"Plaintive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... captivity; and he heard stories which pierced him to the heart. At last, coming to a cage wherein was a venerable-looking old man, he put the same question to him, and the prisoner answered, in a plaintive tone: ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the whole plaintive, yielding mood of a Russian loving maid; and may be considered ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... girl called home. Even that was hardly visible from where they stood, hidden as it was by the swell of the hill, and alone here with this man, alone with the sea and sky around her, with the soft South wind blowing among her curls, with the plaintive cry of the seagulls in her ears, the salt savour of the sea in her nostrils, she was sorely tempted to throw off the trammels of her education, to do the thing her heart prompted her to do, to tell this ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... egg came before the fowl or the fowl before the egg. Both ballads and ballad airs have come down to us greatly changed and corrupted; and probably it is the airs that have suffered most from neglect and from alteration. Notation of the simple and plaintive and sweet old melodies appropriated in the ears and lips of the people to the words of particular ballads came long after the transcribing of the words themselves. There are other elements of perplexity and difficulty in ballad music which require an expert to unravel and explain, and which ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... could ketch glimpses through the willow- sprays of them shinin' bars a layin' down on the gray twilight field. And fur away over the green hills and woods of the east, the moon was a risin', big and calm and silvery. And we could hear the plaintive evenin' song of the thrush, and the crickets' happy chirp, till we got nearer the schoolhouse, when they sort o' blended in with 'There is a fountain filled with blood,' ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... and surprising compositions that form the modern style of music: but you meet them in some few pieces that are the growth of wild unvitiated taste; you discover them in the swelling sounds that wrap us in imaginary grandeur; in those plaintive notes that make us in love with woe; in the tones that utter the lover's sighs, and fluctuate the breast with gentle pain; in the noble strokes that coil up the courage and fury of the soul, or that lull it in confused visions ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... peltings of the storm. Walsingham, more manful, stood to his post, but could not gain a hearing. It was the culprit that should have spoken, and spoken in time. "Why, why did you not write yourself?" was the plaintive cry of all the Earl's friends, from highest to humblest. "But write to her now," they exclaimed, "at any rate; and, above all, send her a present, a love-gift." "Lay out two or three hundred crowns in some rare thing, for a token to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... head, pink with cold, but the ear of a game creature. Her nose, not aquiline, not masculine, still was not weak. Her chin, as I remember I noted even then, was strong, but lean and not over-laden with flesh. Her mouth, not thin-lipped and cold, yet not too loose and easy, was now plaintive as it was sweet in its full, red Cupid bow. Round and soft and gentle she seemed, yet all the lines of her figure, all the features of her face, betokened bone and breeding. The low-cut Indian shirt left her neck bare. I could ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... this memory stirs me so slightly that I scarcely 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 ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... was very still before the first verse ended; and Alice skipped the next, fearing she could not get through; for John's eyes were on her, showing that he knew she sang for him and let the plaintive little ballad tell what her reply must be. He took it as she meant it, and smiled at her so happily that her heart got the better of her voice, and she rose abruptly, saying ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... ruddy wild to-day. Suthin's upset 'em. 'Ow long will this ruddy war last, sir?" asked the soldier, slightly plaintive. ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... minuet with a plump Faenza jar; a tall Dutch clock was going through a gavotte with a spindle-legged ancient chair; a very droll porcelain figure of Littenhausen 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 ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... your last Sunday," resumed the parson in a voice rather plaintive, "then this is our last Sunday night together. And that was my last sermon. Well, it's not a bad one to take with you. By the time you get back, you'll thank me more for it than you did ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... and minds, appear to have been absorbed in the contemplation of African slavery. They appeared to be wholly engrossed with this one idea, to be engulphed! swallowed up! lost! confounded and bewildered in visionary abstractions, and ever and anon, their plaintive notes were heard throughout the hills and dales, liberty and oppression, the burden of their songs. They seemed to consider all crime, all oppression, all injustice, all wrong, as merged in African slavery and its concomitant evils, and themselves the peculiar, ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... you're not too tired," he asked; "one of those old voyageur songs you sang the other night." He handed his tobacco pouch to the guide and then filled his own pipe, while the Canadian, nothing loth, sent his light voice across the lake in one of those plaintive, almost melancholy chanties with which lumbermen and trappers lessen the burden of their labor. There was an appealing and romantic flavor about it, something that recalled the atmosphere of the old pioneer days when Indians and wilderness were leagued together, battles frequent, and ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... fallen upon a wild Florida forest, and all was still save for the hooting of a distant owl and the occasional plaintive call of a whip-poor-will. In a little clearing by the side of a faint bridle-path a huge fire of fat pine knots roared and crackled, lighting up the small cleared space and throwing its flickering rays in amongst ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the general order of society; and how much rarer still would such complaint be, if they did not know of any different order existing anywhere else. Women do not complain of the general lot of women; or rather they do, for plaintive elegies on it are very common in the writings of women, and were still more so as long as the lamentations could not be suspected of having any practical object. Their complaints are like the complaints which men make of the general unsatisfactoriness of human life; they are not meant to imply ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... attain the goal and set him free. Then she saw him dead, upon that very bed, and in that very room, and knew that he had never loved her to the last, and fell upon his cold breast, passionately weeping. Then a prospect opened, and a river flowed, and a plaintive voice she knew, cried, 'It is running on, Floy! It has never stopped! You are moving with it!' And she saw him at a distance stretching out his arms towards her, while a figure such as Walter's used to be, stood near him, awfully serene and still. In every vision, Edith came and went, sometimes ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... wild, plaintive, beautiful song of the voyageur which had floated to them on the morning air, softened by distance to a mere echo of sweet sound. After listening intently for a few moments, the guide ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... this mean?" exclaimed the general. "I ordered you to send the women home, and instead of that, they remain here and sing a plaintive hymn." ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... that way?" demanded his aunt, peremptorily. Bertie's own face was overcast, with an expression of plaintive distrust. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... of gold, And eyes than summer skies more blue, With plaintive voice and modest mien, Went forth to greet ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... remember many other delicious gloamings. Bats whirl and squeak in the odorous dusk. Night hawks whiz and boom, and over the dark forest wall a prodigious moon miraculously rolls. Fire-flies dart through the grass, and in a lone tree just outside the fence, a whippoorwill sounds his plaintive note. Sweet, very sweet, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... dismay of her elder ladies. But Dame Lilias saw what she did not—a look of triumphant malice on the face of Jamet de Tillay. Or at other times she would sit listening, with silent tears in her eyes, to plaintive Scottish airs on Eleanor's harp, which she declared brought back her father's voice to her, and with it the scent of the heather, and the very sight of Arthur's Seat or the hills of Perth. Elleen had some sudden qualms of heart lest her sister's blitheness should be covering wounds ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... enough; and as Jack ended his story, she chimed in with a plaintive little "Me-ow," which said, as plainly as ever any cat spoke yet, "I'm very cold and hungry, and I do wish somebody would take me below ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... little thing, how pretty she used to look in those days, standing on Jack's movable platform, with her hair falling loose about her face, and a heap of primroses held up in her petticoat!—such a patient plaintive look in the sweet little mouth, as much as to say, 'I'm very tired of standing here; but I'm only a model, to be hired for eighteenpence an hour; go on smoking your cigars, and talking your slangy talk about the turf and the theatres, gentlemen. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... appetite did not seem to be at all impaired by his imprisonment, for he ate with a greediness which threatened to make serious inroads upon the scanty stock of provisions. While he was thus occupied, Fanny sang one of her Sunday school hymns, a sad and plaintive air, which not only moved Ethan to the depths of his heart, but visibly affected the little savage. Noticing the effect, she followed up the impression until she was surprised to see ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... little thought, he commenced singing a very beautiful and plaintive one, and certainly much better than he had sung the night before; for he now was sober. The consequence was, that I was still more delighted; and, at my request, he sang several others; but at last his speech became rapid and thick, and he would not sing any more, using some very coarse ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... pigeons wheeled and swooped within a few feet of us. These little black-and-white birds have an air of friendliness that is not possessed by the great circling albatross. They had looked grey against the swaying sea during the storm as they darted about over our heads and uttered their plaintive cries. The albatrosses, of the black or sooty variety, had watched with hard, bright eyes, and seemed to have a quite impersonal interest in our struggle to keep afloat amid the battering seas. In addition to the Cape pigeons an occasional stormy ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... 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 ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... morpheean." There was a hideous edged intonation in the word, like the whine of some plaintive and dangerous animal. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... amusing little Jean Ulrick, Mr. Fabian's sole heir, he was able to read aloud to his aunt from her favorite volume, and to repeat with almost sublime patience, all those tender passages to which she in a plaintive tone would sigh de capo. More than all this. He could sing—the model nephew—and accompany his voice with the guitar not only to the tune of "my love and I," but also to his aunt's favorite ballad, "In the shadows of the wood; in the cavern hid away." And finally there was ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... carrying with him the image of Doris's plaintive prettiness and pathetic solitariness, and thinking gladly of the pleasure it would be to take her to Marlow on Sunday, Ethel slipped on her knees beside Basil's couch, overcome for a moment by the burden of his suffering, and ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... that the cadences come distinctly to us, and almost the words can be plainly caught. In a lull of their song, faint sounds of another arrive from far away. Rising and falling, now heard and now not, plaintive and recurring, it is ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... legs, his forepaws on his master's arm, and uttered little plaintive whines. Paragot ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... in fierce storms in the woods, when his half-breed guides bent their heads to meet the wind and rain, and did not speak for hours; in the long, adventurous journey on the river by day, in the cry of the plaintive loon at night; in the scant food for every meal. Yet what the pleasure would be he felt in the joyous air, the exquisite sunshine, the flocks of wild-fowl flying North, honking on their course; in the song of the half-breeds ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Hayes' ship. His crool, crool mistress shall see him no more! Never more shall his plaintive call to his nannies resound o' nights among the sleeping palm-groves ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... dreamily. "No; what makes you ask? They haven't paid very much attention to me. They've always liked Lucille and Gilbert and Ormond best." Her voice had a plaintive, neglected ring. It was the voice she used in her best ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... light of her eyes grew dim, the color faded from her cheeks, and the tones of her once cheerful voice became plaintive as the "Light of Other Days." Always, from the depths of her weary heart, came up the accusing cry, "Oh, why did I let him go?" She never reproached others; but all the more bitterly did Mr. Wharton, Uncle George, and above all poor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... was 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, maternally, as ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... what this should mean, And why that lovely lady plained so; Perplex'd in thought at that mysterious scene, And doubting if 'twere best to stay or go, I cast mine eyes in wistful gaze around, When from the shades came slow a small and plaintive sound: ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... on earth could you tell her a thing like that?" wailed George's mother, and she went on with a plaintive sigh as Gabriella opened the door: "George was always so mad about beauty, and though Gabriella has a fine face, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... than half the night," added Phyllis. "Bear sat up long over his letters and accounts, and as he went up he heard the crooning, and looked in; and the very moment Angela paused, there came the little plaintive voice, 'Go on, please.' 'Women ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to lie half awake watching the stars above, and the picturesque groupings of the encampment round about, and to hear on all sides the stirrings of animal life. And later in the night, when the fire is low, and servants and cattle are asleep, and there is no sound but of the wind and an occasional plaintive cry of wild animals, the traveller finds himself in that close communion with nature which is the true charm of wild travel. Now all this pleasure is lost by sleeping in a tent. Tent life is semi-civilization, and perpetuates its habits. This may be illustrated by a simple trait; a man who has lived ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... then her fingers came unlocked, her arms fell by her side slowly. Ossipon leaned against the counter. The robust anarchist wanted support badly. This was awful. He was almost too disgusted for speech. Yet he managed to utter a plaintive thought, showing at least that he ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... both sexes amused themselves with dances, the older people kept their seats in order to enjoy their pulque and gossip, or listen to the discourse of some guest of importance. The music which accompanied the dances was frequently soft and rather plaintive. ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... took up the plaintive strain. It was so high and sweet and clear that the listener caught her breath in ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... to preserve Guipuscoa. As to Italy, they could no more make war there than in the moon. Thus the crisis which had seemed likely to produce an European war of ten years would have produced nothing worse than a few angry notes and plaintive manifestoes. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... early in the afternoon when the car slowed down before the closed gates of the Chateau Lontana. The chauffeur got out and tried to open them, but they were locked. He turned to the Prince for instructions. "What are we to do, sir? There is no bell." His tone was plaintive, for he was ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... fact exists for the belief in such sympathetic exhibitions. But a highly probable explanation may be given of the manner in which such a belief originated. These reptiles unquestionably emit very loud and singularly plaintive cries, compared by some travellers to the mournful howling of dogs. The earlier and credulous travellers would very naturally associate tears with these cries, and, once begun, the supposition would be readily propagated, for error and myth are ever plants of quick growth. The ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... medium-sized dull, dark-olive, or gray birds, with big heads that are sometimes crested. Bills hooked at end, and with bristles at base. Harsh or plaintive voices. Wings longer than tail; both wings and tails usually drooped and vibrating when the birds are perching. Habits moody and silent when perching on a conspicuous limb, telegraph wire, dead tree, or fence rail and waiting for insects to fly within ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... came home to the north country and saw his old playmates in the distance circling about the old pine-tree, but was too weak to reach them, or to call loud enough for them to hear, and so lay down and died, died, died. The tune was the sweetest little plaintive wail, and at the end of each stanza it died, died, till you ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... want to hang him in my wagon," objected Tom Osby. "He's company. You fellers plumb rob me every time I come to town." His voice was plaintive. ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... reflected a blinding glare, and a heat like that of a burning fiery furnace was radiated from the engines. I was wondering whether a hammock in a cool English garden would not have been more desirable, when I heard a plaintive, uneducated American voice behind me ask a question of its mate which exactly embodied my own ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... always to be found at the side of the priest, to celebrate the holy mysteries of the proscribed worship. He never ceased to be received with tender respect under the thatched roof of the poor Irish peasant, whom he consoled in his misery and oppression by the plaintive tenderness and solemn sweetness of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... deeply on a variety of matters suggested by Anson's words. The crickets were singing from out the weeds near by; a lost little wild chicken was whistling in plaintive sweetness down in the barley-field; the flaming light from the half-sunk sun swept along the green and yellow grain, glorifying as with a bath of gold ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... maiden took a straw, and ramming it down the chimney of her lamp, stirred up the flies until they glittered like dollar jewelry. Then she chanted, in plaintive, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... not look at her, and went to pass her, almost thrusting her aside. And at that she gave a little plaintive cry, and would have taken his arm, saying for us to hear that he was ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... and quaked through all the limits of the universe; great flames of fire were seen around, the tops of Sumeru were shaken, from heaven there rained showers of flying stones, a whirling tempest rose on every side, the trees were rooted up and fell, heavenly music rose with plaintive notes, whilst angels for a time were joyless. Buddha rising from out his ecstasy, announced to all the world: "Now have I given up my term of years; I live henceforth by power of faith; my body like a broken chariot stands, no further cause of 'coming' ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... their feet, and their leisure, and they are happy. At every twilight the air is full of singing, talking, and clapping of hands in unison. One of their favorite songs is full of plaintive cadences; it is not, I think, a Methodist tune, and I wonder where they obtained a chant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... you are now. Good-bye!" Pearl ran to catch up to the cows, for the sun was throwing long shadows over the pasture, and the plaintive lowing of the hungry calves came faintly to ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... sign-writer he made a naked living for himself and his mother, and achieved success sufficient to keep a cottage roof over their heads, but that was all. Books were his only friends; the old stones of the Moor, the lonely wastes, the plaintive music of a solitary bird were the companions of his happiest days. He had wit enough to torture half his waking hours with self-analysis, and to grit his teeth at his own impotence. But there was no ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... of energy. On bright days they would place him in a little rocking-chair, in some spot where the sun fell warm, and he would rock to and fro for hours, working his slender fingers and mumbling forth his satisfaction at the warmth in the plaintive and unvarying refrain of idiocy. The boy was thus situated when I first ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... his plaintive songs; or he would frequently break off in the midst of a mournful chant, and begin to recite a mirthful story, and then in the midst of Wassamo's laughter he would return to the plaintive ditty—just as it suited his fancy; for the ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... done here by slaves in chains, who perform a kind of plaintive melancholy dirge in recitative, to sooth their unavailing toil, which, with the accompanyment of the clanking of their irons, is the real voice of wo, and attunes the soul to sympathy and compassion, more than the ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... of women came by, carrying their husbands dinners to the harvest field. The Partridge gave a little plaintive cry, and began fluttering along from bush to bush as ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... lanes of water, and elsewhere lakes and little ponds upon the melting ice caught the full orb of the rising sun, and sent its reflection into the man's eyes with dazzling refulgence, while the ripple or rush of ice-born water-falls and the plaintive cries of wild-fowl gave variety and animation to the scene. In a mind less religiously disposed than that of our seaman, the sights and sounds would have irresistibly aroused grateful thoughts to our Creator. On Rooney the effect was almost overpowering, yet, strange to say, it drew no word of thanksgiving ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... plaintive wail of disappointment was drowned in the clamour of execration which greeted the boy's announcement. Lesser feuds were instantly forgotten in presence of this great insult. The most sacred traditions ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... Aurora, unheeded by the rest, went round the verandah to the other side of the house and stood still a moment, looking out at the trees and listening to the sounds of the night. Down by the pool a frog croaked now and then; from a distance came the plaintive, often repeated cry of a solitary owlet; the night breeze sighed through the long grass and ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 a game ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of the river Medway, bordered with willows, brought to my mind the plaintive song of the children of Israel, in captivity on the banks of the river Euphrates, which psalm, among others, I used to sing with my mother and sisters, on Sunday evenings, when an innocent boy, and long before the wild notion of rambling, from a comfortable and plentiful home, came into my ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... uttered if they had been beaten, with a shading hard to define, but which we perceived plainly; and we remarked that, leaving their kennel in the avenue that led up to the lodge, they had come to close quarters with one another at the gate, with alternating howlings and plaintive cries. Inquiring in the morning for the cause of these singular cries, the peasants told me that a wolf had passed, and predicted that it would return. They said, too, that a neighbor's hunting bitch had disappeared, and its bones had been found in the fields near a wood. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... be supposed that at some time or other the health of Mistress Oldfield was drunk by the Kit-Cats, whose custom of honouring womankind in this bibulous way may have given rise to Pope's plaintive query: ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... echoed in plaintive satire. "What affairs is it of mine? That's just the trouble! It's got to be my affairs because you're my first-cousin. My goodness I didn't have anything to do with you being ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... vain; And followed still the wandering strain, So melancholy and so sweet The dim-eyed violets yearned with pain. 'Twas now a sorrow in the air, Some nymph's immortalized despair Haunting the woods and waterfalls; And now, at long, sad intervals, Sitting unseen in dusky shade, His plaintive pipe some fairy played, With long-drawn cadence thin and clear,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... place at the piano, and I kept mine at the card-table. She played unintermittingly—played as if the music was her only refuge from herself. Sometimes her fingers touched the notes with a lingering fondness—a soft, plaintive, dying tenderness, unutterably beautiful and mournful to hear; sometimes they faltered and failed her, or hurried over the instrument mechanically, as if their task was a burden to them. But still, change and waver as they might in the expression they imparted to the music, their resolution ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... brilliant, had taken their places in the sky; the owl was whooping from the ivied tower; the corn-craik was calling drowsily; now and then the distant baying of a watch-dog startled the silence, otherwise undisturbed, save by the plaintive murmuring of the stream, which, as it flowed past, uttered such querulous sounds, that, as some one has happily expressed it, "one was almost tempted to ask what ailed it." A traveller was moving slowly up the side of the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... they felt the Spanish officers did not allow themselves to look bored. The marching and countermarching was of a refined stateliness, as if the pace were not a goose step but a peacock step; and the music was of an exquisitely plaintive and tender note, which seemed to grieve rather than exult; I believe it was the royal march which they were playing, but I am not versed in such matters. Nothing could have been fitter than the quiet beauty of the spectacle, opening through the westward colonnade ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... delightful; it couched itself on the floor, shut its eyes, and appeared in ecstasy; I ceased playing, and it instantly disappeared again. This experiment I repeated frequently with the same success, observing that it was always differently affected, as the music varied from the slow and plaintive, to the brisk or lively. It finally went off, and all my art could ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... inhabitants had nothing to live upon but the grain needed for seeding in the spring time. The conditions at Miramichi were probably not more wretched than on the River St. John. Of the former the Marquis de Vaudreuil writes in the following plaintive terms:—— ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... shook back those golden curls, and sat down in the chair, a large heavy shawl on her shoulders. "I will not take it off yet," she said in a plaintive ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... particularly on board his own ship, where he had the means of ascertaining them. The substance of his reply was this—That most of the slaves laboured under a fixed melancholy, which now and then broke out into lamentations and plaintive songs, expressive of the loss of their relations, friends, and country. So powerfully did this sorrow operate, that many of them attempted in various ways to destroy themselves, and three actually effected it. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... the time we reached the moorlands at the foot of the hills the sun and the licht were clean gone awa', and the darkness was closing down fast aboot us. We could hear the cry of the whaup, a mournful, plaintive note; our own voices were the only other sounds that broke the stillness. Then, suddenly, our host bent low and loosed his dogs, after whispering to them, and they were off as silently and as swiftly as ghosts in ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... unknown guest rolled over, picked itself up, and stood revealed, a woman, not a child, as he had at first thought. And then a feeling of sick, shrinking fear came over Sherston, for there fell on his ears the once horribly familiar accents—plaintive, wheedling, falsely ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... that gay, cheery openness of heart which we love so well to meet,—she was yet the Winnie Santon of days which had known no lowering skies, the singing bird of a June morning,—save that an occasional plaintive note, breathed out upon youth's freshness ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... returned to meet the damsels—all singing in chorus (and laughing as they sang it), "Boyars, show me my bridegroom!" and dusk was falling gently, and from the other side of the river there kept coming far, faint, plaintive echoes of the melody—well, then our Selifan hardly knew whether he were standing upon his head or his heels. Later, when sleeping and when waking, both at noon and at twilight, he would seem still to be holding a pair of white hands, and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sort of fascination and spontaneity that endeared his art to his uncritical audiences, and his endowment was held as something wonderful. And now it was that Laure-lia, hearing him, far away in the open air, play once a plaintive, melodic strain, fugue-like with the elfin echoes, felt a strange soothing in the sound, found tears in her eyes, not all of pain but of sad pleasure, and assumed thenceforth something of the port of a connoisseur. She said she "couldn't abide a fiddle jes sawed helter-skelter ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... that with threadlike legs spread out And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing, Dost murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about, In pitiless ears, full many a plaintive thing, And tell how little our large veins should bleed, Would we but yield them to thy ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... blush, So pale it seem'd near drowned to a white,— She oped her lips, and forth there sprang a gush Of music bubbling through the surface light; The leaves are motionless, the breezes hush To listen to the air—and through the night There come these words of a most plaintive ditty, Sobbing as they would break all hearts ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... remarked my love, after sitting in silence for a few minutes. From where we sat we could see that it was high tide, and the waves were lazily lapping the base of the cliffs deep below. Now and then a gull would circle about us with its shrill, plaintive cry, while far on the distant horizon lay the trail of smoke from a passing steamer. "How delightful it is to be ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... inward eye with joy survey The angel Mercy tempering Death's delay!" Alas! 'twas hard; the treasures still had charms, Hope still its flattery, sickness its alarms; Still was the same unsettled, clouded view, And the same plaintive cry, "What shall I do?" Nor change appear'd; for when her race was run, Doubtful we all exclaim'd, "What has been done?" Apart she lived, and still she lies alone; Yon earthy heap awaits the flattering stone On which invention shall be long employ'd, To show the various worth ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... plaintive, so full of tears, that Hester could not but yearn towards the speaker. She bent over and kissed her cheek, and then clambered unaided down by the wheel on the dark side of the cart. Wistfully she longed for one word of thanks ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Ethereal, melancholy, wailing, plaintive, nebulous, and pathetic are but a few. Why—why try to tie a label to something which slips from the fingers even as they close about it? Why try to describe that which cannot be described? There is, or was, a certain line ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... and all other great public causes, instead of boring everybody and teasing everybody, will be attracting everybody and attracting everybody's money. They will be full of character, courage, and vision. Our present great, vague, helpless, plaintive public enterprises—one third art, one third millionaire, one third deficit—drag along financially because they are listless compromises, because they have no souls or vision, and are not interesting—not even ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... abbe, in a plaintive voice, "the oath you took to be mine for ever. You swore it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... That, from out the blue waves taken, looks a pebble dull alone. 'For within my heart forever Was a never-dying river, Was a spring of deathless music welling from my deepest soul! And all Nature's deep intonings, Merry songs, and plaintive meanings, Floated softly through my spirit, swelling where those bright waves stole, Till the prisoning walls seemed powerless 'gainst that billowy rush ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... robe more closely about his body, looked contentedly at the glow from the two fine beds of coals, closed his eyes once more and went to sleep. He did not look for wolves in his well, although he heard them howling again the next night, the note plaintive and fierce alike with the call of intense hunger. The fourth day, he went out through the pass and killed more rabbits, adding them to his store. He saw a deer floundering in the deep snow, but he would not shoot it. The time might come when he would slay a deer, but he ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... navigation protected, for a while, the inglorious safety of the emperor; but no sooner had a fleet of two hundred ships been constructed by the hands of the captive Greeks, than Alexius trembled behind the walls of his capital. His plaintive epistles were dispersed over Europe, to excite the compassion of the Latins, and to paint the danger, the weakness, and the riches of the city ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... castle is so dilapidated inside that a tarrying 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 ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... window-sill, and the night air ruffled her downy coat. She was pressed against bony ribs; a rough arm squeezed her wretchedly; long, poky fingers tortured her flank; her legs draggled dismally. She voiced protest in a plaintive, ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... The silver cord is only "loosed," not broken. Perchance, as thou standest in the chamber of death, or by the brink of the grave,—in the depths of that awful solitude and silence which reigns around, this may be thy plaintive and mournful soliloquy—"Shall the dust praise Thee?" Yes, it shall! This very dust that hears now unheeded thy footsteps, and unmoved thy tears, shall through eternity praise its redeeming God—it shall proclaim ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... ears came the sounds of dogs wrangling and scuffling, the guttural cries of men, the sharper voices of scolding women, and once the shrill and plaintive cry of a child. With the exception of the huge bulks of the skin-lodges, little could be seen save the flames of the fire, broken by the movements of intervening bodies, and the smoke rising slowly on the quiet air. But to their nostrils came the myriad smells of an Indian camp, carrying ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... cloister, As the guest of the Lord Abbot I went through a bout of drinking In the famous wine of Hallau. But"—the Baron stopped and listened. "Zounds!" he said, "what's that I hear there? Whence doth come that trumpet-blowing?" Werner's music through the March night, Plaintive soared up to the castle, Begging entrance like a pet-dove, Which, returning to its mistress, Finds the window closed and fastened, And begins to peck and hammer. To the terrace went the Baron And his daughter; Hiddigeigei Followed both with step majestic. ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... prevailed, injured it more. The tide of passion, which should have rushed in torrents and burst upon the astonished ear, was sung out in slow and measured syllables, with a monotonous and funeral cadence, painful in its motion, and such as reminded me of the Sloth and his horrid cry: plaintive indeed, but ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... a plaintive voice. "Should I walk through Delhi naked? You, who wear pants, you laugh at me, but I ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... changes, 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 ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... confinement was growing excessively irksome, and though his constant exercise kept him in good bodily health, poor Jack lost his spirits and grew positively wretched in mind. One night, when I had managed to find time to visit him at his "den" in Morusmulticaulis Street, he grew quite plaintive over his unhappy condition. ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... us, we shall founder in putrefying mud, creatures of the ooze and rushes about us—we, the great ship that has floated up from the antique world. Oh, for the antique world, its plain passion, its plain joys in the sea, where the Triton blew a plaintive blast, and the forest where the whiteness of the nymph was seen escaping! We are weary of pity, we are weary of being good; we are weary of tears and effusion, and our refuge—the British Museum—is the wide sea shore and the wind of the ocean. There, there is real joy ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... 