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More "Plaint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... home that it is an enchanted isle, and that he only brushes it with his wings, gliding over, and turns the scythe away and holds the hour-glass steady. Even the children feel it: it is a half-jesting, half-serious plaint with them that the goats, the donkeys, and the ponies to which they successively transfer their affections can never secure immortal youth by a yearly sojourn in that happy kingdom. I offered once to rebuild our old bridge—to make it a drawbridge, even, and ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... until he cried at the comical idea which Sandy's plaint always brought up, of half-a-dozen negro preachers sitting in solemn judgment upon that cakewalk,—it had certainly been a good cakewalk!—and sending poor Sandy ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... same time, the vivid and lightning figures of the Psalms, sweeping over the insipid metaphors of the rhetoric which encumbered his memory, awoke in the depths of him his wild African imagination and sent him soaring. And then the affectionate note, the plaint in those sacred songs: Deus, Deus meus!—"O God! O my God!" The Divinity was no longer a cold abstraction, a phantom that withdrew into an unapproachable infinite; He became the actual possession of the loving soul. He leant over His ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Samvatsare-dated inscription to the Samvat era." Thus, e.g., Cunningham (in his "Arch. Survey of India," iii. 31, 39) directly assigns an inscription dated Samvat 5 to the year "B.C. 52," &c., and winds up the statement with the following plaint: "For the present, therefore, unfortunately, where there is nothing else (but that unknown era) to guide us, it must generally remain an open question, which era we have to do with in a particular inscription, and what date consequently ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... and cold, from their moss-woven nest Peep forth; they stretch their little eager throats Broad to the wind, and plead to the lone spray Their famish'd plaint importunately shrill. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... letters addressed to the editors of women's magazines and departments, asking for information to enlighten ignorance. Such letters range from the naive inquiry of the unsophisticated girl as to whether it is "proper" to allow her "gentleman friend" to kiss her good night, up to the plaint of the novice who doesn't know how to make her spoons and forks come out even at a dinner-party. Here in America, where circumstances may lift a family from poverty and obscurity to wealth, with a position to win in a few brief years, the first great ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the unprofessional arguments one ever hears; for on a breach of any one of the said rules the other party can demur; the demurrer is argued before the judges in Banco, and, if successfully, the faulty plaint or faulty plea is dismissed, and often of course the cause won or lost thereby, and the country saved the trouble, and the suitors the expense of trying ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... grief and tears? Till what time, O lord of Babylon, wilt thou remain in hostile regions?—Let thy heart be softened, and make Babylon joyful,—and let thy face be turned toward Eshaggil which thou lovest!'" Merodach gave ear to the plaint of his servant: he answered him graciously and promised his aid. Namar, united as it had been with Chaldaea for centuries, did not readily become accustomed to its new masters. The greater part of the land belonged to a Semitic and Cossaean ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Kabyles. In 1871, at the height of the French troubles with the Commune, formidable revolts were going on among the descendants of those untamable wretches whom Saint Arnaud smoked out in a cave. In July the garrison at Setif heard the plaint of a friendly cadi, named D'joudi, who had been wantonly attacked for his loyalty to the French by some organized mutineers under Mohammed Ben-Hadad. The poor wretch had been obliged to flee, with his women and his flocks, into the protection ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... London, a lively young dog, wrote "Poems and Ballads," and "Chastelard," since he has gone to live at Putney, he has contributed to the Nineteenth Century, and published an interesting little volume entitled, "A Century of Rondels," in which he continues his plaint ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... her sorrows vent, A thousand tears she pour'd; Her mournful voice, her moving plaint, ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... bosom was bared to the cold midnight storm, That unsparingly beat on her thin fragile form; Her black eyes flash'd sternly whence reason had fled, And she glanc'd on my sight like some ghost of the dead, As she sang a loud strain to the hoarse dashing surge, That rang on my ears like the plaint of a dirge. ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... thou hast bound me with a cruel force, The light of her two tender starry eyes, A face like snow flushed rose 'neath sunset skies, With gentle bearing and with chaste discourse. But I would make no plaint, so great my bliss. The more I love, I long to love again. How light the yoke, how sweet the circling chain Of her arms round my neck! And 'neath her kiss Leaps forth the embodied soul in ecstacy. Unloosed those bonds ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... mighty Father, she, with plaint and prayer, departed: Then from fierce Aetna to the sea a ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... with a world's anguish— But it sleeps, and I on the housetops Commune with souls long dead who guard our land at midnight, A strength in each hushed heart— I seem to hear the Atlantic moaning on our shores with the plaint of the dying And rolling on our shores with the rumble of battle.... I seem to see my country growing golden toward California, And, as fields of daisies, a people, with slumbering up-turned faces Leaned over by Two Brothers, And the greatness ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... the shadow. "I have flung roses, roses riotously with the throng, to put those pale lost lilies out of mind." Always verging on a poetic feeling not just like ourselves in these days, and yet Dowson was a poet. He caressed words until they sang for him the one plaint that he asked of them. That he was obsessed of the beauties and the intimations of Versailles, is seen in everything he did, or at least he imbibed this from Verlaine. He was himself a pale wanderer down soft green allees, he had a twilight mind struggling toward ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... This was the plaint that was often on Florentin's lips. Although he had never been a gambler—and for sufficient reason—in his eyes everything was decided by luck. There are those who are born under a lucky star, others under an unlucky one. There are those who, in the battle of life, receive ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... strong dash of anger, when you approach their nests; but the demeanor of the red-eyed, on such an occasion, is an exception to this rule. The parent birds move about softly amid the branches above, eying the intruder with a curious, innocent look, uttering, now and then, a subdued note or plaint, solicitous and watchful, but making no demonstration of ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... answer thy question to say, Because thou wert born to a whole and this story is a particular? The reason of the pain this discovery causes us (and we make it late in respect to works of art and intellect), is the plaint of tragedy which murmurs from it in regard to ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to do his work in the world. We certainly shall not have better workmen by having ignorant workmen. I need not say that the real education is that which will best fit a man for performing well his duties in life. If Mr. Froude, instead of his plaint over the scarcity of good mechanics, and of the Ten Commandments in England, had recommended the establishment of industrial schools, he would have ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... shall sing; my song, When the green grass answers to my plaint, When in sighs respond to my moan, Then my voice shall be heard in his praise: Linger, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... immediately to our Crown of England, as depending thereof for ever. And that the Inhabitants of the said Province or Territory, or any of them, shall at any Time hereafter, be compelled or compellible, or be any ways subject, or liable to appear or answer to any Matter, Suit, Cause, or Plaint whatsoever, out of the Province or Territory aforesaid, in any other of our Islands, Colonies or Dominions in America, or elsewhere, other than in our Realm of ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... Tennysonian harmony, pitched in the keys that most fittingly suit the singer's mood, are interspersed through the drama, and serve to relieve the narratives of their gloom and plaint. Their presence, we cannot help thinking, recalls work better done, and more within the limitations of the poet's genius, than this drama of "Queen Mary." As a dramatic representation the drama had the advantage ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Matron's cries were loudly heard around, And feeling bosoms shuddered at the sound; Though, we, on these occasions, truly know, The plaint is always greater than the woe. Some ostentation ever is with grief Those who weep most the soonest ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... benefite or aduantage, that any such officer or minister shall hereafter haue or take of any such Marchants or fishermen. For the which forfeiture the party grieued, and euery other person or persons whatsoeuer he or they be, shall and may sue for the same by information, bill, plaint, or action of debt in any of the kings courts of recorde: The king to haue the one moitie, and the party complaining the other moitie: in which suite no essoigne, protection, or wager of law shall be allowed. And for the second ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... sad complaints fayre Lady cannot chuse, 482 But mooue a heart though made of Adamant, And draw to yeeld vnto thy powerfull plaint, I will replant thee in the AEgiptian Throne And all thy wrongs shall Caesar's vallor right, Ile pull thy crowne from the vsurpers head, And make the Conquered Ptolomey to stoope, And feare by force ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... Rang out a sweet bird's song, No feeble, weak, uncertain note, No plaint of grief or wrong, No "Miserere Domine," No "Dies Irea" sad, But "Gloria in Excelsis" rang, ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... And on the holy Hearth, The Lars, and Lemures moan with midnight plaint, In Urns, and Altars round, A drear, and dying sound Affrights the Flamins at their service quaint; And the chill Marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar power forgoes his ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the shades of night, And mould'ring tombs uncouthly gape around, And rails and fallen stones bestrew the ground: In loosen'd garb derang'd, with scatter'd hair, His bosom open to the nightly air, Lone, o'er a new heap'd grave poor Basil bent, And to himself began his simple plaint. ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... of silence far in the jungle lost their individuality in a sob. Grasshoppers clinked in the forest, the hum of bees and beetles, the fluty plaint of a painted pigeon far in the gloom, the furtive scamper of scrub fowl among leaves made tender by decay, the splash of startled fish in the shadows, commingled and blended to the accompaniment of that subdued aerial buzz by which Nature manifests the more secret of her functions and art—that ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... variations on well-known airs; it was some marvellous reverie; a frameless picture, a landscape without horizon. A plaint, in a voice rather playful over something serious that is long past, and that can never come back again, avowed to no one by word of mouth, only handed down from generation to generation on the resounding strings—the song of the beggar who denies that he has ever been king:—the ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... impotent ill-temper. The shadowy suggestion of womanhood—glancing toward the young man—was saying, with affected giggles, "O papa, don't! Oh isn't it perfectly lovely! O papa, don't! Do hush! What will people think?" This last variation of his daughter's plaint must have given the man some satisfaction, at least, for it furnished him another target for his pointless shafts; and he fairly outdid himself in politely damning whoever might presume to think anything at all of him; with ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... judge escape was sometimes possible; but from our worthy Sprenger it was hopeless. His humanity is too strong: it needs great management, a very large amount of ready wit, to avoid a burning at his hands. One day there was brought before him the plaint of three good ladies of Strasburg who, at one same hour of the same day, had been struck by an arm unseen. Ah, indeed! They are fain to accuse a man of evil aspect, of having laid them under a spell. On being brought before the inquisitor, the man vows and swears by all the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... (Being the Plaint of Adolphe Culpepper Ferguson, Salesman of Fancy Notions, held in durance of his Landlady for a failure ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... defendant] may bring a counter-plaint for abusive language,[50] or personal trespass,[50] or for acts of atrocious violence.[51] On behalf of each party, a surety, competent to meet the result of the ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... young gentleman of means and great expectations, I should have been writing sonnets to the eyebrow of some "ladye fayre," or surreptitiously wooing some farmer's daughter, in common with my kind, I was hearkening to the plaint of some Greek or Roman lover, or ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... only usurp one more of what have hitherto been almost exclusively man's rights—the profession of architecture—she would in truth become the architect, not only of her own fortune, but of the fortunes of a suffering sisterhood, whose great plaint is, "So many things and no place to put them!" For who ever knew a mere man, architect and artist of the beautiful though he were, who had even the beginning of a realization of the absolute necessity for closets—large ones, light ones, and ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... yacht's saloon below a violin sang its very soul out upon the summer night, weaving its plaint into the soft, adagio rippling ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... customs. The Dispensary work calls also for much time and strength, nursing often having to accompany the medicine; the very ignorance and superstition of the patients and their friends making the task doubly trying. Then one must be ever at hand to hear the plaint of and to shelter and reconcile the runaway slave or wife or the threatened victim of oppression and superstition. Visitors are to be received, and all the bothersome and, to European notions, stupid details ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... settled down in his seat as one who has made up his mind. "Let the case of the summoner be laid before me," said he. "Justice shall be done, and the offender shall be punished, be he noble or simple. Let the plaint be brought ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tells in a lecture of a fair and frail young thing crying aloud to her mother in bitter plaint, "He loves me—yes, I know he loves me—but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... of the tree to make out the cause of all this excitement. The chickadees were clinging to the ends of the sprays, as usual, apparently very busy looking for food, and all the time uttering their shrill plaint. The nuthatches perched about upon the branches or ran up and down the tree trunks, incessantly piping their displeasure. At last I made out the cause of the disturbance,—a little owl on a limb, looking down in wide-eyed intentness upon me. How annoyed ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... the misty plaint of the Unconceived! O crystal incuriousness of the monad! The faint swarming toward the light and the rending of the sphere of hope, frustrate, inutile. I am the seed called Life; I am he, I am she. We walk, swim, totter, and blend. Through the ages I lay in the vast basin of Time; I am called ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... couples were promenading in the garden. The golden sickle of the moon shed dim rays over the landscape and made the towers and steeples of the town, standing out at some distance, appear like misty silhouettes. In the deep green of the bushes a nightingale pealed forth his liquid plaint into the balmy night air, while from the ballroom inside the tuning of violins mingled inharmoniously. From the town gusts of warm wind carried snatches of a martial song, ground out on the barrel-organ of a carrousel. All these noises rose in a confused mass into ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... plaint against M. de La Tour d'Azyr! You are out of your senses, I think. Oh, you are mad; as mad as that poor friend of yours who has come to this end through meddling in what did not concern him. The language he used here to M. le Marquis on the ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... fill'd with tears I saw those two bright eyes, Which oft have turn'd the sun with envy pale; And from those lips I heard—oh! such a tale, As might awake brute Nature's sympathies! Wit, pity, excellence, and grief, and love With blended plaint so sweet a concert made, As ne'er was given to mortal ear to prove: And heaven itself such mute attention paid, That not a breath disturb'd the listening grove— Even aether's wildest gales ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the report of a Commission of Enquiry in 1843, "kept in a perpetual state of feebleness and dependence. He can never escape from the tie that forever binds to the soil him and his progeny; a cultivator he is born, a mere cultivator he is doomed to die." No doubt this plaint is pitched in a rather high key. But in time the burden of grievances was generally felt and then ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... A stillness fresh and audible: A yellow leaflet to the ground Whirled noiselessly: with wing of gloss A hovering sunbeam brushed the moss, And, wavering brightly over it, Sat like a butterfly alit: The owlet in his open door Stared roundly: while the breezes bore The plaint to far-off places drear,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... again our holy path, Watching the shades that lay upon the ground, Already turned to their accustomed plaint. ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... after Majorian, died Pope St. Leo. First of his line to bear the name of Great, who twice saved his city, and once, by the express avowal of a successor, the Church herself, Leo carried his crown of thorns one-and-twenty years, and has left no plaint to posterity of the calamities witnessed by him in that long pontificate. Majorian was the fourth sovereign whom in six years and a half he had seen to perish by violence. A man with so keen an intellectual vision, so wise a measure of men ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... first robin in Hackensack, the stirring of the maple sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along the main street in Syracuse, the first chirp of the blue bird, the swan song of the blue point, the annual tornado in St. Louis, the plaint of the peach pessimist from Pompton, N.J., the regular visit of the tame wild goose with a broken leg to the pond near Bilgewater Junction, the base attempt of the Drug Trust to boost the price of quinine foiled in the House by Congressman ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the monotonous plaint of his sister which caused the Terror to say: "I've got a penny. We'll go ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... right hand in so far as I'm able, Mr. Flagg," declared Latisan, at last, pricked by the repeatedly iterated plaint. "You can depend on me just as far as I can ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... with a pitying sigh, that there was not, but returned to her plaint over the sinfully wasted kopeks. Once I offered her some "tea-money" in the shape of a basket of raspberries, which she wished to preserve and drink in her tea, with the privilege of purchasing ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... minutes, while listening to the big man—and answering him occasionally—he had been watching for a trim little figure that he knew would presently appear on one of the white walks leading to the great, wide steps that led to the entrance to the building. For he had heard the long-drawn plaint of a locomotive whistle some minutes before; he had seen the train itself come gliding over the mammoth plains that stretched eastward from the capitol; and he knew that Ruth would be ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... crying out under the slowly turning wheels, the horse's lean thighs moving with ascetic deliberation away from the light into the obscurity of the open space bordered dimly by the pointed roofs and the feebly shining windows of the little alms-houses. The plaint of the gravel travelled slowly all round the drive. Between the lamps of the charitable gateway the slow cortege reappeared, lighted up for a moment, the short, thick man limping busily, with the horse's head held aloft in his fist, the lank animal walking in stiff ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... dear," said Clara viciously, in answer to her sister's plaint, "we've given that young devil a bit of trouble. Perhaps they won't renew the contract, and anyway, it'll take a bit of proving that he did not sign ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... A trembling seized her and feeling her way to the bed where Bertie lay, she crept in beside him, cuddling the soft, warm little body close, and checking her sobs that they might not wake him. Long after the whippoorwill had ceased its plaint, she lay there staring into the darkness, waiting ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... set off leisurely for Lindsey's, Terry quiet, the Major jovial at the prospect of a drive at the wild boar. They jogged through the hot afternoon over a trail winding under a canopy of foliage shrill with the plaint of myriad insect life. An hour out and the Major was nearly unseated as his pony shied violently from a three-foot iguana that scurried across their path in furious haste. Farther into the woods, and they drew rein, listening to the mystic tone of a Bogobo agong rung at ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... words came from her heart. If Maitre Quennebert had not witnessed the scene with Jeannin, if he had not known how frail was the virtue of the weeping damsel, he might have been affected by her touching plaint. The chevalier appeared to be deeply moved by Angelique's grief, and while his, uncle was striding up and down the room and swearing like a trooper, he gradually approached her and expressed by ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Why was one in speech so like a ghost selected his companion? And that verse, of all to him most afflicting, and which in hours of despair he had repeated until his very spirit had become colored with its reproachful plaint—who put it ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... whist and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, And naught is heard on the lonely hill, But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill, Of the gauze-winged katydid, And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will {417} Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... unseeing down the sun-sifted dusk of the green lane. Here the desert silence was like a benediction of peace, broken now and then by the faint, shrill note of an insect, or the occasional soft, mournful plaint of a dove. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... smallest consoling idea has a strength of its own that is not to be found in the most magnificent plaint, the most exquisite expression of sorrow. The vast, profound thought that brings with it nothing but sadness is energy burning its wings in the darkness to throw light on the walls of its prison; but ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... more than a burro. Like the useful animal, she has plenty of voice, and, like him, she can knock the horns off the moon with it or send it on a hot chase after the receding ghost of Hamlet's sire; but she is "tone-deaf"— can't tell Ophelia's plaint from the performance of Thomas' orchestra. Svengali hypnotizes her, and, beneath his magic spell she becomes the greatest cantatrice in Europe. Hypnotism is a power but little understood; so we must permit Du Maurier to make such Jules Verne's excursions into that unknown realm as may please ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... instant, with the plaint of the Norse mother in my ears, I knew. The tie was too strong to fight. I loved my little ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... [Evenly.] If he were, He would be shrewder, and not be paying money For what this woman is glad to do for naught. Nothing is cooked, and nobody is warmed,— A most unthrifty fire! Do you bid the Duke, Until he show me sounder cause for plaint, Permit this woman to gather unmolested Dead wood in his forest, and bear it home.—Lisa, Take care you break no ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... claims a place. Retiring, and unknown or but to few, Her latter days were hid from public view; But I have often witness'd, when alone— The prayer uplifted, and the sigh unknown. When no eye saw her, but with God shut in, She pour'd her plaint to Him, who saw, unseen; Then from the sacred word she succour drew, 'To hoary hairs I bear, I carry you.' This promise still her drooping spirit cheered, And shed its starlight when the night appeared. Bold, in her weakness, close the foe pursued, And ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... voice, trembling and faint, Blends with the hollow sobbings of the sea; Like the sad music of a siren's plaint, But shriller than Leander's voice should be, Unless the wintry death had changed its tone,— Wherefore she thinks she ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... spitcat's plaint was as follows: "It ain't That I am to music a foe; For fiddle-strings bide in my own inside, And I twang them soft ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... music; for my soul doth faint. I'm sick of noise and care: and now mine ear Longs for some air of peace, some dying plaint That may the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... of flutes and muted horns. Then, as all other voices are hushed, the clarinet sings a strain that ends in lowest notes of expressive grief (Recit., espressivo dolente)—where we can almost hear the words. It is answered by a sweet plaint of other wood, in ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... gray of dawn, Wakeful, have heard that fruitless plaint Through Memory's chambers deep ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... increases them. When the day's duties are over, and all the house is still, I lie tossing ceaselessly, torn by conflicting doubts and fears. E'en as the wakeful bird sits darkling all night long, and pours her endless plaint, now low and mellow, now piercing high and shrill, so wavers my spirit in its purpose, and threads the unending maze of thought. Sweet home of my wedded joy, must I leave thee, and all the faces which I love so well, and the great possessions which he gave into my keeping? Shall ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... of high birth and gentle condition, passing through the streets, heavily burdened, toward the Alcazaba. As they left their homes they smote their breasts and wrung their hands, and raised their weeping eyes to heaven in anguish; and this is recorded as their plaint: "O Malaga! city so renowned and beautiful! where now is the strength of thy castle, where the grandeur of thy towers? Of what avail have been thy mighty walls for the protection of thy children? Behold ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... moving smoothly, streaked with lines of froth, across the illumined circle thrown round the brig by the lights on her poop. Air bubbles sparkled, lines of darkness, ripples of glitter appeared, glided, went astern without a splash, without a trickle, without a plaint, without a break. The unchecked gentleness of the flow captured the eye by a subtle spell, fastened insidiously upon the mind a disturbing sense of the irretrievable. The ebbing of the sea athwart the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... at his lot, Tho' new fences the lone Heath enclose: For, alas! the blest days are forgot, When poor Men had their Sheep and their Cows. Still had Labour been blest with Content, Still Competence happy had been, Nor Indigence utter'd a plaint, Had Avarice spar'd ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... and plaints, all haunting in their extreme expressiveness, a great variety beneath an appearance of monotony, and from time to time two wailing notes. These notes are always the same, as the chorus gives them as a plaint, and they are both affecting and artistic. At the end comes a dim ray of light and hope. This is the only one in the work save the Amen at the end, for Faith and Hope should not be looked for here. The supplications sound like prayers which ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... Tower, to enter victorious into the city, to receive their recompense for the privations and fatigues of a month's campaign. They were devotees of military glory, they considered war necessary to existence, and yet they were bewailing the hardship that it was imposing upon them. The Count exhaled the plaint ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of modern inscriptions we have the following: "Bethlehem, Calvary, Bethany." "We welcome the infant to the Font. We invite the {21} youth to Confirmation. We invoke the faithful to the Holy Communion." "Joyful our peal for the bridal; mournful our plaint for the dead." ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... who hears for the first time this weird song, is told the first and greatest secret of the Northland; to him who has heard it often, it is the solemn knell of lost endeavor. It is the plaint of tortured souls, for in it is invested the heritage of the North, the suffering of countless generations—the warning and the requiem to the ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... with its plaint of hopeless doom, Bearing in its heart the fragrance of the Truth's enduring bloom, Standing in the light of knowledge, where developed ages meet, We can read the mystic omens which O-kis-ko's eyes did greet. And to us they seem the symbols of what coming ages brought, ...
— The White Doe - The Fate of Virginia Dare • Sallie Southall Cotten
... The plaint gave Wallie such a pang that he could not answer, but with a twig played a game of tick-tack-toe in the dust, while he thought bitterly that no one could blame Helene Spenceley for preferring Canby to a person who seemed destined to failure in ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... he was too expert a farmer to fail. At threshing time the crew looked forward to working for Ben, the farmer, and dreaded the meals prepared by Bella, his wife. She was notoriously the worst cook and housekeeper in the county. And all through the years, in trouble and in happiness, her plaint was the same: "If I'd thought I was going to stick down on a farm all my life, slavin' for a pack of men folks day and night, I'd rather have died. Might as well be dead ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... to get away, for he feared his mother's plaint for money. He knew nothing of the three five-hundred-dollar bills now sewed up in the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... grove, which oft we made resound Of pleasant plaint and of our ladies' praise; Recording oft what grace each one had found, What hope of speed, what dread of long delays. The wild forest; the clothed holts with green; With reins availed, and swift y-breathed horse, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... the throes of a fair. The booths filled an open space to the west of the town known as the Jew's Meadow, and among the attractions was Professor Adams with his "school of undefeated champions." The plural is in the grand manner, giving the lie to Cashel Byron's pathetic plaint:— ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... impetuous phrases declare, "He shall perish," leading to the chorus, "Woe to him!" After a few bars for the instruments, Obadiah, in an exquisite recitative, counsels him to fly to the wilderness. In the next scene we behold Elijah alone, and in a feeble but infinitely tender plaint he resigns himself. It is hard to conceive anything grander and yet more pathetic than this aria, "It is enough," in which the prophet prays for death. A few bars of tenor recitative tell us that, wearied out, he has fallen asleep ("See, now he sleepeth beneath a juniper-tree in the wilderness, and ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... quality of tone and expression that was unspeakably touching. Indeed, it was a wonderful sight to see this sentimental blackleg, with a pack of cards in his pocket and a revolver at his back, sending his voice before him through the dim woods with a plaint about his "Nelly's grave" in a way that overflowed the eyes of the listener. A sparrow hawk, fresh from his sixth victim, possibly recognizing in Mr. Hamlin a kindred spirit, stared at him in surprise, and was fain to ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... her relations, now was the time, her ladyship came slowly up to the circle, and commenced an attack on poor Dunmore, as she knew him best. To transcribe her words would be impossible, for she put in a native sentence whenever she found herself at a loss for an English one, but the burden of her plaint was this:— ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... messages must have reached its mark, for of a sudden her voice grew true and steady and clear, shaken only by the poignant grief of her song. Then there was no more ordeal, only a frail wisp of a girl singing as he had never heard it the exile's plaint. David did not quite know her. Up there in the loft, bathed in the mellow radiance that had singled her out as if in prophecy, letting out to the full, as she could not in the little parlor, a voice of power and passion ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... forth from the shores the notes of an innumerable variety of insects, which filled the air with a strange but not inharmonious concert; while ever and anon was heard the melancholy plaint of the whip-poor-will, who, perched on some lone tree, wearied the ear of night with his incessant moanings. The mind, soothed into a hallowed melancholy, listened with pensive stillness to catch and distinguish each sound that vaguely echoed from the shore—now and then startled, perchance, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... had read it. "Perhaps now you will admit the justice of my plaint that you did not make a simple purchase of my liberty, as I counselled you, instead of entering into this idiotic compact with ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... clouds from the smouldering wound. And no bird spreading its light wings can cross that water; but in mid-course it plunges into the flame, fluttering. And all around the maidens, the daughters of Helios, enclosed in tall poplars, wretchedly wail a piteous plaint; and from their eyes they shed on the ground bright drops of amber. These are dried by the sun upon the sand; but whenever the waters of the dark lake flow over the strand before the blast of the wailing wind, then they roll on in a mass into Eridanus ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... he was stricken with horror as he remained there in the cabin with the dying woman and the naked corpse of the poor dead child. But what was he to do? He could not go and leave them without succour. The woman had made no plaint of her suffering, and had asked for nothing; but he felt that it would be impossible to abandon her without offering her relief; nor was it possible that he should leave the body of the child in that horribly ghastly state. So he took ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... grief, trouble, repentance, &c.]. Indeed, he uttered the word repeatedly, as if his ear had been eager for this sound, which for him comprised the whole scale of the feelings which is produced by an intense plaint, from repentance to hatred, blessed or poisoned fruits of this ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... too busy with politics. He says that he will give them up, if I insist; but my doing so might prevent his being chosen to Congress." There was again rueful pride in her plaint. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... King of the land he goes, And straight to make his plaint began; Then murmured loud the assembled crowd, And clench'd his ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... that swept through the girl choked her—its spray blurred her eyes as she gazed after old Dick, pitying his bent shoulders under the sun-faded coat. But even in her sorrow, because she had been obliged to deny his wistful plaint so heartlessly, she was conscious of relief. She had been afraid of his recognition of her; after this she would be more free ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... "Priapus" when he spoke of Goethe. Even "Wilhelm Meister" seemed to be only a symptom of decline, of a moral "going to the dogs". The "Menagerie of tame cattle," the worthlessness of the hero in this book, revolted Niebuhr, who finally bursts out in a plaint which Biterolf(8) might well have sung: "nothing so easily makes a painful impression as when a great mind despoils itself of its wings and strives for virtuosity in something greatly inferior, ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... effect Of loitering here, of death defrauded long; Of old so gracious (and let that suffice), MY VERY MASTER KNOWS ME NOT. I've been so long remembered I'm forgot. * * When in his courtiers' ears I pour my plaint, They drink it as the Nectar of the Great; And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow. * * Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy, Court favour, yet untaken, I BESIEGE. * * If this song lives, Posterity shall know One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred, Who thought, even gold ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... and night it lasted, nor two. For four days the uproar showed no sign of ever lessening, and on the fifth the eighteen hundred voices were so hoarse that the calves merely whispered their plaint, gave over in disgust and began nosing the scattered piles of hay. The cows, urged by hunger, strayed from the blackened circle around the corrals and went to burrowing in the snow for the ripened grass whereby they must live throughout the winter. They were driven forth to the open range ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... was no doubt already excessive, for an irresistible stupor once more took possession of him, his head dropped, his eyes closed, and he seemed to fall asleep again, continuing his plaint, as if in a dream, moaning in fainter and ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... there passed over the camp, beneath the somber heavens, a loud, wailing cry. Was it the plaint of some nocturnal bird? Or was it a mysterious voice, reaching them from some far-distant field of carnage, ominous of disaster? The whole camp shuddered, lying there in the shadows, and the strained, tense sensation of expectant anxiety that hung, miasma-like, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... both or either of them shall stand charged in the law therefor to the commissioner, who may deny to grant a clearing for such ship or vessel, until payment be made, or may recover the same of the master, at the commissioner's election, by action of debt, bill, plaint or information in any of her majesty's courts of record ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... subtle, aristocratic, and refined. I could imagine it bending above the little serpents of the sistrum as they lifted their melodious voices to bid Typhon depart, or watching the dancing women's rhythmic movements, or smiling half kindly, half with irony, upon the lovelorn maiden who made her plaint: ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... of all. He had, indeed, loved her to the last, for his was an affectionate spirit, but she had become increasingly difficult: jealous of her step-daughter June, jealous even of her own little daughter Holly, and making ceaseless plaint that he could not love her, ill as she was, and 'useless to everyone, and better dead.' He had mourned her sincerely, but his face had looked younger since she died. If she could only have believed that she made him happy, how much happier would ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... soft notes which mean the coming of dark and the green light of sunset. Then the whole changed to a great paean which rang like an organ through the earth. There were trumpet notes ill it and flute notes and the plaint of pipes. "Come forth," it cried; "the sky is wide and it is a far cry to the world's end. The fire crackles fine o' nights below the firs, and the smell of roasting meat and wood smoke is dear to the heart of man. Fine, too is the sting of salt and the rasp of the north wind in ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... years. At an engagement a month before, Tynemouth had been blinded by shrapnel, and had been sent to Durban. To the two letters he had written there had come no answer until now; and he felt that this reply would be a plaint against Fate, a rebellion against the future restraint and trial and responsibility which would be put upon the wife, who was so much of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he had arranged them, and began to strike their keys in unison; this seemed to him for the first time childish. Then he played some lively bars on the piano alone; they sounded too light and trivial, and he turned to the other instrument. As the plaint of the reeds arose, it filled his sense like a solemn organ-music, and transfigured the place; the notes swelled to the ample vault of a church, and at the high altar he was celebrating the mass in his sacerdotal robes. He suddenly caught his fingers away from ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... 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 chant may have little or no sense, and may be merely the repetition of one sentence, such as "Good fella, white fella, sit down 'longa Hall's Creek," or something with an equally silly ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... consecrated earth, And on the holy hearth, The Lars, and Lemures, moan with midnight plaint; In urns, and altars round, A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar Power forgoes ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Rock-doves' poetry of plaint, Or the starling's courtship quaint, Heart made much of; 'twas a boon Won from silence, and too soon Wasted in the ample air: Building rooks far distant were. Scarce at all would speak the rills, And I saw the idle hills, In their ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... tile islands of Guernsey and jersey by an English privateer, who robbed the navigators of all they brought from the land they had visited, the most important loss being the journal of the expedition. On his arrival at Honfleur, De Gonneville immediately entered a plaint before the Admiralty Court of Normandy, and wrote a report of his voyage, which was signed by the principal officers ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... Mrs. Pagnell. She flung wild arms of a semaphore signalling national events. She sprang before Aminta to stop her retreat, and stamped and gibbed, for sign that she would not be driven. She fell away to Mr. Morsfield, for simple hearing of her plaint. He appeared emphatic. There was a passage between him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... should hardly have suspected in him, M. Le Mesge drew us away from the statues. A moment later, Morhange and I found ourselves again seated, or rather sunk among the cushions in the center of the room. The invisible fountain murmured its plaint at ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... of Sinai, with its one prolonged note. David is like his own harp of many chords, through which the breath of God murmured, drawing forth wailing and rejoicing, the clear ring of triumphant trust, the low plaint of penitence, the blended harmonies of all ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... if it be I ever woke ear-winning melody, 'Twas for thy praise I sought the throbbing string, Thy praise alone—for all my worshipping Is at thy shrine, thou knowest, day by day, Then shall it be in vain my plaint to sing?— Send me a maiden meet for love, ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... murderous deeds are transiently recorded by stray painted feathers. But the fright soon passes, and the magnificent fruit pigeon—green, golden-yellow, purplish-maroon, rich orange, bluish-grey, and greenish-yellow, are his predominant colours—resumes his love-plaint in bubbling bass. "Bub-loo, bub-loo maroo," he says over and over again in unbirdlike tone, without emphasis or lilt. "Bub-loo, bub-loo maroo," a grievance, a remonstrance and a threat in one doleful phrase; but to the flattered female it is all compliment and gallantry. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... elapsed, and except the monotonous plaint of the screw, no sound was to be heard. A footstep came from the cabin, where Dave was at work, or appeared to be, for he had been stationed there for his part of the programme which was ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Germany" and that Germany had promoted and honored friendly relations with the United States "as an heirloom from Frederick the Great." Its disclosure was viewed as a sufficing answer to the German Chancellor's plaint that the United States had "brusquely" broken off relations without giving ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... in a high-toned, pitiful whine suggestive of a dog's song on a moonlight night, but this plaint was drowned in the roars of laughter raised by ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... thereafter oft-times did Tyri make plaint to King Olaf, and cried bitterly thereover, because albeit had she such great possessions in Wendland yet had she none in this country, and that she should have such deemed she but seemly for a Queen; & thinking that by fair words would she get her own prayed she him on this matter, and said ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... woke not, neither uttered cry nor plaint, nor did its subtle air vibrate with the slightest tinkle—so soft was the fall of the retreating steps. They sounded for a time, and then were silent. And the evening stillness became pensive, stretched itself out in long shadows, and then grew ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... hopes and fears, where once men had been born, loved, and died, where once maidens had been fair, and good and evil wrestled, and little children played. Some Job may have dwelt here and written his immortal plaint, or some king of Sodom, and suffered the uttermost calamity. The world is very old; all we Westerns learned from the contemplation of these wrecks of men and of their works was just that the ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... uttered her mild plaint, adding, "Lydia ought to be getting back to her own bed, now warm weather ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... of the willows, at the other side of the island, the mysterious bird was trilling from his hiding place, a dizzying shower of notes, which broke at the crescendo of the musical whirl-pool into a plaint as soft and long-sustained as a golden thread stretched in the silence of the night across the river, that seemed to be applauding with its hushed murmur. To get nearer, the lovers went up through the rushes, stopping, bending over at each step, to keep the branches from crackling ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Jupiter; "I have heard thy plaint, and have come hither to show thee how greatly thou dost wrong me. Hark! I, who am sovereign lord of this world, promise to grant in full the first three wishes which it will please thee to utter, whatever these may be. Consider well what ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... caravan arrived at the halting-place the tense solitude gave way to pandemonium. Camels grunted and squealed in eager plaint to be relieved of their loads, horses neighed and fought for the best tufts of grass, men raged at each other as though the work of preparing the camp were something ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... pity of his plaint? Dost thou not see the death that combats him Beside that flood, ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... central figure of the group, all eyes turning ever and anon, upon her in tenderest solicitude, every ear attentive to her slightest plaint, every hand ready ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... not Music's genuine power, nor deign 5 To melt at Nature's passion-warbled plaint; But when the long-breathed singer's uptrilled strain Bursts in a squall—they ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fair Saint! Pour out your praise or plaint Meekly and duly; I will not enter there, To sully your pure ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the game path through which I passed . . . to this, palsy and senility! Oh, the subtile poisons, the intoxicating Hippocrenes I taught him how to drink! And now he turns and casts the dregs into my face. But as I said, I make no plaint; I do not lack courage. A pleasant pastime it was, this worldly lessoning; but I forgot that he was partly a reproduction of his Catholic mother; that where I stood rugged he would fall; that he did not possess ardor that is without fire, love that is without sentiment. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... drew up their esparto-seated chairs in order to hear better. He was about to sing a romance of his own composition; a relacion, accentuated, according to the custom of the country, by a quavering plaint, a cry of pain drawn out as long as the singer had air left ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... with steps of exaggerated carefulness. Suddenly he paused. His dark eyes, in vague, alcoholic meditation, sought the distant peaks stained with the blush-rose of sunset. The evening-purple of the hills fringed the bay with mystery. Gulls floated high on lavender wings, their intermittent plaint answering the Indian voices that drifted up from the beach ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... lonely grave, and he for whom the earth was all too narrow rests peacefully beneath the hillock where five weeping willows droop their green tresses in agonized despair, and a tender-hearted rivulet ripples by with melancholy plaint. There is no inscription on the tombstone, but Clio has graven thereon, in invisible letters, her just sentence that will echo through the centuries ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... heard a feeble plaint, quickly silenced by a thunder crash. "If we were only home with mama," he ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... bliss and a wigwam if need be; but he—he was cold—he was changing—he would prove faithless to his humble, adoring village maid, and then there would be nothing left for her but despair. Then as his convalescence progressed she became insistent and Mrs. Davies weaker. Almira poured forth her plaint to her aunt by letter. Aunt Almira gave another dinner, to which some of the staff were bidden, and a mellow symposium it was, and over the oft-replenished champagne glasses did the kindly woman tell of ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... hunter patrolled his beat, and hours were moments to him. He heard the low hum of the insects, the murmur of running water, the rustle of the wind. A coyote cut the keen air with high-keyed, staccato cry. The owls hooted, with dismal and weird plaint, one to the other. Then a wolf mourned. But these sounds only accentuated the loneliness and wildness of the ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... off leisurely for Lindsey's, Terry quiet, the Major jovial at the prospect of a drive at the wild boar. They jogged through the hot afternoon over a trail winding under a canopy of foliage shrill with the plaint of myriad insect life. An hour out and the Major was nearly unseated as his pony shied violently from a three-foot iguana that scurried across their path in furious haste. Farther into the woods, and they drew rein, listening to the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... should stand together, commenting on passing events, booming in unison with the cyclone, and mimicking the tenderest tones of the idlest wind. During a storm, when the big waves crash on the beach and the Casuarinas are tormented, the tumult is bewildering; but however loud their plaint, very few suffer, though growing in loose sand; for the roots are widespread and, like the trunk and main branches, tough, while the branchlets stream before ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... ballad, not a single song, reminds us that on their banks men and women live who experience the happiness of love and the pangs of separation; that under each roof in the valleys life's joys and sorrows come and go." This plaint of an American of the old days expresses my meaning; it has been noted again and again, particularly by those who visited America at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The only relationship between the Yankee and his environment is one of practical usefulness. The soil, as one ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... still survive; but there is no substantial difference in the incidents of trial, judgment and execution in any of these courts. The initial difference between actions in the High Court and the county court is that the latter are commenced by plaint lodged in the court, on which a summons is prepared by the court and served by its bailiff, whereas in the High Court the party prepares the writ and lodges it in court for sealing, and when it is sealed, himself ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... on a stone with her burden weary, By the foaming eddies of amethyst. And robed in her mantle of mist the sprite Her low wail poured on the silent night. Then the spirit spake, and the floods were still— They hushed and listened to what she said, And hushed was the plaint of the whippowil In the silver-birches above her head: 'Wiwst,—the prairies are green and fair, When the robin sings and the whippowil; But the land of the Spirits is fairer still, For the winds of winter blow never there; ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... He shrieked out for mercy from every saint in the calendar, and entreated one or all of them to carry him on shore, even if it was but to the sandy coast of Africa. "Ah! misericordia, misericordia, misericordia!" was the burden of his plaint. ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... it's no easy thing Making the journey to Bumpville, So I think, on the whole, it were prudent to bring An end to this ride to Bumpville; For, though she has uttered no protest or plaint, The calico mare must be blowing and faint— What's more to the point, I'm blowed if I ain't! So play we have got ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... saide, and deare constraint, Lets me not sleepe, but wast the wearie night 470 In secret anguish and unpittied plaint, Whiles you in carelesse sleepe are drowned quight. Her doubtfull words made that redoubted knight Suspect her truth: yet since no' untruth he knew, Her fawning love with foule disdainefull spight 475 He would not shend; but said, Deare dame I rew, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... interrupted, and the attention of the garrulous twelve was finally given to the presiding officer. For a moment, silence fell. It was broken by Ruth Howard, a girl with large, soulful brown eyes and a manner of rapt earnestness, who uttered her plaint in ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... exact photograph of the casino; by eagerly reading the Joanne guide describing the beauties of the seashore where one would wish to be; by being rocked on the waves, made by the eddy of fly boats lapping against the pontoon of baths; by listening to the plaint of the wind under the arches, or to the hollow murmur of the omnibuses passing above on the Port ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... 1748,[31] is a fine poem; at least the first part of it is, for the second book is tiresomely allegorical, and somewhat involved in plot. There is a magic art in the description of the "land of drowsy-head," with its "listless climate" always "atween June and May,"[32] its "stockdove's plaint amid the forest deep," its hillside woods of solemn pines, its gay castles in the summer clouds, and its murmur of the distance main. The nucleus of Thomson's conception is to be found in Spenser's House of Morpheus ("Faerie ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the gloom sails the silv'ry moon, O'er forests dark and still, Now far, now near, ever sad and clear, Comes the plaint of the whip-poor-will; With song and laugh, and with kindly chaff, We startle the birds above, Then rest tired heads on our cedar beds, To dream ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... boughs among He's coldly nestling. How sad the high wind's sounding dirge, As 'twere old ocean's moaning surge, Around our dwelling; I well may tell the reason why, But oh! the teardrops in mine eye Are swiftly swelling. The world is sad, and I am so; Does Marian hear my plaint? Oh, no; She's far away. Ye envious streams—ye hateful hills! Ah me! what cruel anguish thrills My heart to-day! But soon may Fortune learn to smile Upon her sad and helpless child, And let us meet, No more to part, no more ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... answered her call. A trembling seized her and feeling her way to the bed where Bertie lay, she crept in beside him, cuddling the soft, warm little body close, and checking her sobs that they might not wake him. Long after the whippoorwill had ceased its plaint, she lay there staring into the darkness, ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... of the world, a telephone repeating all men's wants. I open it, and where my eye first falls—well, no, not Morrison's Pills—but here, sure enough, and but a little above, I find the joint that I was seeking; here is the weak spot in the armour of society. Here is a want, a plaint, an offer of substantial gratitude: 'Two Hundred Pounds Reward.—The above reward will be paid to any person giving information as to the identity and whereabouts of a man observed yesterday in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the outlooks of the new soldier and the old. Our Manchester Territorials were distressed to find that thousands of yards of hurdles were being lined with the best tent cloth at 1s. 4d. a yard, instead of with cheap cotton at a quarter the price. I repeated their plaint to a Regular officer of the old school, expecting sympathetic indignation. "Magnificent," was his reply. "It shows the world in what spirit England ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... broke out into a loud laugh. "Ah, he begs for her!" said he. "This little Earl Surrey presumes to think that his sentimental love-plaint can exercise an influence on the heart of his judge! No, no, Henry Howard; you know me better. You say, indeed, that I am a cruel man, and that blood cleaves to my crown. Well, now, it is our pleasure ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... inquired. Yes, I was right; it was husband and wife. They had to be torn apart by force; the girl had to be dragged away, and she struggled and fought and shrieked like one gone mad till a turn of the road hid her from sight; and even after that, we could still make out the fading plaint of those receding shrieks. And the husband and father, with his wife and child gone, never to be seen by him again in life?—well, the look of him one might not bear at all, and so I turned away; but I knew I should never get his picture out of my mind again, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was unspeakably touching. Indeed, it was a wonderful sight to see this sentimental blackleg, with a pack of cards in his pocket and a revolver at his back, sending his voice before him through the dim woods with a plaint about his "Nelly's grave" in a way that overflowed the eyes of the listener. A sparrow hawk, fresh from his sixth victim, possibly recognizing in Mr. Hamlin a kindred spirit, stared at him in surprise, and was fain to confess the superiority ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... If so, it must befall That Death, whene'er he call, Must call too soon. Though fourscore years he give Yet one would pray to live Another moon! What kind of plaint have I, Who perish in July? I might have had to ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... choose to think themselves. Shepherds still piped, and maidens still listened to their piping. The old gods had not been discrowned and banished; and to fishers drawing their nets the coasts yet kept a something of the trace of amorous Polypheme, the rocks were peopled with memories of his plaint to Galatea. Inland, among the dim and thymy woods, bee-haunted and populous with dreams of dryad and oread, there were rumours of Pan; and dwellers under thatch—the goatherd mending his sandals, the hind carving his new staff, the girls who busked them for the ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... poor, you that are rich, you that have been great sinners, listen to the voice of Jesus; listen to the plaint of Mary during this month of November; "My children are now dead; come lay thy prayers up for them, and they shall live." Hear Mass for the poor souls; say your beads for them; supplicate Jesus and Mary and Joseph in their behalf. Fly to St. Catherine of ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... de qui la vertu Etait moins que la table encensee; On ne plaint point la femme abattue, Mais ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... shed dim rays over the landscape and made the towers and steeples of the town, standing out at some distance, appear like misty silhouettes. In the deep green of the bushes a nightingale pealed forth his liquid plaint into the balmy night air, while from the ballroom inside the tuning of violins mingled inharmoniously. From the town gusts of warm wind carried snatches of a martial song, ground out on the barrel-organ of a carrousel. All these ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... scream, Or hens will cackle clear. In robin's song, the whip-poor-will Pours forth his plaint so near. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... Place loko. Place, a public placo. Place of abode restadejo. Placid kvieta. Plagiarist verkosxtelisto. Plague pesto—ego. Plague-stricken (person) pestulo. Plain malbela. Plain senornama. Plainly simple, klare. Plainness simpleco. Plaint plendo. Plaintive plenda. Plait (with straw) pajloplekti. Plait plekti. Plait plektajxo. Plait (hair) harligo. Plan plano. Plan (geometrical) plato. Plane raboti. Plane (tool) rabotilo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... and slays the wild beasts, the God, with keen eye, and at evening returns piping from the chase, breathing sweet strains on the reeds. In song that bird cannot excel him which, among the leaves of the blossoming springtide, pours forth her plaint and her honey-sweet song. With him then the mountain nymphs, the shrill singers, go wandering with light feet, and sing at the side of the dark water of the well, while the echo moans along the mountain crest, and the God leaps hither and thither, and goes ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... Amelia Ellen, putting the house in order, hearing the beautiful plaint of the loving-hearted, mourning servant as she told little incidents of her mistress. Here was the chair she sat in the last time she went up-stairs to oversee the spring regulating, and that was Mr. John's little baby dress in which he was christened. His mother ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... literal sense if I stayed away. No, the women-heroes in this land are those who face it with a careless, selfish husband, or perhaps in a home having no love, and who win through their little day and make no plaint. God ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... around, And rails and fallen stones bestrew the ground: In loosen'd garb derang'd, with scatter'd hair, His bosom open to the nightly air, Lone, o'er a new heap'd grave poor Basil bent, And to himself began his simple plaint. ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... wavering in a strange manner in the midst of the darkness, and that at a depth where no human eye had ever penetrated. Fear lent my sight, and all my senses, an unheard-of subtlety of perception. For several seconds I heard very distinctly the evening plaint of a cricket down at the edge of the wood, a dog barking far away, very far in the valley. Then my heart, compressed for an instant by emotion, began to beat furiously and I ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Nothing was ever more mysteriously melancholy than Camille's improvisation; it seemed like the cry of a soul de profundis to God—from the depths of a grave! The heart of the young lover recognized the cry of despairing love, the prayer of a hidden plaint, the groan of repressed affliction. Camille had varied, modified, and lengthened the introduction to the cavatina: "Mercy for thee, mercy for me!" which is nearly the whole of the fourth act of "Robert ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... me sies l'ombre, aussi soudainement Amour, laissant son arc, s'assiet et se repose: Si ie pense a des vers, ie le voy qu'il compose: Si ie plains mes douleurs, il se plaint hautement. Si ie me plains du mal, il accroist mon tourment: Si ie respan des pleurs, son visage il arrose: Si ie monstre la playe en ma poitrine enclose, Il defait son bandeau l'essuyant doucement. Si ie vay par les bois, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... little serpents of the sistrum as they lifted their melodious voices to bid Typhon depart, or watching the dancing women's rhythmic movements, or smiling half kindly, half with irony, upon the lovelorn maiden who made her plaint: ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... his Lay de Vaillance Eustache Deschamps complains that the degree of knighthood is actually conferred on those who are only ten or twelve years old, and who do not know what to do with the honour.[13] That plaint was written not later than the first years of the fifteenth century, and the poet's prediction that ruin of the institution was imminent when affected by such disorders seemed justified if, in 1433, even the years of the eligible age had shrunk to days. Philip ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... hear zour plaint; Sair, sair I rew the deid, That eir this cursed hand of mine Had gard his body bleid. Dry up zour tears, my winsome dame, Ze neir can heal the wound; Ze see his head upon the speir, His heart's blude ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... not always petitioning to drink. The words, "I am so thirsty," ceased to be her plaint. Sometimes, when she had swallowed a morsel, she would say it had revived her. All descriptions of food were no longer equally distasteful; she could be induced, sometimes, to indicate a preference. With what trembling pleasure and anxious care did not her nurse prepare what was selected! ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... sufferer, if such a term may be applied to so young a child. But it was strange that an infant so pale, thin, and sickly, deprived of its mother's nursing care besides, should have made so little plaint and given so little trouble. Perhaps in the lack of human pity he had the love of heavenly spirits, who watched over him, soothed his pains, and stilled his cries. We cannot tell how that may have ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... incapable of being misunderstood. The heart has lost— not something, but everything. The tones, however, do not always bear the impress of a quiet, melancholy resignation. More passionate impulses awaken, and the still plaint becomes a complaint against cruel fate. It seeks the conflict, and tries through force of will to burst the fetters of pain, or at least to alleviate it through absorption in a happy past. But in vain! The heart ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... paid no attention to this boyish plaint, for he was fumbling in the locker, then withdrew his hand and uncoiled an ordinary fish-line, with ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... craftily open the door with a skeleton key; some who ruthlessly batter the panels; some who achieve only a wax impression, which proves to be useless. There are many who travel no farther than the outer gates. You will find them staring blankly at the stone walls; and their plaint is: ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... these woods by Loire side, the fair shapes of old religion, Fauns, Nymphs, and Satyrs, and heard'st in the nightingale's music the plaint of Philomel. The ancient poets came back in the train of thyself and of the Spring, and learning was scarce less dear to thee than love; and thy ladies seemed fairer for the names they borrowed from the beauties of forgotten days, Helen and Cassandra. How sweetly didst thou sing to them thine old ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... which once had been the theatre of human hopes and fears, where once men had been born, loved, and died, where once maidens had been fair, and good and evil wrestled, and little children played. Some Job may have dwelt here and written his immortal plaint, or some king of Sodom, and suffered the uttermost calamity. The world is very old; all we Westerns learned from the contemplation of these wrecks of men and of their works was just that the ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... native land!' What precious hopes are severed one by one! What hearts lie crushed and sick by 'hope deferred!' How many dear ones, stretched along the sand, Bleed out their lives beneath a blighting sun— With but a word— 'Mother!' for plaint or prayer! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... father reads the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on high; Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire: Or other holy seers ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... already excessive, for an irresistible stupor once more took possession of him, his head dropped, his eyes closed, and he seemed to fall asleep again, continuing his plaint, as if in a dream, moaning in fainter and ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... robin in Hackensack, the stirring of the maple sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along Main Street in Syracuse, the first chirp of the bluebird, the swan song of the Blue Point, the annual tornado in St. Louis, the plaint of the peach pessimist from Pompton, N. J., the regular visit of the tame wild goose with a broken leg to the pond near Bilgewater Junction, the base attempt of the Drug Trust to boost the price of quinine ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... so weird, so wild, so prophetic were its tones that it found only a shrinking in the heart of him whose ear it constrained to listen. The sound of the torrent far below was accelerated to an agitated, tumultuous plaint, all unknown when its pulses were bated by summer languors. The moon was in the turmoil of the clouds, which, routed in some wild combat with the winds, were ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... was the monotonous plaint of his sister which caused the Terror to say: "I've got a penny. We'll ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... Hall with Sir W. Pen. So to Mr. Montagu, where his man, Mons. Eschar, makes a great com plaint against the English, that they did help the Spaniards against the French the other day; and that their Embassador do demand justice of our King, and that he do resolve to be gone for France the next week; which I, and all ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... their brethren in France, and the zeal of the preachers was roused by a revival of the old worship in Clydesdale and by the neglect of the Government to suppress it. In the opening of 1563 they resolved "to put to their own hands," and without further plaint to Queen or Council to carry out "the punishment that God had appointed to idolaters in his law." In Mary's eyes such a resolve was rebellion. But her remonstrances only drew a more formal doctrine of resistance from Knox. "The sword of justice, ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... little while before they had risked their lives—men who in a fortnight had fallen from a high plane of life to the pitiful level of brutes. Only here and there was an exception. This man, Crittenden, was one. When sane, he was gentle, uncomplaining, considerate. Delirious, there was never a plaint in his voice; never a word passed his lips that his own mother might not hear; and when his lips closed, an undaunted ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... quiet and cushioned ease, where "all was one full-swelling bed"; the out-of-door stillness, broken only by "the stock-dove's plaint amid ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... a bear outa season, no!" Strawmyer continued his plaint. "But a bear comes an' kills my stock an' my dog; that there's all right! That's the kinda deal a farmer always gits, in this state! I don't like t' ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... long up into the dark, dense green mass of the tree to make out the cause of all this excitement. The chickadees were clinging to the ends of the sprays, as usual, apparently very busy looking for food, and all the time uttering their shrill plaint. The nuthatches perched about upon the branches or ran up and down the tree trunks, incessantly piping their displeasure. At last I made out the cause of the disturbance,—a little owl on a limb, looking down in wide-eyed intentness upon me. How annoyed he must ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... of a struggle that must be the beginning of a long sorrow. Only the day before, Dr. Kenn had been made acquainted with the contents of Stephen's letter, and he had believed them at once, without the confirmation of Maggie's statement. That involuntary plaint of hers, "Oh, I must go," had remained with him as the sign that she ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... a plaint to the Earl Marshal,' he said; 'it is not fitting that a lord of the Church should ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... your eyes, and the eyes of all the multitude who watch, I hurl myself from this hideous place into the waters of the Nile. Yet ere I go to join dead Pharaoh, and side by side with him to lay our plaint against you before the eternal gods, listen to our curse upon you. From this day forward a snake shall prey upon your vitals, gnawing upwards to your heart. The spirits of Pharaoh and of all his servants ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... her plaint to lay Before the face of Love Divine. Saying in heaven she will not stay, Since you have stolen what made her shine: Aloud she wails with sorrow wan,— She told her stars and two are gone: They are not there; you have them now; They ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the great Viceroy. "I have done my duty to Her Majesty," he laughed, "and now, I am going to do my duty to myself!" Whereat Harry Hardwicke was suddenly aware that Cupid carries a double-barreled gun, sometimes. In her own apartment, Nadine Johnstone listened to Janet Fairbarn's sobbing plaint, as the heart-happy Mattie Jones flew around the rooms making her young mistress's boxes. Nadine was still in an entrancing dream of freedom, life, and love, and the cunning Scotswoman's plaint was all unheeded. Major Hardwicke was announced, "upon ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... feeling of all times?) of a shadowy recollection of past and eternal existence in the profundities of the Divine Heart. 'It sounds forth here a mournful remembrance of a faded world of gods and heroes—as the echoing plaint for the loss of man's original, celestial state, and paradisiacal innocence.' And then we have those transcendent lines that come to us like aromatic breezes ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which, so far from interrupting the universal tranquillity of earth, sea, and sky, rather tended to reveal to us how quiet the world round us really was. Such sounds as I refer to were the peculiar, melancholy—yet, it seemed to me, cheerful—plaint of sea-birds floating on the glassy waters or sailing in the sky; also the subdued twittering of little birds among the bushes, the faint ripples on the beach, and the solemn boom of the surf upon the distant coral reef. We felt very glad in our hearts ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... great amount of attention to one of his younger wives—a circumstance which naturally gives great offence to one of the older women. This wife, when she has an opportunity and is alone with her husband, commences to sing or chant a plaint—a little thing ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... sound the plaint of woe! Beautiful youth! Outstretched and pale he lies, Untimely cropped in early bloom; The heavy night of death has sealed his eyes;— In this glad hour of nuptial joy, Snatched by relentless doom, He sleeps—while echoing to the sky, Of sorrow ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... for ever live, But told, expires; pray then, reveale (To show our wound is half to heale), What mortall nymph or deity Bewail you thus? Who ere you be, The shepheard sigh't, my woes I crave Smotherd in me, me in my grave; Yet be in show or truth a saint, Or fiend, breath anthemes, heare my plaint, For her and thy breath's symphony, Which now makes full the harmony Above, and to whose voice the spheres Listen, and call her musick theirs; This was I blest on earth with, so As Druids amorous did grow, Jealous of both: for as one day This star, as yet but set in clay, ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... arms of a semaphore signalling national events. She sprang before Aminta to stop her retreat, and stamped and gibbed, for sign that she would not be driven. She fell away to Mr. Morsfield, for simple hearing of her plaint. He appeared emphatic. There was a passage between ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was one in speech so like a ghost selected his companion? And that verse, of all to him most afflicting, and which in hours of despair he had repeated until his very spirit had become colored with its reproachful plaint—who put it ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... attendant's arms, clasp it frantically to her breast, and then go parading up and down the room weeping over the wondering little face, speedily bringing on a wailing accompaniment to her own mournful plaint. It was more than Miss ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... darkened sails. She ran easily before a fair monsoon, with her decks cleared for the night; and, moving along with her, was heard the sustained and monotonous swishing of the waves, mingled with the low whispers of men mustered aft for the setting of watches; the short plaint of some block aloft; or, now and then, a loud ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... fail. At threshing time the crew looked forward to working for Ben, the farmer, and dreaded the meals prepared by Bella, his wife. She was notoriously the worst cook and housekeeper in the county. And all through the years, in trouble and in happiness, her plaint was the same—"If I'd thought I was going to stick down on a farm all my life, slavin' for a pack of menfolks day and night, I'd rather have died. Might as well be dead ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... great had not distance lent enchantment to sound as well as view. To Leo there seemed even a sort of restfulness in the voices of the innumerable wild-fowl. They were so far off, most of them, that the sounds fell on his ear like a gentle plaint, and even the thunderous plash of the great Greenland whale was reduced by distance to a ripple like that which fell on the shore ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... was reminded, in spite of herself, of Mrs. Brooke's plaint: "Don't be too indifferent, Cora." She did not want to recall it exactly, because she thought the Brookes agreeable and would have preferred to think them disinterested. But, after all, she reflected, how natural that a girl who ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... counsel," said Tressilian. "I cannot brook to plead my noble patron's cause the unhappy Amy's cause—before any one save my lawful Sovereign. Leicester, thou wilt say, is noble. Be it so; he is but a subject like ourselves, and I will not carry my plaint to him, if I can do better. Still, I will think on what thou hast said; but I must have your assistance to persuade the good Sir Hugh to make me his commissioner and fiduciary in this matter, for it is in his name I must speak, and ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... awake! what skills your sleep to me— Me, among all the dead by you dishonoured— Me from whom never, in the world of death, Dieth this curse, 'Tis she who smote and slew, And shamed and scorned I roam? Awake, and hear My plaint of dead men's hate intolerable. Me, sternly slain by them that should have loved, Me doth no god arouse him to avenge, Hewn down in blood by matricidal hands. Mark ye these wounds from which the heart's blood ran, And by whose hand, bethink ye! for the sense When shut in sleep hath then the spirit-sight, ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... that maiden's breast Sorrow and loneliness sank darkly down, Though the blanch'd lips breathed out no boisterous plaint ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... cowering upon the steps of the sanctuary, was murmuring a monotonous prayer, like the plaint of a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the influence of Gilchrist's early training in hymns is patent. In only a few instances do they follow the latter-day methods of Schumann and Franz. "A Song of Doubt and a Song of Faith" is possibly his best vocal solo. It begins with a plaint, that is full of cynic despair; thence it breaks suddenly into a cheerful andante. "The Two Villages" is a strong piece of work on the conventional lines of what might be called the Sunday ballad. "A Dirge for Summer" has ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... except the monotonous plaint of the screw, no sound was to be heard. A footstep came from the cabin, where Dave was at work, or appeared to be, for he had been stationed there for his part of the programme which was presently ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... commencing at Temple Bar, and ending at Tothill.[142] But it is likely that the Inn at Holborn Bars was still occupied by attorneys who practised for their patrons of the Staple, and that the Merchants for Wools still had their meetings there. In 1401 Hamond Elyot sued a plaint of debt against Martyn Dyne, of Haydon, Norfolk, for the sum of L26 2s. 3d., in the Court of Staple at Westminster;[143] and one hundred years later, John Dyne, his descendant, also of Haydon, Norfolk, was a member of Staple Inn. In his will, proved 1505, he gives the names of the company of the ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... to understand. We stopped, motionless and in suspense, like the shepherds who first heard that song, until the trembling ceased, and it was ended. Then we took up again our holy journey, looking at the shades that were lying on the ground, returned already to their wonted plaint. No ignorance ever with so sharp attack made me desirous of knowing—if my memory err not in this—as it seemed to me I then experienced in thought. Nor, for our haste, did I dare to ask, nor of myself could I see aught there. So I ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... a Methodist hymn in his musical throat, The Sun was emitting his ultimate note; His quivering larynx enwrinkled the sea Like an Ichthyosaurian blowing his tea; When sweetly and pensively rattled and rang This plaint which ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... and plaint charged that this letter written to the father of the plaintiff by Lady Wilde was a libel reflecting on the character and chastity of Miss Travers, and as Lady Wilde was a married woman, her husband Sir William Wilde was joined in the action as a ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Earth, And on the holy Hearth, The Lars, and Lemures moan with midnight plaint, In Urns, and Altars round, A drear, and dying sound Affrights the Flamins at their service quaint; And the chill Marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar power forgoes his ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... followed me about. The cat had never been known to catch a bird, but she had a way of watching them that was very embarrassing to the bird. Whenever she appeared, the mother bluebird would set up that pitiful melodious plaint. One morning the cat was standing by me, when the bird came with her beak loaded with building material, and alighted above me to survey the place before going into the box. When she saw the cat she was greatly disturbed, and in her agitation ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... Pope St. Leo. First of his line to bear the name of Great, who twice saved his city, and once, by the express avowal of a successor, the Church herself, Leo carried his crown of thorns one-and-twenty years, and has left no plaint to posterity of the calamities witnessed by him in that long pontificate. Majorian was the fourth sovereign whom in six years and a half he had seen to perish by violence. A man with so keen an intellectual ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... awoke next morning raindrops were beating a reiterative plaint against the window, and the sound seemed very beautiful. She liked lying in bed, staring out at the upper reaches of sombre sky. She liked it to be rainy when she woke up—there was something about ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... she gave her sorrows vent, A thousand tears she pour'd; Her mournful voice, her moving plaint, ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... riotously with the throng, to put those pale lost lilies out of mind." Always verging on a poetic feeling not just like ourselves in these days, and yet Dowson was a poet. He caressed words until they sang for him the one plaint that he asked of them. That he was obsessed of the beauties and the intimations of Versailles, is seen in everything he did, or at least he imbibed this from Verlaine. He was himself a pale wanderer down soft green ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... though his plaint Brings tears of wistfulness; Still must he grieve and mourn, forlorn and faint, None may his ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... listening now to such a song; a mysterious music unknown to all other ears, as the solitary plaint of some mateless bird dying alone ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... felicitous manner. There are sighs and plaints, all haunting in their extreme expressiveness, a great variety beneath an appearance of monotony, and from time to time two wailing notes. These notes are always the same, as the chorus gives them as a plaint, and they are both affecting and artistic. At the end comes a dim ray of light and hope. This is the only one in the work save the Amen at the end, for Faith and Hope should not be looked for here. The supplications sound like prayers which do not expect to be answered. No one would dare ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... of his bill. Such people have an exaggerated idea of the value of their services. It is difficult to get them to name a price at the beginning; and in the rare cases where a set sum is agreed upon, the final reckoning will invariably include certain extras or a plaint that "the job was different than you claimed and I don't do heavy work like that for nobody without I get extra pay and I was just working to accommodate—" and so forth. Usually you end by paying him and charging ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... your wail, lugubrious saint! You fret high Heaven with your plaint. Is this the "Christian's joy" you paint? Is this the Christian's boasted bliss? Avails your faith no ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of the herd will still echo in thee. And when thou sayest, "I have no longer a conscience in common with you," then will it be a plaint and a pain. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of the group, all eyes turning ever and anon, upon her in tenderest solicitude, every ear attentive to her slightest plaint, every hand ready to minister to ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... "I will forget," but perhaps the hardest task given us is to lock up a natural yearning of the heart, and turn a deaf ear to its plaint, for captive and jailer must inhabit the same small cell. Sylvia was proud, with that pride which is both sensitive and courageous, which can not only suffer but wring strength from suffering. While she struggled with a grief and shame that ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... on poor Dunmore, as she knew him best. To transcribe her words would be impossible, for she put in a native sentence whenever she found herself at a loss for an English one, but the burden of her plaint was this:— ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... once both meek and full of logic? or the sickness of that "masculine breast with feeble arms;" "of that philosopher who only wanted strength to become a saint;" "of that bird without wings," said a woman of genius, "that exhales its calm melancholy plaint on the shores whence vessels depart, and where only shivered remnants return;" the melancholy of an Obermann, whose goodness and almost ascetic virtues are palsied for want of equilibrium, and whose discouragement and ennui were only calculated to exercise a baneful influence over ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Doris Fletcher did understand. She saw Joan, not as she was, a tall young creature radiantly facing life, but as a tired little child in this very room stepping' defeated from the fountain, because she could not make her desires come true! She was listening to the old plaint: "I have used the old ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... had, indeed, loved her to the last, for his was an affectionate spirit, but she had become increasingly difficult: jealous of her step-daughter June, jealous even of her own little daughter Holly, and making ceaseless plaint that he could not love her, ill as she was, and 'useless to everyone, and better dead.' He had mourned her sincerely, but his face had looked younger since she died. If she could only have believed that she made him happy, how much happier ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... after this, that a man was slain in Abou Sabir's village; wherefore the Sultan caused plunder the village, and they plundered the headman's goods with the rest So his wife said to him, 'All the Sultan's officers know thee; so do thou prefer thy plaint to the king, that he may cause thy beasts to be restored to thee.' But he said to her, 'O woman, said I not to thee that he who doth evil shall suffer it? Indeed, the king hath done evil, and he shall suffer [the consequences of] his ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... net of stars told thee that the angels were cutting their way down through the darkness, and into the spheres of men, and that all heaven was in a tumult of expectation, whilst in yonder city men slept, as they always sleep unconscious when God is near. And then, when the feeble plaint broke from Mary's lips, I cannot go further, and the gentle beast turned aside into the rocks and whins, and called to his companions of the stable, and the meek-eyed ox looked calmly at the intruders, and there—there—dear God! to think of it all—In mundo erat, et mundus ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... who happened to bear his sad plaint Addressed in the following manner the saint: "The nation will keep thee to support splendour's throne, And interest will pay thee, because thou'rt ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
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