"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this? Was he deluding himself? Did his over-excited imagination make him hear a death knell pealing for his honour and his hopes, which must be borne to their grave? Yet no! All the citizens and peasants, men and women, great and small, who thronged the salt market, which he had just entered, raised ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "You are sounding the death-knell of autocracy in industry. There was autocracy in political life, and it was superseded by democracy. So surely will democratic power wrest from you the control of industry. The fate of the aristocracy of industry will be as the fate of the aristocracy of land, if you ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... A knell from the church bell broke harshly on these youthful thoughts. Another! Again! It was tolling for the funeral service. A group of humble mourners entered the gate: wearing white favours; for the corpse was ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... the increasing lustiness of his person. Nay, he has often leaped up from his lap-board, and, in the strong spirit of exultation, thrust out his leg in attestation of his assertion, slapping it, moreover, with a loud laugh of triumph, that sounded like a knell to the happiness of his emaciated acquaintance. The schoolmaster's philosophy, however, unlike his flesh, never departed from him; his usual observation was, "Neal, we are both receding from the same point; you increase in flesh, whilst I, heaven ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... flowers, And fairies all; When frost entrapped her, They came and lapped her In leaves, and wrapped her With shroud and pall; In red leaves wound her, With dead leaves bound her Dead brows, and round her A death-knell rang; Rang the death-bell for her, Sang, "is it well for her, Well, is it well with you, rose?" ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... sound of the church-going bell Those valleys and rocks never heard; Never sighed at the sound of a knell, Nor smiled ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... went down again and the frost began to creep after it. Already the bulk of vegetation about them (save the hardy firs and kindred trees and shrubs) were black and dead. The change in climate had tolled the knell of all those plants that had withstood heretofore the rigors of ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... Kshattriya, as an example that they might follow. They would not learn the lesson, either by destruction or by love. They would not follow the example either from fear or from admiration. Then their hour struck on the bell of Heaven, the knell of the Kshattriya caste. He came to sweep away that caste and to leave only scattered remnants of it, dotted over the Indian soil. It had been the sword of India, the iron wall that ringed her round. He came to shiver that wall into pieces, and ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... would seem to sound the knell of possible employment of cavalry in battle. No matter how dislocated are the infantry ridden at so long as they are not quite demoralised, however ruse the cavalry leader—however favourable to sudden unexpected onslaught is the ground, the quick-firing ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage-bell;— But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... setting, and poured its rays upon the bare head of the mighty noble, gathering round it in the hazy atmosphere like a halo. The homage of the crowd to that single form, unarmed, and scarce attended, struck a death-knell to the hopes of Hilyard,—struck awe into all his comrades! The presence of that one man seemed to ravish from them, as by magic, a vast army; power, and state, and command left them suddenly to be absorbed in HIM! Captains, they were troopless,—the wielder of men's hearts was amongst ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been successfully performed, and that they were getting the fire under control, when there suddenly came a terrible burst of flame attended by a roar that drowned all the din of the battle. It was the death knell of 400 men, for the Palestro had blown up with all on board. The great ironclad turret ship and ram of the Italian fleet, the Affondatore, to which Admiral Persano had shifted his flag, far the most powerful vessel in the Adriatic, kept outside of the battle line, and ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... she at length preceded him downstairs and into the little sitting-room she wondered if the hammering of her heart reached him, so tremendous were its strokes. They seemed to her to be beating out a death-knell in ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... pray, and so hurrying to bed, I resolutely shut my eyes. But sleep would not come to me. The ticking of the old clock in the hall seemed every moment to grow louder, as if reproaching me; and when it slowly told the hour of midnight, it smote upon my ear like a knell. ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... dying fear One dreadful sound could the Rover hear, A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell, The fiends below were ringing his knell. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... source of revenue in almost all parishes, and sometimes an important one.[289] Consequently tariffs of fees were drawn up in various places. So much is charged for interment within, so much for burial without the church; so much for a knell according to duration and according to size of the bell; so much for the herse—a sort of catafalque—so much for the pall, the fee varying from that charged for "the best" to that charged for "the worst cloth"; so much if the body is coffined or uncoffined, ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware
... making any appeal to any man. Although I was found guilty by a jury of this court I deem my conduct above reproach. I know how I have been convicted, and will still assert that the first gun fired in anger between this country and America will be a knell of comfort ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... lock sounded the death knell to the one course of amusement that had lain open to him. His mother pulled down the window shades and stooped over in the ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... arrive and end our suspense. We know of a thousand things we want to say, but the time slips by wasted, and hangs drearily on our hands. We have not the spirit to look forward, or the heart to look back. We long to have it all over, and yet every stroke of the clock falls like a cruel knell on our ears. We long that we could fall asleep, and wake to find ourselves on the other side of the crisis ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... of warmth and light The last great knell were knolled; If Death should close mine eyes to-night And all the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... and shot away; but his heart, all the remainder of his day's journey, was as if it had been pierced with many barbed arrows, and the sad voice of the poor anxious widow rung in his ears like the sound of some doleful knell. ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... civil that yesterday rung (Like a clapper beating a brazen bell) Each fair reputation's eternal knell; Hands no longer delivering blows, And noses, for ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... hesitation to become his wife, when the course at last seemed clear. His trouble at this time appears to have had a serious effect on his health, and some words spoken half in malice, half in warning by Madame de Girardin, must have sounded like a knell in his ears. He tells them apparently in jest to Madame Hanska to give her an example of the nonsense people talk in Paris. In his accuracy of repetition, however, we can trace a passionately anxious desire to force Madame Hanska herself to deny the charges brought ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... cloudy tints, their smile has something fatalistic in it, their motions are solemn. These unhappy beings seem to want to suck the last juices of the life they mean to leave; their eyes see things invisible, their ears are listening to a death-knell, they pay no attention to the minor things about them. These alarming symptoms Marie perceived one evening at Lady Dudley's. Raoul was sitting apart on a sofa in the boudoir, while the rest of the company were conversing in the salon. The countess went to the door, but he did not raise ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... was always against fate. Slyly we would leave the one door an inch ajar, or surreptitiously unclose the window a fraction as much. Scarcely, however, had we begun to congratulate ourselves upon success when half a score of antique roses flaunted and flared, and the death-knell of sly hopes sounded with echoed and re-echoed cry: "Mon Dieu! I smell air!" "Mon Dieu! Smell you not air?" "Mon Dieu! Smell we not air?" "Mon Dieu! Smells she not air?" "Mon Dieu! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... was successful as regards Ludovico of Milan; he withdrew from the alliance, and much against the wish of the other allies the peace of Bagnolo was concluded in August, 1484. To Sixtus the news came as the knell of his dearest hopes. He gave way to one wild outburst of passion, in which he cursed all who had been engaged in making peace, then apoplexy supervened, and within a few hours he was a corpse. He was succeeded by Cardinal Cybo, a warm friend toward the Medici, and one who had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... the least afraid, and only thought, even when those doleful words seemed to ring like a knell through the roar of the waves, "Tom will be saved if I reach the shore, and if I don't, Pirate is sure to land and make his way to a house at once. That will tell as well ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... for what air alone can do for children. Now, it is not the "nine-day fits" of that hospital in its unventilated condition which kills our poor children in the hot months, but that other disease of infancy, which to name is like sounding a funeral knell in the ears of many a parent. This one malady, more than any other, gives Boston its place on the black list of unhealthy towns. All parents having young children leave the city during the worst part of the sickly season, if they have the means of so doing. ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... services. The highest and lowest classes of England cannot be in sympathy with the free North. No dynasty can look the fact of successful, triumphant self-government in the face without seeing a shroud in its banner and hearing a knell in its shouts of victory. As to those lower classes who are too low to be reached by the life-giving breath of popular liberty, we cannot reach them yet. A Christian civilization has suffered them, in the very heart of its great cities, to sink almost to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... must be pronounced impossible. No combination of circumstances more favorable to the experiment can ever be expected to occur. The last hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with us; and if it should be proclaimed, that our example had become an argument against the experiment, the knell of popular liberty would be sounded ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... sounded the death-knell of one brave, noble heart, and crushed countless hopes as George Marshall's soul went out. The murderous fragment of a shell penetrated his brain, and his life was ended in ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... hawthorn takes away Heaven: all the spring falls dumb, and all the soul Sinks down in man for sorrow. Night and day Forego the joy that made them one and whole. The change that falls on every starry spray Bids, flower by flower, the knell of ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... no longer the herald of peace, nor the token of joy, for the villagers knew full well that it was tolling the knell of the departed priest, and their hearts were heavy with sorrow for the friend they knew ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... she had irreparably forfeited her claims to his regard and favor, I did not need her short and bitter cry of shame and disappointment, or that low moan for some one to help her, for me to sound his death-knell in my heart. Creeping back to my own room, I waited till I heard her reascend, then I stole forth. Calm as I had ever been in my life, I went down the stairs just as I had seen myself do in my dream, and knocking lightly at the library door, went in. ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... pack, that straight Burst into song at prospect of his death. You say their cry is harmony; and yet The chorus scarce is music to my ear, When I bethink me what it sounds to his; Nor deem I sweet the note that rings the knell Of the once ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... it his diction and his method derived their peculiarities. It transformed what would in all probability have been the mere counterpart of Caedmon's Paraphrase or Langland's Vision into Paradise Lost; and what would have been the mere counterpart of Corydon's Doleful Knell and the satire of the Three Estates, into Lycidas and Comus." (Quarterly Review, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... his devoted followers as the knell of their hopes. For years they had been engaged labourously in rolling uphill the stone of Sisyphus, making active friendships and seeking a fair trial. That opportunity had come at last. It had been an affair of life or death; the contest was protracted, intense, dramatic; the issue ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... time drift round me, and within There is the knell of passing and decay: The sun-smit vastness of the world doth weigh Upon my riddling soul like hidden sin, And bids it speak. Thou desert art my kin! I crumble to thee, waning day by day; But I am cursed with questions that betray The end of life before death's hours ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... clear tone of the church-bell rang out on the still night air. Only once it sounded, but it reverberated among the hills, and its single deep-toned ring was like a knell. The listeners almost expected to hear it followed by the fearful war-cry, that cry which betokened for many desolation ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... taking root there spring forth yielding fruits 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 ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... elation of his heart, and the ethereal joy which flowed in all his veins, the name of Mr. Millbank sounded, something like a knell. However, this was not the time to reflect. He obeyed the hint of Edith; made the most rapid toilet that ever was consummated by a happy lover, and in a few minutes entered the drawing-room of Hellingsley, to encounter the gentleman whom he hoped by some means or other, quite inconceivable, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... my death-knell?" he asked wearily. "Have I, then, died already, and is it death that is lying so heavily on ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... that, Theo—seriously?" she gasped; and the repressed eagerness in her tone sounded the death-knell of his ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... successor to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury—is no longer to be found there, and those who seek their fortunes in wills have now to prosecute their researches in that hub of British departmental records, Somerset House. The knell of "the Commons" was rung about twenty years ago, when a campaign against the abuses prevailing in the ecclesiastical courts was begun in the London Times. It unquestionably had been the home par excellence of sinecures and monopolies, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... steeple of the state-house was a bell, bearing the portentous text from Scripture, "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." A joyous peal from that bell gave notice that the bill had been passed. It was the knell of British domination. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... finish the sentence even in his own mind. He could not bear to think that it was possible he might hear his death-knell from the lips he worshipped. He had gladly seized upon the opportunity afforded by this visit to the ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... force of a hurricane. The last of the withered leaves of the trees in the drive had fallen and the bare branches were beating together like bundles of rods. The sea was louder than ever, and the bell on St. Mary's Rock, a mile away from the shore, was tolling like a knell under the surging of the waves. Sometimes the clashing of the rain against the window-panes was like the wash of billows over the port-holes of a ship ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... the door of his cell. A dim lamp faintly illuminated the long vaulted galleries, and the monks, like shadows, were gliding to midnight prayer. In the dreariness of the night, with the solemn words sounding in his ear like a warning knell, he came to the satisfactory conclusion that all was vanity, and to the determination that the very next day he would retire from the world, join this holy brotherhood, and bind himself to be a Carmelite friar for life. The day brought ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... White Old Maid" an indefinable horror, giving the tale a certain shapelessness, crowds out the compensating brightness which in most cases is not wanting; perhaps, too, "The Ambitious Guest" leaves one with too hopeless a downfall at the end; and "The Wedding Knell" cannot escape a suspicion of disagreeable gloom. But these extremes are not frequent. The wonder is that Hawthorne's mind could so often and so airily soar above the shadows that at this time hung about him; that he should nearly always suggest a philosophy so complete, so gently wholesome, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... come, fast they come; See how they gather! Wide waves the eagle plume Blended with heather. Cast your plaids, draw your blades, Forward each man set! Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, Knell for ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... left us, nearly enough; and the proof that we do not remember them enough is that we speak of them too seldom. We turn away conversation from that subject as though it were a painful one; we let the dead bury their dead, their memory die out in us with the sound of the funeral knell, seeming to forget that a friendship which can end even with death can never have been a true one. Holy Scripture itself tells us that true charity, that is, divine and supernatural love, is stronger than death! It seems to me that as a burning coal not only remains alive but burns ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... like a thing made for Alexander.' 'When he walks, he moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks before his treading.' 'He talks like a knell, his hum is a battery; what he bids be done, is finished at his bidding. He wants nothing of a god but eternity, and a heaven to throne in.' 'Yes,' is the answer; 'yes, mercy, if you paint him truly.' ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... a contrary effect on Leonard. Sweet as it was, tender as the voice that spoke it, it imposed a boundary to affection, it came as a knell to hope. He recoiled, shook his head mournfully: "Too late to accept that tie,—too late even for friendship. Henceforth—for long years to come—henceforth, till this heart has ceased to beat at your name to thrill at your presence, we ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... did end the passing peale Which gaue the warning to a dismall end, And as his words last knell began to faile, This damned Nauie did a glimmering send, By which Sir Richard might their power reueale, Which seeming conquerlesse did conquests lend; At whose appearance Midelton did cry, See where they come, for ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... not hear! Thy words bring back the dear, the bygone days, When I, a maid, might listen to thy praise: Severus, thou must know my inmost heart; I hear the knell bids Polyeucte depart. He dies,—the victim of thine Emperor's laws, And thou, though innocent, art yet the cause. Oh, if thy soul, to thy desires a slave, See hope emerging from my husband's grave Then will I wed with pain—despair embrace,— But wed Severus? Never! 'Twere ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... how Moze had broken his chain and plunged into the raging Colorado River, and tried to swim it just above the terrible Sockdolager Rapids. Rust and his fellow-workmen watched the dog disappear in the yellow, wrestling, turbulent whirl of waters, and had heard his knell in the booming roar of the falls. Nothing but a fish could live in that current; nothing but a bird could scale those perpendicular marble walls. That night, however, when the men crossed on the tramway, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... the quaint music there seemed a sense of infinite disillusion, of infinite rest; a winding-up, a conclusion, things over and done with, a fever subsided, a toil completed, a clamor abated, a farewell knell, a little folding of the hands ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... moments, who can tell, Till Blaisot met her view; They wept, they sigh'd, when Annettes knell ...
— The Maid and the Magpie - An Interesting Tale Founded on Facts • Charles Moreton
... hands, despondingly at first, and then, raising them as if in prayer, kept his eye fixed on the baron; the Lady Margaret bent her head in deep affliction, and Humbert involuntarily struck his harp. The single note sounded like a knell: a death-like silence ensued. Already four stalwart soldiers had secured Gilbert's arms, and with determined looks they waited but a signal from their chief: still the infuriated knight scowled at Gilbert, and still the ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... and in her iciest tones said to her: 'Good-afternoon, Miss Crawford. To what am I indebted for this unexpected pleasure?' her faculties came back, her tongue was loosened, and she replied in a clear voice, which rang through the room like a bell, and was, indeed, the knell ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Blackstone never seemed to have any mode of expressing his feelings except action, and where that was impossible they took hardly any recognizable shape. When the first boom of the big bell filled the little study in which we sat, I gave a cry, and jumped up from my chair: it sounded in my ears like the knell of my lost baby, for at the moment I was thinking of her as once when a baby she lay for dead in my arms. Mr. Blackstone got up and left the room, and my husband rose and would have followed him; but, saying he would be back in a few minutes, he shut the door and left us. It was half an ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... you will grieve for me when I tell you that our baby went away from us quite suddenly this morning, while the Easter bells were ringing so joyfully. They rang the knell of a mother's heart, for they rang my ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... trapper was glad to see the last of habitations, and of men, and of the railroad. Slingerland hated that great, shining steel band of progress connecting East and West. Every ringing sledge-hammer blow had sung out the death-knell of the trapper's calling. This railroad spelled the end of the wilderness. What one group of greedy men had accomplished others would imitate; and the grass of the plains would be burned, the forests blackened, the fountains dried up in the ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... When the knell of my thirtieth birthday sounded, I suddenly realised, with a desolate feeling at the heart, that I was alone in the world. It was true I had many and good friends, and I was blessed with interests and occupations which I had often declared sufficient to satisfy any not too ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... in answer to my whisper, Came a voice of some foul fiend from Hell: "No longer live say I, 'Tis better far to die And let the falling snow-flakes sound the knell." ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... ten, sounded through the muffling storm a knell as mournful as some tolling bell, while into that wild, moaning Friday night, went the desolate woman, wearing henceforth the brand of Cain—remanded to the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... and the flask that had been filled for him stood upon the table untouched. He sat with his eyes fixed upon the stranger, and his skin as pale as a corpse. Betty was in the same state of immovable terror. Every word that fell from his lips was a death-knell—every drop of his red drink was as much liquid fire—and every ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by—it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and—he knew not why—apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet-song and dance and wine; And thou art terrible—the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know or dream or fear Of ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... covered with the blood of those who had striven in their defence. The holiday was duly called forth; houses, where funeral hatchments for murdered inmates had been perpetually suspended, were decked with garlands; the bells, which had hardly once omitted their daily knell for the victims of an incredible cruelty, now rang their merriest peals; and in the very square where so lately Egmont and Horn, besides many other less distinguished martyrs, had suffered an ignominious death, a gay tournament ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and a thoughtful silence stole o'er those youthful brows of mirth, They knew she spoke of the Bridegroom King—the Lord of Heaven and earth; And e'er fleet time of another year had sounded the passing knell, The maiden Clare and her Bridegroom fair ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... the planking, threw out his hand to keep from falling, and watched his father's uncertain, stumbling figure until he was swallowed up in the gloom. The words rang in his ears like a knell. The realization of his position and what it meant, and might mean, rushed over him. For an instant he leaned heavily against the planking until he had caught his breath. Then, with quivering lips and shaking legs, he walked slowly ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... all appeals,—although I grant the power of pathos, and of gold, Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling,—no Method 's more sure at moments to take hold Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow More tender, as we every day behold, Than that all-softening, overpowering knell, The ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... described in the Burial Register as "a Player," to which the Monthly Account adds that he was "buried in the church with a forenoon knell of the great bell," costing 20s. (Vide ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... scarcely swelling, without a gleam above the tarnished gold of their mountings; one entered no Holy Week, everywhere the "Pange Lingua" and the "Stabat Mater" wailed under the arches, and then came the "Tenebrae," the lamentations, and the psalms, whose knell shook the flame of the brown waxen tapers, and after each halt, at the end of each of the psalms, one of the tapers expired, and its column of blue smoke evaporated still under the lighted circumference of the arches, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... imaginary terrors around it. Cain fled when no one pursued. Nero heard invisible trumpets ringing his death-knell around the tomb of his mother. How often has the mountain bandit, whose hand trembled not at murder, shuddered with fear, as he hastened through the forest, at the sound of a branch waving in the wind, or felt his hair stand erect with terror on beholding a distant bush fantastically enlightened ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... to his side, she felt, like full-toned bell, A mighty heart heave large in measured play; But as the floating moon aye lower fell Its bounding force did, by slow loss, decay. It throbbed now like a bird; now like far knell Pulsed low and faint! And now, with sick dismay, She felt the arm relax that round her clung, And from her circling arm he ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... slowly and laboriously, and like a knell, the great gong of the prison sounded the first stroke of twelve; but before it had counted three there came suddenly from all the city about them a great chorus of clanging bells and the shrieks and tooting of whistles and the booming of cannon. From ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... and which would have conducted, them in a different direction, but not one so peculiarly perilous. From this they made a turn to the left into a lane that would have led them back again to a little village, through which they had already passed, the bell of which was already sounding their death-knell. The constabulary, by turning into the narrow lane at the left, unconsciously approached the very ambush into which the people, or rather their more disciplined leaders, had intended to decoy them. This lane ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... to the King and implores him to give him a ship that he may go back to his own country and family. These words fall like a knell upon the heart of Nausikaa; she is led out fainting ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... the partial concealment, an appearance of grandeur and gloom, rendered more terrific when Waverley reflected on the cause by which it was produced, and that each explosion might ring some brave man's knell." ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... they are hanging them," murmured Fouquet, in a sinister voice, which sounded like a funeral knell in that rich gallery, splendid with pictures, flowers, velvet, and gold. Involuntarily every one stopped; the abbe quitted his window; the first fusees of the fireworks began to mount above the trees. A prolonged cry from the gardens attracted the superintendent ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I am blubbering on like an old woman," he murmured, and whipped his horse till all the bells jingled loudly. They sounded in his ear like the knell of all ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... brilliant was the spectacle that few took notice of a singular phenomenon that had marked its entrance. At the moment when the bride's foot touched the threshold the bell swung heavily in the tower above her and sent forth its deepest knell. The vibrations died away, and returned with prolonged solemnity as she entered the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in company with hundreds of others as venturesome, trudged heavily up the narrow trail, a roar as of an earthquake suddenly sounded their death-knell. Swiftly down the mountain side above them tore the terrible avalanche, a monster formation of ice, snow and rock, the latter loosened and ground off the face of old Chilkoot by the rushing force of the moving snowslide urged on by a mighty wind. In an ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... done to death, and their wraiths revisit their guilty lovers in their shrouds at midnight's dark hour and imprint clammy kisses upon them with livid lips; gray friars and black canons abound; requiem and death knell sound through the gloom of the cloisters; echo roars through high Gothic arches; the anchorite mutters in his mossy cell; tapers burn dim, torches cast a red glare on vaulted roofs; the night wind blows through ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... reproach. Even during the period of joyful anticipation some fear of breaking the spell had kept me from any bald circus talk in the presence of them. But Harold, who was built in quite another way, so soon as he discerned the drift of their conversation and heard the knell of all his hopes, filled the room with wail and clamour of bereavement. The grinning welkin rang with "Circus!" "Circus!" shook the window-panes; the mocking walls re-echoed "Circus!" Circus he would have, and the whole circus, and nothing but the circus. No compromise for ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... our grandmothers had its death knell sounded a few years ago, when John Mercer showed that cotton fabrics soaked in caustic soda assumed under certain conditions a silky sheen, and when dyed took on beautiful and varied hues. The demonstration of this simple fact laid the foundation for the manufacture of ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... at the gladsome birth Fling thy silvery echoes Over all the earth, But knell, O knell When death, the shadowy spectre Shall ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... gun on the other side of the creek; I didn't want it tollin' our funeral knell all the time we was goin' through the rapids and splittin' the rocks to pieces by bangin' ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I hear them, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... simple measures of reform and justice, and measures aimed at undermining the State's stability and independence. It is not stupidity! It is that the Boer realizes at least one of the inevitable consequences of reform—that the ignorant and incapable must go under. Reform is the death-knell of his oligarchy, and therefore a danger to the independence of the State—as he sees it. Until the European people who have lately become so deeply concerned in Transvaal affairs realize how widely divergent are the two interpretations of 'Independence,' ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... even in his dying fear One dreadful sound could the Rover hear, A sound as if with the Inchcape bell, The devil below was ringing his knell. ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... saw him return twice, accompanied by different individuals, and at eight o'clock Makaraig encountered him pacing along Calle Hospital near the nunnery of St. Clara, just when the bells of its church were ringing a funeral knell. At nine Camaroncocido saw him again, in the neighborhood of the theater, speak with a person who seemed to be a student, pay the latter's admission to the show, and again disappear among the shadows of ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... well-nigh stern arousal to the world of grave business and anxious care, following the mournful announcement of a death—not a birth. From this day the Queen's heavy responsibilities and stringent obligations were to begin. That untimely, peremptory challenge sounded the first knell to the light heart ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... burned. Full seventy years later, at the court of the Golden Horde, two Russian princes might have been seen disputing before the great khan the possession of the grand principality and tremblingly awaiting his decision. Nevertheless, the battle of the Don had sounded the knell of the Tartar power. Anarchy continued to prevail in the Golden Horde. The power of the grand princes of Moscow steadily grew. The khans themselves played into the hands of their foes. Russia was slowly but surely casting off her fetters, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... were hailed with rapture, and thenceforth sparkling wine was an indispensable adjunct at all the petits soupers of the period. In the highest circles the popping of champagne-corks seemed to ring the knell of sadness, and the victories of Marlborough were in a measure compensated ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... and waters' tone, 250 Sad only or glad with its own glory, and crowned With its own light, and thrilled with its own sound, Learnt now their song, more sweet than heaven's may be, Who pass away by sea; The song that takes of old love's land farewell, With pulse of plangent water like a knell. ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... smother the understanding; swift to leap up in flame at a mention of that hope, which spoke volumes to her vanity and her love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston; swift, also, to recognise in his stumbling or throttled utterance the death-knell of these expectations, and constant, poor girl! in her large-minded madness, to go on and to reck nothing of the future. But these unfinished references, these blinks in which his heart spoke, and his memory and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shall I tell?— Two mournful sisters, And a tolling knell, Tolling ding and tolling dong, ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... neighbourhood—perhaps not in the house—that is the material point. It can hardly be necessary in these days to urge marriages on. I'm sure the country is over . . . Most marriages ought to be celebrated with the funeral knell!" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and on that very morning, they were advised not to ring the bells again, until an examination of the building had taken place: but ring they would, and ring they did, and the result of their ringing was a death-knell unmatched ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... grounds that he might escape attention, and sauntered among the green hillocks under which lay at rest so many of the once loving swains and forgotten beauties of Plumstead. To his ears Eleanor's last words sounded like a knell never to be reversed. He could not comprehend that she might be angry with him, indignant with him, remorseless with him, and yet love him. He could not make up his mind whether or no Mr Slope was in truth a favoured rival. If not, why should she ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the hours Of long uninterrupted evening know. No rattling wheels stop short before these gates; No powdered pert proficients in the art Of sounding an alarm, assault these doors Till the street rings; no stationary steeds Cough their own knell, while heedless of the sound The silent circle fan themselves, and quake: But here the needle plies its busy task, The pattern grows, the well-depicted flower, Wrought patiently into the snowy lawn, Unfolds its bosom; buds and leaves and sprigs And curly tendrils, gracefully disposed, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... to their fire! his only knell, More solemn than the passing bell; For, ah! it tells a spirit flown Without a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... Adjutant-Generals. Adams, fuming, sent the names to the Senate, and they were confirmed in the order in which Washington had written them; but when they came back, jealousy and temper mastered him, and he committed the intemperate act which tolled the death-knell of the Federalist party: he ordered the commissions made out with Hamilton's name third on the list. Knox and Pinckney, he declared, were entitled to precedence; and so the order should stand or ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... tolls the knell of falling steam, The coal supply is virtually done, And at this price, indeed it does not seem As though ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... standing in the centre of a little plot of ground, which, but for the green mounds with which it was studded, might have passed for a lovely meadow. I fancied that the old clanking bell which was now summoning the congregation together, would seem less terrible when it rung out the knell of a departed soul, than I had ever deemed possible before—that the sound would tell only of a welcome to calmness and rest, amidst the most peaceful ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... mulatto held out a grayish-white palm for the quarter-dollar the passenger was ready to drop into it, and stepped back to the platform of the car. The engine bell tolled slowly, as if it sounded a knell, and the train wound away. The curve of the line carried it out of sight in less than a minute, but in the clear mountain air the quickened ringing of the bell, the pant of the engine, and the roll of the wheels were audible for a long time. Then ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... . . . . The name was ringing like a knell in Hodder's head—Eldon Parr! Coming, as it had, like a curse from the lips of this wretched, half-demented creature, it filled his soul with dismay. And the accusation had in it the profound ring of truth. He was Eldon Parr's minister, and it was Eldon Parr who stood between ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Mary's radiance seemed a miracle of returning health, to Porter Bigelow it was no miracle. Nothing could have more completely rung the knell of ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... the same rank with the masters of the sentiment of pity in literature, with Meinhold and Victor Hugo, he collects all the traces of vivid excitement which were to be found in that pastoral world—the girl who rung her father's knell; the unborn infant feeling about its mother's heart; the instinctive touches of children; the sorrows of the wild creatures, even—their home-sickness, their strange yearnings; the tales of passionate ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... fairy hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall awhile repair, To dwell a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... death hangs upon thy 338 fleetness. Vain hope! another turn brings us in sight of the brook, swollen by the breaking up of the frost into a dark, turbulent stream. Fanny perceives it too, and utters a cry of terror, which rings like a death-knell on my ear. There seems no possibility of escape for her; on the left hand an impenetrable hedge; on the right a steep bank, rising almost perpendicularly to the height of a man's head; in front the rushing water; while the mare, apparently irritated to frenzy by ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... blast Now sounds its final reveille,— This dawning morn must be the last Our fated band shall ever see. To life, but not to hope, farewell; Yon trumpet's clang and cannon's peal, And storming shout and clash of steel Is ours,—but not our country's knell. Welcome the Spartan's death! 'Tis no despairing strife— We fall, we die—but our expiring breath Is freedom's breath ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... she weeps Troy's painted woes: For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell, Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; Then little strength rings out the doleful knell: So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow; She lends them words, and ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... bugle's clanging knell," Cried the fair youth with silver voice; "And for devotion's choral swell, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... sound be years Of blighted hopes and fruitless tears— Though the soul vibrate to its knell Of ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... was right when she said that 'nevermore' was the saddest and most expressive word in the English tongue" (so harsh to her ears, usually). "I think she called it the sweetest, too, in sound; but to me it is simply the most sorrowful, a knell of doom, and it fills my soul to-day to overflowing, for 'never, never more' shall I ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... all broken, And light is thy fame; I hear thy name spoken, And share in the shame. They will name thee before me, A knell to mine ear; A shudder comes o'er me— Why ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... something drear, distressing As the knell Of all hopes worth possessing!' . . . —What befell Seemed linked with me, but how ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... you could see fair women and brave men wilting in their seats. Imitation...! The word, as Keats would have said, was like a knell! Many of these people were old travellers and their minds went back wincingly, as one recalls forgotten wounds, to occasions when performers at ships' concerts had imitated whole strings of Dickens' characters or, with the assistance of a few hats and a little false hair, had ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... of relieving himself from an irksome charge in the way of temper and watchfulness. It is undoubtedly a fact that in the attentive ears of Mr Pecksniff, the proposition did not sound quite like the dismal knell of all ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... against their erring sisters, and cried loudly for "Union or coercion." The common people of the North were taught to believe that the Nation had been irretrievably dishonored and disgraced, that the disruption of the Union was a death knell to Republican institutions and personal liberty. That the liberty and independence that their ancestors had won by their blood in the Revolution was now to be scattered to the four winds of heaven by a few fanatical slave ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... the room. Her soul was in her ear. She could hear and feel the step totter, and it shook her as it went. All sounds were trebled to her. Then it struck on the stone step of the staircase, not like a step, but a knell; another step, another and another; down to the very bottom. Each slow step made her head ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... in England of any of the arts employed by the people of a foreign country for the capture of wildfowl. The method alluded to is termed "toling." I am unable to trace the origin of the term, unless it simply implies a death knell, for such it assuredly assumes to those birds which approach within range of the secreted sportsman. This singular proceeding is said to have been first introduced upwards of fifty years ago near Havre-de-Grace, in Maryland; and, according to traditional ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... and the Pillars of Hercules, to the very soil of ancient Carthage. Victorious banners were already floating on the margin of the Great Desert, and they were not the banners of Caesar. Some vigorous hand was demanded at this moment, or else the funeral knell of Rome was on the point of sounding. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that, had the imbecile Carinus (the brother of Numerian) succeeded to the command of the Roman armies at this time, or any other than Dioclesian, the empire of the west would have fallen to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Oxford scholar, a propos of the death of a young man of extraordinary promise, 'What learning has perished with him! How vain seems all toil to acquire!'—and the words, as they passed through his mind, seemed to him to ring another death-knell. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "There spoke the knell of Anne Boleyn!" cried Herne, regarding Henry sternly, and pointing to the Round Tower. "The bloody deed is done, and thou art free to wed once more. Away to Wolff Hall, and bring thy ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ever I strive merry story to tell, Full of japeful and humorsome graces, 'T is as though I were tolling a funeral bell As if dismally, dolefully tolling a knell, So solemn and ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... nay, better never have been born at all, vi. 3. For all is vanity: that is the beginning of the matter, i. 2, it is no less the end, xii. 8. Over every effort and aspiration is wrung this fearful knell. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... production as the proudest achievement of our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete than was our bondage to the King. They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... forswore, and wine, and kept my vow To live a just and joyless life, and now I crave reward.' The voice came like a knell— 'Fool! dost thou hope to find again thy mirth, And those foul joys thou didst renounce on earth? Yea, enter in! My heaven shall ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... unseen land, and Grisell made signs to Clemence, while Leonard lifted himself upright, and all breathed the same for the mighty Prince as for the poorest beggar, the intercession for the dying. Then the solemn note became a knell, and their prayer changed to the De ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forgotten that she had promised to give her services that night at a reception, organised in aid of some charity by the Duchess of Linfield—the shrewish old woman who had paid Diana her first tribute of tears—and the recollection of it sounded the knell to her hopes of seeing Max that day. The morning must perforce be devoted to practising, the afternoon to the necessary rest which Baroni insisted upon, and after that there would be only time to dress ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... the night when we together fell, And when ye made our burial, there was triumph in the knell! Though crushed behind the barricades, and scarred in every limb, The pride of conscious Victory lay on our foreheads grim! We thought: the price is dearly paid, but the treasures must be true, And rested calmly in the graves we swore to fill ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... moved gently o'er the dewy meads To where Saint Alban's holy shrines remain. There did they find that both their knights were slain. Distraught they wander'd to swoln Redbourne's side, Yell'd there their deadly knell, sank in the waves, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... sickening shudder crept through my blood, and the remonstrance of Anna sounded in my ears like a knell. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... custom in the country to toll the church bell upon occasions of death of any one in the township or parish. A few strokes are rung by way of drawing attention; these are followed after a little pause by a single one if the knell is for a man, or two for a woman. Then another short pause. Then follows the number of years the person has lived, told in short, rather slow strokes, as one would count them up. After pausing once more the tolling begins, and is kept up for some time; the strokes following in slow and sad ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... wounded was 7578, and after the capitulation of Port Arthur, the Russian remains were collected and buried to the number of 5400; the real count was supposed to be more than 7000. The possession of this hill by the Japanese sounded the death-knell of the Russian fleet, which was practically wiped out of existence on the 9th of December. We regretted not being able to visit Port Arthur the following week, when a most interesting occasion was to occur,—the dedication of the fine monument erected by the ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... custom and law began That still at dawn the sacristan, Who duly pulls the heavy bell, 340 Five and forty beads must tell Between each stroke—a warning knell, Which not a soul can choose but hear From Bratha ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... battle's fearful sounds, They seem'd my lover's knell— I heard, that pierc'd with ghastly ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... then, good-by— Mixes jes' like laugh and cry; Deaths and births, and worst and best, Tangled their contrariest; Ev'ry jinglin' weddin'-bell Skeerin' up some funer'l knell.— Here's my song, and there's your ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... Return only this once—if but for a day, and I will never persecute thee again. Truant as thou art, thou shalt have full liberty for life. But I cannot tell thee how sad and heavy I am grown, and every hour knocks at my heart like a knell! Come back to thy poor Lucilla—if only to see what joy is! Come—I know thou wilt! But should anything I do not foresee detain thee, fix at least the day—nay, if possible, the hour—when we shall ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... children," turned, and followed her. And Emmy Lou, left sitting at her desk, saw through gathering tears the line of First-Readers wind around the room and file out the door, the sound of their departing footsteps along the bare corridors and down the echoing stairway coming back like a knell to her sinking heart. Then class after class from above marched past the door and on its clattering way, while voices from outside, shrill with the joy of the release, came up through the open windows in talk, in laughter, together with the patter of feet on the bricks. ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... receiving; asking, not answer." The words reverberated through her consciousness like a funeral knell. She dropped the stained lily and ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... being can bring to us. We have the right to challenge the fact and investigate it, and either to say: "It is fact"; or: "To me it is not fact"; but we have no right to say to any human being: "You shall not search nor speak," for that would be the death-knell of our liberty, that the denial of the ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... well—aim at my heart"—was Maximilian's request to his executioners. "Oh man!" was his last cry as he fell, the victim of his own ambition, and of Louis Napoleon's perfidy. The volley which pierced his breast was the knell of the Bonaparte dynasty. Gravelotte was but little more than ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... priest showed himself humble and most respectful, and when Mademoiselle Fifi's body left the Chateau d'Uville on its way to the cemetery, carried by soldiers, preceded, surrounded and followed by soldiers who marched with loaded rifles, for the first time the bell sounded its funeral knell in a lively manner, as if a friendly hand were caressing it. At night it rang again, and the next day, and every day; it rang as much as any one could desire. Sometimes even it would start at night and sound ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Pole." All that the funeral train of an entire nation weeping its own ruin and death can be imagined to feel of desolating woe, of majestic sorrow, wails in the musical ringing of this passing bell, mourns in the tolling of this solemn knell, as it accompanies the mighty escort on its way to the still city of the Dead. The intensity of mystic hope; the devout appeal to superhuman pity, to infinite mercy, to a dread justice, which numbers every cradle ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... early and hasty speculation, and while American ingenuity and experiment in naval warfare had, indeed, sounded the death-knell of wooden ships of war, no great change in the character of navies was immediately possible. Moreover British shipbuilders could surely keep pace in iron-clad construction with America or any other nation. The success of the Monitor ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Crittenden's own face grew tense as he watched her. There was a tone in her voice that he had hungered for all his life; that he had never heard but in his imaginings and in his dreams; that he had heard sounding in the ears of another and sounding at the same time the death-knell of the one hope that until now had made effort worth while. All evening she had played about his spirit as a wistful, changeful light will play over the fields when the moon is bright and clouds run swiftly. She turned on ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... familiar to them. It had become, they knew well enough, a question of life or death where the drifting boat would touch the strand. Now it seemed impossible that she should clear the shallow surf, whose hungry roar sounded a death-knell to any one handed to its tender mercies. Now it seemed certain that she would be carried up the bay without touching land at all. Hope rose as a little later it became obvious that she ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... ever mimic bells—bells of rejoicing, or bells of mourning, are heard in desert spaces of the air, and (as some have said), in unreal worlds, that mock our own, and repeat, for ridicule, the vain and unprofitable motions of man, then too surely, about this hour, began to toll the funeral knell of my earthly happiness—its ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... shoals of fish no longer come so near the shore as they used in the olden time, for then the kirk bell of St. Monan's had its tongue tied when the 'draive' was off the coast, lest its knell should frighten away the ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... impious voice aloud proclaim He knows no Heaven but this—no God but Fame. Lord, in refusing to acknowledge Thee, Vain man denies his own reality; But tho' the boon of life he may receive From God, and still affect to disbelieve, What are his views at death's resounding knell? Just Heaven! Sure, man ne'er died an infidel. Stretched on the agonizing couch of pain, All human aid inefficacious, vain, Where shall his tortured spirit rest? Ah, where? The past, all gloom! the future, all despair! 'Tis then, O Lord, the skeptic turns to Thee, Then the ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... betrayed that a vast army was encamped near us; their bivouac fires were even imperceptible; and the only sound we heard was the great bell of Ciudad Rodrigo as it struck the hour, and seemed, in the mournful cadence of its chime, like the knell ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... and when MAY came to Mayfair, FLORA to Pall-Mall, Shrewd eyes winked hope to eyes which winked again, And maids heard sounds as of the marriage-bell. But hush! hark! a harsh sound strikes like a sudden knell! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... but could not speak That parting word of bitterness; the cheek Grows pale when the tongue utters it; the knell Which tells "the grave is ready!" and doth swell On the dull wind, tolling—"the dead—the dead!" Sounds not more desolate. It is a dread And fearful thing to be of hope bereft, As if the soul itself had died, and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... put a case to you. I met with a man, and upon our Discourse he fell out with me: this man having a good weapon, having neither wit, stomack, nor skill; I say this man may come home by Totnam-high-Cross, and cause the Clerk to tole his knell: It is the very like case with the Gentleman Angler that goeth to the River for his pleasure: this Angler hath neither judgment, knowledge, nor experience; he may come home light laden ...
— The Art of Angling • Thomas Barker
... foot fence to him is nothing! You shall not see the slightest variation between his attitude in that strong effort, and in the easy gallop. If Tom Draw saw him now, he could have some excuse for calling him "half horse"—and he does see him! hark to that most unearthly knell! like unto nothing, either heavenly or human! He waves his hat and hurries back as fast as he is able to the horses, well knowing that for pedestrians at least, the morning's sport ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester) |
