"Alack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or two, then stopped. "Alack, Dame," said she, "that is not the way to do. You may be sure the others would not dare, if my master had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Petrovitch has a loud, deep voice, and never smiles, whereas this man (whoever he may be) is twittering like a sparrow, and smiling all the time." Yet approach and take a good look at the fellow and you will see that is IS Ivan Petrovitch. "Alack, alack!" will be the only remark you ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Alack-a-day! what a climb down from such high flights my life has been. The ship in which I was to have sailed to the west was suddenly countermanded to the east. She was to leave for China the following week, and I was already appointed to her, not even ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... fire! Ho, water! for my heart's afire! Ho, neighbours! help me, or by God I die! See, with his standard, that great lord, Desire! He sets my heart aflame: in vain I cry. Too late, alas! The flames mount high and higher. Alack, good friends! I faint, I fail, I die. Ho! water, neighbours mine! no more delay I My heart's a cinder if ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... But, alack for Molly, he did talk to her on almost every occasion on which they met. It was from no conscious lack of royalty to Rose; it was largely because he was so full of her and her affairs that he would in an assembly of indifferent people drift towards one who was in any way connected with ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... vive le roi! 'Alack! If Malaria slackened hold, enteric tightened its clutch. People were found to say that the latter state of Alexandra was worse than the former. Marvell and Rose Marvell both got enteric. But, thank God, the uneasy misgivings engendered by that eight-devil dream of mine about ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... it. The brown hair was brushed and waved and its consequent state of new glossiness was a very distinct improvement on the former elf locks. In the sunshine it took tones of warm burnt sienna, like the hair of the Madonna in certain of Titian's great pictures. Lessons, alack! were uphill work. Rona was naturally bright, but some subjects she had never touched before, and in others she was hopelessly backward. The general feeling in the school was that "The Cuckoo", as they nicknamed her, was an experiment, and no one could guess exactly what ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... woman Riding upon a colt of Aetna's breed; She wears for headgear a Thessalian hat To shade her from the sun. Who can it be? She or a stranger? Do I wake or dream? 'This she; 'tis not—I cannot tell, alack; It is no other! Now her bright'ning glance Greets me with recognition, yes, 'tis ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... supper, entertained with the Glastonbury Thorn. When we have wondered at that a little, "Father," saith the son, "let us have the Spirit in the Wood." After that, "Now tell us how you served the robber." "Alack!" saith Sir Harry, with a smile, "I have almost forgotten that; but it is a pleasant conceit, to be sure;" and accordingly he tells that and twenty more in the same order ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... you, sir,' Humphrey said, 'yet I feel bound to do what in me lies to rescue this boy. A goodly child he is, full of spirit, and, though wild at times as a young colt, obedient to his mother. Alack!' Humphrey continued, 'his poor bereft mother. Would to God I knew how ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... who cheer and applaud more or less ironically. At last the rain is over, and the serious business of the day commences. The chair is taken by the parish priest of Tiernaur, whose initial oration is peculiar in its character. The tone and manner of speaking are excellent, but alack for the matter! A more wandering, blundering piece of dreary repetition never bemused an audience. In fairness to the priest, however, it must be admitted that a Government reporter is on the platform, and that the presence of that official may perhaps exercise ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... wander and to rest in the Fields, I oft to tell Mine Own of this matter and that matter; and I to know that she had learned somewhat of odd things, ere I did be come to health; but not overmuch; for she also to have been utter alack, as you shall think; and to have come from her bed, when that I did lie so still; for the Master Doctor to have ordained this, because he to fear that I to be going truly to die, if that he not to ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... he looked up, like Saint Christopher, to the burden on his back and said: "Tell me, have you any money about you?"—"You know I have", answered the other, "How do you suppose that a Merchant like me should go about otherwise?" "Alack!" cried the friar, "our rules forbid as to carry any money on our persons," and forthwith he dropped him into the water, which the merchant perceived was a facetious way of being revenged on the indignity he had done them; so, with a smiling face, and blushing somewhat with shame, he peaceably ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Alack! it is not when we sleep soft and wake merrily that we think on other people's sufferings; but when the hour of trouble comes, said ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... where PRUE, alack! Where mother fondly pliant now? Where for that matter too is JACK, And where the grisly Giant now? In lonely stall, with vacant brow I sit and eye the coryphees: In my time they were Fairies; now They seem ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... toys hath Glory for her nursling wrought! No paper, pens, ink, fire, or tools of steel, To exercise the quick brain's teeming thought. ' 'Alack that I so little can reveal! Fancy one hundred for each separate ill: Full space and place I've left for ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Alack! the blaze of Mistress Thankful's brown eyes had become somewhat dimmed in the grave half-lights of the room, in the graver, deeper dignity of the erect, soldier-like figure before her. The bright color born ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... "Alack! And she So young and fair! Place have we none; And yet—how bid ye gone? Stay then!—out there Among the beasts Ye may find room, And eke a truss To ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... greasy squaw. I wish I might truthfully report an artist's Indian of the Minnehaha type, but alack, it was the same one I've seen ever since I've been in the city, and that you've seen for years ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Nearer and nearer the sky But alack for their creeds while the poor man's needs Grow deeper as years ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Romeo, and she expostulated with him on the danger to which he had exposed himself by climbing the orchard walls, for if any of her kinsmen should find him there, it would be death to him being a Montague. "Alack," said Romeo, "there is more peril in your eye, than in twenty of their swords. Do you but look kind upon me, lady, and I am proof against their enmity. Better my life should be ended by their hate, than that hated life should be prolonged, to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... "Alack, alack! my friend, they have gone where they require no surgeon's aid," replied the doctor. "Those bloodthirsty Spaniards last night burst into the village, and murdered every wounded man; together with several other people—men, ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... heart, dear heart, come to my bed, My arms are warm and sweet!" "Alack for you, my love," he said, "My limbs would ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... II., to reward with ingratitude the magnanimity which he displayed in ascending the throne—was not such conduct abominable? Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie had inflicted this vexation upon honest men. To sulk at his country's happiness, alack, what aberration! ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... mouth and teeth he has, Hauberk close-mailed, and all the whole carcass, Saddle of gold, with plates of silver flanked, And of his horse has deeply scarred the back; He's slain them both, they'll make no more attack: The Spanish men in sorrow cry, "Alack!" Then say the Franks: "He strikes well, ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... Alack-a-day for Mr. D.! When he saw his kind mistress toddling along to the receptacle of many a remnant of many a luxurious feast, he was, perchance, filled with affection. Melting tears came to his eyes, and poured, like ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... brother Roger Pike, which unfortunate man I am, having been taken prisoner coming from Boston in New England, by two French privateers, and carried into Boulogne, where we were cruelly treated. Alack, alack! said the parson; pray come in, good Mr. Roger. I am indeed very well acquainted with that worthy servant of God, your brother, Mr. John Pike, and a gracious man he is; I have likewise heard him mention his brother ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: Even so my sun one early morn did shine With all-triumphant splendour on my brow; But, out, alack! he was but one hour mine, The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now. Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; Suns of the world may ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... the chapel yonder," muttered Grey Dick, who had entered with his master's food and not been sent away. "Only," he added looking reproachfully at Sir Andrew, "my hand was stayed by a certain holy priest's command to which, alack, ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... not difficult, alack! Letters of a lover in an extremity of love, crying for help, are as curious to cool strong men as the contortions of the proved heterodox tied to a stake must have been to their chastening ecclesiastical judges. Why go to the fire when a recantation will save you from it? ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Alack! alas! something so bad had happened, so terrible a tragedy had been enacted that even Flower and Hiawatha combined could no longer keep Mrs. Cameron away from ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... clover, Blushing and drooping, with her head bent low! That's the wise child: she makes him ask twice over, Lest he should think she views with too much rapture Her first fine wealthy capture! But,—though her path looks smooth, and though, alack, All will he gay, till Time has painted black The Marigold, her Mother's chosen flower,— Far brighter is my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... "Alack, my lord, such credit is due only to the blessed saints, especially St. Wilfred, whom you first learned to love at Aescendune, as ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... he will force them to hand over before he consents to give me up? It grieves me to think of the good English gold which will go to the enriching of this greedy hawk.—And how is the kingdom going to be governed in my absence?—Alack the day!' ...
— Stories from English History • Hilda T. Skae
... coffee for four, at eight to-morrow," said Henderson. "Trample on the Dragon's tail, someone, and rouse him to the occasion. What! he won't come to the scratch? Alack! alack! ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... here,—Gregory Orlof, and others concerned, waiting to receive her, in the fit temper for playing at sharps. She has spoken a little, wept a little, to the Guards (still only half-dressed, many of them): "Holy religion, Russian Empire thrown at the feet of Prussia; my poor Son to be disinherited: Alack, ohoo!" Whereupon the Guards (their Officers already gained by Orlof) have indignantly blazed up into the fit Hurra-hurra-ing:—and here, since about 9 A.M., we have just been in the "Church of St. Mary of Casan" ("Oh, my friends, Orthodox Religion, first of all!") doing TE-DEUMS and the other ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... glowing, although her strange eyes were cast down. Alack! the Colonel's face was equally flushed, and his own beady eyes were on his desk. To any other woman he would have voiced the banal gallantry that he should now, himself, look forward to that reward, but the words never reached his lips. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Majesty, go not Within that orchard, now I pray! The Witch and Ogre are in league. They've wrought you fearful harm this day. She brewed a draught to change the prince Into a dog! Oh, woe is me! I passed the tower and heard him bark: Alack! That I must tell ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... whereupon Goldsmith paid off his obligation, and with his mercurial Irish nature had a happy evening, no doubt, with his chosen cronies! It is a sordid, humorous-tragic Grub Street beginning for one of the little immortals of letters—so many of which, alack! have ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... melting mood; threnetic[obs3]. in tears, with tears in one's eyes; with moistened eyes, with watery eyes; bathed in tears, dissolved in tears; "like Niobe all tears" [Hamlet]. elegiac, epicedial[obs3]. Adv. de profundis[Lat]; les larmes aux yeux[Fr]. Int. heigh-ho! alas! alack[obs3]! O dear! ah me! woe is me! lackadaisy[obs3]! well a day! lack a day! alack a day[obs3]! wellaway[obs3]! alas the day! O tempora O mores[obs3]! what a pity! miserabile dictu[Lat]! O lud lud[obs3]! too true! Phr. tears ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... at last,"—she said, taking up her stand between Lavretzky and Liza.—"I had mislaid it myself. That's what it is to be old, alack! However, youth is no better. Well, and art thou going to Lavriki thyself, with thy wife?"—she added, addressing ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... 'the call from Macedonia.' The bishop of Oxford, the bishop of London, the lord mayor of London, and a colonial society in England gathered up some industrious young women as suitable wives for the British Columbia miners. Alack the day, there was no poet to send letters to the outside world on this handling of Cupid's bow and arrow! The comedy was pushed in the most business-like fashion. Threescore young girls came out under the auspices of the society ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... pool, Where the summer winds blow cool, Are there hydropathic cures For the ills that man endures? Know'st thou Priessnitz? What? alack Hast no other word ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... more than eight guineas.)—'Well a-day! but this is a power of money, sure and sure.'—''Tis yours, and the plant is mine; and, my good dame, you shall have one of the first young ones I rear, to keep for your husband's sake,'—'Alack, alack!'—'You shall.' A coach was called, in which was safely deposited our florist and his seemingly dear purchase. His first work was to pull off and utterly destroy every vestige of blossom and bud. The plant was divided into cuttings, which were forced in bark beds and hotbeds; were ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... Alack! for dread of being hanged, With voice so piercing shrill he twanged The word of luckless sound, His beast sprang forward at the cry, And plumb the priest dropped down from high ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... me to reside at Mrs Clay's, a desired member of the household, or perish in the attempt. Alack! I had plenty time to spend in such a trifle, for I was but a derelict, broken in fierce struggle and hopelessly cast aside into smooth waters, safe from the stormy currents now too strong for my timbers. That I had means to lie at anchor in some genial boarding-house, instead of being ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... up early the morning after the good giant had shown him that there wasn't any gold at the end of the rainbow. The old gentleman rabbit looked where a place had been set for him at the table, but alas and alack a-day, the table was almost as high from the floor as the church steeple is from the ground, and Uncle Wiggily could not reach up ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis
... force even in that remote period, the age of myths. It is consistent, for nearly all anonymous letters are myths. A wife stays out late; her actions may be quite harmless, only indiscreet. There is, alack! always some intimate friend who sees, who dabbles her pen in the ink-well and labors over a backhand stroke. It is her bounden duty to inform the husband forthwith. The letter may wreck two lives, but what is this beside stern, implacable duty? ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... have staggered even the gay salamander that is said to accept so thoroughly the gospel of caloric. And what was the Markerstown without the Great Captain? What was the Victory with no Nelson? Hence, like the patriarch, I went out to meditate at the eventide. But, alack! there were no camels, no Rebekah, no comfort. Even in subterranean grots there was nothing drawn but Tropic's XXX. Every water-cock let on a geyser. But by-and-by Apollo Archimagirus, wearying of gastronomy, stayed his hand, moistened the fierce flames, jerked the half-fried earth out into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... hat with both hands, despite the grip of the elastic under his chin, and he stamped and screamed in a manner that he had heretofore known to inspire awe and respect in the nursery and disarm authority. Alack, it had lost its efficacy now! Most of the men took no notice whatever of his callow demonstrations of wrath, though old Clenk, with a curious duality of mental process, laughed indulgently at his antics of infantile rage, despite ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... begin to be afraid that we shall not get any of those wide views from the west of Albert over the Somme country which are possible in clear weather. Again the high upland, and this time three tanks on the road, but motionless, alack! the nozzles of their machine guns just visible on their great sides. Then a main road, if it can be called a road since the thaw has been at work upon it. Every mile or two, as our chauffeur explains, the pave "is all burst up" from below, and ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... be dead and gone That were brave and gay; For the sake of these things I will learn to say, "An it please you, gentle sirs," "Alack!" and "Well-a-day!" ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... easy, but, alack! When he tried to get it back There was heard an angry cluck— Captain ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... the digestive apparatus is swelling out with food. For a fortnight, consume your provender in peace, my child; then spin your cocoon: you are now safe from the Tachina! Shall you be safe from the Anthrax' sucker later on? Alack! ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... saith, 'We will have other water,' And another saith, 'But nay;' And none may tell what the end shall be, Alack and well-a-day! ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... our way silently over its ruts and pools. "I'm thinkin'," Jamie said at last, a little wistfully, "that I micht hae been as weel wi' Chirsty." Chirsty was Janet's sister, and Jamie had first thought of her. Craigiebuckle, however, strongly advised him to take Janet instead, and he consented. Alack! heavy wobs have taken all the grace from Janet's shoulders this many a year, though she and Jamie go bravely down the hill together. Unless they pass the allotted span of life, the "poors-house" will ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... what you hesitated to speak, my good Galeotti? and didst thou think thy speaking it would offend me?" said the King. "Alack, I know that thou art well sensible that the path of royal policy cannot be always squared (as that of private life ought invariably to be) by the abstract maxims of religion and of morality. Wherefore do ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... We hear again, Marie, The simple thirds, the waltz refrain, Marie; We only see some drifting wrack, An empty bunk, a battered smack, Alas! Alas!! Alack!!! Alack!!!! Marie! ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... exulting profligate leaves town, where we must remain till the time of my departure hence; and then is he safe, and must live to dishonour God, and not only destroy his own soul but those of many others. Alack, and woe is me! The sins that he and his friends will commit this very night will cry to Heaven against us for our shameful delay! When shall our great work of cleansing the sanctuary be finished, if we proceed at ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... this society, alack! a tremendous squabble ensued. It had fallen almost entirely into the hands of the boarders, and they seemed determined to keep all its privileges to themselves. They fixed upon a play, shared the cast among them, and held rehearsals in the evenings. Mavis, Merle, and Muriel, ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... liefer I would be gathering a posy of choicest flowers for our sweet Lady's shrine; and, thus thinking, I began to do, not according to Sister Mary Augustine's hard task, but according to mine own heart's promptings. Yet, when the posy was finished, alack-a-day! it was a ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... it as a compliment—didn't he?" said Mrs. Friend shyly. She knew, alack, that she ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wretched things which know not love, Their Psyche still a wingless worm. Ice-cold seems heaven's noble glow To spirits whose vital heat is hell; And to corrupt hearts even so The songs I sing, the tale I tell. These cannot see the robes of white In which I sing of love. Alack, But darkness shows in heavenly light, Though whiteness, in the dark, ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... alive! He comes to my rescue!" she exclaimed. "Perchance it was even Roger himself disguised as the pedlar. He was ever one to venture a bold deed. Alack! that I should have been so near, and not have ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... needs obey his orders: mine are to help His Majesty Padella. And also (though alack that I should say it!) to seize wherever I ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... As yes, alack the day! (he answered); and that is why, no doubt, my shoulder ached for more than five days afterwards, as if I had been bitten by some fell beast, and methought I felt a sort of scraping at the heart. (46) Now therefore, in the presence of ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... suppose?" "No; I have eggs." We resolved to sup on eggs. A fire of logs was kindled up stairs, and a table was extemporized out of some deals. In a quarter of an hour in came our supper,—black bread, fried eggs, and a skein of wine. We fell to; but, alack! what from the smut of the chimney and the dust of the pan, the eggs were done in the chiaro scuro style; the wine had so villanous a twang, that a few sips of it contented me; and the bread, black as it was, was the only thing palatable. I got the landlady ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun To give it my loving friends to keep! Nought man could do, have I left undone: And you see my harvest, what I reap This very day, now a year ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... stomach has not been in the best possible condition lately. I've been living at home. My wife cooks. Six months ago she was a magnificent, a celestial cook! Oh, how beautifully she could broil a beefsteak! But, alas! Also alack! She got the bicycle craze; she bought a wheel. Now she ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... warrant! Well, Mrs. Jervis, you abound with your epithets; but I take her to be an artful young baggage; and had I a young handsome butler or steward, she'd soon make her market of one of them, if she thought it worth while to snap at him for a husband. Alack-a-day, sir, said she, it is early days with Pamela; and she does not yet think of a husband, I dare say: and your steward and butler are both men in years, and think nothing of the matter. No, said he, if they were younger, they'd have more wit than to think of such a girl; I'll ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... "Alack! Mr. Prynne," answered the stranger, with a slight foreign accent, "since your captivity in Mont Orgueil many things have befallen. 'Tis not alone I, Michael Lempriere the exile, changed from the state of Seigneur ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... alack, no, I've not won her," mourned Lindley, his Irish eyes and his Irish lips losing their laughter. "I'm in a fair way never to win her, I think. In my case, though, it's the father that's wax in the daughter's hands. 'Tis ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... their churches and castles. It is here that the workers of all kinds congregate in the evening. Here, after the labours of the day, come the tradesman with his wife and family, the young clerk with his betrothed and—also her mother, alack and well-a-day!—the soldier with his sweetheart, the students in twos and threes, the little grisette with her cousin, ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... Alack! poor scholar, wast thou never taught A little knowledge serveth less than naught? Hadst thou perused—but, stay, I will explain What was the writing which thou didst disdain. [Reads:] "Au Petit Trianon, at night's full noon, Mortal, ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... mountebank, I did but utter the truth that was in my heart. San Paolo be my witness that did ye but find the stout Count Leonardo in his cups, sheer from the castle's topmost battlements would he hurl ye all! Alack-a-day, the good Lord Luigi reigns not here in these ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... disappearance with the doctor was discussed at every chota hazri table with and without sympathy, and even in the bazaar it was passed along from one to another. The Collector's memsahib had gone off with the doctor, leaving her little child to the tender mercies of an ayah! Alack! even to the homes of the mighty came shame and dishonour through a woman! And all through the European custom of giving women so much liberty! On the whole, the "black man" knew best how to protect his honour ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... I was ever wont to leave Her lonely there while every night To sleep at the inn with my mules I came. I wished thus that she might remain As a refuge for my old age, Like a Medina counterpane, But she saw through me and alack 480 Must view the matter in a rage And ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... the dreaded words, "Now, Annie dear, will you speak to our Lord." But when my trembling lips had forced themselves into speech, all the nervousness used to vanish and I was swept away by an enthusiasm that readily clothed itself in balanced sentences, and alack! at the end, I too often hoped that God and Auntie had noticed that I prayed very nicely—a vanity certainly not intended to be fostered by the pious exercise. On the whole, the somewhat Calvinistic teaching tended, I think, to make me a little morbid, especially as I always fretted silently ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... faring up and down, Alack and well-a-day. He fared him to the market town, Alack and well-a-day. And there he met a maiden fair, With hazel eyes and auburn hair; His heart went from him then and there, Alack ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... new-comer has to take the last ball of the over—his first. Alas and alack! The sixth ball is dead on to the middle stump. The Harrovian plays forward. Man alive, you ought to have played back to that! The ball grazes the top edge of the bat's blade and flies straight into the ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... 'twas a mighty throw!" sighed Sir Jocelyn, "though alack! sweet my lord, 'twould almost seem my forester hath something ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... entreaties had been choked in her slim throat, the smothering pillow held in place with merciless strength. Then at Emilia's disconcerting knock and demand for admission, Othello had let down and closely drawn the two curtains. But alas and alack a day! though they were thick and rich and wide, they failed to reach the floor by a good foot's breadth—a fact unnoticed by the star. You may not be an actor; but really when you add to that twelve or fourteen-inch space the steep incline of the stage—why, you can readily understand ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... gowden hair: she kent it weel. Alack, the sobs and sighs! The warm win' blew, the laverock ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... buy its My flesh would tempt me by the will, alack, its pleasures sight of savoury food whose flee! The sin that pays their joys shall pass away and price abides to all eternity. pangs maintain ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... 'Alack, alack, Edmund,' says Gloster to his natural son, making him the confidant of his nobler nature, putting what was then the perilous secret of his humanity, into the dangerous keeping of the base-born ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... "Alack-a-day!" cried the housekeeper, lifting up her hands. "Did I not tell you, gentlemen, that I knew on which foot my master halted? Come, dear sir, and we will cure you, without the help of Urganda or anyone ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... command;—agues, consumptions, fevers, inflammations, swords, robbers, hemlock, juries, tyrants,—not one of which gives them a moment's concern so long as they are prosperous; but when they come to grief, then it is Alack! and Well-a-day! and Oh dear me! If only they would start with a clear understanding that they are mortal, that after a brief sojourn on the earth they will wake from the dream of life, and leave all behind them,—they would live more sensibly, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... am a Norwegian what wilt thou do then?' said Styrkar. 'I would slay thee; but alack I have no weapon to do it with,' the peasant replied. 'If thou canst not slay me, peasant, I will make trial if I cannot slay thee,' and therewith Styrkar swung his sword and brought it down on the man's neck so that his head was cut off; and then took he the fur coat and springing ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... Sister, alack! think how our father fell, O'erwhelmed with hatred and with infamy Through sins which his own act had brought to light, His eyes bereft of sight by his own hand; How she that was his wife and mother too Perished, self-strangled with ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... "Alack and alas! for the want of a nail The horseshoe is lost; and my good horse will fail For the want of the shoe; and I shall be late For want of a steed; and my message must wait For want of a bearer; and woe is our plight, For want of the ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay
... see visions of highly-coloured Lord Mayors and aldermen and burghers and beef-eaters. And somehow Dick Whittington and his cat are mixed up with it all, and exhibitions with glass roofs and careful craftsmen and apprentices, and Christopher Wren. Alas and alack! Where ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... "Alack! madam, this pestilence has brought into play some of the worst attributes of human nature. The tokens and loathly boils which break out upon the flesh of the plague-stricken are less revolting to humanity than the cruelty of those who minister to the sick, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... gray uniforms and red-banded caps had indeed seemed the good geniuses of the excursion, but alack! they exhibited a different aspect when they had conducted their party back to the entrance of the funicular railway. Not satisfied with the payment which the government tariff allowed them to charge, they demanded from each of the visitors exorbitant tips ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... mortal—Genius' prize, alack! Is, living, bound upon thy fatal back, Thou reinless racing steed! In vain he writhes, mere cloud upon a star, Thou bearest him as went Mazeppa, far Out of the flow'ry mead,— So—though thou speed'st implacable, (like him, Spent, pallid, torn, bruised, weary, ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... are wi' him, an' he's a strong swimmer. Perhaps half an hour will take him there. He's all right in himself. He can swim it, sure. But alack! it's when he gets there his trouble will be, when none can warn him. Look how the waves are lashing the cliff; and mark the white water beyond! What voice can sound to him out in those deeps? How could he see if even one were ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... observe the sad countenance of Strings. "Alack-a-day! Why do you not take the nosegay?" she asked, wonderingly; for she herself was so very happy that she could not see why Strings too ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... p. 353.).—Todd had better have allowed Johnson to speak for himself: lack-a-daisy, lack-a-day, alack the day, as Juliet's nurse exclaims, and alas-the-day, are only various readings of the same expression. And of such inquiries and such solutions as Todd's, I cannot refrain from expressing my sentiments in the {63} words of poor Ophelia, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... alack! I came upon him not a half hour since, fallen from the North park wall over against the Deerpark side—dead—dead!—a nectarine in his hand that the dear lad must have climbed for, and plucked the ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... Mar. jun. Alack-a-day! Was you to see the plays when they are brought to us—a parcel of crude undigested stuff. We are the persons, sir, who lick them into form—that mould them into shape. The poet make the play indeed! the colourman might be as well said to make the picture, or the ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... laundry as soon as all were assembled. About a dozen were already there, but, when the scout returned with such dire tidings, they decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and all made haste to get back to their rooms ere the enemy appeared. But, alack-a-day! that enemy could flit about in a surprisingly lively manner, and, ere some of them had reached safety behind their own doors, she came in view. To get to their rooms now was out of the question, so, making a virtue of necessity, they all ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... him," cried Philip, as they both scrambled up the bank. But, alack and alas! Pepitia's foot got caught in her long train just as she got to the top of the bank, and down she fell, roly-poly, to ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... field half ploughed, A solitary cow, A child with a broken slate, And a titmarsh in the bough. But where, alack, is Bewick To ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... little box and leading a lady by the hand? It was Pym, as we are about to see, who in the beginning held Tommy up to the public gaze, Pym who first noticed his remarkable indifference to female society, Pym who gave him——But alack! does no one remember Pym for himself? Is the king of the Penny Number already no more than a button that once upon a time kept Tommy's person together? And we are at the night when they first met! Let us hasten into Marylebone before ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... find him, your ex-shelency? I have only seen him one little time in my life, and where is he now, and what's his name? Alack, alack!' added the Jew, shaking the long curls over his ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... met them—the unassuming celebrity, and the young entrepreneur. The great humorist, alack! will never read the tale as I have told it, but I am hopeful, that in "The Tale of Timber Town," his erstwhile companion and the public will perceive the literary value of the theme which arrested the attention of so great ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... I spoke to you of hath more than one habitation. The day you saw me going to visit her, I found her in the Library of Santa Maria Novella. But alack! I heard but the one half of her discourse, for she spoke to me in both of the two languages that flow like honey from her adorable lips. First she delivered me a discourse in the tongue of the Greeks, which I could not comprehend, then she addressed me in the dialect ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... he wore the day before, It was clean cast away; And at every step he fetcht a sigh, "Alack and ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... took me home with him and threw me onto a couch littered with books and papers. Here I stayed for ever so long. One day I heard the young man say to his wife, nodding toward me: "I ought to try to get that unfortunate thing off my hands before my vacation, but I never seem to get around to it." As, alack-a-day! he did not get around to me before that occasion, I went, packed in the bottom of a trunk, with the young man and his wife on their annual holiday. In my pitchy gaol I had, of course, no means of calculating the flight of time, but when I next ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... senses of my palate were of the acute kind, and so were a continual source of the penalties of gluttony. Whatever else there might be alack with me, there was never a lack of appetite. I was able to eat at each meal food enough which, if fully digested, would have redeemed the wastes of any day of labor; and not only this, but also enough ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... ever May, Spied a blossom passing fair Playing in the wanton air: Through the velvet leaves the wind, All unseen, 'gan passage find; That the lover, sick to death, Wished himself the heaven's breath. Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow; Air, would I might triumph so! But, alack, my hand is sworn Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn: Vow, alack, for youth unmeet; Youth so apt to pluck a sweet. Do not call it sin in me That I am forsworn for thee: Thou for whom e'en Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiope were, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... muttering to himself, "That elder one might have been the staff of mine age! Pity on him to be lost in the great and evil City! Yet 'tis a good lad to follow that fiery spark his brother. Tanquam agnus inter lupos. Alack!" ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... crack your cheeks,"—alack, Who said it, wanted house and halls, Nor knew winds have no cheeks to crack, In short crack ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... her earliest days she had been able to twist her father round her little finger. He sent her to a smart boarding school, and no money was spared in order to give her pleasure. It was the dream of Farmer King, and Nancy's dearest ambition also, that she should be turned into a lady. But, alas and alack! Miss Nancy could not overcome the stout yeoman blood in her veins. She was no aristocrat, and nothing could make her one. She was just a hearty, healthy happy-minded English girl; vulgar in voice and loud in speech, but fairly well-intentioned at heart. She was the sort ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... run over to Widow Brown's; Her son, from the mines, has just got back. I don't believe he's a cent in his purse, Young men are so shiftless now, alack! ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... art thou not inglorious in thy fate; For so Apollo, with unweeting hand Whilome did slay his dearly-loved mate Young Hyacinth born on Eurotas' strand, Young Hyacinth the pride of Spartan land; But then transform'd him to a purple flower Alack that so to change ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Alack! they're gone—a thousand ways! And some are serving in "the Greys," And some have perish'd young!— Jack Harris weds his second wife; Hal Baylis drives the wane of life; ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... alack, that so great state The malice of this world should ruinate! Come in, great lord, sit down and take thy ease, Receive the seal, and pardon my offence. With me you shall be safe, and if you please, Till Richard come, from all men's violence. Aged Fitzwater, banished by John, And his fair ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... there with the Lake Superior Indians, and worked in the copper mines, had welcomed a woman at his hut one bitter night, who was gone by morning, leaving wolf tracks on the snow! Yes, it was so, and John Fontanelle, the half-breed, could tell you about it any day—if he were alive. (Alack, the snow where the wolf tracks were, ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... sunlit ways; And yet the earth seemed black, For there were three, where two should be; So runs the world, alack. (The listening gods, the jealous gods, They want ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Alack-a-day! the world went very well in the consulship of Plancus! No doubt even in the best and soundest of their times the magazines did suffer by the subscription plan. The remaining stock of the Analectic Magazine was sold for seven ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... ever alack! my master dear, I fear a deadly storm. I saw the new moon late yestreen, Wi' the auld moon in her arm And if ye gang to sea, maister, I ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... sheep-bell tinkles frae the west, My lambs are bleating near, But still the sound that I lo'e best, Alack! I canna' hear. Oh no! sad and slow, The shadow lingers still, And like a lanely ghaist I stand And ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... June woods a host of grateful leaves wait and beckon. A voice comes from the garden bed; it is the complaint of the pansy. "Here I lie," it says, "with all my jewels low in the dust. Where is the purple of my amethysts, the yellow of my topaz, the inimitable sheen of my milk-white pearls? Alas and alack for pansies when the rain beats them earthward!" The marigold, like a yellow-haired boy with his straw hat well back from his flying mane, whistles softly to himself for joy, and buries his hands in the pockets of his green breeches. The peonies burn low their tinted globes of light, ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... 'Thanks, good friends. Alack! I have dropped my gauntlet in the street. But it is of no import. I thank God that no harm has come to any one. My thanks once more, and may pleasant dreams await ye.' She sprang up the steps and ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle |
