"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... death's nearing knell Tolled in a heart that dreamed no more. Our lips shook, sad as lips in hell; But, fearful of the rending shore, To fill all time with sad farewell We would have sailed ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... record. In 1872, his church voted a vacation of six weeks. True to his Indian nature, he planned a deer hunt. He turned his footsteps to the wilds of the Running Water (Niobrara River), where his heart grew young and his rifle cracked the death-knell of the deer and antelope. One evening, in the track of the hostile Sioux and Pawnees, he found himself near a camp of the savage Sicaugu. He was weak and alone. ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... a renown which made it the resort of pilgrims from every part of Europe, and enabled it to maintain a reputation extending far beyond English shores. To this fair creation of the great Middle-Age the Dissolution was, as historians tell us, the death-knell. With the destruction of the enormous abbey the whole place collapsed in a general ruin: the Martyr's bones met with the fate of the sacred pile that held them, and not a stone is now left ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... race renowned of old, Whose war-cry oft has waked the battle-swell, Since first distinguished in the onset bold, Wild sounding when the Roman rampart fell! By Wallace' side it rung the Southron's knell, Alderne, Kilsythe, and Tibber owned its fame, Tummell's rude pass can of its terrors tell, But ne'er from prouder field arose the name Than when wild Ronda learned the ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... committed, perpetrated, and accomplished in secret. This strange traditional notion will die hard, but some time it will have to die, and at the moment of its death excellent and sincere persons will be convinced that the knell of the British Empire has sounded. The knell of the British Empire has frequently sounded. It sounded when capital punishment was abolished for sheep-stealing, when the great reform bill was passed, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... coolness and silence and between the crisp lights and shadows of the moonlit woods, until suddenly the bell rings out the hour from far-away Chailly, and he starts to find himself alone. No surf-bell on forlorn and perilous shores, no passing knell over the busy market-place, can speak with a more heavy and disconsolate tongue to human ears. Each stroke calls up a host of ghostly reverberations in his mind. And as he stands rooted, it has grown once more so utterly silent that it seems to him he might hear the church bells ring ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a door is a little thing and yet it may have infinite meaning. It may fix a destiny for weal or for woe. When God shut the door of the ark the sound of its closing was the knell of exclusion to those who were without, but it was the token of security to the little company of trusting ones who were within. When the door was shut upon the bridegroom and his friends who had gone into the festal hall, thus sheltering them from ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... the room and closed the door as he passed out. Then it was that Dorothy's laugh sounded like the chilling tones of a knell. It was the laugh of one almost distraught. She came to Madge and me laughing, but the laugh quickly changed to convulsive sobs. The strain of the brief moment during which her father had been in Lady Crawford's room had been too great for even her strong nerves to bear. ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... The fatal knell, then, is knolled, and down among the dead men sink the poor " Witlings "-for ever, and for ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... parent, to consumption and early death! Do you not see, every Sabbath, at church, the young man or woman, upon whose fair and delicate structure the peculiar impress of the EARLY DOOMED is stamped? and as a slight but hollow cough comes upon your ear, does it not recall the death-knell which rang in the same sad note before to the father or mother? Who of you has not followed some young friend to his long resting-place, and found that the grass had not grown rank upon the grave of his brother? that the ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... the sea front of Sebastopol by the allied fleets on 17 October, 1854, was the event that brought home to the minds of even the most conservative the necessity of a great change in warship construction. It rang the knell of the old wooden walls, and led to the introduction ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... their departure; but in this hasty and kindly designed visit there was hidden a fund of cruelty which Lizabetha Prokofievna never dreamed of. In the words "as usual," and again in her added, "mine, at all events," there seemed an ominous knell of some evil ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a stir there is to-day! They are laying him away Where he fell. There the flag goes draped before him; Now they pile the grave sod o'er him With a knell. And he answers to his name In the higher ranks ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... seen the day of barge and raft reach its zenith, had heard the first steam packet's shrieking whistle which sounded the death-knell of the ancient order, though the shifting of the trade was a slow matter and the glory of the old did not pass over to the new at once, but lingered still in mighty fleets of rafts and keel-boats and in the Homeric carousals of some ten thousand of the half-horse, ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... the knell of parting day, The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homewards plods his weary way, And leaves the world ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... Aulis. In verse, in music, in pantomime, the scene lives again—the struggle in the father's heart, the insistence of his brother chiefs, the piteous glance of the girl, and at last the unutterable end; while above and through it all rings like a knell of fate the refrain that is the motive of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... very confidential with Charles; telling him about the grievous mourning and lamentation at Redclyffe, when the bells rung a knell instead of greeting the young master and his bride, and how there was scarcely one in the parish that did not feel as if they had lost a son or a brother. He also told more and more of Sir Guy's excellence, and talked ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fly, his rig they spied [8] And ruffles soon they popped on. [9] When evening came, he sought not home, While she, poor stupid woman, Got lushed that night, [10] Oh, saw his sprite, Then heard the knell That bids farewell! Then heard the knell Of St. Pulchre's bell! [11] Now he dangles on ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... that Shakespeare was a man; that he had moods, that he made mistakes, and, above all, that he knew his art was an art and not an attribute of deity. That is what is the matter with the Germans; they cannot "ring fancy's knell"; their knells have no gaiety. The phrase of Hamlet about "holding the mirror up to nature" is always quoted by such earnest critics as meaning that art is nothing if not realistic. But it really means (or ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... exhaled from the growing perfection of the Church, as fragrance from an opening flower. It is, therefore, peculiarly holy. It is a monitor of especial grace. "It marshals us the way that we are going," like the visionary dagger of Macbeth; but the knell that sounds beneath ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... gold, Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling,—no Method's more sure at moments to take hold[fa] Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow More tender, as we every day behold, Than that all-softening, overpowering knell, The Tocsin of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong. Hark! now I hear them— ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... design; Else men who saw the world had gone astray Would only wish it better—and lie down, In vain regret to perish.— How his head Roll'd on the platform with deep, hollow sound! Methinks I hear it now, and through my brain It vibrates like the storm's accusing knell, Making the guilty quake. I am not guilty! It was the nation's voice, the headsman's axe. Why drums it then within my throbbing ear?— I ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... "That is my grave! Happy, blessed Ivan, thou diedst ere being coffined; but I shall be coffined while yet alive! I stand here by thy tomb, mine Ivan. They have bedded thy noble form in the cold waves of the Dnieper, whose rushing and roaring was thy funeral knell, mine Ivan! I shall dwell by thy grave, and in the deathlike stillness of my cell shall hear the tones of the solemn hymn with which the impetuous stream will rock thee to thine eternal rest! Receive, then, ye sacred waves of the Dnieper, receive thou, mine Ivan, in thy cold ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... already started for the lower deck, when his steps were arrested by a second shout from the pilot-house, and another sound that smote on his ear like a death-knell. It was the hoarse note of a deep-toned whistle apparently at his side. There was a jangling of bells, a wild yelling, the roar of escaping steam, and then the dim form of a great up-river packet loomed above the little ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... love you well, For your silver chime, and the truths you tell— Your every stroke is but the knell Of Hope, or Sorrow buried deep; Say on—but only let me hear The sound most sweet to my listening ear, The child and the mother breathing clear Within ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... said, "upon this city, Empress of the North, her palaces, her castles, her stately halls, her holy towers, and think what war's mischance may bring. These silvery bells may toll the knell of our gallant King. We must not dream that conquest is sure or easily bought. God is ruler of the battlefield, but when yon host begins the combat, wives, mothers, and maids may weep, and priests prepare the death service, for when such a power is led out by such ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... St. Clair was buried there, With candle, with book, and with knell; But the sea caves rung, and the wild winds sung, The dirge of ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... knob knave knife knock knowledge knucks knead knight knoll knuckle knarl knee knit know knell knout ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... bearing, Through sectarian rubbish tearing; The bell and whistle and the steaming, Startle thousands from their dreaming. Look out for the cars while the bell rings! Ere the sound your funeral knell rings. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... to Mr. Miller was a death-knell to Elitha's hopes and plans in our behalf. Her little daughter had been dead more than a year. Sister Leanna had recently married and gone to a home of her own, and the previous week the place made vacant by the marriage had been given ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... answer is from NELL. To be thus "alone in the crowd" is a distinction—a painful one, no doubt, but still a distinction. I am sorry for you, my dear young lady, and I seem to hear your tearful exclamation, when you read these lines, "Ah! This is the knell of all my hopes!" Why, oh why, did you assume that the 4th and 5th bags weighed 4 lbs. each? And why did you not test your answers? However, please try again: and please don't change your nom-de-plume: let us have NELL in the First Class ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... in a dazed fashion. Had I not heard that her cousin would marry her into one of the royal families of Europe? This, then, was the knell to all my hopes! This was the reason she answered me so coldly: there was something better in store for her than to be the wife of a ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... least afraid, and only thought, even when those doleful words seemed to ring like a knell through the roar of the waves, "Tom will be saved if I reach the shore, and if I don't, Pirate is sure to land and make his way to a house at once. That will tell as well as ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall henceforth repair And dwell a ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... curfew tolls the knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea; The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... than when it had begun. He was still a boy then in heart and years; now he was well on in manhood. Yosemite, Glacier Point, Gethsemane, Calvary, Jane Reed's grave, were in that year. He longed to hear its death-knell. Yet that year—how much it had meant to his soul! The sanctifying influence of sorrow had softened and purified his life. The abiding Christ was with him; he lived, and yet not he—it ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... in character as in birth, with a long line of humbler disciples, yielded up their lives at the stake. But from the burning pile of Wishart there came one whom the flames were not to silence, one who under God was to strike the death-knell of popery ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... the good, viii. 14. Better be dead than live in such a world, iv. 2; nay, better never have been born at all, vi. 3. For all is vanity: that is the beginning of the matter, i. 2, it is no less the end, xii. 8. Over every effort and aspiration is wrung this fearful knell. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... no sound after the echoes of the shot had died away, a spluttering funeral knell. Other natives, laying their spears aside, sprang from behind trees and rocks to the help of their fallen chief. Nobody would harm them; the magic had ceased. They raised him with the greatest solicitude, and bore him ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... heard her uncle reply, in his sternest tone, that she had irreparably forfeited her claims to his regard and favor, I did not need her short and bitter cry of shame and disappointment, or that low moan for some one to help her, for me to sound his death-knell in my heart. Creeping back to my own room, I waited till I heard her reascend, then I stole forth. Calm as I had ever been in my life, I went down the stairs just as I had seen myself do in my dream, and knocking lightly at the library door, went ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... of notoriety that the Tory party, whose death-knell was soon to be tolled, constantly poured on the great Irish Tribune the most scurrilous abuse. One of the mock titles with which they honored him was that of "King of the Beggars." Such pitiful ribaldry awakened ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... unhappy. Her nature craved sunshine and peace, and the conduct of her lover she could not possibly understand. In all her imaginings how far was she always from the truth! She did not dream that he believed his death-knell had been rung, and that he attributed her silence to her righteous and inexorable indignation over the story she had heard from the lips of Liz Hepburn. He never for one moment doubted that she had told, and between conscience and disappointed love he had ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... of distant music Floats on the gentle breeze, Its captivating sweetness Bends e'en the proudest knees; Now soft as angel whispers, Then, loud as trumpet's blast It sounds the knell of sorrows And pains ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... southern west its blast released, And drown'd in floods the sky— Ah woe! was gone the star that shone, Nor left a visage dry For her, who won as win could none The people's love so well. O, welaway! the dirging lay That rung from Moy its knell; Alas, the hue, where orbs of blue, With roses wont to dwell! How can we think, nor swooning sink, To earth ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... hour, and silence now Is brooding, like a gentle spirit o'er The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds The bell's deep tones are swelling; 'tis the knell Of the departed year. No funeral train Is sweeping past; yet, on the stream and wood, With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred, As by a mourner's sigh; and, on yon cloud, ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various
... this? Was he deluding himself? Did his over-excited imagination make him hear a death knell pealing for his honour and his hopes, which must be borne to their grave? Yet no! All the citizens and peasants, men and women, great and small, who thronged the salt market, which he had just entered, raised their heads to listen with him; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... changes. Three times three strokes signified that the departed one was a man; three times two, a woman; twice three, a boy; twice two, a girl. The regular continuity of the tolling suggested that it was the resumption rather than the beginning of a knell—the opening portion of which Stephen had not been near ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... behind him, were all silent, and the words of the Public Prosecutor fell like a knell. The condemned man, however, had not stirred, had not even seemed to understand: his attitude was that of a man in a state of somnambulism. The Public Prosecutor was surprised by this strange impassivity and ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... re-echoed on every side; but they were still attempting to escape in different directions. Scarcely two of them were agreed as to the place whence the sound proceeded. Yet it came on, at stated intervals, a long, deep, melancholy knell, almost terrific in their present condition. Another council was attended with the same results—opinions being as varied as ever. Still that warning toll had some connection with their fellow-men, some link, which, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Raleigh! thou wilt live till Time Shall ring his last oblivious chime, The fruitful theme of story; And man in ages hence shall tell, How greatness, virtue, wisdom fell, When England sounded out thy knell, And ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... said state, twenty-one years old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, ... except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion or for felony at common law." This was the death knell to the idea that the leaders of the Confederacy and their white supporters might be permitted to share in the establishment of the new order. Power was thus arbitrarily thrust into the hands of the newly emancipated male negroes ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... sir, They ring a strange sad knell, a preparation To some near funeral of state: nay, weep not, Mine own sweet uncle; you will ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... A knell from the church bell broke harshly on these youthful thoughts. Another! Again! It was tolling for the funeral service. A group of humble mourners entered the gate: wearing white favours; for the corpse was young. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... strive merry story to tell, Full of japeful and humorsome graces, 'T is as though I were tolling a funeral bell As if dismally, dolefully tolling a knell, So solemn ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... to the King and implores him to give him a ship that he may go back to his own country and family. These words fall like a knell upon the heart of Nausikaa; she is led out fainting by ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... affected for any specification of what these were. The first thing they heard in early morning was that, in the course of the night, he had breathed his last; and all day the bells of all the churches round were answering one another with the slow, swinging, melancholy notes of the knell. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that hold the stormy rain, They moved gently o'er the dewy meads To where Saint Alban's holy shrines remain. There did they find that both their knights were slain. Distraught they wander'd to swoln Redbourne's side, Yell'd there their deadly knell, sank in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... knell in David's heart. If he had hoped that Father Roland would, at the very last, tell him something more about Tavish, that hope was now gone. The Missioner spoke in a voice that was almost gentle, and he came to David ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... withered leaves of the trees in the drive had fallen and the bare branches were beating together like bundles of rods. The sea was louder than ever, and the bell on St. Mary's Rock, a mile away from the shore, was tolling like a knell under the surging of the waves. Sometimes the clashing of the rain against the window-panes was like the wash of billows over the port-holes of a ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... old church bell Tolls forth its death knell, Mournfully to tell The hour has come at last, In heavy sadness past, To bury the dead, And in silence bid. Then the mourners go, All mournfully slow, Every heart beating low The march of the dead. All with soft and gentle tread Unto the sepulchre sped, And humbly ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... quietus, give a coupe de grace. behead, bowstring, electrocute, gas &c. (execute) 972. hunt, shoot &c. n. cut off, nip in the bud, launch into eternity, send to one's last account, sign one's death warrant, strike the death knell of. give no quarter, pour out blood like water; decimate; run amuck; wade knee deep in blood, imbrue one's hands in blood. die a violent death, welter in one's blood; dash out one's brains, blow out one's brains; commit suicide; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... step wavered across the room. Her soul was in her ear. She could hear and feel the step totter, and it shook her as it went. All sounds were trebled to her. Then it struck on the stone step of the staircase, not like a step, but a knell; another step, another and another; down to the very bottom. Each slow step made her head ring ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... dead, sounded through all Scotland like a knell announcing a great national bereavement. Men woke up to feel the greatness of the gift which in him had been vouchsafed to their generation, and which had met, on the whole, with so poor a reception. Self-reproach mingled with the ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... check itself by enlarging the supply, it shall, before the point of danger is reached, infallibly check the combustion, let off the steam, and blow a whistle or ring a bell, which the proprietor may, if he pleases, regard as the official death-knell of the careless engineer. Human vigilance must not be superseded, but fortified,—as in the case of the watchman watched by the tell-tale clock. The steam-creature must be so constituted as to refuse to work itself down to the zone ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the efforts of the garrison to extinguish the fire were unavailing, and the building was soon in a blaze. As the flames rapidly rolled up the wall and over the roof, the savages raised shouts of exultation, which fell as a death-knell upon the hearts of those who had now no alternative but to be consumed in the flames or to surrender themselves to the merciless foe. The bullets were still rattling against the house, and fifteen hundred warriors were greedily watching to riddle with balls any ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... before he could offer any effectual resistance. When this was accomplished, a dead and stern silence took place. The fanatics ranged themselves around a large oaken table, placing Morton amongst them bound and helpless, in such a manner as to be opposite to the clock which was to strike his knell. Food was placed before them, of which they offered their intended victim a share; but, it will readily be believed, he had little appetite. When this was removed, the party resumed their devotions. Macbriar, whose fierce zeal did not perhaps exclude some feelings of doubt and compunction, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... he believed in the ghost all night, And believed in the day as well; And he vowed, with a sorrowing tearful might, All she asked, whate'er befel, If she came to his room, in her garment white, Once more at the midnight knell. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... despair. Escape was hopeless, out of the question. I thought of Maud, asleep there in the hut we had reared; I remembered her "Good-night, Humphrey"; "my woman, my mate," went ringing through my brain, but now, alas, it was a knell that sounded. Then everything went black before ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... in a neighboring steeple was striking the ninth hour, and the old man paused in his muttering and sat counting the strokes as the iron tongue pealed them forth; counting them in his fear as if each stroke was a knell, and so indeed to him it was, and many of the chimes we listen carelessly to, would be knells to us, if we knew what would happen twixt ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... the old trapper was glad to see the last of habitations, and of men, and of the railroad. Slingerland hated that great, shining steel band of progress connecting East and West. Every ringing sledge-hammer blow had sung out the death-knell of the trapper's calling. This railroad spelled the end of the wilderness. What one group of greedy men had accomplished others would imitate; and the grass of the plains would be burned, the forests blackened, the fountains ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... loves me well; But, when first he breathed his vow, I felt my bosom swell— For the words rang as a knell, And the voice seemed his who fell In the battle down the dell, And who ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... except action, and where that was impossible they took hardly any recognizable shape. When the first boom of the big bell filled the little study in which we sat, I gave a cry, and jumped up from my chair: it sounded in my ears like the knell of my lost baby, for at the moment I was thinking of her as once when a baby she lay for dead in my arms. Mr. Blackstone got up and left the room, and my husband rose and would have followed him; but, saying he would be back in a few minutes, he shut the door and left us. It was half an ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... was your banquet of power, But the tocsin has burst on your festival hour— 'Tis your knell that it rings! To the popular tiger a prey is decreed, And the maw of Republican hunger will feed ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... sounds, They seem'd my lover's knell— I heard, that pierc'd with ghastly wounds, My ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... actively to work to drown the magazine. The crew thought the work had been successfully performed, and that they were getting the fire under control, when there suddenly came a terrible burst of flame attended by a roar that drowned all the din of the battle. It was the death knell of 400 men, for the Palestro had blown up with all on board. The great ironclad turret ship and ram of the Italian fleet, the Affondatore, to which Admiral Persano had shifted his flag, far the most powerful vessel in the Adriatic, kept outside of the battle line, and ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... to the ruffians—every Orsini slain is a robber the less—strike for God, the Emperor, and the Colonna!" such were the shouts which rung the knell of the dismayed and falling fugitives. Among those who fled onward, in the very path most accessible to the cavalry, was the young brother of Cola, so innocently mixed with the affray. Fast he fled, dizzy with terror—poor boy, scarce before ever parted ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... was advancing, and the knell rung out its two deep notes from the church tower. Rachel had been dreading the effect on him, but he lay still, as if he had been waiting for it, and was evidently counting the twenty-three strokes that told the age of ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... consciousness. Beyond them, he could hear movements, exclamations. But they meant nothing to him. Only the one thought tolled, knell-like, within him. "We seven are the only living ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... pushed into a vehicle, pulled out of it, and shoved along, by the staunch and (as it seemed) brutal arm of friendship, among crimson and gilding and blinding lights all seen at intervals through half-closed eyes. A little bell rang, and I felt it was my death knell. But through the darkness of my weltering soul (for I was presumably dead and undoubtedly damned) there marched, stood still, and curtsied majestically towards each other, the great grave opening chords of the overture. And when they had delivered, solemnly, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... confused din of the London streets, what was the phrase that kept ringing in his ears?—"And when she bids die he shall surely die!" But he no longer heard the pathetic vibration of Natalie Lind's voice; the words seemed to him solemn, and distant, and hopeless, like a knell. But only if it were over—that was again his wild desire. In the grave ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... with the well-heeled boots, whose knell Afar along the pavement sounds, Blent with the tinkling muffin-bell, Or milkman, shrilling on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... fire-side, to deplore the loss of an affectionate brother and son; to the widow and the orphan, whom war's desolating hand cast into the world to tread alone its dreary path. To Uncle Nathan victory and defeat were alike the messengers of woe. Both were the death-knell of human beings; both carried weeping and wailing ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... Beethoven's Symphony in A, that knell which ever and ever comes back and beats upon your heart? Yes, I see very well, you feel as I do, music is a communion—Beethoven, ah, me! how sad and sweet it is to be two to understand him and ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... unfinished garden, without a shrub or a flower in it, frightful to behold. On the open iron gate that led into this inclosure was a new brass plate, with 'Sanitarium' inscribed on it in great black letters. The bell, when the cabman rang it, pealed through the empty house like a knell; and the pallid, withered old man-servant in black who answered the door looked as if he had stepped up out of his grave to perform that service. He let out on me a smell of damp plaster and new varnish; and he let ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... all he said, but in his words the deep agony of a mortal struggle rang strangely—the knell of the old life and the birth-chime of the new. One by one, the words he had never thought to speak fell from his lips, distinctly; the oracle of the heart answered the great question of fate in its ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... like a waterspout; the dresser was stripped, the broken crockery lay on the uncovered floor, and the iron slowrie hanging over the place of the fire was swinging and striking against the wall, and ringing like a knell. And in the midst of this scene of desolation the idiot boy was placidly sleeping on his naked bed, and over it the moon was scudding ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... of Fergus, with thy latest breath Thou hast lent a joy unto the funeral knell, Welcoming with thy whispered "All is well!" The awful aspect of the Angel Death. As, strong in life, thou couldst not brook to shun The heat and burthen of the fiery day, Fronting defeat with stalwart undismay, And wearing meekly honours stoutly won. Pure lips, pure hands, pure heart were ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... They wandered day and night from one tavern to another, and feasted without moderation or bounds. In this way they endeavored to avoid all contact with the sick, and abandoned their houses and property to chance, like men whose death-knell had already tolled. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... concerned, for when it was abolished compensation was given for the loss of fees, the annual payments ranging from L10 8s., to L36 8s. Increased posting facilities, and the infusion of greater activity into the performance of post-office work, were no doubt the things which "rang the parting knell" of these useful servants ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... Plateas had been reading "The Bell" of the poet of Leucadia,—that pathetic picture of the enamored young sailor, who, on returning to his village, throws himself into the sea to reach more speedily the shore, where he hears the tolling knell and sees the funeral procession of his beloved, and as he buffets the waves is devoured by the monster of the deep. The poetical description of this catastrophe had so affected him that he afterwards attributed his misadventure to ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... feeling of sadness came over him as he realized the meaning of the bells. They were the funeral knell of ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... Brunswick, and the snow was falling, as in that clime it only knows how to fall. The atmosphere was like the face of Sterne's monk, "calm, cold, and penetrating," and the faint tinkling of the sleigh bells came mournfully on the ear as a knell of sadness—so utterly cheerless was the scene. Another hour passed, and our journey was ended. The open door of the hospitable dwelling was ready to receive us, and in the light and heat of a happy home, toil and trouble were ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... draped in the guise of Bacchanals placed upon the table, were hailed with rapture, and thenceforth sparkling wine was an indispensable adjunct at all the petits soupers of the period. In the highest circles the popping of champagne-corks seemed to ring the knell of sadness, and the victories of Marlborough were in a measure compensated for ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... they to help to set Hugo Tancred on his legs again, and reconstruct something of a future for Fay? And then there always sounded, like a knell, Fay's tired, pathetic voice: "Don't bother to make plans for me, Jan. For the children, yes, as much as you like. You are so clever and constructive—but leave me out, dear, for it's ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... seem to sound the knell of possible employment of cavalry in battle. No matter how dislocated are the infantry ridden at so long as they are not quite demoralised, however ruse the cavalry leader—however favourable to sudden unexpected onslaught is the ground, the quick-firing arms of ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... knell of falling steam, The coal supply is virtually done, And at this price, indeed it does not seem As though ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... luck that Miles, her darling, should be sent to the other side of the world, to a wild, dare-devil country, the very name of which conjured up a dozen thrilling tales of adventure. "A five years' appointment!" The words rang like a knell in her ears! ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... and the frost began to creep after it. Already the bulk of vegetation about them (save the hardy firs and kindred trees and shrubs) were black and dead. The change in climate had tolled the knell of all those plants that had withstood heretofore the rigors ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... not meet again in the same house for many a long day, and when they did, it was on a grey misty morning in the Christmas week of the year following; and the blinds were down, and the notes of the knell clashing out overhead, as the door was opened to Edgar, Alda, and Clement, as they arrived together, having been summoned late on the previous night by a telegram with tidings that their mother had been struck by a paralysis. They knew what ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and when the record of my death, if recorded at all, should casually meet the eyes of those who once loved me, it would pass unnoticed; and my own name, my fatal name, if ever pronounced by them, would sound as the knell of blighted joys—of hopes gone by—as the memory of a mysterious shame, and of a ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... The pony men circle till they find a trail, follow it till close enough to the game to race ahead and bring it to bay, circle about it while a messenger brings up the Sahib, who dismounts and advances afoot to a combat wherein the echo of a misplaced shot may sound his own death-knell. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... showers, Are friends of flowers, And fairies all; When frost entrapped her, They came and lapped her In leaves, and wrapped her With shroud and pall; In red leaves wound her, With dead leaves bound her Dead brows, and round her A death-knell rang; Rang the death-bell for her, Sang, "is it well for her, Well, is it well ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... syllable; and the flask that had been filled for him stood upon the table untouched. He sat with his eyes fixed upon the stranger, and his skin as pale as a corpse. Betty was in the same state of immovable terror. Every word that fell from his lips was a death-knell—every drop of his red drink was as much liquid fire—and every ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... name? What bring they to fill out a poet's fame? Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age; Scarce living to be christened on the stage! For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense, That tolls the knell for their departed sense." ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... fell like the knell of their own doom on the ears of the inhabitants of Granada. It seemed as if the hand of Providence itself must have been stretched forth to smite the stately city, which, reposing as it were under the shadow of their own walls, and in the bosom of a peaceful and populous country, was ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... five thy father lies: Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I hear ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... of Probate—the successor to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury—is no longer to be found there, and those who seek their fortunes in wills have now to prosecute their researches in that hub of British departmental records, Somerset House. The knell of "the Commons" was rung about twenty years ago, when a campaign against the abuses prevailing in the ecclesiastical courts was begun in the London Times. It unquestionably had been the home par excellence of sinecures ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... by which the spiritual arm had so often stricken down the fiercest foe, came to Nina's ear as a knell. She covered her face with her hands. Rienzi paced the room with rapid strides. "The curse!" he muttered; "the Church's curse—for ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... cracked, tinkling bell "tolls the knell of parting day." Jeanne and I are depressed by it. I have taken up a dozen different occupations and dropped ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... of a frog; By the howling of the dog; By the crying of the hog Against the storm arising; By the evening curfew bell, By the doleful dying knell, O let this my direful spell, Hob, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... the unalleviated darkness of a hopeless exclusion settles down on these sad five, standing, huddled together, at the door, with the extinguished lamps hanging in their despairing hands. 'Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now.' The wedding bell has become a funeral knell. They were not the enemies of the bridegroom, they thought themselves his friends. They let life ebb without securing the one thing needful, and the neglect was irremediable. There is a tragedy underlying ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... man! I fear my Lord Panmure is slain, Or fallen in Whiggish hands, man, Now wad ye sing this double fight, Some fell for wrang, and some for right; But mony bade the world gude-night; Then ye may tell, how pell and mell, By red claymores, and muskets knell, Wi' dying yell, the Tories fell, And Whigs to hell did flee, man. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... short their argument. One by one the sullen sounds fell successively on the ear, leaving but sufficient space for each to die away in distant echo, ere the air was again filled by repetition of the iron knell. These sounds, the signal of the approaching ceremony, chilled with awe the hearts of the assembled multitude, whose eyes were now turned to the Preceptory, expecting the approach of the Grand Master, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... sweet voice sounded on her ears as the knell of hope. But she faced him again with a ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... hands to life's feast, revolted from the like of that, as from suffocation. And still the suggestion of it was everywhere. In the garish afternoon, up to the wholesome heights of the Heiligenberg suddenly from one of the villages of the plain came the grinding death-knell. It seemed to come out of the ugly grave itself, and enjoyment was dead. On his way homeward sadly, an hour later, he enters by chance the open door of a village church, half buried in the tangle of its churchyard. The rude coffin is lying there of a labourer who had but a hovel to live ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... dignity of labor. 'We shall one day,' he says, 'supersede Politics by Education.' Pause well here, you who grope forward into the dark future with misgiving and faithless hearts. This is not the chimerical delusion of a transcendental philosophy, this death-knell to the Slavery of Ignorance and Vice. Recognize in it the wide generosity that says with Leczinsky, 'Je ne connais d'avarice permise que celle du temps.' Here is wealth for want, industry for indolence, distinction for degradation, virtue ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various |
