"Doleful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over forty thriving towns and villages in the valley of the Tagus, under the shadow of her wing. These communities and their homes have all disappeared, pastures and fields of grain covering their dust from the eyes of the curious traveller. The narrow, silent, doleful streets of the old city, with its overhanging roofs and yawning arches, leave a sad memory on the brain as we turn thoughtfully away from its crumbling walls and ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... Lord Shrewsbury, with the distaste of middle age for underground expeditions, "is four leagues hence, and a dark, damp, doleful den, most noxious for your ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lowell weaves the cloth, and the fire on the hearth has gone into black retirement and mourning; when the wiser a virgin is, the less she has to do with oil in her lamp; when the needle has made its last dying speech and confession in the "Song of the Shirt," and the sewing-machine has changed those doleful marches to delightful measures,—how is it possible for the blindest to help seeing that a new era is begun, and that the time has come for ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... money. It would be his bedroom they would attack, and they must reach it by the back staircase, or by the window in the dressing-room. The clock of the Invalides struck a quarter to twelve; the west wind bore on its moistened gusts the doleful ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in the east, gray with threatening rain, cut off any warmth there might have been in the rising sun and sharpened the raw wind to a knifelike edge. The man on the truck was too engrossed with the thoughts that shook his plump shoulders in regularly recurring, silent chuckles, and a ludicrously doleful effort to shut off with upturned collar the draft from the back of his neck, to hear the boy's approaching footsteps. He started guiltily to his feet in the very middle of a spasmodic upheaval, to stand and stare questioningly at the big figure whose fingers had plucked tentatively ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... running up with his tail between his legs, and with a most doleful look; he was closely pursued by all the dogs of the plateau, who, instead of barking, were making a kind of howling noise, common to those that ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... thing to see little children burning on the hot coals for want of help, but yet more doleful to see a flock of souls falling into the burning lake for ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... that lane; we can get into it by the other end and come out at Robin Redbreast corner on to the high-road,' said Phebe; 'it's a very pretty way indeed, though it's a long walk,' her voice sounding rather doleful. ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... for he had watched her closely until now; 'is your brother himself; no doubt, just come down. As he seems to be loitering in this direction, it may be as well, perhaps, to walk towards him, and throw ourselves in his way. He has been very silent and doleful of late. Perhaps, his brotherly conscience is touched - if there are such things as consciences. Though, upon my honour, I hear of them much too ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... holy Vedas deeply read—thy skull in seven wide rents had burst. But since, unwitting, thou hast wrought—that deed of death, thou livest still, Oh son of Raghu, from thy thought—dismiss all dread of instant ill. Oh lead me to that doleful spot—where my poor boy expiring lay, Beneath the shaft thy fell hand shot—of my blind age, the staff, the stay. On the cold earth 'twere yet a joy—to touch my perished child again, (So long if I may live) my boy—in one last fond embrace to strain. His body all bedewed with gore—his locks ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... this noise of the Indians went farther and farther off, so that they were satisfied the Indians fled away, except on one side, where they heard a doleful groaning and howling, and where it continued a good while, which they supposed was from some or other of them being wounded, and howling by reason of their wounds; or killed, and others howling over them: but our men had ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... discern no sign of the sufferer, nor could I even trace footmarks; this, however, is not remarkable, as they would speedily be obliterated by the many reptiles nurtured in the morass. It was afterwards questioned, whether the supposed wanderer was only a catamount, a species of jaguar that emits doleful cries ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... with one of their sex and not be ready to sacrifice her own life and the lives of all her kinsfolk for him. "It be such puddling folly to start with," she said indignantly; "talking about Denas being false to her father and mother! 'Tis a doleful, dismal, ghastly bit of cowardice, ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... when the Duchess was announced, and they all returned to the drawing-room. Madame de Corbelle and her husband presented themselves at the same time, their voices full of tears. For some minutes it seemed, from the doleful tones, that everyone was about to weep; but little by little, after a few tender words and inquiries, another current of thought set in; the voices took on a more cheerful tone, and everyone began to talk naturally, as ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... thicker and faster, As black just as pitch was the sky, When truly a doleful disaster Befel three poor sailors and I. Ben Buntline, Sam Shroud, and Dick Handsail, By a blast that came furious and hard, Just while we were furling the mainsail, Were every soul swept from the yard. But sailors were born for all weathers, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... meant should adorn her present. Thus time flew, till the sand-glass told her it was the eighth hour. But ere she had finished her task, she was roused from the profound stillness in which that part of the castle lay, by the doleful lament of the troop ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... that is its mate * It never winneth dear desire of Fate: My life for him whose tortures tare my frame, * And dealt me pine he can alone abate! He saith (that only he to heal mine ill, * Whose sight is medicine to my doleful state), 'O scoffer-wight, how long wilt mock my woe * As though did ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... for her,—only Aunt Jane, in the cramped, dingy little tenement,—Aunt Jane and her six unruly girls and boys. Poly did not permit herself to think much about going away, however, and the last evening found her cheerful still. Then Elsie Meyer began her doleful suggestions. ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... sat together in familiar conversation, while cheerfulness and good humour reigned among us. It was near midnight, when suddenly a hollow, doleful sound was heard, like the groaning of a human being; gradually it grew weaker, and at last died away entirely. A momentary trembling seized us all; we stared at each other, and then around us, unable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... grief and doleful widowhood, In which the bloody exit of her lord Has plunged the queen, still in her mind she bears The ancient faith ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... Deputies, are sufficient to wipe of such ridiculous Imputations; and 'tis a most lamentable Truth, that they have often-times had in their Charge Villains of the deepest Die; Persons of Quality and great Worth, for whom no Entreaties, no Sums how large soever have been able to interfere between the doleful ...
— The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard • Daniel Defoe
... than ordinary in the place, came at night, found it, and carried it off. The next day, returning as usual to the scene of his delight, and perceiving it had been stolen away from him, he tore his hair for grief, and uttered the doleful complaints of his despair to the woods and meadows. At last, a neighbour of his, who knew his temper, overhearing him, and being informed of the occasion of his sorrow, "Cheer up, man!" says he, "thou has lost nothing; there is the hole for thee to go and peep ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... make of their privilege in Zion, telling us of his awful torments in hell, how his flesh (or the substance of his spiritual body) was all to strings and ringlets torn, how he was roasted in flames of brimstone and tar, and, finally, that all these calamities were caused by his doleful corruptions and pollutions while a member, and professedly a brother to us. This, it was supposed by many, was by true revelation the anticipation of the future state of this victim of apostasy and sin. Two or three more girls were soon taken in the same manner, and became uncontrollable. ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... him sounding the depths and cadences of the Living Temple, "bearing on its front this doleful inscription, 'Here God once dwelt,'" was like listening to the recitative of Handel. But Isaiah was his masterpiece; and I remember quite well his startling us all when reading at family worship, "His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God," by a peremptory, explosive ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... reached them I heard a shrill cry, "Remember the Dark Man!" Then I saw the blind beggarman sitting huddled in a ragged great-coat so much too big for him that till he stood up I did not see how tiny he was. He had a doleful peaked face, set in a shock of grey hair. By him sat a little brown dog—the queerest of mongrels—with a tin can ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... charvadars of the party succeed in rescuing the kajavehs before they sink. Nobody is injured, beyond the women getting wet; no damage is done worth mentioning, and as the two heroines of the adventure emerge from their novel craft, their garments dripping with water, their doleful looks are rewarded with unsympathetic merriment from the men. Few have been my wheeling days on Asian roads that have not witnessed something in the shape of an overthrow or runaway; so far, nobody has been seriously injured by them, but I have sometimes wondered whether ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... by the voices of my men, who were standing at the door of my hut with most doleful countenances. They explained that Richarn was missing, and was supposed to have been killed by the natives. My vakeel held a broken ramrod in his hand: this suspicious witness was covered with blood. It appeared that while I was asleep, Richarn and one of my men named ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... and the additional respect that was universally paid her, contributed not a little to increase them. The queen was given over by her physicians: the few Portuguese women that had not been sent back to their own country filled the court with doleful cries; and the good nature of the king was much affected with the situation in which he saw a princess, whom, though he did not love her, yet he greatly esteemed. She loved him tenderly, and thinking that it was the last time she should ever speak ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... are usually enough to send one straight to bed with a headache! They never sound a note of hope from first to last; although if you had no home, but only a house, like me, with no one but a caretaker in it, you'd be very thankful to get them, doleful or not." ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the men meant to kill Cunningham and make a mad effort to overcome the guard and escape. It seemed to me the wildest folly, but they were grown quite desperate and resolute for something—all but the butcher, who sang obscene songs or doleful hymns, and sat dejected in ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... this wrath to the uttermost will be poured out, our blessed Lord exhorts all to 'fear God, who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.' In that doleful pit, the soul, re-united with the body, will suffer under the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... would have run away, only she was afraid of being lost worse than ever, so she stood still and looked round for the terrible monster that could make such extraordinary sounds. The grunts and clattering stopped, and the noise died away in a long doleful bray, but she could not see where it came from. Having peered into the dark shadows, Dot went more into the open, and sat with her back to a fallen tree, keeping ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... a week there things was in a mess, with Robbie balkin', Mother havin' a case of nerves, Father nursin' a grouch, and Nick Talbot mopin' around doleful. Then some girl friend suggested to Robbie that if she did take Nick they could have a moonlight lawn weddin', with the flower gardens all lit up by electric bulbs, which would be too dear for anything. Robbie perked ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... folk who went about pillaging the country of France that the king was sad and doleful at heart. He summoned his council, and said to them, 'What shall we do with this multitude of thieves who go about destroying our people? If I send against them my valiant baronage I lose my noble barons, and then I shall never more have any joy of my life. If ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... little more about the subject in hand than we do, and who is attempting to convey to us not only his life-philosophy, but also his aches and pains, his likes and dislikes, and the limitations of his own experience. When doleful sounds come from the oracle, we take it for granted that something is the matter with the universe, when all that has happened is that one estimable gentleman, on a particular morning, was out of sorts when he ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... the boy did stand, within the dais so fair, The golden shears were in her hand, to clip his curled hair; And ever as she clipped the curls, such doleful words she spake, That tears ran from Gayferos' eyes, for his ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... the advertisements in our newspapers show, are willing to pay small sums to poets who commend their wares in verse. The widow bereft of her life's companion, the mother bending over an empty cradle, find solace in thinking what doleful little scrag of verse shall be graven on the tombstone of the dead. From the earliest times men have sought to squeeze their loves and joys, their sorrows and hatreds, into distichs and quatrains, and to inscribe them somewhere, on ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... the time, in light and dark, the Indians filled the air with dismal chant and doleful incantations to the Great Spirit, and the tum! tum! tum! tum! of tomtoms, a specific feature of ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... has dislocated and twisted his ankle, broken his head by falling on a stone, while his Gorgon shot far away from his buckler. His mighty braggadocio plume rolled on the ground; at this sight he uttered these doleful words, "Radiant star, I gaze on thee for the last time; my eyes close to all light, I die." Having said this, he falls into the water, gets out again, meets some runaways and pursues the robbers with his spear ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... occasion arising above the commonplace events of everyday life, when the ancient Hebrews did not resort to music. Trumpets were used at the royal proclamations and at the dedication of the Temple. There were doleful chants for funeral processions; joyous melodies for bridal processions and banquets; stirring martial strains to incite courage in battle and to celebrate victories, religious songs, and domestic music for ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... limbs of the child assumed the appearance of deformity and distortion, as, with his back humped up, and his master's stick in his hand, he hobbled about the room, his childish face drawn into a doleful pucker, and spitting from right to left, in imitation of an ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... he confided to the cook that a cow had been taken into the stable, that, at all events, the family might not be without milk at this doleful time. Old Barbette wrung her hands in anguish. "Alas! Mr. Wohlfart, what a frightful thing it is!" cried she; "the balls will be flying about ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... row with you, old boy?" said Montagu, playfully shaking Eric by the shoulder; "you're as silent as Zimmerman on Solitude, and as doleful as Harvey on the Tombs. I expect you've been going through a select course of Blair's Grave, Young's Night Thoughts, ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... songs of their own—quite melodious and in good tune with the accompaniment of dingling bells hanging from the camels' necks. There was a musician in our party—Ali Murat's young brother—who carried a flute in his girdle during the day, but played upon the instrument the whole night—some doleful tunes of his own composition, which were not bad. True, when one had listened to the same tune, not only scores but hundreds of times during one night, one rather felt the need of a change, but still ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... that there are crooked lanes, muddy crossings, dull market-places, tiresome houses. Odd misshapen figures, fretful and wearied, plod through the streets or look out at windows; here is a ruin, with doleful creatures moping in the shade; we overturn a stone, and blind uncanny things writhe away from the light. We begin to reflect that it is after all much like other places, and that our fine romantic view of it was due to some accident of light and colour, some transfiguring mood of our own mind; ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Malone, nor Donne, nor Sweeting. He might be forty years old; he was plain-looking, dark-complexioned, and already rather gray-haired. He stooped a little in walking. His countenance, as he came on, wore an abstracted and somewhat doleful air; but in approaching Farren he looked up, and then a hearty expression illuminated ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... had aught further to say. But the woman remained standing where she was, slightly aloof and with her arms folded. Her sleepy eyes were watching the last dying gleam of daylight away in the west. Suddenly, out upon the still air, came a doleful cry. It was long-drawn-out and mournful, but it travelled as mountain cries will travel. It came waving upon the air with a certain rise and fall in it like the rippling of water. It rose up, up, and then lingeringly died out. The men listened, ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... inconsistent appendages, perhaps, as suggestive of morning callers and a Postman, yet a pleasant finish to the outside of the building. There were scores of melancholy little carts, which, when the wheels went round, performed most doleful music. Many small fiddles, drums, and other instruments of torture; no end of cannon, shields, swords, spears, and guns. There were little tumblers in red breeches, incessantly swarming up high obstacles of red-tape, and coming down, head first, on the other side; and ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... Ferrers' confidential factotum. The master and assistant-master of Pastimes were humming merrily on at their masques and triumphs, when, the King expired. Under Queen Mary, revels might not flourish, but the friendship between Ferrers and Baldwin did not cease. They planned a more doleful but more durable form of entertainment, and the Mirror for Magistrates was started. Those who claim for Sackville the main part of this invention, forget that he is not mentioned as a contributor till what was really the third edition, and that, when the first went ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... placed upon the shoulder of the vessel or are attached to the legs and handles or form part of them. The favorite subjects are doleful little figures, human or partly so, fixed upon the vessel in a sitting posture, with legs and arms doubled up, and with expressions which appear to indicate a variety of exaggerated ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... situation waste and wild. A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames No light; but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all, but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed. Such place Eternal Justice has prepared For those rebellious; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... the second son had come home again with his doleful tale, Boots sat and thought and thought about what had happened. After a while, however, he rose up and shook the ashes from his clothes and said that now it was his turn to have a try at winning ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... him at this time with such incessant importunity that they took possession of his mind, when he first waked, for many hours together.' Writing to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield on Oct. 27, 1781, he says:—'All here is gloomy; a faint struggle with the tediousness of time, a doleful confession of present misery, and the approach seen and felt of what is most dreaded and most shunned. But such is the lot of man.' Piozzi Letters, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... if he had not had the consolation in those doleful hours of knowing that I had, at any rate, got my Dutchman finished, and that a prospect of success was thus opened to the little circle of friends, his misery would have been hard indeed to bear. Despite my own great trouble, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... friend Signor Stancampiano, who is supposed to have died of shock, for when I last saw him he was hopelessly ill. As usual, a considerable number of well-known residents of the city were arrested and charged with being the prime movers in these doleful events. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... her during these days; he only looked, and his doleful gestures, his lugubrious grimaces, were comic. He stood to lose nothing, except possible profits for Helen. She was paying him full rental, but he claimed that his house was being ruined. "It will get the reputation of doing nothing but failures," he said to her once, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... to obey, but the awesome tune had carried its doleful message. The mournful notes had reached the ears of the wounded lad in the canoe. Its message was plain to him. Walter was a captive, or in great danger. And now began a contest between will-power and pain and weakness from which many ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... half-dozen pariah dogs that we kept for wild pig, and led them to the spot where the tiger had last lain. In an instant the entire pack sent up a doleful howl and ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... shorten up that doleful countenance. The mischief that has been done must be undone. Aunt Betty must come home to a loving, forgiving child; old Ephraim must be reinstated in his own and everybody's respect; and to do this—that money must be found! Now, for ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... side. Mary gave up all hope as soon as she saw it. There was not room even for one pansy. The windows looked out on chimneys and roofs and other backyards, with lines of wet clothes flapping in the sun. Not a tree was to be seen. Any one might be excused for thinking it doleful; and Mary, having made up her mind beforehand to dislike it, found it easy to ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... quaintness wrong. Her great creel forehead-slung, she wanders nigh, Easing the heavy strap with gnarled, brown fingers, The spirit of traffic watchful in her eye, Ever and anon imploring you to buy, As looking down the street she onward lingers, Reproachful, with a strange and doleful cry. ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... see her, by the dim night-light burning in a cornet to enable the surgeon or the nurse to find their way to her. She was alone in her favorite little wicker-work chair, with the doleful white bandage over her eyes—to all ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... getting there, he had not the courage to take. He returned to the palace and threw himself on his bed. Then, too agitated to lie, he sprang up and called for some friendly hand to end his wretched life. No one consented, and in his wild despair he called out, in doleful accents, "My friends desert me, and I cannot ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... I want them for my fishpond stream rather than for the bee-house one. The fishpond stream is very doleful, and wants to dance with daffodils if they would come and teach it. How happy we are in our native streams. A thunder-storm swelled the Tiber yesterday, and it rolled over its mill weirs in heaps, literally, of tossed water, the size of haycocks, but black brown like coffee ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... a few days with Patty before her departure. She was frankly envious of Patty's good fortune, but more than that, she was so desperately doleful at the thought of Patty's going away that she was anything but ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... was especially born to set it right. The choice varieties of men know that truth as it is and truth as it appears to them are very different matters. But, thank Heaven, the feminine nature is bound by no such doleful barrier! The man who thinks is limited; the woman who feels may expand indefinitely. Miss Hurribattle's mission was to attract the world's capital of unemployed sentiment, and to set it to work in the mills of society. Let it be said of this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... the chief who had come forward to meet me. I had heard their voices very loud at a distance, and when I came near, I perceived a good number of very old men, who were chanting some unintelligible words in the most doleful cadence I ever heard, with an air of serious solemnity, which inclined me to think that it was a religious ceremony: They were all painted and clothed nearly in the same manner; the circles round the two eyes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... The raven has croaked in a high-pitched, abnormal key; the jackdaw and canary have become silent and dejected, from time to time shivering; the magpie even has feigned death; the parrot has shrieked incessantly. Owls, too, are sure predictors of death, and may be heard hooting in the most doleful manner outside the house of anyone ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... the doleful dumps for very long, Evelyn," said Ruth. "I've never seen you anything but ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... recall him to his better self. Indeed for the moment I was too overwhelmed by fatigue even to remonstrate about his wretched lounge-suit, and I early fell asleep on one of the beds while he was still engaged in washing the metal dishes upon which we had eaten, singing the while the doleful ballad of "Rosalie, the ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... that same wicked wight Her dwelling had— Dark, doleful, dreary, like a greedy grave That still for carrion carcases doth crave, On top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly owle, Shrieking his baleful note, which ever drave Far from that haunt all other cheerful fowl, And all about it wandering ghosts did wail ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... allowed Alvetham for preparation. That very night the fearful sentence was carried out. The stone was removed, and a new pallet placed in the cell. At midnight the prisoner was brought to the dormitory, the brethren chanting a doleful hymn. There he stood amidst them, his tall form towering above the rest, and his features pale as death. He protested his innocence, but he exhibited no fear, even when he saw the terrible preparations. When all was ready he was led to the breach. At that awful moment, his eye met ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... The strangest of the new communities, the Flagellants, made its appearance in England immediately after the pestilence. In the autumn of 1349, some six score men crossed over from Holland and marched in procession through the open spaces of London, chanting doleful litanies in their own tongue. They wore nothing save a linen cloth that covered the lower part of their body, and on their heads hats marked with a red cross behind and before. Each of them bore in his right hand ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Danton; "take hold of my arm; no one shall molest you. We will look for your brother, and try to recover your things;" and on we went together: I, weeping, I may truly say, for my life, stopped at every step, while he related my doleful story to all whose curiosity was excited ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... dropped them like so much lead on his knees, casting up his eyes and giving a doleful shake of his head for ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... about with whitened faces, indescribably contorted, and again bellowing forth this order or that curse with savage energy and wildest gesture. The puny speculators had long since uttered their doleful squeak and plunged down into the limbo of ruin, completely engulfed; only the big speculators, or their commission men, remained in the arena, and many of these like trapped rats scurried about ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... fifteen years, sold it advantageously to another townsman. He would never have parted from the inn if it had not been for the following, apparently insignificant, circumstance: for two mornings in succession his dog, sitting before the windows, had kept up a prolonged and doleful howl. He went out into the road the second time, looked attentively at the howling dog, shook his head, went up to town and the same day agreed on the price with a man who had been for a long time anxious to purchase it. A week later he had moved to a distance—out ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... General Kinkel, in a doleful voice, "you see that further resistance is useless. We ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... on a sudden, from the thorny brake, E'en as Sir Pertinax thus doleful spake, Leapt lusty loons and ragged rascals four, Rusty their mail, yet ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... said to Pelias, "Why do you look so sad, my uncle? And what did you mean just now, when you said that this was a doleful kingdom, and its ruler a ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... close at her heels, the very presentment of canine misery, and uttering at every few steps that doleful whine which was so unusual to him. But, arrived at the cabin, he left her and with one bound had reached the Indian's side, where he still sat beside his window, his head against its casing and his blanket—Jessica's gift—closely ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... come into the barn and see our wool," said Shenac Bhan at last, when the shower was over. "And, Shenac—dark Shenac, doleful Shenac—you are to stay and keep the lads in ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... all right. It isn't Nap I mind." Again that doleful droop of the lips became apparent, together with a little quiver of the voice undeniably piteous. "It—it's Bertie," whispered Dot. "I—I—it's very ridiculous, isn't it? I'm a wee bit afraid of Bertie, ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... something. It will be happy if he can so far inoculate his fellow-countrymen that they may be trusted with their own future. And in the meantime, here is an antidote to 'French Conscripts' and much other doleful versification. ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Christians. We hold the faith that you, too, count dear. How foully then should Christianity be wronged, if you destroy the whole realm. Alas, has not mischief enough been wrought already!" Arthur was tender of heart and marvellously pitiful. He took compassion on this doleful company of ladies, and by reason of those holy bodies of the saints and those fair prelates, he granted life and member to his captives, and ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... companions, who became extremely sick"—his remarks on the incidents of the voyage, and the novel phenomena which presented themselves to his view, are never interrupted by any of those pathetic lamentations on the instability of the human stomach, which form so important and doleful an episode in the relations of most landsmen, of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... doleful tones; "that you get right round the world and come back to where you started, if you ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... for Kenneth to enlarge on the merits of the Latimers, Jake grew restless. He shifted his weight from one cowhide booted leg to the other, and finally he heaved a doleful sigh. Then ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... tolerably fine, she goes to the churchyard. It's the only walk I've ever seen her take since her father's death. She goes past my window regular every night, just about when I'm shutting up, and from my door I can see her open the gate and go into the churchyard. It's a doleful walk to take alone at that time of the evening, to be sure, though some folks think it's the ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... ii. chap. 29.—Puigblanch, Inquisition Unmasked, vol. i. chap. 4.—Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, ubi supra.—I shall spare the reader the description of the various modes of torture, the rack, fire, and pulley, practised by the inquisitors, which have been so often detailed in the doleful narratives of such as have had the fortune to escape with life from the fangs of the tribunal. If we are to believe Llorente, these barbarities have not been decreed for a long time. Yet some recent statements are at variance with this assertion. See, among others, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... affection. The absurdity of the proceeding was manifest, but it needed yet another point of emphasis. There was a grand wedding in Venice in 1595, at which the music consisted of madrigals, all in slow time and minor key. The contradiction between the doleful music and the festive occasion was too plain to be ignored, and led, presently, to the invention of a totally different style of song of which later there is ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... restlessly, in the gloomy desert of her past. I thought of that gay bird—like youth of hers of which the old man with the scythe had told me and wondered. As I was thinking of this there came a cry from the aged squire so loud and doleful that it startled me and I turned and looked ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... on your kind offices, Maria Nikolaevna and Piotr Vassilitch,' she said in a doleful sing-song to my mother and father. 'I've no help for it! There were days, but they are over. Here I am, an excellency, and a poor honour it is with ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... was rocking it to and fro; and, with every lurch the buoy made, this bell gave out a doleful knell as if ringing away the passing soul of some dead sailor gone ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... grove the house that sheltered the melancholy singer must be hidden, so completely shrouded that not even a gleam of light escaped to lead him to the door. Mackenzie stood listening. There was no other sound rising from that sequestered homestead than the woman's song, and this was as doleful as any sound that ever issued ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... wind being fair, "they went aboard and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to see what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound among them." We know, we know—God is our refuge—but sore is the parting. We are willing—but our hearts are wrung. There is no thought of ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... aside your doleful looks. If you show yourself to others in your present state, people will take you for ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... known fact that Nurse Periwinkle objected to blue devils, and entertained a belief that he who laughed most was surest of recovery. At the beginning of my reign, dumps and dismals prevailed; the nurses looked anxious and tired, the men gloomy or sad; and a general "Hark-from-the-tombs-a-doleful-sound" style of conversation seemed to be the fashion: a state of things which caused one coming from a merry, social New England town, to feel as if she had got into an exhausted receiver; and the instinct of self-preservation, to say nothing of a philanthropic ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... in numbers surpassing imagination. There Cocytus creeps to the seat of doom, his waves emitting doleful wails. Styx, nine times enfolding the whole abode, drags his black and sluggish length around. Charon, the slovenly old ferryman, plies his noiseless boat to and fro laden with shadowy passengers. Far ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... The first doleful fact that impressed them was that it was still raining. A peep through the single front window with which their room was provided showed the dull leaden sky, with its infinite reservoir, from which the drops were descending in ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... with his harsh, doleful laugh. "I have never been gayer than I am this morning; it's your liver, my lord, that is out of order and makes you ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... strong arm, press'd Round a maiden's waist On the doleful morrow is seen, And her oozy hair Laves his forehead bare With the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... have learned by a doleful experience that this fly, commonly called "the weavil," is quite at home on Loelia purpurata; in fact, it ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... me is, what doleful bodings can come into a brave man's head on a chill morning before he has broken his fast. A tankard of hot ale will chase away omens, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forgotten, and their sorrow removed." The provost and sheriffs feasted them sumptuously, and they were all well-housed and clad. After the dangers they had undergone, these attentions were doubly grateful to them. But for long years the memory of this doleful march lived in the recollection of the English on both sides the Irish sea, and but once more for above a century did a hostile army venture into the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... 'bout old time songs? Sure did have purty music them days. It's so long, honey, I jest can't 'member the names, 'excusing one. It was "Hark, from the Tombs a Doleful Sound." It was a burying song; wagons a-walking slow like; all that stuff. It was the most onliest song they knowed. They was other music, though. Could they play the fiddle in them days, unh, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Annapolis, in hospital and camp at Annapolis, or after they reached home, none but the Recording Angel can tell. All that I know is we left a trail of dead behind us, wherever we moved, so long as I was with the doleful caravan. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... weeps Troy's painted woes: For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell, Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; Then little strength rings out the doleful knell: So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow; She lends them words, and ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... grown a very old woman in two hours. I found them winding of Marcello's corse; And there is such a solemn melody, 'Tween doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies; Such as old granddames, watching by the dead, Were wont t' outwear the nights with that, believe me, I had no eyes to guide me forth the room, They were so ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... actually to believe that here was the likeness which they spoke of. By the roadside there chanced to be an old beggar-woman and two little beggar-children, stragglers from some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, held out their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteously beseeching charity. A yellow claw—the very same that had clawed together so much wealth—poked itself out of the coach-window, and dropt some copper coins upon the ground; so that, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... beetle, dull as ditchwater^; depressing &c v.. melancholy as a gib cat; oppressed with melancholy, a prey to melancholy; downcast, downhearted; down in the mouth, down in one's luck; heavy-hearted; in the dumps, down in the dumps, in the suds, in the sulks, in the doldrums; in doleful dumps, in bad humor; sullen; mumpish^, dumpish, mopish^, moping; moody, glum; sulky &c (discontented) 832; out of sorts, out of humor, out of heart, out of spirits; ill at ease, low spirited, in low spirits, a cup too low; weary &c 841; discouraged, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... none 770 That we shall longer check the unconquer'd force Of hero-slaughtering Hector, but expect [12]To see him soon amid the fleet of Greece. Oh for some Grecian now to carry swift The tidings to Achilles' ear, untaught, 775 As I conjecture, yet the doleful news Of his Patroclus slain! but no such Greek May I discern, such universal gloom Both men and steeds envelops all around. Father of heaven and earth! deliver thou 780 Achaia's host from darkness; clear the skies; Give day; and (since thy sovereign will is such) Destruction ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... What a doleful night! How anxious, how dismal, how long! There was an inhospitable smell in the room, of cold soot and hot dust; and, as I looked up into the corners of the tester over my head, I thought what a number of blue-bottle flies from the butchers', and earwigs ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... in a very grievous and doleful tone, Newman reached the door in one long limp, and came ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... between Naples and Messina, suddenly lapsed into quiescence. We all know the subsequent story of the outbreak; of the thousands of fugitives flying into Naples or other places of refuge; of the utter destruction of houses and cultivated lands;—the doleful scenes of a Vesuvian eruption have been enacted and described time after time in the history of the Mountain, and there is every reason to suppose they will be repeated at intervals for centuries to come. The ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... with earnestness. The leaders of the party debated whether he might not with advantage be taken out of their opponents' hands. Some thought that a judicious use of him might win popularity; but others objected that it would be perilous for them to mix themselves up with so doleful an interest. In the result the Fogies tipped young Ginx, but did not commit themselves for or against him. Thus a long time elapsed, and our hero had grown old enough to be a page. He had received food, clothing, and goodwill, but ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... Philip's death. The King, shot down like a wearied bull-moose in the deep swamp, "fell upon his face in the mud and water, with his gun under him." They "drew him through the mud to the upland; and a doleful, great, naked dirty beast he looked like." The head brought only thirty shillings at Plymouth: "scanty reward and poor encouragement," thought Captain Church. William Hubbard, the minister of Ipswich, wrote ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... now. A short period of slack water, and the ebb bears us seaward, past the Cowal shore, glinting in the wintry sunlight, the blue smoke in Dunoon valley curling upward to Kilbride Hill, past Skelmorlie Buoy (tolling a doleful benediction), past Rothesay Bay, with the misty Kyles beyond. The Garroch Head, with a cluster of Clyde Trust Hoppers, glides abaft the beam, and the blue Cock o' Arran shows up across the opening water. All is haste and bustle. ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... ludicrous find in him a joyous patron. Where others count and bewail their woes, he sees only sunshine. Gloom and sorrow melt away at his approach, while his features are ever radiant with mirth and joy. His head is up and erect with every sense attuned to the bright, and dead to the doleful. He thanks God that the lot apportioned him is fashioned by infallible wisdom, while he munches with contentment the humble crust that honest toil has brought him. Malevolence towards his fellow men is at the most a passing emotion. Wealth and the happiness ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... was dreadfully worried when she found that Davy had been in my room, but he didn't take the measles, and that was the only time I saw him while I was sick. I was alone all the time. You can't imagine how doleful it was to stay in that hot dark ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... seldom asked to sing a second time. However, you are welcome to the merriest I have." And preparing himself, like certain other accomplished vocalists, with a few preliminary hems and haws, he struck forth the following doleful ditty: ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... language of a sheep. Keeping this in mind, let it be remembered that the shepherds wandered from place to place to find pasture. In doing so, they were sometimes obliged to pass through dark, lonely valleys. Wild beasts, and creatures less formidable, but of hateful sight, and with doleful voices, made it difficult for the flocks to be led through such passages. There was frequently no other way from one pasturage to another but through these places of death-shade, or valleys of ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... paces distant violently on the ground, and blackening and scorching his face and hair in a terrible manner. The other Indians instantly prostrated themselves on their faces, and uttered the most doleful lamentations. Thus they remained a few minutes, evidently impressed with the belief that the Great Spirit had interfered to prevent the destruction of the prisoners. Hastily gathering up their arms, they fled precipitately in the direction of their distant home, and their yells ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... sink her at my leisure. My ship will tack in to Charles Town bar. Then let the messengers go in the long-boat to find the store of medicines. Harkee, shipmaster,—two days, no longer, for their return! Failing this, the hostages feed the fishes. Such sport 'ud liven the hearts of my doleful seamen." ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... comfortably seated in their accustomed places, "but sorry to say it's bound to be only a 'pology for real grub—dry fare and never even a drop o' water to wash it down with." And he emitted a disgusted grunt, as if to display a proper amount of displeasure over the doleful fact. ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... serious in her thankfulness, and in her resolutions; and yet there was no preventing a laugh, sometimes in the very midst of them. She must laugh at such a close! Such an end of the doleful disappointment of five weeks back! ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... different character and age openly expressed their discontent. The Abbe de Rance allowed them to go and get pleasure in other monasteries, and contrived to collect around him youths whom it was easy to delude, and a few elderly misanthropes; with these he formed his doleful wailing flock. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... called "Jackasses" I never could discover; but the creatures certainly do utter by fits and starts a sound which may fairly be described as laughter. These paroxysms arise from no cause that one can perceive; one bird begins, and all the others join in, and a more doleful and depressing chorus I never heard: early in the morning seemed the favourite time for this discordant mirth. Their owner also possessed a cockatoo with a great musical reputation, but I never heard it get beyond the first bar of "Come ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... In dongas vext as jazels flare From splinter'd tombs of Kings in dust, A straggling mist that cleft Hell's dome, Peers at the gloom and strobic sight Of charnel shard as vypers blare Wrathfully at each Monarch's bust. And doleful dirges rake the gloom, A whisper'd sin sobs at the wrecks; Graven imps clasp papyrus old And rant each Body's deeds of shame. Come from a dank and sunken womb All stranded ghouls on keels and decks Where Cyclops fought as Vellum told ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... doleful. I murmured condolence, though in truth I cared, just then, not a straw about ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... Chebacco boat before they reached words of two syllables in Webster's blue-backed spelling-book; the mysteries of trawls and handlines, of baits and hooks were unraveled to them while still in the nursery, and the songs that lulled them to sleep were often doleful ditties of castaways on George's Bank. Often they were shipped as early as their tenth year, going as a rule in schooners owned or commanded by relatives. It was no easy life that the youngster entered upon when first he attained the dignity of being a "cut-tail," but such ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot |
