"Wail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sway! The bloody atrocities of Philip II, in the expulsion of his Moorish subjects, are matters of imperishable history. Who disbelieves or doubts them? And yet his courtiers magnified his virtues and chanted his clemency and his mercy, while the wail of a million victims, smitten down by a tempest of fire and slaughter let loose at his bidding, rose above the Te Deums that thundered from all Spain's cathedrals. When Louis XIV. revoked the edict of Nantz, and proclaimed two millions of his subjects ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... knew that the Egyptian Government regarded him as a rebel and an imposter. But continually striking her forehead and invoking heaven to witness her innocence and unhappy plight, she began to weep and at the same time wail mournfully as women in the East do after losing husbands or sons. Afterwards she again flung herself with face on the ground, or rather on the carpet with which the inlaid floor was covered, and waited ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of light there was no other movement, and no sound. Dark figures stood motionless. The lonely howl of a sledge-dog ended in a wail of pain as some one kicked it into terrified silence. The hollow cough of Mukee's father was smothered in the thick fur of his cap as he thrust his head from his little shack in the edge of the forest. A score of eyes watched Cummins as he came out into the snow, and the rough, ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... wail from lips long dead Has found its echo in this breast alone! Only to me, by blood-remembrance led, Is that ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... a Marblehead schooner was ransomed by the "Nymphe" for $400. Saturday, she took off Cape Ann three coasters and six fishing boats, and the masters were sent on shore for money to ransom them at $200 each." There was room for the wail of a federalist paper: "Our coasts unnavigable to ourselves, though free to the enemy and the money-making neutral; our harbors blockaded; our shipping destroyed or rotting at the docks; silence and stillness in our cities; the grass growing upon the public wharves."[195] ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... face, And through each sweet remembered word, This sweetest undertone is heard: "My child! my child! our God is sweet, In Life — in Death — kneel at his feet — Sweet in gladness, sweet in gloom, Sweeter still beside the tomb." Why should I wail? Why ought I weep? The grave — it is not dark and deep; Why should I sigh? Why ought I moan? The grave — it is not still and lone; Our God is sweet, our grave is sweet, We lie there sleeping at His feet, Where the wicked ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... you have spoken truly. I must bear up for the sake of my child; but oh God, it is hard to be branded in the eyes of the world as a rogue and a scoundrel. Mothers will curse me, and the orphan's wail will haunt ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... though the mourning brow of progeny Forbid the smiling courtesy of love The holy suit which fain it would convince; Yet, since love's argument was first on foot, Let not the cloud of sorrow justle it From what it purpos'd; since, to wail friends lost Is not by much so wholesome-profitable As to rejoice at friends but ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... house of C. D. Bunker a rescuer named Baker was killed while trying to get a dead body from the ruins. Other rescuers heard the pitiful wail of a little child, but were unable to get near the point from which the cry issued. Soon the onrushing fire ended the cry and the men turned to ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... of desertion. Then, one memorable day, the stillness had been broken by the first clatter of sabots—that wooden noise, measured, unmistakable, approaching. Two pairs of sabots and a long road. Two broad backs bent under bulging loads; an infant's wail; a knock at the Red Cross Door—but that was nearly ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... in some pure lyric such as Shelley's "Skylark," or in some mystical fantasy such as Moore's "Lallah Rookh" or Coleridge's "Christabel," or in some story of human abnegation such as Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," or some wail of a soul in pain, as in Shelley's "Adonais," or in some outburst of exultant grief such as Whitman's "Captain, My Captain," or in some revelation of the unseen potencies close about us, as in Browning's ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... that I should wail? Leave me my tearless, sad refrain, When in the pine-top wakes the gale That breathes ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... help it," replied Rebecca with almost a wail. "I am nervous. There's enough to make me so, ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... a day after the scene in the arbor, and all was mourning in the so lately happy, hospitable house; everybody looked through tears. There were subdued breathings, a low murmur, as of many listeners, a voice of prayer, and the wail of a funeral hymn,—and then the heavy tread of bearers, as, beneath the black pall, she was carried over the threshold of her home, never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... vessel's stern hove up, an indistinct blur of deeper blackness on the darkness of the night, the line of lights slid forward and vanished one after another until all had disappeared, while at the same moment a heartrending wail from hundreds of throats pealed out across the water, punctuated by a crackling volley of ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... May it wave Proudly o'er the good and brave; When the battle's distant wail Breaks the sabbath of our vale. When the clarion's music thrills To the hearts of these lone hills, When the spear in conflict shakes, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... him for a minute blinking her watery eyes, and then suddenly broke into a shrill, long-drawn wail. The Baron needed ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... harlotry, oppression, war, and ignorance are existing evils which must have attention. We must not be so taken up with the souls as to neglect the temporal, social, and physical needs of our fellows. But the deepest wail of want and woe which comes from the world is not to be met by bread, or sovereigns, or sanitation, or education, or more equal conditions of life. It is the absence of God and eternal hope which gives the deepest and most sorrowful tone ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... patriarch's strong sable sons supported their decrepit sire homeward, with their wives, "black, but comely," bearing the glistening, satin-skinned babies on their backs, and their other little ebony responsibilities trudging in the rear, there must have been a dismal wail; for there was the ancestral tree, its foliage shrivelled with fire, stretching out its desolate arms over the ashes of the three ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... of ecstasy. I closed my eyes—and with eyes closed, I still saw the whole thing! That beautiful, evil, devilish panorama was in my mind, not my eyes. That's how those fiends work—through the mind. I knew it was the dream-beasts; I didn't need Tweel's wail of 'No breet'! No breet'!' But—I couldn't keep away! I knew it was death beckoning, but it was worth it for one moment ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... cortege, all groaning, chilled to the bone by the searching wind, and it was beginning to be dawn when the last man dragged himself between the boulders into our camping ground. We looked so little like victors that the Syrians sent up a wail and Tugendheim began tugging at his mustaches, but Ranjoor Singh set them at once to feeding and grooming animals and soon disillusioned them as to the outcome ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... two years ago, had he lifted his hand against an Indian; but that remembrance of his master's cruel death, with the wail of the widowed mother and her fatherless child, had risen before him, making his aim the surer, his blow the heavier. But here was a new experience, calling for a new course of action. True was it that his old master had been inhumanly treated by this people, but no less ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... snarl and half wail, Gral leaped to seize it. Otah might have crushed him with a blow, but Otah waited, looking at him fully. Gral's snarl died in his throat. This was not the weapon he had hidden, but another! Otah had found ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... yet does so wail? 'Tis philomel, the nightingale; "Jugg! jugg! terue!" she cries, And hating earth ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... he said. "Friend Chang," I said, "San Francisco sleeps as the dead — Ended license, lust and play: Why do you iron the night away? Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound, With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round. While the monster shadows glower and creep, What can be better ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... lighted door, then stumbled over a small form on the ground and there rose another wail, now of terror ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... down her life for me, and I really believe she would. Well, there is not far from where I used to live a famous cascade called the Swallow Falls, where the water drops down a chasm of great depth. If you listen to the noise of the cataract, you may hear mingled with it a peculiar kind of wail as from a man in great agony. It is said to be the wail of a Sir John Wynn, of Gwydir, whose spirit is under a curse, and is imprisoned at the bottom of the falls on account of his cruelty and misdeeds on earth. On ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Polly," broke out Phronsie, with such a wail, as she sat, a frozen little heap, not daring to stir, that the girl ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... prime|val. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in gar|ments green, indistinct in the twilight. Loud from its rocky cav|erns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents discon|solate answers the wail of the forest. Lay in the fruitful val|ley. Vast meadows ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... mournful melodies have been made, and these lorn lyrists have been induced to glance over it, it seems to us that they must have received it with inextinguishable laughter. Each delicate little wail when taken by itself was not so bad, but the united wail of this band of broken-hearted singers would have produced, instead of tears, laughter both long and deep. This doleful period lasted long after Irving had begun to write in a different vein, and has lasted in too large ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... shocks, the yellow bearded veterans and nobles sat stupefied, frozen in their last gesture. Then, in the midst of their silent despair, came the sound of a curious, high-pitched horn that had in its note something of the eery wail of a fire siren. The effect was magical, for the nobles sprang up, hands on sword hilts and eyes ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... law, abstracted from all mutiny acts and articles of war, that these soldiers were in such a situation that they could not help themselves. People were coming from Royal Exchange Lane, and other parts of the town, with clubs and cord-wood sticks; the soldiers were planted by the wail of the Customhouse; they could not retreat; they were surrounded on all sides, for there were people behind them as well as before them; there were a number of people in the Royal Exchange Lane; the soldiers ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... the sound came a second time over the waters, with a prolonged wail, like the cry of a suffering ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... dive, the carriage swayed as if it would fly in pieces, slithered along, and with a jerk steadied itself. Harz lifted his voice in a shout of pure excitement. Mr. Treffry let out a short shaky howl, and from behind there rose a wail. But the hill was over and the startled horses were cantering with a free, smooth motion. Mr. Treffry and Harz looked at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... heart and tempered will. Not in Elysian lands they take their way; Not as of yore across the gay champaign, Towards some dream city, towered . . . and my . . . The path winds forth before me, sweet and plain, Not now; but though beneath a stone-grey sky November's russet woodlands toss and wail, Still the white road goes thro' them, still may I, Strong in new purpose, God, ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but Fear—in its true sense—was an alien and a stranger. She had never met him in the waste places, seen him skulking on her trail through the winter snows, listened to his voice in the wind's wail. She didn't know the fear of which the coyotes sang from this hill, the blind and groping dread of an immutable destiny, the ghastly realization of impotence against a cruel and omnipotent fate. She hadn't ever ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... the Bishop states what he had done to extricate the Church out of its difficulty. In doing so, he uses language which partakes more of the character of a wail than of a simple statement of facts. He also draws a most gloomy picture of the prospective religious state of Upper Canada, should the dearly prized, and as dearly bought, Imperial Clergy Reserve Act prove, after all, to be an ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Dorothy and told her what had passed. Dorothy kissed him, and cried over him, and made a wail against their darkling fate. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentiles, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow at the ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... at evening made Their hideous wail, Mutely thy musing eye surveyed Bright themes for thought around displayed, Perched on ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... put into execution, and one bitter night Kermode and several others plodded up a frozen creek. It had been snowing hard for the last few hours and he could scarcely see his companions through the driving flakes, while the wail of the wind in the pines above drowned the soft sound of their footsteps. Kermode was tired and very cold, and could not have explained clearly what had induced him to accompany the expedition. Adventure, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... and despair. There can be no other end to it. If men dare not risk being the lovers of their kind, then they must choose between being the slaves of duty or the slaves of force. What are we reading in the public prints and hearing from platform and stage? The unending wail for "rights"; the assertion of the individual. Ceased is the chant of duty, forgotten the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... strange sound, a rush of sounds, words jumbled and hurrying, confused and shapeless, borne along upon a note of throaty distress that at last submerged the words altogether and ended in a wail. Except that it came from a woman's throat it was exactly the babbling sound of a weeping child with a grievance. "I can't," she said, "I can't," and that was all I could distinguish. It was to my young ears the strangest ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... not me, who with him fight! As if his breast be touch'd, I am not wounded! As if he wail'd, my joys were not confounded! We are one heart, though rent by hate in twain; One soul, one essence doth our weal contain: What, then, can conquer him, that kills ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... I then (with some surprise You ask) possess my tranquil soul, And view with calm indifferent eyes The Poll, While partisans, in raucous tones, With doleful wail or joyful shout Proclaim that Brown is in, or Jones Is out? I can: I do: the reason's plain: That blissful day which prophets paint Perhaps may come: perhaps again It mayn't: And ere these ages blest begin (For Rome, I've heard historians say, ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... did you come here?" cried Foster, in a wail that seemed to come from the bottom of his soul. "Why do you come here to torment me with such a sight? Oh, God! It's horrible! It's horrible!... It is your father I see!... He died fearfully! He died fearfully! He was in Texas—on a horse—with ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... holy purpose, unchecked by fear, unswayed by her sisters' entreaties. Hardening her heart magnificently till her fate is sealed; and then after proving her godlike courage, proving the tenderness of her womanhood by that melodious wail over her own untimely death and the loss of marriage joys, which some of you must know from the music of Mendelssohn, and which the late Dean Milman ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... for ever down with the mitre and the crown, With the Belial of the Court and the Mammon of the Pope; There is woe in Oxford halls: there is wail in Durham's Stalls: The Jesuit smites his bosom: ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... plain sight, and proceeded to "look me over," a performance which I returned with interest. He was silent only a few seconds, but the sound that came from his beak amazed me; it was a "mew." If the cat-bird cry resembles that of a cat, this was a perfect copy of a kitten's weak wail. It was always uttered twice in close succession, and sometimes followed by a harsh note that proclaimed his blackbird ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... 'Tis time to wail thy fate, Orestes, when, in thy calamity, Thy mother thus insults ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... unkingly. Rather was it the wail of a criminal on being told that the executioner waited without. His ruddy cheeks blanched, and his hands were outstretched as if in a piteous plea for mercy. There was a tumult of objurgations in the outer passage; but this King in spite of ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the high spots and hit them hard. Nevertheless, in a long and strenuous sporting career the Invigorator became endeared through association to many friends. When the Captain proposed a new vehicle with easier springs and less noise, a wail of protest arose from many and distant places. The Invigorator still ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... all as listlessly, with none to steer. A shrunken stream is Lethe's water wan Unsought of any man: Grass Ceres sowed by alien hands is mown, And now she seeks Persephone alone. The gods have all gone up Olympus' hill, And all the songs are still Of grieving Dryads, left To wail about our woodland ways, bereft, The endless summertide. Queen Venus draws aside And passes, sighing, up Olympus' hill. And silence holds her Cyprian bowers, and claims Her flowers, and quenches all her altar-flames, And strikes dumb in their throats ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katydid, And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... deep, and stubborn is the foe,— Yon island-strength is guarded well,—say, brothers, will ye go? From home and kin for many a year our steps have wander'd wide, And never may our bones be laid our fathers' graves beside. 50 No children have we to lament, no wives to wail our fall; The traitor's and the spoiler's hand have reft our hearths of all. But we have hearts, and we have arms, as strong to will and dare As when our ancient banners flew within the northern air. Come, brothers! let me name a spell shall rouse your ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... floats so still and placidly through heaven, The spirits of the Seasons seem to stand. Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form, And Winter with its aged locks—and breathe In mournful cadences, that come abroad, Like the far windharps wild, touching wail, A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year, Gone from the ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various
... giving way through the last verse, and in the final line, with a helpless wail of the harp, she hid her face, and sank back with a strange ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that day, however, the wail rose loud and long; the mirth which "the waking" permits had passed away, and the ulican, or funeral cry, told that the lifeless chief was being borne from his hall. That wild cry was heard even by the ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... outcry, raucous and shrill as the wail of a captured hen, and out of the passage across the courtyard floundered a woman, fantastically dressed in green ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... wail begin again, and then the echo of a far-off silvery voice came softly to me through the gloom: ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... their last look into each other's eyes—had clasped the last clasp of each other's hands. An hour had passed, and still the old man lay upon the ground, where he had flung himself in his heart's bitter anguish; and still the wail rung out from time to time: "My God! ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... your kindred and your kind befriend: And daily to the gods bid altar-fires ascend. Nor be ye churlish hosts, but glad the heart Of guests with wine, when they must needs depart: And reverence most the priests of sacred song: So, when hell hides you, shall your names live long; Not doomed to wail on Acheron's sunless sands, Like some poor hind, the inward of whose hands The spade hath gnarled and knotted, born to groan, Poor sire's poor offspring, hapless ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... has not been to this village; when the moon comes again, it will be four." He said this with proper significance, and the flat face of the melancholy girl by his side puckered and creased miserably before she opened her large mouth to wail her woe. ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... window. Then, indeed, he felt that he was left alone. It was so dreadful to be out in the night after everybody was gone to bed! That was more than he could bear. He burst out crying in good earnest, beginning with a wail like that of the wind when ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... of the scene and the noise and laughter of the people all about, Fleurette set up a wail of woe which developed rapidly into a storm of screams and sobs,—indeed, it was a first-class crying spell,—a thing which the good-natured child ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... her child, He left the world his garland bright. Wail, Ocean, surge in tumult wild, To sing of thee was ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... the papers crowded with dreary funeral notices, showing how, to every great city of the North, from hospital and battle-ground, the slain are being gathered in, to be buried among their own people; a wail of widows and orphans and mothers, from homestead, hamlet, and town, overpowering with its simple energy, the bombastic war-notes and false stage-thunder of the press; rumors of a terrible battle in the far West, where, after three days' hard fighting, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Bligh of the one eye, and yellow Mrs. Wale of the crooked back, the house grew gradually still. The thunder had by this time died into the solid boom of distant battle, and the fury of the gale had subsided to the long sobbing wail that is charged with so eerie a melancholy. Within all was stirless, and the two old women, each a 'Mrs.' by courtesy, who had not much to thank Nature or the world for, sad and cynical, and in a sort outcasts told off by fortune to these sad ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... voice rose as she spoke, from a quiet reasoning tone to a high, excited wail. She had not meant to say so much. She had intended merely to appeal to her son's affection for her, without making any unpleasant disclosures regarding Joy's mother; she thought merely to win a promise from him that he would not compromise ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... loud in their wail! And Mary-Axe orphans all trembling and pale! For the Alderman glory has melted away, As mists are dispersed by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... his friend for admiring his pictures added: "If you could only see the pictures in my brain. But—" pointing to his brain and then to the ends of his fingers—"the channels from here to here are so long!" The very sad tone which we can hear in the wail of the painter expresses strongly the deficiencies of our age in all its artistic efforts. The channels are shorter just in proportion to their openness. If the way from the brain to the ends of the fingers is perfectly clear, the brain can guide the ends of the fingers to carry out ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... went back again, to shut the door and listen at the other; for I knew that the King's bed was close to it (though he was not in it at this time, but still in the barber's chair where he had been blooded); and presently I heard the poor soul begin to wail aloud. I heard voices too, as if soothing her, for all the physicians were there, and half a dozen others; but the wailing grew, as she saw, I suppose, in what condition His Majesty was—(for he still seemed all unconscious)—till ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... from Florida, from Tampa's lonely shore; It is the wail of gallant men, O'Brien is no more; In the land of sun and flowers his head lies pillowed low, No more to sing petite coquille at Benny Havens' O. At Benny Havens' O, at Benny Havens' O, No more to sing petite coquille ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... Sir Patrick stretched herself on the ocean bed, she fell with a despairing wail; her gown spread like a pall over the earth, the Highland bonnet came off, and her hair floated over a haphazard pillow of ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... slaughtered like pigs in massed formation; when their little boys are driven to war; when young girls—and widows!—are forced to bring more males into the world with the sanction of neither love nor marriage; when those too young for the trench or the casual bed wail incessantly for bread. Oh, no! The German man's day of any but legal dominion is over. Of course there is always the danger of spies and ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... wintry night the low wail of a new-born infant was heard issuing from a bundle of ragged clothing which some poor creature had laid down on the doorstep of a house in a small by-street not many squares from our own. The house was occupied in part by a man named Varick, who had a wife and several children. This man had been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... down on his bob tail, lifted golden muzzle skyward, and emitted a long puppy-wail of dismay ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... later the ship came gently to earth in the Great Place before M'Bongwele's palace. The village appeared at first sight to be deserted, for not a soul was to be seen in any direction; but the low wail of an infant, suddenly breaking in upon the silence, and issuing from one of the huts, betrayed the fact that at least one small atom of humanity still lingered about the place; and where so small a baby was, the mother would ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... one who asked; the whos came like shrapnel; and when, not knowing what else to do, I smiled as one dying, there went up a wail of mirth that froze my blood and then heated it to a fever. The company howled. They rolled over one another, crying, "Charlie Toliver!—Charlie Toliver!—Oh, Lord, where's Scott Gholson!—Charlie Toliver!"—and leaped up and huddled down and moaned and rolled and ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... Ambition flung before the world, and fought 'Gainst Evil, Might, and hated Despot-law; Bled, conquered, clipped the wings of soaring Pride, And earned in Serf-land such a brilliant name Time's breath can never dim. But list!—a wail Of sorrowing sadness sweeps across the Land, With which the up-sent jubilant psalm is blent. 'Reft orphans' cries, in mournful cadence soft, Sobs wrung from widows' broken, bleeding hearts; And fond hoar-headed parents' sighs and tears, Commingling all, merge in a requiem sad For those ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... started by such of the women as could command a view of what was going on outside. This seemed to be communicated to all the rest, women and children taking up the murmur, which rose to a piteous wail. This started the pigs and dogs which had been driven into the protection of the pah, ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... and Brian Boru, stream and crash upon the ear like the warriors of a hundred glens meeting; and you are borne with them to battle, and they and you charge and struggle amid cries and battle-axes and stinging arrows. Did ever a wail make man's marrow quiver, and fill his nostrils with the breath of the grave, like the ululu of the north or the wirrasthrue of Munster? Stately are their slow, and recklessly splendid their quick marches, their "Boyne ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... away down the reach a ferry-boat lifted its infinitesimal wail, and then the silence of the night river came down once more, profound and inscrutable. A corner of the wick above my head ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... acquiescingly, as if indifferent. Another, a child in her arms, clawed at his back, forced him aside, and as she sped by he saw the child's face over her shoulder, placid and sweet, and caught her voice in a moaning wail, "Oh, my baby! Oh, my baby!" A man, holding the hand of a girl, was thrown against the wall and dropped, the girl tugging at him, trying to drag him to his feet. Something, with blood on its whiteness, lay huddled across the sill ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... house sounded a wail that rose as they listened and mounted to a shriek. In spite of her desire to remain cool ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... weeping, for each family had some good reason in forty years to remember MacLure. When Bell Baxter saw Saunders alive, and the coffin of the doctor that saved him on her man's shoulder, she bowed her head on the dyke, and the bairns in the village made such a wail for him they loved that the men ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... men to love Him. He cannot force them. He cannot prise open a man's heart with a crowbar, as it were, and force Himself inside. The door opens from within. 'Behold! I stand at the door and knock.' There is an 'if.' 'If any man open I will come in.' Hence the beseeching, hence the wail of wisdom that cries aloud and no man regards it; of love that stands at the entering in of the city, and pleads in vain, and says, 'I have called, and ye have refused.... How often would I have gathered ... and ye would not.' Oh, brethren! it is an awful responsibility, a mysterious prerogative, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... shriek of the sorry monarch rang through the interior of the desolate ruin another sound mingled with it, half-drowning the piercing wail ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter And from the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over; Down in the pasture the sheep hear that shrill crying for Peter, Up from the spring house the wail stealeth anon like a whisper, Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated. Such were the voices that whooped wildly and vainly for Peter Decades and decades ago down in the State of Kentucky— Such are the voices that cry now from the ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... wind breathed—miles away ... to the north. He could hear the breath coming, a mere whimper among the tree-tops. The whimper became a whine.... Reaching the pinewood, the note slid into a moan, that rose slowly to a thin wail as the breath fled up the corridor with the towering walls. The wail fell ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... more slowly backward and forward—the music became still more affecting, and passing from thoughtfulness to sadness, and from sadness to passionate regret, it died away in a wail. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... from the bed. "The wail of dying men rises louder than the loud sea; the devil's psalm-singing roars higher than the roaring wind! Be silent, and listen! Francois ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... one sandwich, one biscuit—Oh dear me!" cried poor Clara, the historical tone suddenly changing to a wail of agony. ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... the age of Homer, as indeed to all pre-Christian antiquity. But concerning this we need not dilate, as it has often been duly remarked upon, and notably by Carlyle, in his "Lectures on Hero-Worship." Who that has once heard the wail of unutterable ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... then, my Life, my Breath! Return, my Comforter! Hear my bitter wail of woe, lead me back to my home. Have pity on my loneliness! Restore Thy love to me, bring me once again to the cleft of my rock, and let me hide myself in ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... cavern, he had no business to be luring a girl into his companionship. "It is the most horrible of virgin-sacrifices," said Will; and he painted to himself what were Dorothea's inward sorrows as if he had been writing a choric wail. But he would never lose sight of her: he would watch over her—if he gave up everything else in life he would watch over her, and she should know that she had one slave in the world, Will had—to use Sir Thomas Browne's phrase—a "passionate prodigality" ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... combustion, and the serenade had been in honour of their ashes, it would have been impossible to surpass the unutterable despair expressed in that one chorus: 'Go where glory waits thee.' It was a requiem, a dirge, a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament, an abstract of everything that is ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... stillness was only broken by the heavy boots of the few elders and deacons who constituted the male portion of the exceedingly slender audience. With difficulty, and sometimes, only after two or three failures, a hymn was raised, which, when in fullest tide, was only a dreary wail,—how unmelodious to the ears of unreverential youth, gifted with a sense of the ludicrous! How long, how sad, how pointless the prayers! How easy to believe, down in that dreary cellar, that this world was but a wilderness, and man "a feeble piece"! Deacon Jones could speak up ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... not that, Elshie," answered the freebooter; "When I ride, my foes may moan. They have had mair light than comfort at the Heugh-foot this morning; there's a toom byre and a wide, and a wail and a cry ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... old fortress blasts back its besiegers pell-mell into the deep. It is all there: truly enough there, at least, to madden yet more Elsley's wild angry brain, till he tries to add his shouts to the great battle-cries of land and sea, and finds them as little audible as an infant's wail. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... lovely pink apple-blossom! You've got to come. I wouldn't dare face Phoebe without you. It's the whole thing to her to have you there. It's been so long since you've gladded with the crowd once and it's her birthday and—" David's voice trailed off into a perfect wail. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... not smashed dead at the first. The captain stood on the bridge to the last, went down with the ship, came up again among the wreckage, and was saved after hours in the water. He will never forget the long, piercing wail of despair from hundreds of victims as the ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... until the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate, young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed from his dying hand to the cold virtuoso, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... as he heard the wail of the child announcing it wanted to be taken out of the cradle, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the warm sun says winter is done, He'll gladden us all with his cheery song; And never will fret if the season is wet, Or wail that the winter was ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... a-come just when he did. I can't rightly tell how hit was, but hit seemed like there was somethin' inside of me what was a-makin' me do hit, an' I couldn't, somehow, help myself. An'—an'—that ain't all, ma'm; I done worse'n that," she continued in a low, moaning wail. "Oh, my God-A'mighty! Why didn't Mr. Burns sling me inter the river an' let me be smashed an' drowned at Elbow Rock while he had me, 'stead of lettin' me git away ter do what I've gone ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... and "Plug" Avery were as much fixtures in the Smyrna scenery as the town pump. Occasionally of an evening the wail of the snuffling accordion wavered out over the village. Buck, his head thrown back and his eyes closed, seemed to get consoling echoes of the past even from this lugubrious assault on Melody, and loungers hovered ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... wail of these armies. But the book closes with a note of hope, with the unspoken oath of international brotherhood, what time a rift forms in the black skies and a calm ray of light falls upon the ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... a general wail arose, and Mrs. Wing fainted entirely away. Madam Sooty-back was quite satisfied with the effect she had produced, and departed, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... wail from Margot Poins' agonised face—a sound such as might have been made by an ox in pain—brought him to a stop. It wrung the Magister, who could not bear to see a woman pained, up to a pitch ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... crag; Thence mark'd the black hull moving yet, and cried, "He passes to be King among the dead, And after healing of his grievous wound He comes again; but—if he come no more— O me, be yon dark Queens in yon black boat, Who shriek'd and wail'd, the three whereat we gazed On that high day, when, clothed with living light, They stood before his throne in silence, friends Of Arthur, who should ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... "Cumhadh na Cloinne," the Lament for the Children, that Patrick Mor, one of the pipers of Macleod of Skye, had composed to the memory of his seven sons, who had all died within one year? And now the doors were opened, and the piper boy once more entered. The wild, sad wail arose: and slow and solemn was the step with which he walked up the hall. Lady Macleod sat calm and erect, her lips proud and firm, but her lean hands were working nervously together; and at last, when the doors were closed on the slow and stately and mournful Lament ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... to take her hand, making a sign to Gustave to depart. But as he approached Julie, she uttered a weak piteous wail, and fell at his feet senseless. De Mauleon raised and carried her into her room, where he left her to the care of the old bonne. On re-entering the anteroom, he found Gustave still lingering by the outer door. "You will pardon me, Monsieur," he said to the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his own post to the west. Shann was still waiting for the other's signal when there arose from the camp a sound to chill the flesh of any listener, a wail which could not have come from the throat of any normal living thing, intelligent being or animal. Ululating in ear-torturing intensity, the cry sank to a faint, ominous echo of itself, to waver up ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... murmurs on the sea-beat shore His dun grey plumage floating to the gale, The curlew blends his melancholy wail With those hoarse sounds the rushing waters pour. Like thee, congenial bird: my steps explore The bleak lone seabeach, or the rocky dale, And shun the orange bower, the myrtle vale, Whose gay luxuriance suits my soul no more. I love the ocean's broad expanse, when dress'd In limpid clearness, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... door. He knocked. No answer. But there was a curious noise inside. It was difficult to determine what it was. It bore a resemblance to the low moaning of one in pain, but it was not that, being far too regular and constant. Now it seemed a kind of song, now a wail—seemed, that is, to his changing fancy, for the sound itself was never changed or checked. It was unlike anything he had ever heard; and in its tone there was ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... Dunfin as travelling companion, and they had flown about hither and thither with the greatest anxiety for Thumbietot. During this ramble they had heard a thrush, who sat in a tree-top, cry and wail that someone, who called himself Kidnapped-by-Crows, had made fun of him. They had talked with the thrush, and he had shown them in which direction that Kidnapped-by-Crows had travelled. Afterward, they had met a dove-cock, a starling ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... been looking on incredulously at her champion's unaccountable tardiness in coming to the point. But this public repudiation was too much for her. She gave a little low wail as she heard the shameless words of recantation, and then, without a word, jumped lightly down from her bench and ran away to hide ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... outcry, clamor, vociferation, yoicks, scream, shriek, howl, yell, proclamation; slogan, shibboleth; halloo, whoop, hoot: crying, weeping, wail, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... coming from no one knew where, which, unearthly in its shrillness and the power it had on the imagination, reverberated through the house and died away in a wail so weird, so thrilling and so prolonged that it gripped not only my own nerveless and weakened heart, but those of the ten strong men congregated below me. The diamond dropped from Mr. Grey's hand, and neither he nor any one else moved to pick it up. Not till ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... burst out in a piteous low wail, a human wail piercing the wail of the storm. The two girls were quite ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... folded his wings, and entering the crystal gates, sat down upon a blasted rock and struck his divine lyre, and a peace fell over the wretched; the demon ceased to torture and the victim to wail. As sleep to the mourners of earth was the song of the angel to the souls of the purifying star: one only voice amidst the general stillness seemed not lulled by the angel; it was the voice of a woman, and it continued to cry out with a ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one! for each it is better, His friend to avenge than with vehemence wail him; Each of us must the end-day abide of 5 His earthly existence; who is able accomplish Glory ere death! To battle-thane noble Lifeless lying, 'tis at last most fitting. Arise, O king, quick let us hasten To ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... rude revelry, The dim clan of the Gael Came like a bad king's burial-end, With dismal robes that drop and rend And demon pipes that wail— ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... entrance to a large cave scooped out by the continued force of the waves. With that gregarious feeling always experienced in times of danger, the people gathered silently and sadly together in the roundhouse, now and then disturbed by a piercing wail from one of three negresses who had sought refuge there. Various articles of furniture and other effects were strewed about in all directions. Such a picture greeted Mr. Meriton on leaving the deck. He at once struck a light, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... outcry was beyond description lamentable. Never, in the whole universe, had a merchant met with such reverses; never had such a pitiable series of losses befallen an unfortunate man. Regardless of the ridicule which his abject wretchedness excited, he howled on still, and kept up an unending wail; but meanwhile he kept a keen eye upon every article of his property, and amidst universal laughter insisted on having every item registered in an inventory as it was transferred to its appointed place of safety. Servadac considerately ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... soon snoring, for we had travelled hard and long. But sleep was never further from my eyes. As I sat there, listening to the rising wind in the trees, and the rush of the river below, with now and again the wail of a sea-bird crying out seaward, I grew to hate the darkness. Despite the fair innocents who slumbered within and the sturdy rogues who slept without, the loneliness of the place took hold upon me, and made me uneasy and anxious. Once ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... roadway. Many tree-trunks were white, contrasting with the darkness within the dense woods, glistening like spectres, as the tremulous light glimmered through the branches. There was no sound in the forest, except the solemn wail of the wind, and the steady tramp, tramp—tramp, tramp of the hurrying horse. My flesh crept and shuddered under the drastic influence of the chill night and the doleful croakings of my companion; who talked continually of the Kuklux, and peered through the bushes and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... which he has made of Lucan's "Pharsalia," a work of great value to those who would understand how the grand contest for supremacy was viewed by the beaten party in after times. That poem is the funeral wail of the Roman aristocracy, and it embodies the ideas and traditions of the vanquished as they existed far down into the Imperial age. It testifies to the original vitality of the aristocratical faction, when we find a youthful contemporary of Nero dedicating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various |
