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Woful   Listen
adjective
Woful, Woeful  adj.  
1.
Full of woe; sorrowful; distressed with grief or calamity; afflicted; wretched; unhappy; sad. "How many woeful widows left to bow To sad disgrace!"
2.
Bringing calamity, distress, or affliction; as, a woeful event; woeful want. "O woeful day! O day of woe!"
3.
Wretched; paltry; miserable; poor. "What woeful stuff this madrigal would be!"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Woful" Quotes from Famous Books



... woful face. "P'raps you're not so much to blame, Mint. You don't know," he said, in a somewhat softened tone. ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... what he was about. But one room, but one bed, was all they had between them. She was by no means free from fear. He had seen his friends married, and felt soured thereat. Thenceforth her way is marked by tears, by utter weakness, by a woful self-surrender. Threatened by her only God, her son, heart-broken at finding herself in a plight so unnatural, she falls desperate. She tries to drown all her memories in sleep. At length comes an issue for which neither of them can fairly account, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... discovery for the gentlemen of the so-called "forward party" of the Russian Government, since they now beheld not only a new means of evading the plain letter of their agreement, but gleefully found a woful lack of spirit in their partner to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... him? He died out there in the cold. Slap from the bridge fell old Peachey, turning and twisting in the air like a penny whirligig that you can sell to the Amir—No; they was two for three ha’pence, those whirligigs, or I am much mistaken and woful sore. And then these camels were no use, and Peachey said to Dravot—‘For the Lord’s sake, let’s get out of this before our heads are chopped off,’ and with that they killed the camels all among the ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling

... who play with edge tools must expect to be cut. Time and tide wait for no man. Too many cooks spoil the broth. Union is strength. Waste not, want not. What the eye sees not, the heart rues not. When rogues fall out honest men get their own. When the cat's away, the mice play. Willful waste makes woful want. You cannot eat your cake ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman

... his destiny. Holding fast to his great purpose to find a passage to the East by the North, he compelled every one of Fate's deals against him—until that last deal—to turn in his favor; and even in that last deal he won a death so heroically woful that exalted pity for him, almost as much as admiration for his great achievements, has kept his fame through the ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier

... Elijah with ravens, and saved Daniel in the horrible den. At last she floated into the English seas, and was thrown by the waves on the Northumberland shore, near which stood a great castle. The constable of the castle came down in the morning to see the woful woman. She spoke a kind of corrupt Latin, and could neither tell her name nor the name of the country of which she was a native. She said she was so bewildered in the sea that she remembered nothing. The man could not help loving her, and so took her home to live with himself and his wife. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... high-flyer, as he calls it After awhile I caressed her and parted seeming friends Book itself, and both it and them not worth a turd But a woful rude rabble there was, and such noises Did find none of them within, which I was glad of Did so watch to see my wife put on drawers, which (she did) Duodecimal arithmetique Employed by the fencers to play prizes at Enquiring ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger

... "Sling another stick on the fire, lad, the way you won't be perished sittin' there in thim woful ould rags. I've plinty of prayers I might be ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... in this manner, with an eloquence peculiar to himself, the cook got up, and after a hearty curse on the poor author of this mischance, who lay under the table with a woful countenance, emptied a salt-cellar in her hand, and, stripping down the patient's stocking, which brought the skin along with it, applied the contents to the sore. This poultice was scarce laid on, when the drummer, who had begun to abate of his ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... Of dire combustions and cosfus'd events. New-hatch'd to th' woful time, the obscure bird Clamour'd the live-long night. Some say the earth Was fev'rous ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... offerer Of sacrifices, this close votary Of Vedas and Vedangas, in the war Deadly to enemies, like sun and moon For splendor—by some certain evil ones Being defied to dice, my virtuous Prince Was, by their wicked acts, of realm despoiled— Wealth, jewels, all. I am his woful wife, The Princess Damayanti. Seeking him Through thickets have I roamed, over rough hills, By crag and river and the reedy lake, By marsh and waterfall and jungle-bush, In quest of him—my lord, my warrior, My hero—and still roam, uncomforted. Worshipful brethren! say if he hath ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... my dining at Mrs. Procter's yesterday. She was quite alone.... She showed me a beautiful song written by my sister, words and music, a sort of lullaby, but the most woful words! I think I must have inspired her with them, they threw me into such a state of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... sensual alliance was born the illegitimate child, that woful ecclesiastical offspring, we ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman

... with his mace. For me, I rode along farther, swam my horse over the river in the twilight, with much ado to keep clear of the dead horses and poor slaughtered comrades that cumbered the stream, and what was even worse, some not yet dead, borne along and crying out. A woful day it was to all who loved the kindly Duke of York, or this same poor house! As luck would have it, I fell in with Jock of Redesdale and a few more honest fellows, who had 'scaped. We found none but friends when we were well past the ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... repair. Here are a few Roman Classics, which are more choice than those in the Public Library: as Reisinger's Suetonius, in 4to. but cropt, and half bound in red morocco, with yellow sprinkled edges to the leaves—a woful specimen of the general style of binding in this library. Lucretius, 1486: Manilius, 1474: both in one volume, bound in wood—and sound and desirable copies. Eutropius, 1471; by Laver; a sound, desirable copy, in genuine condition. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... Redstock, swaggering out into the road. "Francy McCraw, our good neighbors are woful perplexed by that thread ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... actually trying to betray me; and for several months, at least, was in league with the enemy against me. I believe that the reason why they did not move earlier was the want of the great mover of all treasons—money: of which, in all parts of my establishment, there was a woful scarcity; but of this they also managed to get a supply through my rascal of a godson, who could come and go quite unsuspected: the whole scheme was arranged under our very noses, and the post-chaise ordered, and the means ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... continuing the war. Stephen forthwith broke up his camp and retreated towards Constantinople. On his way he was met by the Emperor Alexius, at the head of a considerable force, hastening to take possession of the conquests made by the Christians in Asia. As soon as he heard of their woful plight, he turned back, and proceeded with the Count of Blois to Constantinople, leaving the remnant of the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... palace, and threw herself on her knees before Angelo, saying, "I am a woful suitor to your honour, if it will please your honour to hear me."—"Well, what is your suit?" said Angelo. She then made her petition in the most moving terms for her brother's life. But Angelo said, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... salt sea must have been his grave." Here sobs prevented her utterance; but after a short pause, with many vehement lamentations over the virtues of the dead, and imprecations on his murderers, she related that as soon as the woful tidings were brought to Monktown kirk (and brought too by the Southron, who was to take it in possession!) she and the clan's-folk who would not swear fidelity to the new lord, were driven from the house. She hastened to the bloody theater of massacre; and ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... would rather have had his hand cut off than go out to meet an angry griffin; but he felt that it was his duty to go, for it would be a woful thing if injury should come to the people of the town because he was not brave enough to obey the summons of the Griffin. So, pale and frightened, ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton

... flags flew at half mast, and the woful news was told: "The President is shot!" The man had fallen who, when Lincoln was murdered, spoke the memorable words from the Treasury building, on the spot where Washington was inaugurated: "The President is dead—but God reigns and the Republic ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... Sense among all Orders of Men; and that Servants report most of the Good or Ill which is spoken of their Masters. That there are Men of Sense who live in Servitude, I have the Vanity to say I have felt to my woful Experience. You attribute very justly the Source of our general Iniquity to Board-Wages, and the Manner of living out of a domestick Way: But I cannot give you my Thoughts on this Subject any way so ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... woful shepherds, weep no more For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... speak'st by woful Experience— but that I should miscarry after thy wholesom Documents— but we are all mortal, as thou say'st, Ned— Would I had never crost the Ferry from Croydon; a few such Nights as these wou'd learn a Man Experience enough to be a Wizard, if he ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... the Spectators may get Good by the horrible Spectacle that is now before them! Let all the People hear and fear, and let no more any such Wickedness be done, as has produced this woful Spectacle. And let all the People beware how they go on in the Ways of Sin, and in the pathes of the Destroyer, after so Solemn Warnings; Lest thou shouldest not only leave them to the grossest Acts ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... the contrary, although dealing with a subject which bristles with points of a highly controversial nature, he states his conclusions with an assurance which is little short of oracular. Heedless of the woful fate which has attended many of the fiscal seers who have preceded him, he does not hesitate to pronounce the most confident prophecies upon a subject as to which experience has proved that prophecy is eminently hazardous, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... the Captain Judgment was making this oration to the town of Mansoul, it was observed by some that Diabolus trembled.[103] But he proceeded in his parable, and said, 'O thou woful town of Mansoul! wilt thou not yet set open thy gate to receive us, the deputies of thy King, and those that would rejoice to see thee live? "Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... unharmed, a woful spectacle of extremest wretchedness, to which death would have been an undeserved relief. If we compare the clamorous and loud exclaims of Margaret after the slaughter of her son, to the ravings of Constance, we shall ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... sturdy influence of some one outside himself to keep him always in the beaten tracks. Already, for better or for worse, Catie's influence upon him was a strong one; stronger, Mrs. Brenton admitted to herself with a woful little sigh, than that of his own mother, despite the ill-concealed anxiety and the doting love that only a mother can give, and then only to an only son. Between the two of them, herself and Catie, Catie's will was the stronger law. Catie, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... arts could any longer practise on, turn away from the new trap; and a third, who can acquire no readers but by giving his books away, growing grey in scourging the sacred genius of antiquity by his meagre versions, and dying without having made up his mind, whether he were as woful a translator as some of his contemporaries ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... the woful'st husband comes alive, No husband now; the wight, that did uphold That name of husband, is now quite o'erthrown, And I am left ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... midst the smother, Shame and slaughter of it all? Did she wander like that other Woful, wistful, wife and mother, Round ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... 142. Indeed it is woful, when the young usurp the place, or despise the wisdom, of the aged; and among the many dark signs of these times, the disobedience and insolence of youth are among the darkest. But with whom is the fault? Youth never yet lost its modesty where age had ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... of Torel!—how, heartsure, Under all guise knowing her lord returned, She springs to meet him coming!—telling all In one great cry of joy. O me! the rout, The storm of questions! stilled, when Torel spake His name, and, known of all, claimed the Bride Wife, Maugre the wasted feast, and woful groom. All hearts but his were light to see Torel; But Adalieta's lightest, as she plucked The bridal-veil away. Something therein— A lady's dagger—small, and bright, and fine— Clashed out upon the marble. "Wherefore that?" Asked Torel; answered she, "I knew you true; And I could live, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... provisions. So the poor devil (I am writing of Mr. Legion) turns for relief from law to law, ever on the stool of repentance, yet ever unfouling the anchor of hope. By no power cm earth can his indurated understanding be penetrated by the truth that his woful state is due, not to any laws of his own, nor to any lack of them, but to his rascally refusal to obey the Golden Rule. How long is it since we were all clamoring for the Australian ballot law, which was to make a new Heaven and a ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... th' town, but now a days The Cit sets up in box, puffs, perfumes, plays, And tho' he passes for a Man of Trade, Is the chief squeaker at the Masquerade, Let him his Sister, or his wife beware, 'Tis not for nothing Courtiers go so far; Thus for a while he holds, till Cash is found To be a Dr. many a woful Pound, Then off he moves, and in another year, Turns true Alsatian, or Solicitor. For we (except o' th' stage) shall seldom find To a poor broken Beau, a Lady kind, Whilst pow'rful Guinea last, he's wondrous pretty, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... 'Twas pitiful to see them fall,— Torn, bleeding, weltering, gasping, all. Force, courage, cunning, all were plied; Intrepid troops on either side No effort spared to populate The dusky realms of hungry Fate. This woful strife awoke compassion Within another feather'd nation, Of iris neck and tender heart. They tried their hand at mediation— To reconcile the foes, or part. The pigeon people duly chose Ambassadors, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... window, looking out into the tempest and the gathering darkness. "The silent falling of snow is to me one of the most solemn things in nature. The fall of autumnal leaves does not so much affect me. But the driving storm is grand. It startles me; it awakens me. It is wild and woful, like my own soul. I cannot help thinking of the sea; how the waves run and toss their arms about,—and the wind plays on those great harps, made by the shrouds and masts of ships. Winter is here in earnest! Whew! How the old churl whistles and threshes the snow! Sleet ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... wealth to enjoy at that unhappy hour. 1160 The wise men sat apart in council sad, Talked of their woe; no joy was in their land. Thus would one hero oft another ask:— "Let him who has good counsel in his heart, And wisdom, hide it not! The hour is come Exceeding woful; great is now the need That we should hear ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown

... ice as thick as pasteboard, too surely showing that the night has made good yesterday's threat. Dalgleish, with his most melancholy face, conveys the most doleful tidings from Bogie. But servants are fond of the woful, it gives such consequence to the person who communicates ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... the land, and the hunter, forgetting his oath, slays four sea-gulls for food. The bird-wife 'shrilled out in a woful cry,' and taking the plumage of the dead birds, she makes wings for her children and for herself, and ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... bard—a cousin of her own—which she, naturally perhaps, but certainly cruelly, terminated by marrying an old East Indian nabob, with a complexion like curry powder, innumerable lacs of rupees, and a woful lack of liver. A refusal by one's cousin is a domestic treason of the most ruthless kind; and, assuming the author's statement to be substantially correct, we must say that the lady's conduct was disgraceful. What her sensations ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... for he had been set at liberty only to learn that liberty was but an empty sound. Sadly he confirmed the story of the surrender. The kindly eyes still strove to cheer, but their happy light was forever quenched. The firm lip quivered not as he told to the sorrowing women the woful tale, but the iron had entered his soul and rankled there until its fatal work was accomplished. Ah, many a noble spirit shrunk appalled from the "frowning Providence" which then and long afterwards utterly hid the face of a merciful and loving Father. ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... was a sad and woful day to the cities of the South, when her rebel princes renounced their allegiance to the government, and raised the traitor arm of rebellion against its authority. Imagined evils, in connection with the Union, were then converted into real ones, and these have been augmented a thousand-fold in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... would not permit her, as the most lovely woman there, to take upon her own shoulders the ridicule that had already been cast upon the ass. Had he been young and gaily caparisoned, she might have done it; but his age, the clumsy trappings of rustic make, and his needy woful look of hard servitude, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... was a coarse-mannered brute, of gross tastes and grovelling nature, without a spark of gallantry, and as destitute of courtesy as of honor. We overrate his very subtlety; for we measure it by its effects, the woful and agonizing results it brings about; forgetting that these, like all results, or resultants, are the product of at least two forces,—the second, in this instance, being the unsuspecting and impetuous nature of Othello, Had Iago undertaken to deceive any ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... Athenian genius had been extinguished, the schools of Greece were still pursuing the beaten paths, and teaching the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. It is the peculiar and prodigious advantage of travelling, that it counteracts this woful and degrading tendency, and by directing men's thoughts, as well as their steps, into foreign lands, has a tendency to induce into their ideas a portion of the variety and freshness which characterize the works of nature. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... There are likewise most lamentable Impressions which the Devil makes upon the Souls of Men by way of punishment upon them for their Sins. 'Tis thus when an Offended God puts the Souls of Men over into the Hands of that Officer who has the power of Death, that is, the Devil. It is the woful Misery of Unbelievers in 2 Cor. 4.4. The god of this World has blinded their minds. And thus it may be said of those woful Wretches whom the Devil is a God unto, the Devil so muffles them that they cannot see the things of their peace. And the ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... village and the mourners no longer went about the streets, Lemuel, Ralph, and I went for a final visit to the new stone house. It showed no change, that house, and save for the broken scaffolding above gave no token of its having been the scene of such a woful tragedy. But as we looked upon it from across its gruesome ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... softness in thy slender waist that lies, By the graces and the languor of thy body and thy shape, By the fount of wine and honey from thy coral lips that rise, O my hope, to see thine image in my dreams were sweeter far Than were safety to the fearful, languishing in woful wise! ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous

... my first acquaintance with a life of labour and restraint. I was but a slim, loose-jointed boy at the time, fond of the pretty intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when broad awake; and, woful change! I was now going to work in a quarry. I was going to exchange all my day-dreams for the kind of life in which men toil every day that they may be enabled to eat, and eat every day that they may ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... they touch is necessarily crude at first, but constantly gaining as they gain facility in working. A precedent of some kind they must have, and they find it close at hand in the Roman basilicas. Uncertain, from the result of woful experiments, of arches of great span, they pack their columns close together and surmount them with sturdy little arches that have scarcely any thrust. This arcade of heavy columns carrying absurdly disproportionate ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various

... rude." No wonder that the factory, like too many more, though a thriving concern to its owners, becomes "a prime nursery of vice and sorrow." "Virtue perished utterly within its walls, and was dreamed of no more; or, if remembered at all, only in a deep and woful sense of self-debasement—a struggling to forget, where it was hopeless to obtain." But to us, almost the most interesting passage in his book, and certainly the one which bears most directly on the general purpose of this article, is one in which he speaks of the effects of song on ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... French novel On gray paper with blunt type! Simply glance at it, you grovel Hand and foot in Belial's gripe: If I double down its pages At the woful sixteenth print, When he gathers his greengages, Ope a sieve ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... I ever employ you to give advice?" demanded Henriette. "It is quite evident that you don't understand me. Do you suppose for an instant that I am robbing these people here in Newport merely for the vulgar purpose of acquiring money? If you do you have a woful misconception of the purposes which ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs

... Miss Ophelia, "if you'll confess all about it, I won't whip you this time." Thus adjured, Topsy confessed to the ribbon and gloves, with woful protestations ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... merely of present illness, but that wasting whiteness which is only seen on faces accustomed to borrow artificial hues; in the other, a healthy pearl-tint, the gleamings and gradations of a perfect complexion. The one a child long lost on weary, woful ways, knowing, yet untaught by, the misery of desolation; the other a child still standing upon the misty threshold of unknown lands, looking around for guidance, yet already half feeling that the sole guide and ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove; Now drooping, woful wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... 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 madder ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... most faithful lady, all this while, Forsaken, woful, solitary maid, Far from the people's throng, as in exile, In wilderness and wasteful deserts stray'd To seek her knight; who, subtlely betray'd By that false vision which th' enchanter wrought, Had her abandon'd. She, of nought afraid, Him through the woods and wide wastes daily sought, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... bed and kill them to save the disgrace of their dying in bed.[104] Keysler cites several instances of this savage custom in Prussia, and a Count Schulenberg rescued an old man who was being beaten to death by his sons at a place called Jammerholz, or "Woful Wood;" while a Countess of Nansfield, in the fourteenth century, is said to have saved the life of an old man on the ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... answer? for my arms are fain To clasp them fast upon the rock-bound steep, Their ancient home. Shall Athens yearn in vain, And all in vain must woful Hellas weep? Must the indignant shade of PHIDIAS mourn For his dear city, free but ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various

... "Oh! woful day! Oh! unhappy church of Christ! fast rushing round and round the fatal circle of absorbing ruin!... Daily does every one see that things are going wrong. With sighs does every true heart confess that rottenness is somewhere; but, ah! it is hopeless ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... with humbled pride, Looked at the judge with woful mien, 'Too well am I convinced' he cried, 'Unjust to me thou hast not been.' The coxcomb scarce had disappeared, when he his god of ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... my Mother, for a Fathers death Take on with me, and ne're be satisfi'd? Fa. How will my Wife, for slaughter of my Sonne, Shed seas of Teares, and ne're be satisfi'd? King. How will the Country, for these woful chances, Mis-thinke the King, and not be satisfied? Son. Was euer sonne, so rew'd a Fathers death? Fath. Was euer Father so bemoan'd his Sonne? Hen. Was euer King so greeu'd for Subiects woe? Much is your sorrow; Mine, ten ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... aching call of gulls along a shore to which the netted foam crept out of darkness, the island of Aengus and the elder gods and the eternal glories that never were, tall kings and women girdled with crusted gold, the woful incessant chanting and the—— ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... nature, and whenever a result is contrary to nature, the cause which produces it is a violation of nature's laws; and the violation of nature's laws, which results in the premature decay of American women, is found mainly in improper marriages, wrong sexual conditions, unhygienic habits, and the woful ignorance of both husband and wife in all that pertains to a proper marriage relation. And, ladies, if you will see that your husbands attend my lectures on Sexual Science, I will promise to educate them to that point where they will be able to preserve your beauty. And in my ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... speaks S. Gregory:—"Because GOD'S servants withdraw themselves from the world and its works, uselessly they cannot speak: so they bind them to silence that they dare say no word save it be teaching others or praising GOD: and therefore, when they ask GOD aught, He grants it at once." But we, woful wretches, who deal with the world, that chatter all the day like magpies; now lie, now twist, now speak evil, now quarrel, now backbite, now swear great oaths, these defile our prayer and hinder it, that it is not heard; for our mouth is as far from praying ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole

... These two were posted on a rampart's height, With more to guard the encampment from surprise, When 'mid the equal intervals, at night, Medoro gazed on heaven with sleepy eyes. In all his talk, the stripling, woful wight, Here cannot choose, but of his lord devise, The royal Dardinel; and evermore Him, left unhonoured ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... him that which is a boon to common men but a curse to public men. Jason Mallard was without a sense of humour. He never laughed at others; he never laughed at himself. Certain of our public leaders have before now fallen into the woful error of doing one or both of these things. Wherefore they were forever after called humourists—and ruined. When they said anything serious their friends took it humorously, and when they said anything humorously their enemies ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... according to the color of the unwholesome weeds they were driven to devour in order to support life, at least it was in the wake of a terrible war that famine came. It was reserved for the eighteenth century to disclose to us the woful spectacle of a people perishing of starvation in the midst of the profoundest peace, frequently of the greatest plenty, the food produced in abundance by the labor of the inhabitants being sold and sent off to foreign countries to enrich absentee landlords. Nay, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... farther and farther behind. At length he turned and came back to meet her. His eyes were downcast, and there was misery unspeakable on his white face. As he came up to her he held out his hand, and looked at her with a strange, woful gaze. ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... practice, from that reformation purity, both in church and state (which, as the attainment of the nations of Britain and Ireland, was by them accounted their chief ornament and glory), that have taken place, especially in this kingdom, since our woful decline commenced: whereby the witnesses for Scotland's covenanted reformation, have been deprived of any legal benefit, as well, since as before the late revolution; in which the reformation, neither in civil nor ecclesiastical ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... it with the solemn and woful communication of the Evangelist John, in order to show how exactly they accord, how clearly the doctrines of the one are deduced from the Revelation of the other, and how justly, therefore, it assumes the exclusive title of evangelical. 'And I saw the dead * * * and the dead were judged ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... for his drive, smiling at my woful plight. Is it only after hard riding that remorse succeeds enjoyment? I was left alone in his great caravansary of a mansion. I wandered from room to room, from corridor to corridor,—now glancing through the window-jalousies, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... Launcelot] Now when the people of the town beheld that terrible blow they lifted up their voices in a great outcry, crying out: "Turn back, Sir Knight! Turn back! For this is a very woful thing for thee that thou hast done!" and some cried out: "Thou hast killed the giants' warder of the bridge!" And others cried: "Thou art a dead man unless thou make haste away from this." But to all this Sir Launcelot paid no heed, but wiped his sword ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... of this dismal grove, Their loathsome nests the brutal Harpies build, Who from the Strophades the Trojans drove With woful auguries erelong fulfilled. Huge wings they have, men's faces, human throats, Feet armed with claws, vast bellies clothed with plumes: From those strange trees they pour their doleful notes. 'Now, ere thou further penetrate these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... yesterday that Palmerston was out and Durham in his place. The latter was under the gallery when Palmerston made that woful exhibition the other night, and must have been well satisfied. I met Peel at dinner yesterday, and after it he talked to me of this report, which he concluded was not true; but he said that Palmerston had seemed bereft of his senses, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... before God, angels and men, against all acts made anywise derogative to the work of God and reformation; likewise protests against all banishments, imprisoning, finings and confinements that the people of God had been put to these years by-past; describing the woful state and condition of malignants, and all the enemies of Jesus Christ. And in the last place speaks very fervently anent his own sufferings, state and condition, which he begins to express in ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... Luckenbooths, waiting for the breaking up of the States, which were then deliberating anent the proposal from the French king that the Prince Dolphin, his son, should marry our young queen, the fair and faulty Mary, whose doleful captivity and woful end scarcely expiated the sins and sorrows that she caused to her ill-used and poor misgoverned native ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... nourishment, until his Doctor tells him that if he did not fall to with a Roast chicken and a flask of White Wine, he would sink and Die from pure Exhaustion. After this he began to Pick up a bit, and to Relish his Victuals; but it was woful to see the countenance he pulled when the Doctor's Bill was brought him, and he found that he had something like Eighty Pounds sterling to pay for a Sickness of Forty Days. Of course he swore that he had not had a tithe of the Draughts and Mixtures that were set down to him,—and he had not indeed ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... glee, "Cheemaun, my darling, O my Birch-canoe! leap forward, Where you see the fiery serpents, Where you see the black pitch-water!" Forward leaped Cheemaun exulting, And the noble Hiawatha Sang his war-song wild and woful, And above him the war-eagle, The Keneu, the great war-eagle, Master of all fowls with feathers, Screamed and hurtled through the heavens. Soon he reached the fiery serpents, The Kenabeek, the great serpents, Lying huge upon the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... outrun us all. Q. Isab. Nay, son, not so; and you must not discourage Your friends that are so forward in your aid. Kent. Sir John of Hainault, pardon us, I pray: These comforts that you give our woful queen Bind us in kindness all at your command. Q. Isab. Yea, gentle brother:—and the God of heaven Prosper your happy motion, good Sir John! Y. Mor. This noble gentleman, forward in arms, Was born, I see, to be our anchor-hold.— Sir John of Hainault, ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... o'clock the rush began. I shall never forget that woful sight of a beaten, demoralized army that came rushing back,—humanity in the last throes of endurance. Wan, hollow-eyed, ragged, footsore, bloody, the men limped along unarmed, but followed by siege-guns, ambulances, gun-carriages, and wagons in aimless confusion. ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... in woful plight; borne in an hour syne by four carles who said you had been set upon by the Master of Albany, and sair harried, and they say the Tutor doth nought but wail for his bairns. How won ye out of ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Baltimore, I found that so woful was the condition of the road between this city and the capital, that, although the distance is but thirty-seven miles, and that there remained full three hours of daylight, still no regular stage would encounter, until morning, the perils ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... procession that made its way to the gate of the town. Sir John led the way, the devoted six followed, while the remainder of the towns-people made their progress woful with tears and cries of grief. Months of suffering had not caused them deeper sorrow than to see these their ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... goats or of beeves on your altars devoted by Hector, Whom thus, dead as he lies, ye will neither admit to be ransom'd, Nor to be seen of his wife, or his child, or the mother that bore him, Nor of his father the king, or the people, with woful concernment Eager to wrap him in fire and accomplish the rites of departure? But with the sanction of Gods ye uphold the insensate Achilles, Brutal, perverted in reason, to every remorseful emotion Harden'd his heart, as the lion that ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... sight then gan he see; His wife and children three Out of the fire were fled: There they sat, under a thorn, Bare and naked as they were born, Brought out of their bed. A woful man then was he, When he saw them all naked be, The lady said, all so blive, "For nothing, sir, be ye adrad." He did off his surcoat of pallade,[FN572] And with it clad his wife. His scarlet mantle then shore[FN573] he; Therein he closed his children ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... Oh son, your woful faith moves all my heart. 'Tis pitiful! but see you not the blood That hotly streaks your sleeping lily there? See how it laces all his garments o'er, And signs the grievous sentence of ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... than take advantage of modern improvements, excited great mirth among our wiser brotherhood. We greeted the two pilgrims with many pleasant gibes and a roar of laughter; whereupon they gazed at us with such woful and absurdly compassionate visages that our merriment grew tenfold more obstreperous. Apollyon also entered heartily into the fun, and contrived to flirt the smoke and flame of the engine, or of his ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... smiting him, right and left, and somewhat checked the rush of the son of Posidon, for all his monstrous strength. Then he stood reeling like a drunken man under the blows, and spat out the red blood, while all the heroes together raised a cheer, as they marked the woful bruises about his mouth and jaws, and how, as his face swelled up, his eyes were half closed. Next, the prince teased him, feinting on every side but seeing now that the giant was all abroad, he planted his fist just above the middle of the nose, beneath the eyebrows, and skinned all ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... his vow, he had not been to see little Fanny. He was trying to drive her from his mind by occupation, or other mental excitement. He laboured, though not to much profit, incessantly in his rooms; and, in his capacity of critic for the Pall Mall Gazette, made woful and savage onslaught on a poem and a romance which came before him for judgment. These authors slain, he went to dine alone at the lonely club of the Polyanthus, where the vast solitudes frightened him, and made him only the more moody. He had been to ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... their two hands together behind their heads do make an hideous noise, crying and roaring as loud as they can, much praysing and extolling the Virtues of the deceased, tho there were none in him: and lamenting their own woful condition to live without him. Thus for three or four mornings they do rise early, and lament in this manner, also on evenings. Mean while the ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... in thy arms. 2. Is it a respect to prelacy that hinders thee, O Scotland? cursed be the day that ever they were born. 3. Is it a respect to the novations already come into Scotland? I may say cursed be these brats of Babel. It had been best to have rent them at the beginning, for many woful days have they brought on, and woful divisions have they brought in, and woful backslidings have they occasioned. Therefore away with these by-respects. 4. Is it a respect to the king? The Lord bless our king. Says not the covenant enough for the maintenance of the king? As ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... even sometimes had the vivid and horrid picture offered to our imagination, of a number of human creatures shut up by their fellow mortals in some strong hold, under an entire privation of sustenance; and presenting each day their imploring, or infuriated, or grimly sullen, or more calmly woful countenances, at the iron and impregnable gates; each succeeding day more haggard, more perfect in the image of despair; and after awhile appearing each day one fewer, till at last all have sunk. Now shall we feel it as a relief to ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... the banshee keen, All woful is her cry. She comes along the gray boreen— Pray God she pass ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson

... members of either class, but it is plain, from his four large quarto volumes, called Analecta, that he did not lack the will. In his Analecta Mr. Wodrow noted down all the news that reached him, scandals about 'The Pretender,' Court Gossip, Heresies of Ministers, Remarkable Providences, Woful Apparitions, and 'Strange Steps of Providence'. Ghosts, second sight, dreams, omens, premonitions, visions, did greatly delight him, but it is fair to note that he does not vouch for all his marvels, but merely ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... the respite from suffering and anxiety; she made herself the good comrade of the young man whom perhaps she even tempted to flatter her farther and farther out of the dreariness in which she had dwelt; and if any woful current of feeling swept beneath, she would not fathom it, but resolutely floated, as one may at such times, on the surface. They laughed together and jested; they talked in the gay idleness ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... have seen. The poor little woman had made up her mind to apply to Dangerfield. She had liked his talk at Belmont, where she had met him; and he enquired about the poor, and listened to some of her woful tales with a great deal of sympathy; and she knew he was very rich, and that he appreciated her Barney, and so she trudged on, full of hope, though I don't think many people who knew the world better would have given a ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... such a woful figure by the door as she turned her head—no bonnet, no shoes, and a tattered frock, all draggled with dirt and rain, and the long, uncombed locks straggling about the child's shoulders, and such a blue, pinched look ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous

... didn't make my trade in camphor after all and I lost in stocks, when if I'd only waited five minutes more in the office I'd have got the message from my brokers and saved my five hundred. Expensive, my time is, eh?" with a woful shake ...
— The Tipster - 1901, From "Wall Street Stories" • Edwin Lefevre

... says, apostrophisin' That uncommon woful wreck: "Your position's so surprisin' That I tremble for ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... all. An awful shadow accompanies the brilliant day of your genius. That dark humor of yours, that woful demon from whose companionship, by the law of your existence, you cannot be free, tolls funeral-bells and chants the dirges of death in your ears forever. What your faith does not take with warmth to its bosom it must spurn violently away; where you cannot hope strongly, you must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... French Valori that the matter lies, Montijos and the others being mere satellites on their respective sides. Much battered upon, this Hyndford, by refractory Hanoverians pitting George as Elector against the same George as King, and egging these two identities to woful battle with each other,—"Lay me at his Majesty's feet" full length, and let his Majesty say which is which, then! A heavy, eating, haggling, unpleasant kind of mortal, this Hyndford; bites and grunts privately, in a stupid ferocious manner, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... it all, my son. My purpose would not be answered unless I finished the narrative. You will gather from it, very possibly, the moral which I could not. You will comprehend something better, the woful distinction between courage of the blood and courage of the brain; between the mere recklessness of brute impulse, and the steady valor of the soul—that valor, which, though it trembles, marches forward to the attack—recovers from its fainting, to retrieve its defeat; ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove; Now drooping, woful-wan, like one forlorn. Or crazed with care, or crossed ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... many men have jumped In logic, and the safer course they took; By any other they would have been stumped, Unable to argue, or to quote a book, And quite dumbfounded, which they cannot brook; They break no bones, and suffer no contusion, Hiding their woful fall, by hook and crook, In slang and gibberish, sputtering and confusion; But that was not the way ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... "sundry rimes and verses affixed." Stern Endicott rode down ere long to investigate matters, and at once cut the "idoll Maypole" down, and told the junketers that he hoped to hear of their "better walking, else they would find their merry mount but a woful mount." ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... breast, Stuck heartwise; and whose glassy flatteries Take all the townsfolk ere they go to rest Who come to buy and gossip? Doth his eye Remember a face lovely in a wood? O people! hasten, hasten, do not buy His woful wares; the bird of grief doth brood There where his heart should be; and far away Dew lies on grave-flowers ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare

... was gathering a woful pity. He had enlisted to free the Uncle Toms, and carry God's vengeance to the Legrees. Here they were, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... bewildered brain her sad story was strangely complicated with that of the hapless girl of Verona. When she swallowed the sleeping-draught, he shrank and shuddered at the horrible pictures conjured up by her frenzied fancy; and in the last woful scene, he forgot himself, the play, the audience, everything but her, the forlorn gypsy child, the shy and lonely little girl whom long years ago he had taken on his knee, and smoothed down her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... house had indeed the air of having been possessed by devils. Every thing was topsy-turvy; trunks had been broken open, and chests of drawers and corner cupboards turned inside out, as in a time of general sack and pillage; but the most woful sight was the widow of Yan Yost Vanderscamp, extended a corpse on the floor of the blue-chamber, with the marks of a deadly gripe ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... capable of conveying, with electrical effect, the most diverse meanings—the solemnity of lofty thought, the tenderness of affection, the piteousness of forlorn sorrow, the awful sense of spiritual surroundings, the woful weariness of despair, the mocking glee of wicked sarcasm, the vindictive menace of sinister purpose, and the lightning glare of baleful wrath. In range of facial expressiveness his countenance is thus fully equal to that of his father. The ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... as having nine nieces on his hands, and makes a woful face over the fact. He dispensed a charming hospitality here, and no friend who ever visited him forgot the pleasure. He was a most genial and cordial host, and loved much to have his friends bring the children, of whom he was passionately ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... right at the girl when I said it. I was boasting. She knew it. She must see, too, what a woful figure I should make with strong-limbed fellows like Tim there, and strong-limbed hounds like old Captain, who was lying at my side. But somehow she liked my vaunting speech. I knew it when our ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... get together and have a society of their own, the which it is very affecting to watch—those tawdry pretences at gentility, those flimsy attempts at gaiety: those woful sallies: that jingling old piano; oh, it makes the heart sick to see and hear them. As Mrs. Raff, with her company of pale daughters, gives a penny tea to Mrs. Diddler, they talk about bygone times and the fine society they kept; and they sing feeble songs out of tattered old music-books; and ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to beat furiously upon the house and the din was appalling, but these two men, keen-eared, trained to the life of their mountains, had heard a sound which was not the storm, nor of the forest creatures doling their woful cries beneath the shelter of ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... pitying us nor able to help us. I would desire that this might first take impression on your hearts,—that sin sets God and man at infinite distance, and not only distance, but disaffection and enmity. It hath sown the seeds of that woful discord, and kindled that contention, which, if it be not quenched by the blood of Christ, will burn to everlasting, so that none can dwell with it, and yet sinners must dwell in it. There is a provoking quality in it, fit to alienate ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... thing more clearly. Looming up upon that fair horizon were wreathing clouds of smoke and crimson flames, and in the heart of it all the outline of the ship these fiends had doomed. No picture ever painted could present that woful scene or describe its magnificence as we saw it from the watch-tower of the reef. It was, indeed, as though the very heavens were on fire, while the sea all about the burning hull shone like a pool of molten gold in which strange shapes moved and the shadows of living things ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... woman, which drove them all to much admiration, desiring to know what it was, and no one resolving them they rose from the tables, and looking directly as the noise came to them, they espied the woful woman, the dogs eagerly pursuing her; the knight galloping after them with his drawn weapon, and came very near unto the company, who cried out with loud exclaims against the dogs, and the knights stepped forth in assistance ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... king's command, and then by the diligence of the House, that upon the jealousy and rumour made a committee, that was very diligent and solicitous to make that discovery, there was never any probable evidence (that poor creature's only excepted) that there was any other cause of that woful fire than the displeasure of God Almighty: the first accident of the beginning in a baker's house, where there was so great a stock of faggots, and the neighbourhood of such combustible matter, of pitch and rosin, and the like, led it in an instant from house to house, through Thames Street, with ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... sympathy not sunk into this blank despair, but wandering about as strangers in streets and ways, with the hope of succour from casual charity; what have we gained by such a change of scene? Woful is the condition of the famished Northern Indian, dependent, among winter snows, upon the chance passage of a herd of deer, from which one, if brought down by his rifle-gun, may be made the means of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... man was much astonished, and not less grieved, to see the son of his old friend in such woful plight. He rose up, however, embraced the youth, and asked the reason of ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... of Flatt'ry rise, Th' anointed Son of Dulness and of Lies: Whose softest Whisper fills a Patron's Ear, Who smiles unpleas'd, and mourns without a tear.[43] Persuasive, tho' a woful Blockhead he: Truth dies before his shadowy Sophistry. For well he knows[44] the Vices of the Town, The Schemes of State, and Int'rest of the Gown; Immoral Afternoons, indecent Nights, Enflaming Wines, and ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte

... would silence and crush her, and I fear our children will see the glory of England vanishing like Arthur in the mist; they will cry too late the woful ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... woful afflictions was the cause of the extraordinary precautions on the part of Boone ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis

... works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Of all this servile herd, the worst is he That in proud dulness joins with Quality. A constant critic at the great man's board, To fetch and carry nonsense for my Lord. What woful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me? But let a Lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! how the style refines! Before his sacred name flies every fault, And each exalted stanza teems ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... darkness of the night Sir Owen awoke by reason of a woful outcry and lamenting; and then he knew that Earl Cadoc, the Knight of the Fountain, was dead from the wound he ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... "You have fathomed the woful secret," replied Mr. Sumner. "It shows no evidence of the slightest thought. Only a man's fingers produced this. All power of originality had become lost; all ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... are so personated to the life, that wantons are tickled with delight, and feed their palates upon them. It seems the goodness is not portrayed with equal accents of liveliness as the wicked things are; otherwise men would be deterred from vicious courses, with seeing the woful success which follows them'—a result scarcely to be claimed by the actors of the day. Massinger, however, shows more moral feeling than is expended in providing sentiments to be tacked on as an external appendage, or satisfied by an obedience ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... fix'd the wedding-day, The morning that must wed them both; But Stephen to another maid Had sworn another oath; And with this other maid to church Unthinking Stephen went— Poor Martha! on that woful day A cruel, cruel fire, they say, Into her bones was sent: It dried her body like a cinder, And almost turn'd her brain ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth

... nouveaux acquisitions, France 9439 page 139.) The treaty of Amiens was negotiated and signed while Baudin's ships were at sea. The British Government at that time was very anxious for peace, and was prepared to make concessions—did, in fact, surrender a vast extent of territory won by a woful expenditure of blood and treasure. It cannot be said that Australia was greatly valued by Great Britain at the time. She occupied only a small portion of an enormous continent, and would certainly ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... innocence are charming to contemplate, I will say that in spite of ill-usage, in spite of drawbacks, in spite of mysterious separation and union, of hope delayed and sickened heart—in the teeth of Vanessa, and that little episodical aberration which plunged Swift into such woful pitfalls and quagmires of amorous perplexity—in spite of the verdicts of most women, I believe, who, as far as my experience and conversation go, generally take Vanessa's part in the controversy—in spite ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Triumphant words, through all the land's length sped. Triumphant words, but, being interpreted, Words of ill sound, woful as words can be. Another carnage by the drear Red Sea— Another efflux of a sea more red! Another bruising of the hapless head Of a wrong'd people yearning to be free. Another blot on her great name, who stands Confounded, left intolerably alone With the dilating ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... canoe-men leaped into the water, and, in spite of the surf, which nearly drowned them, dragged their vessel ashore, with all its load. He then went to the rescue of Hennepin, who, with his awkward companion, was in woful need of succor. Father Gabriel, with his sixty-four years, was no match for the surf and the violent undertow. Hennepin, finding himself safe, waded to his relief, and carried him ashore on his sturdy shoulders; while the old friar, though drenched to the skin, laughed gayly under his ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... happened to be a young gentleman of good fortune, who eagerly paid Mr. Esmond a thousand guineas for his majority in Webb's regiment, and was knocked on the head the next campaign. Perhaps Esmond would not have been sorry to share his fate. He was more the Knight of the Woful Countenance than ever he had been. His moodiness must have made him perfectly odious to his friends under the tents, who like a jolly fellow, and laugh at a melancholy warrior always sighing ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... that I was depressed, melancholy, and under a continued consternation, something of which the morning sun might dissipate, so that I should be able to take a heartier view of my woful plight. So after a good look seawards and at the heavens to satisfy myself on the subject of the weather, and after a careful inspection of the moorings of the boat, I entered her, feeling very sure that, if a sea set in ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... Alas! how woful was our loss! There was lost the Bishop Peter of Bethlehem, and Stephen of Perche, brother to Count Geoffry, and Renaud of Montmirail, brother of the Count of Nevers, and Matthew of Wallincourt, and Robert ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin

... his woful plight, His limbs, that tottered with his weight, And, friendly, to the stable led, And saw him littered, dressed, and fed. In slothful ease all night he lay; The servants rose at break of day; The market calls. Along the road His back must bear the ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... its hearers to fury. The whole city broke into tumult, as the woful tale passed from lip to lip. Many debtors escaped from their prisons and begged protection from the incensed multitude. The consuls found themselves powerless to restore order; and in the midst of the uproar horsemen came riding hotly through the gates, ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... more of the same sort, by turns light, fanciful, woful or desperate. But all this Rose ignored. "I am very glad," she wrote demurely, "that you are rich and happy on such insufficient grounds. I could scarcely deny a corner of my heart to any of my friends, but the rest of them are well enough acquainted with me to know that the possession is not a ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... profound only in the technicalities of the profession; and a very keen study and acquaintance with these—certainly a too great reliance upon them, and upon the dicta of other lawyers—leads to a dreadful departure from elementary principles, and a most woful (sic) disregard, if not ignorance, of those profounder sources of knowledge without which laws multiply at the expense of reason, and not in support of it; and lawyers may be compared to those ignorant captains to whom ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... positif Hath set to make werre and strif For worldes good, which may noght laste. God wot the cause to the laste 250 Of every right and wrong also; But whil the lawe is reuled so That clerkes to the werre entende, I not how that thei scholde amende The woful world in othre thinges, To make pes betwen the kynges After the lawe of charite, Which is the propre duete Belongende unto the presthode. Bot as it thenkth to the manhode, 260 The hevene is ferr, the world is nyh, And veine gloire is ek so slyh, Which ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower

... poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing, Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll; Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening, Were never miss'd."—Thus plaining, doth she bring A gentler speech from burning Porphyro; So woful, and of such deep sorrowing, 160 That Angela gives promise she will do Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... exception to a Greek verb, giving it no quarter. When they come to die, they leave earth with but a single regret: they have never been able fully to compass the ablative. But the rough-and-tumble student was the rule, with nose deep into stein, exaggerating little things into great, making woful ballad to his ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard



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