"Wail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... captain could reply, the sound came a second time over the waters, with a prolonged wail, like the cry of a suffering ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... look on a sweet face," replied Henry, as his eloquent eyes met hers. Blushing deeply, Jennie turned away and remained thoughtful and still, listening to the din of the waters and the wail of the autumn winds as they swept through the tree-tops, and her quiet revery brought the old expression of early maturity and care, for her thoughts had been roving all along her past life, and had left her amid her childhood's ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... voice 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
... rang out with a prolonged wail that seemed to Patty the funniest thing she had ever heard, and she fairly shouted ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... seized the three of them to lead them away, and the frightened babe set up a thin, piercing wail, while the Bishop and his companions, preceded by one of the monks bearing the candle—it was that Ambrose who had choked Emlyn—marched in procession down the hall to gain the ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... Hill stood a throng of natives. Old Mammy Fuller who had loved Mary so much, sat alone at the top of the grave. When the procession was approaching she heard some women beginning to wail, and at once rose. "Kutua oh, kutua oh," she said. "Do not cry, do not cry. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Ma ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... 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 History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hard over, and the yacht whirled around obediently. The main-sheet slacked and dipped, then shot over our heads after the boom and tautened with a crash on the traveller. The yacht heeled over almost on her beam ends, and a great wail went up from the seasick passengers as they swept across the cabin floor in a tangled mass and piled into a heap ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... forest patriarch, Grand in robes of skin and bark, What sepulchral mysteries, What weird funeral-rites, were his? What sharp wail, what drear lament, Back ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... with one great whack, Brought down her broom upon his back, And as he raised a frightened wail Another soused him from ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... near sundown when 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 the threshold ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... seemed to pierce the white turbans of the men who carried the bier. As they marched, fifty voices rose and fell wildly in a stirring chant, exciting and terrible as the beat-beat of a tom-tom, sometimes a shout of barbaric triumph, sometimes a mourning wail. Then, abruptly, a halt was made in the glittering rain, and the bearers were changed, because of the luck it brings Arab men to carry ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... good qualities of their Scotch and Northumbrian neighbours. Their dialect is in some respects akin to the Lowland Scotch, with which it has many words in common; and it has also as a prominent feature that rising intonation, passing sometimes almost into a wail, which one hears all along the eastern Border. But the great outstanding characteristic of Berwick speech is the burr a rough guttural pronunciation of the letter "i." With nothing but the scanty ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... tradition points out as the place where Jane McCrea met her death. River flowed, and raftsmen sang below; women stood at their washing-tubs, and white-headed children stared at us from above; nor from the unheeding river or the forgetful woods came shriek or cry or faintest wail of pain. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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
... from a shepherd's cottage near his way, Whence he had often heard the busy hum Of industry, and childhood's merry laugh, There came the angry, stern command of one Clothed in a little brief authority, Mingled with earnest pleadings, and the wail Of women's voices, and above them all The plaintive treble of a little child. Thither he turned, and when he reached the spot, The cause of all this sorrow was revealed: One from the king had seized ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... one half as great as that of the trained Apache, who bounded forward like a panther, and the next instant griped his horny fingers in the arm of Fred, who uttered a wail, and sank ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... loud wail. "My bairn! My bairn!" snatching him to her arms. "This is none other than your Dutchman's doings, girl. Have him to the dungeon! Where are the stocks? Oh, my pretty boy! He breathed, he is living. Give me the wine!" Then as there was no opening of ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... flame arising from this put the spectres to flight and dispelled the malign influences, a prayer describing the enchantments and their effects being afterwards recited. "The baleful imprecation like a demon has fallen upon a man;—wail and pain have fallen upon him,—direful wail has fallen upon him,—the baleful imprecation, the spell, the pains in the head!—This man, the baleful imprecation slaughters him like a sheep,—for his god has quitted his body—his goddess ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... consultations of the surgeons over the case of some poor boy who was soon to be robbed of a leg or arm, the air filled with stifled groans, or the wild shout of some poor soldier, who, now delirious with pain, his voice sounding like the wail of a lost soul—all this, and more—and thinking your soul, too, is about to shake off its mortal coil and take its flight with the thousands that have just gone, are going, and the many more to follow before the rising of the next sun—all ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... be as you please, but I do not know that you will do any good by staying. A last month may be pleasant enough, or even a last week, but a last day is purgatory. The melancholy of the occasion cannot be shaken off. It is only the prolonged wail of a last farewell.' All this was said in the old man's ordinary voice, but it seemed to betoken if not feeling itself, a recognition of feeling which ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... home, on the side of a hill, across which a low wind, the long death-moan of autumn, blew with a hopeless, undulant, but not intermittent wail among the heather, Kirsty broke into a passionate fit of weeping, but ere she reached home all traces of ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... With each blow he bends his knees, and though there 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 I do not believe it would prove a lasting ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... uttered a wail of anguish. One would have thought the ape's trifling booty an inestimable treasure, for he rode so furiously toward Ciacco that the ape dropped the melon and scampered up a neighbouring tree. But my blood was up. I ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... the Way Song of the Cattle-Hunters Footfalls God Help Our Men at Sea Sitting by the Fire Bellambi's Maid The Curlew Song The Ballad of Tanna The Rain Comes Sobbing to the Door Urara Evening Hymn Stanzas The Wail in the Native Oak Harps We Love Waiting and Wishing The Wild Kangaroo Clari Wollongong Ella with the Shining Hair The Barcoo Bells Beyond the Forest Ulmarra The Maid of Gerringong Watching The Opossum-Hunters ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... outcry, raucous and shrill as the wail of a captured hen, and out of the passage across the courtyard floundered a woman, fantastically ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... 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 place ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... last performances had Sally been, that she forgot her pastry till she opened the door to put in the potato, then a wail arose, for alas! alas! the little ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... melancholy strain of 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 guitar ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... wail. Into her burning eyes merciful tears rushed, and sinking on her knees she rested against the railing, shaken by a storm ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the presence of the congregation, and 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... wide-opened eyes fixed upon invisible things. As they moved on, the group behind set up a joyful hymn in a kind of mournful chant, in which the tall man joined with a strident voice. Fitfully the words came on the wind, in an almost heart-breaking wail: ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had heard birds sing and wail, and beasts cry and growl, but never till now had heard one utter intelligible sounds, answered "Eh!" Raising himself with difficulty, upon his side he beheld that which spoke to him. He saw, mounted upon a noble beast, white as the snow of winter, a being, like to nothing which is seen among ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... I sit at my desk in the open doorway, there come mingled sounds of stir and glee. Boys laugh and shout,—a feeble flute stirs somewhere in some tent, not an officer's,—a drum throbs far away in another,—wild kildeer-plover flit and wail above us, like the haunting souls of dead slave-masters,—and from a neighboring cook-fire comes the monotonous sound of that strange festival, half pow-wow, half prayer-meeting, which they know only as a "shout." These fires are usually enclosed ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... one saw him, he darted through the passage to the well, got across it better this time, rushed over the wall like a cat, fell on the other side from the unsteadiness of his potsherds, rose and hurried into the house, with the feeble wail of his baby ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... high wall of the jungle, first a great globe imminent upon the trees, next soaring remote through the upper heavens, waning at last to a sphere of pale unquickening light. I would lie thus for hours motionless, with lulled mind, until the breeze forerunning the dawn, or the quavering wail of the jackal, recalled the startled thought to the prison bonds ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... woman, he hurried along the passage and mounting the dark stair, paused before a dingy door. Now, setting his ear to the panel, he heard a sound—a muffled sound, hoarse but continuous, ever and anon rising to a wail only to sink again, yet never quite ceasing. Then, feeling the door yield to his hand, Barnabas opened it and, stepping softly into the ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... These southern people, like the Arabs, the 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
... 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. This ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... odd, but I stand here and fancy These people who now play a part, All forced by some strange necromancy To speak, and to act, from the heart. What a hush would come over the laughter! What a silence would fall on the mirth! And then what a wail would sweep after, As the ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... room; and since there was no one who appeared to have any interest in what he might say, he began muttering to himself. I would catch a phrase: "The fate of woman!" And again: "The price of life!" I would hear the terrible, explosive wail: "O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh!" And it would wring a cry out of the depths of ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... drew near the canoe, it was plain, that the loss of their sire had again for the instant overcome the survivors. Raising hands, they cursed us; and at intervals sent forth a low, piercing wail, peculiar to their race. As before, faint cries were heard from the tent. And all the while rose and fell on ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... a dozen steps the neigh of the stallion, deafeningly loud, brought her to a halt with her hands clasped. She saw the mares start under the alarm-call and rush for the gate; in a moment their hoofs were volleying down the road and the wail of Marianne went shrilling: "Lew ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... 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 ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... 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
... The wail of the 'cello is soft, sweet, and low; There are strains of romance in the thrumming banjo. The violin's note—feel it float in your ear; And the harp makes one fancy that ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... said Arthur, 'if he means to be a comfort I wish he would stop that dismal little wail—have one good squall and have done with it. He will worry his mother and ruin all now she takes more notice. So here's Mrs. Moss's letter. I could not open it this morning, and I have been inventing messages to Violet from her—poor woman! ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... still, for the keen air kept folks indoors; and the evening peace was descending that closed another day and another year. Beneath in the narrow streets Percy could see tiny figures, hurrying like belated ants; the crack of a whip, the cry of a woman, the wail of a child came up to this immense elevation like details of a murmur from another world. They, too, would soon be quiet, and there ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... 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 ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... smiled. It seemed as if he laughed a little also. "It will soon be true," he muttered under his breath, that came so quick. And hardly had he spoken when a low deep sound came from the distance. It was the funeral wail of Israel ben Oliel. ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... will thoroughly understand the strange and intimate frame-work of human society, the wail of the pessimist will be soothed and hushed forever: for then will they realize how dependent we poor mortals are upon each other for sorrows or joys: then will it be plain to them that no human life, however obscure, ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... standing behind their chairs, or serving in one capacity or another. It was a very fine show. In a gallery a band with cymbals, horns, harps, and other horrors, opened the proceedings with what seemed to be the crude first-draft or original agony of the wail known to later centuries as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye." It was new, and ought to have been rehearsed a little more. For some reason or other the queen had the composer ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... lying, Thus wail'd she for her dear; Repaid each blast with sighing, Each billow with a tear; When o'er the white wave stooping, His floating corpse she spied; Then, like a lily drooping, She bow'd her head, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... case is by no means surprising, But that there exists the greatest distress In our female community, solely arising From this unsupplied destitution of dress, Whose unfortunate victims are filling the air With the pitiful wail ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... hundred orchestras bursts forth from the lighted windows. The air is soft with the fragrance of a June evening, tempered by the curling smoke of fifty thousand cigars. Through the noise and chatter of the crowd there sounds unending the wail ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... begotten, if ever child was, and to claim, if ever child could, the best—has broken triumphing through the gate of her travail. But she had betrayed him. The new-born spirit had arrived expectant, had cast one look across the threshold, and with one wail had fled. Through and beyond her answering wail, as she laid her head on the pillow, she heard the lost feet, the small betrayed feet, pattering away ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... name the white hair stirred violently, and then a low wail escaped from beneath. The group started, and one of the men, with Ascashe, scanned the face of the girl, who seemed to sleep in perfect unconsciousness; but the panther rolled itself over, stretched out its claws, and threw back his head, showing his long, red tongue, and uttered a yawn so nearly ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... because I know when Hannah and Frieda get here, I won't have so much time for it. The children are fond of Algernon and he remembers the funny things they say and tells them—(it's the first time he ever had anything amusing to say on any subject!)—Peter Osgood wanted The Wail of the Sandal Swag, and a little girl asked for Timothy Squst. (If that's how you spell it. It rhymed with 'crust.') The children aren't the only funny ones. A man came in this afternoon and asked for Edith Breed, and it proved he wanted He That Eateth Bread ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... 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 ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... mile away, the regimental band was playing the overture to the Sing- song, for the men had been told that Bobby was out of danger. The clash of the brass and the wail of the horns ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... that Time 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
... want to see anything for, if I can jest set inside that elephant?" sobbed the Crane boy angrily. And under every roof the wail was repeated ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... disposition to render it. 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 not what has ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... like a cupboard. Something in his heart held him back, but before he had time to listen to it he had opened the little door, for the keys lay on the table to his hand; and he was peering into a small dark recess of stone, which seemed, for the wail that the little door made on its hinges, not to have been ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... looks seaward: The water's in stripes like a snake, olive-pale To the leeward,— On the weather-side, black, spotted white with the wind. "Good fortune departs, and disaster's behind",— Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite wail! ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Navaho raised a shrill quavering wail that carried like the howl of a coyote. Again the reverberating echoes ran up the precipices and slowly died out far above, and again no response came from the ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... hath made us kings and priests to God even his father: to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye will see him, and those, who pierced him: and all the tribes of the earth will wail because of him. Yea, so be it! I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, who is, and who was, and who is to be, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... she had been looking on incredulously at her champion's unaccountable tardiness in coming to the point. But this public repudiation was too much for her. She gave a little low wail as she heard the shameless words of recantation, and then, without a word, jumped lightly down from her bench and ran away to ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... Basanga wail over those who die in bed, but not over those who die in battle: the cattle are a salve for all sores. Another man was killed within half a mile of this: they quarrelled, and there is virtually no chief. The man was stabbed, the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... the company of men, That grows more hateful, as the world grows old. We'll teach the murm'ring brooks in tears to flow, And steepy rock to wail our passed woe. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... to grow less fearful, although a great pain still gnawed at my heart. I remember, too, that I was making up my mind that when daylight came I would seek the priest to whom I had spoken, and ask him to show me Naomi's grave, when I heard a sobbing wail that seemed to come from a heart as broken and ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... 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
... voice rose as 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 ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... panic had abated, but Death had stalked through the settlement six times in as many days, and they listened superstitiously for the stark Tread through the woods which hemmed them in. Each whispering wind that stirred the leaves overhead brought a deeper silence, each wail from delirious sufferers in nearby huts ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... 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 ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the darkness of the utterly empty street the thing was unnatural enough to make any man jump. He had heard it between two gusts of wind, and through another he heard it again - an uncanny, awful sobbing, broken by a hopeless wail of words. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not reached my twentieth year, and—wretched I—I see no more the light! My name is Hypatus; but I pray my brother and my parents to weep for wretched ones no more." Conjecture has coupled this wail of a strange fate with the human sacrifices offered at the shrine of Mithras, and has seen in Hypatus a slave and favourite of Tiberius devoted by his master to the Eastern deity; but there is no ground whatever for either ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... 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 thanksgiving and ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... men." In the sin and 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, they vainly ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... now assail us with the rumbling hoarseness of distance. Giddy uproar which resembles a language, and which, in fact, is a language. It is the effort which the world makes to speak. It is the lisping of the wonderful. In this wail is manifested vaguely all that the vast dark palpitation endures, suffers, accepts, rejects. For the most part it talks nonsense; it is like an access of chronic sickness, and rather an epilepsy diffused than a force employed; we fancy that we are witnessing the descent of supreme evil into ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... into a hysterical fit of persistent shrieking and laughter, which she maintained until she saw that her darling was saved; then, finishing off with a prolonged wail, she fell flat on the grass in a ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... with none to steer. A shrunken stream is Lethe's water wan Unsought of any man: Grass Ceres sowed by alien hands is mown, And now she seeks Persephone alone. The gods have all gone up Olympus' hill, And all the songs are still Of grieving Dryads, left To wail about our woodland ways, bereft, The endless summertide. Queen Venus draws aside And passes, sighing, up Olympus' hill. And silence holds her Cyprian bowers, and claims Her flowers, and quenches all her ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... between the south and the west, to behold the sun again. The palanquin, with its ringing bells, goes round once more; the voices of the jewellers sing again, in the market-place, the song of the emerald, the song of the sapphire; men talk on the housetops, beggars wail in the streets, the musicians bend to their work, all the sounds blend together into one murmur, the voice of Babbulkund speaking at evening. Lower and lower sinks the sun, till Nehemoth, following it, comes with his panting slaves to the great purple garden of which surely thine ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... grave they're bringing Forms that graced the peaceful vale; Youthful herdsman, gaily singing! Thus they'll chant thy funeral wail. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... "There is no greater sorrow than recalling happy times when in misery," doubtless from France would rise but one long forlorn wail. The stoic Parisian poilu, however, has completely reversed such philosophy, and unmindful of the change his absence has created, delights in the remembrance of every instant, dreams but of the moment ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... ghostly whiteness, and in another instant she had swung broadside-on; and as a perfect mountain of white foam leaped upon her, enfolding her in its snowy embrace, her masts fell, and methought that, mingled with the sudden, deafening roar of the trampling breakers, I caught the sound of a despairing wail borne ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral strain of the spirits of the blast who in old Indian times had their dwelling among these mountains and made their heights and recesses a sacred region. There was a wail along the road as if a funeral were passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine-branches on their fire till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once again a scene of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about them fondly and caressed them ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... they want what you cannot buy? It does with the other fellow. Do you for their comfort yourself deny? So does the other fellow. Would you wail aloud if your babe should die For the lack of care you could not supply? Well, it's that way, too, as he travels by, That ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... off at an angle. The hunter quickly pulled the trigger again and the second Sioux also was smitten by sudden death. The other two turned, but one of them was wounded by the terrible marksman, and the pony of the fourth was slain, his rider hiding behind the body. A dismal wail came from the Sioux far back. The hunter lowered his great weapon, and one hand resumed ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... hearing a woman's voice wailing a queer Hindoo chant. It came from the barrack-room door. Afterwards I discovered it was Hawk sitting on his trestle bed cross-legged, with a bit of sacking and ashes on his head imitating the death-wail of an Indian woman for her ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... at dusk, half reeling under the responsibility of existence, and eventually reached the side of the anxious young woman uptown. He bared the facts and awaited the wail of dismay. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... moment I heard the distant strains of the organ, a sad harmony to an undefinable chant, the wail of a soul longing to break these earthly bonds. I listened with every sense, scarcely breathing; plunged, like Captain Nemo, in that musical ecstasy, which was drawing him in spirit ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... my presence here the proof. I owe thee many obligations through thy daughter, and there are times when it does me good to be with her. It is then I fancy I hear in her voice the tones of the long lost, and they come not with a wail of sorrow, but like a welcome and ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... circulated by the million, and where hundreds of sleek gentlemen flourish on the spoils of philanthropy. Read Mr. Rudyard Kipling's story of East-end life; read the lucubrations of General Booth; listen to the ever-swelling wail over the poverty, misery, and degradation of hosts of our people; and then say if it is not high time to cease all this cant about Our Father which ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... louder; 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 ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... in the snow and seemed to shrink to half his normal size; and then, as all the horror and the hopelessness of it came over him, he lifted up his voice in such a cry of abject fear, such a wail of utter agony and despair, as even the Great Tahquamenon Swamp had very seldom heard. I suppose that he had killed and eaten hundreds of smaller animals in his time, but I doubt if any of his victims ever suffered as he did. Most of them were taken unawares, and were killed and eaten almost ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... A wail from Ariadne's room gave warning that the child had wakened, as she not infrequently did, terrified by a bad dream. Lydia fled in to comfort her, and later, when she came back, leading the droll little figure in its pink sleeping-drawers, Paul was dressing with ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... the gates, and mute in their places the wardens; No voice in my longing ear whispered the mystical sentence, And my heart was heavy, and chilled with the fruitless endeavour. On this side lay the snow and the wind, like the wail of repentance, Moaned in the branches forlorn but through the closed lattices ever Drifted a stir and a fragrance of ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... 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 scream ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... 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 opens the first ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... 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 ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... all so strange, with the beat of the sea, the wail of the wind, and Thomas Jefferson Brown sitting there as if nothing were happening, that Lady Isobel just stared in astonishment, while the water gushed in about her. At last he put down his paddle, and stretched out both hands; and it seemed the most natural thing in the world that her two hands ...
— Thomas Jefferson Brown • James Oliver Curwood
... "Ach! Wail, dear nephew, beat your hands upon the bars, curse, waste your breath on stone. Did I not warn you against this very thing when you proposed this mad junket? Well, there are two of us. A fine scandal! They will laugh at us for months ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... Lord of Lyonesse, And bode his joy or bale; While jealous of her right to bless, The wife Isoude, grown pale As buds of light that shrink from night, Made sad and lonely wail: ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... have somebody to guard the bridge. She sent all the fairies into the garden, telling them not to come back to the court till she was happy once more, then gave orders that the flowers should henceforth cease to smell so sweet that every human being would carry them away, the winds wail so piteously that no mortal could help weeping to hear them, the springs send forth bitter waters, and the sun daily cast seven times seven cold rays into the world. After saying all these things, she went to the great wheel on which the threads ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... ear be deafened to the little wail that echoes pitiful within the chambers of her heart! When we remember the great passion of motherhood, the intensity of the drama, the prolongation into years of its deep interplots, we cannot marvel longer at the perennial, lasting character of the mother's love. Given, the marvel, there is no ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... abated 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
... 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 cry of ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... more amazing to me than the easy brutality with which one hears of some men doing what is called "breaking off their engagements." Only a new face has to show itself, and the old face at once disappears with a blow and a wail. ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... 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
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... knew it was the end. Yet even to himself he did not admit it. He hated the fact, mortally. His will was rigid. He could not bear being overcome by death. For him, there was no death. And yet, at times, he felt a great need to cry out and to wail and complain. He would have liked to cry aloud to Gerald, so that his son should be horrified out of his composure. Gerald was instinctively aware of this, and he recoiled, to avoid any such thing. This uncleanness ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... her rival's face, in her steady eye, in her quiet voice, which carried absolute conviction with it. She stood stunned for an instant, panting, her outstretched hands feeling at the air, her defiant eyes dulling and glazing. Then, with a short sharp cry, the wail of one who has fought hard and yet knows that she can fight no more, her proud head drooped, and she fell forward senseless at the feet of her rival. Madame de Maintenon stooped and raised her up in her strong white arms. There was true grief and pity in her eyes as she looked down at the snow-pale ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... came a woman's scream. A piercing cry of terror, of agony—and of something else that froze the blood in his veins as he sprang from his berth. Twice it came, the second time ending in a moaning wail and a man's husky shout. Feet ran swiftly past his window. He heard another shout and then a voice of command. He could not distinguish the words, but the ship herself seemed to respond. There came the sudden smoothness of dead engines, followed by the pounding shock ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... through the stillness which for a moment followed the sudden stoppage of the coach at the barrier. There came a wail from the frightened ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... rigid in a moment. A man had shouted something. There had been a wail from the crowd. Was it true? Some one buried ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... of those who loved the reformed Church as well as they loved their country were sadly blasted by the apostasy of their leader. From the most eminent leaders of the Huguenots there came a wail, which must have penetrated even to the well-steeled heart of the cheerful Gascon. "It will be difficult," they said, "to efface very soon from your memory the names of the men whom the sentiment of a common ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to bring water, it suddenly dried up before her, and she began to weep. Then after a while the water began slowly to rise. When it reached her ankles she tried to fill her pitcher, but it would not go under the water. Being frightened she began to wail and ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... 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 Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... at the singing-school,—one of those wild, pleading tunes, dear to the heart of New England,—born, if we may credit the report, in the rocky hollows of its mountains, and whose notes have a kind of grand and mournful triumph in their warbling wail, and in which different parts of the harmony, set contrary to all the canons of musical Pharisaism, had still a singular and romantic effect, which a true musical genius would not have failed to recognize. The four parts, tenor, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... turn from braggart pride Our race to cheapen and defame? Before the world to wail, to chide, And weakness as with vaunting claim? Ere the hour strikes, to abdicate The steadfast spirit that made us great, And rail with ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... was 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 passage; but this King in spite ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... time that this wail of hopeless misery had sounded on our ears the matter would have been less serious. It is because we have heard it so often that the case is so desperate. The exceeding bitter cry of the disinherited has ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... her heart seemed to grow lighter, and even to vanish altogether; but when she turned to go home by the shortest way, it returned. "Hold fast! hold fast!" and the words came quite clear, though they were like the croak of a frog or the wail of a bird, "A grave! dig me ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Much did he dread his luckless boast might prove The 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 was his fay, for nought beside he car'd; So forth they ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... and she could not resist the desire to get up and look out at the weather. But just as she drew aside the blind, a cloud of frozen snow was dashed against the glass, rattling sharply, while the wind again passed on with its ominous wail. Nothing whatever could be seen; the pale dim dawn was veiled by mist and snow, and each time the icy particles were driven against the window, they left behind them a thicker curtain of frost. Mrs. Costello ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... 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 and serious. He began to talk to his father, while ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... poverty rested upon them, and that its evils were now deepened by oppression. It might be a mere trick of association; but when their plaintive Gaelic singing, so melancholy in its tones at all times, arose from the bare hill-side, it sounded in our ears like a deep wail of complaint and sorrow. Poor people! 'We were ruined and reduced to beggary before,' they say, 'and now the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... book. Then, unfortunately, the cat walked into the room, and soon attracted the attention of the young student. He sidled from his seat so silently that Frank did not hear him. He was soon made sensible that Pomp was engaged in some mischief by hearing a prolonged wail of anguish ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... his handsome head to those who had followed him closest, and as there became visible for the first time in his face, so altered under his troubles, a likeness to their beautiful and commanding Agatha, a murmur broke out around him that was half a wail and half a groan, and which affected him so that he turned from his father, whose hand he was secretly holding, and taking the whole scene in with one flash of his eye, was about to speak, when a sudden hubbub broke out in the direction of the telegraph office, and a man ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... elsewhere. The earnestness with which I dwelt on the character of our past life together, on that occasion, so impressed and shocked her that, fully realising it was through her fault that the home it had cost us so much pain to build up had been destroyed, she broke into a low wail of lamentation for the first time in our lives. This was the first and only occasion on which she gave me any token of loving humility, when late at night she kissed my hand as I withdrew. I was deeply touched at this, and the idea flashed ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... here a cry of fury, yonder a wail of grief, and, rising above all, a woman's shriek of anguish. It came from the lips of Cornelia, the murdered man's wife. Shouts of applause from the King's camp followed, then the blast of a trumpet; the Egyptians drew back from the shore. The scarlet cloak again appeared. Septimius, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... when she saw her darling doll falling into the water began to wail, and tears came into her eyes. Then her nurse knelt before her, and saw in those tears her own wedding. So happy was she over this sight that she jumped up and began to caper about, heeding not the sobs of the poor ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... set 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. ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... visit him. And then invitations are sent out all over the Reservation for the singers to come and assist in the cure. The Navajos had responded loyally on this occasion and were grouped according to location. One group would sing the weird minor wail for half an hour and then another bunch would break in for a few minutes, only to have still a third delegation snatch the song away from them. So closely did they keep time and so smoothly did one bunch take up where another left off that we, standing less ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... well filled with food, locked, and, by his own profusion and high living, excited his starving subjects to revolt. The prelate ordered the rebels to be arrested, confined them in a building, and set it on fire. Not content with this outrage, he added insult to injury by mocking the wail of the sufferers, and comparing their cries with the squeaking of mice. In the night which followed the diabolical deed, a swarm of mice penetrated to the apartments of the archbishop's palace, attacked him, and tried to tear the flesh from his bones. Appalled ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... 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 ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... a wail from Amy Benyon," she said. "She wants me to go to them for Easter and comfort her. Look what she writes: "You must come, dear. I must be helped through, I must have a refuge. How in the world I ever did such a thing ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope |
