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More "Piteous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the midst of all the roar the piteous bellowing of cattle, penned up in the cars. He saw a dark form stealing around the end of a car; in a moment a light spurted out as if a match had been touched to kerosene; there was a gleam of light, and the stock-car with its load of cattle was wrapped in flames. The dark ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... loud;— An Infant, waked by her distress, Makes in the house a piteous cry; And Peter hears the Mother sigh, "Seven are they, and all ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... voice, a grating creak, But only to himself would speak. Groaning with tears in piteous pain, "O! O! ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... patients, through some preconceived notion, or from false ideas of shame or discredit attaching to some particular disease, are trying to mislead you, the very vigor of their efforts will often reveal their secret, just as the piteous broken-winged utterings of the mother partridge reveal instantly to the eye of the bird-lover the presence of the young which she is trying to lure him away from. Only let a patient talk enough about his or her symptoms, and the truth ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... events, I resolved to be prepared, in case he should pay us a second visit. Accordingly, before going to bed, I loaded my gun with ball, and tied Suffolk up in the vicinity of the pork-barrel. At midnight we were suddenly awakened by the piteous howlings of the poor dog, and by a noise, as if everything in the room had been violently thrown down. I jumped out of bed instantly, and seizing my gun, crept cautiously along the passage, till I came to the kitchen-door, which I threw open, whereupon some large dark-looking ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... in inverse ratio with age. A little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left alone for only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by itself is a great punishment. Young people soon get on very friendly terms with one another; it is only the few among them of any nobility of mind who are glad now and then to be alone;—but ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the piteous account that Madame de Ste. Petronelle (otherwise Dame Elspeth Johnstone) gave, and which the Lady of Glenuskie soon perceived to be only too true during the days spent at Nanci. To the two young sisters the condition of things was less evident. To Margaret ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... A piteous groan escaped from the lips of the dying monarch, but his "friends" did not stay to hear it; they fled precipitately from ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... hopes. He sustained with firmness the confidence of the Viceroy and the admissions de Lara made to him in private, of his pleasure in the suitable and fortunate marriage which was there arranged. He even bore without breaking one long, piteous appeal which had been shot at him from the black eyes of ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... manners were so gentle and caressing that Zayda and her mother soon got over the first fright he had given them. He had spent some time with them and quite won their hearts by his insinuating ways, when the King discovered where he was and sent to fetch him back. But the monkey made such piteous cries, and seemed so unhappy when anyone attempted to catch him, that the two ladies begged the King to leave him a little longer with them, to ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... poor lady under her breath, and put out a hand as if feeling for some stick of furniture to lean against. "It has come!" she repeated aloud, but still hoarsely; and with that she turned to the lass with a most piteous look, and "Oh, Kirstie, girl," she cried, "you won't leave me? I have been kind to you—say ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... them across a heath upon which huge pieces of rock lay strewn here and there. Now they noticed a large bird hovering in the air, flying slowly round and round above them; it sank lower and lower, and at last settled near a rock not far off. Directly afterwards they heard a loud, piteous cry. They ran up and saw with horror that the eagle had seized their old acquaintance the dwarf, and was ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... minute, and then waked. Eli involuntarily put a hand on the sofa. Tommy gazed at him, and, with the most heavenly innocent smile of recognition, lightly touched his grandfather's hand. Then he turned over on his right side. In the anguish of sudden joy Eli gave a deep, piteous sob. That smile burnt into him like a coal ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... and unless they brought out to him the first contriver and proposer of the convention. At last he fell upon them in good earnest and killed about three hundred of them. His brother John, who was in the castle, hearing a piteous outcry and lamentation, came down from the castle and entreated his brother to spare the people, representing to him that Jesus Christ had commanded us not to contend with our enemies, much less with those of our own religion. Youkinna told ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... care I for the Swedes? I hate them as I hate the pit of hell, And under Providence I trust right soon To chase them to their homes across their Baltic. My cares are only for the whole: I have A heart—it bleeds within me for the miseries And piteous groaning of my fellow Germans. Ye are but common men, but yet ye think With minds not common; ye appear to me Worthy before all others that I whisper ye A little word or two in confidence! See now! already for full fifteen ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... a piteous state from the sickness, which had cut off hosts of people of all ranks. It lasted seven or nine days in each, and seems to have been a malignant fever. Pericles lost his eldest son, his sister, and almost all his dearest ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Monk may not have as much pride as I have; for I declare if any one had put me into a coffer with that grating over my mouth, and carried me packed up, like a calf, across the seas, I should cherish such a memory of my piteous looks in that coffer, and such an ugly animosity against him who had inclosed me in it, I should dread so greatly to see a sarcastic smile blooming upon the face of the malicious wretch, or in his attitude any grotesque imitation of my position in the box, that, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... fevered eyes His piteous stomach, craving meat; His features, nipt of tenderness, And most, his little ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... unmoved, though his flashing eye betrayed, in some degree, his secret emotion. Not so his partner. Flinging himself on his knees before the Prince, he cried in piteous tones—"I confess my manifold offences, and own that my sentence is lenient in comparison with them. But I beseech your Highness to spare me the mutilation and branding. All else I ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... whereupon the trumpet chorus is repeated. After the tenor aria ("Loud is the Thunder's awful Voice"), the chorus recurs again, showing Handel's evident partiality for it. The Philistine Woman has another solo ("Then free from Sorrow"), whereupon in a pathetic song ("Torments, alas!") Samson bewails his piteous condition. His friend Micah appears, and in the aria, "O Mirror of our fickle State," condoles with him. In answer to his question, "Which shall we first bewail, thy Bondage, or lost Sight?" Samson replies in a short, but exquisitely ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... said a few consolatory words and jumped down from the wheel. She was torn both ways. Bella's plight was piteous, but to make her father rise in his present state of health and attend such a case, hours long, in the chill, night breath of the open—it might kill him! She turned toward the camp, vaguely conscious of the men standing in awkward attitudes and looking thoroughly ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... of bodily pain, it is in prayer, in wakings, [watchings] in fastings, and in virtuous teachings. Of orisons ye shall understand, that orisons or prayers is to say a piteous will of heart, that redresseth it in God, and expresseth it by word outward, to remove harms, and to have things spiritual and durable, and sometimes temporal things. Of which orisons, certes in the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... she told him of their journey and of their life in Paris, a rather piteous look came into the blue eyes. Was she not to hear any of Edmund's own news? Was she not to be allowed to show any sympathy? She might not say how she had been thinking of him, dreaming of how nobly he had met his troubles, praying for ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... the message of the nightingale, And, entering, found, sunk in mysterious swoon, A little maiden dreaming there alone. She babbled of her father sitting pale 'Neath wings of Death—'mid sights of sorrow and bale, And pleaded for his life in piteous tone. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... of the night, aroused by a creaking casement, I had started up out of a dreamless slumber. Whence came, then, for the second and the third time this darkness in me, this torturing feeling of oppression at every breath, this piteous longing never to have waked up and never again to have to wake up? I had gone contentedly to bed, and had slept a deep and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... flood That stayed her flight with his cross-flowing course. The water-nymphs, that in the bottom played, Held up their pearled wrists, and took her in, Bearing her straight to aged Nereus' hall; Who, piteous of her woes, reared her lank head, And gave her to his daughters to imbathe In nectared lavers strewed with asphodel, And through the porch and inlet of each sense Dropt in ambrosial oils, till she revived, 840 And ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... lord, as I was sewing in my closet, Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd; Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other, And with a look so piteous in purport, He comes ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... us to believe those piteous tales about your losing flesh and colour with homesickness," declared Max, his hand on his sister's shoulder, as he turned her full toward the firelight. "Jove, I never saw you look more like one of those pink peonies you think so much of, in ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... her cousin; and knowing her virtuous principles, she believed nothing of what she had heard spoken against her. Not so the poor old father; he believed the story of his child's shame, and it was piteous to hear him lamenting over her, as she lay like one dead before him, wishing she might never more open ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... starving inhabitants had been lured from their holes and corners by the outward passage of the troops, and hoped to snatch some food from the field of battle. Disappointed, they now approached the camps at night in twos and threes, making piteous entreaties for any kind of nourishment. Their appeals were perforce unregarded; not an ounce of ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Pretty and piteous sights! Who could look on them without tears? One thing at least was clear if the soul of this child was in prison, nevertheless it was alive; and if it was in chains, nevertheless it could not die, but was immortal and unmaimed and waited only for the hour ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... moved by the news is seen by a letter from him to Henry VIII, written on June 2d following. He forwards to the King the letters "nowe arryved, as wel out of Fraunce as out of Italy, confirming the piteous and lamentable spoiles, pilages, with most cruel murdres, committed by the Emperialls in the citie of Rome, non parcentes sacris, etati, sexui, aut relioni; and the extreme daungier that the Poopes Holines and Cardinalles, who fled into the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... or Hodder until the incident was past. It was terrible indeed to behold this woman revert—almost in the twinkling of an eye—to a vicious wretch crazed for drink, to feel that the struggle had to be fought all over again. Unable to awe Sally Drover's spirit, she would grow piteous. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... continued she, "it's quite morally impossible I should raise such a sum, or else, to be sure, such a shop as that, now I am grown so poorly, would be quite a heaven upon earth to me: for my strength, madam, is almost all gone away, and when I do any hard work, it's quite a piteous sight to see me, for I am all in a tremble after it, just as if I had an ague, and yet all the time my hands, madam, will be burning ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... the beautiful suggestion that Shakespeare as he wrote had in mind his own dead little son still fresh and living at his heart can hardly add more than a touch of additional tenderness to our perfect and piteous delight in him. And even in her daughter's embrace it seems hard if his mother should have utterly forgotten the little voice that had only time to tell her just eight words of that ghost story which neither she nor we were ever ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... I took my hasty flight." "Him piteous of his youth soft disengage." "I played a while obedient to the fair." "Love free as air spreads his light wings and flies." "Physical science separate from morals ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Immelan accepted these measured words of prophecy as a total reprieve. The relief in his face was almost piteous. He seized his visitor's hand and would have fawned upon it. Prince Shan withdrew himself a little farther from ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... distorted limbs and horrent hair; While every mother closer to her breast 700 Catches her child, and pointing where the waves Foam through the shatter'd vessel, shrieks aloud As one poor wretch that spreads his piteous arms For succour, swallow'd by the roaring surge, As now another, dash'd against the rock, Drops lifeless down: Oh! deemest thou indeed No kind endearment here by Nature given To mutual terror and compassion's ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... in my brain. In the morning, I rose and dressed, dreaming. As I was turning the handle of my door to go down to breakfast, suddenly I swung round in a fit of tears. It was so piteous to think that he should have waited by her twenty years in a slow anguish, his heart burning out, without a reproach or a complaint. I saw him, I still see him, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... station. If he were too much engrossed with cards or had been attracted by some other woman, I thought that both Gruzin and Kukushkin would remind him of us. But our expectations were vain. Five times a day I would go in to Zinaida Fyodorovna, intending to tell her the truth, But her eyes looked piteous as a fawn's, her shoulders seemed to droop, her lips were moving, and I went away again without saying a word. Pity and sympathy seemed to rob me of all manliness. Polya, as cheerful and well satisfied with herself as though ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... saw the man who was nearing the bank. She rose to her feet in the rocking boat, and stretched out her arms,—calling his name, "Brian! Brian! Brian!" Then the impact of the boat against a larger wave of the rapids brought her to her knees, and she clung to the thwarts with piteous cries. ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... two other Marys), is at Castle Howard, and has been exhibited at Manchester, and I think also at Leeds. At Manchester it attracted the greatest attention and admiration. I believe this was not only because Annibale Carracci in the 'Three Marys' does attain to a most piteous mournfulness of sentiment, but because such work as that of the Carracci finds readiest acceptance from a general public, which delights in striking, superficial effects. The same reason, in conjunction with the decline of Italian art, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... to the flood That stay'd her flight with his cross-flowing course, The water Nymphs that in the bottom plaid, Held up their pearled wrists and took her in, Bearing her straight to aged Nereus Hall, Who piteous of her woes, rear'd her lank head, And gave her to his daughters to imbathe In nectar'd lavers strew'd with Asphodil, And through the porch and inlet of each sense Dropt in Ambrosial Oils till she reviv'd, 840 And underwent a quick immortal change Made Goddess of the River; still ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... to good. Now I do not need to keep dividing things and people and thoughts into His and not-His. That was what it came to before. You may say it didn't, but it did. And all we know about Jesus—don't you see." (Bart raised his face with piteous, hunted look)—"don't you see that what His life and death meant was—just what I have told you? God doesn't hold back His robe, telling people what they ought to do, and then judge them. He does not shrink from taking sin on Himself to bring them through death to life. Doesn't your book ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... perplexity of Cadmus, in whose house a god had become an inmate, only to destroy it—the regret of the old man for the one male child to whom that house had looked up as the pillar whereby aged people might feel secure; the piteous craziness of Agave; the unconscious irony with which she caresses the florid, youthful head of her son; the delicate breaking of the thing to her reviving intelligence, as Cadmus, though he can but wish that she might live on for ever in her visionary enjoyment, [80] prepares the way, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... more horsemen fought their way in, and with them foot-soldiers gained an entrance. Step by step the rebels were driven backward toward the statue where Maritza stood. "Will those others never fight their way to us?" she cried in almost piteous tones. ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... and though I will do nothing to her myself, yet I can bear, for the sake of my revenge, and my injured honour and slighted love, to see any thing, even what she most fears, be done to her; and then she may be turned loose to her evil destiny, and echo to the woods and groves her piteous lamentations for the loss of her fantastical innocence, which the romantic ideot makes such a work about. I shall go to London, with my sister Davers; and the moment I can disengage myself, which, perhaps, may be in three weeks from this time, I will be with you, and decide her fate, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... fain would listen, fain forget; She smiles, but with those tragic, waiting eyes, Those proud and piteous lips that hunger yet For love's fulfilment. Ah, when Landry cries "My heart is dead!" with what a wild regret Her own heart feels the throb that ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... perhaps is the main impression which the slight record here presented will convey, the impression of a man quite unlike the many statesmen whom power and the vexations attendant upon it have in some piteous way spoiled and marred, a man who started by being tough and shrewd and canny and became very strong and very wise, started with an inclination to honesty, courage, and kindness, and became, under a tremendous strain, honest, brave, and kind to ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... words had touched Mrs. Wilson's heart, sore as it was; and she looked at the snow-pale girl with those piteous eyes, so hopeless of comfort, and she relented in ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes, God saue the marke, here on his manly brest, A pitteous Coarse, a bloody piteous Coarse: Pale, pale as ashes, all bedawb'd in blood, All in gore blood I sounded ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... The last agonies and the moans and lamentations were dreadful to hear.... The houses were converted into heaps of stones, so that I might say with Micah, "We are made desolate;" and with Jeremiah, "A piteous wail may go forth in his distress." With Paul I say, "Brothers, pray for us." I have every evening, during a whole month, offered up prayers with the congregation, on the four points of our fort, under the blue sky.... Many heathen have been slain, and full twenty-two ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... air — with heavenly plunder? — Gripping the dazzling bird my dreaming knew? Nay! but a piteous freight, A dark and heavy weight Despoiled of silver plumage, its voice forever stilled, — All of the wonder Gone that ever filled Its guise with glory. Oh, bird that I have killed, How brilliantly you flew Across my rapturous vision when ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... me," she said, with piteous tenderness, "and I shall never forget the honor; but you see I cannot. This is more to my father than his life; it is the same to all our family, and I must do my duty. I will pray for strength to keep from loving you, senor, and ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... and her childish face was wan and piteous with weeping; but either the night had worn out her passion and drained her tears, or some great exigency had given her temporary calmness, for she was perfectly composed. She shivered as her eyes met mine, and she blinked as if a bright light had been ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... from the notice of strangers. He was taken sick and carried to the Massachusetts Hospital, where his gentleness won him many friends. But they could not stop the progress of his disease, or comfort his poor, lonely heart. The night before he died, no one near him could sleep for his piteous moaning and sad cries,—"I am afraid to ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... lips. There was something in the gesture that attracted Loder. Looking at him more attentively, he saw what his own feelings and the other's conventional dress had blinded him to—the almost piteous panic and excitement ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... it was taken in early days by the French, who still hold it. Captain Ellis has transferred to this site the story of Fort Eguira, an inland, or rather up-stream, work, destroyed, as Dr. Reynhaut and others tell us, in an 'elendige manier' (a piteous way). ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... for help; so I turned me round to see where he was that uttered it, and by the side of the King's path I could see one striving to mount the bank, and slipping back again as often as he tried. He was trying in right earnest: his cries were piteous to hear, and he laboured as if he would carry his point by storm. But it was all in vain; the more he struggled, the worse his case grew; for the bank, and all the path up to it, got so quagged ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... really was. Before mid-day a reaction had set in, and she had grown so weak that the doctor was evidently alarmed. The baby disturbed, and frightened by the noise and jar, had wailed almost incessantly; and Hetty was more nearly at her wits' end than she had ever been in her life. It was piteous to see her,—usually so brisk, so authoritative, so unhesitating,—looking helplessly into the face of ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... cast down. When she heard him talk lightly and playfully of all that he meant to do, her heart throbbed, and she dared not lift her eyes to his face, lest they should suddenly reveal to him that awful conflict within of wild, and piteous, and agonizing doubt. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the last struggles of life and death. Here and there a gun broke the silence, as if to warn us that all was not peace; now and then a film of cannon smoke drifted across the moon, which seemed to become piteous then. There was silence ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... could only change himself and be another sort of man, he might manage the matter better. He could be fiercely angry, or caressingly affectionate. But he was unable to adopt that safe and golden mean, which his wife recommended. He could not keep himself from interchanging a piteous glance or two with Marie at supper, and put a great deal too much unction into his caress to please Madame Voss, when Marie came to kiss him before ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... man's tears must come from his heart at the moment, not from his brains overnight, if he would have me bowed down beneath his piteous tale. CONINGTON. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... Peggy was nicknamed at the shore,) stood by herself, and every now and then wrung her hands, crying, with a woeful voice, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord;"—but it was manifest to all that her faith was fainting within her. But of all the piteous objects there, on that doleful evening, none troubled my thoughts more than three motherless children, that belonged to the mate of one of the vessels in the jeopardy. He was an Englishman that had been settled some years in the town, where his family had neither kith nor kin; ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... devoured the dishes which were put on the table, with his eyes, and he tried to seize them and pull them to himself with his trembling hands. They put them almost within his reach, to see his useless efforts, his trembling clutches at them, the piteous appeal of his whole nature, of his eyes, of his mouth and of his nose as he smelt them, and he slobbered onto his table napkin with eagerness, while uttering inarticulate grunts. And the whole family was highly amused at this ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... speaking of them, said: "We had such piteous cases of perfectly well-dressed, well-educated, gently-bred women that we hardly dared offer them the one-franc-fifty and 'gouter' (bowl of cafe-au-lait with bread and butter), which was all we were able to give for four hours' work ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Most piteous is the story of the poor souls who have sought to achieve their share of immortality by literature. Go to our noble Museum and look at the appalling expanse of books piled up yard upon yard to the ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... would not bother him any more just now," Saxham interposed, noting the droop of the piteous, flaccid mouth, and feeling the flutter of the uneven pulse. The Mayor's wife broke into helpless sobbing. The Mother-Superior drew her swiftly out of the sick child's hearing and sight. And a shadow fell upon the thin light coverlet, and a crisp, decided ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... tongue, but relishing the tonic directness of his faculty of reason while she considered that the application of the phrase might be brought home to him so as to render 'my Grandmother's moral' a conclusion less comfortingly, if quite intelligibly, summary. And then she thought of Tony's piteous instance; and thinking with her heart, the tears insisted on that bitter irony of the heavens, which bestowed the long-withheld and coveted boon when it was empty of value or was but as a handful of spices to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... escaped a witness of his anguish at leaving her he loved, and Martin escaped a piteous sight. He did not see the poor young things kneel and renew before Heaven those holy vows cruel men had interrupted. He did not see them cling together like one, and then try to part, and fail, and return to one ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... not without a queer kind of perseverance of his own—he could not bear to go to bed leaving any of his lessons unfinished, and he would go on working at them with a sort of dull, hopeless resolution that was rather piteous, till one reflected that, after all, he might just as well look cheerful about it. But to look cheerful in the face of difficulties was not Basil's "way." With the first difficulty vanished all his brightness and good temper, and all ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... thinking of? She did not run. Robbie looked at her in piteous distress; Duncan was beside himself. He cast a beseeching glance at Elsie, a momentary one of resentful anger at his mother, an impatient one at Robbie, the unfortunate ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... she had buried herself deep in the hay, hiding her face in it to deaden those dreadful cries—pudency even stronger than grief. She was sobbing and crying like a child, but there was a more poignant, more piteous sound in the sobs. There was nothing left in the world for her. The maid pulled the hay from her, her mistress submitting with the supine listlessness of a dying animal. The maid could find nothing to say ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac
... all the same to Jack. He had in truth got his "eye in," and as surely as the ball came to him, it was sent away to some most distant part of the ground. The Britishers were mad with dismay as Jack worked his way on through the last hundred. It was piteous to see the exertions which poor Mr Brittlereed made in running backwards and forwards across the ground. They tried, I think, to bustle him by the rapid succession of their bowling. But the only result was that the ball was sent still further off when ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... shook the woman's slight form, and she passed her hand across her eyes once or twice, before reaching it toward him. A piteous smile quivered across her lips, but her ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... pray you, stop!" cried poor Sprigg, in piteous accent, at every new peril which seemed to threaten his destruction. At length, as if in spite, the moccasins stopped, so abruptly that he was thrown forward upon the ground, with a violence that left ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... alighted and let their horses graze while they unarmed, and when they took their armour and their clothing off, the hot blood ran down freshly from their wounds till it was piteous to see. But Prianius took from his page a vial filled from the four rivers that flow out of Paradise, and anointed both their wounds with a certain balm, and washed them with that water, and within an hour afterwards they were both as sound and whole as ever they had been. Then, ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... house. She indeed often relieved him with such donations as spoke her generous disposition. But this was on the solicitation of friends, who frequently set his calamities before her in the most piteous light; and, from a principle of humanity, she became not a little instrumental in saving his ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... horror, with what indignation and piteous curiosity I looked next day, and on the day of the funeral, into the face of my father... yes, my father! In my dead mother's writing-case were found his letters. I fancied he looked a little pale and drawn... but no! Nothing was stirring in that heart of stone. Exactly as before, ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... all this splendour as one bewildered. In front of that gilded wall, quivering in mid-air, as if it had been painted upon the shaft of light that streamed in from the tall window, her fancy pictured the blood-red cross and the piteous legend, "Lord, have mercy on us!" written in the same blood colour. For herself she had neither horror of the pestilence nor fear of death. Religion had familiarised her mind with the image of the destroyer. From her childhood she ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... sick friend who implores me to give him a glass of iced water which the physician has forbidden. No more than a humane collector in India has to those poor peasants who in a season of scarcity crowd round the granaries and beg with tears and piteous gestures that the doors may be opened and the rice distributed. I would not give the draught of water, because I know that it would be poison. I would not give up the keys of the granary, because I know that, by doing so, I should turn a scarcity into a famine. And in the same way I ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Andrew P. Hill, with her forty-five shares clutched in her resolute hand, and saying, "I demand to be heard; I demand to have a voice in this momentous matter; I demand a fair and even chance for my nephew-in-law-to-be." Once more, she was wringing her hands and asking Virgilia in tones of piteous protest, "Why, oh why, didn't you take Richard Morrell when you could have got him?—a fine, promising, pushing fellow, with his million or more already, and barely thirty-five, just the right age for you!" Yet again, she was saying to that poor little ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... soft-moving, delicate and tender! In her gold house the pipe calls querulously, They cloud with thin green silks her body slender, They talk to her and tend her; Come, piteous, gentle ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... and he preceded them in silence to the chamber of his sick wife. It needed no second glance at their patient to tell the two doctors that she was in great extremity. Her pinched face was ashen in color and damp with a cold sweat, and her eyes, no longer wild and restless, looked piteous and anxious, as of one in dreadful suffering who pleaded mutely for help. An examination of her pulse showed the beat to be frequent and feeble, and on the slightest movement she gave signs of pain. Her respiration was short and very rapid. Mr. Ridley was present, and standing in a position ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... at big Emile Augier. There was in this beseeching and piteous glance an expression of sorrow at having to cut out a scene which he prized, and of fear at vexing an Academician just at the time when he was hoping to become a member of ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... George got out, and then helped Mrs. Gray to descend. A half a dozen beggars, some lame, some blind, some old and paralytic, hovered about the steps, and held out tattered hats to Mrs. Gray, moaning all the time in piteous tones, and begging for alms. Mrs. Gray and Mr. George paid no attention to them, but passed directly on, followed by the children, through a door in a high wall, which led into a little court, and thence they passed into a sort of entrance hall, leading into ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... to settle down to the business of the day. But there intervened a riotous scene, arising on a question of a breach of privilege. This extended over an hour, and throughout it Lord Randolph sat in a state of almost piteous nervousness. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... him with eyes of piteous entreaty. She was long past any thought of expediency so far as he was concerned. It seemed only natural in her trouble to turn to him for help. Had he not helped her before? Besides, she knew that he understood things that she ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... so much that I was not at home when you did me the honour to call,' resumed Mrs. Cadurcis; 'but I had gone over for the day to Southport, buying furniture. What a business it is to buy furniture, Lady Annabel!' added Mrs. Cadurcis, with a piteous expression. ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... for once a piteous tale was read, How, when the murderous mother crocodile Was slain, her fierce brood famished, and lay dead, Starved, ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in the place of torment, she is unhappy enough as it is, and need not be made more so," said faithful Leam, suddenly breaking into piteous weeping; adding through her sobs, "and madame shall ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... new impulse—shook hands with Raymond, and kissed his little daughter's forehead. "Good-bye, children; take care of yourselves," and he went away. Then Madge came to Raymond's side, and he laid his head upon her shoulder with a low piteous cry. ...
— The Boy Artist. - A Tale for the Young • F.M. S.
... E'en pipes were dropp'd despairing—all, save one, One man was faithful to his pipe, and kept Despair and deeper misery at bay, By seeking ever for a "topper," dropped From some spurned pipe, but that he could not find; So, with a piteous and perpetual glare, And a quick dissolute word, sucking the pipe, Which answer'd never with a whiff, he slept; The crowd dispersed by slow degrees, but two Of all the dreary company remain'd, And they kept 'bacca shops; they sat upon The scanted lid of a tobacco tub, Wherein was heap'd a mass ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... hands to her breast in a piteous, magnificent gesture, as though she were defending her ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shield, and magnanimous heroism her sword; benevolence seeks out and consoles distress; the confessor intercedes with heaven; the patriot sacrifices his fortune and his comforts; the martyr dies on the scaffold, and the hero in the field. England hath often witnessed such piteous scenes, and many fear she is now on the verge of similar calamities, which threaten to cloud her glory from the envy and admiration of foreign nations, making her a taunting proverb of reproach to her enemies, while she points a moral, and adorns a tale, for posterity. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... base, miserable, pathetic, touching, contemptible, mournful, piteous, woful, despicable, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... flourished over us. Oh, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel The dint of pity: these are gracious drops. Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here, Here is himself, marred, as you see, with traitors. 1st Cit. O piteous spectacle! 2d Cit. O noble Caesar! 3d Cit. We will be revenged! All. Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay! Let not a traitor live. Ant. Stay, countrymen. 1st Cit. Peace there! hear the noble Antony. 2d Cit. We'll hear him, we'll follow him, we'll ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... City She turned her couch to seek, With pearls of tender pity On her queenly cheek; There in restless slumber She dreamt that she was one Of that most piteous number By distress undone. In among that sullen brood, In homeless want she glided, While in mock solicitude Her fate they thus derided: "Queen, now bear thee queenly, In destiny's despite! If thou wilt starve serenely, We ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... speak for God in the councils that you will hold, believe that your rewards shall be very great. I think that you have been a man of a very troubled mind, for you have thought only or mostly of the affairs of this world. But do now this one good stroke for God His piteous sake, and such a peace shall descend upon you as you have never yet known. You shall have no more griefs; you shall have no more fears. And that is better than the jewels of chalices, and than much lead from the roofs of abbeys. Speak you thus ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... the sashes. She had not the strength left to turn the rusty bolts. Nor was there time. She looked again; she saw what was going to happen. Then with frenzy she began to beat against the window-sashes and to moan and try to stifle her own moans. And then shrill startled screams and piteous cries came up to her, and crazed now and no longer knowing what she did, she struck the window-panes in her agony until they were shattered and she thrust her arms out through them with a last blind instinct to wave to him, to reach him, to drag him out of the ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... in this piteous case, And all be-slurred head and face, On runs he in this wild-goose chase, As here and there he rambles; Half blind, against a mole-hill hit, And for a mountain taking it, For all he was out of his wit Yet to ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... mid-African village than a foreigner was in the streets of London. There is a contemporary account written by a French gentleman who travelled in England, and who published his observations on what he saw in England, which gives a piteous account of the barbarous incivility to which he, his friends, and his servants were exposed when they walked abroad. The mob that jeered and insulted the master very nearly killed the servant for the single offence of being a Frenchman. But ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... radiance. They had begun to realise the desolate truth. They read it in each other's eyes. She had been too loyal to speak. She would have married him, hoping as a woman hopes, against hope. Paragot, whose soul revolted from pretence, preferring real mire to sham down, fled from the piteous tragedy. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... came from the gangway and then the stout figure of the detective came staggering into the circle of light around the shaft. He had evidently been wounded seriously, for he fell as he drew near to where the boys were standing and raised his eyes in a piteous appeal for help. Will stooped over and ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... my vision crumbled. Awake, I glared upon a page where the words ran crazily about like a disrupted colony of ants. I stammered at the thing, feeling my cheeks blaze, but no two words would stay still long enough to be related. I glanced a piteous appeal to authority, while old Leggett, still standing by, crumpled his shaven upper lip into a professional sneer that I did ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... brought in; and sitting down on a low marble bench, we consigned ourselves to the influence of the melting atmosphere, thinking of the unhappy condition of the mutton-chop, when it exclaimed in a piteous voice to the gridiron, "I am all of a perspiration." There were several other bathers undergoing this process of fermentation; and when the coffee was finished, and the pipe laid aside, two fellows placed me gently on my back, and commenced rubbing, squeezing, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... inhabitant the cave contained. It was indeed a human being!—an infant, whose age I could not discover; but it seemed too young to walk, and was, besides, tied up in leaves and moss, enclosed in a piece of bark, which was much torn and rent. The poor infant uttered the most piteous cries, and I did not hesitate a moment to enter the cave, and to take the innocent little creature in my arms; it ceased its cries as soon as it felt the warmth of my cheek; but it was evidently in want of food, and I had nothing to give ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... Adele lay sick at the parsonage, that Reuben came in one night, at twelve or thereabout, to his home at the Brindlocks', (living at this time in the neighborhood of Washington Square,) with his head cruelly battered, and altogether in a very piteous plight. Mrs. Brindlock, terribly frightened,—in her woman's way,—was for summoning the Doctor at once; but Reuben pleaded against it; he had been in a row, that was all, and had caught a big knock or two. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... woman of her quality travel without a footman, unless upon some such extraordinary occasion?" "Nay, to be sure, husband," cries she, "you know these matters better than I, or most folk." "I think I do know something," said he. "To be sure," answered the wife, "the poor little heart looked so piteous, when she sat down in the chair, I protest I could not help having a compassion for her almost as much as if she had been a poor body. But what's to be done, husband? If an she be a rebel, I suppose ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... thee in a dream. Oh, piteous sight! I saw thy heart all empty, all in night; I saw the serpent gnawing at thy heart; I saw how wretched, O my love, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a dismal story, tell me thine, Meantime, good Will, I'll listen as I dine. I too my friend can tell a piteous story When I turn'd hero how ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... piteous little moan the girl turned back toward the body of the young giant. A faltering step she took toward it, and then to the horror of her father she sank upon her knees beside it and lifting the man's head in her arms covered ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... growing dark in the big, bare room, and you had to look closely into the back of the hearth to see the two little figures—one trotting the baby, and the other rocking the doll's cradle in which two of Mitz's sisters were tied with cord, for their good, of course. But Mitz's piteous ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... touched by the benevolence of his tone. Nevertheless, it only intensified her helpless perplexity. Sarah Gailey was inexpressibly to be pitied, but George Cannon was not to be blamed. She had a feeling that for any piteous disaster some one ought to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... the northern end of New Ireland corpses were burned on large piles of firewood in an open space of the village. A number of images curiously carved out of wood or chalk were set round the blazing pyre, but the meaning of these strange figures is uncertain. Men and women uttered the most piteous wailings, threw themselves on the top of the corpse, and pulled at the arms and legs. This they did not merely to express their grief, but because they thought that if they saw and handled the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... new imitations of sounds would be given correctly—e. g., when I said "bo"—but these, again, would no longer succeed when called for. Indeed, such attempts often broke down utterly at once. Thus the child once heard a hen making a piteous outcry, without seeing the creature, and he tried in vain to imitate the sound, but once only, and not again. On the other hand, he often succeeds in repeating correctly movements of the tongue made for him to see, as the thrusting out of the tongue ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... the unimpassioned Fluff close to his chin and gave it caressing pats, all the while gravely watching Fetch, who, poor thing, whimpered interruptedly, as if trying to repress that sign of discontent, and at last rested her head beside the appealing paw, looking up with piteous beseeching. So, at least, a lover of dogs must have interpreted Fetch, and Grandcourt kept so many dogs that he was reputed to love them; at any rate, his impulse to act just in that way started from such an interpretation. But when the amusing anguish burst forth in a howling bark, Grandcourt ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... almost jumped with an access of 'nerves'—for 'Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt' suddenly stretched out her long arched neck and whinnied with piteous, beseeching loudness. A pause of intense stillness followed the mare's weird cry,—a stillness broken only by the slow pattering of rain. Then from the near distance came the baying of hounds and a far echo of the ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... art indeed the snowy fleece Upon Day's lamb. A welcome guest That comest alike to palace and to nest And givest the cares of life a glad release. O Sleep, I beg thee, rest upon my eyes, For I am weary, worn, and sad,—indeed, Of thy great mercies have I piteous need So come and lead ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... turned and dashed for the other rail. As they reached it they swarmed over it madly, unheeding of the water beneath. In whole battalions they plunged into the sea, most of them sinking immediately; but some of them swimming about in circles with piteous cries. The sea was discolored with their swarming heads for some distance about ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... increased, until he grew delirious, and raved in the most distressing manner. The unfortunate haricot was still on his mind, and he was persecuted by men with strange-shaped heads and carrot eyes. Sometimes he imagined himself pursued by Caddy, and would cry in the most piteous manner to have her prevented from beating him. Then his mind strayed off to the marble-ground, where he would play imaginary games, and laugh over his success in such a wild and frightful manner as to draw tears from the eyes of all around him. He was greatly ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... A sound of pattering hoofs And anxious bleatings tells the passing herd: Scared by the piteous droves, A shoal of skurrying doves, Veering, around the island of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Lord and my God! I have trusted in Thee; O Jesus, my Saviour belov'd, set me free: In rigorous chains, in piteous pains, I am longing for Thee! In weakness appealing, in agony kneeling, I pray, I beseech Thee, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... ensued. The scene which then took place defies every attempt at description. No pen could adequately place before the reader the awful incidents that succeeded. He must, if he can, imagine the howling of the wolves, the piteous cries of the lacerated and dying youth, the imprecations of the men, the neighing of the horses and roaring of the bulls in the stables; and, more than all, the crying and lamentations of the women and children in the house—a fearful chorus—such as happily few, very few ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... been attended with inevitable ruin. Anselma, sensible of our dangerous position, carefully endeavoured to avoid the threatened storm. It was all in vain; her tears fell fast, and her prayers were uttered in all the fervour of desolate grief; but the barbarian saw those tears unmoved, and heard her piteous expostulations with the coldness of a villain. Nay, he felt exasperated at the resistance with which his wishes were opposed by one whom his pride naturally led him to consider as affording an easy conquest. He had been accustomed, in his shameful career, to meet with little ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... drum. More than one twisted cripple flung himself before the horse of the Prince, begging for "the King's touch." In each case the Young Chevalier disclaimed any power of healing, but his kindly heart forbade his denying the piteous appeal. With a slight smile of sympathy he would comply with the request, saying, "I touch, but God heal." At the head of each clan-regiment rode its chief, and in front of every company the captains, ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Cathedral; Francis in the year before the judgment of the Most High began to fall upon the guilty king and his accursed progeny. Since then everything seemed to have gone wrong. The last six years of Henry the Second's reign were years of piteous misery, shame, and bitterness. His two elder sons died in arms against their father, the one childless, the other, Geoffrey, with a baby boy never destined to arrive at manhood. The two younger ones were Richard ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... the first shock of sudden loss, she was surprised to find the memory of his faults and failings, short life and piteous death, grew dim, as if a kindly hand had wiped out the record and given him back to her in the likeness of the brave, bright boy she had loved, not as the wayward, passionate young man who ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... turned her heavy eyes With such a piteous glance upon my face; It pierced my heart, and fast the gathering tears Blinded my sight. Alas! poor maniac; For thee no hope shall dawn—no tender thought Wake in thy blighted heart a thrill of joy. The immortal mind ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... is given to us by Montaigne, who visited the cell, where it seems the unfortunate inmate was made a show of to all whom curiosity or pity attracted to the hospital. "I had even more indignation than compassion when I saw him at Ferrara in so piteous a state—a living shadow of himself." His jailer was Agostino Mosti, who, although he was himself a man of letters, and therefore should have sympathised with Tasso, on the contrary carried out to the utmost the cruel commands of his prince, and by his harsh language and ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... face with its fringe of straight black hair! That must be public property, and its piteous appeal had no power beyond the mother, to stay ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... the only people whom the ants had attacked, and complaints, piteous and loud, came from all parts of the camp, of the attacks made by the fiery little pests. Many of the men, however, appeared bite proof, and only growled and swore at having ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... still not denying that she stood in a fearful strait. It was a terrible scene that followed. Such a frightful agitation and hurry to accomplish in a few counted hours what ought to have been the business of a life. Such calling for psalms and prayers; such piteous beseechings for help; and, last of all, such an awful awakening of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... meeting was to take place. Our progress was intercepted by the unexpected appearance of an old woman, who, in the scarlet cloak which is the picturesque characteristic of the female peasantry of the south, was moving slowly down the avenue to meet us, uttering that peculiarly wild and piteous lamentation well known by the name of 'the Irish cry,' accompanied throughout by all the customary gesticulation of passionate grief. This rencounter was more awkward than we had at first anticipated; for, upon a nearer approach, the person proved to be no other than an old ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... rock; its carelessness of what any one thinks or feels about it, putting forth no claim, having no beauty, nor desirableness, pride, nor grace; yet neither asking for pity; not, as ruins are, useless and piteous, feebly or fondly garrulous of better days; but, useful still, going through its own daily work,—as some old fisherman, beaten grey by storm, yet drawing his daily nets: so it stands, with no complaint about its past youth, in blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... He turned one piteous gaze after them, with a bitter twinge, not of reproach, but of loneliness; and then, dragging himself up by the side of his horse, he turned the other way and drew out his pistol, and waited for the end. Whether he waited seconds or minutes he never ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the shop-bell rang sharply, and Hepzibah set down the remnant of her final cup of tea, with a look of sallow despair that was truly piteous to behold. In cases of distasteful occupation, the second day is generally worse than the first. We return to the rack with all the soreness of the preceding torture in our limbs. At all events, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Ser Peppe. The fool's face was paler than its wont, whilst the usual roguery had passed from his eyes and his mouth, fear having taken possession of its room. He met the Duke's cruel glance with one of alarm and piteous entreaty. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... and small, groped over the coverlet, with nervous twitchings, as every now and then the howls or the pistol-shots of the mob in the streets below them fell on her ear. And at every such movement the lips of the girl by her pillow twitched in piteous sympathy. About half-past twelve there was sharp firing in volleys to the southward of them, that threw the half-conscious sufferer into an agony of supersensitive disturbance. Then there came a silence that seemed ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... dawn," whispered the Interpreter to himself; "and, when that comes, the bells and the organs will utter a jubilate repeated by the echoes of Paradise." Then, turning to me, he said—"This is sad: this is piteous: but less would not have sufficed for the purposes of God. Look here: put into a Roman clepsydra one hundred drops of water; let these run out as the sands in an hourglass; every drop measuring the hundredth part of a second, so that each ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... woman who had been tossing and turning from side to side, in a sort of madness of restrained and attenuated movement, sat up against her crushed pillow, and knew that there was probably some new line on her face, an accentuation of the sharpness of the cheek-bones, a more piteous droop at ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... wandered off and she had no one to send to look for them. These few logs of wood were all she had to bake bread with; would I ask the General to see that the soldiers did not take them? And then the Kaffirs! It was a piteous tale launched on a flood of tears. Possibly it was exaggerated; people have different ways of asking for help; but the terror in the woman's eye when she spoke of the Kaffirs was genuine. And I remembered the cripple's ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... makes a piteous story, for it is the life of one who was ever seeking—seeking for the man to whom she could look up, who could be strong and brave and ardent like herself, and at the same time be more powerful and more steadfast ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... where patients, through some preconceived notion, or from false ideas of shame or discredit attaching to some particular disease, are trying to mislead you, the very vigor of their efforts will often reveal their secret, just as the piteous broken-winged utterings of the mother partridge reveal instantly to the eye of the bird-lover the presence of the young which she is trying to lure him away from. Only let a patient talk enough about his or her symptoms, and the truth will ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... take that!" called out the Frenchman in a louder key and in a tone of anger, as if battling with the blacks on board the Saint Pierre over again; and then, after a pause we heard a piteous cry. "My God! they are going to shoot me! Look! Look! To the rescue, colonel, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... "Blanca! Blanca!" he seemed to call. And as night came down, I noticed that he was not far from the place where we had overtaken her. At length he seemed to find the trail, and when he came to the spot where we had killed her, his heart-broken wailing was piteous to hear. It was sadder than I could possibly have believed. Even the stolid cowboys noticed it, and said they had "never heard a wolf carry on like that before." He seemed to know exactly what had taken place, for her blood had stained the ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... the Swedes? I hate them as I hate the pit of hell, And under Providence I trust right soon To chase them to their homes across their Baltic. My cares are only for the whole: I have A heart—it bleeds within me for the miseries And piteous groanings of my fellow-Germans. Ye are but common men, but yet ye think With minds not common; ye appear to me Worthy before all others, that I whisper thee A little word or two in confidence! See now! already for full fifteen years, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Destroyer of Female Chastity. This man, who was of a simple and decent aspect, was so dazed by the buffeting of the crowd, so spattered by the mud and filth hurled at him from a hundred taunting hands, and his countenance distorted by so piteous a look of animal fear, that he seemed more like a madman being haled to Bedlam than a penitent making public amends ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... found a tobacco shop where stamps and postal cards were sold and mailed a piteous appeal to Molly. She then found a telegraph office and wrote a telegram to be sent collect, but the hard-hearted operator refused to send it unless she prepaid it, and that she could not do. Her French deserted ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... girl who lay trembling in his arms better than he loved his pride; and had she told him then who and what she was, he would not have deemed it a disgrace to love a child of Hagar Warren. But Margaret did not know him, and when he said again, "Will Maggie answer me?" there came from her lips a piteous, wailing cry, and turning her face away she answered mournfully: "No, Mr. Carrollton, no, I cannot be your wife. It breaks my heart to tell you so; but if you knew what I know, you would never have spoken to me words of love. ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... of them and that they had gone toward Detroit. The slave-hunters at once set out in that direction. The fugitives returned to the house, devoured their breakfast immediately and secured the assistance of the landlord, who hearing their piteous story agreed to take them in his boat to Canada. In the language of Henson, "Their bosoms were swelling with inexpressible joy as they mounted the seats of the boat, ready, eager, to spring forward, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... nothing for the silly old Mrs. Erskine, but my heart bled for her daughter, who became a piteous white at the turn the talk had taken, and put her handkerchief to her face, affecting a cough. Nancy saw this ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... and brightened somewhat. "I may think myself that—indeed?" she murmured, in piteous raillery. "You mean in name! Well, I don't want to be ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... wrapped tightly round in turbans, stood out in sharp contrast upon the white background. Some wore fur caps with ear-flaps. All had sheepskin coats and high boots. Many used snow-spectacles. Watching this silent procession of men with heavy loads upon their backs, struggling higher and higher with piteous panting, one could not help wondering anxiously as to how many of them would return to their own country alive. Moving cautiously to avoid treacherous crevasses, I made my way ahead to a spot six hundred feet higher, where I halted for a while on a rocky island fairly clear of snow. As coolie ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... nuns—the deliberate cold-blooded cruelty which punished with death the resentment, the imprudence, often the mere birth, of orphaned lads; the prayers or the tears of schoolgirls who might well hav urged the piteous plea of Sejanus' infant daughter—these recal the indiscriminate ferocity of wild beasts, the atrocities occasionally committed by destructive maniacs in an excess of fury, or the infectious frenzies of lycanthropy and similar forms of epidemic madness, rather than such ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... us. Oh, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel The dint of pity: these are gracious drops. Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here, Here is himself, marred, as you see, with traitors. 1st Cit. O piteous spectacle! 2d Cit. O noble Caesar! 3d Cit. We will be revenged! All. Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay! Let not a traitor live. Ant. Stay, countrymen. 1st Cit. Peace there! hear the noble Antony. 2d Cit. We'll hear him, we'll follow him, we'll die with him. Ant. Good ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... entranced her, that time flew by unheeded, and Christopher Staines came back from her father. His step was heavy; he looked pale, and deeply distressed; then stood like a statue, and did not come close to her, but cast a piteous look, and gasped out one word, that seemed almost to ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... It was a piteous sight to see the poor French folk as they fled from their homes, with their most cherished belongings ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... where the sea churns with sand. Three ships the south wind catches and hurls on hidden rocks, rocks amid the waves which Italians call the Altars, a vast reef banking the sea. Three the east forces from the deep into shallows and quicksands, piteous to see, dashes on shoals and girdles with a sandbank. One, wherein loyal Orontes and his Lycians rode, before their lord's eyes a vast sea descending strikes astern. The helmsman is dashed away and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... a black tape. Persons who had pitied me for having "such a big head and so much hair" now found reason for comment "on my small head with no hair." The most expensive head cover never deceived anyone, however simple, and I was obliged to make my debut in St. Louis in this piteous plight. ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... They three, in that long-distant summer-time— 625 The castle, and the dewy woods, and hunt And hound, and morn on those delightful hills In Ader-baijan. And he saw that youth, Of age and looks to be his own dear son, Piteous and lovely, lying on the sand, 630 Like some rich hyacinth, which by the scythe Of an unskilful gardener has been cut, Mowing the garden grass-plots near its bed, And lies, a fragrant tower of purple bloom, On the mown, dying grass;—so Sohrab lay, 635 Lovely in death, ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... so seldom interferes with kindly intention in the lives of men, had cut what had become a strangling knot, and Kitty, from a dreadful, never-forgotten burden, had become a rather touching, piteous memory, growing ever dimmer as first the months, and then the years, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... eagle came down upon Gwydion's knee. And Gwydion struck him with his magic wand, so that he returned to his own form. No one ever saw a more piteous sight, for he was nothing ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... labour, there was a man of a "haughty and ferocious" aspect. As soon as the child was born, adds Scott, he demanded the midwife to give it him, and, hurrying across the room, threw it on the back of a fire that was blazing in the chimney, in spite of the piteous entreaties of the mother. Suspicion eventually fell on Darrell, whose house was identified by the midwife, and he was tried for murder at Salisbury, "but, by corrupting his judge, Sir John Popham, he escaped the sentence of the law, only to die a violent death by a fall from his horse." This tale ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... managed to haul the ponderous woman to her feet. The boy was a good deal hurt physically, but his mental distress at sight of the lost beer prevented him from noticing his bruises. When he fully grasped the extent of the calamity he actually became pale, and I do not think I ever saw such a piteous little face in my life. I asked "How much was it, little 'un?" His lips trembled, and he said, "I dunno. I put a-money down, and her knows what to put in a-bottle. Father got to 'ave his beer, else he not have good supper." I thought, "This youngster isn't ill-used, or he wouldn't ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... she saw the man who was nearing the bank. She rose to her feet in the rocking boat, and stretched out her arms,—calling his name, "Brian! Brian! Brian!" Then the impact of the boat against a larger wave of the rapids brought her to her knees, and she clung to the thwarts with piteous cries. ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... since the departure of its great high-priest. From this quarter then Dee could get no information on the stone or elixir of the alchymists, and all his efforts to discover them by other means were not only fruitless but expensive. He was soon reduced to great distress, and wrote piteous letters to the Queen, praying relief. He represented that, after he left England with Count Laski, the mob had pillaged his house at Mortlake, accusing him of being a necromancer and a wizard; and had broken all his furniture, burned his library, consisting of four thousand rare ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... out all the waistcoats I had, and my business was now to try if I could not make jackets out of the great watch-coats which I had by me, and with such other materials as I had; so I set to work a-tailoring, or rather indeed a-botching; for I made most piteous work of it. However, I made shift to make two or three waistcoats, which I hoped would serve me a great while; as for breeches or drawers, I made but very sorry ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... his attention, then not infrequently new imitations of sounds would be given correctly—e. g., when I said "bo"—but these, again, would no longer succeed when called for. Indeed, such attempts often broke down utterly at once. Thus the child once heard a hen making a piteous outcry, without seeing the creature, and he tried in vain to imitate the sound, but once only, and not again. On the other hand, he often succeeds in repeating correctly movements of the tongue made for him to see, ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... sentence in my brain. In the morning, I rose and dressed, dreaming. As I was turning the handle of my door to go down to breakfast, suddenly I swung round in a fit of tears. It was so piteous to think that he should have waited by her twenty years in a slow anguish, his heart burning out, without a reproach or a complaint. I saw him, I still see ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... starting forward and a flush coming into her face. "I know that— that is what it is for. To pay back worthily— to give back a thousandfold what you have received. Those girls can't be idle, can they?" she added in a gentle, piteous ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... did not move. For a moment she thought she was dreaming, and that the voice had spoken in her dream. Then as she looked up with a wild hope that it was so—that all the past hour would prove to be nothing but a terrible nightmare—her dazed, piteous eyes met those ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... freshwater cistern which had been built in a hollow between the rocks. There were some who thought that his death might have been accidental, but old Doctor Bowditch said, "My friends, there was only too much reason for it." Of all the wrecks on that dangerous coast was not this the most piteous and tragical! William Hunt narrowly missed being one of the greatest of painters. Though some of his portraits are wretched failures, there are others of his pictures that might grace any gallery ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... the midst of all the roar the piteous bellowing of cattle, penned up in the cars. He saw a dark form stealing around the end of a car; in a moment a light spurted out as if a match had been touched to kerosene; there was a gleam of light, and the stock-car with its load of cattle was wrapped ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of able, and we doubt not conscientious writers engaging in attempting the impossible,—painful and humiliating." He says, "they evidently do not breathe freely over their work; but shuffle and stumble over their difficulties in a piteous manner." (p. 250.) He asserts dogmatically that "the interpretation proposed by Buckland to be given to the Mosaic description, will not bear a moment's serious discussion:" (p. 230:) while Hugh Miller "proposes to give an entirely mythical or enigmatical ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... greedy JOE and glosing JIMMY, And the third was named Grand Old BILLEE; And they were reduced to the piteous prospect Of grubbing ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... to conceive the consternation and surprise the Portuguese gentry were in, nor is it very decently to be expressed. The poor Governor was so much more than half dead with fright that he really befouled himself in a piteous manner, and the rest were in not much better condition. They trembled, cried, begged, crossed themselves, and said their prayers as men going to execution, but it was all one, they were told flatly that the captain was not to be trifled with, that the ship was in want ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... in the beginning, which drew them away from obedience to their natural king; and that with such an example [as this of the Lutaos before them] the peoples [of Mindanao] would not change sides in order to please a nation so unreliable [as the Spaniards]. The Subanos also presented their piteous remonstrances that as a people of the hill-country, and of timid disposition, they were exposed to greater misfortunes. They went to the fort and renewed their importunities, saying that the Spaniards were deserting ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... wain. [21] —Did Sabine grace adorn my living line, Blandusia's praise, wild stream, should yield to thine! Never shall ruthless minister of death 75 'Mid thy soft glooms the glittering steel unsheath; No goblets shall, for thee, be crowned with flowers, No kid with piteous outcry thrill thy bowers; The mystic shapes that by thy margin rove A more benignant sacrifice approve— 80 A mind, that, in a calm angelic mood Of happy wisdom, meditating good, Beholds, of all from her high powers required, Much done, and much designed, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... women of the neighborhood, not omitting the parish dominie; scarce an hour in the day but a knot of them might be seen wagging their white caps together round her door, while the poor woman made some piteous recital. The daughter, too, was fain to seek for more frequent consolation from the stolen interviews of her favored swain, Dirk Waldron. The delectable little Dutch songs with which she used to dulcify the house grew less and less frequent, and she would forget ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... to drag her off. She clung to the saddle wildly, knowing how hopeless it was, but somehow feeling that she must not leave that one poor haven of safety. Then she felt herself going, and in that sickening moment screamed for help—a child's piteous cry: ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the violence; but the madness generally prevailed, and as the worst men were leaders here, all the dreadful passions of human nature were displayed. Shameless rapacity, brutal intemperance, savage lust, cruelty and murder, shrieks and piteous lamentations, groans, shouts, imprecations, the hissing of fires bursting from the houses, the crashing of doors and windows, the reports of muskets used in violence, resounded for two days and nights in the streets of Badajos. On the third, when the ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... long since scooped Through granites which Titanic wars had groined. Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned, Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred. Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared With piteous recognition in fixed eyes, Lifting distressful hands as if to bless. And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall; With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained; Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground, And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan. ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... gangway and then the stout figure of the detective came staggering into the circle of light around the shaft. He had evidently been wounded seriously, for he fell as he drew near to where the boys were standing and raised his eyes in a piteous appeal for help. Will stooped over and ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... plan of one's own what it shall do or be. The child's future shall shape out some darling purpose or plan, and fulfill some long unfulfilled expectation of the parent. And thus, though the wind of every generation sweeps its hopes and plans like forest-leaves, none are whirled and tossed with more piteous moans than those which come out green and fresh to shade the happy spring-time of the cradle. For the temperaments of children are often as oddly unsuited to parents as if capricious fairies had been ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... faintness solemn, sweet, and slow A hymn from Dian's temple; while upswelling, The incense went to her own starry dwelling. But though her face was clear as infant's eyes, Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice, The Poet wept at her so piteous fate, Wept that such beauty should be desolate: So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won, And ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... look," said Mr Temple; and Arthur, as his leg was lifted, uttered a piteous moan, and ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... a sound of blubbering from within, interspersed with piteous cries like those emitted by a rabbit transfixed by headlights. They sounded to Cam like an account man he knew over at GFR&O; and this in turn meant that the ultimatum was probably proceeding from the fabled throne room of ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... be lost or gained, I spoke out with all the force of which I was capable, surprising and terrifying Marechal Besons to such a point, with my hardihood, that he had not a word to say in order to aid me. When I had finished, M. d'Orleans thanked me in a piteous tone, by which I knew the profound impression I had made upon his mind. I proposed, while he was still shaken, that he should at once send to Madame de Maintenon, to know when she, would grant him an audience; for he had determined to speak to her first of his intention to give up Madame ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of habit. We'll get it all back soon. Voyons"—he took her fat chin in his hand and turned up her face, on which make-up, perspiration and tears melted into one piteous paste. "This is not the ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... alleys, in the squares, Begging, lying little rebels; In the noisy thoroughfares, Struggling on with piteous trebles. ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... breast. Lingard, his hand on the tiller, sat up erect, expectant and silent. Mrs. Travers had drawn her cloak close around her body. Their glances plunged infinitely deep into a lightless void, and yet they were still so near the brig that the piteous whine of the dog, mingled with the angry rattling of the chain, reached their ears faintly, evoking obscure images of distress and fury. A sharp bark ending in a plaintive howl that seemed raised by the passage of phantoms invisible to men, rent the black stillness, ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Carthew slammed the door of the Eagle and got into the driving-seat than a young woman, a perfect stranger to Mr. Prohack, appeared, and through the open window asked in a piteous childlike voice if Mr. Prohack was indeed Mr. Prohack, and, having been informed that this was so, expressed the desire to speak with him. Mr. Prohack was beside himself with annoyance and thwarted energy. Was the entire universe ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... companion-way. One of them was Alice Merton, and he was moved to such pity by the sight of her white face and evident weakness that he put down his curry-comb and brush and went to help her. Her face was flooded with colour as she raised her piteous blue eyes to him, and her hand shook as he drew ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... was what I wanted, something to soak the earth and turn the roads into water-courses and clog the enemy transport, something above all to blind the enemy's eyes ... For I remembered what a preposterous bluff it all had been, and what a piteous broken handful stood between the Germans and their goal. If they knew, if they only knew, they would brush ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... pocket he drew a small sheet of crumpled paper. In order to get this to him, a poor, timid woman had gone out into a raging crowd, had borne its brutality for hours, and then, a piteous bundle of broken nerves, had by sheer accident accomplished that which hundreds of others, braver, abler, more confident, and more deserving, had tried to do and failed. Morally this small slip of paper had upon it the blood, and the ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... the shadows of the between-world to the glare of gas-light, from the communion of spirits to the brisk business-like tones of Dr. Hull, was quite too much for the poor lady, and with a piteous gesture, she buried her face in her hands. Alta now came out of the cabinet, and said that her mother would like them to examine it ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... attempted to introduce "a new species of writing," and public enthusiasm testified to his success. Colly Cibber read "Clarissa" before its publication, and was wrought up into a high state of excitement by the story. "What a piteous, d——d, disgraceful pickle you have placed her in!" he wrote to Richardson. "For God's sake, send me the sequel, or—I don't know what to say! * * * My girls are all on fire and fright to know what can possibly have become of her." And when ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... but though I tried, I could not warm her little hands again: And so there in the icy dark she died. . . . The dawn came groping in with fingers gray And touched me, sitting silent as a stone; I kissed those piteous lips, as cold as clay— I did not cry, I did not even moan. At last I rose, groped down the narrow stair; An evil fog was oozing from the sky; Half-crazed I stumbled on, I knew not where, Like phantoms were the folks that passed me by. ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... and fro on their narrow couches, tearing out the straw with their hot and quivering fingers, or twisting the soiled sheets with a feeble and shaking grasp. Some were calling for water, and praying in piteous tone for mountains of ice, cold bright ice to fall ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... a pained, low cry, and buried her face passionately on his shoulder. "Oh, you know, you know!" she cried, in a piteous voice. "And you love me, yet you tempt me to break my parole. If I could do it and be freed of the responsibility! If a miracle ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... world without the beggar's outstretched palm, the miser's heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of lies, the cruel ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... but art poured out the appeal for pardon with supreme power to move, roused to outdo itself, perhaps, by that first piteous cry that had broken from the master-singer's lips. The plaintive notes floated on the golden air as if a culprit spirit were pleading for forgiveness at the gates of paradise, a ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... more piteous tragedy in history than the story of the decline and ruin of this superbly prosperous, literary and artistic country, and yet out of the ashes came new courage. Burned, broken, the Belgians and the Dutch were not beaten. Pushed at last into Holland, where they united their ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... "No piteous, unconscious moaning sound—which so wastes our strength that, even if we have sworn to be firm, a rush of unconquerable tears sweeps away the oath—preceded her waking. No space of deaf apathy followed. The first words spoken were not those of one becoming estranged from this world, and already ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... down, her face was pinched and piteous; there was a strained, pathetic look in her eyes. She snuggled up in her old attitude on the arm of his chair, and what he said compared but poorly with the clear, authoritative, injured statement he had thought out with much care. His ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... On him! on him! Look you, how pale he glares! His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones, Would make them capable.—Do not look upon me; Lest, with this piteous action, you convert My stern effects: then what I have to do Will want true colour; tears, perchance ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... about The Ring and the Book which must arise from the presence of some other fine compensating or equivalent quality. Perhaps one may say that this equivalent for grandeur is a certain simple touching of our sense of human kinship, of the large identity of the conditions of the human lot, of the piteous fatalities which bring the lives of the great multitude of men to be little more than "grains of sand to be blown by the wind." This old woe, the poet says, now in the fulness of the days ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... late at night, dirty and dusty, their clothes torn, their faces bruised, boasting maliciously of the blows they had struck their companions, or the insults they had inflicted upon them; enraged or in tears over the indignities they themselves had suffered; drunken and piteous, unfortunate and repulsive. Sometimes the boys would be brought home by the mother or the father, who had picked them up in the street or in a tavern, drunk to insensibility. The parents scolded and swore at them peevishly, and beat their spongelike ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... argument, and to prove that the desire to borrow shows no imprudence on his own part, and that a tendency to lend will show none on the part of the intended lender. It may be said that this mode fails oftener than any other. There is the piteous manner,—the plea for commiseration. "My dear fellow, unless you will see me through now, upon my word I shall be very badly off." And this manner may be divided again into two. There is the plea piteous with a lie, and the plea ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... Such was the piteous account that Madame de Ste. Petronelle (otherwise Dame Elspeth Johnstone) gave, and which the Lady of Glenuskie soon perceived to be only too true during the days spent at Nanci. To the two young sisters ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but was paying no attention to what was being said. His whole mind was concentrated on the swaying roof of the wrecked cabin, and the piteous sight of that frightened little fellow clinging ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... such a picture of terror and panic that I was almost sorry for him. His fellow-prisoner, too, who stood a good chance of the fag- end of my bullet, was equally piteous in his protestations. ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... Zoroaster once more, and tell him that she knew all the truth—that she knew he had not deceived her, and that she implored his forgiveness for the wrong she had done him. He would let her rest her head upon his breast and weep out her heartful of piteous sorrow once before she died. And then—the quiet stream of the Araxes flowed softly, cold and clear, among the rose-gardens below the palace. The kindly water would take her to its bosom, beneath the summer's moon, and the nightingales she loved would sing her a gentle good-night—good-night ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... the day, told her kid to keep at home, and not to open the door to strangers. She had not been gone long when up came a fox, with head bound from "headache," and foot bound from "gout," and carrying a ped of trinkets. The fox told the kid a most piteous tale, and showed her a little mirror. The kid, out of pity and vanity, opened the door; but while stooping over the ped to pick up a little bell, the fox clapped down the lid ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... they reached it they swarmed over it madly, unheeding of the water beneath. In whole battalions they plunged into the sea, most of them sinking immediately; but some of them swimming about in circles with piteous cries. The sea was discolored with their swarming heads for ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... was touched by Havelok's piteous speech, and felt some faint compassion, so that he could not slay the lad himself; yet he knew that his only ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... man who could eat up a mountain of bread. The Simpleton did not hesitate long, but ran quickly off to the forest, and there in the same place sat a man who had fastened a strap round his body, making a very piteous ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... eggs and played hide-and-seek. She passed through the orchard where they had worked and played so many happy hours, and on to the back pasture where the Dillon sheep had been killed and she had kept the Sheriff from shooting Jack. And she saw and noted everything with a piteous pain and dry eyes. But she gave no sign that night, and not until she was in bed did she with covered head give way. Then the bed shook with her smothered sobs. This is the sad way with women. After the way of men, Chad proudly marched the old Wilderness Road that led to a big, bright, beautiful ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... and wounded, and stiff and sore, He laid him down on the sandy shore; He blessed the force of the charmed line, And he banned the water-goblins spite, For he saw around in the sweet moonshine Their little wee faces above the brine, Giggling and laughing with all their might At the piteous hap of ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... 'Rascal,' said Cordova, suddenly turning to his domestic with a furious air and regular Spanish grimace, 'you are doing nothing; why don't you take more?' 'I can't hold any more, your worship,' replied the latter in a piteous tone. 'My pockets are already full; and see how full I am here,' he continued, pointing to his bosom. 'Peace, bribon,' said his master; 'if your bosom is full, fill your hat, and put it on your head. We owe you more than we can express,' said he, turning round and addressing us in the blandest ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the lad, with coaxing and almost piteous apology. "I backed Grosvenor's play, and you know he's always the most wonderful luck in the world. I couldn't tell he'd go a crowner and have such cards as he had. How shall I get the money, Bertie? I daren't ask the governor; and besides I told Poulteney he should have it this morning. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... superabundance of his heroism, at a gun where he had no business to be, and in running it out, he had jammed his toe in a scupper hole, so fast that there was no extricating him; and notwithstanding his piteous entreaty "to be eased out handsomely, as the leg was made out of a plank of the Victory, and the ring at the end out of one of her bolts," the captain of the gun finding, after a stout pull, that the man was like to come home in his ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... client has placed her piteous case in my hands. It is the Lady Eva Brackwell, the most beautiful DEBUTANTE of last season. She is to be married in a fortnight to the Earl of Dovercourt. This fiend has several imprudent letters—imprudent, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the two regarded the little brown woman so unconscious of their gaze. By the piteous wizened face screwed up in the sunlight, by the faded hair, nut-cracker jaws, and hollow eyes they utterly condemned Mrs. Tuttle, who, blue feathers floating, was also absorbed in watching the stream of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... had been opened by a lancet. The furious animal missed the throat and jugular vein; but the horse was so dreadfully torn, that he was not at first expected to survive. The expressions of agony, in his tears and moans, were most piteous and affecting. Whether the lioness was afraid of her prey being taken from her, or from some other cause, she continued a considerable time after she had entered the hovel roaring in a dreadful manner, so loud, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the wine into the road, Most piteous to be seen, Which made his horse's flanks to smoke As they ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... moved at the piteous sight, that I from my heart repented the undertaking, and would willing had given over, thinking he had full enough; but, he encouraging and beseeching me earnestly to proceed, I gave him ten more lashes; and then resting, surveyed the ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... lonely girl—isolated by the worst curse that can affect humanity—grievous hereditary vice—the innocent scape-goat of another's sin. Alas, how many homes even in our favoured land are desolated as well as desecrated from this one cause. What piteous waste of sweet young life, crushed under unnatural burdens. The sin of England, we say—the shameful curse ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... camel-drivers was held, and the question discussed, "Whether the camel should be killed?" It was decided that it should be doctored and left to graze until a Targhee was sent from Ghat for it. A most piteous sight it was to look upon the poor camel, prostrate and moaning, as if pleading the excuse of its malady for not moving on. I could not stop to look at the wretched animal. Nevertheless, I returned again, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... turning piteous eyes upon his face, "I know it must be partly true, but do you think it is really quite as bad as that? I believed ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Thought, which once would talk with me Of a bright seraph sitting crowned on high, Found such a cruel foe it died, and so My Spirit wept, the grief is hot even now— And said, Alas for me! how swift could flee 30 That piteous Thought which did my life console! And the afflicted one ... questioning Mine eyes, if such a Lady saw they never, And why they would... I said: 'Beneath those eyes might stand for ever 35 He whom ... regards must kill with... To have known ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... chapel, and carved the figure of a slaughtered lamb on a stone in the gable. Another lamb—a living lamb—was being killed by the butcher of Ballajora as Philip went by the shambles. The helpless creature, with its inverted head swung downwards from the block, looked at him with its piteous eyes, and gave forth that distressful cry which is the last wild appeal of the stricken animal when it sees death near, and has ceased to fight ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... were brought back to town still manacled, under the scorching beams of a sun intensely hot, and must infallibly have expired, had not nature expelled the fever in large painful boils, that covered almost the whole body. In this piteous condition they were embarked in an open boat for Muxadavad, the capital of Bengal, and underwent such cruel treatment and misery in their passage, as would shock the humane reader should he peruse the particulars. At Maxadavad they were led ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... for twenty years, had conscientiously striven to chill her readers' blood, should be compelled at last to turn round and gibe at her own spectres, reveals into what a piteous plight the novel of terror had fallen. When even the enchantress disavowed her belief in them, the ghosts must surely have fled shrieking and affrighted and thought never more to raise their ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... It was piteous to see her sorrowful figure as, in this strange house, she was leaning over the table with her face buried in her hands in mute despair; determined, however, not to cry, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... on either side of the mangled body, overwhelmed by this sudden and irrevocable disaster which had brought all our long and weary labours to so piteous an end. Then as the moon rose we climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had fallen, and from the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half silver and half gloom. Far away, miles off, in the direction of Grimpen, a single ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... as they were in their lives, Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn were not long divided by death; and, piteous as is the story of the last years of Catherine, it pales before the hideous tragedy of the ruin of Anne Boleyn. "If I have a son, as I hope shortly, I know what will become of her," wrote Anne of the Princess Mary.[959] ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... I wonder what he means by looking at me in that piteous manner? I can do nothing to relieve him. I'm sure if I could I would. But 'the way of the transgressor is hard,' Mr. Le Noir, and he who sins ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... his thoughts. The whole course of dishonour seemed so clear; he traced it from Monica's earliest meetings with Barfoot at Chelsea. Wavering between the impulse to cast off his wife with every circumstance of public shame, and the piteous desire to arrest her on her path of destruction, he rushed into a middle course, compatible with neither of these intentions. If at this stage he chose to tell Monica what had come to his knowledge, it should have been done with the sternest ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... wide, the story saith, Out of the night came the patient wraith. He might not speak, and he could not stir A hair of the Baron's minniver. Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin, He roved the castle to find his kin. And oh! 'twas a piteous sight to see The dumb ghost follow ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... their answer, he cried aloud, "Woe is me!" and sank like a stone. It was a cold night, and, after some hours, young Godfrey became benumbed, lost his hold, and likewise sank; but the butcher, in his sheepskin coat, held on till daylight, when he was picked up by some fishermen, and told his piteous tale. ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... tokin that I forgeve thee: My harte, do thyn office." And then by and by, he was putt upoun the gibbet, and hanged, and there brynt to poulder.[433] When that the people beheld the great tormenting of that innocent, thei mycht not withhold frome piteous morning and complaining of the ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... fatal to the inhabitants, especially to those who have been nurtured in Europe. Her encoffined remains were shipped on board a vessel, to be conveyed to England for burial, in accordance with her expressed wish. When the poor creature came to that part of her piteous tale, when, as she called her, her "beautiful angel of a mistress" was put in the coffin, and the estate hands were called in to take a last view of her (a custom in vogue there sometimes), she was overpowered with grief, and her utterance was ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... planted at the head and the foot, upon which flags are placed; the grave is then enclosed by pickets driven in the ground. The funeral ceremonies now begin, the widow being the chief mourner. At night and morning she will go to the grave and pour forth the most piteous cries and wailings. It is not important that any other member of the family should take any very active part in the 'cry,' though they do participate to ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... I see, sir, I see!" said Packer with piteous eagerness, taking the manuscript the star handed him. "Now, then, ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... from him embarrassed the girl. But when the blood began to return to her cheek, she heaved a sigh so piteous and profound as to move every spring of ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... disconsolate mother as her wounded son was carried in at the gate—"Ee maffo fonio abada!" ("He never told a lie; no, never!") When they had conveyed him to his hut, and laid him upon a mat, all the spectators joined in lamenting his fate, by screaming and howling in the most piteous manner. ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... the saturated ground. The presence of the old man, who appeared before me unexpectedly, was by no means welcome. I could have wished, if not to hide, at least to clothe, myself. The shame, the shivering, the effort to cover myself in some degree, made me cut a most piteous figure. The old man employed the moment in venting the severest reproaches against me. "What hinders me," he exclaimed, "from taking one of the green cords, and fitting it, if not to your neck, to your back?" This threat I took in very ill part. "Refrain," I cried, "from ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the wound, I saw it with mine eyes, God saue the marke, here on his manly brest, A pitteous Coarse, a bloody piteous Coarse: Pale, pale as ashes, all bedawb'd in blood, All in gore blood ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... which seemed to plead for a remission of responsibility. "I want to give myself up to others; I want to know everything that lies beneath and out of sight, don't you know? I want to enter into the lives of women who are lonely, who are piteous. I want to be near to them—to help them. I want to do something—oh, I should ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... beauty and activity. The beautiful child, clasped close to his breast, her face buried on his shoulder under his shaggy locks, was a strange contrast to his appearance, but only added to the look of piteous helplessness and desolation, as she hung upon him in her alarm at the agitation ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... arrest their progress. The gallant seamen, he knew, would be dashing in among them in spite of the hot smoke, and doing their best to rescue the unfortunate wretches, but he feared that few would be saved. Even where he was he could hear their piteous shrieks, as the flames caught hold of them, chained as they were and unable to escape. As was too likely the pirates had set fire to the barracoon on purpose to delay the English; this plan succeeded perfectly. Often the same sort of thing ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... to fill the hole and drown out the woodchuck? Sometimes it seemed as if the hole was a bottomless pit. But sooner or later the water would rise in it, and then there was sure to be seen the nose of the woodchuck, keeping itself on a level with the rising flood. It was piteous to see the anxious look of the hunted, half-drowned creature as—it came to the surface and caught sight of the dog. There the dog stood, at the mouth of the hole, quivering with excitement from his nose to the tip of his tail, and behind him were the cruel boys dancing with joy ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... pair of grey eyes, bright a week ago, now dimmed with tears, and patched beneath with lines of sorrow. His clean-cut, rather passionate lips were set now, with down-turned corners, in a line of angry self-control piteous to see; and his clear skin seemed stained and dull. He had never dreamt of such misery ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... left alone And mourns her cruel fate; She makes a sad and piteous moan, Alone without a mate. She fears her friend is dead and gone— Confirmed in her belief, Her sorrow finds relief in song, And thus she tells her grief. 'Sweet mate! Alas, where art thou now? I miss thine eyes so bright, Thy feet upon the tender bough, Thy breast so pure and bright.' She wanders ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... their great, widespread tossing branches; and she fell upon her knees and kissed the very stones at her feet and the green blades of waving grass that she never once thought she would see again, and she raised her white arms to heaven with such piteous cries of thankfulness that the angels must have ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
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