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More "Knell" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... 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

... did his 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, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... contrary, the condemned remains exposed during three days in a "chapelle ardente;" his coffin is continually before his eyes; the priests say the prayers for the dying; the bells of the church night and day ring a funeral knell. ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... him, and suddenly filled with womanly compassion which sounded the knell of anger, Rose called, gently, "Judd! ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... many links 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 Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... eyes of the monster fastened on the form of the herdsman, even amidst the thick darkness of the pine. It paused—it glared upon him—its jaws opened, and a low deep sound, as of gathering thunder, seemed to the son of Osslah as the knell of a dreadful grave. But after glaring on him for some moments, it again, and calmly, pursued its terrible way, crashing the boughs as it marched along, till the last sound of its heavy tread died away ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham

... successors to my name? What bring they to fill out a poet's fame? Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age; Scarce living to be christened on the stage! For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense, That tolls the knell for their departed sense. Dulness might thrive in any trade but this: 'Twould recommend to some fat benefice. Dulness, that in a playhouse meets disgrace, Might meet with reverence, in its proper place. The ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... is a little thing and yet it may have infinite meaning. It may fix a destiny for weal or for woe. When God shut the door of the ark the sound of its closing was the knell of exclusion to those who were without, but it was the token of security to the little company of trusting ones who were within. When the door was shut upon the bridegroom and his friends who had gone ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller

... leaders are in a curiously anomalous position. They see their power going in the dawn of a more socialistic age. They cannot refuse to accept our principles but in their hearts they know that our triumph sounds the death knell to their power. This article of Tallente's would give them a wonderful chance. Out of very desperation they will ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... and shot away; but his heart, all the remainder of his day's journey, was as if it had been pierced with many barbed arrows, and the sad voice of the poor anxious widow rung in his ears like the sound of some doleful knell. ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... and bear with me a measureless flow, Of infinite joy and of infinite woe: The banquet's light jest and the penitent prayer, The sweet laugh of gladness, the wail of despair, The warm words of welcome, and broken farewell, The strains of rich music, the funeral knell, The fair bridal wreath, and the robe for the dead, O how will they meet in the path I shall tread! O how will they mingle where'er I pass by, As sunshine and storm in the rainbow ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford

... 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, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... listens to the praise of him "whom living she most hated," is not less so. How beautiful her religious enthusiasm!—the slumber which visits her pillow, as she listens to that sad music she called her knell; her awakening from the vision of celestial joy to ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... being tolerable had very little power to elevate the imagination of one who had so long been accustomed to praise and ecstacy; but it was some satisfaction to be separated from my mother, who was incessantly ringing the knell of departed beauty, and never entered my room without the whine of condolence, or the growl of anger. She often wandered over my face, as travellers over the ruins of a celebrated city, to note every place which had once been remarkable ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... 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 system rushed irresistibly to its natural development. The death-struggle for California ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft

... Goldfish lies; Here last September was he laid; Poppies these, that were his eyes, Of fish-bones are these blue-bells made; His fins of gold that to and fro Waved and waved so long ago, Still as petals wave and wave To and fro above his grave. Hearken, too! for so his knell Tolls ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... And now I found these fancies creating their own realities, and all imagined horrors crowding upon me in fact. I felt my knees strike violently together, while my fingers were gradually but certainly relaxing their grasp. There was a ringing in my ears, and I said, "This is my knell of death!" And now I was consumed with the irrepressible desire of looking below. I could not, I would not, confine my glances to the cliff; and, with a wild, indefinable emotion, half of horror, half of a relieved oppression, I threw my vision far down into the abyss. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... rhythmic stress, | | whereas the foot may begin with an unstressed element. | | | | [24] Some metrists, holding that every foot should begin | | with a stress, divide thus: | | | | The | curfew | tolls the | knell of | parting | day. | | | | Such a division can be justified on several grounds, but it | | remains awkward and obscures the plain fact of rising | | rhythm. It does not affect the division of word and foot; | | for compare Shelley's line: | | | | Ne | cessi | ty! ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... own light, and thrilled with its own sound, Learnt now their song, more sweet than heaven's may be, Who pass away by sea; The song that takes of old love's land farewell, With pulse of plangent water like a knell. ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... upon the ear the strains of a full military band posted among the trees, and brilliant music adds its charm to the attractive scene. This is one side of the picture; we may perhaps with profit to ourselves turn to the other. The same bell that rings out the marriage peal, tolls forth the funeral knell; sweet flowers that deck the bridal altar, are also brought to lay upon the tomb. We have not far to go in seeking for the shadow of the Tuileries gardens. Misery in all its varied forms is to be found in the Faubourg St. Antoine, partially hidden by ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... pictures of actual life, we have allegory not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a shiver." There are sunny gleams upon the pages, but a strange, melancholy chill pervades the book. In "The Wedding Knell", "The Minister's Black Veil", "The Gentle Boy", "Wakefield", "The Prophetic Pictures", "The Hollow of the Three Hills", "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", "The Ambitious Guest", "The White Old Maid", "Edward Fane's Rose-bud", "The Lily's ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... tenant and master. Fast 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 American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... their fire! his only knell, More solemn than the passing bell; For, ah! it tells a spirit flown Without a prayer ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... swelling, without a gleam above the tarnished gold of their mountings; one entered no Holy Week, everywhere the "Pange Lingua" and the "Stabat Mater" wailed under the arches, and then came the "Tenebrae," the lamentations, and the psalms, whose knell shook the flame of the brown waxen tapers, and after each halt, at the end of each of the psalms, one of the tapers expired, and its column of blue smoke evaporated still under the lighted circumference of the arches, while the choir recommenced ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... 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

... was no 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 knew had just ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... view, whilst the loud and awful death-cry of five hundred helpless beings, imprisoned in the burning vessel, rings in our ears, curdling our blood, and seeming as if it would burst the very vault of Heaven with its appalling tones. It was a fitting knell to be rung ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... him, 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

... 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 hearts of those ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various

... others of less note came one frail form, A phantom among men, companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness 5 Actaeon-like; and now he fled astray With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, And his own thoughts along that rugged way Pursued like raging hounds their ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... the Roman Empire and the progress of Christianity in Europe sounded the death knell of Paganism and its attributes, of which Pantomime was deemed to be one, owing to the bad odour in which this form of entertainment had got to during the last days of the Empire. Notwithstanding this the church was only too glad to avail itself of Pantomime as a vehicle to portray before ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... from NELL. To be thus "alone in the crowd" is a distinction—a painful one, no doubt, but still a distinction. I am sorry for you, my dear young lady, and I seem to hear your tearful exclamation, when you read these lines, "Ah! This is the knell of all my hopes!" Why, oh why, did you assume that the 4th and 5th bags weighed 4 lbs. each? And why did you not test your answers? However, please try again: and please don't change your nom-de-plume: let us have NELL in the First Class ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll

... was hard, dry, as though she had been striving long for some goal, which, when nearly attained, her failing strength was scarce able to grasp. It was the echo of a fearful struggle that had raged in her proud bosom. The knell it seemed of expiring exertion, of sinking resistance. Mary gazed sadly on her cousin, who stood mechanically smoothing her glossy black hair. The haughty features seemed chiseled in marble, so ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... itself down there, think of him greeting each with the question, 'Thou too? What! are ye all here? Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?' and from each bloodless spectral lip there tolls out the answer, the knell of his life, 'I have found thee, because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord.' Ah, my friend! if that were all we had to say, it might well stiffen us into stony despair. Thank God—thank ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the compassionate nurse. "I feared it would be so. I saw it coming this last week; and a third stroke is a death-knell—that's certain! But it will be a blessed escape for the poor dear; so don't take on, Mr. Morris" (this was her nearest approach to saying "Maurice"). "You'll need all your spirit to get along with the old lady; though, if ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... the 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 ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... Wire fences coming down this way now," mused Johnny, sullenly. He hated them by training as much as he hated horse-thieves and sheep; and his companions had been brought up in the same school. Barb wire, the death-knell to the old-time punching, the bar to riding at will, a steel insult to fire the blood—it had come ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... 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

... dugout and found a note from him on the table. It contained few words, but they held a world of meaning. Simple words and few, tolling her knell of doom. ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... speaking, it may not be more impressive now, than at any other time; for the hours steal as swiftly on, at other periods, and their flight is little heeded. But, we measure man's life by years, and it is a solemn knell that warns us we have passed another of the landmarks which stands between us and the grave. Disguise it as we may, the reflection will force itself on our minds, that when the next bell announces the arrival of a new year, we may be insensible alike of the timely warning we have so ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... a contrary effect on Leonard. Sweet as it was, tender as the voice that spoke it, it imposed a boundary to affection, it came as a knell to hope. He recoiled, shook his head mournfully: "Too late to accept that tie,—too late even for friendship. Henceforth—for long years to come—henceforth, till this heart has ceased to beat at your name to thrill at your presence, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... peculiarly suited to the humanities of every race, clime, and condition; there is no limit to its expansive adaptability. It is in a special manner voracious in the destruction of other languages; wherever it goes, it sounds the death-knell of all the rest. ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... Cseiteburg, as soon as he inherited it. But the wicked nurse could not be moved by his tears and prayers, she pierced the second one through with the big gold pin, and then she left them in the depths of the forest, covered with dry leaves; the cuckoos sounded their funeral knell, and the nightingale sang their death dirge. The same day came the handsome knight to the beautiful lady in the castle. And the beautiful lady said to him, full of joy, '"The four eyes" are no longer ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai

... tower was unsafe, and on that very morning, they were advised not to ring the bells again, until an examination of the building had taken place: but ring they would, and ring they did, and the result of their ringing was a death-knell unmatched ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... 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, but ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... ruined balcony, And passing by the fallen door, Stood on the dark hall's oaken floor. Lighting the pine-torch that he bore, He watched its lurid beams explore The gloomy precincts, and passed on, As one who knew each winding well, To a low room that lay beyond, And echoed to the south wind's knell. Upon the threshold crushed and lone, By rude marauder's hand o'erthrown, The holy volume lay; He raised it from its station there, And smoothed the crumpled leaves with care, Then sadly turned away To gaze upon a portrait near, Whose thoughtful eyes, so calm and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... cherished guest, Who quits you never on an alien quest. But what that mystic prism shadows forth Hath menace which auxiliar from the North May scarce avert. The scales of Justice tilt Something askew. The curse of high-placed guilt Is on you, if the warning tocsin's knell, Clanging forth fiercely, hath not force to tell The hearer that Fate's hourglass fast runs out. That spectral Comet flames, beset about With miasmatic mist, and lurid fume, Conquering Corruption threatens hideous doom. Yet, yet the Bow of Promise gleams ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various

... Preceptory, broke short their argument. One by one the sullen sounds fell successively on the ear, leaving but sufficient space for each to die away in distant echo, ere the air was again filled by repetition of the iron knell. These sounds, the signal of the approaching ceremony, chilled with awe the hearts of the assembled multitude, whose eyes were now turned to the Preceptory, expecting the approach of the Grand Master, the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... the purifying fire in a nation's existence. It is to be hoped that this great convulsion will purify the free States by sounding the death-knell of these small intriguing politicians. The American people at large will acquire earnestness, knowledge of men, and clear insight into its own affairs. Tricky politicians will be discarded, and ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... gate of 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, it thundered round ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... sense, only a concession! Mr. President, I do not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On the contrary, I believe that whenever you establish that doctrine, whenever you crystallize that idea in the public mind of this country, you ring the death-knell of American liberties. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... did not know that I too loved 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

... stormy rain, They moved gently o'er the dewy meads To where Saint Alban's holy shrines remain. There did they find that both their knights were slain. Distraught they wander'd to swoln Redbourne's side, Yell'd there their deadly knell, sank in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... national art is as dead as the proverbial door-nail; whether or not it ever regains its position as a craft is a matter of conjecture. Personally, I incline to the belief that it is absolutely extinct. The death-knell rang for all time when the sewing-machine was invented. The machine has been a very doubtful blessing, as it has allowed even the art of stitchery in ordinary work to slide into the limbo of forgotten things. What woman now knows what it ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes

... times. Since I started putting these pages in shape for the printer, the Child Labor Committee and the Tuberculosis Committee have been formed to put up bars against the slum where it roamed unrestrained; the Tenement House Department has been organized and got under way, and the knell of the double-decker and the twenty-five-foot lot has been sounded. Two hundred tenements are going up to-day under the new law, that are in all respects model buildings, as good as the City and Suburban Home Company's houses, though built ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... times" rang through Frank like a death-knell, for he grasped what his father meant, and tried to speak some words of comfort, but they would not come. Even if they had, they would have been drowned by a tremendous cheer which arose from the ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn

... Haunted House and fling himself on the drenched grass beside his shivering mare. Presently his debauch turned into a heavy sleep, and the hours passed. Suddenly he woke and sat up. He heard, quite distinctly, the sharp click of a horse's hoof. It had rung through his drunken sleep like a knell. He had dreamt he heard again the passing bell that had tolled ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin

... from the country round, gathering together hurriedly before the fortress, heard portentous wailings from supernatural voices, which mingled in ghostly harmony with the moaning of the restless sea, the dirging of the dreary wind, and the dull deep thunder of the funeral knell. About the heights of the castle, and in the caverns beneath it, these sounds ceased not night or day, until the corpse of the hero was conveyed to the ship destined to bear it to its burial-place in Glastonbury Abbey. Then, dirging winds, and moaning sea, and wailing voices, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... the poor horse lashed through the heavy mire, tired, foaming, panting, while his strong arm urged it on, with whip and spur; I can hear the exulting beating of his heart, that wild refrain that was raging as his death-knell—"Mine! Mine at last!" I could hear it, I say. It rung in my ears all night. He held her in his power; she must be his; hastily, yet carefully he performs his toilet; I dare say he stopped to think which cravat she liked best. "Mine! ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... athwart the face of light Float the clouds of sullen Night! Odin's warriors watch for me By the earth-encircling sea! The water's dirges howl my knell; 'Tis ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... 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 ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... eccentric Wakefield (whose original, if I remember rightly, is to be found in 'King's Anecdotes'), who leaves his house one morning for no particular reason, and though living in the next street, does not reveal his existence to his wife for twenty years; and the hero of the 'Wedding Knell,' the elderly bridegroom whose early love has jilted him, but agrees to marry him when she is an elderly widow and he an old bachelor, and who appals the marriage party by coming to the church in his shroud, with the bell tolling as for a funeral—all these bear ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... the drooping flock, toll'd forth her knell; The solemn deathwatch click'd the hour ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various

... 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 fear, Of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... 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 ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... the end. After the death of Guaybana no other cacique ever attempted an organized resistance, and the partial uprisings that took place for years afterward were easily suppressed. The report of the arquebus that laid Guaybana low was the death-knell of the whole ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... of the Maid fell on the defenders of the place. It was 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 their ears. ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... Allan's consciousness. Beyond them, he could hear movements, exclamations. But they meant nothing to him. Only the one thought tolled, knell-like, within him. "We seven are the only living humans left ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat

... shoals 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 shining myriads of ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... wars, farewell! You have heard my empire's knell, Yet no hostile world's decree Can estrange your hearts from me; Exiled to a tiny isle, Through your tears you well may smile At the realm my foes ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... well—aim at my heart"—was Maximilian's request to his executioners. "Oh man!" was his last cry as he fell, the victim of his own ambition, and of Louis Napoleon's perfidy. The volley which pierced his breast was the knell of the Bonaparte dynasty. Gravelotte was but little more ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... died away, and Mr Swiveller was still sitting in a very grim state in the clients' chair, when there came a ring—or, if we may adapt the sound to his then humour, a knell—at the office bell. Opening the door with all speed, he beheld the expressive countenance of Mr Chuckster, between whom and himself a ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... impious voice aloud proclaim He knows no Heaven but this—no God but Fame. Lord, in refusing to acknowledge Thee, Vain man denies his own reality; But tho' the boon of life he may receive From God, and still affect to disbelieve, What are his views at death's resounding knell? Just Heaven! Sure, man ne'er died an infidel. Stretched on the agonizing couch of pain, All human aid inefficacious, vain, Where shall his tortured spirit rest? Ah, where? The past, all gloom! the future, all despair! 'Tis then, O Lord, the skeptic turns to Thee, Then the ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney

... if ever I strive merry story to tell, Full of japeful and humorsome graces, 'T is as though I were tolling a funeral bell As if dismally, dolefully tolling a knell, So solemn ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... were a source of revenue in almost all parishes, and sometimes an important one.[289] Consequently tariffs of fees were drawn up in various places. So much is charged for interment within, so much for burial without the church; so much for a knell according to duration and according to size of the bell; so much for the herse—a sort of catafalque—so much for the pall, the fee varying from that charged for "the best" to that charged for "the worst cloth"; so much if the ...
— The Elizabethan Parish in its Ecclesiastical and Financial Aspects • Sedley Lynch Ware

... committed, perpetrated, and accomplished in secret. This strange traditional notion will die hard, but some time it will have to die, and at the moment of its death excellent and sincere persons will be convinced that the knell of the British Empire has sounded. The knell of the British Empire has frequently sounded. It sounded when capital punishment was abolished for sheep-stealing, when the great reform bill was passed, when purchase was abolished in the army, when the deceased wife's sister ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... shrine of Charolois is again sounding; but how different its tone from the musical and inspiring chime that summoned the weary vassals to their grateful vespers! The bell of the shrine of Charolois is again sounding. Alas! it tolls a gloomy knell. Oh! valley of sweet waters, still are thy skies as pure as when she wandered by thy banks and mused over her beloved! Still sets thy glowing sun; and quivering and bright, like the ascending soul of a hero, still Hesperus rises from thy dying glory! But she, the maiden fairer than ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... the perfect life of Kshattriya, as an example that they might follow. They would not learn the lesson, either by destruction or by love. They would not follow the example either from fear or from admiration. Then their hour struck on the bell of Heaven, the knell of the Kshattriya caste. He came to sweep away that caste and to leave only scattered remnants of it, dotted over the Indian soil. It had been the sword of India, the iron wall that ringed her round. He came to shiver that wall into pieces, and to break the sword that ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant

... black flags floated from many a tower and steeple. The country was in a frenzy of anger and disappointment. A monster meeting was held on Newhall Hill, and there, in half a dozen words, Muntz sounded the knell of the new Tory Ministry. In tones such as few lungs but his could produce, he thundered in the ears of attentive and eager listeners the words, "To stop the Duke, run for gold." There were no telegraphs in those days, but these words were soon known through the country. A run commenced, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... princes fell, What time the bishop said, 'Sir Bertrand loved ye well; Weep, warriors, for the dead! The knell of sorrow tolls For deeds that were so bright: God save all Christian souls, And his—the gallant ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the great bell overhead Boom'd in the wind a knell for the dead, Though no one toll'd it, a knell for ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various

... lustiness of his person. Nay, he has often leaped up from his lap-board, and, in the strong spirit of exultation, thrust out his leg in attestation of his assertion, slapping it, moreover, with a loud laugh of triumph, that sounded like a knell to the happiness of his emaciated acquaintance. The schoolmaster's philosophy, however, unlike his flesh, never departed from him; his usual observation was, "Neal, we are both receding from the ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... his obsequies' knell Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well! 15 England, good cheer! Rupert is near! Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here, CHORUS.—Marching along, fifty-score strong, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... It was the imminent danger only to the Cause that made his heart sink in that seemingly fateful hour. When we heard in the malignant and triumphant roar of the Rebel cannon in our rear what might be the death-knell of the last great experiment of civilized men to establish among the nations of the world a united republic, freed from the curse of pampered kings and selfish, grasping aristocrats—it was in that moment, in his simple ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... Lockier a Trooper who was shot to death by Sentence of the Court Martial was buried in this manner. About one thousand went before the Corps, and five or six in a file, the Corps was then brought with six Trumpets sounding a Soldier's Knell, then the Trooper's Horse came clothed all over in mourning and led by a Footman. The Corps was adorned with bundles of Rosemary, one half stained with blood, and the Sword of the deceased with them. Some thousands followed in Ranks and Files, all had Sea-green ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... crowd up to the stand, the motley group of negroes take the alarm, and seem inclined to close in towards a centre as the vender mounts the stand. The bell, with the sharp clanking sound, rings their funeral knell; they startle, as with terror; they listen with subdued anxiety; they wait the result in painful suspense. How little we would recognise the picture from abroad. The vender, an amiable gentleman dressed in modest black, and whose cheerful ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... certainly had the knack of expressing himself clearly. Those concluding words rang like a knell. They even called Watts back from the slumber of unconsciousness; the "chief" stirred himself where he lay on the floor of the cavern, ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... finish the sentence even in his own mind. He could not bear to think that it was possible he might hear his death-knell from the lips he worshipped. He had gladly seized upon the opportunity afforded by this visit to ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... the object of the present expedition. I fancied it possible—but let us go ring fancy's knell. I'll begin it.' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... the waste water; the rumbling of the small trains carrying under wide arches trucks loaded with hams, sausages, &c., and the whistling of the engines warning one of the danger of their approach, which in this spot of terrible massacre seems to be the perpetual knell of wretched agonies. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... in our wards increased daily. Sick men poured into the hospital. Often they came too late, having remained at the post of duty until fever had sapped the springs of life or the rattling breath sounded the knell of hope, marking too surely that fatal disease, double pneumonia. Awestruck I watched the fierce battle for life, the awful agony, trying vainly every means of relief, lingering to witness struggles which wrung my heart, because I could not resist the appealing glance of dying eyes, the ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... Giving, not receiving; asking, not answer." The words reverberated through her consciousness like a funeral knell. She dropped the stained lily and called ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... made that speech. For, in my humble opinion, it betrayed to say the least, a confusion of thought. Could he think of the Turkish people as apart from the Ottoman Government? And what is the meaning of the death-knell of Ottoman Dominion in Europe and Asia if it be not the death knell of Turkish people as a free and governing race? Is it, again, true historically that the Turkish rule has always been a blight that 'has ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... this well-meaning but misguided prince should fall by his own obstinacy; for though his son advised him to seek the alliance of Alfonso, he refused to do so until that alliance could no longer avail him. He himself seemed to think that the knell of his departing greatness was about to sound; and the most melancholy images were present to his fancy, even in sleep. "One night," says an Arabic historian, "he heard in a dream his ruin predicted by one of his sons: he awoke, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... shall I tell?— Two mournful sisters, And a tolling knell, Tolling ding and tolling ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... river that he loved so well Like a full heart is awed to calm, The winter air that wafts his knell Is fragrant ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... message of Peace, the South chose to regard it as a message of Menace;* and it was not received in a much better spirit by some of the Northern papers, which could see no good in it—"no Union spirit in it"—but declared that it breathed the spirit of Sectionalism and mischief, and "is the knell and requiem of the Union, and the death ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... tried to take them aid, And each time back we fell, Though once we could hear the fort's far guns Boom like a funeral knell; Till at length Joe Hooker's corps came up, An' then straight through we broke; How we cheered as we saw those dandy coats Still back of ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... he would the labour of making one. The virgin forest is his domain, and he is not the man to rob it of its primeval charms. The sound of the lumberer's axe, cheerful to the lonely traveller, has no music for his ear: it is to him a note of evil augury—a knell of dread import. It is not often that he hears it: he dwells beyond the circle of its echoes. His nearest neighbour—a squatter like himself—lives at least a mile off; and the most proximate "settlement" is six times ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... two in their rocky fortress beneath the crags the apparition had no terrors. All the pain, the anguish, the hopelessness of the world was passing from them—the cry that swelled through the forest was its knell. They smiled to hear it, and with raised faces looked beyond the many-tinted evening skies into clear spaces where Love was all. The intoxication of the moment when hidden and despairing love became love triumphant and acknowledged abode with them. In the very grasp of death ineffable ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... pathos, and of gold, Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling,—no Method 's more sure at moments to take hold 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 ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... soul the toll of bell Trembles. Thou art calmly sleeping While my weary heart is weeping: I cannot listen to thy knell: Fare-thee-well. ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... submitting to her guidance, loved her no more. The Jesuits, too, whom she had driven from court, overwhelmed her with letters, in which they strove to depict to her the terrors of everlasting punishment.[E] Every hour that struck seemed to toll for her the death-knell of all her hopes and joys. On her first appearance at court, proud of her youth, her beauty, and her brilliant complexion, she had proscribed rouge and patches, saying that life was not a masked ball. She had now reached that sad period of life when she would be compelled ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... loved survivors tell How nought from death could save, Till every sound appears a knell, And ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... weary existence were drawing to a close. She was assailed with innumerable annoyances. Her body was racked with the gout, and her feeble mind was distracted by the contradictory counsels of her advisers. Any allusion to her successor was a knell of agony to her disturbed soul. She became suspicious, and was even alienated from Harley, whom she dismissed from office only a few days before her death, which took place Aug. 1, 1714. She died without ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... 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

... in which his friend Peregrine was stationed, thrust the label with his uncle's name through a small chink in the partition according to agreement, muttering at the time a sort of gibberish, that increased the panic of his audience; then returning to his chair, the knell was tolled again, and Pickle called aloud, "D—n your ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... instantly flashed a volley, reverberating a wild and unearthly death knell among the crags that looked down upon that awful scene. In the clear morning air, the smoke of the guns curled up lazily and hung like a funeral pall over the mangled, bleeding form. Four bullets had pierced his body. He fell on his face and lay motionless for a few seconds. Then he began ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... guilt. Perez was not the only favoured votary of the versatile siren. His rival, or rather his partner, was—Philip of Spain! The revelation of promiscuous worship, threatened by Escovedo, sounded like a knell to Perez and the princess. Was it a mad defiance, or a profound prescience, of the consequences, which, when Escovedo, stung on one occasion beyond forbearance by the demonstration of iniquity which Othello in his agony demands of Iago, declared loudly his purpose of divulging ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... August 12, 1607, in the parish of St. Giles', Cripplegate, was buried "Edward, the base-born son of Edward Shakespeare, Player," and that on December 31 of the same year was buried within the Church of St. Saviour's, Southwark,[211] "Edmund Shakespeare, Player," "with a forenoon knell of the Great Bell."[212] The poet paid every honour ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... her reason with a passionate outbreak of sorrow that shook her from head to foot. "Take me with you, Ovid, take me with you!" He did his best to console her, under adverse circumstances. Mrs. Gallilee's warning voice sounded like a knell—"Time! time!" Zo's shrill treble rang out louder still. Zo was determined to write to Ovid, if she was not allowed to go with him. "Pa's going to write to you—why shouldn't I?" she screamed through her tears. "Dear Zoe, you are too young," Maria remarked. "Damned nonsense!" ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... through shade and foliage, whilst clouds of smoke issue from the chimneys, and curl up slowly towards the sky. But now, strange to say, every hearth in the country seems cold and deserted. Stranger and more fatal still, every steeple rings out a funeral knell. Whatever there is of activity, movement, or life, appears concentrated in that lugubrious and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... 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 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 • Various

... you will grieve for me when I tell you that our baby went away from us quite suddenly this morning, while the Easter bells were ringing so joyfully. They rang the knell of a mother's heart, for they rang ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... colonies,' he said,—'saved the colonies. I knew it must be so. It is the knell of ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... measure to adopt. Camille Desmoulins, a young man, more daring than the rest, one of the usual orators of the crowd, mounted on a table, pistol in hand, exclaiming: "Citizens, there is no time to lose; the dismissal of Necker is the knell of a Saint Bartholomew for patriots! This very night all the Swiss and German battalions will leave the Champ de Mars to massacre us all; one resource is left; to take arms!" These words were received with violent ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... offering any popular or national resistance to an active or enterprising enemy." In this Mr Finlay does but agree with other able writers; but he and they should have recollected, that hardly had that very year 623 departed, even yet the knell of its last hour was sounding upon the winds, when this effeminate empire had occasion to show that she could clothe herself with consuming terrors, as a belligerent both defensive and aggressive. In the absence of her great emperor, and of the main imperial ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... withdrew and Stanton turned to the President. Lincoln's face was terrible in its strain, for the words "in the moment of victory" had rung the knell of ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... 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

... when he sat beside her in the tiny boudoir of the Square du Roule, and the heavy foot fall of Heron and his bloodhounds broke in on their first kiss, down to this hour which he believed struck his own death-knell, his love for her had brought more tears to her dear eyes than ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... fearless reply sounded the knell of many a sacred painting and statue; for the destruction was accepted as God's work rather than man's.[90] Henceforth little exertion was made to save these objects of mistaken devotion, while the greatest care was taken to prevent the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... shall that night light such a candle as shall never be put out. Electric light is doomed. The knell ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... of the cathedral tolled out a funeral knell as a solemn procession marched to a transport ship. They were dust covered, haggard men, with a hunted look, chained in pairs. On either side marched a file of soldiers with fixed bayonets. Pierola's men were ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds

... 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

... those people who were confined within the walls of Chao-t'ong city—the silence of their own homes broken up by the distant uproar of a frantic chorus of yells and angry disputations, sounding, as it were, their very death-knell, as if they were to form a manacled procession dragging their chains of martyrdom to their own slow doom—before we show contempt for the opinion of those who would tell the truth. There is more of Boxerism in the far-away interior parts of ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... distinguish. distintivo distinctive mark. distinto distinct, different. disuadir to dissuade. divertido amusing. dividir to divide. divino divine. divisar to perceive, descry. doblar to double, fold, bend, give way. doble double, m. passing bell, knell. doblegar to bend, curve. doce twelve. doctrina doctrine. documento document. dolor pain, grief. doloroso sorrowful, painful. domar to subdue. domicilio home. dominar to dominate, rule. domingo Sunday. dominio domain. don m. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... spread the unfurled banner of your infamy on every breeze, and cause it to float in the atmosphere of every State in this Union, until your very name becomes a mockery and a by-word! And I call upon the people of Kentucky and Missouri to ring the loud knell of your infamy, from steep to steep, and from valley to valley, until their swelling sounds are heard in startling echoes, mingling with the rush of the criminal's torrent, and ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... understand and quick to choke down and smother the understanding; swift to leap up 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 ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 and their ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... hell, and his obsequies' knell Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well! 15 England, good cheer! Rupert is near! Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here, CHORUS.—Marching along, fifty-score strong, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... the ensign Amboires of Oluferne; Pagans 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, ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... enough, too; he did not know My Miriam! I can fancy the poor horse lashed through the heavy mire, tired, foaming, panting, while his strong arm urged it on, with whip and spur; I can hear the exulting beating of his heart, that wild refrain that was raging as his death-knell—"Mine! Mine at last!" I could hear it, I say. It rung in my ears all night. He held her in his power; she must be his; hastily, yet carefully he performs his toilet; I dare say he stopped to think which cravat she liked best. "Mine! Mine!" ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... me where is Fancy bred, Or in the heart, or in the head? How begot, how nourished? It is engendered in the eyes With gazing fed, And Fancy dies in the cradle where it lies. Let us all ring Fancy's knell. I'll begin it—ding, dong, bell. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... him something of the old political life of Vienna, continually agitated by some "Balkan Question"; of the general dislike of the "Heir," whose violent death at Sarajevo had been the death knell of European peace; apprehensions of the day when he should ascend the throne, for he was intensely clerical and reactionary. If he had survived until the old Emperor's death, and there had been ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... saw, in the suggestion of that same establishment, an easy means of relieving himself from an irksome charge in the way of temper and watchfulness. It is undoubtedly a fact that in the attentive ears of Mr Pecksniff, the proposition did not sound quite like the dismal knell ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... the trees and standing back to them, they saw a man. He appeared unconscious of their presence. Yes, that must be Ferguson! The thought flashed through the boy's mind and, unconscious of his own safety, his lips opened to cry the alarm, which would have sounded his own death knell, when he saw a tomahawk hurtle through the air and bury itself in the man's brain. He fell to his knees without a moan. The Indian, leaping to his side, had scalped him before Rodney realized what had happened. Then, seizing the lad by the shoulder, ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... his every whim, for in the blackness of her trouble nothing seemed at present to really matter. The whirling eddies of her thoughts rushed through her brain in a perpetual series of questions and answers. Must hate strike the death knell of love? Surely the only thing to do with an injury is to forgive it. Would revenge wipe out the wrong or in any way solve anything? No, there would only be one more wrong done in the world, to go on in ever-widening circles of ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... whether the economic system adopted by a society is feudal, capitalistic, or collectivist, provided it keeps the race afoot (the hive and the anthill being as acceptable to her as Utopia), the demonstrations of Socialists, though irrefutable, will never make any serious impression on property. The knell of that over-rated institution will not sound until it is felt to conflict with some more vital matter than mere personal inequities in industrial economy. No such conflict was perceived whilst society had not yet grown beyond national communities too ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... 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 was near ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... the churchyard, and methought There entering, as I let the iron gate Swing to behind me, that the change was good— The unquiet living, for the quiet dead. And at that moment, from the old church tower A knell resounded—"Man to his long home" Drew near. "The mourners went about the streets;" And there, few paces onward to the right, Close by the pathway, was an open grave, Not of the humbler sort, shaped newly out, Narrow ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... What is that noise? A clatter as of falling boards. There is a sound as of hammering. At first it seems to Romeo Augustus like Mephibosheth's death-knell. Thud, thud, thud, go the blows. Drawn almost against his will, Romeo Augustus stealthily approaches the window. He glances fearfully out. What does he see? His father pounding busily, making—what is he making? Can it be? It is—it is ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... burdens, he has been tomahawked in the face; he is now to be roasted alive. A dark forest is selected for the sacrifice; stripped naked, he is bound to a tree, and the inflammable brushwood piled around him. Savage voices sound his death-knell. Fire is applied, when a sudden shower dampens the flame, to burst forth again with renewed strength. Though securely fastened, the limbs of the victim are left some liberty to shrink from the accursed heat. He has thought his last thought of home, of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... they led him to a dark and dismal cell. Where they left him. Sad and solemn, heavy, awful as a knell, Seemed the fading of their footsteps, as he heard them slowly glide Through the long and vaulted corridor till ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... The latest of my wealth I'll share amongst you. Wherever we shall meet, for Timon's sake Let's yet be fellows; let's shake our heads, and say, As 'twere a knell unto our master's fortunes, "We have seen better days." Let each take some. (Giving them money.) Nay, put out all your hands. Not one word more: Thus part we rich ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... men concerned, for when it was abolished compensation was given for the loss of fees, the annual payments ranging from L10 8s., to L36 8s. Increased posting facilities, and the infusion of greater activity into the performance of post-office work, were no doubt the things which "rang the parting knell" of these useful servants of ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... Helfrich recalled them. He signalled with his hand, but Mr Gale did not observe him. "Fire a gun there," he shouted; "quick, for your lives!" A gun had been ready loaded for the purpose. Its report served as the funeral knell ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... Dartie had that financial crisis, due to speculation in Oil Shares, James made himself ill worrying over it; the knell of all prosperity seemed to have sounded. It took him three months and a visit to Baden-Baden to get better; there was something terrible in the idea that but for his, James's, money, Dartie's name might have appeared ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... name of Nola, daughter of Menecreta, amongst those whom the State doth not guarantee for skill, health or condition," rejoined the praefect quietly, and his rough voice, scarcely raised above its ordinary pitch, seemed to ring a death-knell in ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... forgotten some of her misgivings of the day. Now they suddenly returned to her. What news did Jack Elliott bring? Lines from an old poem flashed unbidden into her mind—"there was a sound of revelry by night"—"Hush! Hark! A deep sound strikes like a rising knell"—why should she think of that now? Why didn't Jack Elliott speak—if he had anything to tell? Why did he just stand there, ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... objective of Great Britain in India, and that a substantial measure of it is to be given at once; when this promise is made good by the granting of the Reforms outlined last year in Lucknow, then the end of the War will be in sight. For the War cannot end till the death-knell ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant

... 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! ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... Sorrow would I sing. Aye as the Star of Evening flung its beam In broken radiance on the wavy stream, My soul amid the pensive twilight gloom Mourn'd with the breeze, O Lee Boo![64:2] o'er thy tomb. 10 Where'er I wander'd, Pity still was near, Breath'd from the heart and glisten'd in the tear: No knell that toll'd but fill'd my anxious eye, And suffering Nature wept that one ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... brooding over what she had come through. And Jean Merle had not trusted himself to look into the open grave, about to close over all that remained of the woman he had so passionately loved. The tolling of the minute-bell, which began early in the day and struck its deep knell through the tardy hours till late in the evening, smote upon his ear and heart every time the solemn tone sounded through the quiet hours. He was left alone in his old home, for Mr. Clifford was gone as one of the mourners to follow Felicita to the grave; and all the ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... descendant of the stories in the Acta Sanctorum and elsewhere. It embodied their spirit and carried it forward, uniting their delicate feeling for chastity and purity with the ideal of monogamic love. Aucassin et Nicolette was the death-knell of the primitive Christian romance of chastity. It was the discovery that the chaste refinements of delicacy and devotion were possible within the strictly normal sphere ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... from our view, whilst the loud and awful death-cry of five hundred helpless beings, imprisoned in the burning vessel, rings in our ears, curdling our blood, and seeming as if it would burst the very vault of Heaven with its appalling tones. It was a fitting knell to be ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... could not speak That parting word of bitterness; the cheek Grows pale when the tongue utters it; the knell Which tells "the grave is ready!" and doth swell On the dull wind, tolling—"the dead—the dead!" Sounds not more desolate. It is a dread And fearful thing to be of hope bereft, As if the soul itself had died, and left The body living—feeling ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... notice, monsieur, in Beethoven's Symphony in A, that knell which ever and ever comes back and beats upon your heart? Yes, I see very well, you feel as I do, music is a communion—Beethoven, ah, me! how sad and sweet it is to be two to understand him ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... and you know how exultingly we both 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 ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... fell, and again, in terrible earnest. There was a gasp from the gathered multitudes as they saw and understood. That swift, relentless hand was sounding the knell of doom to ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... whereby he strives to spell His lines of life, nor where he bends his knee, Since, with his grave before him, he can see White Peace above it, while the churchyard bell Poised in its tower, poised now, to boom his knell, Seems but the waiting tongue ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

... clanging knell," Cried the fair youth with silver voice; "And for devotion's choral swell, Exchange ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... praise who came to them covered with the blood of those who had striven in their defence. The holiday was duly called forth; houses, where funeral hatchments for murdered inmates had been perpetually suspended, were decked with garlands; the bells, which had hardly once omitted their daily knell for the victims of an incredible cruelty, now rang their merriest peals; and in the very square where so lately Egmont and Horn, besides many other less distinguished martyrs, had suffered an ignominious death, a gay tournament was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of the valley, Voiceless now, speed on before; Soon shall knell that chapel bell For the songs ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... 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 ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... streets, what was the phrase that kept ringing in his ears?—"And when she bids die he shall surely die!" But he no longer heard the pathetic vibration of Natalie Lind's voice; the words seemed to him solemn, and distant, and hopeless, like a knell. But only if it were over—that was again his wild desire. In the grave ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall a while repair, To ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... compared with others, we were getting along finely. Every day, as the difficulties of the trail increased, I saw more and more instances of suffering and privation, and to many the name of the White Pass was the death-knell of hope. I could see their faces blanch as they gazed upward at that white immensity; I could see them tighten their pack-straps, clench their teeth and begin the ascent; could see them straining every muscle as they climbed, the grim lines harden round their ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... some far-off quarter of the square, and he turned short about and the people saw his face. Despair had seized it, and if any one there desired vengeance, he had it. The knell of active life had been rung for this man. He would never remount the courthouse steps, or face again ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... upon thee; Sirra? Rascal? You Lenten Chaps, you that lay sick, and mockt me, Mockt me abominably, abused me lewdly, I'le make thee sick at heart, before I leave thee, And groan, and dye indeed, and be worth nothing, Not worth a blessing, nor a Bell to knell for thee, A sheet to cover thee, but that thou Stealest, Stealest from the Merchant, and the Ring he was buried with Stealest from his Grave, do ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... which had veered more to the eastwardly, rose considerably, drowning the clanging knell of the Spit buoy bell and rattling the windows and doors, like some desperate burglar on thoughts of plunder bent trying to effect ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... chamber in which his friend Peregrine was stationed, thrust the label with his uncle's name through a small chink in the partition according to agreement, muttering at the time a sort of gibberish, that increased the panic of his audience; then returning to his chair, the knell was tolled again, and Pickle called aloud, "D—n your mummery: why ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... the sound of that death-knell shook her nerves, and made her feel faint and weak. Oh, it would have been easier had she been as she was a year ago, before she learned to love, and hand in hand had seen faith and hope re-arise from the depths of her stirred ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... this hour of warmth and light The last great knell were knolled; If Death should close mine eyes to-night And all the tale ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... the whole of Cseiteburg, as soon as he inherited it. But the wicked nurse could not be moved by his tears and prayers, she pierced the second one through with the big gold pin, and then she left them in the depths of the forest, covered with dry leaves; the cuckoos sounded their funeral knell, and the nightingale sang their death dirge. The same day came the handsome knight to the beautiful lady in the castle. And the beautiful lady said to him, full of joy, '"The four eyes" are no longer in our way, the two children lie out there covered with leaves, the cuckoo has ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai

... summon courage enough to ask a question concerning you and yours, and yet God Almighty knows that every hour the thought had been gnawing at my heart. I then for the first time heard of that event which sounded like my own knell, without its natural hope or sense of rest. Such shall I be (is the thought that haunts me), but O! not such; O! with what a different retrospect! But I owe it to justice to say, Such good I truly can do myself, etc., etc." The rest ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... who shaped my ways, Or works, or thoughts," he said. "I scarcely marked her living days, Or missed her much when dead." But O, his joyance knew its knell When ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... simple-hearted old Charley! It was the imminent danger only to the Cause that made his heart sink in that seemingly fateful hour. When we heard in the malignant and triumphant roar of the Rebel cannon in our rear what might be the death-knell of the last great experiment of civilized men to establish among the nations of the world a united republic, freed from the curse of pampered kings and selfish, grasping aristocrats—it was in that moment, in his simple language, that the peril to the Cause ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... to all of us, was to send for Monty. His steamer was not supposed to sail for an hour yet. But the thought had hardly flashed in mind when we heard the roar of steam and clanking as the anchor chain came home. The sound traveled over water and across roofs like the knell of good luck—the clanking of ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... 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 thought) ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... flames, against the rear of the house. All the efforts of the garrison to extinguish the fire were unavailing, and the building was soon in a blaze. As the flames rapidly rolled up the wall and over the roof, the savages raised shouts of exultation, which fell as a death-knell upon the hearts of those who had now no alternative but to be consumed in the flames or to surrender themselves to the merciless foe. The bullets were still rattling against the house, and fifteen hundred warriors were greedily watching ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... the 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

... clock—I love you well, For your silver chime, and the truths you tell— Your every stroke is but the knell Of Hope, or Sorrow buried deep; Say on—but only let me hear The sound most sweet to my listening ear, The child and the mother breathing clear ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... 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. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... 'internal weakness,' and as 'equally incapable of offering any popular or national resistance to an active or enterprising enemy.' In this Mr. Finlay does but agree with other able writers; but he and they should have recollected, that hardly had that very year 623 departed, even yet the knell of its last hour was sounding upon the winds, when this effeminate empire had occasion to show that she could clothe herself with consuming terrors, as a belligerent both defensive and aggressive. In ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... some distance from the Preceptory, broke short their argument. One by one the sullen sounds fell successively on the ear, leaving but sufficient space for each to die away in distant echo, ere the air was again filled by repetition of the iron knell. These sounds, the signal of the approaching ceremony, chilled with awe the hearts of the assembled multitude, whose eyes were now turned to the Preceptory, expecting the approach of the Grand Master, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... those warlike Austrians see that that is their death-knell, and that it is a bad omen for them that Gentz had to blow the war-trumpet? Is it not the same Gentz who drew up the high-sounding manifesto for the King of Prussia, previous to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... the battle's fearful sounds, They seem'd my lover's knell— I heard, that pierc'd with ghastly wounds, My vent'rous ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams

... fifteenth century the knell of the Church rang out; it is memorable evermore in history for the discovery of the New World, and the consequent practical demonstration of the falsehood of the whole theory of the patristic and ecclesiastical theology. In the flood only "Noah and his ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... midnight's holy hour—and silence now Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds, The bell's deep-notes are swelling. 'Tis the knell ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... adds zest to Froude's satisfaction. No purer soul ever set himself to right the world than Reginald Pole; no one failed more completely in his cherished plans. He and Mary died on the same day; the bells that tolled their knell rang out the order for which they stood. But the utter failure of their hopes roused no emotion save that of bitter contempt in Froude. He saw no merit in the "hysterical dreamer" who had sacrificed his all for his religion; he saw no pathos in the life of that lone ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... secure the visible 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

... It stood like a shrouded ghost, and the drip, drip, drip of the rain on the veranda came to him like a death-knell. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... noble hearts for those less blest than they. These are the men who serve the city in times of peace, save it in times of war, deserve the highest honors in its gift, and leave behind them a record that keeps their memories green. For such an one we lately tolled a knell, my brothers; and as our united voices pealed over the city, in all grateful hearts, sweeter and more solemn than any chime, rung the words ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... in 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. ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton

... churchyard. 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 ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... chapel 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. ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris

... mute! And when the midnight moon should lave Her forehead in the silver wave, How solemn on the ear would come The holy matins' distant hum, While the deep peal's commanding tone Should wake, in yonder islet lone, A sainted hermit from his cell, To drop a bead with every knell! And bugle, lute, and bell, and all, Should each bewildered stranger call To ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... by the moor, Where father, mother, mourning dwell. The fire is bright, where hearts are sore The chime to them a mournful knell. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... "Is that my death-knell?" he asked wearily. "Have I, then, died already, and is it death that is lying so heavily ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... hundred or more—Oh! he made them all fly! One day, by a blow, He was conquered, I know; But no wonder at last he should yield to a foe: He yielded, poor fellow! The conquering bellow Resounds in my ears as my poor father's knell—Oh!" A Fox then replied, While, leering aside, He laughed at his folly and vapouring pride: "My chattering youth, Your nonsense, forsooth, Is more like a funeral sermon than truth. Let history tell How your old father fell; And see if the narrative sounds ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... Here last September was he laid; Poppies these, that were his eyes, Of fish-bones are these blue-bells made; His fins of gold that to and fro Waved and waved so long ago, Still as petals wave and wave To and fro above his grave. Hearken, too! for so his knell Tolls all day ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... a jerk she freed her skirt from his clutch. Then she ran quickly up the stairs. Outside the door of her own room on the first landing she paused for one minute, and from out of the gloom her voice came to him like the knell of passing hope. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... carillon, curfew, tocsin, gong. Associated Words: campanology, campanologist, peal, ring, knell, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... Had the Taepings shown better generalship there is no saying but that they would have succeeded in capturing it, as the Imperialists had left quite unguarded the approach by Chingting and Paoting, and the capture of Peking would have sounded the knell of the Manchu dynasty. But the Taepings did not seize the chance—if it were one—and they were far from being in the best of spirits. They had advanced far, but it looked as if it was into the lion's mouth. Their march had been a remarkable one, but it had been attended with no striking success. ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... heartless rigour. The tower of the Cathedral of S. Caterina contains five bells, the largest of which, still in daily use, is the same which was formerly tolled on the occasion of the auto-da-fe. It was quite thrilling to listen to its deep knell, and to think that those same tones must have fallen upon the agonised ears of the poor victims of an ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... Nature laments that her best achievement, man, has become discontented with her in his ungrateful discontent with himself. It is like the whimpering of a hurt animal, and the queer, ingenious metre, with its one rhyme set at wide but distinct and heavily recurrent intervals, beats on the ear like a knell. Blind and dumb forces speak, conjecture, half awakening out of sleep, turning back heavily to sleep again. Many poets have been sorry for man, angry with Nature on man's behalf. Here is a poet who is sorry for Nature, who feels the earth and its roots, as ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... hard in him. A clock outside, chiming the half-hour, rang its knell with derisive strokes that seemed to beat upon his heart. It was just his luck. She would never turn up. A hundred contingencies might arise to prevent her—a street accident, a headache, bad news of ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... hills, and the glad birds were warbling melodiously in the thickets, as if none but the living were moving amongst them; and but for the wild dirge, which mingled with the whispers of the wind, and but for the deep-toned knell which ever and anon rose slowly and mournfully above it, the lone traveller would never have conjectured that Death was conveying its victims through those smiling scenes. As the procession approached the portals of the Abbey, it was met, as was then ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various

... the midnight bell, Pealing forth its funeral knell; Now its tones sound loud and clear— Now low and dirge-like, strike the ear, Solemn and slow, they seem to fall, Upon ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... on Lionel like a knell. He foresaw trouble. "Sibylla," he gravely said, "I have been speaking ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... those full, piercing eyes, and felt that I was conquered. Still I resolved to make some struggles for my dignity yet, and not submit until defeat was no longer doubtful. People in talking of "unrequited affection," speak of "the knell of departed hopes," but no knell could sound more dreadful to the ears of a girl in her teens—trembling for her scarcely-fledged young-lady-hood—than did the voice of my grandmother, (and it was by no ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... de (or en) su obligacion: To neglect one's duty. Desfallecer de animo: To lose courage. Deshacerse de los generos: To get rid of the goods. Detestar de la mentira: To hate lying. Disfrutar de buena renta: To enjoy a good income. Doblar por un difunto: To sound the death knell. Dudar de ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano

... only laugh at Love to whom the fullness of living has been denied, in whose cold veins, adulterate with inherited disease, a stagnant liquid mocks the purpose of the rich red blood of a healthy race; that in that laugh of theirs is the, knell of them and of their people; that the nation which has ceased to love ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... enjoy them. But now—in a single moment—Ambition was dethroned. At the time, though his eyes were open, he scarcely realized that the old supremacy had passed. Only long afterwards did he ask himself if the death-knell of his success had begun to toll on that golden morning; because a man cannot serve ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... Mr. Sinclair emphatically, and he never did, though he saw her form grow thinner, and her cheek paler every day, and before the winter was gone heard that deep, hollow cough from her, which has so often sounded the knell of hope to the anxious heart. With the coming on of summer this cough passed away, but Mary was oppressed by great feebleness and languor—scarcely less fatal symptoms. Still she omitted none of those cares essential to her father's comfort—while to the poor, the sick, the ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... measures aimed at undermining the State's stability and independence. It is not stupidity! It is that the Boer realizes at least one of the inevitable consequences of reform—that the ignorant and incapable must go under. Reform is the death-knell of his oligarchy, and therefore a danger to the independence of the State—as he sees it. Until the European people who have lately become so deeply concerned in Transvaal affairs realize how widely divergent are the two interpretations of 'Independence,' they will ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... that 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

... that speech. For, in my humble opinion, it betrayed to say the least, a confusion of thought. Could he think of the Turkish people as apart from the Ottoman Government? And what is the meaning of the death-knell of Ottoman Dominion in Europe and Asia if it be not the death knell of Turkish people as a free and governing race? Is it, again, true historically that the Turkish rule has always been a blight that 'has withered some of the fairest regions of the earth?' And what is the meaning of his statement ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... the dirge, the knell? These were the mourner's share,— The sullen clang, whose heavy swell Throbbed through the beating air; The rattling cord, the rolling stone, The shelving sand that slid, And, far beneath, with hollow tone Rung on the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the push in the West is indecisive then our push is only to be postponed. Postponed! The word is like a knell. To write it gives me a feeling of sick despair. Only postponed! As well ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... my room-mate," answered Rebecca, who thought her own knell of doom had sounded, if he ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... own, but alas, the fond cry of welcome to sweet Adah Hastings was a death knell to 'Lina, for it seemed to shut her out of that gentle woman's heart. There was no place for her, and in her terrible desolation she stood alone, her eyes wandering wistfully from one to another, but turning very quickly when they fell on the white-haired Densie, her mother. She would ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... even in his dying fear One dreadful sound could the Rover hear, A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell, The fiends below were ringing his knell. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... violence of the conflict within us,—of the definite with the indefinite—of the substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails,—we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer—note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies—it disappears—we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... 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, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... them 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

... the enemy came in sight half a mile distant and started towards them at double-quick, loading and firing as they ran; but before they had traversed half the distance, they had learned that the whistle of every bullet was the death-knell of one, and in many instances of more than one of their number, and coming to a slight ravine, the temptation of its shelter from so fearful a storm proved irresistible, and, turning up course, they fled in dismay, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... as to determine the exact time of its inception. Dr. Miller says that Chivalry was formally abolished in the year 1559, when Henry II. of France was slain in a tournament. With us, the edict formally abolishing Feudalism in 1870 was the signal to toll the knell of Bushido. The edict, issued two years later, prohibiting the wearing of swords, rang out the old, "the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise," it rang in the new age of "sophisters, ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... of St. Giles', Cripplegate, was buried "Edward, the base-born son of Edward Shakespeare, Player," and that on December 31 of the same year was buried within the Church of St. Saviour's, Southwark,[211] "Edmund Shakespeare, Player," "with a forenoon knell of the Great Bell."[212] The poet paid every honour ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... the sacred wine cups, and a bell Of beaten bronze, whose tongue should warn or bless; As had been done in France, so he as well Would ring a marriage chime or funeral knell For his lone flock, out ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard

... night was passing, and Beth still lay there, no tear on her cold white cheeks. The clock struck one, a knell-like sound in the night! Beth lay there, her hands folded on her breast, the prayer unuttered by her still lips—one for death. The rest were sleeping quietly in their beds. They knew nothing of her suffering. They ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt

... is that noise? A clatter as of falling boards. There is a sound as of hammering. At first it seems to Romeo Augustus like Mephibosheth's death-knell. Thud, thud, thud, go the blows. Drawn almost against his will, Romeo Augustus stealthily approaches the window. He glances fearfully out. What does he see? His father pounding busily, making—what is he making? Can it be? ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... sounding the death-knell of autocracy in industry. There was autocracy in political life, and it was superseded by democracy. So surely will democratic power wrest from you the control of industry. The fate of the aristocracy of industry will be as the fate of the aristocracy of land, ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard

... flower that hears afar The coming tempest knell, And folds its tiny leaves in fear,— The ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford

... purport to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a shiver." There are sunny gleams upon the pages, but a strange, melancholy chill pervades the book. In "The Wedding Knell", "The Minister's Black Veil", "The Gentle Boy", "Wakefield", "The Prophetic Pictures", "The Hollow of the Three Hills", "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", "The Ambitious Guest", "The White Old Maid", "Edward Fane's ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis

... It has, indeed, a knell-like ring. Do philosophies tend also to cast those who adopt them into a mould? These were of the self-same breed, indubitably the followers of Antonelli. The men wore their hair long, affected, like their leader, soft felt hats and loose black ties that fell over the lapels of their ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... early and hasty speculation, and while American ingenuity and experiment in naval warfare had, indeed, sounded the death-knell of wooden ships of war, no great change in the character of navies was immediately possible. Moreover British shipbuilders could surely keep pace in iron-clad construction with America or any other nation. The success of the Monitor was soon regarded by the British Government as important mainly ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... other by the disengaged hand, 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

... purchasers crowd up to the stand, the motley group of negroes take the alarm, and seem inclined to close in towards a centre as the vender mounts the stand. The bell, with the sharp clanking sound, rings their funeral knell; they startle, as with terror; they listen with subdued anxiety; they wait the result in painful suspense. How little we would recognise the picture from abroad. The vender, an amiable gentleman dressed in modest black, and whose cheerful countenance, graced with ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... fathom 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

... 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, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... seemed a speck of light below, There 'twixt heaven and earth suspended as the bell swung to and fro; And the sexton at the bell-rope, old and deaf, heard not the bell, Sadly thought, "That twilight curfew rang young Basil's funeral knell." Still the maiden clung more firmly, and with trembling lips so white, Said, to hush her heart's wild throbbing: ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... dead than live in such a world, iv. 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

... baggage-van an invisible person tumbled, a canvas bale. The 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 ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... anarchy. Domestic peace would be a blessing of the past. Discontent, wrangles, fights, riots, civil discord and sabotage would be the order of the day till irrepressible rebellion had sounded the death-knell of Socialism. ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... murmured the unhappy man, as like the strokes of a hammer upon his heart fell the three distinct chimes that rung the knell of his business life. ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur

... the beggar at the monastery gate. In all Europe there was not a man too obscure, too insignificant, or too desolate for her. Surrounded by her solemnities, every one received his name at her altar; her bells chimed at his marriage, her knell tolled at his funeral. She extorted from him the secrets of his life at her confessionals, and punished his faults by her penances. In his hour of sickness and trouble her servants sought him out, teaching him, by her exquisite litanies ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... of 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 deathbed he counseled secession. Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison had died despairing of the abolition of slavery; Calhoun died in despair at the growth of freedom. His system rushed irresistibly to its natural ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... in the country to toll the church bell upon occasions of death of any one in the township or parish. A few strokes are rung by way of drawing attention; these are followed after a little pause by a single one if the knell is for a man, or two for a woman. Then another short pause. Then follows the number of years the person has lived, told in short, rather slow strokes, as one would count them up. After pausing once more the tolling begins, and is kept up for some time; ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... fair order after all, and not without his laughing apologies to Mrs. Lascelles; but it was sad to me to note the spurious ring his laugh had now; it was like the death-knell of the simple and the single heart that it had been my lot, if not my mission, to poison and to warp. But the less said about my odious task, the sooner to its fulfilment, which now ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung

... and when Mademoiselle Fifi's body left the Chateau d'Urville on its way to the cemetery, carried by soldiers, preceded, surrounded, and followed by soldiers, who marched with loaded rifles, for the first time the bell sounded its funereal knell in a lively manner, as if a friendly hand were caressing it. At night it sounded again, and the next day, and every day; it rang as much as anyone could desire. Sometimes even, it would start at night, and sound ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... serve the city in times of peace, save it in times of war, deserve the highest honors in its gift, and leave behind them a record that keeps their memories green. For such an one we lately tolled a knell, my brothers; and as our united voices pealed over the city, in all grateful hearts, sweeter and more solemn than any chime, rung the words that made ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... seeking help, thy wail Rose sadder than the sound of a death knell; And thus the last ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas

... 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 he would be back in a few minutes, he shut the door and left us. It was ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... spoke, Informally intrepid,—"Sink her, and be damned!"* [* Historic.] Enough. Gathering way, the iron-clad rammed. The frigate, heeling over, on the wave threw a dusk. Not sharing in the slant, the clapper of her bell The fixed metal struck—uinvoked struck the knell Of the Cumberland stillettoed by the Merrimac's tusk; While, broken in the wound underneath the gun-deck, Like a sword-fish's blade in leviathan waylaid, The tusk was left infixed in the fast-foundering wreck. There, dungeoned in the cockpit, the wounded go down, ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... church voted a vacation of six weeks. True to his Indian nature, he planned a deer hunt. He turned his footsteps to the wilds of the Running Water (Niobrara River), where his heart grew young and his rifle cracked the death-knell of the deer and antelope. One evening, in the track of the hostile Sioux and Pawnees, he found himself near a camp of the savage Sicaugu. He was weak and alone. ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell

... me tell, The clock struck twelve by its last knell; Watch o'er the fire and o'er the light That ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... England. The mere threat of war saved Scotland. Edward's forces there were drawn to the south to meet the looked-for attack from across the Channel; and the patriot party freed from their pressure at once drew together again. The actual declaration of war against France at the close of 1337 was the knell of Balliol's greatness; he found himself without an adherent and withdrew two years later to the court of Edward, while David returned to his kingdom in 1342 and won back the chief fastnesses of the Lowlands. From that moment the freedom of Scotland was secured. From a war of conquest ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... It was in my mind that all the good folk would come in their best array, and that so we should sing a great 'Te Deum' for the happiness of all. And indeed there was a voice from the belfry—but it was of the great bell alone, as of a knell for the dead. And indeed it seemed that the people came—but they came softly and weeping, and they were clad all in black. And then they sang—but it ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler

... would spring into new vigor following sectional lines. All patriots were genuinely alarmed. "This momentous question," wrote Jefferson, "like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... ship suddenly sinks from our view, whilst the loud and awful death-cry of five hundred helpless beings, imprisoned in the burning vessel, rings in our ears, curdling our blood, and seeming as if it would burst the very vault of Heaven with its appalling tones. It was a fitting knell to be rung over ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur

... through all life. 'All is vanity.' That principle may even be exemplified in worship, and the obscure verse 7 which closes the section about the faults of worship seems to be equivalent to the more familiar close which rings the knell of so many of men's pursuits in this book, 'This also is vanity.' It stands in the usual form in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... of a door is a little thing and yet it may have infinite meaning. It may fix a destiny for weal or for woe. When God shut the door of the ark the sound of its closing was the knell of exclusion to those who were without, but it was the token of security to the little company of trusting ones who were within. When the door was shut upon the bridegroom and his friends who had gone into the festal hall, thus sheltering ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller

... Parliament said during the debate on the Union Bill, "it [the 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 South ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... sun, come showers, Are friends of flowers, And fairies all; When frost entrapped her, They came and lapped her In leaves, and wrapped her With shroud and pall; In red leaves wound her, With dead leaves bound her Dead brows, and round her A death-knell rang; Rang the death-bell for her, Sang, "is it well for her, Well, is it well with you, ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the dewy meads To where Saint Alban's holy shrines remain. There did they find that both their knights were slain. Distraught they wander'd to swoln Redbourne's side, Yell'd there their deadly knell, sank in the waves, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... on 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, there, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... you can picture it to yourself where you like, in the East, anywhere in Europe, here in England, it is all the same, an "Auburn" among villages, with thatched cottages, and green pastures, and the cows coming home lowing in the evening, when the curfew tolls the knell of passing day. The grey church tower peeping above the lime trees, and the rooks cawing and wheeling above the old trees. The trim gardens blazing with hollyhocks and large white lilies, and the orchards with the apples ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... boat which was bearing him away so swiftly now: she strained her ears, vaguely hoping to catch one last, lingering echo of his voice. But all was silence, save that monotonous clapper, which seemed to beat against her heart like a rhythmic knell ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... 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 ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... with it went up the soul of Red Jabez to face a tribunal more dread than any earthly judge his body had eluded. And the tall clock ticked his knell. ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... he deluding himself? Did his over-excited imagination make him hear a death knell pealing for his honour and his hopes, which must be borne to their grave? Yet no! All the citizens and peasants, men and women, great and small, who thronged the salt market, which he had just entered, raised their heads to listen with him; for from every steeple ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... always begins with a rhythmic stress, | | whereas the foot may begin with an unstressed element. | | | | [24] Some metrists, holding that every foot should begin | | with a stress, divide thus: | | | | The | curfew | tolls the | knell of | parting | day. | | | | Such a division can be justified on several grounds, but it | | remains awkward and obscures the plain fact of rising | | rhythm. It does not affect the division of word and foot; | | for compare ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... Pagans 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, ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... was true, though the knowledge blast me with 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

... for the lower deck, when his steps were arrested by a second shout from the pilot-house, and another sound that smote on his ear like a death-knell. It was the hoarse note of a deep-toned whistle apparently at his side. There was a jangling of bells, a wild yelling, the roar of escaping steam, and then the dim form of a great up-river packet loomed above ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... of wounded in our wards increased daily. Sick men poured into the hospital. Often they came too late, having remained at the post of duty until fever had sapped the springs of life or the rattling breath sounded the knell of hope, marking too surely that fatal disease, double pneumonia. Awestruck I watched the fierce battle for life, the awful agony, trying vainly every means of relief, lingering to witness struggles which wrung my heart, ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... last September was he laid, Poppies these that were his eyes, Of fish-bones were these bluebells made. His fins of gold that to and fro Waved and waved so long ago, Still as petals wave and wave To and fro above his grave. Hearken too! for so his knell Tolls all ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... September of 1651, the year that tolled the knell of royalty in England. In all directions from the fatal field of Worcester panic-stricken fugitives were flying; in all directions blood-craving victors were pursuing. Charles I. had lost his head for his blind obstinacy, two years before. Charles II., crowned ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... fail in a dry time by recording itself as one of the quietest and most orderly ever known in the Sage-Brush State. A few editors there were, like Blenkinsop, of The Plainsman, who maintained stoutly that it sounded the death-knell of the machine, but there was no gainsaying the result. The "Paramounters" ticket, with or without the help of the machine, was elected by sweeping majorities everywhere; and Gantry, roaming the corridors and lounging-rooms of the Railway Club and reading the bulletins ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... 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 to hell ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... 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 ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... now serving out his eighth term in the penitentiary. It is fearful to contemplate these human wrecks. A wasted life, golden opportunities unimproved, a dark and dismal future will constitute the death knell of such fallen beings. Young man, remember the life of this convict, ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds

... now remains what is worse to tell, The greatest ships had the greatest knell; The brave C'ronation and all her men Was lost and drowned every one, Except the mate and eighteen more What in ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... not handle the news as it should be handled, in the unlikely event of their getting through alive. No, there were no two ways of it. I must make the effort, though in that leaden hour of weariness and cold it seemed as if my death-knell were ringing. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... measures of reform and justice, and measures aimed at undermining the State's stability and independence. It is not stupidity! It is that the Boer realizes at least one of the inevitable consequences of reform—that the ignorant and incapable must go under. Reform is the death-knell of his oligarchy, and therefore a danger to the independence of the State—as he sees it. Until the European people who have lately become so deeply concerned in Transvaal affairs realize how widely divergent are the two interpretations of 'Independence,' they will not have ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... my plans and in part consented to them, so that I retreated to my post at the gateway with something like confidence, while he, approaching the door, lifted the knocker and let it fall with a resounding clang that must have rung like a knell of death to the ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... I tell, by doleful knell, Lightning and thunder, I break asunder, On Sabbath all, to church I call, The sleepy head, I raise from bed, The winds so fierce, I do disperse, Men's ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various

... 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 to the zone ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... like the 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 ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... music and splendor Survive not the lamp and the lute, The heart's echoes render No song when the spirit is mute, No song but sad dirges, Like the wind through a ruined cell, Or the mournful surges That ring the dead seaman's knell." ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... thy spirit home, Knowest thou my path below? Knowest thou the steps I roam, And the devious road I go? Many years have past since I Bade thee here a sad farewell; Many past since thou didst die, Since I heard thy funeral knell. Thou didst go when thou wast young; Scarcely hadst thou oped thine eyes To the world, and it had flung Its bright sunshine from the skies, Ere thy Maker called for thee, Thou obeyed his high behest; Then I mourned, yet knew thou 'dst be Throned on high among the blest. Gently thou ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... they now—the friends I loved so well? My outstretched hands clutch only empty air! I call on those who loved me—Like a knell The silence ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... the ghost all night, And believed in the day as well; And he vowed, with a sorrowing tearful might, All she asked, whate'er befel, If she came to his room, in her garment white, Once more at the midnight knell. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... things, most striking of which was how Moze had broken his chain and plunged into the raging Colorado River, and tried to swim it just above the terrible Sockdolager Rapids. Rust and his fellow-workmen watched the dog disappear in the yellow, wrestling, turbulent whirl of waters, and had heard his knell in the booming roar of the falls. Nothing but a fish could live in that current; nothing but a bird could scale those perpendicular marble walls. That night, however, when the men crossed on the tramway, Moze met them with a wag of his tail. He had crossed ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... not receiving; asking, not answer." The words reverberated through her consciousness like a funeral knell. She dropped the stained lily and called again, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... moreover, despair seized him at her 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 ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... room-mate," answered Rebecca, who thought her own knell of doom had sounded, if he had forgotten Emma ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... besides the two individuals noted, included Frederick and William Hamblin, Dudley and Thomas Leavitt, Samuel Knight, Ira Hatch, Andrew S. Gibbons (later an Arizona legislator), Benjamin Knell and a Paiute guide, Naraguts. The journey started at Hamblin's home in the Santa Clara settlement and was by way of the mouth of the Paria, where a good ferry point was found, but not used, and the Crossing of the Fathers on the Colorado, probably ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... this once—if but for a day, and I will never persecute thee again. Truant as thou art, thou shalt have full liberty for life. But I cannot tell thee how sad and heavy I am grown, and every hour knocks at my heart like a knell! Come back to thy poor Lucilla—if only to see what joy is! Come—I know thou wilt! But should anything I do not foresee detain thee, fix at least the day—nay, if possible, the hour—when we shall meet, and ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... pupil who never learns anything thoroughly often disregards the rule about silent consonants. Braddock and most of his men were killed by the Indians in 1755. This date this pupil translates by the phrase, "Dock knell all" (17255). He overlooks the fact that 17 was expressed by "Dock," and no one out of a mad-house can tell how he came to add "knell all," unless he had forgotten that he had provided for the 7 of 17, and imagined that "k" in knell is sounded. But how account for "n" to introduce ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)

... and in Virginia, at least, everybody, sooner or later, follows the best people. 'Gradual manumission, Mr. Green,' that's what Colonel Anderson said, 'with colonization in Africa if possible. The difficulties are enough to turn a man's hair grey, but,' said he, 'slavery's knell has struck, and we'll put an end to it in Virginia peacefully and with some approach to wisdom—if only ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... alone, and die alone; and when the record of my death, if recorded at all, should casually meet the eyes of those who once loved me, it would pass unnoticed; and my own name, my fatal name, if ever pronounced by them, would sound as the knell of blighted joys—of hopes gone by—as the memory of a mysterious shame, and ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... I turn me? whither shall I bend My weary way? thus worn with toil and faint How thro' the thorny mazes of this wood Attain my distant dwelling? that deep cry That rings along the forest seems to sound My parting knell: it is the midnight howl Of hungry monsters prowling for their prey! Again! oh save me—save me gracious Heaven! I am not fit to die! Thou coward wretch Why heaves thy trembling heart? why shake thy limbs Beneath their palsied burden? ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... 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

... after the 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 small ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... courtesy, to permit the present consideration of private bills, had, in the main, as well have been made to a marble statue. His well known and long to be remembered, "I object, Mr. Speaker," sounded the knell of many a well devised raid upon the Treasury. It may be that he sometimes prevented the early consideration of meritorious measures, but with occasional exceptions his objections were wholesome. He kept in close touch with the popular pulse, and knew, as ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... 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 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 • Various

... father 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: Hark! now I hear them,— Ding, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... vitals was in Ernest's case simply distrust of himself,—the timidity of a man to whom no woman had ever said, "Ah, how I love thee!" and, above all, the spirit of self-devotion without an object. After hearing the knell of the monarchy in the fall of his patron's ministry, the poor fellow had next fallen upon a rock covered with exquisite mosses, named Canalis; he was, therefore, still seeking a power to love, and this spaniel-like search for a ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... or an 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 ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... the besieged city. The salute of twenty-one guns fired by the fleet was joyful music to the people of Quebec. Amid the thundering of the guns from the citadel, the great bell of the Cathedral clanged the death knell to ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell

... the beginning of the end of the primitive man. The solitude of the centuries was now to be disturbed and its peace invaded; aboriginal life destroyed forever. The advent of this vessel was the death knell ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... 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 shout ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... weakness,' and as 'equally incapable of offering any popular or national resistance to an active or enterprising enemy.' In this Mr. Finlay does but agree with other able writers; but he and they should have recollected, that hardly had that very year 623 departed, even yet the knell of its last hour was sounding upon the winds, when this effeminate empire had occasion to show that she could clothe herself with consuming terrors, as a belligerent both defensive and aggressive. In the absence of her great emperor, and ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... to the King and implores him to give him a ship that he may go back to his own country and family. These words fall like a knell upon the heart of Nausikaa; she is led out ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... pushed into a vehicle, pulled out of it, and shoved along, by the staunch and (as it seemed) brutal arm of friendship, among crimson and gilding and blinding lights all seen at intervals through half-closed eyes. A little bell rang, and I felt it was my death knell. But through the darkness of my weltering soul (for I was presumably dead and undoubtedly damned) there marched, stood still, and curtsied majestically towards each other, the great grave opening ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... 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

... flutter lightly round them with their little flickering torches. Do these dancing maidens sleep, or are they dead? The scent of the flower says that they are corpses. The evening bell tolls their knell.' ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... of the frog, By the howling of the dog, By the crying of the hog Against the storm arising; By the evening curfew bell, By the doleful dying knell, O let this my direful spell, Hob, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... regnant The woman is always regnant, whether she be queen or dairymaid, but the barrier between himself and her was built of the old hurdles of low birth and iron fortune. Here anyway in his heart rang the knell 'Good-bye,' the farewell, farewell, farewell which every poet worth his salt has heard not once but many times, and, in the middle of the dirge the bell rang so remorselessly, came the exquisite chrysm of a fondling hand ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... tolls on in my heart As though in my ears a knell Had ceased for awhile to swell, But the sense of it would not part From the spirit that bears its part In the chime of ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... any appeal to 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

... rightly, is to be found in 'King's Anecdotes'), who leaves his house one morning for no particular reason, and though living in the next street, does not reveal his existence to his wife for twenty years; and the hero of the 'Wedding Knell,' the elderly bridegroom whose early love has jilted him, but agrees to marry him when she is an elderly widow and he an old bachelor, and who appals the marriage party by coming to the church in his shroud, with the bell tolling as for a funeral—all these bear ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... little 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 ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... God! Threaten not him who is stronger than thou, lest he slay thee with his hands where thou sittest." Zoroaster's voice sounded low and distinct as the knell of relentless fate, and his hand went out towards ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... plan of the universe may be, it is more nearly comprehended now than in Jesus' time. Twentieth century events are more dependable in forming our philosophy of life than those of the first century. The failure to grasp this fact is the death knell of orthodox religion. Every existing religious sect has founded its spirituality upon events supposed to have occurred in the past. Christianity depends upon the direct creation, fall of man and life of an atoning Savior, all physical in character. Our new ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd

... sofa, but not to sleep. Hour after hour passed onward towards eternity. One, two, three, spoke out the loud voice of Time, and it sounded in the ears of the watcher like his knell. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... she weeps 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]

... nature craved sunshine and peace, and the conduct of her lover she could not possibly understand. In all her imaginings how far was she always from the truth! She did not dream that he believed his death-knell had been rung, and that he attributed her silence to her righteous and inexorable indignation over the story she had heard from the lips of Liz Hepburn. He never for one moment doubted that she had told, and between conscience and disappointed love ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... eyes could not discern the figures to which Carmela was pointing. But this strange girl's triumphant tone rang like a knell in her heart. She was not thinking now of the complications that might arise between San Benavides and his discarded flame. She only knew that, by some miracle, her uncle had come to bring her home, and with him was the man to whom she was plighted, while ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... three syllables of sinister intent were sounding like a funeral knell.... At thought of Fantomas and Vagualame co-mingled, Bobinette's terror-filled heart fainted within her. Yet, prey to haunting terrors as she was, Bobinette pressed unfalteringly forward towards what Fate held ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... ever made that speech. For, in my humble opinion, it betrayed to say the least, a confusion of thought. Could he think of the Turkish people as apart from the Ottoman Government? And what is the meaning of the death-knell of Ottoman Dominion in Europe and Asia if it be not the death knell of Turkish people as a free and governing race? Is it, again, true historically that the Turkish rule has always been a blight that 'has withered some of the fairest regions of the earth?' And what is the meaning of ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... first!—'tis time to ring The knell of such an aim; To be the swiftest!—riches bring So easily that fame. To shine, a highway meteor, Devourer of the map!— A vulgar bliss to choose before Repose in ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... figure of a man, bearded and moustached, with a high forehead, 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 reach their ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... any faint hope of mine that the war might soon end, or end advantageously for the North, or when it ended, leave my father and mother kindly disposed for my happiness. All the while I read, a slow knell seemed to be sounding at my heart. "We could have got on with those fanatics if they had been either Christians or gentlemen" - "there are neither Christians nor gentlemen among them." "Nothing on earth shall ever induce us to submit ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... was the object of the present expedition. I fancied it possible—but let us go ring fancy's knell. I'll begin it.' ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... music sounding, Dalzell, victorious, entered Edinburgh. But his banners were dyed in blood, and a band of prisoners were marched within his ranks. The old man knew it all. That martial and triumphant strain was the death-knell of his friends and of their cause, the rust-hued spots upon the flags were the tokens of their courage and their death, and the prisoners were the miserable remnant spared from death in battle to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... excoriation, he would at least be credited with honest intentions. But the mere mention of Anne's name would be the signal for a cry from the housetops, and all the world would hear. And Anne's name would sound the death knell ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon









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