"Wail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... order to show him that she made no claim upon him. She wanted to seem quite collected so that her behaviour should not lead him to think her heart at all affected, but she could only watch his eyes hungrily. She braced herself to restrain a wail of sorrow if she saw his disillusionment. He talked in order to give time for her to master ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... in an obscure corner of the opera-house that night. Soon all her expressions of astonishment were hushed, but by another cause than the mysterious inattention of her son: a queenly woman appeared upon the stage; she lifted her voice, and sobbed the mournful wail which ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... religion; in the man and in the nation. To do injustice under the pretence of equity and fairness; to reprove vice in public and commit it in private; to pretend to charitable opinion and censoriously condemn; to profess the principles of Masonic beneficence, and close the ear to the wail of distress and the cry of suffering; to eulogize the intelligence of the people, and plot to deceive and betray them by means of their ignorance and simplicity; to prate of purity, and peculate; of honor, and basely abandon a sinking cause; of disinterestedness, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... was in danger of having her shoulders dislocated. At length the officer prevailed and she escaped. Her mother and the women who had assembled from the neighborhood, then set up a terrific shriek, like a funeral wail, "She's lost! she's dead! wo is me!" It was all pre-arranged. The brother-in-law had been around to the square to a rendezvous of soldiers, and told them that an attempt would be made to abduct ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... cold hermit over wail, Whose sighs do freeze, and tears drop hail, Once having pass'd this, will ne'r ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... Willis. "Yes, in another twenty years or so, perhaps; to wail for such an unlikely event will never do; my young friend, Master Jack Becker, is in a hurry, and we must all leave this place within ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... crackerboxes, and everything else that would stop a bullet, in such manner as to form a square barricade, two sides of which were the wagons, with the mules haltered to the wheels. Every man then supplied himself with all the ammunition he could carry, and the Mandan scouts setting up the depressing wail of the Indian death-song, we all awaited the attack ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and then over the river came the terrible hunger wail of a tiger. That instant its tawny face scarred with black emerged from behind green leaves. He saw I was across the river. The tiger's body is marked with the same stripes and curves as he makes in the grass when he walks, and people in the ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... he spoke soothingly to her. Still the stricken woman took no notice of him until a large hot tear, which the youth could not restrain, dropped upon her forehead, and coursed down her cheek. She then looked suddenly up in Erling's face and uttered a low wail of agony. ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... in his great coffin of black marble beneath the pines and the rhododendrons. And the pipers followed after, making shrill and dreadful music that sounded as though some supernatural beings added their voices to the universal wail of woe. And on either side of the body walked the women, the prophet's kinsfolk; but Nehushta walked by Zoroaster, and ever and anon, as the funeral procession wound through the myrtle walks of the deep gardens, her dark and heavy eyes stole a glance ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... hat 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 owner ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the distant wail of the last notes as they came out of the dining-room, and, while it made the financier uncomfortable, it caused Tristram ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... civil servants of the United States falls into three periods: Before 1829, 1829-65, and 1865-83. In the first period they were commonly treated as permanent officials. Rarely had they been removed for partisan purposes, although it had been the wail of Jefferson that "few die, and none resign." Appointments had often been given as the reward for past services, but none had felt a need for a general proscription of officials upon the entry of ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... hand imperiously and we all listened, McTurkle with his mouth wide open and his near-sighted eyes fixed in fascination upon the speaker's face. From outside came a long, impatient wail from ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... observances were and are, the women relatives getting on some elevated spot near where the body rests, and keeping up a dismal wail, frequently even in extreme cold weather, the greater part of the night, and this is kept up often for a month. No cremation or burying in a grave was practiced by them at any time. Pained by often coming on skeletons in trees ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... bear no more; the band loosened from my throat; the oppression lifted from my breast long enough for me to give one wild wail and she turned, saw (heaven sent its flashes quickly at this moment) and recognizing my childish form, all the horror of her deed (or so I have fondly hoped) rose within her, and she gave a start and fell full upon the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... What to him the wail of them who beneath the fierce sun toiled under the whips of relentless masters? Heard from granite colonnade or beneath cool linen awning, it was mellowed by distance, to monotonous music. Why should he question the Sphinx of Fate, or quarrel ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... clock. And scarcely had it ceased, Than tolled the chapel bell, As though for some long-suffering soul released, Its slow funereal knell, And on its ebon wings the rising gale Swept landward from the sea, And mingled with the chapel bell's long wail Its own sad symphony. ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... blue, and the phantasmal city, rising like a beautiful spirit from the waters. Gliding near the Lido—where so many rings of Doges lie lost beneath the waves—I heard the pleasant sound of female voices upon the water—and then, with a sudden glory, rose a sad, wild hymn, like the musical wail ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... eternal forfeit of his lady's love; And, all impatient his dark doom to try, And end the pangs of dire uncertainty, His humble prayer he tremblingly preferr'd, Wo worth the while! his prayer no more was heard. O! how he wail'd! how curs'd the unhappy day! Deaf still remained the unrelenting fay. Him, thus dismay'd, the approaching barons found; Outstretch'd he lay, and weeping, on the ground; To reckless ears their summons they declar'd, Lost ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... atrocities of Philip II, in the expulsion of his Moorish subjects, are matters of imperishable history. Who disbelieves or doubts them? And yet his courtiers magnified his virtues and chanted his clemency and his mercy, while the wail of a million victims, smitten down by a tempest of fire and slaughter let loose at his bidding, rose above the Te Deums that thundered from all Spain's cathedrals. When Louis XIV. revoked the edict of Nantz, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... don't know!" she cried, with a sudden wail, like a person in pain; "only—oh! I wish I had not seen it for the first time ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... spoken of here was almost a weakness with Burns. We hear it like an ever-recurring wail in his poems and letters. In the very next entry in his commonplace book, after praising the old bards, and drawing a parallel between their sources of inspiration and his own, he shudders to think that his fate may ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... so new that its light was very dim, but the stars were bright. Presently a long, quivering wail arose and was answered from a dozen hills. It seemed just the sound one ought to hear in such a place. When the howls ceased for a moment we could hear the subdued roar of the creek and the crooning of the wind in the pines. So we rather enjoyed ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... that evil is unreal, but to know it, he must demonstrate his statement. To assume that 448:1 there are no claims of evil and yet to indulge them, is a moral offence. Blindness and self-righteousness cling 448:3 fast to iniquity. When the Publican's wail went out to the great heart of Love, it won his humble desire. Evil which obtains in the bodily senses, 448:6 but which the heart condemns, has no foundation; but if evil is uncondemned, it is undenied and nurtured. Under such circumstances, to say that there is no evil, is an evil 448:9 ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... Where angels dared not go, came to his doom, And fell a molten mass; so, tempting Heaven, Saul died the death of disobedient Pride And self-willed Folly—curses of mankind! Sins against God which wrought the Fall, and sent, As tempests moan along the listening night, A wail of mournful sadness drifting down The annals of the world: unearthly strains! Cries of eternal ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... the tall young gentleman, as he slammed the door and so shut off the wail. "Damn 'em, they worry Charles to death. If he would only stick to quinze and picquet, and keep clear of the hounds*, he need never ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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
... mellowing!" He turns his light, and the shadows play, spectre-like, along a low, wet aisle, hung on each side with rusty bolts and locks, revealing the doors of cells. An ominous stillness is broken by the dull clank of chains, the muttering of voices, the shuffling of limbs; then a low wail breaks upon the ear, and rises higher and higher, shriller and shriller, until in piercing shrieks it chills the very heart. Now it ceases, and the echoes, like the murmuring winds, die faintly away. "Look in here, now," says Mr. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... lifted, briefly restoring the cheery moonbeams and silver roadway. Many tree-trunks were white, contrasting with the darkness within the dense woods, glistening like spectres, as the tremulous light glimmered through the branches. There was no sound in the forest, except the solemn wail of the wind, and the steady tramp, tramp—tramp, tramp of the hurrying horse. My flesh crept and shuddered under the drastic influence of the chill night and the doleful croakings of my companion; who talked continually of the Kuklux, and peered through ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... cavern black; I saw the blue above. Some terror turned me to look back: I heard him wail, "O love! What hast thou done! What hast thou done!" And then I saw no more the sun, And lost ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... excited, and Luke Raeburn's daughter had inherited that burning sense of indignation which was so strongly marked a characteristic in Raeburn himself. Violins can be more sweet and delicate in tone than any other instrument, but they can also wail with greater pathos, and produce a more fearful ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... fool that he was to ask. Has the owner of the favourite at Goodwood pity for the jockey who swoons in a death-sickness, causing the next to come in a head's length? Has the eagle pity for the young mother's wail for her babe as he carried it aloft to feed the young? No, she told herself she had spoiled him, allowing him the entree to her presence for the past seven or eight years at will. She cared for him too for his bold, fierce, passionate nature, that is—in a way, if only he would not insist ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... and ankles, staple-bound, Had graved thereon the sign Of crucified. "My God!" he cried, "such fate may yet be mine!" He turned and lo! close at his feet he spied A note. A piercing wail then woke the ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... stated, that when his fatal attack came on, his pockets were found filled with old letters from the woman to whom he was attached. He died! she lives still,—in May Fair. The Eumenides, I suppose, went out of existence at the time when the wail was heard, "Great Pan is dead." I think we could better have spared him than those awful Sisters who ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bleeding silence of desertion. Then, one memorable day, the stillness had been broken by the first clatter of sabots—that wooden noise, measured, unmistakable, approaching. Two pairs of sabots and a long road. Two broad backs bent under bulging loads; an infant's wail; a knock at the Red Cross Door—but that was ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... curses at the object of its fury. The madman's frenzy was utterly revolting to listen to, but Tranter searched it closely for some clue to the identity of the person, or thing, to whom it was addressed. The voice rose again to a shriek; then subsided as before into a feeble wail of misery. ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... low and narrow, and seemed to be choked up by men with short white surplices, but nevertheless he found himself inside, jammed among a crowd of Jews; and a sound of many voices, going together in a sing-song wail or dirge, met his ears. His first impulse was to take off his hat, but that was immediately replaced upon his head, he knew not by whom; and then he observed that all within the building were covered. ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... boots and an unlimited quantity of animal spirits in a high state of effervescence. As they trooped off, an unmistakable odor of burnt milk pervaded the air, and the crash of china, followed by an Irish wail, caused Mrs. Dean to clap on her three shawls again and excuse ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... lightly passed over, for they forcibly commend to us the magnificent mercy of God. And we run the danger, if we lightly esteem them, of being found ungrateful, and of being condemned together with these men, and even more cruelly tormented. Therefore, when we perceive how they suffer and wail aloud, we ought so much the more to rejoice in the goodness of God toward us; according to Isaiah lxv: "Behold, my servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry; behold, my servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty; behold, my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... to think of our coming to this!" she would wail a dozen times a day—or, "Anna, I can't stand it another minute," and she would burst into paroxysms of grief, from which nothing could arouse her, and utterly exhausted by her own emotions, which were chiefly regret and self-pity, she would sink off to ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... in a whimper. "I was in his mind. He was not hurt! God! Steve—what are we up against?" Her voice rose to a wail. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... caterpillar of a white butterfly with black spots on its wings. In Europe, this butterfly is preyed on by two or more parasites, which keep it somewhat in check; but its remarkably rapid increase in this country, causing a wail of lamentation to rise in a single season from the cabbage growers over areas of tens of thousands of square miles, proved that when it first appeared it had reached this country without its ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... chosen brave, Whom Destiny, whom Valor led To their consecrated grave 'Mid Thessalia's mountains dread. Their sepulchre's a holy shrine, Their epitaph, the engraven line Recording former deeds divine; And Pity's melancholy wail Is changed to hymns of praise that ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... swung Where, before the altar, hung The crimson banner, that with prayer Had been consecrated there. And the nuns' sweet hymn was heard the while, Sung low in the dint, mysterious aisle, "Take thy banner! may it wave Proudly o'er the good and brave; When the battle's distant wail Breaks the Sabbath of our vale, When the cannon's music thrills To the hearts of those lone hills. When the spear in conflict shakes, And the ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... she broke down as the recollection of danger swept back upon her. 'Oh, Mother! Mother!' she cried, with a long, low wail, which touched every one of her hearers to ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... a drum like a rattle of hail, Clinking a cymbal or castanet; Chirping a twitter or sending a wail Through a piccolo that thrills me yet; Reeling ripples of riotous bells, And tipsy tinkles of triangles— Wrangled and tangled in skeins of sound Till it seemed that my very soul spun round, As I leaned, in a breathless joy, toward my Radiant uncle, who snapped ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... Ii Kamon no Kami's blood stained the winter snow-drifts some sixty years ago, because he dared to open the Country of the Gods to the contemptible foreigners; and in the cry of the tofu-seller echoes the voice of old Japan, a long-drawn wail, drowned at last by the grinding of the tram wheels and the lash and crackle of the connecting-rods against ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... of his narrative my father's voice suddenly broke, and with a wail of uncontrollable anguish and an exclamation of "Heaven, have mercy upon me and heal my broken heart!" he flung his arms out upon the cabin table, laid his head upon them, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... and outward fortune which scorns and excludes the other, and partly, at all events, actively dooms it to a living death in England of to-day, as in India of the past, and in Jewry of old, where the leper was thrust outside the wall to wail 'Unclean! unclean!' ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... you so from the beginning, Headland," he answered, with a sort of wail. "But what's that got to do with drugging ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... in a wail—a strange, half-stifled cry which rang out with a chill, ghostly sound upon the black silence. His face was covered with a wet towel, a ghastly odor was in his nostrils, his lips refused to utter any further sound. He lay ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 do?" and she ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... was in this very uncomfortable state of mind, with the jungle wrapped in profound silence as well as gloom, there broke on the night air a wail so indescribable that the very marrow in Nigel's bones seemed to shrivel up. It ceased, but again broke forth louder than before, increasing in length and strength, until his ears seemed to tingle with the sound, and then it died away to ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... Wan as his own are their looks, and a nightmare seems to brood Heavy upon them, and heavy the silence hangs on all, Save for the rapids' plunge, and the thunder of the fall. But on a sudden thrills from the people still and pale, Chorussing his unheard despair, a desperate wail Caught on a lurking point of rock it sways and swings, Sport of the pitiless waters, the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and his men made a great pile before each of the doors, and then the women-folk who were inside began to weep and to wail. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... one dare For her sweet sake the flaming stair?" Look, one steps forth with muffled face, Leaps through the flames with fleetest feet, on trembling ladder runs a race With life and death—the window gains. Deep silence falls on all around, Till bursts aloud a sobbing wail. The ladder falls with crashing sound— A flaming, treacherous mass. O God! she was so young and he so brave! Look once again. See! see! on highest roof he stands—the fiery wave Fierce rolling round—his arms enclasp the child—God help him yet to save! "For life or for eternal sleep," He ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... any more parley, and on Susan following, Mrs MacStinger recommenced her pedestrian exercise in pattens, and Alexander MacStinger (still on the paving-stone), who had stopped in his crying to attend to the conversation, began to wail again, entertaining himself during that dismal performance, which was quite mechanical, with a general survey of the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... joy. Everywhere festive guns were booming, bells pealing, the churches ringing with thanksgivings, and jubilant multitudes thronging the thoroughfares, when suddenly the news flashed over the land that Abraham Lincoln had been murdered. The people were stunned by the blow. Then a wail of sorrow went up such as America had never heard before. Thousands of Northern households grieved as if they had lost their dearest member. Many a Southern man cried out in his heart that his people had been robbed of their best friend ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... and darkened and lightened again around him, as the folds of the cloud-blanket overhead were torn, or dropped trailing, or gathered again in the arms of the hurrying wind. As he stood, it seemed suddenly to change, and take a touch of south in its blowing. The same instant came to his ear a loud wail: it was the ghost-music! There was in it the cry of a discord, mingling with a wild rolling change of harmonies. He stood "like one forbid," and listened with all his power. It came again, and again, and was more continuous than he had ever heard it before. Here ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... things came creeping to the edge of the clearing, sat peering there, then ventured nearer—curious, suspicious, greedy. Soft, noiseless, and ghost-like was the flight of the great owl through the desolation, and his uncanny cry and the wail of the whippoorwill filled the night as ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... and wolds and dales and stony leas. But as regards the Merchant and his daughter, he went in to her one day of the days and found her weeping and wailing, so he said to her, "What causeth thee to shed tears, O my child?" and said she, "How shall I not weep? indeed I must wail over my lot, and over the promise wherewith Allah promised me." Hereupon he exclaimed, "O my daughter, be silent and Inshallah—God willing— I will equip me for travel and will fare to the son of the King; and look to it, for haply Allah Almighty our Lord may direct me to a somewhat shall ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... to such a wail as a dog makes when one treads unaware upon his tail, and clapped his ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... one, they fall asleep And the pension agents awake to weep, And orphaned statesmen are loud in their wail As the souls flit by on the evening gale. O Father of Battles, pray give us release From the horrors of ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... turned out to demand information. The adjutant had joined the commanding officer by this time, and several of the guard had come forth, anxious and eager to hear the news. No man in the group could catch the reply of the horseman to the questioners at "Sudstown," but in an instant an Irish wail burst upon the ear, and, just as one coyote will start a whole pack, just as one midnight bray will set in discordant chorus a whole "corral" of mules, so did that one wail of mourning call forth an echoing "keen" from every Hibernian hovel in all the little settlement, and in an instant the air ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... this, except to draw down her round face to a doleful length, and drawl out a ridiculous wail common among the sailors,— ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... rose from the lines of tonsured heads which skirted the high wall—a wail which suddenly died away into a long hushed silence, broken at last by a rapturous cry of ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her wail. "How can you ask? What would it mean to me to be left here all alone? If you would have me brave, do not ask ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... she spoke, from a quiet reasoning tone to a high, excited wail. She had not meant to say so much. She had intended merely to appeal to her son's affection for her, without making any unpleasant disclosures regarding Joy's mother; she thought merely to win a promise from him that he would not compromise himself at present with the girl, through ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Murdison, going grey in the face. "Oh, aye! In one minute," he said, hastily stepping back into the kitchen and whispering a few words to his wife. Gibson did not hear the words, but his heart sank like lead as he noticed Mrs. Murdison fling herself into a chair, bury her face in her hands, and wail, "Oh God! my ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... in the name o' common sense would ye go and borry a broken cradle?" came the wail from the bed. "I 'lowed you'd git Billy Spinner's, an' ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... of the foreshortened figure of the man, who vainly as patiently sought to soothe the child by gently rocking it to and fro. But when he began a strange humming song to it, which brought all Glashgar before her eyes, Ginevra knew beyond a doubt that it was Gibbie. At the sound the child ceased to wail, and presently the woman with difficulty rose, laying a hand for help on Gibbie's shoulder. Then Gibbie rose also, cradling the infant on his left arm, and making signs to the mother to place the child on his right. She did so, and turning, went feebly up the stair. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... forest, where so many good men had fallen, and, turned red in the gleam of the lightning, it was more terrifying than it had been in the mere black of the night. The wind, too, was now blowing, and the forest gave forth what Dick's ears turned into a long despairing wail. ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sweet singer of Israel been on the field after the clash of arms, doubtless he would have repeated his wail: "How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!" The Covenanters defeated! How! Why! Ah, there was an Achan in the camp. The king was already perfidious in the Covenant. His perfidy had blighted the nation, and smitten the army. Hitherto God had led the armies ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... his dog, and wrapped sixty silver dollars in a leathern bag, which he sewed fast to the girdle he wore about his waist. That same night some one was heard playing wildly up in the birch copse above the Skogli mansion; now it sounded like a wail of distress, then like a fierce, defiant laugh, and now again the music seemed to hush itself into a heart-broken, sorrowful moan, and the people crossed themselves, and whispered: "Our Father;" but Borghild ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... well has found peace at last; the coal-black wine has been drunk: there is an end! And you, you poor, cowering fugitives, who only see each other's terrified faces when the wan gleam of the lightning blazes through the sky, perhaps it is well that you should weep and wail for the young master; but that is soon over, and the day will break. And this is what I am thinking of now: when the light comes and the seas are smooth, then which of you—oh, which of you all will tell this tale to the two women ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... quite beyond mistake the sound for which they listened was presently loud in their ears. And it was the sound of steel on steel; the sound of men shouting in the breathless moment between sword-stroke and sword-stroke; the cry of victory and the wail of defeat. ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... That year indeed, he was trobled with a rheume, What willingly he did confound, he wail'd, Beleeu't till ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... introduce him to the street with an indicating finger. The gloom grew, calling out the lights into strength, but the concourse did not thin: it only gathered in numbers, and the long, moaning hoot of an out-going tramp filled the air as though with a wail of sorrow at departure. Lascars in coal-begrimed tunics joined in with the rest, adding their voices to the babel, and round-hatted sailors from the Royal Indian Marine ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... music—melancholy enough to make one shiver—and shrill, shrill as the song of the grasshoppers, it began to make itself heard, very softly at first, then growing louder and rising in the silence of the noonday like the diminutive wail of some poor Japanese soul in pain and anguish; it was Chrysantheme and her ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... chin (Not a toot!), While the leading violin And the flute Wail and plead in low duet Till, it may be, eyes are wet. She her trombone ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... will not come," she said at last, in a low wail of anguish. She rose and turned to Hillyard. Her face glimmered against the darkness deathly white and her ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... a strange sight that met their gaze as they entered the village. Men, women and children, with a wild wail, threw themselves flat on their stomachs, uttering the most melancholy moans that ever came from human lips. Interspersed with the cries were apparent ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... away sounded a long-drawn whistle, now faint, now clearer, a modulated wail broken at moments by a tremolo on one high note. It was like a voice lamenting to the dead of night. Glazzard could not endure it; he turned back into the station and tramped noisily on the ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... cabin, as if it felt the desolateness of the barren, icy hills and the black hollows between, and of the angry red sky with its purple shadows lowering over the unhappy land—and would make fickle friendship with some human thing. Charming Billy, hearing the crooning wail of it, knew well the portent and sighed. Perhaps he, too, felt something of the desolateness without and perhaps he, too, longed for ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... more and more slowly backward and forward—the music became still more affecting, and passing from thoughtfulness to sadness, and from sadness to passionate regret, it died away in a wail. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... as of a new-born lamb, high above her head; she started and looked up. Then a wail from the cliffs, as of a child in pain, answered by another from the opposite rocks. They were but the passing snipe, and the otter calling to her brood; but to her they were mysterious, supernatural ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... my mien may change and hair, Ere, with true pity touch'd, shall greet my eyes My idol imaged in that laurel green: For, unless memory err, through seven long years Till now, full many a shore has heard my wail, By night, at noon, in ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... wail deride! The solemn sorrow dies in scorn; And lonely in the waste I hide The tortured heart that would forewarn. And the happy, unregarded, Mocked by their fearful joy, I trod: Oh! dark to me the lot ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... humans' dinner-time he scorned their expensive fare and sneaked away into the shadows of the garden to wait for Ringtail Pete and the rising of the moon. It rose; and, as it peeped above the wall, there also rose a cautious signal-wail, and Pete's one eye glowed green among ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... tilted back his head, twisted his face to a hideous grimace, and then opening his shapeless mouth emitted a tremendous wail which took shape in the ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... its music. The freshness of its song was unchanged, the glad rush of its waters was as joyous as ever, but the spirits were quieted that used to answer it with sweeter freshness and lighter joyousness. Its faint echo of the old-time laugh was blended now in Fleda's ear with a gentle wail for the rushing days and swifter fleeing delights of human life;—gentle, faint, but clear,—she could hear it very well. Taking up her walk again with a step yet slower and a brow yet more quiet, she went on till she came in sight of the little mill; and presently above the noise of the ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... 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 equal ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... spoonful of alcohol—that's all; that's all, men. Pretty cold night, this—minus thirty-eight. Only a quarter of a mile covered to-day. Everybody suffering in their feet, and so weak—and starving—and freezing." All at once the voice became a wail. "My God! is it never going to end?... Sh—h, steady, what was that? Who whimpered? Was that Ward Bennett? No whimpering, whatever comes. Stick it out like men, anyway. Fight it out till we drop, but no whimpering.... Who said there were steam whalers ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... be consumed amid the wreck, they then started back with their train of one hundred and twelve captives. The horrors of that march through the wilderness can never be told. The groan of helpless exhaustion, or the wail of suffering childhood, was instantly stilled by the pitiless tomahawk. Mrs. Williams, the feeble wife of the minister, had remembered her Bible in the midst of surprise, and comforted herself with its promises, till, her strength failing, she commended her five captive children ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... Everybody knows this, and the slave knows it best of all; so that he feels that there are ten chances of his finding an abusive and tyrannical master, to one of his finding a considerate and kind one. Therefore is it that the wail over a kind master is loud and long, as well ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had taken place in the window, and was interrupted every moment by the shouts and laughter of the children; but beneath these sounds of merriment came an occasional bitter wail ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... teeth bare, gave his mouth the appearance of a horrible and convulsive smile. He seized my arm with his whole strength; and, as I felt his grasp, and saw him struggling for words, I expected to hear curses and execrations, or the wild howl of an infuriated madman. I was mistaken. The wail of a sickly child, who dreads its mother's departure, was the only sound to which I could compare that wretched man's voice. He held me with a force almost supernatural; but his tongue uttered supplications in a feeble monotonous tone, and with the most humble and beseeching manner. 'Leave him,' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... about the tiller. There was a jerk on the tow-rope and a bump as the nose of the "Old Woman" ran into the river-bank. Netteke, the mule, came to a sudden stop, and Mother De Smet sat down equally suddenly on a coil of rope. Her potatoes spilled over the deck, while a wail from the front of the boat announced that one of the babies had bumped, too. Mother De Smet picked herself up and ran to see what was the matter with the baby, while Father De Smet seized a long pole and hurried forward. Joseph left the mule ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins |
