"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and let me tell, The clock struck twelve by its last knell; Watch o'er the fire and o'er the light That no ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... remember rightly, is to be found in 'King's Anecdotes'), who leaves his house one morning for no particular reason, and though living in the next street, does not reveal his existence to his wife for twenty years; and the hero of the 'Wedding Knell,' the elderly bridegroom whose early love has jilted him, but agrees to marry him when she is an elderly widow and he an old bachelor, and who appals the marriage party by coming to the church in his shroud, with the bell tolling as for a funeral—all these bear the unmistakable ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Domestic peace would be a blessing of the past. Discontent, wrangles, fights, riots, civil discord and sabotage would be the order of the day till irrepressible rebellion had sounded the death-knell of Socialism. ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... hour of twelve, my weary soul On earth shall cease to dwell, As sign of which the chapel bell shall toll Its slow funereal knell. Then seek me, if you will, and you shall find Upon the altar stair The prison-house my soul will leave behind, ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... those men seized the Capitol at once, the fourth intended to do so. It was always the immediate object of every revolt, and the power to ring the great Patarina, the ancient bell stolen by the Romans from Viterbo, had for centuries a directing influence in Roman brawls. Its solemn knell announced the death of a Pope, or tolled the last hour of condemned criminals, and men crossed themselves as it echoed through the streets; but at the tremendous sound of its alarm, rung backward ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the elation of his heart, and the ethereal joy which flowed in all his veins, the name of Mr. Millbank sounded, something like a knell. However, this was not the time to reflect. He obeyed the hint of Edith; made the most rapid toilet that ever was consummated by a happy lover, and in a few minutes entered the drawing-room of Hellingsley, to encounter the gentleman whom he hoped by some means or other, quite inconceivable, might ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... passing bell— There's no music to a knell; All the other sounds we hear Flatter and but ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... had really found Willie Hughes in Elizabethan literature. In a wonderfully graphic account of the last days of the great Earl of Essex, his chaplain, Thomas Knell, tells us that the night before the Earl died, 'he called William Hewes, which was his musician, to play upon the virginals and to sing. "Play," said he, "my song, Will Hewes, and I will sing it ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... Sinclair emphatically, and he never did, though he saw her form grow thinner, and her cheek paler every day, and before the winter was gone heard that deep, hollow cough from her, which has so often sounded the knell of hope to the anxious heart. With the coming on of summer this cough passed away, but Mary was oppressed by great feebleness and languor—scarcely less fatal symptoms. Still she omitted none of those ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... be in your pocket! What Tyrian purple in the faded waistcoat, the vest not owed for; how glossy the well-worn hat, if it covers not the aching head of a debtor! Next, the home sweets, the outdoor recreation of the free man. The street door falls not a knell in his heart, the foot on the staircase, though he lives on the third pair, sends no spasm through his anatomy; at the rap of his door he can crow 'come in,' and his pulse still beats healthfully. See him abroad! How he returns ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... arms! Let the battle-cry rise, Like the raven's hoarse croak, through their ranks let it sound; Set their knell on the wing of each arrow that flies, Till the shouts of the free shake the mountains around; Let the cold-blooded, faint-hearted changeling now tremble, For the war-shock shall reach to his dark-centered cave, While the laurels that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... arms—and I was face to face with her, alone, with ruin between us. So with a stamp of her little foot, so with a flick of the fingers, it seems, she had broken her own image and killed love outright. There and then love died, and his funeral knell was the horrid barking laughter with which I greeted ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... five thy father lies: Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I hear ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... man! I fear my Lord Panmure is slain, Or fallen in Whiggish hands, man, Now wad ye sing this double fight, Some fell for wrang, and some for right; But mony bade the world gude-night; Then ye may tell, how pell and mell, By red claymores, and muskets knell, Wi' dying yell, the Tories fell, And Whigs to hell did flee, man. La, la, la, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... not supposed to sail for an hour yet. But the thought had hardly flashed in mind when we heard the roar of steam and clanking as the anchor chain came home. The sound traveled over water and across roofs like the knell of good luck—the clanking of ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... massively-furnished rooms within, the deep, mysterious recesses and the heavy curtains, all affected my spirits. I was silent and sad from my childhood. There was a great clock tower above, from which the hours rang dismally during the day, and tolled like a knell in the dead of night. There was no light nor life in the house, for my mother was a helpless invalid, and my father had grown melancholy in his long task of caring for her. He was a thin, dark man, with sad eyes; kind, I think, but silent and unhappy. Next to my mother, I believe ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... tell, by doleful knell; Lightnings and thunder I break asunder; On Sabbath all to church I call; The sleepy head, I raise from bed; The winds so fierce I do disperse; Men's cruel rage, ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... in the smithy, and it was a sore pull from the Guildhall. Jasper presently recovered enough to walk with a good deal of support. When he was laid on the bed he fell unto an exhausted sleep, while Stephen kneeling, as the strokes of the knell smote on his ear, prayed—as he had never prayed before—for his comrade, for his enemy, and for all the unhappy boys who were being led to their death wherever ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... is Fancy bred, Or in the heart, or in the head? How begot, how nourished? It is engendered in the eyes With gazing fed, And Fancy dies in the cradle where it lies. Let us all ring Fancy's knell. I'll begin it—ding, ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... of the silver bell of the clock seemed to smite on our hearts like a knell of doom. ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... church bell Tolls forth its death knell, Mournfully to tell The hour has come at last, In heavy sadness past, To bury the dead, And in silence bid. Then the mourners go, All mournfully slow, Every heart beating low The march of the dead. All with soft and gentle tread Unto the sepulchre sped, ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... never touched the grand instrument in the drawing-room, and when asked to do so and sing, she answered, "I can't; I can't. It would bring it all back and shake up the bottle. I hate the memory of it when I sang to the crowd and they applauded. I hear them now; it is baby's death knell. I can never sing again as ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... vacation. In fact there is only one on record. In 1872, his church voted a vacation of six weeks. True to his Indian nature, he planned a deer hunt. He turned his footsteps to the wilds of the Running Water (Niobrara River), where his heart grew young and his rifle cracked the death-knell of the deer and antelope. One evening, in the track of the hostile Sioux and Pawnees, he found himself near a camp of the savage Sicaugu. He was weak and alone. They ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... of the frog, By the howling of the dog, By the crying of the hog Against the storm arising; By the evening curfew bell, By the doleful dying knell, O let this my direful ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... of grief and suspense among anxious and at length despairing relations at home, around many a cheerless hearth, and in many a darkened chamber, and the sadly frequent notice in the obituaries of all our public journals, so significant of the disaster, and which must have rung so heavy a knell to so many affectionate hearts, 'Killed in the Khyber Pass.' To find passages of parallel calamity in the history of at least civilised countries, we have to ascend to the times of the Roman empire during its period of decline and disaster, when one ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Lord Elmwood in the morning"—[never again to see him after this evening,] were like the knell of death to Miss Milner. She felt the symptoms of fainting, and eagerly snatched a glass of water, which the servant was holding to Sandford, who had called for it, and drank it off;—as she returned the glass to the servant, she began to apologize to Mr. ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... arisen so far as to escape slavery forever. Debt peonage could be fastened on part of the rural South and was; but even here the new Negro landholder appeared. Thus despite everything the Fifteenth Amendment, and that alone, struck the death knell of slavery. ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... suddenly returned to her. What news did Jack Elliott bring? Lines from an old poem flashed unbidden into her mind—"there was a sound of revelry by night"—"Hush! Hark! A deep sound strikes like a rising knell"—why should she think of that now? Why didn't Jack Elliott speak—if he had anything to tell? Why did he just stand ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to some end of Fate, unseen, unguessed, Are these wild throbbings of my heart and breast? Yea, of some doom they tell? Each pulse, a knell. Lief, lief I were, that all To unfulfilment's ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... lo'ed me as I lo'e you, I wad ring my ain deid knell; My sel' wad vanish, shot through and through By the shine o' your sunny sel'. By the shine o' your sunny sel', By the licht aneath your broo, I wad dee to mysel', and ring my bell, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... glance, yes," studied Peters. "But, on the other hand, it would be the death knell of my post-card business, and I'm calculating to go back to Baldpate next summer and take it up again. No, I'm afraid I can't let it be generally known that I've quit living in a shack on the mountain for love of somebody ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... that proviso was interrupted for three administrations, but justice moved steadily onward. In the news that the men of California had chosen freedom, Calhoun heard the knell of parting slavery, and on his death-bed he counselled secession. Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison had died despairing of the abolition of slavery; Calhoun died in despair at the growth of freedom. His system rushed irresistibly to its natural development. ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... away. Laud had his revenge; a drummer who had joined in the attack was racked mercilessly, and then hanged and quartered. But retaliation like this was useless. The gathering of the Long Parliament sounded the knell of the sturdy little minister who had ridden England so hard. At the close of October he is in his upper study—it is one of the pleasant scholarly touches that redeem so much in his life—"to see some manuscripts which I was sending to Oxford. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... godly prayers, And quiet rest did from her fly; She to her friends full oft declares, She could not live if he did die: Thus she continued till the bell, Began to sound his fatal knell. ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... of potent change. So may Death's pale and lingering weeds entwine These hollow globes that still unhindered range Through Heaven. O famished Time! thy jaws devour The suns and slumbers of the broken spheres, Whose knell young stars have heard, whose rounded hour Strikes, and is buried in thy bourneless years. They glow like fevered jewels in the deeps, Like sullen embers in remorseless Night, Like flowers with'ring when the Winter creeps With iron dews their little lives to blight. ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... morbidness. In "The White Old Maid" an indefinable horror, giving the tale a certain shapelessness, crowds out the compensating brightness which in most cases is not wanting; perhaps, too, "The Ambitious Guest" leaves one with too hopeless a downfall at the end; and "The Wedding Knell" cannot escape a suspicion of disagreeable gloom. But these extremes are not frequent. The wonder is that Hawthorne's mind could so often and so airily soar above the shadows that at this time hung about him; that he should nearly always suggest ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... pathos, and of gold, Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling,—no Method 's more sure at moments to take hold Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow More tender, as we every day behold, Than that all-softening, overpowering knell, The tocsin of ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... that Shakespeare was a man; that he had moods, that he made mistakes, and, above all, that he knew his art was an art and not an attribute of deity. That is what is the matter with the Germans; they cannot "ring fancy's knell"; their knells have no gaiety. The phrase of Hamlet about "holding the mirror up to nature" is always quoted by such earnest critics as meaning that art is nothing if not realistic. But it really means (or at least its author really thought) that art is nothing ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... troubled, that she could not sink away into a quiet slumber until long after midnight. In the morning she felt no better, and, as church time approached, her heart beat more heavily in her bosom. Finally, the nine o'clock bell rang, and every stroke seemed like a knell. At last the hour for assembling came, and Aunt Mary, cast down in heart, repaired to the meeting-house. The pew of Mrs. Tompkins was just in front of Aunt Mary's, but that lady did not turn around and smile and give her ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... docile, humble, full of attention. And when the body of Mademoiselle Fifi, carried by soldiers, preceded, surrounded and followed by soldiers, who marched with loaded rifles, left the Chateau d'Urville, on the way to the cemetery, for the first time the bell sounded the knell in a gay tone, as if a friendly ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... day when he sat beside her in the tiny boudoir of the Square du Roule, and the heavy foot fall of Heron and his bloodhounds broke in on their first kiss, down to this hour which he believed struck his own death-knell, his love for her had brought more tears to her dear eyes than smiles to ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... morn, as high The southern west its blast released, And drown'd in floods the sky— Ah woe! was gone the star that shone, Nor left a visage dry For her, who won as win could none The people's love so well. O, welaway! the dirging lay That rung from Moy its knell; Alas, the hue, where orbs of blue, With roses wont to dwell! How can we think, nor swooning sink, To earth them ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... in the centre of a little plot of ground, which, but for the green mounds with which it was studded, might have passed for a lovely meadow. I fancied that the old clanking bell which was now summoning the congregation together, would seem less terrible when it rung out the knell of a departed soul, than I had ever deemed possible before—that the sound would tell only of a welcome to calmness and rest, amidst the most peaceful and ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... seeking help, thy wail Rose sadder than the sound of a death knell; And thus the last ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... car at all hours of the day and night. She was not only sincerely anxious to serve, but she knew, and sheltered girls all over the land knew,—to say nothing of the younger married women—that this was the beginning of their real independence, the knell of the old order. They were freed. Even the reenforced concrete minds of the last generation imperceptibly crumbled and were as imperceptibly ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... shrub or a flower in it, frightful to behold. On the open iron gate that led into this inclosure was a new brass plate, with 'Sanitarium' inscribed on it in great black letters. The bell, when the cabman rang it, pealed through the empty house like a knell; and the pallid, withered old man-servant in black who answered the door looked as if he had stepped up out of his grave to perform that service. He let out on me a smell of damp plaster and new varnish; and he let in ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... happier times" rang through Frank like a death-knell, for he grasped what his father meant, and tried to speak some words of comfort, but they would not come. Even if they had, they would have been drowned by a tremendous cheer which arose from the ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... It was the imminent danger only to the Cause that made his heart sink in that seemingly fateful hour. When we heard in the malignant and triumphant roar of the Rebel cannon in our rear what might be the death-knell of the last great experiment of civilized men to establish among the nations of the world a united republic, freed from the curse of pampered kings and selfish, grasping aristocrats—it was in that moment, in his simple language, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... medicine, and acted accordingly. They wandered day and night from one tavern to another, and feasted without moderation or bounds. In this way they endeavored to avoid all contact with the sick, and abandoned their houses and property to chance, like men whose death-knell had already tolled. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... early morning was that, in the course of the night, he had breathed his last; and all day the bells of all the churches round were answering one another with the slow, swinging, melancholy notes of the knell. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... whose eyes were almost starting from his head, "your words are the knell of poetry, philosophy, and prose—especially of prose. They are the grave of history, which, as you know, is made up of the wars and intrigues which have originated in the brains of public men. If your sordid views were true, how ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... universe may be, it is more nearly comprehended now than in Jesus' time. Twentieth century events are more dependable in forming our philosophy of life than those of the first century. The failure to grasp this fact is the death knell of orthodox religion. Every existing religious sect has founded its spirituality upon events supposed to have occurred in the past. Christianity depends upon the direct creation, fall of man and life of an atoning ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... my death-knell?" he asked wearily. "Have I, then, died already, and is it death that is lying so heavily ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... sets himself to prove runs through all life. 'All is vanity.' That principle may even be exemplified in worship, and the obscure verse 7 which closes the section about the faults of worship seems to be equivalent to the more familiar close which rings the knell of so many of men's pursuits in this book, 'This also is vanity.' It stands in the usual form ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... decided. He advanced towards the angle, and summoning all his resolution, attacked the ground with the pickaxe. At the fifth or sixth blow the pickaxe struck against an iron substance. Never did funeral knell, never did alarm-bell, produce a greater effect on the hearer. Had Dantes found nothing he could not have become more ghastly pale. He again struck his pickaxe into the earth, and encountered the same resistance, but not the same sound. "It is a casket of wood bound with iron," ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... let me bless the region ere I go. Poor house, sad comrade of my watch, farewell! Ye nymphs of meadows where soft waters flow Thou ocean headland, pealing thy deep knell, Where oft within my cavern as I lay My hair was moist with dashing south-wind's spray, And ofttimes came from Hermes' foreland high Sad replication of my storm-vext cry; Ye fountains and thou Lycian water sweet,— I never thought to leave you, yet my feet Are turning ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... but in his words the deep agony of a mortal struggle rang strangely—the knell of the old life and the birth-chime of the new. One by one, the words he had never thought to speak fell from his lips, distinctly; the oracle of the heart answered the great question of ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... Everything became confused, until at last he could recognize himself no longer, in the midst of the imaginary troubles which agitated his disturbed organism. And every evening the conclusion was the same, the same knell sounded in his brain—heredity, appalling heredity, the fear of ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... silence stole o'er those youthful brows of mirth, They knew she spoke of the Bridegroom King—the Lord of Heaven and earth; And e'er fleet time of another year had sounded the passing knell, The maiden Clare and her Bridegroom fair were wedded ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... she weeps Troy's painted woes: For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell, Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; Then little strength rings out the doleful knell: So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow; She lends them words, and she ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Highland clans, man! I fear my Lord Panmure is slain, Or fallen in Whiggish hands, man: Now wad ye sing this double fight, Some fell for wrang, and some for right; And mony bade the world guid-night; Then ye may tell, how pell and mell, By red claymores, and muskets' knell, Wi' dying yell, the Tories fell, And Whigs to hell ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... conquered the masses then thus far, use every effort to destroy this experiment of ours and perpetuate thereby their own existence? If we continue to succeed, our lesson to the world is the death-knell of monarchy and imperial power. Foreign powers and priestly powers are making this effort. And if we are doomed to fail, it will be by the DISUNION their emissaries here endeavor to produce. With us, again, is religious influence exerted. Servitude is recognised and practised in the south. ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... mother's knee, Do you remember dear what night this is? Look back at last St. John's day, then at this, You've often wondered why upon that night, When you my guide led from the gloom to light; That when you gave the name Adair it seemed, To him who heard it, as if he had dreamed. Like a dim funeral knell from some old chime, Heard years ago, in some far distant clime, Ethel, we should speak kindly of the dead, Unable to defend themselves, their spirits fled To worlds unknown to us, we cannot see The homes they occupy, the destiny It pleases God to give them, this we know ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... it abides. It is peculiarly suited to the humanities of every race, clime, and condition; there is no limit to its expansive adaptability. It is in a special manner voracious in the destruction of other languages; wherever it goes, it sounds the death-knell of all the rest. ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... it is said, sounded like a knell in Sir Robert's ear, and the truth was manifest to him. But unwilling to make a public example of his own wife, he adopted a somewhat unique method of vengeance, and publicly proclaimed that as he could not bestow the estate on his son while alive, he would spend it upon him when dead. Accordingly, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... disaster are always interposed? Unsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of life ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding when the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... politics must be committed, perpetrated, and accomplished in secret. This strange traditional notion will die hard, but some time it will have to die, and at the moment of its death excellent and sincere persons will be convinced that the knell of the British Empire has sounded. The knell of the British Empire has frequently sounded. It sounded when capital punishment was abolished for sheep-stealing, when the great reform bill was passed, when purchase was abolished in the army, when ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... in Petrograd and Moscow sounded, we are told, the death knell of autocracy in Berlin and Vienna. The clarion tones that echoed through the Crimea and Siberia, albeit to the ear of the masses muffled in the Schwarzwald and along the shores of the North Sea, and up and down the Danube and the Rhine, yet conveyed a ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... compassionate nurse. "I feared it would be so. I saw it coming this last week; and a third stroke is a death-knell—that's certain! But it will be a blessed escape for the poor dear; so don't take on, Mr. Morris" (this was her nearest approach to saying "Maurice"). "You'll need all your spirit to get along with the old lady; though, if she were the north pole itself, I should ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... the Curfew has taken its toll from the knell of parting day, and darkness reigns supreme, they will urge on their wild career, illuminated by the dim religious light of a small ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... for those less blest than they. These are the men who serve the city in times of peace, save it in times of war, deserve the highest honors in its gift, and leave behind them a record that keeps their memories green. For such an one we lately tolled a knell, my brothers; and as our united voices pealed over the city, in all grateful hearts, sweeter and more solemn than any chime, rung the words ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... yielded to you and me and others; not a right in any sense, only a concession! Mr. President, I do not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On the contrary, I believe that whenever you establish that doctrine, whenever you crystallize that idea in the public mind of this country, you ring the death-knell ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Shakespeare is described in the Burial Register as "a Player," to which the Monthly Account adds that he was "buried in the church with a forenoon knell of the great bell," costing 20s. (Vide ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... the word is spoken— Mourn, for the knell hath knoll'd— The master chord is broken, And the master's hand is cold! Romance hath lost her minstrel, No more his magic strain Shall throw a sweeter spell around, The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... and Etheldrida, whom he loves. It was in my mind that all the good folk would come in their best array, and that so we should sing a great 'Te Deum' for the happiness of all. And indeed there was a voice from the belfry—but it was of the great bell alone, as of a knell for the dead. And indeed it seemed that the people came—but they came softly and weeping, and they were clad all in black. And then they sang—but it was ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... the twilight deepened, waking at intervals in the gloomy stillness, as if from sleep. It filled the room every now and then with a sad, sighing sound, then died out slowly, again to swell, again to fall, sad as the tolling of a funeral knell. He lay listening to it when I went to him, with parted lips and strange solemnity of face. Too heart-broken for speech, I knelt beside him with a stifled moan. 'Magsie,' (that was his pet name for me,) 'I thought it was your notion, dear, but there is a voice in the wind to-night, and it is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sometimes so full of joyous meaning and so surrounded with associations of mirth and festivity, now rang in Brooke's ears with a sound as harsh and terrible as that of a death-knell. It was the word which he dreaded more than all others to hear from the lips of Lopez. His heart sank within him, and he knew not what to think, or where to turn for hope. That Talbot would refuse to perform this ceremony he felt convinced, but what would be the consequences of ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... a neighboring steeple was striking the ninth hour, and the old man paused in his muttering and sat counting the strokes as the iron tongue pealed them forth; counting them in his fear as if each stroke was a knell, and so indeed to him it was, and many of the chimes we listen carelessly to, would be knells to us, if we knew what would happen twixt them and their ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... very far from the truth. The matter really was a new line, invented by M. Jupille, cast a little further than an ordinary one, and rigged up with a float like a raft, carrying a little clapper. The fish rang their own knell as they took ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... were something about 'the curfew tolling the knell of parting day,' but I can never ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... river that he loved so well Like a full heart is awed to calm, The winter air that wafts his knell Is fragrant with ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... love will everywhere spring up spontaneously; that there is no entering a heart by force, and that every soul is free to name its conqueror; therefore I should have no reason to complain, if you had spoken to me without dissembling; you would then have sounded the death-knell of my hope; but my heart could have blamed fortune alone. But to see my love encouraged by a deceitful avowal on your part, is so treacherous and perfidious an action, that it cannot meet with too great a punishment; I can allow my resentment to do anything. No, no, after such an outrage, ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... which was bearing him away so swiftly now: she strained her ears, vaguely hoping to catch one last, lingering echo of his voice. But all was silence, save that monotonous clapper, which seemed to beat against her heart like a rhythmic knell of death. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... principal articles of production and consumption, such as tea, and, worst symptom of all, the eunuchs again became supreme in the palace. Although the dynasty survived for another century, it was clear that its knell was sounded before Tetsong died. Under his grandson Hientsong the mischief that had been done became more clearly apparent. Although he enjoyed some military successes, his reign on the whole was unfortunate, and he was poisoned by ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... front of Sebastopol by the allied fleets on 17 October, 1854, was the event that brought home to the minds of even the most conservative the necessity of a great change in warship construction. It rang the knell of the old wooden walls, and led to the ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... Milan, and the Duke of Lorraine to the throne of Naples. The move was successful as regards Ludovico of Milan; he withdrew from the alliance, and much against the wish of the other allies the peace of Bagnolo was concluded in August, 1484. To Sixtus the news came as the knell of his dearest hopes. He gave way to one wild outburst of passion, in which he cursed all who had been engaged in making peace, then apoplexy supervened, and within a few hours he was a corpse. He was succeeded by Cardinal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Miser's face Assumed the cast of death's worst lineaments. His skinny jaws fell down upon his breast; He tried to speak, but his dried tongue refused Its utterance, and cluck'd upon the gum. His heart-pipes whistled with a crannell'd sound; His knell-knees plaited, and his every bone Seem'd out of joint. He raved—he cursed—he wept— But payment he refused. I have my bond, Not yet a fortnight old, and shall be paid. It broke the Miser's heart. He ate no more, Nor drank, nor spake, but groan'd until he died; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... sun—the shades of evening fell, The mournful night-wind sung their funeral knell; And the same day beheld their warriors dead, Their sovereign ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... summons imaginary terrors around it. Cain fled when no one pursued. Nero heard invisible trumpets ringing his death-knell around the tomb of his mother. How often has the mountain bandit, whose hand trembled not at murder, shuddered with fear, as he hastened through the forest, at the sound of a branch waving in the wind, or felt his hair stand erect with terror on beholding a distant ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... and she half rose, but sank back as if the effort exhausted her. There was a struggle for breath, and a low hollow cough. Was it possible that I had been mistaken, and that in that cough was heard the warning knell of the most insidious enemy ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hands their knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is sung: There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay, And Freedom shall awhile repair To ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... Even, undaunted Lochiel, Place thy targe on thy shoulder and burnish thy steel! Rough Keppoch, give breath to thy bugle's bold swell, Till far Coryarrick resound to the knell! ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Adrian had been speaking seriously, but at this point his whimsical mood seized him. He went on:—"You don't mean to say, I hope, that you are going to make meaning a sine qua non in theories? It would be the death-knell of speculation." ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... His hands, and rest! Thy Lord hath fathomed every earthly woe; With patient feet Earth's thorniest pathway pressed, And left the tomb with Heaven's light aglow;— For, what them seest not now, some other day, In lands unreached by sorrow's dreary knell, Thou in His light shalt read, and meekly say, "E'en so, dear Lord, Thou ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... instead of seeing your father, I confronted a haggard, death-stricken young woman sitting up in bed, her great eyes bright with pain, her lips as white as her hollow cheeks, and her long, black hair streaming over the pillow. The very sight of her struck a knell to the little hope I had of soothing your father's sick bed and forgiving him if he had done me ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Saturday Review and his old friend Punch for 1868. Then he goes over African travelers and their achievements, real and supposed. He returns again to the achievements of ladies, and praises Miss Tinne and other women. "The death-knell of American slavery was rung by a woman's hand. We great he-beasts say Mrs. Stowe exaggerated. From what I have seen of slavery I say exaggeration is a simple impossibility. I go with the sailor who, on seeing ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... notice, monsieur, in Beethoven's Symphony in A, that knell which ever and ever comes back and beats upon your heart? Yes, I see very well, you feel as I do, music is a communion—Beethoven, ah, me! how sad and sweet it is to be two to understand him ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... of the consternation caused by these words, the clock on the mantel behind his back rang out the hour. It was but a double stroke, but that meant two hours after midnight and had the effect of a knell in the hearts ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... sofa, but not to sleep. Hour after hour passed onward towards eternity. One, two, three, spoke out the loud voice of Time, and it sounded in the ears of the watcher like his knell. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... monarchs of earth! was your banquet of power, But the tocsin has burst on your festival hour— 'Tis your knell that it rings! To the popular tiger a prey is decreed, And the maw of Republican hunger will feed On ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... follow. They would not learn the lesson, either by destruction or by love. They would not follow the example either from fear or from admiration. Then their hour struck on the bell of Heaven, the knell of the Kshattriya caste. He came to sweep away that caste and to leave only scattered remnants of it, dotted over the Indian soil. It had been the sword of India, the iron wall that ringed her round. He came to shiver that wall into pieces, ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... two words. He Waited! And his waiting sounded the death-knell of a thousand boyhood hopes. HE WAITED!! And health slowly took wings and flew away. HE WAITED!! And the insidious little Devil-of-Fear piece by piece tore down his will-power, sapped his power-of-concentration. HE WAITED!! ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... the loved survivors tell How nought from death could save, Till every sound appears a knell, And every spot ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... a veil of universal mourning over the secret sentiments which his death inspired to all parties. Whilst the various belfries tolled his knell, and minute guns were fired; whilst, in a ceremony that had assembled two hundred thousand spectators, they awarded to a citizen the funeral obsequies of a monarch; whilst the Pantheon, to which they conveyed his remains, seemed scarcely a ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... over the shrouded Still form of the mother and wife; Very lonely the way seems, and clouded, As he looks down the vista of life. With the sweet Christmas chimes there is blended The knell for a life that is done, And he knows that his joys are all ended And his ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... drear, distressing As the knell Of all hopes worth possessing!' . . . —What befell Seemed linked with me, but ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... snow-bound North to the Australasian seas Surges the solemn lament—O, shall it not come, A glimpse of that mightier union of all mankind? Now, though our eyes, as they gaze on the vision, grow blind, Now, while the world is all one funeral knell, And the mournful cannon thunder his great farewell, Now, while the bells of a thousand cities toll, Remember, O England, remember the ageless goal, Rally the slumbering faith in the depths of thy soul, Lift up thine eyes to the Kingdom for which he ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... stability and independence. It is not stupidity! It is that the Boer realizes at least one of the inevitable consequences of reform—that the ignorant and incapable must go under. Reform is the death-knell of his oligarchy, and therefore a danger to the independence of the State—as he sees it. Until the European people who have lately become so deeply concerned in Transvaal affairs realize how widely divergent are the two interpretations of 'Independence,' they will not ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... A knell from the church bell broke harshly on these youthful thoughts. Another! Again! It was tolling for the funeral service. A group of humble mourners entered the gate: wearing white favours; for the corpse was young. They stood uncovered by a grave; and there was a mother—a ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... shall ring the sacring bell, Keep your hours, and tell your knell, Rise at midnight at your matins, Read your Psalter, sing your latins, And when your blood shall kindle pleasure, Scourge your ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... adverse, Battle to seek, canter ye now ahead!" Carries the ensign Amboires of Oluferne; Pagans cry out, by Preciuse they swear. And the Franks say: "Great hurt this day you'll get!" And very loud "Monjoie!" they cry again. That Emperour has bid them sound trumpets; And the olifant sounds over all its knell. The pagans say: "Carlun's people are fair. Battle we'll have, bitter and ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... did throb, And thus she heard their burden go, "Marry, mar-marry, mar-Guillot!" Bells were not then left to hang idle: A week,—and they rang for her bridal But, woe the while, they might as well Have rung the poor dame's parting knell. The rosy dimples left her cheek. She lost her beauties plump and sleek, For Guillot oftener kick'd than kiss'd, And back'd his orders with his fist, Proving by deeds as well as words, That servants make ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... country life. With a penetrative pathos, which puts him in the same rank with the masters of the sentiment of pity in literature, with Meinhold and Victor Hugo, he collects all the traces of vivid excitement which were to be found in that pastoral world—the girl who rung her father's knell; the unborn infant feeling about its mother's heart; the instinctive touches of children; the sorrows of the wild creatures, even—their home-sickness, their strange yearnings; the tales of passionate regret that hang [53] by a ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... the King and implores him to give him a ship that he may go back to his own country and family. These words fall like a knell upon the heart of Nausikaa; she is led out ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... Adoniram Judson, who kindled the lights of salvation amid the darkness of Burmah?—or of Mrs. Hemans, who poured out her holy soul in words which will forever be associated with hunter's horn, and captive's chain, and bridal hour, and lute's throb, and curfew's knell at the dying day?—and scores and hundreds of women, unknown on earth, who have given water to the thirsty, and bread to the hungry, and medicine to the sick, and smiles to the discouraged—their footsteps heard along dark lane and in government hospital, and in almshouse ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... out both men turned to look their last on the martyrs. The death knell which had rung in the ears of the Christians, was to them the voice of God. Stern, dark visages of men and the sweet, submissive faces of women were uplifted with rapt attention. A light seemed to shine from these faces as if the contemplation ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... the liberals on the mainland, and to guarantee the Venetian territories, leaving behind troops enough both to secure those ends and to guard his own communications. If these should be tampered with, he warned the senate that the knell of Venetian independence would toll forthwith. No one can tell what would have been in store for the proud city if she had chosen the alternative, not of neutrality, but of an alliance with France. Bonaparte always made his plan in two ways, and it is probable that her ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... and as his footsteps sounded on the stair she felt as if she were doomed and hearing her own death-knell. What had she done? What would he do now? She stood there a dissonance of despair, and when the lower door clicked moved her hand out of the agony ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... painfully acute, that the latent feeling of racial hatred was only held in check by the power of an iron will, and that like a boiling volcano it needed but the faintest extra aggravation to make it burst forth and overwhelm its surroundings. The man's words fell on his ears like the knell of doom, and ere he replied he braced himself for the ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... are supposed, as Mr. Darwin supposed them, to be inheritable at all. Darwinians have at length woke up to the dilemma in which they are placed by the manner in which Mr. Darwin tried to sit on the two stools of use and disuse, and natural selection of accidental variations, at the same time. The knell of Charles-Darwinism is rung in Mr. Wallace's present book, and in the general perception on the part of biologists that we must either assign to use and disuse such a predominant share in modification as to make it the feature ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... name of Nola, daughter of Menecreta, amongst those whom the State doth not guarantee for skill, health or condition," rejoined the praefect quietly, and his rough voice, scarcely raised above its ordinary pitch, seemed to ring a death-knell ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... fairy hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall awhile repair, To ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... smoke. There was Bordeaux wine at luncheon and dinner, Martinique and Tahitian rum and absinthe between meals. The ship's bell was struck by the steersman every half hour, and McHenry made it the knell of an ounce. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... fools of such contingencies? 35 And do we waste in blind misgivings thus The hours when we should act? Then wind and thunder, Which seemed to howl his knell, is the loud laughter With which Heaven mocks our weakness! I henceforth Will ne'er repent of aught designed or done ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... hail the welcome sight. Drums beat to arms, the church bells clanged, and an immense shout arose that was re-echoed from the Plains of Abraham across the river to the Isle of Orleans. It was the acclamation of deliverance for the besieged, the knell of final defeat for the besiegers. The frigate was well named the Surprise, and she carried on board two companies of the 29th regiment with some marines, the whole amounting to two hundred men, who were ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... as he was passing by did not prevent Justice Hackett from fining the delinquent ten dollars and costs, which made sad havoc with the poor wife's bank account. So Margaret's married life wore on, and all went merry as a funeral knell. ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... doff thy mortal weed, Mary Mother be thy speed, Saints to help thee at thy need;— Hark! the knell is ringing. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... early September of 1651, the year that tolled the knell of royalty in England. In all directions from the fatal field of Worcester panic-stricken fugitives were flying; in all directions blood-craving victors were pursuing. Charles I. had lost his head for his blind obstinacy, two years before. Charles II., crowned king by the Scotch, had made a ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... vibrations, to the brain of the sick man, and seemed to him, in the gathering excitement of this fearful hour, to grow louder and louder, till each tick sounded to his sharpened sense like the vibrations of a bell, and seemed to be the funeral knell of his destiny; sounding thus to his ears, solemnly, fatefully, bodingly; pealing forth thus with every sound the announcement that second after second out of those few minutes of time which were still left him had passed away from him forever. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Just at that moment the tolling bell rang out on the air. Its tones fell sadly on the ear of a tall, beautiful girl, who was impatiently pacing the deck, and looking anxiously in the direction of the city. The knell was repeated, and she murmured, "Oh, what if that should be for Richard!" The thought overpowered her, and sitting down on a seat near her ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... firing, several times repeated—that signal that they are unable to answer, or unable to avail themselves of its friendly warning. Situated as they are, it seems sounding a farewell salute—or it may be their death knell. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... least afraid, and only thought, even when those doleful words seemed to ring like a knell through the roar of the waves, "Tom will be saved if I reach the shore, and if I don't, Pirate is sure to land and make his way to a house at once. That will tell as well ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... low standard of intelligence. The sense of their own rescue had overcome the poignancy of grief. I envied them their stolidity, which I explained to my own mind by the rush of the engulfing waters still swirling and singing knell of ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... of a hopeless exclusion settles down on these sad five, standing, huddled together, at the door, with the extinguished lamps hanging in their despairing hands. 'Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now.' The wedding bell has become a funeral knell. They were not the enemies of the bridegroom, they thought themselves his friends. They let life ebb without securing the one thing needful, and the neglect was irremediable. There is a tragedy underlying ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and wept:—the dark and azure well Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears, And every little circlet where they fell Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres And intertangled lines of light:—a knell 245 Of sobbing voices came upon her ears From those departing Forms, o'er the serene Of the white streams and ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... not receiving; asking, not answer." The words reverberated through her consciousness like a funeral knell. She dropped the stained lily and ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... loathing escaped her lips and with a jerk she freed her skirt from his clutch. Then she ran quickly up the stairs. Outside the door of her own room on the first landing she paused for one minute, and from out of the gloom her voice came to him like the knell ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... and is, of infinite importance to mankind. That fact is the death-knell of superstition; it gives liberty to every soul, annihilates fear, and ushers ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange, Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark, now I ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... truly, to mar such innocent pleasures! Shame on them! The funeral knell that tolled over your father's grave must still ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... public exposure was involved an additional complication of guilt. Perez was not the only favoured votary of the versatile siren. His rival, or rather his partner, was—Philip of Spain! The revelation of promiscuous worship, threatened by Escovedo, sounded like a knell to Perez and the princess. Was it a mad defiance, or a profound prescience, of the consequences, which, when Escovedo, stung on one occasion beyond forbearance by the demonstration of iniquity which Othello in ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... naught left but to wait quietly for the end. There was an ignobleness in it—a self-absorption which was almost dishonour. And in this way he had erred as far as any stripling with blooming cheeks and girlish love-locks who thought that nine and twenty struck the knell of love and life. 'Twas thoughts like these that were passing through his mind as they were driven through the darkness—at least they were the thoughts upon the surface of his mind, while below them surged a torrent into whose darkness he ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... it sacrilege to touch. Now, where are the successors to my name? What bring they to fill out a poet's fame? Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age; Scarce living to be christened on the stage! For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense, That tolls the knell for their departed sense. Dulness might thrive in any trade but this: 'Twould recommend to some fat benefice. Dulness, that in a playhouse meets disgrace, Might meet with reverence, in its proper place. The fulsome ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... luckless day it thus befell— About their surly jailer's wonted hour To bring them food, he enter'd not their cell, But bolted fast their prison's outer door. This on the County's heart rang like a knell— Hope was excluded from this grizzly tow'r. Speechless he sat, despair forbade to rave— This hold was now their dungeon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... from?" The words fell slowly from Mrs. Tobin's lips, and to the two culprits they sounded like the knell of doom. She waited for some response, but none came. "Is it possible that you have had a woman in this cabin," she continued. "Can ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... world, iv. 2; nay, better never have been born at all, vi. 3. For all is vanity: that is the beginning of the matter, i. 2, it is no less the end, xii. 8. Over every effort and aspiration is wrung this fearful knell. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... commanding officer gave orders for all the monkeys to be taken up, but the order was not carried out and he had the doctor chloroform the two large ones and throw them overboard. That made the crew very mad and sounded the death knell to all ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... of a race renowned of old, Whose war-cry oft has waked the battle-swell, Since first distinguished in the onset bold, Wild sounding when the Roman rampart fell! By Wallace' side it rung the Southron's knell, Alderne, Kilsythe, and Tibber owned its fame, Tummell's rude pass can of its terrors tell, But ne'er from prouder field arose the name Than when wild Ronda learned the conquering shout ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... the finish of the ceremony. "All over! All over!" they seemed to wail, and in the quaint music there seemed a sense of infinite disillusion, of infinite rest; a winding-up, a conclusion, things over and done with, a fever subsided, a toil completed, a clamor abated, a farewell knell, a little folding of the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... ripping sound which had such a sinister meaning. Then followed a terrific explosion. The final and dreadful bombardment of Ypres had begun. At intervals of ten minutes the huge seventeen-inch shells fell, sounding the death knell ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... wind; Forms of pale and pensive loveliness, with eyes like pensile stars, Such as never yet were beaming 'mid this world's discordant jars. And their whispers wild, unearthly, unutterable, fell like a harp-string's dying echo, or a fair young spirit's knell, On my soul amid the shadows of my native forest trees, Rustling melancholy, lowly, in the wailing of the breeze, Till, unknowing pain or agony, I've wept such blissful tears As shall never, never flow ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... the knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... despair! This, trembling, doubts if aught be ill or well; And that cries, "Fair is foul and foul is fair;" And this cries, "Forward, though I cannot tell Whither, and all too surely all things die;" And that sighs, "Rest, then, sleep and take thine ease." One sings his country and one rings its knell, One hymns mankind, one dwarfs them with the sky. O, Britain, let thy soul Once more command the whole, Once more command the ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... of wounded in our wards increased daily. Sick men poured into the hospital. Often they came too late, having remained at the post of duty until fever had sapped the springs of life or the rattling breath sounded the knell of hope, marking too surely that fatal disease, double pneumonia. Awestruck I watched the fierce battle for life, the awful agony, trying vainly every means of relief, lingering to witness struggles which wrung my heart, because I could not resist the appealing ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... declines, there is again a gradual reviving, and when the vesper bell rings out his sinking knell, all nature seems to rejoice that the tyrant of the day has fallen. Now begins the bustle of enjoyment, when the citizens pour forth to breathe the evening air, and revel away the brief twilight in the walks and gardens of the ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... and die finally out, and still walks on in the strange coolness and silence and between the crisp lights and shadows of the moonlit woods, until suddenly the bell rings out the hour from far-away Chailly, and he starts to find himself alone. No surf-bell on forlorn and perilous shores, no passing knell over the busy market-place, can speak with a more heavy and disconsolate tongue to human ears. Each stroke calls up a host of ghostly reverberations in his mind. And as he stands rooted, it has grown once more so ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would have conducted, them in a different direction, but not one so peculiarly perilous. From this they made a turn to the left into a lane that would have led them back again to a little village, through which they had already passed, the bell of which was already sounding their death-knell. The constabulary, by turning into the narrow lane at the left, unconsciously approached the very ambush into which the people, or rather their more disciplined leaders, had intended to decoy them. This lane was enclosed ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... war is mostly the purifying fire in a nation's existence. It is to be hoped that this great convulsion will purify the free States by sounding the death-knell of these small intriguing politicians. The American people at large will acquire earnestness, knowledge of men, and clear insight into its own affairs. Tricky politicians will be discarded, and true ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... in the country to toll the church bell upon occasions of death of any one in the township or parish. A few strokes are rung by way of drawing attention; these are followed after a little pause by a single one if the knell is for a man, or two for a woman. Then another short pause. Then follows the number of years the person has lived, told in short, rather slow strokes, as one would count them up. After pausing once more the tolling begins, and is kept up for some time; the strokes following in slow and sad succession, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... defence. The holiday was duly called forth; houses, where funeral hatchments for murdered inmates had been perpetually suspended, were decked with garlands; the bells, which had hardly once omitted their daily knell for the victims of an incredible cruelty, now rang their merriest peals; and in the very square where so lately Egmont and Horn, besides many other less distinguished martyrs, had suffered an ignominious death, a gay tournament was held, day after ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... great Corsairs may be said to have ended with the battle of Lepanto, which sounded the knell of the naval supremacy of the Ottomans. It is true that they seemed to have lost little by Don John's famous victory; their beard was shorn, they admitted, but it soon grew again:—their fleet was speedily repaired, and the Venetians sued for peace. But they ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole |
