"Mournful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... held each other by the hand, and whirled round and round with horrible clamor. Strange and painful contrasts! At the height of the stunning noise of these horrid deeds of tumult and devastation, a scene of imposing and mournful calm was taking place in the chamber of Marshal Simon's father, the door of which was guarded by a few devoted men. The old workman was stretched on his bed, with a bandage across his blood stained white hair. His countenance ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... He seemed to gather but little food and {50} the evidence of his suffering was pitiful. In fact, he stirred our feelings to such a pitch we at length closed the windows to shut out the sounds of his mournful calls. ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... will and disposed of all his worldly property, and assembling his friends, bade them the farewell of a dying man. Arrayed as for the grave, he was laid in his coffin, and thus carried from his stately dwelling by the brethren of the Misericordia, who, in their ghostly costume, with mournful chants and lighted candles, bore him to the tomb of his ancestors, where the coffin was deposited in the vault, and its occupant passed the awful hours of the night in darkness and solitude. Thence he was carried, the next day, almost in a state of insensibility, to a neighboring convent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... the people have sung her praise, and they sing it yet. Of the many folk-songs that have come down from the middle ages, those that tell of Queen Dagmar are the sweetest, as they are the most mournful, for her happiness was as brief ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... Harkness, when his slow and mournful eyes rested on the lady. The exclamation, if profane, was justified, for it is probable that the American had never before set eyes on such a masterpiece of the Creator's power. There was in this woman's being—in her eyes, her face, her ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... sharp kitchen knives—a procedure, the necessity of which I have never understood—they sang all sorts of folk-songs, the text of which formed a strange contrast, as well to the murderous act as to the mournful melody. At least one had to suppose this to be the case, for the maids, who sat on the edge of the bed with their guest from the straw-loft between them, followed the folksongs with never-ending merriment, and at the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... your mournful Correspondent gives against this Facetious Epilogue, as he calls it, is, that he has mind to go home melancholy. I wish the Gentleman may not be more Grave than Wise. For my own part, I must confess I think it very sufficient to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Our mournful meditations were in some degree disturbed by a loud dispute on board the vessel. At the request of a gentleman present, one of the passengers was compelled, instead of flying, as he had intended, with bag and baggage to Hungary, to return to Vienna in company of the police. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... paused again to listen. Far away a mournful howl rose on the still air and died away, only to be taken up by another and another. At the sound the hair bristled upon the back of the listener. It was the cry of ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... of the town-hall opened, and between a double file of soldiers advanced seventeen non-commissioned officers, each one assisted by two monks of the order of Misericordia. Mournful silence prevailed, interrupted every now and then by the doleful beating of the drums, and the prayers of the agonising, chanted by the monks. The procession moved slowly on, and after some time reached the palace; the seventeen non-commissioned officers were ordered ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... solitary meal, an oldish man with a great frame suggesting broken strength, with a white beard and with falling under-eyelids that made him look as if he were just about to cry. His eyes were blue and far away, and his still, mournful face and his great bent shoulders seemed to suggest all the power and mystery of ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... are!" she said, "to people this dear human night with your fancies. No doubt, now, you will read between the lines of that bird speech down there?" (She looked at me curiously, but with none of the mournful speculativeness of a soul struggling against the dimness of its own vision.) "To me it is articulate happiness—nothing more abstruse. Yes, I have seen a mastodon; and I was as glad to happen on the beast as a naturalist is glad ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... A mournful song, in stately measure, praising the dead for his virtues, full of the grief that remains with the living, believing in the happiness of the departed and hoping for a blessed reunion in the hereafter: this is the typical elegy. On the one ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... pulse-like beat, Rings like the cymbals clashing as they meet; The sweet Spenserian, gathering as it flows, Sweeps gently onward to its dying close, Where waves on waves in long succession pour, Till the ninth billow melts along the shore; The lonely spirit of the mournful lay, Which lives immortal as the verse of Gray, In sable plumage slowly drifts along, On eagle pinion, through the air of song; The glittering lyric bounds elastic by, With flashing ringlets and exulting eye, While every image, in her airy whirl, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the ear as well as heard by it; a sound that might proceed from some incalculable distance, from some far invisible height; a sound unlike any thing that is heard on the upper ground in the free air of heaven; a sound so sublimely mournful and still, so ghostly and impressive when listened to in the subterranean recesses of the earth, that we continue instinctively to hold our peace, as if enchanted by it, and think not of communicating to each other the strange awe and astonishment which it has ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... in a lecture on Emerson, "the charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St. Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and then in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music—subtile, sweet, mournful." To Arnold, he was a man "never to be named by a son of Oxford without sympathy;" and this, though Arnold, too, regarded his solution for the doubts and difficulties which beset men's minds to-day as impossible. Once Charles Kingsley ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... me, except the mournful muffled hooting of a steamer's syren at intervals; no doubt some wretched collier, nosing her way at half-speed through the fog, in ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... Beckford rather footsore, very disgusted, and abnormally silent. Norris sulked by himself at one end of the saloon carriage, and the Bishop sulked by himself at the other end, and even Marriott forbore to treat the situation lightly. It was a mournful home-coming. No cheering wildly as the brake drove to the College from Horton, no shouting of the School song in various keys as they passed through the big gates. Simply silence. And except when putting him on to bowl, or taking him off, or moving him in the ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... He chose a mournful muse Soft pity to infuse; He sung the Weaver wise and good, By too severe a fate, Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, Fallen from his high estate, And ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... drawing rein also and listening. He heard a faint, sobbing cry come from ahead, and so mournful was it, so charged with wild grief, that for an instant his heart stood still, and the ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... blew; million little waves Ran rippling round the point in mellow tune; But mournful, like the voice of one who raves, That laughter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... mournful tidings to the lonely grandmother over the ocean, and accompanied the faithful John as far as Genoa, on his way homeward with the remains of the young master he had carried in his arms as ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... hair of snowy whiteness, Played the shadows and the firelight. Long she gazed into the embers, And I feared I had offended In the question I had asked her. Then she spoke in measured accents, Slowly, with a mournful cadence, And long ...
— The Legends of San Francisco • George W. Caldwell
... though old, is strong in flight, And years rolled swiftly by; And Autumn's falling leaves proclaimed This good old man must die! He laid him down right tranquilly, Gave up life's latest sigh; And mournful stillness reigned around, And tears bedewed each eye, For this fine old English gentleman All of the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... (the virtue of obeying, as of ruling, being in his opinion one that does not exist without first a noble nature, and then a philosophic education, where the eager and active powers are allayed with the gentler and humaner sentiments), may claim in confirmation of his doctrines sundry mournful instances elsewhere, and, in particular, the events that followed among the Romans upon the death of Nero, in which plain proofs were given that nothing is more terrible than a military force moving about in an empire ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of his mournful death Margery sat in her nursing- chair, gravely thinking for nearly ten minutes, to the total neglect of her infant in the cradle. Jim, from the other side of the fire- place, said: 'You are sorry enough for him, Margery. I am ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... as deaf as a post; but that is no matter, as he is professor of mathematics, and deals only in demonstration. He has a very good-natured, intelligent countenance. He laughed heartily at some nonsense of mine which caught his ear, and that broke the mournful gravity of his countenance. ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... of Twenty Hundred Pounds. I was arrested, it is true, and lay for many Months in the House of Restriction; but interest was made for me, and the Creditors of the Broken House agreed to sign a Certificate of Liberation. I believe that but for that mournful business of the Beguine, and for that confounded Officer that I sworded, some of the Wealthy Merchants would have subscribed to an Association for setting me up again; but that Rencounter was remembered to my hurt, and, says Mynheer ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... head, but sez, all mournful an' melancolius, as if he thought I wud be sorry for him: "I ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... a fish. He stood and looked at him a spell, and I see his mouth begin to work. 'There's nothin' catamouse about that sleep, Cousin!' I says. 'There couldn't a baby sleep easier than what he is.' He shakes his head mournful. 'Simeon's aged terrible since Ma went,' he says. He stood there lookin' at him a spell longer, and then he give a kind of groan and went back to his ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... I left my bed and wandered down-stairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... House, with its brave columned front, its cracking veneer of stucco, and its surrounding of little vari-colored one story cafes and shops (which are themselves like bits of operatic scenery), does not so much suggest to the imagination a home of modern opera, as a mournful mortuary chapel haunted by the ghosts of old half-forgotten composers: Herold, Spontini, Mehul, Varney; old conductors, long since gone to dust: Prevost, John, Calabresi; old arias of Meyerbeer, Auber, and Donizetti; and above all, by the ghosts of pretty pirouetting ballerinas, and of great singers ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... departure of the queens, news reached Naukratis that Oroetes, the satrap of Lydia, had, by a stratagem, allured his old enemy, Polykrates, to Sardis and crucified him there, thus fulfilling what Amasis had prophecied of the tyrant's mournful end. This act the satrap had committed on his own responsibility, events having taken place in the Median kingdom which threatened the fall ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... through the blue woodlands bare Shatters the windy rain. A thousand leaves, Like birds that fly the mournful Northern air, Flutter away from the old ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... that warrior—such a death as was fitting for one of his warlike race. The testimony of eyewitnesses could not be doubted. The fatal day had again been hostile to the cause of the Red Rose, and the mournful cry of those who had seen and shared in the fight, as they fled pellmell from the field, had been, "Lost—all lost! the House of Lancaster ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... after prayer and fasting, had sent them forth to free their country from the Philistines. Shiloh, the sanctuary, was then lying desolate, just as Jerusalem now lay in ruins; and yet better times had come. But very mournful was that fast day at Mizpeh, as the Jews looked along the hillside to their own holy mountain crowned by no white marble and gold Temple flashing back the sunbeams, but only with the tall castle of their enemies towering over the ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... either earth or man to be benefited by it. Long before the sun himself appears, those avant-couriers of his fiery might, heated glow, and feverish breeze, came rustling through the foliage of the mallee-trees, which give out the semblance of a mournful sigh, as though they too suffered from the heat and thirst of this desolate region, in which they are doomed by fate to dwell, and as though they desired to let the wanderers passing amongst them know, that they also felt, and were ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... he sat down on his trunk again and played the most mournful of tunes. Two white pigeons, which had been talking to each other in the heat on the roof, came one on each side of the window and peeped into the room; and out between them, as he played, Robert saw the sea, and the blue sky ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... again sank upon their knees in the corner and hid their faces, while the sons took up the axes. I was going to try to pacify them once more, when the sleeping dog awakened suddenly and, raising his head and stretching his neck, looked at the fire with his dim eyes and uttered one of those mournful howls which make travelers shudder in the darkness and solitude of the country. All eyes were focused upon him now as he rose on his front feet, as though haunted by a vision, and began to howl at something invisible, unknown, and doubtless horrible, for he was bristling all over. The ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... and mournful—and a murmur went round among the eager watchers. It was her most famous dance—the dance of Death, the most gruesome spectacle, so it was said, that any dancer had ever conceived. She came on to the stage like the ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... sailed by Execution Dock, where the swinging pirates haughty and scornful Rattled their chains, and on Margate beach we came like a school-treat safe to land; And one of us took to religion at once; and the rest of the crew, tho' their hearts were mournful, Capered about as Christy Minstrels, while Hook conducted the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... wore the black frock-coat suit of a Methodist preacher at the same time as the rainbow tie, diamond tie-pin, heavy gold watch-chain, diamond ring and natty spats of a professional bookmaker. The latter oddities, however, did not detract from the quiet, mournful dignity of his face and manner. Paul felt himself in the presence ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... she sat there, mournful and alone. In the dusk of the chamber the little half-hidden white figure caught his eye, the golden ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... being already driven out of the country, and Pacorus slain] Ventidius, by Antony's command, sent a thousand horsemen, and two legions, as auxiliaries to Herod, against Antigonus. Now Antigonus besought Macheras, who was their general, by letter, to come to his assistance, and made a great many mournful complaints about Herod's violence, and about the injuries he did to the kingdom; and promised to give him money for such his assistance; but he complied not with his invitation to betray his trust, for he did not contemn him that sent him, especially while Herod ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... protected her. Durade had grown rich—wild—vain—mad to pit himself against the coolest and most skilful gamblers in Benton—and therefore his end was imminent. Allie lay in the dark, listening to Benton's strange wailing roar, sad, yet hideous, and out of what she had seen and heard, and from the mournful message on the night wind, she realized how closely associated were gold and evil and men, and how inevitably they must lead to lawlessness and to bloodshed ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... the moonlight streamed on untroubled, and though Fate was deaf, yet beauty of those fresh strains going starward from under his fingers touched at least the heart of Rodriguez and gilded his dreams and gave to his thoughts a mournful autumnal glory, until he sang all newly as he never had sung before, with limpid voice along the edge of tears, a love-song old as the woods of his father's valleys at whose edge he had heard it once drift ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... compelled to a shameful retreat, abandoning the beautiful region it had wrested from the foe, and deserting the loyal people who trusted to its protection, and who, exiles from their homes, followed its retreating files,—a mournful procession of broken-hearted men, weeping women, and suffering children. With an unscrupulousness which passes belief, the authors of this terrible disaster have denied the presence of the enemy at Springfield. The miserable wretches, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... of life—he might have been a spirit for all the sound he made; while the big house blinked across the rich clumps of Michaelmas daisies, and the dark windows showed a flicker of fire darting upon the walls. Everything seemed mournful, yet contented, dying serenely and tranquilly, with a great and noble dignity. I wish I could put into words the sweet solemnity, the satisfying gravity of the scene; it was like the sight of a beautiful aged face that testifies to an inner spirit which has learnt patience, tenderness, and ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... water before coming up to breathe, but is very awkward and top-heavy on land because his legs are so far back that he has to stand up on end. His nest is on the ground and his flesh is not fit to eat, being too rank and fishy. You can hear his mournful cry a ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... three nearest and hugged them hard. I have suddenly found such new life and exuberance, I feel as though I had been released from prison and were free. I feel,—oh, I'll stop,—I just want you to know the truth. Don't show Jervis this letter, but tell him what's in it in a decently subdued and mournful fashion. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... mist brooded here and there in the hollows. The distant hills were wreathed in vapour, so that even the green of the pastures was invisible. Every now and then a snipe started up from one of the weedy places with his shrill, mournful cry, and more than once a solitary hawk hovered for a few minutes above his head. The only other sign of life was a black speck in the distance, a speck which came nearer and nearer until he paused to watch ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of sympathy for them withheld and forbidden,—those who ought to have been their comforters denouncing them in the most awful language, and consigning them to the doom of excommunication from the church on earth and from the hope of heaven. Surely, there have been few cases in the dark and mournful annals of human suffering and wrong, few instances of "man's inhumanity to man," to be compared with what the victims of this tragedy endured. Their bearing through the whole, from the arrest to the scaffold, reflects credit upon our common nature. The fact that Wardwell lost his firmness, for a ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... with the utmost reluctance that I take up my pen to communicate tidings which, I well know, will occasion you great distress. This morning's post brought me the mournful intelligence of my brother Algernon's death, which melancholy event took place on the morning of the 4th of August last, at the house of a friend in Calcutta. Mr. Richardson's letter I will transmit to you as soon as you are able to bear its contents. My ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... changes mortal Life with fleeting years; A mournful change, should Reason fail to bring The timely insight that can temper fears, And from vicissitude remove its sting; While Faith aspires to seats in that domain Where joys are perfect—neither ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... Mr. Greg saw a good deal until his death in 1849.[6] Southey was still lingering at Greta Hall; but it was death in life. He cherished and fondled the books in his beloved library as if they had been children, and moved mechanically to and fro in that mournful 'dream from which the sufferer can neither wake nor be awakened.' Southey's example might, perhaps, have been a warning to the new-comer how difficult it is to preserve a clear, healthy, and serviceable faculty ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... wandering, and neglecting the true vein of sentiment which so abounds in my heart. All my pleasure is still in mournful contemplation, but I have learned that the feelings are most refined when freed from low cares and personal discomforts. I was going to cite a letter I wrote to my oldest friend, the baron of Hohenfels. It ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... from a cheerful noise that he made, for he only succeeded in giving a mournful howl. And that sad sound made Spot gloomier ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Rosemary knelt down with a little gasp at the loveliness spread before her. She rested her elbows on the low window sill and leaned forward, drinking in the scent of new hay and roses and dewy grass. The shrill, insistent chorus of insects was music, and when the mournful cry of a distant hoot owl came out of the woods that rose shadowy and dark across the white ribbon of road, why that was music, too. Country nights are no more absolutely silent than nights in the town or city, but some enchantment weaves the noises of the countryside into graceful ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... ne sera pas contente, pas contente du tout quand elle verra la robe," was Louise's mournful ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... looked very mournful as he rode along the dismal Paddiford lanes, between rows of grimy houses, darkened with hand-looms, while the black dust was whirled about him by the cold November wind. He was thinking of the object which had brought him on this afternoon ride, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... house, a mournful-looking woman came to the door. My companion sprang out of the buggy as much elated now as he had previously been depressed (for that was the coinage of his temperament), rushed up to his wife and led her down to the gate. She was evidently astonished at his enthusiasm. ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... They had gone away without seeing me. I was standing beside the monument, leaning on the carved Crusader. The sun was again shining, and the old church was full of light. But the sunshine had changed to me, and I felt very mournful. I should see the sweet face, hear the lovely voice, no more in this world. I endeavoured to realize the thought, but could not, and I left the church hardly conscious of anything but a dull ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... warn him of the danger he was in? Suddenly the bound lad was seized by an ingenious idea. Assuring himself by their deep breathing, that his captors were fast asleep, he began to whistle, softly at first, then gradually louder and louder till the weird, mournful strains of the "Funeral March" filled ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... low: All that it saw when alone with its laughter, All that it suffered in times that came after, Mournful it tells, that ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... abilities had combined to raise the house of Chatillon to its present distinction. He saw him point out to his cousin Damville the flags and banners taken from the Huguenots on the fields of Jarnac and Moncontour, still suspended from the walls of the cathedral, mournful trophies of a civil contest. "These will soon be torn down," De Thou heard Coligny say, "and in their place others more pleasing to the eye will be hung up." The words had unmistakable reference to the victories which he hoped soon to win in a war against Spain. It is not strange, however, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... shell is round us joy is chained to pain, and granted us but to lift up the spirit to that heaven where pain is banished, bliss made perfect; dearest, 'tis but for this!" answered the young enthusiast, and the rich yet somewhat mournful tones of his voice ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... Mr. Germaine answered, "but my experience and observation have impressed me differently. I never knew, personally, but one woman of genius, and she was a mournful instance of the truth of my convictions, and of the fatal folly of striving to pass beyond the brazen walls with which prejudice has encompassed womanhood. She was young, fair, and flattered, and fascinating above any comparison I ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... purpose to make it more sure and certain under the favouring conditions of darkness and solitude. Possibly too I found a certain weak pleasure in dallying with the thought of dying and tasting the mournful satisfaction of my coming release from my troubles. At two o'clock in the morning, I went down to the river's brink. Sirs, you know the rest,—you snatched me from a watery grave. I thank you for your goodness,—though I am sorry you saved my life. The world is full of forsaken ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... literary gossip might be written about this collaboration; a melancholy chapter, since it brings with it the memory of a charming man, who first brought Messieurs Cerfberr and Christophe together, and who has since died under mournful circumstances. His name was Albert Allenet, and he was chief editor of a courageous little review, La Jeune France, which he maintained for some years with a perseverance worthy of the Man of Business in the Comedie Humaine. I can see him yet, a feverish ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... Heard a carol, mournful, holy, Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her blood was frozen slowly And her eyes were darken'd wholly, Turn'd to tower'd Camelot. For ere she reached upon the tide The first house by the water side, Singing in her song she ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... painful moments when all timidly, secretly, at the bottom of their hearts long for his death; and only the children fear the death of someone near them, and always feel horrified at the thought of it. And now the children, with bated breath, with a mournful look on their faces, gazed at Nikolay and thought that he was soon to die; and they wanted to cry and to say something friendly and compassionate ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... tender heart was touched by the mournful look of the smaller creature, and she felt, somehow, that she could better justify her purchase if compassion helped to sway her, for, though no one really opposed her, she felt denial in the air, ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... are useful to the mariner, they are obnoxious to the house dweller within earshot of them, and that the Lighthouse Board has to weigh the petitions and remonstrances before setting these buoys off inhabited coasts. They can at times be heard 15 miles, and emit an inexpressibly mournful and saddening sound. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... very much to be commiserated is the task of the feeling historian who writes the history of his native land. If it fell to his lot to be the recorder of calamity or crime, the mournful page is watered with his tears—nor can he recall the most prosperous and blissful era without a melancholy sigh at the reflection that it has passed away for ever! I know not whether it be owing to an immoderate love for the simplicity of former ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... into his study: and as soon as the logs burned and the bustle was over, and he was left alone, he took up the light and passed into the adjoining library. It was then about nine o'clock in the evening; the air of the room felt damp and chill, and the light but faintly struggled against the mournful gloom of the dark book-lined walls and sombre tapestry. He placed the candle on the table, and drawing aside the curtain that veiled the portrait, gazed with deep emotion, not unmixed with awe, upon the beautiful face whose eyes seemed fixed upon him ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of South Carolina was doubtless exaggerated by Hayne, in his speech in the Senate in 1832, when he characterized it as "not merely one of unexampled depression, but of great and all- pervading distress," with "the mournful evidence of premature decay," "merchants bankrupt or driven away—their capital sunk or transferred to other pursuits—our shipyards broken up—our ships all sold!" "If," said he, "we fly from the city to the country, what do we there behold? Fields abandoned; ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... a deep low bow to the shadowy theatre. She kissed her fingers to the empty boxes that stared down at her with hollow, mournful eyes. (Were there ghosts there too, Stonehouse wondered bitterly? The unlucky Frederick, perhaps, with the fatal hole gaping above the temple, applauding, ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... subject to sudden and prolonged fits of torpor. In their movement, undulating and caressing like that of water, there is always a threat of unforeseen frost. The high latitude, the difficulty of life, the inflexibility of their autocratic regime, the heavy and mournful sky, the inexorable climate, all these harsh fatalities have left their mark upon the Muscovite race. A certain somber obstinacy, a kind of primitive ferocity, a foundation of savage harshness which, under the influence of circumstances, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not well enough acquainted with musical terms to tell the method of that composition in which the wail of a Highland coronach seemed mingled with such mournful crooning as I had heard often from Indian voyageurs north of Lake Superior. Perhaps that fancy sprang from my knowledge that Angus McNeil's father had been a younger son of the chief of the McNeil clan, and ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... the nature of poetry, we may have to go where Homer went if we are to sing a new song. Is it because all that is under the moon thirsts to escape out of bounds, to lose itself in some unbounded tidal stream, that the songs of the folk are mournful, and that the story of the Fianna, whenever the queens lament for their lovers, reminds us of songs that are still sung in country-places? Their grief, even when it is to be brief like Grania's, goes up into the waste places of the sky. But in supreme art or ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... gardens, in which each family enjoyed the privilege of cultivating patches of corn, sweet potatoes, and such vegetables as they chose, a street of about a hundred feet wide dividing the houses. Midway, under the shade of a magnificent liveoak, whose branches were mournful with the funereal moss (always suggestive to my fancy of the 'little old woman,' whose employment in the nursery legend is 'to sweep the cobwebs out of the sky,' having executed her task in a slovenly manner), was a simple apparatus for grinding ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... intoning of priests, the applause of the multitude and of the soldiers, the groans of the dying, the trumpet call, the roll of the drum, ball music, military bands, the cannon's roar, were the joyful and mournful harmonies heard while the play went on. What we shall study amid this tumult and agitation is one woman. We have already studied her as the Viscountess of Beauharnais, as Citizeness Bonaparte, and as the wife of the First Consul. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... exactly the same with our religion. Economics and religion are very closely related. People in a certain physical environment have a certain religion. A tired and overworked people, enslaved as chattels or by the spirit of the times, find solace in a mournful religion, and a haven of rest hereafter— also, in the contemplation of a Hell for those who believe differently from what they do. They sing, "All Days Will Be Sunday By and By," or "Sweet Rest in Heaven." If they are oppressed by debt and mortgages that gnaw, they sing, "Jesus paid it all, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... and passing large, costly and great, where, with her maids, she since dwelt joyless. She liked for to go to church and did this willingly. Where her love lay buried, thither she went all time in mournful mood (how seldom she gave that over). She prayed the good God to have mercy on her soul. With great fidelity she bewept the knight full oft. Uta and her meiny comforted her all time, but so sorely wounded was her heart, that it booted naught, whatever comfort men did offer her. She had the ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... a mournful month the front door of Haytersbank Farm was open; the warm spring air might enter, and displace the sad dark gloom, if it could. There was a newly-lighted fire in the unused grate; and Kester was in the kitchen, with his clogs off his feet, so as not to dirty the spotless ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that you look so pale, O fisher of the sea?" "'Tis for a mournful tale I own, Fair ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... of their children; mothers pressed to their milkless bosoms their starving infants. Others crept about bereft of all their family, and haunting like pale ghosts the scenes of their past happiness. No carriages shook the public ways. The grass grew in the deserted streets; one mournful equipage alone slowly pursued its course through the doomed city, gathering as it passed the dead at every door; and when the dreadful cargo was completed, bearing it away to the crowded cemetery. The ruin of private property, the general ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... diseased humanity that throng the holy places and obstruct the gates, one might suppose that the ancient days had come again, and that the angel of the Lord was expected to descend at any moment to stir the waters of Bethesda. Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... off, or a flag hoisted, without he was duly consulted and apprised of the fact. Not a funeral could take place in the town, without Kitson calling upon the bereaved family, and offering his services on the mournful occasion, securing to himself by this simple manoeuvre, an abundant supply of black silk ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... animosity. There is no suggestion or reminiscence of wrong, from invading Norman, or from the established sovereign. On the contrary, Robin loved no man in the world so well as his king. What the tone of these ballads would have been, had Robin Hood been any sort of partisan, we may judge from the mournful and indignant strains which were poured out on the fall of De Montfort. We should have heard of the fatal field of Hastings, of the perfidy of Henry, of the sanguinary revenge of Edward,—and not of matches at archery and encounters at quarter-staff, the plundering of rich abbots and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... street only a few rods from her window, stars and a moon merely added to the strangeness. Soft noises came from the other rooms, sounds of people moving about, but not a sound from outside, nothing except at intervals the cry of a mournful bird. After a while the noises inside ceased. Elliott lay quiet, staring at the moonlit room, and feeling more utterly miserable than she had ever felt before in her life. Homesick? It must be that this was homesickness. ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... veil of grief over Erin Since Maelseaclain, chieftain of our race has perished,— Maelseaclain of the flowing Shannon. Many a moan resounds in every place; It is mournful news among the Gael. ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... along the shore of the pond, they toss up their slender necks, and then plunge their red beaks down into the dark water seeking for the grateful bits which were not there. But when they saw that they were disappointed, they poured forth their peculiarly mournful song and slowly sailed away down the lakelet into the obscurity of the distance, letting their complaining notes be heard ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... December, Robin woke to the consciousness of a steady drip, drip of rain, accompanied by an indescribably mournful wind. In the other room she heard Adam piling on the logs, and shivered. Perhaps the winter had come. It had been hard enough when there was plenty of work, and the free outdoor life; if they should become prisoners, how should they, how would he endure it? She dressed quickly, ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... The priests were continually employed in exorcisms against the wicked spirits. Cavite resembled an afflicted Nineveh. God willed to let the punishment end with threats. The spirits left their obsessions at the command of the ecclesiastical ministers, the horrible apparitions ceased, and their mournful howling was no longer heard. The inhabitants became quiet and were consoled, but did not fail to be very well warned. For they continued constant in the correction and the general reform of morals; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... Listening to this mournful wind with all my ears I was the better prepared for any lonesome cries of the forest; nevertheless, a sudden, sharp "Ki-yi-i!" seemingly right at my back, gave me a fright that sent my tongue to the ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... keeping as wide a space as possible between themselves and their new mates. But the gray and white, old yoke fellows at the plough, who knew nothing of the dignity of carriage drawing, and cared less, who had rubbed noses and shared feed-boxes ever since they were colts, both lifted up their voices in mournful whinneys and refused comfort and correction. The white turned his head back over his shoulder and would have halted anywhere until his mate came up; while the gray strained forward, shaking his head, and neighing as if his throat were full of tears every ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... by. So he was sailing on, and the question would come up, Whither? He listened to the water falling over the dam by the mill, and to the chirping of the crickets, and the sighing of the wind, and the church-bell tolling the hours: they were sweet, yet mournful and solemn sounds. Tears stood in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks, as he thought that he and his mother were on earth, and his father and grandfather were praising God in the heavenly choirs. But he resolved ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the line of the Tugela against Duller; yet, albeit weakened by that necessity, it was still able without much effort to pin White down to the banks of the Klip River. The inactivity of the garrison, as well as the daily increasing hospital camp at Intombi under the shadow of Bulwana and the mournful processions to the cemetery hard by, showed that sickness, the waning physical and moral strength of those who were still on duty, and the expenditure of stores, supplies, and ammunition, were slowly impairing White's power of resistance; and that the numbers of the besieging force, which ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... the paste-dish, and draws in a long breath. If the paste is fresh he eats it, and wiggles his polonaise as much as to thank us, and goes away refreshed. If the paste is sour, and smells bad, he looks at us with a mournful expression, and goes away looking as though it was a mighty mean trick to play on a cockroach, and he runs about as though he was offended. When a package of wedding cake is placed on the desk he is the first one to find it ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... common sufferers under a common calamity, interchanged their experiences, and mingled their tears. If the personal history of the pupils in my sewing-school was diversified, in this assembly the domestic experience of each individual was in mournful harmony with that of all. The great majority were wives of soldiers who had gone forth to uphold the flag of our country. Hundreds of them were clad in mourning,—their husbands had died in battle,—their remittances ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... men, women and children, and probably carried off at least one hundred and twenty prisoners before they left the island of Montreal, where the authorities and people seemed paralysed for the moment. The whole history of Canada has no more mournful story to tell than this massacre of this unhappy settlement by the side of the beautiful lake of St. Louis. The Iroquois had never forgiven the treachery of the governor during the winter of 1687, at Fort Frontenac, where he had seized a large number of friendly ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... of people of the great emigrant procession had arrived. They united in giving to the dead the best interment that the circumstances permitted. Then the broken and scattered effects of the Holloway company were gathered up, and the now mournful trains took position in the line of pilgrimage and again moved ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... and vines, These granite crags are gray monastic shrines Perched on the cliffs like old dismantled forts; And far to seaward can be dimly seen The marble splendor of Venetian courts; While one can all but hear the mournful rhythmic beat Of white-lipped waves along the sea-paved street. O childless mother of dead empires, we, The latest born of all the western lands, In fancied kinship stretch our infant hands Across the intervening seas to thee. Thine the ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... the day was mid-forenoon; the time of the year was spring. The low, mournful voice of a temple gong floated across the race of brown water. River fokies, on sampans and junks, were singing their old work song, the Yo-ho—hi-ho! of the ancient river, as their naked, broad backs bent to ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... life, whatever services a man may have rendered to his country and to civilization. Few kings have ever accomplished more than David; but his glory was succeeded, if not by shame, at least by clouds and darkness. And this eclipse is all the more mournful when we remember not only his services but his exalted virtues. He was the most successful and the most admired of all the monarchs who reigned at Jerusalem. He was one of the greatest and best men who ever lived in any nation or at any period. "When, before or since, has there lived an outlaw who ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... Lady Ruthven's wish that the remains of her brother should be entombed with his ancestors, preparations were made for the mournful cavalcade to set forth toward Braemar Castle. The countess, hoping that Wallace might be induced to accompany them, did not long object to this proposal, which Lady Ruthven had enforced with tears. Had any one seen the tow, and been called upon to judge, by their deportment, of the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... have to be leaving you, boys," announced Wallace just then, as he started to go the rounds with a mournful face, shaking hands with each lucky scout whom he ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... disputing about the ring, I heard a mournful voice calling, "An-tonia, An-tonia!" She sprang up like a hare. "Tatinek, Tatinek!" she shouted, and we ran to meet the old man who was coming toward us. Antonia reached him first, took his hand and kissed it. When I came up, he touched my shoulder and ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... fair white birds, the crane and gull The fields are full, while cuckoos cry— No mournful music! Heath-poults dun ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... gray corridors, with carpets that muffled the feet which at intervals passed along them. It was a house of silence, brooding within the high fence that shut it and the grounds from a landscape torpid under the hot sun of summer, and across which occasionally drifted the lonely, mournful whistle of a train on a nearby railroad. Inside the house there was always a hush, a heavy ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... submission. She, after the great moral shock which had completely transformed her, still reflected, hesitated, struggled, fighting against herself, putting off her decision in order not to surrender, in her instinctive rebelliousness. And the misunderstanding continued, in the midst of the mournful silence of the miserable house, where there ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... of will, would he be able to think of his father in the same way he used to think of him when the poor man was alive. His breathing image was no longer in his power. This consideration, closely affecting his own identity, filled his breast with a mournful and angry desire for action. In this his instinct was unerring. Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we find ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... that weary winter is come upon us, which bringeth with him drooping days and tedious nights, if it be true, that the motions of our minds follow the temperature of the air wherein we live, then I think the perusing of some mournful matter, tending to the view of a notable example, will refresh your wits in a gloomy day, and ease your weariness of the louring night. Which if it please you, may serve ye also for a solemn revel against this festival time, for Gismund's bloody shadow, with ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... Sir James Stewart was in the Prior's chamber, they sat silent and mournful by the bedside where their guardian lay dozing, even till the bell for Matins summoned them in common with all the other inmates of the convent; they knelt on the floor of the candle-lit church, and held each other's hands as they prayed; Lilias ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fathomed the idiosyncrasies of the stove. Maybe it is sadly misunderstood, but at any rate we can always empty the vials of our wrath for its misdeeds upon the head of its unfortunate custodian, a newly caught officer's steward of the second class, with long hair and a mournful aspect. ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... in support of which he often saw in fancy, when alone, spectral thousands in gray, marching as he once had seen them in actual life. That all had been in vain, was to him one of those mysterious providences to which he could only bow his head in mournful resignation, in patient endurance. He had no hate for the North, for he was broad enough in mind to recognize that it saw the question from its own point of view, and, as a soldier, he knew that its men had fought gallantly. But the North's side of the question was not his ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... The fundamental difficulty lies in the fact that all the people whose saints' days must inevitably be skipped for the first year in the process of rectification will inevitably feel that they are being robbed of their guardian angels, that they are "orphans"—a mournful word greatly beloved of the Russian masses under multiform circumstances, both material and spiritual—and orphaned in a peculiarly distressing and irrevocable way. They might even feel when their saints' days came around quite correctly the next year that some spurious adventurer—Angel ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the entrance of the gate which leads from the second court to the palace, is the famous colossal sounding statue, which, according to Herodotus, Strabo, and Pausanias, uttered a joyful sound when the sun rose, and a mournful one when it set. It is also related that it shed tears, and gave out oracular responses in seven verses, and that these sounds were heard till the fourth century after Christ. These phenomena, attested by many ancient and modern ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... of love was paid in mournful silence, and then the father and the children passed into the ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... falling leaves, and the wailing winds of autumn, of forgotten joys, of blasted hopes, of a crushed ambition, of gray hairs, of uttering footsteps, of old age, of a lonely grave. And, as he sang, all were moved to tears by the mournful melody and the sad, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... again. Eleseus was not distressed in any way in the matter of Barbro; she could go to the devil—and, besides, he had two big bank-notes in his pocket! The brothers took care not to touch on any mournful things, such as the strange way father had said good-bye, or how mother had cried. They went a long way round to avoid being stopped at Breidablik, and made a jest of that little ruse. But when they came down in ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... a little tobacco to show for it. It was on Rooney's account that McCloud's order banishing cuspidors from his office had been rescinded. A few evenings of agony on the despatcher's part when in consultation with his chief, the mournful wandering of his uncomplaining eyes, his struggle to raise an obstinate window before he could answer a question, would have moved a heart harder than McCloud's. The cuspidor had been restored to one corner of the large room, and to this corner Rooney, like a man with a jaw ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... saw that the fortunes of the dinner-table had placed him beside this lady, and they had not been long seated before he took an opportunity of addressing her. Her eyelids fell as she turned to answer him; but there was a sweet, mournful smile on her lip—a smile that awoke strange recollections, and made his heart for a moment stand still. For some minutes he did not speak again, nor she either; when he did, it was to ask her, in a low, gentle voice, to take wine with him. The lady's ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... entrance of his friends, that gentleman laid down his knife and fork, and with a mournful ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... fingers there, so that she always kept it gloved afterward. Then there was the tale of the two men of Detroit who were crushed by a falling tree: the married one, who was not fatally hurt, begged his mate to call his wife, as soon as his soul was free, and the woman, hearing the mournful voice at her door, as the spirit passed on its way to space, ran out and rescued her husband from his plight. She told, too, of the feu follet, or will-o'-the-wisp, that led a girl on Grosse Isle to the swamp ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... spoonful of "slosh" are disposed of, the unhappy foragers return. They take in the situation at a glance, realize with painful distinctness that they have sacrificed the homely slosh for the vain expectancy of apple butter, shortcake, and milk, and, with woeful countenance and mournful voice, narrate their adventure and disappointment thus: "Well, boys, we have done the best we could. We have walked about nine miles over the mountain, and haven't found a mouthful to eat. Sorry, but it's a fact. Give us our biscuits." Of course there are none, ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... soldiers always knew that they had a sure, and firm friend: like his brother, when on the conquering side, clemency and humanity were never, even in the heat of victory, forgotten by the young general. Individuals like these lamented and unfortunate brothers give a mournful interest to the history ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... been decided by Miss Murray that, under the circumstances, it will be wiser for her to postpone the celebration of her marriage to some time and place less fraught with mournful suggestions. A telegram has just been sent to the Bishop to that effect, and while we all suffer from this disappointment, I am sure there is no one here who will not see the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... back, and murmured a long, trembling, "Farewell!" that was like a low, mournful vibration of an Aeolian harp, when the night-breeze breathes upon it. Then she pressed her right hand over her eyes, shuddered, and tremblingly put out her left for that which would end all. But, instead of the phial which she had placed there but a little before, her hand rested upon a book. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... happened there went on still; someone who had been there was there still. The lawns under the trees were mournful with old pain, or with vanished joys more pathetic than pain in their ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... thee herself; our engagement was contrary to holy duties, to prior engagements, to earlier vows. God denied his blessing to the guilty project, and my course was arrested in a fearful manner. Pray for me, Edward, and bring back the ring, my ring," continued the voice, in a mournful tone of appeal. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... eyes filling with tears. "I will take her some flowers and oranges for the last time. Do you know, Jocunda, I feel that I never shall come back here to this dear little home where I have been so happy?—everything sounds so mournful and looks so mournful!—I love everything here ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... and hardships, and I was glad when the shade of the trees, and the cool evening breeze, combined with my matted hair to stop the flow of blood. After lying there about three quarters of an hour, brooding over the singular and mournful lot to which I was doomed, my mind passing over the whole scale or circle of belief and unbelief, from faith in the overruling providence of God, to the blackest atheism, I again took up my journey toward St. Michael's, more ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... and its red rage of destruction bepainted the clouds that hung so low above the chimneys and dormer-windows. To the east, the woods on the steeps had been shelled, and a myriad boughs and boles riven and rent, lay in fantastic confusion. Through the mournful chaos the wind had begun to sweep; it sounded in unison with the battle clamors, and shrieked and wailed and roared as it surged adown the defiles. Now and then there came on the blast the fusillade of dropping shots from the south, where the skirmish line of one faction engaged ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... and bicycle, she ran out from the dooryard as it approached. Tim Reardon, an undersized, sharp-eyed youngster, rather poorly dressed and barefoot, wheeling his machine laboriously along, was somewhat of a mournful-looking figure. The girl held up a warning hand ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... women when they saw Rama the choice bark round her draw, Rained water from each tender eye, And cried aloud with bitter cry: "O, not on her, beloved, not On Sita falls thy mournful lot. If, faithful to thy father's will, Thou must go forth, leave Sita still. Let Sita still remaining here Our hearts with her loved presence cheer. With Lakshman by thy side to aid Seek thou, dear son, the lonely shade. Unmeet, one good and fair as she Should dwell in woods a devotee. Let ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... National Woolens' factories there. He accepted her invitation to stay with her, and devoted himself to Gladys, who took up her flirtation with him precisely where she had dropped it when they bade each the other a mock-mournful good-by five months before. They were so realistic that Pauline came to the satisfying conclusion that her sister-in-law was either in earnest with Langdon or not in earnest with anybody. If she had not been avoiding Scarborough, she would probably have seen Gladys' real game—to use Langdon as ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... his attendants. Near the principal entrance was drawn up a two-horse team, having the appearance of awaiting the reception of persons about to depart on some journey. At length the family, consisting evidently of father, mother, and their children, slowly, and in seeming mournful silence, issued from the door, and approached the wagon, when the former, lifting the latter into the seats, again turned an anxious look towards the house, and, with his companion whose handkerchief was frequently applied to her eyes, stood lingering and hesitating, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... With a camp stool in one hand and a rosary in the other, he follows Sada San like the shadow on a sun dial. Wherever she is seated, there is the stool and the royal youth, his mournful eyes feasting on the curves and dimples of her face, her lightest jest far sweeter than any prayer, the beads ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... but Kathleen, now turning round, laid her face on her sister's bosom, and, with a pressure that indicated shame and bitterness of heart, she wept. Hanna returned this melancholy and distressing caress in the same mournful spirit, and both wept ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... his face with a very mournful gaze while he was speaking, but he was busy with his argument and did not ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... on a seat, which was placed for-ard of the skylight, and gazed at the lofty masts and spars, which, denuded of all their running gear, stood out stark, grim, and mournful against the rays of a declining sun. On the fore-topgallant yard a frigate bird and his mate stood, oblivious of our presence, and looking shoreward at the long, long line of verdure clothing ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... in his infancy, by the whole carriage of his life, that he was of a different order from those among whom he lived. Timid, susceptible, lost in reverie, fond of solitude, or seeking no better company than a book, the years had stolen on, till he had arrived at that mournful period of boyhood when eccentricities excite attention and command no sympathy. In the chapter on Predisposition, in the most delightful of his works,[1] my father has drawn from his own, though his unacknowledged feelings, immortal truths. Then commenced the age of domestic criticism. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... that desolate wood; although about the only living things that we saw in it, even when we rowed close along its ragged shore, were owls. At night, strange, uncanny cries came out of the wood, and probably out of the owls also; but such sad and querulous cries as may well have been the plaints of the mournful marsh forest itself. Upon our Shirley shore too, there lived an owl, evidently of a different kind. We never saw him; but at night he worked untiringly upon a voluminous woodland ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... Alas! it was of no moment to her whether she strolled on the poetical banks of the Teche, or rambled in the picturesque sites of Maryland. She lived in the past, and her soul was absorbed in the mournful regret of that past. For her, the universe had lost the prestige of its beauties, of its freshness, of its splendors. The radiance of her dreams was dimmed, and she breathed in an atmosphere ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... larger than they are in reality. They are solitary birds, and may be seen sitting singly, or in pairs—some species on the taller trees, and others but a few feet above the ground—occasionally uttering a mournful note, which sounds like curucua,—the name which the Indians give to them. "This would betray them to the hunter," says Edwards; "but they are great ventriloquists, and it is often impossible to discover them, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... strike so mournful," she repeated, "to think of the child junketing up on the hill, and May Queen an' all, an' that poor ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... dwelling, the locksmith stood early on the morning after he had met with the wounded man, gazing disconsolately at a great wooden emblem of a key, painted in vivid yellow to resemble gold, which dangled from the house-front, and swung to and fro with a mournful creaking noise, as if complaining that it had nothing to unlock. Sometimes, he looked over his shoulder into the shop, which was so dark and dingy with numerous tokens of his trade, and so blackened by the smoke of a little forge, near which his 'prentice was at work, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... women and feasting were a weariness, and when old hates had smouldered down, he desired more and more the revivifying fire that came liquid out of bottles—out of all sorts of bottles—for he remembered them well. He would sit in the sun for hours, occasionally drooling, in mournful contemplation of the great orgy which had been his when the German plantation was ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... of Helgi and Sigrun displays this rivalry of moods—a tragic story, carried beyond the tragic stress into the mournful ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... love and hope in her heart did not lift her above the depressing influence of that mournful last view of her home. Was the thing that she was going to do worth while? Was anything in life worth while? The little town had a half-awakened Monday-morning look. Every one seemed to be beginning another week with an "Oh, dear me!" sort of feeling. ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... mournful temperament. I think I can trust you," she answered. "Do you think you could communicate to my aunt the fact that you are a Cairngorm and a neighbour? I am sure she would like ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... night! There was no moon, and not the least glimmer of a star overhead; an utter darkness shrouded the world. The wind was high and steady, and its mournful howling through the rocky cuttings of the railway sounded unspeakably melancholy. Driven by the gale, the snowflakes had in five minutes covered the windward side of the train with a winding-sheet, inches deep, and when Gus Todd, from curiosity, opened the window ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... strains still continued, rising into a mournful wail, then sinking info the soft cries of the whip-poor-will. In a few minutes the perplexed fugitives were deep in a clump of wild hawberries, invisible to any one who should pass. The strains had ceased as suddenly as ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... after the "laying-out" comes the actual funeral. Normally it is held as early as possible in the morning, before the rising of the sun. Perhaps while on the way to the Agora we have passed, well outside the city, such a mournful procession. The youngest and stoutest of the male relatives carry the litter: although if Lycophron's relatives had desired a really extravagant display they might have employed a mule car. Ahead of the bier march the screaming flute players, ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... standing at the foot of the steps, and his sombre eyes were now fixed upon the girl in a look so strange and intent as fully to explain her perturbation. Through his parted lips the breath came hurriedly, in his eyes was a mournful exaltation as of one who looks from a desert into Paradise. He stood absorbed, unconscious of aught save the splendid vision above him. For a moment she stared at him in return, her eyes, held by his, slowly widening and the color quite gone from her face. With a slow, involuntary ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... as if the king could not survive this mournful news. He tore his hair, wept bitterly, and lamented his loss with all manner of sorrowful cries and sobs and sighs. For several days he would see nobody, and hid himself from view. Later, he returned to his capital and entered upon ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... it was noised abroad that Mr. Badman had shut up shop, was gone, and could trade no longer. Now by that time his breaking was come to his creditors' ears, he had by craft and knavery made so sure of what he had, that his creditors could not touch a penny. Well, when he had done, he sends his mournful sugared letters to his creditors, to let them understand what had happened unto him, and desired them not to be severe with him, for he bore towards all men an honest mind, and would pay so far as he was able. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bound hand and foot who had won me in spite of her severity, and the woman freed, whose sweetness should make my love eternal! What a difference. Madame de Mortsauf was the skylark of Bengal, transported to our cold Europe, mournful on its perch, silent and dying in the cage of a naturalist; Henriette was the singing bird of oriental poems in groves beside the Ganges, flying from branch to branch like a living jewel amid the roses of a volkameria that ever blooms. Her beauty grew more beautiful, her mind recovered ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... traces her more delicate embroideries of the unexpected. Distant crashes, single and impressive; stealthy footsteps near at hand; the subdued scratching of claws; a faint sniff! sniff! sniff! of inquiry; the sudden clear tin-horn ko-ko-ko-oh of the little owl; the mournful, long-drawn-out cry of the loon, instinct with the spirit of loneliness; the ethereal call-note of the birds of passage high in the air; a patter, patter, patter among the dead leaves, immediately stilled; and then at the last, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White |
