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Wailing   /wˈeɪlɪŋ/   Listen
Wailing

adjective
1.
Vocally expressing grief or sorrow or resembling such expression.  Synonyms: lamenting, wailful.  "Wailing mourners" , "The wailing wind" , "Wailful bagpipes" , "Tangle her desires with wailful sonnets"



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"Wailing" Quotes from Famous Books



... Scipio," "Here, on earth, is the cavern of Dis, the infernal region. The river of oblivion is the wandering of the mind forgetting the majesty of its former life and thinking a residence in the body the only life. Phlegethon is the fires of wrath and desire. Acheron is retributive sadness. Cocytus is wailing tears. Styx is the whirlpool of hatreds. The vulture eternally tearing the liver is the torment ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below; The winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, And nought is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katy-did; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and wo, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... much in the dark as we, and I could hear them pass on, and I knew that we must have been going in the right direction for the junk. Then I had clear proof, for all at once there was a low, wailing, querulous cry, which sent a chill through me, it sounded so wild ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... next day began to dawn, Lemminkainen went to the beach, that was hidden behind a projecting point, where his vessels lay. He found them still there, but as he approached he heard the rigging wailing in the wind, and saying: 'Must we lie here for ever and rot, since Ahti has sworn not to go to war ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind

... she was the last to be deaf and blind to the things of the spirit. But the things of the spirit she demanded should be likewise strong. No halting, no stuttered utterance, tremulous waiting, minor wailing! The mind and the soul must be as quick and definite and certain as the body. Nor was the spirit made alone for immortal dreaming. Like the flesh, it must strive and toil. It must be workaday as well as idle day. She could understand a weakling singing sweetly and even greatly, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... of the fall of their giant chief Rezu whom they believed to be invulnerable, his followers, who were watching the fray, set up a great wailing, a most mournful and uncanny noise to hear. Then, as I think did the hosts of the Philistines when David brought down Goliath by his admirable shot with a stone, they set out for their homes wherever these may have been, at an ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... minister, who was present at the interview in her room at the cloister of St. Germain, and who has left us a vivid description of the scene. Gabrielle burst into passionate reproaches and employed in turn all the arts of feminine guile. Her eyes streaming with tears, sobbing and wailing, she seized her royal lover's hand and smothered it with kisses; she called for a poignard that by plunging it into her heart he might behold his image graven there; she appealed to his love for their children and flung herself hysterically on the bed, protesting ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... wedding-gown, so crisp and fine and fair; I never decked with bridal flowers my pretty yellow hair, No bridegroom came to claim me when the autumn leaves were sear, For there was bitter wailing on the rugged coast that year; And vain was further vigil from its rocks and beaches brown For never did the fishing-fleet sail ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... incalculable distance, wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking; and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl, adorned with a garland of white roses about ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... with pitiable wailing, deplored with their customary weepings the hope of their nation thus cut off in the early bloom of youth; as the worshippers of Venus are often seen to do in the solemn festival of Adonis, which the mystical doctrines of religion show to be some sort of image of the ripened fruits ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... Almost immediately the wailing of emergency sirens could be heard spreading the alarm over the city. At the spaceport, where the citizens were waiting to be taken off the satellite, small groups began to charge toward the loading ships in a frenzy of fear. Since Titan ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman

... ridicule, made him an object of dread even to the leaders of armies and the rulers of nations. In truth, of all the intellectual weapons which have ever been wielded by man, the most terrible was the mockery of Voltaire. Bigots and tyrants, who had never been moved by the wailing and cursing of millions, turned pale at his name. Principles unassailable by reason, principles which had withstood the fiercest attacks of power, the most valuable truths, the most generous sentiments, the noblest ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... anxious to know whether her brother could "lend" her a small sum of twenty pounds. It came out in conversation that the small sum was needed to satisfy some imperious demand made upon Mr. Carroll by a tailor. "He must have clothes, you know," said the poor woman, wailing. "He doesn't have many, but he must have some." There had been other appeals on the same subject made not very long since, and, to tell the truth, Mr. Grey did require to have the subject argued, in fear ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... West. Now and then the dry, shrill laughter of a woman sounded, without lightness, without mirth, as if it came from the lips of one who long, long ago, in the fever of pain and despair, had wept her heart empty of its tears. Now and again, also, a wailing cornet lifted its lone voice, dying away dimly like ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... four closed doors and it was from beyond these that there came to him the wailing of children. A fifth door was open and through it he saw a cradle gently rocking. Here at last was visible life, or motion at least, and he knocked loudly. Very gradually the cradle ceased its movement. Then it stopped, and a woman came out into the larger room. In a ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood

... with its most leonine aspect, howling and blustering; north-east winds shrieking along the gorges and wailing from height to height. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... have meant much to a girl in those dim days: to Rebecca pondering who knows what temptation at the well; to Ruth tempted who knows how in the corn and thinking of Boaz and the barn; to Judith plotting in the camp; to Jephtha's daughter out on the wailing mountains. ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... keep her charges amused and there were days when she longed to fly home and rest her tired head on the cool pillow on her own little bed. She had never been forced to do anything steadily for long after she tired of it, and to be obliged to smile and play with a wailing, discontented baby on a hot, muggy afternoon did seem more than she could stand. But she had plenty of perseverance, had Rosemary, and when she once made up her mind to do a thing she stuck it out. Sarah and Shirley had ceased to worry ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence

... heard it—that voice that seemed to mingle with the wailing tones of the deep! The little swinging lantern beneath the bowsprit played on his bearded face as he bent farther forward, and, with growing wonder not unmixed with fear, now made out something dark clinging to one of the steel lines that ran from the projecting timber to the ship. ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... A coyote wailing in the yellow dawn, A mountain land that stretches on and on, And ceases not till in the skies Vast peaks of rosy snow arise, Like ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... by no means on my account. For Miss Irma was all taken up with grandmother and little Louis with Crazy. Nobody minded me, and Miss Irma did not so much as reach me a finger, though at the last she just nodded, and Sir Louis had to be removed wailing, because he wished to keep his arms tight about the shaggy neck of Master Crazy, that singularly indifferent sheep-dog, but excellent ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... every guest Who held the Sea-God's solemn feast— As in a single heart prevailing, Throughout all Hellas went the wailing. Wild to the Council Hall they ran— In thunder rush'd the threat'ning Flood— "Revenge shall right the murder'd man, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... something about it in Mr. Haweis's book long ago. Too tired to follow the orchestra with much understanding, she crouched down in her seat and closed her eyes. The cold, stately measures of the Walhalla music rang out, far away; the rainbow bridge throbbed out into the air, under it the wailing of the Rhine daughters and the singing of the Rhine. But Thea was sunk in twilight; it was all going on in another world. So it happened that with a dull, almost listless ear she heard for the first time that troubled music, ever-darkening, ever-brightening, which ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... to cheer the timid, and a hand to help the weak, There was firmness in his accents, there was hope upon his cheek. A hundred men are safe on shore, but one is left behind; There's a shriek is mingling wildly with the wailing of the wind. The rope has snapped! Almighty God! the noble and the brave Is left alone to perish at ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... passed. We rested well in large hard beds with dry rough sheets. But there was a fretful wind abroad, which went wailing round the convent walls and rattling the doors in its deserted corridors. One of our party had been placed by himself at the end of a long suite of apartments, with balconies commanding the wide sweep of hills that Monte Amiata ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... been in the Virgin Islands, too, and had been involved in the adventure of The Wailing Octopus. "You found out that the octopus didn't wail," he reminded them, "but for a while it looked as though you'd found a new species. Maybe this is the same thing. ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin

... the South Fork basin gave way mountains of water twenty feet high came rushing down the Conemaugh River, carrying before them death and destruction. I shall never forget the harrowing scene. Just think of it! thousands of people, men, women and children, struggling and weeping and wailing as they were being carried suddenly away in the raging current. Houses were picked up as if they were but a feather, and their inmates were all carried away with them, while cries of 'God help me!' 'Save me!' 'I am drowning!' ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... hearing from your worthy nephew a fresh instance of the villany of Mr Square the atheist's young pupil. I shall not wonder at any murders he may commit; and I heartily pray that your own blood may not seal up his final commitment to the place of wailing and gnashing of teeth. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... the sea-birds from their nests; They dart and wheel with deafening screams; Now dark—and now their wings and breasts Flash back amid disastrous gleams. O, sin! what hast thou done on this fair earth? The world, O man! is wailing ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... to be heard in the little farmhouse kitchen but the sobbing and wailing of the women. Philip stood by silent, thinking, as well as he could, for his keen sympathy with their grief, what had best be done next. Kester, after some growls at Sylvia for having held back the uplifted arm which he ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... days, when "miseries were coming upon them," the prospect of which might well drench them in tears and fill them with terror. If these admonition and warnings were heeded there, would not "the South" break forth into "weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth?" What else are its rich men about, but withholding by a system of fraud, his wages from the laborer, who is wearing himself out under the impulse of fear, in cultivating their fields and producing their luxuries? Encouragement and support do they derive ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... it gives way, he falls upon the sharp rocks below. Behold the great Pontiac, whose grave I saw near St. Louis; he was murdered while an exile from his country! Think of the brave Black Hawk! Methinks his spirit is still wailing through Wisconsin and Illinois for his lost people! I do not say you have no cause to complain, but to resist ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... Arsinoe and Doris who have hitherto been employed in singing the hymns of lamentation, as Isis and Nephthys, by the bier of the deceased god on the occasion of the festivals of the dead, and in pouring out the libations with wailing and outcries when the bodies were brought into the temple to be blessed. These maidens, Asclepiodorus says, are now too old and ugly for these duties, but the temple is bound to maintain them all their ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... rebuses and universal solver of missing words—looked over the unfathomable desert and these few pages, with the worried, hopeless expression of one who is obliged at last to give it up. And then the wailing voice of a woman, toiling up the steep steps of the pyramid, was heard above the creaking of the Ibis: "'Arry Axes! Where are ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... her pathway, began to roar at her. "I ain' ga no money!" he shouted, in a dismal voice. He lurched on up the street, wailing to himself: "I ain' ga no money. Ba' luck. ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane

... been standing there just so, not for minutes, but for hours and days; yes, standing there all the length of those ten long years, erect on a seaward dune, unmoved by the wild, moving elements, broken water, wailing wind, needle-blown sand—as if her spirit had flown on other business, leaving the quiet clay to wait and watch there till the tides of fate, turning in their appointed progress, should bring back the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... shore, where are many tall poplar trees and willows. Beach there thy ship on the shore of ocean, and go thyself to the dwelling of Hades.[Footnote: Ha'-des] There is a certain rock, and near to it meet two streams, the river of fire, and the river of wailing. Dig there a trench; it shall be a cubit [Footnote: cubit, a foot and a half] long and a, cubit broad; pour out therein a drink-offering to the dead; and sprinkle white barley thereon. And as thou doest these things, entreat the dead, and promise that when thou shalt come ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church

... Power Officer[2] greeted the newcomer in the wailing, hissing language of the Vorkuls. He tossed the scroll into the air, where it instantly rolled into a tight cylinder and shot into an opening in the wall of the room. "Glad to see you. Books and shows are all right on practice cruises, but I can't seem to work up much ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... kill him—thank God!" muttered Van der Kemp as he left the market-place, where the relatives of those who had been murdered were wailing ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... the war whoop the seemingly peaceful Indians were turned suddenly into raging demons who, with tomahawk and torch in hand, sowed destruction and death around. So the land was filled with blood and wailing, pleasant homesteads were laid in ruins, and only heaps of smouldering ashes marked where they ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... said, "O my "O my lord, I crave thy lord, I crave thy company." company." But he answered, But he said, "This may in no "This may nowise be." way be." Then I began Whereupon I fell a-weeping weeping and wailing at and lamenting, and the loss of his company he said: "Peace: weeping when he said, "Spare thy will avail thee nothing," tears, which will avail thee And he recited the naught!" and he ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... sobbing air Came the same words from warring lips: "God save my country!" and the prayer Still wailing from the drifting ships, Returned ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... night in the village, and there was wailing in Timbo when the Fullah returned with the tragic story. In fact, such was the distracted excitement both on the sea-shore and in the settlement, that none of my companions had eyes to observe an episode of the drama ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... trees of the forest. But she began to stifle as passion drew nigh with the clove-like breath of the carnations, which burst upon her in brazen notes that seemed to drown all others. She thought that death was nigh when the poppies and the marigolds broke into a wailing strain, which recalled the torment of desire. But suddenly all grew quieter; she felt that she could breathe more freely; she glided into greater serenity, lulled by a descending scale that came from the throats of the stocks, and died away amidst ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... church up to this moment; but at this audacious move, a solitary wailing cry of mingled astonishment and despair went up behind us; but before any of us could turn, and while my own heart stood still, for I thought I recognized this veiled figure, the woman at the altar raised her hand ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... out-buildings, and a pool of water beneath a group of elms. It was vacant in the sunlight, and the water vividly green with a scum of weed. And about half a mile beyond stood a cluster of cottages and an old towered church. He gazed idly down, listening vaguely to the wailing of a curlew flitting anxiously to and fro above the broken solitude of its green hill. And it seemed as if a thin and dark cloud began to be quietly withdrawn from over his eyes. Hill and wailing cry and barn and water faded out. And he was staring as if in an endless stillness ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... introductory. The principal procession took place on the following day (or days), when Osiris went forth to his death at Nedit. The actual death scene certainly took place in secret. But when the dead body was found, the multitude joined in the wailing and the lamentations. The god Thoth went forth in a boat and brought back the body of Osiris. The body was prepared for burial and taken in funeral procession to the grave at Peker. Osiris was avenged on his enemies in a great battle on the ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner

... Blois was in great turmoil—the cattle lowing in the streets, the churches full to the doors of men-at-arms, waiting their turn to be shrived, for the Maid had ordained that all who followed her must go clean of sin. And there was great wailing of light o' loves, and leaguer lasses that had followed the army, as is custom, for this custom the Maid did away, and drove these women forth, and whither they wandered I know not. Moreover, she made proclamation ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... studying his life away, longing for books and a teacher. The man has a library full, and might keep the poor boy from despair by a little help and a friendly word. He mourns for his own lost baby: I advise him to adopt the orphan whom nobody will own, and who lies wailing all day untended on the poor-house floor. Yes: if he wants to forget sorrow and find peace, let him fill his empty heart and home with such as these, and life won't seem ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... hopeless, ye unpitying dames! I see, half seeing. Tell me, ye who scanned The stars, Earth's elders, still must noblest aims Be traced upon oblivious ocean-sands? Must Hesper join the wailing ghosts of names?" ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... away! come away! there's a frost along the marshes, And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water; There's a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us. There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of autumn Put off the summer's languor with a touch that made us glad For ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... of Hector being dishonoured in the dust. His mother tore her hair, and flung her veil from her with a loud cry as she looked upon her son. His father made piteous moan, and throughout the city the people fell to weeping and wailing. It was as though the whole of frowning Ilius was being smirched with fire. Hardly could the people hold Priam back in his hot haste to rush without the gates of the city. He grovelled in the mire and besought them, calling ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... Rick. I want to see that film the minute you know whether your camera worked well enough for evidence. Now, m'lads, I've got to get to work. Instead of barging into Creek House with sirens wailing, I just think I'll put a pair of my boys in civilian clothes on the job, one on the water front and the other at the bridge. I have a pair of squad cars without insignia or state license plates that will be useful, and both of ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine

... failed to bring in. It was as though the old-fashioned, unweighted window-sash, having been slightly lifted, had slipped from the fingers and fallen shut. I hearkened, and the next instant there came softly searching through doors, through walls, through my own flesh and blood, a long half-wailing sigh. Fontenette tightened on my hand, then dropped it, and opening his eyes sharply, asked, ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable

... lingered at Monte Rosa, and it was well for the inhabitants he did, for an event occurred which plunged that happy valley from joy and gaiety into wailing and affliction, and even for a brief interval infected the inhabitants of Oakwood with its gloom. Death came, and tore away as his victim the widow's son, the orphan's brother. The title of Delmont became extinct, for the last scion of that ancient race had gone ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... There came a great wailing, driving gust of storm at that moment, as if it wanted to sweep them off their feet, but it was a welcome blast, for it was the occasion of a strong arm being flung round Phoebe, to restrain that fluttering cloak. 'Storms ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... That she was conscious of the presence of many strangers is certain, and when the men from the Kasbah brought the roll of white linen down the stairway, with the two black women clinging to it, kissing its fringe and wailing over it, she broke away from Israel and rushed in among them with a startled cry, and her little white arms upraised. But whatever her impulse, there was no need to check her. The moment she had touched her mother she crept back in dread to her ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... hours went by and she found no other game, she grew so blue and discouraged that she really couldn't contain herself any longer. Perhaps it did her good to have a cry. For two hours the land-looker lay in his bunk and listened to a wailing that made his heart fairly sink within him. Now it was a piercing scream, now it was a sob, and now it died away in a low moan, only to rise again, wilder and more agonized than ever. He knew without a doubt that ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert

... gray hair and haggard visage, sat at the foot of the bed, wailing piteously; and Joe and half a dozen aged saints stood around, singing a hymn, doleful enough to have made even ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Drum-major, In the country's earlier struggle; Was our one surviving scion, Of the famous Revolution. When their knell of death was sounded, When they one by one went from us, They were buried with the honors Of the military calling; They were followed to their resting By the requiem fife of wailing, By the muffled drum of sorrow, By the solemn tramp of mourners, By the fun'ral march of soldiers. We are rearing brilliant guide-posts, To the brave men of this era; We are pointing to their actions, With indelible mementos. Thus may generations rescue Sleeping ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... meal without ever flying more than ten yards from his bough. Still, one rejoices in the energy of the swift. One wishes the greenfinch had a little of it. The yellow splashes on his wings are undoubtedly delightful, but why will he perch so long in the acacia wailing like a sick cricket? And why did Wordsworth write a poem in praise of him? Probably he mistook some other bird for him. Poets are like that. Or perhaps he liked a noise like the voice of a sick cricket. One can never tell with Wordsworth. He had ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... by one slowly, Ah, how sad and slow! Wailing and praying The spirits rise and go: Clear stainless spirits, White,—as white as snow; Pale ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... the entire party of the Sioux was in confusion. We saw them running about, mounting, heard them shouting and wailing. ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... other's spirits. So they wandered on, until the ponies, as if they felt that their little riders had lost resolution, came to a dead stop. A keen breeze came out of the west, chilling the two children to the bone; and Stonecrop turning his head to the wind broke out into a long wailing whinny, which brought home to the children such a sense of their loneliness and desolation that Elsie looked blankly at Dick and Dick as blankly at Elsie, and neither found ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... the distance of about half a mile there fell on my ears the most hideous wailing. It was like the cats on a frosty night; it was like the clanging of pots in a tinker's cart; and it would rise now and then to a shriek of rhapsody such as I have heard at field-preachings. Clearly the sound was human, though from what ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... hunger and pestilence, the city stood over against us, above the naked plain, all her outer gardens stripped away, bare light striking the red Alhambra and the Citadel. When the wind swept over her and on to Santa Fe it seemed to bring a sound of wailing and the faint and terrible odor ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... to Coney Island, and got drunk, and we either had to cut out that performance, or give back the money, and the manager was wailing about it, 'cause nothing makes a circus man wail like giving back good money. Then pa said he would save the day by taking charge of the animal act. He said he had watched it every day, and knew how to do it, and he could dress up in the clothes of the regular trainer, and the animals wouldn't ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... did Azalia listen to the storm. When the great drops rattled upon the roof and dashed against the windows, she thought of Paul and his comrades as rushing into battle amid volleys of musketry; the mournful sighing of the wind was like the wailing of the wounded. She thought of him as marching wearily and alone through the dismal forest to perform deeds of daring; she thought of him as keeping watch through the stormy nights, cold, wet, hungry, and weary; ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin

... vices, crimes, Furies that curse the earth, and make the blows, The heaviest blows, of Nature's innocent hand Seem sport: which are indeed but as the care Of a wise parent, who solicits good To all her house, though haply at the price Of tears and froward wailing and reproach From some unthinking child, whom not the less Its mother destines to ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... far spent before I got back, my horse having gone lame. There seemed unusual disturbance in the town; I distinguished a distant hum of many voices, and all at once a shrill cry that made me shudder, followed by the passionate wailing of children, and the incessant barking of dogs. I took the back way to our house, where lay our stable, and entering the little yard, saw to my dismay six or eight cavalry horses standing in it. I sprang from my cart and hurried into the house, on the threshold of which my ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning

... low words with her eyes on the distant mountains. Overhead the aspens stirred beneath a passing breeze, and a few withered leaves drifted slowly down. Aunt Lydia wept softly, and the servants broke into a subdued wailing, but Mrs. Ambler's gentle voice ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... column; then all the men whom Sulla had commanded in his wars, and who had vied with each other in hastening there, carrying gilded standards and silver-plated shields. There was also a countless host of flute-players, making now most tender, now most wailing music. A cry of benediction, raised by the senators, was taken up by the knights and the soldiers, and re-echoed by the people, for some mourned his loss in reality, and others feared the soldiers and dreaded him in death as much as in life, the present scene recalling dreadful memories. ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... been class orator and a debater of power. Now he stood on a block of wood, and gazed upon a hundred bearded faces, on which the flickering firelight played eerily. In the hush he could hear the big winds wailing through ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... longer." Leaving this, we entered another cabin in which we found seven or eight attenuated young creatures, with a mother who had pawned her cloak and could not venture out to beg for bread because she was not fit to be seen in the streets. Hearing the voice of wailing from a cluster of huts further up the hill, we proceeded to them, and entered one, and found several persons weeping over the dead body of a woman lying by the wall near the door. Stretched upon the ground here and there lay several sick persons, and the ...
— A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen, and its Neighbourhood • Elihu Burritt

... Bailey's voice in the hall, lifted up in loud wailing and weeping. We all rushed out, thinking the sweet little fellow had fallen down stairs. But he was safe, though the great tears were running down his cheeks; and he sobbed out, 'Mamma! mamma! Edith won't come to see Aunt Fanny!' ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... For, when Fanny died in her German home, Felix, amidst a happy company in England, suddenly aware of some terrible calamity, from the disturbance of equilibrium and dread sinking of his soul, rushed to the piano, and poured out his anguish in an improvisation of wailing and mysterious strains, which held the assembly spell-bound and in tears. In a few days a letter reached him, announcing that his sister had died at that very hour. On receiving the tidings, he uttered a shriek, and the shock was so great as to burst a blood-vessel in his brain. Life had no charm ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... that?" she asked with a start, for a wild shrill cry rang suddenly out of the stillness, and the hillside returned the sound in a doleful wailing ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... months; and in that truest of fictions, 'The History of the Plague Year', Defoe shows death, with every accompaniment of pain and terror, stalking through the narrow streets of old London, and changing their busy hum into a silence broken only by the wailing of the mourners of fifty thousand dead; by the woful denunciations and mad prayers of fanatics; and by the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... season was past, yet crates and barrels of vegetables were being hauled to the water's edge for shipment. The negroes sang as they drove, but often punctuated the melody with strong language designed to encourage the mules. One wailing voice came to our ears with the set refrain, "O feed me, white folks! White folks, feed me!" The crates and barrels were loaded on lighters and floated out to little sailing boats that went tacking past our bows on ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... upon the spot where he fell. Then the Egyptian band played their quaint funeral march, and the native men and women, understanding that, and whom it was played for, raised their prolonged, shrill, wailing cry. Count Calderai, the Italian Military Attache, who stood near the Sirdar, was deeply affected, whilst Count von Tiedmann, the German Attache, who appeared in his magnificent white Cuirassier uniform on the occasion, was even more keenly impressed, a soldier's tears coursing down ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... kittens devotedly, was melted to the verge of tears by his wailing appeals in a minor key; so she cuddled him and fed him on Lady Babby's creamy, foamy milk. In the intervals of eating, however, he still wailed like a ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden

... a lord has two or three or four, the lords went through their towns and took, first all the orphans; next, of those who had two children they asked one, and of those who had three, two: and in this way the lord completed the number demanded by the tyrant, amidst great wailing and weeping in the town, for they seem, more than any other people, to love their children. 12. By such conduct from the year 1523 to 1533, they ruined all this kingdom. During six or seven years, five or six vessels carried on this traffic, ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... severity toward Gwendolen: but it had a more beneficial effect on her than any soothings. Nothing is feebler than the indolent rebellion of complaint; and to be roused into self-judgment is comparative activity. For the moment she felt like a shaken child—shaken out of its wailing into awe, and she ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... Geatmen got him then ready A pile on the earth strong for the burning, Behung with helmets, hero-knights' targets, And bright-shining burnies, as he begged they should have them; 5 Then wailing war-heroes their world-famous chieftain, Their liegelord beloved, ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin

... shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.' It says, 'in the end of this world' did you know this world would ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell

... up was like scourging a crowd of fagged-out children to school. All her limbs and sundry muscles whose existence she had never realized before were like separate children, each aching and wailing: "I can't! ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... the form of a cross, and flayed from the neck to his finger-ends; pierced also with darts and javelins, and bruised with clubs. The mourning was now dismal; every one wept for his friend, till the groves and valleys resounded with wailing. Charles solemnly vowed to pursue the Pagans till he found them; and, marching in pursuit with his whole army, the sun stood still for three days, till he overtook them on the banks of the Ebro, near Saragossa, feasting ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... beagles, guarring of puppies, snarling of messens, rantling of rats, guerieting of apes, snuttering of monkeys, pioling of pelicans, quacking of ducks, yelling of wolves, roaring of lions, neighing of horses, crying of elephants, hissing of serpents, and wailing of turtles, that he was much more troubled than if he had been in the middle of the crowd at the fair of Fontenay or Niort. Just so is it with those who are tormented with the grievous pangs of hunger. The stomach begins to gnaw, and bark, as it were, the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... his head again, with a bitter, wailing cry. "O, I'm afraid he is, and I shooted him! ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley

... in our desperation, with bluestone. But we were dealing with the virulent gonococcus, and we neither expected nor obtained much result from these measures. In a couple of hours more the eyes were beginning to exude pus, and the poor infant was wailing in ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... waving plume, of the wiry frizzes, of the sharp, frost-reddened face, of those watchful, unhappy eyes. He realized that if she should make a scene there, if he should hear again that laugh and those wailing sobs, he could not answer for what he might do. There even flashed across his mind a mental picture of the on-rush of the train, and of a man hurling himself before it, to get for once and all out of sight and sound of the unspeakable, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... good omens are quite as numerous as the evil. It promises a fortunate expedition, if, on the first day, they pass through a village where there is a fair. It is also deemed fortunate, if they hear wailing for the dead in any village but their own. To meet a woman with a pitcher full of water upon her head, bodes a prosperous journey and a safe return. The omen is still more favourable if she be in a state of pregnancy. It is said of the Thugs of the Jumaldehee and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... quarter to an eastern sky from which a sun that seldom sleeps bakes the grey stones, bares every detail of a crumbling ruin, and intensifies the wistful odor of decay. This, the remnant of Solomon's glory, is the Wailing Wall of the Jews. Clad in sackcloth and covered with ashes, patriarchal figures sway to and fro, press their lips to the hot granite, beat now their chests and now the wall, and today, as every day for eighteen hundreds of years, wail in the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... in the cradle, took off his coat, grasped a spade in his shaking hand, and hobbled across the patch of open ground to a spot as far distant as possible both from the cottage and from the borders of the wood; the maddened wind was wailing itself away in the distance, and happily for a few minutes there was a lull in the air. He could hear the baby crying, left alone in the cottage. He never looked off from his work, but went on digging a ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall

... of the earth," that have "waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies," "shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, and saying, Alas, alas that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls! For in one hour so great riches ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... not at all whether any train were caught or missed, filled only with a kind of frenzy to keep moving somehow further into Ireland. In the cab he gave utterance to ridiculous pleasantries. He seized the child from Marion, and held him, wailing piteously, half out of the window, that his eyes might rest on the great gilt characters which adorn the offices of the Gaelic League. It was with rapture that he read Irish names, written and ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... quadrangular shape, depending, as will hereafter be explained, on the firm closing of the eyelids, and consequent drawing up of the upper lip. How far this square shape of the mouth modifies the wailing or crying sound, I am not prepared to say; but we know from the researches of Helmholtz and others that the form of the cavity of the mouth and lips determines the nature and pitch of the vowel sounds ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... did not know where to find percussion caps for their guns. When the Doctor had procured these, two or three shots sent the assailants to the right about, with one of their number killed or wounded, for bloodstains were on their track, and they were heard next morning wailing in the woods. But the little caravan had suffered heavy loss. Gilbert was killed; Roper and Calvert were severely injured and disfigured by spear-wounds and blows from the waddies. It was a melancholy and untoward event, but time could ill be spared to mourn. The dead man was buried, a large ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... coming when I will help to drive you out of Belgium, even as you now drive me. Brave soldiers are you, to make war on women and children. Guh! I would kill you where you stand—if I dared." With venomous hate she spat upon the floor, then seized her wailing children, shook them and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne

... woman, and threw up an infant, which Little caught and handed to Grace. She held it, wailing to her breast. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... God's name cast through your merciful eyes one pitiful look upon a sick, forsaken, and most miserable wretch; bestow one little penny out of thy riches upon one smitten of God and ready to perish!' —and mind you, keep you ON wailing, and abate not till we bilk him of his penny, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... night it was the same. Morning found him a happy, bright child, full of engaging ways and innocent sayings, and quite satisfied with 'Cousin Honor,' but bed-time always brought back the same wailing. Nurse, a tidy, brisk personage, with a sensible, deferential tone to her superiors, and a caressing one to the children, tried in vain assurances of papa's soon coming back; nay, it might be feared that she held out that going to sleep would bring the morrow when ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... eddy in the gentle wind. Once the bark of a wolf sounded so sharp and clear that the youth started and looked to one side, expecting to see the animal steal forward from the gloom, but a moment's reflection told him the brute was a mile or more distant. Then, some time later, a mournful, wailing cry rose and fell from some remote point. He suspected that that, too, came from the throat of a wolf, ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... The wailing in the cabin became louder and turned to insistent animal howls. Instead of a babe the imprisoned creature was evidently a dog. I wondered that the potter did not let him out to warm his ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... the city, and raised torches as a signal to those at Tenedos, who returned, and Troy was soon captured and given over to fire and the sword. Then followed the rejoicings of the victors, and the weeping and wailing of the Trojan women about to be carried away captive into distant lands, according to the usages ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... four pieces placed behind flowers and shrubbery was playing. Here was no blare of trumpets or call of bugles. It was the music of the dance and the sentimental old songs of the South, nearly all of which had a sad and wailing note. Harry heard the four black men play the songs that he had heard Samuel Jarvis sing, deep in the Kentucky mountains, and his heart beat with an emotion that he could not understand. Was it a cry for peace? Did his soul tell him that an end should come to fighting? Then throbbed ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... with no blood on it!' she wailed. And so wailing she voiced the deep lament, old as the moan of forests and falling water, that goes up through the centuries to the aloof and silent sky, and ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... corridors, inexpansive, with Fort McHenry on his shoulders, and Baltimore in his breeches-pocket, and his courteous aid again pressed upon me his kind offices. About the doors of the hotel the news-boys cried the papers in plaintive, wailing tones, as different from the sharp accents of their Boston counterparts as a sigh from the southwest is from a northeastern breeze. To understand what they said was, of course, impossible to any but ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... to ever cling to me In closest love, look on me through his eyes And call me mother, bless me with his smile." Then low in tearful prayer her voice would sound Despairing, wailing, through the lonely room, The silent turret chamber steep and high, "Thou maiden mother, Mary, knows my heart, Thou who didst love and suffer, look on me, Oh, pity me, sweet ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley

... only so much is spent as is necessary. There is no squandering on trifles, and its wealth of strength is saved up with miserly strictness to meet the really big calamities. So any amount of weeping and wailing over the lesser griefs fails to evoke a charitable response. But when sorrow is deepest there is no stint of effort. Then the surface crust is pierced, and consolation wells up, and all the forces of patience and courage are banded together to do ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... him at the thought of heaping back those tons of earth and stone above her, crushing with a frightful weight of inert matter the bodily beauty that he adored. He felt as though her soul hovered about him, wailing to him not to be so cruel, tugging at his garments ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... cries were drowned by the louder voices of the elements. The wailing of the wind among the ancient ruins was much more full of sound than his cries; and, now and then, the full-mouthed thunder filled the air with such a volume of roaring, and awakened so many echoes among the ruins, that, had he possessed the voices of fifty men, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... tell the story. "I went to the river-side. There, until far into the night, I saw hundreds of drays carrying cotton out of the presses and yards to the wharves, where it was fired. The glare of those sinuous miles of flame set men and women weeping and wailing thirty miles away, on the farther shore of Lake Pontchartrain. But the next day was the day of terrors. During the night, fear, wrath, and sense of betrayal, had run through the people as the fire had run through the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... inner house is stirred with shrieks and misery and confusion, and the court echoes deep with women's wailing; the golden stars are smitten with the din. Affrighted mothers stray about the vast house, and cling fast to the doors and print them with kisses. With his father's might Pyrrhus presses on; nor guards nor barriers ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... clumpety-clump!" of a stamp-mill on a shoulder of a hill high above the camp, drowned the whir and chirp of night insects, and from the second story of a house they passed they heard the crude banging of a piano, and a woman's strident voice wailing, "She may have seen better da-a-ys," with a mighty effort ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... canoe, by leaping into the water and swimming ashore with the aid of a line. Ice four feet thick clung to the walls of the rampart shores, and this increased the danger of landing for a portage, the Indians whining out their complaints in exactly the tone of the wailing north wind that had cradled their lives—"Eduiy, eduiy!—It is hard, white man, it is hard!" And harder the way became. For nine nights fog lay so heavily on the river that not a star was seen. This was followed by driving rain and wind. Mackenzie ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... horrible feature. Children, especially, were offered to El ("god"; possibly also called Melek (Moloch), "the king," as among the Hebrews). To appease him at Tyre and Carthage, girls and boys, sometimes in large numbers, and of the highest families, were cast into the flames; while the wailing of their relatives, if it was not stifled by themselves at the supposed demand of piety, was drowned by the sound of musical instruments. As late as 310 B.C., when Agathocles was besieging Carthage, and had reduced the city to the direst straits, we are told that the people laid two hundred boys ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... the point of the last hill which lay between them and the wagons. They could hear the wailing of the children close at hand. He turned inquiringly. She handed ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... on every other when these people encounter us, being the objects of admiration and wonderment, on which their gaze is immovably riveted. Presently the whole congregation uplifted their voices in a hymn, the first high wailing notes of which—sung all in unison, in the midst of these unwonted surroundings—sent a thrill through all my nerves. When the chant ceased, cooper London began a prayer, and all the people knelt down in the sand, as I did also. Mr. —— alone remained standing in ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... really be, or how terrible. This was just such a terror as only hypochondriacs can provide for themselves. She told me long ago that a misfortune was often preceded by the dream frequently repeated which she gives to 'Jane Eyre,' of carrying a little wailing child, and being unable to still it. She described herself as having the most painful sense of pity for the little thing, lying inert, as sick children do, while she walked about in some gloomy place with it, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... still can see, those big Belgian hounds sniffing along the outskirts of the crowd and plainly advertising for an owner; I can see other hounds with their heads thrown back wailing at the door of their deserted and abandoned homes. And I can see the Dutch border where Holland opened out her arms, and the Dutch peasants gave us rye bread and sandwiches and good long drinks of ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... the 6th of May. They took the city by assault, and for nine months Clement, leaning from the battlements of Hadrian's Mausoleum, watched smoke ascend from desolated palaces and desecrated temples, heard the wailing of women and the groans of tortured men, mingling with the ribald jests of German drunkards and the curses of Castilian bandits. Roaming those galleries and gazing from those windows, he is said to have exclaimed in the words of Job: "Why died I not from the womb? why ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... wish that we could have time to quote them. But I can only refer to them. There is, for example, the legend of the invention of music, when the hero Wainamoinen (supposed to represent the Spirit of the Wind, and the sound of the name indicates the wailing of the wind) invents the first musical instrument. In no other literature is there anything quite like this except in the Greek story of Orpheus. Even as the trees bent down their heads to listen to the song of Orpheus, and as the wild beasts became tamed at the sound, and as the very ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... thoroughfares now. A wailing child's voice fell on her ear. A small crowd of disreputable idlers was hanging round the closed doors of a public-house, waiting eagerly for the opening which would take place at the close of service-time. The wailing child's voice grew more and more piteous. Erica ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... rest upon the ground, he said only this: "Be of cheer, woman, and keep a good heart, for no harm shall befall you." She was distressed that he would neither look at her nor breathe a word about the kingdom or any sigh of love, and fell at his knees wailing: "Life for me, Caesar, is neither desirable nor possible. This favor I beseech of you in memory of your father,—that since Heaven gave me to Antony after him, I may also die with my lord. Would that I had perished on the very instant after Caesar's death! But since this present fate was ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio

... and been enshrined in the great heart of the world, there to glow like the stars forever and ever? Is it a hardship to die that one may live forever? Is it a hardship to die that millions who now live in wailing and woe, in chains and degradation, may live in happiness and freedom in all time to come? The voice of the great army of American freemen rolls back the answer, like the majestic anthem of the sea, No! a deep, continuous no, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... knew the futility of it, while they stumbled onward through the dark. Behind them the night was hideous with noise as the great palace gave forth an eruption of shrieking, inhuman forms that scattered with whistling and wailing calls ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... unclasped the cloak and let it slip on the floor; he removed the flowing hair and beard, and with it the mask. And uttering a low, wailing cry, Mollie staggered back—for there before her, pale as herself, stood the ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... upper limb of the planet, of a deep crimson, was alone visible betwixt them, and shed a sombre light over the waste. He thought he had seldom seen any thing so impressive; combined with the low moaning of the night-breeze, which rose and sank at intervals, with a wild and wailing murmur. The light was so indistinct that he could discover nothing of his horse, and in the lawless state of the country no time was to be lost in getting to a place ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... in. One morning when she was dressing she heard a peculiar little wailing cry. She listened. The cry was repeated. She listened again, but could not locate the sound. Then, thinking she might be mistaken, she continued with her dressing; but again that piercing wail was borne to her ears. She opened her window and then she heard it distinctly—a ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... her eyes were upon me as Moa and I entered, but she did not move. The thirty-odd passengers were huddled in a group. Solemn, white-faced men, frightened women. Some of them were sobbing. One Earth-woman—a young widow—sat holding her little girl, and wailing with uncontrolled hysteria. The child knew me. As I appeared now, with my gold-laced white coat over my shoulders, the little child seemed to see in my uniform a mark of authority. She left her mother ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... Spaceman's Lament.' You make it up as you go along." His voice grew louder, taking the minor, wailing key at a ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond

... doorstep where he had been sitting smoking. He rushed up the stairs also. When he reached the top he saw, by the light of the candle in Nellie's hand, a little form lying still and white; its mother crouched on the floor, wailing over it. ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... The wailing sounds ceased as Steve knocked and a voice called "Come in!" When they entered they saw a tall, lank youth standing in front of a music-rack close to the window. He held a violin to his chin and waved his bow ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... apprehension of the human soul! The lurid color, the long, irregular, convulsive sound, the ghastly shapes of flaming and heaving cloud, are all as true and faithful in their appeal to our instinct of danger, as the moaning or wailing of the human voice itself is to our instinct of pity. It is not a reasonable calculating terror which they awake in us; it is no matter that we count distance by seconds, and measure probability by averages. That shadow ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... work. Then, such deliberations done, the paper would be drawn out, and the casual notes of the day corrected and writ fair; and for an hour or more there would be no sound save the scratching of pens on the paper and the gusty wailing of ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... still calm but ghastly white, a pistol in each hand. Around her, through the wet smoke, rise and fall with sickening thuds the clubbed muskets of three or four men, and then one by one these sink to the ground too. With a wailing groan like a man in a nightmare, he sees the inevitable end and rushes to place his body before hers. A bullet shatters his sword-blade; now none are left around them but the begrimed and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... which were seldom worn by the Fathers. Women and children, mixed with a few men, came in the rear, bewailing the apprehended desolation of their ancient sanctuary. They moved, however, in order, and restrained the marks of their sorrow to a low wailing sound, which rather mingled with than interrupted the measured ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... head that green shawl which Marmeladov had mentioned to Raskolnikov, Katerina Ivanovna squeezed her way through the disorderly and drunken crowd of lodgers who still filled the room, and, wailing and tearful, she ran into the street—with a vague intention of going at once somewhere to find justice. Polenka with the two little ones in her arms crouched, terrified, on the trunk in the corner of the room, where she waited trembling for her mother ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... long, low, wailing cry the girl laid herself upon the ground by her father's side and put her arms around him. They all gathered about the couch, with the doctor ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... sun shone and so did the stars. General Bols reopened Pontius Pilate's water-works. The learned monks in convents argued about facts and theories denied by archaeologists. Old-fashioned Jews wailed at the Wailing Wall. Tommy Atkins blasphemously dug corpses of donkeys and dogs ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... with a shiver. The wind that shook the birches had grown perceptibly colder: the gloom beneath them deepened rapidly, and there was a doleful wailing amidst the swinging boughs. Beyond the bluff the white wilderness, sinking into dimness now, ran back, waste and empty, to the horizon. Miss Schuyler was from the cities, and the loneliness of the prairie is most impressive when ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... husky, terrified cry—a second, louder cry; and then a long, wailing scream... horror-laden as that of one who has touched ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... educated white men, that have been book-keepers (some of them) and clerks in the old country. It’s my belief a superstition grows up in a place like the different kind of weeds; and as I stood there and listened to that wailing I twittered in ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson

... peculiar demon, a Banshie, or female spirit, who was wont to shriek "foreboding evil times;" and who was generally seen weeping and bemoaning herself before the death of any person of distinction belonging to the family. For an instant, Julian could scarcely divest himself of the belief that the wailing, jibbering form, which glided before him, with a lamp in her hand, was a genius of his mother's race, come to announce to him as an analogous reflection, that if the suspicion which had crossed his mind concerning Fenella was a just one, her ill-fated attachment to him, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... fear in all directions, mangled in limbs, and bereft of senses; when he will behold his steeds, elephants, and foremost of heroes slain; when he will see his troops thirsty, struck with panic, wailing aloud, dead and dying, with their animals exhausted; and hair, bones and skulls lying in heaps around like half-wrought works of the Creator, then will that wretch repent. When he will behold on my car, Gandiva, Vasudeva, and the celestial conch Panchajanya, myself, my couple of inexhaustible ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... pleasantry if the airs most frequently selected had been cheerful or soothing, and if the favorite hymns had been of a sort to inspire a love for what was lovely in this life, and to give some faint foretaste of the harmonies of a better world to come. But there is a fondness for minor keys and wailing cadences common to the monotonous chants of cannibals and savages generally, to such war-songs as the wild, implacable "Marseillaise," and to the favorite tunes of low—spirited Christian pessimists. ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the markets Graham had a transitory glance of a long narrow white-walled room in which men in the universal blue canvas were carrying covered things like biers, and about which men in medical purple hurried to and fro. From this room came groans and wailing. He had an impression of an empty blood-stained couch, of men on other couches, bandaged and blood-stained. It was just a glimpse from a railed footway and then a buttress hid the place and they were going on towards ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... priests called a town meeting to protest against insult to the Church. Great is Diana of the Ephesians! When the tenants refused to pay their lawful dues the priests called no meeting. When the country from end to end echoed with the lamentations of widows and the wailing of helpless children whose natural protectors had been murdered by the Land League, the Tuamites suppressed their indignation, the Tuam priests made no protest. When scores of men were butchered at their own firesides, shot in their beds, battered to pieces at their own thresholds, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... had him accused of treason, and took possession of the county of Lusignan, which became confiscated to the crown. It was on this sad occasion that, for twelve successive nights, the spirit of Melusine appeared on the platform of the castle, wailing and lamenting in a pitiable manner, and making the woods and groves re-echo ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... strange-voiced creatures were never silent an hour, weird cries from the scrub pierced the air, and there arose from the plantation below wild sounds, sometimes of revelry over a feast, the beating of tom-toms, and wailing of voices as the natives conducted their heathen worship, or indulged in noisy quarrels likely to end in ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield

... Your mother is too rash and reasonless— Wailing and fainting over statesmanship Which is no personal caprice of mine, But policy most painful—forced on me By the necessities of this country's charge. Go to her; see if she be saner now; Explain it to her ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy



Words linked to "Wailing" :   wail, tears, lamenting, sorrowful, weeping, crying, wailful



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