"Tocsin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as the clock struck the hour, we went on to the balcony listening and saying: "It is the tocsin!" ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... things, Hoping still to hold the strings, And, for your ungodly gains, Life to bind with golden chains;— Man! you're mightily mistaken! From such dreams you'd best awaken To the sense of what is coming, When you hear the low, dull booming Of the far-off tocsin drums. —Such a day of vast upsettings, Dire outcastings and downsettings!— You have held the reins too long,— Have you time to heal ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... Of her, our tiny Belle, Whom my boy Gus (at his age!) Said was a "deuced swell!" P'raps now Miss Tickler's tocsin Has caged that pert young linnet; Old Birch perhaps is boxing My ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... called him,) Mr. Jay, was sent on a pilgrimage to London, to make up all by penance and petition. In the mean time the lengthy and drowsy writer of the pieces signed Camillas held himself in reserve to vindicate every thing; and to sound in America the tocsin of terror upon the inexhaustible resources of England. Her resources, says he, are greater than those of all the other powers. This man is so intoxicated with fear and finance, that he knows not the difference between plus and minus—between a hundred pounds in hand, and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... of my Cripples," he said. "They have been wished on to a Group of Philanthropists in New England. Sound the glad Tocsin. I have ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... denunciations. The petitioners frequently appear in person, and read their enthusiastic effusions, their imperious advice, their doctrines of dissolution. To-day it is Danton, in the name of Paris, with his bull visage and his voice that seems a tocsin of insurrection; to-morrow, the vanquishers of the Bastille, or some other troop, with a band of music which continues playing even into the hall. The meeting is not a conference for business, but a patriotic opera, where the eclogue, the melodrama, and sometimes the masquerade, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... impassable, he roused the municipal authorities, for it was nearly midnight, and then, returning to the royal carriage, he compelled the royal family to dismount and follow him to the house of the mayor, a petty grocer, whose name was Strausse. The magistrates sounded the tocsin: the National Guard beat to arms: the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... put right, wins. The caucus in Fort Canibas exposed the methods of "so-called reformers"—as the report of it was set forth in print. And that news was a tocsin for town committeemen who had ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... on perceiving that their jailer had removed his family, and then that he sent up their dinner earlier than usual, and removed all the knives and forks. By and by howls and shouts were heard, and the tocsin was heard, ringing, alarm guns firing, and reports came in to the prisoners of the Abbaye that the populace were breaking ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no doubt about it, that was the rattle of musketry at a distance! And now they heard also the loud booming of artillery, and the ringing of the tocsin ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... mon cher, am a true Parisien: Now, the red revolution, the tocsin, and then The dance and the play. I am now at ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... not hit, drew his sabre and rushed in the direction of the vehicle. He was stopped by four armed men, who fired at him; his eagerness saved him, for he ran toward one of the three passengers to tell him to make for Chesnay and ring the tocsin. But two brigands followed him, and one of them, taking aim, sent a ball through his left shoulder, which broke his ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... Francois, and Madame Pele, and one of the Napoleonic prisoners (not M. le Major), and several other people we had known, including a servant of our own, Therese, the devoted Therese, to whom we were all devoted in return. That malodorous tocsin, which I have compared to the big bell of Notre Dame, had warned, and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... thing beheld the outpost. He let the tocsin sound. Of the Cid Roy Diaz ready were the companies around. They sallied from the city with their arms appointed well. When they came on the Moriscos upon them swift they fell. They drove them from the gardens in exceeding sorry plight; Of the Moors a full five hundred ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... grand-mason?' returned the Chancellor, aghast. 'If he but saw this, he would sound the tocsin - we should ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cost, and finally, at the crossing of the Danube, the energy and genius of Napoleon met their equal, and the standards of France, for the first time under Napoleon's leadership, went back in defeat. It was the tocsin of fate. His career of victory had culminated. From ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... bellowed in the plains, and fewer sheep bleated upon the hills, there were far better opportunities afforded of indulging in wild independence. Should the halberded bands of the city be ordered out to quell, seize, or exterminate them; should the alcalde of the village cause the tocsin to be rung, gathering together the villanos for a similar purpose, the wild sierra was generally at hand, which, with its winding paths, its caves, its frowning precipices, and ragged thickets, would offer to them a secure refuge where they might laugh to scorn the rage of ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... a dismal chord of discord; and now for a second all seem to have conspired to hold their peace. Indeed, there are not many uproars in this world more dismal than that of the Sabbath bells in Edinburgh: a harsh ecclesiastical tocsin; the outcry of incongruous orthodoxies, calling on every separate conventicler to put up a protest, each in his own synagogue, against "right-hand extremes and left-hand defections." And surely there are few ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The Song of the Shirt, which it would be futile to praise or even to characterize, came out, anonymously of course, in the Christmas number of Punch for 1843: it ran like wildfire, and rang like a tocsin, through the land. Immediately afterwards, in January 1844, Hood's connection with the New Monthly closed, and he started a publication of his own, Hood's Magazine, which was a considerable success: more than half ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... taxpayer—nay, directly mentioning him. He is the key of our ingenuity. He pays his dues; he will not pay the additional penny or two wanted of him, that we may be a step or two ahead of the day we live in, unless he is frightened. But scarcely anything less than the wild alarum of a tocsin will frighten him. Consequently the tocsin has to be sounded; and the effect is woeful past measure: his hugging of his army, his kneeling on the shore to his navy, his implorations of his yeomanry and his hedges, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in the mouth of an obscure alley which my companion whispered would bring us to his house; and here we paused to take breath and look back. The sky was red behind us, the air full of the clash and din of the tocsin, and the flood of sounds which poured from every tower and steeple. From the eastward came the rattle of drums and random shots, and shrieks of "A BAS COLIGNY!" "A BAS LES HUGUENOTS!" Meanwhile the city was rising as one man, pale at this dread awakening. From every ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... going after the two brothers, they were sore displeased, but they could do nothing,' says the chronicler; 'for the citizens who were in the plot straightway fell to sounding the tocsin, and gathering about the castle in great numbers, with arms and with sticks, were soon ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... with all the dread array That wraps in wrath thy desolating way, As the wild tempest wakes the slumbering sea, Thou only teachest all that man can be. Alike thy tocsin has the power to charm The toil-knit sinews of the rustic's arm, Or swell the pulses in the poet's veins, And bid the nations ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... outrage a notice was issued from one of the newspapers calling an open-air meeting in the Champ de Mars. Towards evening the excitement increased, and the fire-bells jangled a tocsin to call the people into the streets. The Champ de Mars soon filled with a tumultuous mob, roaring its approbation of wild speeches which denounced the 'tyranny' of the governor-general and the Reformers. A cry arose, ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... as well. You like to see other folks; taking the bitters is another thing. The tea-bell is a tocsin." ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... distant town of Uglitch, and there, by his orders, the young prince was murdered, in the presence of his nurse and six other people, and buried from his mother's residence. This was in 1591. The lad's death was announced, of course. Indeed, it was known to nearly everybody in Uglitch, the tocsin having been sounded, and the population having gathered around the murdered boy, where they put to death a good many who were suspected of complicity with the murderers. But in publishing it abroad in Russia, Boris deemed it prudent to attribute ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... she heard Matilda toss about, draw long, tremulous breaths; then from the couch of that elderly virgin sounded the incontrovertible tocsin of deep sleep. But for Mrs. De Peyster there ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... gigantic. This power was rarely put forth, but at the right time and place it was made to peal out with a resistless volume, and his portentous notes rang through the house like the boom of a great bell. It was said that his wife was sometimes aroused at night by what appeared to be the fire tocsin, only to discover that it was her recumbent husband producing these bell-like sounds in his sleep. The vibratory power of his full voice was so great that it was dangerous for him to sing in ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... sign certain documents which had been brought to him, than the bells of the nearest church struck a peculiar note, which was taken up by the others in different parts of the city in rapid succession. It was the tocsin peal, announcing the approach of an enemy, and summoning the citizens to the ramparts. The burgomaster immediately rose, and sending word to Jaqueline on no account to leave the house, set forth to the Stadhuis, where he knew that the principal magistrates ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... and defend what'er was remaining. Every man sprang to his arms, by the flight of the foeman encouraged, And by his blanching cheeks, and his timorous, wavering glances. Ceaselessly now rang out the clanging peal of the tocsin. Thought of no danger to come restrained their furious anger. Quick into weapons of war the husbandman's peaceful utensils All were converted; dripped with blood the scythe and the ploughshare. Quarter was shown to none: the enemy fell without mercy. Fury everywhere raged and the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the last time, and departed on the morrow with the bitter words, "Adieu, O city, where everything is permitted but to be a good man!" Ten years later he burnt the Bull of the Pope in the public square of Wittemberg, and all Europe rang with the tocsin of the Reformation. I never passed that venerable monastery without thinking of the austere German monk and his glorious work; and the old well-known motto of the Reformation which had been his battle-cry ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... a long run to the foot of the vineyard hill, where, on the crest, deep hidden among the vines, three cannon clanged at regular intervals, stroke following stroke, like the thundering summons of a gigantic tocsin. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... Provost answered importantly. "But have no fear, the tocsin will sound. The King and our good man M. de Guise have all in hand. A white sleeve, a white cross, and a sharp knife shall rid Paris of the vermin! Gentlemen of the quarter, the word of the night is 'Kill, and no quarter! Death ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... a tocsin sounded, augurs a strife from which you will come victorious. For a woman, this is a warning of separation from her husband ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... fifty or sixty feet. During the war times they make use of these fires as signals from band to band, and each fire has a conventional meaning. Like the phares that flashed the alarm from hill-top to hill-top or the tocsin that sang from belfry to belfry in the Basse Bretagne, in the days of the rising of the Vendee, so those beacons would communicate as swiftly the tidings that one band or tribe had to convey to another. Again, speaking of the danger of fire-making, ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... Contrast her with other female sovereigns,—with Isabella, who with all her virtues favored the Inquisition; with her sister Mary, who kindled the fires of Smithfield; with Catherine de Medicis, who sounded the tocsin of St. Bartholomew; with Mary of Scotland, who was a partner in the murder of her husband; with Anne of Austria, who ruled through Italian favorites; with Christiana of Sweden, who scandalized Europe by her indecent eccentricities; with Anne of Great Britain, ruled by the Duchess of Marlborough. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... songs were chanted, And war's stirring tocsin pealed, By those songs thy heart was haunted, And thy spirit, proud, undaunted, Clamored wildly — wildly panted: "Mother! let my wish be granted; I will ne'er be mocked and taunted That I fear to meet our vaunted ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... chapter of the 'Spirit of Whiggism'-a little book which I hope may be easily read and easily remembered. The Whig party have always adopted popular cries. In one age it is Liberty, in another reform; at one period they sound the tocsin against popery, in another they ally themselves with papists. They have many cries, and various modes of conduct; but they have only one object—the establishment of an oligarchy in this free and equal land. I do not wish this country to ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... quite too much even for Marie's soaring spirit; but she scarcely had time to picture herself ranging the sky when Dumas was back again, sorrowfully confessing failure. Aeroplanes likewise had heard the tocsin; they had sterner business than wafting lovers through the sky; they were carrying explosives and messages in the service of France. Dumas looked almost as disappointed as the wilted little figure ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... road, would march all night to their assistance; and they attributed his delay to the necessity of collecting a sufficient force to overpower the numerous troops of national guards whom the sound of the tocsin had summoned to Varennes. But at each instant they expected to see him appear, and the least movement of the populace, the slightest clash of arms in the streets, seemed to announce his arrival; the courier despatched ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... to live so bravely, To be so great and strong, That your memory is ever a tocsin To rally the foes of the wrong; To live so proudly and purely That your people pause in their way, And year by year, with banner and drum, Keep the thought of ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... various quarters sounds that warned of approaching danger reached his ears. On one hand, although at a considerable distance, the clang of a cavalry trumpet was audible; on the other, church and convent bells rang out a tocsin of alarm. The sounds were taken up by other bells; in their rear, in front, on all sides. The Mochuelo rode along the flank of the little column, which in dead silence, and with rapid steps, followed El Tuerto, who, with Paco and Velasquez, marched at its head. So dim and shadowy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... of, the Royalist hopes. He retired into exile, and sadly left the Royal cause to its fate. On the 20th of April 1792 France entered upon her supreme struggle with Europe by declaring war. On the night of the 9th of August the dread tocsin sounded the note of doom to the Royal cause—herald to the bloodshed of the 10th of August. Three days afterwards the king and the Royal Family were prisoners in the Temple. There followed the terrible ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... him a family, even exceeding in number and extent, that to which Spruggins at present laid claim (deafening cheers and waving of handkerchiefs)? The captain concluded, amidst loud applause, by calling upon the parishioners to sound the tocsin, rush to the poll, free themselves from dictation, or be ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... appearing to remark on his alarm, but when, little suspecting the true motive of her agitation, he saw her evince an emotion surpassing his own, and admitting and giving way to fears beyond any he would openly avow, he grew impatient and disappointed, and preferring rather to hear the tocsin of alarm sounded from his own heart than from the lips of another, he suddenly, and much to the surprise of the affectionate girl, discontinued all allusion to the subject. But Henry's anxiety was not the less poignant from being confined within his own breast, and although it gratified him ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... Guinea (and the least known) belongs to Holland, and it was in the waters of this coast that the Australians whose story I am telling were living and working when the tocsin of war sounded. These sons of empire were registered under a Dutch name with their charter to work there from the Dutch Government, yet when they heard that men were needed for the Australian army, they dropped everything and hastened south to enlist. ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... that might have done for Long Island Sound, where somebody said she'd just come from, but which didn't seem to fit in here. Her passengers were mostly fishermen—crews of vessels not in the race. There was also a big powerful iron sea-tug, the Tocsin, that promised to make better weather of it than any of ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... a paroxysm of silent despair. Her words rung like a tocsin of the bright romance conjured up by the avowal of their love. It seemed to him, in that instant, they had no separate existence as distinguished from the great stream of human life—the turbulent river that flowed unceasingly from an eternity ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... the tocsin of civil war had sounded there were mutterings of thunder in the halls of Congress, and the cloud, at first no bigger than a man's hand, was yearly gathering force, till it finally burst in a cyclone of passion and prejudice ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... Swollen corpses, gashed and gory, Heads and limbs of slaughter'd men? Father Euxine! be thou joyful! I am running red once more— Not with heathen blood, as early, But with gallant Christian gore! For the old times are returning, And the Cross is broken down, And I hear the tocsin sounding In the village and the town; And the glare of burning cities Soon shall light me on my way— Ha! my heart is big and jocund With the draught I drank to-day. Ha! I feel my strength awakened, And my brethren ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... The tocsin was ringing in my ears when I awoke this morning. Custis packed his haversack, and, taking blanket, etc. etc., joined his department comrades, and they were all marched out the Brooke turnpike. Yesterday the enemy in considerable force came up the Peninsula ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... admit that Mr. Crampton's conduct was "notoriously at war with the rights of neutrality and national honor." This was not altogether pleasant to some of the old Nestors of the Senate, who wanted once more to sound the war tocsin. General Cass, who had had a bad fall on the outside steps of the Department of the Interior, was "eager for the fray;" the valiant Clayton, of Delaware, saw an opportunity to wipe out the stigma cast upon his treaty; and although the patriarchal Butler (owner of men-servants and maid-servants, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... was much pleased by your remarks on the storm in the Travailleurs. There was another very odd storm, as it struck me on a hasty reading in '93, where there is mention of a beautiful summer evening and yet the wind is so high that you can't hear the tocsin. You do justice also and more than justice to Hugo's tenderness about children. That, I think, points to one great source ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... higher pretentions of the Negro without apology or equivocation. The old form of appeal has become insipid and uninspiring; the ear has become dull to its dinging. The old blade has become blunt and needs a new sharpness of point and keenness of edge. Where now is heard the tocsin call whose key-note a generation ago resounded from the highlands of Kentucky and Tennessee to the plains of the Carolinas calling the black youths, whose hopes ran high within their bosoms, to rise and make for higher things? This ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... then I went out on the balcony and strained my ears to listen, then I entered the room again and paced to and fro, or dropped into an arm-chair and dozed. But my slumber was agitated by feverish dreams. I dreamed that I could hear the murmur of angry crowds, and the report of distant firing; the tocsin was clanging from the church towers. I awoke. It was ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... on your heart no Christmas Peace can fall. The chimes shall be a tocsin, and the red Glow of the Yule-wood embers shall recall A myriad ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... boiled when he heard that three young Protestants had been killed because they took {164} up arms at the sound of the tocsin, thinking it was the signal for rebellion. He received under his protection at Geneva the widow and children of the Protestant Calas, who had been broken on the wheel in 1762 because he was falsely declared ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... feet became audible in the kitchen above, while bass voices were added to the shrill soprano that had sounded the former tocsin. The men had arrived from the stables. The burglar and the ghost regarded each other for a moment of suspended breathing; their mutual danger drew them together. Patty hesitated an instant, while she studied his face as it ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... first equerry. This officer they mounted on a spare horse, and set out for the Low Countries; but, being little acquainted with the roads, they did not reach Chantilly till next morning, when they heard the tocsin, or alarm-bell, and thence concluded that detachments were sent out in pursuit of them. Nevertheless, they proceeded boldly, and would certainly have carried the point, had not Queintern halted three hours for the refreshment of his prisoner, who complained ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... at once for the general's reception; from attic to kitchen was sounded the tocsin of his coming. Julian was all bustle and excitement, to his mother's joy and pride; while Charles merited her wrath by too much of his habitual and paternal quietude, particularly when he withdrew his forces altogether from the loud domestic fray, by retreating ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... for he's so immersed in them mem'ries he don't hear Texas where he rings in his theeries, 'up on the roof my grandfather has a big bell, an' the rope is brought down an' fetched through a auger hole in the side of the house, so he can lay in bed if he feels like it, an' ring this yere tocsin of his while so minded. An' you can bet he shorely rings her! Many a time an' oft as a child about my mother's knees, the sound of that ringin' comes floatin' to us where my father has his house four miles further down the river. On sech ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... and other members of the commune, and charging twelve of their members, the boldest who could be selected, to proceed with the armed force to the execution of the sentence. The drums of the National Guards now beat to arms in all the sections under authority of the convention, while the tocsin continued to summon assistance with its iron voice to Robespierre and the civic magistrates. Every thing appeared to threaten a violent catastrophe, until it was seen clearly that the public voice, and especially ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... shattering blare of a trumpet upon the walls. And now from within the waking city rose a confused sound, a hum that grew louder and ever more loud, pierced by shout and trumpet-blast while high above this growing clamour the tocsin pealed alarm. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... form, Still as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm; Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly, Revenge, or death,—the watchword and reply; Then pealed the notes, omnipotent to charm, And the loud tocsin tolled their last alarm!— In vain, alas! in vain, ye gallant few! From rank to rank your volleyed thunder flew:— O, bloodiest picture in the book of Time! Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime; ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... enterprise were left to the Duke of Guise, and a more efficient and fitting agent could not have been found. He had ordered that the tocsin, the signal for the massacre, should be tolled at two o'clock in the morning. Catharine and Charles, in one of the apartments of the palace of the Louvre, were impatiently awaiting the lingering flight of the hours till the alarm-bell should toll forth ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... movement, yea, even with coin of the realm, on the one condition that he should be allowed to insert articles of his own composition in the new organ which it was proposed to establish. There was no difficulty in conceding this trifle, and the 'Tocsin' was the result. The name was a suggestion of the oil merchant himself, and no bad name if Socialists at large could be supposed capable of understanding it; but the oil merchant was too important a man to be thwarted, and the argument by which he supported his choice was incontestable. 'Isn't ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... 'The tocsin! The bell of St. Germain! Fire! No, a Huguenot rising! Fire! Oh, let us out! Let us out! The window! Where is the fire? Nowhere! See the lights! Hark, that was a shot! It was in the palace! A heretic rising! Ah! there was to be a slaughter of the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... received, at once the tocsin was rung, and when all the citizens were gathered together, a protest was read, stating that the Bishop had taken possession of his see without showing the papal bulls or the royal decree authorizing him to do so, and declaring that he must cease his innovations and do as other ...
— Las Casas - 'The Apostle of the Indies' • Alice J. Knight
... day; Joyous hour, we give thee greeting! Whither, whither art thou fleeting? Fickle moment, prithee stay! What though mortal joys be hollow? Pleasures come, if sorrows follow. Though the tocsin sound, ere long, Ding dong! Ding dong! Yet until the shadows fall Over one and over all, Sing a ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... we were startled. In our eyes, Looked forth the light of great surprise. Then as a deep-toned tocsin tolls, A voice ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... occasioned. Granger, however, was the first who introduced it in the form of a treatise, and surely "in an evil hour" was this treatise published—although its amiable author must be acquitted of "malice prepense." His History of England[52] seems to have sounded the tocsin for a general rummage after, and slaughter of, old prints: venerable philosophers and veteran heroes, who had long reposed in unmolested dignity within the magnificent folio volumes which recorded their achievements, were ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote; And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin's throat." ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... the constant alert wore us to shadows; rockets from the goulet, the tocsin, the warning boom of a gun from the castle, found us spurring our jaded horses through ice and snow to scour the landward banlieue and purge it of a dreaded revolt. The names of Marx, of Flourens, of Buckhurst, were constantly repeated; news of troubles ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... her king-son into a fit of weakness and mad anger. Anxious to profit by it, "she gave orders on the instant for the signal, which was not to have been given until an hour before daybreak," says De Thou, "and, instead of the bell at the Palace of Justice, the tocsin was sounded by the bell of St.-Germain-Auxerrois, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... sound struck against the silence with the impact of a blow. Nothing more undesirable could have happened. Again Mack bayed, and the echoing bell tones of his voice took on a strange similarity to a tocsin of warning. Rustling and crackling across the men's fancies the influences of the North ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... nor violence could arrest the popular torrent. The church-bells were no longer rung for divine service; whenever their deep and prolonged sounds were heard in the fields, it was the tocsin, and all ran to arms. The people of the Black Forest had rallied round John Muller of Bulgenbach. With an imposing aspect, covered with a red cloak and wearing a red cap, this leader boldly advanced from village to village followed by the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the winding reaches of the Boyne. Everywhere there were strength, and numbers, and resolution; where were they now in the supreme hour of the country's agony? A thousand times it had been sworn by tens of thousands of Irishmen, that the tocsin of battle would find them clustered round the good old flag to conquer or die beneath its shadow. And now, the hour had come, the flag of insurrection so often invoked was raised; but the patriot that ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... conditions of the Constitution; and the recent measures of the country go to prove there is no real disposition, in the masses, to do otherwise. The attachment to the Union is very strong and general throughout the whole of this vast country, and it is only necessary to sound the tocsin to bring to its maintenance a phalanx equal to uphold its standard against the assaults of any enemies. The impossibility of the North-western States consenting that the mouth of the Mississippi should be held by a foreign power, is in itself a guaranty of the long existence of ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... thousand cannon-mouths in the forts, magazines, arsenals, ammunition sufficient to carry out a Russian campaign; on the other a hundred and twenty Representatives, a thousand or twelve hundred patriots, six hundred muskets, two cartridges per man, not a drum to beat to arms, not a bell to sound the tocsin, not a printing office to print a Proclamation; barely here and there a lithographic press, and a cellar where a hand-bill can be hurriedly and furtively printed with the brush; the penalty of death against any one who unearths ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... he could, twofold, threefold, tenfold, a hundredfold, the debt which they had acquired. They excused themselves politely for being unable to postpone the little transaction. The Bishop threatened to sound the tocsin, to rouse against them the people who would kill them like dogs for profaning, violating, and stealing the miraculous images and holy relics. They smilingly pointed to the sheriff's officers, who were guarding them. They were protected by King Berln, for they lent him money. At this sight ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France
... Felician Entered, with serious mien, and ascended the steps of the altar. Raising his reverend hand, with a gesture he awed into silence All that clamorous throng; and thus he spake to his people; Deep were his tones and solemn; in accents measured and mournful Spake he, as, after the tocsin's alarum, distinctly the clock strikes. "What is this that ye do, my children? what madness has seized you? Forty years of my life have I labored among you, and taught you, Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one another! Is this ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... once, they set their cannon in its way. There is no gable now, nor wall That does not suffer, night and day, As shot and shell in crushing torrents fall, The stricken tocsin quivers through the tower; The triple nave, the apse, the lonely choir Are circled, hour by hour, With thundering bands of fire And Death ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the ninth of August the tocsin was sounded in every quarter, and the generale was beat. Early the next morning the Tuilleries were attacked by the populace, and the king and his family, attended by the Swiss guard, fled for protection to the National Assembly. In the conflict ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... slowly sinking in the west, edged the towers and spires with filmy lines of silver. To the right Marguerite caught sight of the frowning Beffroi, which even as she gazed out began tolling its heavy bell. It sounded like the tocsin, dull and muffled. After ten ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... these endless attacks on an old abstruse metaphysical notion to be allowed, yet why in the name of common candour does not the Barrister ring the same 'tocsin' against his friend Dr. Priestley's scheme of Necessity;—or against his idolized Paley, who explained the will as a sensation, produced by the action of the intellect on the muscles, and the intellect itself as a catenation of ideas, and ideas as configurations ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... then, remember the tocsin of St. Germain l'Auxerrois?" said Henri, bitterly. "It seems to me that a husband whom they try to murder on the night of his marriage might think less of his dowry than ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... another author enthusiastically exclaims: 'All hail, therefore, to those who, by attacking a truth, prevent that truth from slumbering. All hail to those bold and fearless natures, the heretics and innovators of the day, who, rousing men out of their lazy sleep, sound in their ears the tocsin and the clarion, and force them to come forth that they may do battle for their creed. Of all evils, torpor is the most deadly. Give us paradox, give us error, give us what you will, so that you save us from stagnation. It is the cold spirit of routine which is the nightshade of our ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the tocsin was sounded: the two villages joined forces, and with weapons in their hands marched along the road from Beaucaire to Nimes. At the bridge of Quart the villagers of Redressan and Marguerite joined them. Thus reinforced, they were able to bar the way to all who ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to find out up to what point they could count on the populace, the government arranged for the rumour to be spread throughout all the communes of France, that the "Brigands" led by the migrs, were coming to destroy all the new institutions. The tocsin was rung by all the churches; everyone armed themselves with whatever they could lay hands upon; a National Guard was organised; the country turned into an armed camp while it waited for these imaginary "Brigands" who, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... field of practical and beneficent activity. For there was an immense task to accomplish. The tide of immigration had set in, and ship after ship came laden with hunted human beings flying from their fellow-men, while all the time, like a tocsin, rang the terrible story of cruelty and persecution,—horrors that the pen refuses to dwell upon. By the hundreds and thousands they flocked upon our shores,—helpless, innocent victims of injustice and oppression, panic-stricken in the midst ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... the Censer burn low, and flicker in final sickliness; the great bell called Conscience, hanging in the dome, strikes an alarm that rocks the building. How oft the solemn tocsin sounds! It drives us to our duty! Let us be thankful its clangor ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... not hear the tocsin this time; she felt it on her spine—the drums of fear. If they ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... a city: the city of the priests, that is to say, the Roman city, and the city of the merchants, that is to say, the, French city. The city of the priests, with its papal palace, its hundred churches, its innumerable bell-towers, ever ready to sound the tocsin of conflagration, the knell of slaughter. The town of the merchants, with its Rhone, its silk-workers, its crossroads, extending north, east, south and west, from Lyons to Marseilles, from Nimes to Turin. The French city, the accursed city, longing for a king, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... the place, became uneasy; went out on his house-top alone, and looked in that direction too; glanced down from behind his chimneys at the darkening faces by the fountain below, and sent word to the sacristan who kept the keys of the church, that there might be need to ring the tocsin by-and-bye. ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Your information shall be forwarded to the court; where, however, I doubt whether it will be received with much credence. The Austrian declaration of war has put the flatterers of royalty into such spirits, that if the tocsin were sounding at this instant, they would not believe in the danger. We have been unfortunately forced to send the chief part of the garrison of Paris towards the frontier. But we have three battalions of the Swiss guard ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Meanwhile the old insurrectionary methods of the nights of June and of August in '92, of May and of June in '93, were again followed. The beating of the rappel and the generale was heard in all the sections; the tocsin sounded its dreadful note, reminding all who should hear it that insurrection is the most sacred and the most indispensable of duties. Hanriot, the commandant of the forces, had been arrested in the evening, but he was speedily released by the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... time—making little, spasmodic movements on the flat stone above his den. At a motion of my arm he darted into his hole with an exultant chip. He was soon out with empty pockets, and he then proceeded to sound his little tocsin of distrust or alarm so that all the sylvan folk might hear. As I made no sign, he soon ceased and went ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... are spread; a bell rings—that "tocsin of the soul," as Byron has sarcastically but truthfully termed the dinner-bell; and all the passengers rush in from every quarter of the ship, and seat themselves with an air of expectation till the covers are raised. Grievous disappointments ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... would not be ready to grant them. Should the North succeed in striking some heavy blow at the South, I will tell you what will happen; your abolitionists will seize the occasion of the peoples' exultation to push their doctrine to a consummation. Whenever you shall hear the tocsin of victory sounding in the North, then listen for the echoing cry of emancipation—for you will hear it. You will see it in every column of your daily prints; you will hear your statesmen urging it in your legislative halls, and your cabinet ministers making it their theme. And, most dangerous ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... here for that. But the neighbouring towns, especially the small ones and the villages, have long been worked by certain secret societies, and belong to the advanced Republican party. If a Coup d'Etat should burst forth, the tocsin will be heard throughout the entire country, from the forests of the Seille to the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... the bearer of the flag of truce, and the negotiations commenced. In the mean time, shells and red-hot shot were poured into the city, killing alike the soldiers on the ramparts and the citizens in their dwellings. Lamentations and shrieks, the roar of artillery, the uninterrupted peals of the tocsin, calling out the inhabitants, mingled with the crash of the falling houses, and the wails of the wounded ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... day; Joyous hour, we give thee greeting! Whither, whither art thou fleeting? Fickle moment, prithee stay! What though mortal joys be hollow? Pleasures come, if sorrows follow: Though the tocsin sound, ere long, Ding dong! Ding dong! Yet until the shadows fall Over one and over all, Sing a merry ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... found no higher goal than the bench of the Supreme Court. Mr. Dickens laughed very fairly at the "remarkable men" of our small towns; but England is full of just such little-greatness, with the difference that one is proclaimed in the "Bungtown Tocsin" and the other in the "Times." We must get a new phrase, and say that Mr. Brown was immortal at the latest dates, and Mr. Jones a great man when the steamer sailed. The small man in Europe is reflected to his contemporaries from a magnifying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... statement, by which it appears that the most active and unsparing inquisition was taking place, corresponds with the historical notices of repeated persecutions upon this dreadful charge of sorcery. A bull of Pope Innocent VIII. rang the tocsin against this formidable crime, and set forth in the most dismal colours the guilt, while it stimulated the inquisitors to the unsparing discharge of their duty in searching out and punishing the guilty. "It is come to our ears," says the bull, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... he styles "the murderers with their double boxes or charges," a not excessively deadly kind of mitrailleuse or Gatling gun, we should imagine; the Fort also contained a smith's forge, carpenter's tools, machinery for a windmill, and a handmill to grind corn, a brass bell—probably to sound the tocsin, or alarm, at the approach of the marauding savages of Stadacona, the array of muskets—(thirteen complete)—is not formidable. Who was the maker of ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... and cymbal-clank the ear appal, The Tecbir war-cry, and the Lelie's yell, Ring wildly dissonant along the hall. Needs not to Roderick their dread import tell - "The Moor!" he cried, "the Moor!—ring out the Tocsin bell! ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... blacksmith, seizing his hammer, went to the door of his hut, where hung part of a suit of armour, that served at the same time as a sign of his profession and as a tocsin. He smote the hanging iron with his sledge until the clangorous reverberation sounded through the valley, and presently there came hurrying to him eight of his stalwart sons, who had been occupied in tilling ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... the doomed man had been kneeling. Men running blundered into running men and cannoned off at direct angles to their original courses, without realising it. Disorder reigned rampant, and the cavern rang with a thousand echoes, while the Bell awoke and roared a raging tocsin, redoubling the din. No man could have said where he stood or whither he ran—save one, perhaps. That one was at Amber's side and had laid his course beforehand and knew that both their lives depended upon his sticking to it without deviation. To him a rush of a hundred feet in a ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Monsieur Chateaupers with you. You will cause the tocsin to be sounded. You will crush the populace. You will seize the witch. 'Tis said. And I mean the business of the execution to be done by you. You will render me an account of it. Come, Olivier, I shall not go to bed ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... end can this tocsin have except to arouse all Europe and put it in movement! They must be made to understand this, and we must stick to it; nothing is ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and six feet thick had been erected with embrasures for cannon and a loop-holed platform for riflemen. Cannon were placed on the roof of the building where the old Monumental firebell had been installed as a tocsin of war. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote; And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin's throat; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
