"Wailing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for Balder's footstep and sprang up in all the fields to greet him, hung their frail blossoms and wept bitterly for the love and the warmth and the light that had gone out. Throughout the whole earth there was nothing but weeping, and the sound of it was like the wailing of those storms in autumn that weep for the dead summer as its withered leaves drop one by one from ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... wild, melancholy, forsaken songs rose thereon from that frightful aerie,—weeping, wailing tunes, that sob among the people from age to age, and overflow with otherwise unexpressed sadness,—all rude, mournful ballads,—old tearful strains, that Shakspeare heard the vagrants sing, and that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... looked about her with a shiver. The wind that shook the birches had grown perceptibly colder: the gloom beneath them deepened rapidly, and there was a doleful wailing amidst the swinging boughs. Beyond the bluff the white wilderness, sinking into dimness now, ran back, waste and empty, to the horizon. Miss Schuyler was from the cities, and the loneliness of the prairie is most impressive when night ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... did all their little master desired. And Arndt knew not that while they surrounded him with delights it was only to make him forget his errand. But one day, when the boy lay on a green dell in the lovely fairy-garden, he heard a low, wailing song, and saw a troop of little mortal children at work in the distance. Some were digging ore, and others making jewellery, while a few stood in the stream that ran by, beating linen, as it seemed. And among these poor little maidens, who ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... will—had been caught by her father and brought back, and she turned into a painted thing like her mother. She brandished a brandy bottle and a stream of foul words ran lightly from her mouth and suddenly stopped, because she was wailing "I wanted so to be good, it is sweet to be good!" Now a man with a beard was whipping her, and Tommy felt each lash on his own body, so that he had to strike out, and he started up in bed, and the horrible thing was that he had never been asleep. Thus it went on until early ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... night it was the same. Morning found him a happy, bright child, full of engaging ways and innocent sayings, and quite satisfied with 'Cousin Honor,' but bed-time always brought back the same wailing. Nurse, a tidy, brisk personage, with a sensible, deferential tone to her superiors, and a caressing one to the children, tried in vain assurances of papa's soon coming back; nay, it might be feared that she held out that going to sleep would bring the morrow when he was ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... face with her apron. As she passed her master, he lifted the goose and hit her over the head with it as hard as he could. The bird smashed to pieces, and the woman, covered with gravy and seasoning, fled back, wailing, to ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... dead waste and middle of the night, the sleeping household of Ellsworth was startled from repose by long, loud, wailing cries that rang through the wide corridors and vaulted roofs like the shrieks ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... can't act as if nothing had happened," protested Grace, with a wailing tone in her voice. "I'd be sure to act so strangely that mamma would suspect at once, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... in confirmation of these words, followed a stamping and rattle of hoofs on the flags of the courtyard below. The old servant stood wringing his hands in helpless terror, and wailing, "Monsieur, monsieur!" ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... and heart-rending howl broke out. He looked back once; the dog was leaping at the length of his rope, nearly capsizing the holder of the same with every jump, and wailing hungrily for his ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... shells, so solemnly it falls! A dying music shrouded in deep walls, That bury its wild breathings! And the moon, Of glow-worm hue, like virgin in sad swoon, Lies coldly on the bosom of a cloud, Until the elf-winds, that are wailing loud, Do minister unto her sickly trance, Fanning the life into her countenance; And there are pale stars sparkling, far and few In the deep chasms of everlasting blue, Unmarshall'd and ungather'd, one and one, Like outposts of ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... stiffened to attention, for though a man of the cities would probably have heard nothing but the wailing of the wind, he caught a faint rhythmic drumming which might have been made by a galloping horse. It ceased, and he surmised, probably correctly, that it was trooper Payne returning. It was, however, his business to watch ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... had, until recently, been equipped with pontoons for water landing. Rick had outfitted it originally for a skin-diving trip to the Virgin Islands, an adventure now known as The Wailing Octopus. The pontoons were so useful that he had left them on, until his new science project had made it necessary to go back and forth between Newark and the island for consultation with a laboratory in ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... this jeremiad, wailing like a calf that is being slaughtered, she beheld the blushing face of the young priest, who had hidden himself, peeping at her from behind her large ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... and smote it; and the mouth of the thing opened, and there came forth a purplish froth—and then a cry! It was a sound like a tin-pan beaten—a sound that was itself a living presence, an apparition; a thing superhuman, out of another world—like the wailing of a lost spirit, terrifying to every sense! With Thyrsis it was like the falling down of towers within him—his whole being collapsed, and he sunk down upon the bed, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... again—though no soldiers became visible—the men went back for the baggage, but brought back only one bundle. The other, worth over a hundred roubles, had disappeared. Wailing helped nothing. Kazelia said: 'Hold your peace. Here, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... sheriff, "as old man Tompkins said, you couldn't hire a nigger to stick his head in here after the Colonel was found. They say they can hear something wailing around the pool and they think his ghost is ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... it vengeance and equity. I presumed, O Providence! upon whetting out the notches of thy sword and repairing thy partialities. But, oh, vain trifling! here I stand on the brink of a fearful life, and learn, with wailing and gnashing of teeth, that two men like myself could ruin the whole edifice of the moral world. Pardon—pardon the boy who thought to forestall Thee; to Thee alone belongeth vengeance; Thou needest not the hand of man! But it is not in my power to recall the past; that which is ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... he besought him, blinking and again passing his open hand over his nose. "Show heavenly mercy; let Vaska go home! We shall remember you in our prayers for ever! Your honour, let him go! They are all starving! Mother's wailing day in, day out, Vaska's wife's wailing . . . it's worse than death! I don't care to look upon the light of day. Be merciful; let him go, ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... on finely, for the outdoor air seemed to put the babies asleep and there was no crying. But no sooner were they inside the church, than about two hundred of the brats began wailing and whimpering. Pretty soon, they set up such a squall that the Count felt ashamed of his progeny and the Bishop looked ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... beheld a red-freckled boy in a purple cloak. He is always a-wailing in the house. A stead wherein is the king of a cantred, whom each man takes from bosom ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... that the police credit me—on my word, I do not," said he in a wailing voice. "Just because they have never heard of it before, they think that such a thing cannot be. But I know that I shall never be easy in my mind until I know what has become of my poor man with the sticking-plaster ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... her, it is not all my grief, And yet it may be said I lov'd her dearly; That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief, A loss in love that touches me more nearly. Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye: Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her; And for my sake even so doth she abuse me, Suffering my friend for my sake to approve ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... outbreak of the hostilities excited the people so that we thought it best to retire, taking our single prisoner with us. A few of the natives followed us, and when we left the village the relatives of the murderer broke out in violent wailing and weeping, thinking, as did the prisoner, Belni, himself, that we were going to eat him up, after having tortured him to death. Belni trembled all over, was very gentle and inclined to weep like a punished ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... messenger ran in haste where Siegfried's heroes of the Nibelung land lay, and took from them their joy with heavy tidings. They believed it not, till they heard the wailing. ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... may'st, why 'mongst the waves— 'Mongst the tempestuous waves on raging sea, The wailing merchant can no pity crave. What cares the wind and weather for their pains? One strikes the sail, another turns the same; He shakes the main, another takes the oar, Another laboureth and taketh pain To pump the sea into ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... — N. cry &c. v.; crying &c. v.; bowwow, ululation, latration[obs3], belling; reboation[obs3]; wood-note; insect cry, fritiniancy|, drone; screech owl; cuckoo. wailing (lamentation) 839. V. cry, roar, bellow, blare, rebellow[obs3]; growl, snarl. [specific animal sounds] bark [dog, seal]; bow-wow, yelp [dog]; bay, bay at the moon [dog, wolf]; yap, yip, yipe, growl, yarr|, yawl, snarl, howl [dog, wolf]; grunt, gruntle[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... city was full of weeping and wailing, for none thought that they who had fled to Veii were yet alive, or that any had been saved from the battle, save such as were already come back to Rome. But when tidings were brought that the Gauls were close at hand, ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... death—how often had Malemute Kid faced it! The pine needles were still quivering as he gave his commands and sprang into action. Nor did the Indian girl faint or raise her voice in idle wailing, as might many of her white sisters. At his order, she threw her weight on the end of a quickly extemporized handspike, easing the pressure and listening to her husband's groans, while Malemute Kid attacked ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... George had been during his earlier days in political sympathy as well as boon companionship with Fox and with Sheridan. Fox had always shown himself a true friend to Ireland. The Irish national poet, Thomas Moore, had, in one of his songs, described the Banshee as wailing over the grave of him "on whose burning tongue truth, peace, and freedom hung." It was fondly believed in Ireland that the King was returning to the sympathies of his earlier days, and that his coming ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... certainly did not move, and lying there at full length, he made them think that he was actually dead. At length they carried him out as though he had been overcome by the heat and handed him over to his more trusty servants, while his mistresses ran shrieking and wailing to his side. Aroused by their cries and restored by the coolness of the room where he lay, he opened his eyes and moved his limbs, betraying thereby that he was still alive, as it was then safe to do so. His slaves took to flight; most of them have been captured, but some are still being hunted ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... current, as it twisted around some gnarled root along shore or struck against the dipping branch of a tree overhanging the water, were the sounds which first fell on their ears. But a moment later the wailing scream of a panther came from the depths of the wilderness, answered a moment after by a similar cry from a point a ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... an early period placed a large armchair in front of the tablet, and lady Feng sat down, and gave way to loud lamentations. Promptly all those, who stood inside or outside, whether high or low, male or female, took up the note, and kept on wailing and weeping until Chia Chen and Mrs. Yu, after a time, sent a message to advise her to withhold her tears; when ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... room precipitated Mrs. Gilson, in a smile, a super-sweater, and a sports skirt that would have been soiled by any variety of sport more violent than pinochle, and she was wailing as ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... only tells us that we may expect a new play of Kalidasa. A company of heavenly nymphs then appear upon Mount Gold-peak wailing and calling for help. Their cries are answered by King Pururavas, who rides in a chariot that flies through the air. In response to his inquiries, the nymphs inform him that two of their number, Urvashi and Chitralekha, ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... left the room, the sound of a child's wailing came down to him, mingled with the sound of a woman's voice soothing it. He glanced back at his wife; she had moved nearer the fire, her fair head with its golden glory of hair was thrown back against the dark velvet of the chair; she was smiling and the sound of the child's grief ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... dawning of the day. It was a hard land—the North—having naught to do with beauty and the soft brilliance of moonlight. He glanced toward the jutting rock-ribbed plateau that was Lapierre's stronghold. Out of the night—out of the intense blackness of the spruce-guarded dark came the wailing howl of the ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... the body from the hunt Where he alone had died. Once more he heard The wail and sigh, and saw once more their front Of drooping grief; once more the wailing stirred Old hounds to baying wilder than was wont; Fell once more like slow, sullen rain each word Reluctant, telling to his senses strayed, How while the gods drowsed ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... this when she heard something that made her first stop her work to listen and then jump up hurriedly, spilling the peas out of her lap. The wailing of a terrified child was coming nearer and nearer. Elliott set down the peas that were left and ran out on the veranda. There was Johnny stumbling up the path, crying at the top of ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... throne-room, with its shadowy nooks and dim corners, shapeless and nameless spectres may momentarily come upon him and shake his strong spirit with the sinister menace of hell. Along the dark plains, on the fateful night before the battle, the sad ghosts may drift and wander, moaning and wailing in the ghastly gloom; and in that hour of haunted desolation the doomed king may feel that, after all, he is but mortal man, and that his pre-ordered destruction is close at hand and not to be averted; but ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... lording, honoured wight, What avails you to weep so? What your wailing, what your woe? I may ne'er your darling be, For your father hateth me; All your kin thereto agree. For your sake I'll pass the sea, Get me to some ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... Evan Cameron,— Come stand beside my knee; I hear the river roaring down Towards the wintry sea. There's shouting on the mountain side; There's war within the blast; Old faces look upon me, Old forms go riding past. I hear the pibrock wailing Amidst the din of fight, And my dim spirit wakes again Upon the verge ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... alone visible betwixt them, and shed a sombre light over the waste. He thought he had seldom seen any thing so impressive; combined with the low moaning of the night-breeze, which rose and sank at intervals, with a wild and wailing murmur. The light was so indistinct that he could discover nothing of his horse, and in the lawless state of the country no time was to be lost in getting to a place ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... below; The winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid. And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katy-did, And the plaint of the wailing whippoorwill, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till the morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... into a cabin adjoining that which was occupied by La Salle and Galinee. The two Frenchmen visited him in the evening. Three women were wailing the death of their relative who had been killed, and were heaping imprecations upon the victim through whose tortures they hoped to avenge the death of the one who had been slain. The Christians pleaded earnestly for him, and offered large rewards to obtain him as a guide ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... by a long, wailing cry from the dark moors outside. The silence that followed it seemed more startling than the shriek itself, and it ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... came to that part where it tells how the young gentleman she was engaged to and a friend of his took up the poor girl's bloodless shape and carried it through the street, and how all the women followed, wailing, and asking if that was what their daughters were coming to,—if that was what they were to get for being good girls,—he melted down into his accustomed tears of pity and grief, and, through them all, of delight at the charming Latin ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... trust himself to look back, but, as he rode through the pasture to the pike gate, his ears heard, never to forget, the chatter of the blackbirds, the noises around the barn, the cry of the peacock, and the wailing ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... pulling him different ways like wild horses. He was a cautious, conservative Scotchman, fully aware what a foetid gas-bag much of modern radicalism is; but then his great heart demanded reform, demanded change—often terribly at odds with his scornful brain. No author ever put so much wailing and despair into his books, sometimes palpable, oftener latent. He reminds me of that passage in Young's poems where as death presses closer and closer for his prey, the soul rushes hither and thither, appealing, shrieking, berating, to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... not precisely clear to Jane how among them the half-dozen Mexican women, who now thronged the wagon and filled it with wailing exclamations, managed to pass the little girl from hand to hand and out into the air. Seeing, however, that this was accomplished, she descended into the crowd of villagers now assembled outside. There was a strange, ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... not right," said the lady in a wailing voice. "I have been thinking about this matter lately. I read a great deal in the papers about the misery of the lower classes, and I think we richer ones ought to do something to help them. Mrs. Morris, what ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... the Xenia was to set literary Germany agog with curiosity. Two editions of the 'Almanac' were quickly bought up and a third became necessary. There was infinite guessing, speculating, interpreting, and among those who had been hit there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, A very few friends of Goethe and Schiller, such as Koerner, Humboldt and Zelter, watched the commotion with solemn glee. Others were shocked or grieved at such a mode of warfare. Wieland mildly regretted that he had come off well in the Xenia, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... glare showed him the swords returned to position with the speed of light. He jumped for his life and escaped being slashed to pieces by the barest inch. They swung to behind him; and again the drum roared, while afar there arose a furious, eldritch wailing of conches. Overhead the opening disappeared and the light was shut out. In darkness as of the Hall of Eblis the conches were stilled and the echoes ebbed into a silence that held sway for many minutes ere ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... set in clouds of smoke on one of the most desperate battles of the Confederacy, saw Colonel Gordon's brave, patriotic soul released on that long "furlough" which glory granted her heroes; saw his devoted wife a wailing widow. The red burial of battle had precluded the solemnization of baptismal rites at the sacred marble font; and when four days after Colonel Gordon's death, his frail young wife welcomed the summons to an everlasting re-union, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... miraculous region of life. For, when Fanny died in her German home, Felix, amidst a happy company in England, suddenly aware of some terrible calamity, from the disturbance of equilibrium and dread sinking of his soul, rushed to the piano, and poured out his anguish in an improvisation of wailing and mysterious strains, which held the assembly spell-bound and in tears. In a few days a letter reached him, announcing that his sister had died at that very hour. On receiving the tidings, he uttered a shriek, and the shock ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... chasm, that slanted Down the steep hill athwart a cedar cover— A savage place, as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath the waning moon was haunted By woman's wailing for her demon lover,' ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... busy and content by day. It was only of the night-time she was afraid, when strange-voiced creatures were never silent an hour, weird cries from the scrub pierced the air, and there arose from the plantation below wild sounds, sometimes of revelry over a feast, the beating of tom-toms, and wailing of voices as the natives conducted their heathen worship, or indulged in noisy quarrels likely to end in bloodshed between ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... from intense cold were shriveled and wrinkled. Men formerly models of bodily and mental strength, hardened in war, now staggered along, leaning on a stick, wailing and lamenting childlike, begging for a piece of bread, and if something to eat was given to them they burst out in really childish joy, not ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... an end and the worst was known, when the poor dripping body had been reverently covered over and borne away by loving arms amid a torrent of sobs and wailing tears towards the house, then some one came near her and spoke to her—some one off whom the water came pouring in streams, and whose face was white ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... voice subsides in wailing, And, ere the dawning of day, Murmuring fainter and fainter, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... where Saint-Simon describes the death of Monseigneur, son of the king, and the court hypocrites are wailing their extravagantly pretended sorrow, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... is usually the most deplorable of narratives—filled with exaggerated fears, the horrors of sea-sickness, and endless lamentations of the evil fate of the writer, in being exposed to such a complication of miseries. Of the wailing of Mirza Abu-Talib we have already given a specimen: and the Persian princes, even in the luxurious comfort of an English Mediterranean steamer, seem to have fared but little better, in their own estimation at least, than the Mirza in his dirty and disorderly Danish merchantman. "Our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... awoke and began to cry. He turned from the page and tried to hush it: but it would not be hushed. He began to rock it to and fro in his arms but its wailing cry grew keener. He rocked it faster while his eyes began ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... by an eddy in the gentle wind. Once the bark of a wolf sounded so sharp and clear that the youth started and looked to one side, expecting to see the animal steal forward from the gloom, but a moment's reflection told him the brute was a mile or more distant. Then, some time later, a mournful, wailing cry rose and fell from some remote point. He suspected that that, too, came from the throat of a wolf, but he ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... with a groan, that came wailing up like a whistle; "he was so excessively dead, that there was no use keeping him; and as the room was wanted for other purposes, I—pray, my dear sir, don't look so violent—I put him in the pest-cart and ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... hand she offered, but suddenly, with a wailing moan, cast himself on his knees at her feet. He was so tall a man that the movement could have no grace. He abased his head awkwardly, to bury it among the folds of the skirts at her ankles. She stood still ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... been brought to Tzazon, and he had disclosed its contents to the Vandals, they turned to wailing and lamentation, not openly, however, but concealing their feelings as much as possible and avoiding the notice of the islanders, silently among themselves they bewailed the fate which was upon them. And straightway setting in order matters in hand just as ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... shining brightly, they would have felt depressed, what with Amy's accident and the bad news Mollie had received; but with the wind wailing dolefully and black darkness in the middle of the day, they felt themselves growing ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... a few moments; but it seemed an eternity before a glad murmur of voices told her that it was done, and looking up, she saw Felipe lying on the roof, unconscious, his face white, his eyes shut. At this sight, all the servants broke out afresh, weeping and wailing, "He is dead! ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... stranger required. He could see that those inside the building were all clothed in muslin shirts of different lengths, and that it was filled with men, all of whom had before them some sort of desk, from which they were reading, or rather wailing out their litany. Though this was the chief synagogue in Prague, and, as being the so-called oldest in Europe, is a building of some consequence in the Jewish world, it was very small. There was no ceiling, and the high-pitched roof, which had once probably been coloured, and the walls, ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... obsequies were performed with great solemnity. Pizarro and the principal cavaliers went into mourning, and the troops listened with devout attention to the service of the dead from the lips of Father Valverde.35 The ceremony was interrupted by the sound of loud cries and wailing, as of many voices at the doors of the church. These were suddenly thrown open, and a number of Indian women, the wives and sisters of the deceased, rushing up the great aisle, surrounded the corpse. This was not the way, they cried, to celebrate the funeral rites ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... principal cause of her grief, loomed the desertion of her lover. She tried not to think of Stafford; for every thought bestowed on him seemed to rob her dead father and to be disloyal to his memory; but, alas! the human heart is despotic; and as she lay awake and listened to the wailing of the wind and the rain as it drove against the window, Stafford's voice penetrated that of the storm; and, scarcely consciously, her lips were forming some of the passionate words of endearment which he had whispered to her by the stream and on the hill-side. Though she knew every ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... illicit spoils, it was the stern Sinclair who had insisted on driving home the lesson. He forced them to strip Dago to the waist. Two stalwarts held his hands, and Sinclair laid on the whip. And Dago, the moment the lash fell, ceased his wailing and begging, and stood quivering, with his head bent, his teeth set and gritting, until the ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... him that he should be made to know by some signal from her how it was going with her feelings. As he spoke of his danger, there came a gurgling little trill of wailing from her throat, a soft, almost musical sound of woe, which seemed to add an unaccustomed eloquence to his words. When he spoke of his own hope the sound was somewhat changed, but it was still continued. When he alluded to the disposition of his fortune, she was at his feet. "Not that," ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... cried the old woman, and burst into the tearless wailing of a child; "there is a home for me no more! My house was all that was left me of my people, and it is your own that make a house a home! In the long winter nights, when I sat by the fire and heard the wind howl, and the snow pat, pat like the small hands of my little brothers on the window, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... worship, ordered simply the whole of the children then in Bethlehem to be massacred. And Jeremiah prophesied that this would happen, speaking by the Holy Ghost thus: 'A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and much wailing, Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be comforted, because they are not.'" (Dial. ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... burst forth from the mass of people along the shore, which rising to a terrific cry sunk gradually down to a low wailing, then rose and fell again several times as the Irish death-cry filled the air and rose to Heaven, as if imploring vengeance on ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... who has. Sound has no power to express a profounder emotion of utter loneliness than the loon's cry. Standing in piny darkness on the lake's bank, or floating in dimness of mist or glimmer of twilight on its surface, you hear this wailing note, and all possibility of human tenancy by the shore or human voyaging is annihilated. You can fancy no response to this signal of solitude disturbed, and again it comes sadly over the water, the despairing plaint of some companionless and incomplete ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... path? Did not the sweet clamour of the wild-fowl, gathering for one rich paean ere they sank into rest, seem to him as God's bells chiming him home in triumph, with peels sweeter and bolder than those of Lincoln or Peterborough steeple-house? Did not the very lapwing, as she tumbled, softly wailing, before him, as she did years ago, seem to welcome the wanderer home in the ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... mountain ballads, paused, here and there, to pluck some lovely flower, accumulating, presently, a nosegay so enormous as to be almost unwieldy, whistled to the birds and smiled as they sent back their answers, laughed at the fierce scolding of a squirrel on a limb, heard the doleful wailing of young foxes and crept near enough their burrow to see them huddled in the sand before it, waiting eagerly for their foraging mother and the ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... equally matched—about fifteen men in each. The noise now became deafening; shouts of defiance, insulting expressions, and every kind of abusive epithet were bandied about, and the women and children in the bush kept up a wailing cry all the while rising and falling in cadence. The pantomimic movements were of various descriptions; besides the singular quivering motion given to the thighs placed wide apart (common to all the Australian dances) they frequently invited each other to throw at them, turning ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... night, about two o'clock in the morning, An Irish lad, so tight, all the wind and weather scorning, At Judy Callaghan's door, sitting upon the paling, His love tale he did pour, and this is part of his wailing: Only say you'll be mistress Brallaghan; Don't ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... rangers saved but five of their captives. On the British side only two whites were killed and eight Indians wounded. The next day the remaining forts, filled chiefly with women and children, capitulated. The long and wailing procession of survivors flying from their fields of corn, their gardens, the flames of their cottages, the unburied bodies of their beloved defenders, escaped by a pass through the hills to the eastern settlements. Every fort and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Doctor had procured these, two or three shots sent the assailants to the right about, with one of their number killed or wounded, for bloodstains were on their track, and they were heard next morning wailing in the woods. But the little caravan had suffered heavy loss. Gilbert was killed; Roper and Calvert were severely injured and disfigured by spear-wounds and blows from the waddies. It was a melancholy and untoward event, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... with flake and flurry over the Westfall farm. Whirling, crooning, pirouetting, the mad white ghost swept down from the hills and hurled itself with a rattle of shutters and stiffened boughs against the frozen valley. By nightfall the wind was wailing eerily through the chimneys; but the checkerboard panes of light one glimpsed through the trees of the Westfall lane ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... coat was so many sizes too large for her that the sleeves were folded back to allow her blue, chapped hands to come forth to the light of day and to their destined usefulness. Theodora's heart gave a quick bound, and, stepping forward, she bent over the wailing child. ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... his grave, he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of flowers. Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word, but the light of death. Hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustic of a wing, he who sleeps here when dying, mistaking the approach of death for the return ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... abandoned herself to the tears, the outcries of murdered love. She laid down her pen and took it up again, to express as simply as possible all that passion commonly proclaims in this sort of testamentary letter. Her heart went forth in exclamations, wailing and weeping; but reason ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... the poor lady failed and pined from that hour, and was like to die. My gossip Madge told me how when, next Midsummer, this unlucky babe was born they had to take him from her chamber at once because any sound of crying made her start in her sleep, and shriek that she heard a poor child wailing who had been left in a burning house. Moll Owens, the hind's wife, a comely lass, was to nurse him, and they had him at once to her in the nursery, where was the elder child, two years old, Master Oliver, as you know well, Mistress Lucy, a fine-grown, sturdy ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... colour suddenly fled her cheek, the distaff forsook her hand, the reel revolved, and with dishevelled locks she broke away, wailing as a woman." ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... to the door one day by the cries of children in the street, and there was Mr. Lincoln, striding by with two of his boys, both of whom were wailing aloud. 'Why, Mr. Lincoln, what's the matter with the ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... city. In the gypsy camp beside us insomnia reigns. A little forge is clinking and clanking. Donkeys raise their antiphonal lament. Dogs salute the stars in chorus. First a leader, far away, lifts a wailing, howling, shrieking note; then the mysterious unrest that torments the bosom of Oriental dogdom breaks loose in a hundred, a thousand answering voices, swelling into a yapping, growling, barking, yelling discord. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... had introduced her. But as she had given no address she was safe from pursuit. Mrs. Andrews' life had never been so uncomfortable. She had to maid herself, and do her own housekeeping, and the thing was Scandalous and intolerable. She filled the local air with wailing and abuse. ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and on either side, because they could get no sleep; and till the arrival of Nurse Swift, there was no rest for poor Mrs. Ashe, who could not keep away from her darling for a moment while that mournful wailing sounded ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... sauntered slowly, wrapt in thought, as far as the pinewood. Which he had threaded for a good half-mile, when, the fifth hour of the day being well-nigh past, yet he recking neither of food nor of aught else, 'twas as if he heard a woman wailing exceedingly and uttering most piercing shrieks: whereat, the train of his sweet melancholy being broken, he raised his head to see what was toward, and wondered to find himself in the pinewood; and saw, moreover, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... place, as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... same month the warm genius of Shelley came, as Hunt used to tell him, "from the planet Mercury" to our earth. Coleridge and Keats, with whose song a deep bar of sorrow was to mingle, like the music of falling leaves, or of winds wailing for the departure of summer, arrived in October,—that month, the beauty of which is the child of blasting, and its glory the flush of decay. And it seems somehow fitting that Addison, the mild, the quietly-joyous, the sanguine and serene, should come, with the daisy and the sweet summer-tide, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... up feather beds, rubber boots, strings of garlic, hot-water bags, portable canoes and scuttles of coal to take along for the sake of comfort. The sidewalk looked like a Russian camp in Oyama's line of march. There was wailing and lamenting up and down stairs from Danny Geoghegan's flat on the top floor to the apartments of Missis ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... that over against the Durbar at Delhi there stood forth the spectral form of Famine, bestriding the dusty plains of the Carnatic. By the glint of her eyes the splendours of Delhi shone pale, and the viceregal eloquence was hushed in the distant hum of her multitudinous wailing. The contrast shocked all beholders, and unfitted them for a proper appreciation of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the squirming mass in the baptismal dress beside the girl on the bed. With the instinct of ages, the baby stopped wailing ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... midst of the province which—in the very year when I was born—had been swept by the horrors of a famine and pestilence which left whole villages with no other survivor than perhaps two or three wailing children, feeding on garbage torn from the ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... deep Where the spirit wailed, and a falling star; Then stealthily crouching under the trees, By the light of the moon, the Kan—ti-dan, [31] The little, wizened, mysterious man, With his long locks tossed by the moaning breeze. Then a flap of wings, like a thunder-bird, [32] And a wailing spirit the sleeper heard; And lo, through the mists of the moon, she saw The hateful visage ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... will not go to weeping Poland, shaking her chains, and only wailing and complaining instead of acting, but I will go to the men and heroes of Poland, who have thrown off their fetters, and shed their blood for their country! Go home and tell this to your countrymen, and ask them when ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... Murty what he thinks of it." But Murty had been swallowed up in a crowd anxious to congratulate him on Shannon's success, and his employer failed to find him at the moment. He came upon Sarah, however—sitting under a tree, with her baby wailing dismally. ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Bewitch'd me towards; and I soon was near A sight too fearful for the feel of fear: In thicket hid I curs'd the haggard scene— 500 The banquet of my arms, my arbour queen, Seated upon an uptorn forest root; And all around her shapes, wizard and brute, Laughing, and wailing, groveling, serpenting, Shewing tooth, tusk, and venom-bag, and sting! O such deformities! Old Charon's self, Should he give up awhile his penny pelf, And take a dream 'mong rushes Stygian, It could not be so phantasied. ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... seven souls. Among them then there were but few who were not completely crushed, their minds a seething torrent, in which regret, misery and despair made battle for the mastery. Children weeping and wailing clung to the skirts of their elders. The women with shrieks, groans and tearful lamentations deplored their sad fate, while the men, securely chained wrist and wrist together, stood with heads dropped forward, too dazed and wretched for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... wailing cry, but did not tear his hair for obvious reasons. Then he rang the bell three times in swift succession, which was the signal to Foljambe that even if she was in her bath, she must come at once. In she came with one of Hermy's ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... bright appearance of an angel in the air, speeding forth on some heavenly mission. The engine now announced the close vicinity of the final station-house by one last and horrible scream, in which there seemed to be distinguishable every kind of wailing and woe, and bitter fierceness of wrath, all mixed up with the wild laughter of a devil or a madman. Throughout our journey, at every stopping-place, Apollyon had exercised his ingenuity in screwing the most abominable ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the flies away from him; but they apparently do not attempt any measures for curing him, their offices only beginning when he is regarded as dying. In the meantime they all wail, and there are also a number of other women wailing ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... went; and still we onward sailed. At last, by night, there fell a calm, becalming the water of the wide lagoon, and becalming all the clouds in heaven, wailing the constellations. But though our sails were useless, our paddlers plied their broad stout blades. Thus sweeping by a rent and hoar old rock, Vee-Vee, impatient of the calm, sprang to his crow's ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... with cannibal ferocity, and computed how many pounds of steaks might be cut from his well fattened carcass. Nay, the rage of his enemies was such that, in language seldom heard in England, they proclaimed their wish that he might go to the place of wailing and gnashing of teeth, to the worm that never dies, to the fire that is never quenched. They exhorted him to hang himself in his garters, and to cut his throat with his razor. They put up horrible prayers ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with candles, collop fashion, or squeezing heads flat in a vice, and all the most shocking devices which ever were upon earth, compared with one of these? Mere pastime! There were a hundred thousand shoutings, hoarse cries, and strong groans; yonder a boisterous wailing and horrible outcry answering them, and the howling of a dog is sweet, delicious music when compared with these sounds. When we had proceeded a little way onward from the accursed beach, towards the wild place of Damnation, I perceived, by their own ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... I spoken of the faded leaf; Long have I listened to the wailing wind, And watched it ploughing through the heavy clouds; For autumn ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... hardly out of his mouth when, from somewhere in the building, evidently some distance away, came a long wailing cry, low at first, then rising gradually higher and higher, until it became a piercing scream—the scream of a ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... brother could "lend" her a small sum of twenty pounds. It came out in conversation that the small sum was needed to satisfy some imperious demand made upon Mr. Carroll by a tailor. "He must have clothes, you know," said the poor woman, wailing. "He doesn't have many, but he must have some." There had been other appeals on the same subject made not very long since, and, to tell the truth, Mr. Grey did require to have the subject argued, in fear of the subsequent ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... teased, and petted and bossed about at will. Other creatures were different. For instance, the scream of the hawk always made her shrink a little closer to the ground, or else run helter-skelter for the house, and sometimes, up the gulches, she had heard the wailing of a mountain lion on the trail, hunting swiftly, and very hungry. There was even something about the dead eyes of certain lynxes and coyotes and bobcats which Daddy Dan trapped that made Joan feel these animals belonged ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... folk still were, they met with a vociferous affection. A regular tangi, or joy-wailing, followed, and all crowded vociferously about Stern, with hails of "Kromno! Long live our Kromno, our great chief!" in ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... 1883, the Governor informed me that Mr. Bradlaugh was going to pay me a visit, having the Home Secretary's order to see me on urgent business. The same afternoon I was marched from my cell into one of the Governor's offices, where Mr. Bradlaugh was wailing. Compared with the pale prisoners I saw day by day, he looked the very picture of health. Fresh, clean-shaven, neatly dressed, he was a most refreshing sight to eyes accustomed to rough faces and the brown convict's garb. And it was a friend too, and I could take his hand and exchange human speech ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... find, And, groaning, writhed together to and fro Like souls that did the fiery torment know. Thus, in the wood, 'twas dark and cold and dank, And breathed an air of things long dead and rank; While shapes, dim-seen, did creep and flit and fly With sudden squeak, and bodeful, wailing cry. ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... came through the Notch and seemed to pause before their cottage, ... wailing and lamentation.... For a moment it saddened them, though there was nothing unusual in ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... blankets among the luggage. It occurred to me for the first time that we had a phonograph under the cargo. I went down after it. At random I chose a record and set the machine going. It was a Chopin Nocturne played on a 'cello—a vocal yearning, a wailing of frustrate aspirations, a brushing of sick wings across the gates of heavens never to be entered; and then the finale—an insistent, feverish repetition of the human ache, ceasing ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... for Rhun; doth not the stranger tread, With spurning foot, upon his lowly bed? Doth not his spirit wailing roam, The land his dying wishes bless'd? And finds, within the Cymry's home, But the oppressor ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... having wove and proffered this poor wreath, I stand to-day as lone as he who saw At nightfall through the glimmering moony mists, The last of Arthur on the wailing mere, And strained in vain to hear ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Blyth; I forgot that for the moment. There would have been weeping and wailing indeed, even in our own household. But they could not have kept them long, though the loss of their boats would have been most terrible. But I cannot make out why the French should have wanted to catch ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... really nervous and irritable people find the country worse than town. The noise of the nightingales is deplorable. The lamentations of a cow deprived of her calf, or of a passion-stricken cow, "wailing for her demon lover" on the next farm, excel anything that the milkman can perpetrate, and almost vie with the performances of the sweep. When "the cocks are crowing a merry midnight," as in the ballad, the sleepless patient ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Zulus gave to the word "Mameena", although as I know the language I cannot get any such interpretation out of the name, I believe that it was given to her, however, because she was born just before a terrible tempest, when the wind wailing round the hut made a sound like the word "Ma-mee-na". ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... evilly," said Dick. "But what cheer! 'Tis but a squall, and presently it will blow over." But, in spite of his words, he was depressingly affected by the bleak disorder of the sky and the wailing and fluting of the wind; and as he got over the side of the Good Hope and made once more for the landing-creek with the best speed of oars, he crossed himself devoutly, and recommended to Heaven the lives of all who should adventure ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
