"Wail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... new-comer, with his face to the porch door, and the answer came back to him in a wail like ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... air was rent by a wail, and a rattle of shells and drums. The body of Benjamin was being brought out of the lodge. It was borne on a bier made of poles, and covered with boughs of pine and fir and red mountain phlox. It was wrapped in a blanket, and strewn with odorous ferns. Four young braves ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... been detained by the deep mud in the bottom lands, and by the extreme exhaustion of the ladies, demanding some hours' rest each day. The village was dark and quiet. Here and there the glimmer of a candle, now and then the call of a sentry, or the wail of a child broke ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... willing he shall speak his about mine, if I have any. And, true enough, maybe I have; but I reckon they'll bear inspection—I have that idea, anyway. A manly fellow! You should have heard him whine and wail and swear, last night, because the saddle hurt him. Why didn't the saddle hurt me? Pooh—I was as much at home in it as if I had been born there. And yet it was the first time I was ever on a horse. ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... arose. It was said that Mrs. Carradyne, taking the air on the terrace outside in the calmness of the autumn evening, heard the fatal quarrel through the open window; that she heard Mr. West, after he had received the death blow, wail forth a prophecy (or whatever it might be called) that those chimes would surely be accursed; that whenever their sound should be heard, so long as they were suffered to remain in the tower, it should be the signal of woe to ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... melancholy place in the middle of night, surrounded by the mouldering bodies of my deceased Companions, and expecting every moment to be torn in pieces by their Ghosts who wander about me, and complain, and groan, and wail in accents that make my blood run cold, ..... Christ Jesus! It is enough to ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... snoring, for we had travelled hard and long. But sleep was never further from my eyes. As I sat there, listening to the rising wind in the trees, and the rush of the river below, with now and again the wail of a sea-bird crying out seaward, I grew to hate the darkness. Despite the fair innocents who slumbered within and the sturdy rogues who slept without, the loneliness of the place took hold upon me, and ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... a child of twelve or fourteen trapped by the wild storm sweeping over them. He crouched lower still, and when he did so the strength of the wind against his face decreased wonderfully, for the sharp angle of the hill's declivity protected them. Seeing him kneel there, she cried out with a little wail: "Help me—the tree—help me!" And, bursting into a passion of sobbing, she tugged her hands from his and covered ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... rests with the immortals; his journey has been long: For him no wail of sorrow, but a paean full and strong! So well and bravely has he done the work be found to do, To justice, freedom, duty, God, ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... with a chaplet round his head, The taste of Maro and Anacreon plead, 'Sir, Flaccus knew to live as well as write, And kept, like me, two boys array'd in white;' Worthy to feel that appetence of fame Which rivals Horace only in his shame! Let Isis[9] wail in murmurs as she runs, Her tempting fathers, and her yielding sons; 110 While dulness screens the failings of the Church, Nor leaves one sliding Rabbi in the lurch: Far other raptures let the breast contain, Where ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the loud thunders, sonorous and deep, With the sobs of the rain as the black heavens weep; Where the whispering zephyr, and murmuring breeze, Unite with the soft, listless sigh of the trees; And where to the fancy, the voices of air Wail in tones of distress, or in shrieks of despair; Where mourneth the night wind, with desolate breath, In accents suggestive of sorrow and death; As falls from the heavens, so fleecy and light, The winter's immaculate mantle of white; Wherever I wander, these sounds ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... off to sleep he heard the wail of a jackal, and next he was awakened by the sound of a native chanting. It was already daybreak, and Mr. Hume stood on the verandah, having drawn ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... "and I should wail In Hell even now, but I Have lingered round the county jail To ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... my tenement room; its one window opened over a narrow alley flanked on its opposite side by a second tenement, through whose shutters I could look and see repeated layers of squalid lodgings. The thermometer had climbed up into the eighties. The wail of a newly born baby came from the room under mine. The heat was stifling. Outdoors in the false, flickering day of the arc lights the crowd swarmed, on the curb, on the sidewalk, on the house steps. The breath of the black, sweet night reached them, fetid, heavy with the odour of death as ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... unfortunate boy who lived not far from here, In the township of Arcade in the County of Lapeer. It seems his occupation was a sawyer in a mill, He followed it successfully two years, one month, until, Until this fatal accident that caused many to weep and wail; 'Twas where this young man lost his life,—his name ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... being rude to each other when you differ," she declared. "You must take it in turns to have your own way. It is not fair that the eldest should always arrange everything, but on the other hand Joan and Alwyn will get nothing at all if they begin to wail and complain in that most grumbling and unpleasant tone of voice. I think it is a disgrace if you're all so selfish that you can't agree. You must each be prepared to give up a certain amount, for among eight children it is quite impossible ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... into a loud wail. Pulling his mother back, he cried, "Don't go! Please don't! We must finish it. We have to finish it. Come back, ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... folded his wings, and entering the crystal gates, sat down upon a blasted rock and struck his divine lyre, and a peace fell over the wretched; the demon ceased to torture and the victim to wail. As sleep to the mourners of earth was the song of the angel to the souls of the purifying star: one only voice amidst the general stillness seemed not lulled by the angel; it was the voice of a woman, and it continued to cry out with ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had been vanquished. With mysterious passes and burning of gums, he summons that Formidable Feminine: "Nameless one!... Most ancient of Devils!... Rose of Hell!... Herodias!..." and amid the blue smoke-wreathes, uttering the wail of a slave haled to the market-place, rises the form of Kundry. She appears like one but half roused from the torpour of sleep, and struggling with a terrible dream, or resisting some terrible reality. All the answer she can give to his first words of ironical congratulation, is in ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... thou wert seeking help, thy wail Rose sadder than the sound of a death knell; And thus the last of thy own ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... in her golden train, made by "that clumsy Admiral Gray who came over with the Frasers, and had the impudence to almost force me to dance with him—gouty old horror!" But I know it was the rent in her vanity, not her dress, which made her gurgle, and wail, and choke, until frightened Sir Samuel patted her on the back, and she stopped short, to ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... a mob. It is probable a priori, since the great popular movement was still profoundly popular. It is supported by a thousand things in the story of the campaign; the extraordinary emotionalism that made throngs of men weep and wail together, the importance of the demagogue, Peter the Hermit, in spite of his unmilitary character, and the wide differences between the designs of the leaders and the actions of the rank and file. It was a crowd of rude and simple ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... heard the wail of the Russian people and the prayers of the Holy Virgin the Mother of God of Smolensk, and he cried out to the angels and the archangels: "The hour of my wrath has passed. The people have suffered enough for their sins and have repented of their wickedness. Napoleonder has destroyed nations ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... al-Muluk ceased not to weep and wail and beat face and breast, till Sa'id awoke and missing him from the bed and seeing but a single candle, said to himself, "Whither is Sayf al-Muluk gone?" Then he took the other candle and went round about the palace, till he came upon the closet where he saw the Prince lying at full length, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... lamed and maim'd to dislocation, better Than raised to take a life which Henry bad me Guard from the stroke that dooms thee after death To wail in deathless flame. ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Queen seemed to tremble between life and death as she stretched forth her arms to them with a low wail that almost ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... prevail; You, one against a hundred though it be, Balance all Europe in the other scale. Them liken I to those who, in the tale, Mountain on mountain piled, presumptuously Warring with Heaven and Jove. The earth clave he, And hurled them down beneath huge rocks to wail: So take you up your bolt with energy; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... thus address'd me: "Thou true praise of God! Beatrice! why is not thy succour lent To him, who so much lov'd thee, as to leave For thy sake all the multitude admires? Dost thou not hear how pitiful his wail, Nor mark the death, which in the torrent flood, Swoln mightier than a sea, him struggling holds?" "Ne'er among men did any with such speed Haste to their profit, flee from their annoy, As when these words were spoken, I came here, Down from my blessed seat, trusting ...
— The Vision of Hell, Part 1, Illustrated by Gustave Dore - The Inferno • Dante Alighieri, Translated By The Rev. H. F. Cary
... but the cry itself was quite unlike anything I have ever heard before. The beginning of each sentence was uttered in a rapid monotone, and towards the end it rose gradually till it ended in a prolonged, shrill wail, which floated overhead through the still air with an indescribably sad and ghostlike effect; heard at night, it would have thrilled one like the ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... door did he notice a sound that filled the valley. A strange, high-pitched note, like a hundred curry-fowl crying at once—a wail, as of spirits in hell. Now from one direction, now from another; now rising, now falling, the weird, unearthly shriek seemed everywhere at once, increasing each moment in force and shrillness. As the old man, holding the baby close to him, looked up and listened, fear struck ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... at this period in the history of our country that the colonists found themselves not only banished from all civilization, but compelled to fight an armed foe whose trade was war and whose music was the dying wail of a tortured enemy. Unhampered by the exhausting efforts of industry, the Indian, trained by centuries of war upon adjoining tribes, felt himself foot-loose and free to shoot the unprotected forefather from behind the very stump fence his victim had ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... delightful in the cove that the girls were loath to go. They climbed with reluctance up the steep sandy little path to the cliff. As they neared the top they could hear voices in altercation—a high-pitched, protesting, childish wail, and a blunt, uncompromising, scolding retort. On the road above stood an invalid carriage, piled up with innumerable parcels, and containing also a small boy. He was a charmingly pretty little fellow, with a very pale, delicately oval face, ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... her shoulder, and then went out quietly, and Agatha lay still in her chair beside the stove. It snapped and crackled cheerfully, but save for that there was a restful quietness, and the room was cosily warm, though she could hear a little icy wind wail about the building. It swept her thoughts away to the frozen North, and she realised what it had cost her to keep faith with Gregory as she pictured a little snow-sheeted schooner hemmed in among the floes, and two or three worn-out men hauling a sled painfully over the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... With the first wail of the newly born infant a last convulsive shudder passed through the frame of the unconscious mother. Then three or four short gasps for breath, and the spirit passed away. She was dead. Professor Biggleswade threw a corner of the sheet over ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... clutching his arm. "They're going to look for something—probably our trunk. No, they're not. Look how excited he is! And Daddy, too! Oh, Chet, what in the world——" the last words were a wail, and Chet ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... away with a broken sob. Vi uttered a low cry of anguish; and Rosie and the boys broke into a wail of sorrow. ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... that 'mid my gladness I must ever hear you wail, Of the grief that wrung my spirit, And that made my cheek ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... warmed it, while Cross breezes cut the surface to a file, This heart, some fraction of me, happily Floats through the window even now to a tree Down in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale, Not like a pewit that returns to wail For something it has lost, but like a dove That slants unswerving to its home and love. There I find my rest, and through the dusk air Flies what yet lives in me. ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... many people die here!" But upon Wiseman and Wishart the significance of that barbaric keening was lost. Full of bread and drink, they rollicked along unconcerned, embraced the girls, who had scarce energy to repel them, took up and joined (with drunken voices) in the death-wail, and at last (on what they took to be an invitation) entered under the roof of a house in which was a considerable concourse of people sitting silent. They stooped below the eaves, flushed and laughing; within a minute they came ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... second of time I had recognised the face and voice of the inn-keeper's daughter, but the next minute a dreadful wail broke from the lips of the young man, and the sky grew suddenly as dark as night, the wind rose and began to toss the branches about us, and the whole scene was swallowed up in ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... massive, yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... of facts will be police, detective, and alms-house reports; city missionaries' explorations, and the testimony of the abandoned and sin-blasted, who, about to take the final plunge, have staggered back just for a moment, to utter the wild shriek of their warning, and the agonizing wail of ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... satisfactory and encouraging. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured." The tone of the address, so far from being jubilant as the mass of his hearers felt, was ineffably sad. It seemed to bear the wail of an oppressed spirit. The thought and the language were as majestic as those of the ancient prophets. As if in agony of soul the President cried out: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... place, we find him asking Esli,—the wife of Joseph, of whom he had just said, "Her little daughter has died recently, and her heart is broken,"—"When your child died, did you weep and wail as your people ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... the battle field, and the cold pale moon Look'd down on the dead and dying, And the wind pass'd o'er with a dirge and a wail, Where the young and the brave ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... change in their vocal expression. Heretofore the short, snappy bark has spoken only of anticipation and eagerness; now there comes the instinctive yelp of the questing beast, the hound on the scent. It bursts from them like a wail from the distant past. As if shot, they are off in a bunch. A clatter of sounds, scratching, rustling, and scrambling, we hear them tearing through the brush. We follow, but are soon outdistanced. Down the creek bed we go, splash through mud, clamber over logs, stop, listen, and ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... was foreign to the age of Homer, as indeed to all pre-Christian antiquity. But concerning this we need not dilate, as it has often been duly remarked upon, and notably by Carlyle, in his "Lectures on Hero-Worship." Who that has once heard the wail of unutterable despair ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... on the bed and made for the Italian's door. He did not wait to knock, but broke in noisily. The accordion stopped with a prolonged wail; its ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... my desk looked a bit tempting for a man with a retired conscience. I was going to keep him on the Candace, rather than fuss, because it wasn't so much his fault as mine that he was the wrong man in the place. He couldn't do any harm in Jerusalem, it seemed. Let him wail in the Jews' Wailing Place, if he'd any complaints, said I to myself. I thought he was too keen on money to resign because his silly pride was hurt. But to my surprise, he informed me that he'd come to 'hand in his papers,' as he called it. So much the worse for his pocket and the better ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... rang out through the corridor. With a low wail of genuine grief, Mignon dropped into a chair. She heard Harriet Delaney begin her first song. Unable to bear the chagrin that was hers, she sprang up. Readjusting the gown she had partly thrown off, she seized her cloak and wrapped it about her. Then she fled up the stairway, ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... of the New World, to wrest it from the Indians and subdue it for wife and child, it was the noiseless nocturnal cougar that filled their imaginations with the last degree of dread. To them its cry—most peculiar and startling at the love season, at other times described as like the wail of a child or of a traveller lost in the woods—aroused more terror than the nearest bark of the wolf; its stealth and cunning more than the strength and courage and address of the bear; its attack more than the rush of the majestic, resistless bison, or the furious pass with antlers ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... entered the room, caught sight of the weeper, grabbed up an old muddy shoe of Beverly's and raining tears into it forthwith raised a genuine darkey wail of woe which very nearly turned Mrs. Ashby's ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the ark, and the sound, accelerated by the water-charged atmosphere, struck upon their ears with terrible distinctness. Sometimes, when a gust of wind blew the rain into their faces, the sound deepened into a long, despairing wail, which seemed to be borne from afar off, mingled with the roar of the descending torrent—the death-cry ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... among the groups of dwellings to one standing in the center. It seemed no better and no worse than any of the others. Outside the entrance to this rock heap the guide gave a low wail that sounded ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... She played this and some other favourites of her own as few musicians play them, for music had been the one delight of her life, and but for the fleeting theatrical ambition, and for Paul, she might have become famous as an executant He stood in the hall to listen as the alternate wail and triumph filled and thrilled the air, and thinking that she was alone, he strolled silently to his dressing-room, and then in smoking-jacket and slippers went to join her. Except for the glow of the fire the room was in darkness, and a voice which came ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Hagen a wound deep and wide. But he did not wish to slay him, desiring rather to have such a hero as hostage. Casting away his shield, in his arms he gripped Hagen of Trony, who, faint from loss of blood, was overthrown. At that Gunther began to wail greatly. Dietrich then bound Hagen and led him to where stood Kriemhild and gave him into her hand. Right merry was she at the sight and blessed Dietrich, bowing low before him, telling him that he had requited her of all her woes, and that she ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... busy, ma. You make me give into her all the time 'cause I'm bigger 'en she is. You're smaller 'en pa, but when he comes in, you bring him his slippers, and hand him the paper." Jimmie yanked his go-cart from baby Jennie, and disregarded her wail ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... my dear Spenser, doth not require tears and lamentations. Dry thine eyes; rebuild thine house: the queen and council, I venture to promise thee, will make ample amends for every evil thou hast sustained. What! does that enforce thee to wail still louder? ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... baronet lived to see him return, though with plaintive wail he often declared to his daughter-in-law that this was impossible. He lived, but he never returned to that living life which had been his before he had taken up the battle for Lady Mason. He would sometimes ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... Negroes as soldiers in the armies of the United States seriously offended the Southern view of "the eternal fitness of things." No action on the part of the Federal Government was so abhorrent to the rebel army. It called forth a bitter wail from Jefferson Davis, on the 12th of January, 1863, and soon after the Confederate Congress elevated its olfactory organ and handled the subject with a pair of tongs. After a long discussion the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... sense. In a series of broken ejaculations, not sentences but lyric cries, she evokes the scenes of the past and of the future. Blood drips from the palace; in its chambers the Furies crouch; the murdered sons of Thyestes wail in its haunted courts; and ever among the visions of the past that one of the future floats and fades, clearly discerned, impossible to avert, the murder of a husband by a wife; and in the rear of that, most pitiful of all, the violent death ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... settled upon the hills, and unrolled itself upon brook, glade, and tarn, and the spring breeze was not powerful enough to raise the veil, though from the wild sounds which were heard occasionally on the ridges, and through the glens, it might be supposed to wail at a sense of its own inability. The route of the travellers was directed by the course which the river had ploughed for itself down the valley, the banks of which bore in general that dark grey livery which Sir Aymer de Valence had intimated to be the prevalent tint of the country. Some ineffectual ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Later he was roused by a "Scratch, scratch, scratch" close to him. He listened silently for some time. This was no leaf; it was an animal! Yes, surely—it was a Mouse. He slapped the canvas violently and "hissed" till it went away, but as he listened he heard again that peculiar wail in the tree-tops. It almost made his hair sit up. He reached out and poked the fire together into a blaze. All was still and in time he dozed off. Once more he was wide awake in a flash and saw Sam sitting up ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... it! He was shot through the window and by that wretch. He never shot himself." Violent declarations which trailed off into the one continuous wail, "O, ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... something to eat, Kid—I'm purty hungry myself—what the blazes!" he exclaimed, for Johnny's protesting wail was finished outside the port. Then a light broke upon him and he wondered how soon it would be his turn to pay ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... of the cactus hedge before him were like great hands shorn of fingers thrust against the sky. Through a gap he beheld the lights of the Mission—fierce hostile eyes intent upon his thoughts. The wail and bark of a jackal came ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... painfully vivid, but it is far exceeded in poignancy by what follows. Indeed it would be difficult to find in all literature, from the wail of David over Jonathan downward, such an expression of the hopeless longing for an irrecoverable presence as informs the broken melodies, the stanzas which are like sobs, of the fifth section of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the shallop, woman's wail and man's despair, A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp and bare, And through it all the murmur ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... broken-hearted wife. Her husband one night came in, to her surprise, and said he was a defaulter and must flee, and he went, she knew not where. He forsook her and two children. It was a pitiful letter, and the wail of that poor woman seems to ring in my ears yet. That night up in that gallery was a man whose heart began to beat when I told the story, thinking it was him I meant, till I came to the two children. ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... on the little, square, pulpit-like landing, at the top of the creaking wooden staircase, which led down the side of the building from office to yard, listening to the faint drip of the water through the sluice-gates; the wail of a child outside the walls, and the pacing step of the woman who hushed it; the distant intermittent roar of the song which reached them through the often opened doors of a public-house. Presently the night-watchman lumbered out of his sentry-box by the gates, his dim lantern ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... they moved on up town, "I wish you knew that little Frenchman. He's a unique specimen. He has the most exquisite violin I've seen in years; beautiful and mellow as a genuine Cremona, and he can make the music leap, sing, laugh, sob, skip, wail, anything you like from under his bow when he wishes. It's something wonderful. We are good friends. Picked him up in my French-town rambles. I've been trying ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... scorned the Democrat's wail, And flirting its false fantastic tail, It spread its wings and it soared away, And left the Democrat ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... horribly, showing his big front teeth. I could feel his breath hot on my face as he clutched me round the neck. I could see some boys holding Angel back, I could hear The Seraph's wail of "John! John!" Then, simultaneously there came a blow on my own nose, and a grasping of my collar, and a shaking that freed us of each other, for I was clutching him with fury ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... Fires are kept burning within the house and also outside, and after each meal the people strike one another's legs with firebrands in order to forget their grief. Members of the family, who begin to wail immediately after his death, continue to do so constantly for seven days, and they wear no red garments until after the tiwah feast which constitutes his second funeral. The coffin is buried in the ground or placed on a crude platform, and, when this work is ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... Bird so sings, yet so does wail? O 'tis the ravished Nightingale. Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu, she cries, And still her woes at Midnight rise. Brave prick song! who is't now we hear? None but the lark so shrill and clear; Now at ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... from window, doorway, and roof. The wind, blowing from the south, carried sparks and cinders to the adjoining houses, glowing in the summer heat. A wail of horror from the people ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... aimless firing continued a few minutes, underneath the mild effulgence of the stars. It ceased, from the Legion's trenches at the agreed moment; and soon it died down, also from the Arabs'. Quiet rose again from the desert, broken only by the surf-wash on the sand, the far, tremulous wail of a jackal, the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Around, around, in airy rings, They wheel with oarage of their wings, But not the eyas-brood behold, That called them to the nest of old; But let Apollo from the sky, Or Pan, or Zeus, but hear the cry, The exile cry, the wail forlorn, Of birds from whom their home is torn— On those who wrought the rapine fell, Heaven sends the vengeful ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... had stood in the same corner of the library long enough to mark the hours of the births and marriages, the meetings and partings, and death, of several generations of the Vyvyans, now chimed in slow, subdued tones, through which ran the echo of a wail, like the voice of a human being, who has ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid. And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katy-did; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in her ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... ever leant over the banister and declared to the expectant father below that it was "a fine healthy Commander-in-Chief." Therefore, a Commander-in-Chief is not like a poet. But when a Commander-in-Chief dies, the spirit of a thousand Beethovens sob and wail in the air; dull cannon roar slowly out their heavy grief; silly rifles gibber and chatter demoniacally over his grave; and a cocked hat, emptier than ever, rides with the mockery of despair on ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... not been stolen," thought he. The child threw its little hands towards him as it awoke; and he could have wept. Its short feeble wail had smitten him ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... me, if you have any pity for an unhappy woman, let me in—let me speak to you," were the words I heard her say, in a voice like the wail of harp-strings. Its pathos would have been irresistible to any man, even if he had never loved her. Eagle March let Diana come in, though I heard him protesting that his friend Jim White ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... plainer, and Melton's finger was already trembling on the match when a terrific splash echoed over the water, followed instantly by a most awful and heartrending wail of agony, that caused every one to shudder from head ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... rise up lustily, When sluggish sleep is past, So hope I to rise joyfully, To judgment at the last. Thus will I wake, thus will I sleep, Thus will I hope to rise, Thus will I neither wail nor weep, But ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... as over and adown the New England mountains the howling wind swept furiously, now shrieking exultingly as one by one the huge forest trees bent before its power, and again dying away in a low, sad wail, as it shook the casement of some low-roofed cottage, where the blazing fire, "high piled upon the hearth," danced merrily to the sound of the storm-wind, and then, whirling in fantastic circles, ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... first? I rode late one evening from Guldvik hall, Some kind of feast I seem to recall. My spirit was heavy, my heart full of woe! That something had grieved me is all that I know. I rode all alone up the mountain side, At midnight I passed by the river so wide; Then heard I beyond a melodious wail, That rang like a song over mountain and dale. It seemed a plaintive, bewitching lay; I folded my hands, I tried to pray, But tied was my tongue and my thoughts went astray; The strains did beguile and lure me away. 'Twas now like weeping and now like ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... aft and raised a wail, and begun to beg the professor to turn back and land us, but he jerked out his pistol and motioned us back, and we went, but nobody will ever know ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Englishman, the Englishman than the Kaffir, the Kaffir than the Chinaman. I have heard," said the stranger, "the black infant cry as it crept on its mother's body and sought for her breast as she lay dead in the roadway. I have heard also the rich man's child wail in the palace. ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... beasts; they fall into the circular periphery of the whole, which he calls Circe; whereas she is justly represented as the child of the Sun, dwelling in the island of Aeaea, for this word [Greek omitted] is so called because men lament and wail by reason of death. But the prudent man Odysseus did not suffer the change, because from Hermes, i.e. reason, he had received immortality. He went down into Hades, as it were, dissolving and separating the soul from the body, and became ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... presented, fell sobbing upon his knees and buried his face in the bed-clothing. He spoke no word, but the tumultuous throes of his agony shook the room as he knelt beside her. And from the bed arose a wail more terrible in its utter, eternal sorrowfulness than had ever fallen upon the ears of those present. It was the wail of a soul recognizing for the first time that the loveliness of life ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... their place shall serve me, and sustain Their plagues, their torments suffer, sorrows bear, And they his absence shall lament in vain, And wail his loss and theirs with many a tear:' Thus talking to herself she did ordain A false and wicked guile, as you shall hear; Thither she hasted where the valiant knight Had overcome and slain her ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... shape under the torch. The man was transformed, swaying half crouched before them. The long black hair fell across the white scar, and picture after picture leaped from his tongue with such vividness that a low wail started through the audience, and women sobbed in their bonnets. It was penalty for bloodshed—not in this world: penalty eternal in the next; and one slight figure under the dips staggered suddenly aside into ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.
... began to weep and wail, For little Tommy Tadpole had lost his little tail; And his mother didn't know him as he wept upon a log, For he wasn't Tommy Tadpole, ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... the wrinkled old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha, Rocked him in his linden cradle, Bedded soft in moss and rushes, Safely bound with reindeer sinews; Stilled his fretful wail by saying, "Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!" Lulled him into slumber, singing, "Ewa-yea! my little owlet! Who is this that lights the wigwam? With his great eyes lights the wigwam? Ewa-yea! ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... voice from Florida, from Tampa's lonely shore; It is the wail of gallant men, O'Brien is no more; In the land of sun and flowers his head lies pillowed low, No more to sing petite coquille at Benny Havens' O. At Benny Havens' O, at Benny Havens' O, No more to sing petite coquille at Benny Havens' ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... Carmagnola the pathos is chiefly in the feeling embodied by the magnificent chorus lamenting the slaughter of Italians by Italians at the battle of Maclodio; in the Adelchi we are conscious of no emotion so strong as that we experience when we hear the wail of the Italian people, to whom the overthrow of their Longobard oppressors by the Franks is but the signal of a new enslavement. This chorus is almost as fine as the more famous one in the Carmagnola; both are incomparably finer than anything else in the tragedies and are ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... the venomous green path, not thirty yards away, I saw the head and shoulders and upstretched, appealing arms of Van Roon. Even as the lightning flickered and we saw him, he was gone; with one last, long, drawn-out cry, horribly like the mournful wail of a ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... had ceased, or rather were lost in the loud cry of sorrow which were uttered by the keeners and friends of the deceased—they, too, standing somewhat apart from the rest, joined in it bitterly; and the solitary wail of Mrs. Grimes, differing in character from that of those who had been trained to modulate the most profound grief into strains of a melancholy nature, was particularly wild and impressive. At all ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... "I heard the wail of the old women before. I come to the cabin, and when Metla had sobbed the story out in her weakness, I went back into the dark and down to the Mission. I remember how the Northern Lights flared over the hills above, and the little spruces on the summit looked to me like ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again three days later, when the wail of the Dead March, and the tramp of the squadrons, told the wondering Station, who saw no gap in the mess-table, that an officer of the regiment had resigned ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... Dirk Sharp's door, Noll suddenly fancied he heard a faint wail within. He was not at all sure, the sea thundered so, and the wind screamed so shrilly about the miserable dwelling; but presently, in a slight lull of the tempest, he heard the wail—if wail it was—again. It sounded like the voice of a child,—a child ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord |
