"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the storm, in the smoke, in the fight, I come To help thee, dear, with my fife and my drum. My name is Music: and, when the bell Rings for the dead men, I rule the knell; And, whenever the mariner wrecked through the blast Hears the fog-bell sound, it was I who passed. The poet hath told you how I, a young maid, Came fresh from the gods to the myrtle shade; And thence, by a power divine, I stole To where the waters ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... alone can do for children. Now, it is not the "nine-day fits" of that hospital in its unventilated condition which kills our poor children in the hot months, but that other disease of infancy, which to name is like sounding a funeral knell in the ears of many a parent. This one malady, more than any other, gives Boston its place on the black list of unhealthy towns. All parents having young children leave the city during the worst part of the sickly season, if they have the means of ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... moment had arrived. The knell of Venice was rung; and Bonaparte thus wrote to the Directory on the 30th of April: "I am convinced that the only course to be now taken is to destroy this ferocious and sanguinary Government." On the 3d of May, writing from Palma Nuova, he says: ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... tongue Suddenly civil that yesterday rung (Like a clapper beating a brazen bell) Each fair reputation's eternal knell; Hands no longer delivering blows, And noses, for ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... arisen so far as to escape slavery forever. Debt peonage could be fastened on part of the rural South and was; but even here the new Negro landholder appeared. Thus despite everything the Fifteenth Amendment, and that alone, struck the death knell of slavery. ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... of the mournful voice, now fare thee well! My sad song ended, ended is thy spell. Perchance thine echoes, memory haunting, May oft awaken, shadowing forth the swell Of long sung monody and long tolled knell, And o'er the dead past, dirges chanting; But for me, ever hang in Sorrow's hall! Bid Night and Silence spread oblivion's pall O'er earthly blooming joys, that seared must fall And leave the stricken soul to weep:— Ever, till this ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... was opened for burials about twenty-seven years ago. At the close of the year 1870 the interments had reached 150,000. From fifteen to twenty interments are made here every day. The deep-toned bell of the great gateway is forever tolling its knell, and some mournful train is forever wending its slow way under the beautiful trees. Yet the sunlight falls brightly, the birds sing their sweetest over the new-made graves, the wind sighs its dirge through the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Hood's army was the real object to be desired. Yet Atlanta was known as the "Gate-City of the South," was full of founderies, arsenals, and machine-shops, and I knew that its capture would be the death-knell ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... A knell from the church bell broke harshly on these youthful thoughts. Another! Again! It was tolling for the funeral service. A group of humble mourners entered the gate: wearing white favours; for the corpse was young. They stood uncovered by a grave; and there was a mother—a mother ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... just at day break, we found where Rocket fell, Down in a washout twenty feet below; And beneath the horse, mashed to a pulp,—his spur had rung the knell,— Was our little Texas stray, ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... Curfew has taken its toll from the knell of parting day, and darkness reigns supreme, they will urge on their wild career, illuminated by the dim religious light of a ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... there is implied the ultimate universality of His dominion and sole supremacy of His throne. There is to be but one Shepherd, and over all the earth a great unity of obedience to Him. Here is the knell of all authority that does not own Him, and the subordination of all that does. The hirelings, the blind guides, that have misled and afflicted humanity for so many weary ages, shall be all sunk in oblivion. The false gods shall be discrowned, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... knee-deep, o'er head and ears a fork'd one!— Go, play, boy, play:—thy mother plays, and I Play too; but so disgrac'd a part, whose issue Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour Will be my knell.—Go, play, boy, play.—There have been, Or I am much deceiv'd, cuckolds ere now; And many a man there is, even at this present, Now while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm That little thinks she has been sluic'd in his absence, And his pond fish'd by his next neighbour, by Sir Smile, ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... Had I as many sons as I have hairs, I would not wish them to a fairer death: And so his knell is knoll'd. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... not forgotten; there are memories clinging Round every breast that beats to hope and fear In this drear world, until the death's knell, ringing, Chimes with heart-moanings o'er the solemn bier; Then come love's pilgrims to the sad shrine, bringing The choicest ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... knell: hope hears the ringing Of birthday bells on high. Faith, Hope and Love make answer with soft singing, Half carol and ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... clad in shirt and jerkin and breeches and hosen and shoon, all by this time, we may be sure, profoundly in need of repair. The tree and Smith are ringed by Indians, each of whom has an arrow fitted to his bow. Almost one can hear a knell ringing in the forest! But Opechancanough, moved by the compass, or willing to hear more of seventeenth-century science, raises his arm and stops the execution. Unbinding Smith, they take him with them as a trophy. Presently all ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... it has hung for fifty years or more, But some who loved its silver tones the church-yard covers o'er, And many are the times since then, with deep and solemn knell, Has tolled for dear departed ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... takes pleasure in proclaiming to all the tale of his mistakes. Still young in heart and in mind, it seems as if in giving up hope on earth, he tolled the knell of all the enchantments that were passed and gone; that creative head fermenting with the ardor of discovery seems to doubt the future and bow beneath the burden ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... the few can love, This world would seldom be well; And who need wish, if he dwells above, For a deep, a long death knell. ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... sound after the echoes of the shot had died away, a spluttering funeral knell. Other natives, laying their spears aside, sprang from behind trees and rocks to the help of their fallen chief. Nobody would harm them; the magic had ceased. They raised him with the greatest solicitude, and bore him off. His head hung on his ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... deeply into my heart, and taking root there spring forth yielding fruits of repentance. Soon may Death, the great enemy of mankind, add one more ghastly victim to the lifeless piles that lie heaped together in every clime and on every shore; and when my death- knell shall sound will it be the signal of a spirit wailing in the regions of the lost, or rejoicing in the bright realms of everlasting bliss? It is for me, and me alone to decide. Perhaps it is for this that my life has been spared—that I might ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... but the time slips by wasted, and hangs drearily on our hands. We have not the spirit to look forward, or the heart to look back. We long to have it all over, and yet every stroke of the clock falls like a cruel knell on our ears. We long that we could fall asleep, and wake to find ourselves on the other side of the crisis ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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
... "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 death service, for when such a power ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by—it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and—he knew not why—apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... can flow ..." murmured Knightley, and of a sudden he flung back into the room. "Let me have the truth of it," he burst out, confronting his brother-officers gathered about the table—"the truth, though it knell out my damnation. If you only knew how up there, at Fez, at Mequinez, I have pictured your welcome when I should get back! I made of my anticipation a very anodyne. The cudgelling, the chains, the hunger, ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... forth from the battlements; the whole giving, by the partial concealment, an appearance of grandeur and gloom, rendered more terrific when Waverley reflected on the cause by which it was produced, and that each explosion might ring some brave man's knell. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... "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 ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... 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
... as practised in England of any of the arts employed by the people of a foreign country for the capture of wildfowl. The method alluded to is termed "toling." I am unable to trace the origin of the term, unless it simply implies a death knell, for such it assuredly assumes to those birds which approach within range of the secreted sportsman. This singular proceeding is said to have been first introduced upwards of fifty years ago near Havre-de-Grace, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... 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 ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... silently; she thought of the past. The dreadful reflection, "If I had not done as I did, how different would it have been now!" had been sounding its knell in her heart so often that she had almost ceased to shudder at it. The very nails of her hands had, before now, entered the palms, with the sharp pain it brought. Stealing over her more especially this night, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... self-consuming pangs. But, true or false, one thing she promised me: though other spheres, though other lives had come between us, she would be with me in my dying hour. Soon the bell will toll that hour, and toll my knell! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it the knell ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... was gathering in, and the report of each successive wave, fraught as it were with my death warrant, struck on my heart like a funeral knell. Was there no hope of escape in the cove itself? no difficult path to the rocks aloft? were the questions I rapidly put to myself. An examination made as well as the darkness of the place permitted, convinced me that my hopes were vain and transitory. I now gave way to a sort ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... of distant music Floats on the gentle breeze, Its captivating sweetness Bends e'en the proudest knees; Now soft as angel whispers, Then, loud as trumpet's blast It sounds the knell of sorrows And pains for ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... gin ye lo'ed me as I lo'e you, I wad ring my ain deid knell; My sel' wad vanish, shot through and through By the shine o' your sunny sel'. By the shine o' your sunny sel', By the licht aneath your broo, I wad dee to mysel', and ring my bell, And ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong. Hark! now ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... this ringing Bell, Think it is your latest knell: When I cry, Maide in your Smocke, Doe not take it for a mocke: Well I meane, if well 'tis taken, I would have you still awaken: Foure a Clocke, the Cock is crowing I must to my home be going: When all other men doe rise, Then must I shut up ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... have gathered a host of the most interesting, as well as the most brilliant, souvenirs of our literary history. Here were sold, in "the days that tried men's souls," those stirring pamphlets that sounded the death-knell of British tyranny in the New World; and it was from this old corner that the tender songs of Longfellow, the weird conceptions of Hawthorne, the philosophic utterances of Emerson, first found their way to the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... as it was wound up regularly recked nothing of love or hate, joy or sorrow—solemnly tolled out the hour of midnight and sounded the knell of his lost love. Lost she was, as though she had never been, as she had indeed had no right to be. He resolutely determined to banish her image from his mind. See her again he could not; it would be ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... any man. Although I was found guilty by a jury of this court I deem my conduct above reproach. I know how I have been convicted, and will still assert that the first gun fired in anger between this country and America will be a knell of ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... tremendously swell; In vain the lost wretch calls on Mercy to save; Unseen hands of spirits are ringing his knell, And the death angel flaps his broad ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... at the best a marvellously acted but somewhat bloodless drama. On the other hand, the pure passion-letters lack as a rule this many-sidedness. With Swift we get both. Seldom has any collection shown us more varied interests. But through it all there is an anticipation of the knell of this commerce of his—"Only a woman's hair"—and that hair threads, in subtle fashion, the whole of the Journal, turning the panorama to something felt as well as seen, and the puppet-show to realities ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made, Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that can fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange; Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark, now I hear ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... far as the chateau de- ——— which had witnessed the betrothal and the death of Marie, and the birth of Marguerite. My heart tolled a knell within me when I saw once more that peaceful abode, which, despite the scenes of sorrow enacted within its walls, speaks, with its white pillared facade, of naught save elegant opulence and luxurious repose. I was ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... Erwash, Idel, Snite and Soare Each broke his urn, and twenty waters more That swelled proud Trent, shrunk themselves dry, that since No sun or moon, or other cheerful star, Looked out of heaven, but all the cope was dark As it were hung so for her exequies! And not a voice or sound to ring her knell But of that dismal pair, the screeching owl And buzzing hornet! Hark! hark! hark! the foul Bird! how she flutters with her wicker wings! Peace! you shall ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Bacchanals placed upon the table, were hailed with rapture, and thenceforth sparkling wine was an indispensable adjunct at all the petits soupers of the period. In the highest circles the popping of champagne-corks seemed to ring the knell of sadness, and the victories of Marlborough were in a measure compensated for by this ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... by his devoted followers as the knell of their hopes. For years they had been engaged labourously in rolling uphill the stone of Sisyphus, making active friendships and seeking a fair trial. That opportunity had come at last. It had been ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... sanction the military preparations advised by the Commander-in-Chief, it required ceaseless vigilance on his part to prevent the acceptance of an illusory settlement which would have sounded the death-knell of British supremacy ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... other, hitherto so silent, sounded at the same time a word that fell upon the ear like a knell of doom: ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... the window, and the merriment struck chill at her heart like the tolling of a knell. She saw the pale face of Henderson gleam yellow-white among the dancers, and, watching him, the blood-lust of the Indian woke in her heart. The rest of the room was but a blur; the dancers faded into swaying shadows; ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... proposal for unification] is the unification of the white races to disfranchise the coloured races, and not to promote union between all races in South Africa." The passage of the Union Bill sounded the political death knell of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... knell, then, is knolled, and down among the dead men sink the poor " Witlings "-for ever, and for ever, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... fine leader, but unlike Mahan, with whom he clashed in the game with the Crimson in his final year, he was not able to play the play through what was to him probably the most important gridiron battle of his career. Nevertheless, it was his touchdown in the first quarter that sounded the knell of the Crimson hopes that day, and Cornell men will always believe that his presence on the side line wrapped in a blanket, after his recovery from the shock that put him out of the game, had much to do with inspiring ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... The words fell slowly from Mrs. Tobin's lips, and to the two culprits they sounded like the knell of doom. She waited for some response, but none came. "Is it possible that you have had a woman in this cabin," she continued. "Can you deny it, ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... rose as the twilight deepened, waking at intervals in the gloomy stillness, as if from sleep. It filled the room every now and then with a sad, sighing sound, then died out slowly, again to swell, again to fall, sad as the tolling of a funeral knell. He lay listening to it when I went to him, with parted lips and strange solemnity of face. Too heart-broken for speech, I knelt beside him with a stifled moan. 'Magsie,' (that was his pet name for me,) 'I thought it was your notion, dear, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... looked forward to such a future. But we made shipwreck of those plans, and now it is too late to build them anew. However, let us not mourn over the past, but forget it. This hour has witnessed your last lament over your dead past. Its knell has been rung, let us both now doom it to oblivion. I have retained one thing in my memory, however, and that is the note which the incautious Princess gave you that evening in the greenhouse. Do you still ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... fishermen finding the body, and remembered the shriek which arose on the gusty air. She dared not speak; it would sound her own death-knell. She could not confess her presence at the margin of ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... to reverence women, but the girls I meet with in society won't let me. They like me to make free with them; they like me to talk to them about doubtful subjects, and they make me"—and he ground his teeth as he said it—"what I just hate myself for being." Alas! alas! can sadder words knell in a woman's ears ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... 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 hearts ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... them the Duke of Norfolk, About two hundred people looked silently on while the body was removed from the train to the hearse, and the funeral cortege moved on to Westminster Hall at once and entered the Palace Yard just as "Big Ben" tolled the hour of one like a funeral knell. ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... is in those words, thou hast been! when the sense of them becomes absolutely clear to us. One feels one's self sinking gradually into one's grave, and the past tense sounds the knell of our illusions as to ourselves. What is past is past: gray hairs will never become black curls again; the forces, the gifts, the attractions of youth, have ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the breiks him bair, Whill flatlies to the ground he fell: Than thought I weel we had lost him there, Into my stomach it struck a knell! Yet up he raise, the treuth to tell ye, And laid about him dints full dour; His horsemen they raid sturdilie, And stude about ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... magazine. The crew thought the work had been successfully performed, and that they were getting the fire under control, when there suddenly came a terrible burst of flame attended by a roar that drowned all the din of the battle. It was the death knell of 400 men, for the Palestro had blown up with all on board. The great ironclad turret ship and ram of the Italian fleet, the Affondatore, to which Admiral Persano had shifted his flag, far the most powerful vessel in the Adriatic, kept outside of the battle line, and ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... the ripping sound which had such a sinister meaning. Then followed a terrific explosion. The final and dreadful bombardment of Ypres had begun. At intervals of ten minutes the huge seventeen-inch shells fell, sounding the death knell of the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... the church-yard's peace annoys, With classic Weston, Charley Coote and Tew, In dismal dance about the mournful yew. But first in notes Sicilian placed on high, Bates sounds the soft precluding symphony; And in sad cadence, as the bands condense, The curfew tolls the knell ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... in flame at a mention of that hope, which spoke volumes to her vanity and her love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston; swift, also, to recognise in his stumbling or throttled utterance the death-knell of these expectations, and constant, poor girl! in her large-minded madness, to go on and to reck nothing of the future. But these unfinished references, these blinks in which his heart spoke, and his memory and reason rose up to silence ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... approach would decide the strife, for each party was so exhausted as to be unable to resist any new assailants. Soon the signals of war proclaimed that an army was approaching for the rescue of the fortress. Shouts of exultation rose from the garrison, which fell like the knell of death upon the ears of the besiegers, freezing on the plains. The alarm which spread through the camp was instantaneous and terrible. The darkness of a November night soon settled down over city and plain. With the first rays of the morning the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... sacred ensign was welcomed by the Christians with a shout of "Victory!" which rose high above the din of battle. The tidings of the death of Ali soon passed from mouth to mouth, giving fresh heart to the confederates, but falling like a knell on the ears of the Moslems. Their confidence was gone. Their fire slackened. Their efforts grew weaker and weaker. They were too far from shore to seek an asylum there, like their comrades on the right. They had no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Poll, a buxom lass; when I returned A B, I bought her ear-rings, hat, and shawl, a sixpence did break we; At last 'twas time to be on board, so, Poll, says I, farewell; She roared and said, that leaving her was like a funeral knell. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... this heavy outrage to the feelings of the neighbourhood would cause more stir than a hundred sheep stolen, or a score of houses sacked. Not of course that the beacon was of the smallest use to any one, neither stopped anybody from stealing, nay, rather it was like the parish knell, which begins when all is over, and depresses all the survivors; yet I knew that we valued it, and were proud, and spoke of it as a mighty institution; and even more than that, our vestry had voted, within the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes look'd 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! ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... around them as the best medicine, and acted accordingly. They wandered day and night from one tavern to another, and feasted without moderation or bounds. In this way they endeavored to avoid all contact with the sick, and abandoned their houses and property to chance, like men whose death-knell ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... him down a long stone corridor and down a flight of steps. On the way he picked up two other men, also in khaki, who followed him; the four passed through a series of underground passages, and entered a stone cell with a solid steel door, which they clanged behind them—a sound that was like the knell of doom to poor Jimmie's terrified soul. And instantly Sergeant Perkins seized him by the shoulder and whirled him about, and glared into his eyes. "Now, you ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... even Sarah, thought William intended more than to keep in Mr. Leopold's good graces, but Esther, although unable to guess the truth, heard the still tinkling bell ringing the knell of her hopes. She noted, too, the time he remained upstairs, and asked herself anxiously what it was that detained him so long. The weather had turned colder lately.... Was it a fire that was wanted? In the course of the afternoon, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... of Brougham's figure had vanished; his features seemed concentrated almost to a point; he glanced toward every part of the House in succession; and, sounding the death-knell of the Secretary's forbearance and prudence, with both his clinched hands upon the table, he hurled at him an accusation more dreadful in its gall, and more torturing in its effects than ever had been hurled at mortal man within the same walls. The result was instantaneous—was electric; it was ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... witchcraft, it was some vile art. They had no heart to man the battlements, to fight like their brothers at Orleans and Jargeau in face of all the powers of the evil one: the cry of "Sus! Sus!" was like the death-knell in ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... of horse und soldiers Vas all de funeral knell; De ring of sporn und carpine Vas all de sacrin bell. Mit hoontin knife und sabre Dey digged de grave a span, From German eyes blue gleamin De ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... fallen like a rock hurled from some great high stood living and human, but struck into marble by a single blow. The man could not move; the woman did not seem to breathe. Hannah Yates went on, her voice low, but ringing out clear and distinctly like a funeral knell: ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... 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 ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... 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 he would be back in a few minutes, he shut the door and ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... it is the certainty of all Which I must do doth make me tremble thus. But let these last and lingering thoughts have way, To which you only and the night are conscious, And both regardless; when the Hour arrives, 490 'Tis mine to sound the knell, and strike the blow, Which shall unpeople many palaces, And hew the highest genealogic trees Down to the earth, strewed with their bleeding fruit, And crush their blossoms into barrenness: This will I—must I—have I sworn to do, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... steeped in bitterness and overflowing with disgust, he felt himself solitary in this dejected landscape, struck by an inexpressibly melancholy and stubborn distress whose mysterious intensity excluded all consolation, pity and repose. Like a funeral-knell, this despairing chant haunted him, now that he was in bed, prostrated by fever and agitated by an anxiety so much the more inappeasable for the fact that he could not discover its cause. He ended by abandoning ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... they come, fast they come; See how they gather! Wide waves the eagle plume Blended with heather. Cast your plaids, draw your blades, Forward each man set! Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, Knell for the onset! ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell! Hark! ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... can be accomplished, must be as sudden as the danger which it affronts. Even that, even the sickening necessity for hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be vain, self-baffled, and where the dreadful knell of too late is already sounding in the ears by anticipation—even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one particular case, namely, where the agonising appeal is made not exclusively ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... existing before secession but "the male citizens of said state, twenty-one years old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, ... except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion or for felony at common law." This was the death knell to the idea that the leaders of the Confederacy and their white supporters might be permitted to share in the establishment of the new order. Power was thus arbitrarily thrust into the hands of the newly emancipated male negroes and the handful of whites who could show ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... Highland clans, man! I fear my Lord Panmure is slain, Or fallen in Whiggish hands, man, Now wad ye sing this double fight, Some fell for wrang, and some for right; But mony bade the world gude-night; Then ye may tell, how pell and mell, By red claymores, and muskets knell, Wi' dying yell, the Tories fell, And Whigs to hell did flee, man. La, la, la, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... hour of warmth and light The last great knell were knolled; If Death should close mine eyes to-night And all the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. We are not enemies, but friends." This message, held out as an olive branch, the South denounced as a menace. Some northern papers condemned it as the "knell and requiem of the Union." But the general feeling it evoked at the North was one of rejoicing. People believed that a hand both moderate and firm had at length seized ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... harsh and heavy, as if shod with steel. I recognize them with a thrill; for they have haunted me many years, and they are speaking to me now. The one is soothing and pleading, and it implores me to write; but the second is like the striking of a revengeful knell. "Confession and Pardon," says the one; "Horror and Remorse," echoes the other. They tinkle and toll thus every midnight, when my hour of penance arrives and I have tried to register my story. It is almost finished now. Let me read the pages softly ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... voice, never broken by a sob, never rising to violence, but sounding like a distant, monotonous, mournful knell, rent Mathieu's heart. He sought words of consolation, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... cry out, by Preciuse they swear. And the Franks say: "Great hurt this day you'll get!" And very loud "Monjoie!" they cry again. That Emperour has bid them sound trumpets; And the olifant sounds over all its knell. The pagans say: "Carlun's people are fair. Battle we'll have, bitter ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... tresses play: When comes that hour which judges Gods and men, That God shall plague the Gods that filched His name, And cleanse the Peoples. When ye hear, my sons, That God uprising in His judgment robes And see their dreadful crimson in the West, Then know ye that the knell of Rome is nigh; Then stand, and listen! When His Trumpet sounds Forth from your forests and your snows, my sons, Forth over Ister, Rhenus, Rhodonus, To Moesia forth, to Thrace, Illyricum, Iberia, Gaul; but, most of all, to Rome! Who leads you thither ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... triple bob: Oh, how our widow's heart did throb, And thus she heard their burden go, "Marry, mar-marry, mar-Guillot!" Bells were not then left to hang idle: A week,—and they rang for her bridal But, woe the while, they might as well Have rung the poor dame's parting knell. The rosy dimples left her cheek. She lost her beauties plump and sleek, For Guillot oftener kick'd than kiss'd, And back'd his orders with his fist, Proving by deeds as well as words, That servants ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... dying fear, One dreadful sound he seemed to hear,— A sound as if, with the Inchcape Bell, The Devil below was ringing his knell. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... sounds have a different import to different ears. To mine there is a death knell in these tremulous vibrations of ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... a death-knell to Helen's last hope, and she sank down, quite overcome; she knew that Arthur could have had but one motive in acting as he had,—that he meant to cut himself off entirely from all his old life and surroundings. He had no friends in Hilltown, ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... serenaded by bands, comforted by ladies, half smothered by roses, half drowned in champagne." The enthusiasm shown at his release was frantic and delirious. None the less those months in Richmond prison proved the death-knell of his power. He was an old man by this time; he was already weakened in health, and that buoyancy which had hitherto carried him over any and every obstacle never again revived. The "Young Ireland" party, the members ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... have come the airy melody of the charming eclogue Phyllida's Love-call to her Corydon, which invites the genius of a Mendelssohn to frame it in music. He might have penned in his prison cell the knell for the tragedy of human life, De Morte. He might have been the shepherd minstrel of ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... gallant gentlemen, Amang the Highland clans, man! I fear my Lord Panmure is slain, Or fallen in Whiggish hands, man: Now wad ye sing this double fight, Some fell for wrang, and some for right; And mony bade the world guid-night; Then ye may tell, how pell and mell, By red claymores, and muskets' knell, Wi' dying yell, the Tories fell, And Whigs ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... dark, sullen, silent ones, brooding over their imaginary or real wrongs, and weeping and moaning piteously—there were the dangerous, careless and happy victims, who filled the dismal cells with their heart-rending peals of wild laughter, that fall upon the heart like the loneliest knell—there were the apparently quiet, religious ones who addressed their Creator in ceaseless, meaningless prayer, crying for forgiveness and mercy, but there was no bright, pretty French child, who called for "Bijou" or her "revenge," and this discouraged Guy ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... and a thoughtful 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
... were. The first thing they heard in early morning was that, in the course of the night, he had breathed his last; and all day the bells of all the churches round were answering one another with the slow, swinging, melancholy notes of the knell. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon it or curled over it; all eyes should be kept away from the skies, in spite of os homini 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 a poor creature grubbing for rhymes to fill up ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... herself. She never touched the grand instrument in the drawing-room, and when asked to do so 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 ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... street, 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 of poor Black Bess. ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... jeering at the death-struggles of the unfortunate crews, Jack Tar began to regard the unterseebooten in the light of pirates and murderers. The wanton destruction of the Lusitania, accompanied by the appalling death-roll of non-combatants, women and children, literally sounded the death-knell of the crews of von Tirpitz's jolly-Roger-flying submarines. In their methods of "frightfulness" they had overreached themselves. They had sown a wind: they were now reaping ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... certain shapelessness, crowds out the compensating brightness which in most cases is not wanting; perhaps, too, "The Ambitious Guest" leaves one with too hopeless a downfall at the end; and "The Wedding Knell" cannot escape a suspicion of disagreeable gloom. But these extremes are not frequent. The wonder is that Hawthorne's mind could so often and so airily soar above the shadows that at this time hung about him; that he should nearly always suggest ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... pitch. Neckar generously sacrificed a vast part of his private fortune to buy food for the hunger-stricken poor of Paris. It was in national gloom that the States-General met at Versailles on the 5th of May in 1789. That day sounded the knell of the Monarchy. ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall |
