"Wail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stood, he found the roadway filled with people, crowding about a group of disheveled women. These were shrieking, wildly tearing their hair, beating themselves and throwing dust upon their heads. Kenkenes immediately surmised that there was something more than the usual death-wail in this. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the Coliseum: larks were singing above my head; wall-flowers were waving at my feet; a procession of chanting monks was walking slowly around the great cross in the arena below. I was on the highest tier, and their voices reached me only as an indistinct wail, like the notes of a distant Aeolian harp; but the joyous sun and sky and songs, were darkened and dulled by their presence. A strange sadness oppressed me, and I sank into a deep reverie. I do not know how long I ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... The air was hot, oppressive, laden with the scents of dry earth. Sounds carried far in the stillness. The stamp of a horse in a stall, the low, throaty notes of a cow nuzzling her calf, the far-off evening wail of a coyote—all seemed strangely near at hand, borne by some telephonic ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... silent again. Soon arose a wind, a partial wandering wind, which came slowly up, and, rousing the quivering leaves to life for a moment, passed away; then again a silence, deeper than ever, so that she could hear the cattle and horses feeding in the lower paddock, a quarter of a mile off; then a low wail in the wood, then two or three wild weird yells, as of a devil in torment, and a pretty white curlew skirled over the housetop to settle ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... merry, glorious, and bespattered, one waving a couple of rabbits, and the other of pheasants, and trying to tickle Theodore's cheeks with the long tails of the latter, of course frightening him into a fretful wail. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... words a very wail. "Oh, my boy! my boy! how shall I ever tell you? Oh, why did I send for you this dreadful night? Ethel"—her ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... I saw the soul of Agamemnon approaching, together with the shades of those of his companions who had perished with him. The moment he had drunk of the blood he knew me and raised a loud wail. He stretched out his hands to me, and I tried to seize them, but I ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... wrinkled old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha, Rocked him in his linden cradle, Bedded soft in moss and rushes, Safely bound with reindeer sinews; Stilled his fretful wail by saying, "Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!" Lulled him into slumber, singing, "Ewa-yea! my little owlet! Who is this, that lights the wigwam? With his great eyes lights the wigwam? ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... prepare their storms, And o'er the silent city, vulture forms— Eris and Enyo, Alke, Ioke, The biter, the sharp-bitten, the mad, the fey— Hover and light on pinnacle and tower: The gray Erinnyes, watchful for the hour When Haro be the wail. And down the sky Like a white squall flung Ate with a cry That sounded like the wind in a ship's shrouds, As shrill and wild at once. The driving clouds Surging together, blotted out the sea, The beached ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... beneath the night divine— Alone, another weeps elsewhere: Her love for him is unlike mine, Her wail she will ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... With loud wail the people followed after. None was joyful, neither woman nor man. They sang and read or they buried him. Ah, what good ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... Life, my Breath! Return, my Comforter! Hear my bitter wail of woe, lead me back to my home. Have pity on my loneliness! Restore Thy love to me, bring me once again to the cleft of my rock, and let me hide myself in ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... the black chaos ahead a sound, a sound low and weird, like the moaning of a winter's wind through the pine tops, swelling, advancing, until it ended in a shriek—a shriek that echoed and reechoed between the chasm walls, dying away in a wail that froze the blood of the three ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... once more brooding over sea and land, when one morning, in Nance's cottage, a feeble wail was heard; a sound which brought a flood of happiness to Valmai, for nothing could wholly crush the joyous welcome of a mother's heart. For a little while the past months of sorrow and weariness were forgotten. The bitter disappointment caused by ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... oppression. It might be a mere trick of association; but when their plaintive Gaelic singing, so melancholy in its tones at all times, arose from the bare hill-side, it sounded in our ears like a deep wail of complaint and sorrow. Poor people! 'We were ruined and reduced to beggary before,' they say, 'and now the gospel is taken ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... mercy on us," I heard him mutter, "what's that? It sounds like the wail of all the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... my mien may change and hair, Ere, with true pity touch'd, shall greet my eyes My idol imaged in that laurel green: For, unless memory err, through seven long years Till now, full many a shore has heard my wail, By night, at noon, in summer and ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... him. It is literary poetry trying to be Volkspoesie, and not quite succeeding. Many of the pieces in the southern English, such as "Halbert the Grim," "The Troubadour's Lament," "The Crusader's Farewell," "The Warthman's Wail," "The Demon Lady," "The Witches' Joys," and "Lady Margaret," have an echo of Elizabethan music, or the songs of Lovelace, or, now and then, the verse of Coleridge or Byron. "True Love's Dirge," e.g., borrows ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... in the whole universe, had a merchant met with such reverses; never had such a pitiable series of losses befallen an unfortunate man. Regardless of the ridicule which his abject wretchedness excited, he howled on still, and kept up an unending wail; but meanwhile he kept a keen eye upon every article of his property, and amidst universal laughter insisted on having every item registered in an inventory as it was transferred to its appointed place of safety. Servadac considerately allowed the whole ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Collinses—four tall glasses of pale liquid and ice, some stuff red as blood floating on the top. No sooner had Diana tasted hers than she set up a loud wail that there was not enough Angostura in it. One of the men hurried away to have this grave defect remedied, and the moment he was out of sight Diana took up his as yet untouched glass, and with two long straws between her lips, skilfully sucked all the red stuff from the top of the ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... girl in a coarse, enveloping pinafore opened the door. Her hands and arms were red and dripping and from a dim region at the rear came the smell of dishwater. Down the narrow, precipitate stairway floated an infant's thin, protesting wail and Jane felt a sick sense of ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... eat and he cannot sleep - (Hey, but his face is a sight for to see!) Daily he goes for to wail - for to weep - (Hey, but he's wretched as a youth can be!) [SHE.] She's very thin and she's very pale - (Hey, but she sickens as the days go by!) Daily she goes for to weep - for to wail - (Hey, but I think that little maid ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... eyes penetrated him, as if with a wail of the deepest despair. Now that she was about to be free, all was lost. ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... whole country was already cowering again, except the provinces of Holland and Zealand. No one dared approach, even to learn what had occurred within the walls of the town, for days after its doom had been accomplished. "A wail of agony was heard above Zutphen last Sunday," wrote Count Nieuwenar, "a sound as of a mighty massacre, but we know not what ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... breathed—miles away ... to the north. He could hear the breath coming, a mere whimper among the tree-tops. The whimper became a whine.... Reaching the pinewood, the note slid into a moan, that rose slowly to a thin wail as the breath fled up the corridor with the towering walls. The wail ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... was a lamentable wail from low on the floor, rising to the full pitch of Rol's healthy lungs; for his hand was gashed across, and the copious bleeding terrified him. Then was there soothing and comforting, washing and binding, and a modicum of scolding, till the loud outcry sank into occasional ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... followed by a shower of fiery flakes and sparks blown aloft, like the explosion of some stupendous firework. Mixed with the roaring of the flames, the thunder of falling roofs, the cracking of timber, was a wild hubbub of human voices, that sounded afar off like a dismal wail. In spite of its terror, the appearance of the fire was at that time beautiful beyond description. Its varying colours—its fanciful forms—now shooting out in a hundred different directions, like lightning-flashes,—now ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... get a chance to speak to them," said the chief, pointing significantly towards a lodge whence rose the wail of despair for a warrior who had gone out in the pride of manhood and returned not. "They will be avenged for the warriors who fell in the fight with the whites," he added, "and though they will respect ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... Though the cold hermit over wail, Whose sighs do freeze, and tears drop hail, Once having pass'd this, will ne'r Another flaming ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... her heart seemed to grow lighter, and even to vanish altogether; but when she turned to go home by the shortest way, it returned. "Stop! stop!" and the words came quite clear, though they were like the croak of a frog, or the wail of a bird. "A grave! dig ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... stranger; but lately he was lost, nor doth any know of him whether he be dead or alive. The Princess Firuzah his mother hath sent allwheres in search of him, yet hath she found nor trace nor tidings of him. His parents and indeed all the folk, rich and poor, weep and wail for him and albeit the Sultan hath other forty and nine sons, none of them can compare with him for doughty deeds and skilful craft, nor from any one of them deriveth he aught of comfort or consolation. Full quest and search have been made but hitherto all hath been in vain." The surgeon thereupon ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... usual tone of devout men. And stranger still is the fact that the absence of this consciousness of evil has never been felt to be itself evil and a blot. Think of a David's agony of penitence. Think of a Paul's, 'Of whom I am chief!' Think of the long wail of an Augustine's confessions. Think of the stormy self-accusations of a Luther; and then think that He who inspired them all, never, by word or deed, betrayed the slightest consciousness that in Himself there was the smallest deflection from the perfect line ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... pump." 'He complains of having to dig up and eat little miniature sweet potatoes and asks piteously: "What am I to do? I'm hungry and have nothing else!" His feet become cut and sore, and in every day's entry is a plaintive wail at the pain. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... and its tiny face twisted all awry. I told the women to heat water, thinking that possibly this might be a case of convulsions, which a hot bath would mitigate; but before it was ready the poor babe uttered a thin wail ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... His wisdom will not fail, He has not tasted wine impure, Nor bent to passion frail. Age cannot cloud his memory, Nor grief untune his voice, Ranging down the ruled scale From tone of joy to inward wail, Tempering the pitch of all In his windy cave. He all the fables knows, And in their causes tells,— Knows Nature's rarest moods, Ever on her secret broods. The Muse of men is coy, Oft courted will not come; In palaces and market squares Entreated, she is dumb; But my minstrel ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... your toys For girls and boys, For bits of brass And broken glass, (these four lines being spoken in a breathless hurry) A penny or a vial-bottell . . . . (this being drawled out in an endless wail). ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... All who had sat patiently through trouble and trial, working with might and main, suffering from endless ills, in peril of their lives, and deprived of property and home, now joined in one heartrending wail of woe and disappointment. The consternation that followed the announcement of the ignoble surrender is thus described by Mr. Nixon, who was an eye-witness and sharer of the general grief ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... a cry, coming from no one knew where, which, unearthly in its shrillness and the power it had on the imagination, reverberated through the house and died away in a wail so weird, so thrilling and so prolonged that it gripped not only my own nerveless and weakened heart, but those of the ten strong men congregated below me. The diamond dropped from Mr. Grey's hand, and neither he nor any one else moved to pick ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... kind befriend: And daily to the gods bid altar-fires ascend. Nor be ye churlish hosts, but glad the heart Of guests with wine, when they must needs depart: And reverence most the priests of sacred song: So, when hell hides you, shall your names live long; Not doomed to wail on Acheron's sunless sands, Like some poor hind, the inward of whose hands The spade hath gnarled and knotted, born to groan, Poor sire's poor ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... beat his drum; louder and louder he sang his love song until his soft rich voice broke into a wail. Presently the door-skin of Granny's lodge was gently pushed aside, and Neykia stepped ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... and covered with ashes, patriarchal figures sway to and fro, press their lips to the hot granite, beat now their chests and now the wall, and today, as every day for eighteen hundreds of years, wail in the words of ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... upon the Baal Shem a herd of wild boars, spitting flames; and these at last passed beyond the first circle. Then the pupils saw a change come over the Baal Shem's face, and they began to wail the Penitential Prayer. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... young compeers, Was Brian from his infant years; A moody and heart-broken boy, Estranged from sympathy and joy Bearing each taunt which careless tongue On his mysterious lineage flung. Whole nights he spent by moonlight pale To wood and stream his teal, to wail, Till, frantic, he as truth received What of his birth the crowd believed, And sought, in mist and meteor fire, To meet and know his Phantom Sire! In vain, to soothe his wayward fate, The cloister oped her pitying gate; In vain the learning of the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... says the tall young gentleman, as he slammed the door and so shut off the wail. "Damn 'em, they worry Charles to death. If he would only stick to quinze and picquet, and keep clear of the hounds*, he need ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fine jokers are those fellows who imprison art in a toy-box!" resumed Claude, after a pause. "They are always repeating the same idiotic words: 'You can't create art out of science,' says one; 'Mechanical appliances kill poetry,' says another; and a pack of fools wail over the fate of the flowers, as though anybody wished the flowers any harm! I'm sick of all such twaddle; I should like to answer all that snivelling with some work of open defiance. I should take a pleasure in shocking those good people. Shall I tell you what was the finest thing ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... of Erin's sons, By plague and famine frantic; The wail of wives and little ones Comes o'er ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... till forth he came, when all fell on their knees, and the Recorder spake for them, casting all the blame on the vain and light persons who had made that enormity. Thereupon what does our Hal but make himself as stern as though he meant to string them all up in a line. 'Ye ought to wail and be sorry,' said he, 'whereas ye say that substantial persons were not concerned, it appeareth to the contrary. You did wink at the matter,' quoth he, 'and at this time we will grant you neither favour nor good-will.' However, none who knew Hal's ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of light there was no other movement, and no sound. Dark figures stood motionless. The lonely howl of a sledge-dog ended in a wail of pain as some one kicked it into terrified silence. The hollow cough of Mukee's father was smothered in the thick fur of his cap as he thrust his head from his little shack in the edge of the forest. A score of eyes watched Cummins as he came out into the snow, and the rough, ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... spectre-like, along a low, wet aisle, hung on each side with rusty bolts and locks, revealing the doors of cells. An ominous stillness is broken by the dull clank of chains, the muttering of voices, the shuffling of limbs; then a low wail breaks upon the ear, and rises higher and higher, shriller and shriller, until in piercing shrieks it chills the very heart. Now it ceases, and the echoes, like the murmuring winds, die faintly away. "Look in here, now," says Mr. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... low, weird sobbing that mounted steadily into a keening whose mournfulness made my skin creep. And then his hand shot out and gripped my shoulder, and I stiffened like stone in my chair—for from behind us, like an echo, and then taking up the cry, swelled a wail that seemed to hold within it a sublimation of the sorrows of centuries! It gathered itself into one heartbroken, sobbing note and died away! O'Keefe's grip loosened, and he rose ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... food, locked, and, by his own profusion and high living, excited his starving subjects to revolt. The prelate ordered the rebels to be arrested, confined them in a building, and set it on fire. Not content with this outrage, he added insult to injury by mocking the wail of the sufferers, and comparing their cries with the squeaking of mice. In the night which followed the diabolical deed, a swarm of mice penetrated to the apartments of the archbishop's palace, attacked him, and tried to tear ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... that it should belong to another, its strings should for ever render up the ghost of music in one prolonged wail, as it plunged ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... this period in the history of our country that the colonists found themselves not only banished from all civilization, but compelled to fight an armed foe whose trade was war and whose music was the dying wail of a tortured enemy. Unhampered by the exhausting efforts of industry, the Indian, trained by centuries of war upon adjoining tribes, felt himself foot-loose and free to shoot the unprotected forefather from ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... me, ma'am? I am lost—lost out of sight! Nothing can save me! The Saviour himself wouldn't open the door to a woman that left her suckling child out in the dark night!— That's what I did!" she cried, and ended with a wail as from a heart whose wound eternal years could ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... the spirits the ballyan places an offering before her and begins to chant and wail. A distant stare comes into her eyes, her body begins to twitch convulsively until she is shivering and trembling as if seized with the ague. In this condition she receives the messages of the spirits and under their direction conducts ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... whose master had come North in search of him. It was a fine thing, that throbbing humanity, which could in those days burst the reformer out of the evangelical husk, and I learned my lesson from it. ("Where did she get it?" conservative friends used to wail, whenever I was seen to have tumbled into the last new ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... succeeded in falling asleep, only to wake in a cold perspiration, and to find himself standing up and hastily girding on sword and revolver. What had awakened him he could not imagine, but he had a vague impression of a cry or wail of some sort. It was not repeated, and he unbuckled his belts and lay down again, mentally anathematizing the perfume mingled with the Rajah's tobacco, which must have given him nightmare. But when he woke again, in the grey ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... the sea before a storm. The Sisters Sigsbee, Coon Delineators and Unrivalled Burlesque Artists, have finished their dance, smiled, blown kisses, skipped off, skipped on again, smiled, blown more kisses, and disappeared. A long chord from the orchestra. A chord that is almost a wail. A wail of regret for that which is past. Two liveried menials appear. They carry sheets of cardboard. These menials carry sheets of cardboard. But not blank sheets. On ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... "Its wail came eternally between me and my great desire. When I sat down to work the sound—which I could not quiet—perplexed my brain. When I lay down to get, in sleep, power for fresh work, it struck through my dreams. I heard it when the stars were out over London, and in the dawn, when from ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... For Lady Maxwell they passed with recurring gusts of heart-broken sorrow and of agonies of prayer for her apostate son. Mistress Margaret was at the Hall all day, soothing, encouraging, even distracting her sister by all the means in her power. The mother wrote one passionate wail to her son, appealing to all that she thought he held dear, even yet to return to the Faith for which his father had suffered and in which he had died; but a short answer only returned, saying it was impossible to make his defence in a letter, and expressing ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... with black lips baked We could not laugh nor wail; Through utter drought all dumb we stood! I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, And cried, A sail! ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... slowly back to the house, a low wail—half a chant, half a dirge—rose from the black crowd, and floated off on the still night air, till it died away amid the far woods, in a strange, unearthly moan. With that sad, wild music in our ears, we entered ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... a corse In its coffin in the clay, So White Winter, that rough nurse, Rocks the death-cold Year to-day; 10 Solemn Hours! wail aloud For your mother ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... particularly a song called the Penzhinski, sung one night by the natives at Lesnoi, which was, without exception, the sweetest, and yet the most inexpressibly mournful combination of notes that I had ever heard. It was a wail of a lost soul, despairing, yet pleading for mercy. I tried in vain to get a translation of the words. Whether it was the relation of some bloody and disastrous encounter with their fiercer northern neighbours, or the lament over the slain body of some ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... turquoise sky. Peace broods over this sanctuary of Nature's making, dove-like, with folded wings. No lightest echo of the world's turmoil and strife disturbs the stillness. Only at dawn and dusk, the thin note of the temple bell, the chanting of priests, and the unearthly minor wail of conches, announce the downsitting and uprising of the little stone image of godhead, housed in a picturesque temple that nestles among low trees, beside the Holy Lake, at the southern end ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... clutching his arm. "They're going to look for something—probably our trunk. No, they're not. Look how excited he is! And Daddy, too! Oh, Chet, what in the world——" the last words were a wail, and Chet squeezed ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... indistinct as the outlines of the clouds which seemed to be wandering at random overhead. He remembered his childhood, his mother; he remembered her death, how they had carried him in to her, and how, clasping his head to her bosom, she had begun to wail over him, then had glanced at Glafira Petrovna—and checked herself. He remembered his father, at first vigorous, discontented with everything, with strident voice; and later, blind, tearful, with unkempt grey beard; he remembered how one day after drinking a glass too much at dinner, and ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... stars set in a dry sapphire, the fire cast yellow flickers upon the carven features of Kawa Kendi. In the still heat the distant wailing of the women from the opposite hill drifted into the continuous throb of the drums, the plaintive wail of the singer, and the hysterical groaning of the magicians, yelling ferociously ever and again to intimidate the baulked spirits around the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... at the danger," Strether paternally said, "because when I hear you wail to go back I seem to see you open up ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... did fetch them, the dinner had run away! Then the tiger family set up such a wail and lament over ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle, Book Two • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... mortal man, who livest here by toil, Do not complain of this thy hard estate: That like an emmet thou must ever moil Is a sad sentence of an ancient date; And, certes, there is for it reason great, For though sometimes it makes thee weep and wail And curse thy star, and early drudge and late, Withouten that would come an heavier bale— Loose life, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... They must have deceived him. And yet that music at least had seemed startlingly near, sudden, and sweet, as though one should tread upon a harp in the grass. For the next day or two Antony could not get it out of his ears, and often, like a sweet wail through the wood, he seemed to ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... saw one or two of these watching us from a distance, but soon we passed into utter loneliness, and nought but the cries of the nesting curlew which we startled, and the wail of the plover round our heads, broke the solemn stillness of the grey rocks on every side. Even our men grew silent, and the ring of sword on stirrup seemed too loud to be natural at last. We were all fully ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... the expectant father below that it was "a fine healthy Commander-in-Chief." Therefore, a Commander-in-Chief is not like a poet. But when a Commander-in-Chief dies, the spirit of a thousand Beethovens sob and wail in the air; dull cannon roar slowly out their heavy grief; silly rifles gibber and chatter demoniacally over his grave; and a cocked hat, emptier than ever, rides with the mockery of despair on ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... stretched-out arms, resting upon the table as heretofore. She heard him whisper; she bent tenderly down to listen. 'I don't know. Don't tell me it is Frederick—not Frederick. I cannot bear it,—I am too weak. And his mother is dying!'He began to cry and wail like a child. It was so different to all which Margaret had hoped and expected, that she turned sick with disappointment, and was silent for an instant. Then she spoke again—very differently—not so exultingly, far more ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... I was certain. It was O'Connor's manly voice. It was not a shriek, the death-wail of a struggling wretch, but ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... visit to Miss Cobbe, bade her go bravely on as she had begun, and "fight the good fight," by which he meant the warfare against cruelty in which she was engaged. After his death it was sad to hear the wail of three dogs, a collie, a Scotch terrier, and a Russian wolf-hound, constant companions and friends of the poet. Thousands of dogs have pined, and died of grief, for ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... one would care to run the risk of fever by lingering on the spot to watch the sunset gilding the gloom of the Acropolis with a halo of kindred radiance. Every breeze that stirs the tall grasses and the leaves of the brushwood of the dismantled citadel has a wail in it; the long-drawn murmur of the peaceful sea at the foot of the hill comes up with a melancholy cadence to the ear; and even on the beautiful cyclamens and veronicas that strive to enliven the ruins of the temples of Apollo and Serapis, emblems of the immortal ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... it!" And her enjoyment of the situation becoming acute, there broke from her lips a shrill, unfamiliar, troubled sound, which performed the office of a laugh, a laugh of triumph, but which, at a distance, might have passed almost as well for a wail of despair. It rang in Ransom's ears as he quickly ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... over an old man, seated in her rocking-chair. There she stood, pressing his white head against her breast, calling over and over again in a tone through whose present jubilation sounded the wail of past ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... It won't help matters for us to sit around and wail the whole morning. We'll be on deck for your radio talk ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... it before she understood; she was numb with terror. She rose with difficulty to her feet, clasping the child, whose wail was now weak with exhaustion. The peering crowd made a ring of brute faces about them, full of menace and mystery, but the new power in him moved them to right and left at his gesture, and they gave him passage, with the woman behind him, across the road. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... mind that shuts the divine up in some far off heaven to be reached only by formal telephony called prayer; that fails to see the infinite in all things—in sunlight and flower, in children's laughter, and in misery's wail, in factories and stores, as well as in churches. We need the mind that argues not about omnipresence, but in duty and delight cries, Always ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... was most unkingly. Rather was it the wail of a criminal on being told that the executioner waited without. His ruddy cheeks blanched, and his hands were outstretched as if in a piteous plea for mercy. There was a tumult of objurgations in the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... There was almost a wail in the boy's voice. "That makes the whole democratic system in the Empire a farce! It's totally unnecessary! You're unnecessary! He could ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... villages were deserted. One, where on the previous visit a number of men had been seen peacefully weaving cloth, was burned, and the stores of grain scattered over the plain and along the paths. The smoke of burning villages was seen in front, and triumphant shouts, mingled with the wail of the Manjanga women lamenting over the slain, reached their ears. The bishop knelt and engaged in prayer, and on rising, a long line of Ajawa warriors with their captives was seen. In a short time the travellers were surrounded, the savages shooting their poisoned ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... then, midst a wail Of agonizing woe, His answer falls upon the ear,— "Yes, sister, ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... prosperity. He may not be wholly free from prejudices, but it is not that which determines his actions, it is the prejudice of the masses. He will not sacrifice his existence by opposing it. It is a mistake to wail at the class who is at the mercy of the masses. It is more than probable that they would do different if ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... the dawn. The coyotes changed their barking to a solemn wail as though day came to rob them of some irredeemable joy. A belated prairie cock began to boom, and then tired, sleepy, and grimy, the men sat down to breakfast at Jacob Pratt's house. The deed had been done. Daniel had entered ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... plaintive song of the teakettle may have been but the wail of imprisoned power, until Watts set it free to work out its glorious destiny, so the boy's surly ways had been his own protest against a destiny that seemed enchaining him to an uncongenial work, for which he brought ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... only see a glimmer of the shape of the window. Then, indeed, he felt that he was left alone. It was so dreadful to be out in the night after everybody was gone to bed! That was more than he could bear. He burst out crying in good earnest, beginning with a wail like that of the wind ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... "I, from the happy Wren, Linnet and Blackcap, Woodlark, Thrush, Perched all upon a sweetbrier bush, Have come at cold of midnight-tide To ask thee, Why and when Grief smote thy heart so thou dost sing In solemn hush of evening, So sorrowfully, lovelorn Thing— Nay, nay, not sing, but rave, but wail, Most melancholic Nightingale? Do not the dews of darkness steep All pinings of the day in sleep? Why, then, when rocked in starry nest We mutely couch, secure, at rest, Doth thy lone heart delight to make ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... trembling. He rolled frightened eyes toward Jackson who was glaring at him. Finally he broke into a wail. "Oh! Pappy Jackson, da's all Ah knows. He tell me he go to de bah an' ef'n anybuddy ask whah he go dat night to ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... a faint bleat, as of a new-born lamb, high above her head; she started and looked up. Then a wail from the cliffs, as of a child in pain, answered by another from the opposite rocks. They were but the passing snipe, and the otter calling to her brood; but to her they were mysterious, supernatural goblins, come to answer to her call. Nevertheless, they only ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... sea which bears thee, gives reply But with a solemn sigh along the shore. With evening's ruddy glow I'll send to thee A greeting, when it sinks into thy waves. And heaven's long ship, the fleeting cloud, shall take On board the wail of the abandoned one. So shall I sit within my virgin bower, In mourning clad, of all life's joy bereft, And broken lilies sew into the cloth, Until the Spring its cloth doth weave, and sew It full of better lilies ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... utterly revolting to listen to, but Tranter searched it closely for some clue to the identity of the person, or thing, to whom it was addressed. The voice rose again to a shriek; then subsided as before into a feeble wail ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... honest in their wonderment. They could not conceive of themselves raising a wail over a business transaction, so they could not understand it in ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... roofs, Bellowing fly the herds, and seek to break their inclosure; So on the hearts of the people descended the words of the speaker. Silent a moment they stood in speechless wonder, and then rose Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow and anger, And, by one impulse moved, they madly rushed ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... you in your wail about the markets being "flat." Wait a while, patiently, and they will ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... cloak of the Syriac speech; George Costard sorrowed in Arabic that might have amazed Abu l'Atahiyeh; Mr. Swinton's learned sock stirred him to Phoenician and Etruscan; and Mr. Evans, full of national fire and the traditions of the bards, delivered himself, and at great length too, in Welsh. The wail of this "Welsh fairy" is the fine flower of this funeral wreath of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... newspapers of the day, while the perpetrators thereof escaped the punishment due to their crimes. Yet no lament was raised by the political guides of Ireland over murdered landholders and clergymen; it appeared to be, in their sight, a just revenge. At the same time a long wail of woe was heard throughout the country, if it happened that any of the resisting peasantry were killed by the military in the performance of their duties in securing the tithe. Four were thus killed in the county of Cork, and others wounded, the military being ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and Umqua had appeared upon the scene, and added their testimony to that of their chief. While they were still engaged in explanation, a low wail from Softswan turned their attention to the corner where the ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... to a close his extraordinary peroration, to which I fear the written word has done but poor justice. A long silence followed; in it there was borne to us from below the murmur of the hidden fountain, the wail of the nightingale. It was night now; the moon had set, and the sky was thick with stars. Among them one planet was blazing red, just opposite where I sat; and I saw the eyes of my neighbour, Henry Martin, fixed upon it. He was ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... sandman, but the child stared wildly at her mother. Johanna reappeared in the door with a scared face; Barbara burst into loud weeping, and her nurse bore her away crying and bending toward her mother, while from the veranda the wail ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... of a town, and from its streets one great wail of terror rose to heaven. Men stood staring as though they were drunken, looking at their red arms which they had dipped in the stream, and women ran to and fro upon the bank, tearing their hair and robes, and ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... Glover o'er Medea doze; Let them with Dodsley wail Cleone's woes, Whilst he, fine feeling creature, all in tears, Melts as they melt, and weeps with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... go wrong!" in a faint half wail; "if anything could happen!" She could not bear the mere thought. It would break her heart. She had been so happy. ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the strangeness of the scene and the noise and laughter of the people all about, Fleurette set up a wail of woe which developed rapidly into a storm of screams and sobs,—indeed, it was a first-class crying spell,—a thing which the good-natured child rarely ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... of the chants and prayers of the Church pervaded by a more terrible, wild fervor than the Superior that night breathed into them. They seemed to wail, to supplicate, to combat, to menace, to sink in despairing pauses of helpless anguish, and anon to rise in stormy agonies of passionate importunity; and the monks quailed and trembled, they scarce knew why, with forebodings of coming wrath ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentiles, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord. ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... of each sacked and burning village; The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns; The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage; The wail ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... that met their gaze as they entered the village. Men, women and children, with a wild wail, threw themselves flat on their stomachs, uttering the most melancholy moans that ever came from human lips. Interspersed with the cries were apparent ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... voice rose in a sharp wail. "You can't mean you really... You don't seriously intend ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... 'if he means to be a comfort I wish he would stop that dismal little wail—have one good squall and have done with it. He will worry his mother and ruin all now she takes more notice. So here's Mrs. Moss's letter. I could not open it this morning, and I have been inventing messages to Violet from her—poor woman! I have some good news for ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Montrose wars, which introduce to our acquaintance the more modern class of bards; of these the most conspicuous is, Ian Lom[16] or Manntach. This bard was a Macdonald; he hung on the skirts of armies, and at the close of the battle sung the triumph or the wail, on the side of his partisans.[17] To the presence of this person the clans are supposed to have been indebted for much of the enthusiasm which led them to glory in the wars of Montrose. His poetry only reaches mediocrity, but the success which attended it led ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of Rockland. After this discovery, one may dare to wonder at his finding a novelty in the "Upland Plover," and naming it among the birds not heard in the interior of the State, when he might be supposed to have observed it, in summer, near Mount Wachusett, where its wail adds so much, by day or night, to the wildness of the scenery. Yet by the triviality of these our criticisms one may measure the astonishing excellence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... had found it. The shriek of the great gale rushing on that Christmas Eve round the stout Norman towers was not more strong than the breath of the despair which shook her life. She could not sleep—who could sleep on such a night, the herald of such a morrow? The wail and roar of the wind, the crash of falling trees, and the rattle of flying stones seemed to form a fit accompaniment to the turmoil of ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... little he could do for Marie, he could at least be faithful to that trust. He came back shivering as he had gone out; and as he fitted his latchkey with cold fingers into the lock he heard the newborn infant's wail. ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... friendly string, A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide Of passers by in thickest confluence flow'd: To whom with loud and passionate laments From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. Nor wail'd to all in vain: some here and there, The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. I meantime at his feet obsequious slept; Not all-asleep in sleep, but heart and ear Prick'd up at his least motion; ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... door did he notice a sound that filled the valley. A strange, high-pitched note, like a hundred curry-fowl crying at once—a wail, as of spirits in hell. Now from one direction, now from another; now rising, now falling, the weird, unearthly shriek seemed everywhere at once, increasing each moment in force and shrillness. As the old man, holding ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... down the ravine; tomb-doors were shaken from their holdings; the moaning of wind, like a dying breath, passed the length of the valley below and from the black depths a leper cried, "Unclean! Unclean!" his despairing wail answered by ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... in their enemy's camp, transported them all to the Island of Dead Men, and there held them as captives. Their war canoes circled the island like a fortification, through which drifted the sobs of the imprisoned women, the mutterings of the aged men, the wail of little children. ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... our man as lost, but still held on, in a pouring mixture of sleet and snow, which added considerably to the gloom of the scene. Every now and then the old mate, who was in very low spirits, would raise a lugubrious wail at the top of his voice of "Ai Khansaman Jee! Ai Khansaman Jee?" "Oh, cook of my soul! oh, cook of my soul, where art thou?" at the same time apparently apostrophizing the deepest whirlpools of the torrent, while ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... one's heart, one is apt to be excited, and Luke Raeburn's daughter had inherited that burning sense of indignation which was so strongly marked a characteristic in Raeburn himself. Violins can be more sweet and delicate in tone than any other instrument, but they can also wail with greater pathos, and produce a more ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... "Hai-yai-kai-yai, Hai-yai-kai-yai," that ever accompanies the Indian dance. Suddenly the drums ceased altogether and with it the chanting, and then there arose upon the night silence a low moaning cry that gradually rose into a long-drawn penetrating wail, almost a scream, made ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... one shiver—and shrill, shrill as the song of the grasshoppers, it began to make itself heard, very softly at first, then growing louder and rising in the silence of the noonday like the diminutive wail of some poor Japanese soul in pain and anguish; it was Chrysantheme and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... told her all the rest. In terror, her hands to her face, she stood an instant, then sprang toward him, her voice almost a wail ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... or to make certain of a future in which war is not, and all love is pure heavenly. If one were to choose favourites from "The Defence of Guinevere," they would be the ballads of "Shameful Death," and of "The Sailing of the Sword," and "The Wind," which has the wind's wail in its voice, and all the mad regret of "Porphyria's Lover" in ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... if they kill not me, who with him fight! As if his breast be touch'd, I am not wounded! As if he wail'd, my joys were not confounded! We are one heart, though rent by hate in twain; One soul, one essence doth our weal contain: What, then, can conquer him, that kills ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... half as great as that of the trained Apache, who bounded forward like a panther, and the next instant griped his horny fingers in the arm of Fred, who uttered a wail, ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... those who loved the reformed Church as well as they loved their country were sadly blasted by the apostasy of their leader. From the most eminent leaders of the Huguenots there came a wail, which must have penetrated even to the well-steeled heart of the cheerful Gascon. "It will be difficult," they said, "to efface very soon from your memory the names of the men whom the sentiment of a common religion, association in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that there was no necessity for her to continue her speech, and indeed no possibility of her doing so even if she were so minded. The children began to wail and cry, and the mothers also mixed loud sobbings with their loud prayers; and Emmeline and Mary, dissolved in tears, sat themselves down, drawing to them the youngest bairns and those whom they had ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... unison they spurred their horses and raised the weary brutes into a gallop; the voice faded into a wail behind them. And still they ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... subject perfectly well without being rude to each other when you differ," she declared. "You must take it in turns to have your own way. It is not fair that the eldest should always arrange everything, but on the other hand Joan and Alwyn will get nothing at all if they begin to wail and complain in that most grumbling and unpleasant tone of voice. I think it is a disgrace if you're all so selfish that you can't agree. You must each be prepared to give up a certain amount, for among eight children it is quite impossible ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... convulsive, until it appeared as though the entire firmament were in the throes of mortal agony, the suggestion soon becoming intensified by the arising in the atmosphere of low, weird, moaning sounds, that at intervals rose and strengthened into a wail as of the spirits of drowned sailors lamenting the coming havoc. And as the wailing sounds arose and grew in volume, sudden stirrings in the stagnant air became apparent, first in the form of exaggerated cats'- paws, that smote savagely upon the glassy surface of ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... the evening, a little after nine o'clock, the air was suddenly filled, as it seemed to me, with a strange wild, screaming wail. At first I thought it must be the mules; but it rose and fell again and again in such agony, as I thought, that Mr. Soule and William went out to investigate, while I opened the window to listen more distinctly. It seemed to come from ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... 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 in her ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck |
