"Wail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Venza was near the head of the incline. Some of the women and children were on it. A woman screamed. Her child had slipped from her hand; bounded up over the rail and fallen. Hardly fallen—floated down to the ground, with flailing arms and legs, landing in the dark ferns unharmed. Its terrified wail ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... it is to take up, at a venture, the folded papers, announces that the sublime Emperor, or some mandarin of exalted rank, has been so fortunate as to hold the winning number in the Annual State Lottery. So vengeance-laden and mournful was the combined and evidently preconcerted wail, that Yin was compelled to shield his ears against it; yet the inconsiderable Tsin-Su-Hoang, on whose account it was raised, seemed in no degree to be affected by it, he, doubtless, having become hardened by hearing a similar outburst, at fixed hours, throughout interminable ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... in Katherine's eyes as she listened to this stern wail of a bruised spirit, but with instinctive wisdom she refrained from uttering fruitless expressions of sympathy. She would not encourage Rachel to dwell on the hateful subject; she only replied by pressing her friend's hand in silence, and she ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... everything else that would stop a bullet, in such manner as to form a square barricade, two sides of which were the wagons, with the mules haltered to the wheels. Every man then supplied himself with all the ammunition he could carry, and the Mandan scouts setting up the depressing wail of the Indian death-song, we all awaited the attack with the courage ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... 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
... I should never have chosen that trimming. However, the "under the circumstances" is not so bad. A good cut, too—yes. Aha! Just you wail ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of her death, he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it—a sickly, whining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night long—not screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it had been his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his own at that ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... had long been confused and broken in my memory, arrayed itself with all its first distinctness. Methought I stood a weeping infant by my father's hearth; by the cold and blood-stained hearth where he lay dead. I heard the childish wail of Alice, and my own cry arose with hers, as we beheld the features of our parent, fierce with the strife and distorted with the pain, in which his spirit had passed away. As I gazed, a cold wind whistled by, and waved my father's hair. Immediately ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the cry of a young child, darter, of our Anna's baby; a little, feeble wail; but I should have heard it, if the storm had been twice as loud. I had been sitting here, from sundown to ten o'clock, with no company but my fears and the raging storm. Hannah came, once or twice, and put her pale face ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... the court-room stirred with excitement. Some weak-nerved woman with a child at her breast began to cry, and the little one joined its feeble wail ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was a wail. "Oh, you don't know how important it is—let me out. I'll give you anything in ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... not have very good eyes, but he has very good ears, and he had just wakened from a "cat" nap when he heard that lonesome wail from Little White Fox. And he didn't wait one minute, nor one second! He tumbled down into his house in the ocean as quick as a wink, just as Omnok the hunter was getting ready to ...
— Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends • Roy J. Snell
... 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 free ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 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
... in hither! Speak to me one moment; for mercy's sake speak to me!' and she drew him, half against his will, into the chamber, and throwing herself at his feet, broke out into a childlike wail. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... goes on unceasingly; the altar fires are never out, and the wail of the little ones and the groans of the crushed that go up from this great altar only cause ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... meeting with the "beauty of Paliuli" there were gathered together the high chiefs, the low chiefs, and the country aristocracy as well, to see the strangers who came with Kailiokalauokekoa's party. Aiwohikupua came with the rest of the chiefs to wail ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... tickle t' see my punt come in. She was wonderful on sunsets, was mother; an' she was sort o' sot, somehow, on keepin' watch on me. Wonderful good o' she, wasn't it, Dannie, t' want t' keep watch—on me?" Again the note of melancholy, throbbing above the drawl—rising, indeed, into a wail. "So," said he, "I 'low I'll just put up a house, by-an'-by, for the wife I'm t' have; an' I'll have it here, I'm thinkin', for mother 'lowed my wife would want it with a view o' the tickle, t' watch my punt come in. Think she will, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... see the farm yet, with perfect clearness. I can see all its belongings, all its details; the family room of the house, with a "trundle" bed in one corner and a spinning-wheel in another—a wheel whose rising and falling wail, heard from a distance, was the mournfulest of all sounds to me, and made me homesick and low-spirited, and filled my atmosphere with the wandering spirits of the dead: the vast fireplace, piled high, on winter nights, with flaming hickory logs from whose ends a sugary sap bubbled ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... could do for Marie, he could at least be faithful to that trust. He came back shivering as he had gone out; and as he fitted his latchkey with cold fingers into the lock he heard the newborn infant's wail. ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... they come in line upon the mighty wall, and each one bends backward to the knees of the one who follows. As I stood and looked at them for the first time, almost I heard the twitter of flutes, the rustic wail of the African hautboy, the monotonous boom of the derabukkeh, cries of a far-off gaiety such as one often hears from the Nile by night. But these cries came down the long avenues of the centuries; this gaiety was distant in the vasty halls of the long-dead years. Never can I think of Luxor ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... I have lost my life and yet not death Have won, and now to me shall joy be strange, And all my days the kindly winds that breathe From mirthful groves of Paradise shall change In my poor songless soul to wail, and sigh, And moan, and hollow ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... come back!" cried the mother, without pausing her wail. "They'll come back—trust them for that—running off horses. O John, John! why did you, why did you?" She suddenly lifted herself and sat rigid, staring at her daughter. "Mary," she said in tragic whisper, "the kitchen door isn't locked!" Already she was bended forward to listen, her mouth ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... a vision the dying spark of our council fires, the ashes cold and white. I see no longer the curling smoke rising from our lodge poles. I hear no longer the songs of the women as they prepare the meal. The antelope have gone; the buffalo wallows are empty. Only the wail of the coyote is heard. The white man's medicine is stronger than ours; his iron horse rushes over the buffalo trail. He talks to us through his 'whispering spirit.' " (The Indian's name for the telegraph and telephone.) "We are like birds with ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... benevolence, sustained by unconquerable will, over the oppression of physical force, the tyranny of resistless power. It exhibits the charity of the Saviour in the Paradise Regained, united to the indomitable spirit of Satan, who is chained on the burning lake, in Paradise Lost. It is the prophetical wail of humanity, so often doomed to suffer in the best of causes from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... moor, and the pathos of "Mary in Heaven," he has made every chord in our northern life to vibrate. The distance from "Duncan Gray" to "Auld Lang Syne" is nearly as great as that from Falstaff to Ariel. There is the vehemence of battle, the wail of woe, the march of veterans "red-wat-shod," the smiles of meeting, the tears of parting friends, the gurgle of brown burns, the roar of the wind through pines, the rustle of barley rigs, the thunder on the hill—all Scotland is in his verse. Let who ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... too accustomed plaint and wail Repeating, of Rogero's cruelty Fair Bradamant renewed the wonted tale; She cursed her hard and evil destiny; Then loosening to tempestuous grief the sail, Heaven that consented to such perjury, — And did not yet by some plain token speak — ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... little gold mine, do you call that a joke? It was a wail of the soul, a cry from the heart, that burst through my lips. My love for you and Zuzu is immense. [Gaily] Oh, rapture! Oh, bliss! I cannot look at you two without ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... 'im come back to his poor old Jane. They're a keepin' us apart, they're a keepin' us apart!" And her voice died away in a wail. She stopped in the middle of ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... Betty crept cautiously about, peering and hoping with a half-fearing expectation, a sweet, threadlike wail trembled out toward her across the moonlit and shadowed space. Her father was tuning his violin. Her mother sat at his side, hushing Bobby in her arms. Betty could hear the sound of her rockers on the porch floor. Now the plaintive call of the violin came stronger, and she hastened back to curl ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... failed; and who only the week before paid ten dollars for a fancy rooster and was happily telling his neighbors how rich he was going to be, selling fighting stock. His wife stepped on her skirt and ripped it. Jocelyn could hear her worried wail and Sam comforting her with promises of new dresses when the roosters began to sell. She could hear fat Mrs. Glenn puffing and laughing her way up the little crests of the road and could guess that her thin husband was doing his best to ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... said Arthur, 'if he means to be a comfort I wish he would stop that dismal little wail—have one good squall and have done with it. He will worry his mother and ruin all now she takes more notice. So here's Mrs. Moss's letter. I could not open it this morning, and I have been inventing messages to Violet from her—poor ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... call for the mourners, and raise the lament, Let the tresses be torn, and the garments be rent; But weep not for him who is gone to his rest, Nor mourn for the ransom'd, nor wail for the blest. The sun is not set, but is risen on high, Nor long in corruption his body shall lie— Then let not the tide of thy griefs overflow, Nor the music of heaven be discord below; Rather loud be the song, and triumphant the chord, Let us joy for the dead ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... this rate, a boy chanced to stumble upon him, on which the family gave a shriek, the same also did the guests; not for such a beast of a man, whose neck they could willingly have seen broken, but for fear the supper should break up ill, and they be forc'd to wail the death of ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... cups which each had cost ten times its weight in gold; that wrestlers, brought from the arena at Uriconium, were striving with sweat and strain for the purse of twenty sestertii offered to the winner; and dancing girls from far Arabia were posing to the plaintive wail of reeds and the thin tinkle of cymbals. But of all this the rear courts knew nothing. Here was only hurrying to and fro of jaded slaves laden with amphorae of wine and oil and honey; the smell of roasting meats, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... uttered these last words, Preston bowed his head, his wife sobbed aloud, and the black people gave out a low cry, as sad as the wail which their own mourners breathe over the dead. Fixing his eyes on a tall, stalwart negro in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... till all were tossed aside, broken as kindling wood is broken. It was good that the jailer was either deaf, or, like the heathen gods in the Old Testament, away on a journey. Finally, we gave up in despair. The big negro collapsed with a wail. The first sign of weakness ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... keeps her that 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 ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... a wail at this juncture, not understanding or approving these strange proceedings, and it was as much as his mother could do to soothe him. A few yards round the corner they passed a man, who looked curiously at the vehicle. This was George Fairfax, who was pacing the street in the gloaming ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... escaped the punishment due to their crimes. Yet no lament was raised by the political guides of Ireland over murdered landholders and clergymen; it appeared to be, in their sight, a just revenge. At the same time a long wail of woe was heard throughout the country, if it happened that any of the resisting peasantry were killed by the military in the performance of their duties in securing the tithe. Four were thus killed in the county of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of the cross," she said, "think of leaving their native land, while the wail of women and of orphans is in their ears?—it were to convert their pious purpose into mortal sin, and to derogate from the high fame they have so well won. Yes—fight but valiantly, and perhaps, before the very sun that is now slowly rising shall sink in the sea, you will see it ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... between these gusts had something weird and awful, and she could not resist the desire to get up and look out at the weather. But just as she drew aside the blind, a cloud of frozen snow was dashed against the glass, rattling sharply, while the wind again passed on with its ominous wail. Nothing whatever could be seen; the pale dim dawn was veiled by mist and snow, and each time the icy particles were driven against the window, they left behind them a thicker curtain of frost. Mrs. Costello went shivering ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... I looked he slid down from out of her arms; back into the pool, and began struggling to gain the edge. What grief and longing in her wild face then! But she did not wail. She did not try to pull him back; that elfish heart of dignity could reach out to what was coming, it could not drag at what was gone. Unmoving as the boughs and water, she watched him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was a lamentable wail from low on the floor, rising to the full pitch of Rol's healthy lungs; for his hand was gashed across, and the copious bleeding terrified him. Then was there soothing and comforting, washing and binding, and a modicum of scolding, till the loud outcry sank into occasional ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the wail of a man in torture burst from him. It woke more than one sleeper in the distant chambers of the Chateau, making them start upon their pillows to listen for another cry, but none came. Bigot was a man of iron; ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... wail of anger and deprecation. He had took out the right keys, and Jenkins could bear him out in the assertion. Some wicked trick had been played upon him, and the keys brought back during his absence and hung up on their hook! He'd lay his life it ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... from "Nauh"ceremonious keening for the dead. The general term for the wail is "Walwalah" or "Wilwal" (an onomatopoy) and for the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... old boy," said the Harvester. "I had such hopes and I worked so hard. I suffered in the flesh for every hour of it, and I failed. Oh but I hate the word! If I knew where she is right now, Bel, I'd give anything I've got. But there's no use to wail and get sorry for myself. That's against the law of common decency. I'll take a swim, sleep it off, straighten up the herbs a little, and go at it again, old fellow; that's a man's way. She's somewhere, and she's got to be found, no matter what ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... Him. To forsake Him is to despise Him. To go from Him is to go 'away backward.' Whatever may have been our inheritance of evil, we each go further from Him. And this fatherly lament over Judah is indeed a wail over every child of man. Does it not echo in the 'pearl of parables,' and may we not suppose that it suggested that supreme revelation of man's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... all lost!' This was the wail for Sir George's ears, as the spade made it clear that the food-stuffs, with a trifling salvage, had been uprooted and scattered by the storm. It was almost the pronouncing of a sentence of death upon the party, having regard to the desert country which surrounded them, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... do you have control of your emotional states? What have you observed about differences in expression of deep emotions by different people? In case of death in the family, some people wail and moan and express their grief in the most extreme manner, while others do not utter a sound and show great control. ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... next, slipping northward between the glazed walls of the Subway, another languid crowd in the seats about him and the nasal yelp of the stations ringing through the car like some repeated ritual wail. The blindness within him seemed to have intensified his physical perceptions, his sensitiveness to the heat, the noise, the smells of the dishevelled midsummer city; but combined with the acuter perception of these offenses was a complete indifference to them, as though he were ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... was there to wail or knock the breast between two people who prided themselves on looking facts in the face, and making their grim best of them, without vain repinings? He had been right in thinking their marriage an act of madness. Her charms had overruled his judgment, and they had had their year... their mad ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... wail tore through the air. The children shrieked together and fled, stumbling in dry bog, weeping in terror. Carl's backbone was all one prickling bar of ice. But he waved his stick fiercely, and, because he had to care for her, was calm enough ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... again, and oh! we are so happy. Do not go away again. You are a man; you do not know, you cannot understand all a woman feels. She must sit and wait, and hope, and pray for the safe return of husband or brother or sweetheart. The long days! Oh, the long sleepless nights, with the wail of the wind in the pines, and the rain on the roof! It is maddening. Do not leave us! Do not leave me! Do not leave Helen! Say you ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... treacherously compasses the murder of Balder. The frightful foreboding which at once flies through all hearts finds voice in the dark "Raven Song" of Odin. Having chanted this obscure wail in heaven, he mounts his horse and rides down the bridge to Helheim. With resistless incantations he raises from the grave, where she has been interred for ages, wrapt in snows, wet with the rains and the dews, an aged vala or ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... last Tuesday, that the matter of the missing handbag and the letters was important. More important, probably, than the mere record shows. Do you recall the note of distress in Miss Jeremy's voice? It was almost a wail." ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... death in this world and the next. Their feet are turned backward that all sober men may recognize them. There are ghosts of little children who have been thrown into wells. These haunt well curbs and the fringes of jungles, and wail under the stars, or catch women by the wrist and beg to be taken up and carried. These and the corpse ghosts, however, are only vernacular articles and do not attack Sahibs. No native ghost has yet been authentically reported to have frightened an Englishman; but many ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Apulians, and the Spaniards, seem to find their music in a hurdy-gurdy swell of sound. The other day we met a little girl, walking and spinning, and singing all the while, whose song was just another version of this chant. It has a discontented plaintive wail, as if it came from some vast age, and were a ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Syriac speech; George Costard sorrowed in Arabic that might have amazed Abu l'Atahiyeh; Mr. Swinton's learned sock stirred him to Phoenician and Etruscan; and Mr. Evans, full of national fire and the traditions of the bards, delivered himself, and at great length too, in Welsh. The wail of this "Welsh fairy" is the fine flower of this funeral wreath of pedantic ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... does not exhibit itself nor refuse to exhibit itself, possesses still underneath, Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of slaves, Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young people, accents of bargainers, Underneath these ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... odd, but I stand here and fancy These people who now play a part, All forced by some strange necromancy To speak, and to act, from the heart. What a hush would come over the laughter! What a silence would fall on the mirth! And then what a wail would sweep after, As the night-wind sweeps ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... dying, and I had no power to hold Death backward from such dread intent. In another room, I heard the little wail of the child; and the wail of the child waked my wife back into this life, so that her hands fluttered white and ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... foreign to 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
... the human, ardent idealism, sweetnesses of unselfishness, renunciation, and martyrdom—all the splendid, stinging things of the spirit. Here life was clean, noble, and alive. I was in touch with great souls who exalted flesh and spirit over dollars and cents, and to whom the thin wail of the starved slum child meant more than all the pomp and circumstance of commercial expansion and world empire. All about me were nobleness of purpose and heroism of effort, and my days and nights were sunshine and starshine, all fire and dew, with before ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... seaward: The water's in stripes like a snake, olive pale To the leeward,— On the weather-side, black, spotted white with the wind. "Good fortune departs, and disaster's behind"— Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite wail! ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... savage foe, or of the prowling beast of prey. He ploughed, and sowed, and reaped, and gathered, with the rifle slung over his shoulders; and, at every turn, he halted, listening, with his ear turned toward his home; for well he knew that, any moment, the scream of his wife, or the wail of his children, might tell of the up-lifted tomahawk, or the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... improvising soft, passionate little movements. She took no note of time. At last the clock struck twelve, and still she sat there playing. Then she began to sing a song which Alice Tynemouth had written and set to music two years before. It was simply yet passionately written, and the wail of anguished disappointment, of wasted chances ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Look across the Pont Alexandre, at the serene gold dome of the Invalides, surrounded by its sleepy barracks. Suddenly you are in the fires and awful slaughter of Napoleon's wars. The flower of France is being pitilessly cut down for the lust of one man's ambition; and when that is spent, and the wail of the widowed country pierces heaven with its desolation, a costly asylum is built for the handful of soldiers who are left—and the great Emperor has ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... expression".—"Finally!" sighed another, relieved. Kohn yelled: "But I don't want to have an ending for a story. That is vulgar. I'm losing my mind. I want to inflame you. I want to torment you, not satisfy you. You must moan and wail. You must dissolve in pain." The dead Kohn ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... afraid that Mrs. Bill would come down and jump into hysterics. I snaked the boy off the lion's back and rapped on him for order. The matron got busy with the others. In a jiffy it seemed as if they had all begun to wail an' roar. I trembled when a maid opened the door an' I saw Mrs. Bill comin' down the staircase. I wouldn't have been surprised to have seen the bronze lion get ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... when the Prince went into the castle. Tonight I waited till an hour past sundown, and twice I called. Once a wail came back to me. It sounded like a sigh of the damned. When I called the second time, something moved in the turret of the keep, like a man waving; and my heart leaped for joy. Then, with a harsh cry, a black, ugly bird flew from the turret straight ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... me at the Pear-tree[6]; a delightful tour in South Wales with the Sheppards and other friends most agreeable and good-humoured,—botany, sketching, talk, and fun. Life has few things to offer more enjoyable than such tours. I have found in them the happiest hours in my life." And then follows the wail for so "many of them departed; so many dear good friends; ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... spirit took its flight, Midst the crashing charge of squadrons, And the thunder of the fight! Strike, I say, the notes of triumph, As we march o'er moor and lea! Is there any here will venture To bewail our dead Dundee? Let the widows of the traitors Weep until their eyes are dim! Wail ye may full well for Scotland— Let none dare to mourn for him! See! above his glorious body Lies the royal banner's fold— See! his valiant blood is mingled With its crimson and its gold. See! how calm he looks and stately, Like a warrior on his shield, Waiting till the flush of morning Breaks ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... John Speriwig; boys shout and applaud, and the enjoyment and confusion are intense, till eleven o'clock comes. By this time the children who swarm in the side-rooms are not to be kept quiet longer, even by hunches of bread and cake; there is a general howl and wail, that rises yet higher than the scraping of fiddles, and mothers rush from their partners to knock small heads together, and cuff little nursemaids, and force the wailers down into unoccupied corners of beds, under tables and behind boxes. In half an hour every ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... similarly, the latter loosing upon the quiet air one shriek of mental agony before the little dog scrambled to his feet and gave further employment to his voice in a frenzy of profanity. At the same time the subterranean diapason of a demoniac bass viol was heard; it rose to a wail, and rose and rose again till it screamed like a small siren. It was Gipsy's war-cry, and, at the sound of it, Duke became a frothing maniac. He made a convulsive frontal attack upon the hobgoblin—and the ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... descending tune half-way between a wail and a laugh. And ever in interlude is the skipping, mincing step,—here of reeds answered by solo violin with a light clank of cymbals. Answering the summoning fifes, the unison troop of fiddlers dance the main step to bright strokes of triangle, then the ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... at last; the coal-black wine has been drunk: there is an end! And you, you poor, cowering fugitives, who only see each other's terrified faces when the wan gleam of the lightning blazes through the sky, perhaps it is well that you should weep and wail for the young master; but that is soon over, and the day will break. And this is what I am thinking of now: when the light comes and the seas are smooth, then which of you—oh, which of you all will tell this tale to the two ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Arlington hear that demoniac gabble; but he lay awake for hours expecting and dreading to hear it again. The owls were not so sparing of their vocal performances, scores of them joining in concert to serenade the lost man. Sometimes their prolonged notes sounded like the wail of a deserted babe, sometimes like mocking laughter, and again like a deep guttural snore. Nothing worse than mosquitos, dismal sounds, and the dank vapor of the swamp afflicted the weary man, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... wonderful about Sheila, they at all events were considerably surprised by the strange sort of music she sang. It was not of a sort commonly heard in a London drawing-room. The pathos of its minor chords, its abrupt intervals, startling and wild in their effect, and the slowly subsiding wail in which it closed, did not much resemble the ordinary drawing-room "piece." Here, at least, Sheila had produced an impression; and presently there was a heap of people round the piano, expressing their admiration, asking questions and begging her to continue. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... 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 Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 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
... the ground beside them. The leg had been amputated and the boy was dying. Intense silence fell on the camp, only the laughter and voices of the children rising clear on the thin air. Then a wail arose, a penetrating, fearful cry, Rachel mourning for her child. Courant raised his head and said with an unemotional air of relief, "he's dead." The Mormon woman dropped her sewing, gave a low exclamation, and sat listening with bitten ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... what I was or did (save that I loved King Richard), I whipt forward with a handkerchief to cover the horror out of sight. This I would have done, though all had seen it; the King had seen it, and that white-hearted traitor Count had seen it, and sprung away with a wail, "O Christ! O Christ!" The King stood up, and with his lifted hand stopped me in the pious act. All held their breaths. I saw the priest at the altar peer round the corner, his mouth making a ring. King Richard was very pale and serious. He began to talk to ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... make one shiver—and shrill, shrill as the song of the grasshoppers, it began to make itself heard, very softly at first, then growing louder and rising in the silence of the noonday like the diminutive wail of some poor Japanese soul in pain and anguish; it was Chrysantheme and her guitar ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... poor little I, looking out on its solemn march to the sea, thinking of Minnesota; sending a wail upon its bosom to meet and mingle with that borne by the Missouri from Kansas; thinking of a sad-faced slave, who landed with her babe in her arms here, just in front of my unfinished loft, performed the labor of a ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... poetry, came the inspiring Montrose wars, which introduce to our 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 it led the chiefs to seek similar ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... a woman, breaking the stillness of the summer evening. She had just come to the door of the little cabin, where she was now standing, anxiously scanning the space before her, while a baby's plaintive wail rose and fell within with wearying monotony. The log cabin, set in a gall in the middle of an old field all grown up in sassafras, was not a very inviting-looking place; a few hens loitering about the new hen-house, a brood of half-grown chickens picking in the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... derides With a very triumphant sneer - They weep and they wail from the opposite sides (And I shed a ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... also the restaurant. It was full of strange noises and figures and odors—the shuffling of feet, the clash of crockery, the explosion of nervous German voices, mixed with the smell of beer and ham, and the smoke of cigars. Through it all pierced the wail of a postman standing at the door with a letter in his hand and calling out at regular intervals, "Krahnay, Krahnay! "When March could bear it no longer he went up to him and shouted, "Crane! Crane!" and the man bowed gratefully, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... France went doomed back to her cell. Her return was awaited with dreadful anxiety by her associates in confinement, who hoped against hope for her safe deliverance. As she passed through the massive doors, she smiled, and drew her hand knife-like across her neck, and then there went up a wail from all assembled there, the wail of titled women, of sacred nuns, of magdalens and thieves, a dirge of inconsolable sorrow, of humanity weeping ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... hidden under that despairing wail?—It was the parting of the last strand of the cord ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... floor with such a sharp wail of despair that Farmer Giles felt a lump rising in his throat He knew there could be no comfort yet for the broken-hearted child; that she must go through her trouble alone—words at such a time were useless; and after watching her for some minutes, he ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... into a narrow door way, her arms still clasping her old port, that lay in the folds of her shawl. On her shrewd kindly old face came a light that touched it all at once with a glow of divinity; the mother in her had sprung into life with sharp, sweet suddenness; she had caught the wail of the new-born babe ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun; We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... English Chronicler does raise his wail on behalf of his countrymen is the special jurisprudence of the forests and the extortions of money with which he charges the Conqueror. In both these points the royal hand became far heavier under the Norman rule. In both William's character grew darker ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... coat, vest, all to shelter Sidney; and he felt a kind of strange pleasure through the dark, even to hear Sidney's voice wail and moan. But that voice grew more languid and faint—it ceased—Sidney's weight hung heavy—heavier ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... mine, and I will have her, I seek but for mine own: She is my slave, born in my house, and stolen away and sold, The year of the sore sickness, ere she was twelve hours old. 'Twas in the sad September, the month of wail and fright, Two augers were borne forth that morn; the Consul died ere night. I wait on Appius Claudius, I waited on his sire: Let him who works the client ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... paralyzed by electric 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 ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... whole house sounded a wail that rose as they listened and mounted to a shriek. In spite of her desire to remain cool and calm, ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... doom, And fell a molten mass; so, tempting Heaven, Saul died the death of disobedient Pride And self-willed Folly—curses of mankind! Sins against God which wrought the Fall, and sent, As tempests moan along the listening night, A wail of mournful sadness drifting down The annals of the world: unearthly strains! Cries of eternal ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... not a thousand slanderers could have touched her heart with a shadow of mistrust. But who are you—you whom the first gross lie of a man lusting for your beauty utterly estranges from your faith? Who are you—who wail for the liar's death, and shrink in horror from the hand that slew him? I ever heard that the daughters of the Goths were chaste and true and fearless. So they may be—all but one, whose birth marked ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... others brave the flood in quest of gain And beat for joyless months, the gloomy wave. Let such as deem it glory to destroy, Rush into blood, the sack of cities seek; Unpierced, exulting in the widow's wail, The virgin's shriek and ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... voice seemed the best possible medium. As she achieved full consciousness, she understood that it was not a chorus of voices that filled her ear, but one,—rich, sonorous, impassioned. It was singing one of the popular Methodist hymns with a fervour which not even its typical African drawl and wail could temper. It was some moments before Betty realized that the singer was Harriet Walker, and then she sprang out of bed ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... crags where the hoarse wind is raving, Rocks where the weary floods murmur and wail, Wilds where the fern by the furrow is waving, Reeled with the echoes that rode on the gale; Far as the tempest thrills Over the darkened hills Far as the sunshine streams over the plain, Roused by the tyrant band, Woke all the mighty ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... is that it shall contain at least one quotation from the Classics. Mr. G. from year to year observed this custom with splendid effect. LOWE'S Ex luce lucellum is famous in history; nearly became the epitaph of a Ministry; certainly was the funeral wail over a carefully-constructed Budget. The SQUIRE to-night felt bound to observe tradition; but in accordance with his nature did it modestly, adventuring nothing more recondite than citation of the familiar line that serves to mark WREN'S resting-place in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... flats, cross our hills, unless Murder Hollow be blockaded with snow, or unless he has turkeys for sale? But Buck Davis with turkeys would surely have stopped here, unless he were selling a large stock in town. A wail from the sacking at the back of the sleigh tells the tale. It is a winter calf, and Buck Davis is going to sell it for one dollar to the Boston Market where it will be turned into potted chicken. This leaves the mystery of his change of route unexplained. After two days' sitting on tenter-hooks ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... ruthlessly annexed to France; in short, all the states that are groaning under the tyrant's yoke; yea, France herself!—all are crying for deliverance from slavery. But whence is help to come when every one shuts his eyes against the despairing wail of Europe; when every one idly folds his hands and waits for some one else to be bold enough to call upon the people to take up arms? Every individual must be animated with this courage; must regard himself as chosen by Providence to commence the task ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... slave rebelled. David saw him come in one afternoon, and found him a minute or two after viciously biting the blind-cord in the parlour, in a black temper. When his father inquired what was the matter, Sandy broke out in a sudden wail of tears. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rough. This young parson expected Patience to sympathise with him, to greet for him, to aid him if there might be aid, and to understand that for him the world would be blank and wretched unless he could get for himself a soft sweet mate to sing when he sang, and to wail when he wailed. The only mate that Patience had was this very girl that was to be thus taken from her. But she did sympathise with him, did greet for him, did give him all her aid. Knowing what she was herself and how God had formed her, she ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... reply, the sound came a second time over the waters, with a prolonged wail, like the cry of a suffering ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... The gloom grew, calling out the lights into strength, but the concourse did not thin: it only gathered in numbers, and the long, moaning hoot of an out-going tramp filled the air as though with a wail of sorrow at departure. Lascars in coal-begrimed tunics joined in with the rest, adding their voices to the babel, and round-hatted sailors from the Royal Indian Marine ships mingled ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... we sat in silence, another voice uttered a wail of infinite terror and despair. "I didn't do it! Don't kill me! It was not my work." And then, still more horrible to hear, a sound like the gurgling of blood came from the psychic's lips, mixed ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... obeyed. Daniel tried to take the dripping hat, but failed. Little Dan'l was wise enough to pour the water over the old man's head, but she commenced to weep, the pitiful, despairing wail of a child who sees failing that upon which she has ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of her tresses, Fearful, the light of her eyes; while the boy (for her sorrow had awed him) Blushed at her blushes, and vanished, like mist on the cliffs at the sunrise. Fearful at length she looked forth: he was gone: she, wild with amazement, Wailed for her mother aloud: but the wail of the wind only answered. Sudden he flashed into sight, by her side; in his pity and anger Moist were his eyes; and his breath like a rose-bed, as bolder and bolder, Hovering under her brows, like a swallow that haunts by the house-eaves, Delicate-handed, ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... the gloom of the mango tope, the old man's high, shrill voice ringing across the field, as wail by long-drawn wail he unfolded the story of Nikal Seyn [Nicholson]—the song that men sing in the Punjab to this day. Kim was delighted, and the lama listened with ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... sleep he heard the wail of a jackal, and next he was awakened by the sound of a native chanting. It was already daybreak, and Mr. Hume stood on the verandah, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... in his somber preoccupation—shakes his head and mutters.] Fog, fog, fog, all bloody time. You can't see vhere you vas going, no. Only dat ole davil, sea—she knows! [The two stare at him. From the harbor comes the muffled, mournful wail of steamers' whistles.] ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... for a while longer—oh, and I, too, must live for a while longer!" the Jew returned. His voice had risen in a curious quavering wail. It was the first time Melicent ever knew him ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... skin hath grown black upon me And my bones are scorched with heat; My harp is turned to mourning, And my bagpipe into the wail ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon |
