"Doleful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... matters by a secret marriage to a man in her own rank of life, which later becomes distasteful to her, and the duties of which she refuses to fulfil. Like the three preceding novels in our list, "A Social Experiment" is rather doleful, and seems to have been written for any other purpose rather than to cheer and stimulate the average reader who longs for pictures of life which rouse pleasant fancies and kindle tender sentiments. None of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... lieutenant that he was in that battle with Lord St. Vincent, and of course helped him gain the victory, and here he was now sailing by a most noble ship, (built in honour of that famous admiral) on his way to a doleful prison! This man had been pressed on board a British man of war, and was given up as such; but instead of being sent home as he ought, he was detained a prisoner of war, and yet this unfortunate man ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... rose, as if to smite him, the thought of Ireland—of Ireland, poor, derided of strangers, deserted by her sons, roped in as a prize-ring where selfish men struggle ignobly for sordid gains The children of the land fled from it sick with despair. Its deserted houses were full of all doleful things. Cormorants and the daughters of the owl lodged in ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... the nights are long, The north-wind sings a doleful song; Then hush again upon my breast; All merry things are now at rest, Save thee, my ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... saw the end ere Leslie fired. "THE LORD," said he, as rapt he stands, "HATH GIVEN THEM INTO OUR HANDS!" 'Tis the ninth month and second day, A wild, wet night, historians say. Quit you like men, and bravely stand; Death's wrestle now is close at hand; Heed not the hoarse sea's doleful moan, As on the cliffs its waves are thrown. Think not of life nor kindred dear— Who goes to war should nothing fear But God, whose eye-lids never sleep— His Israel He will safely keep. Oh, pray! but keep your powder dry— Your part do, then on God rely. Stand to your arms the whole night thro' ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... is dark; and though I have lain Awake, as I guess, an hour or twain, I have not once open'd the lids of my eyes, But I lie in the dark, as a blind man lies. O Rain! that I lie listening to, You're but a doleful sound at best: I owe you little thanks, 'tis true, For breaking thus my needful rest! Yet if, as soon as it is light, O Rain! you will but take your flight, I'll neither rail, nor malice keep, Though sick and sore for ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... with horror, seen the discovery of a great witchcraft. An army of devils has broken in upon this place, which is the centre, and, after a sort, the first-born of our English settlements; and the houses of the good people there are filled with the doleful shrieks of their children and servants tormented by invisible hands, with tortures altogether preternatural. After the mischiefs there endeavoured, and since in part conquered, the terrible plague of evil angels hath made its progress into some other places, where other persons ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... the wooden rocking-chair, trundling the child to and fro, and murmuring a doleful tune. Her son was now almost two years old, and beginning to toddle about upon a pair of crooked, thin legs. As often as Ben had visited the hut he had never deigned to look at the child, but Myra had a dull hope that, ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... methought I heard a doleful voice Cry, OEdipus.—The prophet bade me sleep. He talked of dreams, and visions, and to-morrow! I'll muse no more; come what will, or can, My thoughts are clearer than unclouded stars; And with those thoughts I'll rest. Creon, good-night. [Exit ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... and fry him, and dip my biscuit in his gravy. Poor Fed, Confed, Confederacy, I place one hand on my heart and one on my head, regretting that I have not another to place on my stomach, and whisper, softly whisper, in the most doleful accents, Good-bye, farewell, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... bed about 10 last night. About 2, Barker, Priestley, and Verity returned from their working parties. Priestley was very doleful; he was mournfully discussing the horrors of the war, and of his evening's experiences in particular. And it appears that there was some reason, for he had been in command of a party of eight whose mission ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... It was a long, doleful sigh. "I am feeling badly, Blacky," said he. "I never felt worse in my life. The ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess
... anything to please," and Patty assumed a doleful expression, drew down the corners of her mouth, and wrung ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... answer this argument, and Betty, glancing at the doleful faces of her fellow-workers felt very much depressed until a new ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... talking in doleful tones to Lady Margaret about my mother, saying she had promised her on her death-bed to take care of her child and had been as good as her word, always putting me before her own daughter, although her ladyship would admit ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... the side, and trying to summon up some image of Liverpool, to see how the reality would answer to my conceit; and while the fog, and mist, and gray dawn were investing every thing with a mysterious interest, I was startled by the doleful, dismal sound of a great bell, whose slow intermitting tolling seemed in unison with the solemn roll of the billows. I thought I had never heard so boding a sound; a sound that seemed to speak of judgment and the resurrection, like belfry-mouthed ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... need of slings this time, any way. There, there, you needn't look so doleful over it! Put your heels together and show how straight you can shoot. Before long there'll be more work cut out for you than you'll know how to get through, and there's nothing ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... psalmody of their desolated temple" (McClintock and Strong). There was hardly an occasion arising above the commonplace events of everyday life, when the ancient Hebrews did not resort to music. Trumpets were used at the royal proclamations and at the dedication of the Temple. There were doleful chants for funeral processions; joyous melodies for bridal processions and banquets; stirring martial strains to incite courage in battle and to celebrate victories, religious songs, and domestic music for private recreation and pleasure; and even ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... whirl gracefully, arms spread and hair flying; and then, apparently oblivious of the staring men, she broke into a low, sweet song. Next she danced around a pine, then danced into her little green inclosure. From which presently she sent out the most doleful moans. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... said Larry, hurrying off toward the baggage car. In a few minutes Mr. Wakeham appeared with the doleful news that the trunk was not in the car and must ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... we hear, Father, may be exaggerated; and even if the city itself be doleful, which I doubt, there is sure to be light and gayety in the precincts of the Court and in the homes of ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... fashionable luxury to have them sing at the end of suppers, and everyone showered money on them in order not to be behind the others. They accompanied on guzlas, on castanets, on tambourines, and sang the old airs, doleful and languorous, or excitable and breathless as the flight of the earliest nomads in the beginnings ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... file, slowly the searchers were carrying the bodies of the murdered men, wrapped in canvas and strapped to poles cut from the forest trees. As they advanced, a crowd, bare-headed and at every step increasing, accompanied the doleful procession. They passed the spot where stood the two girls, the one supporting the other, and so ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... forest, which they entered. There Enid, as she rode in front, saw four armed men lurking by the road, and one said to the other: "See, now is our opportunity to win much spoil at little cost; for we may easily overcome this doleful knight, and take from him his arms and lady." And Enid hearing them, was filled with fear and doubt; for she longed to warn her lord of his danger, yet feared to arouse his wrath, seeing he had bidden her keep silence. Then said she to herself: "Better to anger him, even to the slaying ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... threatening all sorts of reprisals on the part of her brother, who "wouldn't see her imposed upon by the likes of thim, not he!" From the kitchen, at intervals, came up doleful snatches of "Then you'll remember me," interrupted by hiccoughs, and with involuntary variations and cadenzas that would have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... The Ursuline steeple waved in the air like a reed vexed by the blast. The chair I stood on was all but capsized, and the fire at my feet was overthrown. The very vault of heaven swung to and fro, ebbing and heaving with the general convulsion. The doleful psalmody in the neighboring ground broke abruptly. The chorus of many feminine voices sent forth but one rending shriek. The clamor of thousands of the town-folk from their encampment gave its wakeful response. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... at this time with such incessant importunity that they took possession of his mind, when he first waked, for many hours together.' Writing to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield on Oct. 27, 1781, he says:—'All here is gloomy; a faint struggle with the tediousness of time, a doleful confession of present misery, and the approach seen and felt of what is most dreaded and most shunned. But such is the lot of man.' Piozzi Letters, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... reached nearly to his waist, while the latter was as bare as a billiard-ball. Preparing himself for the effort with a wine-glass full of raw cognac, this gentleman leaned back in his chair, stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and plunged at once into a doleful ballad about one Mademoiselle Rosine, and a certain village aupres de la mer, which seemed to be in an indefinite number of verses, and amused no one but himself. In the midst of this ditty, just as the audience had begun to testify their impatience by much whispering and shuffling ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... Now and again he turned his face to the wall, as if to drop a tear unseen, but really to take a discreet pull at the pipe. I think he must have swallowed the smoke. Then he would face the crowd again, and repeat his doleful cry: ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... it blaze. "This room isn't warm enough. Jackson isn't half attending to the furnace. I wish you'd ring for him to put on more coal. Jackson is losing his mind of late. If he wasn't a church member I'd think he was seeking, he's been so doleful the last few days. They are half-cracked, every one of them, ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... Troy's painted woes: For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell, Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; Then little strength rings out the doleful knell: So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow; She lends them words, and she their ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the second letter with a sigh. He feared as much himself, and had doleful visions of a painful fortnight to be spent in a big country house, where the conversation would be all concerning the slaughter of pheasants and the torture of foxes, which his soul loathed to listen to. 'It's from Lady Hilda,' he said, glancing through it, 'and ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... our kettle boiling water. Also our tent was warm and cozy. We were quietly resting with pleasant thoughts of supper to soothe us, when suddenly a howling and laughter as though from some inferno burst upon us from just outside the tent, while from the other side of the valley came the long and doleful howls in answer. ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... would entertain us. He ran into the storeroom and brought out a gaudily painted harmonica, sat down on a bench, and spreading his fat legs apart began to play like a whole band. The tunes were either very lively or very doleful, and he sang ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... Drane, and was slightly acquainted with his family. I heard of their misfortune through a friend in Pennsylvania, and as I knew that La Fleur took such an interest in the family, I mentioned it to her. The result was disastrous; she has been in a doleful mood ever since, and yesterday assured Mrs. Tolbridge that if it should prove that Mrs. Drane and her daughter, who had been so good to her, had become so poor that they could not afford to employ a servant, she must leave us and go to them. ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... I dreamed a doleful dream, I fear there will be sorrow! I dreamed I pu'd the heather green With ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... boat with their hard fists to ascertain its strength, believed that I could cross the sound to the other village without rolling over. One kind-hearted oysterman offered to carry myself and boat to Portsmouth, but as the day was calm, I rowed away on the five-mile stretch amid doleful prognostications, such as: "That feller will make a coffin for hisself out of that yere gimcrack of an egg-shell. It's all a man's life is wurth to go ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... left her, and went back to the forest, and Riminild sent for Athulf, who met her with a doleful countenance. "Athulf!" she cried, "rejoice with me! Horn has come—I tell ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... they raise malicious lying charges against him, and finally they clap him in irons and leave him—Imagination being the ringleader throughout. Left alone once more Pity sings a lament over the wickedness of the times, whereof the doleful refrain is 'Worse was it never'. A ray of light in his affliction comes with the return of Contemplation and Perseverance, who, releasing him, send him off to fetch his persecutors back. Fortune is on their side, for scarcely ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... spread ourselves, and shown him what we could do; but what a paltry, heart-sickening achievement! Now, good Mr. Crowfield, thou friend of the robbed and despairing, wilt thou not descend into our purgatorial circle, and tell the world what thou hast seen there of doleful remembrance? Tell us how we, who must do and desire to do our own work, can show forth in our homes a homely yet genial hospitality, and entertain our guests without making a fuss and hurlyburly, and seeming to be ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... bloodthirsty Gehazi, the halinshaker ne'er-do-weel! I'll gie him sic a redding up as he never had since the day his mother boor him!" Then looting down to the poor bit beast, that was bleeding like a sheep—"Ay, Puggie, man," she said in a doleful voice, "they've made ye an unco fright; but I'll gie them up their fit for't; I'll show them, in a couple of hurries, that they have catched a Tartar!"—and with that out went the woman, paper-parcel, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... that here was the likeness which they spoke of. By the roadside there chanced to be an old beggar-woman and two little beggar-children, stragglers from some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, held out their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteously beseeching charity. A yellow claw—the very same that had clawed together so much wealth—poked itself out of the coach-window, and dropt some copper coins upon the ground; so that, though the great man's name seems ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Bill pounced on the big table, and began to rattle it away to its place outside the buttery door. The lower-passage boys carried off their small tables, aided by their friends; while above all, standing on the great hall-table, a knot of untiring sons of harmony made night doleful by a prolonged performance of "God Save the King." His Majesty King William the Fourth then reigned over us, a monarch deservedly popular amongst the boys addicted to melody, to whom he was chiefly known from the beginning of that excellent if slightly ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... his ears from the distance, judged that it was high time for him to use his slice of onion. Then his doleful voice was heard as ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... incumbent in person. Some ecclesiastical ladies, young and middle-aged, who, rightly or wrongly, believe their mission is music, and to whom the curate is very probably an attraction, aid his efforts. Serious young men read, and others of a more mundane turn of mind sing doleful "comic" songs, culled from the more presentable of the music-hall repertoire. In many cases skilled amateurs or professionals lend their valuable assistance; and it is not too much to say that many a ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... advantageously to another townsman. He would never have parted from the inn if it had not been for the following, apparently insignificant, circumstance: for two mornings in succession his dog, sitting before the windows, had kept up a prolonged and doleful howl. He went out into the road the second time, looked attentively at the howling dog, shook his head, went up to town and the same day agreed on the price with a man who had been for a long time anxious to purchase it. A week later he had moved to a distance—out ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... summer was not a favourable one, and everybody else was complaining of unseasonable weather, of the certainty of storms in the autumn, of blight, and the prospect of scarcity; yet, though Mr Grey shook his head, and the parish clerk could never be seen but with a doleful prophecy in his mouth, Morris's young master and mistresses were gay as she could desire. She was piously thankful for Margaret's engagement; for she concluded that it was by means of this that other hearts were working round into their true relation, and into a peace which the world, with ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... the world's salvation. This is a tempest, and all the windows rattling, and the great Napoleon dying, amid the fury of the elements, with 'te'te d'arme'e!' on his dying lips, and 'battle' in his expiring soul. No, sir; if the learned Englishmen of this day can do nothing nearer the mark than DOLEFUL MAGNIFICATS and STORMY NUNC DIMITTISES, I shall stand faithful to poor dead Kent, and his fellows—they were my solace ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... drooped, the brooks were dried, The fish and birds that swam them died, And every tree that was so fair With flower and fruit was stripped and bare. The wild wind ceased, yet, raised on high, Dark clouds of dust involved the sky. In doleful twitter long sustained The restless Sarikas(462) complained, And from the heavens with flash and flame Terrific meteors roaring came. Earth to her deep foundation shook With rock and tree and plain and brook, As Khara with triumphant shout, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... happy, in spite of Kate's doleful prophecies. Certainly they looked happy enough to-day," declared Cyril, patting a yawn as he rose to his feet. "I fancy Will and Aunt Hannah are lonesome, ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... girls. "What's the matter with you all? Think, girls, think of what you're singing. Use your imaginations. 'With Flowers o'erladen. Baskets of Fruit and Ribbons to boot.' And 'Congratulate.'" Miss Meadows broke off. "Don't look so doleful, girls. It ought to sound warm, joyful, eager. 'Congratulate.' Once more. ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... in light and dark, the Indians filled the air with dismal chant and doleful incantations to the Great Spirit, and the tum! tum! tum! tum! of tomtoms, a specific feature of their wild ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... of the new year, 1761, was ushered in by the solemn tolling of the church bells in the town, and the firing of minute guns on Castle Island. These mournful sounds were heard all day, even to the setting of the sun. However doleful the day may have seemed, there was more appropriateness in these signs of mourning than any man of that generation could have known; for with George II. died the indolent but salutary let-them-alone policy under ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... would attack, and they must reach it by the back staircase, or by the window in the dressing-room. The clock of the Invalides struck a quarter to twelve; the west wind bore on its moistened gusts the doleful ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the answer, in the most doleful of voices. "It bean't no good. I've forgotten all about ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... progress will persist after death; and all through the duration of immortal being, goodness, blessedness, holiness, Godlikeness, will, on the one hand, grow in brighter lustre; and on the other, alienation from God, loss of the noble elements of the nature, and all the other doleful darknesses which attend that conception of a lost man, will increase likewise. And so, two people, sitting side by side here now, may start from the same level, and by the operation of the one principle the one may rise, and rise, and rise, till he is lost in God, and so finds himself, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... duchesses in the gallery, which were interesting, and the pictures were so bad as to molest no one. There was, besides all this, a hanging garden in this small Babylon, on which the travellers looked with a doleful regret that they were no longer of the age when a hanging garden would have brought supreme comfort to the soul. It occupied a spacious oblong, had a fountain and statues, trees and flowers, and would certainly have been taken for the surface of the earth, had not the Custode proudly pointed out ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... leave, and left Charny with the doctor. Fever commenced, and before long he was delirious. Three hours after the doctor called a servant, and told him to take Charny in his arms, who uttered doleful cries. "Roll the sheet over his ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... as a beetle, dull as ditchwater^; depressing &c v.. melancholy as a gib cat; oppressed with melancholy, a prey to melancholy; downcast, downhearted; down in the mouth, down in one's luck; heavy-hearted; in the dumps, down in the dumps, in the suds, in the sulks, in the doldrums; in doleful dumps, in bad humor; sullen; mumpish^, dumpish, mopish^, moping; moody, glum; sulky &c (discontented) 832; out of sorts, out of humor, out of heart, out of spirits; ill at ease, low spirited, in low spirits, a cup too low; weary &c 841; discouraged, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fullness and the ripeness of the year; All the work of earth is finished, or the final tasks are near, But there is no doleful wailing; every living thing that grows, For the end that is approaching wears the finest garb it knows. And I pray that I may proudly hold my head up high and smile When I come to my September ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... virgin, hast thou with the most doleful tears called me forth leaning on the support of a blind foot[50] to the light, a bed-ridden man from his darksome chamber, gray-headed, an obscure phantom of air—a dead body beneath ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... afternoon, being content to cuddle down, and rest. Phil saw a serious look on the usually merry countenance of his chum. He knew from this that Larry had really suffered very much while facing such a doleful end. Nor did he ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... in this it will be a doleful thing, not for the Church, but for the Irish priests, and for the Irish people. No Irishman who witnessed the magnificent display made at Rome this year, of the scope and power of the Catholic Church, can labour under any delusions ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... you been doing?" she rallied them. "You looked as if you had been intending to read the marriage service through together, and had read the funeral one by mistake; or possibly because it appealed to you more!... You both seemed doleful ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... married daughter across the river, just the same hard, loveless, moral, hard-working being as her mother. Each morning, soon after seven, when I have swept the cabin, the family come in for "worship." Chalmers "wales" a psalm, in every sense of the word wail, to the most doleful of dismal tunes; they read a chapter round, and he prays. If his prayer has something of the tone of the imprecatory psalms, he has high authority in his favor; and if there be a tinge of the Pharisaic ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... in the door. Then the door opened, and the Sheriff stepped inside, accompanied by a white-haired, stately old man. At sight of this second figure—the Sheriff had come often before, and would come for one more doleful walk with him—Grassette started. His face, which had never whitened in all the dismal and terrorizing doings of the capture and the trial and sentence, though it had flushed with rage more than once, now turned a little pale, for it seemed as if this old man had stepped ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... made his escape. When Cappy Ricks stripped for action, Mr. Skinner knew from long experience that there was going to be a fight or a foot race; that whenever the old gentleman set out to confound an enemy, the inevitable result was wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth, in which doleful form of exercise Cappy Ricks had never ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... went out, he confided to the cook that a cow had been taken into the stable, that, at all events, the family might not be without milk at this doleful time. Old Barbette wrung her hands in anguish. "Alas! Mr. Wohlfart, what a frightful thing it is!" cried she; "the balls will be flying about ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... Aunt Trudy's doleful prediction proved only too true. That very afternoon, when Rosemary left to take care of the Simmons baby while his proud mother attended the fortnightly meeting of her card club, Sarah and Shirley decided to sail boats in the bath-tub. ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... ill-cleakit witch, Erne McBean, that makes Nanny speak so doleful," Sanders told me. "There was to be a prayer-meeting last nicht, but Mr. Dishart never came to 't, though they rang till they wraxed their arms; and now Effie says it'll ring on by itsel' till he's brocht ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... office once again. (Reflectively.) For once a politician wins the race, He like an warhorse smells the battle far And to his dying day doth live in hope That grateful country may make its demand. (Close by singing an ode to the air; "Hark, from the Tomb a Doleful Sound") Sleep! martyrs, sleep! till resurrection morn, When sounding trump shall call to office sweet; Republicans may grin with silent scorn, But we like hungry ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... anew. Zaidee and Helen bore the shingle-bier in front, Eunice and Cricket came behind, tearing their hair, and chanting in doleful tones how ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... hope that your doleful apprehensions will prove unfounded. These changes from muggy weather to slight sharp frost, and back again, touch weak places, as I find by my own foot; but the touch goes by. May ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... the first thought in the mind of all was that the town was on fire, or that the army of some enemy had mysteriously landed under cover of night and could put the citizens to the edge of the sword. But the doleful, intermittent sounds of all these fills, which disturbed the silence at regular and distant intervals, were an invitation to the faithful to pray for a passing soul, and it was soon evident that no disaster threatened ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as an impostor and deceiver. 'False to all men, a hateful fellow, a mere Machiavel,' Captain Parker called him, because he did not find his gold mine. Ralegh, for whom he had ventured and borne much, writes of him as an obstinate, self-willed man, and of his doleful end with a coldness which only gnawing despair can ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... of austere mold was the new major,—one of the old Covenanter type, who would march to battle shouting hymn tunes, and to Christmas and Thanksgiving chanting doleful lays. He hailed, indeed, from old Puritan stock; had been a pillar in the village church in days before the great war, and emulated Stonewall Jackson in his piety, if he did not in martial prowess. Backed by local, and by no means secular, influences ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... by this rhetoric, for, with a doleful look, which Count Robert saw by means of the nearly extinguished torch, he seemed to bid him farewell, and to creep away towards the ladder with the same excellent good-will wherewith a condemned criminal performs the like evolution. But no sooner did the Count ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... member of our small society who positively refused to adapt himself to circumstances, was Jip. He never saw my aunt without immediately displaying every tooth in his head, retiring under a chair, and growling incessantly: with now and then a doleful howl, as if she really were too much for his feelings. All kinds of treatment were tried with him, coaxing, scolding, slapping, bringing him to Buckingham Street (where he instantly dashed at the two cats, to the terror of all beholders); but he never could prevail upon himself to bear ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... The drug store on the opposite corner showed a bright interior, where two small boys devoured ice cream sodas with solemn rapture. Somewhere up a side street a choir was practising a hymn, making a noise infinitely doleful. ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... moralizing on the tragedies of life and the mystery of death. This inclination is common enough in many romantic-spirited persons of all times, and it is always a symptom of immaturity or lack of perfect balance. Among the earlier eighteenth century Romanticists there was a very nourishing crop of doleful verse, since known from the place where most of it was located, as the 'Graveyard poetry.' Even Gray's 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard' is only the finest representative of this form, just as Shakspere's 'Hamlet' is the culmination ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... the altar, and as she took her place before it another clang resounded from the belfry. The bridegroom was not there. Again and again the brazen throat and iron tongue sent out a doleful knell, and faces grew pale and anxious, for the meaning of it could not be guessed. With eyes fixed on the marble tomb of her first husband, the woman tremblingly awaited the solution of the mystery, until the door was darkened by something that made her catch her breath—a ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... 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 undergrowth, as if expecting to see rise from the ground a full cavalcade of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... to obey, but the awesome tune had carried its doleful message. The mournful notes had reached the ears of the wounded lad in the canoe. Its message was plain to him. Walter was a captive, or in great danger. And now began a contest between will-power and pain and weakness from which many a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... sir Ector threw his shield, his sword, and his helm from him; and when he beheld sir Launcelot's visage, he fell down in a swoon; and when he awoke, it were hard for any tongue to tell the doleful complaints that he made for his brother. "Ah! sir Launcelot," said he, "thou wert head of all Christian knights!" "And now, I dare say," said sir Bors, "that sir Launcelot, there thou liest, thou wert never matched of none earthly knight's hands; and thou wert the ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... were the wife and children! As he walked home to tell them the doleful news, he was much depressed by thoughts of them. He had paid his old debts; but he had saved nothing. He seemed to lack money, friends, and influence. He had written to a friend in Boston,—"I shall not stand upon my dignity; that must take care of itself.... Do not think anything too humble to ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... not speak at once and Jed began to whistle a doleful melody. Then the former declared, with emphasis: "I think SOME dogs are ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of melancholy little carts which, when the wheels went round, performed most doleful music. Many small fiddles, drums, and other ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... real business of the morning was over. The Pit knew it. Grossmann, obstinate, hypnotized as it were by one idea, still stood in his accustomed place on the upper edge of the Pit, and from time to time, with the same despairing gesture, emitted his doleful outcry of "'Sell twenty-five ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... doleful? One would think you had lost your best horse, or broken the sword of your ancestors on the head of a buffalo," ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... Talbot; he was of a very social disposition, and we engaged for a short time in a lively conversation. Mrs. Talbot was present, and, strange to tell, once actually laughed at some amusing remark made by her husband. He soon after left the room, and her countenance resumed its usual doleful expression as she addressed me, saying, "I wish I could have any hopes of Mr. Talbot; but I am afraid the last state of that man will be worse than the first." I questioned her as to her meaning; and she went on to tell me that her husband had once made a profession of religion; ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... the second son had come home again with his doleful tale, Boots sat and thought and thought about what had happened. After a while, however, he rose up and shook the ashes from his clothes and said that now it was his turn to have a try at winning the Princess ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... of the Bad Lands and there were no birds to sing; but crows, wheeling about a sandstone summit, flung doleful voices downward into the morning hush—the spirit of ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall shepherds make their flocks to lie down there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and ostriches shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And wolves shall cry in their castles, and jackals ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Madam!" said Lord Shrewsbury, with the distaste of middle age for underground expeditions, "is four leagues hence, and a dark, damp, doleful den, most noxious for your ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not easy to see why religion should be associated with gloom and disheartening ugliness. The long-drawn music of an Old Testament psalm is not without a certain doleful impressiveness, but the human soul needs occasional stimulus, even on Sundays, of something less lugubrious. Certain congregations hate hymns: they consider them carnal and uninspired. As for organ-music in a church, that would be praising God by ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... in strait and few, Thinly dieted on dew, I will use the world, and sift it, To a thousand humors shift it, As you spin a cherry. O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry! O all you virtues, methods, mights, Means, appliances, delights, Reputed wrongs and braggart rights, Smug routine, and things allowed, Minorities, things under cloud! Hither! take me, use me, fill me, Vein ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... within. They wept: and one, my little Anslem, cried: "Thou lookest so! Father what ails thee?" Yet I shed no tear, nor answer'd all that day Nor the next night, until another sun Came out upon the world. When a faint beam Had to our doleful prison made its way, And in four countenances I descry'd The image of my own, on either hand Through agony I bit, and they who thought I did it through desire of feeding, rose O' th' sudden, and cried, 'Father, we should grieve Far less, if thou wouldst eat of us: thou gav'st These ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... cleft in the face from chin to forelock; and all the others whom thou seest here were, when living, sowers of scandal and of schism, and therefore are they so cleft. A devil is here behind, that adjusts us so cruelly, putting again to the edge of the sword each of this crew, when we have turned the doleful road, because the wounds are closed up ere one passes again before him. But thou, who art thou, that musest on the crag, perchance to delay going to the punishment that is adjudged on thine own accusations?" [2] "Nor death hath reached him ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... midst of a sentence and hurrying on again with tenfold rapidity. The candidates for matrimony were silent, but the deacon, who was looking abstractedly out of a window on the opposite side of the church, interrupted him occasionally with doleful chanted responses. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... moment Gringalet came running up with his tail between his legs, and with a most doleful look; he was closely pursued by all the dogs of the plateau, who, instead of barking, were making a kind of howling noise, common to those that are but ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... with. I've lots of teeth to eat with, A brand new hat to bow with, A pair of fists to beat with, A rage to have a row with. No joy it brings To have indeed A lot of things One does not need. Observe my doleful-plight. For here am I without a crumb To satisfy a raging ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... said the colonel, between a groan and a growl. 'What do you call poor? For you and for me to be in this doleful street is to be ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... doleful speech the Senator climbed reluctantly into his saddle, and he and Don Estevan took the route, riding side by side, as in the morning. Behind, at a few paces distance, followed Cuchillo and Baraja, and after these the little recua of ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... have driven those brigades. The men are hastening to the rear with doleful stories. Some of them rush through Cruft's brigade. Cruft meets the advancing Rebels face to face. The din of battle has lulled for a moment, but now it rolls again louder than before. The Rebels dash on, but it is like the dashing of the waves against a ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... a line of stake-and-rider fence, with the woods on one side and the bright moonlight flooding a field of young cotton on the other. Now they heard the distant baying of house-dogs, now the doleful call of the chuck-will's-widow, and once Mary's blood turned, for an instant, almost to ice at the unearthly shriek of the hoot owl just above her head. At length they found themselves in a dim, narrow road, and ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... old woman Larue! It was mournful enough to encounter you for the only time in this world in this plight, and to have this glimpse of your wretched life on lonesome Gilead Hill. What pleasure, I wonder, had she in her life, and what pleasure have any of these hard-favored women in this doleful region? It is pitiful to think of it. Doubtless, however, the region isn't doleful, and the sentimental traveler would not have felt it so if he had not encountered ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... from off the mountains steep, The plaintive sounds, from caverns deep, Of water's dismal roar: To hear the maiden's doleful cries, That on her warrior's tomb-stone dies, Who her did ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... of the cage where sat young Geoffrey inside, on the floor. The knight had put his head down between his knees, and seemed doleful enough. ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... Annot Stein, or had even heard of her; but Annot, though at present she was rather doleful, was not long in making herself known to them, and explaining to them her own particular connexion ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... feeing employs to do their duty. Another referred to certain breaches of trust by bank officers and treasurers, which occurring within a short time of one another had startled the community. This last subject begot a somewhat doleful train of commentary and gave the lugubrious their cue. Complaints were made of our easygoing standards of morality, and our disposition not to be severe on anybody; of the decay of ideal considerations and the lack of enthusiasm for ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... red, which they account the gayest of colours. Supplies, however, often fail in this dreary journey, a want first felt by the slaves, many of whom perish with hunger and fatigue. Clapperton heard the doleful tale of a mother, who had seen her child dashed to the ground, while she herself was compelled by the lash to drag on an exhausted frame. Yet, when at all tolerably treated, they are very gay, an observation generally made in regard to slaves, but this gaiety, arising only from ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... doleful fact that impressed them was that it was still raining. A peep through the single front window with which their room was provided showed the dull leaden sky, with its infinite reservoir, from which the drops were descending in streams that bid fair ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... voice was heard—deep, solemn, awful, portentous, ominous, sorrow-laden, weird, mysterious, prophetic, obscure, gloomy, doleful, ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... history Aright; give ear, endeavour to descry The groves of giant rushes, how they grew Like demons' endlong tresses we sailed through, What mountains yawned, forests to give us vent Opened, each doleful side, yet on we went Till ... may that beetle (shake your cap) attest The springing of a land-wind from the West!" —Wherefore? Ah yes, you frolic it to-day! To-morrow, and the pageant moved away Down to the poorest tent-pole, we and you Part company: no other may pursue Eastward ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... we could hear them emitting beseeching, doleful, disgusted moans and shrieks and howls from her air-whistle. But it was too rough for any little choo-choo boat to be battling around. It was 9.30 that night before they could safely be taken off. They were a moderately good-natured lot; but that was the blear-eyed trouble with making ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... longer the better, O Beowulf the lief; In such wise hast thou fared, that unto the folks now, The folk of the Geats and the Gar-Danes withal, In common shall peace be, and strife rest appeased And the hatreds the doleful which erst they have dreed; Shall become, whiles I wield it, this wide realm of ours, Treasures common to either folk: many a one other 1860 With good things shall greet o'er the bath of the gannet; And the ring'd bark withal ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... art to warm his breast, And, straying oft, among the leafy bowers, Whilst Luna's silvery smiles upon them rest, And Earth sleeps deeply, in that beauty drest, The lonely Muckawiss[B], with doleful strain, Pities her fate—alas, she is not blest, But hopes and doubts, and dares to hope again, That Smith may love, and ne'er is free from ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... came on thicker and faster, As black just as pitch was the sky, When truly a doleful disaster Befel three poor sailors and I. Ben Buntline, Sam Shroud, and Dick Handsail, By a blast that came furious and hard, Just while we were furling the mainsail, Were every soul swept from the yard. But sailors were born for all weathers, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... mastiff and boar, much more an Englishman. And now come hither to me, my adventurous godson, and don't look in such doleful dumps. I hear you have broken ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley |
