"Plaintive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the shore, when they all began to rub each other's noses, and at a given signal, to weep aloud. This is the established etiquette in welcoming a great chief. Some of the old women of rank surrounded Karemaku, under Chinau's direction, and rubbing each other's noses, sang in a plaintive tone a song to ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... mournful things To the wind, which on its wings From her to the guardian sky Bore her melancholy cry— Bore her tender tears. She spake As if her fond heart would break. One while in a sad, sweet note, Gurgled from her straining throat, She enforced her piteous tale, Mournful prayer and plaintive wail; One while with the shrill dispute, Quite o'er-wearied, she was mute; Then afresh, for her dear brood, Her harmonious shrieks renewed; Now she winged it round and round, Now she skimmed along the ground; Now from bough to bough in haste The delighted robber chased; And ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... white to the lips. She stood as one turned to stone, with her distended eyes fixed upon him. It was like a trapped bird, watching its impending fate. She faltered a little on her feet, and—I could not help it—I hurried to her side with a chair. As she sank into it she thanked me with a very plaintive smile. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... only for form's sake, and that he himself no longer meant what he said. Madame Desvarennes received this plaintive remonstrance with a calm smile, and answered, ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... our steps in the direction of the camp, and for some distance walked in silence. Then of a sudden a plaintive moan from the child reminded me that the wee mite and her mother, soaked with wet, were, in the cutting air, rapidly assuming the condition of living icicles. Fortunately I had a flask with me, and, telling the exhausted and shivering woman to sit down, I rested ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... curious story of a headstrong boy and a proud and relentless family: the details do not matter here, but they are sufficient to weave a web of romance around the tall yellow-bearded man with the sad eyes and the voice that gives itself perfectly to plaintive little Swedish songs remembered out of childhood. In the winter evenings we play chess together, he and I, and after some close, fierce battle has been fought to a finish—usually with my own defeat—we fill our pipes again, and ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... as boys, play with dogs in these days!" is another plaintive cry we often hear. But were there ever days when this was not the case? From that far-off day when Iseult "had always a little brachet with her that Tristram gave her the first time that ever she came into Cornwell," ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... gave up the society of even his oldest friends: everything indicated a rapid decline of the active faculties. Unhappily, that of suffering seemed only to increase—no longer the sharp anguish of unspent force which had wrung from him the passionate cries and plaintive murmurs of former years, but the dull numbness of hopelessness. His existence was monotonous, and the few occurrences which varied it were of a sad or unpleasant nature. His sister married and left Paris, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... generation, and of Edith he was prepared to be as indulgent as he had been, in their time, of his grandchildren, the Grantlys, and still was of his grandchildren the Arabins, and had been before that of his own daughters. "She's more like Eleanor than any one else," said the old man in a plaintive tone. Now Eleanor was Mrs Arabin, the dean's wife, and was at this time,—if I were to say over forty I do not think I should be uncharitable. No one else saw the special likeness, but no one else remembered, as ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... of the poor mourner was touched; she bowed down her head upon the hand that held her so kindly in its sisterly grasp, and wept soft, sweet, human tears full of grateful love, while she whispered, in her own low, plaintive voice, "My white sister, I kiss you in my heart; I will love the God of my white brothers, ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... At first his voice was weak, but his notes seemed to rivet the attention of his audience. As he proceeded, it became more and more animated, firmer, and fuller, exhibiting a wonderful combination of freshness, sweetness, and power; so exquisitely plaintive, so overflowing with poignant grief—for it was of a melancholy character—that tears, sobs, and groans broke from the breasts of most of his audience. It was truly the triumph of song over human feelings, and ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... admitted the narrator, "an' I'll tell you what I did. I'm not much of a hand with the pen, but right in the middle of the work I found a man who was goin' down the river, an' I sat down and wrote a long letter to the supervisor. It was about as plaintive a thing as I ever read. I had no reason to expect an answer, but by chance another party was comin' up that way, an' some weeks later I received a reply. What ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... with a more euphonious name. Iridescent flies were skimming about, now and then a fish made a stir and dazzle. Squirrels ran up and down the trees and chattered, robins were singing joyously, the thrush with her soft, plaintive note. She glanced up now and then and caught his eye, and he felt she was happy. It was a delightful thing, after all, to render some one truly happy. Perhaps children were more easily ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... chocolate and orange fell about him in heavy folds, and swept behind him, like a train. I could scarcely believe, at first, that it was the same person; but, when he spoke, despite the pomp and obscurity of his language. I recognised the plaintive ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... afresh—though this time only three or four eggs,—and again has recourse to the down on her body. But her greedy persecutors once more rifle her nest, and oblige her to line it for the third time. Now, however, her own stock of down is exhausted, and with a plaintive voice she calls her mate to her assistance, who willingly plucks the soft feathers from his breast to supply the deficiency. If the cruel robbery be again repeated, which in former times was frequently the case, the poor eider-duck abandons the spot, never to return, ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... approaching, with a crude but gorgeous curtained litter drawn by camels, and a number of musicians with raeitas, darabukas, the "key and bottle," and other Eastern instruments which may have been ancestors of the Highlanders' bagpipes. The street crowd followed, enchanted by the plaintive, monotonous notes, grotesque to newcomers from the west, but enthralling to those who have fallen under the ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... crowded years Fade, dream-like, from my life, and lo! I find my eyelids wet with tears,— So much I loved, so well I know Those plaintive airs ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... live; their education and environment have unfitted them for useful effort; but they are a part of the great, seething struggle for existence. And so we have their piteous and plaintive plea for the obsolete and the outworn. Disraeli once in an incautious moment exclaimed: "If we do away with the Established Church, what is to become of the fourteen million prepared and pickled sermons? ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Her sweet face had almost lost the dignity of sorrow. It was lined, weather-beaten, at times almost vacant. The Reverend Orme's black mane had suddenly turned white in streaks. A perpetual scowl knitted his brows. To mammy's broad countenance, built for vast smiles, had come a look of plaintive despair. ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... have all undervalued me," he answers, with plaintive audacity, while a merry light shines in his dark eyes. He is very handsome, and so jolly and joyous that the children are convulsed with laughter. They lure him down in the garden afterward for ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... a plaintive whinnying at the open door. A long and hairy face, a pair of patient, inquiring eyes looked in. It was a pony. For a moment it regarded us—and then trotted trustfully through; ambled up to us; poked ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... in her pose, as she sat with her shoulders drooping slightly forward and her dark eyes fixed absently on the swans, watching them through the bending reeds. Now one uttered its note, and she listened, seeming to vibrate to the deep, plaintive cry; then she raised to her lips a flute that she held in her hands, and answered it with a perfect intonation,—an intonation that breathed the very spirit of the swan. So successful was the mimicry that the swans replied, thinking it the cry of a hidden mate; and again she ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... the tent, took up a volume of Fromentin's, and sat down in a folding-chair at the tent door. She read a little, but it was difficult to read with the mirage beneath her. Perpetually her eyes were attracted from the book to its mystery and plaintive sadness, that was like the sadness of something unearthly, of a spirit that did not move but that suffered. She did not put away the book, but presently she laid it down on her knees, open, and sat gazing. Androvsky had disappeared with ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... while her husband, who had been out since the morning, was vainly scouring the streets. Just as the Commissary of Police arrived to verify what had happened, the poor devil returned, and when he had seen and understood things, he fell to the ground like a stunned ox, and raised a prolonged, plaintive howl, such a poignant cry of death that the whole terrified street ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the chief bowman's steel-shod pole, held high—there is silence but for the bells—the bowman's pole is lowered—as with one stroke out sweep the paddles in a poetry of motion. The chimes die away over the water, the chapel spire gleams—it, too, is gone. Some one strikes up a plaintive ditty,—the voyageur's song of the lost lady and the faded roses, or the dying farewell of Cadieux, the hunter, to his comrades,—and the adventurers are ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... of the Marne, the scene of that immortal order of Joffre's in which he exhorted the sons of France to conquer or die where they stood. As he had commanded, so had they done. With an emotion too deep for words we each contemplated these plaintive memorials of the heroes who lay where they fell. Our orderly wept and made no effort to hide his tears. I thought of Jeanne's wistful petition, but my heart sank, for these graves were to be numbered not by hundreds but by thousands. "C'est absolument impossible!" ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... fine arts." The sultan put the question; upon which she replied, "I am perfect in all:" and he then requested her to play and sing. She retired immediately, but soon returning with a lute, sat down, tuned it, and played in a plaintive strain, which she accompanied with the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... one, what means thy plaintive moan?" So spake the hoary dame. "Didst thou not smiling say Our Lady did receive thy offering to-day? But sure, no happy heart should make so sad a groan. Thou hast deceived me? Some new ill," she said, Hath fall'n upon us!" "Nay, not so; be comforted. I—I'm quite happy!" ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... and the best, of the Hindus, celebrating the life and exploits of Rama, "a work of art in which an elevated religious and moral spirit is allied with much poetic fiction, ... written in accents of an ardent charity, of a compassion, a tenderness, and a humility at once sweet and plaintive, which ever and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... rage, While the poor inmate looks around and smiles Dart her fell sting with poison to his soul? Hard is the question, and from ancient days Hath still oppress'd with care the sage's thought; Hath drawn forth accents from the poet's lyre Too sad, too deeply plaintive; nor did e'er Those chiefs of human kind, from whom the light Of heavenly truth first gleam'd on barbarous lands, Forget this dreadful secret when they told 20 What wondrous things had to their favour'd eyes And ears on cloudy mountain been reveal'd, Or in deep cave by ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... of blue-birds built their nest in a box which Addison had nailed to a short pole and set up in the barnyard wall; and every morning, as we milked the cows, we would hear their plaintive notes, repeated over and over to each other as they flew about;—"Deary, cheer up, Deary, cheer up!" as if life needed constant mutual consolation, to be supported. "Old Ummy," the house cat, was much inclined to watch their box and once attempted ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... his shell plaintive notes; Ape, parraquito, bee Flock where a shoe on the salt wave floats,— ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... were back at Rosebury," said little Daisy, in a very sad and plaintive voice. "I don't think London is at all a cheerful place. We made a great mistake about it, didn't we, Jasmine? Oh, Jasmine, darling, you are not going to leave me by myself, for I really don't feel well ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the astonishment of the people, he spoke, voicing a plaintive panegyric on liberty and protesting his willingness to barter all the luxury of his captivity for one free ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... as it proved. You should have heard the change that came in that sweetly plaintive voice when it addressed the luckless housemaid. It was not brutal; not at all. But so sharp, hard, unrelenting—the voice of the goddess Poverty herself perhaps sounds ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... evening to her father, she saw no reason why he should, on this occasion, be deprived of an amusement to which he was accustomed. As the welcome sea-breeze rose and stirred the flowers and branches, her voice blended with its fresh and fragrant breath. It was a beautiful voice; and the wild and plaintive air in which she indulged, indigenous to their isle, harmonised alike with the picturesque scene and the serene hour. Mr. Ferrers listened with attention, and thanked her for her courtesy. Before they withdrew to the casino he ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... I heard a voice! A voice at once soft and plaintive; a voice within the chapel, pronouncing ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... outstretched, appealing arms; and presently, when we were still a few yards apart, with a low, wailing cry she fell prone and lay huddled up in a pathetic little heap in the long grass, while the dogs dashed forward and stood alternately nuzzling her and looking up to us with plaintive whines. The next instant I swung out of my saddle, and, bending down, raised the unfortunate creature in my arms, when I saw, to my amazement, that she was evidently a full-grown woman, but of very diminutive stature, being only about four feet six inches in height. Moreover she was in a most ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... of the most plaintive and yearning of soldiers' songs. Jack-Johnsons and coal-boxes are two greatly dreaded types of high explosive shells which Tommy would much rather sing about ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... Fulmort as Phoebe appeared, and was followed by plaintive inquiries for her sisters, and assurances that it would have been better to have stayed in the cool tent, and gone home at once. Phoebe consoled her by ordering the carriage, and explaining that her sisters were at hand with some other girls, then begged leave to go home with ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mastered her anger, and answered in a melancholy, plaintive tone, "Ah, good sister Anna! I had a miserable toothache, so that I could not sleep, and I just crept down here into the fresh air, thinking it might do me good. But what are you all doing here ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... melody, MacDowell's lovely, hurrying, buoyant "Improvisation," with its aeolian vibrancies, its light, bright surges of sound, sinking at the last into cradled restfulness. Without pause or transition she passed on to Grieg; the wistful, remote appeal of the strangely misnamed "Erotique," plaintive, solemn, and in the fulfillment almost hymnal: the brusque pursuing minors of the wedding music, and the diamond-shower of notes of the sun-path song, bleak, piercing, Northern sunlight imprisoned in melody. Then, the majestic swing of Ase's ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... grooves of flight A blundering bat swoops swiftly by; From out a coppice drifts a bird's Last plaintive melody. ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... fit, I am not able: say that I am not well; indeed, my love, you may say so with truth.—Tell your friend that I have a terrible head-ache, and that I am gone to bed—but not to rest," added she, in a lower and more plaintive tone, as she drew her hand from her husband's, and in spite of all his entreaties retired to her room with an air of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... plaintive and clear. It seemed to lodge itself in his heart so that ever afterwards he had only to think of her to hear it like the echo of a small, sad bell. He went on stubbornly, ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... "poor" is an epithet in very common misuse. It is often brought into play, especially in its plaintive sense, in situations, where, poor thing, it scarcely knows itself, and where there is not the slightest provocation to account for the use of it. It is degraded to the condition of a mere expletive; and, where there is a real good call for it, how often ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... heard. It became still worse when she reached the threshold of the vestibule and saw the great crowd waiting in the court. Then her face worked convulsively, and crouching down, as though she would bury her feet in the earth, she addressed the doctor in words both plaintive and wild: "Is it possible that, after what is now happening, M. de Brinvilliers can ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... on allowance day, those who visited the great house farm were peculiarly excited and noisy. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild notes. These were not always merry because they were wild. On the contrary, they were mostly of a plaintive cast, and told a tale of grief and sorrow. In the most boisterous outbursts of rapturous sentiment, there was ever a tinge of deep melancholy. I have never heard any songs like those anywhere since I left slavery, except when in Ireland. There I heard the same wailing notes, and ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... anxiety, and grief, and love, and remorse for not having been on the look out, Finn poured out his very soul in a succession of long-drawn whines, plaintive and insistent as a 'cello's wailings, while his powerful fore-paws tugged and scratched ineffectually at the solid iron bars of his cage. The woman whose voice he heard was the Mistress of the Kennels, and the man to whom she spoke, who walked beside her, looking obstinately at her and not at ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... the procession—singing a peculiarly sweet and plaintive air—fairly inside the body of the temple than Escombe aroused himself with a violent start, for walking in the midst of the priests, attired in a simple white robe, from the hem of which her little bare feet peeped as she walked ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... equal pertinency be addressed, "To the Man in the Moon." Yet these letters often make my heart ache,—they speak so of people who strive and sorrow and want help; and it is hard to be called on in plaintive tones for help which you know it is perfectly impossible for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... prolonged, grief or regret may be transient. One may grieve or mourn, regret, rue, or sorrow without a sound; he bemoans with suppressed and often inarticulate sounds of grief; he bewails with passionate utterance, whether of inarticulate cries or of spoken words. He laments in plaintive or pathetic words, as the prophet Jeremiah in his "Lamentations." One deplores with settled sorrow which may or may not find relief in words. One is made to rue an act by some misfortune resulting, or by some penalty or vengeance inflicted because of it. One regrets ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... more surely come into touch with them, and the more easily convey to them the deepest truths of our faith. Formerly, missionaries declined to use the music of Hinduism because it enriched the temple services and "was of the devil." Today these same sweet and plaintive songs are wedded to beautiful Christian hymns, prepared by native Christian poets, and are the appropriate and very popular vehicles of the best Christian thought and sentiment to Christian and non-Christian ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... what a world does the illustrious bard carry me! To wander over pathless wilds, surrounded by impetuous whirlwinds, where, by the feeble light of the moon, we see the spirits of our ancestors; to hear from the mountain-tops, mid the roar of torrents, their plaintive sounds issuing from deep caverns, and the sorrowful lamentations of a maiden who sighs and expires on the mossy tomb of the warrior by whom she was adored. I meet this bard with silver hair; he wanders in the valley; ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... complaining of ill-treatment, or slightly suffering, almost always speaks in a high-pitched voice. Dogs, when a little impatient, often make a high piping note through their noses, which at once strikes us as plaintive;[4] but how difficult it is to know whether the sound is essentially plaintive, or only appears so in this particular case, from our having learnt by experience what it means! Rengger, states[5] that the monkeys (Cebus ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... menaces vice, and right constantly menaces wrong, Sardinia was a menace to Austria;—and as we often find the wrongdoer denouncing the good as subverters of social order, we ought not to be astonished at the plaintive whine of the master of thrice forty legions at the conduct of the decorous, humane, and enlightened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of them had taken shelter under the matted hair which hangs from the flanks of the camel; and when the pitiless driver persisted in dislodging them, they departed with a plaintive cry, to seek an asylum with a camel whose driver was more hospitable. A sentinel had found one in his pocket during the night, but it paid dearly for its lodging—he roasted it for his supper! These poor birds had fled from the rigours of a European winter, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... male seeks to please the female to gain her favors. The brilliant colors of butterflies and birds, song, skill and proof of strength, often come to the aid of the male sexual instinct. Even in certain animals supplicant and plaintive sounds assist the male after his repeated refusal, apparently or in reality, by the female. We shall see in Chapter VI that savage men have a much greater tendency to tattoo and adorn ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... manifestly discourages the most enterprising, and it is quite rare that Madame de Breuilly has not two vacant seats on her right and on her left, despite her nonchalant grace, despite her great creole eyes, and despite her plaintive and beseeching looks, that seem to be ever saying: "Mon Dieu! will no one ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... Angel way a way," explained the baby obediently. "Yosie say Angel be a good girl and her come yite back. Where Yosie,—Angel wants Yosie to come now," and the plaintive little voice broke into a sob, as the child looked from one to the other ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... very hard to earn money, Mr. Gilsum," said the musical and plaintive voice, but have been disappointed. Next week I am sure I will have some ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... she continued to gaze up at the house-front, which seemed, in the plaintive decline of light, to send her back the mute appeal ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the great poet, he no doubt represented him in the best possible light, and his narration of his last days was deeply interesting. Lady Byron had a quiet, reserved manner, a sad face, and a low, plaintive voice, like one who had known deep sorrow. I had seen her frequently in the convention and at social teas, and had been personally presented to her before this occasion. Altogether I thought her ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... pleasing to the Western ear, not because it possesses quick progressions, flourishes, or any elaborate technicalities, but because it conveys the impression of reality and feeling. The responsive duets, sung by a young man and answered by a girl, pleased me most. All their songs are plaintive, and contain modulations of the voice so mysteriously charming in effect, and so good in tone, that they really affect one profoundly. They only sing when the mood takes them; never with a view to please others, but always simply to give vent to their emotions. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the moonlight searched out the side porch of Hopewell Drugg's store. The plaintive notes of the storekeeper's violin breathed tenderly ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... points, and look upon shining clouds far below, as if the same snowy mountains had descended to bow in meek devotion. The llama, the delicate beast of burden, sometimes called the Peruvian camel, with gently curving neck, moves gracefully on, turning often and quickly, from side to side, mild, plaintive eyes, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... waters around her. Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen. Plaintive at first were the tones and sad; then soaring to madness Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes. Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation; Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision, As when, after a storm, a gust ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... in the upper chambers is scarcely advisable. The lower rooms of the castle have been repaired, and are used as prisons; and as we passed, arms were stretched forth from some of the barred windows, and plaintive voices entreated the passers-by to bestow some trifle upon the poor inmates. Upwards of 140 prisoners are said to be confined ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... past and to come, our reflections are not all pleasant. Often do we regret with Washington living the passing away of the Arcadian simplicity which once prevailed upon this island. Often do we recall his plaintive words, applied to this very community: "Let no man congratulate himself when he beholds the child of his bosom or the city of his birth increasing in magnitude and importance." Yet mournful reflections over the passing away of childhood's days have small place in the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... their knees. The music gave out sharp plaintive notes which were answered by the voices of men and women in short, wailing, as it were inquiring, rhythm; this continued till the sun was on the point of disappearance, when music and voices together burst into a sad chant, seemingly of farewell; the kneeling people extending ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... up, and down, and about, getting the best views of the building. It is scarcely possible for description to give you the picture. The artist, in whose mind the conception of this building arose, was a Mozart in architecture; a plaintive and ethereal lightness, a fanciful quaintness, pervaded his composition. The building is not a large one, and it has not that air of solemn massive grandeur, that plain majesty, which impresses you in the cathedrals of Aberdeen and Glasgow. As you stand looking at the wilderness ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... raise my eyes to that dark corner of my room where the light is dimly reflected by the glass of an indistinct portrait. I realize of how little consequence has become what had seemed at one time capable of filling all my life. This plaintive mystery is of no more interest to me. If the strolling singers of Rolla came to murmur their famous nostalgic airs under the window of this bordj I know that I should not listen to them, and if they became insistent I should send them ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... required. Away they sped down the road toward the east, the mild June air coming sweet and cool and fresh from the distant lake, laden with the odors of the woods and the fields. The stillness was intense, broken only by the plaintive cry of the whippoorwill, America's one-phrased nightingale, or the still more weird and eerie note ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... McLean. "Successes! One ice-cream-soda success. And she"—Lin's still wounded male pride made him plaintive—"why, even that girl quit him, once she got the chance to appreciate how insignificant he was as compared with the size of his words. No, sir. Not one of 'em retains interest ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... her features expressed only gloomy severity. He turned in consternation and caught sight for the first time of Phoebe's face. Her eyes and pretty nose were red and her mouth was drawn into a curve of plaintive rebellion. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... lights wavered, and went out by scores and hundreds, just as the petals drop from spent flowers, while it seemed, though it may have been only wind in the rank grass, that the air was full of most plaintive sighs as each little lamp slipped ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... that the sadness that comes to us sometimes as the day dies and the last of the sun's rays vanish to leave the hills and valleys dark and cold, the sorrowful feeling that we cannot understand when, in country places, we hear music coming from far away, or listen to the plaintive song of the bird, are things that very specially belong to ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... white sails came out here and there from among the islands in the Loire to add new grace to the perfect view. The subtle scent of the willows by the water's edge was mingled with the damp odor of the breeze from the river. The monotonous chant of a goat-herd added a plaintive note to the sound of birds' songs in a chorus which never ends; the cries of the boatmen brought tidings of distant busy life. Here was Touraine in all its glory, and the very height of the splendor of spring. Here was the one peaceful district ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... and suddenly the plaintive sound ceased. Joan bent over it. She had been holding the tiny hand as she always did, and at this moment the soft fingers closed upon one of her own quietly. She was quite alone, and for an instant there was ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the landlord about to set on his big dog, took to his heels, muttering in a low and plaintive tone, and threatening to report his grievances to Parson Bangshanter, and Squire Clapp, two leading members of the temperance league, and who, in respect to good morals, had taken the sale of liquor into their own hands, and were making a good thing of it. The major now remembered ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... The plaintive note drove all doubt from his mind. He was suddenly exalted. Speech was beyond him. His dream had come true. She was incomparably fairer than his waking hours had pictured her during the five years of probation; only in fond dreams had she appeared to him as ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... softly by her and was off like a shot through the tall weeds growing beyond the fence; it was only a rabbit who was more frightened at Edna than she at it. Next, the bushes parted and a small white figure crept stealthily forth. The child's heart stood still and she stopped short. Then came a plaintive meow and she discovered one of the three kittens out on an adventuring tour. She picked up the little creature which purred contentedly as she snuggled it to her, continuing ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... of "Spookes," and that there was plenty of light for him to say his prayers. Even the parson himself, in company with his wife, went to listen at the door of where their prisoner was confined, and for a moment their hard hearts even were softened by the sweet, plaintive chant ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... is there in denying to a man that which he did not or could not desire? In the sixth book of his AEneid (426-429) the gentle Virgil makes us hear the plaintive voices and sobbing of the babes who weep ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... Woods, in admiration, "you're a witch. I wasn't laughing, though, my dear. I was developing quite a twilight mood over them—a plaintive, old-lettery sort of ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... asleep," he explained, more to protect her than himself. "I—I wish that fool Nelson kid would break his mandolin—or his neck," he said irritably. He kissed her and went upstairs. From across the quiet street there came thin, plaintive, occasionally inaccurate, the strains ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... belonging to a lady of his acquaintance. The female laid her eggs, and was about to brood them: some days elapsed, and the people saw the female still sitting on the eggs, but the male, flying about the nest, and sometimes settling on a nail, was herd to utter a very plaintive note, which betrayed his uneasiness. On a nearer examination the female was found dead on the nest, and, on her being removed, the male took his seat upon the eggs; but after remaining upon them about two hours, he went out, and returned in the afternoon, ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... cannot call me child after to-day—so my father says." Her voice was still plaintive, but there was a hint of the old mischief there. "I'll be sixteen to-morrow—and I didn't know until to-day that I'd be so sorry that it is so. Ever since I was ten I've been wishing I could be eighteen without waiting for the years. But I don't know, now, Harlan. It seemed as though ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... a sickly fashion. 'If your honour would but allow me?' he said. He saw a great chance slipping from him, and his voice was plaintive. ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... singing in such a sweet plaintive voice in the room beneath our porch? It is the Sit Leila, wife of Sheikh Abbas, saying a lullaby to her little baby boy, Sheikh Fereed. We will sit on the porch in this bright moonlight, and listen ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... faster without, and blew in fierce clouds against the windows. The wind was rising and gaining power, and it whistled wrathfully about the house, howling as in bitter mockery at the scene within. Sometimes it swelled into wild laughter, and again dropped into low and plaintive wailings. It was very dismal out in the cold, and hardly more cheerful in the warm sitting-room, where those two jaded souls knelt ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... of expectancy followed. The boy held his breath and gazed spellbound at the radiant vision on whom all eyes were riveted. The orchestra struck the first notes of a plaintive melody, and the glorious voice of the great singer filled the vast hall, as the words of the sad little song of the child composer floated on the air. It was so simple, so touching, so full of exquisite pathos, that many were in ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... moments, with neck extended and ears alert, peering into the obscurity from whence he expected to see some melancholy phantom emerge; but almost immediately a gust of wind driving through the broken square of a dormer window made it grind upon its hinges and give out a plaintive sound, which reverberated through the corridor. Gilbert then fancied that what he had taken for a sigh was only the moaning of the wind, counterfeiting in its melancholy gambols the voice of human grief. Resuming his ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... to pray plaintively in the tongue of his forefathers. "Shma Isroel! Shma Isroel!" ... His comrades did not understand him and glanced at him in terror, as at a madman, but from the opposite side another frightened and plaintive voice answered him in Jewish: "A ...
— The Shield • Various
... that sings seconds, and the impression was confirmed as he listened to the blind girl's accompaniment to the other voices; low when they were loud, sad when they were triumphant, following painfully their quicker steps with that ever plaintive protest and soft wail—fit image of life, where our highest joys are dogged by sorrow's quick and ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... of her own son Simon, and her grandson George Foster, and little James Eddy, gave us a share of her motherly attention, and tried to feed and comfort us. Affliction and famine, however, had well nigh sapped her strength and by the time those plaintive voices ceased to cry for bread and meat, her willing hands were too weakened to ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... poet, born near Loch Leven, in poor circumstances, in the parish of Portmoak; studied for the Church; died of consumption; his poems singularly plaintive and pathetic; his title to the authorship of the "Ode to the Cuckoo" has been matter of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... gurgle at the bows— their bright blue and scarlet and white trappings reflected in the dark waters in broken masses of colour, streaked with long lines of shining ripples, as if they floated on a lake of liquid rainbows. And it was a glorious thing to hear the wild, plaintive song, led by one clear, sonorous voice, that rang out full and strong in the still air, while at the close of every two lines the whole brigade burst into a loud, enthusiastic chorus, that rolled far and wide over the smooth waters—telling of their approach ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... pioneer of the flycatchers. In the inland farming districts, I used to notice her, on some bright morning about Easter Day, proclaiming her arrival, with much variety of motion and attitude, from the peak of the barn or hay-shed. As yet, you may have heard only the plaintive, homesick note of the bluebird, or the faint trill of the song sparrow; and Phoebe's clear, vivacious assurance of her veritable bodily presence among us again is welcomed by all ears. At agreeable intervals in her lay she describes a circle or an ellipse in the air, ostensibly prospecting for ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... I bade one of our men take the beasts into a chamber among the rocks that I had shown him, and where plenty of fodder had been stored a few days before. After this we waited a little longer till night fell, and then I bade Tupac do what I had bidden him the day before. His voice rose shrill and plaintive in the silence, chanting a song that you may have heard the Indians singing in Peru when returning from their labours, and presently, from among the rocks on the plain, and from the shadowy lines of the Fortress, many silent ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... a tremendous pace, over the snow, which gave out under our runners that crunching, iron sound only heard when the thermometer touches zero. There is a peculiar fascination about the troika, and the sweetest, saddest melody and most plaintive song of Russia ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... the wood of leaves, Wherewith it filled the air. We with closed eyes And lips sat bowing to the wrath of heaven. When this had passed away, after some time, Appeared this maiden, uttering piercing wails; Like to the plaintive notes of a lorn bird, That finds her nest robbed of its callow brood, Her wailings were, when she beheld the corpse Once more uncovered; and right bitterly Cursed she the man whose hand had done the deed. Straightway a handful of dry dust she brings, Then thrice uplifting ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... freely shed, had wiped away all stains upon his memory, and enshrined him in the hearts of Snowdon's people as a martyr. He was the first dead soldier returned to them, his the first soldier's grave in their churchyard; and so a goodly throng were there, with plaintive fife and muffled drum, to do him honor. His major was coming with him, it was said—Major Stanley, who had himself been found, in a half-fainting condition watching by the dead—Major Stanley, who had seen that the body was embalmed, had written to ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... charade was easier. Every one wrote "music" on his card, after the two acts in which plaintive mews floated up from the rocks and the Gibbs family were taken sick. All but Jim, who, in the high silk hat he had worn before, ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... moment the three were in the roomy cockpit and Tom had made the empty rowboat fast to the stern. He was about to start up when from another boat, containing two little girls and two slightly larger boys, came a plaintive cry: ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... beautiful little Innisfallen. Here we landed for a while, and the weather clearing up, allowed us to see this charming spot. Rocks, shrubs, and little abrupt rises and falls of ground, covered with the brightest emerald grass; a beautiful little ruin of a Saxon chapel, lying gentle, delicate, and plaintive on the shore; some noble trees round about it, and beyond, presently, the tower of Ross Castle, island after island appearing in the clearing sunshine, and the huge hills throwing their misty veils off, and wearing their noble robes of purple. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... these lines, read a sad mishap, and learn our plaintive lay. Many call that a sarcophagus which contains bones, But this has become the home of unhallowed bees. [1] Shame it should be so! Here lies a damsel of exceeding beauty. There's more than grief in this: a dearly loved wife has been snatched away. She lived a virgin so long as Nature ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... saying these words he uttered a little plaintive grunt like that of a sucking calf: "M-m-m. ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... renders a man more reserved than his approach to an anticipated danger. I looked askance at Adolphe, and saw that his teeth rattled like castanets; and when the foremost keepers, in doubt as to the track, blew a plaintive note, which, ere it died away, was answered by another in the distance, showing that we were in the right one, Adolphe's breathing became stentorious behind me. And then as the branches and hazel twigs, through which we forced our way ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... treated to the drum, it is generally in large potions, and nothing but drum. This is a relic of barbarism, and is quite unworthy of a musical age. There is more or less of it in all the garrisoned towns of Europe. You may imagine the satisfaction with which one listens to a hundred or two of these plaintive instruments, beat between houses six or eight stories high, in a narrow street, and with desperate perseverance! The object is to recall the troops ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to begin now," said the plaintive Maria. "You don't care about walking with your poor cousin. Not long ago ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Alfred has three hundred and fifty-four candidates for six vacancies. The cook has run away and left us liable, which makes our committee very plaintive. Master Brook, our head serving-man, has the gout, and our new cook is none of the best. I speak from report,—for what is cookery to a leguminous-eating ascetic? So now you know as much of the matter as I do. Books and quiet are still there, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and black oaks, the red and purple of the maples, and the green of the pines and hemlocks flamed in a glorious blaze of color. A stillness, which was only broken now and then by the twittering of birds uttering the plaintive notes peculiar to them in the autumn as they band together before their pilgrimage to the far south, ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... and followed the dim trail back toward the college, entering the campus as the evening lights were coming on in the dormitory windows, and somewhere a group of boys were singing, not lustily but with the plaintive quality that sometimes steals into the voices of the young and happy at the twilight hour. I tossed my hat on a table, and saw my withered violets falling dejectedly over the band. But I did not care. Back below Thumping Dick was a cove full on the march, coming up the slope, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... ere earth had waked from sleep, From the calm shadow of my tent I stole; I could not rest, and as I sought the shore, To tell my longings to the ocean o'er, A warning Voice, uprising from the deep, Murmured in plaintive rhythm ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... chatter for a season, and then give way to the noiseless flight of innumerable bats chasing the hawk-moth and beetle. There is scarcely a sound in a tropical forest which is joyous and cheering. The birds are usually silent; those that have voices utter a plaintive song, or hoarse, shrill cry. Our door-yards are far more melodious on a May morning. The most common birds on the Napo are macaws, parrots, toucans, and ciganas. The parrots, like the majority in South America, are of the green type. The toucan, peculiar to the New World, and distinguished by ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... its texture; after thirty, there is an effect of premature senility: the skin is yellowish, leathery, and wrinkled as the faces of old women are wrinkled: the upper lip is traversed by vertical wrinkles, and wrinkles come around corners of the mouth. The expression is juvenile, effeminate or plaintive. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... a gavotte with a spindle-legged ancient chair; a very droll porcelain figure of Zitzenhausen was bowing to a very stiff soldier in terre cuite of Ulm; an old violin of Cremona was playing itself, and a queer little shrill plaintive music that thought itself merry came from a painted spinet covered with faded roses; some gilt Spanish leather had got up on the wall and laughed; a Dresden mirror was tripping about, crowned with flowers, and a Japanese ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... general prone to melancholy; yet the most plaintive ditty hath imparted a fuller joy, and of longer duration, to its composer, than the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian. A bottle of wine bringeth as much pleasure as the acquisition of a kingdom, and not unlike it in kind: the senses in both cases ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... do, not to be utterly forgotten by those whom He cared for and loved; and who, not only because their remembrance was their salvation, but because their forgetfulness pained His human heart, brings to their hearts the plaintive appeal: 'Do not forget Me when I am gone away from you; and even if you have no better way of remembering Me, take these poor symbols, to which I am not too proud to entrust the care of My memory, and do this, lest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... with bloom, bent to meet its reflected image. It was so fair that Audrey began to sing as she went down the stream; and without knowing why she chose it, she sang a love song learned out of one of Darden's ungodly books, a plaintive and passionate lay addressed by some cavalier to his mistress of an hour. She sang not loudly, but very sweetly; carelessly, too, and as if to herself; now and then repeating a line twice or maybe thrice; pleased with the sweet melancholy of the ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... he accompanied with a sobbing and plaintive howl, in which his trembling hearers joined. They assured each other in uncomfortable whispers that Pfannenstiel's prophecies usually came true, and that, even before the war, he had predicted the coming ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... time ran through the pieces, which ended and began oddly after the fashion of wind through an Aeolian harp. It was part of the place and scene, just as the dying sunlight and faintly breathing wind were part of the scene and hour, and the mellow notes of old-fashioned plaintive horns, pierced here and there by the sharper strings, all half smothered by the continuous booming of the deep drum, touched his soul with a curiously potent spell that was almost too engrossing ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... into the inn. "Vocal no more to high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellynn's lay!" A harper was sitting in the passage, and he tuned his harp to catch her attention as she passed. "A harp!—O play for me some plaintive air!" The harper followed her into a ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... Spencer, in her tired, plaintive voice, as she sat down with the children; "I cannot get good servants to stay with me here. I had no trouble in the city at all. Does your mother ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... what she wanted and formed her own opinions quite independently of those of others. Moreover, in a certain way she was a good-looking child, but of a stamp totally different from that of either of her parents. Her eyes were not restless and prominent, like her father's, or dark and plaintive, like her mother's, but large, grey and steady, with long curved lashes. In fact, they were fine, but it was her only beauty, since the brow above them was almost too pronounced for that of a woman, the mouth was a little large, and the nose somewhat irregular. Her hair, too, though ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... epithets "heavenly," "holy," "solemn," &c., represent the nightingale's song, as spoken of by Keats, as the bird's "plaintive anthem;" by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... wigs knowingly. The little Dauphin's tutor and squire are waiting before the door, anxious for the decision of the faculty. Scullions pass by without saluting them. The squire swears like a pagan; the tutor recites verses from Horace. And during this time down by the stables one can hear a long plaintive neighing. It is the Dauphin's little sorrel pony, whom the grooms are neglecting, and who calls sadly from his empty manger. And the King—where is his Majesty the King? The King has shut himself up in a room in a remote part of the castle. Their Majesties ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various |
