"Plaint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blest; the sycamore and hawthorn were yet musical with the hum of bees, busy in securing their evening burthen for the hive. Myriads of winged insects were sporting in the sunbeams; the melancholy plaint of the ringdove came out sweetly from the trees, mingled with the songs of other birds, and the still sweeter voice of some happy groups of children at play in the distance. The light of the hour, in its subdued but golden tone, fell with singular clearness upon all nature, ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... were here to enjoy this fine spring morning. It is like April, bright, calm, warm, and dreamy, sparrows singing, robins and blue birds calling, hens cackling, crows cawing, while now and then the ear detects the long drawn plaint of the meadow lark. The ice in the placid river floats languidly by and I dare say your hunting ground is alive with ducks. I am boiling sap on the old stove set up here in the chip yard. I have ten trees tapped and lots of sap. I wish you had some of the syrup. Your mother ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... be sure to be in my dressing-room and I rushed to my room. The voice was not there. I locked my door and, with tears in my eyes, besought it, if it were still alive, to manifest itself to me. The voice did not reply, but suddenly I heard a long, beautiful wail which I knew well. It is the plaint of Lazarus when, at the sound of the Redeemer's voice, he begins to open his eyes and see the light of day. It was the music which you and I, Raoul, heard at Perros. And then the voice began to sing the leading phrase, 'Come! And believe ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... enacted that no parent should send his children beyond seas for education under penalty, both for the sender and the person sent, of being disqualified "to sue, bring, or prosecute any action, bill, plaint, or information in course of law, or to prosecute any suit in a court of equity, or to be guardian or executor, or administrator to any person, or capable of any legacy, or deed of gift, or to bear any ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... laborers, directed by various grades of bosses, at work building the foundation of the dam. Later, he crossed the basin, followed the well-beaten trail up the slope to the level, and shortly he was in Hanrahan's saloon across the street from Braman's bank, listening to the plaint of Jim Lefingwell, the Circle Cross owner, whose ranch was east of town. Lefingwell was big, florid, and afflicted with perturbation that was almost painful. So exercised was he that he ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... are not to be taken as meaning that Jesus said 'I thirst' with the mere intention of fulfilling the Scripture. His utterance was the plaint of a real need, not a performance to fill a part. But it is John who sees in that wholly natural cry the fulfilment of the psalm (Ps. lxix. 21). All Christ's bodily sufferings may be said to be summed up in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... manner. There are sighs and plaints, all haunting in their extreme expressiveness, a great variety beneath an appearance of monotony, and from time to time two wailing notes. These notes are always the same, as the chorus gives them as a plaint, and they are both affecting and artistic. At the end comes a dim ray of light and hope. This is the only one in the work save the Amen at the end, for Faith and Hope should not be looked for here. The supplications ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... this day our daily bread!" O prayer By Jesus taught, thou hast become a cry For starveling mouths in Famine's ghastly lair— A beggar's plaint when Dives passes by. ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... plaint for days, but the sad excitement had not been productive of any fights, for the few married men in the camp prudently absented themselves at night from "The Nugget" saloon, where the matter was fiercely discussed every evening. There was, therefore, such an utter absence ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... her plaint to lay Before the face of Love Divine. Saying in heaven she will not stay, Since you have stolen what made her shine: Aloud she wails with sorrow wan,— She told her stars and two are gone: They are not there; ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... goriaulx Than shal I haue two coliers 28 Pour mes cheuaulx de querue. For my horses of the plowh. Xpristiene la fylle Xpristine the doughter Se plaint du serrurier, Complayned her of the lokyer, Pour ce quil nye By cause that he denyeth 32 Dun enfant quil gaigna. Of a child that ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton
... public, through the press, has no restraining power upon them as it has in England. A parcel sent by express over a distance of forty miles will not be delivered within twenty-four hours. I once made my plaint on this subject at the bar or office of a hotel, and was told that no remonstrance was of avail. "It is a monopoly," the man told me, "and if we say anything, we are told that if we do not like it we need not use it." In railway matters and postal matters time and punctuality are not valued ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... a circle went he and Christopher, the lad constantly trying to brighten and encourage, and the clerk as invariably bringing up with this same doleful plaint. He was ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... oft-times did Tyri make plaint to King Olaf, and cried bitterly thereover, because albeit had she such great possessions in Wendland yet had she none in this country, and that she should have such deemed she but seemly for a Queen; & thinking that by fair words would she get her own prayed she him on this ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... "The plaint of Citronella is full of a passion of dream that only the Italian poets have found ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... smallest consoling idea has a strength of its own that is not to be found in the most magnificent plaint, the most exquisite expression of sorrow. The vast, profound thought that brings with it nothing but sadness is energy burning its wings in the darkness to throw light on the walls of its prison; but the timidest ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and agony he suddenly realized that to these same collectors he had been solely indebted toward the last of his time of trial for what human companionship had come to him. His friends, how easily they had given him up! He thought of poor old Rip Van Winkle's plaint, "How soon we are forgotten when we are gone!" and sarcastically amended it to "How soon we are forgotten when we are here!" A few invitations declined, the ordinary social calls left for some other time, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... had he not let the waters of its bitterness overflow into the heart of the soutar? The wail of that violin echoed now in Robert's heart, not for Flodden, not for himself, but for the debased nature that drew forth the plaint. Comrades in misery, why should they part? What right had he to forsake an old friend and benefactor because he himself was unhappy? He would go and see him the very next night. And he would make friends once more with the much ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... order in the development of Genius is, first, Complaint; second, Plaint; third, Love. Complaint, which is the condition of Persius, lies not in the province of poetry. Erelong the enjoyment of a superior good would have changed his disgust into regret. We can never have much sympathy with the complainer; for after searching nature ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the French troubles with the Commune, formidable revolts were going on among the descendants of those untamable wretches whom Saint Arnaud smoked out in a cave. In July the garrison at Setif heard the plaint of a friendly cadi, named D'joudi, who had been wantonly attacked for his loyalty to the French by some organized mutineers under Mohammed Ben-Hadad. The poor wretch had been obliged to flee, with his women and his flocks, into the protection of his country's oppressors. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... alcoholic meditation, sought the distant peaks stained with the blush-rose of sunset. The evening-purple of the hills fringed the bay with mystery. Gulls floated high on lavender wings, their intermittent plaint answering the Indian voices that drifted up from the beach where ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... soul-hunger is there, the restlessness of the savage, the wail of the wanderer, and the plaint is put ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Rang out a sweet bird's song, No feeble, weak, uncertain note, No plaint of grief or wrong, No "Miserere Domine," No "Dies Irea" sad, But "Gloria in Excelsis" rang, ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... s'ecria-t-elle avec emportement—pourquoi ne voulez-vous pas que je ressente vivement l'offense qu'on a fait a ce petit agneau, a cette colombe sans fiel, qui ne se plaint seulement pas de l'outrage qu'il a recu? Ah! que ne suis-je homme en ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... immediately the instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar, flashing with fury, dominated all the others with his clearer voice; Ashton hurled homicidal provocations at him in deep notes; Lucie uttered her shrill plaint, Arthur at one side, his modulated tones in the middle register, and the bass of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the voices of the women repeating his words took them up in chorus ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... state of feebleness and dependence. He can never escape from the tie that forever binds to the soil him and his progeny; a cultivator he is born, a mere cultivator he is doomed to die." No doubt this plaint is pitched in a rather high key. But in time the burden of grievances was generally felt and then the seigniorial system ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... stillness woke not, neither uttered cry nor plaint, nor did its subtle air vibrate with the slightest tinkle—so soft was the fall of the retreating steps. They sounded for a time, and then were silent. And the evening stillness became pensive, stretched itself ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... year of Abbot Sampson's abbacy we monks, after full deliberation in chapter, laid our formal plaint before the abbot in his court. We said that the rents and revenues of all the good towns and boroughs in England were steadily growing and increasing to the enrichment of their lords, in every case save in that of our town of St. Edmund. The customary rent of L40 which it pays never rises ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... paid no attention to this boyish plaint, for he was fumbling in the locker, then withdrew his hand and uncoiled an ordinary fish-line, with painted ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... had been efficiently interrupted, and the attention of the garrulous twelve was finally given to the presiding officer. For a moment, silence fell. It was broken by Ruth Howard, a girl with large, soulful brown eyes and a manner of rapt earnestness, who uttered her plaint in ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid; And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katydid; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings And earth and sky ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... the Howards" were running in her veins. What further inch of ground was there for a fight? And if the fight were over, why should he rob his boy of one sparkle from off the joy of his triumph? Silverbridge was now standing before him abashed by that plaint, inwardly sustained no doubt by the conviction of his great success, but subdued by his father's wailing. "However,—perhaps we had better let that pass," said the Duke, with a long sigh. Then Silverbridge took his father's hand, and looked up in his face. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... sickle of the moon shed dim rays over the landscape and made the towers and steeples of the town, standing out at some distance, appear like misty silhouettes. In the deep green of the bushes a nightingale pealed forth his liquid plaint into the balmy night air, while from the ballroom inside the tuning of violins mingled inharmoniously. From the town gusts of warm wind carried snatches of a martial song, ground out on the barrel-organ of a carrousel. All these noises rose in a confused mass into the still air, mingling ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... sighing of thy soul He ever, And thy heart's deep plaint is hearing; What to another thou wouldst never Tell, reveal to God, ne'er fearing. He is not far, But standeth near thee, Who poor men's pray'r Marks, soon will hear thee. ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... not there, Thou mourner fair, Nor pour the fruitless tear! The plaint of woe is all too low— The ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... long lines wavering in a strange manner in the midst of the darkness, and that at a depth where no human eye had ever penetrated. Fear lent my sight, and all my senses, an unheard-of subtlety of perception. For several seconds I heard very distinctly the evening plaint of a cricket down at the edge of the wood, a dog barking far away, very far in the valley. Then my heart, compressed for an instant by emotion, began to beat furiously and ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Kiyomidzu, in the old, old summer-house, where everything is like a dream of five hundred years ago,—and where there is a great shadowing of high woods, and a song of water leaping cold and clear from caverns, and always the plaint of flutes unseen, blown softly in the antique way,—a tone-caress of peace and sadness blending, just as the gold light glooms into ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... shall be to the use of the poor called Christ's Hospital within Newgate for the time being, and the other moiety thereof shall be to the use of him or them that will sue for the same in any Court of Record within same City by bill, original plaint, or information, to be commenced and sued in the name of the chamberlains of the said city for the time being, wherein none essoyne [exemption] or wages of law for the defendants ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... temptations to social excess were great; is it not all the more creditable to Burns that he did not sink under those temptations and become the besotted wreck conventional biography has attempted to make him? If those who raise this plaint mean to insinuate that Burns became a confirmed toper, then they are assuredly wrong; if they be only drawing attention to the fact that drinking was too common in Scotland at that time, then they are attacking not the poet but the social customs of his day. It would ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... a counter-plaint for abusive language,[50] or personal trespass,[50] or for acts of atrocious violence.[51] On behalf of each party, a surety, competent to meet the result of the suit, shall ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... who had been his faithful friend over so many years. At an engagement a month before, Tynemouth had been blinded by shrapnel, and had been sent to Durban. To the two letters he had written there had come no answer until now; and he felt that this reply would be a plaint against Fate, a rebellion against the future restraint and trial and responsibility which would be put upon the wife, who was so much of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... uncouthly gape around, And rails and fallen stones bestrew the ground: In loosen'd garb derang'd, with scatter'd hair, His bosom open to the nightly air, Lone, o'er a new heap'd grave poor Basil bent, And to himself began his simple plaint. ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... own accord, than win the honour and glory of the campaign, which she knew beforehand would bring to her renown, the like of which no woman in the world's history has ever won. She would have gone back gladly, I truly believe, to her home in Domremy, and uttered no plaint, even though men ceased after the event to give her the praise and glory; for herself she ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... tones or tricks of verbal art The plaint and paean rung: Thine the clear utterance of an earnest heart, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of genuine Tennysonian harmony, pitched in the keys that most fittingly suit the singer's mood, are interspersed through the drama, and serve to relieve the narratives of their gloom and plaint. Their presence, we cannot help thinking, recalls work better done, and more within the limitations of the poet's genius, than this drama of "Queen Mary." As a dramatic representation the drama had the advantage of being produced at the Lyceum ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... London, a lively young dog, wrote "Poems and Ballads," and "Chastelard," since he has gone to live at Putney, he has contributed to the Nineteenth Century, and published an interesting little volume entitled, "A Century of Rondels," in which he continues his plaint ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... chairman concluded his introduction in these words: "And now, gentlemen, we have a farmer as our guest here tonight. It has been the plaint of the farmer from time out of mind that he had not representation; that he had not voice in affairs that had to do with his vocation. The newly made clod-hopper is respectfully informed that he can air his grievances to the fullest extent and that, unlike others, we will not pass resolutions ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... cause you have to make such plaint! Now certes we have come upon days of great lament— Our land is taken away, and so's our increase, And ne'er we may look for any help or surcease. It must be, as long I have both dreamt and said, That the promise to ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... her silvery rays across the plain, the hunter may lead forth the village belle, and foot it merrily on the mossy greensward, to the sound of the bagpipe and the rustic flute, by fountains which never cease their monotonous but soothing plaint, and under the long shadows of the ancient oaks ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... a woman of my plaint complaining, If she was a woman at all half discreet, Would shudder to think every day she is maiming Her stomach with trash, and ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
... 2. Elle le plaint de tout son c[oe]ur, mais qu'il ne se dcourage pas. Grce son travail acharn, il pourra dans deux on trois ans passer l'examen qui ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... murmur that filled the heavy air, the tremulous, ceaseless plaint which comes from strong, muscular creatures, tenacious of life, who are ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... the noise which escapes from Paris by day is the city speaking; by night, it is the city breathing; in this case, it is the city singing. Lend an ear, then, to this concert of bell towers; spread over all the murmur of half a million men, the eternal plaint of the river, the infinite breathings of the wind, the grave and distant quartette of the four forests arranged upon the hills, on the horizon, like immense stacks of organ pipes; extinguish, as in a half shade, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... said Death, "and with your permission, Mr. Wrangler, these names must stick to you for evermore." "Indeed," quoth the Wrangler, "by the devil, I'll make it hot for you; although you may put me to death, you have no right to nickname me. I shall enter a plaint for this and for false imprisonment, against you and your kinsman Lucifer, in the ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... was not long in the heavens before the barrel organ, silenced at midnight, renewed its plaint and the business of the day began. After an early breakfast Cleofonte and Luigi retired to the dressing tent, emerging after a while in gorgeous costumes of pink fleshings and spangles, their hair well greased with ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... observe it's no easy thing Making the journey to Bumpville, So I think, on the whole, it were prudent to bring An end to this ride to Bumpville; For, though she has uttered no protest or plaint, The calico mare must be blowing and faint— What's more to the point, I'm blowed if I ain't! So play we have got ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... poor, you that are rich, you that have been great sinners, listen to the voice of Jesus; listen to the plaint of Mary during this month of November; "My children are now dead; come lay thy prayers up for them, and they shall live." Hear Mass for the poor souls; say your beads for them; supplicate Jesus and Mary and Joseph in their behalf. Fly to St. Catherine of Genoa and beg her to help them, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... choose to think themselves. Shepherds still piped, and maidens still listened to their piping. The old gods had not been discrowned and banished; and to fishers drawing their nets the coasts yet kept a something of the trace of amorous Polypheme, the rocks were peopled with memories of his plaint to Galatea. Inland, among the dim and thymy woods, bee-haunted and populous with dreams of dryad and oread, there were rumours of Pan; and dwellers under thatch—the goatherd mending his sandals, the hind carving his new staff, the girls who busked them for the vintaging—were ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... went onward with no word or plaint, Clasping the child unto her bosom still, Unflagging when all else began to faint, Intent to save her little one from ill; And they look'd on her as she sped along, Wond'ring what made so frail ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... of all, In Olaf's hall Now sits in state on high; Whilst up in heaven Amidst the shriven Sits Olaf's majesty. For not in cell Does our hero dwell, But in realms of light for ever: As a ransom'd saint To heal our plaint, Be glory to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... whole aviary of highly colored songsters would not have assuaged Gay's woe at that moment. Every effort at conciliation was met with the one plaint: "I want my Timfy! ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and shadow of the slayer, Slayer of loves, sweet world, slayer of dreams; Make sad thy voice with sober plaint and prayer; Make gray thy woods, and darken all ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... ears of both the hammock sentinels came the mournful sounds of living things unseen. From the depths beyond drifted the weird plaint of the sloth, crying in the night, "Oh me, poor sloth, oh-oh-oh-oh!" Goat suckers repeated by the hour their monotonous refrains, "Quao quao," or "Cho-co-co-cao," while a third earnestly exhorted, "Joao corta pao!" ("John, cut wood!"). Tree ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... followed this plaint! Did any aspirant for literary or dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an antechamber of horrors? Did poet of the day ever have his head so maltreated? To be dipped in the rain-water tub, soused again and again; to be held under the spout and pumped on; to be rubbed furiously with rough ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... qui la vertu Etait moins que la table encensee; On ne plaint point la femme abattue, Mais bien la ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... and puny to fight and was minded to seize him alive. Khudadad, seeing how his foe had no intent to combat, struck him with his sword on the knee a stroke so dour that the negro foamed with rage and yelled a yell so loud that the whole prairie resounded with the plaint. Thereupon the brigand, fiery with fury, rose straight in his shovel-stirrups and struck fiercely at Khudadad with his huge sword and, but for the Prince's cunning of fence and the cleverness of his courser, he would have been sliced in twain like unto a cucumber. Though ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... aft myself meeting on my way a hard gust of wind whose approach Gambril's ear had detected from afar and which filled the sails on the main in a series of muffled reports mingled with the low plaint of the spars. I was just in time to seize the wheel while Frenchy who had followed me caught up the collapsing Gambril. He hauled him out of the way, admonished him to lie still where he was, and then stepped up to relieve ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... voir George Eliot et Lewes qui a ete charmant; il est venu s'asseoir a cote de moi ou il est reste tout le temps de ma visite, et lorsque je suis parti, il s'est beaucoup plaint de ne pas me voir davantage. Il me traite d'une facon tres affectueuse, et en meme temps avec un respect qui, venant de lui, me flatte beaucoup. Quant a George Eliot elle est tres aimable, mais elle ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... if there were no other, it is considered a sufficient answer to the German Chancellor's plaint that the United States "brusquely" broke off relations without giving "authentic" reasons for ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... of which were defined as commencing at Temple Bar, and ending at Tothill.[142] But it is likely that the Inn at Holborn Bars was still occupied by attorneys who practised for their patrons of the Staple, and that the Merchants for Wools still had their meetings there. In 1401 Hamond Elyot sued a plaint of debt against Martyn Dyne, of Haydon, Norfolk, for the sum of L26 2s. 3d., in the Court of Staple at Westminster;[143] and one hundred years later, John Dyne, his descendant, also of Haydon, Norfolk, was a member of Staple Inn. In his will, proved ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... must have seen what I felt, for he said: 'A la guerre comme a la guerre. It is very good of you to come to see me.' In a quiet, natural way he then praised the kindness of the Germans at Wilhelmshoehe, nor did a single plaint escape him during our conversation. He said he had been deceived as to the force and preparation of his armies, but without mentioning names, nor did he abuse anybody, till I mentioned Trochu, who had abandoned the empress, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... maple sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along the main street in Syracuse, the first chirp of the blue bird, the swan song of the blue point, the annual tornado in St. Louis, the plaint of the peach pessimist from Pompton, N.J., the regular visit of the tame wild goose with a broken leg to the pond near Bilgewater Junction, the base attempt of the Drug Trust to boost the price of quinine foiled in the House by Congressman Jinks, the first tall poplar struck by lightning and ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Another plaint is heard, deeper and more universal, that of all souls in which regret for their established church and forms of worship still subsists ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... silence far in the jungle lost their individuality in a sob. Grasshoppers clinked in the forest, the hum of bees and beetles, the fluty plaint of a painted pigeon far in the gloom, the furtive scamper of scrub fowl among leaves made tender by decay, the splash of startled fish in the shadows, commingled and blended to the accompaniment of that subdued ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the sounds had died, leaving a heavy silence, and neither noticed. For of old Death young Life is ever heedless; ever the brazen fanfare of life's trumpets drowns the thin reed-plaint of death. In the passage ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... the twain, Sir Gawain nor Sir Lancelot, but the tears fell from their eyes when they heard the knight's tale. Such pity had they for him, they waxed pale, and red, and discovered their faces, when they heard his plaint. ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... seek the Orient through the thick darkness of your abstractions, vast as principles! Farewell, martyrs of thought, led by thought into the presence of the True Light. Farewell, regions of study where mine ears can hear the plaint of genius neglected and insulted, the sigh of the patient scholar to whom enlightenment comes ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... she saide, and deare constraint, Lets me not sleepe, but wast the wearie night 470 In secret anguish and unpittied plaint, Whiles you in carelesse sleepe are drowned quight. Her doubtfull words made that redoubted knight Suspect her truth: yet since no' untruth he knew, Her fawning love with foule disdainefull spight 475 He would ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... say, betwixt plaint and humor, that it always seemed to him that no one ever gave an abbreviation or an abstract of anything which he had written, without very nearly spoiling the original. This would be preeminently true of an abstract of this examination; abbreviation ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... horizon of which were a few palms overshadowing dingy, sun-baked mud buildings, houses formed of the brick made of straw now as in the days when the taskmaster-beaten Israelitish bondmen put up such pitiful plaint. ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... who shrieked. The Emperor uttered no plaint. A puff of white-gray smoke rose to heaven. And those who watched there no doubt took note ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... a low cry, like the plaint of a broken-hearted child, issued from the leaden, writhen ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... space to the west of the town known as the Jew's Meadow, and among the attractions was Professor Adams with his "school of undefeated champions." The plural is in the grand manner, giving the lie to Cashel Byron's pathetic plaint:— ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Herder was fond of using the word "Priapus" when he spoke of Goethe. Even "Wilhelm Meister" seemed to be only a symptom of decline, of a moral "going to the dogs". The "Menagerie of tame cattle," the worthlessness of the hero in this book, revolted Niebuhr, who finally bursts out in a plaint which Biterolf(8) might well have sung: "nothing so easily makes a painful impression as when a great mind despoils itself of its wings and strives for virtuosity in something greatly inferior, while ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... greener boughs among He's coldly nestling. How sad the high wind's sounding dirge, As 'twere old ocean's moaning surge, Around our dwelling; I well may tell the reason why, But oh! the teardrops in mine eye Are swiftly swelling. The world is sad, and I am so; Does Marian hear my plaint? Oh, no; She's far away. Ye envious streams—ye hateful hills! Ah me! what cruel anguish thrills My heart to-day! But soon may Fortune learn to smile Upon her sad and helpless child, And let us meet, No more to part, no more to sigh, But happy live, ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... meaning," he corrected. "'Tis the very heart and throat of love that are yours this night. And for the first time, dear lady, have I heard the full fair volume that is yours. Never again plaint that your voice is thin. Thick it is, and round it is, as a great rope, a great golden rope for the mooring of argosies in the harbors of the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... which is the special pride and attribute of his sex. When a man nags, he puts his whole heart into the effort; a woman only nags, as a rule, because the heart has been taken out of her. The nagging woman is an over-tasked creature with jarred nerves, whose plaint is an expression of pain, a cry for help; in any interval of ease which lasts long enough to relax the tension, she feels remorse, and becomes amiably anxious to atone. With the male nag it is different. He is usually sleek and smiling, a joyous creature, fond of good living, whose self-satisfaction ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... scared; the lamp seems to be burning dim and the last coal has gone out. Is it some restless spirit, so unhappy that it must moan out its weary plaint? I ought to be brave and go at once and look boldly down the cellar stairs and draw aside that waving portiere. Oh, dear! If I only had some one to go with me and hold a light and—there it is—the third time. Courage vanished. It might be some ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... on passing events, booming in unison with the cyclone, and mimicking the tenderest tones of the idlest wind. During a storm, when the big waves crash on the beach and the Casuarinas are tormented, the tumult is bewildering; but however loud their plaint, very few suffer, though growing in loose sand; for the roots are widespread and, like the trunk and main branches, tough, while the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... mothers have come to the author with the piteous plaint: "O Aunt Fanny! we are perfectly worn out with your 'Nightcaps,' 'Mittens,' and 'Socks;' we have read them to our little children, who have not yet conquered the compound mysteries of the alphabet, until we know them by heart; do, ...
— The First Little Pet Book with Ten Short Stories in Words of Three and Four Letters • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... plaint Followed the stranger minstrel's chaunt; And, when his sounding harp was dumb, The crowd, with loud applausive hum, Gave hearty guerdon for his strain; While some with sighs expressed what pain Had pierced their simple bosoms thorow To hear his song ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... your sleep to me— Me, among all the dead by you dishonoured— Me from whom never, in the world of death, Dieth this curse, 'Tis she who smote and slew, And shamed and scorned I roam? Awake, and hear My plaint of dead men's hate intolerable. Me, sternly slain by them that should have loved, Me doth no god arouse him to avenge, Hewn down in blood by matricidal hands. Mark ye these wounds from which the heart's blood ran, And by whose hand, bethink ye! for the sense When shut in sleep ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... might inspire her with the touch she best applied and was most instinctive mistress of: this didn't at all events strike him as what he should most resent. It wasn't as if Mrs. Folliott, to make up for boring him with her own plaint, for example, had had so much as a gleam of conscious diversion ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... Except in that you cannot permanently banish it, the presence offers no positive resistance to your will: it accepts each caprice with obedience; it meets your every whim with angelic patience. It is never critical,—never makes plaint even by a look,—never proves irksome: yet you cannot ignore it, because of a certain queer power it possesses to make something stir and quiver in your heart,—like an old vague sweet regret,—something buried alive which will not die.... And so often does this ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... past the ship's side, moving smoothly, streaked with lines of froth, across the illumined circle thrown round the brig by the lights on her poop. Air bubbles sparkled, lines of darkness, ripples of glitter appeared, glided, went astern without a splash, without a trickle, without a plaint, without a break. The unchecked gentleness of the flow captured the eye by a subtle spell, fastened insidiously upon the mind a disturbing sense of the irretrievable. The ebbing of the sea athwart the lonely sheen of flames resembled the eternal ebb-tide of time; and ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Pope St. Leo. First of his line to bear the name of Great, who twice saved his city, and once, by the express avowal of a successor, the Church herself, Leo carried his crown of thorns one-and-twenty years, and has left no plaint to posterity of the calamities witnessed by him in that long pontificate. Majorian was the fourth sovereign whom in six years and a half he had seen to perish by violence. A man with so keen an intellectual ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... And on the holy hearth, The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint; In urns, and altars round, A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... any substance in the plaint that nobody now buys books, meaning thereby second-hand books? The late Mark Pattison, who had 16,000 volumes, and whose lightest word has therefore weight, once stated that he had been informed, and verily believed, that there ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... from one another, hand in hand, and smiled as they listened to the tuneful plaint. Then the man unfolded a wonderful plan to this girl whom he loved. Her willing ears drank in the details like one whose heart is set with a great purpose. They also talked of their love in their own practical way. There was little display of sentiment. They understood ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... crew looked forward to working for Ben, the farmer, and dreaded the meals prepared by Bella, his wife. She was notoriously the worst cook and housekeeper in the county. And all through the years, in trouble and in happiness, her plaint was the same: "If I'd thought I was going to stick down on a farm all my life, slavin' for a pack of men folks day and night, I'd rather have died. Might as well be dead ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... the moon comes up, and her cold, pale light Coquettes with the freezing streams, What care these twain for the wintry night, Since Chloe is wrapt in dreams, And Daphnis utters no plaint of woe O'er his fair jack full on kings, But smiles that fortune should bless him so, Attending to matters ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... struggle that must be the beginning of a long sorrow. Only the day before, Dr. Kenn had been made acquainted with the contents of Stephen's letter, and he had believed them at once, without the confirmation of Maggie's statement. That involuntary plaint of hers, "Oh, I must go," had remained with him as the sign that she was ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... civilization are upon her, and there is legitimate curiosity from Christiania to Yokohama to discover what she is going to do. To me as a philosopher, and taking into account one consideration with another, including Josephine's plaint, it seems as though woman would have much plainer sailing in her progress toward reconstruction if it were not that she is so exceedingly good-looking in spots and bunches. Let her distinction as an ornamental factor be totally negatived and overcome, and there is no telling how rapidly she might ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... employment whatsoever, and shall forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred pounds, one-half thereof to his Majesty, and the other half to such person or persons that shall sue for the same by any action of debt, bill, plaint, or information, in any court of record whatsoever."—7 Will. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... qui baise ce rivage, De quoi se plaint-elle a ses bords? Pourquoi le roseau sur la plage, pourquoi le ruisseau sous l'ombrage, Rendent-ils de tristes accords? De quoi gemit la tourterelle? Tout naist, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... not false. I must be true or die; I cannot play A masker's part, disguising hopes that cling Nearest my brooding heart. But, say the word, 'I cannot love you,' and the bird who leaves The cage where he has pined will sooner try To enter it again, than I return To utter plaint of ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... answered Jupiter; "I have heard thy plaint, and have come hither to show thee how greatly thou dost wrong me. Hark! I, who am sovereign lord of this world, promise to grant in full the first three wishes which it will please thee to utter, whatever these may be. ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... of the facts are taking root in many minds that do not share his fierce hypochondria and hunger for bitter herbs. That the American has lost somewhat in animal resources is incontestable; but Mr. Knox's ever-implied premise, "The animal is the man," from which his Jeremiad derives its plaint, is but a provincial paper-currency, of very local estimation, and can never, like gold and silver, pass by weight in the world's marts of thought. The physical constitution of the New Man is comparatively delicate and fragile; but as a china vase is not necessarily less sound ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... this blinding headache lasted, and he suffered as wild animals suffer, as it seemed the way on ship to suffer, without plaint, without sympathy, utterly alone. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... Kissing affectionate; then came, herself, As golden Venus or Diana fair, Forth from her chamber to her son's embrace, The chaste Penelope; with tears she threw Her arms around him, his bright-beaming eyes And forehead kiss'd, and with a murmur'd plaint Maternal, in wing'd accents thus began. 50 Thou hast return'd, light of my eyes! my son! My lov'd Telemachus! I had no hope To see thee more when once thou hadst embark'd For Pylus, privily, and with no consent From me obtain'd, news seeking ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... doubt already excessive, for an irresistible stupor once more took possession of him, his head dropped, his eyes closed, and he seemed to fall asleep again, continuing his plaint, as if in a dream, moaning in ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... Hear this truth: Over the trackless past, somewhere, Lie the lost days of our tropic youth, Only regained by faith and prayer, Only recalled by prayer and plaint: Each lost day has its ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... spitcat's plaint was as follows: "It ain't That I am to music a foe; For fiddle-strings bide in my own inside, And I twang them soft ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... she was not always petitioning to drink. The words, "I am so thirsty," ceased to be her plaint. Sometimes, when she had swallowed a morsel, she would say it had revived her. All descriptions of food were no longer equally distasteful; she could be induced, sometimes, to indicate a preference. With what trembling pleasure and anxious care did not ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... women and tender maidens, some of high birth and gentle condition, passing through the streets, heavily burdened, toward the Alcazaba. As they left their homes they smote their breasts and wrung their hands, and raised their weeping eyes to heaven in anguish; and this is recorded as their plaint: "O Malaga! city so renowned and beautiful! where now is the strength of thy castle, where the grandeur of thy towers? Of what avail have been thy mighty walls for the protection of thy children? Behold them driven from thy pleasant abodes, doomed to drag out a life of bondage ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Join'd them their lord retaining; join'd their teeth Their victim seizing:—now his body bleeds, A wound continuous: deep he utters groans, Not human, yet unlike a dying deer; And fills the well-known mountains with his plaint. Prone on his knees in suppliant form he bends; And low beseeching waves his silent head, As he would wave his hands. His witless friends, The savage pack with joyous outcries urge; Actaeon anxious ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid |
