"Wail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ammonia bottle's empty," she panted; and the miserable father started hatless, for the drug-store, a faint, choked wail from the stricken girl sounding in his ears: "It's—it's my ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... Amati!—the divine Stradivarius! Played on by ancient maestros until the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate, young enthusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed from his dying hand to the cold virtuoso, who let it slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the rushing bow of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... acquaintance the more modern class of bards; of these the most conspicuous is, Ian Lom[16] or Manntach. This bard was a Macdonald; he hung on the skirts of armies, and at the close of the battle sung the triumph or the wail, on the side of his partisans.[17] To the presence of this person the clans are supposed to have been indebted for much of the enthusiasm which led them to glory in the wars of Montrose. His poetry only reaches mediocrity, but the success which attended ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... I stooped low but he relaxed suddenly and seemed to shrink. I felt his heart but it was still. I tried his eyes and they were sightless. Patsy sent up a heartrending wail and crawled over behind his master's gun and knapsack, so I knew my old friend ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... south winds blow, Dissolves in silent dew. Tweed's echoes heard the ceaseless plash, While many a broken band Disordered through her currents dash, To gain the Scottish land; To town and tower, to town and dale, To tell red Flodden's dismal tale, And raise the universal wail. Tradition, legend, tune, and song Shall many an age that wail prolong: Still from the sire the son shall hear Of the stern strife and carnage drear Of Flodden's fatal field, Where shivered was fair Scotland's spear, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... rose from the lines of tonsured heads which skirted the high wall—a wail which suddenly died away into a long hushed silence, broken at last by a rapturous cry of ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... far away down the reach a ferry-boat lifted its infinitesimal wail, and then the silence of the night river came down once more, profound and inscrutable. A corner of the wick above my head sputtered a little—that ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... warm and comfortable; certainly he was fortunate. But he assured himself that the window was properly shuttered, barred, and fully covered by the thick curtain, and he stood by it for a moment listening intently for any sound of movement without. No sound came, not even the wail of a somewhat strong wind which he knew to be sweeping through the pine trees, and he came to the conclusion that the old stone walls were almost sound-proof and that if he and Miss Pett conversed ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... is round. That there may be tribes who believe it to be triangular or oblong does not alter the fact that it is certainly some shape, and therefore not any other shape. Therefore I repeat, with the wail of imprecation, don't say that the variety of creeds prevents you from accepting any creed. It is an ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... long there ebbed and flowed through the temple doors a rainbow-coloured stream of worshippers; while the dust-laden air vibrated with jangle of metal bells, wail of conches and raucous clamour of crows. Within doors, the rattle of dice rivalled the jangle of bells. Young or old, none failed to consult those mysterious arbiters on this auspicious day. Houses, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... smote Dennis's heart with the deepest commiseration was the continuous wail of helpless little children, many of them utterly separated from parents and friends, and in ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... in the shelvy rock is hid, And naught is heard on the lonely hill, But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill, Of the gauze-winged katydid, And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will {417} Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... rushing on that Christmas Eve round the stout Norman towers was not more strong than the breath of the despair which shook her life. She could not sleep—who could sleep on such a night, the herald of such a morrow? The wail and roar of the wind, the crash of falling trees, and the rattle of flying stones seemed to form a fit accompaniment to the turmoil of ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... to the curses ringing From all smitten lands; In sob and wail, they tell the tale Of England's ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... And fast the white rocks faded from his view, And soon were lost in circumambient foam; And then, it may be, of his wish to roam Repented he, but in his bosom slept The silent thought, nor from his lips did come One word of wail, whilst others sate and wept, And to the reckless ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... waking, exclaims with reverential joy, 'Surely GOD is in this place.' Make a mind miserable, and you darken its universe. The stars fall from its heaven, the golden fruitage of its paradise decays, and winter winds wail around it, and night and storm mingle their pitiless elements on its unsheltered head. Intertwined and involved in the inner life, are occurring at all times the great things of human history. In the sanctuary of unrevealed bosoms, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... uttered in a piteous, dismal wail, was too much for Vince's feelings; and, pushing his companion aside, he was about to hurry to the lad's help, but Mike seized him by the arm, and at the same moment they heard Carnach junior jump up ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... sweetest Saviour, thrice all hail! The King of Kings, by David's prophesying; Yet on no royal couch Thy first weak wail Awoke, for in a manger Thou wast lying: Still for that condescension more a King Than having all the whole world's wealth ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... music of these forests is made by crickets and tree-toads. The voice of the latter sounds like the cracking of wood. Occasionally frogs, owls, and goat-suckers croak, hoot, and wail. Between midnight and 3 A.M. almost perfect silence reigns. At early dawn the animal creation awakes with a scream. Pre-eminent are the discordant cries of monkeys and macaws. As the sun rises higher, one musician after another seeks the forest shade, and the morning concert ends at noon. In ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... forth my horse, Bucephalus!" So spake the man of letters. Straight Black John went through the stable gate, But soon returned with hair on end, While terror wings his speed did lend, And out he sent his piteous wail: "O boss! Old Bucky's lost ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Her fingers made the bells crash out her horror and disgust, and her appeal to a higher power to right this dreadful wrong. And then a hopeless sick feeling came over her, a whirling dizzy sensation as if she were going to faint, although she never fainted. She longed to drop down upon the keys and wail her heart out, but she might not. Those awful words or more like them were going on behind the organ there, and the door was open—or even if the door was not open they could be heard, for the room behind the organ was only screened by a heavy curtain! Those two strangers ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... out: he could only see a glimmer of the shape of the window. Then, indeed, he felt that he was left alone. It was so dreadful to be out in the night after everybody was gone to bed! That was more than he could bear. He burst out crying in good earnest, beginning with a wail like that of the wind when ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... perhaps a second's silence, then a faint moaning, a crescendo wail, the whirr and rush of a snarling, shrieking skyrocket overhead, and a crash, like all the thunders of the universe rolled into one, when the shell struck, followed by the roar of falling brick as a neighboring house came pouring ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... to the prison, where for a quarter of a century I have occupied a lonely cell. When the door swings in on you there, the world does not hear your muffled wail. There is little to inspire mirth in prison. For a man who has lived close to the heart of nature, in the forest, in the saddle, to imprison him is like caging a wild bird. And yet imprisonment has brought out the excellencies of many men. I have ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... black upon me And my bones are scorched with heat; My harp is turned to mourning, And my bagpipe into the wail of ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... A slap, a wail, then Mrs. Zapp's elephantine slowness on the stairs from the basement. She appeared, buttoning her collar, smiling almost pleasantly, for she disliked Mr. Wrenn less than she did any other of ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... been so commonplace had it not been so lone? Some latent interest must attach to it. Was it there that a vision of woe had lifted the wild hair of a Prophet; there where some Hagar had stilled the wail of her child on her indignant breast? We would fain call back the pageantry procession, fain see again the solitary thing that seemed so little worth the hand of the artist, and ask, "Why art thou here, and wherefore dost thou ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he has not been to this village; when the moon comes again, it will be four." He said this with proper significance, and the flat face of the melancholy girl by his side puckered and creased miserably before she opened her large mouth to wail her woe. ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... since there was no one who appeared to have any interest in what he might say, he began muttering to himself. I would catch a phrase: "The fate of woman!" And again: "The price of life!" I would hear the terrible, explosive wail: "O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh!" And it would wring a cry out of the depths of Carpenter's soul: ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... place, we find him asking Esli,—the wife of Joseph, of whom he had just said, "Her little daughter has died recently, and her heart is broken,"—"When your child died, did you weep and wail as your people ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... found that there was no necessity for her to continue her speech, and indeed no possibility of her doing so even if she were so minded. The children began to wail and cry, and the mothers also mixed loud sobbings with their loud prayers; and Emmeline and Mary, dissolved in tears, sat themselves down, drawing to them the youngest bairns and those whom they had loved the best, kissing their sallow, famine-stricken, unwholesome faces, and ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... this a general wail arose, and Mrs. Wing fainted entirely away. Madam Sooty-back was quite satisfied with the effect she had ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... away with a wail which was dismally echoed by Rubens. Then, suddenly, in the darkness came a sob that was purely human, and I was clasped in a woman's arms, and covered with tender kisses and soothing caresses. For one wild moment, in my excitement, and the boundless ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... had ceased her gestures, and stood still listening and watching. Thalassa pulled back the blind, and looked out. The moor and rocks were draped in black, and the only sounds which reached him were the disconsolate wail of the wind and the savage break of the sea on the rocks below. He looked at his wife. She had started tossing her hands again at some spectral invisible thing in the shadowy night. She was quite mad—there could be no ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... murmur and swelled to a deep moan, soft but clear, and ended in a wail like that of a ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... singing-school,—one of those wild, pleading tunes, dear to the heart of New England,—born, if we may credit the report, in the rocky hollows of its mountains, and whose notes have a kind of grand and mournful triumph in their warbling wail, and in which different parts of the harmony, set contrary to all the canons of musical Pharisaism, had still a singular and romantic effect, which a true musical genius would not have failed to recognize. The four parts, tenor, treble, bass, and counter, as they were then called, rose and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... drizzly, dark, moist day; the mist had settled upon the hills, and unrolled itself upon brook, glade, and tarn, and the spring breeze was not powerful enough to raise the veil, though from the wild sounds which were heard occasionally on the ridges, and through the glens, it might be supposed to wail at a sense of its own inability. The route of the travellers was directed by the course which the river had ploughed for itself down the valley, the banks of which bore in general that dark grey livery which Sir Aymer de Valence had intimated to be the prevalent tint ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... chance to wail that I fired him because I am afraid of him, that I did it in desperation to save myself. Why, it would give him 10,000 votes of sympathy. No, Brennan, I must get something real to show that Gibson and ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... the wrinkled, old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha; Rocked him in his linden cradle, Bedded soft in moss and rushes, Safely bound with reindeer sinews; Stilled his fretful wail by saying, "Hush! The Naked Bear will get thee!" Lulled him into slumber, singing, "Ewa-yea! my little owlet! Who is this that lights the wigwam, With his great eyes lights the wigwam? Ewa-yea! my ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... say a few words to readers of The Sabbath Scoop on the alleged decay of the British drama. There is indeed some apparent truth in this allegation. On all sides I hear managers sending up the same old wail of dwindling box-office receipts and houses packed with ghastly rows of deadheads. No "paper" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... subject this scene has been seldom treated. I have seen two pictures which represent it. One is a fresco by Giovanni di San Giovanni, which, having been cut from the wail of some suppressed convent, is now in the academy at Florence. The other is a ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... Mrs. Brenner hailed. But her voice fell flat and muffled. Far off on the beach she could dimly hear the long wail of a fog-horn. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... bearers went aboard[53] and hoisting sail from Kagei ran northward. Before they had gone far black storm clouds swept across the sky. Night fell. Lightning blazed unceasingly and flung up into silhouette the wild outlines of the mountains to the east. The roar of the thunder echoed above the wail of the wind and the threshing ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... the pitiless waters, Are borne on the blast of the thunder-rocked air, As husbands and wives, as sons and as daughters, Unite in a wild shrieking wail of despair. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... the summer changes into the sorrowful wail of the yellowing woods, so the strains of joyous worship changed into a wail of supplication; and as he caught the words, Thomas too raised his voice in ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... his mind during this year of afterglow. The end was fitting in its swiftness and dignity. No lingering, painful illness, but a swift stroke and a happy release. "Nothing is here for tears; nothing to wail." ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... she had been looking on incredulously at her champion's unaccountable tardiness in coming to the point. But this public repudiation was too much for her. She gave a little low wail as she heard the shameless words of recantation, and then, without a word, jumped lightly down from her bench and ran away to hide herself ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... warrant it'll be a devil's carnival, too. Isn't Mr. Cyril Henshaw going to play his own music? Oh, I know I'm hopeless, from your standpoint, but I can't help it. I like mine with some go in it, and a tune that you can find without hunting for it. And I don't like lost spirits gone mad that wail and shriek through ten perfectly good minutes, and then die with a gasping moan whose home is the tombs. However, you're going, ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... unrest prepare their storms, And o'er the silent city, vulture forms— Eris and Enyo, Alke, Ioke, The biter, the sharp-bitten, the mad, the fey— Hover and light on pinnacle and tower: The gray Erinnyes, watchful for the hour When Haro be the wail. And down the sky Like a white squall flung Ate with a cry That sounded like the wind in a ship's shrouds, As shrill and wild at once. The driving clouds Surging together, blotted out the sea, The beached ships, the plain with ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... but it is far exceeded in poignancy by what follows. Indeed it would be difficult to find in all literature, from the wail of David over Jonathan downward, such an expression of the hopeless longing for an irrecoverable presence as informs the broken melodies, the stanzas which are like sobs, of the fifth section ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... has left me and my parents alike of hope! I am not fifteen, I have not reached my twentieth year, and—wretched I—I see no more the light! My name is Hypatus; but I pray my brother and my parents to weep for wretched ones no more." Conjecture has coupled this wail of a strange fate with the human sacrifices offered at the shrine of Mithras, and has seen in Hypatus a slave and favourite of Tiberius devoted by his master to the Eastern deity; but there is no ground whatever ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... another instant she had swung broadside-on; and as a perfect mountain of white foam leaped upon her, enfolding her in its snowy embrace, her masts fell, and methought that, mingled with the sudden, deafening roar of the trampling breakers, I caught the sound of a despairing wail borne toward us ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... all indistinctly visible. In a chair opposite is a young woman with such a mournful, careworn face, that a glance inspires you with sorrow; and from a bundle of clothes on her knee issues the fretful wail of a restless child. The monotonous tick of an old clock is the only sound, saving the longdrawn sigh of that young mother, or the quick, hollow breathing of the sleeping man. Now and then the wind whistles more shrilly through ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... months are clad in flowery green, Sad Philomel, in bowery shades unseen, To vernal airs attunes her varied strains; And Itylus sounds warbling o'er the plains; Young Itylus, his parents' darling joy! Whom chance misled the mother to destroy; Now doom'd a wakeful bird to wail the beauteous boy. So in nocturnal solitude forlorn, A sad variety of woes I mourn! My mind, reflective, in a thorny maze Devious from care to care incessant strays. Now, wavering doubt succeeds to long ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... A sharp wail smote the air from a point suspiciously close to the lath and canvas partition on the other side, followed by hasty hushings and steps in the opposite direction. It enabled Lindsay to observe that Mr. Sand seemed at present ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... combined forces of the king and Henry of Navarre on one side, and of the League, aided by many of the princes of Catholic Europe, on the other. The storms of winter swept over the freezing armies and the smouldering towns, and the wail of the victims of horrid war blended with the moanings of the gale. Spring came, but it brought no joy to desolate, distracted, wretched France. Summer came, and the bright sun looked down upon barren ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... weeping and well-away; Let them kill the feast. I would be happy in my soul. "He is better," saith the Priest; He did but sleep the weary day, And will waken whole. Carry me to his dear side, And let the halls be trim; Whistly, whistly,' said she, 'I am wan with watching and wail, He must not wake to see me pale, Let me sleep with him. See you keep the tryst for me, I would rest till he awake And rise up like a bride. But whistly, whistly!' said she. 'Yet rejoice your Lord doth live; And for His dear sake Say Laus, Domine.' Silent they cast down ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... sits at home. Clytaem. Thou seem'st, my son, about to slay thy mother. Orest. It is not I that slay thee, but thyself. Clytaem. Take heed, beware a mother's vengeful hounds. Orest. How, slighting this, shall I escape my father's? Clytaem. I seem in life to wail as to a tomb. Orest. My father's fate ordains this doom for thee. Clytaem. Ah me! The snake is here I bare and nursed. Orest. An o'er-true prophet was that dread dream-born. Thou slewest one thou never should'st have slain, ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... sets an' cries on de furder hill? An' what's de matter wid Miss Bob White, Dat she choke herse'f wid sayin' Good-night? You know mighty well dat sump'n is wrong When dey sets an' sings dat kinder song, 'Twix' a call an' a cry, 'twix' a weep an' a wail— Dey must be tellin' a mighty ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris
... Florence making bold to enter, without any more parley, and on Susan following, Mrs MacStinger recommenced her pedestrian exercise in pattens, and Alexander MacStinger (still on the paving-stone), who had stopped in his crying to attend to the conversation, began to wail again, entertaining himself during that dismal performance, which was quite mechanical, with a general survey of the prospect, terminating in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... banister and declared to the expectant father below that it was "a fine healthy Commander-in-Chief." Therefore, a Commander-in-Chief is not like a poet. But when a Commander-in-Chief dies, the spirit of a thousand Beethovens sob and wail in the air; dull cannon roar slowly out their heavy grief; silly rifles gibber and chatter demoniacally over his grave; and a cocked hat, emptier than ever, rides with the mockery of despair on ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... did the Caronia's siren wail out into the stillness. No reply. And then the throbbing pulses ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... the heaven's Regent fair, That she deign to succour me, And I'll humbly bend my knee; For but poorly do I know With my subject on to go; Therefore is my wisest plan Not to trust in strength of man. I my heavy sins bewail, Whilst I view the wo and wail Handed down so solemnly In the book of times gone by. Onward, onward, now I'll move In the name of Christ above, And his Mother true and dear, She who loves the wretch to cheer. All I know, and all I've heard I will state - how God appear'd And to Noah thus did cry: Weary with the world am I; ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... at her with widening, almost unbelieving, eyes; then raised his face to the sky and, like a wounded animal, emitted one long howl. All of the plucky sergeant's grief, fury, self-condemnation—aye, and love—were in that wail of agony. ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... groan of a gravelled grouse, Or the snarl of a snaffled snail (Husband or mother, like me, or spouse), Have you lain a-creep in the darkened house Where the wounded wombats wail?" ...
— Reginald • Saki
... of a saddler. He learned more than that. Wheeling, as he tells us, was then a great thoroughfare for the traffickers in human flesh. Their coffles passed through the place frequently. "My heart," he continues, "was grieved at the great abomination. I heard the wail of the captive, I felt his pang of distress, and the ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... in the hawk's trail, so high that only a keen eye could have caught sight of him. Daylight insects were beginning to abate their clamor, while their fellows of the night were tuning for the evening concert. Mournfully, and very faintly, came a locomotive's wail from the far valley. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the murmurs on the sea-beat shore His dun grey plumage floating to the gale, The curlew blends his melancholy wail With those hoarse sounds the rushing waters pour. Like thee, congenial bird: my steps explore The bleak lone seabeach, or the rocky dale, And shun the orange bower, the myrtle vale, Whose gay luxuriance suits my soul no ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... is a sudden wail from the child; JOE stops and stares at her; MARY goes quickly to the mattress and ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... then, midst a wail Of agonizing woe, His answer falls upon the ear,— "Yes, sister, you ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... these words. But every novel experiment seems doomed to fail, or meet with some disaster. The water in the bottle had been reduced too low by vaporism, and the bottle burst suddenly, with a loud report. That report was followed by a piteous wail. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... "Ach! Wail, dear nephew, beat your hands upon the bars, curse, waste your breath on stone. Did I not warn you against this very thing when you proposed this mad junket? Well, there are two of us. A fine scandal! They will laugh at us for months ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... outside, and Billy was soon hugging a magnificent box of soldiers, wherewith he pranced off to show them to his mother, leaving the doors open, so that Ursula could more decidedly hear the baby's voice, not a healthy child's lusty cry, but a poor little feeble wail, interspersed with attempts at consolation. 'Come, won't she go to Emily? Oh, Billy-boy, how splendid! I hope you thanked Cousin Ursula. Baby Jenny, now can't you let any one speak but yourself? Oh! shall I never teach you that "Balow, my babe," is not "bellow, my babe." That's ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not call you down to wail and groan." He never raised his voice; his calmness made him terrible. But now the questions broke loose as ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... was saying about it, when there came a sort of wail from a group at a little distance, and it ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... the "Paralus" reached Athens with her evil tidings, on receipt of which a bitter wail of woe broke forth. From Piraeus, following the line of the long walls up to the heart of the city, it swept and swelled, as each man to his neighbour passed on the news. On that night no man slept. There was mourning and sorrow for ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... a common thing for the wake wail to be sung over the boddy each night it be in the house as also for a rushlight to be kept alight from sunset to sunrise and for the death watchers for to tend the dead throw the night owther in the same room or in one so held that those watching could ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... I be dead, ye shall wash my body many times with rose-water and balsam. And thou, Ximena, take heed that thou and the women cry not aloud nor wail for me so that the Moors get knowledge of my death. And when Bucar is come, bid all the folk of Valencia go forth on the wall and sound trumpets, and show great glee. Also bid the people get together their goods in secret, that the Moors know it not, for ye may not tarry here after ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... I, with the plaintive wail of a heroine. "Take all I have, pocket-book and all, but, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... burst close to the ear with the importunity of a peal of trumpets, now assail us with the rumbling hoarseness of distance. Giddy uproar which resembles a language, and which, in fact, is a language. It is the effort which the world makes to speak. It is the lisping of the wonderful. In this wail is manifested vaguely all that the vast dark palpitation endures, suffers, accepts, rejects. For the most part it talks nonsense; it is like an access of chronic sickness, and rather an epilepsy diffused than ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... that calling through the night, A wail that dies when the wind roars? We heard it first on Shipley's Hill, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... came a sudden wail from Winifred, "you can't go off and live by yourself. What will people think? They will say we could ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... have been incessantly torturing her child, whose cry she knew not how to quiet? She carried her about, rocking her in her arms as she went wildly along the paths, obstinately hoping that she would at last get her to sleep, and so hush that wail which was rending her heart. And suddenly, utterly worn-out, sharing each of her daughter's death pangs, she found herself opposite the Grotto, at the feet of the miracle-working Virgin, she who forgave ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the winds were not pleasant. A great owl ensconced in a tree not far away began and maintained for a long time its monotonous "hoot-a-hoot a-hoo," while away in the distant forest gloom, rising at times shrill and distinct above the fitful wind, he heard the wail of the catamount or panther, the saddest and most mournful sound that ever broke the solitude of forest gloom. A sound at times so like the shrieking wail of a child in mortal agony, that heard close at hand it has caused the face of many a brave wife of ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... the carriage swayed as if it would fly in pieces, slithered along, and with a jerk steadied itself. Harz lifted his voice in a shout of pure excitement. Mr. Treffry let out a short shaky howl, and from behind there rose a wail. But the hill was over and the startled horses were cantering with a free, smooth motion. Mr. Treffry and Harz looked at ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lost her father and after his death her own wail was: 'I never lived with my father. He was always away in the morning before I was up. I was away, or busy, in the evening when he was there. On Sundays he never went to church as mother and I did—I suppose now because he had some other religion of his own. But if he ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... in the Tabernacle impressed me more than any other Fourth of July celebration I ever attended. As most of the Mormon families keep no servants, mothers must take their children wherever they go—to churches, theatres, concerts, and military reviews—everywhere and anywhere. Hence the low, pensive wail of the individual baby, combining in large numbers, becomes a deep monotone, like the waves of the sea, a sort of violoncello accompaniment to all their holiday performances. It was rather trying to me at first to have my glowing periods ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... fair seashell— Bend down thine ear And thou shalt hear The river on the golden strand And sound of harps in that fair land— Or wail of ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... their own unworthiness and impurity, as well as that of their people, they uttered their spiritual desires, and their aspirations and disappointments and indignations and humiliations, in strains that make their great writings sound like one long, impassioned, rhythmic wail through the bars of a dungeon. Gloomy, wrathful, and intense, their utterances are grand and pathetic and sublime; but the beautiful plays through them, and gilds their highest points as the white crests do the billows of a ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... John Collinses—four tall glasses of pale liquid and ice, some stuff red as blood floating on the top. No sooner had Diana tasted hers than she set up a loud wail that there was not enough Angostura in it. One of the men hurried away to have this grave defect remedied, and the moment he was out of sight Diana took up his as yet untouched glass, and with two long straws between her lips, skilfully sucked all the red stuff from the top of the ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... intelligible to them. And withal there was a constitutional melancholy, aggravated by his weary toils, perilous fightings, and fierce throes, which led him down often into the deep mire where there was no standing; and which sighs through all his life. The penitential Psalms and Paul's wail: 'O wretched man that I am,' perhaps never woke more plaintive echo in any human heart than ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... young Queen seemed to tremble between life and death as she stretched forth her arms to them with a low wail that almost unnerved ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... blowing his long grey locks about his head, and twisting into grotesque and fantastic folds the nameless horror of the dead man's shroud. Then the clock struck the quarter, and he felt the time was come. He chuckled to himself, and turned the corner; but no sooner had he done so, than, with a piteous wail of terror, he fell back, and hid his blanched face in his long, bony hands. Right in front of him was standing a horrible spectre, motionless as a carven image, and monstrous as a madman's dream! Its head was bald and burnished; its face round, and fat, and white; and hideous ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... the hands of an infuriated horde of soldiers a bruised, battered, slouching hulk of a man in a dingy Confederate uniform. He implores their protection, and it is only when they see the piteous, haggard, upturned face, and hear the wail of his voice, that Putnam and Abbot recognize the deserter, Rix. Abbot is off his horse and by his side in an instant. Sternly ordering back the men who had grappled and were dragging him, the major holds Rix by the coat-collar and gazes at ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... side-wheels fitfully revolving, a shriek rent the air and froze my young blood. Some mother parting from a son who was on board our vessel, no longer able to restrain her emotion, was borne away, frantically raving in the delirium of grief. I have never forgotten that agonizing scene, or the despairing wail that was enough to pierce the hardest heart. I imagined my heart was about to break; and when we put out to sea in a damp and dreary drizzle, and the shore-line dissolved away, while on board there was overcrowding, and confusion ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... travellers for that region of bliss; it drives sleep from our eyes and forces them to watch in fruitless jealousy. Far below us earth's old forests rustle and her seas chant the primal hymn of creation: they sound like the wail of a memory that wanders ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... wail of fearful agony, but under the circumstances Sergeant Overton could not afford to ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... with the Greek; but the monody of 'Thyrsis', Matthew Arnold's commemoration of Clough, approaches nearer the Greek. Yet no other lament has the energy and rapidity of Bion's; the refrain, the insistent repetition of the words "I wail for Adonis",—"Alas for Cypris!" full of pathos and unspoken irrepressible woe, is used only by his pupil Moschus, though hinted at ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... darkness deep voices shouted questions, or answered or gave orders, and from a thousand houses, alike in the wealthy Bourg du Four with its three-storied piles and in the sordid lanes about the water and the bridges, went up one wail of horror and despair. Men who had dreamed of this night for years, and feared it as they feared God's day, awoke to find their dream a fact, and never while they lived forgot that awakening. While women left alone in their homes bolted and barred and ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... occur that a passionate master, heated with wine,—mad with himself and all about him, pours out his vengeful ire on the head and back of some helpless slave, and leaves him weltering in his blood! How often may be heard the agonized wail of the slave mother, deploring the departure of some innocent child that has been lost in gambling, ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... Where? Why didn't Mr. Robert tell her where? And couldn't he get him away at once? Mr. Robert had almost gone hoarse tryin' to explain why he couldn't. But after every try she'd come back with this wail: ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... green path, not thirty yards away, I saw the head and shoulders and upstretched, appealing arms of Van Roon. Even as the lightning flickered and we saw him, he was gone; with one last, long, drawn-out cry, horribly like the mournful wail of a ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... his stretched-out arms, resting upon the table as heretofore. She heard him whisper; she bent tenderly down to listen. 'I don't know. Don't tell me it is Frederick—not Frederick. I cannot bear it,—I am too weak. And his mother is dying!'He began to cry and wail like a child. It was so different to all which Margaret had hoped and expected, that she turned sick with disappointment, and was silent for an instant. Then she spoke again—very differently—not so exultingly, far more ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... frightened pony galloping off at an angle. The hunter quickly pulled the trigger again and the second Sioux also was smitten by sudden death. The other two turned, but one of them was wounded by the terrible marksman, and the pony of the fourth was slain, his rider hiding behind the body. A dismal wail came from the Sioux far back. The hunter lowered his great weapon, and one hand ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... would have answered, or what Thaddeus would have done next if the conversation had been continued, can be a matter of unprofitable speculation only, for at this point a wail from above- stairs showed that Master Perkins had awakened, and the ladies, considerate of Bessie's maternal feelings, promptly rose to take their leave, and in ten minutes she and ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... heart held him back, but before he had time to listen to it he had opened the little door, for the keys lay on the table to his hand; and he was peering into a small dark recess of stone, which seemed, for the wail that the little door made on its hinges, not to have been opened for ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Lying calm and black Under the night, Floats the wail Of the pipes: And beyond, loom Langdale Pikes, dim, Shadowy sentinels. Over all, the stars, Like friends, faithful ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... wingless wind that walk'st the sea, Weak wind, wing-broken, wearier wind than we, Who are yet not spirit-broken, maimed like thee, Who wail not in our inward night as thou In the outer darkness now, What word has the old sea given thee for mine ear From thy faint lips to hear? For some word would she ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... she lay as if petrified, every limb struck powerless, every nerve strained to listen. Who had uttered that dreadful wail? What did it portend? Then, her strength returning, she started up, and knew that she was alone. The camp-bed by her side was empty. It had not been touched. Fear, nameless and chill, swept through her. She felt her ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... so difficult to credit the villainy of a man—and yet so easy to suspect, to believe all possible deceit and wickedness in a poor helpless woman? Oh, man of God! is your mantle of charity cut to cover only your own sex? Can the wail of down-trodden orphanage wake no pity in your heart,—or is it locked against me by the cowardly dread of incurring the hate of the house ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... other way than crying; and the same is true of hunger, pain and discomfort. Crying is the reaction appropriate to a condition where the individual cannot help himself—where he wants something but is powerless to get it. The helpless baby sets up a wail that brings some one to his assistance; that is the utility of crying, though the baby, at first, does not have this result in view, but simply cries because he is hungry and helpless, uncomfortable and {145} helpless, thwarted and helpless. The child cries less as he grows older, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... o'er all the other gods prevail; You, one against a hundred though it be, Balance all Europe in the other scale. Them liken I to those who, in the tale, Mountain on mountain piled, presumptuously Warring with Heaven and Jove. The earth clave he, And hurled them down beneath huge rocks to wail: So take you up your bolt with energy; A happy ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... replied Marian, her chin beginning to quiver. "Nobody can help me. I'm the most miserable girl—" her voice ended in a wail, and she rocked to and fro ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... head master of the Grammar School and his wife, the head mistress of the High School, and a few others had been invited to meet them; and Angela could only just appear at dinner, trusting to a slumber of her charge, but, on coming out of the dining-room, a wail summoned her upstairs at once, and she was seen no ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long since canceled woe, And moan the expense of many a vanished sight: Then can I ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... another son thou weepest, and in a new sorrow art thou wasting away.... Nor so much did pleasant Lesbos mourn for Alcaeus, nor did the Teian town so greatly bewail her poet,... and not for Sappho but still for thee doth Mitylene wail her musical lament.... Ah me! when the mallows wither in the garden, and the green parsley, and the curled tendrils of the anise, on a later day they live again, and spring In another year: but we men, we the great and mighty or wise, when once we have died, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... slighted ghosts protested, there came a loud, reproachful wail out of space. Everyone started, and stared in all directions. Then the soberly clad, modern inhabitants of Nancy glanced skyward as they crossed the square of Stanislas. Nobody hurried, yet nobody stopped. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... study and experience have eliminated even this defect, so that to-day the singer and actor are justly balanced; both are superlatively great. Can any one who hears and sees Caruso in the role of Samson, listen unmoved to the throbbing wail of that glorious voice and the unutterable woe of the blind ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... What to him the wail of them who beneath the fierce sun toiled under the whips of relentless masters? Heard from granite colonnade or beneath cool linen awning, it was mellowed by distance, to monotonous music. Why should he question the Sphinx ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... story of the bygone? The elegy, too, comes to us as the last lamenting, sadly solemn swan-song of that glorious golden time. And, indeed, are not all poesies but various notes of that mighty diapason of Thought and Feeling, that has, through the ages, been singing itself in jubilee and wail? ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for her, the kind slave-woman. Not one of all those little ones of the nation but who had a home in the many-mansioned heart of Lundy. He had been an eye and ear witness of the barbarism of slavery. "My heart," he sobbed, "was deeply grieved at the gross abomination; I heard the wail of the captive; I felt his pang of distress, and the iron entered my soul." With apostolic faith and zeal he had for a decade been striving to free the captive, and to tie up his bruised spirit. Sadly, but with a great ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... on the latch the piteous old man held forth his arms toward her and in a wail of agony cried: "Doll! Doll! My daughter! My child! ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major |
