"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plunged into the eddying stream, and kept an onward course, without pause, without hindrance, without fatigue. With him I shouted, sang, laughed, exulted, wept. Nor did I retire to rest till, in imagination, I heard the bell of York Minster toll forth the knell ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... iron gate that led into this inclosure was a new brass plate, with 'Sanitarium' inscribed on it in great black letters. The bell, when the cabman rang it, pealed through the empty house like a knell; and the pallid, withered old man-servant in black who answered the door looked as if he had stepped up out of his grave to perform that service. He let out on me a smell of damp plaster and new varnish; and he ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Stael was right when she said that 'nevermore' was the saddest and most expressive word in the English tongue" (so harsh to her ears, usually). "I think she called it the sweetest, too, in sound; but to me it is simply the most sorrowful, a knell of doom, and it fills my soul to-day to overflowing, for 'never, never more' shall I ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... 'tis the knell of the Browning Society, Wind-bags are bursting all round us to-day; FURNIVALL fails, and for want of his diet he Pines like a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... bearing, Through sectarian rubbish tearing; The bell and whistle and the steaming, Startle thousands from their dreaming. Look out for the cars while the bell rings! Ere the sound your funeral knell rings. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... evening Markham became very confidential with Charles; telling him about the grievous mourning and lamentation at Redclyffe, when the bells rung a knell instead of greeting the young master and his bride, and how there was scarcely one in the parish that did not feel as if they had lost a son or a brother. He also told more and more of Sir Guy's excellence, and talked of fears of his ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exception of two from an unknown donor that contained the Saturday Review and his old friend Punch for 1868. Then he goes over African travelers and their achievements, real and supposed. He returns again to the achievements of ladies, and praises Miss Tinne and other women. "The death-knell of American slavery was rung by a woman's hand. We great he-beasts say Mrs. Stowe exaggerated. From what I have seen of slavery I say exaggeration is a simple impossibility. I go with the sailor who, on seeing slave-traders, said: 'If the devil ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... no railroads, merely for the purpose of standing in a ride and knocking over a certain quantity of half-tame fowls. No, no; I ought to have seen it long ago. I had lost him now, and now I knew his value when it was too late. Too late!—the knell that tolls over half the hopes and half ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... of fish no longer come so near the shore as they used in the olden time, for then the kirk bell of St. Monan's had its tongue tied when the "draive" was off the coast, lest its knell should frighten away the ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Voiceless now, speed on before; Soon shall knell that chapel bell For the songs you'll sing ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet-song and dance and wine; And thou art terrible—the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know or dream or ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... cooking, however, is so generally abused as frying. The frying-pan has awful sins to answer for. What untold horrors of dyspepsia have arisen from its smoky depths, like the ghosts from witches' caldrons! The fizzle of frying meat is as a warning knell on many an ear, saying, "Touch not, taste not, if you would not burn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... vault was a dungeon grim, And they say that many a chanted hymn Has rung a knell on the moldy air For luckless errant prisoned there, As kneeling monk and pious nun Sang orison at set of sun. A single window, dark and small, Showed opening in the heavy wall, Nor other entrance seemed attained That erst had human footstep gained. I paused before the uncanny place And peered ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... in the Burial Register as "a Player," to which the Monthly Account adds that he was "buried in the church with a forenoon knell of the great bell," costing ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... possible extension of the liberty of the people. Looking at a country such as that, is there any man who hears me who does not feel that if, in order to satisfy a greedy appetite for aggrandizement, coming whence it may, Belgium were absorbed, the day that witnessed the absorption would hear the knell of public right and public law in Europe? But we have an interest in the independence of Belgium, which is wider than that—which is wider than that which we may have in the literal operation of the guarantee. It is found in the answer to the ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... the morning came, the second only after death. The neighbouring thanes whom the troubled times did not detain at home, the churls of the estate, the thralls, crowded the precincts of the minster, as the solemn bell tolled the deep funeral knell. At length the monks poured into the church, while the solemn "Domino refugium" arose from their lips—the same grand words which for these thousand years past have told of the eternity of God and the destiny of the creature; ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... notwithstanding the elation of his heart, and the ethereal joy which flowed in all his veins, the name of Mr. Millbank sounded, something like a knell. However, this was not the time to reflect. He obeyed the hint of Edith; made the most rapid toilet that ever was consummated by a happy lover, and in a few minutes entered the drawing-room of Hellingsley, to encounter the gentleman whom he hoped ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... and the frost began to creep after it. Already the bulk of vegetation about them (save the hardy firs and kindred trees and shrubs) were black and dead. The change in climate had tolled the knell of all those plants that had withstood heretofore the rigors of the ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... have conducted, them in a different direction, but not one so peculiarly perilous. From this they made a turn to the left into a lane that would have led them back again to a little village, through which they had already passed, the bell of which was already sounding their death-knell. The constabulary, by turning into the narrow lane at the left, unconsciously approached the very ambush into which the people, or rather their more disciplined leaders, had intended to decoy them. This lane was enclosed by walls, and on ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... of Hercules, to the very soil of ancient Carthage. Victorious banners were already floating on the margin of the Great Desert, and they were not the banners of Caesar. Some vigorous hand was demanded at this moment, or else the funeral knell of Rome was on the point of sounding. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that, had the imbecile Carinus (the brother of Numerian) succeeded to the command of the Roman armies at this time, or any other than Dioclesian, the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... who hears for the first time this weird song, is told the first and greatest secret of the Northland; to him who has heard it often, it is the solemn knell of lost endeavor. It is the plaint of tortured souls, for in it is invested the heritage of the North, the suffering of countless generations—the warning and the requiem to ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... single syllable; and the flask that had been filled for him stood upon the table untouched. He sat with his eyes fixed upon the stranger, and his skin as pale as a corpse. Betty was in the same state of immovable terror. Every word that fell from his lips was a death-knell—every drop of his red drink was as much liquid fire—and every look was ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... bugle's clanging knell," Cried the fair youth with silver voice; "And for devotion's choral swell, Exchange the rude, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... ring the sacring bell, Keep your hours, and tell your knell, Rise at midnight at your matins, Read your Psalter, sing your latins, And when your blood shall kindle pleasure, Scourge your self in ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... longer the herald of peace, nor the token of joy, for the villagers knew full well that it was tolling the knell of the departed priest, and their hearts were heavy with sorrow for the friend they ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... his dying fear One dreadful sound could the Rover hear— A sound as if with the Inchcape bell The devil below was ringing his knell." ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... for a moment, then fled down the stair and out of the door and turning his back for the last time upon the house whose young master he had been, with the word "Nevermore" ringing like a knell in his ears, made his way again to the abode of love and peace in Baltimore, which held his whole heart and which ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... her bosom heaving like the sea under her close arms—and I was face to face with her, alone, with ruin between us. So with a stamp of her little foot, so with a flick of the fingers, it seems, she had broken her own image and killed love outright. There and then love died, and his funeral knell was the horrid barking laughter with which I greeted ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... ten, sounded through the muffling storm a knell as mournful as some tolling bell, while into that wild, moaning Friday night, went the desolate woman, wearing henceforth the brand of Cain—remanded to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... purpose and with high design; Else men who saw the world had gone astray Would only wish it better—and lie down, In vain regret to perish.— How his head Roll'd on the platform with deep, hollow sound! Methinks I hear it now, and through my brain It vibrates like the storm's accusing knell, Making the guilty quake. I am not guilty! It was the nation's voice, the headsman's axe. Why drums it then within my throbbing ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... hesitation to become his wife, when the course at last seemed clear. His trouble at this time appears to have had a serious effect on his health, and some words spoken half in malice, half in warning by Madame de Girardin, must have sounded like a knell in his ears. He tells them apparently in jest to Madame Hanska to give her an example of the nonsense people talk in Paris. In his accuracy of repetition, however, we can trace a passionately anxious desire to force Madame Hanska herself ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... He left the archdeacon's grounds that he might escape attention, and sauntered among the green hillocks under which lay at rest so many of the once loving swains and forgotten beauties of Plumstead. To his ears Eleanor's last words sounded like a knell never to be reversed. He could not comprehend that she might be angry with him, indignant with him, remorseless with him, and yet love him. He could not make up his mind whether or no Mr Slope was in truth a favoured rival. If not, why should she not ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... air, he would unbosom himself entirely, and prepared eagerly to listen. And the clock, in the altar on which Iphigenia was situated, beginning, after a preparatory convulsion, to toll twelve, the mere tolling seemed as if it would last until one—so prolonged was the knell to the anxious spinster. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... least afraid, and only thought, even when those doleful words seemed to ring like a knell through the roar of the waves, "Tom will be saved if I reach the shore, and if I don't, Pirate is sure to land and make his way to a house at once. That will tell as well as ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... fell back step by step, till they found the support of a tree- trunk, when they waited for the attack. From time to time the low growls gave warning of the enemy's close presence, and to them each sound was as a death-knell; for what were their knives against a foe so powerful, who had, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... are cast on foreign shores, Beyond the dark-blue sea, Sad memory oft returns to weep, O dearest home, with thee, And when the knell of death shall come, And set our spirits free, Our hearts shall find their sweetest rest, O ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... They were Merrie England in full flower. In part, I suppose, my tears were tears of joy for the very joyousness of these men; in part, of envy for their fine simplicity; in part, of sorrow in the thought that they were a survival of the past, not types of the present, and that their knell would soon be tolled, and the old elm ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... and sing, she answered, "I can't; I can't. It would bring it all back and shake up the bottle. I hate the memory of it when I sang to the crowd and they applauded. I hear them now; it is baby's death knell. I can never sing again as ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... ship to shore, and Iseult the Fair set foot upon the land. She heard loud mourning in the streets, and the tolling of bells in the minsters and the chapel towers; she asked the people the meaning of the knell and of their tears. An old man said ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... the Pacific, the answer came. It roared from a thousand cannon, it flashed from a million muskets. The sudden gleam of uplifted swords revealed it, the quiver of bristling bayonets wrote it in blood. A knell to the despot, a paean to the slave, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... coffee-coloured mulatto held out a grayish-white palm for the quarter-dollar the passenger was ready to drop into it, and stepped back to the platform of the car. The engine bell tolled slowly, as if it sounded a knell, and the train wound away. The curve of the line carried it out of sight in less than a minute, but in the clear mountain air the quickened ringing of the bell, the pant of the engine, and the roll of the wheels were audible for a long time. Then the engine, with a final wail ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... lord he loves me well; But, when first he breathed his vow, I felt my bosom swell, For the words rang as a knell, And the voice seemed his who fell 10 In the battle down the dell, And who ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... for the hearts that bleed 'Neath misery's furrowing trace; Toll for the hapless orphan left, The last of all his race! Yea, with thy heaviest knell, From surge to rocky shore, Toll for the living—not the dead, Whose mortal woes ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... followed her. And Emmy Lou, left sitting at her desk, saw through gathering tears the line of First-Readers wind around the room and file out the door, the sound of their departing footsteps along the bare corridors and down the echoing stairway coming back like a knell to her sinking heart. Then class after class from above marched past the door and on its clattering way, while voices from outside, shrill with the joy of the release, came up through the open windows in talk, in laughter, together with the patter of feet on the bricks. ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... "The death-knell of me and mine has been sounded unless boys like Gray here keep us alive after death, but the light of your hills is only dawning. It's a case of the least shall be first, for your pauper counties are going to be the richest in the State. The Easterners are buying up our farms as they would buy a ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... the frosty silence There rang out the midnight chime; And the hills gave back in echoes The knell ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... his jest to these Seemed—screamed, shrieked, wreaked on kin for sin! When for mirth's yell earth's knell seemed please Some dumb new grim great whim in him Made Jews ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to some rapid conclusions from the way he spoke. He bit off his words, as riflemen bite their cartridges, he chiselled every consonant, and gave full free scope to every vowel. This was all the accent he had, an accent of precision and determination and formalism, that struck like a knell, clear and piercing ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... available. Longstreet, in obedience to the letter of his orders, but contrary to their spirit, refused to sanction Hood's advance. Longstreet's failure to seize a fleeting opportunity sounded the death-knell ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... The pony men circle till they find a trail, follow it till close enough to the game to race ahead and bring it to bay, circle about it while a messenger brings up the Sahib, who dismounts and advances afoot to a combat wherein the echo of a misplaced shot may sound his own death-knell. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... remembered with a pang the saying of another Oxford scholar, a propos of the death of a young man of extraordinary promise, 'What learning has perished with him! How vain seems all toil to acquire!'—and the words, as they passed through his mind, seemed to him to ring another death-knell. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her time in godly prayers, And quiet rest did from her fly; She to her friends full oft declares, She could not live if he did die: Thus she continued till the bell, Began to sound his fatal knell. ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... "It is the knell, Monsieur Madeleine. The bell will continue to strike once a minute for twenty-four hours, until the body is taken from the church.—You see, they play. At recreation hours it suffices to have a ball roll aside, to send them all hither, in ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of a race renowned of old, Whose war-cry oft has waked the battle-swell, Since first distinguished in the onset bold, Wild sounding when the Roman rampart fell! By Wallace' side it rung the Southron's knell, Alderne, Kilsythe, and Tibber owned its fame, Tummell's rude pass can of its terrors tell, But ne'er from prouder field arose the name Than when wild Ronda learned the conquering ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... moments, who can tell, Till Blaisot met her view; They wept, they sigh'd, when Annettes knell Proclaim'd ...
— The Maid and the Magpie - An Interesting Tale Founded on Facts • Charles Moreton
... about the heart; this indistinct horror of the mind, blending itself with the darkness of the chamber. . . . Now comes the peal of the distant clock, with fainter and fainter strokes as you plunge farther into the wilderness of sleep. It is the knell of a temporary death. Your spirit has departed, and strays like a free citizen, among the people of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights, yet without wonder or dismay. So calm, perhaps, will be the final change, so undisturbed, as if ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... distressing As the knell Of all hopes worth possessing!' . . . —What befell Seemed linked with me, but how ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... tolls the knell of day, The lowing herd winds o'er the lea The ploughman homeward plods ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... more fully than the writer the fact that the bully type can be carried too far, and great harm will inevitably ensue, but the swing of the pendulum to the exaggerated terrier type will in time, I firmly believe, ring in his death knell. It is a source of wonderment to me that numbers of men who don the ermine can distribute prizes to the weedy specimens, shallow in muzzle, light in bone and substance, long in body, head and tail, who adorn (?) the shows of the past few years. ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... all knew Tom Moody, the whipper-in, well, The bell that's done tolling is honest Tom's knell." ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... first three of those men seized the Capitol at once, the fourth intended to do so. It was always the immediate object of every revolt, and the power to ring the great Patarina, the ancient bell stolen by the Romans from Viterbo, had for centuries a directing influence in Roman brawls. Its solemn knell announced the death of a Pope, or tolled the last hour of condemned criminals, and men crossed themselves as it echoed through the streets; but at the tremendous sound of its alarm, rung backward till the tower rocked, the Romans ran to arms, the captains of the Regions ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Even during the period of joyful anticipation some fear of breaking the spell had kept me from any bald circus talk in the presence of them. But Harold, who was built in quite another way, so soon as he discerned the drift of their conversation and heard the knell of all his hopes, filled the room with wail and clamour of bereavement. The grinning welkin rang with "Circus!" "Circus!" shook the window-panes; the mocking walls re-echoed "Circus!" Circus he would have, and the whole circus, and nothing but the circus. ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... restrictive institutions of their time. Within the bourgeoisie was the seed of revolution: they would one day in their own interests overturn monarchy, nobility, the Church, the whole social fabric. That was to be the death-knell of the old regime—the annunciation ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... a neighboring steeple was striking the ninth hour, and the old man paused in his muttering and sat counting the strokes as the iron tongue pealed them forth; counting them in his fear as if each stroke was a knell, and so indeed to him it was, and many of the chimes we listen carelessly to, would be knells to us, if we knew what would happen twixt them ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... of that bell As it breaks on the midnight ear— Seems it not tolling a funeral knell? 'Tis the knell of the parting year! Before that bell shall have ceas'd its chime The year shall have sunk on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... knot knap sack knob knave knife knock knowledge knucks knead knight knoll knuckle knarl knee knit know knell knout ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... carpet while he went to the window to look mechanically into the yard. Between these two creatures but a moment before clasped together, a sudden icy coldness sprung up as if each had divined that the hour was about to sound, terrible as a knell, when their affairs must be settled. The kisses of love are to be ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... gently met; Just a little, turn not yet, Thou shalt laugh, and soon forget: Now the midnight draweth near. I have little more to tell; Soon with hollow stroke and knell, Thou shalt count the palace bell, Calling that the ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... the neighbourhood—perhaps not in the house—that is the material point. It can hardly be necessary in these days to urge marriages on. I'm sure the country is over . . . Most marriages ought to be celebrated with the funeral knell!" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that proviso was interrupted for three administrations, but justice moved steadily onward. In the news that the men of California had chosen freedom, Calhoun heard the knell of parting slavery, and on his death-bed he counselled secession. Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison had died despairing of the abolition of slavery; Calhoun died in despair at the growth of freedom. His ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... the knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of illness, danger, and disaster are always interposed? Unsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of life ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding when the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... pale and pensive loveliness, with eyes like pensile stars, Such as never yet were beaming 'mid this world's discordant jars. And their whispers wild, unearthly, unutterable, fell like a harp-string's dying echo, or a fair young spirit's knell, On my soul amid the shadows of my native forest trees, Rustling melancholy, lowly, in the wailing of the breeze, Till, unknowing pain or agony, I've wept such blissful tears As shall never, never flow ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Troy's painted woes: For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell, Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; Then little strength rings out the doleful knell: So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow; She lends them words, and she ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the distant voice again, a cold deep voice with a note in it that to my ears sounded like the knell of approaching doom. ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... your affianced Violet; how long, how deeply I can never utter to any living soul. I did not know that you had won her affections, and the information that such was the case, came on me like the death-knell of all my cherished hopes. But I have schooled myself now to the calm contemplation of my failure, and I can rejoice without envy in the knowledge, that in you she has won a lover richly endowed with all the qualities on which future happiness ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... Sabbath, at church, the young man or woman, upon whose fair and delicate structure the peculiar impress of the EARLY DOOMED is stamped? and as a slight but hollow cough comes upon your ear, does it not recall the death-knell which rang in the same sad note before to the father or mother? Who of you has not followed some young friend to his long resting-place, and found that the grass had not grown rank upon the grave of his brother? that the row of white marbles, beneath which slept his ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... cast a veil of universal mourning over the secret sentiments which his death inspired to all parties. Whilst the various belfries tolled his knell, and minute guns were fired; whilst, in a ceremony that had assembled two hundred thousand spectators, they awarded to a citizen the funeral obsequies of a monarch; whilst the Pantheon, to which they conveyed his remains, seemed scarcely ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... in his dying fear One dreadful sound he seemed to hear,— A sound as if with the Inchcape bell The evil spirit was ringing his knell. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... of the ceremony. "All over! All over!" they seemed to wail, and in the quaint music there seemed a sense of infinite disillusion, of infinite rest; a winding-up, a conclusion, things over and done with, a fever subsided, a toil completed, a clamor abated, a farewell knell, a little folding ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... were hiding behind the leaves; the monkeys were clustered motionless upon the highest twigs; only out of the far depths of the forest, the campanero gave its solemn toll, once, twice, thrice, like a great death-knell rolling down from far cathedral towers. Was it an omen? He looked up hastily at Ayacanora. She was watching him earnestly. Heavens! was she waiting for his decision? Both dropped their eyes. The decision was ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... sublime dedit; youth should be coupled with all the virtues except truth; earth should never be reminded of her birth; death should never be allowed to stop a mortal's breath, nor the bell to sound his knell, nor flowers from blossoming bowers to wave over his grave or show their bloom upon his tomb. We have rhyming dictionaries,—let us have one from which all rhymes are rigorously excluded. The sight of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... pleasant woman," said he, approaching Aminta, "like you, beautiful, intelligent, and I venture to say also full of talent, as you are—we swear we love her, and are really sincere. Reason, however, in the guise of matrimony, hurries to sound the knell of love. At the first peal, it escapes, and whither? The beauty we adore first weeps, and then finds consolation, or rather suffers herself to be consoled. Then, opening her wings like the butterfly, she hurries to find the pleasure she calls ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... and her chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men. A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell; But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... an Englishman. I complain of their forgetting that Shakespeare was a man; that he had moods, that he made mistakes, and, above all, that he knew his art was an art and not an attribute of deity. That is what is the matter with the Germans; they cannot "ring fancy's knell"; their knells have no gaiety. The phrase of Hamlet about "holding the mirror up to nature" is always quoted by such earnest critics as meaning that art is nothing if not realistic. But it really means (or at least its author really ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... lay claim to the dukedom of Milan, and the Duke of Lorraine to the throne of Naples. The move was successful as regards Ludovico of Milan; he withdrew from the alliance, and much against the wish of the other allies the peace of Bagnolo was concluded in August, 1484. To Sixtus the news came as the knell of his dearest hopes. He gave way to one wild outburst of passion, in which he cursed all who had been engaged in making peace, then apoplexy supervened, and within a few hours he was a corpse. He was succeeded by Cardinal Cybo, a warm friend ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Northern Colonies sufficient power and influence to shape the legislation of the Union. And I have no hesitation in declaring that when Union was accomplished, and the Coloured people were partially disfranchised, the death-knell of political equality for the Coloured races was sounded, and the triumph of the north ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... perhaps a turtle, wandering far beyond accustomed limits, had disturbed one of the spring-gun communications on the sands. A sputtering volley, which his trained ear recognized as the firing of muzzle-loaders, sounded the death-knell of ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... makes an ugly punctuation in space. It breaks the preoccupation of the mind into funereal paragraphs. A knell, like a man's death-rattle, notifies an agony. If in the houses about the neighbourhood where a knell is tolled there are reveries straying in doubt, its sound cuts them into rigid fragments. A vague reverie is a sort of refuge. Some indefinable ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... milvo. Kite (toy) flugludilo. Knack lerteco. Knacker defelisto. Knapsack tornistro. Knave fripono. Knave (cards) lakeo. Knavery friponeco. Knead knedi. Kneading-trough knedujo. Knee genuo. Kneecap genuosto. Kneel genufleksi. Knell mortsonorado, funebra sonorado. Knife trancxilo. Knife-blade trancxanto. Knight kavaliro. Knit triki, trikoti. Knitting-needle trikilo. Knob butono. Knock frapi. Knock down disjxeti, dejxeti. Knot ligtubero. Knot ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... digress: of all appeals,—although I grant the power of pathos, and of gold, Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling,—no Method's more sure at moments to take hold[fa] Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow More tender, as we every day behold, Than that all-softening, overpowering knell, The Tocsin of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... "helpless" was ringing like a knell over his late triumph. It tinged victory with a hideous color of rapacity ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... on the night when we together fell, And when ye made our burial, there was triumph in the knell! Though crushed behind the barricades, and scarred in every limb, The pride of conscious Victory lay on our foreheads grim! We thought: the price is dearly paid, but the treasures must be true, And rested calmly in the graves we swore to fill ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... silence stole o'er those youthful brows of mirth, They knew she spoke of the Bridegroom King—the Lord of Heaven and earth; And e'er fleet time of another year had sounded the passing knell, The maiden Clare and her Bridegroom fair were ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... "upon this city, Empress of the North, her palaces, her castles, her stately halls, her holy towers, and think what war's mischance may bring. These silvery bells may toll the knell of our gallant King. We must not dream that conquest is sure or easily bought. God is ruler of the battlefield, but when yon host begins the combat, wives, mothers, and maids may weep, and priests prepare the ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... Principal Registry of the Court of Probate—the successor to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury—is no longer to be found there, and those who seek their fortunes in wills have now to prosecute their researches in that hub of British departmental records, Somerset House. The knell of "the Commons" was rung about twenty years ago, when a campaign against the abuses prevailing in the ecclesiastical courts was begun in the London Times. It unquestionably had been the home par excellence of sinecures and monopolies, which culminated in the office of registrar ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... yes," studied Peters. "But, on the other hand, it would be the death knell of my post-card business, and I'm calculating to go back to Baldpate next summer and take it up again. No, I'm afraid I can't let it be generally known that I've quit living in a shack on the mountain for love of somebody ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly called the "Renaissance" It was the knell of the architecture ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... following the mournful announcement of a death—not a birth. From this day the Queen's heavy responsibilities and stringent obligations were to begin. That untimely, peremptory challenge sounded the first knell to the light heart and ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... God!{2} how stings the madd'ning pain, His dearest happiness that blow must stain, Kissing and boxing—glory, shame! Light, darkness! Fire, ice! Life, death! Heaven, hell! All this was to our Pascal's soul the knell Of hope! But to be thus tormented By flagrant insult, as the soldier meant it; Now without fear he must resent it! It does not need to be a soldier nor a "Monsieur," An outrage placidly to bear. Now fiery Pascal let fly ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... time, and To mildness farewell! Its bristles are low'ring With darkness; o'erpowering Are its waters, aye showering With onset so fell; Seem the kid and the yearling As rung their death-knell. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... were all silent, and the words of the Public Prosecutor fell like a knell. The condemned man, however, had not stirred, had not even seemed to understand: his attitude was that of a man in a state of somnambulism. The Public Prosecutor was surprised by this strange impassivity and spoke ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... spirit!—thine arms crossed upon thy bosom, thine eyes fixed and open, with a calm unfearing awe. Mother, it is thy child that leads thee on! The fairy moments go before thee; thou hearest still the clock-knell tolling them to their graves behind. On, gliding on, thou hast gained the door; no lock bars thee, no magic spell drives thee back. Daughter of the dust, thou standest alone with night in the chamber where, pale and numberless, the hosts of space ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... they knew well enough, a question of life or death where the drifting boat would touch the strand. Now it seemed impossible that she should clear the shallow surf, whose hungry roar sounded a death-knell to any one handed to its tender mercies. Now it seemed certain that she would be carried up the bay without touching land at all. Hope rose as a little later it became obvious that she would clear ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... old one; and a few elderly maidens mooted the point whether he were likely to be a "single" gentleman, or burdened with a "wife and family." These and similar discussions were increasing in vivacity, and kindling more and more gayety of repartee, when suddenly, with the effect of a funeral knell upon their mirth, a whisper began to circulate that there was one Masque too many in company. Persons had been stationed by Adorni in different galleries, with instructions to note accurately the dress of every person in the company; to watch the motions of every ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... penetrated, with clear, sharp vibrations, to the brain of the sick man, and seemed to him, in the gathering excitement of this fearful hour, to grow louder and louder, till each tick sounded to his sharpened sense like the vibrations of a bell, and seemed to be the funeral knell of his destiny; sounding thus to his ears, solemnly, fatefully, bodingly; pealing forth thus with every sound the announcement that second after second out of those few minutes of time which were still left him had passed away from him forever. Each one of those ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... old companions tread, By midnight lamps, the mansions of the dead, Thro' breathing statues, then unheeded things, Thro' rows of warriors, and thro' walks of Kings! What awe did the slow solemn knell inspire, The pealing organ, and the pausing choir; The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid, And the last words, that ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... worried and gloomy. His servants saw him return twice, accompanied by different individuals, and at eight o'clock Makaraig encountered him pacing along Calle Hospital near the nunnery of St. Clara, just when the bells of its church were ringing a funeral knell. At nine Camaroncocido saw him again, in the neighborhood of the theater, speak with a person who seemed to be a student, pay the latter's admission to the show, and again disappear among the shadows ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... unto him," added the clergyman, in a depressed voice that had in it the knell of a human soul. "But these besotted men will not go to him. I am helpless and in despair of salvation, when I stand face to face with a confirmed drunkard. All one's care and thought and effort seem wasted, You lift them up to-day, and they fall to-morrow. ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... garrison. Yesterday we saw those fair, smiling women bravely striving to hide their anxieties and loneliness, and to lend enthusiasm to the celebration of the nation's anniversary. One after another they were startled from the deep slumber of early morning by the knocking at the door,—"the first knell of disaster,"—and who that saw the old Missouri post when the fearful news was finally made known to all will ever forget the scene that ensued? May God avert the possibility ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... to Ramona in after years, as she looked back over this life, that the news of Father Salvierderra's death was the first note of the knell of their happiness. It was but a few days afterward, when Alessandro came in one noon with an expression on his face that terrified her; seating himself in a chair, he buried his face in his hands, and would neither look up nor speak; not until Ramona ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... wether's bell, Before the drooping flock, toll'd forth her knell; The solemn deathwatch click'd the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... sir, They ring a strange sad knell, a preparation To some near funeral of state: nay, weep not, Mine own sweet uncle; you will ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... sang the wedding-bell; Even to the tree-top tolled the passing knell. Beneath it Walt and Jessamine were wed; Beneath it many a year she lieth dead! And the moon ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... producing any change in the relation of master and slave; but the humble slave on the Georgia cotton plantation, or in the Carolina rice fields, knew that the booming of the guns of rebellion in Charleston was the opening note of the death knell of slavery. The slave undoubtedly understood the issue, and knew on which side liberty dwelt. Although thoroughly bred to slavery, and as contented and happy as he could be in his lot, he acted according to the injunction of the Apostle: "Art thou called being a ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... musketry. We wondered at it, but could not conjecture its cause; and although we spoke of the trial of Marshal Ney, we had so little reason to suppose that his life was in jeopardy, that neither of us imagined that volley was his death-knell. As I continued on my way, I passed round the Boulevard, and reaching the spot I have named, I saw a few men and women, of the lowest class, standing together, while a sentinel paced to and fro before a wall, which was covered with mortar, and which formed one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... death, put on his hat, and went out totteringly with the doctor. He stopped on the way to change the cheque at the baker's where they usually dealt, and then went on to the goat's milk shop. How that sovereign he flung upon the counter seemed to ring the knell of his seif-respect! The man who changed it noticed the strangeness of Ernest's look, and knew at once he had not come by the money honestly. He rang it twice to make sure it was good, and then gave the change to Ernest. But Dot, at least, was saved; that was a great thing. The milk arrived ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... 2; nay, better never have been born at all, vi. 3. For all is vanity: that is the beginning of the matter, i. 2, it is no less the end, xii. 8. Over every effort and aspiration is wrung this fearful knell. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... lofty sentiments as the bells were ringing out the old year—stopping to strike its knell;—the Captain also stopped, to seize a glass and the hand of Brown—wishing him the merriest, maniest, and happiest of New Years;—drinking eternal unity to the B.'s and De C.'s—at the same time shedding a very visible tear, that dropped into his brandy and water, like the pearl ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... it all. A weight like that of a mountain fell upon my heart, and I walked on some distance without speaking. To me, the words of my excellent guardian sounded like the knell of ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... knell of doom the words fell on our ears—it could not be! Our dear old home, the only one we children had ever known, to be taken from us. We sat in the bright little sitting-room, blankly looking at one another, in dumb astonishment. Louise, who was always the thoughtful one, soon roused ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... a bulletin from the field of battle; what the heart sighs for, hopes for—fears, yet welcomes—desires, yet dreads. You seize the letter. Has it a black seal? Yes? The blood leaves your cheeks and rushes to its citadel, frozen with fear, and in your ear sounds the knell of a departed joy. No? Then you heave a long sigh of relief, and gaze for a moment at the missive, wondering from whom it can be. Your doubts are soon resolved, and you rest satisfied or you are disappointed. Recall the emotions ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... doubtless admit, that the instincts of the bee have been acquired for the good of the community. She goes so far as to say that if the theory of ethics advocated in this chapter were ever generally accepted, "I cannot but believe that in the hour of their triumph would be sounded the knell of the virtue of mankind!" It is to be hoped that the belief in the permanence of virtue on this earth is not held by many persons on so weak a tenure.) Nevertheless, the bee, or any other social animal, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... - Their swords are rust, their altars cold! For us, the Children of the Seas, Who ruled where'er the waves have rolled, For us, in Fortune's books enscrolled, I read no runes of hopeless loss; Nor—while YE last—our knell is tolled, Ye ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... air full hundred times, Bhima pressed his knee against Jarasandha's backbone and broke his body in twain. And having killed him thus, the mighty Vrikodara uttered a terrible roar. And the roar of the Pandava mingling with that death knell of Jarasandha, while he was being broken on Bhima's knee, caused a loud uproar that struck fear into the heart of every creature. And all the citizens of Magadha became dumb with terror and many women ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... midst of the consternation caused by these words, the clock on the mantel behind his back rang out the hour. It was but a double stroke, but that meant two hours after midnight and had the effect of a knell in the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... sorrow numbs my thought: methinks I hear the passing knell; As dies across yon thin blue line the ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... representation eager for vengeance and tormented with a thirst for blood. At the end of the fourth act a lugubrious bell announces the moment of the massacre, and the audience, drawing in its breath sighing and groaning, furiously exclaims silence! silence! as if fearing that the sound of this death-knell had not stirred the heart to its very depths."—"Revolutions de Paris," number for June 23, 1792. "The speakers, under full sail, distributed their parts amongst themselves," one against the staffs, another against priests, another against judges, department, and the ministers, and especially the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... unity of the ecclesiastical commonwealth. The Catholic confederation was supposed to comprehend all the faithful; and it was, no doubt, expected that, not long after its establishment, it would have rung the death knell of schism and sectarianism. According to its fundamental principle, whoever was not in communion with the bishop was out of the Church. To be out of the Church was soon considered as tantamount to be without God and without hope, so that ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... loved his joke, his pipe, and mug of ale; For twenty years he did the duties well, Of ostler, boots, and waiter at the 'Bell.' But Death stepp'd in, and order'd Peter Staggs To feed his worms, and leave the farmers' nags. The church clock struck one—alas! 'twas Peter's knell, Who sigh'd, 'I'm coming—that's the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... words with which the court preacher Massilon startled the titled throng who had gathered in Notre Dame to do the last honors to that monarch whose reign was the longest and most splendid in French annals, "God only is great!" How often does the knell of vanished power repeat the lesson! How constantly does the fleeting away of our own men of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... that when the subsidence of the water fails to check itself by enlarging the supply, it shall, before the point of danger is reached, infallibly check the combustion, let off the steam, and blow a whistle or ring a bell, which the proprietor may, if he pleases, regard as the official death-knell of the careless engineer. Human vigilance must not be superseded, but fortified,—as in the case of the watchman watched by the tell-tale clock. The steam-creature must be so constituted as to refuse to work itself down ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... some whimpering in misery, some looking imploringly—their intelligent eyes challenging present sympathy on the ground of past fidelity—all, all in vain: the hour that summons the Mussulman to prayer, equally silently tolls their death-knell; yon glorious sun, setting in a flood of fire, lights them to their untimely grave; one ruthless hand holds the unconscious head, another with deadly aim smashes the skull and scatters the brain—man's faithful ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... never seemed to have any mode of expressing his feelings except action, and where that was impossible they took hardly any recognizable shape. When the first boom of the big bell filled the little study in which we sat, I gave a cry, and jumped up from my chair: it sounded in my ears like the knell of my lost baby, for at the moment I was thinking of her as once when a baby she lay for dead in my arms. Mr. Blackstone got up and left the room, and my husband rose and would have followed him; but, saying ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... done so than the scene in the studio—Wilderspin's story of the model's terror on seeing my mother's portrait—came upon me, and 'Dead! dead!' rang through me like a funeral knell: all the superstructure of Hope's sophisms was shattered in a moment like a house of cards: my imagination flew away to all the London graveyards I had ever heard of; and there, in the part divided by the pauper line, my soul hovered ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... white at the words, "She is my wife!" It was the death-knell of his hopes of securing the fortune for which he had not hesitated to sacrifice every particle of moral principle. When he turned and saw impending retribution in the shape of the two stalwart representatives of the law, a look of cunning came into his face, and with one swift motion he ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... tocsin of insurrection tolls its dismal knell in the towers of Paris. Through scenes surpassing fable, the king and his family escape to the hospitable shores of England. Here, in obscurity and exile, he reaches the end of life's journey, and passes away to the unknown ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott |
