"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... only a concession! Mr. President, I do not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On the contrary, I believe that whenever you establish that doctrine, whenever you crystalize that idea in the public mind of this country, you ring the death-knell of ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... a sentiment of forthcoming evil, which I found it impossible to quell by any effort of the reason, I perceived the huge jaws at the extremity of the proboscis suddenly expand themselves, and from them there proceeded a sound so loud and so expressive of wo, that it struck upon my nerves like a knell and as the monster disappeared at the foot of the hill, I fell at once, fainting, to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... not receiving; asking, not answer." The words reverberated through her consciousness like a funeral knell. She dropped the stained lily and ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... self-consuming pangs. But, true or false, one thing she promised me: though other spheres, though other lives had come between us, she would be with me in my dying hour. Soon the bell will toll that hour, and toll my knell! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... in mad, disjointed times It shakes the torch of terror, and its cry Shrills o'er the quaking earth, and in the flame Of riot and war we see its awful form Rise by the scaffold, where the crimson axe Rings down its grooves the knell of shuddering kings. For ever in thine eyes, O Liberty, Shines that high light whereby the world is saved, And though thou slay us, ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... after their distinguished contemporary was laid to his rest. The merits of both these able men and of those now following after them must be left to be dealt with by another chronicler. Although, as we remarked in our opening chapter, the wood engraver has rung the knell of English caricature, with such clever men as Colonel Seccombe, Mr. Proctor, Mr. Randolph Caldicott, Mr. F. Barnard, the present George Cruikshank, Mr. Chasemore, and others whose names do not at present occur to us, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... On my soul the toll of bell Trembles. Thou art calmly sleeping While my weary heart is weeping: I cannot listen to thy knell: Fare-thee-well. ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... of wounded in our wards increased daily. Sick men poured into the hospital. Often they came too late, having remained at the post of duty until fever had sapped the springs of life or the rattling breath sounded the knell of hope, marking too surely that fatal disease, double pneumonia. Awestruck I watched the fierce battle for life, the awful agony, trying vainly every means of relief, lingering to witness struggles which wrung my heart, ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... matrimonial knell Of worthy people such as these! Why was I an attorney? Well - Go on ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... eyes to catch sight of that boat which was bearing him away so swiftly now: she strained her ears, vaguely hoping to catch one last, lingering echo of his voice. But all was silence, save that monotonous clapper, which seemed to beat against her heart like a rhythmic knell ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... during the debate on the Union Bill, "it [the proposal for unification] is the unification of the white races to disfranchise the coloured races, and not to promote union between all races in South Africa." The passage of the Union Bill sounded the political death knell of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... witchcraft, it was some vile art. They had no heart to man the battlements, to fight like their brothers at Orleans and Jargeau in face of all the powers of the evil one: the cry of "Sus! Sus!" was like the death-knell in ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... that proviso was interrupted for three administrations, but justice moved steadily onward. In the news that the men of California had chosen freedom, Calhoun heard the knell of parting slavery, and on his deathbed he counseled secession. Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison had died despairing of the abolition of slavery; Calhoun died in despair at the growth of freedom. His system rushed irresistibly ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... something of the old political life of Vienna, continually agitated by some "Balkan Question"; of the general dislike of the "Heir," whose violent death at Sarajevo had been the death knell of European peace; apprehensions of the day when he should ascend the throne, for he was intensely clerical and reactionary. If he had survived until the old Emperor's death, and there had been no war, it ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... words; and when, in a moment later I heard her uncle reply, in his sternest tone, that she had irreparably forfeited her claims to his regard and favor, I did not need her short and bitter cry of shame and disappointment, or that low moan for some one to help her, for me to sound his death-knell in my heart. Creeping back to my own room, I waited till I heard her reascend, then I stole forth. Calm as I had ever been in my life, I went down the stairs just as I had seen myself do in my dream, and knocking ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... was right when she said that 'nevermore' was the saddest and most expressive word in the English tongue" (so harsh to her ears, usually). "I think she called it the sweetest, too, in sound; but to me it is simply the most sorrowful, a knell of doom, and it fills my soul to-day to overflowing, for 'never, never more' shall I look ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... I tell, by doleful knell, Lightning and thunder, I break asunder, On Sabbath all, to church I call, The sleepy head, I raise from bed, The winds so fierce, I do disperse, Men's cruel ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell; But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... upward way they take, Such speed as age and fear can make, And crossed themselves for terror's sake, As hurrying, tottering on: Even in the vesper's heavenly tone, They seemed to hear a dying groan, And bade the passing knell to toll For welfare of a parting soul. Slow o'er the midnight wave it swung, Northumbrian rocks in answer rung; To Warkworth cell the echoes rolled, His beads the wakeful hermit told, The Bamborough peasant raised his head, But slept ere half a prayer he said; So far ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... not, death's nearing knell Tolled in a heart that dreamed no more. Our lips shook, sad as lips in hell; But, fearful of the rending shore, To fill all time with sad farewell We ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... of Colonel Montgomery was the knell of the famished Fort London, situated on the borders of the Cherokee country. The garrison was forced to capitulate to the Indians, who agreed to escort the men in safety to another fort. They were, however, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... His steamer was not supposed to sail for an hour yet. But the thought had hardly flashed in mind when we heard the roar of steam and clanking as the anchor chain came home. The sound traveled over water and across roofs like the knell of good luck—the clanking of the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... that lay sick, and mockt me, Mockt me abominably, abused me lewdly, I'le make thee sick at heart, before I leave thee, And groan, and dye indeed, and be worth nothing, Not worth a blessing, nor a Bell to knell for thee, A sheet to cover thee, but that thou Stealest, Stealest from the Merchant, and the Ring he was buried with Stealest from his Grave, ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... of the Luxembourg, some of the guard, who had been with him in Italy, recognized his person, and he was instantly greeted, with enthusiastic shouts. "Long live Bonaparte." The clamor rolled like a voice of thunder through the spacious halls of the palace, and fell, like a death knell, upon the ears of the Directors. The populace upon the pavement, caught the sound and reechoed it from street to street. The plays at the theatres, and the songs at the Opera, were stopped, that it might be announced, from the stage, that Bonaparte had arrived ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... out his eighth term in the penitentiary. It is fearful to contemplate these human wrecks. A wasted life, golden opportunities unimproved, a dark and dismal future will constitute the death knell of such fallen beings. Young man, remember the life of this convict, and shun such ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... hard in him. A clock outside, chiming the half-hour, rang its knell with derisive strokes that seemed to beat upon his heart. It was just his luck. She would never turn up. A hundred contingencies might arise to prevent her—a street accident, a headache, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... side, she felt, like full-toned bell, A mighty heart heave large in measured play; But as the floating moon aye lower fell Its bounding force did, by slow loss, decay. It throbbed now like a bird; now like far knell Pulsed low and faint! And now, with sick dismay, She felt the arm relax that round her clung, And from her circling ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... him to a dark and dismal cell. Where they left him. Sad and solemn, heavy, awful as a knell, Seemed the fading of their footsteps, as he heard them slowly glide Through the long and vaulted corridor ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... friends of flowers, And fairies all; When frost entrapped her, They came and lapped her In leaves, and wrapped her With shroud and pall; In red leaves wound her, With dead leaves bound her Dead brows, and round her A death-knell rang; Rang the death-bell for her, Sang, "is it well for her, Well, is it well ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... one's duty. Desfallecer de animo: To lose courage. Deshacerse de los generos: To get rid of the goods. Detestar de la mentira: To hate lying. Disfrutar de buena renta: To enjoy a good income. Doblar por un difunto: To sound the death knell. Dudar de alguna cosa: ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... crowd, and who at once threw off his coat and plunged into the stream. This was very rapid, and, after a few moments battling with the turbid current, he was overpowered; uttering a loud cry for assistance, which I shall never forget and which rang in my ears like a death knell, he disappeared from the view of the spectators, and, being probably entangled in the trees and debris that were floating down the torrent, he did not rise again. A loud wail arose from the terrified assemblage, who were unable to render the poor fellow any assistance, and ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... elephant as bagged. The natives had also heard the report, and people began to accumulate from all quarters for the sake of the flesh. The elephant was not dead, but was standing about ten yards within the grass jungle; however, in a short time a heavy fall sounded his knell, and the crowd rushed in. He was a fine bull, and before I allowed him to be cut up, I sent for the measuring tape; the result being ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... once, the fourth intended to do so. It was always the immediate object of every revolt, and the power to ring the great Patarina, the ancient bell stolen by the Romans from Viterbo, had for centuries a directing influence in Roman brawls. Its solemn knell announced the death of a Pope, or tolled the last hour of condemned criminals, and men crossed themselves as it echoed through the streets; but at the tremendous sound of its alarm, rung backward till the tower rocked, the Romans ran to arms, the captains of the Regions buckled on their breastplates ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... father lies. Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... by a certain date they should issue writs for a free Parliament and bring their own sittings to an end. Their hopes were at once scattered to the winds; and in the wild tumult of bonfires and rejoicings with which Monk's declaration was celebrated in the City, they saw the death-knell of their own power. In the licence of recovered liberty many toasted the King's health, and there was ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Provincial Assembly of Pennsylvania. It bore the portentous text from Scripture: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." A joyous peal from that bell gave notice that the bill had been passed. It was the knell of British domination. ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... any human being can bring to us. We have the right to challenge the fact and investigate it, and either to say: "It is fact"; or: "To me it is not fact"; but we have no right to say to any human being: "You shall not search nor speak," for that would be the death-knell of our liberty, that the denial of the foundation on ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... and shoved along, by the staunch and (as it seemed) brutal arm of friendship, among crimson and gilding and blinding lights all seen at intervals through half-closed eyes. A little bell rang, and I felt it was my death knell. But through the darkness of my weltering soul (for I was presumably dead and undoubtedly damned) there marched, stood still, and curtsied majestically towards each other, the great grave opening chords of the overture. And when they had delivered, solemnly, their mysterious herald's ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Labor Committee and the Tuberculosis Committee have been formed to put up bars against the slum where it roamed unrestrained; the Tenement House Department has been organized and got under way, and the knell of the double-decker and the twenty-five-foot lot has been sounded. Two hundred tenements are going up to-day under the new law, that are in all respects model buildings, as good as the City and ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... manifesto issued by the Duke but the day before. Surely no other great general of the world ever made so colossal, so fatal a blunder. In that arrogant and sanguinary manifesto could be heard the death-knell of the unhappy King of France, or so it seemed to Calvert, who was so deeply impressed with the rashness and danger of his Grace's diplomacy that he made no attempt to conceal the alarm he felt. This open disapproval so offended the Duke and his friend, the ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... the universe may be, it is more nearly comprehended now than in Jesus' time. Twentieth century events are more dependable in forming our philosophy of life than those of the first century. The failure to grasp this fact is the death knell of orthodox religion. Every existing religious sect has founded its spirituality upon events supposed to have occurred in the past. Christianity depends upon the direct creation, fall of man and life of an atoning Savior, all physical in character. Our new metaphysics will ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... any public exposure was involved an additional complication of guilt. Perez was not the only favoured votary of the versatile siren. His rival, or rather his partner, was—Philip of Spain! The revelation of promiscuous worship, threatened by Escovedo, sounded like a knell to Perez and the princess. Was it a mad defiance, or a profound prescience, of the consequences, which, when Escovedo, stung on one occasion beyond forbearance by the demonstration of iniquity which Othello in his agony demands of Iago, declared loudly his purpose of divulging every ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... life, we have allegory not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a shiver." There are sunny gleams upon the pages, but a strange, melancholy chill pervades the book. In "The Wedding Knell", "The Minister's Black Veil", "The Gentle Boy", "Wakefield", "The Prophetic Pictures", "The Hollow of the Three Hills", "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", "The Ambitious Guest", "The White Old Maid", "Edward ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... the twilight deepened, waking at intervals in the gloomy stillness, as if from sleep. It filled the room every now and then with a sad, sighing sound, then died out slowly, again to swell, again to fall, sad as the tolling of a funeral knell. He lay listening to it when I went to him, with parted lips and strange solemnity of face. Too heart-broken for speech, I knelt beside him with a stifled moan. 'Magsie,' (that was his pet name for me,) 'I thought it was your notion, dear, but there is a voice in the wind to-night, and it is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... disappear'd Our star of morn, as high The southern west its blast released, And drown'd in floods the sky— Ah woe! was gone the star that shone, Nor left a visage dry For her, who won as win could none The people's love so well. O, welaway! the dirging lay That rung from Moy its knell; Alas, the hue, where orbs of blue, With roses wont to dwell! How can we think, nor swooning sink, To earth them in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... A knell from the church bell broke harshly on these youthful thoughts. Another! Again! It was tolling for the funeral service. A group of humble mourners entered the gate: wearing white favours; for the corpse was young. They stood uncovered by a grave; ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... end our suspense. We know of a thousand things we want to say, but the time slips by wasted, and hangs drearily on our hands. We have not the spirit to look forward, or the heart to look back. We long to have it all over, and yet every stroke of the clock falls like a cruel knell on our ears. We long that we could fall asleep, and wake to find ourselves on the other side of ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... man; that he had moods, that he made mistakes, and, above all, that he knew his art was an art and not an attribute of deity. That is what is the matter with the Germans; they cannot "ring fancy's knell"; their knells have no gaiety. The phrase of Hamlet about "holding the mirror up to nature" is always quoted by such earnest critics as meaning that art is nothing if not realistic. But it really means (or at least its author really thought) that art is nothing if not artificial. ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... the fishermen finding the body, and remembered the shriek which arose on the gusty air. She dared not speak; it would sound her own death-knell. She could not confess her presence at the margin of the ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... Wakefield (whose original, if I remember rightly, is to be found in 'King's Anecdotes'), who leaves his house one morning for no particular reason, and though living in the next street, does not reveal his existence to his wife for twenty years; and the hero of the 'Wedding Knell,' the elderly bridegroom whose early love has jilted him, but agrees to marry him when she is an elderly widow and he an old bachelor, and who appals the marriage party by coming to the church in his ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... tolls the knell of day, The lowing herd winds o'er the lea The ploughman homeward plods ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... my ancestors, Which swept the desert shore of that Dead Sea Whereof we got the name of Mortimer, Will I advance upon this castle ['s] walls— Drums, strike alarum, raise them from their sport, And ring aloud the knell of Gaveston! Lan. None be so hardy as to touch the king; But neither spare you ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... expected favourable moment had arrived. The knell of Venice was rung; and Bonaparte thus wrote to the Directory on the 30th of April: "I am convinced that the only course to be now taken is to destroy this ferocious and sanguinary Government." On the 3d of May, writing from Palma Nuova, he says: "I see nothing ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... was a poor woman neatly headed off the scent of a fifty-dollar bill. She rang the knell of a new hat ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... my heart"—was Maximilian's request to his executioners. "Oh man!" was his last cry as he fell, the victim of his own ambition, and of Louis Napoleon's perfidy. The volley which pierced his breast was the knell of the Bonaparte dynasty. Gravelotte was but little more than three ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... in his dying fear One dreadful sound could the Rover hear, A sound as if with the Inchcape bell, The devil below was ringing his knell. ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... Poppies these that were his eyes, Of fish-bones were these bluebells made. His fins of gold that to and fro Waved and waved so long ago, Still as petals wave and wave To and fro above his grave. Hearken too! for so his knell Tolls all ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... Was he deluding himself? Did his over-excited imagination make him hear a death knell pealing for his honour and his hopes, which must be borne to their grave? Yet no! All the citizens and peasants, men and women, great and small, who thronged the salt market, which he had just entered, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... glance, yes," studied Peters. "But, on the other hand, it would be the death knell of my post-card business, and I'm calculating to go back to Baldpate next summer and take it up again. No, I'm afraid I can't let it be generally known that I've quit living in a shack on the mountain for love of somebody ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... centurion, "thou shalt see with thine own eye, and hear it ring a knell in the purse which holds our common stock." "Which did hold it, as thou wouldst say, most valiant commander," replied the inferior warder; "but what that purse holds now, save a few miserable oboli for purchasing certain pickled potherbs and salt fish, to relish our allowance of stummed wine, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... had indeed resolved that this well-meaning but misguided prince should fall by his own obstinacy; for though his son advised him to seek the alliance of Alfonso, he refused to do so until that alliance could no longer avail him. He himself seemed to think that the knell of his departing greatness was about to sound; and the most melancholy images were present to his fancy, even in sleep. "One night," says an Arabic historian, "he heard in a dream his ruin predicted by one of his sons: he awoke, and the same verses ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... wives must one day hear the striking of a fatal hour. It is a knell, the death and end of jealousy, a great, noble and charming passion, the only true symptom of love, if it is not even its double. When a woman is no longer jealous of her husband, all is over, she loves him no more. ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... mean that, Theo—seriously?" she gasped; and the repressed eagerness in her tone sounded the death-knell of ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... wafted on the balmy summer wind; Forms of pale and pensive loveliness, with eyes like pensile stars, Such as never yet were beaming 'mid this world's discordant jars. And their whispers wild, unearthly, unutterable, fell like a harp-string's dying echo, or a fair young spirit's knell, On my soul amid the shadows of my native forest trees, Rustling melancholy, lowly, in the wailing of the breeze, Till, unknowing pain or agony, I've wept such blissful tears As shall never, never flow again 'mid ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... were past! and now the distant bell (For deep and pensive thought had held her there) Toll'd midnight out, with long-resounding knell, While dismal echoes ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... the loved survivors tell How naught from death could save, Till every sound appears a knell, And every ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the widow and the orphan, whom war's desolating hand cast into the world to tread alone its dreary path. To Uncle Nathan victory and defeat were alike the messengers of woe. Both were the death-knell of human beings; both carried weeping and wailing ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... note came one frail form, A phantom among men, companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness 5 Actaeon-like; and now he fled astray With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, And his own thoughts along that rugged way Pursued like raging hounds ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... their heads, gravely, with decorous looks of sympathy, repeating their short refrain, like a knell. ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... The fatal knell, then, is knolled, and down among the dead men sink the poor " Witlings "-for ever, and for ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... feet apart. A Zuni executioner, armed with a war club, was stationed in front of each victim, and another one, armed likewise, stood behind him. A war chief raised his arms and yelled, and forty clubs were raised in air. Then the great war drum, or tombe, boomed out the knell of death. There was a sickening, crashing thud, and twenty Navajos fell to earth with crushed skulls, each cabeza having been whacked simultaneously, right and left, fore and aft, by two stone clubs in the hands ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... something. They all could hear something above the shrieking of the wind, and the roar of the waves, and the crash of the cakes and bergs of ice tumbling against each other. It was something that sounded like the death-knell of the Nancy Bell, and made their faces blanch with fear. It was the noise of breakers, distant yet, but still as plainly distinguishable as if quite near— breakers breaking on a lee-shore, the most terrible sound of all ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... prisoner, lying helpless among his sleeping captors. Silvertip and the guard had fled into the woods, frightened by the appalling moan which they believed sounded their death-knell. And Joe believed he might have fled himself had he been free. What could have caused that sound? He fought off the numbing chill that once again began to creep over him. He was wide-awake now; his head was ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... me, Brother, gently met; Just a little, turn not yet, Thou shalt laugh, and soon forget: Now the midnight draweth near. I have little more to tell; Soon with hollow stroke and knell, Thou shalt count the palace bell, Calling that the ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... woman," said he, approaching Aminta, "like you, beautiful, intelligent, and I venture to say also full of talent, as you are—we swear we love her, and are really sincere. Reason, however, in the guise of matrimony, hurries to sound the knell of love. At the first peal, it escapes, and whither? The beauty we adore first weeps, and then finds consolation, or rather suffers herself to be consoled. Then, opening her wings like the butterfly, she hurries to find the pleasure she ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... lay the package and letter, which she no longer felt any desire to open, and her hands drooped listlessly at her side. The fact that her MS. was returned rung a knell for all her sanguine hopes, for such was her confidence in the critical acumen of Mr. Manning that she deemed it utterly useless to appeal to any other tribunal. A higher one she knew not; a ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall henceforth repair And dwell ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... not speak That parting word of bitterness; the cheek Grows pale when the tongue utters it; the knell Which tells "the grave is ready!" and doth swell On the dull wind, tolling—"the dead—the dead!" Sounds not more desolate. It is a dread And fearful thing to be of hope bereft, As if the soul itself had died, and left ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... times did the death knell of independence seem on the point of being tolled, and how many times did the god of chance throw his weight into the ascending scale of the Colonists. But for a lapse of memory, the attempt of the British in the Summer of 1777 to capture the Hudson ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... ghastly incident was to her as the sounding of her own death-knell. Standing there with her face to the sea, she was telling herself that she would never see the daylight again. The very soldiers that guarded them were revolutionists at heart. They were only waiting, so she believed, for a strong man's ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... I had really found Willie Hughes in Elizabethan literature. In a wonderfully graphic account of the last days of the great Earl of Essex, his chaplain, Thomas Knell, tells us that the night before the Earl died, 'he called William Hewes, which was his musician, to play upon the virginals and to sing. "Play," said he, "my song, Will Hewes, and I will sing it to myself." So he did it most joyfully, not as the howling ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... the midnight moon should lave Her forehead in the silver wave, How solemn on the ear would come The holy matins' distant hum, While the deep peal's commanding tone Should wake, in yonder islet lone, A sainted hermit from his cell, To drop a bead with every knell! And bugle, lute, and bell, and all, Should each bewildered stranger call To friendly feast and ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... who drown, perchance, And all their years, a waking dream, Flash pictured by in lightning gleam, His childhood home appears, the mother's glance, The hearth-side smile; the fragrance of the fields: —Now, war's iron knell Wakes the hounds of hell, Whilst o'er the realm her ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... Ay, even afloat his concentrations work: Two vast united squadrons of his sail Move at this moment viewless on the seas.— Their whereabouts, untraced, unguessable, Will not be known to us till some black blow Be dealt by them in some undreamt-of quarter To knell ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... in f, l, or s, preceded by a single vowel, double the final consonant; as staff, mill, pass—muff, knell, gloss—off, hiss, puss. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... end of a steep and narrow street. When she arrived about at the middle of it, she heard strange noises, a funeral knell. "It must be for some one else," thought she; and she ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... sounded through the muffling storm a knell as mournful as some tolling bell, while into that wild, moaning Friday night, went the desolate woman, wearing henceforth the brand of Cain—remanded to the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... moon should lave 290 Her forehead in the silver wave, How solemn on the ear would come The holy matin's distant hum, While the deep peal's commanding tone Should wake, in yonder islet lone, 295 A sainted hermit from his cell, To drop a bead with every knell— And bugle, lute, and bell, and all, Should each bewildered stranger call To friendly feast, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... them the dirge, the knell? These were the mourner's share,— The sullen clang, whose heavy swell Throbbed through the beating air; The rattling cord, the rolling stone, The shelving sand that slid, And, far beneath, with hollow tone ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... again and the frost began to creep after it. Already the bulk of vegetation about them (save the hardy firs and kindred trees and shrubs) were black and dead. The change in climate had tolled the knell of all those plants that had withstood heretofore the rigors of ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... stir there is to-day! They are laying him away Where he fell. There the flag goes draped before him; Now they pile the grave sod o'er him With a knell. And he answers to his name In the ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... yet,"—and then left the Tower, and went to a little lodging in a back street, where she found her husband, and where they both lay hid while the search for Lord Nithsdale was going on, and where they heard the knell tolling when his friends, the other lords, were being led out to have their heads cut off. Afterwards, they made their escape to France, where most of the Jacobites who had been concerned in the rising were living, as best they could, on small ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... others of less note came one frail form, A phantom among men; companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Aclaeon-like, and now he fled astray, With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, And his own thoughts along that rugged way Pursued, like raging hounds, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... darkness of a hopeless exclusion settles down on these sad five, standing, huddled together, at the door, with the extinguished lamps hanging in their despairing hands. 'Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now.' The wedding bell has become a funeral knell. They were not the enemies of the bridegroom, they thought themselves his friends. They let life ebb without securing the one thing needful, and the neglect was irremediable. There is a tragedy underlying many a life of outward religiousness and inward emptiness, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... princes fell, What time the bishop said, 'Sir Bertrand loved ye well; Weep, warriors, for the dead! The knell of sorrow tolls For deeds that were so bright: God save all Christian souls, And ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Even, undaunted Lochiel, Place thy targe on thy shoulder and burnish thy steel! Rough Keppoch, give breath to thy bugle's bold swell, Till far Coryarrick resound to the knell! ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... kept away from the skies, in spite of os homini sublime dedit; youth should be coupled with all the virtues except truth; earth should never be reminded of her birth; death should never be allowed to stop a mortal's breath, nor the bell to sound his knell, nor flowers from blossoming bowers to wave over his grave or show their bloom upon his tomb. We have rhyming dictionaries,—let us have one from which all rhymes are rigorously excluded. The sight of a poor creature grubbing for rhymes to fill up his sonnet, or to cram one of those ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Inch-thick, knee-deep, o'er head and ears a fork'd one!— Go, play, boy, play:—thy mother plays, and I Play too; but so disgrac'd a part, whose issue Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour Will be my knell.—Go, play, boy, play.—There have been, Or I am much deceiv'd, cuckolds ere now; And many a man there is, even at this present, Now while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm That little thinks she has been sluic'd in his absence, And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour, by Sir Smile, ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... was the first act of the period properly called the "Renaissance." It was the knell of the architecture of Venice,—and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... nothing, for the White Lady needs no theatrical apparatus; she goes where she pleases, and walls and locked doors open to her. General d'Espagne, however, was unable to overcome his horror. He left Baireuth on the following day, and when he rode out of the gate he said, 'I heard my own death-knell here at Baireuth. I shall ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... lie close Oh! Love, I have found you at last; Let me hear your low sweet voice The knell of the aching past. The lashes lie on your cheek Oh! lift them and show me your eyes; Twin stars in a mortal face, They are soft, they are kind, ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... when the course at last seemed clear. His trouble at this time appears to have had a serious effect on his health, and some words spoken half in malice, half in warning by Madame de Girardin, must have sounded like a knell in his ears. He tells them apparently in jest to Madame Hanska to give her an example of the nonsense people talk in Paris. In his accuracy of repetition, however, we can trace a passionately anxious desire to force Madame Hanska herself to deny the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... trapper was glad to see the last of habitations, and of men, and of the railroad. Slingerland hated that great, shining steel band of progress connecting East and West. Every ringing sledge-hammer blow had sung out the death-knell of the trapper's calling. This railroad spelled the end of the wilderness. What one group of greedy men had accomplished others would imitate; and the grass of the plains would be burned, the forests blackened, the fountains dried up in the valleys, and the wild creatures of the mountains ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... abortion! With vacant stare, And ragged hair, And every feature out of all proportion! Embodiment of echoing inanity! Excellent type of simpering insanity! Unwieldy, clumsy nightmare of humanity! I ring thy knell! ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... singers of the valley, Voiceless now, speed on before; Soon shall knell that chapel bell For the songs ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field |
