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Plaint   Listen
noun
Plaint  n.  
1.
Audible expression of sorrow; lamentation; complaint; hence, a mournful song; a lament. "The Psalmist's mournful plaint."
2.
An accusation or protest on account of an injury. "There are three just grounds of war with Spain: one of plaint, two upon defense."
3.
(Law) A private memorial tendered to a court, in which a person sets forth his cause of action; the exhibiting of an action in writing.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Plaint" Quotes from Famous Books



... down in his seat as one who has made up his mind. "Let the case of the summoner be laid before me," said he. "Justice shall be done, and the offender shall be punished, be he noble or simple. Let the plaint ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... heard a feeble plaint, quickly silenced by a thunder crash. "If we were only home with mama," he ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... bliss and a wigwam if need be; but he—he was cold—he was changing—he would prove faithless to his humble, adoring village maid, and then there would be nothing left for her but despair. Then as his convalescence progressed she became insistent and Mrs. Davies weaker. Almira poured forth her plaint to her aunt by letter. Aunt Almira gave another dinner, to which some of the staff were bidden, and a mellow symposium it was, and over the oft-replenished champagne glasses did the kindly woman tell of ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... hunter patrolled his beat, and hours were moments to him. He heard the low hum of the insects, the murmur of running water, the rustle of the wind. A coyote cut the keen air with high-keyed, staccato cry. The owls hooted, with dismal and weird plaint, one to the other. Then a wolf mourned. But these sounds only accentuated the loneliness and wildness of the ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... off leisurely for Lindsey's, Terry quiet, the Major jovial at the prospect of a drive at the wild boar. They jogged through the hot afternoon over a trail winding under a canopy of foliage shrill with the plaint of myriad insect life. An hour out and the Major was nearly unseated as his pony shied violently from a three-foot iguana that scurried across their path in furious haste. Farther into the woods, and they drew rein, listening to the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... should stand together, commenting on passing events, booming in unison with the cyclone, and mimicking the tenderest tones of the idlest wind. During a storm, when the big waves crash on the beach and the Casuarinas are tormented, the tumult is bewildering; but however loud their plaint, very few suffer, though growing in loose sand; for the roots are widespread and, like the trunk and main branches, tough, while the branchlets stream before ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... ballad, not a single song, reminds us that on their banks men and women live who experience the happiness of love and the pangs of separation; that under each roof in the valleys life's joys and sorrows come and go." This plaint of an American of the old days expresses my meaning; it has been noted again and again, particularly by those who visited America at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The only relationship between the Yankee and his environment is one of practical usefulness. The soil, as one ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... still survive; but there is no substantial difference in the incidents of trial, judgment and execution in any of these courts. The initial difference between actions in the High Court and the county court is that the latter are commenced by plaint lodged in the court, on which a summons is prepared by the court and served by its bailiff, whereas in the High Court the party prepares the writ and lodges it in court for sealing, and when it is sealed, himself ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... on a stone with her burden weary, By the foaming eddies of amethyst. And robed in her mantle of mist the sprite Her low wail poured on the silent night. Then the spirit spake, and the floods were still— They hushed and listened to what she said, And hushed was the plaint of the whippowil In the silver-birches above her head: 'Wiwst,—the prairies are green and fair, When the robin sings and the whippowil; But the land of the Spirits is fairer still, For the winds of winter blow never there; ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... He shrieked out for mercy from every saint in the calendar, and entreated one or all of them to carry him on shore, even if it was but to the sandy coast of Africa. "Ah! misericordia, misericordia, misericordia!" was the burden of his plaint. ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... it's no easy thing Making the journey to Bumpville, So I think, on the whole, it were prudent to bring An end to this ride to Bumpville; For, though she has uttered no protest or plaint, The calico mare must be blowing and faint— What's more to the point, I'm blowed if I ain't! So play we have got ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field

... saide, and deare constraint, Lets me not sleepe, but wast the wearie night 470 In secret anguish and unpittied plaint, Whiles you in carelesse sleepe are drowned quight. Her doubtfull words made that redoubted knight Suspect her truth: yet since no' untruth he knew, Her fawning love with foule disdainefull spight 475 He would not shend; but said, Deare dame I rew, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... with a world's anguish— But it sleeps, and I on the housetops Commune with souls long dead who guard our land at midnight, A strength in each hushed heart— I seem to hear the Atlantic moaning on our shores with the plaint of the dying And rolling on our shores with the rumble of battle.... I seem to see my country growing golden toward California, And, as fields of daisies, a people, with slumbering up-turned faces Leaned over by Two Brothers, And the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... interrupted, and the attention of the garrulous twelve was finally given to the presiding officer. For a moment, silence fell. It was broken by Ruth Howard, a girl with large, soulful brown eyes and a manner of rapt earnestness, who uttered her plaint in ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan

... Rang out a sweet bird's song, No feeble, weak, uncertain note, No plaint of grief or wrong, No "Miserere Domine," No "Dies Irea" sad, But "Gloria in Excelsis" rang, In accents ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins

... "Priapus" when he spoke of Goethe. Even "Wilhelm Meister" seemed to be only a symptom of decline, of a moral "going to the dogs". The "Menagerie of tame cattle," the worthlessness of the hero in this book, revolted Niebuhr, who finally bursts out in a plaint which Biterolf(8) might well have sung: "nothing so easily makes a painful impression as when a great mind despoils itself of its wings and strives for virtuosity in something greatly inferior, while ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... exact photograph of the casino; by eagerly reading the Joanne guide describing the beauties of the seashore where one would wish to be; by being rocked on the waves, made by the eddy of fly boats lapping against the pontoon of baths; by listening to the plaint of the wind under the arches, or to the hollow murmur of the omnibuses passing above on the Port ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... 1748,[31] is a fine poem; at least the first part of it is, for the second book is tiresomely allegorical, and somewhat involved in plot. There is a magic art in the description of the "land of drowsy-head," with its "listless climate" always "atween June and May,"[32] its "stockdove's plaint amid the forest deep," its hillside woods of solemn pines, its gay castles in the summer clouds, and its murmur of the distance main. The nucleus of Thomson's conception is to be found in Spenser's House of Morpheus ("Faerie ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... the gloom sails the silv'ry moon, O'er forests dark and still, Now far, now near, ever sad and clear, Comes the plaint of the whip-poor-will; With song and laugh, and with kindly chaff, We startle the birds above, Then rest tired heads on our cedar beds, To dream ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... boughs among He's coldly nestling. How sad the high wind's sounding dirge, As 'twere old ocean's moaning surge, Around our dwelling; I well may tell the reason why, But oh! the teardrops in mine eye Are swiftly swelling. The world is sad, and I am so; Does Marian hear my plaint? Oh, no; She's far away. Ye envious streams—ye hateful hills! Ah me! what cruel anguish thrills My heart to-day! But soon may Fortune learn to smile Upon her sad and helpless child, And let us meet, No more to part, no more ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley

... answered her call. A trembling seized her and feeling her way to the bed where Bertie lay, she crept in beside him, cuddling the soft, warm little body close, and checking her sobs that they might not wake him. Long after the whippoorwill had ceased its plaint, she lay there staring into the darkness, ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... of the world, a telephone repeating all men's wants. I open it, and where my eye first falls—well, no, not Morrison's Pills—but here, sure enough, and but a little above, I find the joint that I was seeking; here is the weak spot in the armour of society. Here is a want, a plaint, an offer of substantial gratitude: 'Two Hundred Pounds Reward.—The above reward will be paid to any person giving information as to the identity and whereabouts of a man observed yesterday in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the outlooks of the new soldier and the old. Our Manchester Territorials were distressed to find that thousands of yards of hurdles were being lined with the best tent cloth at 1s. 4d. a yard, instead of with cheap cotton at a quarter the price. I repeated their plaint to a Regular officer of the old school, expecting sympathetic indignation. "Magnificent," was his reply. "It shows the world in what spirit England ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst

... broke out into a loud laugh. "Ah, he begs for her!" said he. "This little Earl Surrey presumes to think that his sentimental love-plaint can exercise an influence on the heart of his judge! No, no, Henry Howard; you know me better. You say, indeed, that I am a cruel man, and that blood cleaves to my crown. Well, now, it is our pleasure ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... inquired. Yes, I was right; it was husband and wife. They had to be torn apart by force; the girl had to be dragged away, and she struggled and fought and shrieked like one gone mad till a turn of the road hid her from sight; and even after that, we could still make out the fading plaint of those receding shrieks. And the husband and father, with his wife and child gone, never to be seen by him again in life?—well, the look of him one might not bear at all, and so I turned away; but I knew I should never get his picture out of my mind again, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... was unspeakably touching. Indeed, it was a wonderful sight to see this sentimental blackleg, with a pack of cards in his pocket and a revolver at his back, sending his voice before him through the dim woods with a plaint about his "Nelly's grave" in a way that overflowed the eyes of the listener. A sparrow hawk, fresh from his sixth victim, possibly recognizing in Mr. Hamlin a kindred spirit, stared at him in surprise, and was fain to confess the superiority ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... If so, it must befall That Death, whene'er he call, Must call too soon. Though fourscore years he give Yet one would pray to live Another moon! What kind of plaint have I, Who perish in July? I might have had to ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... choose to think themselves. Shepherds still piped, and maidens still listened to their piping. The old gods had not been discrowned and banished; and to fishers drawing their nets the coasts yet kept a something of the trace of amorous Polypheme, the rocks were peopled with memories of his plaint to Galatea. Inland, among the dim and thymy woods, bee-haunted and populous with dreams of dryad and oread, there were rumours of Pan; and dwellers under thatch—the goatherd mending his sandals, the hind carving his new staff, the girls who busked them for the ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... poor, you that are rich, you that have been great sinners, listen to the voice of Jesus; listen to the plaint of Mary during this month of November; "My children are now dead; come lay thy prayers up for them, and they shall live." Hear Mass for the poor souls; say your beads for them; supplicate Jesus and Mary and Joseph in their behalf. Fly to St. Catherine of ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... de qui la vertu Etait moins que la table encensee; On ne plaint point la femme abattue, Mais ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... hardly have suspected in him, M. Le Mesge drew us away from the statues. A moment later, Morhange and I found ourselves again seated, or rather sunk among the cushions in the center of the room. The invisible fountain murmured its plaint ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... shed dim rays over the landscape and made the towers and steeples of the town, standing out at some distance, appear like misty silhouettes. In the deep green of the bushes a nightingale pealed forth his liquid plaint into the balmy night air, while from the ballroom inside the tuning of violins mingled inharmoniously. From the town gusts of warm wind carried snatches of a martial song, ground out on the barrel-organ of a carrousel. All these ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... scream, Or hens will cackle clear. In robin's song, the whip-poor-will Pours forth his plaint so near. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... Place loko. Place, a public placo. Place of abode restadejo. Placid kvieta. Plagiarist verkosxtelisto. Plague pesto—ego. Plague-stricken (person) pestulo. Plain malbela. Plain senornama. Plainly simple, klare. Plainness simpleco. Plaint plendo. Plaintive plenda. Plait (with straw) pajloplekti. Plait plekti. Plait plektajxo. Plait (hair) harligo. Plan plano. Plan (geometrical) plato. Plane raboti. Plane (tool) rabotilo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... and slays the wild beasts, the God, with keen eye, and at evening returns piping from the chase, breathing sweet strains on the reeds. In song that bird cannot excel him which, among the leaves of the blossoming springtide, pours forth her plaint and her honey-sweet song. With him then the mountain nymphs, the shrill singers, go wandering with light feet, and sing at the side of the dark water of the well, while the echo moans along the mountain crest, and the God leaps hither and thither, and goes ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... Amelia Ellen, putting the house in order, hearing the beautiful plaint of the loving-hearted, mourning servant as she told little incidents of her mistress. Here was the chair she sat in the last time she went up-stairs to oversee the spring regulating, and that was Mr. John's little baby dress in which he was christened. His mother ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... literal sense if I stayed away. No, the women-heroes in this land are those who face it with a careless, selfish husband, or perhaps in a home having no love, and who win through their little day and make no plaint. God ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... around, And rails and fallen stones bestrew the ground: In loosen'd garb derang'd, with scatter'd hair, His bosom open to the nightly air, Lone, o'er a new heap'd grave poor Basil bent, And to himself began his simple plaint. ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie

... wavering in a strange manner in the midst of the darkness, and that at a depth where no human eye had ever penetrated. Fear lent my sight, and all my senses, an unheard-of subtlety of perception. For several seconds I heard very distinctly the evening plaint of a cricket down at the edge of the wood, a dog barking far away, very far in the valley. Then my heart, compressed for an instant by emotion, began to beat furiously and I ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... Nothing was ever more mysteriously melancholy than Camille's improvisation; it seemed like the cry of a soul de profundis to God—from the depths of a grave! The heart of the young lover recognized the cry of despairing love, the prayer of a hidden plaint, the groan of repressed affliction. Camille had varied, modified, and lengthened the introduction to the cavatina: "Mercy for thee, mercy for me!" which is nearly the whole of the fourth act of "Robert ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... me sies l'ombre, aussi soudainement Amour, laissant son arc, s'assiet et se repose: Si ie pense a des vers, ie le voy qu'il compose: Si ie plains mes douleurs, il se plaint hautement. Si ie me plains du mal, il accroist mon tourment: Si ie respan des pleurs, son visage il arrose: Si ie monstre la playe en ma poitrine enclose, Il defait son bandeau l'essuyant doucement. Si ie vay par les bois, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... little serpents of the sistrum as they lifted their melodious voices to bid Typhon depart, or watching the dancing women's rhythmic movements, or smiling half kindly, half with irony, upon the lovelorn maiden who made her plaint: ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... his Lay de Vaillance Eustache Deschamps complains that the degree of knighthood is actually conferred on those who are only ten or twelve years old, and who do not know what to do with the honour.[13] That plaint was written not later than the first years of the fifteenth century, and the poet's prediction that ruin of the institution was imminent when affected by such disorders seemed justified if, in 1433, even the years of the eligible age had shrunk to days. Philip ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... hear zour plaint; Sair, sair I rew the deid, That eir this cursed hand of mine Had gard his body bleid. Dry up zour tears, my winsome dame, Ze neir can heal the wound; Ze see his head upon the speir, His heart's blude ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols

... not always petitioning to drink. The words, "I am so thirsty," ceased to be her plaint. Sometimes, when she had swallowed a morsel, she would say it had revived her. All descriptions of food were no longer equally distasteful; she could be induced, sometimes, to indicate a preference. With what trembling pleasure and anxious care did not her nurse prepare what was selected! ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... plaint of the land-holders, one not devoid of equity and, therefore, awakening a response in the minds of timid and sober business men, who were as yet unaffected by the danger. But some of these found ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... sufferer, if such a term may be applied to so young a child. But it was strange that an infant so pale, thin, and sickly, deprived of its mother's nursing care besides, should have made so little plaint and given so little trouble. Perhaps in the lack of human pity he had the love of heavenly spirits, who watched over him, soothed his pains, and stilled his cries. We cannot tell how that may have ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... consecrated earth, And on the holy hearth, The Lars, and Lemures, moan with midnight plaint; In urns, and altars round, A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... incapable of being misunderstood. The heart has lost— not something, but everything. The tones, however, do not always bear the impress of a quiet, melancholy resignation. More passionate impulses awaken, and the still plaint becomes a complaint against cruel fate. It seeks the conflict, and tries through force of will to burst the fetters of pain, or at least to alleviate it through absorption in a happy past. But in vain! The heart ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... paid no attention to this boyish plaint, for he was fumbling in the locker, then withdrew his hand and uncoiled an ordinary fish-line, with ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... craftily open the door with a skeleton key; some who ruthlessly batter the panels; some who achieve only a wax impression, which proves to be useless. There are many who travel no farther than the outer gates. You will find them staring blankly at the stone walls; and their plaint is: ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... these woods by Loire side, the fair shapes of old religion, Fauns, Nymphs, and Satyrs, and heard'st in the nightingale's music the plaint of Philomel. The ancient poets came back in the train of thyself and of the Spring, and learning was scarce less dear to thee than love; and thy ladies seemed fairer for the names they borrowed from the beauties of forgotten days, Helen and Cassandra. How sweetly didst thou sing to them thine old ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... which once had been the theatre of human hopes and fears, where once men had been born, loved, and died, where once maidens had been fair, and good and evil wrestled, and little children played. Some Job may have dwelt here and written his immortal plaint, or some king of Sodom, and suffered the uttermost calamity. The world is very old; all we Westerns learned from the contemplation of these wrecks of men and of their works was just that the ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... native land!' What precious hopes are severed one by one! What hearts lie crushed and sick by 'hope deferred!' How many dear ones, stretched along the sand, Bleed out their lives beneath a blighting sun— With but a word— 'Mother!' for plaint or prayer! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... father reads the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on high; Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire: Or other holy seers ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... already excessive, for an irresistible stupor once more took possession of him, his head dropped, his eyes closed, and he seemed to fall asleep again, continuing his plaint, as if in a dream, moaning in fainter and ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... robin in Hackensack, the stirring of the maple sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along Main Street in Syracuse, the first chirp of the bluebird, the swan song of the Blue Point, the annual tornado in St. Louis, the plaint of the peach pessimist from Pompton, N. J., the regular visit of the tame wild goose with a broken leg to the pond near Bilgewater Junction, the base attempt of the Drug Trust to boost the price of quinine ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... so weird, so wild, so prophetic were its tones that it found only a shrinking in the heart of him whose ear it constrained to listen. The sound of the torrent far below was accelerated to an agitated, tumultuous plaint, all unknown when its pulses were bated by summer languors. The moon was in the turmoil of the clouds, which, routed in some wild combat with the winds, were ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... was the monotonous plaint of his sister which caused the Terror to say: "I've got a penny. We'll ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... Hall with Sir W. Pen. So to Mr. Montagu, where his man, Mons. Eschar, makes a great com plaint against the English, that they did help the Spaniards against the French the other day; and that their Embassador do demand justice of our King, and that he do resolve to be gone for France the next week; which I, and all ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... their brethren in France, and the zeal of the preachers was roused by a revival of the old worship in Clydesdale and by the neglect of the Government to suppress it. In the opening of 1563 they resolved "to put to their own hands," and without further plaint to Queen or Council to carry out "the punishment that God had appointed to idolaters in his law." In Mary's eyes such a resolve was rebellion. But her remonstrances only drew a more formal doctrine of resistance from Knox. "The sword of justice, ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... little while before they had risked their lives—men who in a fortnight had fallen from a high plane of life to the pitiful level of brutes. Only here and there was an exception. This man, Crittenden, was one. When sane, he was gentle, uncomplaining, considerate. Delirious, there was never a plaint in his voice; never a word passed his lips that his own mother might not hear; and when his lips closed, an undaunted ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... quiet and cushioned ease, where "all was one full-swelling bed"; the out-of-door stillness, broken only by "the stock-dove's plaint amid ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... a bear outa season, no!" Strawmyer continued his plaint. "But a bear comes an' kills my stock an' my dog; that there's all right! That's the kinda deal a farmer always gits, in this state! I don't like t' ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper

... long up into the dark, dense green mass of the tree to make out the cause of all this excitement. The chickadees were clinging to the ends of the sprays, as usual, apparently very busy looking for food, and all the time uttering their shrill plaint. The nuthatches perched about upon the branches or ran up and down the tree trunks, incessantly piping their displeasure. At last I made out the cause of the disturbance,—a little owl on a limb, looking down in wide-eyed intentness upon me. How annoyed he must ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... mighty Father, she, with plaint and prayer, departed: Then from fierce Aetna to the sea a ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... of a struggle that must be the beginning of a long sorrow. Only the day before, Dr. Kenn had been made acquainted with the contents of Stephen's letter, and he had believed them at once, without the confirmation of Maggie's statement. That involuntary plaint of hers, "Oh, I must go," had remained with him as the sign that she ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... a plaint to the Earl Marshal,' he said; 'it is not fitting that a lord of the Church should ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... judge escape was sometimes possible; but from our worthy Sprenger it was hopeless. His humanity is too strong: it needs great management, a very large amount of ready wit, to avoid a burning at his hands. One day there was brought before him the plaint of three good ladies of Strasburg who, at one same hour of the same day, had been struck by an arm unseen. Ah, indeed! They are fain to accuse a man of evil aspect, of having laid them under a spell. On being brought before the inquisitor, the man vows ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... your eyes, and the eyes of all the multitude who watch, I hurl myself from this hideous place into the waters of the Nile. Yet ere I go to join dead Pharaoh, and side by side with him to lay our plaint against you before the eternal gods, listen to our curse upon you. From this day forward a snake shall prey upon your vitals, gnawing upwards to your heart. The spirits of Pharaoh and of all his servants ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... her plaint to lay Before the face of Love Divine. Saying in heaven she will not stay, Since you have stolen what made her shine: Aloud she wails with sorrow wan,— She told her stars and two are gone: They are not there; you have them now; They ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... the great Viceroy. "I have done my duty to Her Majesty," he laughed, "and now, I am going to do my duty to myself!" Whereat Harry Hardwicke was suddenly aware that Cupid carries a double-barreled gun, sometimes. In her own apartment, Nadine Johnstone listened to Janet Fairbarn's sobbing plaint, as the heart-happy Mattie Jones flew around the rooms making her young mistress's boxes. Nadine was still in an entrancing dream of freedom, life, and love, and the cunning Scotswoman's plaint was all unheeded. Major Hardwicke was announced, "upon ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... feeling of all times?) of a shadowy recollection of past and eternal existence in the profundities of the Divine Heart. 'It sounds forth here a mournful remembrance of a faded world of gods and heroes—as the echoing plaint for the loss of man's original, celestial state, and paradisiacal innocence.' And then we have those transcendent lines that come to us like aromatic breezes ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... The plaint was just another of the rumblings of discontent contributing to the grand explosion of thirteen years later. The intricacies were entered into in ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton

... which, so far from interrupting the universal tranquillity of earth, sea, and sky, rather tended to reveal to us how quiet the world round us really was. Such sounds as I refer to were the peculiar, melancholy—yet, it seemed to me, cheerful—plaint of sea-birds floating on the glassy waters or sailing in the sky; also the subdued twittering of little birds among the bushes, the faint ripples on the beach, and the solemn boom of the surf upon the distant coral reef. We felt very glad in our hearts ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... great amount of attention to one of his younger wives—a circumstance which naturally gives great offence to one of the older women. This wife, when she has an opportunity and is alone with her husband, commences to sing or chant a plaint—a little thing ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... sound the plaint of woe! Beautiful youth! Outstretched and pale he lies, Untimely cropped in early bloom; The heavy night of death has sealed his eyes;— In this glad hour of nuptial joy, Snatched by relentless doom, He sleeps—while echoing to the sky, Of sorrow ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... for ever live, But told, expires; pray then, reveale (To show our wound is half to heale), What mortall nymph or deity Bewail you thus? Who ere you be, The shepheard sigh't, my woes I crave Smotherd in me, me in my grave; Yet be in show or truth a saint, Or fiend, breath anthemes, heare my plaint, For her and thy breath's symphony, Which now makes full the harmony Above, and to whose voice the spheres Listen, and call her musick theirs; This was I blest on earth with, so As Druids amorous did grow, Jealous of both: for as one day This star, as yet but set in clay, ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... arms of a semaphore signalling national events. She sprang before Aminta to stop her retreat, and stamped and gibbed, for sign that she would not be driven. She fell away to Mr. Morsfield, for simple hearing of her plaint. He appeared emphatic. There was a passage between ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... was one in speech so like a ghost selected his companion? And that verse, of all to him most afflicting, and which in hours of despair he had repeated until his very spirit had become colored with its reproachful plaint—who put it ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... attendant's arms, clasp it frantically to her breast, and then go parading up and down the room weeping over the wondering little face, speedily bringing on a wailing accompaniment to her own mournful plaint. It was more than Miss ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... darkened sails. She ran easily before a fair monsoon, with her decks cleared for the night; and, moving along with her, was heard the sustained and monotonous swishing of the waves, mingled with the low whispers of men mustered aft for the setting of watches; the short plaint of some block aloft; or, now and then, a loud ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... fail. At threshing time the crew looked forward to working for Ben, the farmer, and dreaded the meals prepared by Bella, his wife. She was notoriously the worst cook and housekeeper in the county. And all through the years, in trouble and in happiness, her plaint was the same—"If I'd thought I was going to stick down on a farm all my life, slavin' for a pack of menfolks day and night, I'd rather have died. Might as well be dead ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... great had not distance lent enchantment to sound as well as view. To Leo there seemed even a sort of restfulness in the voices of the innumerable wild-fowl. They were so far off, most of them, that the sounds fell on his ear like a gentle plaint, and even the thunderous plash of the great Greenland whale was reduced by distance to a ripple like that which fell on the shore ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... was reminded, in spite of herself, of Mrs. Brooke's plaint: "Don't be too indifferent, Cora." She did not want to recall it exactly, because she thought the Brookes agreeable and would have preferred to think them disinterested. But, after all, she reflected, how natural that a girl who ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... counsel," said Tressilian. "I cannot brook to plead my noble patron's cause the unhappy Amy's cause—before any one save my lawful Sovereign. Leicester, thou wilt say, is noble. Be it so; he is but a subject like ourselves, and I will not carry my plaint to him, if I can do better. Still, I will think on what thou hast said; but I must have your assistance to persuade the good Sir Hugh to make me his commissioner and fiduciary in this matter, for it is in his name I must speak, and ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... awake! what skills your sleep to me— Me, among all the dead by you dishonoured— Me from whom never, in the world of death, Dieth this curse, 'Tis she who smote and slew, And shamed and scorned I roam? Awake, and hear My plaint of dead men's hate intolerable. Me, sternly slain by them that should have loved, Me doth no god arouse him to avenge, Hewn down in blood by matricidal hands. Mark ye these wounds from which the heart's blood ran, And by whose hand, bethink ye! for the sense When shut in sleep hath then the spirit-sight, ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... that maiden's breast Sorrow and loneliness sank darkly down, Though the blanch'd lips breathed out no boisterous plaint ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... cowering upon the steps of the sanctuary, was murmuring a monotonous prayer, like the plaint of a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the influence of Gilchrist's early training in hymns is patent. In only a few instances do they follow the latter-day methods of Schumann and Franz. "A Song of Doubt and a Song of Faith" is possibly his best vocal solo. It begins with a plaint, that is full of cynic despair; thence it breaks suddenly into a cheerful andante. "The Two Villages" is a strong piece of work on the conventional lines of what might be called the Sunday ballad. "A Dirge for Summer" has ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... except the monotonous plaint of the screw, no sound was to be heard. A footstep came from the cabin, where Dave was at work, or appeared to be, for he had been stationed there for his part of the programme which was presently ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... commencing at Temple Bar, and ending at Tothill.[142] But it is likely that the Inn at Holborn Bars was still occupied by attorneys who practised for their patrons of the Staple, and that the Merchants for Wools still had their meetings there. In 1401 Hamond Elyot sued a plaint of debt against Martyn Dyne, of Haydon, Norfolk, for the sum of L26 2s. 3d., in the Court of Staple at Westminster;[143] and one hundred years later, John Dyne, his descendant, also of Haydon, Norfolk, was a member of Staple Inn. In his will, proved 1505, he gives the names of the company of the ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... to understand. We stopped, motionless and in suspense, like the shepherds who first heard that song, until the trembling ceased, and it was ended. Then we took up again our holy journey, looking at the shades that were lying on the ground, returned already to their wonted plaint. No ignorance ever with so sharp attack made me desirous of knowing—if my memory err not in this—as it seemed to me I then experienced in thought. Nor, for our haste, did I dare to ask, nor of myself could I see aught there. So I ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri

... a Methodist hymn in his musical throat, The Sun was emitting his ultimate note; His quivering larynx enwrinkled the sea Like an Ichthyosaurian blowing his tea; When sweetly and pensively rattled and rang This plaint which ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... and plaint charged that this letter written to the father of the plaintiff by Lady Wilde was a libel reflecting on the character and chastity of Miss Travers, and as Lady Wilde was a married woman, her husband Sir William Wilde was joined in the action as a ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... Earth, And on the holy Hearth, The Lars, and Lemures moan with midnight plaint, In Urns, and Altars round, A drear, and dying sound Affrights the Flamins at their service quaint; And the chill Marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar power forgoes his ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... followed me about. The cat had never been known to catch a bird, but she had a way of watching them that was very embarrassing to the bird. Whenever she appeared, the mother bluebird would set up that pitiful melodious plaint. One morning the cat was standing by me, when the bird came with her beak loaded with building material, and alighted above me to survey the place before going into the box. When she saw the cat she was greatly disturbed, and in her agitation ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... Pope St. Leo. First of his line to bear the name of Great, who twice saved his city, and once, by the express avowal of a successor, the Church herself, Leo carried his crown of thorns one-and-twenty years, and has left no plaint to posterity of the calamities witnessed by him in that long pontificate. Majorian was the fourth sovereign whom in six years and a half he had seen to perish by violence. A man with so keen an intellectual ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... awoke next morning raindrops were beating a reiterative plaint against the window, and the sound seemed very beautiful. She liked lying in bed, staring out at the upper reaches of sombre sky. She liked it to be rainy when she woke up—there was something about ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... she gave her sorrows vent, A thousand tears she pour'd; Her mournful voice, her moving plaint, ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams

... riotously with the throng, to put those pale lost lilies out of mind." Always verging on a poetic feeling not just like ourselves in these days, and yet Dowson was a poet. He caressed words until they sang for him the one plaint that he asked of them. That he was obsessed of the beauties and the intimations of Versailles, is seen in everything he did, or at least he imbibed this from Verlaine. He was himself a pale wanderer down soft green ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... though his plaint Brings tears of wistfulness; Still must he grieve and mourn, forlorn and faint, None may his ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... listening now to such a song; a mysterious music unknown to all other ears, as the solitary plaint of some mateless bird dying alone ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... felicitous manner. There are sighs and plaints, all haunting in their extreme expressiveness, a great variety beneath an appearance of monotony, and from time to time two wailing notes. These notes are always the same, as the chorus gives them as a plaint, and they are both affecting and artistic. At the end comes a dim ray of light and hope. This is the only one in the work save the Amen at the end, for Faith and Hope should not be looked for here. The supplications sound like prayers which do not expect to be answered. No one would dare ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... of his bill. Such people have an exaggerated idea of the value of their services. It is difficult to get them to name a price at the beginning; and in the rare cases where a set sum is agreed upon, the final reckoning will invariably include certain extras or a plaint that "the job was different than you claimed and I don't do heavy work like that for nobody without I get extra pay and I was just working to accommodate—" and so forth. Usually you end by paying him and charging ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... your wail, lugubrious saint! You fret high Heaven with your plaint. Is this the "Christian's joy" you paint? Is this the Christian's boasted bliss? Avails your faith no ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... of the herd will still echo in thee. And when thou sayest, "I have no longer a conscience in common with you," then will it be a plaint and a pain. ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... of the group, all eyes turning ever and anon, upon her in tenderest solicitude, every ear attentive to her slightest plaint, every hand ready to minister to ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... "I will forget," but perhaps the hardest task given us is to lock up a natural yearning of the heart, and turn a deaf ear to its plaint, for captive and jailer must inhabit the same small cell. Sylvia was proud, with that pride which is both sensitive and courageous, which can not only suffer but wring strength from suffering. While she struggled with a grief and shame that ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... on poor Dunmore, as she knew him best. To transcribe her words would be impossible, for she put in a native sentence whenever she found herself at a loss for an English one, but the burden of her plaint was this:— ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... once both meek and full of logic? or the sickness of that "masculine breast with feeble arms;" "of that philosopher who only wanted strength to become a saint;" "of that bird without wings," said a woman of genius, "that exhales its calm melancholy plaint on the shores whence vessels depart, and where only shivered remnants return;" the melancholy of an Obermann, whose goodness and almost ascetic virtues are palsied for want of equilibrium, and whose discouragement and ennui were only calculated to exercise a baneful influence over ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... Matron's cries were loudly heard around, And feeling bosoms shuddered at the sound; Though, we, on these occasions, truly know, The plaint is always greater than the woe. Some ostentation ever is with grief Those who weep most ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... Doris Fletcher did understand. She saw Joan, not as she was, a tall young creature radiantly facing life, but as a tired little child in this very room stepping' defeated from the fountain, because she could not make her desires come true! She was listening to the old plaint: "I have used the old ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... had, indeed, loved her to the last, for his was an affectionate spirit, but she had become increasingly difficult: jealous of her step-daughter June, jealous even of her own little daughter Holly, and making ceaseless plaint that he could not love her, ill as she was, and 'useless to everyone, and better dead.' He had mourned her sincerely, but his face had looked younger since she died. If she could only have believed that she made him happy, how much happier ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... of modern inscriptions we have the following: "Bethlehem, Calvary, Bethany." "We welcome the infant to the Font. We invite the {21} youth to Confirmation. We invoke the faithful to the Holy Communion." "Joyful our peal for the bridal; mournful our plaint for the dead." ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester

... after this, that a man was slain in Abou Sabir's village; wherefore the Sultan caused plunder the village, and they plundered the headman's goods with the rest So his wife said to him, 'All the Sultan's officers know thee; so do thou prefer thy plaint to the king, that he may cause thy beasts to be restored to thee.' But he said to her, 'O woman, said I not to thee that he who doth evil shall suffer it? Indeed, the king hath done evil, and he shall suffer [the consequences of] his ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... net of stars told thee that the angels were cutting their way down through the darkness, and into the spheres of men, and that all heaven was in a tumult of expectation, whilst in yonder city men slept, as they always sleep unconscious when God is near. And then, when the feeble plaint broke from Mary's lips, I cannot go further, and the gentle beast turned aside into the rocks and whins, and called to his companions of the stable, and the meek-eyed ox looked calmly at the intruders, and there—there—dear God! to think of it all—In mundo erat, et mundus ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... who happened to bear his sad plaint Addressed in the following manner the saint: "The nation will keep thee to support splendour's throne, And interest will pay thee, because thou'rt ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various



Words linked to "Plaint" :   United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Great Britain, complaint, United Kingdom, allegation, U.K., wail, Britain, UK, lamentation



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