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More "Wail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I should never have chosen that trimming. However, the "under the circumstances" is not so bad. A good cut, too—yes. Aha! Just you wail ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of her death, he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it—a sickly, whining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night long—not screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it had been his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his own at that ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... had long been confused and broken in my memory, arrayed itself with all its first distinctness. Methought I stood a weeping infant by my father's hearth; by the cold and blood-stained hearth where he lay dead. I heard the childish wail of Alice, and my own cry arose with hers, as we beheld the features of our parent, fierce with the strife and distorted with the pain, in which his spirit had passed away. As I gazed, a cold wind whistled by, and waved my father's hair. Immediately ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the cry of a young child, darter, of our Anna's baby; a little, feeble wail; but I should have heard it, if the storm had been twice as loud. I had been sitting here, from sundown to ten o'clock, with no company but my fears and the raging storm. Hannah came, once or twice, and put her pale face ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... the court-room stirred with excitement. Some weak-nerved woman with a child at her breast began to cry, and the little one joined its feeble wail ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was a wail. "Oh, you don't know how important it is—let me out. I'll give you anything in ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... not have very good eyes, but he has very good ears, and he had just wakened from a "cat" nap when he heard that lonesome wail from Little White Fox. And he didn't wait one minute, nor one second! He tumbled down into his house in the ocean as quick as a wink, just as Omnok the hunter was getting ready to ...
— Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends • Roy J. Snell
... II, in the expulsion of his Moorish subjects, are matters of imperishable history. Who disbelieves or doubts them? And yet his courtiers magnified his virtues and chanted his clemency and his mercy, while the wail of a million victims, smitten down by a tempest of fire and slaughter let loose at his bidding, rose above the Te Deums that thundered from all Spain's cathedrals. When Louis XIV. revoked the edict of Nantz, and proclaimed two millions of his subjects free ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... I stooped low but he relaxed suddenly and seemed to shrink. I felt his heart but it was still. I tried his eyes and they were sightless. Patsy sent up a heartrending wail and crawled over behind his master's gun and knapsack, so I knew my old friend ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... in hither! Speak to me one moment; for mercy's sake speak to me!' and she drew him, half against his will, into the chamber, and throwing herself at his feet, broke out into a childlike wail. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... goes on unceasingly; the altar fires are never out, and the wail of the little ones and the groans of the crushed that go up from this great altar only cause ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... meeting with the "beauty of Paliuli" there were gathered together the high chiefs, the low chiefs, and the country aristocracy as well, to see the strangers who came with Kailiokalauokekoa's party. Aiwohikupua came with the rest of the chiefs to wail ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... tickle t' see my punt come in. She was wonderful on sunsets, was mother; an' she was sort o' sot, somehow, on keepin' watch on me. Wonderful good o' she, wasn't it, Dannie, t' want t' keep watch—on me?" Again the note of melancholy, throbbing above the drawl—rising, indeed, into a wail. "So," said he, "I 'low I'll just put up a house, by-an'-by, for the wife I'm t' have; an' I'll have it here, I'm thinkin', for mother 'lowed my wife would want it with a view o' the tickle, t' watch my punt come in. Think she will, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... see the farm yet, with perfect clearness. I can see all its belongings, all its details; the family room of the house, with a "trundle" bed in one corner and a spinning-wheel in another—a wheel whose rising and falling wail, heard from a distance, was the mournfulest of all sounds to me, and made me homesick and low-spirited, and filled my atmosphere with the wandering spirits of the dead: the vast fireplace, piled high, on winter nights, with flaming hickory logs from whose ends a sugary sap bubbled ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... could do for Marie, he could at least be faithful to that trust. He came back shivering as he had gone out; and as he fitted his latchkey with cold fingers into the lock he heard the newborn infant's wail. ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... they come in line upon the mighty wall, and each one bends backward to the knees of the one who follows. As I stood and looked at them for the first time, almost I heard the twitter of flutes, the rustic wail of the African hautboy, the monotonous boom of the derabukkeh, cries of a far-off gaiety such as one often hears from the Nile by night. But these cries came down the long avenues of the centuries; this gaiety was distant in the vasty halls of the long-dead years. Never can I think of Luxor ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... I have lost my life and yet not death Have won, and now to me shall joy be strange, And all my days the kindly winds that breathe From mirthful groves of Paradise shall change In my poor songless soul to wail, and sigh, And moan, and hollow ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... come back!" cried the mother, without pausing her wail. "They'll come back—trust them for that—running off horses. O John, John! why did you, why did you?" She suddenly lifted herself and sat rigid, staring at her daughter. "Mary," she said in tragic whisper, "the kitchen door isn't locked!" Already she was bended forward to listen, her mouth ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... a vision the dying spark of our council fires, the ashes cold and white. I see no longer the curling smoke rising from our lodge poles. I hear no longer the songs of the women as they prepare the meal. The antelope have gone; the buffalo wallows are empty. Only the wail of the coyote is heard. The white man's medicine is stronger than ours; his iron horse rushes over the buffalo trail. He talks to us through his 'whispering spirit.' " (The Indian's name for the telegraph and telephone.) "We are like birds with ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... benevolence, sustained by unconquerable will, over the oppression of physical force, the tyranny of resistless power. It exhibits the charity of the Saviour in the Paradise Regained, united to the indomitable spirit of Satan, who is chained on the burning lake, in Paradise Lost. It is the prophetical wail of humanity, so often doomed to suffer in the best of causes from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... moor, and the pathos of "Mary in Heaven," he has made every chord in our northern life to vibrate. The distance from "Duncan Gray" to "Auld Lang Syne" is nearly as great as that from Falstaff to Ariel. There is the vehemence of battle, the wail of woe, the march of veterans "red-wat-shod," the smiles of meeting, the tears of parting friends, the gurgle of brown burns, the roar of the wind through pines, the rustle of barley rigs, the thunder on the hill—all Scotland is in his verse. Let who ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... too accustomed plaint and wail Repeating, of Rogero's cruelty Fair Bradamant renewed the wonted tale; She cursed her hard and evil destiny; Then loosening to tempestuous grief the sail, Heaven that consented to such perjury, — And did not yet by some plain token speak — ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... little gold mine, do you call that a joke? It was a wail of the soul, a cry from the heart, that burst through my lips. My love for you and Zuzu is immense. [Gaily] Oh, rapture! Oh, bliss! I cannot look at you two without ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... 'im come back to his poor old Jane. They're a keepin' us apart, they're a keepin' us apart!" And her voice died away in a wail. She stopped in the middle of ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... Betty crept cautiously about, peering and hoping with a half-fearing expectation, a sweet, threadlike wail trembled out toward her across the moonlit and shadowed space. Her father was tuning his violin. Her mother sat at his side, hushing Bobby in her arms. Betty could hear the sound of her rockers on the porch floor. Now the plaintive call of the violin came stronger, and she hastened back to curl ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... failed; and who only the week before paid ten dollars for a fancy rooster and was happily telling his neighbors how rich he was going to be, selling fighting stock. His wife stepped on her skirt and ripped it. Jocelyn could hear her worried wail and Sam comforting her with promises of new dresses when the roosters began to sell. She could hear fat Mrs. Glenn puffing and laughing her way up the little crests of the road and could guess that her thin husband was doing his best to ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... said Arthur, 'if he means to be a comfort I wish he would stop that dismal little wail—have one good squall and have done with it. He will worry his mother and ruin all now she takes more notice. So here's Mrs. Moss's letter. I could not open it this morning, and I have been inventing messages to Violet from her—poor ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... call for the mourners, and raise the lament, Let the tresses be torn, and the garments be rent; But weep not for him who is gone to his rest, Nor mourn for the ransom'd, nor wail for the blest. The sun is not set, but is risen on high, Nor long in corruption his body shall lie— Then let not the tide of thy griefs overflow, Nor the music of heaven be discord below; Rather loud be the song, and triumphant the chord, Let us joy for the dead ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... this rate, a boy chanced to stumble upon him, on which the family gave a shriek, the same also did the guests; not for such a beast of a man, whose neck they could willingly have seen broken, but for fear the supper should break up ill, and they be forc'd to wail the death of ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... cups which each had cost ten times its weight in gold; that wrestlers, brought from the arena at Uriconium, were striving with sweat and strain for the purse of twenty sestertii offered to the winner; and dancing girls from far Arabia were posing to the plaintive wail of reeds and the thin tinkle of cymbals. But of all this the rear courts knew nothing. Here was only hurrying to and fro of jaded slaves laden with amphorae of wine and oil and honey; the smell of roasting meats, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... uttered these last words, Preston bowed his head, his wife sobbed aloud, and the black people gave out a low cry, as sad as the wail which their own mourners breathe over the dead. Fixing his eyes on a tall, stalwart negro in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... till all were tossed aside, broken as kindling wood is broken. It was good that the jailer was either deaf, or, like the heathen gods in the Old Testament, away on a journey. Finally, we gave up in despair. The big negro collapsed with a wail. The first sign of weakness ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... keeps her that sits at home. Clytaem. Thou seem'st, my son, about to slay thy mother. Orest. It is not I that slay thee, but thyself. Clytaem. Take heed, beware a mother's vengeful hounds. Orest. How, slighting this, shall I escape my father's? Clytaem. I seem in life to wail as to a tomb. Orest. My father's fate ordains this doom for thee. Clytaem. Ah me! The snake is here I bare and nursed. Orest. An o'er-true prophet was that dread dream-born. Thou slewest one thou ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... a wail at this juncture, not understanding or approving these strange proceedings, and it was as much as his mother could do to soothe him. A few yards round the corner they passed a man, who looked curiously at the vehicle. This was George Fairfax, who was pacing the street in the gloaming ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... escaped the punishment due to their crimes. Yet no lament was raised by the political guides of Ireland over murdered landholders and clergymen; it appeared to be, in their sight, a just revenge. At the same time a long wail of woe was heard throughout the country, if it happened that any of the resisting peasantry were killed by the military in the performance of their duties in securing the tithe. Four were thus killed in the county of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of the cross," she said, "think of leaving their native land, while the wail of women and of orphans is in their ears?—it were to convert their pious purpose into mortal sin, and to derogate from the high fame they have so well won. Yes—fight but valiantly, and perhaps, before the very sun that is now slowly rising shall sink in the sea, you will see it ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... between these gusts had something weird and awful, and she could not resist the desire to get up and look out at the weather. But just as she drew aside the blind, a cloud of frozen snow was dashed against the glass, rattling sharply, while the wind again passed on with its ominous wail. Nothing whatever could be seen; the pale dim dawn was veiled by mist and snow, and each time the icy particles were driven against the window, they left behind them a thicker curtain of frost. Mrs. Costello went shivering ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... I looked he slid down from out of her arms; back into the pool, and began struggling to gain the edge. What grief and longing in her wild face then! But she did not wail. She did not try to pull him back; that elfish heart of dignity could reach out to what was coming, it could not drag at what was gone. Unmoving as the boughs and water, she watched him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was a lamentable wail from low on the floor, rising to the full pitch of Rol's healthy lungs; for his hand was gashed across, and the copious bleeding terrified him. Then was there soothing and comforting, washing and binding, and a modicum of scolding, till the loud outcry sank into occasional ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the wail of a man in torture burst from him. It woke more than one sleeper in the distant chambers of the Chateau, making them start upon their pillows to listen for another cry, but none came. Bigot was a man of iron; ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... wail of anger and deprecation. He had took out the right keys, and Jenkins could bear him out in the assertion. Some wicked trick had been played upon him, and the keys brought back during his absence and hung up on their hook! He'd lay his life it ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... from "Nauh"ceremonious keening for the dead. The general term for the wail is "Walwalah" or "Wilwal" (an onomatopoy) and for the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... old boy," said the Harvester. "I had such hopes and I worked so hard. I suffered in the flesh for every hour of it, and I failed. Oh but I hate the word! If I knew where she is right now, Bel, I'd give anything I've got. But there's no use to wail and get sorry for myself. That's against the law of common decency. I'll take a swim, sleep it off, straighten up the herbs a little, and go at it again, old fellow; that's a man's way. She's somewhere, and she's got to be found, no matter what ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... Him. To forsake Him is to despise Him. To go from Him is to go 'away backward.' Whatever may have been our inheritance of evil, we each go further from Him. And this fatherly lament over Judah is indeed a wail over every child of man. Does it not echo in the 'pearl of parables,' and may we not suppose that it suggested that supreme revelation of man's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... all lost!' This was the wail for Sir George's ears, as the spade made it clear that the food-stuffs, with a trifling salvage, had been uprooted and scattered by the storm. It was almost the pronouncing of a sentence of death upon the party, having regard to the desert country which surrounded them, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... do you have control of your emotional states? What have you observed about differences in expression of deep emotions by different people? In case of death in the family, some people wail and moan and express their grief in the most extreme manner, while others do not utter a sound and show great control. ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... next, slipping northward between the glazed walls of the Subway, another languid crowd in the seats about him and the nasal yelp of the stations ringing through the car like some repeated ritual wail. The blindness within him seemed to have intensified his physical perceptions, his sensitiveness to the heat, the noise, the smells of the dishevelled midsummer city; but combined with the acuter perception of these offenses was a complete indifference to them, as though he were ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... was there to wail or knock the breast between two people who prided themselves on looking facts in the face, and making their grim best of them, without vain repinings? He had been right in thinking their marriage an act of madness. Her charms had overruled his judgment, and they had had their year... their mad ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... again, and oh! we are so happy. Do not go away again. You are a man; you do not know, you cannot understand all a woman feels. She must sit and wait, and hope, and pray for the safe return of husband or brother or sweetheart. The long days! Oh, the long sleepless nights, with the wail of the wind in the pines, and the rain on the roof! It is maddening. Do not leave us! Do not leave me! Do not leave Helen! Say you ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... treacherously compasses the murder of Balder. The frightful foreboding which at once flies through all hearts finds voice in the dark "Raven Song" of Odin. Having chanted this obscure wail in heaven, he mounts his horse and rides down the bridge to Helheim. With resistless incantations he raises from the grave, where she has been interred for ages, wrapt in snows, wet with the rains and the dews, an aged vala or ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... last Tuesday, that the matter of the missing handbag and the letters was important. More important, probably, than the mere record shows. Do you recall the note of distress in Miss Jeremy's voice? It was almost a wail." ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... death in this world and the next. Their feet are turned backward that all sober men may recognize them. There are ghosts of little children who have been thrown into wells. These haunt well curbs and the fringes of jungles, and wail under the stars, or catch women by the wrist and beg to be taken up and carried. These and the corpse ghosts, however, are only vernacular articles and do not attack Sahibs. No native ghost has yet been authentically reported to have frightened an Englishman; but many ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Apulians, and the Spaniards, seem to find their music in a hurdy-gurdy swell of sound. The other day we met a little girl, walking and spinning, and singing all the while, whose song was just another version of this chant. It has a discontented plaintive wail, as if it came from some vast age, and were a ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Syriac speech; George Costard sorrowed in Arabic that might have amazed Abu l'Atahiyeh; Mr. Swinton's learned sock stirred him to Phoenician and Etruscan; and Mr. Evans, full of national fire and the traditions of the bards, delivered himself, and at great length too, in Welsh. The wail of this "Welsh fairy" is the fine flower of this funeral wreath of pedantic ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... does not exhibit itself nor refuse to exhibit itself, possesses still underneath, Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of slaves, Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young people, accents of bargainers, Underneath these ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... odd, but I stand here and fancy These people who now play a part, All forced by some strange necromancy To speak, and to act, from the heart. What a hush would come over the laughter! What a silence would fall on the mirth! And then what a wail would sweep after, As the night-wind sweeps ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... dying, and I had no power to hold Death backward from such dread intent. In another room, I heard the little wail of the child; and the wail of the child waked my wife back into this life, so that her hands fluttered white and ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... foreign to the age of Homer, as indeed to all pre-Christian antiquity. But concerning this we need not dilate, as it has often been duly remarked upon, and notably by Carlyle, in his "Lectures on Hero-Worship." Who that has once heard the wail of unutterable ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the human, ardent idealism, sweetnesses of unselfishness, renunciation, and martyrdom—all the splendid, stinging things of the spirit. Here life was clean, noble, and alive. I was in touch with great souls who exalted flesh and spirit over dollars and cents, and to whom the thin wail of the starved slum child meant more than all the pomp and circumstance of commercial expansion and world empire. All about me were nobleness of purpose and heroism of effort, and my days and nights were sunshine and starshine, all fire and dew, with before ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... seaward: The water's in stripes like a snake, olive pale To the leeward,— On the weather-side, black, spotted white with the wind. "Good fortune departs, and disaster's behind"— Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite wail! ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... savage foe, or of the prowling beast of prey. He ploughed, and sowed, and reaped, and gathered, with the rifle slung over his shoulders; and, at every turn, he halted, listening, with his ear turned toward his home; for well he knew that, any moment, the scream of his wife, or the wail of his children, might tell of the up-lifted tomahawk, or the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... improvising soft, passionate little movements. She took no note of time. At last the clock struck twelve, and still she sat there playing. Then she began to sing a song which Alice Tynemouth had written and set to music two years before. It was simply yet passionately written, and the wail of anguished disappointment, of wasted chances ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Look across the Pont Alexandre, at the serene gold dome of the Invalides, surrounded by its sleepy barracks. Suddenly you are in the fires and awful slaughter of Napoleon's wars. The flower of France is being pitilessly cut down for the lust of one man's ambition; and when that is spent, and the wail of the widowed country pierces heaven with its desolation, a costly asylum is built for the handful of soldiers who are left—and the great Emperor has ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... expression".—"Finally!" sighed another, relieved. Kohn yelled: "But I don't want to have an ending for a story. That is vulgar. I'm losing my mind. I want to inflame you. I want to torment you, not satisfy you. You must moan and wail. You must dissolve in pain." The dead Kohn ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... afraid that Mrs. Bill would come down and jump into hysterics. I snaked the boy off the lion's back and rapped on him for order. The matron got busy with the others. In a jiffy it seemed as if they had all begun to wail an' roar. I trembled when a maid opened the door an' I saw Mrs. Bill comin' down the staircase. I wouldn't have been surprised to have seen the bronze lion get ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... when the Prince went into the castle. Tonight I waited till an hour past sundown, and twice I called. Once a wail came back to me. It sounded like a sigh of the damned. When I called the second time, something moved in the turret of the keep, like a man waving; and my heart leaped for joy. Then, with a harsh cry, a black, ugly bird flew from the turret straight ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... me at the Pear-tree[6]; a delightful tour in South Wales with the Sheppards and other friends most agreeable and good-humoured,—botany, sketching, talk, and fun. Life has few things to offer more enjoyable than such tours. I have found in them the happiest hours in my life." And then follows the wail for so "many of them departed; so many dear good friends; ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... spirit took its flight, Midst the crashing charge of squadrons, And the thunder of the fight! Strike, I say, the notes of triumph, As we march o'er moor and lea! Is there any here will venture To bewail our dead Dundee? Let the widows of the traitors Weep until their eyes are dim! Wail ye may full well for Scotland— Let none dare to mourn for him! See! above his glorious body Lies the royal banner's fold— See! his valiant blood is mingled With its crimson and its gold. See! how calm he looks and stately, Like a warrior on his shield, Waiting till the flush of morning Breaks ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... John Speriwig; boys shout and applaud, and the enjoyment and confusion are intense, till eleven o'clock comes. By this time the children who swarm in the side-rooms are not to be kept quiet longer, even by hunches of bread and cake; there is a general howl and wail, that rises yet higher than the scraping of fiddles, and mothers rush from their partners to knock small heads together, and cuff little nursemaids, and force the wailers down into unoccupied corners of beds, under tables and behind boxes. In half an hour every ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... similarly, the latter loosing upon the quiet air one shriek of mental agony before the little dog scrambled to his feet and gave further employment to his voice in a frenzy of profanity. At the same time the subterranean diapason of a demoniac bass viol was heard; it rose to a wail, and rose and rose again till it screamed like a small siren. It was Gipsy's war-cry, and, at the sound of it, Duke became a frothing maniac. He made a convulsive frontal attack upon the hobgoblin—and the ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... descending tune half-way between a wail and a laugh. And ever in interlude is the skipping, mincing step,—here of reeds answered by solo violin with a light clank of cymbals. Answering the summoning fifes, the unison troop of fiddlers dance the main step to bright strokes of triangle, then the ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... at last; the coal-black wine has been drunk: there is an end! And you, you poor, cowering fugitives, who only see each other's terrified faces when the wan gleam of the lightning blazes through the sky, perhaps it is well that you should weep and wail for the young master; but that is soon over, and the day will break. And this is what I am thinking of now: when the light comes and the seas are smooth, then which of you—oh, which of you all will tell this tale to the two ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Arlington hear that demoniac gabble; but he lay awake for hours expecting and dreading to hear it again. The owls were not so sparing of their vocal performances, scores of them joining in concert to serenade the lost man. Sometimes their prolonged notes sounded like the wail of a deserted babe, sometimes like mocking laughter, and again like a deep guttural snore. Nothing worse than mosquitos, dismal sounds, and the dank vapor of the swamp afflicted the weary man, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... wonderful about Sheila, they at all events were considerably surprised by the strange sort of music she sang. It was not of a sort commonly heard in a London drawing-room. The pathos of its minor chords, its abrupt intervals, startling and wild in their effect, and the slowly subsiding wail in which it closed, did not much resemble the ordinary drawing-room "piece." Here, at least, Sheila had produced an impression; and presently there was a heap of people round the piano, expressing their admiration, asking questions and begging her to continue. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... though it be, Balance all Europe in the other scale. Them liken I to those who, in the tale, Mountain on mountain piled, presumptuously Warring with Heaven and Jove. The earth clave he, And hurled them down beneath huge rocks to wail: So take you up your bolt with energy; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the ground beside them. The leg had been amputated and the boy was dying. Intense silence fell on the camp, only the laughter and voices of the children rising clear on the thin air. Then a wail arose, a penetrating, fearful cry, Rachel mourning for her child. Courant raised his head and said with an unemotional air of relief, "he's dead." The Mormon woman dropped her sewing, gave a low exclamation, and sat listening with bitten ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... what I was or did (save that I loved King Richard), I whipt forward with a handkerchief to cover the horror out of sight. This I would have done, though all had seen it; the King had seen it, and that white-hearted traitor Count had seen it, and sprung away with a wail, "O Christ! O Christ!" The King stood up, and with his lifted hand stopped me in the pious act. All held their breaths. I saw the priest at the altar peer round the corner, his mouth making a ring. King Richard was very pale and serious. He began to talk to ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... make one shiver—and shrill, shrill as the song of the grasshoppers, it began to make itself heard, very softly at first, then growing louder and rising in the silence of the noonday like the diminutive wail of some poor Japanese soul in pain and anguish; it was Chrysantheme and her guitar ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... poor little I, looking out on its solemn march to the sea, thinking of Minnesota; sending a wail upon its bosom to meet and mingle with that borne by the Missouri from Kansas; thinking of a sad-faced slave, who landed with her babe in her arms here, just in front of my unfinished loft, performed the labor of a ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... poetry, came the inspiring Montrose wars, which introduce to our acquaintance the more modern class of bards; of these the most conspicuous is, Ian Lom[16] or Manntach. This bard was a Macdonald; he hung on the skirts of armies, and at the close of the battle sung the triumph or the wail, on the side of his partisans.[17] To the presence of this person the clans are supposed to have been indebted for much of the enthusiasm which led them to glory in the wars of Montrose. His poetry only reaches mediocrity, but the success which attended it led the chiefs to seek similar ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... a woman, breaking the stillness of the summer evening. She had just come to the door of the little cabin, where she was now standing, anxiously scanning the space before her, while a baby's plaintive wail rose and fell within with wearying monotony. The log cabin, set in a gall in the middle of an old field all grown up in sassafras, was not a very inviting-looking place; a few hens loitering about the new hen-house, a brood of half-grown chickens picking in the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... derides With a very triumphant sneer - They weep and they wail from the opposite sides (And I shed a ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... also the restaurant. It was full of strange noises and figures and odors—the shuffling of feet, the clash of crockery, the explosion of nervous German voices, mixed with the smell of beer and ham, and the smoke of cigars. Through it all pierced the wail of a postman standing at the door with a letter in his hand and calling out at regular intervals, "Krahnay, Krahnay! "When March could bear it no longer he went up to him and shouted, "Crane! Crane!" and the man bowed gratefully, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... France went doomed back to her cell. Her return was awaited with dreadful anxiety by her associates in confinement, who hoped against hope for her safe deliverance. As she passed through the massive doors, she smiled, and drew her hand knife-like across her neck, and then there went up a wail from all assembled there, the wail of titled women, of sacred nuns, of magdalens and thieves, a dirge of inconsolable sorrow, of humanity weeping ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... hidden under that despairing wail?—It was the parting of the last strand of the cord ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... floor with such a sharp wail of despair that Farmer Giles felt a lump rising in his throat He knew there could be no comfort yet for the broken-hearted child; that she must go through her trouble alone—words at such a time were useless; and after watching her for some minutes, he ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... into a narrow door way, her arms still clasping her old port, that lay in the folds of her shawl. On her shrewd kindly old face came a light that touched it all at once with a glow of divinity; the mother in her had sprung into life with sharp, sweet suddenness; she had caught the wail of the new-born babe ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun; We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... English Chronicler does raise his wail on behalf of his countrymen is the special jurisprudence of the forests and the extortions of money with which he charges the Conqueror. In both these points the royal hand became far heavier under the Norman rule. In both William's character grew darker ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... coat, vest, all to shelter Sidney; and he felt a kind of strange pleasure through the dark, even to hear Sidney's voice wail and moan. But that voice grew more languid and faint—it ceased—Sidney's weight hung heavy—heavier ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... mine, and I will have her, I seek but for mine own: She is my slave, born in my house, and stolen away and sold, The year of the sore sickness, ere she was twelve hours old. 'Twas in the sad September, the month of wail and fright, Two augers were borne forth that morn; the Consul died ere night. I wait on Appius Claudius, I waited on his sire: Let him who works the client ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... paralyzed by electric shocks, the yellow bearded veterans and nobles sat stupefied, frozen in their last gesture. Then, in the midst of their silent despair, came the sound of a curious, high-pitched horn that had in its note something of the eery wail of a fire siren. The effect was magical, for the nobles sprang up, hands on sword hilts ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... whole house sounded a wail that rose as they listened and mounted to a shriek. In spite of her desire to remain cool and calm, ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... doom, And fell a molten mass; so, tempting Heaven, Saul died the death of disobedient Pride And self-willed Folly—curses of mankind! Sins against God which wrought the Fall, and sent, As tempests moan along the listening night, A wail of mournful sadness drifting down The annals of the world: unearthly strains! Cries of eternal ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... not a thousand slanderers could have touched her heart with a shadow of mistrust. But who are you—you whom the first gross lie of a man lusting for your beauty utterly estranges from your faith? Who are you—who wail for the liar's death, and shrink in horror from the hand that slew him? I ever heard that the daughters of the Goths were chaste and true and fearless. So they may be—all but one, whose birth marked ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... others brave the flood in quest of gain And beat for joyless months, the gloomy wave. Let such as deem it glory to destroy, Rush into blood, the sack of cities seek; Unpierced, exulting in the widow's wail, The virgin's shriek and ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... voice seemed the best possible medium. As she achieved full consciousness, she understood that it was not a chorus of voices that filled her ear, but one,—rich, sonorous, impassioned. It was singing one of the popular Methodist hymns with a fervour which not even its typical African drawl and wail could temper. It was some moments before Betty realized that the singer was Harriet Walker, and then she sprang out of bed ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... crags where the hoarse wind is raving, Rocks where the weary floods murmur and wail, Wilds where the fern by the furrow is waving, Reeled with the echoes that rode on the gale; Far as the tempest thrills Over the darkened hills Far as the sunshine streams over the plain, Roused by the tyrant band, Woke all the mighty ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... is that it shall contain at least one quotation from the Classics. Mr. G. from year to year observed this custom with splendid effect. LOWE'S Ex luce lucellum is famous in history; nearly became the epitaph of a Ministry; certainly was the funeral wail over a carefully-constructed Budget. The SQUIRE to-night felt bound to observe tradition; but in accordance with his nature did it modestly, adventuring nothing more recondite than citation of the familiar line that serves to mark WREN'S resting-place in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... flats, cross our hills, unless Murder Hollow be blockaded with snow, or unless he has turkeys for sale? But Buck Davis with turkeys would surely have stopped here, unless he were selling a large stock in town. A wail from the sacking at the back of the sleigh tells the tale. It is a winter calf, and Buck Davis is going to sell it for one dollar to the Boston Market where it will be turned into potted chicken. This leaves the mystery of his change of route unexplained. After two days' sitting on tenter-hooks ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... ruthlessly annexed to France; in short, all the states that are groaning under the tyrant's yoke; yea, France herself!—all are crying for deliverance from slavery. But whence is help to come when every one shuts his eyes against the despairing wail of Europe; when every one idly folds his hands and waits for some one else to be bold enough to call upon the people to take up arms? Every individual must be animated with this courage; must regard himself as chosen by Providence to commence the task ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... slave rebelled. David saw him come in one afternoon, and found him a minute or two after viciously biting the blind-cord in the parlour, in a black temper. When his father inquired what was the matter, Sandy broke out in a sudden wail of tears. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rough. This young parson expected Patience to sympathise with him, to greet for him, to aid him if there might be aid, and to understand that for him the world would be blank and wretched unless he could get for himself a soft sweet mate to sing when he sang, and to wail when he wailed. The only mate that Patience had was this very girl that was to be thus taken from her. But she did sympathise with him, did greet for him, did give him all her aid. Knowing what she was herself and how God had formed her, she ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... reply, the sound came a second time over the waters, with a prolonged wail, like the cry of a suffering ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... The gloom grew, calling out the lights into strength, but the concourse did not thin: it only gathered in numbers, and the long, moaning hoot of an out-going tramp filled the air as though with a wail of sorrow at departure. Lascars in coal-begrimed tunics joined in with the rest, adding their voices to the babel, and round-hatted sailors from the Royal Indian Marine ships mingled ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... we sat in silence, another voice uttered a wail of infinite terror and despair. "I didn't do it! Don't kill me! It was not my work." And then, still more horrible to hear, a sound like the gurgling of blood came from the psychic's lips, mixed ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... obeyed. Daniel tried to take the dripping hat, but failed. Little Dan'l was wise enough to pour the water over the old man's head, but she commenced to weep, the pitiful, despairing wail of a child who sees failing that upon which she has ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of her tresses, Fearful, the light of her eyes; while the boy (for her sorrow had awed him) Blushed at her blushes, and vanished, like mist on the cliffs at the sunrise. Fearful at length she looked forth: he was gone: she, wild with amazement, Wailed for her mother aloud: but the wail of the wind only answered. Sudden he flashed into sight, by her side; in his pity and anger Moist were his eyes; and his breath like a rose-bed, as bolder and bolder, Hovering under her brows, like a swallow that haunts by the house-eaves, Delicate-handed, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... the gloom of the mango tope, the old man's high, shrill voice ringing across the field, as wail by long-drawn wail he unfolded the story of Nikal Seyn [Nicholson]—the song that men sing in the Punjab to this day. Kim was delighted, and the lama listened with ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... sleep he heard the wail of a jackal, and next he was awakened by the sound of a native chanting. It was already daybreak, and Mr. Hume stood on the verandah, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... in his somber preoccupation—shakes his head and mutters.] Fog, fog, fog, all bloody time. You can't see vhere you vas going, no. Only dat ole davil, sea—she knows! [The two stare at him. From the harbor comes the muffled, mournful wail of steamers' whistles.] ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... for a while longer—oh, and I, too, must live for a while longer!" the Jew returned. His voice had risen in a curious quavering wail. It was the first time Melicent ever knew him ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... skin hath grown black upon me And my bones are scorched with heat; My harp is turned to mourning, And my bagpipe into the wail ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... What hast thou done? Upon the blighted earth I hear a melancholy wail resounding; Among the blades of grass where flowers have birth I hear a new-born tone mournfully sounding. It is thy brother's blood Crying aloud to God ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... of the citadel of Bagdad held in its gloomy limits the late lord of Asia. The captive did not sigh, or weep, or wail. He did not speak. He did not even think. For several days he remained in a state of stupor. On the morning of the fourth day, he almost unconsciously partook of the wretched provision which his gaolers brought him. Their torches, round which the bats whirled ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... until eleven o'clock—during the hours of Divine Service—that the hundred thousand ears adorning the anatomy of the human population were first shocked by the horrisonous banshee wail of the hooters. The music was awe-inspiring, and ineffably weird. It seemed to portend the cries of the dying; and it was small wonder that the people subsequently endeavoured—as they did successfully—to have a more ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... winds blew and shrieked and moaned like the pain that was biting at my heart; and all through it I heard the plaintive "Speak, wife!" of the nightbird echoing in the tumult outside! ... It was the helpless wail of ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... my boots as I drew nearer and discerned an unusual glow of light from the cabin window, and heard, carried across the water on the breeze, the sounds of singing and the wail of a fiddle. I dreaded to think of the dear body that lay there heedless of all the noise, whose eyes I should never see and whose voice I should never hear more. I could not help calling to mind again the strange words she had last spoken—of her longing to see his ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... should go wrong!" in a faint half wail; "if anything could happen!" She could not bear the mere thought. It would break her heart. She had been so happy. God ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... which held a thousand casks of water, for she wished to fill it anew, adding that if the task were not finished by the evening she would make mincemeat of him. When the old woman went away Nardo Aniello began again to weep and wail; and Filadoro, seeing that the labours increased, and that the old woman had something of the brute in her to burden the poor fellow with such tasks and troubles, said to him, "Be quiet, and as soon as the moment has passed that interrupts ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... of the barren, icy hills and the black hollows between, and of the angry red sky with its purple shadows lowering over the unhappy land—and would make fickle friendship with some human thing. Charming Billy, hearing the crooning wail of it, knew well the portent and sighed. Perhaps he, too, felt something of the desolateness without and perhaps he, too, longed ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... north they heard a low wail of the wind, and Uncle Henry and Dorothy could see where the long grass bowed in waves before the coming storm. There now came a sharp whistling in the air from the south, and as they turned their eyes that way they saw ripples in the grass ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... speechless, dumb, Not sayin' any word. An' was it then the Shrawn of Eire,[2] you'll say, For him that died the death on Carrisbool? It was not that; nor was it, by the way, The Sons of Garnim[3] blitherin' their drool; Nor was it any Crowdie of the Shee,[4] Or Itt, or Himm, nor wail of Barryhoo[5] For Barrywhich that stilled the tongue of me. 'Twas but my own heart cryin' out for you Magraw![6] Bulleen, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Loki treacherously compasses the murder of Balder. The frightful foreboding which at once flies through all hearts finds voice in the dark "Raven Song" of Odin. Having chanted this obscure wail in heaven, he mounts his horse and rides down the bridge to Helheim. With resistless incantations he raises from the grave, where she has been interred for ages, wrapt in snows, wet with the rains and the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... way that you warned me from," she said in whispered tones. "You are friends with me still?" It was like the piteous wail of a child seeking to make it up with one who wants to quarrel, the child knows not why. Graham was moved, but what could he say? Could he have the right to warn her from this profession also; forbid all desires, all roads of fame to this brilliant aspirant? Even ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his luckless boast might prove The eternal forfeit of his lady's love; And, all impatient his dark doom to try, And end the pangs of dire uncertainty, His humble prayer he tremblingly preferr'd, Wo worth the while! his prayer no more was heard. O! how he wail'd! how curs'd the unhappy day! Deaf still remained the unrelenting fay. Him, thus dismay'd, the approaching barons found; Outstretch'd he lay, and weeping, on the ground; To reckless ears their summons they ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... grew still and then over the river came the terrible hunger wail of a tiger. That instant its tawny face scarred with black emerged from behind green leaves. He saw I was across the river. The tiger's body is marked with the same stripes and curves as he makes in the grass when he walks, and people in the jungle can always tell by the wave ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... went nearly out: he could only see a glimmer of the shape of the window. Then, indeed, he felt that he was left alone. It was so dreadful to be out in the night after everybody was gone to bed! That was more than he could bear. He burst out crying in good earnest, beginning with a wail like that of the wind when it is ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... these forests is made by crickets and tree-toads. The voice of the latter sounds like the cracking of wood. Occasionally frogs, owls, and goat-suckers croak, hoot, and wail. Between midnight and 3 A.M. almost perfect silence reigns. At early dawn the animal creation awakes with a scream. Pre-eminent are the discordant cries of monkeys and macaws. As the sun rises higher, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... were clustered round the body two or three of the Indians ran up. They raised the Indian wail as they saw their comrade and with the rest took up ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... through the Long Islander's pumpkin patch—also the mad dash, dash, dash of the farmer, the low moan of the disabled and frozen-toed hen as the whooping horsemen run her down; the wild shriek of the children, the low melancholy wail of the frightened shoat as he flees away to the straw pile, the quick yet muffled plunk of the frozen tomato and the dull ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... the pin; "be good enough to remember what I said, and if you can't endure to hear of anybody sitting and looking at a wail, it's no use my ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... we have an eminent example of that Jewish language, which Dr. Wail truly observes, we several times find used in the sacred writings; I mean, where the words "all" or "whole multitude," etc. are used for much the greatest part only; but not so as to include every person, without exception; for when Josephus had said that "the ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... use the labor of all men without enslaving or brutalizing; such training as will give us poise to encourage the prejudices that bulwark society, and stamp out those that in sheer barbarity deafen us to the wail of prisoned souls within the Veil, and the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... faces grinned at her from the whins, cold eyes frowned at her from the stones. In another minute that ragged bramble would turn back into an old witch. And behind the mountains the Kidnappers were cutting the soles off Honeybird's feet. With a wail of anguish Fly began to run again. She was not afraid of the fiends and witches. They might grin and frown and laugh that low, shivering laugh behind her if they liked—her Honeybird, her own Honeybird, was behind the mountains, alone ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... with the reeking dust. Then a cry rose up from all nature, as though every star in heaven, every wave of ocean, every leaf of the forest, every blade in the meadow, every rock on the shore and every grain of sand in the measureless desert had found a voice; and this universal wail of "Woe, woe!" was drowned by rolling thunder such as the ear of man had never heard, and no mortal creature could hear and live. The heavens opened, and out of the black gulf of death-bearing clouds ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... worn-out souls that only ask to die, Would it not long to leave the bliss of Heaven, Bearing a little water in its hand To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain With Him we call our Father? Or is all So changed in such as taste celestial joy They hear unmoved the endless wail of woe, The daughter in the same dear tones that hushed Her cradled slumbers; she who once had held A babe upon her bosom from its voice Hoarse with its cry of ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... tip-top edge of his paper, I defiantly swung into The Humming Coon, which apparently had no more effect than Herman Lohr. So with malice aforethought I slowly and deliberately pounded out the Beethoven Funeral March. I lost myself, in fact, in that glorious and melodic wail of sorrow, merged my own puny troubles in its god-like immensities, and was brought down to earth by a sudden movement ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... carnival, too. Isn't Mr. Cyril Henshaw going to play his own music? Oh, I know I'm hopeless, from your standpoint, but I can't help it. I like mine with some go in it, and a tune that you can find without hunting for it. And I don't like lost spirits gone mad that wail and shriek through ten perfectly good minutes, and then die with a gasping moan whose home is the tombs. However, you're ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... provided a like one of suitable proportions for the princess. This came in good play, as her fine gentleman's attire would be but poor stuff to turn the water. The wind, which had arisen with just enough force to set up a dismal wail, gave the rain a horizontal slant and drove it in at every opening. The flaps of the comfortable great cloak blew back from Mary's knees, and she felt many a chilling drop through her fine new silk trunks that made her wish for ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... the cruel fire of sorrow Cast thy heart, do not faint or wail, Let thy heart be firm and steady, Do not let thy spirit quail; But wait till the trial be over And take thy heart again; For as gold is tried by fire, A heart must ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Beneath another standard: ill is this Follow'd of him, who severs it and justice: And let not with his Guelphs the new-crown'd Charles Assail it, but those talons hold in dread, Which from a lion of more lofty port Have rent the easing. Many a time ere now The sons have for the sire's transgression wail'd; Nor let him trust the fond belief, that heav'n Will truck its armour for his lilied shield. "This little star is furnish'd with good spirits, Whose mortal lives were busied to that end, That honour and renown might wait on them: And, when ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... through the settlement six times in as many days, and they listened superstitiously for the stark Tread through the woods which hemmed them in. Each whispering wind that stirred the leaves overhead brought a deeper silence, each wail from delirious sufferers in nearby huts ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... movingly, With clinging arms and passionate sobs, the three Wept out aloud, until the sorrow grew Into a deadly hush—nor cry nor wail Starts the drear silence of the solitude. Then suddenly a bodiless voice is heard And fear came cold on all. They shook with awe, And horror, like a wind, stirred up their hair. Again, the voice—again—'Ho! Oedipus, Why linger ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stabbed the vitals of the most hardened of us; with my own eyes I saw the mate tremble. Aye, in some way Holy Joe had sent a fear into the brute soul of Fitzgibbon; in some way he had sent a fear into the brute souls of us all, and, at least in my case, a great wonder. The pain-filled wail of Nils, coming as it did, seemed magic-inspired to light for me a universal truth. I felt it crudely, saw it dimly, but there it was, dramatized before my eyes, the age-long, ceaseless battle between ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... a man, who came to tune the pianoforte, extolled the merits of an AEolian harp. D'Argenton immediately ordered one made on a gigantic scale, and placed it on his roof. From that moment poor little Jack's life was a burden to him. The melancholy wail of the instrument, like a soul in purgatory, pursued him in his dreams. To the child's great relief, the poet was equally disturbed, and the harp was ordered to the end of the garden; but its shrieks and moans were still heard. D'Argenton fiercely commanded ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... faint bleat, as of a new-born lamb, high above her head; she started and looked up. Then a wail from the cliffs, as of a child in pain, answered by another from the opposite rocks. They were but the passing snipe, and the otter calling to her brood; but to her they were mysterious, supernatural goblins, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the new-comer, with his face to the porch door, and the answer came back to him in a wail like ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... that?" I exclaimed, as a plaintive cry, which ended in a wail of anguish, such as might be given by a lost soul in torment, rang through ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... cry of anguish, one long, passionate wail of grief, she threw herself on her mother's bed. Her sorrow could not disturb that mother now; she was gone to that land which is very far off, where even the sound of weeping is never heard. The Good Shepherd had carried her safely over the river, and, as Rosalie wept in the ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... In the wail which Sanang Setzen, the poetical historian of the Mongols, puts, perhaps with some traditional basis, into the mouth of Toghon Temur, the last of the Chinghizide Dynasty in China, when driven from his throne, the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... to a perfect wail, but came down a note or two as Mother hastily reached in the press and drew out a tall, old demijohn and poured a liberal dose of the desired medicine into a glass. She added a dash of red pepper ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again three days later, when the wail of the "Dead March" and the tramp of the squadrons told the wondering station, that saw no gap in the table, an officer of the regiment ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... distinct above the roar of the storm, which at the moment had somewhat lulled, there rose a prolonged wail, or rather shriek, as of many human voices rising slowly in one passionate appeal to the mercy of Heaven, and dying away in sobbing, shuddering despair as the wild blast broke out again with the mocking laughter of all the fiends in the pit—a cry without similitude on earth, yet surely and ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... same. So like an outcast, dowerless and pale, Thy daughter went; and in a foreign gale Spread her young banner, till its sway became A wonder to the nations. Days of shame Are close upon thee; prophets raise their wail. When the rude Cossack with an outstretched hand Points his long spear across the narrow sea,— "Lo! there is England!" when thy destiny Storms on thy straw-crowned head, and thou dost stand Weak, ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... calm the wind stores up his forces for a mighty storm. On this dark, fearful night he blew his fiercest blasts. The wild beast was affrighted from his lair and rushed down with a moan, or the mountain eagle screamed out a wail, indistinctly heard through the moaning sounds. During the whole night, which was black as wickedness, the wind howled in mournful cadence, or went sobbing along the sand. As the hours wore on we seemed to hear, in every shriek of the blast, the strange tongue of some long-departed ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... to wake up the children," said she, "Arthur's never does. It's odd, for his voice is much heavier, of course. But I can never take really high notes without hearing a wail from either Bud or Dot. ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... of traffic which innkeepers love, Mrs Kelly was accounted a warm, comfortable woman. Her husband had left her for a better world some ten years since, with six children; and the widow, instead of making continual use, as her chief support, of that common wail of being a poor, lone woman, had put her shoulders to the wheel, and had earned comfortably, by sheer industry, that which so many of her class, when similarly situated, are willing ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... down in the snow and seemed to shrink to half his normal size; and then, as all the horror and the hopelessness of it came over him, he lifted up his voice in such a cry of abject fear, such a wail of utter agony and despair, as even the Great Tahquamenon Swamp had very seldom heard. I suppose that he had killed and eaten hundreds of smaller animals in his time, but I doubt if any of his victims ever suffered as he did. Most of them ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... be born, or live, or die there without attracting any attention whatsoever. Let us profit by the advantages of civilization. There are fifty or sixty deaths every day; if you have a mind to do it, you can sit down at any time and wail over whole hecatombs of dead in Paris. Old Goriot has gone off the hooks, has he? So much the better for him. If you venerate his memory, keep it to yourselves, and let the rest of us ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... shabbily dressed woman sat on one of the unpainted benches of the shady stoop, holding a baby in her arms. As Martin had said, slow tears of helpless misery were rolling down her cheeks, while from the bundle that she held came the worn-out, tired wail of a sick child. ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... in a social way By a body of ghosts in dread array; But no conventional spectres they— Appalling, grim, and tricky: I quail at mine as I'd never quail At a fine traditional spectre pale, With a turnip head and a ghostly wail, And a splash of blood on ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... Now a wail of men to Zeus rang: from Olympus the Thunderer Saw the rage of the havoc wide-mouthed, the bright car superimpending Over Asia, Africa, low down; ruin flaming over the vales; Light disastrous rising savage out of smoke inveterately; Beast-black, conflagration like a menacing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... conclusion, last Tuesday, that the matter of the missing handbag and the letters was important. More important, probably, than the mere record shows. Do you recall the note of distress in Miss Jeremy's voice? It was almost a wail." ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... why does Buck Davis, who lives on the river flats, cross our hills, unless Murder Hollow be blockaded with snow, or unless he has turkeys for sale? But Buck Davis with turkeys would surely have stopped here, unless he were selling a large stock in town. A wail from the sacking at the back of the sleigh tells the tale. It is a winter calf, and Buck Davis is going to sell it for one dollar to the Boston Market where it will be turned into potted chicken. This leaves the mystery of his change of route unexplained. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... expression of recklessness, "Oh, very well, if you must have it, I will sing it. But I hate these sentimental songs, that say so much and mean nothing." Striking the chords nervously she sang, with a voice at first tremulous but at last full of strong and deep feeling, that wail ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... and breaks into a theatrical wail. When a little later, his wife, stepping cautiously on tiptoe, brings him in a glass of tea, he is sitting in an easy chair as before with his eyes closed, absorbed in his article. He does not stir, drums lightly on his forehead with two fingers, and pretends he is ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was hot, oppressive, laden with the scents of dry earth. Sounds carried far in the stillness. The stamp of a horse in a stall, the low, throaty notes of a cow nuzzling her calf, the far-off evening wail of a coyote—all seemed strangely near at hand, borne by some telephonic quality ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... howl at something invisible, unknown, and doubtless horrible, for he was bristling all over. The gamekeeper with livid face cried: 'He scents him! He scents him! He was there when I killed him.' The two women, terrified, began to wail in ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... that his will through them might be wrought. Then he gave unto Fafnir my brother the soul that feareth nought, And the brow of the hardened iron, and the hand that may never fail, And the greedy heart of a king, and the ear that hears no wail. ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... suppose. Well, hardly. You won't leave here to-night. And when you do, you won't carry those papers—my own safety depends on that and I am selfish, so don't get me started. Listen!" They caught the wail of the night crying as though hungry for sacrifice. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Captain Stevenson join in the chorus softly. It is sung slowly, like a low wail, Major Shore's clear ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... the groan of a gravelled grouse, Or the snarl of a snaffled snail (Husband or mother, like me, or spouse), Have you lain a-creep in the darkened house Where the wounded wombats wail?" ...
— Reginald • Saki
... that old tower, though perhaps farther off, they could not tell, came a sound almost human, a kind of moaning intermingled with a plaintive wail, ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... spots it is a common thing for the wake wail to be sung over the boddy each night it be in the house as also for a rushlight to be kept alight from sunset to sunrise and for the death watchers for to tend the dead throw the night owther in the same room or in one so held that those watching could see the corpse, and they due at this day ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... his principal for sale, or introduce him to the street with an indicating finger. The gloom grew, calling out the lights into strength, but the concourse did not thin: it only gathered in numbers, and the long, moaning hoot of an out-going tramp filled the air as though with a wail of sorrow at departure. Lascars in coal-begrimed tunics joined in with the rest, adding their voices to the babel, and round-hatted sailors from the Royal Indian ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... away!" the golden-haired girl broke out, in a voice that was positively a wail, and clasping a pair of pretty, slender ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... and owls, and creaks and cracks—no quiet about the place from night to morning. Then came the barking of dogs, the noises of the cocks and kine, of horses and foals, of pigs and geese—the general wail of the zoological kingdom—cows bellowing, duck diplomacy, and much else. So that it were not surprising to learn that this distinguished traveler in these contemptible regions was sitting on a broken-down bridge, looking wearily on to ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... A horrible wail of mingled pain and fright, which wrung my heart-strings, welled from the lips of the little lamb, as mother, father, and grandmother rushed to raise him, knocking their own heads together in the process. Harold, white as a sheet and with a son-in-law's ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... orange and snow-white ribbon magically inspired, thrice at enormous speed they set a belt about the house. With tremendous bounds the Rose kept before her pursuers—heavily labouring, horrid with thirsty glee. Impotent in the doorway moaned Mr. Marrapit, his dirge rushing up to a wail of grief each time the parti-coloured ribbon ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... this loneliness could mean, and wherefore we were unable to make an entrance even into the little auberge that professed to loger a pied et a cheval, a kind of low wail or chaunt began to make itself heard from the other side of the river; wild and strange, yet full of a music of its own, it took my friend and myself so much by surprise that we almost thought for the moment that we had trespassed on to the forbidden ground of some fairy people who ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... her chin (Not a toot!), While the leading violin And the flute Wail and plead in low duet Till, it may be, eyes are wet. She her trombone doth ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Hither and thither he moves them; for an hour we see the show of it: Only a little hour, and the life of the race is done. And here he builds a nebula, and there he slays a sun And works his own fierce pleasure. All things he shall fulfill, And O, my poor Despoina, do you think he ever hears The wail of hearts he has broken, the sound of human ill? He cares not for our virtues, our little hopes and fears, And how could it all go on, love, if he knew ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... sure, His wisdom will not fail, He has not tasted wine impure, Nor bent to passion frail. Age cannot cloud his memory, Nor grief untune his voice, Ranging down the ruled scale From tone of joy to inward wail, Tempering the pitch of all In his windy cave. He all the fables knows, And in their causes tells,— Knows Nature's rarest moods, Ever on her secret broods. The Muse of men is coy, Oft courted will not come; In ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... you down to wail and groan." He never raised his voice; his calmness made him terrible. But now the questions broke loose ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... her holy purpose, unchecked by fear, unswayed by her sisters' entreaties. Hardening her heart magnificently till her fate is sealed; and then after proving her godlike courage, proving the tenderness of her womanhood by that melodious wail over her own untimely death and the loss of marriage joys, which some of you must know from the music of Mendelssohn, and which the late Dean Milman has put into ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Instead of gold, we'll offer up our arms; Since arms avail not, now that Henry's dead. Posterity, await for wretched years, When at their mothers' moist eyes babes shall suck, Our isle be made a marish of salt tears, And none but women left to wail the dead. Henry the Fifth, thy ghost I invocate: Prosper this realm, keep it from civil broils, Combat with adverse planets in the heavens! A far more glorious star thy soul will make ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... alone, although they thought they were. The hag that guarded the jewels was in the room. She sat hunched up against the wail, and as she looked like a bundle of rags they did not notice her. She began to ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... passed: at Eaglestein There sat the Ladye Etheline; Her eyes were wet, and her cheek was pale, Her sweet voice dwindled into a wail; For though through the world's busy crowd The deeds of the war were sung aloud, And the name of Sir Peregrine was enrolled With Godfrey's among the brave and bold, No letter had come from her knight so dear, To belie the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... folded his wings, and entering the crystal gates, sat down upon a blasted rock and struck his divine lyre, and a peace fell over the wretched; the demon ceased to torture and the victim to wail. As sleep to the mourners of earth was the song of the angel to the souls of the purifying star: one only voice amidst the general stillness seemed not lulled by the angel; it was the voice of a woman, and it continued to cry out with ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the commanding officer by this time, and several of the guard had come forth, anxious and eager to hear the news. No man in the group could catch the reply of the horseman to the questioners at "Sudstown," but in an instant an Irish wail burst upon the ear, and, just as one coyote will start a whole pack, just as one midnight bray will set in discordant chorus a whole "corral" of mules, so did that one wail of mourning call forth an echoing "keen" from every Hibernian hovel in all the little settlement, and in ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... out, it was about eleven o'clock, and the surrounding jungle was full of the horrible noises of an African night; the wail of the small lemur, that sounds like the death-moan of a child; the more distant roar of the lion in the black depths of the forest, too thick for the moonlight to ever penetrate; the giant trees ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... Hastinapura and proclaim unto all that Pandu with his wives hath gone into the woods, foregoing wealth, desire, happiness, and even sexual appetite.' Then those followers and attendants, hearing these and other soft words of the king, set up a loud wail, uttering, 'Oh, we are undone!' Then with hot tears trickling down their cheeks they left the monarch and returned to Hastinapura with speed carrying that wealth with them (that was to be distributed in charity). Then Dhritarashtra, that first of men, hearing from them ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... people lined the whole of the way from Manchester to Liverpool, and, as far as the eye could reach, faces were seen anxiously looking towards Liverpool. Suddenly a strange roar was heard from the crowd, not a cheer of triumph, but a prolonged wail, beginning at the furthest point of travelling along the swarming banks like the incoming swirl of a breaker as it runs ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... woe. Of old didst thou lose Homer:... now again another son thou weepest, and in a new sorrow art thou wasting away.... Nor so much did pleasant Lesbos mourn for Alcaeus, nor did the Teian town so greatly bewail her poet,... and not for Sappho but still for thee doth Mitylene wail her musical lament.... Ah me! when the mallows wither in the garden, and the green parsley, and the curled tendrils of the anise, on a later day they live again, and spring In another year: but we men, we the great and mighty or wise, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... fierce accusation; and every pale and starved prisoner shall raise his skinny hand in judgment. Blood shall call out for vengeance, and tears shall plead for justice, and grief shall silently beckon, and love, heart-smitten, shall wail for justice. Good men and angels will cry out: "How long, O Lord, how long, wilt thou not avenge?" And, then, these guiltiest and most remorseless traitors, these high and cultured men,—with might and wisdom, used for the destruction of their country,—the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... seeing that escape by flight was no longer possible, he turned round and boldly faced his pursuer. At the same instant a wild swan, rising from the water, flew off with a loud cry. It might have been taken for the death-wail of one of the combatants. Like a couple of wild beasts, the two Indians rushed at each other, and the next instant they were clasped in a deadly embrace. A desperate struggle ensued. It was youth and activity opposed to well-knit muscles and ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... What is that I hear, So mournfully ringing in my ear, Like a death song of warriors, For those who fell by their brave sires? Is this the wail now sounding For my ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... his sword. Next he put round his head his crested war-helm of battle and fight and combat, [5]wherein were four carbuncle-gems on each point and each end to adorn it,[5] whereout was uttered the cry of an hundred young warriors with the long-drawn wail from each of its angles and corners. [W.2583.] For this was the way that the fiends, the goblins and the sprites of the glens and the demons of the air screamed before and above and around him, what time ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... Nursed the little Hiawatha, Rocked him in his linden cradle, Bedded soft in moss and rushes, Safely bound with reindeer sinews; Stilled his fretful wail by saying, "Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!" Lulled him into slumber, singing, "Ewa-yea! my little owlet! Who is this, that lights the wigwam? With his great eyes lights the wigwam? Ewa-yea! my ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... Darn's words Jerry stretched out at full length in the road and his voice rose in a quavering wail of anguish. Celia Jane emitted a thinner, shriller wail. Nora came back to comfort them and was caught by the contagion so that she too plumped down in the ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... cleared off the last of the fever, which had by now worn itself away, and by degrees the things of North Aston went back to their normal condition. The families came into residence again, and save for the widow's wail and the orphan's cry in the desolated village below, life passed as it had always passed, and the strong did not spend their strength in bearing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... was deemed a good sign of the state of the sufferer's soul, if from the gloomy recesses of the wall was heard the agonized groan of his dismal response. This was regarded in the light of a penitent wail from the dead, because the customs of the order ordained that when any inmate should be first incarcerated in the wall, he should be committed to it in the presence of all the brethren, the chief reading the burial service as the live body was sepulchred. Sometimes ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... resounds through the stillness, a long-drawn, mysterious utterance, passing drearily, difficult to locate, more difficult to name—one of those sounds by which Nature at times reaches to the dark places of our spirit and terrifies us with vague dread of the unknown. Is it the wail of an owl or other bird of the night? It pervades the air wildly and lingeringly. Those who come late to the ford and hear this sudden strange call draw rein and turn backward; it is better to drive the weary distance ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... the brook and pushed his way straight ahead through the dense foliage which shut us off from the beach. I fell and made a great racket, setting up a wail about my leg and swearing that I had broken it, and ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... days, Tom, moved with undefined remorse, tried to take a part in nursing her. She took things from him, as she did from the landlady, without heed or recognition. Just once, opening suddenly her eyes wide upon him, she uttered a feeble wail of "Baby!" and, turning her head, did not look at him again. Then, first, Tom's conscience gave him ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... the corridor the anguished wail floated, followed an instant later by sounds counterfeiting the howling of an unhappy dog. ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... sufficient to render all indistinctly visible. In a chair opposite is a young woman with such a mournful, careworn face, that a glance inspires you with sorrow; and from a bundle of clothes on her knee issues the fretful wail of a restless child. The monotonous tick of an old clock is the only sound, saving the longdrawn sigh of that young mother, or the quick, hollow breathing of the sleeping man. Now and then the wind whistles more shrilly through the crevices ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... will gather no more ripe grapes for the Trembling Fawn. He will not bathe again in the clear waters with La-u-na. He will give her no more rings of roses to put on her breast. The Trembling Fawn is wounded. She must find a cool shade and lie down. The dove will perch over her and wail. She will sing a low song. She will close her ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... curious curse, or influence. I am posed, puzzled and perplexed by the legerdemain of a creature—a deity rather; by Aphrodite, as a poet would put it, as I should put it myself in marble. ... But I forget—this is not to be a deprecatory wail, but a defence—a sort of Apologia ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... behind the hedge which marks the beginning of the combe, but Marah had disappeared—I could see no trace of him. Then suddenly, from somewhere behind me, out of sight, an owl called—and this in broad daylight. Three times the "Too-hoo, too-hoo" rose in a long wail from the shrubs, and three times another owl answered from up the combe, and from up the valley, too, till the place seemed full of owls. "Too-hoo, too-hoo" came the cries, and very faintly came answers—some of them ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... Negro has such a contagious brand of humor that many people never realize that this plays only on the surface. The real background of the race is one of tragedy. It is not in current jest but in the wail of the old melodies that the soul of this people is found. There is something elemental about the heart of the race, something that finds its origin in the forest and in the falling of the stars. There is something grim about it too, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... sir, I—" Hobbs began to wail. Then he groaned in dismal horror. King had lightly vaulted the wall and was grinning back at him from the sacred precincts—from the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... prophet wail deride! The solemn sorrow dies in scorn; And lonely in the waste, I hide The tortured heart that would forewarn. Amid the happy, unregarded, Mock'd by their fearful joy, I trod; Oh, dark to me the lot awarded, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... bright, laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Said "Hi!" in a Commanding Tone, "Hi, Lundy! Leave the Cat alone!" Lord Lundy, letting go its tail, Would raise so terrible a wail As moved ...
— Cautionary Tales for Children • Hilaire Belloc
... wakened at the stranger's touch and began to wail. He had no mind to go with the Shepherd; he wanted to stay where he was. So as they went he screamed at the top of his lungs, hoping some of his friends would come. And the mother Deer, who was on her way thither, ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... figured that a life of ease | | Attends the jackie on the seas | | Who draws a U. S. check. | | His lot, it seems, is not quite so; | | Just hear this plaintive plea of woe | | That comes from off the BUFFALO. | | The sailors rise to raise a wail | | Because they say they get no mail. | | | |Will some Milwaukee misses in their spare moments do| |Uncle Sam a favor by writing letters to cheer up | |some of his downhearted nephews in the navy? | | | |The boys are just pining ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... on board. As the last boats put off there was a rush into the surf. Some women caught hold of the ropes, were dragged out of their depth, clung till their fingers were cut through, and perished in the waves. The ships began to move. A wild and terrible wail rose from the shore, and excited unwonted compassion in hearts steeled by hatred of the Irish race and of the Romish faith. Even the stern Cromwellian, now at length, after a desperate struggle of three ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... going down, then smothered and drowned, if not smashed dead at the first. The captain stood on the bridge to the last, went down with the ship, came up again among the wreckage, and was saved after hours in the water. He will never forget the long, piercing wail of despair from hundreds of victims as the gallant ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... found it inexpressibly lonesome and spooky. To the newcomer it is apt to be a ghostly sort of place at any time of year, unless mayhap he be from some similar strand, for its rolling sand hills are swept by winds that wail, and beaten by a sea that grumbles when it does not cry aloud. At the time of year when Standish and his men patrolled its beaches, it is no wonder they saw savages behind every liliputian pitch pine ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... words, not spoken, but rather moaned forth in a slow, monotonous wail of utter helplessness and broken-heartedness. I have heard human grief expressed in many forms, but I never heard or imagined anything so desolate, so surcharged with the despair of an eternal woe. It was, indeed, too hopeless for sympathy. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... recurring gusts of heart-broken sorrow and of agonies of prayer for her apostate son. Mistress Margaret was at the Hall all day, soothing, encouraging, even distracting her sister by all the means in her power. The mother wrote one passionate wail to her son, appealing to all that she thought he held dear, even yet to return to the Faith for which his father had suffered and in which he had died; but a short answer only returned, saying it was impossible to make his defence in a letter, and expressing pious hopes that she, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... hear distinctly," Sibley had remarked as Ida took his arm and walked away from her post of observation. "Were you disgusted with his pious wail on general principles, or did something in ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... but to know it, he must demonstrate his statement. To assume that 448:1 there are no claims of evil and yet to indulge them, is a moral offence. Blindness and self-righteousness cling 448:3 fast to iniquity. When the Publican's wail went out to the great heart of Love, it won his humble desire. Evil which obtains in the bodily senses, 448:6 but which the heart condemns, has no foundation; but if evil is uncondemned, it is undenied and nurtured. Under such circumstances, to say that there is no evil, is an evil 448:9 in ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... these same prairies. I see as in a vision the dying spark of our council fires, the ashes cold and white. I see no longer the curling smoke rising from our lodge poles. I hear no longer the songs of the women as they prepare the meal. The antelope have gone; the buffalo wallows are empty. Only the wail of the coyote is heard. The white man's medicine is stronger than ours; his iron horse rushes over the buffalo trail. He talks to us through his 'whispering spirit.' " (The Indian's name for the telegraph and telephone.) "We are like birds with a broken wing. My heart is cold within me. ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... outward life fails to harmonise with the inner, the dweller within is hurt, and his pain manifests itself in the outer consciousness in a manner to which it is difficult to give a name, or even to describe, and of which the cry is more akin to an inarticulate wail than words ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... story that the old sailor from Tadousac told me when the waves were leaping, snapping, and frothing at us from the St. Lawrence, and over the moan of the wind and the anger of the waters rose the wail of the Braillard ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... Kent had noticed that the thunder and lightning were drifting steadily eastward, and now the occasional flashes of electrical fire scarcely illumined the trail ahead of them. The rain was not beating so fiercely. They could hear the wail of the spruce and cedar tops and the slush of their boots in mud and water. An interval came, where the spruce-tops met overhead, when it was almost calm. It was then that Kent threw out of him a great, deep breath and ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... A wail swept up from French, American, English, Swedish, Spanish, Norwegian, Russian and West ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the couch-chair shone like mahogany, the couch itself was plump and smooth, like a living thing in good condition. The walls were a bright, lively blue, but there was not very much to be seen of them, so covered were they with all sorts of family-belongings and treasures. Against one wail stood a rather ambitious-looking article, half chest of drawers, half sideboard, the knobs of the drawers being of glass, which flashed in the bright fire-light as if smiling their approbation of the happy condition of ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... pronounced to be naughty, wilful, mischievous, and, finally, to be combined together to break their mamma's heart. It was clear that they were receiving the discharge of the wrath which was caused by somebody else. Now a wail, now a scream of passion, went to Maria's heart. She hastened on with her letter, in the hope that Mrs Rowland would presently go into the house, when the little sufferers might be invited into the schoolroom, to hear a story, or have their ruffled ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... I got back from Paris," the pretty woman was heard to wail, "I found all the women here were wearing the very models ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... stretched herself on the ocean bed, she fell with a despairing wail; her gown spread like a pall over the earth, the Highland bonnet came off, and her hair floated over a haphazard pillow ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... voice decayed; their shots Slowly boom. They ceased—and all is wail, As they strike the shattered sail, Or in conflagration ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... of us turned down the gallery toward the kitchen. As we approached the door we heard a murmur of voices, one rising every now and then in a shrill wail which furnished a sort of chorus. Radnor whispered in my ear that he reckoned Nancy had "got um" again. Though I did not comprehend at the moment, I subsequently learned that "um" referred to a sort of emotional ecstasy into ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... out until the tumbrils started, then with a wail of despair he fell on his knees, shaking in every limb, chattering to himself, whether oaths ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... statue, she listened in deadly suspense. Again that cry, that dreadful cry, pierces through the stillness of the night, freezing her young heart with horror! "His death-wail!" cried the wretched girl; and careless of danger, scarce knowing what she did, heeding nothing but the sound of her lover's voice, she sprang from the balcony, and as though moonbeams had drawn her thither, she swung herself to the ground. For one moment her ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... am lost—lost out of sight! Nothing can save me! The Saviour himself wouldn't open the door to a woman that left her suckling child out in the dark night!— That's what I did!" she cried, and ended with a wail as from a heart whose wound eternal years ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... the low wail begin again, and then the echo of a far-off silvery voice came softly to me through the gloom: "It's an ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... aiks the cushats wail, And Echo cons the doolfu' tale; The lintwhites in the hazel braes, Delighted, rival ither's lays: The craik amang the clover hay, The paitrick whirrin o'er the ley, The swallow jinkin round my shiel, Amuse me at ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... to wail throughout the city. Doors clanged shut automatically everywhere. Lights and warning signs flashed at every street corner, advising citizens to run for the ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... Lord Dunquerque Said "Hi!" in a Commanding Tone, "Hi, Lundy! Leave the Cat alone!" Lord Lundy, letting go its tail, Would raise so terrible a wail As moved ...
— Cautionary Tales for Children • Hilaire Belloc
... patriarch's strong sable sons supported their decrepit sire homeward, with their wives, "black, but comely," bearing the glistening, satin-skinned babies on their backs, and their other little ebony responsibilities trudging in the rear, there must have been a dismal wail; for there was the ancestral tree, its foliage shrivelled with fire, stretching out its desolate arms over the ashes of the ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... every American of the party of political evasion, there now began a sad, internal conflict. Every one of them had to choose among three courses: to shut his eyes and to continue to wail that the function of government is to do nothing; to make an end of political evasion and to come out frankly in approval of the Southern position; or to break with his own record, to emerge from his evasions on the ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... that cannot fly and feed itself: he never tottered; he walked straight to his mark. She set up his image and Renee's, and cowered under the heroical shapes till she felt almost extinct. With her weak limbs and head worthlessly paining, the little infantile I within her ceased to wail, dwindled beyond sensation. Rosamund, waiting on her in the place of her maid, saw two big drops come through her closed eyelids, and thought that if it could be granted to Nevil to look for a moment on this fair and proud young lady's loveliness in abandonment, it would tame, melt, and save him. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... if the depot ship receives a plaintive wail by signal to say that one of her children has been punctured through the bows by a projectile from a belligerent Hun, or that another, in a slight altercation at sea with one of her sisters, has developed a "slight dent" in herself to the accompaniment of leaky rivets and seams, ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... reply, and with that wail ringing in his ears to assure him that he did not pass unloved, he was hurried below to prepare him for ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... part of the five million inhabitants go down to the waterside to see him off. Not long ago I stood with the crowd and watched two fine lads go up the gangplank, each carrying a red handkerchief containing his worldly goods. As the good ship moved away we lifted a wild wail of woe that drowned the sobbing of the waves. Everybody cried—I wept, too—and as the great, black ship became but a speck on the Western horizon we embraced each other ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... clapping my glass to my eye I took another look towards the northern reef and the ship that was stranded there. But no ship was to be seen. She had disappeared in a twinkling; the sea had swallowed her up. And over the water, as an eerie wail, lasting and doleful, came the death-cries of those who ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... of strange noises and figures and odors—the shuffling of feet, the clash of crockery, the explosion of nervous German voices, mixed with the smell of beer and ham, and the smoke of cigars. Through it all pierced the wail of a postman standing at the door with a letter in his hand and calling out at regular intervals, "Krahnay, Krahnay! "When March could bear it no longer he went up to him and shouted, "Crane! Crane!" and the man bowed gratefully, and began to cry, "Kren! Kren!" ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... he travel, Long must he row o'er the rime-crusted sea— Plod his lone exile-path—Fate is severe. Mindful of slaughter, his kinsman friends' death, Mindful of hardships, the wanderer saith:— Oft must I lonely, when dawn doth appear, Wail o'er my sorrow—since living is none Whom I may whisper my heart's undertone. Know I full well that in man it is noble Fast in his bosom his sorrow to bind. Weary at heart, yet his Fate is unyielding— Help cometh not to his suffering mind. Therefore do those who are thirsting for glory ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... just see some of them!" she would wail to herself. "If I could just see mother or father or anybody from New York! Oh, I know I shall never see New York again, or Broadway or Fifth Avenue or Central Park—I never—never—never shall!" And she would grovel among her pillows, burying her face and half stifling ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was; however, no such disposition. The whole country was already cowering again, except the provinces of Holland and Zealand. No one dared approach, even to learn what had occurred within the walls of the town, for days after its doom had been accomplished. "A wail of agony was heard above Zutphen last Sunday," wrote Count Nieuwenar, "a sound as of a mighty massacre, but we know not what ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... some new danger. Mrs. Chadron was in far worse state, with reason, certainly, for being so. Now that the stimulation of her first wild outburst had been exhausted, she stood wilted and weak, shivering with her hands over her eyes, moaning and moaning in piteous low wail. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... infants prattling at his knees. Let therefore Diomede beware, lest strong And valiant as he is, he chance to meet 490 Some mightier foe than thou, and lest his wife, Daughter of King Adrastus, the discrete AEgialea, from portentous dreams Upstarting, call her family to wail Her first-espoused, Achaia's proudest boast, 485 Diomede, whom she must behold no more. She said, and from her wrist with both hands wiped The trickling ichor; the effectual touch Divine chased all her pains, and she was heal'd. Them Juno mark'd and Pallas, and with ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... was a small iron door like a cupboard. Something in his heart held him back, but before he had time to listen to it he had opened the little door, for the keys lay on the table to his hand; and he was peering into a small dark recess of stone, which seemed, for the wail that the little door made on its hinges, not to have been opened ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... intermittently a confusion of voices, Liane's light laughter, muted clatter of chips, now and then the sound of a popping cork. Forward the ship's bell sounded two double strokes, then a single, followed by a wail in minor key: "Five bells and all's well!" ... And of a sudden Lanyard suffered the melancholy oppression of knowing his littleness of body and soul, the relative insignificance even of the ship, that impertinent atom of human organization which traversed with unabashed effrontery ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... made a great pile before each of the doors, and then the women folk who were inside began to weep and to wail. ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... to relieve Betty of her burden, but she waved him imperiously away, passed him and, opening the car-door, threw the bag at my feet. Not one of the rough crowd moved a foot or uttered a sound, save a baby in arms two doors off, who cut the silence with a sickly wail and was immediately hushed by its mother. Betty turned to ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... to his waxen wings, upsoared Where angels dared not go, came to his doom, And fell a molten mass; so, tempting Heaven, Saul died the death of disobedient Pride And self-willed Folly—curses of mankind! Sins against God which wrought the Fall, and sent, As tempests moan along the listening night, A wail of mournful sadness drifting down The annals of the world: unearthly strains! Cries of eternal ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... a piteous wail from the tortured animal, an acrid pungent odor, and the thing was done. The girl got to her feet, ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... nothing whatsoever enchants or deludes the eye. Yet what secret, what invincible force draws me to you? Why does there ceaselessly echo and re-echo in my ears the sad song which hovers throughout the length and the breadth of your borders? What is the burden of that song? Why does it wail and sob and catch at my heart? What say the notes which thus painfully caress and embrace my soul, and flit, uttering their lamentations, around me? What is it you seek of me, O Russia? What is the hidden bond which subsists between ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... began Richard; but he was going to say since ever she was married, but he remembered that this allusion would be unbecoming, so he turned his face to the doorpost, and began to wail bitterly. ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... motionless in amazement. Minnie put down her work. The crying continued. It was no feeble wail, but a good hearty roar with a running accompaniment of sobs in another key. Two children were being as miserable and unhappy as they knew how. As they came close to the leafy screen that protected Rosanna and Helen, the girls were able to see ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... uttered a fresh wail of grief, when she saw this shelter; but after the men had removed the snow as well as they could, and covered the holes in the roof with pine-branches; when Adam had lighted a fire, and the sacks and coverlets were brought in from the sledge, and laid on a dry spot to furnish ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... clutching their terrified children about their skirts. He saw an Austrian woman, a pitiful, pale young thing with a ragged grey shawl about her head, stretching out her hands and crying: "Mein Mann! Mein Mann!" Presently she covered her face, and her voice died into a wail of despair: "O, mein Mann! O, mein Mann!" She turned away, staggering about like some creature that has received a death wound. Hal's eyes followed her; her cry, repeated over and over incessantly, became the leit-motif of ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... streams of light go upward. Then the lords Of havoc and unrest prepare their storms, And o'er the silent city, vulture forms— Eris and Enyo, Alke, Ioke, The biter, the sharp-bitten, the mad, the fey— Hover and light on pinnacle and tower: The gray Erinnyes, watchful for the hour When Haro be the wail. And down the sky Like a white squall flung Ate with a cry That sounded like the wind in a ship's shrouds, As shrill and wild at once. The driving clouds Surging together, blotted out the sea, The beached ships, the plain with mound and tree, And slantwise came the sheeted rain, and fast ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... silence, half expecting that he would, after all, come walking in upon them. Doctor Joe was grave and preoccupied. Several times, now he, now David, went out into the night to stand and listen in the storm, but all they heard was the wail of ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... stars set in a dry sapphire, the fire cast yellow flickers upon the carven features of Kawa Kendi. In the still heat the distant wailing of the women from the opposite hill drifted into the continuous throb of the drums, the plaintive wail of the singer, and the hysterical groaning of the magicians, yelling ferociously ever and again to intimidate the baulked ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... halt and explained my plan to the others. It needed but a word, and there was no demur but a low wail from Madame Saugrain, who, I make no doubt, believed Pelagie was going to certain death. Mademoiselle herself said nothing; I think for the first time she realized that the chevalier was leading the Osages and that their only aim was to get ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... came, it made him sad, for it was not in harmony with the forward look of his young life, which, though not ambitious, was vaguely expectant. But when the hoar frosts appeared, when the clouds gathered, when the winds began to wail, and the snows to fall, then his spirits rose to meet the invading death. The old castle grew grayer and grayer outside, but ruddier and merrier within. Oh, that awful gray and white Scottish winter—dear to my heart ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Alleghenies, into the Conemaugh vale, And see the rising waters, and hear the bitter wail; The swollen streams now empty their contents in the lake, The waters rise to kiss the skies and walls of ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... loud in their wail! And Mary-Axe orphans all trembling and pale! For the Alderman glory has melted away, As mists are dispersed by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... of the cactus hedge before him were like great hands shorn of fingers thrust against the sky. Through a gap he beheld the lights of the Mission—fierce hostile eyes intent upon his thoughts. The wail and bark of a jackal came from the ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... Mun Bun set up a wail. It seemed that his shoes were brand new and he was very proud of them. He would not consider eating ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... merchant sea-captain, emerge from the blur of the wet. And the revulsion of feeling was so sharp, the shock at once so staggering and intimate—as summing up all the last ten days confused experience—that Damaris could not control herself. She turned away with a wail of distress, threw out her hands, and then, covering her eyes with them, bowed ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... A faint wail made her scramble out of bed and rush into the back room where she gathered a hot, squirming bundle into her arms and peered anxiously into its wizened face. She knew the trick babies had of dying when the weather was hot! Two other beloved scraps of humanity ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... raised their bodies partly from the sands, like a resurrection of the already dead, and there then rang out upon the night air a sound such as my ears had never before heard in my life, such as, I pray God, they may never listen to again. I do not know what that dreadful death-wail meant in words, only that it touched the lowest depths of human horror. All along the beach that fearful chorus of the damned wailed forth, and echoed back from rock and cliff. The cry for mercy could not be mistaken—the supplication blended ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... mournful melodies have been made, and these lorn lyrists have been induced to glance over it, it seems to us that they must have received it with inextinguishable laughter. Each delicate little wail when taken by itself was not so bad, but the united wail of this band of broken-hearted singers would have produced, instead of tears, laughter both long and deep. This doleful period lasted long after Irving had begun ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... for you." He moved now to open the spring-house door; she turned and was lost to him in the lights and shadows of the woods-pasture. On its further border her cabin stood, and from it came the sound of a pitiful wail; at the back door a little child stood, staying itself by the slats let into grooves in the jambs. She had left it in its low cradle asleep, and it must have waked and clambered out and crept to the barrier and been crying for her there; its small ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... willows, that dying sunset; we have heard the wail of those melancholy water-fowl; somewhere—far from here—in some previous incarnation perhaps, or in the "dim backward" of pre-natal dreaming. It all comes back to us as we give ourselves up to the whispered cadences of this faint sweet ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Those strange, pale, Eastern faces, passive, apathetic, ignorant, childish, unreasoning, stretched in a great cloud under the grey overhanging canopy of the sky. They raised if once and again a melancholy little tune that was more wail than anything else. They had stood there, I was told, in pools of frozen water for hours, and were perfectly ready to stand thus for many hours more if they were ordered to do so. As I regarded their ignorance and apathy ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... who scorn the thrilling tale Of Carolina's high-souled daughters, Which echoes here the mournful wail Of sorrow from Edisto's waters, Close while ye may the public ear— With malice vex, with slander wound them— The pure and good shall throng to hear, And tried and manly ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... squawks from overhead could be heard for miles and chief among the offenders in this respect were the terns whose shrill voices and incessant clatter were like the cries of woe of demented souls. Below, the occasional bellow of a crocodile hidden in the reedy bed of a marsh or the high-pitched wail of the great brown wolf added its note to ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... with the crackling of the flames, until the imprisoned congregation, becoming conscious of their situation, rushed to the doors and windows, where they were met by a double row of bristling swords. Now, indeed, arose the wild wail of despair, the shrieks of women, the infuriated cries of men, and the helpless screaming of children, these mingled with the roaring of the flames appalled even the Macdonalds, but not so Allan Dubh. "Thrust them back into the flames" cried he, "for he that suffers ought to escape alive from ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... dreary. Toward nightfall the wind arose, and sometimes its dismal wail seemed to run around the house. The river, too, now swollen and turbulent, that flowed beneath the neighboring bridge, added its voice of lamentation as it wandered on and on ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... far from where I used to live a famous cascade called the Swallow Falls, where the water drops down a chasm of great depth. If you listen to the noise of the cataract, you may hear mingled with it a peculiar kind of wail as from a man in great agony. It is said to be the wail of a Sir John Wynn, of Gwydir, whose spirit is under a curse, and is imprisoned at the bottom of the falls on account of his cruelty and misdeeds ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... of nearly equal size. There was little evidence that the castle had been inhabited during recent years, though there was an ancient woman care-taker who opened the great door for us, and then took up the Irish peasant's wail for the last of the O'Haras. She never ceased her crooning except when she spoke to us, which was seldom; but she placed us at table in the state dining room, and served us with stewed kid, potatoes, and goat's milk. The walls of the dining room were covered with ancient pictures of the ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... and the crisis were framed for each other.... His contemporaries, who without him might have seen the extinction of freedom among us, saw it, by his peculiar genius, placed on an imperishable basis."[146] But Erskine without a Jury, Gentlemen, what could he have done? He could only wail, O ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... and all that wail, Our pity shall be given, And when this life of love shall fail, We'll ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... their wild wayward boys. We would pierce the hearts of many pure confiding girls, who are buried in dreams of future happiness, and who would not dare suspect the awful truths that are born of the midnight hours. There are, therefore, too many innocent ones interested; too many mothers to wail; too many sisters to bow their heads in shame; too many young loving hearts that would burst were one to spell out the truth in legible characters. "They have eyes and they see not," let us mercifully leave ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... which he himself had taken a part. But it had become known to Mrs Arabin, through the servants, that he had once dragged the instrument forth from its case when he had thought the house to be nearly deserted; and a wail of sounds had been heard, very low, very short-lived, recurring now and again at fitful intervals. He had at those times attempted to play, as though with a muffled bow,—so that none should know of his vanity and folly. Then there had been further consultations at the deanery, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the coarse tones. The weirdness fell from the wail of the music as Mrs. Pat remembered the woman who had bothered her for money that morning in Carnfother. She and the blind old man were tramping slowly up the road, seemingly as useless a couple to any one in Mrs. Pat's plight ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... demand information. The adjutant had joined the commanding officer by this time, and several of the guard had come forth, anxious and eager to hear the news. No man in the group could catch the reply of the horseman to the questioners at "Sudstown," but in an instant an Irish wail burst upon the ear, and, just as one coyote will start a whole pack, just as one midnight bray will set in discordant chorus a whole "corral" of mules, so did that one wail of mourning call forth an echoing "keen" from every Hibernian hovel in all the little settlement, and in an ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... coming from no one knew where, which, unearthly in its shrillness and the power it had on the imagination, reverberated through the house and died away in a wail so weird, so thrilling and so prolonged that it gripped not only my own nerveless and weakened heart, but those of the ten strong men congregated below me. The diamond dropped from Mr. Grey's hand, and neither he nor any one else moved to pick it up. Not till silence ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... the pines blows in with the breeze from the neighbouring firwood. Keen airs sigh through the pine-needles. Grasshoppers chirp from deep tangles of bracken. The song of a skylark drops from the sky like soft rain in summer; in the evening, a nightjar croons to us his monotonously passionate love-wail from his perch on the gnarled boughs of the wind-swept larch that crowns the upland. But away below in the valley, as night draws on, a lurid glare reddens the north-eastern horizon. It marks the spot where the great wen of London heaves and festers. Up here on the ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... joy; howbeit, she soon came to herself again, seeing my dear gossip still had a little wine by him. Meanwhile the dear young lord did me some injustice, which, however, I freely forgive him; for he railed at me and called me an old woman, who could do naught save weep and wail. Why had I not journeyed after the Swedish king, or why had I not gone to Mellenthin myself to fetch his testimony, as I knew right well what he thought about witchcraft? (But, blessed God, how could ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought. And with old woes new wail ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... From the moment of leaving the Tide Mill until I discovered your blonde and brunette heads bending over this pool my pilgrimage has been one long reminiscent wail." ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... bear no more; the band loosened from my throat; the oppression lifted from my breast long enough for me to give one wild wail and she turned, saw (heaven sent its flashes quickly at this moment) and recognizing my childish form, all the horror of her deed (or so I have fondly hoped) rose within her, and she gave a start and fell full upon the point upturned to ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... who is still revered in Egypt by all sects, and Seyd el-Bedawee is as certainly one form of Osiris. His festivals, held twice a year at Tanta, still display the symbol of the Creator of all things. All is thus here—the women wail the dead, as on the old sculptures, all the ceremonies are pagan, and would shock an Indian Mussulman as much as his objection to eat with a Christian shocks an Arab. This country is a palimpsest, in ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... God's lost ones who are in China, and God cares for them and yearns over them," and men who were in England respectable artisans, with an imperfect hold of their own language, come to China, in response to the "wail of the dying millions," to stay this "awful ruin of souls," who, at the rate of 33,000 a day, are "perishing without hope, having sinned ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... whistle a bit for courage," Tim interrupted. "Couldn't he do that, Mark? Couldn't he go away with his head up and face set, or must he totter along and wail simply because he is doing a fair thing that any man ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... discernment to recognize and worship the infant God, so there are now a few who discern the personality and operation of the Holy Spirit, and pour out to him their gold and frankincense and myrrh. Just as the people of Bethlehem, who had turned the unborn Savior from their door were soon made to wail by the king's order of assassination, so the thousands of nominal churches which now reject the work of the Holy Spirit from their doors will soon wail under the awful tribulation that is rapidly coming on all the earth. Oh, if the Protestant churches could only see the day of ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... immediately upon it, and so remained till the last. When Miss Leaf and Miss Hilary came in, Elizabeth was still kneeling there, trying softly to take the little hand away; for the baby had wakened and began its piteous wail. But it did ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... meanings and facts from a written page with a mere flirt of a glance, ask me that. What I really wanted from her was an inspection of the book and blotter, and a deduction from it. As though she guessed, she answered with a sort of wail, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... "Plug" Ivory and "Plug" Avery were as much fixtures in the Smyrna scenery as the town pump. Occasionally of an evening the wail of the snuffling accordion wavered out over the village. Buck, his head thrown back and his eyes closed, seemed to get consoling echoes of the past even from this lugubrious assault on Melody, and loungers hovered at a respectful distance. No one dared to ask questions, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... Time with happy haste Bring wail and triumph to a waste, And war be done; The battle flag-staff fall athwart The curs'd ravine, and wither; naught Be left of trench or gun; The bastion, let it ebb away, Washed with the river bed; and Day ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... and she began to weep. Then after a while the water began slowly to rise. When it reached her ankles she tried to fill her pitcher, but it would not go under the water. Being frightened she began to wail and cry to ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... harp, and his fingers smote the strings; and the music which came forth sounded like the wail of the winter's wind through the dead treetops of the forest. And the song which he sang was full of grief and wild hopeless yearning for the things which were not to be. When he ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... To this youthful wail—and it is a real one—I can raise no real objection. I am an Old Fogy; but I know it. That marks the difference between other old fogies and myself. Some English wit recently remarked that the sadness of old age in ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... arms avail not, now that Henry's dead. Posterity, await for wretched years, When at their mothers' moist eyes babes shall suck, Our isle be made a marish of salt tears, And none but women left to wail the dead. Henry the Fifth, thy ghost I invocate: Prosper this realm, keep it from civil broils, Combat with adverse planets in the heavens! A far more glorious star thy soul will make ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... finished; and, at the same time, by some prearranged contrivance, all the lights in the seven chandeliers grew dim, and in the four corners of the edifice trumpets began to sound in a low, mournful wail, in which joined a chorus of sobs and loud moans. A heart-rending cry came from the portico, which was all the more terrible as, it came from the breast of a young and powerful man. There was the noise of many feet, and the sound of somebody driven out. Meir disappeared from the house ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... uniterable life, and to have lived in vain. Forget not the capital end, and frustrate not the opportunity of once living. Dream not of any kind of metempsychosis or transanimation, but into thine own body, and that after a long time; and then also unto wail or bliss, according to thy first and fundamental life. Upon a curricle in this world depends a long course of the next, and upon a narrow scene here an endless expansion hereafter. In vain some think ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... his position and listened to the shrieking of the wind and rain, he felt that the wail of the elements but echoed the cry of his own affections, thus strangled in their birth. Indeed the sensations of that moment made so deep an impression upon him that he was never afterward able to hear a furious gust of wind or rain without the picture rising up before him ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... have lost my life and yet not death Have won, and now to me shall joy be strange, And all my days the kindly winds that breathe From mirthful groves of Paradise shall change In my poor songless soul to wail, and sigh, And moan, and hollow silence—let ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... chosen Dunfin as travelling companion, and they had flown about hither and thither with the greatest anxiety for Thumbietot. During this ramble they had heard a thrush, who sat in a tree-top, cry and wail that someone, who called himself Kidnapped-by-Crows, had made fun of him. They had talked with the thrush, and he had shown them in which direction that Kidnapped-by-Crows had travelled. Afterward, they had ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... me a lulling chant, O Anthem-Maker, Out of the fall of lonely seas and the wind's sorrow. Behind are the burning glens of the sunset sky Where, like blown ghosts, the seamews Wail their desolate sea dirges. Make now of these a lulling chant, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Amati! the divine Stradivari! played on by ancient maestros until the bow hand lost its power, and the flying fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed from his dying hand to the cold virtuoso, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more, and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... joy attends their way The vale of peace along: There to its lord the village gay Renews the grateful song. Yon castle's glittering towers contain No pit of woe, nor clanking chain, Nor to the suppliant's wail resound: The open doors the needy bless, The unfriended hail their calm ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... the glorious day, When, through the heavenly way, Lo, He shall come; While they who pierced him wail; His promise shall not fail; Saints, see your King ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... melodious wail from the instrument, then lightly ran up the chromatic scale and paused on an upper note for an instant before he began, with perfect certainty of idea and marvellous modulations and transitions in the expression of it, to make music that steeped the Tenor's ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... door with a sullen sound closed behind Earl Surrey, a low wail and moan was perceived—such as is wont to struggle forth at the last hour from the breast ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... earth again; But this I know:—not for one second's space Shall I insult my sight with visionings Such as the credulous crowd so eager-eyed Beholds, self-conjured, in the empty air. Let the world wail! Let drip its easy tears! ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... began Frank, and then his eye fell on her crape trimmings. He touched her sleeve, and made a low wail. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the funeral was one of ghostly gloom. The November wind swept icily over the sea with a dreary wail of winter; the cold rain beat its melancholy drip, drip; sky and earth and sea were all blurred in ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... spear, dripping with blood, is thrust through the roof of the shed. This is a token that the boy's head has been cut off, and that the devil has carried him away to the other world, there to regenerate and transform him. So at sight of the bloody sword the mothers weep and wail, crying that the devil has murdered their children. In some places, it would seem, the boys are pushed through an opening made in the shape of a crocodile's jaws or a cassowary's beak, and it is then said that the devil has swallowed them. The boys remain in the shed for ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... us [the Scots] as to chase us home with the sword. ... Our great hope on earth, the City of London, has played nipshot [i.e. miss-fire or burnt priming]: they are speaking of dissolving the Assembly." [Footnote: Ibid. II. 362.]—To understand this wail of Baillie's we have again to turn to the Journals ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... song called the Penzhinski, sung one night by the natives at Lesnoi, which was, without exception, the sweetest, and yet the most inexpressibly mournful combination of notes that I had ever heard. It was a wail of a lost soul, despairing, yet pleading for mercy. I tried in vain to get a translation of the words. Whether it was the relation of some bloody and disastrous encounter with their fiercer northern ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... and me were realists. We knew it wouldn't help to wail. We were up against another of those "two" problems, the problem of two destinations, and ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... morning to an Indian Tamahnous (incantation), to drive away the evil spirits from a sick man. He lay on a mat, surrounded by women, who beat on instruments made by stretching deer-skin over a frame, and accompanied the noise thus produced by a monotonous wail. Once in a while it became quite stirring, and the sick man seemed to be improved by it. Then an old man crept in stealthily, on all-fours, and, stealing up to him, put his mouth to the flesh, here and there, apparently sucking ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... Mission bells which formerly rang out the Angelus over the sunset waves. My guide carelessly struck them with the butt of his whip, and called forth from their consecrated lips of bronze a sound which, in that scene of loneliness, at first seemed like a wail of protest at the sacrilege, and finally died away into a muffled intonation resembling a stifled sob. Roused by the unexpected call, there presently appeared an Indian who looked as if he might have been contemporary with Methuselah. No wrinkled ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... been threatened did not fall. Although Chippy had got up, it was to wail and lament, and the tramps took no notice of him except to laugh at his distress. You see, they knew where the money ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... that the sleepy exiles might hear the strains of music floating up the wide staircase. There was the soft sound of whispered words from bed to bed like the sleepy twitterings of birdlings in their nests, and then silence. Cherry and Lorene were fast asleep. Downstairs the carols ceased, the wail of violin and guitar died away, and the murmur of voices was again borne to the straining ears of the conspirators in ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... up against the common thing generally. And that wasn't the worst of it. Where? Why didn't Mr. Robert tell her where? And couldn't he get him away at once? Mr. Robert had almost gone hoarse tryin' to explain why he couldn't. But after every try she'd come back with this wail: ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... began to weep and wail, For little Tommy Tadpole had lost his little tail; And his mother didn't know him as he wept upon a log, For he wasn't Tommy Tadpole, but Mr. ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... wi' angry sough; [wail] The shortening winter-day is near a close; The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh; The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose: The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes, This night his weekly moil is at an end, Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... sob of the parted, The wail of the broken-hearted, The sigh for the loved departed, In the surging roar of ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... subject this scene has been seldom treated. I have seen two pictures which represent it. One is a fresco by Giovanni di San Giovanni, which, having been cut from the wail of some suppressed convent, is now in the academy at Florence. The other is a ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... fear of breaking the spell had kept me from any bald circus talk in the presence of them. But Harold, who was built in quite another way, so soon as he discerned the drift of their conversation and heard the knell of all his hopes, filled the room with wail and clamour of bereavement. The grinning welkin rang with "Circus!" "Circus!" shook the window-panes; the mocking walls re-echoed "Circus!" Circus he would have, and the whole circus, and nothing but the ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... of the event went out through all nations. The chronicles of Wales, of Scotland, and of Man; the annals of Ademar and Marianus; the Sagas of Denmark and the Isles all record the event. In "the Orcades" of Thormodus Torfaeus, a wail over the defeat of the Islesmen is ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... routine of everyday events, and the uncanny quiet, falling away from the single voice, benumbs you. Thus in the mess-room, where music and laughter and the hubbub of men's talking usually resounded, the unwonted stillness, broken only by the piercing wail of the tsa, struck coldly and ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... previously stated, that when his fatal attack came on, his pockets were found filled with old letters from the woman to whom he was attached. He died! she lives still,—in May Fair. The Eumenides, I suppose, went out of existence at the time when the wail was heard, "Great Pan is dead." I think we could better have spared him than those awful Sisters who sting dead ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... "'He in their place shall serve me, and sustain Their plagues, their torments suffer, sorrows bear, And they his absence shall lament in vain, And wail his loss and theirs with many a tear:' Thus talking to herself she did ordain A false and wicked guile, as you shall hear; Thither she hasted where the valiant knight Had overcome and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... the pitying multitude; Wan as his own are their looks, and a nightmare seems to brood Heavy upon them, and heavy the silence hangs on all, Save for the rapids' plunge, and the thunder of the fall. But on a sudden thrills from the people still and pale, Chorussing his unheard despair, a desperate wail Caught on a lurking point of rock it sways and swings, Sport of the pitiless waters, the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and collapsed. She would then wander forth again:—the mountain-breeze reanimated her spirits, and imagination again became pleasant unto her. She heard the wild swans winging their way above her, and she thought of the wild hunters and the spectre-horseman:[41] the short wail of the curlew, the call of the moor-cock and plover, was the voice of her beloved. To her all nature wore a charmed life: earth and sky were but creatures formed for her use, and the ministers of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... presented, fell sobbing upon his knees and buried his face in the bed-clothing. He spoke no word, but the tumultuous throes of his agony shook the room as he knelt beside her. And from the bed arose a wail more terrible in its utter, eternal sorrowfulness than had ever fallen upon the ears of those present. It was the wail of a soul recognizing for the first time that the loveliness of life had ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... did. The black night, the quiet, the loneliness, the salt spray on our faces and the wash of the waves alongside, the high singsong wail from lookout to lookout—it WAS a voice from the past, the call of generations of sea-beaten, weather-worn, brave old Cape Codders to their descendants, reminding the latter of a dead and gone profession and of thousands of fine, old ships which had plowed the ocean in the days when "Plutonias" ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the spectator, and facing him were the Hospital buildings. A little beyond, was an opening which gave to view a portion of the parapet of the Quay Notre-Dame. A placard had been recently stuck on the discolored and sunken wail of the archway; it contained these ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... he has not been to this village; when the moon comes again, it will be four." He said this with proper significance, and the flat face of the melancholy girl by his side puckered and creased miserably before she opened her large mouth to wail ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... Damietta, with her ladies, expecting to hear of battles won and fortresses taken. At length, one morning about sunrise, a strange and heart-rending cry resounded through the city, and reached the ears of the queen in her palace. What was it? was it fire? No. Another and another wail of agony. What could it be? The approach of an enemy? No. It was merely tidings of the massacre ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... poor Highland women, who had lost father, husband, brother in battle, or whose menfolk were imprisoned in the gaol at Halifax, there arose such a wail of distress as to call forth the attention of the Provincial Congress, which at once put forth a proclamation, and ordered it translated into the "Erse tongue," in which it was declared that they "warred not with those helpless females, but sympathized with them in their sorrow," ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... the women in the cave began to wail while I unstrung my bow and set it in its case, from habit I think, seeing that I never hoped to ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... down with the mitre and the crown, With the Belial of the Court and the Mammon of the Pope; There is woe in Oxford halls: there is wail in Durham's Stalls: The Jesuit smites his bosom: ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... murmuring through the clefts and among the rocks, with its brownish-yellow water; the air is full of the scent of moss and pine-needles; while overhead, against the light-blue sky, the dark pine-tops rock to and fro in the spring breeze, ever uttering their murmuring wail, and beneath their shelter the soul fearlessly expands its wings and cools itself in the ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... handkerchief, coat, vest, all to shelter Sidney; and he felt a kind of strange pleasure through the dark, even to hear Sidney's voice wail and moan. But that voice grew more languid and faint—it ceased—Sidney's weight hung heavy—heavier on the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... was all but hopeless,—anchored as they were close to a lee shore, with inadequate ground tackle, and an increasing gale. When the chain of the smaller anchor snapped, and the Captain ordered the minute-gun to be fired, and rockets to be thrown up, then the wail ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... it. At first he was startled, and made almost indignant at the firmness of the girl's words. She gave him up as though it were a thing quite decided, and uttered no expression of her own regret in doing so. There was no soft woman's wail in her words. But there was in them something which made him unconsciously long to get back the thing which he had so nearly thrown away from him. They inspired him with a doubt whether he might yet succeed, which very doubt greatly ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... apiece. The negro had money now, and the merchants—these men who had said let the nigger alone so long as he raises cotton and corn—sold him the guns, a gun for every black idler, man and boy, in all the South. Then shortly a wail went up from the sportsmen, "The niggers are killing our quail." They not only were killing them, but most of the birds were already dead. On the grounds of the Southern Field Club where sixty bevies were raised by the dogs in one day, within two years but three bevies could be found in a day by ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... prophet, lingering 'neath the moon, Heard from a tent a child's heart-withering wail, Mixt with the message of the nightingale, And, entering, found, sunk in mysterious swoon, A little maiden dreaming there alone. She babbled of her father sitting pale 'Neath wings of Death—'mid sights of sorrow and bale, And pleaded for his ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... speaking our attention was attracted by a low wail, and the appearance of some living object creeping amongst the ruins not far from us. At first we thought it must be a beast of prey lurking in the neighbourhood of the dead, and impatient at our having interrupted its hideous banquet; but presently the object sat up and proved to be a ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... Twas the wail of a slave, As he sank in despair, to the rest of the grave; Behold him where bleeding and prostrate he lies, Unfriended he lived, and unpitied ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... curs at evening made Their hideous wail, Mutely thy musing eye surveyed Bright themes for thought around displayed, Perched on ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... chastised by God for the sins of their forefathers. Let the ruins of the Republic remain to testify to the latest generations our greatness and our heroism. And let Liberty, crownless and childless, sit upon these ruins, crying aloud in a sad wail to the nations of the world, 'I nursed and brought up children and they have rebelled ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... toil keeps her that sits at home. Clytaem. Thou seem'st, my son, about to slay thy mother. Orest. It is not I that slay thee, but thyself. Clytaem. Take heed, beware a mother's vengeful hounds. Orest. How, slighting this, shall I escape my father's? Clytaem. I seem in life to wail as to a tomb. Orest. My father's fate ordains this doom for thee. Clytaem. Ah me! The snake is here I bare and nursed. Orest. An o'er-true prophet was that dread dream-born. Thou slewest one thou never should'st have ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... not the only species of change. It is not that which has brought a wail from the ages, when men have seen what they prize slip away. The common root of sorrow has been destructive change. Holding the watch in my hand, I may drop it on the floor; and at once the crystal, which has been so transparently protective, is gone. ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... into a prolonged wail of fear, roused old Beharilal, and he saw a sight that nearly caused him to swoon with terror. The little man, a moment ago so placid and happy, was shrinking back with "I don't like that thing" inscribed in lines of anguish on his distorted face, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... only after numerous presents have been given them that they become resigned, but at the last moment, when the bride is about to be led away, they surround her and hold her and perhaps repeat the wail till they receive more material consolation. This necessitates another supply of presents. Then the children have to be appeased. Finally the girl is led down the pole, but as her father may have espied, let us say, a fine dagger, or a lance that ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... field, and the cold pale moon Look'd down on the dead and dying, And the wind pass'd o'er with a dirge and a wail, Where the young ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... Custer's breast, But, as he led his army to the crest, Above the wigwams, ready for the charge He felt the heart within him, swelling large With human pity, as an infant's wail Shrilled once again above the wintry gale. Then hosts of murdered children seemed to rise; And shame his halting thought ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... tents, and as I sit at my desk in the open doorway, there come mingled sounds of stir and glee. Boys laugh and shout,—a feeble flute stirs somewhere in some tent, not an officer's,—a drum throbs far away in another,—wild kildeer-plover flit and wail above us, like the haunting souls of dead slave-masters,—and from a neighboring cook-fire comes the monotonous sound of that strange festival, half pow-wow, half prayer-meeting, which they know only as a "shout." These fires are usually enclosed in a little booth, made neatly of palm-leaves ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... all and began to cry and wail as women do. Ho! but he made a great fuss. He ran along the bank of the river, stumbling in the snowdrifts, and crying like a woman whose child is dead; but it was because he didn't want to be left ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... 2 And then shall the wicked be cast out, and they shall have cause to howl, and weep, and wail, and gnash their teeth; and this because they would not hearken unto the voice of the Lord; therefore the ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... sons and daughters. Pitiful little boxes and carpet bags were piled on the platform. Friends clung to hands outstretched through the carriage-windows while the train moved slowly out. Then came the long mournful wail from those left behind, and the last wavings of farewell. At the Robeen station the crowd was no less than elsewhere. The carriages set apart for the emigrants were full, and at the last minute two girls were hustled into the compartment where Hyacinth sat. A woman, their mother, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... thus for Beloved Hail. In the evening the cries of his wife were heard as she called for her husband, while the rocks and the hills echoed the wail. He will return no more—and who will hunt the deer for his wife and ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... had been giving way through the last verse, and in the final line, with a helpless wail of the harp, she hid her face, and sank back ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him and give it to the servant who has the ten talents; for to every one who has shall more be given and he shall have plenty; but from him who has only a little, even what he has shall be taken away. Throw this worthless servant into the outer darkness where men shall wail and grind ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... wars, which introduce to our acquaintance the more modern class of bards; of these the most conspicuous is, Ian Lom[16] or Manntach. This bard was a Macdonald; he hung on the skirts of armies, and at the close of the battle sung the triumph or the wail, on the side of his partisans.[17] To the presence of this person the clans are supposed to have been indebted for much of the enthusiasm which led them to glory in the wars of Montrose. His poetry only reaches mediocrity, but ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... whole form became rigid in a moment. A man had shouted something. There had been a wail from the crowd. Was it true? Some ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... He may not be wholly free from prejudices, but it is not that which determines his actions, it is the prejudice of the masses. He will not sacrifice his existence by opposing it. It is a mistake to wail at the class who is at the mercy of the masses. It is more than probable that they would do different if free ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... Doris, and Galatea, Panope; There too were Oreithyia, Clymene, And Amathea with the golden hair, And all the denizens of ocean's depths. Fill'd was the glassy cave; in unison They beat their breasts, as Thetis led the wail: ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... Would fling the charm of song o'er the green robe of the North Lily said, sweet friend there's one, And his name is Herbison, Who sings of Northern Erin in sunlight and in storm, Of the legend and the tale, Of the banshees awful wail, Of Dunluce upon the sea, of the ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... sway! The bloody atrocities of Philip II, in the expulsion of his Moorish subjects, are matters of imperishable history. Who disbelieves or doubts them? And yet his courtiers magnified his virtues and chanted his clemency and his mercy, while the wail of a million victims, smitten down by a tempest of fire and slaughter let loose at his bidding, rose above the Te Deums that thundered from all Spain's cathedrals. When Louis XIV. revoked the edict of Nantz, and proclaimed two millions of his subjects ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... knew that the Egyptian Government regarded him as a rebel and an imposter. But continually striking her forehead and invoking heaven to witness her innocence and unhappy plight, she began to weep and at the same time wail mournfully as women in the East do after losing husbands or sons. Afterwards she again flung herself with face on the ground, or rather on the carpet with which the inlaid floor was covered, and waited ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of light there was no other movement, and no sound. Dark figures stood motionless. The lonely howl of a sledge-dog ended in a wail of pain as some one kicked it into terrified silence. The hollow cough of Mukee's father was smothered in the thick fur of his cap as he thrust his head from his little shack in the edge of the forest. A score of eyes watched Cummins as he came out into the snow, and the rough, ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... a Marblehead schooner was ransomed by the "Nymphe" for $400. Saturday, she took off Cape Ann three coasters and six fishing boats, and the masters were sent on shore for money to ransom them at $200 each." There was room for the wail of a federalist paper: "Our coasts unnavigable to ourselves, though free to the enemy and the money-making neutral; our harbors blockaded; our shipping destroyed or rotting at the docks; silence and stillness in our cities; the grass growing upon the public wharves."[195] ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... face, And through each sweet remembered word, This sweetest undertone is heard: "My child! my child! our God is sweet, In Life — in Death — kneel at his feet — Sweet in gladness, sweet in gloom, Sweeter still beside the tomb." Why should I wail? Why ought I weep? The grave — it is not dark and deep; Why should I sigh? Why ought I moan? The grave — it is not still and lone; Our God is sweet, our grave is sweet, We lie there sleeping at His feet, Where the wicked ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... you have spoken truly. I must bear up for the sake of my child; but oh God, it is hard to be branded in the eyes of the world as a rogue and a scoundrel. Mothers will curse me, and the orphan's wail will haunt ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... though the mourning brow of progeny Forbid the smiling courtesy of love The holy suit which fain it would convince; Yet, since love's argument was first on foot, Let not the cloud of sorrow justle it From what it purpos'd; since, to wail friends lost Is not by much so wholesome-profitable As to rejoice at friends but ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... house of C. D. Bunker a rescuer named Baker was killed while trying to get a dead body from the ruins. Other rescuers heard the pitiful wail of a little child, but were unable to get near the point from which the cry issued. Soon the onrushing fire ended the cry and the men turned to ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... of desertion. Then, one memorable day, the stillness had been broken by the first clatter of sabots—that wooden noise, measured, unmistakable, approaching. Two pairs of sabots and a long road. Two broad backs bent under bulging loads; an infant's wail; a knock at the Red Cross Door—but that was nearly ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... in some pure lyric such as Shelley's "Skylark," or in some mystical fantasy such as Moore's "Lallah Rookh" or Coleridge's "Christabel," or in some story of human abnegation such as Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," or some wail of a soul in pain, as in Shelley's "Adonais," or in some outburst of exultant grief such as Whitman's "Captain, My Captain," or in some revelation of the unseen potencies close about us, as in Browning's ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... that I should wail? Leave me my tearless, sad refrain, When in the pine-top wakes the gale That breathes ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... help it," replied Rebecca with almost a wail. "I am nervous. There's enough to make me so, ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... a day after the scene in the arbor, and all was mourning in the so lately happy, hospitable house; everybody looked through tears. There were subdued breathings, a low murmur, as of many listeners, a voice of prayer, and the wail of a funeral hymn,—and then the heavy tread of bearers, as, beneath the black pall, she was carried over the threshold of her home, never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... vessel's stern hove up, an indistinct blur of deeper blackness on the darkness of the night, the line of lights slid forward and vanished one after another until all had disappeared, while at the same moment a heartrending wail from hundreds of throats pealed out across the water, punctuated by a crackling volley of ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... May it wave Proudly o'er the good and brave; When the battle's distant wail Breaks the sabbath of our vale. When the clarion's music thrills To the hearts of these lone hills, When the spear in conflict shakes, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... him for a minute blinking her watery eyes, and then suddenly broke into a shrill, long-drawn wail. The Baron needed ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... harlotry, oppression, war, and ignorance are existing evils which must have attention. We must not be so taken up with the souls as to neglect the temporal, social, and physical needs of our fellows. But the deepest wail of want and woe which comes from the world is not to be met by bread, or sovereigns, or sanitation, or education, or more equal conditions of life. It is the absence of God and eternal hope which gives the deepest and most sorrowful tone ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... of ecstasy. I closed my eyes—and with eyes closed, I still saw the whole thing! That beautiful, evil, devilish panorama was in my mind, not my eyes. That's how those fiends work—through the mind. I knew it was the dream-beasts; I didn't need Tweel's wail of 'No breet'! No breet'!' But—I couldn't keep away! I knew it was death beckoning, but it was worth it for one moment ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... cortege, all groaning, chilled to the bone by the searching wind, and it was beginning to be dawn when the last man dragged himself between the boulders into our camping ground. We looked so little like victors that the Syrians sent up a wail and Tugendheim began tugging at his mustaches, but Ranjoor Singh set them at once to feeding and grooming animals and soon disillusioned them as to the outcome ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... two years ago, had he lifted his hand against an Indian; but that remembrance of his master's cruel death, with the wail of the widowed mother and her fatherless child, had risen before him, making his aim the surer, his blow the heavier. But here was a new experience, calling for a new course of action. True was it that his old master had been inhumanly treated by this people, but no less ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... snarl and half wail, Gral leaped to seize it. Otah might have crushed him with a blow, but Otah waited, looking at him fully. Gral's snarl died in his throat. This was not the weapon he had hidden, but another! Otah had found ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... yet does so wail? 'Tis philomel, the nightingale; "Jugg! jugg! terue!" she cries, And hating earth ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... he said. "Friend Chang," I said, "San Francisco sleeps as the dead — Ended license, lust and play: Why do you iron the night away? Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound, With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round. While the monster shadows glower and creep, What can be better ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... lighted door, then stumbled over a small form on the ground and there rose another wail, now of terror ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... down her life for me, and I really believe she would. Well, there is not far from where I used to live a famous cascade called the Swallow Falls, where the water drops down a chasm of great depth. If you listen to the noise of the cataract, you may hear mingled with it a peculiar kind of wail as from a man in great agony. It is said to be the wail of a Sir John Wynn, of Gwydir, whose spirit is under a curse, and is imprisoned at the bottom of the falls on account of his cruelty and misdeeds on earth. On ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Polly," broke out Phronsie, with such a wail, as she sat, a frozen little heap, not daring to stir, that the girl ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... prime|val. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in gar|ments green, indistinct in the twilight. Loud from its rocky cav|erns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents discon|solate answers the wail of the forest. Lay in the fruitful val|ley. Vast meadows ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... shocks, the yellow bearded veterans and nobles sat stupefied, frozen in their last gesture. Then, in the midst of their silent despair, came the sound of a curious, high-pitched horn that had in its note something of the eery wail of a fire siren. The effect was magical, for the nobles sprang up, hands on sword hilts and eyes ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... law, abstracted from all mutiny acts and articles of war, that these soldiers were in such a situation that they could not help themselves. People were coming from Royal Exchange Lane, and other parts of the town, with clubs and cord-wood sticks; the soldiers were planted by the wail of the Customhouse; they could not retreat; they were surrounded on all sides, for there were people behind them as well as before them; there were a number of people in the Royal Exchange Lane; the soldiers ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... the sound came a second time over the waters, with a prolonged wail, like the cry of a suffering ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... dive, the carriage swayed as if it would fly in pieces, slithered along, and with a jerk steadied itself. Harz lifted his voice in a shout of pure excitement. Mr. Treffry let out a short shaky howl, and from behind there rose a wail. But the hill was over and the startled horses were cantering with a free, smooth motion. Mr. Treffry and Harz looked at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... heart and tempered will. Not in Elysian lands they take their way; Not as of yore across the gay champaign, Towards some dream city, towered . . . and my . . . The path winds forth before me, sweet and plain, Not now; but though beneath a stone-grey sky November's russet woodlands toss and wail, Still the white road goes thro' them, still may I, Strong in new purpose, God, ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but Fear—in its true sense—was an alien and a stranger. She had never met him in the waste places, seen him skulking on her trail through the winter snows, listened to his voice in the wind's wail. She didn't know the fear of which the coyotes sang from this hill, the blind and groping dread of an immutable destiny, the ghastly realization of impotence against a cruel and omnipotent fate. She hadn't ever ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... the Bishop states what he had done to extricate the Church out of its difficulty. In doing so, he uses language which partakes more of the character of a wail than of a simple statement of facts. He also draws a most gloomy picture of the prospective religious state of Upper Canada, should the dearly prized, and as dearly bought, Imperial Clergy Reserve Act prove, after all, to be an ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Dorothy and told her what had passed. Dorothy kissed him, and cried over him, and made a wail against their darkling fate. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentiles, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow at the ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... at evening made Their hideous wail, Mutely thy musing eye surveyed Bright themes for thought around displayed, Perched on ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... put into execution, and one bitter night Kermode and several others plodded up a frozen creek. It had been snowing hard for the last few hours and he could scarcely see his companions through the driving flakes, while the wail of the wind in the pines above drowned the soft sound of their footsteps. Kermode was tired and very cold, and could not have explained clearly what had induced him to accompany the expedition. Adventure, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... and despair. There can be no other end to it. If men dare not risk being the lovers of their kind, then they must choose between being the slaves of duty or the slaves of force. What are we reading in the public prints and hearing from platform and stage? The unending wail for "rights"; the assertion of the individual. Ceased is the chant of duty, forgotten the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... strange sound, a rush of sounds, words jumbled and hurrying, confused and shapeless, borne along upon a note of throaty distress that at last submerged the words altogether and ended in a wail. Except that it came from a woman's throat it was exactly the babbling sound of a weeping child with a grievance. "I can't," she said, "I can't," and that was all I could distinguish. It was to my young ears the strangest ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... not me, who with him fight! As if his breast be touch'd, I am not wounded! As if he wail'd, my joys were not confounded! We are one heart, though rent by hate in twain; One soul, one essence doth our weal contain: What, then, can conquer him, that kills ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... I then (with some surprise You ask) possess my tranquil soul, And view with calm indifferent eyes The Poll, While partisans, in raucous tones, With doleful wail or joyful shout Proclaim that Brown is in, or Jones Is out? I can: I do: the reason's plain: That blissful day which prophets paint Perhaps may come: perhaps again It mayn't: And ere these ages blest begin (For Rome, I've heard historians say, ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... did you come here?" cried Foster, in a wail that seemed to come from the bottom of his soul. "Why do you come here to torment me with such a sight? Oh, God! It's horrible! It's horrible!... It is your father I see!... He died fearfully! He died fearfully! He was in Texas—on a horse—with ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... holy purpose, unchecked by fear, unswayed by her sisters' entreaties. Hardening her heart magnificently till her fate is sealed; and then after proving her godlike courage, proving the tenderness of her womanhood by that melodious wail over her own untimely death and the loss of marriage joys, which some of you must know from the music of Mendelssohn, and which the late Dean Milman ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... for ever down with the mitre and the crown, With the Belial of the Court and the Mammon of the Pope; There is woe in Oxford halls: there is wail in Durham's Stalls: The Jesuit smites his bosom: ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... plain sight, and proceeded to "look me over," a performance which I returned with interest. He was silent only a few seconds, but the sound that came from his beak amazed me; it was a "mew." If the cat-bird cry resembles that of a cat, this was a perfect copy of a kitten's weak wail. It was always uttered twice in close succession, and sometimes followed by a harsh note that proclaimed his blackbird ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... 'Tis time to wail thy fate, Orestes, when, in thy calamity, Thy mother thus insults ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... unkingly. Rather was it the wail of a criminal on being told that the executioner waited without. His ruddy cheeks blanched, and his hands were outstretched as if in a piteous plea for mercy. There was a tumult of objurgations in the outer passage; but this King in spite of ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the high spots and hit them hard. Nevertheless, in a long and strenuous sporting career the Invigorator became endeared through association to many friends. When the Captain proposed a new vehicle with easier springs and less noise, a wail of protest arose from many and distant places. The Invigorator still ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... all as listlessly, with none to steer. A shrunken stream is Lethe's water wan Unsought of any man: Grass Ceres sowed by alien hands is mown, And now she seeks Persephone alone. The gods have all gone up Olympus' hill, And all the songs are still Of grieving Dryads, left To wail about our woodland ways, bereft, The endless summertide. Queen Venus draws aside And passes, sighing, up Olympus' hill. And silence holds her Cyprian bowers, and claims Her flowers, and quenches all her altar-flames, And strikes dumb in their throats ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... 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, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... deep, and stubborn is the foe,— Yon island-strength is guarded well,—say, brothers, will ye go? From home and kin for many a year our steps have wander'd wide, And never may our bones be laid our fathers' graves beside. 50 No children have we to lament, no wives to wail our fall; The traitor's and the spoiler's hand have reft our hearths of all. But we have hearts, and we have arms, as strong to will and dare As when our ancient banners flew within the northern air. Come, brothers! let me name a spell shall rouse your ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... floats so still and placidly through heaven, The spirits of the Seasons seem to stand. Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form, And Winter with its aged locks—and breathe In mournful cadences, that come abroad, Like the far windharps wild, touching wail, A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year, Gone from the ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various
... giving way through the last verse, and in the final line, with a helpless wail of the harp, she hid her face, and sank back with a strange ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that day, however, the wail rose loud and long; the mirth which "the waking" permits had passed away, and the ulican, or funeral cry, told that the lifeless chief was being borne from his hall. That wild cry was heard even by the ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... outcry, raucous and shrill as the wail of a captured hen, and out of the passage across the courtyard floundered a woman, fantastically dressed in green ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... their last look into each other's eyes—had clasped the last clasp of each other's hands. An hour had passed, and still the old man lay upon the ground, where he had flung himself in his heart's bitter anguish; and still the wail rung out from time to time: "My God! ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... your kindred and your kind befriend: And daily to the gods bid altar-fires ascend. Nor be ye churlish hosts, but glad the heart Of guests with wine, when they must needs depart: And reverence most the priests of sacred song: So, when hell hides you, shall your names live long; Not doomed to wail on Acheron's sunless sands, Like some poor hind, the inward of whose hands The spade hath gnarled and knotted, born to groan, Poor sire's poor offspring, hapless ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... window. Then, indeed, he felt that he was left alone. It was so dreadful to be out in the night after everybody was gone to bed! That was more than he could bear. He burst out crying in good earnest, beginning with a wail like that of the wind when ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... of the scene and the noise and laughter of the people all about, Fleurette set up a wail of woe which developed rapidly into a storm of screams and sobs,—indeed, it was a first-class crying spell,—a thing which the good-natured child ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... her child, He left the world his garland bright. Wail, Ocean, surge in tumult wild, To sing of thee was ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... the papers crowded with dreary funeral notices, showing how, to every great city of the North, from hospital and battle-ground, the slain are being gathered in, to be buried among their own people; a wail of widows and orphans and mothers, from homestead, hamlet, and town, overpowering with its simple energy, the bombastic war-notes and false stage-thunder of the press; rumors of a terrible battle in the far West, where, after three days' hard fighting, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Bligh of the one eye, and yellow Mrs. Wale of the crooked back, the house grew gradually still. The thunder had by this time died into the solid boom of distant battle, and the fury of the gale had subsided to the long sobbing wail that is charged with so eerie a melancholy. Within all was stirless, and the two old women, each a 'Mrs.' by courtesy, who had not much to thank Nature or the world for, sad and cynical, and in a sort outcasts told off by fortune to these sad ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... voice rose as she spoke, from a quiet reasoning tone to a high, excited wail. She had not meant to say so much. She had intended merely to appeal to her son's affection for her, without making any unpleasant disclosures regarding Joy's mother; she thought merely to win a promise from him that he would not compromise ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... his friend for admiring his pictures added: "If you could only see the pictures in my brain. But—" pointing to his brain and then to the ends of his fingers—"the channels from here to here are so long!" The very sad tone which we can hear in the wail of the painter expresses strongly the deficiencies of our age in all its artistic efforts. The channels are shorter just in proportion to their openness. If the way from the brain to the ends of the fingers is perfectly clear, the brain can guide the ends of the fingers to carry out ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... went back again, to shut the door and listen at the other; for I knew that the King's bed was close to it (though he was not in it at this time, but still in the barber's chair where he had been blooded); and presently I heard the poor soul begin to wail aloud. I heard voices too, as if soothing her, for all the physicians were there, and half a dozen others; but the wailing grew, as she saw, I suppose, in what condition His Majesty was—(for he still seemed all unconscious)—till ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... from Florida, from Tampa's lonely shore; It is the wail of gallant men, O'Brien is no more; In the land of sun and flowers his head lies pillowed low, No more to sing petite coquille at Benny Havens' O. At Benny Havens' O, at Benny Havens' O, No more to sing petite coquille ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... Sir Patrick stretched herself on the ocean bed, she fell with a despairing wail; her gown spread like a pall over the earth, the Highland bonnet came off, and her hair floated over a haphazard pillow of ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... slaughtered like pigs in massed formation; when their little boys are driven to war; when young girls—and widows!—are forced to bring more males into the world with the sanction of neither love nor marriage; when those too young for the trench or the casual bed wail incessantly for bread. Oh, no! The German man's day of any but legal dominion is over. Of course there is always the danger of spies and ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... wintry night the low wail of a new-born infant was heard issuing from a bundle of ragged clothing which some poor creature had laid down on the doorstep of a house in a small by-street not many squares from our own. The house was occupied in part by a man named Varick, who had a wife and several children. This man had been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... down on his bob tail, lifted golden muzzle skyward, and emitted a long puppy-wail of dismay ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... later the ship came gently to earth in the Great Place before M'Bongwele's palace. The village appeared at first sight to be deserted, for not a soul was to be seen in any direction; but the low wail of an infant, suddenly breaking in upon the silence, and issuing from one of the huts, betrayed the fact that at least one small atom of humanity still lingered about the place; and where so small a baby was, the mother would ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... one who asked; the whos came like shrapnel; and when, not knowing what else to do, I smiled as one dying, there went up a wail of mirth that froze my blood and then heated it to a fever. The company howled. They rolled over one another, crying, "Charlie Toliver!—Charlie Toliver!—Oh, Lord, where's Scott Gholson!—Charlie Toliver!"—and leaped up and huddled down and moaned and rolled and ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... Ambition flung before the world, and fought 'Gainst Evil, Might, and hated Despot-law; Bled, conquered, clipped the wings of soaring Pride, And earned in Serf-land such a brilliant name Time's breath can never dim. But list!—a wail Of sorrowing sadness sweeps across the Land, With which the up-sent jubilant psalm is blent. 'Reft orphans' cries, in mournful cadence soft, Sobs wrung from widows' broken, bleeding hearts; And fond hoar-headed parents' sighs and tears, Commingling all, merge in a requiem sad For those ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... started by such of the women as could command a view of what was going on outside. This seemed to be communicated to all the rest, women and children taking up the murmur, which rose to a piteous wail. This started the pigs and dogs which had been driven into the protection of the pah, ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... and Brian Boru, stream and crash upon the ear like the warriors of a hundred glens meeting; and you are borne with them to battle, and they and you charge and struggle amid cries and battle-axes and stinging arrows. Did ever a wail make man's marrow quiver, and fill his nostrils with the breath of the grave, like the ululu of the north or the wirrasthrue of Munster? Stately are their slow, and recklessly splendid their quick marches, their "Boyne ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... away down the reach a ferry-boat lifted its infinitesimal wail, and then the silence of the night river came down once more, profound and inscrutable. A corner of the wick above my head ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... acquiescingly, as if indifferent. Another, a child in her arms, clawed at his back, forced him aside, and as she sped by he saw the child's face over her shoulder, placid and sweet, and caught her voice in a moaning wail, "Oh, my baby! Oh, my baby!" A man, holding the hand of a girl, was thrown against the wall and dropped, the girl tugging at him, trying to drag him to his feet. Something, with blood on its whiteness, lay huddled across the sill ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... house sounded a wail that rose as they listened and mounted to a shriek. In spite of her desire to remain cool ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... weeping, for each family had some good reason in forty years to remember MacLure. When Bell Baxter saw Saunders alive, and the coffin of the doctor that saved him on her man's shoulder, she bowed her head on the dyke, and the bairns in the village made such a wail for him they loved that the men ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... men to love Him. He cannot force them. He cannot prise open a man's heart with a crowbar, as it were, and force Himself inside. The door opens from within. 'Behold! I stand at the door and knock.' There is an 'if.' 'If any man open I will come in.' Hence the beseeching, hence the wail of wisdom that cries aloud and no man regards it; of love that stands at the entering in of the city, and pleads in vain, and says, 'I have called, and ye have refused.... How often would I have gathered ... and ye would not.' Oh, brethren! it is an awful responsibility, a mysterious prerogative, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter And from the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over; Down in the pasture the sheep hear that shrill crying for Peter, Up from the spring house the wail stealeth anon like a whisper, Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated. Such were the voices that whooped wildly and vainly for Peter Decades and decades ago down in the State of Kentucky— Such are the voices that cry now from the ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... wind breathed—miles away ... to the north. He could hear the breath coming, a mere whimper among the tree-tops. The whimper became a whine.... Reaching the pinewood, the note slid into a moan, that rose slowly to a thin wail as the breath fled up the corridor with the towering walls. The wail fell ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... more slowly backward and forward—the music became still more affecting, and passing from thoughtfulness to sadness, and from sadness to passionate regret, it died away in a wail. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... from the bed. "The wail of dying men rises louder than the loud sea; the devil's psalm-singing roars higher than the roaring wind! Be silent, and listen! Francois ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... one sandwich, one biscuit—Oh dear me!" cried poor Clara, the historical tone suddenly changing to a wail of agony. ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... the age of Homer, as indeed to all pre-Christian antiquity. But concerning this we need not dilate, as it has often been duly remarked upon, and notably by Carlyle, in his "Lectures on Hero-Worship." Who that has once heard the wail of unutterable ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... then, my Life, my Breath! Return, my Comforter! Hear my bitter wail of woe, lead me back to my home. Have pity on my loneliness! Restore Thy love to me, bring me once again to the cleft of my rock, and let me hide myself in ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... cavern, he had no business to be luring a girl into his companionship. "It is the most horrible of virgin-sacrifices," said Will; and he painted to himself what were Dorothea's inward sorrows as if he had been writing a choric wail. But he would never lose sight of her: he would watch over her—if he gave up everything else in life he would watch over her, and she should know that she had one slave in the world, Will had—to use Sir Thomas Browne's phrase—a "passionate prodigality" ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... combustion, and the serenade had been in honour of their ashes, it would have been impossible to surpass the unutterable despair expressed in that one chorus: 'Go where glory waits thee.' It was a requiem, a dirge, a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament, an abstract of everything that is ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... stillness was only broken by the heavy boots of the few elders and deacons who constituted the male portion of the exceedingly slender audience. With difficulty, and sometimes, only after two or three failures, a hymn was raised, which, when in fullest tide, was only a dreary wail,—how unmelodious to the ears of unreverential youth, gifted with a sense of the ludicrous! How long, how sad, how pointless the prayers! How easy to believe, down in that dreary cellar, that this world was but a wilderness, and man "a feeble piece"! Deacon Jones could speak up ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... not that, Elshie," answered the freebooter; "When I ride, my foes may moan. They have had mair light than comfort at the Heugh-foot this morning; there's a toom byre and a wide, and a wail and a cry ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... old fortress blasts back its besiegers pell-mell into the deep. It is all there: truly enough there, at least, to madden yet more Elsley's wild angry brain, till he tries to add his shouts to the great battle-cries of land and sea, and finds them as little audible as an infant's wail. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... lovely pink apple-blossom! You've got to come. I wouldn't dare face Phoebe without you. It's the whole thing to her to have you there. It's been so long since you've gladded with the crowd once and it's her birthday and—" David's voice trailed off into a perfect wail. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... not smashed dead at the first. The captain stood on the bridge to the last, went down with the ship, came up again among the wreckage, and was saved after hours in the water. He will never forget the long, piercing wail of despair from hundreds of victims as the ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... until the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate, young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed from his dying hand to the cold virtuoso, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... as he heard the wail of the child announcing it wanted to be taken out of the cradle, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the warm sun says winter is done, He'll gladden us all with his cheery song; And never will fret if the season is wet, Or wail that the winter was ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... a-come just when he did. I can't rightly tell how hit was, but hit seemed like there was somethin' inside of me what was a-makin' me do hit, an' I couldn't, somehow, help myself. An'—an'—that ain't all, ma'm; I done worse'n that," she continued in a low, moaning wail. "Oh, my God-A'mighty! Why didn't Mr. Burns sling me inter the river an' let me be smashed an' drowned at Elbow Rock while he had me, 'stead of lettin' me git away ter do what I've gone ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... and "Plug" Avery were as much fixtures in the Smyrna scenery as the town pump. Occasionally of an evening the wail of the snuffling accordion wavered out over the village. Buck, his head thrown back and his eyes closed, seemed to get consoling echoes of the past even from this lugubrious assault on Melody, and loungers hovered ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... a general wail arose, and Mrs. Wing fainted entirely away. Madam Sooty-back was quite satisfied with the effect she had produced, and departed, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... crag; Thence mark'd the black hull moving yet, and cried, "He passes to be King among the dead, And after healing of his grievous wound He comes again; but—if he come no more— O me, be yon dark Queens in yon black boat, Who shriek'd and wail'd, the three whereat we gazed On that high day, when, clothed with living light, They stood before his throne in silence, friends Of Arthur, who should ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... "Cumhadh na Cloinne," the Lament for the Children, that Patrick Mor, one of the pipers of Macleod of Skye, had composed to the memory of his seven sons, who had all died within one year? And now the doors were opened, and the piper boy once more entered. The wild, sad wail arose: and slow and solemn was the step with which he walked up the hall. Lady Macleod sat calm and erect, her lips proud and firm, but her lean hands were working nervously together; and at last, when the doors were closed on the slow and stately and mournful Lament ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... to take her hand, making a sign to Gustave to depart. But as he approached Julie, she uttered a weak piteous wail, and fell at his feet senseless. De Mauleon raised and carried her into her room, where he left her to the care of the old bonne. On re-entering the anteroom, he found Gustave still lingering by the outer door. "You will pardon me, Monsieur," he said to the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his own post to the west. Shann was still waiting for the other's signal when there arose from the camp a sound to chill the flesh of any listener, a wail which could not have come from the throat of any normal living thing, intelligent being or animal. Ululating in ear-torturing intensity, the cry sank to a faint, ominous echo of itself, to waver up ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... murmurs on the sea-beat shore His dun grey plumage floating to the gale, The curlew blends his melancholy wail With those hoarse sounds the rushing waters pour. Like thee, congenial bird: my steps explore The bleak lone seabeach, or the rocky dale, And shun the orange bower, the myrtle vale, Whose gay luxuriance suits my soul no more. I love the ocean's broad expanse, when dress'd In limpid clearness, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... door. He knocked. No answer. But there was a curious noise inside. It was difficult to determine what it was. It bore a resemblance to the low moaning of one in pain, but it was not that, being far too regular and constant. Now it seemed a kind of song, now a wail—seemed, that is, to his changing fancy, for the sound itself was never changed or checked. It was unlike anything he had ever heard; and in its tone there was ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Dunfin as travelling companion, and they had flown about hither and thither with the greatest anxiety for Thumbietot. During this ramble they had heard a thrush, who sat in a tree-top, cry and wail that someone, who called himself Kidnapped-by-Crows, had made fun of him. They had talked with the thrush, and he had shown them in which direction that Kidnapped-by-Crows had travelled. Afterward, they had met a dove-cock, a starling ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... been looking on incredulously at her champion's unaccountable tardiness in coming to the point. But this public repudiation was too much for her. She gave a little low wail as she heard the shameless words of recantation, and then, without a word, jumped lightly down from her bench and ran away to hide ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... outcry, clamor, vociferation, yoicks, scream, shriek, howl, yell, proclamation; slogan, shibboleth; halloo, whoop, hoot: crying, weeping, wail, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... burst out in a piteous low wail, a human wail piercing the wail of the storm. The two girls were quite ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... one! for each it is better, His friend to avenge than with vehemence wail him; Each of us must the end-day abide of 5 His earthly existence; who is able accomplish Glory ere death! To battle-thane noble Lifeless lying, 'tis at last most fitting. Arise, O king, quick let us hasten To ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... rude revelry, The dim clan of the Gael Came like a bad king's burial-end, With dismal robes that drop and rend And demon pipes that wail— ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... entrance to a large cave scooped out by the continued force of the waves. With that gregarious feeling always experienced in times of danger, the people gathered silently and sadly together in the roundhouse, now and then disturbed by a piercing wail from one of three negresses who had sought refuge there. Various articles of furniture and other effects were strewed about in all directions. Such a picture greeted Mr. Meriton on leaving the deck. He at once struck a light, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... outcry was beyond description lamentable. Never, in the whole universe, had a merchant met with such reverses; never had such a pitiable series of losses befallen an unfortunate man. Regardless of the ridicule which his abject wretchedness excited, he howled on still, and kept up an unending wail; but meanwhile he kept a keen eye upon every article of his property, and amidst universal laughter insisted on having every item registered in an inventory as it was transferred to its appointed place of safety. Servadac considerately ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... soon snoring, for we had travelled hard and long. But sleep was never further from my eyes. As I sat there, listening to the rising wind in the trees, and the rush of the river below, with now and again the wail of a sea-bird crying out seaward, I grew to hate the darkness. Despite the fair innocents who slumbered within and the sturdy rogues who slept without, the loneliness of the place took hold upon me, and made me uneasy and anxious. Once ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... roadway. Many tree-trunks were white, contrasting with the darkness within the dense woods, glistening like spectres, as the tremulous light glimmered through the branches. There was no sound in the forest, except the solemn wail of the wind, and the steady tramp, tramp—tramp, tramp of the hurrying horse. My flesh crept and shuddered under the drastic influence of the chill night and the doleful croakings of my companion; who talked continually of the Kuklux, and peered through the bushes and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... which he has made of Lucan's "Pharsalia," a work of great value to those who would understand how the grand contest for supremacy was viewed by the beaten party in after times. That poem is the funeral wail of the Roman aristocracy, and it embodies the ideas and traditions of the vanquished as they existed far down into the Imperial age. It testifies to the original vitality of the aristocratical faction, when we find a youthful contemporary of Nero dedicating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... bitter cry of anguish, one long, passionate wail of grief, she threw herself on her mother's bed. Her sorrow could not disturb that mother now; she was gone to that land which is very far off, where even the sound of weeping is never heard. The Good Shepherd had carried her safely over the river, and, as Rosalie wept in the dark ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... like the wail of a man in torture burst from him. It woke more than one sleeper in the distant chambers of the Chateau, making them start upon their pillows to listen for another cry, but none came. Bigot was a man of iron; he retained self-possession ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... horror rose from the lines of tonsured heads which skirted the high wall—a wail which suddenly died away into a long hushed silence, broken at last by a rapturous cry of thanksgiving ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... men and women alike, had partaken of an "eye-opener," Baptiste gave the signal, and the fiddler struck up his plaintive wail. The reedy strings of his instrument shrieked out the long-drawn measure of a miserable waltz, the company paired off, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the clouds which seemed to be wandering at random overhead. He remembered his childhood, his mother; he remembered her death, how they had carried him in to her, and how, clasping his head to her bosom, she had begun to wail over him, then had glanced at Glafira Petrovna—and checked herself. He remembered his father, at first vigorous, discontented with everything, with strident voice; and later, blind, tearful, with unkempt ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... grief without knowledge, of the courage that may not avail, Of the longing that may not attain, of the love that shall never forget, More joy than the gladness of laughter thy voice hath amidst of its wail: More hope than of pleasure fulfilled amidst of thy blindness is set; More glorious than gaining of all thine unfaltering hand that shall fail: For what is the mark on thy brow but the brand that thy Brynhild doth bear? Lone ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... the ascendant. The great families one by one came round again; and, as the backward movement began, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew gave it a fresh and tremendous impulse. Even the avowed Catholics—the Hamiltons, the Gordons, the Scotts, the Kers, the Maxwells—quailed before the wail of rage and sorrow which at that great horror rose over their country. The Queen's party dwindled away to a handful of desperate politicians, who still clung to Edinburgh Castle. But Elizabeth's ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... the distant strains of the organ, a sad harmony to an undefinable chant, the wail of a soul longing to break these earthly bonds. I listened with every sense, scarcely breathing; plunged, like Captain Nemo, in that musical ecstasy, which was drawing him in spirit to the ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... board. As the last boats put off there was a rush into the surf. Some women caught hold of the ropes, were dragged out of their depth, clung till their fingers were cut through, and perished in the waves. The ships began to move. A wild and terrible wail rose from the shore, and excited unwonted compassion in hearts steeled by hatred of the Irish race and of the Romish faith. Even the stern Cromwellian, now at length, after a desperate struggle of three years, left the undisputed lord of the bloodstained and devastated island, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... eyes, tilted back his head, twisted his face to a hideous grimace, and then opening his shapeless mouth emitted a tremendous wail which took ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... followed by a wail of misery, they came to the Great Place and entered it, preceded by the locusts which already were heaped up in the streets like winter leaves, and for lack of other provender gnawed at the straw of the huts, and the shields and moochas of the soldiers. It ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... but I stand here and fancy These people who now play a part, All forced by some strange necromancy To speak, and to act, from the heart. What a hush would come over the laughter! What a silence would fall on the mirth! And then what a wail would sweep after, As the night-wind ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to slacken its pace, and the hideous wail and blare of the concealed organ died mercifully down, Hartley saw that his friend's manner had all at once altered, that he sat leaning forward away from the enthusiastic lady with the blue hat, and that the paper serpentines had dropped from his hands. Hartley thought that ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... turned over and righted herself before rising to the surface. When she did appear she was within a foot or so of the pier. Her little blonde head popped up from under the water all of a sudden, and in that instant she opened her mouth in a wail for help. Tommy's companions were fairly hysterical with merriment. Tommy yelled again, begging them ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... abysses. Dull lights here and there Kindled, like wreckage of a city razed By vandals, and the inky sky cupped up Into a black, impenetrable roof.... But now from out the chaos there arose Another sound more fearful than the wail Of tempest, or the quake of mighty hills— A mortal cry, a ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... was sitting on the floor, lacing up her own stout boots, and an instant later she followed her brother, pursued by a wail of dismay from the adjoining chamber. Through the chill morning light she hurried, asking many questions, but receiving no coherent reply from the racing men; then after endless moments of suspense she saw with relief that the massive ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... perfectly well without being rude to each other when you differ," she declared. "You must take it in turns to have your own way. It is not fair that the eldest should always arrange everything, but on the other hand Joan and Alwyn will get nothing at all if they begin to wail and complain in that most grumbling and unpleasant tone of voice. I think it is a disgrace if you're all so selfish that you can't agree. You must each be prepared to give up a certain amount, for among eight ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... a depression you encounter, press, and press hard on the knob concealed within it. But beware when any one you love is seated in that corner of the settle where the cushion invites rest, lest it be your fate to mourn and wail as it is mine to curse the hour when I sought to clear my way by murder. For the doom of the man of blood is upon me. The hindrance is gone from my life, but a horror has entered it beyond the conception ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... his wings, and entering the crystal gates, sat down upon a blasted rock and struck his divine lyre, and a peace fell over the wretched; the demon ceased to torture and the victim to wail. As sleep to the mourners of earth was the song of the angel to the souls of the purifying star: one only voice amidst the general stillness seemed not lulled by the angel; it was the voice of a woman, and it continued to cry out with ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... launched upon the Baal Shem a herd of wild boars, spitting flames; and these at last passed beyond the first circle. Then the pupils saw a change come over the Baal Shem's face, and they began to wail the Penitential Prayer. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... She began to cry and wail, and the tears started from her eyes, whereupon she began blowing her nose with her apron, and as she tugged at her nose it grew so long, so long, that it was ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... Weavers' Song is heard, sung by hundreds of voices quite close at hand; it sounds like a dull, monotonous wail. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... own hour they reign in their own right. The heart of the romantic utterances, whether poetical, critical, or historical, is this inward remedilessness, what Carlyle calls this far-off whimpering of wail and woe. And from this romantic state of mind there is absolutely no possible theoretic escape. Whether, like Renan, we look upon life in a more refined way, as a romance of the spirit; or whether, like the friends of ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... into a loud, unrestrained bawl. This sudden demonstration of grief seemed to frighten the children and smaller fry, who up to this time had been very jovial; but now, suspecting something was wrong, they all broke out in a most pitiful chorus, forming an anti-climax to the wail of their parents that was quite amusing, and that seemed to have its effect upon the "children of a larger growth," for they instantly hushed their lamentations and turned their attention toward the great steamer. There was a rugged but bewildered old granny among them, on her ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... leaving his body at death. The spirit is flying out through the window with awful staring eyes, aghast at the desolation into which it is going. If in the agony of dissolution such a lost soul could utter a cry, it would, I think, sound like the wail which I heard from the violin ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... faint, straight pathway in the sand. Rabbit gave a long sigh, turned his head to look back at his master, and then stood motionless again. Far on a hilltop a coyote pointed his nose to the moon and yap-yap-yapped, with a shrill, long-drawn tremolo wail that made the girl catch her breath. Behind them the nine goats moved closer together and huddled afraid beside a clump of bushes. The little breeze whispered again. A night bird called in a hurried, frightened way, and upon the last notes came the eerie ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... fast to your tail, and you wriggle and wail, And romp all around, the best master, And kindest of heart, Dog and Lobster can't part. Don't think I deride your disaster! The pinch of it might make an elephant prance; No, all that I ask ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... these days of stress and need, and Dowie was an efficient person. The cousin whose husband had been killed in Belgium, leaving a young widow and two children scarcely younger and more helpless than herself, had no relation nearer than Dowie, and had sent forth to the good woman a frantic wail for help in her desolation. The two children were, of course, on the point of being added to by an almost immediately impending third, and the mother, being penniless and prostrated, had remembered the comfortable creature with her solid bank account ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... are thousands of women offering these manuscripts. The publishers and the editors walk slowly along before the stalls and receive the manuscripts, which they look at and then lay down, though their writers weep and wail and wring their hands. Presently there comes along a man greatly resembling in the expression of his face the wild and savage wolf trying to smile. His habit is to take up a manuscript, and presently to express, with the aid of strange oaths and ejaculations, wonder and imagination. ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... the flood in quest of gain And beat for joyless months, the gloomy wave. Let such as deem it glory to destroy, Rush into blood, the sack of cities seek; Unpierced, exulting in the widow's wail, The virgin's shriek and infant's ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... level—the floor of a second mighty valley—a lone coyote began his dismal howling. Beth, on the horse, felt a chill go down her spine. Van seemed not to hear. The howl was repeated from time to time intermittently, like the wail of a ghost, forever ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... new Sir Patrick stretched herself on the ocean bed, she fell with a despairing wail; her gown spread like a pall over the earth, the Highland bonnet came off, and her hair floated over a ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was alive with the bay of dogs; the ridges were ringing with the echoes of a gunshot; but above them all I heard a plaintive wail over there in the charcoal clearing. I called for Weston and I got no answer, only the cry of the little hound. I called again and I got no answer. Through the hushes I tore as fast as my crutches would take me, calling as I ran and hearing only the wail ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... the shadows play, spectre-like, along a low, wet aisle, hung on each side with rusty bolts and locks, revealing the doors of cells. An ominous stillness is broken by the dull clank of chains, the muttering of voices, the shuffling of limbs; then a low wail breaks upon the ear, and rises higher and higher, shriller and shriller, until in piercing shrieks it chills the very heart. Now it ceases, and the echoes, like the murmuring winds, die faintly away. "Look in here, now," says Mr. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... for we had travelled hard and long. But sleep was never further from my eyes. As I sat there, listening to the rising wind in the trees, and the rush of the river below, with now and again the wail of a sea-bird crying out seaward, I grew to hate the darkness. Despite the fair innocents who slumbered within and the sturdy rogues who slept without, the loneliness of the place took hold upon me, and made me uneasy and anxious. Once I thought I heard returning footsteps ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... had become accustomed to the darkness, and they could not only see the clump in which the cage was clearly, but could make out the outline of the bush all round the open space in which it stood. Both started as a loud and dismal wail rose suddenly in the air, ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... pull down my "Tristram Shandy," (on which the dust of years has accumulated,) and read again that tender story of the lorn maiden, with her attendant goat, and her hair caught up in a silken fillet, and her shepherd's pipe, from which she pours out a low, plaintive wail upon the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... gloom of the summer night, from the forest and the marsh wild things came creeping to the edge of the clearing, sat peering there, then ventured nearer—curious, suspicious, greedy. Soft, noiseless, and ghost-like was the flight of the great owl through the desolation, and his uncanny cry and the wail of the whippoorwill filled the night as ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... battle is only a part. The curse goes far beyond the field of combat. The trampled dead and dying are but a tithe of the actual sufferers. There are desolate homes, far away, where want changes sorrow into madness. Wives wail by hearthstones where the household fires have died into cold ashes forever more. Like Rachel, mothers weep for the proud boys that lie stark beneath the pitiless stars. Under a thousand roofs—cottage ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had no rights in equity against her soul, having been on vicious errands when they met their ends, and bankrupts in the court of pity; but suddenly a helpless something would appear, and paralyze her with its little wail, like a babeless mother or a motherless babe, and, with her forehead wet with sweat of agony, she would affect to chuckle, and would whisper, "Nothin' but niggers! ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... see, transmitted, in her daughter shine, And view a new Lepel in Caroline.[309] 610 Is a son born into this world of woe? In never-ceasing streams let sorrow flow; Be from that hour the house with sables hung, Let lamentations dwell upon thy tongue; E'en from the moment that he first began To wail and whine, let him not see a man; Lock, lock him up, far from the public eye; Give him no opportunity to buy, Or to be bought; B——, though rich, was sold, And gave his body up to shame for gold. 620 Let it be bruited all about the town, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... the magnificent Gaston Phoebus were fearfully extinguished in blood and flame! Alas! the splendours of the proud castle of Orthez were dimmed with cruelty and suffering! No wonder that spectres are still said to walk and wail around the ruined tower; no wonder that the moans of the feeble prince, fainting beneath the blow of his mail-clad chief, are heard at night echoing through the loop-holes of the battered walls; or that the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... the doctor instead of sending for the doctor to visit him. And then invitations are sent out all over the Reservation for the singers to come and assist in the cure. The Navajos had responded loyally on this occasion and were grouped according to location. One group would sing the weird minor wail for half an hour and then another bunch would break in for a few minutes, only to have still a third delegation snatch the song away from them. So closely did they keep time and so smoothly did one bunch take up where ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was very dry. The wind and the wires took up the story with a long lamenting wail. ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... Senate in this day, When all the smothering by-streets weep and wail; When wisdom breaks the hearts of her best sons; When kingly men, voting ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... "the child that had only recovered from the measles" began to wail. It was then he had his first good taste of the teacher's floggings. "A little boy must not look where it is forbidden. A little boy must not bleat like ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... then asked Lucille for some music. The girl sat down at the piano, and there, to her own accompaniment, without the printed score, sang such songs of Provence as tug at the heart strings, one knows not why. There seemed to be a wail in the music—and in slurring, as it were, from one note to the other—a trick such Southern songs demand—I heard ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun; We dance along Deaths icy brink, but is the dance less ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... a prolonged tremulous howl, and, cocking his eyes, would listen intently as the sound issued forth. And the very quiver in his voice seemed in a manner intentional. He did not scream wildly, but drew out each note carefully in that mournful wail full ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... swound again for joy; howbeit, she soon came to herself again, seeing my dear gossip still had a little wine by him. Meanwhile the dear young lord did me some injustice, which, however, I freely forgive him; for he railed at me and called me an old woman, who could do naught save weep and wail. Why had I not journeyed after the Swedish king, or why had I not gone to Mellenthin myself to fetch his testimony, as I knew right well what he thought about witchcraft? (But, blessed God, how could ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... voice of a woman, breaking the stillness of the summer evening. She had just come to the door of the little cabin, where she was now standing, anxiously scanning the space before her, while a baby's plaintive wail rose and fell within with wearying monotony. The log cabin, set in a gall in the middle of an old field all grown up in sassafras, was not a very inviting-looking place; a few hens loitering about the new hen-house, a brood of half-grown chickens picking in the grass and watching the door, and ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... away into a hopeless wail. Frank knelt by her side, his faithful heart breaking with pity, great tears rolling untouched down his ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... a lie from beginning to end!" she exclaimed, in a voice which was totally changed from that wail of despair which had been heard once before. It was a firm, proud, stern voice. She had fallen back upon her own lofty soul, and had sought refuge in that resolute nature of hers which had sustained her before this in other dire emergencies. "Yes," she said, sternly, "a ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... morning, but no eyelid closed in sleep. With maternal solicitude, Mrs. Middleton sat by the bedside of her daughter Julia, whose eyes opened once, but on seeing Dr. Lacey standing near by, she closed them again with a shudder, and a faint wail of anguish escaped her. She had ruptured a small blood vessel, but Dr. Gordon said there was no danger if she could be kept quiet for ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... day, When, through the heavenly way, Lo, He shall come; While they who pierced him wail; His promise shall not fail; Saints, see your King ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... call rum, and send to them in exchange for their poor commodities? What about introducing new diseases, the offspring of vice, into the South Sea Islands, decimating and all but destroying the population? Is it not true that, as the prophet wailed of old about a degenerate Israel, we may wail about the beach-combers and other loafers that go amongst savage lands from England—'Through you the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles.' A Hindoo once said to a missionary, 'Your Book is very good. If you were as good as your Book you would conquer ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... spindle-shanks he scorns— But, lo! he hears the hunter's cries, And, frighten'd, o'er the champaign flies— His swiftness baffles the pursuit: At length a wood receives the brute, And by his horns entangled there, The pack began his flesh to tear: Then dying thus he wail'd his fate: "Unhappy me! and wise too late! How useful what I did disdain! How grievous that which made ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... his wife, and her wail aroused Roberjot once more from his stupor. He opened his eyes and looked ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... legs lying across the head and body of their dead comrades. Calls all night long could be heard coming from the wounded and dying, and one could not sleep for the sickening sound "W—a—t—e—r" ever sounding and echoing in his ears. Ever and anon a heart-rending wail as coming from some lost spirit disturbed the hushed stillness of the night. There were always incentives for some of the bolder spirits, whose love of adventure or love of gain impelled them, to visit the battlefield before the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Infantry. It was a name of little note, but there was one to whom it was the synonyme of all that gave beauty or gladness to life; and ere the bells had ceased to sound, or the eager crowd to huzza, her heart was still. With her last quivering sigh had mingled the wail of a ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... the afterglow lingered along the Danube, these dusky musicians appeared and installed themselves in a corner. The old stream's murmur could not drown the piercing and pathetic notes of the violin, the gentle wail of the guzla or the soft thrumming of the rude tambourine. Little poetry as a spectacled and frosty Austrian officer might have in his soul, that little must have been awakened by the songs and the orchestral performances of the Tsiganes as the sun sank low. The dusk began to creep athwart ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... Elysian lands they take their way; Not as of yore across the gay champaign, Towards some dream city, towered . . . and my . . . The path winds forth before me, sweet and plain, Not now; but though beneath a stone-grey sky November's russet woodlands toss and wail, Still the white road goes thro' them, still may I, Strong in new purpose, ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we shall refrain from dwelling further upon the scene. But as Burl stood out there in the night and witnessed the widow's anguish, and heard the wail of her fatherless child, from that heart whence had ascended to heaven the promise never to be broken there rose a terrible oath that never from that day forward, while he had life in his heart and strength in his arm, should an opportunity for vengeance slip his hand. How faithfully ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... death, he rose and lives and reigns,—and we shall conquer, rise, live, and reign; the hours on the cross were long, the thirst was bitter, the darkness and horror real,—but they ended. After the wail, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" came the calm, "It is finished"; pledge to us all that our "It is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the cove that the girls were loath to go. They climbed with reluctance up the steep sandy little path to the cliff. As they neared the top they could hear voices in altercation—a high-pitched, protesting, childish wail, and a blunt, uncompromising, scolding retort. On the road above stood an invalid carriage, piled up with innumerable parcels, and containing also a small boy. He was a charmingly pretty little fellow, ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... are loud in their wail! And Mary-Axe orphans all trembling and pale! For the Alderman glory has melted away, As mists are dispersed by the glad dawn ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and her eyes took on a sombre tone. Presently, with a slight, husky pain in her voice, like the faint echo of a wail, she went on: "Now that he's going, I'm glad we've had the things he gave us, things that can't be taken away from us. What you have enjoyed is yours for ever and ever. It's memory; and for one moment or for one day or one year of those things you loved, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it hardly fed the lungs, and the sun blazing so pitilessly upon the log structure that a faint odor of parching wood mingled with the torrid air within the Fort, yes, for nine long hours the elder prayed, or preached, or recited aloud the deep abasement of the penitential psalms, and the wail of the prophets, proclaiming, yet deprecating, the wrath of ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Mancini (1716-1800), three of the greatest teachers of the old Italian school, all lamented the decadence of the art of singing. Others before and since have done the same thing. It seems that in all times any one who could get the public ear has filled it with this sort of pessimistic wail. From this we draw some interesting conclusions: First, that the real art of singing was lost immediately after it was found. Second, that the only time it was perfect was when it began. Third, that ever since ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... The first melodies which he played reminded me of a Highland pibroch—at one moment low, solemn, and plaintive, then gradually rising into a soul-stirring, martial strain, and again descending to a plaintive wail. The amount of expression which he put into his simple instrument was truly marvellous. Then, passing suddenly from grave to gay, he played a series of light, merry airs, and some of the younger onlookers got up ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... for there are well known "treaty stipulations," and the lawmakers expect him, generally on foot, to pursue, overtake, and severely punish the well-mounted savage. Fatal error! every southerly wind brings with it a wail of the dying border man, and Mexico will yet, ere the present "long parliament" closes, present her wrongs before the proper source, the master—not the man. But we have digressed once or twice into extraneous topics: they germinated from the subject, and as ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... may be, Far o'er the watery track must he travel, Long must he row o'er the rime-crusted sea— Plod his lone exile-path—Fate is severe. Mindful of slaughter, his kinsman friends' death, Mindful of hardships, the wanderer saith:— Oft must I lonely, when dawn doth appear, Wail o'er my sorrow—since living is none Whom I may whisper my heart's undertone. Know I full well that in man it is noble Fast in his bosom his sorrow to bind. Weary at heart, yet his Fate is unyielding— Help cometh not to his suffering mind. Therefore do those who are ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Bend down thine ear And thou shalt hear The river on the golden strand And sound of harps in that fair land— Or wail of ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... say, in vain?—from man to God. Her lips were opened to speak; but the words that should have come from them reached God's ear alone; for in an instant Peter struck her down, the dark mass closed over her again, ... and then wail on wail, long, wild, ear-piercing, rang along the vaulted roofs, and thrilled like the trumpet of avenging ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... up hope when the Prince went into the castle. Tonight I waited till an hour past sundown, and twice I called. Once a wail came back to me. It sounded like a sigh of the damned. When I called the second time, something moved in the turret of the keep, like a man waving; and my heart leaped for joy. Then, with a harsh cry, ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... and the lust of war prevail, Soon within these ancient chambers will resound the sound of wail! ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... she had been looking on incredulously at her champion's unaccountable tardiness in coming to the point. But this public repudiation was too much for her. She gave a little low wail as she heard the shameless words of recantation, and then, without a word, jumped lightly down from her bench and ran away to hide ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... out on the sidewalk, in the darkness beyond. Then, as the policeman stepped down from the steps, Hoof suddenly let out a wail and darted into ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... harmonies. I did not know until I read Sir George Grove's article upon him, that Byrd secretly remained a Roman Catholic, but I long ago made up my mind, on my own judgment, that his most pathetic anthem, "Bow thine ear," was a wail over the iconoclasm in St. Paul's. He died in extreme old age in 1623. Morley was another organist of St. Paul's, the author of a fine setting of the Burial Service. Paul Hentzner, who visited St. Paul's in 1598, says in his Itinerary, "It has a very fine organ, which at evensong, accompanied ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... rang through the still room like a lost soul's despairing wail. Ames had rushed from his seat, overturning his chair, thrusting the lawyers aside, and seized the locket. For a moment he peered wildly into it. It seemed as if his eyes would devour it, absorb ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... flatteries to the girls whom they are eager to marry, whereas the Greek and Roman poets sought merely to beguile a class of women whose charms were for sale to anyone. One of these profligate men might cringe and wail and cajole, to gain the good will of a capricious courtesan, but he never dreamed of bending his knees to win the honest love of the maid he took to be his wife (that he might have male offspring.) Roman love was not romantic, nor was Greek. It was frankly sensual, and the gallantry ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the monarch's palace, when Sped from the bower that lord of men, Up from the weeping women went A mighty wail and wild lament: "Ah, he who ever freely did His duty ere his sire could bid, Our refuge and our sure defence, This day will go an exile hence, He on Kausalya loves to wait Most tender and affectionate, And as he treats his mother, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... know," gasped the girl, wildly; and now that the burden was partly shifted from her shoulders, her feminine nature began to reassert itself, and she uttered a low wail. ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... grating, a sound which drew his attention from the altar—the sound of a strange, lugubrious chant, uttered by women's voices. It began softly, but it presently grew louder, and as it increased it became more of a wail and a dirge. It was the chant of the Carmelite nuns, their only human utterance. It was their dirge over their buried affections and over the vanity of earthly desires. At first Newman was bewildered—almost stunned—by ...
— The American • Henry James
... me to state that, between the events of the last chapter and this, Nimrod and I heard the hum, the wail, and the shriek that make the song of the Westinghouse brake before we found ourselves deposited at the flourishing mining camp of Red Ridge in the Arizona Rockies, nine thousand ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... their place shall serve me, and sustain Their plagues, their torments suffer, sorrows bear, And they his absence shall lament in vain, And wail his loss and theirs with many a tear:' Thus talking to herself she did ordain A false and wicked guile, as you shall hear; Thither she hasted where the valiant knight Had overcome and slain her ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... they fell there was none to sing their coronach or wail the death-wail over them. Those who sacrificed themselves for the peace, the liberty, and the religion of their fellow-countrymen, lay bleaching in the field of death for long, and when at last they were buried by charity, the peasants dug up their bodies, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... With loud wail the people followed after. None was joyful, neither woman nor man. They sang and read or they buried him. Ah, what good priests ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... forgot—'coo-ee!' That was the startling cry as nearly as it can be written. But no letters can convey the sustained shrillness of the long, penetrating note represented by the first syllable, nor the weird, die-away wail of the second. It is the well-known bushcall,the 'jodel' ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... said the young man; "I command thee to tell me, O Zadok! Why are the people all gone mad this morning, and why do they weep and wail, and why do they go crazy when I do but ask them ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... covered with a varnished cloth; they were disputing violently amid thick clouds of smoke from their pipes. The second and third floors were the quietest. Here through the open doors came the sound of a cradle rocking, the wail of a baby, a woman's voice, the rattle of a spoon against a cup. On one door she read a placard, MME GAUDRON, CARDER; on the next, M. MADINIER, MANUFACTURER ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... deadly sickness came over him, and reeling back to his pallet, he buried his face in his hands and wept aloud—and the wail of his soul was that of the first doomed transgressor, "My punishment is ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... name: begin the wo, Ye woods, and tell it to the doleful winds; And doleful winds, wail to the howling hills; And howling hills, mourn to the dismal vales; And dismal vales, sigh to the sorrowing brooks; And sorrwing brooks, weep to the weeping stream; And weeping stream, awake the groaning deep; And let the instrument take up the song, Responsive ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... steam-whistle, and jerked out screech after screech hurriedly. The tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked instantly, and then from the depths of the woods went out such a tremulous and prolonged wail of mournful fear and utter despair as may be imagined to follow the flight of the last hope from the earth. There was a great commotion in the bush; the shower of arrows stopped, a few dropping shots rang ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... like a seagull, the sun bright upon her sail. Bronze, left upon the rock, lifted his head and gave one long, low wail. It echoed woefully and terribly over the wide, quiet waters. They gave back no answer—not even the poor ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... before the dawn. The coyotes changed their barking to a solemn wail as though day came to rob them of some irredeemable joy. A belated prairie cock began to boom, and then tired, sleepy, and grimy, the men sat down to breakfast at Jacob Pratt's house. The deed had been done. Daniel had entered ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... by. For Lady Maxwell they passed with recurring gusts of heart-broken sorrow and of agonies of prayer for her apostate son. Mistress Margaret was at the Hall all day, soothing, encouraging, even distracting her sister by all the means in her power. The mother wrote one passionate wail to her son, appealing to all that she thought he held dear, even yet to return to the Faith for which his father had suffered and in which he had died; but a short answer only returned, saying it was impossible to make his defence in a letter, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the vessel within the surf, but a few yards distant from the outer rocks, thrown on her beam-ends, with both foresail and mainsail blown clear out of their bolt-ropes. The cry for succour was raised in vain; the wail of despair was not heard; the struggles for life were not beheld, as the elements in their wrath roared and ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... ejaculated he, "be pleased to spare this vessel; let not the wail of women, the shrieks of the poor children, now embarked, be heard; the numerous body of men, trusting to her planks,—let them not be sacrificed for my father's crimes." And Philip mused. "The ways of Heaven are indeed mysterious," thought he.—"Why should others suffer because my ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Psyche's wail is but a fluted sadness Heard from willows the moon silvereth; Psyche's tears are dews of morning redness, And her sighs ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... who came to tune the pianoforte, extolled the merits of an AEolian harp. D'Argenton immediately ordered one made on a gigantic scale, and placed it on his roof. From that moment poor little Jack's life was a burden to him. The melancholy wail of the instrument, like a soul in purgatory, pursued him in his dreams. To the child's great relief, the poet was equally disturbed, and the harp was ordered to the end of the garden; but its shrieks and moans were still heard. D'Argenton fiercely commanded that the instrument should be buried, ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... said I, while Anthony looked from her to me with shining eyes. At this moment we started, all three, as borne to our ears came the distant rumble of thunder, followed by a fierce wind-gust that rattled crazy door and lattice and, dying in a dismal wail, left behind the mournful ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... broke from her in a wail of passionate sorrow; and clasping her hands before her face, she wept for the first time that day. The violence of her sobs shook her slender frame, and she was obliged to lean against the trunk ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... crackerboxes, and everything else that would stop a bullet, in such manner as to form a square barricade, two sides of which were the wagons, with the mules haltered to the wheels. Every man then supplied himself with all the ammunition he could carry, and the Mandan scouts setting up the depressing wail of the Indian death-song, we all awaited the attack with the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of Wales without a harp. The music of this most ancient and honorable instrument, which emits sweet sounds, when heard in a foreign land makes Welsh folks homesick for the old country and the music of the harp. Its strings can wail with woe, ripple with merriment, sound out the notes of war and peace, and lift the ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... over the air, and, apparently, their power of using dead bodies as vehicles for themselves, Thyraeus comes to no distinct conclusion. He endeavours, at great length, to distinguish between haunters who are ghosts of the dead, and haunters who are demons, or spirits unattached. The former wail and moan, the latter are facetious. He decides that to bury dead bodies below the hearth does not prevent haunting, for 'the hearth has no such efficacy'. Such bodies are not very unfrequently found in old English houses, the reason for this strange interment is not obvious, but perhaps ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... the states that are groaning under the tyrant's yoke; yea, France herself!—all are crying for deliverance from slavery. But whence is help to come when every one shuts his eyes against the despairing wail of Europe; when every one idly folds his hands and waits for some one else to be bold enough to call upon the people to take up arms? Every individual must be animated with this courage; must regard himself as chosen by Providence to commence the task of liberation. Each one must act as ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... cry that was a wail of parenthood, as we all sank to the ground just as the terrible black monster tore the roof from the Little House and hurled it toward us across the street. I saw a huge rafter hurtle through the air and strike down Mark Morgan as he started toward the steps of the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... sipahis, and thus the sons were set to guard their own mother, and it was not long before they found out their relationship. The Rani was delighted to recover her long lost children, but when she heard that her husband had been washed away by the river and drowned, she began to weep and wail. The merchant went to the Raja and complained that the sipahis who had been sent, had thrown the woman into great distress and the Raja thereupon sent for all the parties in order that he might enquire into the matter. When he heard their ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... cactus hedge before him were like great hands shorn of fingers thrust against the sky. Through a gap he beheld the lights of the Mission—fierce hostile eyes intent upon his thoughts. The wail and bark of a jackal came from ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... and wise, that his will through them might be wrought. Then he gave unto Fafnir my brother the soul that feareth nought, And the brow of the hardened iron, and the hand that may never fail, And the greedy heart of a king, and the ear that hears no wail. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... their bodies, they inclined also their ears, after the strained manner of listeners who feel anguish at what they hear. A voice, shrill and human, pierced the night like a needle, then, with a wail of a tortured soul, died away amid discordant raspings: the voice of a phonograph. It was their own, or had been until one overconfident day, when the Flying Heart Ranch had risked it as a wager in a foot-race with the neighboring Centipede, and ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... family-not of the canaille. You do not believe it of me? No! He had no right to accuse me. I was a prisoner; Senor Bansemer was my rescuer. I loved him for it. See, I cannot help it, I cannot hide it from you. But he is yours. I have no claim. I do not ask it. Oh!" and here her voice rose to a wail of anguish, "can you not procure something else for me to wear? These rags are intolerable. I hate them! I cannot go back ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... chamber, Death! Come to the mother, when she feels, For the first time, her first-born's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, 5 And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake's shock, the ocean's storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet song, and dance, and wine,— 10 And thou art terrible!—The tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier; And all ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... it were by these reminiscences, leaned back in his chair and breathed heavily. With downcast eyes and in silence the queen still sat before him, charmed by the music of his words, which found an echo in her heart like the dying wail ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... hope, feed, fatten, and beware! Soon comes the day when those grim giants fell, Famed through the world, dyed deep with sanguine hue, Whom with feigned flatteries you applaud, shall be Swept from the earth, and sunk in horrid Hell, Girt round with flames, to weep and wail with ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... a turning, and that night came to an end at last; and we were footsore and tired enough, and to my mind the babby were getting weaker and weaker, and it wrung my heart to hear its little wail! I'd ha' given my right hand for one of yesterday's hearty cries. We were wanting our breakfasts, and so were it too, motherless babby! We could see no public-houses, so about six o'clock (only we thought it were later) ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the venomous green path, not thirty yards away, I saw the head and shoulders and upstretched, appealing arms of Van Roon. Even as the lightning flickered and we saw him, he was gone; with one last, long, drawn-out cry, horribly like the mournful wail of a sea gull, ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... coming!" and she poked her head out from her clump, and stared up at the sky in dismay. "There surely is! Now we must run home like everything." She skipped out and seized Phronsie's arm. "Come, Pet," and not stopping to look, she set out upon a run. Phronsie began to wail, and then pulled back. "I've left ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... deduced that missionary work has not been as thorough as might be hoped. That is true. The Woods Indian loves to sing, and possesses quaint melodies, or rather intonations, of his own. But especially does he delight in the long-drawn wail of some of our old-fashioned hymns. The church oftenest reaches him through them. I know nothing stranger than the sight of a little half-lit church filled with Indians swaying unctuously to and fro in the rhythm of a cadence old Watts would have recognized ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... that had been worked upon him by a wizard. They came together and saw this. On the door-posts of the gateway of the Intunkulu, the house of the king, were great smears of blood. The knees of men strong in the battle trembled when they saw it; women wailed aloud as they wail over the dead; they wailed because of the horror of ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... and young and thoughtless; how had he managed to do this wild thing?—and had he done all decently and wisely, with consideration for the girl's good name? The thought of all the risks lying in the train of Patty's youth and inexperience brought a wail of anguish from Waitstill's lips, and, dropping the beads and closing the drawer, she stumbled blindly down the stairway to the kitchen, intent upon one thought only—to find her sister, to look in her eyes, feel the touch ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... But there was a curious noise inside. It was difficult to determine what it was. It bore a resemblance to the low moaning of one in pain, but it was not that, being far too regular and constant. Now it seemed a kind of song, now a wail—seemed, that is, to his changing fancy, for the sound itself was never changed or checked. It was unlike anything he had ever heard; and in its tone there was something ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Nye And went through him. Words fail For what follers! Kin I Paint our agonized wail Ez he drew from Nye's pocket that twenty wot we sworn was in his ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... dripping from among the rocks; flowers hanging from hedges emitting their fragrance, as they were flapped by the winds; red leaves on the tree tops swaying to and fro; groves picture-like, half stripped of foliage; the western breeze coming with sudden gusts, and the wail of the oriole still audible; the warm sun shining with genial rays, and the cicada also adding its chirp: structures, visible to the gaze at a distance in the South-east, soaring high on various sites and resting against the hills; three halls, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... near the canoe, it was plain, that the loss of their sire had again for the instant overcome the survivors. Raising hands, they cursed us; and at intervals sent forth a low, piercing wail, peculiar to their race. As before, faint cries were heard from the tent. And all the while rose and fell on the sea, the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... better to preserve the equilibrium of the canoe—a conveyance treacherous at the best—wrapped in a blanket in the bottom of the canoe I laid, looking into the faces of the Indians, contorted by fright, and listened to their peculiar and mournful death wail, "while the gale whistled aloft his ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... There lies the dead man, in the black cloak wrought with silver; the crozier in the powerless hand that was once so mighty. The incense rises in clouds, and the monks chant the funeral hymn. It sounds like a wail—it sounds like a sentence of wrath and condemnation, that must be heard far over the land, carried by the wind—sung by the wind—the wail that sometimes is silent, but never dies; for ever again it rises in song, singing even into our own time this legend of the Bishop of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... pig, the one still capable of activity. Cornering it at last, he persuaded it to cease running round and round the room, and instead to take a spin outside. It shot through the door with one long wail. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... piercing cry, raised by hundreds of voices, a cry which resounds through the streets of the city, and which is echoed by the surrounding hills. What can be the matter? What can be the cause of this mournful wail? ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... said Vittoria, promptly setting him down on his feet, and little Amalia at the same time perceiving that practical sympathy only required a ring at the bell for it to come out, straightway pulled the wires within herself, and emitted a doleful wail that gave her sole possession of Vittoria's bosom, where she was allowed to bring her tears to an end very comfortingly. Giacomo meanwhile, his body bent in an arch, plucked at Carlo Ammiani's wrists with savagely playful tugs, and took a stout boy's lesson in the art of despising ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Guldvik hall, Some kind of feast I seem to recall. My spirit was heavy, my heart full of woe! That something had grieved me is all that I know. I rode all alone up the mountain side, At midnight I passed by the river so wide; Then heard I beyond a melodious wail, That rang like a song over mountain and dale. It seemed a plaintive, bewitching lay; I folded my hands, I tried to pray, But tied was my tongue and my thoughts went astray; The strains did beguile and lure me away. 'Twas now like weeping and now like laughter, 'Twas now full ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... came? Why?' In the evening came a sister, whose aged parents had sent her to search for their only son. She also came too late. The brother had gone to the soldier's grave two days previous. One continued wail of sorrow goes up from all parts of ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... bar. It was her turn now to shrink appalled and petrified. It was not reproach that she saw pictured in that well-loved face, but downright hate and loathing. "He will never, never forgive me!" cried she, with a piteous wail; and then scream followed scream, and she was borne out in haste, and a doctor ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... electric shocks, the yellow bearded veterans and nobles sat stupefied, frozen in their last gesture. Then, in the midst of their silent despair, came the sound of a curious, high-pitched horn that had in its note something of the eery wail of a fire siren. The effect was magical, for the nobles sprang up, hands on sword hilts and eyes searching ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... dwelling, and turned the key on it. My uncle was made tolerably comfortable, with my aunt seated beside him; and in this way we stealthily quitted the neighborhood. I could hear uproarious voices in the distance, and occasionally a faint scream or wail, but gradually left these painful sounds behind. To say truth, I was by no means sure of our performing this journey in safety, and had many alarms by the way; and as for my uncle, my aunt afterwards told me he was in prayer the ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... old, enfeebled men in their enemy's camp, transported them all to the Island of Dead Men, and there held them as captives. Their war canoes circled the island like a fortification, through which drifted the sobs of the imprisoned women, the mutterings of the aged men, the wail ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... a—a wail of despair. She—talks of suicide. Kirby, I've got to get to Denver on the next train. Find out when it leaves. And I'll send a telegram to her to-night telling her I'll fix it. I ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... hawk's trail, so high that only a keen eye could have caught sight of him. Daylight insects were beginning to abate their clamor, while their fellows of the night were tuning for the evening concert. Mournfully, and very faintly, came a locomotive's wail from ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... another twenty years or so, perhaps; to wail for such an unlikely event will never do; my young friend, Master Jack Becker, is in a hurry, and we must all leave this place ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... quite dark, but the gray curtain of falling snow shut out everything from his vision; no sound could be heard but the rush of the wind over the slopes, and an occasional wail nearer at hand, as it swished round a corner of the rocks behind him. He dare not attempt to climb higher, nor dare he descend. What unexplored expanses of moorland might lie beyond, to lure him farther away from the chance of shelter ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... cried the other, starting from her seat. "Oh, what are you made of? Is it water that runs in your veins? you that he loves"—her voice broke into a wail—"you who ought to be so proud to know he loves you even though your heart be broken! You refuse to go to him, refuse his last request!... Come to the light," she went on, seizing the girl's wrists again; "let me look at you. Bah! you never loved him. You don't even understand ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... on errands of mercy, and waking, exclaims with reverential joy, 'Surely GOD is in this place.' Make a mind miserable, and you darken its universe. The stars fall from its heaven, the golden fruitage of its paradise decays, and winter winds wail around it, and night and storm mingle their pitiless elements on its unsheltered head. Intertwined and involved in the inner life, are occurring at all times the great things of human history. In the sanctuary of unrevealed bosoms, in the 'silent, secret sessions' of thought, and in the glow ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... in a voice which was almost a wail, "do you mean to say that you are to be considered in this matter, that for a moment you think of ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... was not one half as great as that of the trained Apache, who bounded forward like a panther, and the next instant griped his horny fingers in the arm of Fred, who uttered a wail, and sank ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... head to foot the shooting agony went on. With his teeth ripping his lower lip till the blood came, Berrington tried to fight down the yell of pain that filled his throat, but the effort was beyond human power. A long piteous wail of agony and entreaty came from him. It was only when the third or fourth cry was torn from him and he felt the oppression of a hideous death, that the thing suddenly ceased and Sartoris's gentle, mocking laughter took the place ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... dropped off to sleep he heard the wail of a jackal, and next he was awakened by the sound of a native chanting. It was already daybreak, and Mr. Hume stood on the verandah, having drawn ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... to act quickly, they threw off their coats, plunging into the water almost at the same instant. They swam fiercely, lashed on by that frantic wail, sounding fainter each ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... no quiet way out of this one so Jason leaped out with an echoing shout and lunged. The blade went right under the man's guard—he must never have seen a sword before—and the tip caught him full in the throat. He expired with a bubbling wail that stirred voices deeper in the building. Jason sprang over the corpse and tore at the multifold bolts and locks that sealed the door. Footsteps were running in the distance when he finally threw the ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... of it!" And her enjoyment of the situation becoming acute, there broke from her lips a shrill, unfamiliar, troubled sound, which performed the office of a laugh, a laugh of triumph, but which, at a distance, might have passed almost as well for a wail of despair. It rang in Ransom's ears as he quickly ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... summer's day was o'er, His violin's mirth and wail, The walk on pleasant Newbury's shore, The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... of the arena opened and a tremendous roar followed. A low wail of terror ran round the arena. Surely this Mem-sahib had all the gods with her. A great crevice had opened up between Kathlyn and the lions, one of which lay dead. Then came the rush toward the exits, a mad frantic rush. Not even Umballa, who knew that not the gods, but man ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... cleaner blow with a spear. The Golden Knight stood up rocking in his stirrups. Then he dropped his weapon and began to wail like a woman. ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... in the square, And still they quaffed their ale; They talked of the people's good, But heard not the people's wail. ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... memorable day, the stillness had been broken by the first clatter of sabots—that wooden noise, measured, unmistakable, approaching. Two pairs of sabots and a long road. Two broad backs bent under bulging loads; an infant's wail; a knock at the Red Cross Door—but that was ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... we are willing and ready to be sacrificed? and what are we all coming to, and where are you all going to, and where will Boston be if this thing goes on?" But these thoughtless and jeering bachelors will not stop to hear the wail of their challengers; they feel no pity for their despair; they have no stomach for their agony; but go their ways, leaving the wretched females rooted, transfixed, the picture of perfect hopelessness, and greeting them, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... the ammonia bottle's empty," she panted; and the miserable father started hatless, for the drug-store, a faint, choked wail from the stricken girl sounding in his ears: "It's—it's my ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... Amati!—the divine Stradivarius! Played on by ancient maestros until the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate, young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed from his dying hand to the cold virtuoso, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing bow of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... acquaintance the more modern class of bards; of these the most conspicuous is, Ian Lom[16] or Manntach. This bard was a Macdonald; he hung on the skirts of armies, and at the close of the battle sung the triumph or the wail, on the side of his partisans.[17] To the presence of this person the clans are supposed to have been indebted for much of the enthusiasm which led them to glory in the wars of Montrose. His poetry only reaches mediocrity, but the success which attended ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... south winds blow, Dissolves in silent dew. Tweed's echoes heard the ceaseless plash, While many a broken band Disordered through her currents dash, To gain the Scottish land; To town and tower, to town and dale, To tell red Flodden's dismal tale, And raise the universal wail. Tradition, legend, tune, and song Shall many an age that wail prolong: Still from the sire the son shall hear Of the stern strife and carnage drear Of Flodden's fatal field, Where shivered was fair Scotland's spear, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... rose from the lines of tonsured heads which skirted the high wall—a wail which suddenly died away into a long hushed silence, broken at last by a rapturous cry of ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... far away down the reach a ferry-boat lifted its infinitesimal wail, and then the silence of the night river came down once more, profound and inscrutable. A corner of the wick above my head sputtered a little—that ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... warm and comfortable; certainly he was fortunate. But he assured himself that the window was properly shuttered, barred, and fully covered by the thick curtain, and he stood by it for a moment listening intently for any sound of movement without. No sound came, not even the wail of a somewhat strong wind which he knew to be sweeping through the pine trees, and he came to the conclusion that the old stone walls were almost sound-proof and that if he and Miss Pett conversed ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... is round. That there may be tribes who believe it to be triangular or oblong does not alter the fact that it is certainly some shape, and therefore not any other shape. Therefore I repeat, with the wail of imprecation, don't say that the variety of creeds prevents you from accepting any creed. It is an ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... long there ebbed and flowed through the temple doors a rainbow-coloured stream of worshippers; while the dust-laden air vibrated with jangle of metal bells, wail of conches and raucous clamour of crows. Within doors, the rattle of dice rivalled the jangle of bells. Young or old, none failed to consult those mysterious arbiters on this auspicious day. Houses, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... smote Dennis's heart with the deepest commiseration was the continuous wail of helpless little children, many of them utterly separated from parents and friends, and in ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... 