked out into the night, and, as it were, ceased to speak to it, and became a listener. A song of sorrow came from the city, the wailing of mothers uncomforted, of children orphaned, uncared for, of forsaken ones. I heard again the old reproach of the children sitting in the market. "Here surely," I said, "where so many are gathered together, there is more solitude and lonely grief than in all the wide places of the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... books and a teacher. The man has a library full, and might keep the poor boy from despair by a little help and a friendly word. He mourns for his own lost baby: I advise him to adopt the orphan whom nobody will own, and who lies wailing all day untended on the poor-house floor. Yes: if he wants to forget sorrow and find peace, let him fill his empty heart and home with such as these, and life won't seem dark to ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... assembled in the drawing-room, the piano—with, it may be, a flute accompaniment—is made to do the organ's duty, and the full service of the Prayer-Book is read and sung and listened to with reverent attention. There are yet two hours to dinner, and as the wild, wailing chant from the negro-yard comes to our ears we determine to visit their chapel. If there was one point in which, more than in others, the Carolina planter was faithful to his duty, it was in securing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... the condition of the Republic, and especially of the treachery of his friend Pompey. Though there be much of despondency in his tone, there is enough also of high spirit to make us feel that his literary aspirations are not out of place, though mingled with his political wailing. The time will soon come when his trust even in literature will ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... on practically 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, our ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... descended out of the first circle Down to the second, that less space begirds, And so much greater dole, that goads to wailing. ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... 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 ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... upon the brow of my hapless mentor when I saw her again. How different now was the vision that greeted my daily sight from that of former years! The want that admits not of idle wailing compelled her still to pursue her daily course of labour, and she pursued it with the same constancy and punctuality as she had ever done. But the exquisitely chiselled face, the majestic gait, the elastic step—the beauty and glory of youth, unshaken because unassaulted by ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... harder, and more unpleasant than it had been before. And then, the baby? What could she do with it?—a creature more helpless than herself, always to be clothed and taken care of, when she could not take care of herself, always in the way, always crying and wailing and troubling day and night. She almost blamed the baby for everything. Perhaps she would not have lost her lover if it had not been for the baby. Perhaps he knew what a trouble it would be, and wanted ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... relieve the suffering of her precious babe; and ever would she say it will soon be better. One week succeeded another, and still there was no change for the better. But oh, how deep was the fountain of that mother's love, and the feeble wailing of that dear infant moved all its ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... to a road from which he could see in the distance dark and agitated bodies of troops, smoke-fringed. In the lane was a blood-stained crowd streaming to the rear. The wounded men were cursing, groaning, and wailing. In the air, always, was a mighty swell of sound that it seemed could sway the earth. With the courageous words of the artillery and the spiteful sentences of the musketry mingled red cheers. And from this region of noises came the steady current ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... warriors. On coming in sight of the enemy, and hearing their first yells as they rushed from the bush, a bullet pierced young Rarip's breast, and he fell dead into the arms of Miaki. The body was carried home to his brother's village, with much wailing, and a messenger ran to tell me that Rarip was dead. On hasting thither, I found him quite dead, and the center of a tragic ceremonial. Around him, some sitting, others lying on the ground, were ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... puffing when he reached the place where he had lain between the two boulders, and he stopped there to listen again. It came,—the sound he instinctively expected, yet dreaded to hear; the sound of a woman's high-keyed wailing. ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... this young woman screaming and wailing into the tower below. She soon fainted. I heard the followers tell the leader of the gang that the coachman had just cut the traces and decamped with the horses. He then bade them gather all the gang waiting in hiding so as to carry her down ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... the shore, throwing about molten masses, some after them and some at one another, and then all went back into the forges and set them blazing, until the whole island seemed one mass of fire. The sea boiled like a boiling cauldron, and all day long the travellers heard an awful wailing. Even when they were out of sight of the island, the howls still rang in their ears, and the stench made their nostrils smart. 'And Brendan said, "O ye soldiers of Christ, make you strong in faith not feigned, and in the armour of the ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... washed the eyes in a solution of boric acid, and later, in our desperation, with bluestone. But we were dealing with the virulent gonococcus, and we neither expected nor obtained much result from these measures. In a couple of hours more the eyes were beginning to exude pus, and the poor infant was wailing in torment. ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... up so quickly in a sort of frenzy, his foot struck against the broken harp, and instantly the instrument gave forth a wailing sound, that pierced the poet's heart. He lifted up the harp: alas! it was so broken he could do nothing with it; from his hands it fell back upon the floor where it had lain neglected, forgotten, so long. But Tiny's heart ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... heavenly lyre Thou couldst drown the wailing, The lament of hearts. At the sad sound of this song The eye to-day is filled with tears, As a flower is filled with dew, But who can raise from dust and ashes That day of fire, disaster, ruin? O ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... as much in the dark as we, and I could hear them pass on, and I knew that we must have been going in the right direction for the junk. Then I had clear proof, for all at once there was a low, wailing, querulous cry, which sent a chill through me, it sounded so wild ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... the moment swayed by the mood of sacrifice. He half crawled over the barricade to proceed to the other camp, but sank back, a trembling mass, wailing: "As the spirit moves! As the spirit moves! Who am I that I should set aside the judgments of God? Before the foundations of the world were all things written in the book of life. Worm that I am, shall I erase the page or any portion thereof? As God wills, ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... am! I can calmly take up my pen to amuse myself by scribbling, since sleep is impossible. I can look round my vast and solitary room without fancying a ghost or an assassin in every corner, and listen to the raving and lamenting of the storm, without imagining I hear in every gust the shrieks of wailing spirits, or the groans of murdered travellers; only wishing that the wind were rather less cold, or my fire a little brighter, or my dormitory less infinitely spacious; for at present ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... broke off in the middle and was succeeded by a series of rattles and thumps and jingles like a barrel of kitchenware falling downstairs; this was followed by a startling stillness, which was, in turn, broken by an aggrieved voice wailing: "Say, Central, why can't I get that twenty-seven ring fourteen Bayport? I bet you you've given me every other ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to them in wealth were to distribute among themselves those in need of bread and raiment, scarcely would one poor person fall to the share of fifty men, or even a hundred. Yet, nevertheless, though in such great abundance of persons able to assist them, they are wailing every day. And that thou mayest learn their inhumanity, recall that the Church(150) has a revenue of one of the lowest among the wealthy, and not of the very rich; and consider how many widows it succors every day, how many virgins; ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... am wrong, O! Man of men, Surely it is not hard to comfort me, Laugh at my fears with dear persistency, Nay, if thou must, lie to me! There, again, I hear the rain, and the wind's wailing cry Stirs with wild life the ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... women, who, unless the moon is bright, light fires, which they replenish from time to time. The dancers are all men, young warriors and older men, but no greybeards. The orchestra consists of some half-dozen men, who clap together two sticks or boomerangs; in time to this "music" a wailing dirge is chanted over and over again, now rising in spasmodic jerks and yelled forth with fierce vehemence, now falling to a prolonged mumbled plaint. Keeping time to the sticks, the women smack their thighs with great energy. The monotonous ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... was not altogether dead to humanity, as appears by an incident which occurred during the siege that reduced his capital to the direst extremities. The ghastly aspect of a famished woman who throws herself in his way with a wild, impassioned, wailing cry of "Help, my lord, O king!" touches him; and he asks, "What aileth thee?" Stretching out a skinny arm to one pale and haggard as herself, she replies, with hollow voice, "This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... how long and how often it would afflict itself, and it determined to do so at every opportunity. And the great opportunity came soon. Not the Black Fast when the congregation sat shoeless on the floor of the synagogue, weeping and wailing for the destruction of Jerusalem, but the great White Fast, the terrible Day of Atonement commanded in the Bible. It was preceded by a long month of solemn prayer, ushering in the New Year. The New Year itself was the most sacred of the Festivals, provided ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... necessary to 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 ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... supposed, but a most dolorous company of nearly, or quite, naked men and women, outlined blackly, as they emerged, against the dull illumination from behind. These wretched beings, sighing and groaning most piteously, with a monotonous wailing of many voices, were chained by the wrist, two and two together, and as they passed by close to Dunburne, his nostrils were overpowered by a heavy and fetid odor that came partly from within the building, partly from the wretched creatures ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... been left in the entresol alone. But as I descended the stairs quietly I heard within that room a voice which at first persuaded me he had company, and next that, left to himself, he had broken down and given way to the most childish wailing. The voice was so unlike his, or any grown man's, that it arrested me on the lowermost stair against my will. It resembled rather the sobbing of an infant mingled with short strangled cries of contrition ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... unavailing. They were driven in, and the flames were extinguished; the agger was level with the walls, and defence was no longer possible. The garrison intended to slip away at night through the ruins to join their friends outside. The wailing of the women was heard in the Roman camp, and escape was made impossible. The morning after, in a tempest of rain and wind, the place was stormed. The legionaries, excited by the remembrance of Gien and the long ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... for a time and Thirlwell heard the river rolling through its ice-bound channel and the dreary wailing of the pines. He felt disturbed; something in Driscoll's voice and look had jarred his nerves, and it cost him an effort not to waken Father Lucien. It was not time yet and the priest needed sleep. Driscoll lay quiet with his eyes shut, but presently moved and ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... a falling star; Then stealthily crouching under the trees, By the light of the moon, the Kan—ti-dan, [31] The little, wizened, mysterious man, With his long locks tossed by the moaning breeze. Then a flap of wings, like a thunder-bird, [32] And a wailing spirit the sleeper heard; And lo, through the mists of the moon, she saw ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... a tall young girl with a dirty face, wearing a serge skirt pinned up under a dirty apron. The house was dirty too: the smell of an unwashed, unswept interior came out of it, together with the wailing of a fretful baby. "I've missed my way on the moor," said Lawrence, inobtrusively holding his handkerchief to his nose. "Can you ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... Owen. And he—he was hardly aware of their looks of wonder and terror; his father's words fell on a deadened ear; for before his eyes there rose a pale dead babe, and in that lady's violent sounds of grief he heard the wailing of a more sad, more hopeless mother. For by this time the lad Robert had opened his eyes, and though evidently suffering a good deal from the effects of Owen's blows, was fully conscious of all that was passing ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... roar of motors just over the barracks, and, at the same time, the siren sounded the alarm in a series of prolonged, wailing shrieks. Some belated pilot was still in the air. We rushed out to the field just as the flares were being lighted and placed on the ground in the shape of an immense T, with the cross-bar facing in the direction from which the wind was coming. By this time the hum of motors ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... recognise by smell the hands that made each bundle. During the whole period the dead man is attended continuously by at least two or three mourners, either relatives or, more rarely, hired mourners, who from time to time throughout both day and night wail loudly, renewing their wailing at the arrival of each party of ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... news spread through the town that the prisoners were about to set out. At first it was heard with terror; afterward came the weeping and wailing. The families of the prisoners ran about in distraction, going from the convento to the barracks, from the barracks to the town hall, and finding no consolation anywhere, filled the air with cries and groans. The ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... "Oh, Jemmy, Jemmy, I see it in your face!" He fell back into his own corner of the cab, with a faint, wailing cry. "They're married," he moaned to himself; his hands falling helplessly on his knees; his hat falling unregarded from his head. "Stop them!" he exclaimed, suddenly rousing himself, and seizing his son in a frenzy by the collar ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... gone, Alike without their monumental stone! The first, all efforts vainly strove to wean From lingering where her Chieftain's blood had been: Grief had so tamed a spirit once too proud, Her tears were few, her wailing never loud; But furious would you tear her from the spot Where yet she scarce believed that he was not, 1250 Her eye shot forth with all the living fire That haunts the tigress in her whelpless ire; But left to waste ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... at that moment the music came to them again, wailing, mournful, as if the strings of the violin were sobbing under the touch of the bow, held in the fingers of a real master. The music blended with the night, and the listening girls seemed to lose all desire ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... 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, take him up, and bear him to our hall: An if he live, we will have him of our band; And if he die, why earth has earth enough To hide him. See ye take the charger ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester |