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 hour on the ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Mr. Hamilton's copy of Sir Patrick Spens is different from that, to which the words are commonly sung; being less plaintive, and having a bold nautical turn in ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... petite, And she looked full fair and passing sweet— And, oh! she owned—but cannot you guess What pet can a maiden so love and caress As a tiny lamb with a plaintive bleat ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... plaintive, but he seemed no more frightened than Harry was. Following the bang of the gun came the sharp rattle of musketry. We learned afterward that this firing occurred when the advance guard of the Federal commander collided with Forrest's famous escort. We had no idea of the result of ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... frequent while living, where they sprinkle pinole upon the ground. A Yokaia mother who has lost her babe goes every day for a year to some place where her little one played while alive, or to the spot where its body was burned, and milks her breasts into the air. This is accompanied by plaintive mourning and weeping and piteous calling upon her little one to return, and sometimes she sings a hoarse and melancholy chant, and dances with a wild, ecstatic ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... plaintive regret that they had no longer the good old times when they were poor? and about the delights of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... air of mystery, as though they led to some sequestered woodland paradise. To the right was a mill, with a great pond thick with bulrushes and water-lilies, full of water-birds, coots and moorhens, which swam about, uttering plaintive cries. The mill was of wood, the planks warped and weather-stained, the tiled root covered with mosses; the mill-house itself was a quaint brick building, with a pretty garden, full of old-fashioned flowers, sloping down to the pool; ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... suspended all conversation in the galleries and porticos; till, rowing slowly away, it was heard no more. The gondoliers catching the air, imitated its cadences, and were answered by others at a distance, whose voices, echoed by the arch of the bridge, acquired a plaintive and interesting tone. I retired to rest, full of the sound; and long after I was asleep, the melody seemed to vibrate in ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... in the afternoon, we drew nigh to an island, overcast with shadows; a shower was falling; and pining, plaintive notes forth issued from the groves: half-suppressed, and sobbing whisperings of leaves. The shore sloped to the water; thither our prows ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... this, we have sucked in with the milk of our Puritan mothers a forlorn and sorrowful spirit. We celebrate our festivals with a sad countenance. We attempt to make merry by singing dismal psalms. We weave our woes into poetry, and expand our wretchedness in plaintive declamations. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sung for her a number of carefully expurgated lumberjack ballads, the lunatic humour of which had delighted her exceedingly. She marvelled now at his choice of minstrelsy, for the melody was hauntingly plaintive— the words Eugene Field's poem of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... exclaimed Dorry, in consternation, while even Donald broke forth with a plaintive ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... plaintive strain Of some poor dove . . . Why, I can scarcely keep My heavy eyelids—there it is ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... quite a long time after his sister had finished the story of Gerty Keane, and of her fondness for her lonesome, friendless, and unlovable father; sat gazing out upon the moonlit landscape, but seeing nothing; sat while the nightingale's lilt, plaintive and low or mournfully sweet, bubbled tremulously from the grove, but hearing nothing. And in the shadow of the old-fashioned arm-chair snuggled Flora, her eyes resting lovingly, wistfully on her brother's sad but ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... afflicted mother, was welcome to whatever comfort or happiness her prophetic soul foresaw as a recompense to all this endless worry and trouble. Even my father grew unsympathetic, and actually arose one night when baby's plaintive minor key was resounding through the house, and closed his bed-room door most emphatically, to keep out the disturbing echoes that had broken ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... tune and chanting a spiritual hymn, and an abid, who bore us company, kept disparaging the morals of the dervishes, and was callous to their sufferings, till we reached the palm plantation of the tribe of Hulal, when a boy of a tawny complexion issued from the Arab horde and sung such a plaintive melody as would arrest the bird in its flight through the air. I remarked the abid's camel that it kicked up and pranced, and, throwing the abid, danced into the wilderness. I said: "O reverend Shaikh! that spiritual strain threw a brute into an ecstasy, and it is not in like ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the bird darting from a stake in the fence, or flitting from one mullein-stalk to another. Its notes now become daily more frequent; the birds multiply; they sing less in the air and more when at rest; and their music is louder and more continuous, but less sweet and plaintive. Their boldness increases and soon you see them flitting with a saucy and inquiring air about barns and outbuildings, peeping into dove-cota and stable windows, and prospecting for a place to nest. They wage war against robins, pick quarrels with swallows, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... commenced their Indian ceremonies of drumming and shaking the rattle, accompanied with war songs. San-ge-man was asked by the chief of the party, if he could che-qwon-dum, at the same time giving him the rattle. He took it and commenced singing in a low, plaintive tone, which made the warriors exclaim, "He is weak-hearted, a coward, an old woman". Feigning great weakness and cowardice, he stepped up to the Indian to whom he had surrendered his war club; and taking it, he commenced shaking the rattle, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... said a little plaintive voice, "do you think I need go to my practising quite so ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... 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
... The song was a lament, describing in plaintive words and in mournful music, the situation and the sorrows of a young prince, excluded wrongfully from the throne of his ancestors.[B] The whole company listened with profound attention, charmed at first ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... with that pleasant smile of his which was beginning to grow so painfully sweet and plaintive in its character, "and yet, it is very odd how real that landscape and that house are becoming to me. Do you know, Barbara, that the other night I seemed to be sitting in it in a great cool room, looking out ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... music, in the voice 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
... suffered to remain: the same is true of most of Thackeray's books. Like Dickens, Thackeray was exposed to all the danger of the Twenty Parts method of publication. He began his stories without seeing the end; in one of them he is humorously plaintive over the trouble of making this manner of fiction. While "Vanity Fair" is, of course, written in the impersonal third person, at least one passage is put into the mouth of a character in the book: an extraordinary slip for ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... of Moses, and paid him visits of noisy unfriendliness. The little white-throated sparrows came familiarly about the palm cabins and whitewashed houses and trilled on the rooftrees. It was a simple song, with just a hint of our northern white-throat's sweet and plaintive melody, and of the opening bars of our song-sparrow's pleasant, homely lay. It brought back dear memories of glorious April mornings on Long Island, when through the singing of robin and song-sparrow comes the piercing cadence of the meadowlark; and of ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... Bow'r with beauty blest The lov'd Amintor lies, While sinking on Lucinda's breast He fondly kiss'd her Eyes. A wakeful nightingale who long Had mourn'd within, the Shade Sweetly renewed her plaintive song ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... Kurwenal, do you not see it?" With watchful intensity he scans Kurwenal's face. Kurwenal hesitates, between the wish to humour him by going to the watch-tower, and the fear of leaving him, when the shepherd's pipe is heard again in the same plaintive tune, and Kurwenal has no heart to pretend. "No ship as yet on the sea!" he announces heavily. Tristan's excitement, as the notes spin out their thin music, whose message he seems to divine, gradually dies; the happy delusion fades; a deeper sadness ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... Miriam, listening apprehensively as she did her share of work on the top floor, gathered that the lack of any planned programme was a standing annoyance to the English girls. Millie, still imperfectly acclimatised, carrying out her duties in a large bibbed apron, was plaintive about it in her conscientious German nearly every morning. The Martins, when the sense of Fraulein as providence was strong upon them made their beds vindictively, rapping out sarcasms to be alternately mocked and giggled at by Jimmie who was generally heard, as the gusts subsided, ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... full of plaintive chords, Sobbed into silence—echoing down the strings Like voice of one who walks from us, and sings. Vivian had leaned upon the instrument The while they sang. But, as he spoke those words, "Love, I am near to thee, I come to thee," He turned his grand ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of society you've been used to here, I don't know how you'll get on among us Americans. We're a pretty rough lot, I guess. Though, perhaps, what you lose in the look of the fruit, you'll make up in the flavour.' This Fisker said in a somewhat plaintive tone, as though fearing that the manifest substantial advantages of Frisco would not suffice to atone for the loss of that fashion to which Miss Melmotte had ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... something of the power and goodness of God. The result, he assures us, has been highly satisfactory; the mind, too feeble for earthly lore, too weak to grasp the simplest facts of science, has yet comprehended something of the love of the All-father, and lifted up to him its imperfect but plaintive supplication. That the enthusiasm of this good man may have led him to exaggerate somewhat the extent of the religious attainments of his pupils is possible; but the experience of every teacher of the cretin or the idiot has satisfactorily demonstrated that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... A sweet plaintive song did I hear And I fancied that she was the singer. May emotions as pure as that song set astir Be the wont that the future shall ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... above it. These southern people, like the Arabs, the Apulians, and the Spaniards, seem to find their music in a hurdy-gurdy swell of sound. The other day we met a little girl, walking and spinning, and singing all the while, whose song was just another version of this chant. It has a discontented plaintive wail, as if it came from some vast age, and were a cousin of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... hear a plaintive cry, not unlike the wail of an infant. All stopped in surprise. The Professor was the first to speak: "That is a young orang. See if you can ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... 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," to the time when Dora cuddled Jip, even ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... fit, and he walks with a slight stoop. When he wants clothes he telephones for them. His necktie is worn by the right oblique, his iron-gray hair is combed by the wind. On his cherubic face usually sits a half-quizzical, pleased smile, that fades into a look plaintive and very gentle. The face is that of a man who has borne burdens and known sorrow, of one who has overcome only after mighty effort. I was going to say that Edison looks like a Roman Emperor, but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... roar, someone was getting it very hot. A victorious force was in full chase over the fields, storming in the forest and on the church roof, battering spitefully with its fists upon the windows, raging and tearing, while something vanquished was howling and wailing.... A plaintive lament sobbed at the window, on the roof, or in the stove. It sounded not like a call for help, but like a cry of misery, a consciousness that it was too late, that there was no salvation. The snowdrifts ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... but it was a long time before I could make out that he remonstrated against my standing up to my knees in water - as I was; of course I don't know why. I tried to thank him, but couldn't. I could only point to my boots - or wherever I supposed my boots to be - and say in a plaintive voice, 'Cork soles:' at the same time endeavouring, I am told, to sit down in the pool. Finding that I was quite insensible, and for the time a maniac, he humanely conducted ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... beautiful was to be of power; the Signora Cesarini had scarcely appeared in public before she saw at her feet half the rank and gallantry of Avignon. Her female attendants were beset with bribes and billets; and nightly, beneath her lattice, was heard the plaintive serenade. She entered largely into the gay dissipation of the town, and her charms shared the celebrity of the hour with the verse of Petrarch. But though she frowned on none, none could claim the monopoly of her smiles. Her fair fame was as yet unblemished; but if any might ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton |