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 ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... rushing on that Christmas Eve round the stout Norman towers was not more strong than the breath of the despair which shook her life. She could not sleep—who could sleep on such a night, the herald of such a morrow? The wail and roar of the wind, the crash of falling trees, and the rattle of flying stones seemed to form a fit accompaniment to the turmoil of ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... to the curses ringing From all smitten lands; In sob and wail, they tell the tale Of England's ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... And fast the white rocks faded from his view, And soon were lost in circumambient foam; And then, it may be, of his wish to roam Repented he, but in his bosom slept The silent thought, nor from his lips did come One word of wail, whilst others sate and wept, And to the reckless ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... waking, exclaims with reverential joy, 'Surely GOD is in this place.' Make a mind miserable, and you darken its universe. The stars fall from its heaven, the golden fruitage of its paradise decays, and winter winds wail around it, and night and storm mingle their pitiless elements on its unsheltered head. Intertwined and involved in the inner life, are occurring at all times the great things of human history. In the sanctuary of unrevealed bosoms, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... uttered in a piteous, dismal wail, was too much for Vince's feelings; and, pushing his companion aside, he was about to hurry to the lad's help, but Mike seized him by the arm, and at the same moment they heard Carnach junior jump up ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... sweetest Saviour, thrice all hail! The King of Kings, by David's prophesying; Yet on no royal couch Thy first weak wail Awoke, for in a manger Thou wast lying: Still for that condescension more a King Than having all the whole world's wealth ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... music of these forests is made by crickets and tree-toads. The voice of the latter sounds like the cracking of wood. Occasionally frogs, owls, and goat-suckers croak, hoot, and wail. Between midnight and 3 A.M. almost perfect silence reigns. At early dawn the animal creation awakes with a scream. Pre-eminent are the discordant cries of monkeys and macaws. As the sun rises higher, one musician after another seeks the forest shade, and the morning concert ends at noon. In ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... forth my horse, Bucephalus!" So spake the man of letters. Straight Black John went through the stable gate, But soon returned with hair on end, While terror wings his speed did lend, And out he sent his piteous wail: "O boss! Old Bucky's lost ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Her fingers made the bells crash out her horror and disgust, and her appeal to a higher power to right this dreadful wrong. And then a hopeless sick feeling came over her, a whirling dizzy sensation as if she were going to faint, although she never fainted. She longed to drop down upon the keys and wail her heart out, but she might not. Those awful words or more like them were going on behind the organ there, and the door was open—or even if the door was not open they could be heard, for the room behind the organ was only screened by a heavy curtain! Those two strangers ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... out: he could only see a glimmer of the shape of the window. Then, indeed, he felt that he was left alone. It was so dreadful to be out in the night after everybody was gone to bed! That was more than he could bear. He burst out crying in good earnest, beginning with a wail like that of the wind when ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... perhaps a second's silence, then a faint moaning, a crescendo wail, the whirr and rush of a snarling, shrieking skyrocket overhead, and a crash, like all the thunders of the universe rolled into one, when the shell struck, followed by the roar of falling brick as a neighboring house came pouring ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... to the prison, where for a quarter of a century I have occupied a lonely cell. When the door swings in on you there, the world does not hear your muffled wail. There is little to inspire mirth in prison. For a man who has lived close to the heart of nature, in the forest, in the saddle, to imprison him is like caging a wild bird. And yet imprisonment has brought out the excellencies of many men. I have ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... A slap, a wail, then Mrs. Zapp's elephantine slowness on the stairs from the basement. She appeared, buttoning her collar, smiling almost pleasantly, for she disliked Mr. Wrenn less than she did any other of ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... been so commonplace had it not been so lone? Some latent interest must attach to it. Was it there that a vision of woe had lifted the wild hair of a Prophet; there where some Hagar had stilled the wail of her child on her indignant breast? We would fain call back the pageantry procession, fain see again the solitary thing that seemed so little worth the hand of the artist, and ask, "Why art thou here, and wherefore dost thou ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... since there was no one who appeared to have any interest in what he might say, he began muttering to himself. I would catch a phrase: "The fate of woman!" And again: "The price of life!" I would hear the terrible, explosive wail: "O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh!" And it would wring a cry out of the depths of Carpenter's soul: ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... place, we find him asking Esli,—the wife of Joseph, of whom he had just said, "Her little daughter has died recently, and her heart is broken,"—"When your child died, did you weep and wail as your people ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... found that there was no necessity for her to continue her speech, and indeed no possibility of her doing so even if she were so minded. The children began to wail and cry, and the mothers also mixed loud sobbings with their loud prayers; and Emmeline and Mary, dissolved in tears, sat themselves down, drawing to them the youngest bairns and those whom they had loved the best, kissing their sallow, famine-stricken, unwholesome faces, and ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... this a general wail arose, and Mrs. Wing fainted entirely away. Madam Sooty-back was quite satisfied with the effect she had ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... away with a wail which was dismally echoed by Rubens. Then, suddenly, in the darkness came a sob that was purely human, and I was clasped in a woman's arms, and covered with tender kisses and soothing caresses. For one wild moment, in my excitement, and the boundless ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... had ceased her gestures, and stood still listening and watching. Thalassa pulled back the blind, and looked out. The moor and rocks were draped in black, and the only sounds which reached him were the disconsolate wail of the wind and the savage break of the sea on the rocks below. He looked at his wife. She had started tossing her hands again at some spectral invisible thing in the shadowy night. She was quite mad—there could be no ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... murmur and swelled to a deep moan, soft but clear, and ended in a wail like that of a ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... singing-school,—one of those wild, pleading tunes, dear to the heart of New England,—born, if we may credit the report, in the rocky hollows of its mountains, and whose notes have a kind of grand and mournful triumph in their warbling wail, and in which different parts of the harmony, set contrary to all the canons of musical Pharisaism, had still a singular and romantic effect, which a true musical genius would not have failed to recognize. The four parts, tenor, treble, bass, and counter, as they were then called, rose and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... drizzly, dark, moist day; the mist had settled upon the hills, and unrolled itself upon brook, glade, and tarn, and the spring breeze was not powerful enough to raise the veil, though from the wild sounds which were heard occasionally on the ridges, and through the glens, it might be supposed to wail at a sense of its own inability. The route of the travellers was directed by the course which the river had ploughed for itself down the valley, the banks of which bore in general that dark grey livery which Sir Aymer de Valence had intimated to be the prevalent tint ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... chance to wail that I fired him because I am afraid of him, that I did it in desperation to save myself. Why, it would give him 10,000 votes of sympathy. No, Brennan, I must get something real to show that Gibson and ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... the wrinkled, old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha; Rocked him in his linden cradle, Bedded soft in moss and rushes, Safely bound with reindeer sinews; Stilled his fretful wail by saying, "Hush! The Naked Bear will get thee!" Lulled him into slumber, singing, "Ewa-yea! my little owlet! Who is this that lights the wigwam, With his great eyes lights the wigwam? Ewa-yea! my ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... say a few words to readers of The Sabbath Scoop on the alleged decay of the British drama. There is indeed some apparent truth in this allegation. On all sides I hear managers sending up the same old wail of dwindling box-office receipts and houses packed with ghastly rows of deadheads. No "paper" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... Mrs. Brenner hailed. But her voice fell flat and muffled. Far off on the beach she could dimly hear the long wail of a fog-horn. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... bearers went aboard[53] and hoisting sail from Kagei ran northward. Before they had gone far black storm clouds swept across the sky. Night fell. Lightning blazed unceasingly and flung up into silhouette the wild outlines of the mountains to the east. The roar of the thunder echoed above the wail of the wind and the threshing ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... the pitiless waters, Are borne on the blast of the thunder-rocked air, As husbands and wives, as sons and as daughters, Unite in a wild shrieking wail of despair. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... the summer changes into the sorrowful wail of the yellowing woods, so the strains of joyous worship changed into a wail of supplication; and as he caught the words, Thomas too raised his voice in ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... his mind during this year of afterglow. The end was fitting in its swiftness and dignity. No lingering, painful illness, but a swift stroke and a happy release. "Nothing is here for tears; nothing to wail." ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... warrant it'll be a devil's carnival, too. Isn't Mr. Cyril Henshaw going to play his own music? Oh, I know I'm hopeless, from your standpoint, but I can't help it. I like mine with some go in it, and a tune that you can find without hunting for it. And I don't like lost spirits gone mad that wail and shriek through ten perfectly good minutes, and then die with a gasping moan whose home is the tombs. However, you're going, ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... unrest prepare their storms, And o'er the silent city, vulture forms— Eris and Enyo, Alke, Ioke, The biter, the sharp-bitten, the mad, the fey— Hover and light on pinnacle and tower: The gray Erinnyes, watchful for the hour When Haro be the wail. And down the sky Like a white squall flung Ate with a cry That sounded like the wind in a ship's shrouds, As shrill and wild at once. The driving clouds Surging together, blotted out the sea, The beached ships, the plain with ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... but it is far exceeded in poignancy by what follows. Indeed it would be difficult to find in all literature, from the wail of David over Jonathan downward, such an expression of the hopeless longing for an irrecoverable presence as informs the broken melodies, the stanzas which are like sobs, of the fifth section ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... has left me and my parents alike of hope! I am not fifteen, I have not reached my twentieth year, and—wretched I—I see no more the light! My name is Hypatus; but I pray my brother and my parents to weep for wretched ones no more." Conjecture has coupled this wail of a strange fate with the human sacrifices offered at the shrine of Mithras, and has seen in Hypatus a slave and favourite of Tiberius devoted by his master to the Eastern deity; but there is no ground whatever ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... another instant she had swung broadside-on; and as a perfect mountain of white foam leaped upon her, enfolding her in its snowy embrace, her masts fell, and methought that, mingled with the sudden, deafening roar of the trampling breakers, I caught the sound of a despairing wail borne toward us ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... all indistinctly visible. In a chair opposite is a young woman with such a mournful, careworn face, that a glance inspires you with sorrow; and from a bundle of clothes on her knee issues the fretful wail of a restless child. The monotonous tick of an old clock is the only sound, saving the longdrawn sigh of that young mother, or the quick, hollow breathing of the sleeping man. Now and then the wind whistles more shrilly through ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... months are clad in flowery green, Sad Philomel, in bowery shades unseen, To vernal airs attunes her varied strains; And Itylus sounds warbling o'er the plains; Young Itylus, his parents' darling joy! Whom chance misled the mother to destroy; Now doom'd a wakeful bird to wail the beauteous boy. So in nocturnal solitude forlorn, A sad variety of woes I mourn! My mind, reflective, in a thorny maze Devious from care to care incessant strays. Now, wavering doubt succeeds to long ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... A sharp wail smote the air from a point suspiciously close to the lath and canvas partition on the other side, followed by hasty hushings and steps in the opposite direction. It enabled Lindsay to observe that Mr. Sand seemed at present ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... combined forces of the king and Henry of Navarre on one side, and of the League, aided by many of the princes of Catholic Europe, on the other. The storms of winter swept over the freezing armies and the smouldering towns, and the wail of the victims of horrid war blended with the moanings of the gale. Spring came, but it brought no joy to desolate, distracted, wretched France. Summer came, and the bright sun looked down upon barren ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... weeping and well-away; Let them kill the feast. I would be happy in my soul. "He is better," saith the Priest; He did but sleep the weary day, And will waken whole. Carry me to his dear side, And let the halls be trim; Whistly, whistly,' said she, 'I am wan with watching and wail, He must not wake to see me pale, Let me sleep with him. See you keep the tryst for me, I would rest till he awake And rise up like a bride. But whistly, whistly!' said she. 'Yet rejoice your Lord doth live; And for His dear sake Say Laus, Domine.' Silent they cast down ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... sits at home. Clytaem. Thou seem'st, my son, about to slay thy mother. Orest. It is not I that slay thee, but thyself. Clytaem. Take heed, beware a mother's vengeful hounds. Orest. How, slighting this, shall I escape my father's? Clytaem. I seem in life to wail as to a tomb. Orest. My father's fate ordains this doom for thee. Clytaem. Ah me! The snake is here I bare and nursed. Orest. An o'er-true prophet was that dread dream-born. Thou slewest one thou never should'st have slain, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... sets an' cries on de furder hill? An' what's de matter wid Miss Bob White, Dat she choke herse'f wid sayin' Good-night? You know mighty well dat sump'n is wrong When dey sets an' sings dat kinder song, 'Twix' a call an' a cry, 'twix' a weep an' a wail— Dey must be tellin' a mighty ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris
... Florence making bold to enter, without any more parley, and on Susan following, Mrs MacStinger recommenced her pedestrian exercise in pattens, and Alexander MacStinger (still on the paving-stone), who had stopped in his crying to attend to the conversation, began to wail again, entertaining himself during that dismal performance, which was quite mechanical, with a general survey of the prospect, terminating in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... banister and declared to the expectant father below that it was "a fine healthy Commander-in-Chief." Therefore, a Commander-in-Chief is not like a poet. But when a Commander-in-Chief dies, the spirit of a thousand Beethovens sob and wail in the air; dull cannon roar slowly out their heavy grief; silly rifles gibber and chatter demoniacally over his grave; and a cocked hat, emptier than ever, rides with the mockery of despair on ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... did the Caronia's siren wail out into the stillness. No reply. And then the throbbing pulses ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... the heaven's Regent fair, That she deign to succour me, And I'll humbly bend my knee; For but poorly do I know With my subject on to go; Therefore is my wisest plan Not to trust in strength of man. I my heavy sins bewail, Whilst I view the wo and wail Handed down so solemnly In the book of times gone by. Onward, onward, now I'll move In the name of Christ above, And his Mother true and dear, She who loves the wretch to cheer. All I know, and all I've heard I will state - how God appear'd And to Noah thus did cry: Weary with the world am I; ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... at her with widening, almost unbelieving, eyes; then raised his face to the sky and, like a wounded animal, emitted one long howl. All of the plucky sergeant's grief, fury, self-condemnation—aye, and love—were in that wail of agony. ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... groan of a gravelled grouse, Or the snarl of a snaffled snail (Husband or mother, like me, or spouse), Have you lain a-creep in the darkened house Where the wounded wombats wail?" ...
— Reginald • Saki
... of a saddler. He learned more than that. Wheeling, as he tells us, was then a great thoroughfare for the traffickers in human flesh. Their coffles passed through the place frequently. "My heart," he continues, "was grieved at the great abomination. I heard the wail of the captive, I felt his pang of distress, and the ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... in the hawk's trail, so high that only a keen eye could have caught sight of him. Daylight insects were beginning to abate their clamor, while their fellows of the night were tuning for the evening concert. Mournfully, and very faintly, came a locomotive's wail from the far valley. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the murmurs on the sea-beat shore His dun grey plumage floating to the gale, The curlew blends his melancholy wail With those hoarse sounds the rushing waters pour. Like thee, congenial bird: my steps explore The bleak lone seabeach, or the rocky dale, And shun the orange bower, the myrtle vale, Whose gay luxuriance suits my soul no ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... is a sudden wail from the child; JOE stops and stares at her; MARY goes quickly to the mattress and ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... then, midst a wail Of agonizing woe, His answer falls upon the ear,— "Yes, sister, you ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... these words. But every novel experiment seems doomed to fail, or meet with some disaster. The water in the bottle had been reduced too low by vaporism, and the bottle burst suddenly, with a loud report. That report was followed by a piteous wail. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... "Ach! Wail, dear nephew, beat your hands upon the bars, curse, waste your breath on stone. Did I not warn you against this very thing when you proposed this mad junket? Well, there are two of us. A fine scandal! They will laugh at us for months ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... outside, and Billy was soon hugging a magnificent box of soldiers, wherewith he pranced off to show them to his mother, leaving the doors open, so that Ursula could more decidedly hear the baby's voice, not a healthy child's lusty cry, but a poor little feeble wail, interspersed with attempts at consolation. 'Come, won't she go to Emily? Oh, Billy-boy, how splendid! I hope you thanked Cousin Ursula. Baby Jenny, now can't you let any one speak but yourself? Oh! shall I never teach you that "Balow, my babe," is not "bellow, my babe." That's ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not call you down to wail and groan." He never raised his voice; his calmness made him terrible. But now the questions broke loose as ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... was saying about it, when there came a sort of wail from a group at a little distance, and it ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... the "Paralus" reached Athens with her evil tidings, on receipt of which a bitter wail of woe broke forth. From Piraeus, following the line of the long walls up to the heart of the city, it swept and swelled, as each man to his neighbour passed on the news. On that night no man slept. There was mourning and sorrow for ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... a common thing for the wake wail to be sung over the boddy each night it be in the house as also for a rushlight to be kept alight from sunset to sunrise and for the death watchers for to tend the dead throw the night owther in the same room or in one so held that those watching could ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... I be dead, ye shall wash my body many times with rose-water and balsam. And thou, Ximena, take heed that thou and the women cry not aloud nor wail for me so that the Moors get knowledge of my death. And when Bucar is come, bid all the folk of Valencia go forth on the wall and sound trumpets, and show great glee. Also bid the people get together their goods in secret, that the Moors know it not, for ye may not tarry here after ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... I, with the plaintive wail of a heroine. "Take all I have, pocket-book and all, but, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... burst close to the ear with the importunity of a peal of trumpets, now assail us with the rumbling hoarseness of distance. Giddy uproar which resembles a language, and which, in fact, is a language. It is the effort which the world makes to speak. It is the lisping of the wonderful. In this wail is manifested vaguely all that the vast dark palpitation endures, suffers, accepts, rejects. For the most part it talks nonsense; it is like an access of chronic sickness, and rather an epilepsy diffused than ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... that calling through the night, A wail that dies when the wind roars? We heard it first on Shipley's Hill, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... came a sudden wail from Winifred, "you can't go off and live by yourself. What will people think? They will say we could ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... have been incessantly torturing her child, whose cry she knew not how to quiet? She carried her about, rocking her in her arms as she went wildly along the paths, obstinately hoping that she would at last get her to sleep, and so hush that wail which was rending her heart. And suddenly, utterly worn-out, sharing each of her daughter's death pangs, she found herself opposite the Grotto, at the feet of the miracle-working Virgin, she who forgave ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the winds were not pleasant. A great owl ensconced in a tree not far away began and maintained for a long time its monotonous "hoot-a-hoot a-hoo," while away in the distant forest gloom, rising at times shrill and distinct above the fitful wind, he heard the wail of the catamount or panther, the saddest and most mournful sound that ever broke the solitude of forest gloom. A sound at times so like the shrieking wail of a child in mortal agony, that heard close at hand it has caused the face of many a brave wife of ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... the carriage swayed as if it would fly in pieces, slithered along, and with a jerk steadied itself. Harz lifted his voice in a shout of pure excitement. Mr. Treffry let out a short shaky howl, and from behind there rose a wail. But the hill was over and the startled horses were cantering with a free, smooth motion. Mr. Treffry and Harz looked at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lost her father and after his death her own wail was: 'I never lived with my father. He was always away in the morning before I was up. I was away, or busy, in the evening when he was there. On Sundays he never went to church as mother and I did—I suppose now because he had some other religion of his own. But if he ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... in the Tabernacle impressed me more than any other Fourth of July celebration I ever attended. As most of the Mormon families keep no servants, mothers must take their children wherever they go—to churches, theatres, concerts, and military reviews—everywhere and anywhere. Hence the low, pensive wail of the individual baby, combining in large numbers, becomes a deep monotone, like the waves of the sea, a sort of violoncello accompaniment to all their holiday performances. It was rather trying to me at first to have my glowing periods ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... fair seashell— Bend down thine ear And thou shalt hear The river on the golden strand And sound of harps in that fair land— Or wail of ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... their own unworthiness and impurity, as well as that of their people, they uttered their spiritual desires, and their aspirations and disappointments and indignations and humiliations, in strains that make their great writings sound like one long, impassioned, rhythmic wail through the bars of a dungeon. Gloomy, wrathful, and intense, their utterances are grand and pathetic and sublime; but the beautiful plays through them, and gilds their highest points as the white crests do the billows of a ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... John Collinses—four tall glasses of pale liquid and ice, some stuff red as blood floating on the top. No sooner had Diana tasted hers than she set up a loud wail that there was not enough Angostura in it. One of the men hurried away to have this grave defect remedied, and the moment he was out of sight Diana took up his as yet untouched glass, and with two long straws between her lips, skilfully sucked all the red stuff from the top of the ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... intelligible to them. And withal there was a constitutional melancholy, aggravated by his weary toils, perilous fightings, and fierce throes, which led him down often into the deep mire where there was no standing; and which sighs through all his life. The penitential Psalms and Paul's wail: 'O wretched man that I am,' perhaps never woke more plaintive echo in any human heart than ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... young Queen seemed to tremble between life and death as she stretched forth her arms to them with a low wail that almost unnerved ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... blowing his long grey locks about his head, and twisting into grotesque and fantastic folds the nameless horror of the dead man's shroud. Then the clock struck the quarter, and he felt the time was come. He chuckled to himself, and turned the corner; but no sooner had he done so, than, with a piteous wail of terror, he fell back, and hid his blanched face in his long, bony hands. Right in front of him was standing a horrible spectre, motionless as a carven image, and monstrous as a madman's dream! Its head was bald and burnished; its face round, and fat, and white; and hideous ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... the hands of an infuriated horde of soldiers a bruised, battered, slouching hulk of a man in a dingy Confederate uniform. He implores their protection, and it is only when they see the piteous, haggard, upturned face, and hear the wail of his voice, that Putnam and Abbot recognize the deserter, Rix. Abbot is off his horse and by his side in an instant. Sternly ordering back the men who had grappled and were dragging him, the major holds Rix by the coat-collar and gazes at ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... side-wheels fitfully revolving, a shriek rent the air and froze my young blood. Some mother parting from a son who was on board our vessel, no longer able to restrain her emotion, was borne away, frantically raving in the delirium of grief. I have never forgotten that agonizing scene, or the despairing wail that was enough to pierce the hardest heart. I imagined my heart was about to break; and when we put out to sea in a damp and dreary drizzle, and the shore-line dissolved away, while on board there was overcrowding, and confusion ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... travellers for that region of bliss; it drives sleep from our eyes and forces them to watch in fruitless jealousy. Far below us earth's old forests rustle and her seas chant the primal hymn of creation: they sound like the wail of a memory that wanders ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... with the Greek; but the monody of 'Thyrsis', Matthew Arnold's commemoration of Clough, approaches nearer the Greek. Yet no other lament has the energy and rapidity of Bion's; the refrain, the insistent repetition of the words "I wail for Adonis",—"Alas for Cypris!" full of pathos and unspoken irrepressible woe, is used only by his pupil Moschus, though hinted at ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... darkness deep voices shouted questions, or answered or gave orders, and from a thousand houses, alike in the wealthy Bourg du Four with its three-storied piles and in the sordid lanes about the water and the bridges, went up one wail of horror and despair. Men who had dreamed of this night for years, and feared it as they feared God's day, awoke to find their dream a fact, and never while they lived forgot that awakening. While women left alone in their homes bolted and barred and ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... occur that a passionate master, heated with wine,—mad with himself and all about him, pours out his vengeful ire on the head and back of some helpless slave, and leaves him weltering in his blood! How often may be heard the agonized wail of the slave mother, deploring the departure of some innocent child that has been lost in gambling, ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... Where? Why didn't Mr. Robert tell her where? And couldn't he get him away at once? Mr. Robert had almost gone hoarse tryin' to explain why he couldn't. But after every try she'd come back with this wail: ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... green path, not thirty yards away, I saw the head and shoulders and upstretched, appealing arms of Van Roon. Even as the lightning flickered and we saw him, he was gone; with one last, long, drawn-out cry, horribly like the mournful wail of a ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... his stretched-out arms, resting upon the table as heretofore. She heard him whisper; she bent tenderly down to listen. 'I don't know. Don't tell me it is Frederick—not Frederick. I cannot bear it,—I am too weak. And his mother is dying!'He began to cry and wail like a child. It was so different to all which Margaret had hoped and expected, that she turned sick with disappointment, and was silent for an instant. Then she spoke again—very differently—not so exultingly, far more ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... frightened pony galloping off at an angle. The hunter quickly pulled the trigger again and the second Sioux also was smitten by sudden death. The other two turned, but one of them was wounded by the terrible marksman, and the pony of the fourth was slain, his rider hiding behind the body. A dismal wail came from the Sioux far back. The hunter lowered his great weapon, and one hand ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... would have answered, or what Thaddeus would have done next if the conversation had been continued, can be a matter of unprofitable speculation only, for at this point a wail from above- stairs showed that Master Perkins had awakened, and the ladies, considerate of Bessie's maternal feelings, promptly rose to take their leave, and in ten minutes she and ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... heart held him back, but before he had time to listen to it he had opened the little door, for the keys lay on the table to his hand; and he was peering into a small dark recess of stone, which seemed, for the wail that the little door made on its hinges, not to have been opened for ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Lying calm and black Under the night, Floats the wail Of the pipes: And beyond, loom Langdale Pikes, dim, Shadowy sentinels. Over all, the stars, Like friends, faithful ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... wingless wind that walk'st the sea, Weak wind, wing-broken, wearier wind than we, Who are yet not spirit-broken, maimed like thee, Who wail not in our inward night as thou In the outer darkness now, What word has the old sea given thee for mine ear From thy faint lips to hear? For some word would she ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... she lay as if petrified, every limb struck powerless, every nerve strained to listen. Who had uttered that dreadful wail? What did it portend? Then, her strength returning, she started up, and knew that she was alone. The camp-bed by her side was empty. It had not been touched. Fear, nameless and chill, swept through her. She felt her ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... so difficult to credit the villainy of a man—and yet so easy to suspect, to believe all possible deceit and wickedness in a poor helpless woman? Oh, man of God! is your mantle of charity cut to cover only your own sex? Can the wail of down-trodden orphanage wake no pity in your heart,—or is it locked against me by the cowardly dread of incurring the hate of the house ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... other way than crying; and the same is true of hunger, pain and discomfort. Crying is the reaction appropriate to a condition where the individual cannot help himself—where he wants something but is powerless to get it. The helpless baby sets up a wail that brings some one to his assistance; that is the utility of crying, though the baby, at first, does not have this result in view, but simply cries because he is hungry and helpless, uncomfortable and {145} helpless, thwarted and helpless. The child cries less as he grows older, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... o'er all the other gods prevail; You, one against a hundred though it be, Balance all Europe in the other scale. Them liken I to those who, in the tale, Mountain on mountain piled, presumptuously Warring with Heaven and Jove. The earth clave he, And hurled them down beneath huge rocks to wail: So take you up your bolt with energy; A happy ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... replied Marian, her chin beginning to quiver. "Nobody can help me. I'm the most miserable girl—" her voice ended in a wail, and she rocked to and fro ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... head master of the Grammar School and his wife, the head mistress of the High School, and a few others had been invited to meet them; and Angela could only just appear at dinner, trusting to a slumber of her charge, but, on coming out of the dining-room, a wail summoned her upstairs at once, and she was seen no ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... another son thou weepest, and in a new sorrow art thou wasting away.... Nor so much did pleasant Lesbos mourn for Alcaeus, nor did the Teian town so greatly bewail her poet,... and not for Sappho but still for thee doth Mitylene wail her musical lament.... Ah me! when the mallows wither in the garden, and the green parsley, and the curled tendrils of the anise, on a later day they live again, and spring In another year: but we men, we the great and mighty or wise, when once we have died, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... slighted ghosts protested, there came a loud, reproachful wail out of space. Everyone started, and stared in all directions. Then the soberly clad, modern inhabitants of Nancy glanced skyward as they crossed the square of Stanislas. Nobody hurried, yet nobody stopped. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... study and experience have eliminated even this defect, so that to-day the singer and actor are justly balanced; both are superlatively great. Can any one who hears and sees Caruso in the role of Samson, listen unmoved to the throbbing wail of that glorious voice and the unutterable woe of the blind ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... What to him the wail of them who beneath the fierce sun toiled under the whips of relentless masters? Heard from granite colonnade or beneath cool linen awning, it was mellowed by distance, to monotonous music. Why should he question the Sphinx ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... story of the bygone? The elegy, too, comes to us as the last lamenting, sadly solemn swan-song of that glorious golden time. And, indeed, are not all poesies but various notes of that mighty diapason of Thought and Feeling, that has, through the ages, been singing itself in jubilee and wail? ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for her, the kind slave-woman. Not one of all those little ones of the nation but who had a home in the many-mansioned heart of Lundy. He had been an eye and ear witness of the barbarism of slavery. "My heart," he sobbed, "was deeply grieved at the gross abomination; I heard the wail of the captive; I felt his pang of distress, and the iron entered my soul." With apostolic faith and zeal he had for a decade been striving to free the captive, and to tie up his bruised spirit. Sadly, but with a great ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... on the latch the piteous old man held forth his arms toward her and in a wail of agony cried: "Doll! Doll! My daughter! My child! ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
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