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More "Wail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... waft him from his native home; And fast the white rocks faded from his view, And soon were lost in circumambient foam: And then, it may be, of his wish to roam Repented he, but in his bosom slept[34] The silent thought, nor from his lips did come One word of wail, whilst others sate and wept, And to the reckless gales unmanly ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... life. Many years later, talking with me about those last sad hours when she watched with such tender devotion by his bedside, she told me with accents that are still ringing in my ears with their wail of agony: I lived through a hell of suffering on ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... regarded as particularly virulent and hostile if they happened to have left the body of one who was ceremonially impure. The most terrible ghost in Babylonia was that of a woman who had died in childbed. She was pitied and dreaded; her grief had demented her; she was doomed to wail in the darkness; her impurity clung to her like poison. No spirit was more prone to work evil against mankind, and her hostility was accompanied by the most tragic sorrow. In Northern India the Hindus, like the ancient Babylonians, regard as a ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... lost ones who are in China, and God cares for them and yearns over them," and men who were in England respectable artisans, with an imperfect hold of their own language, come to China, in response to the "wail of the dying millions," to stay this "awful ruin of souls," who, at the rate of 33,000 a day, are "perishing without hope, having sinned ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... with a conductor to whom he could show no ticket. On the platform James Macauley, junior, and Martha Macauley, Winifred Chester, and four small children of assorted ages stared after the big figure bolting into the Pullman. Bobby Burns gave a shriek of delight followed by a wail of disappointment. ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... of the tower, clad in the blue dungaree of his abandoned service, and as Findlayson motioned to him to be careful, for his was no life to throw away, he gripped the last pole, and, shading his eyes ship-fashion, answered with the long-drawn wail of the fo'c'sle lookout: "Ham dekhta hai" ("I am looking out"). Findlayson laughed and then sighed. It was years since he had seen a steamer, and he was sick for home. As his trolley passed under the tower, Peroo descended by a rope, ape-fashion, and cried: "It ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... it stands off and mocks him. It goes to a home, tramples upon the pure unselfish love of a wife, enthrones the shadow of a drunkard's poverty upon the hearth-stone, makes the empty cupboard echo the wail of hungry children for bread, with its bloody talons marks the door lintels with the death sentence of an immortal soul, and then stands off and mocks the home. It goes to the Congress of the United States and says: "Put upon me the harness of taxation ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... complainin' none 'bout Dinah. Ah mah'd huh caze ah wuz lonesome, an' she suttinly bin a good wife to me. Ahm goin' to wuk foh huh tell ah git back all the money ah spent on Hannah. Hit wus Dinah's money, too. But"—he burst out again with a sudden long wail— "ah jes' doan see how ahm goin' tuh keep on livin in a worl' ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... of the library long enough to mark the hours of the births and marriages, the meetings and partings, and death, of several generations of the Vyvyans, now chimed in slow, subdued tones, through which ran the echo of a wail, like the voice of a human being, who has ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... hold, and obedient to the pressure of his lips. Since then he had lived from feeble hope to hope; and now, when he struck upon that hard and narrow tract of corduroy studded with comfortless buttons, he began again his melancholy wail. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... irrevocably settled. She thought quite methodically of how it would all be,—what must be done to cut the cords of the old life, to establish the new. John would see the necessity,—he would not make difficulties. He might even be glad to have it all over! Of course her mother would wail, but she would learn to accept. She would leave Molly at first, and John naturally must have his share in her always. That could be worked out later. As for the Farm, they might come back to it afterwards. John had better stay on here for the present,—it was good for ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... exclamation was one of horror. A screech-owl had just sent its dreadful note in melancholy waves out upon the still night air. It started low, almost pianissimo, rose with a hideous crescendo to fortissimo, and then died away like the wail of a lost soul. It came from just ahead of them and to the right. Alice's horse shied and danced nervously. Prudence's horse stood stock still. Then, as no further sound came, ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... are various degrees of skill in playing, I have never yet learned to be critical. I can only see a difference in style. Some are dramatic, some classical, some furious and others buffo. The song is a monotonous, drawling wail, with which the drumming has no sort of connection, for it increases and diminishes in rapidity according to the pleasure or strength of the player. I am sure a concert, such as I witnessed nightly, would cause a sensation in New York, though ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... elevation of feeling and mortification of the flesh. The interior is a hollow cross, and we wander among the instruments of martyrdom itself; the variegated windows cast on us red and green light, like blood and corruption; funeral songs wail about us; under our feet are mortuary tablets and decay; and the soul soars with the colossal columns to a giddy height, tearing itself with pain from the body, which falls like a weary, worn-out garment to the ground. But when we behold the exteriors of these ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... they are chanting show it to be a funeral procession. Every one wears a green badge, for most all the colored people belong to some order. Finally they come to a stop and gather about the grave. The mourners break out into a wail, and they begin to chant the words: "And must my trembling spirit glide into a world unknown?" The chant I can never describe, for there is no music in it, and we cannot distinguish any tune. Then the minister preaches, and they begin another chant. Let us look around ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... The monotonous wail of the instruments, the pungency of the incense, the subdued light, the humid breath of the roses carried the thoughts of Mr. Tutt far away. Before him, against the blue misty sunshine, rose the yellow temples of Peking. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... wail of a man in torture burst from him. It woke more than one sleeper in the distant chambers of the Chateau, making them start upon their pillows to listen for another cry, but none came. Bigot was a man of iron; he retained self-possession enough to ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... right?" Wilford asked, for now that the time drew near when the little crib at home would be empty, the nursery desolate, with no fretful, plaintive wail to annoy and worry him, he began to feel that after all that cry was not so very vexing as he had imagined it to be; that he might miss it when it was gone, and wish back the little creature which had been so ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... scorn the thrilling tale Of Carolina's high-souled daughters, Which echoes here the mournful wail Of sorrow from Edisto's waters, Close while ye may the public ear— With malice vex, with slander wound them— The pure and good shall throng to hear, And tried and manly ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... heart-breaking. 'Why could he not have lived until I came? Why?' In the evening came a sister, whose aged parents had sent her to search for their only son. She also came too late. The brother had gone to the soldier's grave two days previous. One continued wail of sorrow goes up from all parts ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... spoke a frightful noise was heard,—not thunder, it was too prolonged for that; it was a deep, sullen roar, heard above the wail of the wind like the boom of Niagara Falls. Very soon the children saw for themselves what it meant. ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... case on the return of a war-party, mourning for a chief is to be terminated, one of the heads is carried down river to his tomb, followed by most of the men, while the women wail in the house. The head is first brought before the house, but not into it. An old man shoots a dart into the air in the direction of the enemy, and then, pattering out a long formula in the usual way, he slaughters ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... in their vocal expression. Heretofore the short, snappy bark has spoken only of anticipation and eagerness; now there comes the instinctive yelp of the questing beast, the hound on the scent. It bursts from them like a wail from the distant past. As if shot, they are off in a bunch. A clatter of sounds, scratching, rustling, and scrambling, we hear them tearing through the brush. We follow, but are soon outdistanced. Down the creek bed we go, splash through mud, clamber over logs, stop, listen, and hear them baying, ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... neist outspak a raucle carlin, Wha kent fu' weel to cleek the sterling, For monie a pursie she had hooked, And had in mony a well been ducked. Her dove had been a Highland laddie, But weary fa' the waefu' woodie! Wi' sighs and sobs she thus began To wail her braw John Highlandman. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... other, though it is probable that a sight of a fresh store of bodily aliment, which was soon after exposed in order to gain access to the roof, might have led to some further inferences, had more time been given to conjectures. But at this moment a new wail proceeded from the maidens ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... face who wert doomed to undergo that sore trial of thy faith. Of Holly also I desired to learn whether his wisdom could pierce through my disguise, and how near he stood to truth. It was for this reason that I suffered him to see me draw the lock from the satchel on thy breast and to hear me wail over thee yonder in the Rest-house. Well he did not guess so ill, but thou, thou knewest me—in thy sleep—knewest me as I am, and not as I seemed to be, yes," she added softly, "and didst say certain sweet ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... the undertone; The wail of hopeless weeping in the dawn From lips that smiled through ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... born into this world of woe? In never-ceasing streams let sorrow flow; Be from that hour the house with sables hung, Let lamentations dwell upon thy tongue; E'en from the moment that he first began To wail and whine, let him not see a man; Lock, lock him up, far from the public eye; Give him no opportunity to buy, Or to be bought; B——, though rich, was sold, And gave his body up to shame for gold. 620 Let it be bruited all about the town, That he is coarse, indelicate, and brown, An antidote to ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... immovable barriers of great-coated soldiers, and the surging, restless sea of black-clad men and women pent up on either hand behind them. The long rolling of muffled drums, and the dull boom of cannon; the baring of men's heads; the wail of the Funeral March, the flash of suddenly whitened faces turned one way to greet Her as She passed, borne to Her rest upon a gun-carriage, as fitting an aged warrior Queen; drawn to her wedded couch within the tomb by the willing, faithful ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... nothing you kin do, Miss." The voice was a wail which rose, swelled out, and cracked like floating ice against the shore of a mighty stream. "Thar ain't nothin' nobody kin do. My John is dead. Even God can't do nothin'. It's over, I tell you. Dead, dead! I can't believe it, but they say it is so. He wasn't well when he left the house this ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... they even tried to show by gestures of the whole body that they could see and understand. When, however, the adherents of Sextus were routed, then in unison and with one impulse the one side raised the paean and the others a wail of lamentation. The soldiers as if they too had shared defeat at once retired to Messana. Caesar took up such of the vanquished as were cast on shore and went into the sea itself to set on fire all the vessels that ran aground in ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... blissful thing thou were If thou wouldst spare us in our lustiness, And come to wretches that be of heavy cheer When they thee ask to lighten their distress. But out, alas, thine own self-willedness Harshly refuses them that weep and wail To close their eyes ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... they gone? That wail was sweet and piercing: but was it just? No. Let me forget myself a thousand times rather than I should forget them! And yet, cost what it will to say so, say it we must, that certain traces are fading off, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... hugged the cropped head tenderly, Jo assumed an indifferent air, which did not deceive anyone a particle, and said, rumpling up the brown bush and trying to look as if she liked it, "It doesn't affect the fate of the nation, so don't wail, Beth. It will be good for my vanity, I was getting too proud of my wig. It will do my brains good to have that mop taken off. My head feels deliciously light and cool, and the barber said I could soon have a curly crop, which will be boyish, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... succeeding generations of this land, but will give a stimulus to free principles in every part of the globe. If 'Freedom shrieked when Kosciuszko fell' at the hands of despotism, a longer and sadder wail would mark the fall of American republicanism, wounded and slain in the house of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... trust, "Our Father who art in heaven." While the other taught his followers to lean only upon self, and to seek speedy relief from life itself, declaring that heaven returned only an empty, mocking echo to the helpless wail of the ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... so sings, yet does so wail? 'Tis philomel, the nightingale; "Jugg! jugg! terue!" she cries, And hating earth ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... shall contain at least one quotation from the Classics. Mr. G. from year to year observed this custom with splendid effect. LOWE'S Ex luce lucellum is famous in history; nearly became the epitaph of a Ministry; certainly was the funeral wail over a carefully-constructed Budget. The SQUIRE to-night felt bound to observe tradition; but in accordance with his nature did it modestly, adventuring nothing more recondite than citation of the familiar line that serves to mark WREN'S resting-place in Westminster Abbey. TOMMY BOWLES took ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... There was; however, no such disposition. The whole country was already cowering again, except the provinces of Holland and Zealand. No one dared approach, even to learn what had occurred within the walls of the town, for days after its doom had been accomplished. "A wail of agony was heard above Zutphen last Sunday," wrote Count Nieuwenar, "a sound as of a mighty massacre, but we know ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... filled the room, broken presently by the mother's wail as she fell on her knees at the bedside, and taking the cold hand in hers covered it ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... aery traceried pinnacle. So; it is builded, the high tenement, - God grant—to mine intent! Most like a palace of the Occident, Up-thrusting, toppling maze on maze, Its mounded blaze, And washed by the sunset's rosy waves, Whose sea drinks rarer hue from those rare walls it laves. Yet wail, my spirits, wail! So few therein to enter shall prevail! Scarce fewer could win way, if their desire A dragon baulked, with involuted spire, And writhen snout spattered with yeasty fire. For at the elfin portal hangs a horn Which none can wind ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... hoarse wind is raving, Rocks where the weary floods murmur and wail, Wilds where the fern by the furrow is waving, Reeled with the echoes that rode on the gale; Far as the tempest thrills Over the darkened hills Far as the sunshine streams over the plain, Roused ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... broken and bloody fail. Ensign and pennon are rent and cleft, And the Franks of their fairest youth bereft, Who will look on mother or spouse no more, Or the host that waiteth the gorge before. Karl the Mighty may weep and wail; What skilleth sorrow, if succour fail? An evil service was Gan's that day, When to Saragossa he bent his way, His faith and kindred to betray. But a doom thereafter awaited him— Amerced in Aix, of life and limb, With thirty of his kin beside, To whom ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... The wail and sob and moan of the sea's dirge, Its plangor and surge; The awful biting sough Of drifted snows along some arctic bluff, That ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... of the venomous green path, not thirty yards away, I saw the head and shoulders and upstretched, appealing arms of Van Roon. Even as the lightning flickered and we saw him, he was gone; with one last, long, drawn-out cry, horribly like the mournful wail of a sea ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... of a young child, darter, of our Anna's baby; a little, feeble wail; but I should have heard it, if the storm had been twice as loud. I had been sitting here, from sundown to ten o'clock, with no company but my fears and the raging storm. Hannah came, once or twice, and put her pale face through ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... silver roadway. Many tree-trunks were white, contrasting with the darkness within the dense woods, glistening like spectres, as the tremulous light glimmered through the branches. There was no sound in the forest, except the solemn wail of the wind, and the steady tramp, tramp—tramp, tramp of the hurrying horse. My flesh crept and shuddered under the drastic influence of the chill night and the doleful croakings of my companion; who talked continually of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... slighted ghosts protested, there came a loud, reproachful wail out of space. Everyone started, and stared in all directions. Then the soberly clad, modern inhabitants of Nancy glanced skyward as they crossed the square of Stanislas. Nobody hurried, yet nobody stopped. Men, women, and children pursued their way at the same leisurely pace as before, except ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... norbury Banshee— To wail and, then, to vanish. She will stand With lifted flambeau, lighted by the hand That lights the stars, till she again is free, Inspiring normal man in every land With love of Freedom, by her scorn ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... lake Lying calm and black Under the night, Floats the wail Of the pipes: And beyond, loom Langdale Pikes, dim, Shadowy sentinels. Over all, the stars, Like friends, faithful ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... just enough time to dig his wallet, pockets, and billfold before the whole neighborhood was up and out. Sirens howled in the distance and from above I could hear the thin wail of a jetcopter. Someone opened a window and called: "What's going on ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... the candles shine around his narrow bier, Escorted by the crowds of poor with many a bitter tear; No more, alas! can he the sad and anguished-laden cure— Oh, wail! For Durand is no more—the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... ye Alleghenies, into the Conemaugh vale, And see the rising waters, and hear the bitter wail; The swollen streams now empty their contents in the lake, The waters rise to kiss the skies ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... the story we cannot unfold; They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold; They grieved, but no wail from their slumber will come; They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... the spirits the ballyan places an offering before her and begins to chant and wail. A distant stare comes into her eyes, her body begins to twitch convulsively until she is shivering and trembling as if seized with the ague. In this condition she receives the messages of the spirits and under their direction ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... plaintive and wailing. This, too, is the opinion of hillmen, some of whom declare that the souls of men who have suffered injuries in the Law Courts, and who have in consequence died of broken hearts, transmigrate into the great Himalayan barbets, and that is why these birds wail unceasingly un-nee-ow, un-nee-ow, which means "injustice, injustice." Obviously, the hillmen have not a high opinion ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... and his men made a great pile before each of the doors, and then the women folk who were inside began to weep and to wail. ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... on their sentence waits They thrust pale Justice from their haughty gates, Invisible their steps the Virgin treads, And musters evil o'er their sinful heads. She with the dark of air her form arrays, And walks in awful grief the city ways: Her wail is heard; her tear, upbraiding, falls O'er their ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... bleak and bitter sky, the shapeless bog, the stunted trees, the savage girl alone with the corpse in that utter desolation. And as she bent her head over the still face, and called wildly to him who heard her not, and then, utterly unmindful of the intruders, sent up again that dreary wail into the dreary air, they felt a sacred horror, which almost made them turn away, and leave her unquestioned: but Yeo, whose nerves were of tougher ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... quietly, and Agatha lay still in her chair beside the stove. It snapped and crackled cheerfully, but save for that there was a restful quietness, and the room was cosily warm, though she could hear a little icy wind wail about the building. It swept her thoughts away to the frozen North, and she realised what it had cost her to keep faith with Gregory as she pictured a little snow-sheeted schooner hemmed in among the floes, and two ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... fell. Recovering himself, however, he sprang back on to the firm ground; but seeing that escape by flight was no longer possible, he turned round and boldly faced his pursuer. At the same instant a wild swan, rising from the water, flew off with a loud cry. It might have been taken for the death-wail of one of the combatants. Like a couple of wild beasts, the two Indians rushed at each other, and the next instant they were clasped in a deadly embrace. A desperate struggle ensued. It was youth and activity opposed to well-knit ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... intermittently a confusion of voices, Liane's light laughter, muted clatter of chips, now and then the sound of a popping cork. Forward the ship's bell sounded two double strokes, then a single, followed by a wail in minor key: "Five bells and all's well!" ... And of a sudden Lanyard suffered the melancholy oppression of knowing his littleness of body and soul, the relative insignificance even of the ship, that impertinent atom of human organization which traversed with unabashed effrontery the waters ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... cry of the massacred Jews in Russia rang across the Atlantic, and the Ghetto of Manhattan paraded one day through the narrow streets draped in black, through the erstwhile clamorous thoroughfares steeped in silence, stores and shops bolted, a wail of anguish issuing from every door and window—the only one remaining in his shop that day was old Zelig. His fellow-workmen did not call upon him to join the procession. They felt the incongruity of "this brute" in line with mourners in muffled tread. And the Gentile watchman ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Hastinapura and proclaim unto all that Pandu with his wives hath gone into the woods, foregoing wealth, desire, happiness, and even sexual appetite.' Then those followers and attendants, hearing these and other soft words of the king, set up a loud wail, uttering, 'Oh, we are undone!' Then with hot tears trickling down their cheeks they left the monarch and returned to Hastinapura with speed carrying that wealth with them (that was to be distributed in charity). Then Dhritarashtra, that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... He moved now to open the spring-house door; she turned and was lost to him in the lights and shadows of the woods-pasture. On its further border her cabin stood, and from it came the sound of a pitiful wail; at the back door a little child stood, staying itself by the slats let into grooves in the jambs. She had left it in its low cradle asleep, and it must have waked and clambered out and crept to the barrier and been crying ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... punishment due to their crimes. Yet no lament was raised by the political guides of Ireland over murdered landholders and clergymen; it appeared to be, in their sight, a just revenge. At the same time a long wail of woe was heard throughout the country, if it happened that any of the resisting peasantry were killed by the military in the performance of their duties in securing the tithe. Four were thus killed in the county of Cork, and others wounded, the military being ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... else they had as one. At length, by industry in trade, They had a pretty fortune made, And had, like others in the city, A country cottage very pretty; Where they amused their leisure hours, In innocence, with plants and flowers, Till fate had cut Tom's thread across, And left poor John to wail his loss. ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... wandered; their outlines were as vague and indistinct as the outlines of the clouds which seemed to be wandering at random overhead. He remembered his childhood, his mother; he remembered her death, how they had carried him in to her, and how, clasping his head to her bosom, she had begun to wail over him, then had glanced at Glafira Petrovna—and checked herself. He remembered his father, at first vigorous, discontented with everything, with strident voice; and later, blind, tearful, with unkempt grey beard; he remembered ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... increasing each instant as it came. It grew louder as the wind bore it towards me, and now falling, now swelling, it burst forth into one loud, prolonged cry of agony and grief. O God, it was the death-wail! ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... stood round about it while the four men laid their master in his great coffin of black marble beneath the pines and the rhododendrons. And the pipers followed after, making shrill and dreadful music that sounded as though some supernatural beings added their voices to the universal wail of woe. And on either side of the body walked the women, the prophet's kinsfolk; but Nehushta walked by Zoroaster, and ever and anon, as the funeral procession wound through the myrtle walks of the deep gardens, her dark and heavy eyes stole a glance sidelong at her strong fair lover. ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... thousands of women offering these manuscripts. The publishers and the editors walk slowly along before the stalls and receive the manuscripts, which they look at and then lay down, though their writers weep and wail and wring their hands. Presently there comes along a man greatly resembling in the expression of his face the wild and savage wolf trying to smile. His habit is to take up a manuscript, and presently to express, with the aid of ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... seemed to tremble between life and death as she stretched forth her arms to them with a low wail that almost ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... law, and the grief of a poor child pining for the glorious sunshine, the dews of the valley, and liberty. Werther is the slave of desire; Louis Lambert was an enslaved soul. Given equal talent, the more pathetic sorrow, founded on desires which, being purer, are the more genuine, must transcend the wail even ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... Sing we a litany,— Sing for poor maiden-hearts broken and weary; Domine, Domine! Sing we a litany, Wail we and ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... suddenly resounds through the stillness, a long-drawn, mysterious utterance, passing drearily, difficult to locate, more difficult to name—one of those sounds by which Nature at times reaches to the dark places of our spirit and terrifies us with vague dread of the unknown. Is it the wail of an owl or other bird of the night? It pervades the air wildly and lingeringly. Those who come late to the ford and hear this sudden strange call draw rein and turn backward; it is better to drive the weary distance to the bridge than to brave a crossing when this warning is abroad. Those ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... privileges of the good city of Paris that anybody may be born, or live, or die there without attracting any attention whatsoever. Let us profit by the advantages of civilization. There are fifty or sixty deaths every day; if you have a mind to do it, you can sit down at any time and wail over whole hecatombs of dead in Paris. Father Goriot has gone off the hooks, has he? So much the better for him. If you venerate his memory, keep it to yourselves, and let the rest of us ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... the commanding officer by this time, and several of the guard had come forth, anxious and eager to hear the news. No man in the group could catch the reply of the horseman to the questioners at "Sudstown," but in an instant an Irish wail burst upon the ear, and, just as one coyote will start a whole pack, just as one midnight bray will set in discordant chorus a whole "corral" of mules, so did that one wail of mourning call forth an echoing "keen" from every Hibernian hovel in all the little settlement, and in an instant ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... truth. When you wept, when you tore your hair, when you flung yourself in sorrow upon the body, I told myself that either he or I must die. And now you bid me be merciful." Then the big tears dropped down his cheeks, and he began to wail himself,—hardly like ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... would hiccough out a sob, sprinkle a few tears upon the counsel table, and gently thrust the pin into the infant's anatomy. Sob from Gottlieb—opportune wail from the baby. Verdict ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... darkness of the vaults. A great wine-cellar—there are ten miles of them at Rheims—crowded with four thousand people, lighted only by candles, and swarming with huge rats; the blanched faces of women, the crying of children, the wail of babies at the breast. Overhead the crash of falling masonry—the men had armed themselves with big iron pikes to hew their way out in case the vaults fell in. Life in these catacombs was one long threnody of anguish. Outside, ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... bone-headed, feeble-minded sons-uh-guns it's ever been my duty and pleasure to reconstruct," announced Pink melodiously, "you sure take the sour-dough biscuit. You're a song that's been tried on the cattle and failed t' connect. You're the last wail of a coyote dying in the dim distance. For a man that's been lynched and cut down and waiting for another yank, you certainly—are—mild! You're the tamest thing that ever happened. A lady could handle yuh with safety and ease. You're a children's playmate. ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... white men. Silently his followers ranged up in big circle, almost enveloping the stolid troopers. For a moment nothing was heard but the shuffling of moccasined feet, the quick breathing or murmured words of the squaws, the feeble wail of some Indian baby left to its own devices in the parental lodge. Sniffing the tainted air the horses shrank a bit, rallying under the prompt touch of the spur and standing with erect, quivering ear and starting eyeball, staring at the coming throng and uttering low snorts of fear. And then ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... takes up the note of warning, and bids Lodovico beware of the new King of France and, ceasing to dally with Fortune, prepare to defend his fair duchy. The next time Pistoia took up his pen, it was to wail over the duke's fall and the ruin of Italy, and to hurl curses on the head of the false servants who had betrayed their trust and yielded up the Castello to their master's foes. This, at least, may be said to Pistoia's credit—he did not forget his generous patron in the days of adversity; ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... of her husband, a deserter, condemned to die. Such was the crowd of besiegers for grace, offices, and simple greeting by the host of the White House that she was kept out in the hall. But one day, the master passing through the corridor "to hold the show," heard a baby's pitiful wail. He halted, listened again to make sure, and on entering his reception-parlor asked his favorite usher if he had not heard ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... "Oh, how frightful that would be." And she read on with lips compressed. But soon there came from a room upstairs the sudden cry of one of her children, followed by a shrill wail of distress. And dropping the paper, ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... he shook his head from side to side with a look of mingled grief and desperation. The shrill complaint of Maria Remedios grew constantly shriller, and pierced the brain of the unhappy and now dazed priest like an arrow. But all at once the woman's face became transformed; her plaintive wail was changed to a hard, shrill scream; she turned pale, her lips trembled, she clenched her hands, a few locks of her disordered hair fell over her forehead, her eyes glittered, dried by the heat of the anger that glowed in her breast; she rose from her seat and, not ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... stirred with excitement. Some weak-nerved woman with a child at her breast began to cry, and the little one joined its feeble wail ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... A mellowed wail of the bagpipe came from Strone, the last farewell of the departing soldiers; it was but a moment, then was gone. The wind changed from the land, suddenly the odours of the traffics of peace blew familiarly, the scents of gathered hay and the more elusive perfume of yellowing corn. A myriad birds, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... temperature had now fallen to sixty-five or seventy degrees below zero, and with it there came from the north an increasing wind, making the night one in which human life could not have existed for an hour. By midnight Kazan was back under the windfall. The wind grew stronger. It began to wail in mournful dirges over the swamp, and then it burst in fierce shrieking volleys, with intervals of quiet between. These were the first warnings from the great barrens that lay between the last lines of timber and the Arctic. With morning the storm burst in all its fury from out of the north, ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... in their place shall serve me, and sustain Their plagues, their torments suffer, sorrows bear, And they his absence shall lament in vain, And wail his loss and theirs with many a tear:' Thus talking to herself she did ordain A false and wicked guile, as you shall hear; Thither she hasted where the valiant knight Had overcome and slain her ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... To the endless home of unbelievers, Where there is everlasting wail and woe, 460 Gnashing of teeth, and tears of blood, and fire Eternal and the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the last two days and nights in her room; nevertheless she had felt no fear; the thunder of the cannon and the wail of the wounded had inspired her with mournful resignation rather than with fear. As, at one time, she stood at the window, a shell burst near the house, and shattered the window-panes of the ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... There is nothing lovelier than white hair. Combine with it a fine complexion and a pair of animated brown eyes and you have as picturesque a beauty as ever awakened emotions in the heart of man. But, nevertheless, women moan and wail over every stray gray hair. They go off downtown and proceed to lug home a cartload of mysterious bottles which they keep religiously away from hubby's investigating eye. I won't tell the result of the experience, for it is too well known. It is a certain episode through ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... faint bleat, as of a new-born lamb, high above her head; she started and looked up. Then a wail from the cliffs, as of a child in pain, answered by another from the opposite rocks. They were but the passing snipe, and the otter calling to her brood; but to her they were mysterious, supernatural goblins, come to answer to her call. Nevertheless, they only quickened her expectation; and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... scorned their expensive fare and sneaked away into the shadows of the garden to wait for Ringtail Pete and the rising of the moon. It rose; and, as it peeped above the wall, there also rose a cautious signal-wail, and Pete's one eye glowed green ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... man can do that the more manly he is. Is it a sign of strength to wail under a sorrow that cannot be cured,—or of truth to perpetuate the appearance of ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... spoke, the other spirit mourn'd With wail so woful, that at his remorse I felt as though I should have died. I turn'd Stone-stiff; and to the ground, fell like ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... dripping from among the rocks; flowers hanging from hedges emitting their fragrance, as they were flapped by the winds; red leaves on the tree tops swaying to and fro; groves picture-like, half stripped of foliage; the western breeze coming with sudden gusts, and the wail of the oriole still audible; the warm sun shining with genial rays, and the cicada also adding its chirp: structures, visible to the gaze at a distance in the South-east, soaring high on various sites and resting ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... a violent outcry, raucous and shrill as the wail of a captured hen, and out of the passage across the courtyard floundered a woman, fantastically dressed ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... stretched herself on the ocean bed, she fell with a despairing wail; her gown spread like a pall over the earth, the Highland bonnet came off, and her hair floated over a haphazard ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... all of every name: begin the wo, Ye woods, and tell it to the doleful winds; And doleful winds, wail to the howling hills; And howling hills, mourn to the dismal vales; And dismal vales, sigh to the sorrowing brooks; And sorrwing brooks, weep to the weeping stream; And weeping stream, awake the groaning deep; And let the instrument ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... why does Buck Davis, who lives on the river flats, cross our hills, unless Murder Hollow be blockaded with snow, or unless he has turkeys for sale? But Buck Davis with turkeys would surely have stopped here, unless he were selling a large stock in town. A wail from the sacking at the back of the sleigh tells the tale. It is a winter calf, and Buck Davis is going to sell it for one dollar to the Boston Market where it will be turned into potted chicken. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... him at five hundred yards, and began firing. Close over his head Thor heard the curious ripping wail of the first bullet, and an instant later came ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... the best possible chance to catch him in mischief, if to mischief he inclined. He generally made his appearance flying in bounding, wave-like fashion, uttering his loud mournful cry, which, though an apparent wail, was evidently not inspired by sadness. Alighting near the foot of a tree-trunk, with many repetitions of his complaining note, he gayly bobbed his way up the bark highway as if it were a ladder. When he reached the branches, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... him it was Samael's. Adam was annoyed, and his annoyance grew as the boy cried and screamed more and more violently. In his vexation he dealt the little one a blow that killed him. But the corpse did not cease to wail and weep, nor did it cease when Adam cut it up into bits. To rid himself of the plague, Adam cooked the remains, and he and Eve ate them. Scarcely had they finished, when Samael appeared and demanded his son. The two malefactors tried to deny everything; ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... Him grace to be concerned about the salvation of your souls. And then, in the last place, I have taken upon me to do this, that I may deliver, if not you, yet myself, and that I may be clear of your blood, and stand quit, as to you, before God, when you shall, for neglect, be damned, and wail to consider that you have lost your souls. 'When I say,' saith God, 'unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou,' the prophet or preacher, 'givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... white man returned with the boy in his arms, a wail of mingled anguish and rage rose from ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was now closed, through the curious complications of state policy. Philip VI. retained his throne, but France was exhausted and impoverished. The king often sat for hours, with his head leaning upon his hand, in a state of profound listlessness and melancholy. Famine was ravaging the land. A wail of woe came from millions whom his wars and ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... replied the Shaykh, his lip curling, his eyes gleaming. "They will tear their clothes, and cut their shaven crowns, and wail, 'Woe's me, O Ali!' then kiss the Kaaba with defilement on their beards. The curse of the Shaykaim is on them—may ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... on the arm, and passing through the flesh entered his breast. He was on foot, in front of the brave peasants whom he was leading, and they all saw him fall. Oh, M. de Lescure, if you had heard the groan, the long wail of grief, which his poor followers from St. Florent uttered, when they saw their sainted leader fall before them, your ears would never forget the sound. We raised him up between us, and carried him back to a part of the town which was in our hands, and from thence ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... a wail from the lips of Phoebe's father. He covered his face with his hands. Mr. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... catch, not the dog but the remaining pig, the one still capable of activity. Cornering it at last, he persuaded it to cease running round and round the room, and instead to take a spin outside. It shot through the door with one long wail. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... was about to reply, when of a sudden out of the silence of the night there rose a long-drawn piercing scream, which thrilled through every nerve of our bodies. I have never heard such a wail of despair. We pulled up our horses, as did the troopers behind us, and strained our ears for some sign as to whence the sound proceeded, for some were of opinion that it came from our right and some from our left. The main body with the waggons had come up, and we all listened intently for any ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... up and come alongside him, at a distance of half a cable's-length away, and both ships quickened up their speed, by such small degrees as to be imperceptible, to nine knots, which was as fast as the cruiser's consort could steam. Presently a long, dismal wail came floating across the water from the Union, and Douglas saw that she wished to attract his attention to a signal ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... the golden-haired girl broke out, in a voice that was positively a wail, and clasping a pair of pretty, slender hands in ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... Press had truth on its side when it uttered its wail that Medora needed housing facilities for the unruly. Medora had never had a jail. Little Missouri had had an eight by ten shack which one man, who knew some history, christened "the Bastile," and which was used as a sort of convalescent hospital for men who were too drunk to distinguish ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... unfaithful or unhappy; and their offspring—when they are cursed with any—poor, miserable, weak fledgelings, with aged, wasted faces, water on the brain, with rickets and softening of the bones—idiots or imbeciles—dying early and scarcely regretted even by the parent whose progeny they are, for every wail of the little suffering voice pierced his heart and reminded him of his lustful sin, and passionate, inexcusable indulgence that caused ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... last the warrior's race finished, his companions bring him, lashed on his steed, back at night to the aoul from which he rode so gayly forth in the morning, and with arms locked around each other's necks stand encircling the bard, the latter commences a monotonous but beautifully plaintive wail, his voice subdued with sorrow, and running at the end of the lines upon the same note, which rapidly caught and prolonged is like an uncontrollable gust of anguish, until the brothers in arms, no less impassioned, ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... death-fire leaped From ridge to river-head, From the Malwa plains to the Abu scars: And wail upon wail went up to the stars Behind the grim zenana-bars, When they knew that the ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... way out of this one so Jason leaped out with an echoing shout and lunged. The blade went right under the man's guard—he must never have seen a sword before—and the tip caught him full in the throat. He expired with a bubbling wail that stirred voices deeper in the building. Jason sprang over the corpse and tore at the multifold bolts and locks that sealed the door. Footsteps were running in the distance when he finally threw the door open ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... they reached the spot near which Poopy was concealed, the child sank with a low wail to the ground, unable to advance another step. Keona seized her in his arms, and, uttering a growl of anger as he threw her rudely over his shoulder, ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... first autumn rains of a thousand years, the first snow-flakes that had wavered down in a slantin' line and touched the tips of her outstretched fingers, and then had drifted about her till her heart wuz almost frozen and she would clap her cold hands together to warm 'em, and wail out a dretful moanin' sound of desolation, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... screaming child with Eve, who, in reply to his question, told him it was Samael's. Adam was annoyed, and his annoyance grew as the boy cried and screamed more and more violently. In his vexation he dealt the little one a blow that killed him. But the corpse did not cease to wail and weep, nor did it cease when Adam cut it up into bits. To rid himself of the plague, Adam cooked the remains, and he and Eve ate them. Scarcely had they finished, when Samael appeared and demanded his ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... to the other side of the world on the one hand, and up to the heaven of God on the other. Often He must have felt the strong attraction of the great world of men, which He loved; and the wild winds, as they careered over his village home, must have often borne to Him the wail of broken hearts, asking Him to hasten to their relief. On his ear must have struck the voices of Jairuses pleading for their only daughters; of sisters interceding for their Lazaruses; of halt and lame and blind entreating that He would come and ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... erring Cain, What hast thou done? Upon the blighted earth I hear a melancholy wail resounding; Among the blades of grass where flowers have birth I hear a new-born tone mournfully sounding. It is thy brother's blood Crying aloud to God ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... among the rocks; flowers hanging from hedges emitting their fragrance, as they were flapped by the winds; red leaves on the tree tops swaying to and fro; groves picture-like, half stripped of foliage; the western breeze coming with sudden gusts, and the wail of the oriole still audible; the warm sun shining with genial rays, and the cicada also adding its chirp: structures, visible to the gaze at a distance in the South-east, soaring high on various sites and resting against the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... away, seeking his own post to the west. Shann was still waiting for the other's signal when there arose from the camp a sound to chill the flesh of any listener, a wail which could not have come from the throat of any normal living thing, intelligent being or animal. Ululating in ear-torturing intensity, the cry sank to a faint, ominous echo of itself, to waver ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... the Lute (vol. v. 244) is afterwards carried out in the Song (vol. viii. 281), which is a masterpiece of originality[FN294] and (in the Arabic) of exquisite tenderness and poetic melancholy, the wail over the past and the vain longing for reunion. And the very depths of melancholy, of majestic pathos and of true sublimity are reached in Many-columned Iram (vol. iv. 113) and the City of Brass (vol. vi. 83): the metrical part of the latter shows a luxury of woe; it is one long wail ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... unkingly. Rather was it the wail of a criminal on being told that the executioner waited without. His ruddy cheeks blanched, and his hands were outstretched as if in a piteous plea for mercy. There was a tumult of objurgations in the outer passage; but this King in spite ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... he ran at full speed for some distance across the moor before venturing to look behind him. When at length he did so, he saw, against the sky, the girl standing on the edge of the cliff, wringing her hands. One solitary wail crossed the space between. She made no attempt to follow him, and he reached the ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... woody glen, Under cliffs that tear the blue, Over torrent, over fen, She and forest, where she skims Feathery, darken and relume: Those are her white-lightning limbs Cleaving loads of leafy gloom. Mountains hear her and call back, Shrewd with night: a frosty wail Distant: her the emerald vale Folds, and wonders in her track. Now her retinue is lean, Many rearward; streams the chase Eager forth of covert; seen One hot tide the rapturous race. Quiver-charged and crescent-crowned, Up on a flash the lighted mound Leaps she, bow to shoulder, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Jim. "Don't introduce it to this part of the country. As you render it, through the nose, and with the wail at the end, it is a thing to make a strong man lie down and give up the ghost in sheer disgust. Ches, does it really make you ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Notwithstanding her hold upon her mistress, she would not have felt it quite safe to let her know all her secrets. She would not have liked to say, for instance, how often she woke suddenly with a little feeble wail sounding in the ears that fingers cannot stop, or to confess that it cried out against a double injustice, that of life and that of death: she had crossed the border of the region of horror, and went about with a worm coiled in her heart, like a centipede in the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... buried the first three without grieving overmuch, and now I have buried the last I can't forget him. He seems always standing before me. He never leaves me. He has withered my heart. I look at his little clothes, his little shirt, his little boots, and I wail. I lay out all that is left of him, all his little things. I look at them and wail. I say to Nikita, my husband, 'Let me go on a pilgrimage, master.' He is a driver. We're not poor people, Father, not poor; he drives our own horse. It's all ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... dying, and I had no power to hold Death backward from such dread intent. In another room, I heard the little wail of the child; and the wail of the child waked my wife back into this life, so that her hands fluttered white and desperately ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... first ray, or rather grey of morn, Gulbeyaz rose from restlessness; and pale As passion rises, with its bosom worn, Array'd herself with mantle, gem, and veil. The nightingale that sings with the deep thorn, Which fable places in her breast of wail, Is lighter far of heart and voice than those Whose headlong ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... dark, heaving waters, I sent forth a cry; Save the wail of those waters there came no reply. I longed, like a bird, o'er the billows to flee, From our lone island home and the ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... cushats wail, [oaks, pigeons] And Echo cons the doolfu' tale; [repeats, doleful] The lintwhites in the hazel braes, [linnets] Delighted, rival ither's lays: The craik amang the claver hay, [corn-crake, clover] The paitrick whirrin' o'er the ley. [partridge, meadow] The swallow jinkin' ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Daphne wreathed, Yon stone was mournful Niobe's mute cell, Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed, And through those groves wail'd the sweet Philomel; The tears of Ceres swell'd in yonder rill— Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne; And, for her lost Adonis, yonder hill ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... about for a stagecoach old, and a miner-man with a bag of gold, And a burro train with its pack-loads which he'd read they tie with the diamond hitch. The rattler's whir and the coyote's wail ne'er sounded out as he hit the trail; And no one knew of a branding bee or a steer roundup that he longed to see. But the oldest settler named Six-Gun Sim rolled a cigarette and remarked to him: "The West hez gone to the East, ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... thy mother, in all my life"; the majesty of his demeanour in the forum; the look that saw the knife; the mute parting glance at Servia; the accents of broken reason, but unbroken and everlasting love, that called upon the name of the poor murdered Virginia; and then the last low wail of the dying father, conscious and happy in the great boon of death—those, as McCullough gave them, were points of impressive beauty, invested with the ever-varying light and shadow of a delicate artistic treatment, and all the while ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... bitter cry of anguish, one long, passionate wail of grief, she threw herself on her mother's bed. Her sorrow could not disturb that mother now; she was gone to that land which is very far off, where even the sound of weeping is never heard. The Good Shepherd had carried ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... John Collinses—four tall glasses of pale liquid and ice, some stuff red as blood floating on the top. No sooner had Diana tasted hers than she set up a loud wail that there was not enough Angostura in it. One of the men hurried away to have this grave defect remedied, and the moment he was out of sight Diana took up his as yet untouched glass, and with two long straws between her lips, skilfully sucked all ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... hundred sad voices lifted a wail, And a hundred glad voices piped on the gale: "Time is short, life is short," they took up the tale: "Life is sweet, love is sweet, use to-day while you may; Love is sweet, and to-morrow may fail; Love is ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... loss she recommences her diary on Shelley's birthday, this time not without a wail. She writes to Mrs. Hunt of the tears she constantly sheds, and confesses she has done little work since coming to Italy. She had read, however, several books of Livy, Antenor, Clarissa, some novels, the Bible, Lucan's Pharsalia, ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... "And men my prophet wail deride! The solemn sorrow dies in scorn; And lonely in the waste, I hide The tortured heart that would forewarn. Amid the happy, unregarded, Mock'd by their fearful joy, I trod; Oh, dark to me the lot ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... and that knight made the greatest dole that ever he heard man make, for ever he wept, and therewith he sighed as though he would die. Then Sir Palomides rode near him and saluted him mildly and said: Fair knight, why wail ye so? let me lie down and wail with you, for doubt not I am much more heavier than ye are; for I dare say, said Palomides, that my sorrow is an hundred fold more than yours is, and therefore let us complain either to other. First, said the wounded knight, I require you tell ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... recognize and worship the infant God, so there are now a few who discern the personality and operation of the Holy Spirit, and pour out to him their gold and frankincense and myrrh. Just as the people of Bethlehem, who had turned the unborn Savior from their door were soon made to wail by the king's order of assassination, so the thousands of nominal churches which now reject the work of the Holy Spirit from their doors will soon wail under the awful tribulation that is rapidly coming on all the earth. Oh, if the Protestant ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... will not come," she said at last, in a low wail of anguish. She rose and turned to Hillyard. Her face glimmered against the darkness deathly white and her ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... specially to articulate the words and syllables of the message, or to repeat them slowly, so as to make them more readily heard at a distance off, though the last syllable of each sentence is always prolonged into a continuous sort of wail. This system of wireless telegraphy has, however, been before described by other writers, so I need ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... most despised among all mortal men, nor will they fulfil the promise that they pledged thee when they still were marching hither from horse-pasturing Argos; that thou shouldest not return till thou hadst laid well-walled Ilios waste. For like young children or widow women do they wail each to the other of returning home. Yea, here is toil to make a man depart disheartened. For he that stayeth away but one single month far from his wife in his benched ship fretteth himself when winter storms and ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... nation, from Thy high and holy Habitation look down upon us and suitably impress us to-day, with a sense that God only is great. Kings and Presidents die; but Thou, the Universal Ruler, livest to roll on thine undisturbed affairs forever, from Thy Throne. A wail has gone up from the heart of the nation to heaven—O, hear, and pity, and assuage, and save. We pray that Thou wilt command thy blessing now, which is life forevermore, upon the family of the President dead; upon the President living upon the Ministers of state; upon ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... mass; so, tempting Heaven, Saul died the death of disobedient Pride And self-willed Folly—curses of mankind! Sins against God which wrought the Fall, and sent, As tempests moan along the listening night, A wail of mournful sadness drifting down The annals of the world: unearthly strains! Cries of eternal souls that ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... "'He in their place shall serve me, and sustain Their plagues, their torments suffer, sorrows bear, And they his absence shall lament in vain, And wail his loss and theirs with many a tear:' Thus talking to herself she did ordain A false and wicked guile, as you shall hear; Thither she hasted where the valiant knight Had overcome and slain her ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... the lake Lying calm and black Under the night, Floats the wail Of the pipes: And beyond, loom Langdale Pikes, dim, Shadowy sentinels. Over all, the stars, ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... the north. Overhead a few stars glittered against the black, and the angry wind had the most mournful wail I have ever heard. How the weird undertones came like the cries of a tortured child, and the loud gusts ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... aspect of the whole situation—the lepers wailing as they depart for Molokai. The Noeau will be taking them on board in a few minutes. But let me warn you not to let your feelings be harrowed. Real as their grief is, they'd wail a whole sight harder a year hence if the Board of Health tried to take them away from Molokai. We've just time for a whiskey and soda. I've a carriage outside. It won't take us five minutes to get ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... while there was little he could do for Marie, he could at least be faithful to that trust. He came back shivering as he had gone out; and as he fitted his latchkey with cold fingers into the lock he heard the newborn infant's wail. ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... Children, that Patrick Mor, one of the pipers of Macleod of Skye, had composed to the memory of his seven sons, who had all died within one year? And now the doors were opened, and the piper boy once more entered. The wild, sad wail arose: and slow and solemn was the step with which he walked up the hall. Lady Macleod sat calm and erect, her lips proud and firm, but her lean hands were working nervously together; and at last, when the ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... snoring, for we had travelled hard and long. But sleep was never further from my eyes. As I sat there, listening to the rising wind in the trees, and the rush of the river below, with now and again the wail of a sea-bird crying out seaward, I grew to hate the darkness. Despite the fair innocents who slumbered within and the sturdy rogues who slept without, the loneliness of the place took hold upon me, and made me uneasy and anxious. Once I thought I heard returning footsteps without, ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... for the whole world," said Leonore, resuming her old self with horrible rapidity. But just then she burnt her finger with the match with which she was lighting the lamp, and her cruelty vanished in a wail. "Oh!" ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... make itself heard above Truth's voice. The [1] audible and inaudible wail of evil never harms Scientists, steadfast in their consciousness of the nothingness of wrong and the ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... sunrise breeze sweeping down from the eastern hills was like a draught of invigorating wine. As he leaned out for an instant to make sure that not even the height would bring a return of the vertigo, the wail of the nearest newsboy became shrilly articulate: "Here's yer Morning Plainsman! All ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... Now a wail of terror rose on the air. Two of the bravos took fairly to their heels. The rest wavered, then gave way, glaring with sullen looks at these young Americans who could fight so terribly ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... 15th, when any lingering hopes of his escape were ended by the sight of Admiral Hotham's ship, "Superb," in the offing. On leaving the French brig, "Epervier," he was greeted with the last cheers of Vive l'Empereur, cheers that died away almost in a wail as his boat drew near to the "Bellerophon." There he was greeted respectfully, but without a salute. He wore the green uniform, with gold and scarlet facings, of a colonel of the Chasseurs a Cheval ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... that its light was very dim, but the stars were bright. Presently a long, quivering wail arose and was answered from a dozen hills. It seemed just the sound one ought to hear in such a place. When the howls ceased for a moment we could hear the subdued roar of the creek and the crooning ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... bark. The better to preserve the equilibrium of the canoe—a conveyance treacherous at the best—wrapped in a blanket in the bottom of the canoe I laid, looking into the faces of the Indians, contorted by fright, and listened to their peculiar and mournful death wail, "while the gale whistled aloft ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... a low, piteous, half-stifled wail from the vessel, which went so home to Mark's feelings, that his voice sounded changed ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... banners lowered, the muffled drums beating the sad march to the grave. All the flags of the city were at half-mast, the fire bells tolled mournfully, and when, wearied with their sorrowful duty, their cadences for a while died away in gloomy silence, the bells of Trinity took up the wail in chiming the requiem to the dead. Everywhere reigned breathless silence, broken only by these sounds ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... impressment of slaves for work on fortifications so as to enable the state authorities to hold a check upon the Confederate authorities. The significance of the three statutes was interpreted by a South Carolina soldier, General John S. Preston, in a letter to the Secretary of War that was a wail of despair. "This legislation is an explicit declaration that this State does not intend to contribute another soldier or slave to the public defense, except on such terms its may be dictated by ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... father Lord Dunquerque Said "Hi!" in a Commanding Tone, "Hi, Lundy! Leave the Cat alone!" Lord Lundy, letting go its tail, Would raise so terrible a wail As moved ...
— Cautionary Tales for Children • Hilaire Belloc
... suitable proportions for the princess. This came in good play, as her fine gentleman's attire would be but poor stuff to turn the water. The wind, which had arisen with just enough force to set up a dismal wail, gave the rain a horizontal slant and drove it in at every opening. The flaps of the comfortable great cloak blew back from Mary's knees, and she felt many a chilling drop through her fine new silk trunks that made her wish for buckram in their place. Soon the water began to ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... phrase ran that the evangelist had disevangelised him—the great seal was taken from him, he lost all self-reliance. Wolsey was not a Ximenes or a Richelieu. He had no other support than the King's favour; without this he fell back into his nothingness. He was heard to wail like a child: the King comforted him by a token of favour, probably however less out of personal sympathy than because he could not be yet quite dispensed with.[104] The High Treasurer, Norfolk, who generally acted as first minister, received the seals, and held them till some time afterwards ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... down on his bob tail, lifted golden muzzle skyward, and emitted a long puppy-wail of dismay ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... in a piteous, dismal wail, was too much for Vince's feelings; and, pushing his companion aside, he was about to hurry to the lad's help, but Mike seized him by the arm, and at the same moment they heard Carnach junior jump up and begin ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... was apparently very weak—so weak that she panted and stumbled as she went along, a circumstance which was accounted for by the little infant tied to her back, which could not have been more than a couple of weeks old. Stumbling against the fallen branch of a tree, she fell at last with a low wail to the ground, and made no effort, as on previous occasions, ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... novelty and uniqueness, but the cry itself was quite unlike anything I have ever heard before. The beginning of each sentence was uttered in a rapid monotone, and towards the end it rose gradually till it ended in a prolonged, shrill wail, which floated overhead through the still air with an indescribably sad and ghostlike effect; heard at night, it would have thrilled one like the cry ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... and are, the women relatives getting on some elevated spot near where the body rests, and keeping up a dismal wail, frequently even in extreme cold weather, the greater part of the night, and this is kept up often for a month. No cremation or burying in a grave was practiced by them at any time. Pained by often coming on skeletons in trees and ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... warn you, fair maidens, to wail and to sigh, For Rama, our Rama, to greenwood must fly; Then hasten, come hasten, to see his array, Ayud'hya is dark when ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... still and placidly through heaven, The spirits of the seasons seem to stand— Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form, And Winter with his aged locks—and breathe, In mournful cadences that come abroad Like the far wind-harp's wild and touching wail, A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year, Gone ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... looked appealingly round, the other old woman took her hand, and pressing it led her to a chair. Two of the men sprang quickly up the stairs. They were absent but a short while, and then they came down like men bewildered and distraught. No need to speak. A low wail of utter misery rose from the women, and was caught up and repeated by the crowd outside, for the only man who could have set their hearts at rest had escaped the perils of the deep, and died quietly ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are to-day rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... because I should never have chosen that trimming. However, the "under the circumstances" is not so bad. A good cut, too—yes. Aha! Just you wail till my portmanteau comes! ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... shamed, humiliated, agonized radical—thus made a mark for gibes instead of winning honor as a martyr for the cause—began to wail and plead the men who were nearest the scene of flagellation started to laugh. The laughter spread like a fire through dry brambles. It ran crackling from side to side of the great square. It mounted into higher bursts of merriment. It became hilarity ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... make him offer his principal for sale, or introduce him to the street with an indicating finger. The gloom grew, calling out the lights into strength, but the concourse did not thin: it only gathered in numbers, and the long, moaning hoot of an out-going tramp filled the air as though with a wail of sorrow at departure. Lascars in coal-begrimed tunics joined in with the rest, adding their voices to the babel, and round-hatted sailors from the Royal Indian Marine ships ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... to have become a swain. Hilary and Anna had lately sung this wail together, but not to its end, she had called it "so ungenuine." How rakishly now it came ripping out. "My fortune is too hard for thee," it declared, "'twould chill thy dearest joy. I'd rather weep to see ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... on the fence of the lot—it ain't so far?" pleaded Jennie in almost a wail. "I'm afraid Pete will cry from the smell if we go any closter. He's most ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... fell back in her corner with a low wail of despair. The man seeing the effect he had wrought, laughed his triumph, and in sheer brutality passed his light once or twice across her face. Then he closed the door with a crash and mounted; the carriage bounded ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... seems to have haunted. This is in part due, we presume, to the free use which he has made of Lucan's "Pharsalia," a work of great value to those who would understand how the grand contest for supremacy was viewed by the beaten party in after times. That poem is the funeral wail of the Roman aristocracy, and it embodies the ideas and traditions of the vanquished as they existed far down into the Imperial age. It testifies to the original vitality of the aristocratical faction, when we find a youthful contemporary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... weep, and weep, For pauper, dolt, and slave; Hark! from wasted moor and fen, Feverous alley, workhouse den, Swells the wail of Englishmen: ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... it deathless fame; The times have changed, the moral is the same. So like an outcast, dowerless and pale, Thy daughter went; and in a foreign gale Spread her young banner, till its sway became A wonder to the nations. Days of shame Are close upon thee; prophets raise their wail. When the rude Cossack with an outstretched hand Points his long spear across the narrow sea,— "Lo! there is England!" when thy destiny Storms on thy straw-crowned head, and thou dost stand Weak, helpless, mad, a by-word in the land,— God grant ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... it in some pure lyric such as Shelley's "Skylark," or in some mystical fantasy such as Moore's "Lallah Rookh" or Coleridge's "Christabel," or in some story of human abnegation such as Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," or some wail of a soul in pain, as in Shelley's "Adonais," or in some outburst of exultant grief such as Whitman's "Captain, My Captain," or in some revelation of the unseen potencies close about us, as in Browning's "Saul," or in some vision of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... listened to her. When she had finished and begun to wail for her daughters, whom she thought she would see no more, he said, "Mother of the Bilbers, your daughters shall be avenged if aught has happened to them at the hands of Narahdarn. Fresh are his tracks, ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... hid. And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katy-did; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... life of ours is a wild aeolian harp of many a joyous strain, But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail, as of souls ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... in answer to my cry, save a kind of wail, which, as it mingled with the splash of the waves seemed to be only a mocking echo of ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... dust, in rain, with might and main, He nursed his cotton, cursed his grain, Fretted for news that made him fret again, Snatched at each telegram of Future Sale, And thrilled with Bulls' or Bears' alternate wail— In hope or fear alike for ever pale. And thus from year to year, through hope and fear, With many a curse and many a secret tear, Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear, At last He woke to find his foolish dreaming past, Beheld his best-of-life ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... be a devil's carnival, too. Isn't Mr. Cyril Henshaw going to play his own music? Oh, I know I'm hopeless, from your standpoint, but I can't help it. I like mine with some go in it, and a tune that you can find without hunting for it. And I don't like lost spirits gone mad that wail and shriek through ten perfectly good minutes, and then die with a gasping moan whose home is the tombs. However, you're ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... sleep he heard the wail of a jackal, and next he was awakened by the sound of a native chanting. It was already daybreak, and Mr. Hume stood on the verandah, having drawn the ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... there was a constitutional melancholy, aggravated by his weary toils, perilous fightings, and fierce throes, which led him down often into the deep mire where there was no standing; and which sighs through all his life. The penitential Psalms and Paul's wail: 'O wretched man that I am,' perhaps never woke more plaintive echo in any human heart than they did in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... a saddler. He learned more than that. Wheeling, as he tells us, was then a great thoroughfare for the traffickers in human flesh. Their coffles passed through the place frequently. "My heart," he continues, "was grieved at the great abomination. I heard the wail of the captive, I felt his pang of distress, and the iron entered into ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... Israel'; that is why they are 'laden with iniquity.' Alienated hearts separate from Him. To forsake Him is to despise Him. To go from Him is to go 'away backward.' Whatever may have been our inheritance of evil, we each go further from Him. And this fatherly lament over Judah is indeed a wail over every child of man. Does it not echo in the 'pearl of parables,' and may we not suppose that it suggested that supreme revelation of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... It was the apron that Bridget Doyle had worn that fatal night. One quick, furtive look at that, one glance at her trembling, shrinking, cowering kinsman, and, with an Irish howl of despair, a loud wail of "Mike, Mike, you've sworn your sister's life away!" she threw herself upon the floor, tearing madly at her hair. And so ended the mystery ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... clouds are rolling heavy, Fitful gusts distend his sail; See the whirlpool's foaming eddy, Hear the seagull's mournful wail. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... as young men. It was predicted that almost unheard-of evils would ensue. Woman, if they succeeded, would be unfitted for her "sphere," and become unwilling to soothe, with tender hand, the suffering and the distressed, etc. The wail was terrific. The experiment, however, succeeded. Women not only commenced a real collegiate course, but pursued it to the end, graduating with honors; and, despite prophecy, college-bred women made faithful wives, judicious mothers, and good housekeepers. A cruel war ravaged the fair ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... and then almost wished she had not, for baby clung to her with inconvenient fondness, changing her former wail of "Marmar" into a lament for "Aunty Wose" if separated long. Nevertheless, there was great satisfaction in cherishing the little waif, for she learned more than she could teach and felt a sense of responsibility which was excellent ballast for ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... With the first wail of the newly born infant a last convulsive shudder passed through the frame of the unconscious mother. Then three or four short gasps for breath, and the spirit passed away. She was dead. Professor Biggleswade ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... years, the first snow-flakes that had wavered down in a slantin' line and touched the tips of her outstretched fingers, and then had drifted about her till her heart wuz almost frozen and she would clap her cold hands together to warm 'em, and wail out a dretful moanin' ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... fast to your tail, and you wriggle and wail, And romp all around, the best master, And kindest of heart, Dog and Lobster can't part. Don't think I deride your disaster! The pinch of it might make an elephant prance; No, all that I ask is—just ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... in grandeur and splendor every day, and the time will come when every man and every woman shall have the same rights as every other man and every other woman has. I believe, we are growing better. I don't believe the wail of want shall be heard forever; that the prison and gallows will always curse the ground. The time will come when liberty and law and love, like the rings of Saturn, will surround the world; when the world will cease making these mistakes; when every man will be judged according to ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... low wail of a new-born infant was heard issuing from a bundle of ragged clothing which some poor creature had laid down on the doorstep of a house in a small by-street not many squares from our own. The house was occupied in part by a man named Varick, who had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... enough to make one shiver—and shrill, shrill as the song of the grasshoppers, it began to make itself heard, very softly at first, then growing louder and rising in the silence of the noonday like the diminutive wail of some poor Japanese soul in pain and anguish; it was Chrysantheme and her ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... gave! while he struggled and bit, and proved himself very savage indeed. More startling, however, than his protest was a cry of anguish that answered it from the woods, a heart-rending, terrible cry, the wail of a mother about to be bereaved. I looked up, and lo! in plain sight, in her agony forgetting her danger, and begging by every art in her power, a cuckoo. Her distress went to my heart; I could not resist her pleading. One instant I held that vociferous cuckoo ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... rang out through the corridor. With a low wail of genuine grief, Mignon dropped into a chair. She heard Harriet Delaney begin her first song. Unable to bear the chagrin that was hers, she sprang up. Readjusting the gown she had partly thrown off, she seized her cloak and wrapped it ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... me," replied Marian, her chin beginning to quiver. "Nobody can help me. I'm the most miserable girl—" her voice ended in a wail, and she rocked to and fro upon ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again three days later, when the wail of the "Dead March" and the tramp of the squadrons told the wondering station, that saw no gap in the table, an officer of the regiment had resigned ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... his life and hers, but he brushed it out of his mind, and they went back together down the waterside. Their progress was slow, for there was no trail at all, and while they laboriously plodded over the shingle, or crept in and out among the thickets, the wail of the breeze grew louder. Half an hour had passed when the faint hoot of the Tillicum's whistle reached ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... heard the wail of the southern mothers, and the laughing cry of the clansmen as the foemen stood to arms, the wild devilish lilt of it for glory or a laughing death, and all around a black, black land, lighted alone with blazing farms, and the broad red swathe where the hillmen trailed. Came the very struggle, ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... up a sorrowful wail as if it knew better and protested against Winny's softening ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... dimly lighted corner by the canopy, came a little piteous wail; then another followed, and was lost in the singer's voice. During a long phrase on the harpsichord, sharp and tinkling, the singer turned his head towards the dais, and there came a plaintive little sob. But he, instead of stopping, struck a sharp ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... interest in these important events dwindles and shrinks, like paper in the fire, before the intensity of that more domestic sympathy which has been every where awakened by individual calamities. The frightful cost at which we have purchased success, may be heard and seen in the wail and the gloom round a multitude of hearths. No dauntless courage was more conspicuous,—alas! no gallant life-blood was poured out more copiously,—than that of the sons of Scotland. The eternal sunshine of glory which irradiates ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... to my eye I took another look towards the northern reef and the ship that was stranded there. But no ship was to be seen. She had disappeared in a twinkling; the sea had swallowed her up. And over the water, as an eerie wail, lasting and doleful, came the death-cries of those who ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... skyline, and the next turning must bring him in view of the ill-assorted couple he was pursuing. Then the colour went suddenly out of things, and a grey light settled itself with a quick shiver over the landscape. Van Cheele heard a shrill wail of fear, ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... war-whoops from the boisterous youngsters rang through the parlor. In eye, and look, and voice, the popular tribute spoke in honor of the popular instrument,—an instrument whose strings can sound almost every passion forth: The quip and quirk of merriment, the mourner's wail, the measured praise of solemn psalms, the lively beat of joy, the subtle charm of indolent moods, and the sweet ecstacy of youthful pleasure, when with flying feet and in the abandon of delight she swings, circles, and floats through the ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... pin; "be good enough to remember what I said, and if you can't endure to hear of anybody sitting and looking at a wail, it's no use my going on ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... the wail. Perched upon the biggest and pinkest of the hydrangeas was a naughty little canary, its head on one side warbling defiantly in the first thrill of joyous freedom. Its deserted mistress paused breathlessly. A touch, a movement, ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... marriage of her daughter who can deny? But what will she say when she knoweth my purpose? And of the maiden, what shall I say? Unhappy maiden whose bridegroom shall be death! For she will cry to me, 'Wilt thou kill me, my father?' And the little Orestes will wail, not knowing what he doeth, seeing he is but a babe. Cursed be Paris, who ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... mountain peaks And the low moaning of the billowy winds Among the abysses. Dull lights here and there Kindled, like wreckage of a city razed By vandals, and the inky sky cupped up Into a black, impenetrable roof.... But now from out the chaos there arose Another sound more fearful than the wail Of tempest, or the quake of mighty hills— A mortal cry, a human ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... were cheaper places," he chortled, "and the owner gave me the advantage of the broker's commission, too. Come out next spring and see what a bargain I found." In late May there came a wail for help from the cocksure buyer. A few days of unseasonably warm weather and a strong east wind had revealed the reason for the bargain. Back of a wooded area to the rear of his holding, was a combination hog farm and refuse dump. ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... various degrees of skill in playing, I have never yet learned to be critical. I can only see a difference in style. Some are dramatic, some classical, some furious and others buffo. The song is a monotonous, drawling wail, with which the drumming has no sort of connection, for it increases and diminishes in rapidity according to the pleasure or strength of the player. I am sure a concert, such as I witnessed nightly, would cause a sensation in New York, ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... brow On a pillar leanest thou, All Aucassin's wail dost hear For his love that is so dear, Then thou spakest, shrill and clear, "Gentle knight withouten fear Little good befalleth thee, Little help of sigh or tear, Ne'er shalt thou have joy of me. Never shalt thou win me; still Am I held in evil will Of thy father ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... now howled in the direction of the south. A fourth one was heard farther off, and both voices united in a plaintive wail. Any one unacquainted with the remarkable perfection with which the Navajos imitate the nocturnal chant of the so-called coyote, would have been deceived, and have taken the sounds for the voices of the animals themselves; but Tyope recognized them as signals ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... quickly, and in dread Gather'd round Helen, but might naught avail To wake her; moveless as a maiden dead That Artemis hath slain, yet nowise pale, She lay; but Aethra did begin the wail, And all the women with sad voice replied, Who deem'd her pass'd unto the poplar vale ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... field beside the asylum. I was told that the band was composed of patients. This made the music more thrilling. When they struck up "Auld Lang Syne," or "There Is no Luck About the House," there was a wail in it to my ears, after home, happiness and reason. We got down from our high position and came home by another way, passing through some of the poorer streets of Sligo, which are kept scrupulously clean. Even here women and girls were gathering sticks to cook the handful of meal. The poor are ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... and then went out quietly, and Agatha lay still in her chair beside the stove. It snapped and crackled cheerfully, but save for that there was a restful quietness, and the room was cosily warm, though she could hear a little icy wind wail about the building. It swept her thoughts away to the frozen North, and she realised what it had cost her to keep faith with Gregory as she pictured a little snow-sheeted schooner hemmed in among the floes, and two or three worn-out ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the evening, instead of a rival organization from Wells, which the Colonel often imported upon private and public occasions. Jerry Dugan was getting old, too, like the Judge and the Honourable Joe. He had not lost the peculiar wail and lilt from his fiddling, but he had made few recent additions to his repertoire. Just now the band concert in front of Odd Fellows' Hall was winding up with his old favourite: "A ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... stores up his forces for a mighty storm. On this dark, fearful night he blew his fiercest blasts. The wild beast was affrighted from his lair and rushed down with a moan, or the mountain eagle screamed out a wail, indistinctly heard through the moaning sounds. During the whole night, which was black as wickedness, the wind howled in mournful cadence, or went sobbing along the sand. As the hours wore on we seemed to hear, in every shriek of the ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer, and learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... footsore, his shoes and gaiters trodden out, his hair and beard untrimmed; the cloak he carried over his shoulder, and the clothes he wore, sodden with wet; limping along in pain and difficulty; he looked as if the clouds were hurrying from him, as if the wail of the wind and the shuddering of the grass were directed against him, as if the low mysterious plashing of the water murmured at him, as if the fitful autumn night were disturbed ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... sitting high in glory, Heard this shrill wail ring out from Purgatory: "Have mercy, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... dinner to the theatre, thence to bed, thence to breakfast, thence to work, and so on. Or, if in hard luck, we struggle and wail, "cursing our day," ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... old, with voices sad and prophetic. Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... plump and smooth, like a living thing in good condition. The walls were a bright, lively blue, but there was not very much to be seen of them, so covered were they with all sorts of family-belongings and treasures. Against one wail stood a rather ambitious-looking article, half chest of drawers, half sideboard, the knobs of the drawers being of glass, which flashed in the bright fire-light as if smiling their approbation of the happy ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... distinguish no signal from the shore to give us hope. Blacker and blacker grew the night. More keenly whistled the wind. The sea-birds' shriek, echoing it seemed from the caverned rocks, sounded like a funeral wail. We fancied that many a fierce albatross was hovering over our heads, to pounce down on us when nature gave ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... boys. We would pierce the hearts of many pure confiding girls, who are buried in dreams of future happiness, and who would not dare suspect the awful truths that are born of the midnight hours. There are, therefore, too many innocent ones interested; too many mothers to wail; too many sisters to bow their heads in shame; too many young loving hearts that would burst were one to spell out the truth in legible characters. "They have eyes and they see not," let us mercifully leave ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... door knob; it seemed welded to the metal. From head to foot the shooting agony went on. With his teeth ripping his lower lip till the blood came, Berrington tried to fight down the yell of pain that filled his throat, but the effort was beyond human power. A long piteous wail of agony and entreaty came from him. It was only when the third or fourth cry was torn from him and he felt the oppression of a hideous death, that the thing suddenly ceased and Sartoris's gentle, mocking laughter took ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... I lift my veil, The roses turn with envy pale, And from their pierced hearts, rich with pain, Send forth their fragrance like a wail. ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... martyrdom—all the splendid, stinging things of the spirit. Here life was clean, noble, and alive. I was in touch with great souls who exalted flesh and spirit over dollars and cents, and to whom the thin wail of the starved slum child meant more than all the pomp and circumstance of commercial expansion and world empire. All about me were nobleness of purpose and heroism of effort, and my days and nights were sunshine and starshine, all fire and dew, with before my eyes, ever ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again three days later, when the wail of the Dead March, and the tramp of the squadrons, told the wondering Station, who saw no gap in the mess-table, that an officer of the regiment had ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... was in this very uncomfortable state of mind, with the jungle wrapped in profound silence as well as gloom, there broke on the night air a wail so indescribable that the very marrow in Nigel's bones seemed to shrivel up. It ceased, but again broke forth louder than before, increasing in length and strength, until his ears seemed to tingle with the sound, and then it died away to a sigh ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... this a general wail arose, and Mrs. Wing fainted entirely away. Madam Sooty-back was quite satisfied with the effect she had produced, and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... rolled frightened eyes toward Jackson who was glaring at him. Finally he broke into a wail. "Oh! Pappy Jackson, da's all Ah knows. He tell me he go to de bah an' ef'n anybuddy ask whah he go dat night ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... to ask Barbara about the sandman, but the child stared wildly at her mother. Johanna reappeared in the door with a scared face; Barbara burst into loud weeping, and her nurse bore her away crying and bending toward her mother, while from the veranda the wail poured in. ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... was rent by a wail, and a rattle of shells and drums. The body of Benjamin was being brought out of the lodge. It was borne on a bier made of poles, and covered with boughs of pine and fir and red mountain phlox. It was wrapped in a blanket, and strewn with odorous ferns. Four young braves bore it, besmeared with war-paint. ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... gradually died away, and all was silence. Neither horses nor men gave any token of their presence in the ravine. The only sounds that fell upon the ears were the voices of nature's wild creatures whose haunts had been invaded. They were the wail of the goatsucker, the bay of the barking wolf, and the maniac ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... the fading light, Where the mournful winds forever Sweep down from the dim old hills of night, Like the wail of ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... news came of her death, he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it—a sickly, whining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night long—not screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it had been his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his own at that ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... far away came the hideous screeching of a fiddle, accompanied by a discordant, monotonous wail, as of someone singing a song unfamiliar to him; from across the street floated a medley of other noises, above which could be heard the jangling music of a heavily drummed piano. There came to her ears coarse oaths and the maudlin laughter ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... his head, and twisting into grotesque and fantastic folds the nameless horror of the dead man's shroud. Then the clock struck the quarter, and he felt the time was come. He chuckled to himself, and turned the corner; but no sooner had he done so, than, with a piteous wail of terror, he fell back, and hid his blanched face in his long, bony hands. Right in front of him was standing a horrible spectre, motionless as a carven image, and monstrous as a madman's dream! Its head was bald and burnished; its face round, and fat, and white; and hideous ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... somewhat dim to her; but yet not so much so as that she could not see them. But when she stretched out her arm she could see it not at all, nor her limbs nor any other part of her which her eyes might fall upon. Then would she have uttered a lamentable wail, but the voice was sealed up in her and no sound came from her voice. Then she heard the witch-wife how she said (and yet she heard it as if her voice came from afar), Nay, thou canst not speak, and thou canst not see thyself, nor may any other, save me, and I but dimly. But this ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... and the Beanstalk" story—an old man puts his wife in a bag and attempts to carry her up the beanstalk to heaven. Becoming tired on the way, he drops the bag, and the old woman is killed. After weeping over her dead body he sets out in search of a Wailer. Meeting a bear, he cries, "Wail a bit, Bear, for my old woman! I'll give you a pair of nice white fowls." The bear growls out "Oh, dear granny of mine! how I grieve for thee!" "No, no!" says the old man, "you can't wail." Going a little further he tries a wolf, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... Judaean, Amos of Tekoa, a shepherd from the wilderness bordering on the Dead Sea. Into the midst of the joyful tones of the songs which with harp and tabor were being sung at the sacred banquet he brought the discordant note of the mourner's wail. For over all the joyous stir of busy life his ear caught the sounds of death: "the virgin of Israel is fallen, never more to rise; lies prostrate in her own land with no one to lift her up." He prophesied as close at hand the downfall of the kingdom which just at that moment was rejoicing most ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... the sentence resolved itself into a veritable wail and she sat down quickly and subsided ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... calm and black Under the night, Floats the wail Of the pipes: And beyond, loom Langdale Pikes, dim, Shadowy sentinels. Over all, the stars, Like ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... surprised and a little bit alarmed, and she ran from point to point, calling and calling again; but for a long time the only answer was the long sighs the wind gave as it rushed over the level land, and lost itself with a little wail of anger amongst the old tors. Then at last came a long shout, and Dan appeared, and almost at the same moment a drop fell smartly on Kitty's cheek, then another and another, and suddenly a heavy downpour descended ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... did not exactly know how to reply to this wail of discontent, so he gathered himself together and poured forth a ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... and saint John Save the ground we stand on"— Cried the Miller,—"but ye come in a hurry;" While the lad, turning pale, 'Gan to weep and to wail, And to patter this ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... been giving way through the last verse, and in the final line, with a helpless wail of the harp, she hid her face, and sank back with a strange ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sceptical, as education had made him the one, and experience but of worldly things was calculated to make him the other, he followed not the wing of the philosophy which passed through heights not occupied by Olympus, and dived into depths where no Tartarus echoed to the wail of Cocytus. ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... place in the window, and was interrupted every moment by the shouts and laughter of the children; but beneath these sounds of merriment came an occasional bitter wail of lamentation. ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... tribe; the bones of the deceased being placed in the coffin of their tribe. Among these is carried one empty bier decked for the missing, that is, for those whose bodies could not be recovered. Any citizen or stranger who pleases, joins in the procession: and the female relatives are there to wail at the burial. The dead are laid in the public sepulchre in the Beautiful suburb of the city, in which those who fall in war are always buried; with the exception of those slain at Marathon, who for their singular and extraordinary valour were interred on ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... circuitous corridors, came the scent of citron-blossom and jasmine, with sometimes a bird's song before dawn, sometimes a flute's wail at sunset, and always the call of the muezzin in the night, but no sunlight reached the apartment except in remote rays through the clerestory, and no air except through one ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... smile and a kiss for the compliment, but a little wail from the nursery hurried her out of ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... rose almost to a wail. She turned suddenly to Koltsoff. "Of course you understand that you must leave us as soon as possible." Koltsoff, who had arisen, eyed her sullenly. She turned to Jack, who met her eyes ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... firmament were in the throes of mortal agony, the suggestion soon becoming intensified by the arising in the atmosphere of low, weird, moaning sounds, that at intervals rose and strengthened into a wail as of the spirits of drowned sailors lamenting the coming havoc. And as the wailing sounds arose and grew in volume, sudden stirrings in the stagnant air became apparent, first in the form of exaggerated cats'- paws, that smote savagely upon the glassy surface of the water, scourging ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... with nods and grins took themselves away as quietly as could be expected of six clumping boots and an unlimited quantity of animal spirits in a high state of effervescence. As they trooped off, an unmistakable odor of burnt milk pervaded the air, and the crash of china, followed by an Irish wail, caused Mrs. Dean to clap on her three shawls again and excuse herself ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... in the other scale. Them liken I to those who, in the tale, Mountain on mountain piled, presumptuously Warring with Heaven and Jove. The earth clave he, And hurled them down beneath huge rocks to wail: So take you up your bolt with energy; A ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... girl stood still, and with a wrench freed her self from the man's arm. She gave a stifled cry, like the wail of one vanquished after a hard struggle—then flung herself ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... be luring a girl into his companionship. "It is the most horrible of virgin-sacrifices," said Will; and he painted to himself what were Dorothea's inward sorrows as if he had been writing a choric wail. But he would never lose sight of her: he would watch over her—if he gave up everything else in life he would watch over her, and she should know that she had one slave in the world, Will had—to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... to answer their call is death in this world and the next. Their feet are turned backward that all sober men may recognize them. There are ghosts of little children who have been thrown into wells. These haunt well-curbs and the fringes of jungles, and wail under the stars, or catch women by the wrist and beg to be taken up and carried. These and the corpse-ghosts, however, are only vernacular articles and do not attack Sahibs. No native ghost has yet been authentically reported ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... said Vittoria, promptly setting him down on his feet, and little Amalia at the same time perceiving that practical sympathy only required a ring at the bell for it to come out, straightway pulled the wires within herself, and emitted a doleful wail that gave her sole possession of Vittoria's bosom, where she was allowed to bring her tears to an end very comfortingly. Giacomo meanwhile, his body bent in an arch, plucked at Carlo Ammiani's wrists with savagely playful tugs, and took ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and in dread Gather'd round Helen, but might naught avail To wake her; moveless as a maiden dead That Artemis hath slain, yet nowise pale, She lay; but Aethra did begin the wail, And all the women with sad voice replied, Who deem'd her pass'd unto the poplar vale Wherein doth dread ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... was the answer that came sad, sweet, and low as the wail of an Aeolian harp swept by the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... she went to wake him. She found him lying cold and motionless on the bench, his face downward. And his radiance was gone from him—he lay there a dark, cold corpse. The horrified mother began to wail: ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... 'One cannot wail properly in this cave,' he said, 'it is much too damp. You had better take the body to the storehouse. It will sound much finer there.' So the bear carried his wife's body to the storehouse, while he himself went back to the cave to cook some pap for the mourner. From time to time ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... a manatee, raising its bristled snout above the surf, gives out a low prolonged wail, like the moan of some ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... that all his utterances disclose the soul of the conqueror, of a man intensely anxious for earthly fame and a conspicuous place in the gallery of human events; envious, too, of the great names of the past, his ears so tuned for admiration and applause that they fail to hear the great, long drawn wail of agony that echoes around the world. His eyes are so blinded with the sheen of his own glory that they do not see the mutilated corpses, the crime, the pestilence, the hunger, the incalculable sorrow that sweeps the earth from the jungles of Africa to the frozen plains of ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... happened. He lay back sick with horror, and felt as if he were the guilty one. For many a day the old man's dying wail rang ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... widows are loud in their wail! And Mary-Axe orphans all trembling and pale! For the Alderman glory has melted away, As mists are dispersed by the glad dawn ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... thy friendes from thee fail, And death by rene hend[48] their life, Why shouldest thou then weep or wail? It is nought against God to strive: ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... man and wagon of the flying division disappeared over the hill toward health and home, a despairing wail went up from the doomed 350 left in this condition of indescribable horror. 'We are abandoned to die!' they cried; 'we are deserted by our own comrades in the hour of danger and left ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... lived to see him return, though with plaintive wail he often declared to his daughter-in-law that this was impossible. He lived, but he never returned to that living life which had been his before he had taken up the battle for Lady Mason. He would sometimes allow Mrs. Orme to drive him about the grounds, ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... may boast of his vine-cover'd hills, Through each bosom the tide of depravity thrills; Though the Indian may sit in his green orange bowers, There slavery's wail counts the wearisome hours. Though our island is beat by the storms of the north, There blaze the bright meteors of valour and worth; There the loveliest rose-bud of beauty awakes From that cradle of virtue, the dear land ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... over," a performance which I returned with interest. He was silent only a few seconds, but the sound that came from his beak amazed me; it was a "mew." If the cat-bird cry resembles that of a cat, this was a perfect copy of a kitten's weak wail. It was always uttered twice in close succession, and sometimes followed by a harsh note that proclaimed his blackbird strain, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... literary poetry trying to be Volkspoesie, and not quite succeeding. Many of the pieces in the southern English, such as "Halbert the Grim," "The Troubadour's Lament," "The Crusader's Farewell," "The Warthman's Wail," "The Demon Lady," "The Witches' Joys," and "Lady Margaret," have an echo of Elizabethan music, or the songs of Lovelace, or, now and then, the verse of Coleridge or Byron. "True Love's Dirge," e.g., borrows a burden from Shakspere—"Heigho! the Wind and Rain." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... scarce knowing what I was or did (save that I loved King Richard), I whipt forward with a handkerchief to cover the horror out of sight. This I would have done, though all had seen it; the King had seen it, and that white-hearted traitor Count had seen it, and sprung away with a wail, "O Christ! O Christ!" The King stood up, and with his lifted hand stopped me in the pious act. All held their breaths. I saw the priest at the altar peer round the corner, his mouth making a ring. King Richard was very pale ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... Curtis the gardener would suddenly cease his fugitive digging and glance with furtive eyes at the windows of the house; about them were the dark shadows of the long passages, the sharp note of some banging door in a distant room, the wail of that endless wind beyond the walls. He felt too that Mrs. Trussit and his aunt were furtively watching him. He never caught them in anything tangible but he knew that, when his back was turned, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... tied up the pups, to prevent the straying of the litter. Several times, as he approached his tent, he heard noises proceeding from it, which sounded like the talking, the laughing, the crying, the wail, and the merriment of children; but, on entering it, he only perceived the pups tied up as usual. His curiosity being excited by the noises he had heard, he determined to watch and learn whence these sounds proceeded, and what ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... the shore in times of trouble?" Thus the war-ship spake in answer: "To the waters would this vessel Haste upon the well-tarred rollers, As a happy maiden journeys To the cottage of her husband. I, alas! a goodly vessel, Weep because I lie at anchor, Weep and wail because no hero Sets me free upon the waters, Free to ride the rolling billows. It was said when I was fashioned, Often sung when I was building, That this bark should be for battle, Should become a mighty war-ship, Carry in my hull great treasures, Priceless goods across ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... A wail of fear went up from the wreck and was echoed from the beach, but by the blessing of Providence she kept afloat until we made our way under her bowsprit and rescued every man of ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... too seldom helper. At noon Mr. Dudley and Tom came home to partake of underdone potatoes and overdone meat. The twins, repressed and admonished into a state of hysterical nervousness, repaired directly after dinner to the attic. Half an hour later a prolonged wail told that Rob had cut his finger severely with an old knife; and it was during the attendant excitement that Rose managed to fall the entire length of the attic stairs. At night, after a supper ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... to form a square barricade, two sides of which were the wagons, with the mules haltered to the wheels. Every man then supplied himself with all the ammunition he could carry, and the Mandan scouts setting up the depressing wail of the Indian death-song, we all awaited the attack ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... homewards in all the glee of apparent happiness. Immediately on our left, the cattle were grazing in a rich pasture meadow; while, before us, the white pheasant darted across the walk, and the stock-dove was heard to wail in the grove. We passed a row of orange trees, glittering with golden fruit; and, turning sharply to our right, discovered, on a gentle eminence, and skirted with a profusion of shrubs and delicately ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... was, of course, rather quieter, but in the dark doorways strange figures were huddled, and sometimes the feeble wail of a child, or a smothered oath, reminded one that more was hidden behind the scenes. Gladys was now in a state of extreme mental excitement. She had never been in a town larger than Boston, and there only on bright days with her father. It seemed to her that this resembled ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... new that its light was very dim, but the stars were bright. Presently a long, quivering wail arose and was answered from a dozen hills. It seemed just the sound one ought to hear in such a place. When the howls ceased for a moment we could hear the subdued roar of the creek and the crooning of the wind in the pines. So we rather enjoyed the coyote chorus and were not afraid, because they ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... of the summer changes into the sorrowful wail of the yellowing woods, so the strains of joyous worship changed into a wail of supplication; and as he caught the words, Thomas too raised ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... machine began to slacken its pace, and the hideous wail and blare of the concealed organ died mercifully down, Hartley saw that his friend's manner had all at once altered, that he sat leaning forward away from the enthusiastic lady with the blue hat, and that the paper ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... visit to Miss Cobbe, bade her go bravely on as she had begun, and "fight the good fight," by which he meant the warfare against cruelty in which she was engaged. After his death it was sad to hear the wail of three dogs, a collie, a Scotch terrier, and a Russian wolf-hound, constant companions and friends of the poet. Thousands of dogs have pined, and died of grief, for their ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... four rooms of nearly equal size. There was little evidence that the castle had been inhabited during recent years, though there was an ancient woman care-taker who opened the great door for us, and then took up the Irish peasant's wail for the last of the O'Haras. She never ceased her crooning except when she spoke to us, which was seldom; but she placed us at table in the state dining room, and served us with stewed kid, potatoes, and goat's ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... balance revives? What are all those influences that are about us in the atmosphere, that keep playing over our nerves like fingers on stringed instruments, and call forth now a sweet note, and now a wail—now an exultant swell, and anon the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... went to the window also. His wife had ceased her gestures, and stood still listening and watching. Thalassa pulled back the blind, and looked out. The moor and rocks were draped in black, and the only sounds which reached him were the disconsolate wail of the wind and the savage break of the sea on the rocks below. He looked at his wife. She had started tossing her hands again at some spectral invisible thing in the shadowy night. She was quite mad—there could be no doubt of that. He endeavoured to lead her back to her seat ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... patriarch, Grand in robes of skin and bark, What sepulchral mysteries, What weird funeral-rites, were his? What sharp wail, what drear lament, Back scared wolf and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... weep and wail, For little Tommy Tadpole had lost his little tail; And his mother didn't know him as he wept upon a log, For he wasn't Tommy Tadpole, but Mr. ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... years since I last wrote to you, since which time, war has desolated our once prosperous and happy country, and drenched its soil with the blood of her sons. All has been excitement and turmoil. Many widows and orphans have been made—and the wail of anguish has been poured into the ear of the God of Sabbath. But I turn from the revolting facts which belong to the history of the nation—to consider the last sad hours of your revered grandfather, and to copy for ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... elfin harp around his neck, his minstrel cloak across his shoulders, and out into the pale moonlight he walked. And as he walked the wind touched the strings of the elfin harp and drew forth a wail so full of dole that those who heard it whispered: 'It is a note ...
— Stories from the Ballads - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... of Falstaff, "heinously unprovided." Coming from the unbounded luxury of the plantations, he found himself entering "the most horrid and impenetrable forests, where no kind of refreshment was to be had,"—he being provisioned only with salt pork and pease. After a wail of sorrow for this inhuman neglect, he bursts into a gush of gratitude for the private generosity which relieved his wants at the last moment by the following list of supplies: "24 bottles best claret, 12 ditto Madeira, 12 ditto ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to be broken in," whispered Nora, tears of mingled excitement and pain at her mother's words brimming to her eyes. "Oh, mother!" she said, with a sudden wail, "will you never, never ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... would, when Sallie stopped to put the starch on her face all over again. And Cousin James, he's as slow as molasses, and I couldn't dress two twins in not time to button one baby. Oh, damn, oh, damn!" And the sobs rose to a perfect storm of a wail. ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... to the bridal chamber, Death! Come to the mother's, when she feels For the first time her first-born's breath! Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke! Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm! Come when the heart beats high and warm, With banquet song, and dance, and wine! And thou art terrible!—the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know or dream ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... of sick people turned out to perish, the Boy started up as a long wail came, muffled, but keen still with anguish, down through the snow and the earth, by way of the smoke-hole, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... therefore, worked like Trojans. There was no need to drive us, nor was a single harsh word spoken. Nothing was heard but the almost incessant clatter of the windlass pawls, abrupt monosyllabic orders, and the occasional melancholy wail of a gannet overhead. No word had been spoken on the subject among us, yet somehow we all realized that we were working for a large stake no less than our lives. What! says somebody, within a few miles of Hong Kong? Oh yes; and even within Hong Kong harbour itself, if opportunity offers. Let ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... seagull, the sun bright upon her sail. Bronze, left upon the rock, lifted his head and gave one long, low wail. It echoed woefully and terribly over the wide, quiet waters. They gave back no answer—not even the poor ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... strayed in the glade; (Oh, my soul! but the milk is blue!) She strayed and strayed and strayed and strayed (And I wail and ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... of the saloon were endeavoring to persuade each other that all was well, the loud wail of the siren thrilled them with increased foreboding. It was not the warning note of a fog, nor the sharp course-signal for the guidance of a passing ship, but a sustained trumpeting, which announced to any steamer hidden ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... uttered a wail of despair. To be left to follow—to follow alone, in the dark, through unknown roads, with scarce a clue and on a strange horse—the prospect might have appalled a hardier soul. He was saved from it by Sir George's servant, a stolid silent man, who might be warranted ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... a start. Mary was frightened by the abrupt movement, perhaps disappointed by the escape of her prey, and raised a sudden wail. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... six months after the birth of Photogen, the dark lady also gave birth to a baby: in the windowless tomb of a blind mother, in the dead of night, under the feeble rays of a lamp in an alabaster globe, a girl came into the darkness with a wail. And just as she was born for the first time, Vesper was born for the second, and passed into a world as unknown to her as this was to her child—who would have to be born yet again before she ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... coming upon us like a cheerful surprise. Five minutes elapsed— ten—and I saw and heard nothing of him. What could he be doing? Possibly waiting in the corridor below. Little Georgette still piped her plaintive wail, appealing to me by her familiar term, "Minnie, Minnie, me very poorly!" till my heart ached. I descended to ascertain why he did not come. The corridor was empty. Whither was he vanished? Was he with Madame ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Carley lay there. The crescent moon went down, the stars moved on their course, the coyotes ceased to wail, the wind died away, the lapping of the waves along the lake shore wore to gentle splash, the whispering of the insects stopped as the cold of dawn approached. The darkest hour fell—hour of silence, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... hair who was sitting not far off heralded the beginning of the third song. It began on a high note, clear and loud, so that the audience was startled, and for a moment or two there was not a whisper to be heard in the drawing-room. Then it died away in a piteous wail like the scream of a sea-bird, and the high insistent note came back once more, and this process seemed to be repeated several times till the sad scream prevailed, and stopped suddenly. A little desultory ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... drink blood. I have no secret sin. A thousand pound is not so great a sum; And that is all they paid me, every penny. Salt water, that is all the drink I taste On this rough island. Somebody has taught The sea-gulls how to wail around my hut All night, like lost souls. And there is a face, A dead man's face that laughs in every storm, And sleeps in every pool along the coast. I thought it was my own, once. But I know These actions ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... was about eleven o'clock, and the surrounding jungle was full of the horrible noises of an African night; the wail of the small lemur, that sounds like the death-moan of a child; the more distant roar of the lion in the black depths of the forest, too thick for the moonlight to ever penetrate; the giant trees of the bombax around the ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought. And with old woes new wail ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... loved, but the story we cannot unfold; They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold; They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers will come; They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness ...
— The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address • Abraham Lincoln
... God's lost ones who are in China, and God cares for them and yearns over them," and men who were in England respectable artisans, with an imperfect hold of their own language, come to China, in response to the "wail of the dying millions," to stay this "awful ruin of souls," who, at the rate of 33,000 a day, are "perishing without hope, ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... grew towards the ascendant. The great families one by one came round again; and, as the backward movement began, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew gave it a fresh and tremendous impulse. Even the avowed Catholics—the Hamiltons, the Gordons, the Scotts, the Kers, the Maxwells—quailed before the wail of rage and sorrow which at that great horror rose over their country. The Queen's party dwindled away to a handful of desperate politicians, who still clung to Edinburgh Castle. But Elizabeth's 'peace-makers,' as the big English ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... first few days, Tom, moved with undefined remorse, tried to take a part in nursing her. She took things from him, as she did from the landlady, without heed or recognition. Just once, opening suddenly her eyes wide upon him, she uttered a feeble wail of "Baby!" and, turning her head, did not look at him again. Then, first, Tom's conscience gave ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... barking-bird and little owlet; no native dog is howling round our camp in the chilly morning: the cricket alone chirps along the water-holes; and the musical note of an unknown bird, sounding like "gluck gluck" frequently repeated, and ending in a shake, and the melancholy wail of the curlew, are ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... long-drawn, mysterious utterance, passing drearily, difficult to locate, more difficult to name—one of those sounds by which Nature at times reaches to the dark places of our spirit and terrifies us with vague dread of the unknown. Is it the wail of an owl or other bird of the night? It pervades the air wildly and lingeringly. Those who come late to the ford and hear this sudden strange call draw rein and turn backward; it is better to drive the weary distance to the bridge than to brave a crossing when this warning ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... again! And the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane To our cheering sent us back— Their shots along the deep slowly boom: Then ceased, and all is wail As they strike the shatter'd sail, Or, in ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... must wail, As one in doleful dumps; For when his legs were smitten off, He fought upon ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... want to see anything for, if I can jest set inside that elephant?" sobbed the Crane boy angrily. And under every roof the wail ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... muttering of one holding audible communion with his own spirit. De Poininges listened too, and he fancied it was a female voice. Presently he heard one of those wild and uncouth ditties, a sort of chant or monotonous song, which, to the terrified psalm-singer, sounded like the death-wail of some ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... looked up into her face for one trace of her old self; listened for one note of her old pleasant voice. He flitted round the child: so wan, so prematurely old, so dreadful in its gravity, so plaintive in its feeble, mournful, miserable wail. He almost worshiped it. He clung to it as her only safeguard; as the last unbroken link that bound her to endurance. He set his father's hope and trust on the frail baby; watched her every look upon it as she held it in her arms; and cried a thousand times, "She ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... not the only scale for such a theme; but one has to learn that there are different ways for every thing, and no one who knows much will assume that he has the best. Owing to the change of the scale, I suppose I missed the sentiment of every piece performed. When I thought they were giving us a wail for the dead it turned out to be a warm welcome, and an assurance on the part of those pretty maidens of their happiness in being permitted the great honor of performing before such illustrious visitors. Our companion, Mile. Rio, took one of the ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... as one day." John, in the 1st chapter of Revelations, says, concerning the coming of Jesus, "Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." And in the last chapter of Revelations he represents Jesus, as saying, ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... Chinamen, with drawn knives, were upon him. He swung the unwieldy sword above his head. Its sweep saved him. He dashed at the Joss. Again he lifted the sword. A grasp and then a wail of fear sounded through ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... lust, oppression, perjury. Let Chardin[8], with a chaplet round his head, The taste of Maro and Anacreon plead, 'Sir, Flaccus knew to live as well as write, And kept, like me, two boys array'd in white;' Worthy to feel that appetence of fame Which rivals Horace only in his shame! Let Isis[9] wail in murmurs as she runs, Her tempting fathers, and her yielding sons; 110 While dulness screens the failings of the Church, Nor leaves one sliding Rabbi in the lurch: Far other raptures let the breast contain, Where heaven-born taste ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... vessel within the surf, but a few yards distant from the outer rocks, thrown on her beam-ends, with both foresail and mainsail blown clear out of their bolt-ropes. The cry for succour was raised in vain; the wail of despair was not heard; the struggles for life were not beheld, as the elements in their wrath roared and howled over ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... Domine! Sing we a litany,— Sing for poor maiden-hearts broken and weary; Domine, Domine! Sing we a litany, Wail we and weep we ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a queer kind of whistle they can blow on, and it makes a long, loud moan, or a wail," explained Hen. "Whee! It gave me the creepy shivers the ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... Richard Horn, who had lifted up his hands in horror as the opening sentence reached his ears, lowered his head upon his chest as he would in church. There was no blasphemy in this! It was the wail of a lost ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... immortals; his journey has been long: For him no wail of sorrow, but a paean full and strong! So well and bravely has he done the work be found to do, To justice, freedom, duty, God, and man ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... proved, in the end, a fortunate one for the homeless, and almost starving terrier, of plebeian lineage, whose wail of distress had summoned two friends to the rescue. The creature had been ill-treated by some boys, who found Sunday afternoon hang heavy on their hands. The Professor carried the injured animal across the fields and ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... in expectation of relief, began to rise once more. He was angry. Why didn't she do something? This delay was unendurable. His voice mounted in a long, piercing wail. ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid. And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katy-did; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Wishart the significance of that barbaric keening was lost. Full of bread and drink, they rollicked along unconcerned, embraced the girls, who had scarce energy to repel them, took up and joined (with drunken voices) in the death-wail, and at last (on what they took to be an invitation) entered under the roof of a house in which was a considerable concourse of people sitting silent. They stooped below the eaves, flushed and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the mass of warriors and folk confined to their huts behind the outer palisade the phrase was echoed in a mighty wail, startling monkeys and parrots into as wild an acclamation of ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... reached us. We could distinguish no signal from the shore to give us hope. Blacker and blacker grew the night. More keenly whistled the wind. The sea-birds' shriek, echoing it seemed from the caverned rocks, sounded like a funeral wail. We fancied that many a fierce albatross was hovering over our heads, to pounce down on us when nature gave way before ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate, of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy;—smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,—fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe!' Not only were pipes smoked at home, but walks were taken in the London streets at night, with much ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... they became an agonising wail; the painful shrieking of a lover before the mutilated corpse of his affections. With unsteady hands he touched the limbs lying in confusion around him; the head, the torso, the arms that had snapped in twain; above aught else the bosom, now caved in. That ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... a hundred yards of the Moorunde tribe. Here the men came to a full stop, whilst several of the women singled out from the rest, and marched into the space between the two parties, having their heads coated over with lime, and raising a loud and melancholy wail, until they came to a spot about equi-distant from both, when they threw down their cloaks with violence, and the bags which they carried on their backs, and which contained all their worldly effects. The bags were then opened, and pieces of glass ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... life a dead black; his eyebrows of exquisite curve, narrow and intense; his voice deep when unmoved and calm; keen and sharp to piercing fierceness when vehement and roused—in the pulpit, at times a shout, at times a pathetic wail; his utterance hesitating, emphatic, explosive, powerful,—each sentence shot straight and home; his hesitation arising from his crowd of impatient ideas, and his resolute will that they should come in their order, and some of them not come at all, only the best, and his settled determination ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... bodies of those shipwrecked farther up the coast generally come ashore, and a ghastly kind of interest attaches to the place. For miles along the shore the same sad tale is being continually told: it is the solemn burden of the sea's loud wail. We heard it at Fire Island; walking along the beach opposite Sayville, we heard it again in the billows that broke over the wreck of the Great Western; it haunted us at Quogue, and rang in our ears on the lovely beach at the Hamptons; it followed us to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... sun rides high and clear, (The day is long, so long,) How long it must be ere it grows to a year— How deep the sorrow that finds no tear, But only a wail of song. ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and the poor creature looked out to ascertain if her tormentors had gone off. Not seeing them she came out, and Jenny heard her in a plaintive voice thanking God for having delivered her from her enemies; then she broke into a low wail, the words she uttered being disconnected and incoherent. She was on her knees, with her hands clasped and her countenance upturned towards heaven. Jenny's heart was more touched than she had expected. Going up to the old woman, she said, 'These ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... boreal forest, with its Red-men, its Buffalo, its Moose, and its Wolves; I have seen the Great Lone Land with its endless plains and prairies that do not know the face of man or the crack of a rifle; I have been with its countless lakes that re-echo nothing but the wail and yodel of the Loons, or the mournful music of the Arctic Wolf. I have wandered on the plains of the Musk-ox, the home of the Snowbird and the Caribou. These were the things I had burned to do. Was I content? Content!! Is a man ever content with a single ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... jewels, Each wall adorned with battered coats of mail, Choice relics of some bloody fields or duels, A legend or some untold battle tale. I see the scouts go forth upon the trail, And soldiers charging over battlements— The weeping mother sends to God her wail; While passion's rage the mortal heart laments, The dove of peace ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... took her hand, and pressing it led her to a chair. Two of the men sprang quickly up the stairs. They were absent but a short while, and then they came down like men bewildered and distraught. No need to speak. A low wail of utter misery rose from the women, and was caught up and repeated by the crowd outside, for the only man who could have set their hearts at rest had escaped the perils of the deep, and died quietly in ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... tha art, an' aw mun wail Thi loss through ivvery hill an' dale, Fer nah it is too true a tale, Tha'rt cowd az leead. An' nah thi bonny face iz pale, Tha'rt deead! ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... facts! But that it is not a fiction the proofs lie bleeding in thousands of hearts; they have been attested by surrounding voices from almost every slave State, and from slave-owners themselves. Since so it must be, thanks be to God that this mighty cry, this wail of an unutterable anguish, has ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... the tufts by which he held came out at the root, and Knight began to follow the quartz. It was a terrible moment. Elfride uttered a low wild wail of agony, bowed her head, and covered her ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... And then shall the wicked be cast out, and they shall have cause to howl, and weep, and wail, and gnash their teeth; and this because they would not hearken unto the voice of the Lord; therefore the Lord ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... his pockets were found filled with old letters from the woman to whom he was attached. He died! she lives still,—in May Fair. The Eumenides, I suppose, went out of existence at the time when the wail was heard, "Great Pan is dead." I think we could better have spared him than those awful Sisters who sting ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bewildered. The woman's wail for a lost child leaped terrifyingly into his recollection. His hand went up as if to ward off something. "Don't know," he repeated. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... silence fell on the girl as they left the town, padding noiselessly through the outskirts where no one met them, and no sound was to be heard save for the barking of dogs, and the occasional wail of an infant; for the strangeness of everything had suddenly made her realise that of her own will she was standing on the threshold of a new life, laden—though this the usual narrow outlook and education of the West prevented her from understanding—with a ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... write—scarcely to think—politics; if truth is to be told, it must be told by the English; England is the only tribunal yet open to the complaints of Europe.' A greater poet and nobler man, Ugo Foscolo, had but lately uttered a wail still more despondent: 'Italy will soon be nothing but a lifeless carcass, and her generous sons should only weep in silence without the impotent complaints and mutual recriminations of slaves.' That as patriotic a heart ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... power of using dead bodies as vehicles for themselves, Thyraeus comes to no distinct conclusion. He endeavours, at great length, to distinguish between haunters who are ghosts of the dead, and haunters who are demons, or spirits unattached. The former wail and moan, the latter are facetious. He decides that to bury dead bodies below the hearth does not prevent haunting, for 'the hearth has no such efficacy'. Such bodies are not very unfrequently found in old English houses, the reason for this ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... early stages of the growth's formation it is but slight, increasing as the keraphyllocele enlarges. Should this be the case, other symptoms present themselves. The coronet is hot, and tender to the touch, sometimes even perceptibly swollen, and percussion over the wail is met with flinching on the part of the animal. In other cases one is led to suspect the condition by the prominence of the horn of the wall of the toe. This is distinctly ridge-like from the coronet to the ground, while on either side of it the quarters appear ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... His crime is revealed by the wail of the cat, which he had supposed dead but had ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... never Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while Cross breezes cut the surface to a file, This heart, some fraction of me, happily Floats through the window even now to a tree Down in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale, Not like a pewit that returns to wail For something it has lost, but like a dove That slants unswerving to its home and love. There I find my rest, and through the dusk air Flies what yet lives ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... were silent. He thrust a woman out of his way and felt her move, acquiescingly, as if indifferent. Another, a child in her arms, clawed at his back, forced him aside, and as she sped by he saw the child's face over her shoulder, placid and sweet, and caught her voice in a moaning wail, "Oh, my baby! Oh, my baby!" A man, holding the hand of a girl, was thrown against the wall and dropped, the girl tugging at him, trying to drag him to his feet. Something, with blood on its whiteness, lay huddled across the sill of an ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... and dark in the summer night. . . . Slowly the distant wail of the orchestra died from her ears. She had a vague memory of going upstairs with Oakleigh and of seeing him draw Jim aside and whisper to him, but between them lingered a white face with incredulous ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... whispered Corporal Horace Faggit through parched cracked lips. "We kep' 'em orf. We 'eld the bleedin' fort," and the last effect of the departing mind upon the shot-torn, knife-slashed body was manifested in a gasping, quavering wail of— ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... Northerner. But, like good Irishmen, they could not tear themselves away from England, and they paraded that country where parade was not so urgent, and they made orations there until the mere accent of an Irishman must make Englishmen wail for very boredom. ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... On a large stone King Alfred sat Against his buskin rubbed a cat, Snow-white in every part, Though drenched and soiled from head to tail. The poor Thane's tears poured down like hail— "Poor puss, in vain thy loving wail," Then came a joyful start! A little hand was on his cloak— "Father!" a voice beside him spoke, Emerging from the wood. All travel-stained, and marked with mire, With trace of blood, and toil, and fire, Yet safe ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is equivalent to our 'The course of Providence.' The lady's words are, literally, 'The steps of Heaven.' She makes but a feeble wail; but in Chinese opinion discharges thereby, all the better, the duty ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... this stubby tail of mine? I got that when a car Came near to crushing Bobbie-boy—it gave us all a jar; I knocked him off the track in time, but one wheel caught my tail And cut it short; it hurt, of course, and I let out a wail— (The cur that I had hoped to fight Across the street, ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... had recovered her senses, thanks to the careful tending of Mere-Grand, she sobbed on without cessation, raising such a continuous doleful wail, that Pierre's hand again sought Guillaume's, and grasped it, whilst their hearts, distracted but healed, mingled ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... doom, Fierce as fire, and foul as plague-polluted gloom; Out of hell wherein the sinless damned endure More than ever sin conceived of pains impure; More than ever ground men's living souls to dust; Worse than madness ever dreamed of murderous lust. Since the world's wail first went up from lands and seas Ears have heard not, tongues have told not things like these. Dante, led by love's and hate's accordant spell Down the deepest and the loathliest ways of hell, Where beyond the brook of blood ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... crags where the hoarse wind is raving, Rocks where the weary floods murmur and wail, Wilds where the fern by the furrow is waving, Reeled with the echoes that rode on the gale; Far as the tempest thrills Over the darkened hills Far as the sunshine streams over the plain, Roused by the tyrant ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... listened to with devout respect and seriousness by the refined and intellectual Mr Clayton. Another hymn succeeded immediately. It must have been written for the occasion, for the sentiment of it was in accordance with the prayer. It was a wail over the backsliding of a fallen saint. To the assembly thus prejudiced—an assembly made up of men of business and their wives, mechanics, dressmakers, servant-maids, and the like, an address suitable to their capacities was spoken. Mr Clayton himself delivered it.—He trembled with emotion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... that that fault is not a slight one. It is said in the Book of Revelation, "Behold He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him[11]." We, my brethren, every one of us, shall one day rise from our graves, and see Jesus Christ; we shall see Him who hung on the cross, we shall see His wounds, we shall see the marks in His hands, and in His feet, and in His side. ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... cry, raised by hundreds of voices, a cry which resounds through the streets of the city, and which is echoed by the surrounding hills. What can be the matter? What can be the cause of this mournful wail? ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... serenade had been in honour of their ashes, it would have been impossible to surpass the unutterable despair expressed in that one chorus, 'Go where glory waits thee!' It was a requiem, a dirge, a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament, an abstract of everything that is sorrowful and hideous in sound. The flute of the youngest gentleman was wild and fitful. It came and went in gusts, like the wind. For a long time together he seemed to have left off, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... with it. It oppressed me with a sense of the common-place, which, of all things, I hate. At length, into the midst of it, came a few notes, like the first chirp of a sleepy bird trying to sing; only the attempt was half a wail, which died away, and came again. Over and over again came these few sad notes, increasing in number, fainting, despairing, and reviving again; till at last, with a fluttering of agonized wings, as of a soul struggling up out of the purgatorial smoke, the music- bird sprang aloft, and broke ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... Corsica—I had really heard that inappropriate sound, soon across the hillside on my left echoed an even stranger one—yet one I recognised at once as having mingled with my dreams; a woman's voice pitched at first in a long monotonous wail and then undulating in semitones above and below the keynote—a voice which seemed to call from miles away—a sound as dismal as ever ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... new-comer, with his face to the porch door, and the answer came back to him in a wail like ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... air was rent by a wail, and a rattle of shells and drums. The body of Benjamin was being brought out of the lodge. It was borne on a bier made of poles, and covered with boughs of pine and fir and red mountain phlox. It was wrapped in a blanket, and strewn with odorous ferns. Four young braves ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... been detained by the deep mud in the bottom lands, and by the extreme exhaustion of the ladies, demanding some hours' rest each day. The village was dark and quiet. Here and there the glimmer of a candle, now and then the call of a sentry, or the wail of a child broke ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... willing he shall speak his about mine, if I have any. And, true enough, maybe I have; but I reckon they'll bear inspection—I have that idea, anyway. A manly fellow! You should have heard him whine and wail and swear, last night, because the saddle hurt him. Why didn't the saddle hurt me? Pooh—I was as much at home in it as if I had been born there. And yet it was the first time I was ever on a horse. ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... arose. It was said that Mrs. Carradyne, taking the air on the terrace outside in the calmness of the autumn evening, heard the fatal quarrel through the open window; that she heard Mr. West, after he had received the death blow, wail forth a prophecy (or whatever it might be called) that those chimes would surely be accursed; that whenever their sound should be heard, so long as they were suffered to remain in the tower, it should be the signal of woe to ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... melancholy place in the middle of night, surrounded by the mouldering bodies of my deceased Companions, and expecting every moment to be torn in pieces by their Ghosts who wander about me, and complain, and groan, and wail in accents that make my blood run cold, ..... Christ Jesus! It is enough to ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... a child of twelve or fourteen trapped by the wild storm sweeping over them. He crouched lower still, and when he did so the strength of the wind against his face decreased wonderfully, for the sharp angle of the hill's declivity protected them. Seeing him kneel there, she cried out with a little wail: "Help me—the tree—help me!" And, bursting into a passion of sobbing, she tugged her hands from his and covered ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... rests with the immortals; his journey has been long: For him no wail of sorrow, but a paean full and strong! So well and bravely has he done the work be found to do, To justice, freedom, duty, God, ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... with a chaplet round his head, The taste of Maro and Anacreon plead, 'Sir, Flaccus knew to live as well as write, And kept, like me, two boys array'd in white;' Worthy to feel that appetence of fame Which rivals Horace only in his shame! Let Isis[9] wail in murmurs as she runs, Her tempting fathers, and her yielding sons; 110 While dulness screens the failings of the Church, Nor leaves one sliding Rabbi in the lurch: Far other raptures let the breast contain, Where ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the loud thunders, sonorous and deep, With the sobs of the rain as the black heavens weep; Where the whispering zephyr, and murmuring breeze, Unite with the soft, listless sigh of the trees; And where to the fancy, the voices of air Wail in tones of distress, or in shrieks of despair; Where mourneth the night wind, with desolate breath, In accents suggestive of sorrow and death; As falls from the heavens, so fleecy and light, The winter's immaculate mantle of white; Wherever I wander, these sounds ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... off to sleep he heard the wail of a jackal, and next he was awakened by the sound of a native chanting. It was already daybreak, and Mr. Hume stood on the verandah, having drawn ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... "and I should wail In Hell even now, but I Have lingered round the county jail To ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... my tenement room; its one window opened over a narrow alley flanked on its opposite side by a second tenement, through whose shutters I could look and see repeated layers of squalid lodgings. The thermometer had climbed up into the eighties. The wail of a newly born baby came from the room under mine. The heat was stifling. Outdoors in the false, flickering day of the arc lights the crowd swarmed, on the curb, on the sidewalk, on the house steps. The breath of the black, sweet night reached them, fetid, heavy with the odour of death as ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... unfortunate boy who lived not far from here, In the township of Arcade in the County of Lapeer. It seems his occupation was a sawyer in a mill, He followed it successfully two years, one month, until, Until this fatal accident that caused many to weep and wail; 'Twas where this young man lost his life,—his name ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... being rude to each other when you differ," she declared. "You must take it in turns to have your own way. It is not fair that the eldest should always arrange everything, but on the other hand Joan and Alwyn will get nothing at all if they begin to wail and complain in that most grumbling and unpleasant tone of voice. I think it is a disgrace if you're all so selfish that you can't agree. You must each be prepared to give up a certain amount, for among eight children it is quite impossible ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... into a loud wail. Pulling his mother back, he cried, "Don't go! Please don't! We must finish it. We have to finish it. Come back, ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... folded his wings, and entering the crystal gates, sat down upon a blasted rock and struck his divine lyre, and a peace fell over the wretched; the demon ceased to torture and the victim to wail. As sleep to the mourners of earth was the song of the angel to the souls of the purifying star: one only voice amidst the general stillness seemed not lulled by the angel; it was the voice of a woman, and it continued to cry out with ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had been vanquished. With mysterious passes and burning of gums, he summons that Formidable Feminine: "Nameless one!... Most ancient of Devils!... Rose of Hell!... Herodias!..." and amid the blue smoke-wreathes, uttering the wail of a slave haled to the market-place, rises the form of Kundry. She appears like one but half roused from the torpour of sleep, and struggling with a terrible dream, or resisting some terrible reality. All the answer she can give to his first words of ironical congratulation, is in ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... thou wert seeking help, thy wail Rose sadder than the sound of a death knell; And thus the last of thy own ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... in her golden train, made by "that clumsy Admiral Gray who came over with the Frasers, and had the impudence to almost force me to dance with him—gouty old horror!" But I know it was the rent in her vanity, not her dress, which made her gurgle, and wail, and choke, until frightened Sir Samuel patted her on the back, and she stopped short, to ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... a mob. It is probable a priori, since the great popular movement was still profoundly popular. It is supported by a thousand things in the story of the campaign; the extraordinary emotionalism that made throngs of men weep and wail together, the importance of the demagogue, Peter the Hermit, in spite of his unmilitary character, and the wide differences between the designs of the leaders and the actions of the rank and file. It was a crowd of rude and simple ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... al-Muluk ceased not to weep and wail and beat face and breast, till Sa'id awoke and missing him from the bed and seeing but a single candle, said to himself, "Whither is Sayf al-Muluk gone?" Then he took the other candle and went round about the palace, till he came upon the closet where he saw the Prince lying at full length, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... lamed and maim'd to dislocation, better Than raised to take a life which Henry bad me Guard from the stroke that dooms thee after death To wail in deathless flame. ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Queen seemed to tremble between life and death as she stretched forth her arms to them with a low wail that almost ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... prevail; You, one against a hundred though it be, Balance all Europe in the other scale. Them liken I to those who, in the tale, Mountain on mountain piled, presumptuously Warring with Heaven and Jove. The earth clave he, And hurled them down beneath huge rocks to wail: So take you up your bolt with energy; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... thus address'd me: "Thou true praise of God! Beatrice! why is not thy succour lent To him, who so much lov'd thee, as to leave For thy sake all the multitude admires? Dost thou not hear how pitiful his wail, Nor mark the death, which in the torrent flood, Swoln mightier than a sea, him struggling holds?" "Ne'er among men did any with such speed Haste to their profit, flee from their annoy, As when these words were spoken, I came here, Down from my blessed seat, trusting ...
— The Vision of Hell, Part 1, Illustrated by Gustave Dore - The Inferno • Dante Alighieri, Translated By The Rev. H. F. Cary
... but the cry itself was quite unlike anything I have ever heard before. The beginning of each sentence was uttered in a rapid monotone, and towards the end it rose gradually till it ended in a prolonged, shrill wail, which floated overhead through the still air with an indescribably sad and ghostlike effect; heard at night, it would have thrilled one like the ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... door did he notice a sound that filled the valley. A strange, high-pitched note, like a hundred curry-fowl crying at once—a wail, as of spirits in hell. Now from one direction, now from another; now rising, now falling, the weird, unearthly shriek seemed everywhere at once, increasing each moment in force and shrillness. As the old man, holding the baby close to him, looked up and listened, fear struck ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... at this period in the history of our country that the colonists found themselves not only banished from all civilization, but compelled to fight an armed foe whose trade was war and whose music was the dying wail of a tortured enemy. Unhampered by the exhausting efforts of industry, the Indian, trained by centuries of war upon adjoining tribes, felt himself foot-loose and free to shoot the unprotected forefather from behind the very stump fence his victim had ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... delightful in the cove that the girls were loath to go. They climbed with reluctance up the steep sandy little path to the cliff. As they neared the top they could hear voices in altercation—a high-pitched, protesting, childish wail, and a blunt, uncompromising, scolding retort. On the road above stood an invalid carriage, piled up with innumerable parcels, and containing also a small boy. He was a charmingly pretty little fellow, with a very pale, delicately oval face, ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... her shoulder, and then went out quietly, and Agatha lay still in her chair beside the stove. It snapped and crackled cheerfully, but save for that there was a restful quietness, and the room was cosily warm, though she could hear a little icy wind wail about the building. It swept her thoughts away to the frozen North, and she realised what it had cost her to keep faith with Gregory as she pictured a little snow-sheeted schooner hemmed in among the floes, and two or three worn-out men hauling a sled painfully over the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... clutching his arm. "They're going to look for something—probably our trunk. No, they're not. Look how excited he is! And Daddy, too! Oh, Chet, what in the world——" the last words were a wail, and Chet ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... away with a broken sob. Vi uttered a low cry of anguish; and Rosie and the boys broke into a wail of sorrow. ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... that 'mid my gladness I must ever hear you wail, Of the grief that wrung my spirit, And that made my cheek ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... warmed it, while Cross breezes cut the surface to a file, This heart, some fraction of me, happily Floats through the window even now to a tree Down in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale, Not like a pewit that returns to wail For something it has lost, but like a dove That slants unswerving to its home and love. There I find my rest, and through the dusk air Flies what yet lives in me. ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... many people die here!" But upon Wiseman and Wishart the significance of that barbaric keening was lost. Full of bread and drink, they rollicked along unconcerned, embraced the girls, who had scarce energy to repel them, took up and joined (with drunken voices) in the death-wail, and at last (on what they took to be an invitation) entered under the roof of a house in which was a considerable concourse of people sitting silent. They stooped below the eaves, flushed and laughing; within a minute they came ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... second of time I had recognised the face and voice of the inn-keeper's daughter, but the next minute a dreadful wail broke from the lips of the young man, and the sky grew suddenly as dark as night, the wind rose and began to toss the branches about us, and the whole scene was swallowed up in ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... massive, yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... of facts will be police, detective, and alms-house reports; city missionaries' explorations, and the testimony of the abandoned and sin-blasted, who, about to take the final plunge, have staggered back just for a moment, to utter the wild shriek of their warning, and the agonizing wail of ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... satisfactory and encouraging. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured." The tone of the address, so far from being jubilant as the mass of his hearers felt, was ineffably sad. It seemed to bear the wail of an oppressed spirit. The thought and the language were as majestic as those of the ancient prophets. As if in agony of soul the President cried out: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... place, we find him asking Esli,—the wife of Joseph, of whom he had just said, "Her little daughter has died recently, and her heart is broken,"—"When your child died, did you weep and wail as your people ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... the battle field, and the cold pale moon Look'd down on the dead and dying, And the wind pass'd o'er with a dirge and a wail, Where the young and the brave ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... change in their vocal expression. Heretofore the short, snappy bark has spoken only of anticipation and eagerness; now there comes the instinctive yelp of the questing beast, the hound on the scent. It bursts from them like a wail from the distant past. As if shot, they are off in a bunch. A clatter of sounds, scratching, rustling, and scrambling, we hear them tearing through the brush. We follow, but are soon outdistanced. Down the creek bed we go, splash through mud, clamber over logs, stop, listen, and ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... was foreign to the age of Homer, as indeed to all pre-Christian antiquity. But concerning this we need not dilate, as it has often been duly remarked upon, and notably by Carlyle, in his "Lectures on Hero-Worship." Who that has once heard the wail of unutterable despair ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... on the bed and made for the Italian's door. He did not wait to knock, but broke in noisily. The accordion stopped with a prolonged wail; its ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... my desk looked a bit tempting for a man with a retired conscience. I was going to keep him on the Candace, rather than fuss, because it wasn't so much his fault as mine that he was the wrong man in the place. He couldn't do any harm in Jerusalem, it seemed. Let him wail in the Jews' Wailing Place, if he'd any complaints, said I to myself. I thought he was too keen on money to resign because his silly pride was hurt. But to my surprise, he informed me that he'd come to 'hand in his papers,' as he called it. So much the worse for his pocket and the better ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... of the New World, to wrest it from the Indians and subdue it for wife and child, it was the noiseless nocturnal cougar that filled their imaginations with the last degree of dread. To them its cry—most peculiar and startling at the love season, at other times described as like the wail of a child or of a traveller lost in the woods—aroused more terror than the nearest bark of the wolf; its stealth and cunning more than the strength and courage and address of the bear; its attack more than the rush of the majestic, resistless bison, or the furious pass with antlers ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... entered the room, caught sight of the weeper, grabbed up an old muddy shoe of Beverly's and raining tears into it forthwith raised a genuine darkey wail of woe which very nearly turned Mrs. Ashby's ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the ark, and the sound, accelerated by the water-charged atmosphere, struck upon their ears with terrible distinctness. Sometimes, when a gust of wind blew the rain into their faces, the sound deepened into a long, despairing wail, which seemed to be borne from afar off, mingled with the roar of the descending torrent—the death-cry ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... among the groups of dwellings to one standing in the center. It seemed no better and no worse than any of the others. Outside the entrance to this rock heap the guide gave a low wail that sounded ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... She played this and some other favourites of her own as few musicians play them, for music had been the one delight of her life, and but for the fleeting theatrical ambition, and for Paul, she might have become famous as an executant He stood in the hall to listen as the alternate wail and triumph filled and thrilled the air, and thinking that she was alone, he strolled silently to his dressing-room, and then in smoking-jacket and slippers went to join her. Except for the glow of the fire the room was in darkness, and a voice which came ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Hagen a wound deep and wide. But he did not wish to slay him, desiring rather to have such a hero as hostage. Casting away his shield, in his arms he gripped Hagen of Trony, who, faint from loss of blood, was overthrown. At that Gunther began to wail greatly. Dietrich then bound Hagen and led him to where stood Kriemhild and gave him into her hand. Right merry was she at the sight and blessed Dietrich, bowing low before him, telling him that he had requited her of all her woes, and that she ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... busy, ma. You make me give into her all the time 'cause I'm bigger 'en she is. You're smaller 'en pa, but when he comes in, you bring him his slippers, and hand him the paper." Jimmie yanked his go-cart from baby Jennie, and disregarded her wail ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... my dear Spenser, doth not require tears and lamentations. Dry thine eyes; rebuild thine house: the queen and council, I venture to promise thee, will make ample amends for every evil thou hast sustained. What! does that enforce thee to wail still louder? ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... baronet lived to see him return, though with plaintive wail he often declared to his daughter-in-law that this was impossible. He lived, but he never returned to that living life which had been his before he had taken up the battle for Lady Mason. He would sometimes ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... Negroes as soldiers in the armies of the United States seriously offended the Southern view of "the eternal fitness of things." No action on the part of the Federal Government was so abhorrent to the rebel army. It called forth a bitter wail from Jefferson Davis, on the 12th of January, 1863, and soon after the Confederate Congress elevated its olfactory organ and handled the subject with a pair of tongs. After a long discussion the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... sense. In a series of broken ejaculations, not sentences but lyric cries, she evokes the scenes of the past and of the future. Blood drips from the palace; in its chambers the Furies crouch; the murdered sons of Thyestes wail in its haunted courts; and ever among the visions of the past that one of the future floats and fades, clearly discerned, impossible to avert, the murder of a husband by a wife; and in the rear of that, most pitiful of all, the violent death ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... settled upon the hills, and unrolled itself upon brook, glade, and tarn, and the spring breeze was not powerful enough to raise the veil, though from the wild sounds which were heard occasionally on the ridges, and through the glens, it might be supposed to wail at a sense of its own inability. The route of the travellers was directed by the course which the river had ploughed for itself down the valley, the banks of which bore in general that dark grey livery which Sir Aymer de Valence had intimated to be the prevalent tint of the country. Some ineffectual ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Later he was roused by a "Scratch, scratch, scratch" close to him. He listened silently for some time. This was no leaf; it was an animal! Yes, surely—it was a Mouse. He slapped the canvas violently and "hissed" till it went away, but as he listened he heard again that peculiar wail in the tree-tops. It almost made his hair sit up. He reached out and poked the fire together into a blaze. All was still and in time he dozed off. Once more he was wide awake in a flash and saw Sam sitting up ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... it! He was shot through the window and by that wretch. He never shot himself." Violent declarations which trailed off into the one continuous wail, "O, ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... something to eat, Kid—I'm purty hungry myself—what the blazes!" he exclaimed, for Johnny's protesting wail was finished outside the port. Then a light broke upon him and he wondered how soon it would be his turn to pay ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... of the cactus hedge before him were like great hands shorn of fingers thrust against the sky. Through a gap he beheld the lights of the Mission—fierce hostile eyes intent upon his thoughts. The wail and bark of a jackal came ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... painfully vivid, but it is far exceeded in poignancy by what follows. Indeed it would be difficult to find in all literature, from the wail of David over Jonathan downward, such an expression of the hopeless longing for an irrecoverable presence as informs the broken melodies, the stanzas which are like sobs, of the fifth section of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the shallop, woman's wail and man's despair, A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks so sharp and bare, And through it all the murmur ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... broken-hearted wife. Her husband one night came in, to her surprise, and said he was a defaulter and must flee, and he went, she knew not where. He forsook her and two children. It was a pitiful letter, and the wail of that poor woman seems to ring in my ears yet. That night up in that gallery was a man whose heart began to beat when I told the story, thinking it was him I meant, till I came to the two children. ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... on the little, square, pulpit-like landing, at the top of the creaking wooden staircase, which led down the side of the building from office to yard, listening to the faint drip of the water through the sluice-gates; the wail of a child outside the walls, and the pacing step of the woman who hushed it; the distant intermittent roar of the song which reached them through the often opened doors of a public-house. Presently the night-watchman lumbered out of his sentry-box by the gates, his dim lantern ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... they moved on up town, "I wish you knew that little Frenchman. He's a unique specimen. He has the most exquisite violin I've seen in years; beautiful and mellow as a genuine Cremona, and he can make the music leap, sing, laugh, sob, skip, wail, anything you like from under his bow when he wishes. It's something wonderful. We are good friends. Picked him up in my French-town rambles. I've been trying ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... scorned the Democrat's wail, And flirting its false fantastic tail, It spread its wings and it soared away, And left the Democrat ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... horribly, showing his big front teeth. I could feel his breath hot on my face as he clutched me round the neck. I could see some boys holding Angel back, I could hear The Seraph's wail of "John! John!" Then, simultaneously there came a blow on my own nose, and a grasping of my collar, and a shaking that freed us of each other, for I was clutching him with fury ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... Fires are kept burning within the house and also outside, and after each meal the people strike one another's legs with firebrands in order to forget their grief. Members of the family, who begin to wail immediately after his death, continue to do so constantly for seven days, and they wear no red garments until after the tiwah feast which constitutes his second funeral. The coffin is buried in the ground or placed on a crude platform, and, when this work is ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... Bird so sings, yet so does wail? O 'tis the ravished Nightingale. Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu, she cries, And still her woes at Midnight rise. Brave prick song! who is't now we hear? None but the lark so shrill and clear; Now at ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... from window, doorway, and roof. The wind, blowing from the south, carried sparks and cinders to the adjoining houses, glowing in the summer heat. A wail of horror from the people ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... aimless firing continued a few minutes, underneath the mild effulgence of the stars. It ceased, from the Legion's trenches at the agreed moment; and soon it died down, also from the Arabs'. Quiet rose again from the desert, broken only by the surf-wash on the sand, the far, tremulous wail of a jackal, the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Around, around, in airy rings, They wheel with oarage of their wings, But not the eyas-brood behold, That called them to the nest of old; But let Apollo from the sky, Or Pan, or Zeus, but hear the cry, The exile cry, the wail forlorn, Of birds from whom their home is torn— On those who wrought the rapine fell, Heaven sends the vengeful ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... had stood in the same corner of the library long enough to mark the hours of the births and marriages, the meetings and partings, and death, of several generations of the Vyvyans, now chimed in slow, subdued tones, through which ran the echo of a wail, like the voice of a human being, who has ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... ever leant over the banister and declared to the expectant father below that it was "a fine healthy Commander-in-Chief." Therefore, a Commander-in-Chief is not like a poet. But when a Commander-in-Chief dies, the spirit of a thousand Beethovens sob and wail in the air; dull cannon roar slowly out their heavy grief; silly rifles gibber and chatter demoniacally over his grave; and a cocked hat, emptier than ever, rides with the mockery of despair on ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... not been stolen," thought he. The child threw its little hands towards him as it awoke; and he could have wept. Its short feeble wail had smitten him ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... me, if you have any pity for an unhappy woman, let me in—let me speak to you," were the words I heard her say, in a voice like the wail of harp-strings. Its pathos would have been irresistible to any man, even if he had never loved her. Eagle March let Diana come in, though I heard him protesting that his friend Jim White ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... plainer, and Melton's finger was already trembling on the match when a terrific splash echoed over the water, followed instantly by a most awful and heartrending wail of agony, that caused every one to shudder from head ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... rise up lustily, When sluggish sleep is past, So hope I to rise joyfully, To judgment at the last. Thus will I wake, thus will I sleep, Thus will I hope to rise, Thus will I neither wail nor weep, But ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... as over and adown the New England mountains the howling wind swept furiously, now shrieking exultingly as one by one the huge forest trees bent before its power, and again dying away in a low, sad wail, as it shook the casement of some low-roofed cottage, where the blazing fire, "high piled upon the hearth," danced merrily to the sound of the storm-wind, and then, whirling in fantastic circles, ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... first? I rode late one evening from Guldvik hall, Some kind of feast I seem to recall. My spirit was heavy, my heart full of woe! That something had grieved me is all that I know. I rode all alone up the mountain side, At midnight I passed by the river so wide; Then heard I beyond a melodious wail, That rang like a song over mountain and dale. It seemed a plaintive, bewitching lay; I folded my hands, I tried to pray, But tied was my tongue and my thoughts went astray; The strains did beguile and lure me away. 'Twas now like weeping and now like ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... aft and raised a wail, and begun to beg the professor to turn back and land us, but he jerked out his pistol and motioned us back, and we went, but nobody will ever know ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Englishman, the Englishman than the Kaffir, the Kaffir than the Chinaman. I have heard," said the stranger, "the black infant cry as it crept on its mother's body and sought for her breast as she lay dead in the roadway. I have heard also the rich man's child wail in the palace. ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... beasts; they fall into the circular periphery of the whole, which he calls Circe; whereas she is justly represented as the child of the Sun, dwelling in the island of Aeaea, for this word [Greek omitted] is so called because men lament and wail by reason of death. But the prudent man Odysseus did not suffer the change, because from Hermes, i.e. reason, he had received immortality. He went down into Hades, as it were, dissolving and separating the soul from the body, and became ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... presented, fell sobbing upon his knees and buried his face in the bed-clothing. He spoke no word, but the tumultuous throes of his agony shook the room as he knelt beside her. And from the bed arose a wail more terrible in its utter, eternal sorrowfulness than had ever fallen upon the ears of those present. It was the wail of a soul recognizing for the first time that the loveliness of life ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... their place shall serve me, and sustain Their plagues, their torments suffer, sorrows bear, And they his absence shall lament in vain, And wail his loss and theirs with many a tear:' Thus talking to herself she did ordain A false and wicked guile, as you shall hear; Thither she hasted where the valiant knight Had overcome and slain her ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... shape under the torch. The man was transformed, swaying half crouched before them. The long black hair fell across the white scar, and picture after picture leaped from his tongue with such vividness that a low wail started through the audience, and women sobbed in their bonnets. It was penalty for bloodshed—not in this world: penalty eternal in the next; and one slight figure under the dips staggered suddenly aside into ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.
... began to weep and wail, For little Tommy Tadpole had lost his little tail; And his mother didn't know him as he wept upon a log, For he wasn't Tommy Tadpole, ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... the wrinkled old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha, Rocked him in his linden cradle, Bedded soft in moss and rushes, Safely bound with reindeer sinews; Stilled his fretful wail by saying, "Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!" Lulled him into slumber, singing, "Ewa-yea! my little owlet! Who is this that lights the wigwam? With his great eyes lights the wigwam? Ewa-yea! ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... voice from Florida, from Tampa's lonely shore; It is the wail of gallant men, O'Brien is no more; In the land of sun and flowers his head lies pillowed low, No more to sing petite coquille at Benny Havens' O. At Benny Havens' O, at Benny Havens' O, No more to sing petite coquille at Benny Havens' ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... Carmagnola the pathos is chiefly in the feeling embodied by the magnificent chorus lamenting the slaughter of Italians by Italians at the battle of Maclodio; in the Adelchi we are conscious of no emotion so strong as that we experience when we hear the wail of the Italian people, to whom the overthrow of their Longobard oppressors by the Franks is but the signal of a new enslavement. This chorus is almost as fine as the more famous one in the Carmagnola; both are incomparably finer than anything else in the tragedies and are ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... the venomous green path, not thirty yards away, I saw the head and shoulders and upstretched, appealing arms of Van Roon. Even as the lightning flickered and we saw him, he was gone; with one last, long, drawn-out cry, horribly like the mournful wail of a ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... had ceased, or rather were lost in the loud cry of sorrow which were uttered by the keeners and friends of the deceased—they, too, standing somewhat apart from the rest, joined in it bitterly; and the solitary wail of Mrs. Grimes, differing in character from that of those who had been trained to modulate the most profound grief into strains of a melancholy nature, was particularly wild and impressive. At all ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... "I heard the wail of the old women before. I come to the cabin, and when Metla had sobbed the story out in her weakness, I went back into the dark and down to the Mission. I remember how the Northern Lights flared over the hills above, and the little spruces on the summit looked to me like ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... a matter suddenly and swiftly taken from the loving hands of the White Hussars. The lieutenant had returned only to go away again three days later, when the wail of the Dead March, and the tramp of the squadrons, told the wondering Station, who saw no gap in the mess-table, that an officer of the regiment had resigned ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... Dirk Sharp's door, Noll suddenly fancied he heard a faint wail within. He was not at all sure, the sea thundered so, and the wind screamed so shrilly about the miserable dwelling; but presently, in a slight lull of the tempest, he heard the wail—if wail it was—again. It sounded like the voice of a child,—a child ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... order to show him that she made no claim upon him. She wanted to seem quite collected so that her behaviour should not lead him to think her heart at all affected, but she could only watch his eyes hungrily. She braced herself to restrain a wail of sorrow if she saw his disillusionment. He talked in order to give time for her to master ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... in an obscure corner of the opera-house that night. Soon all her expressions of astonishment were hushed, but by another cause than the mysterious inattention of her son: a queenly woman appeared upon the stage; she lifted her voice, and sobbed the mournful wail which ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... religion; in the man and in the nation. To do injustice under the pretence of equity and fairness; to reprove vice in public and commit it in private; to pretend to charitable opinion and censoriously condemn; to profess the principles of Masonic beneficence, and close the ear to the wail of distress and the cry of suffering; to eulogize the intelligence of the people, and plot to deceive and betray them by means of their ignorance and simplicity; to prate of purity, and peculate; of honor, and basely abandon a sinking cause; of disinterestedness, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... was in danger of having her shoulders dislocated. At length the officer prevailed and she escaped. Her mother and the women who had assembled from the neighborhood, then set up a terrific shriek, like a funeral wail, "She's lost! she's dead! wo is me!" It was all pre-arranged. The brother-in-law had been around to the square to a rendezvous of soldiers, and told them that an attempt would be made to abduct ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... cold hermit over wail, Whose sighs do freeze, and tears drop hail, Once having pass'd this, will ne'r ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... Willis. "Yes, in another twenty years or so, perhaps; to wail for such an unlikely event will never do; my young friend, Master Jack Becker, is in a hurry, and we must all leave this place within ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... crackerboxes, and everything else that would stop a bullet, in such manner as to form a square barricade, two sides of which were the wagons, with the mules haltered to the wheels. Every man then supplied himself with all the ammunition he could carry, and the Mandan scouts setting up the depressing wail of the Indian death-song, we all awaited the attack ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and then over the river came the terrible hunger wail of a tiger. That instant its tawny face scarred with black emerged from behind green leaves. He saw I was across the river. The tiger's body is marked with the same stripes and curves as he makes in the grass when he walks, and people in the ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... he spoke soothingly to her. Still the stricken woman took no notice of him until a large hot tear, which the youth could not restrain, dropped upon her forehead, and coursed down her cheek. She then looked suddenly up in Erling's face and uttered a low wail of agony. ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... in his great coffin of black marble beneath the pines and the rhododendrons. And the pipers followed after, making shrill and dreadful music that sounded as though some supernatural beings added their voices to the universal wail of woe. And on either side of the body walked the women, the prophet's kinsfolk; but Nehushta walked by Zoroaster, and ever and anon, as the funeral procession wound through the myrtle walks of the deep gardens, her dark and heavy eyes stole a glance ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... hat on the bed and made for the Italian's door. He did not wait to knock, but broke in noisily. The accordion stopped with a prolonged wail; its owner ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the distant wail of the last notes as they came out of the dining-room, and, while it made the financier uncomfortable, it caused Tristram ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... civil servants of the United States falls into three periods: Before 1829, 1829-65, and 1865-83. In the first period they were commonly treated as permanent officials. Rarely had they been removed for partisan purposes, although it had been the wail of Jefferson that "few die, and none resign." Appointments had often been given as the reward for past services, but none had felt a need for a general proscription of officials upon the entry of ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... hand imperiously and we all listened, McTurkle with his mouth wide open and his near-sighted eyes fixed in fascination upon the speaker's face. From outside came a long, impatient wail from ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... observances were and are, the women relatives getting on some elevated spot near where the body rests, and keeping up a dismal wail, frequently even in extreme cold weather, the greater part of the night, and this is kept up often for a month. No cremation or burying in a grave was practiced by them at any time. Pained by often coming on skeletons in trees ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... bear no more; the band loosened from my throat; the oppression lifted from my breast long enough for me to give one wild wail and she turned, saw (heaven sent its flashes quickly at this moment) and recognizing my childish form, all the horror of her deed (or so I have fondly hoped) rose within her, and she gave a start and fell full upon the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... What to him the wail of them who beneath the fierce sun toiled under the whips of relentless masters? Heard from granite colonnade or beneath cool linen awning, it was mellowed by distance, to monotonous music. Why should he question the Sphinx of Fate, or quarrel ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... clock. And scarcely had it ceased, Than tolled the chapel bell, As though for some long-suffering soul released, Its slow funereal knell, And on its ebon wings the rising gale Swept landward from the sea, And mingled with the chapel bell's long wail Its own sad symphony. ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... blue, and the phantasmal city, rising like a beautiful spirit from the waters. Gliding near the Lido—where so many rings of Doges lie lost beneath the waves—I heard the pleasant sound of female voices upon the water—and then, with a sudden glory, rose a sad, wild hymn, like the musical wail ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... eternal forfeit of his lady's love; And, all impatient his dark doom to try, And end the pangs of dire uncertainty, His humble prayer he tremblingly preferr'd, Wo worth the while! his prayer no more was heard. O! how he wail'd! how curs'd the unhappy day! Deaf still remained the unrelenting fay. Him, thus dismay'd, the approaching barons found; Outstretch'd he lay, and weeping, on the ground; To reckless ears their summons they declar'd, Lost ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... atrocities of Philip II, in the expulsion of his Moorish subjects, are matters of imperishable history. Who disbelieves or doubts them? And yet his courtiers magnified his virtues and chanted his clemency and his mercy, while the wail of a million victims, smitten down by a tempest of fire and slaughter let loose at his bidding, rose above the Te Deums that thundered from all Spain's cathedrals. When Louis XIV. revoked the edict of Nantz, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... don't know!" she cried, with a sudden wail, like a person in pain; "only—oh! I wish I had not seen it for the first time ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun, And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... spoken of here was almost a weakness with Burns. We hear it like an ever-recurring wail in his poems and letters. In the very next entry in his commonplace book, after praising the old bards, and drawing a parallel between their sources of inspiration and his own, he shudders to think that his fate may ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... so new that its light was very dim, but the stars were bright. Presently a long, quivering wail arose and was answered from a dozen hills. It seemed just the sound one ought to hear in such a place. When the howls ceased for a moment we could hear the subdued roar of the creek and the crooning of the wind in the pines. So we rather enjoyed ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... that evil is unreal, but to know it, he must demonstrate his statement. To assume that 448:1 there are no claims of evil and yet to indulge them, is a moral offence. Blindness and self-righteousness cling 448:3 fast to iniquity. When the Publican's wail went out to the great heart of Love, it won his humble desire. Evil which obtains in the bodily senses, 448:6 but which the heart condemns, has no foundation; but if evil is uncondemned, it is undenied and nurtured. Under such circumstances, to say that there is no evil, is an evil 448:9 ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... Where angels dared not go, came to his doom, And fell a molten mass; so, tempting Heaven, Saul died the death of disobedient Pride And self-willed Folly—curses of mankind! Sins against God which wrought the Fall, and sent, As tempests moan along the listening night, A wail of mournful sadness drifting down The annals of the world: unearthly strains! Cries of eternal ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... the tall young gentleman, as he slammed the door and so shut off the wail. "Damn 'em, they worry Charles to death. If he would only stick to quinze and picquet, and keep clear of the hounds*, he need never ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mellowing!" He turns his light, and the shadows play, spectre-like, along a low, wet aisle, hung on each side with rusty bolts and locks, revealing the doors of cells. An ominous stillness is broken by the dull clank of chains, the muttering of voices, the shuffling of limbs; then a low wail breaks upon the ear, and rises higher and higher, shriller and shriller, until in piercing shrieks it chills the very heart. Now it ceases, and the echoes, like the murmuring winds, die faintly away. "Look in here, now," says Mr. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... lifted, briefly restoring the cheery moonbeams and silver roadway. Many tree-trunks were white, contrasting with the darkness within the dense woods, glistening like spectres, as the tremulous light glimmered through the branches. There was no sound in the forest, except the solemn wail of the wind, and the steady tramp, tramp—tramp, tramp of the hurrying horse. My flesh crept and shuddered under the drastic influence of the chill night and the doleful croakings of my companion; who talked continually of the Kuklux, and peered through ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... cavern black; I saw the blue above. Some terror turned me to look back: I heard him wail, "O love! What hast thou done! What hast thou done!" And then I saw no more the sun, And lost ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... excited, and Luke Raeburn's daughter had inherited that burning sense of indignation which was so strongly marked a characteristic in Raeburn himself. Violins can be more sweet and delicate in tone than any other instrument, but they can also wail with greater pathos, and produce a more fearful ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... fool that he was to ask. Has the owner of the favourite at Goodwood pity for the jockey who swoons in a death-sickness, causing the next to come in a head's length? Has the eagle pity for the young mother's wail for her babe as he carried it aloft to feed the young? No, she told herself she had spoiled him, allowing him the entree to her presence for the past seven or eight years at will. She cared for him too for his bold, fierce, passionate nature, that is—in a way, if only he would not insist ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... and ankles, staple-bound, Had graved thereon the sign Of crucified. "My God!" he cried, "such fate may yet be mine!" He turned and lo! close at his feet he spied A note. A piercing wail then woke the ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... stated, that when his fatal attack came on, his pockets were found filled with old letters from the woman to whom he was attached. He died! she lives still,—in May Fair. The Eumenides, I suppose, went out of existence at the time when the wail was heard, "Great Pan is dead." I think we could better have spared him than those awful Sisters who ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bleeding silence of desertion. Then, one memorable day, the stillness had been broken by the first clatter of sabots—that wooden noise, measured, unmistakable, approaching. Two pairs of sabots and a long road. Two broad backs bent under bulging loads; an infant's wail; a knock at the Red Cross Door—but that was ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... curses at the object of its fury. The madman's frenzy was utterly revolting to listen to, but Tranter searched it closely for some clue to the identity of the person, or thing, to whom it was addressed. The voice rose again to a shriek; then subsided as before into a feeble wail of misery. ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... low and narrow, and seemed to be choked up by men with short white surplices, but nevertheless he found himself inside, jammed among a crowd of Jews; and a sound of many voices, going together in a sing-song wail or dirge, met his ears. His first impulse was to take off his hat, but that was immediately replaced upon his head, he knew not by whom; and then he observed that all within the building were covered. ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... boots and an unlimited quantity of animal spirits in a high state of effervescence. As they trooped off, an unmistakable odor of burnt milk pervaded the air, and the crash of china, followed by an Irish wail, caused Mrs. Dean to clap on her three shawls again and excuse ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... lightly passed over, for they forcibly commend to us the magnificent mercy of God. And we run the danger, if we lightly esteem them, of being found ungrateful, and of being condemned together with these men, and even more cruelly tormented. Therefore, when we perceive how they suffer and wail aloud, we ought so much the more to rejoice in the goodness of God toward us; according to Isaiah lxv: "Behold, my servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry; behold, my servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty; behold, my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... to think of our coming to this!" she would wail a dozen times a day—or, "Anna, I can't stand it another minute," and she would burst into paroxysms of grief, from which nothing could arouse her, and utterly exhausted by her own emotions, which were chiefly regret and self-pity, she would sink off to ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... in a whimper. "I was in his mind. He was not hurt! God! Steve—what are we up against?" Her voice rose to a wail. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... caterpillar of a white butterfly with black spots on its wings. In Europe, this butterfly is preyed on by two or more parasites, which keep it somewhat in check; but its remarkably rapid increase in this country, causing a wail of lamentation to rise in a single season from the cabbage growers over areas of tens of thousands of square miles, proved that when it first appeared it had reached this country without its ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... chosen brave, Whom Destiny, whom Valor led To their consecrated grave 'Mid Thessalia's mountains dread. Their sepulchre's a holy shrine, Their epitaph, the engraven line Recording former deeds divine; And Pity's melancholy wail Is changed to hymns of praise that ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... swung Where, before the altar, hung The crimson banner, that with prayer Had been consecrated there. And the nuns' sweet hymn was heard the while, Sung low in the dint, mysterious aisle, "Take thy banner! may it wave Proudly o'er the good and brave; When the battle's distant wail Breaks the Sabbath of our vale, When the cannon's music thrills To the hearts of those lone hills. When the spear in conflict shakes, And the ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... she broke down as the recollection of danger swept back upon her. 'Oh, Mother! Mother!' she cried, with a long, low wail, which touched every one of her hearers to ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... a drum like a rattle of hail, Clinking a cymbal or castanet; Chirping a twitter or sending a wail Through a piccolo that thrills me yet; Reeling ripples of riotous bells, And tipsy tinkles of triangles— Wrangled and tangled in skeins of sound Till it seemed that my very soul spun round, As I leaned, in a breathless joy, toward my Radiant uncle, who snapped ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... Ii Kamon no Kami's blood stained the winter snow-drifts some sixty years ago, because he dared to open the Country of the Gods to the contemptible foreigners; and in the cry of the tofu-seller echoes the voice of old Japan, a long-drawn wail, drowned at last by the grinding of the tram wheels and the lash and crackle of the connecting-rods against ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... of his narrative my father's voice suddenly broke, and with a wail of uncontrollable anguish and an exclamation of "Heaven, have mercy upon me and heal my broken heart!" he flung his arms out upon the cabin table, laid his head upon them, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... and outward fortune which scorns and excludes the other, and partly, at all events, actively dooms it to a living death in England of to-day, as in India of the past, and in Jewry of old, where the leper was thrust outside the wall to wail 'Unclean! unclean!' ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... you so from the beginning, Headland," he answered, with a sort of wail. "But what's that got to do with drugging ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... in a wail—a strange, half-stifled cry which rang out with a chill, ghostly sound upon the black silence. His face was covered with a wet towel, a ghastly odor was in his nostrils, his lips refused to utter any further sound. He lay ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Wan as his own are their looks, and a nightmare seems to brood Heavy upon them, and heavy the silence hangs on all, Save for the rapids' plunge, and the thunder of the fall. But on a sudden thrills from the people still and pale, Chorussing his unheard despair, a desperate wail Caught on a lurking point of rock it sways and swings, Sport of the pitiless waters, the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... one dare For her sweet sake the flaming stair?" Look, one steps forth with muffled face, Leaps through the flames with fleetest feet, on trembling ladder runs a race With life and death—the window gains. Deep silence falls on all around, Till bursts aloud a sobbing wail. The ladder falls with crashing sound— A flaming, treacherous mass. O God! she was so young and he so brave! Look once again. See! see! on highest roof he stands—the fiery wave Fierce rolling round—his arms enclasp the child—God help him yet to save! "For life or for eternal sleep," He ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... any more parley, and on Susan following, Mrs MacStinger recommenced her pedestrian exercise in pattens, and Alexander MacStinger (still on the paving-stone), who had stopped in his crying to attend to the conversation, began to wail again, entertaining himself during that dismal performance, which was quite mechanical, with a general survey of the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... joy. Everywhere festive guns were booming, bells pealing, the churches ringing with thanksgivings, and jubilant multitudes thronging the thoroughfares, when suddenly the news flashed over the land that Abraham Lincoln had been murdered. The people were stunned by the blow. Then a wail of sorrow went up such as America had never heard before. Thousands of Northern households grieved as if they had lost their dearest member. Many a Southern man cried out in his heart that his people had been robbed of their best friend ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... and darkened and lightened again around him, as the folds of the cloud-blanket overhead were torn, or dropped trailing, or gathered again in the arms of the hurrying wind. As he stood, it seemed suddenly to change, and take a touch of south in its blowing. The same instant came to his ear a loud wail: it was the ghost-music! There was in it the cry of a discord, mingling with a wild rolling change of harmonies. He stood "like one forbid," and listened with all his power. It came again, and again, and was more continuous than he had ever heard it before. Here ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... things came creeping to the edge of the clearing, sat peering there, then ventured nearer—curious, suspicious, greedy. Soft, noiseless, and ghost-like was the flight of the great owl through the desolation, and his uncanny cry and the wail of the whippoorwill filled the night as ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... and wolds and dales and stony leas. But as regards the Merchant and his daughter, he went in to her one day of the days and found her weeping and wailing, so he said to her, "What causeth thee to shed tears, O my child?" and said she, "How shall I not weep? indeed I must wail over my lot, and over the promise wherewith Allah promised me." Hereupon he exclaimed, "O my daughter, be silent and Inshallah—God willing— I will equip me for travel and will fare to the son of the King; and look to it, for haply Allah Almighty our Lord may direct me to a somewhat shall ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... to such a wail as a dog makes when one treads unaware upon his tail, and clapped his ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... one, they fall asleep And the pension agents awake to weep, And orphaned statesmen are loud in their wail As the souls flit by on the evening gale. O Father of Battles, pray give us release From the horrors of ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... turned out to demand information. The adjutant had joined the commanding officer by this time, and several of the guard had come forth, anxious and eager to hear the news. No man in the group could catch the reply of the horseman to the questioners at "Sudstown," but in an instant an Irish wail burst upon the ear, and, just as one coyote will start a whole pack, just as one midnight bray will set in discordant chorus a whole "corral" of mules, so did that one wail of mourning call forth an echoing "keen" from every Hibernian hovel in all the little settlement, and in an instant the air ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... this, except to draw down her round face to a doleful length, and drawl out a ridiculous wail common among the sailors,— ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... rose from the lines of tonsured heads which skirted the high wall—a wail which suddenly died away into a long hushed silence, broken at last by a rapturous cry of ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her wail. "How can you ask? What would it mean to me to be left here all alone? If you would have me brave, do not ask ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... she spoke, from a quiet reasoning tone to a high, excited wail. She had not meant to say so much. She had intended merely to appeal to her son's affection for her, without making any unpleasant disclosures regarding Joy's mother; she thought merely to win a promise from him that he would not compromise himself at present with the girl, through ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Murdison, going grey in the face. "Oh, aye! In one minute," he said, hastily stepping back into the kitchen and whispering a few words to his wife. Gibson did not hear the words, but his heart sank like lead as he noticed Mrs. Murdison fling herself into a chair, bury her face in her hands, and wail, "Oh God! my ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... in the name o' common sense would ye go and borry a broken cradle?" came the wail from the bed. "I 'lowed you'd git Billy Spinner's, an' ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... of the foreshortened figure of the man, who vainly as patiently sought to soothe the child by gently rocking it to and fro. But when he began a strange humming song to it, which brought all Glashgar before her eyes, Ginevra knew beyond a doubt that it was Gibbie. At the sound the child ceased to wail, and presently the woman with difficulty rose, laying a hand for help on Gibbie's shoulder. Then Gibbie rose also, cradling the infant on his left arm, and making signs to the mother to place the child on his right. She did so, and turning, went feebly up the stair. ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... forest, where so many good men had fallen, and, turned red in the gleam of the lightning, it was more terrifying than it had been in the mere black of the night. The wind, too, was now blowing, and the forest gave forth what Dick's ears turned into a long despairing wail. ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sweet singer of Israel been on the field after the clash of arms, doubtless he would have repeated his wail: "How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!" The Covenanters defeated! How! Why! Ah, there was an Achan in the camp. The king was already perfidious in the Covenant. His perfidy had blighted the nation, and smitten the army. Hitherto God had led the armies ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... his dog, and wrapped sixty silver dollars in a leathern bag, which he sewed fast to the girdle he wore about his waist. That same night some one was heard playing wildly up in the birch copse above the Skogli mansion; now it sounded like a wail of distress, then like a fierce, defiant laugh, and now again the music seemed to hush itself into a heart-broken, sorrowful moan, and the people crossed themselves, and whispered: "Our Father;" but Borghild ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... well has found peace at last; the coal-black wine has been drunk: there is an end! And you, you poor, cowering fugitives, who only see each other's terrified faces when the wan gleam of the lightning blazes through the sky, perhaps it is well that you should weep and wail for the young master; but that is soon over, and the day will break. And this is what I am thinking of now: when the light comes and the seas are smooth, then which of you—oh, which of you all will tell this tale to the two women ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... quite beyond mistake the sound for which they listened was presently loud in their ears. And it was the sound of steel on steel; the sound of men shouting in the breathless moment between sword-stroke and sword-stroke; the cry of victory and the wail of defeat. ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... That year indeed, he was trobled with a rheume, What willingly he did confound, he wail'd, Beleeu't till ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... introduce him to the street with an indicating finger. The gloom grew, calling out the lights into strength, but the concourse did not thin: it only gathered in numbers, and the long, moaning hoot of an out-going tramp filled the air as though with a wail of sorrow at departure. Lascars in coal-begrimed tunics joined in with the rest, adding their voices to the babel, and round-hatted sailors from the Royal Indian Marine ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... music—melancholy enough to make one shiver—and shrill, shrill as the song of the grasshoppers, it began to make itself heard, very softly at first, then growing louder and rising in the silence of the noonday like the diminutive wail of some poor Japanese soul in pain and anguish; it was Chrysantheme and her ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... chin (Not a toot!), While the leading violin And the flute Wail and plead in low duet Till, it may be, eyes are wet. She her trombone ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a strange sight that met their gaze as they entered the village. Men, women and children, with a wild wail, threw themselves flat on their stomachs, uttering the most melancholy moans that ever came from human lips. Interspersed with the cries were apparent ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... away sounded a long-drawn whistle, now faint, now clearer, a modulated wail broken at moments by a tremolo on one high note. It was like a voice lamenting to the dead of night. Glazzard could not endure it; he turned back into the station and tramped noisily on the ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... cabin, as if it felt the desolateness of the barren, icy hills and the black hollows between, and of the angry red sky with its purple shadows lowering over the unhappy land—and would make fickle friendship with some human thing. Charming Billy, hearing the crooning wail of it, knew well the portent and sighed. Perhaps he, too, felt something of the desolateness without and perhaps he, too, longed for ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... more and more slowly backward and forward—the music became still more affecting, and passing from thoughtfulness to sadness, and from sadness to passionate regret, it died away in a wail. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... as of a new-born lamb, high above her head; she started and looked up. Then a wail from the cliffs, as of a child in pain, answered by another from the opposite rocks. They were but the passing snipe, and the otter calling to her brood; but to her they were mysterious, supernatural ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... my mien may change and hair, Ere, with true pity touch'd, shall greet my eyes My idol imaged in that laurel green: For, unless memory err, through seven long years Till now, full many a shore has heard my wail, By night, at noon, in ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... humans' dinner-time he scorned their expensive fare and sneaked away into the shadows of the garden to wait for Ringtail Pete and the rising of the moon. It rose; and, as it peeped above the wall, there also rose a cautious signal-wail, and Pete's one eye glowed green among ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... tilted back his head, twisted his face to a hideous grimace, and then opening his shapeless mouth emitted a tremendous wail which took shape in the ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... its music. The freshness of its song was unchanged, the glad rush of its waters was as joyous as ever, but the spirits were quieted that used to answer it with sweeter freshness and lighter joyousness. Its faint echo of the old-time laugh was blended now in Fleda's ear with a gentle wail for the rushing days and swifter fleeing delights of human life;—gentle, faint, but clear,—she could hear it very well. Taking up her walk again with a step yet slower and a brow yet more quiet, she went on till she came in sight of the little mill; and presently above the noise of the ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... his big front teeth. I could feel his breath hot on my face as he clutched me round the neck. I could see some boys holding Angel back, I could hear The Seraph's wail of "John! John!" Then, simultaneously there came a blow on my own nose, and a grasping of my collar, and a shaking that freed us of each other, for I was clutching him with fury equal ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... spoonful of alcohol—that's all; that's all, men. Pretty cold night, this—minus thirty-eight. Only a quarter of a mile covered to-day. Everybody suffering in their feet, and so weak—and starving—and freezing." All at once the voice became a wail. "My God! is it never going to end?... Sh—h, steady, what was that? Who whimpered? Was that Ward Bennett? No whimpering, whatever comes. Stick it out like men, anyway. Fight it out till we drop, but no whimpering.... Who said there were steam whalers ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... be consumed amid the wreck, they then started back with their train of one hundred and twelve captives. The horrors of that march through the wilderness can never be told. The groan of helpless exhaustion, or the wail of suffering childhood, was instantly stilled by the pitiless tomahawk. Mrs. Williams, the feeble wife of the minister, had remembered her Bible in the midst of surprise, and comforted herself with its promises, till, her strength failing, she commended her five captive children ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... Everybody knows this, and the slave knows it best of all; so that he feels that there are ten chances of his finding an abusive and tyrannical master, to one of his finding a considerate and kind one. Therefore is it that the wail over a kind master is loud and long, as well ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... teeth bare, gave his mouth the appearance of a horrible and convulsive smile. He seized my arm with his whole strength; and, as I felt his grasp, and saw him struggling for words, I expected to hear curses and execrations, or the wild howl of an infuriated madman. I was mistaken. The wail of a sickly child, who dreads its mother's departure, was the only sound to which I could compare that wretched man's voice. He held me with a force almost supernatural; but his tongue uttered supplications in a feeble monotonous tone, and with the most humble and beseeching manner. 'Leave him,' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... about the tiller. There was a jerk on the tow-rope and a bump as the nose of the "Old Woman" ran into the river-bank. Netteke, the mule, came to a sudden stop, and Mother De Smet sat down equally suddenly on a coil of rope. Her potatoes spilled over the deck, while a wail from the front of the boat announced that one of the babies had bumped, too. Mother De Smet picked herself up and ran to see what was the matter with the baby, while Father De Smet seized a long pole and hurried forward. Joseph left the mule ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... his wings, and entering the crystal gates, sat down upon a blasted rock and struck his divine lyre, and a peace fell over the wretched; the demon ceased to torture and the victim to wail. As sleep to the mourners of earth was the song of the angel to the souls of the purifying star: one only voice amidst the general stillness seemed not lulled by the angel; it was the voice of a woman, and it continued to cry ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thought of the Prince, Cluny, Lord Murray, Creagh, and a score of others, wondering if they had been taken, and fell at last to troubled sleep, from which ever and anon I started to hear the wild wail of the pibroch or the ringing Highland slogans, to see the flaming cannon mouths vomiting death or the fell galloping of ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... I have said, quite authentic, for the Professor had seen her so often that he had come to regard her with respectful friendship, the Lady Alicia was not quite an orthodox ghost. She did not come at midnight and wail in distressing fashion over the scene of her sad and shameful death. She seemed to come when and where she listed, whether in the glimpses of the moon or the full sunlight of mid-day. She never passed beyond the limits of the old lodge, and never broke the silence of her coming and goings. None of ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... Tadpole began to weep and wail, For little Tommy Tadpole had lost his little tail; And his mother didn't know him as he wept upon a log, For he wasn't Tommy ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... of palaced wastes!{B} From king-forlorn Versailles To where, round gateless Thebes, the winds Like monarch voices wail, Your tribe capricious ranges, Reckless of glory's changes; Love makes for ye a merry home ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... should have been made president of something or other or else been put on exhibition where the rest of suffering womankind could have gone and feasted their eyes upon such an impossible paragon. If there is not a general wail about over-weight or under-weight, then it's a thin neck, or big hips, or an inclination to too much "tum-tum," or skinny arms, or cheeks like miniature pumpkins—and goodness only knows what else. And by the time one particular horror is massaged out of existence another ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... two syllables of which signify cold-grief, is most descriptive of the sad wail which she utters, and which will, it is said, literally freeze the veins of those who hear it; she is rarely seen, but is heard at a cross-road, or beside a stream—in the latter case she splashes the water with her hands—uttering her lamentation, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... upon the barn and unsaddled and hitched and fed his horse in one end of it—the beast having drunk his fill at the creek they had lately forded—and lay down to rest, for the night, with the saddle blanket beneath him and his coat for a cover. A wind from the north began to wail and whistle through the cracks in the barn and over its roof bringing cold weather. Samson's feet and legs had been wet in the crossing so that he found it difficult to keep warm. He crept to the side of his horse, which had lain ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... been yet. For in the north Eadmund and Utred marched across the country, laying waste all as they went, lest the north should rise for Cnut; and going east as they went west, Cnut ravaged and burnt all the southern midlands. Then rose the wail of all England, for friend and foe alike had turned on her, and her case was at its hardest. And from that time forwards I know that none who chose Cnut for king should ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... is Death's; he laughs as erst o'er hours that England cherished, "Count up, count up the stricken homes that wail the first-born son, Count by your starved and fatherless the tale of what hath perished; Then gather with your foes and ask ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... North life is a continual struggle with cold and starvation. The long, rough journeys which we frequently took over ice and ridges of snow in quest of animal food, I found monotonously destitute of everything I had experienced in former traveling, except fatigue. The wail of the winds, and the desolate landscape of ice and snow, never varied. The coruscations of the Aurora Borealis sometimes lighted up the dreary waste around us, and the myriad eyes of the firmament shone out with a brighter lustre, as ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... of every name: begin the wo, Ye woods, and tell it to the doleful winds; And doleful winds, wail to the howling hills; And howling hills, mourn to the dismal vales; And dismal vales, sigh to the sorrowing brooks; And sorrwing brooks, weep to the weeping stream; And weeping stream, awake the groaning deep; And let the instrument take up the song, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the commonest rights of humanity this nefarious business was allowed to flourish triumphant. The bitter wail of widows and orphans was silenced by the clamour for gold until all nature revolted against it. The earth and the waters under the earth seemed to call aloud for the infamy to be stayed. The rumbling noise of a vigorous agitation permeated the air. Strenuous efforts were made to block its progress. ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... Apulians, and the Spaniards, seem to find their music in a hurdy-gurdy swell of sound. The other day we met a little girl, walking and spinning, and singing all the while, whose song was just another version of this chant. It has a discontented plaintive wail, as if it came from some vast age, and were a ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... fast the white rocks faded from his view, And soon were lost in circumambient foam; And then, it may be, of his wish to roam Repented he, but in his bosom slept The silent thought, nor from his lips did come One word of wail, whilst others sate and wept, And to the reckless gales ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... skilful than Hogg's, but seems to come hard to him. It is literary poetry trying to be Volkspoesie, and not quite succeeding. Many of the pieces in the southern English, such as "Halbert the Grim," "The Troubadour's Lament," "The Crusader's Farewell," "The Warthman's Wail," "The Demon Lady," "The Witches' Joys," and "Lady Margaret," have an echo of Elizabethan music, or the songs of Lovelace, or, now and then, the verse of Coleridge or Byron. "True Love's Dirge," e.g., borrows a burden from ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... even poked one bare foot down at the leaping beast, and waved her leg in provocation. At the same time there was no doubt that she was beset. Furthermore she was hungry, and so she raised her voice, and sent out through the forest a strange call, a quavering minor wail, but something to be heard at a great distance. There was no delay in the response, for delays were dangerous when cave men lived. The call was answered instantly and the answering cry was repeated as she called again, the sound of the reply approaching near and nearer all the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Still the wail of sorrow sobbed itself out from beneath Azzie's fingers. In a moment more, the audience would have been in tears. She sat for a moment silent. When she touched the keys again, it was to give expression to a march, measured, heavy, solemn. At this, emerging from the rear of the chapel ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... growl, raised his stumped arm, and the sharp part of the hook scraped the skin from her hollow cheek. It paused an instant on the level of her chin, then descended into the upturned chest of the child. With a scream, Scraggy dragged the boy back, and a wail rose from the tiny lips. Crabbe turned, cursing audibly, and stumbled up the steps to the stern of the boat. The woman heard him fall in his drunken stupor, and listened again and again for him to rise. Her face was white and rigid as ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... boy, but he wasn't your 'perfectly darling confidential friend,' as girls' chums are! Moreover, you haven't shed such gallons of first-class well-salted tears as this young person has. No, Son, I'm sorry to leave you behind, but you didn't weep and wail loud enough!" ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... and farther away, until the country grew rougher and he was full ten miles from home. At last, stopping upon a small hill to reconnoitre, the searcher heard far in the distance a sound he recognized and which sent his cheek pale—the faint dying wail of a wounded steer. It came from a deep draw between two low hills, one cut into a steep ravine by converged floods and hidden by the tall surrounding weeds. Bye knew the place well and the significance of the sound he heard. In a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... half-hour had hardly passed, when one pup made a stir, And stretching out a lazy paw, just touched the tabby's fur; 'Twas nothing but an accident, yet, oh! the angry wail! The flashing in the tabby's eye, the lashing ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the Democrat's wail, And flirting its false fantastic tail, It spread its wings and it soared away, And left the Democrat in ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... wakened, at midnight, the room was empty save for a nurse reading under a night lamp behind a screen. Elinor was not in pain. She lay there, listening to the night sounds of the hospital, the watchman shuffling along the corridor in slippers, the closing of a window, the wail of a newborn infant ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... heart, some fraction of me, happily Floats through the window even now to a tree Down in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale, Not like a peewit that returns to wail For something it has lost, but like a dove That slants unswerving to its home and love. There I find my rest, and through the dark air Flies what yet lives in me. Beauty ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... will I lament and wail; I will go stripped and naked; I will make a wailing like the jackals, And a lamentation ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, has fallen into the hands of a fanatic. Armand is hopelessly compromised . . . to-morrow, perhaps he will be arrested . . . after that the guillotine . . . unless . . . oh! it is horrible!" . . . she said, with a sudden wail of anguish, as all the events of the past night came rushing back to her mind, "horrible! . . . and you do not understand . . . you cannot . . . and I have no one to whom I can turn . . . for help . . . or even for ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... they passed with recurring gusts of heart-broken sorrow and of agonies of prayer for her apostate son. Mistress Margaret was at the Hall all day, soothing, encouraging, even distracting her sister by all the means in her power. The mother wrote one passionate wail to her son, appealing to all that she thought he held dear, even yet to return to the Faith for which his father had suffered and in which he had died; but a short answer only returned, saying it was impossible to make his defence in a letter, and expressing ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... when the kitchen had been swept, and the door locked, Jean-Pierre, looking at the cot, asked his wife: "What's the matter with those children?" And, as if these words, spoken calmly, had been the portent of misfortune, she answered with a loud wail that must have been heard across the yard in the pig-sty; for the pigs (the Bacadous had the finest pigs in the country) stirred and grunted complainingly in the night. The husband went on grinding his bread and butter slowly, gazing at the wall, the soup-plate smoking under his chin. He ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... boats are hurrying Londonward just clear of the fluff. Mail-packets are supposed, under the Conference rules, to have the five-thousand-foot lanes to themselves, but the foreigner in a hurry is apt to take liberties with English air. "No. 162" lifts to a long-drawn wail of the breeze in the fore-flange of the rudder and we make Valencia (white, green, white) at a safe 7000 feet, dipping our beam to ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... music? Oh, I know I'm hopeless, from your standpoint, but I can't help it. I like mine with some go in it, and a tune that you can find without hunting for it. And I don't like lost spirits gone mad that wail and shriek through ten perfectly good minutes, and then die with a gasping moan whose home is the tombs. However, ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... they hailed it with joy, it being land anyway, yet they must have found it inexpressibly lonesome and spooky. To the newcomer it is apt to be a ghostly sort of place at any time of year, unless mayhap he be from some similar strand, for its rolling sand hills are swept by winds that wail, and beaten by a sea that grumbles when it does not cry aloud. At the time of year when Standish and his men patrolled its beaches, it is no wonder they saw savages behind every liliputian pitch pine and heard them shouting in the wind and sea. So far as the records go the Icelanders ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... the table trembled, her wail rose to a perfect little whistle of woe. Charles-Norton sat down by her and took her in his arms. "Well, we won't have to, Dolly," he said gently; "us won't ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... civil friendliness which she had intended in order to show him that she made no claim upon him. She wanted to seem quite collected so that her behaviour should not lead him to think her heart at all affected, but she could only watch his eyes hungrily. She braced herself to restrain a wail of sorrow if she saw his disillusionment. He talked in order to give time for ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... scene has been seldom treated. I have seen two pictures which represent it. One is a fresco by Giovanni di San Giovanni, which, having been cut from the wail of some suppressed convent, is now in the academy at Florence. The other is ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... was a cry, coming from no one knew where, which, unearthly in its shrillness and the power it had on the imagination, reverberated through the house and died away in a wail so weird, so thrilling and so prolonged that it gripped not only my own nerveless and weakened heart, but those of the ten strong men congregated below me. The diamond dropped from Mr. Grey's hand, and neither ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... girl caught his hand without ceasing for more than a second to watch the ball-room floor,—"I have promised to go home willingly at ten o'clock!" It was spoken in a gentle wail. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... starting from her seat. "Oh, what are you made of? Is it water that runs in your veins? you that he loves"—her voice broke into a wail—"you who ought to be so proud to know he loves you even though your heart be broken! You refuse to go to him, refuse his last request!... Come to the light," she went on, seizing the girl's wrists again; "let me look at you. Bah! you never loved him. You don't even understand what it is to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... that region of bliss; it drives sleep from our eyes and forces them to watch in fruitless jealousy. Far below us earth's old forests rustle and her seas chant the primal hymn of creation: they sound like the wail of a memory that wanders void ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... was not complied with, but the superintending and saving arm of the stranger continued to be exercised in favour of the Borderer. They fought together to the end of the battle. The result of the bloody contest is but too well known. The strains of poetry have carried the wail of bereavement to the ends of the earth, and sorrow has claimed the sounds ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... have moved hand or foot even if one had flayed her alive; she neither stirs nor says a word, and yet she hearkens to and hears the mourning which the emperor makes, and the wailing with which the hall is full. And o'er all the city the folk wail who weep and say: "God! what a sorrow and a calamity has accursed death dealt us! Greedy death! Covetous death! Death is worse than any she-wolf, for death cannot be sated. Never couldst thou give a worse wound to the world. Death, what hast thou done? May God confound thee who hast extinguished ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... east fanned the fire, the song of praise, mingled with the crackling of the flames, until the imprisoned congregation, becoming conscious of their situation, rushed to the doors and windows, where they were met by a double row of bristling swords. Now, indeed, arose the wild wail of despair, the shrieks of women, the infuriated cries of men, and the helpless screaming of children, these mingled with the roaring of the flames appalled even the Macdonalds, but not so Allan Dubh. ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... whole of the eighteenth century, almost all writers who had occasion to speak of the general condition of society joined in one wail of lament over the irreligion and immorality that they saw around them. This complaint was far too universal to mean little more than a general, and somewhat conventional tirade upon the widespread corruption of human nature. The only doubt is whether it might not in some measure have arisen ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... we a litany,— Sing for poor maiden-hearts broken and weary; Domine, Domine! Sing we a litany, Wail we and weep ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to guard their own mother, and it was not long before they found out their relationship. The Rani was delighted to recover her long lost children, but when she heard that her husband had been washed away by the river and drowned, she began to weep and wail. The merchant went to the Raja and complained that the sipahis who had been sent, had thrown the woman into great distress and the Raja thereupon sent for all the parties in order that he might enquire into the matter. When he heard their story, he at once recognised that it was ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... A faint wail from the infant lying in the nurse's arms seconded the suggestion. That feeble cry and the mention of his wife acted as a magic spell ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... pause: then, midst a wail Of agonizing woe, His answer falls upon the ear,— "Yes, ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... words left her lips, arose a piercing wail from across the street, in which three lusty young throats united—Lucy, Kitty, and John, each outscreaming ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... with a varnished cloth; they were disputing violently amid thick clouds of smoke from their pipes. The second and third floors were the quietest. Here through the open doors came the sound of a cradle rocking, the wail of a baby, a woman's voice, the rattle of a spoon against a cup. On one door she read a placard, MME GAUDRON, CARDER; on the next, M. MADINIER, ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... long-drawn, quavering, banshee wail of a locomotive. The sound came from almost behind him, in an opposite direction from where he supposed the track to be. So he turned around and went back the other way. He crossed a half-dried-up runlet and climbed a small hill, neither of ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... brightens at the clash of Yes and No, She sees the Best that glimmers through the Worst, She feels the sun is hid but for a night, She spies the summer thro' the winter bud, She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls, She hears the lark within the songless egg, She finds the fountain where they wail'd 'Mirage!'" ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... a young child, darter, of our Anna's baby; a little, feeble wail; but I should have heard it, if the storm had been twice as loud. I had been sitting here, from sundown to ten o'clock, with no company but my fears and the raging storm. Hannah came, once or twice, and put her pale face through the door, and went off again as if she wanted me out ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... men made a great pile before each of the doors, and then the women-folk who were inside began to weep and to wail. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... fitful phases of a nightmare. My friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm; the scene on our arrival at the house of Sir Crichton Davey; the secretary's story of the dying man's cry, "The red hand!"; the hidden perils of the study; the wail in the lane—all were fitter incidents of delirium than of sane reality. So, when a white-faced butler made us known to a nervous old lady who proved to be the housekeeper of the next-door residence, I was not surprised at ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life now is grafted upon the Infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be. Pass on, thou that hast overcome! Your sorrows O people, are his peace! Your bells, and bands, and muffled drums sound triumph in his ear. Wail and weep here; God makes it echo joy and triumph there. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... rigid in a moment. A man had shouted something. There had been a wail from the crowd. Was it true? Some ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... swabbing off the deck, | | And figured that a life of ease | | Attends the jackie on the seas | | Who draws a U. S. check. | | His lot, it seems, is not quite so; | | Just hear this plaintive plea of woe | | That comes from off the BUFFALO. | | The sailors rise to raise a wail | | Because they say they get no mail. | | | |Will some Milwaukee misses in their spare moments do| |Uncle Sam a favor by writing letters to cheer up | |some of his downhearted nephews in the navy? | | | |The boys are just pining away from lonesomeness, | |owing to the fact that ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... promptly setting him down on his feet, and little Amalia at the same time perceiving that practical sympathy only required a ring at the bell for it to come out, straightway pulled the wires within herself, and emitted a doleful wail that gave her sole possession of Vittoria's bosom, where she was allowed to bring her tears to an end very comfortingly. Giacomo meanwhile, his body bent in an arch, plucked at Carlo Ammiani's wrists with savagely playful tugs, and took ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... clothes, was goin' up against the common thing generally. And that wasn't the worst of it. Where? Why didn't Mr. Robert tell her where? And couldn't he get him away at once? Mr. Robert had almost gone hoarse tryin' to explain why he couldn't. But after every try she'd come back with this wail: ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... introduction of the feeling and the principle of religious fear. The youth ought to seek an impression from things unseen and eternal. God, and His august attributes; Christ, and His awful Passion; heaven, with its sacred scenes and joys; hell, with its just woe and wail,—all these should come in, to modify, and temper, the jubilance that without them becomes the riot of the soul. For this, we apprehend, is the meaning of our Lord, when He says, "I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... surprising. Kitty, though, was surprised and a little bit alarmed, and she ran from point to point, calling and calling again; but for a long time the only answer was the long sighs the wind gave as it rushed over the level land, and lost itself with a little wail of anger amongst the old tors. Then at last came a long shout, and Dan appeared, and almost at the same moment a drop fell smartly on Kitty's cheek, then another and another, and suddenly a heavy ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... They had expected no more than thirty. Surprise made them speechless—that is, for a moment; then a pandemonium of hurrahs, shrieks, and loud-voiced enthusiasm made the room ring till wonder seized them again, and a sudden silence fell, through which I caught a far-off wail of grief from the disappointed ones without, which, heard in the dark and narrow place in which I was confined, had a peculiarly weird and ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... death and danger from Tampa's deadly shore, There comes a wail of manly grief, "O'Brien is no more," In the land of sun and flowers his head lies pillowed low, No more he'll sing "Petite Coquette" ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... what cannot be done: certainly, cannot be done! for there are well known "treaty stipulations," and the lawmakers expect him, generally on foot, to pursue, overtake, and severely punish the well-mounted savage. Fatal error! every southerly wind brings with it a wail of the dying border man, and Mexico will yet, ere the present "long parliament" closes, present her wrongs before the proper source, the master—not the man. But we have digressed once or twice into extraneous topics: they germinated from the subject, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... ejaculated he, "be pleased to spare this vessel; let not the wail of women, the shrieks of the poor children, now embarked, be heard; the numerous body of men, trusting to her planks,—let not them be sacrificed for my father's crimes." And Philip mused. "The ways of Heaven are indeed mysterious," thought he. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... don't like Europe...it's not what I expected, and I think it's all too dreadfully dreary!" The words broke from her in a long wail of rebellion. ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... John Save the ground we stand on"— Cried the Miller,—"but ye come in a hurry;" While the lad, turning pale, 'Gan to weep and to wail, And ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... as the Revised Version, with most modern interpreters, 'Thou art against Me, against thy Help,' and to find in the second clause the explanation, or analysis, of the destruction announced in the first. So we have here the wail of the parental love of God over the ruin which Israel has brought on itself, and that parental love is setting forth Israel's true condition, in the hope that they may discern it. Thus, even the rebuke holds enclosed a promise and a hope. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Aunt Letty found that there was no necessity for her to continue her speech, and indeed no possibility of her doing so even if she were so minded. The children began to wail and cry, and the mothers also mixed loud sobbings with their loud prayers; and Emmeline and Mary, dissolved in tears, sat themselves down, drawing to them the youngest bairns and those whom they had loved the best, kissing their sallow, famine-stricken, unwholesome faces, and weeping over them ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... put the cheese and egg in his pocket, the milk in the basket, then started. The place where they delivered the wash made Mickey feel almost prosperous. He picked up his milk bottle and stepped from the door, when a long, low wail that made him ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... said at length; "now go away from here. Yes, go!" And as her face lifted defiantly to his, her voice slid upward like the lonely, untamed wail of some wild creature. "Go back from whar you come! Don't you never let me see your face again, nor hear you speak; don't you never touch me no more, you Man! 'Cause I'm scairt o' you, I am; 'cause you're big an' strong, an' ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... A loud wail was the answer. After some minutes, Clery opened the glass door, and the royal family were brought into the view of the officials once more. The queen was clinging to the right arm of Louis; they each gave a hand to the dauphin. Theresa had flung her arms around the king's body, his sister ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... from where I used to live a famous cascade called the Swallow Falls, where the water drops down a chasm of great depth. If you listen to the noise of the cataract, you may hear mingled with it a peculiar kind of wail as from a man in great agony. It is said to be the wail of a Sir John Wynn, of Gwydir, whose spirit is under a curse, and is imprisoned at the bottom of the falls on account of his cruelty and misdeeds on earth. On those rare nights when the full moon shines ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... that the Egyptian Government regarded him as a rebel and an imposter. But continually striking her forehead and invoking heaven to witness her innocence and unhappy plight, she began to weep and at the same time wail mournfully as women in the East do after losing husbands or sons. Afterwards she again flung herself with face on the ground, or rather on the carpet with which the inlaid floor was ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... you tore your hair, when you flung yourself in sorrow upon the body, I told myself that either he or I must die. And now you bid me be merciful." Then the big tears dropped down his cheeks, and he began to wail himself,—hardly like ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... it was, of course, rather quieter, but in the dark doorways strange figures were huddled, and sometimes the feeble wail of a child, or a smothered oath, reminded one that more was hidden behind the scenes. Gladys was now in a state of extreme mental excitement. She had never been in a town larger than Boston, and there only on bright ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... dummy flapped up and down without cadence. The soldiers snickered, squirmed restlessly. A sound started, a low, plaintive wail that broke into a dirge and finally into a wild shriek from Crawford's lips. He screamed and kicked over the chair his foot was balanced on. The dummy toppled to ...
— The Second Voice • Mann Rubin
... upon Wiseman and Wishart the significance of that barbaric keening was lost. Full of bread and drink, they rollicked along unconcerned, embraced the girls, who had scarce energy to repel them, took up and joined (with drunken voices) in the death-wail, and at last (on what they took to be an invitation) entered under the roof of a house in which was a considerable concourse of people sitting silent. They stooped below the eaves, flushed and laughing; within a minute they came forth again with changed faces and silent tongues; and as the press ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "A wail is man's earliest speech on this earth, and a groan his farewell to it. Full of suffering does he come into life, full of sorrow does he go to his resting-place, and no one asks him where ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... punishment of those unfaithful men, the priests and elders see their own course and their own just doom. And now there rises a cry of mortal agony. Louder than the shout, "Crucify Him! crucify Him!" which rang through the streets of Jerusalem, swells the awful, despairing wail, "He is the Son of God! He is the true Messiah!" They seek to flee from the presence of the King of kings. In the deep caverns of the earth, rent asunder by the warring of the elements, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... with the memory of guilt and grief unpunished and unavenged, and by whose walls the traveler hastens fearfully, when the sun has set, lest he should hear, awakening again through the horror of their chambers, the faint wail of the children of Ugolino,[23] the ominous alarm of Bonatti, or the long low cry of her ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... willows, that dying sunset; we have heard the wail of those melancholy water-fowl; somewhere—far from here—in some previous incarnation perhaps, or in the "dim backward" of pre-natal dreaming. It all comes back to us as we give ourselves up to the whispered cadences of this faint ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... man's voice rose to a perfect wail, but came down a note or two as Mother hastily reached in the press and drew out a tall, old demijohn and poured a liberal dose of the desired medicine into a glass. She added a dash of red pepper and a few drops of peppermint. ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of instructions to his son, written at this period, the first thing, he says, to be done is, "to commend affectionately, with much devotion," the soul of the Queen to God. Could the poor Indians but have known what a friend to them was dying, one continued wail would have gone up to heaven from Hispaniola and all the western islands. The dread decree, however, had gone forth, and on the 26th of November, 1504, it was only a prayer for the departed that could ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... I wanted a good prepared position, with sound trenches and decent wiring. Above all I wanted reserves—reserves. The word was on my lips all day and it haunted my dreams. I was told that the French were to relieve us, but when—when? My reports to Corps Headquarters were one long wail for more troops. I knew there was a position prepared behind us, but I ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... overhead; while the dark, squat, hideous ironclad hulls seemed to have risen from a submarine inferno to stab each other with livid tongues of flame—so deadly close the two flotillas fought. When the awful hour was over the Confederates were not only defeated but destroyed; and a wail went up from the thousands of their anguished friends, as if the very shores ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... up a hand imperiously and we all listened, McTurkle with his mouth wide open and his near-sighted eyes fixed in fascination upon the speaker's face. From outside came a long, impatient wail from two thousand throats: ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... as they sweep In their solemn grandeur by, With a cadence wild and deep, Mournfully their requiem sigh. And each plant and leaf and flower Bows responsive to the wail, Chanted, at the midnight hour, By the spirits ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... most unkingly. Rather was it the wail of a criminal on being told that the executioner waited without. His ruddy cheeks blanched, and his hands were outstretched as if in a piteous plea for mercy. There was a tumult of objurgations in the outer ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... To this youthful wail—and it is a real one—I can raise no real objection. I am an Old Fogy; but I know it. That marks the difference between other old fogies and myself. Some English wit recently remarked that the sadness of old age in a woman is because her face changes; but the sad part ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... till dawn was pale, The priest tossed in his misery, With muffled ears to hide the wail, The voice of that ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... she dreamed there came to her ears from a distance, faintly, the terrified bleating of a kid. Meriem was instantly alert. You or I, even had we been able to hear the pitiful wail at so great distance, could not have interpreted it; but to Meriem it meant a species of terror that afflicts the ruminant when a carnivore is near ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dizzy with a sort of ecstasy. I closed my eyes—and with eyes closed, I still saw the whole thing! That beautiful, evil, devilish panorama was in my mind, not my eyes. That's how those fiends work—through the mind. I knew it was the dream-beasts; I didn't need Tweel's wail of 'No breet'! No breet'!' But—I couldn't keep away! I knew it was death beckoning, but it was worth it for one moment ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... Tom, moved with undefined remorse, tried to take a part in nursing her. She took things from him, as she did from the landlady, without heed or recognition. Just once, opening suddenly her eyes wide upon him, she uttered a feeble wail of "Baby!" and, turning her head, did not look at him again. Then, first, Tom's conscience gave him ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... desperate. Defensively he crouched, yet the next instant he was overthrown. Then, as he lay sprawling in the snow, the big man fell to lashing him with the whip. Time after time he struck, till the screams of his victim became one long, drawn-out wail of agony. Then he desisted. Jerking the other on his feet once more, he bade him go on ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... opposite pole. In addition the transmitter had make-and-break points such as an ordinary telephone bell has, and when these came in contact with the current, the springs inside continually gave out a sort of wail keyed to correspond with the pitch of the spring. As Mr. Bell had six of these instruments tuned to as many different pitches—and six receivers to answer them—you may picture to yourself the hideousness of the sounds ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... beside him, and for long intervals would stare silently into the darkness. Sometimes a string of the vermin would hop past close to the fire, and another time a curlew would come near and screech its ghostly wail, but he never noticed them. Yet he ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... He thrust a woman out of his way and felt her move, acquiescingly, as if indifferent. Another, a child in her arms, clawed at his back, forced him aside, and as she sped by he saw the child's face over her shoulder, placid and sweet, and caught her voice in a moaning wail, "Oh, my baby! Oh, my baby!" A man, holding the hand of a girl, was thrown against the wall and dropped, the girl tugging at him, trying to drag him to his feet. Something, with blood on its whiteness, lay huddled across the sill of an ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... deeply interesting from its novelty and uniqueness, but the cry itself was quite unlike anything I have ever heard before. The beginning of each sentence was uttered in a rapid monotone, and towards the end it rose gradually till it ended in a prolonged, shrill wail, which floated overhead through the still air with an indescribably sad and ghostlike effect; heard at night, it would have thrilled one like ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... pits in is a perishable article, and should not be left unguarded in this present evil world, where human nature has its frailties. When Bugsey looked into the pail, he raised a wail of bereavement, and at the same moment Tommy set out for home at high speed accelerated no doubt by the proddings of conscience. Bugsey followed, breathing out slaughter, and even made the murderous threat of "takin' it out of his hide," which no ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... dip-net had descended and come up full of fish, and the work was proceeding rapidly in spite of the pitching and heaving of the vessel, when suddenly every one was stopped by the long wail of a foghorn near by. Not a sound of one had been heard before, and all hands were so busy that the direction from which the sound came had not been noted. Exactly half ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... sweet sake the flaming stair?" Look, one steps forth with muffled face, Leaps through the flames with fleetest feet, on trembling ladder runs a race With life and death—the window gains. Deep silence falls on all around, Till bursts aloud a sobbing wail. The ladder falls with crashing sound— A flaming, treacherous mass. O God! she was so young and he so brave! Look once again. See! see! on highest roof he stands—the fiery wave Fierce rolling round—his arms enclasp the child—God help him yet to save! "For ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... the other arm and the poor girl was in danger of having her shoulders dislocated. At length the officer prevailed and she escaped. Her mother and the women who had assembled from the neighborhood, then set up a terrific shriek, like a funeral wail, "She's lost! she's dead! wo is me!" It was all pre-arranged. The brother-in-law had been around to the square to a rendezvous of soldiers, and told them that an attempt would be made to abduct his sister by force, ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... two days and nights in her room; nevertheless she had felt no fear; the thunder of the cannon and the wail of the wounded had inspired her with mournful resignation rather than with fear. As, at one time, she stood at the window, a shell burst near the house, and shattered the window-panes of ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... arrival I called on Madame Audibert, and had the pleasure of finding my niece wail pleased with the efforts her friend was making in her favour. Madame Audibert had spoken to her father, telling him that his daughter was with her, and that she hoped to obtain his pardon and to return to his house, where she would soon become the bride of a rich Genoese, who ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... sweetbrier bush, Have come at cold of midnight-tide To ask thee, Why and when Grief smote thy heart so thou dost sing In solemn hush of evening, So sorrowfully, lovelorn Thing— Nay, nay, not sing, but rave, but wail, Most melancholic Nightingale? Do not the dews of darkness steep All pinings of the day in sleep? Why, then, when rocked in starry nest We mutely couch, secure, at rest, Doth thy lone heart delight to make Music for sorrow's sake?" A Moon ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... The wild winds wail themselves asleep, The rills drop tear-like down the steep, In forest glooms the songsters mourn, For thee—who shall no more return! Macrimmon shall no more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... look—and every sound stopped. The Orchestra died away in a discordant wail; the guests stopped, with glasses raised half way to their lips; the waiters stood as if petrified. Old Bohemia had seen many strange sights in its career; but no stranger cavalcade had ever marched in through its portals than this "Peaceful Valley Quartette." The three aged women, dressed ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... Lum got back. Smoke was coming out of his rickety chimney, and the wail of an old ballad reached his ears. Singing, the girl did not hear him coming, and through the open door he saw that the room had been tidied up and that she was cooking supper. The baby was playing on the floor. She turned at the creak of his footstep on ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... song answered the wail. Perched upon the biggest and pinkest of the hydrangeas was a naughty little canary, its head on one side warbling defiantly in the first thrill of joyous freedom. Its deserted mistress paused breathlessly. A touch, a movement, she knew would send him off into ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... thus, Kumbhakarna only laughed at them and began to eat them up. And he devoured those foremost of monkeys known by the name of Chala, and Chandachala, and Vajravahu. And beholding that fearful act of the Rakshasa, other monkeys were frightened and set forth a loud wail of fear. And hearing the screams of those monkey-leaders, Sugriva boldly advanced towards Kumbhakarna. And that high-souled king of the monkeys swiftly approaching the Rakshasa, violently struck him on the head with the trunk of a Sala tree. And ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... prayer; and not only Sogoro and his wife, but even the executioner and the spectators could not repress their tears; but the headsman, unnerved as he was, and touched to the very heart, was forced, on account of his office, to cut off the child's head, and a piteous wail arose from the parents ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... and mighty—in thy strain A torrent of inspiring passion sounds— Whether for cities by the Almighty cursed, Thy wail arose—or, on enormous crimes That darken'd heav'n with supernat'ral gloom, Thy flash of indignation fell, alike The feelings quiver when thy voice awakes!— Borne in the whirlwind of a dreadful song, The spirit travels round the destin'd globe, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be matured on earth ... the wind through the Notch took a deeper and drearier sound.... There was a wail along the road as ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... event went out through all nations. The chronicles of Wales, of Scotland, and of Man; the annals of Ademar and Marianus; the Sagas of Denmark and the Isles all record the event. In "the Orcades" of Thormodus Torfaeus, a wail over the defeat of the Islesmen is heard, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... itself heard above Truth's voice. The [1] audible and inaudible wail of evil never harms Scientists, steadfast in their consciousness of the nothingness of wrong ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... and waking, exclaims with reverential joy, 'Surely GOD is in this place.' Make a mind miserable, and you darken its universe. The stars fall from its heaven, the golden fruitage of its paradise decays, and winter winds wail around it, and night and storm mingle their pitiless elements on its unsheltered head. Intertwined and involved in the inner life, are occurring at all times the great things of human history. In the sanctuary of unrevealed bosoms, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... words?—'Wretched, ungrateful son—do you care nothing at all for your parents' feelings? Do you owe us nothing for what we have done? And so and so? And so and so? And so and so?'" Mr. Tapping's voice would rise to a wail; and then in a flash he would turn to Moses Rosen (he called all the actors by their character-names). "That's your cue, Rosen, you rush in left centre, and throw up your hands—right here—see? And what's your dope?—oh yes—'I have spent seven thousand dollars on this thing! You have ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... I heard him mutter, "what's that? It sounds like the wail of all the babies since ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the trigger. A flash of fire leaped from the long slender muzzle of blue steel, there was a sharp report like the swift lash of a whip, and then a cry, so terrible that Henry, strong as he was, shuddered in every nerve and muscle. The short high-pitched and agonizing shout died away in a wail and after it came silence, grim, deadly, but so charged with mysterious suspense that both Henry and Paul felt the hair lifting itself upon their heads. Henry had seen nothing, but he knew well ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the air. The children shrieked together and fled, stumbling in dry bog, weeping in terror. Carl's backbone was all one prickling bar of ice. But he waved his stick fiercely, and, because he had to care for her, was calm enough to realize that the wail must have been the cry ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... had been giving way through the last verse, and in the final line, with a helpless wail of the harp, she hid her face, and sank back with ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yet mournful to the soul." I remember particularly a song called the Penzhinski, sung one night by the natives at Lesnoi, which was, without exception, the sweetest, and yet the most inexpressibly mournful combination of notes that I had ever heard. It was a wail of a lost soul, despairing, yet pleading for mercy. I tried in vain to get a translation of the words. Whether it was the relation of some bloody and disastrous encounter with their fiercer northern neighbours, or the lament over the slain body of some dear son, brother, or husband, I could ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... but still held on, in a pouring mixture of sleet and snow, which added considerably to the gloom of the scene. Every now and then the old mate, who was in very low spirits, would raise a lugubrious wail at the top of his voice of "Ai Khansaman Jee! Ai Khansaman Jee?" "Oh, cook of my soul! oh, cook of my soul, where art thou?" at the same time apparently apostrophizing the deepest whirlpools of the torrent, while the roar of the waters effectually prevented his ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... and I stooped low but he relaxed suddenly and seemed to shrink. I felt his heart but it was still. I tried his eyes and they were sightless. Patsy sent up a heartrending wail and crawled over behind his master's gun and knapsack, so I knew my ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... lighted corner by the canopy, came a little piteous wail; then another followed, and was lost in the singer's voice. During a long phrase on the harpsichord, sharp and tinkling, the singer turned his head towards the dais, and there came a plaintive little sob. But he, instead of stopping, struck ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... all heard that: 'twas like a musical wail of gladness; and Madame Giche sank into her high-backed chair—like a snowflake was her face for ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... they were startled by a new, sudden answer, an exact repetition of the first call. Rolf had recovered his rifle from its hiding place and instantly both made ready for some hostile prowler; then after a long silence he gave the final wail line "hoooo-aw" and that in the ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... are rolling heavy, Fitful gusts distend his sail; See the whirlpool's foaming eddy, Hear the seagull's mournful wail. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... came, when all fell on their knees, and the Recorder spake for them, casting all the blame on the vain and light persons who had made that enormity. Thereupon what does our Hal but make himself as stern as though he meant to string them all up in a line. 'Ye ought to wail and be sorry,' said he, 'whereas ye say that substantial persons were not concerned, it appeareth to the contrary. You did wink at the matter,' quoth he, 'and at this time we will grant you neither favour nor good-will.' However, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... here?" cried Foster, in a wail that seemed to come from the bottom of his soul. "Why do you come here to torment me with such a sight? Oh, God! It's horrible! It's horrible!... It is your father I see!... He died fearfully! He died fearfully! ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... girl's mind, perhaps because it was imbued already with the subject, had possessed itself of what filled her mother's. She dropped from the elbow on which she had lifted herself, and turned her face into the pillow, with a long wail ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
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