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More "Plaintive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thy doing, Tessa, for that thou must needs be uppermost: I told thee plainly what would come of it," Whereat the lady, being not a little modest, coloured from brow to neck, and with downcast eyes, withdrew from the room, saying never a word by way of answer. Calandrino ran on in the same plaintive strain:—"Alas! woe's me! What shall I do? How shall I be delivered of this child? What passage can it find? Ah! I see only too plainly that the lasciviousness of this wife of mine has been the death of me: God make her as wretched as I would ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the corral; but, as before, the inclosure was empty and silent, and now, somehow, forbidding. She called again—called to the horse, called to the Mexican. But again came only the echo of her voice, sounding hollow and solemn and plaintive through ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... are thy pillars now—each passing gale Sighs o'er them as a spirit's voice, which moaned That loneliness, and told the plaintive tale Of the bright synod once above them throned. Mourn, graceful ruin! on thy sacred hill Thy gods, thy rites, a kindred fate have shared: Yet art thou honored in each fragment still That wasting years and barbarous hands have spared; Each ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... its {128} scarcely disguised assault upon the Laudian clergy, strains it almost to bursting. Yet no one would wish it away; for it adds a passage of Miltonic fire to what but for Phoebus and St. Peter would be too plaintive to be fully characteristic of Milton whose genius lay rather in strength than in tenderness. Yet perhaps we love Lycidas all the more for giving us our almost solitary glimpse of a Milton in whom the affections are more than the will, and sorrow not sublimated into resolution. Its ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... the train drew into the station. Peter, encumbered with Marie's luggage and his own, lowered his window and added his voice to the chorus of plaintive calls: "Portier! Portier!" ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the plaintive whine peculiar to the would-be invalid. "I sleep dreadful heavy. I take a nap each day for a couple of hours. And I must have a pound of beefsteak or mutton-chops for dinner. The fever makes me that hungry! You see it devours ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Every one wrote "music" on his card, after the two acts in which plaintive mews floated up from the rocks and the Gibbs family were taken sick. All but Jim, who, in the high silk hat he had worn before, took ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and mysterious elves, that were wont to lead travellers astray to their destruction. But he must pass through that forest or else go round many miles across the hills; so he braced his girdle tighter about him and boldly plunged into the darkness. As he went forth the plaintive cry of the curlew high up above the treetops startled him more than once, and the sudden movement of every wild beast and bird that his own footsteps had frightened filled him ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... dome, all those melodies strange, Soft, plaintive, and melting, for ever will sigh; Nor e'er will the notes from their tenderness change; Nor e'er will the ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... any message to be sent, and that if he did, King Edward would not allow the Duke, who was his vassal, to obey it. To the least hint that the Duke might or could himself decline, she refused to listen so decidedly that no one had the heart to repeat it. More plaintive, day by day, grew the dying mother's yearning moans for her best-loved child. In vain Perrote tried to assure her that human love was inadequate to satisfy the cravings of her immortal soul; that God had made her for Himself, ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... on the heaving billows Is dancing a light boat; The sounds of plaintive singing Up to ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... notes in simple guise; They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim: Perhaps 'Dundee's' wild-warbling measures rise, Or plaintive 'Martyrs,' worthy of the name; Or noble 'Elgin' beets the heavenward flame, The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays. Compared with these, Italian trills are tame; The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise; Nae unison hae they ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... a sweet little ballad which she had learned soon after her mother's death. It was plaintive, and told the story of a lonely little heart longing for mother-love, and she had not reached the end of the second verse when she saw the tears streaming over Bertha's little face, and knew that her wedge had entered ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... heard, and all trembled and turned pale as they recognized the singing of a chorus of Banshees. The lady's ailment developed into pleurisy, and she died in a few days, the chorus being again heard in a sweet, plaintive requiem as the spirit was leaving her body. The honor of being warned by more than one Banshee is, however, very great, and comes only to the purest ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... does life deck out her tragedies! There is no prelude of low-toned plaintive orchestral music tuned to expectancy. There is no thunder barrel; or if there is a thunder barrel, you may know that the tragedy is theatrical and hollow in proportion to the size of its emptiness. And there is no graceful curtain-drop between it and real life, permitting ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... welled the haunting melody of "Annie Laurie." Tim, who had listened with casual interest to the coronel's music, now grinned happily. And when the plaintive Scotch song became "Kathleen Mavourneen" he closed his eyes and lay back in pure enjoyment. "The River Shannon" flowed into "The Suwanee River," and this in turn blended into other heart-tugging airs of Dixieland. When the last strain died and the captain reached for his half-smoked ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... head drooping and eyes half closed as becomes a poet of the tender kind, passed out from among us—to travel to Paris in an aeroplane. I do not know whether it was this latter event, or the expression of a philosophy so entirely at variance with my own, or perhaps the sound of the high-pitched plaintive voice, that gave me the sense of incongruity, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... intent that she might, in consequence, have her husband again. Accordingly, having bethought herself what she should do, she assembled certain of the best and chiefest men of the county and with plaintive speech very orderly recounted to them that which she had already done for love of the count and showed them what had ensued thereof, adding that it was not her intent that, through her sojourn there, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... formed her own opinions quite independently of those of others. Moreover, in a certain way she was a good-looking child, but of a stamp totally different from that of either of her parents. Her eyes were not restless and prominent, like her father's, or dark and plaintive, like her mother's, but large, grey and steady, with long curved lashes. In fact, they were fine, but it was her only beauty, since the brow above them was almost too pronounced for that of a woman, the mouth was a little ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... and voluptuous harmony from a piano, signals success and health. If discordant music is being played, you will have many exasperating matters to consider. Sad and plaintive music, ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... the sort of voice that wins a man's heart out of his breast!" exclaimed Uncle Mac, wiping his eyes after one of the plaintive ballads that ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... sue, to use one of Dante's most terrible Tacitean phrases—he had no more song, the Greek said. Apollo had been victor. The lyre had vanquished the reed. But perhaps the Greeks were mistaken. I hear in much modern Art the cry of Marsyas. It is bitter in Baudelaire, sweet and plaintive in Lamartine, mystic in Verlaine. It is in the deferred resolutions of Chopin's music. It is in the discontent that haunts Burne-Jones's women. Even Matthew Arnold, whose song of Callicles tells of 'the triumph of the sweet persuasive lyre,' and ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... in Park City when the Cousin Jacks from the Ontario cut loose on one another. The Denver council takes cawgnizance of this, and investigates. It snoops around till it gets the goods. Then—wow! bing! goes this here Thompson. They sue him themselves, and now he's up in Canon City, a-lookin' plaintive like through these things." ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... to work, however unpromising the material. I was pleased with a service which I attended in one of their log-schoolhouses. Nothing could be more devout than the demeanour of the Indians; the women's sweet plaintive hymns haunted me for a ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... full ten minutes, and then came another note, a howl almost plaintive, but, nevertheless, weird and full of ferocity. All knew it at once. They had heard the cry of wolves too often in their lives, but this had an uncommon note like the yell of the Indian in victory. Again the cry arose, nearer, haunting, and powerful. The five, used to the darkness, ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... taking his favourite with him. In the picture, Radha holds her head in anguish while to the right the cowgirls look at her in mute distress. Drooping branches echo their stricken love while a tree in the background, its branches stretching wanly against the sky, suggests their plaintive yearning. ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... country. Framed in hills that are garlanded with vineyards, these inns are often mere rose-hidden bowers. They make California seem as gay as France. I can best put it by saying that I know of no place so "haunted" in every poetic and plaintive sense as California; yet I know of no place so perfectly ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... offered to get me something to eat at once. I accepted and said I would be down in the studio in half an hour. I found her there by the side of the laid table ready for conversation. She began by telling me—the dear, poor young Monsieur—in a sort of plaintive chant, that there were no letters for me, no letters of any kind, no letters from anybody. Glances of absolutely terrifying tenderness mingled with flashes of cunning swept over me from head to foot while ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... the dog, touched him gently, and shouted in his ear his old name of "Leon." The dog had not forgotten it; he knew that voice, the touch of that hand. With a plaintive, joyful cry, he sprang up to the breast of his old master, nestled about blindly for his hands, and licked them unreproved; then sunk down, as though faint with joy, to his master's feet. The brave soldier was overcome ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... the first to rise, but heedless of her entreaties he lay still, bewildered by the increasing light. Animals, however, have their own ways of teaching their little ones, and on the dam's first pretense of deserting him he found his voice, and uttering a plaintive cry, struggled to his feet, which caused his mother to return ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... us leave the shame and sin Of taking vainly, in a plaintive mood, The holy name of GRIEF!—holy herein, That, by the grief of ONE, came all our good. ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... his bugle, suggesting to the scared housemaid the psychological moment for a plunge beneath the bed. On each application of the fuse to Long Tom the bugle rang out in clarion tones its warning to seek cover. It made plaintive melody in the nocturnal stillness, bespeaking the death-knell perchance of many. Nobody was abroad, excepting a solemn procession of men wending its way to the cemetery with all that was mortal of George Labram. Cannon in front of them volleyed and thundered—to avoid which the late hour ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... July, the efforts were renewed to disengage the frigate, but without success. We then prepared to quit her. The sea became very rough, and the wind blew with great violence. Nothing now was heard but the plaintive and confused cries of a multitude, consisting of more than four hundred persons, who, seeing death before their eyes, deplored their hard fate in bitter lamentations. On the 4th, there was a glimpse of hope. At the hour the tide flowed, the frigate, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... if you please," requested Martin, with intense gravity, serenity, phlegm. The boy had naturally a low, plaintive voice, which in his "dour moods" rose scarcely above a lady's whisper. The more inflexibly stubborn the humour, the softer, the sadder the tone. He rang the bell, and gently asked for ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... morning Philip Harris's big touring car drew up in front of the striped awning; it gave a little plaintive honk—and stood still. Achilles came to the door with swift look. He turned back to the shop. "I go," he said to Alcibiades, and stepped across ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... disjointed, murderous-looking creature, whose violent gestures and waving of hands in front of my face were somewhat irritating. He dashed into a room on the ground floor—and we outside could hear an altercation between the loud-voiced proprietor and the plaintive moans of ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of enthusiasm and greediness, but this impression was short-lived, all eyes contemplating the yellow discs with indifference. Don Marcelo was himself convinced that the miraculous charm had lost its power. They all chanted a chorus of sorrow and horrors with slow and plaintive voice, as though they stood weeping before a bier: "Monsieur, they have killed my husband." . . . "Monsieur, my sons! Two of them are missing." . . . "Monsieur, they have taken all the men prisoners: they say it is to work ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fit of coughing, and in the querulous, plaintive, fretful, sometimes angry tones which invalids have, he grumbled at Angela and then cried over her, saying what a burden he was to her, while she, moving about the room in her bare feet, coaxed and caressed him, and persuaded him to take his milk ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... difference between the soft, insinuating tones of persuasion; the full, strong voice of command and decision; the harsh, irregular, and sometimes grating explosion of the sounds of passion; the plaintive notes of sorrow and pity; and the equable and unimpassioned flow of words ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... earthly flesh, why dost thou fade? All gold; no earthly dross, why look'st thou pale? Sickness how darest thou one so fair invade? Too base infirmity to work her bale. Heaven be distempered since she grieved pines, Never be dry, these my sad plaintive lines. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... for a poetical fancy to range in, and presented new images to the selection of genius and taste. The morals, in particular, of the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, afford a fine subject for the exercise of a plaintive Muse. Such a Muse hath seized upon the subject; and, at the same time, has added another wreath to the memory of our navigator. I refer to a lady, who hath already, in many passages of her 'Peru,' in her 'Ode on the Peace.' and, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... mistress, who expended the love and care of a very large heart on a family that I think appreciated it as far as goats are capable of appreciation. If she was a little late coming home (she had a tiny shack on one corner of the place) they would be waiting at the gate calling plaintively. There is a plaintive tone about everything a goat has to say. In his cot on the porch J—— composed some verses one morning early—I forget them ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... melancholy, aggravated by his weary toils, perilous fightings, and fierce throes, which led him down often into the deep mire where there was no standing; and which sighs through all his life. The penitential Psalms and Paul's wail: 'O wretched man that I am,' perhaps never woke more plaintive echo in any human heart than they did ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... delicate arabesques—as if the guitar had been dowered with a soul—and the richness and originality of its harmonic scheme, gives us pause to ask if Chopin's invention is not almost boundless. The melody itself is plaintive; a plaintive grace informs the entire piece. The harmonization is far more wonderful, but to us the chord of the tenth and more remote intervals, seem no longer daring; modern composition has devilled the musical alphabet into the very caverns of the grotesque, yet there are harmonies in the ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... twenty-one thousand human beings among whom she lived as did the glow of personal joy that suffused her thoughts. From the dusk below she heard the tapping of a blind beggar's stick on the pavement, and the sound made, while it lasted, a plaintive accompaniment to the lullaby she was singing. "Two whole weeks," she thought, while her longing reached out to that unknown room in which she pictured Oliver sitting alone. "Two whole weeks. How hard it will be ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... their education and environment have unfitted them for useful effort; but they are a part of the great, seething struggle for existence. And so we have their piteous and plaintive plea for the obsolete and the outworn. Disraeli once in an incautious moment exclaimed: "If we do away with the Established Church, what is to become of the fourteen million prepared and pickled sermons? ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... mind, according to Berkeley's reverie[464]. If his imagination be not sickly and feeble, it 'wings its distant way[465]' far beyond himself, and views the world in unceasing activity of every sort. It must be acknowledged, however, that Pope's plaintive reflection, that all things would be as gay as ever, on the day of his death, is natural and common[466]. We are apt to transfer to all around us our own gloom, without considering that at any given point of time there is, perhaps, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... 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 Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... and interviewing guides, while he kept up his reputation for piety with the customary devotions. According to his wont, he carefully studied the customs of the people. "One of the peculiar charms," he says, of the Somali girls, is "a soft, low and plaintive voice," and he notices that "in muscular strength and endurance the women of the Somal are far superior to their lords." The country teems with poets, who praise the persons of the belles very much in the style of Canticles, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... his funny pug nose, his curiously flat and twisted face, and his querulous, plaintive chimpanzee eyes, had been moved by some unlucky whim to venture an insolent remark under the cover of darkness on the main deck. But Mr. Pike, from above, at the break of the poop, had picked the offender unerringly. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the crypt of the basilica of St. Sergius during the Coptic mass of Easter morning. And when, after the first surprise, we examine these phantoms, we find that, for the most part, they are young mothers, with the refined and gentle faces of Madonnas, who hold the plaintive little ones beneath their black veils and seek to comfort them. And the sorcerer, who plays the cymbals, is a kind old priest, or sacristan, who smiles paternally. If he makes all this noise, in a rhythm which in itself is full of joy, it ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... words have become altered in the song, as frequently happens. D[^u]nu[']wa appears to be an old verb, meaning "it has penetrated," probably referring to the tooth of the reptile. These medicine songs are always sung in a low plaintive tone, somewhat resembling a lullaby. Usu[']'g[)i] also is without explanation, but is probably the name of some small ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... of dust heaven-high, Swept o'er the plain, stripping the wood of leaves, Wherewith it filled the air. We with closed eyes And lips sat bowing to the wrath of heaven. When this had passed away, after some time, Appeared this maiden, uttering piercing wails; Like to the plaintive notes of a lorn bird, That finds her nest robbed of its callow brood, Her wailings were, when she beheld the corpse Once more uncovered; and right bitterly Cursed she the man whose hand had done the deed. Straightway a handful of dry dust she brings, Then thrice ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... himself in the way of meeting Miss Ludlow, though she did send him two rather plaintive notes. Early in June, the marriage took place; and the bride's trousseau was quite magnificent, if it was not made in Paris. Mrs. Nicoll was delighted with what she termed her grandniece's good sense, and gave her a handsome set of rubies, beside having her diamonds reset for her. And when ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... The epithets "heavenly," "holy," "solemn," &c., represent the nightingale's song, as spoken of by Keats, as the bird's "plaintive ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... strain of music!" he blundered on, feeling how hopeless, how distinctly absurd was all his speech. "I surely must always have known you, somewhere!" His voice took on a plaintive assertiveness which in another he would have derided and have recognised as an admission ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... plaintive melodies carried the pathos and humor of the plantation all over the land, so Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852, brought home to millions of readers the sufferings of the Negroes in the "black belt" of the cotton-growing ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... plane on some red deal boards, his feet buried in beautifully curled shavings, and the whole place redolent of the delicious scent of turpentine. Every time his plane travelled along the edge, to my childish fancy, the board said in plaintive tones of remonstrance, in crescendo, his name, "Snewin, Snewin," and again, "SNEWIN," and even now the scent and action of planing a deal board always brings back the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... 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 days have small place ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... gloomy analysis, a bird of night uttered from the depths of the forest that prolonged and plaintive cry which ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the smooth bark, and environed with a chaplet of violets, underneath which the motto, "Forget me not," was cut in graceful letters. While pondering on this rural emblem of constant love, he was startled by a low and plaintive female voice chanting the following simple strain, with the gentle pathos of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... slowly all alone on the shore," went on the voice, dropping into a more plaintive and tender tone; "The sun had sunk, and one little star was sparkling in the sky. He looked up ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... pleased her, and she straightened herself out under the gay afghan, while she sang, in a plaintive voice, another little French song her ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... victims will be able to take shelter. For this reason wherever the tiger goes his stench precedes him, and knowing this the fox comes out of his little hole and calls through the jungle that the tiger is out. Hence, here in the night when the moonlight falls on the thickest gloom, following the plaintive cry, the cunning fox, the servant of our mother, threads its way through the jungle giving ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... of bells—to solemn music—to plaintive hymn chanted by monks—to roll of muffled drum at intervals—the sad cortege set forth. Loud cries from the bystanders marked its departure, and some of them followed it, but many turned away, unable to endure the sight of horror about to ensue. Amongst those who went ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... orange trees—these magnolias, splendid with the waxy blooms, with the gilded salons he had left, bewildered him. It seemed difficult to connect the thought of murder with this fair-smiling and enchanted scene. The soft gravel yielded to his tread, and plashing fountains murmured forth a plaintive and monotonous harmony. ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the narrator, "an' I'll tell you what I did. I'm not much of a hand with the pen, but right in the middle of the work I found a man who was goin' down the river, an' I sat down and wrote a long letter to the supervisor. It was about as plaintive a thing as I ever read. I had no reason to expect an answer, but by chance another party was comin' up that way, an' some weeks later I received a reply. What do you ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... thinking to himself that he was glad he hadn't won; he liked it better as it was, and felt very friendly to the Slogger. And then poor little Arthur crept in and sat down quietly near him, and kept looking at him and the raw beef with such plaintive looks that Tom at ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... in other words somewhere in Kirke White's poems. It is the burden of the plaintive songs of all these sweet albino-poets. "I shall die and be forgotten, and the world will go on just as if I had never been;—and yet how I have loved! how I have longed! how I have aspired!" And so singing, their eyes grow brighter and brighter, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... reputation, and from that time forward no Sunday-school library was complete without a full edition of his plaintive and sentimental "Perry-Gorics." After great research and profound study of his subject, he produced that wonderful gem which is known in every land as "The Young Mother's Apostrophe to Her ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... been sometimes tempted to withdraw entirely from this game of life; as a man who makes nothing but misses withdraws from that less dangerous one of billiards. You have fallen back upon the thought that you yourself most sharply smarted for your misdemeanours, or, in the old, plaintive phrase, that you were nobody's enemy but your own. And then you have been made aware of what was beautiful and amiable, wise and kind, in the other part of your behaviour; and it seemed as if nothing could reconcile the contradiction, as indeed nothing can. If you ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an attacking army. It lashed the waters of the sea into a frenzy. With the dawn came the snow. Softly and tenderly it wrapped the earth in a great white coverlet, hushing the troubled notes of the savage storm music into plaintive echoes of a lullaby. As it grew light a world of magic beauty greeted my eyes. Winter was King, but withal a tender monarch wooing as his handmaidens the beauties of early spring. The great Camellia trees gave lavishly of their ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... members of the Club, many privileged persons of the army, clergy, nobility, and higher commerce have taken seats in the hall of conference, the windows of which, wide open, allow the city band, installed below on the portico, to mingle a few heroic or plaintive notes with the remarks of the gentlemen. An enormous crowd, pressing around the musicians, is standing on the tips of its toes and stretching its necks in hopes to catch a fragment of what is said in session. But the windows are too high, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... back, to avoid being observed, though he watched, with intense interest, the motions of De Valette. The young Frenchman applied a flute to his lips, and played a few notes of a lively air,—then, suddenly breaking off, he changed the measure into one so soft and plaintive, that the sounds seemed to float, like aerial harmony, upon the stillness of the night. He paused, and looked earnestly toward the window: the moon shone brightly against it, but all was quiet within, and around, while he sang, in a clear and manly ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... 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
... the sounds begin Of a far-away fairy violin, Faint and reedy and cobweb thin." Cobweb thin, the accompaniment took up the plaintive chirping till the Maestro ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... more serious. The sophomore class, exuberant and inventive as ever, were evidently determined to "try it on'' their young professor—in fact, to treat me as they had treated their tutors. Any mistake made by a student at a quiz elicited from sundry benches expressions of regret much too plaintive, or ejaculations of contempt much too explosive; and from these and various similar demonstrations which grew every day among a certain set in my class-room, it was easy to see that a trial of strength must soon come, and it seemed to me best to force the fighting. Looking over these obstreperous ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... not a very fine composition, but this final chorus had the singular charm of fugue. And as the voices mourned like doves, "Oh that I had wings!" and pursued each other with the plaintive passage, "Then would I flee away—then would I flee away——," Jack's ears knew no weariness of the repetition. It was strangely like watching the rising and falling of Daddy Darwin's pigeons, as they tossed themselves by turns upon ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... Cyrus Bangs a very particular woman," she said, with plaintive impressiveness to her husband. "If she is willing to send her Gwendolen to Miss Whyte, I am disposed to let Margery, Gladys, and Dorothy go. Only you must have a very clear understanding with Miss Whyte, at the outset, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... A wild and plaintive cry escaped my lips. On earth during the most profound and comparatively complete darkness, light never allows a complete destruction and extinction of its power. Light is so diffuse, so subtle, that ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... little later the entering tone finally disappeared from Pekingese. The following monosyllabic dialogue gives a very fair idea of the quality of the four Pekingese tones—1st tone: Dead (spoken in a raised monotone, with slightly plaintive inflection); 2nd tone: Dead? (simple query); 3rd tone: Dead? (an incredulous query long drawn out); 4th tone: Dead! (a sharp and decisive answer). The native learns the tones unconsciously and by ear alone. For centuries their existence was unsuspected, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... one-eyed man went on in that tearful voice, and all of a sudden they all looked at me. I do not know who the two old men were or what any of them were doing, but there are moments when it is clearly time to go, and I left them there and then. And just as I got up on to my bicycle I heard the plaintive voice of the one with the hammer apologizing for the liberty he had taken in ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... were giving forth their last evening notes—"bentivis," who hang their nests on the bank-side reeds; "niambus," a kind of partridge, whose song is composed of four notes, in perfect accord; "kamichis," with their plaintive melody; kingfishers, whose call responds like a signal to the last cry of their congeners; "canindes," with their sonorous trumpets; and red macaws, who fold their wings in the foliage of the "jaquetibas," when night comes on ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... doubt, that accounted for the sadness in Lady Castlewood's eyes, and the plaintive vibrations of her voice. Who does not know of eyes, lighted by love once, where the flame shines no more?—of lamps extinguished, once properly trimmed and tended? Every man has such in his house. Such mementoes make our ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mysteries of sombre trees hard by, stole the plaintive notes of a blackbird singing, as it were, in ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... looking with a sort of despairing languor over the smooth purple sea, which scarcely heaved round us, while the flapping sails drooped useless round the masts, and the rowers indolently leaning on their oars, sung in a low and plaintive chorus. I sat hour after hour, still and silent, sickening in the sunshine, dazzled by its reflection on the water, and overcome with deadly nausea: I believe nothing on earth could have roused me at that moment. But evening so impatiently invoked, came at last: the sun set, the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... was a very dismal one to the major. He petted his garden as usual, and whistled softly to himself, as was his constant habit, but he insanely pinched the buds off the flowering plants, and his whistling—sometimes plaintive, sometimes hopeless, sometimes wrathful, sometimes vindictive in expression—was restricted to the execution of dead-marches alone. He jeopardized his queen so often at chess that Parson Fisher deemed it only honorable to call the major's attention ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... shudder, "do you—you dinna think it's a' true, do you?" But the ill-fated prince only gives him a warning look and plunges into the mazes of the forest. For a long time silence reigns over the Den. Lights glint fitfully, a human voice imitates the plaintive cry of the peewit, cautious whistling follows, comes next the clash of arms, and the scream of one in the death-throes, and again silence falls. Stroke emerges near the Reekie Broth Pot, wiping his sword and muttering, "Faugh! it drippeth!" At the same moment the air is filled with music of ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... on me thus, and lo! Each ready with a plaintive whine; Said I, "Not half an hour ago Your Mother has had alms of mine." "That cannot be," one answer'd, "She is dead." "Nay but I gave her pence, and she will ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... range themselves in two semicircles, standing opposite each other. The tallest of both lines at the one end, diminishing away at the other extremity to the children and little ones who can scarcely toddle. They have a wild, plaintive song, with swelling cadences and abrupt stops. They go through an extraordinary variety of evolutions, stamping with one foot and keeping perfect time. They sway their bodies, revolve, march, and countermarch, the men sometimes opening their ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... approached its consummation, still upward arose the voice of the church in plaintive chants, interceding for the departed, who, in the "suffering church" rejoiced with a mournful rapture amidst its patient agony which would ere long be exchanged from dreary Calvary to an eternal Thabor. But now the awful moment arrived; ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... cleft of a rock. This refers to the gift of fortitude, wherewith the saints build their nest, i.e. take refuge and hope, in the death wounds of Christ, who is the Rock of strength. Lastly, the dove has a plaintive song. This refers to the gift of fear, wherewith the saints delight ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Fancy still will pourtray to my sight, How her Bard lingers in this sullen shade, This dreary gloom of dull monastic night. Say that from every joy of life remote At evening's closing hour he quits the throng, Listening alone the ring-dove's plaintive note Who pours like him her solitary song. Say that her absence calls the sorrowing sigh, Say that of all her charms he loves to speak, In fancy feels the magic of her eye, In fancy views the smile illume her cheek, Courts ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... attain moral truth both in discipline and in idea; and in its aspect of a moral truth it obtained a more explicit expression than did some other of his finer personal attributes. His practice of cherishing and repeating the plaintive little verses which inquire monotonously whether the spirit of mortal has any right to be proud indicates the depth and the highly conscious character of this fundamental moral conviction. He is not only humble himself, ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... the preparation of their evening meal with a plaintive quietness. Juno, too, seemed oppressed, for after a tentative wriggle of her stump of a tail she settled back on her haunches, eyes fixed ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... of sorrow in it now. It was no longer the loud, defiant howl, but a long, plaintive wail; "Blanca! Blanca!" he seemed to call. And as night came down, I noticed that he was not far from the place where we had overtaken her. At length he seemed to find the trail, and when he came to the spot where we had ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... into that little bit of a clearing under the cedar trees, perhaps a hundred feet by thirty. Such wild excitement as prevailed among the horses when the distribution of oats began, such plaintive whinnying and restless stirring! But I think they behaved much better than human beings would have under the same circumstances. And at last each was being fed—such a pathetically small amount, too, hardly more ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... opposite corner that surround the bride, a pale little shop-girl with a pleading, winsome face. From somewhere unexpectedly appears a big man in an ill-fitting coat and skullcap, flanked on either side by a fiddler, who scrapes away and away, accompanying the improvisator in a plaintive minor key as he halts before the bride and intones his lay. With many a shrug of stooping shoulders and queer excited gesture, he drones, in the harsh, guttural Yiddish of Hester Street, his story of life's joys and sorrows, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... the will exerted from the lower center. We call it headstrong temper and masterfulness. But the peculiar will of the upper center—the sort of nervous, critical objectivity, the deliberate forcing of sympathy, the play upon pity and tenderness, the plaintive bullying of love, or the benevolent bullying of love—these we don't care to recognize. They are the extravagance of spiritual will. But in its true harmony the thoracic ganglion is a center of happier activity: of ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... unreasonable anger. Again, the dove builds its nest in the cleft of a rock. This refers to the gift of fortitude, wherewith the saints build their nest, i.e. take refuge and hope, in the death wounds of Christ, who is the Rock of strength. Lastly, the dove has a plaintive song. This refers to the gift of fear, wherewith the saints delight in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... Ever thwarted, and never nearer the happiness he desired for himself and others, he did not, like ordinary men attain a juster notion of the relation between good and ill in himself and in the world; he lapsed into a plaintive bewildered melancholy, translating the inexplicable conflict of right and wrong into the ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... a look at Lisbeth that was at once affectionate and plaintive, "but for you I should long since have ceased to live. But, my ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... of this season, is earnest and serious enough to disarm hostile criticism; and his loose and flippant productions are read leniently in the light of this pathetic confession. It is a self-revelation truly, but it is honest, straightforward, and manly. There is nothing plaintive or ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... say good-night to her, and she went to sleep crying, and remembering she hadn't after all learned from the girls how to get along without that ribbon in her costume and she must get up early and buy it, which made her utter one final little plaintive sniffle of vexation. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... uncomfortable; for here, close at hand, sighs and groans are very plainly perceptible." The Caliph now in turn stood still, and quite distinctly heard a low moaning, which seemed to belong rather to a human being than a beast. Full of expectation, he essayed to proceed to the place whence the plaintive sounds issued: but the Vizier, seizing him by the wing with his beak, entreated him fervently not to plunge them in new and unknown dangers. In vain! the Caliph, to whom a valiant heart beat beneath his stork-wing, burst away with the loss of a feather, and hastened ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... which plaintive and intrepid utterance by virtue of its very fragility penetrated the building and released The Black Holster, who bounded through the gate, roaring a salutation as he bounded, and in a jiffy had cuffed the participants apart. "All right, whose fault is this?" he roared. And a number ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... could only sing plaintive melodies, and then felt annoyed to think that she had failed to accomplish the purpose for which she came. But she was mistaken, these songs harmonized better with his present mood than more ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... fireplace on the guests' settee, beside Madonna Gemma. The torches, dripping fire in the wall-rings, cast their light over the faces of the wondering servants. The harp twanged its plaintive interlude; then the song continued, quavering, soaring, athrob with this new pathos and reverence, that had crept like the counterfeit of a celestial dawn upon a world long obscured ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... alone in my fire-lit room; But, no! the fire is dying, And the weary-voiced winds, in the outer gloom, Are sad, and I hear them sighing. The wind hath a voice to pine — Plaintive, and pensive and low; Hath it a heart like mine or thine? Knoweth it weal or woe? How it wails in a ghost-like strain, Just against that window pane! As if it were tired of its long, cold flight, And wanted to rest with me to-night. ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... of a cow that with full udder stood in the stall, the plaintive bleating of a goat that had been staked by the house, the furious grunting of a pig that longed to get out of the hot sty and roll on the ground, animated now and then the stillness of death that ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... A plaintive air, sung by some shrill girlish voices in the West End, was wafted over by the light evening breeze. It was so still that Madeleine could follow ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... without seeming to draw breath, the young man burst into peal after peal of the sweetest, clearest, highest, swiftest whistling that you can possibly imagine. I don't know how he did it—he didn't even purse or move his lips—they were barely parted, in a kind of plaintive, sad little smile—and the notes came out; that was all. Of course I can't tell you what the thing meant word for word or sound for sound; but, in general, it said youth, youth and spring: and I tell you it had those compositions of Mendelssohn, and ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... could hear the men and women singing on their homeward way some plaintive Cornish songs, which to me blended sweetly with the low ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... Captain Marsham came to the edge of the little granite wharf, and they had just stepped in when a strange sound came floating through the silence of the soft, dreamy summer air, followed directly by a long-drawn, plaintive howl that was almost terrible in ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... soft and musical tenor, died away and changed to a plaintive whistle, leaving the scene more lonely than ever. For a few moments nothing was to be seen except the endless expanse of wilderness, and nothing was to be heard save the mournful warble of the singer. Then a horse and rider were suddenly framed where the sparse timber opened ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... gone elsewhere to recruit their health on the sands and lose their money at the gaming-tables. They had been frightened to the coasts of France by the apparition of Carlism, and San Sebastian was plaintive. Her streets and her coffers were empty. The campamento of bathing-huts was ranged as usual on the velvet rim of the ear-like bay, but no bathers were there. There were more domestics than guests in the hotels; and ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... demurring, so with a plaintive look at Sir Rupert, who, hardly able to repress his laughter, was still standing by, I did as ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... And I began to be embarrassed in my turn, which embarrassment was only increased by her breaking out in a plaintive tone— ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... street, an effect of light, a passing face, yes, even the plaintive grind of a street organ, some such everyday circumstance, affects you suddenly in quite a strange way. It has become universalised. It is no longer a detail of the Strand, but a cryptic symbol of human life. It has been transfigured into a thing of infinite ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... the image, though short-lived, Which afterwards the muse revived. Thus carelessly I once portrayed Mine own ideal, the mountain maid, The captives of the Salguir's shore.(22) But now a question in this wise Oft upon friendly lips doth rise: Whom doth thy plaintive Muse adore? To whom amongst the jealous throng Of maids ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... eyes, and the sudden and expressive dilation of his nostrils. For a moment, his lips were compressed with more than the usual force of Indian gravity, and then they slightly severed. A low, soft, and as even the startled matron was obliged to confess, a plaintive sound issued from ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... controlling the aberrations of his patient:—A patient in the Pennsylvania Hospital, who called his physician his father, once lifted his hand to strike him. "What!" said his physician, (Dr. Rush), with a plaintive tone of voice, "Strike your father?" The madman dropped his arm, and instantly showed marks of contrition for his conduct. The following was related to me by Samuel Coates, President of the Pennsylvania Hospital:—maniac had made several attempts to set fire to the Hospital: upon being ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... to protect her than himself. "I—I wish that fool Nelson kid would break his mandolin—or his neck," he said irritably. He kissed her and went upstairs. From across the quiet street there came thin, plaintive, occasionally inaccurate, the strains of the long, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... simple, a little plaintive also; and Charlotte sang it with a low, sweet monotony that recalled, one knew not how or why, the cool fragrance of the hillside, and the scent of wild ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... pronunciation. Incredulity on our part is met by lugging the dictionary into the conflict and we are defeated at once. So victorious has the little one become that we tremble when we hear, "Mamma, how do you pronounce so and so," and prepare for another humiliation. My wife's plaintive, "It was pronounced so when I was a girl," is very touching to me, but when did the young ever have mercy on the old? The last conflict had—I hope it will be the last—was over the word "Squalor." The young one, after setting the ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... continuously, and suddenly the plaintive sound ceased. Joan bent over it. She had been holding the tiny hand as she always did, and at this moment the soft fingers closed upon one of her own quietly. She was quite alone, and for an instant there was a deep silence. After ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... concealed, skulking like rails through the tall grass, fly reluctantly, and when driven up, their flight is exceedingly noisy and violent, the bird soon exhausting itself. They are solitary, but many live in proximity, frequently calling to each other with soft plaintive voices. The evening call-notes of the larger bird are flute-like in character, and singularly ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... she murmured in touchingly plaintive tones. "I shall be in the water at the stroke of the half hour—in the icy water. Promise that ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... earnest entreaties for her intercession and mine with Effie. He cursed his infatuation, and the cause of it, and closed with the declaration that he would be reckless of life if Effie remained unforgiving. As I finished reading the letter I heard Effie's voice warbling in wild and plaintive notes in the conservatory, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... music portrayed the rising of the wind, the falling of rain, the roar of thunder. This was succeeded by low, plaintive strains, as of people weeping, and a party of elves in the garb of monks headed a procession bearing lighted tapers and carrying biers, upon which they placed the inanimate forms of the warriors. Slowly they paced about, ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... loved it tenderly, And named it Nestling; so forgot herself A moment, and her cares; till that young life Being smitten in mid heaven with mortal cold Past from her; and in time the carcanet Vext her with plaintive memories of the child: So she, delivering it to Arthur, said, 'Take thou the jewels of this dead innocence, And make them, an thou wilt, ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... visit one another's rooms for friendly gossip; and young men drop in to join their parties, accept the proffered cigarette, and discourse the sweet music of the KELURI,[49] the noseflute, and the Jew's harp (Figs. 17, 18, 19). Or Romeo first strikes up his plaintive tune outside the room in which Juliet sits with the women folk. Juliet may respond with a few notes of her guitar[50] (Fig. 20), thus encouraging Romeo to enter and to take his place in the group beside her, where he joins in the conversation or renews his musical efforts. About nine ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the house a long plaintive howl came from the Canadian forest. A sort of shiver, as if he were looking into the future, ran through Henry's veins. All his premonitions ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... yearned over you, but I could not bear the thought of hearing your peculiarly plaintive wailing cry, which always pierced my soul so painfully, and I softly kissed your feet and hurried away. Come, put your arms around my neck, and kiss me, my ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... among the race in ghosts, spirits, haunts and conjuration. Many believe in them yet. I can never forget the fright of the time my young master, William was going off to the war. The evening before he went, a whippoorwill lighted on the window sill and uttered the plaintive 'whip-poor-will.' All the slaves on the place were frightened and awed and predicted bad luck to Master Will. He took sick in war and died, just wasted away. He was brought back in rags toward the end ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... bold; His mission had success, but still the youth Distraction felt, which 'gan to shake his truth; A pow'rful monarch's favour there he view'd; A partner here, with melting tears bedew'd; And while he wavered on the painful choice, She thus address'd her spouse with plaintive voice: ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... his head. His eyes had a curious yellow fire, beseeching, plaintive, with a demon quality of ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... dagger and the shield given him by the friendly magician, now makes use of an instrument—a lyre—which he has brought with him, and the meaning of which he had not yet understood. To the sounds of this instrument he now expresses his plaintive moans, his remorse, and his overpowering longing for his enchanted queen. The stone is moved by the magic of his love: the beloved one is released. Fairyland with all its marvels opens its portals, and the mortal learns that, owing to his former inconstancy, Ada has lost the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... him, plaintive and clear. It seemed to lodge itself in his heart so that ever afterwards he had only to think of her to hear it like the echo of a small, sad bell. He ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... through thy tears in these hopes "full of immortality." 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 ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... guests Miss Humfray must be accommodated at late dinner. Mrs. Chater considered it annoying, yet found in it certain comfortable advantages—as sympathy from friends: "Mustn't it be rather awkward sometimes, Mrs. Chater?" A plaintive shrug would illustrate the answer: "Well, it is, of course, very awkward sometimes; but one must put up with it. That class of person takes offence so easily, you know; and I always try to treat my lady-helps as well as possible." "I'm sure you do, Mrs. Chater. How grateful ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... fossilized in the frozen seas. Our specimen was strung with thin cords made from the fibre of a lliana; I was shown this growth, which looked much like a convolvulus. The people have a long list of instruments, and their music, though monotonous, is soft and plaintive: Bowdich gives a specimen of it ("Sketch of Gaboon," p. 449), and of a bard who seems to have been somewhat more frenzied than most poets. Captain Allen (iii. 398) speaks of a harp at Bimbia (Camarones) tightly strung with ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... each is developing in spite of chance; each is determining hour by hour his heritage from unknown parents. The matron leaves us; the rocking begins again. Conversation is animated. The three-year-old baby bears the name of a three-year-old hero. This "Dewey" complains in a plaintive voice of a too long absent mother. His rosy lips are pursed out even with his nose. Again and again he reiterates the refrain: "My mamma don't never come to see me. She don't bring me no toys." And then with pride, ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... most direct course, but, leaving the streets with their noise of children and possibly vulgar contact, strolled through "Lovers' Lane." The old trees met overhead; there were dooryards full of sweet, old-fashioned flowers, and now and then the sound of a weak piano or a plaintive voice. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... at the entrance of the grotto, and bowing his head, he penetrated into the interior of the cavern, imitating the cry of the owl. A little plaintive cooing, a scarcely distinct cry, replied from the depths of the cave. Aramis pursued his way cautiously, and soon was stopped by the same kind of cry as he had first uttered and this cry sounded within ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Glegg should call her money in; it 'ud be very awkward for you to have to raise five hundred pounds now," said Mrs. Tulliver to her husband that evening, as she took a plaintive ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... plant forms, they painted the bamboo in black and white. A single masterly stroke sufficed to draw the cylindrical stalk from one joint to another, or the pointed leaves which are so quivering with life that we seem to hear the plaintive voice of the wind "combed," as the Chinese writings express it, "by the reeds." Or again, when a flower was the subject, they suggested it with a simplicity that presupposes a scientifically exact study of forms. It was by no means the splendid image which they sought to grasp but the soul itself; ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... completely covered with scarlet honeysuckle and trumpet-flower. While seeking to investigate one of these I startled a hen-quail, which, after whirring rapidly out of sight, returned and manifested much anxiety by plaintive calls. This is a queer place for quail: in the neighborhood of old fields, where they can easily run out and glean a hasty meal from weeds and broken ground, is their chosen place ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... There was a plaintive whinnying at the open door. A long and hairy face, a pair of patient, inquiring eyes looked in. It was a pony. For a moment it regarded us—and then trotted trustfully through; ambled up to us; poked its head ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... by day (as sometimes, though rarely, he is heard,—perhaps because he misses his mate; perhaps because he sees from his bower the creeping form of some foe to his race),—see, as she listens now to that plaintive, low-chanted warble, how quickly the smile is sobered, how the shade, soft and pensive, steals over the brow. It is but the mystic sympathy with Nature that bestows the smile or the shade. In that heart lightly moved beats the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to my feet, and so did my companions. The dogs were no less sensible of their danger than ourselves, and stirred uneasily while giving vent to plaintive whines. The wind from the south had increased; it was blowing directly off the land, and I could see that the ice was cracking here and there under its influence, and the whole field was in motion. Dark lanes appeared, and continued to increase in width, besides growing every minute more numerous. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... for help on her friends, the water nymphs. They heard and consented. Pan threw his arms around what he supposed to be the form of the nymph, and found he embraced only a tuft of reeds! As he breathed a sigh, the air sounded through the reeds, and produced a plaintive melody. The god, charmed with the novelty and with the sweetness of the music, said 'Thus, then, at least, you shall be mine.' And he took some of the reeds, and placing them together, of unequal lengths, side ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... box somewhere on the table began playing a rather trivial, rather plaintive air that was strange to him. It seemed to deepen the silence about him, an accent on the expectant stillness, a thread of tinkling melody spanning ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... would only meet him emerging from a fresh cloud of it with a glad tongue thrown out to the breeze. Again, there were desperate plunges into wayside underbrush or down steep ravines, whence I would hear rapid splashing through a hidden stream and short, plaintive cries to tell that that wonderful, unseen wood-presence of a thousand provoking scents had once more ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... me, I shall make the absence very short. Dear my life, every instant that I am from you is snatched from Paradise. Fain would I be with you alway, but stern duty"—the villain stopped to draw a plaintive and theatric sigh—"calls me to attend once for all to a matter of small moment. Anon I shall be with ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... living over again, in the melodies that he played, his chequered past. Forms moved before him to the music, and faces, long since dust, smiled at him, and held converse with him, as the plaintive notes rose and fell and died away. Winds, sweetened by their sweep over miles of ling and herbage, and spiced with the scents of the garden-flowers that like a zone of colour encircled him, kissed his lips, and stole therefrom his ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... ceased, and the wilderness fell into a silence so deep and heavy that it preyed upon the nerves of the Spaniard. Then, out of the stillness came a long, plaintive note, wailing, but musical, full of a quality that made it seem to Alvarez ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... white hands of mischievous Naiads which dash the water in your face, a pensive melancholy settles upon you with the mysterious dusk, and you are startled by Undine's "short, quick sobs," and are loth to believe that the plaintive sounds with which the air pulses are but the dropping of rills in and out of ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... The plaintive pleading cry was tremulous and faint like the voice of a disembodied spirit floating somewhere in the air. This time he ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... faint, now grew louder. It began with a series of mellow, plaintive clucks that followed thickly one upon another, like smooth pearls of sound that rolled through the throat in a continuous current; then came a few sharp notes as of a large bird that snaps his bill; then a long, half-melodious rumbling, intermingled with cacklings and snaps, and ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... was time for the twelve o'clock dinner hour, or lunch hour, again the well-filled plate was refused, the appetite having been satisfied at ten o'clock. Having taken very little nourishment at noon, by half past two the plaintive plea again came to the mother ears: "May I have a piece?" and again the well-meaning mother gave him the desire of his heart. So the day passed, the dinner making the fifth time food was taken into the stomach, and in all probability there was eaten a cookie in between. The reader can readily ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... killed one bird—it was the male, Oh cruel deed and base! The female gave a plaintive wail And ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... of insipidity, with the oddest names: white poison, nuns' kisses, angels' crops, cats' tails, heavenly bacon, royal eggs, coruscations, cocked hats, and esquecidos, or oblivion cakes, the butter being omitted. It seems an unexpected symbol of the plaintive melancholy of the Portuguese character that the small confections which we call kisses they call sighs, suspiros. As night advances, the cakes grow sweeter and the dances livelier, and the pretty national dances are at last introduced; though these are never ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... sat immobile, listening for a while and then began to play so plaintive and wistful a melody that Harry felt the old sorrow wake and stir within his heart and demand a reckoning of the forgetful years. Not realizing that he did so, he arose and began to pace up and down the room, nor remembered where he was until he looked up to see Pearl ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... banks 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 ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... MOTHER bends above her weeping child, Her bosom heaving with convulsive throe, Her large eye lighted with expression wild, That, ah! too plainly speaks maternal wo! The tearful infant, lost in bitter grief, Thrills forth its plaintive call for tender care; While from a mother's trembling hand relief, Alas! can answer no imploring pray'r. Swift-falling tears! and piercing cries of pain! Maternal passion kindling into glow! Peace banished from its sweet domestic reign! Stricken with grief!—ah! ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... hall. By the pavement a car was standing, and from somewhere at the back there came the sound of a baby crying inconsolably in the darkness. While they entered the hall, and went up the broad old-fashioned flight of stairs, that plaintive wail followed them, growing gradually fainter as they ascended, but never fading utterly into silence. When they reached the second storey, and turned toward the back of the house, a door at the end of the passage opened, and an old woman, with a hunch ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... moment the three were in the roomy cockpit and Tom had made the empty rowboat fast to the stern. He was about to start up when from another boat, containing two little girls and two slightly larger boys, came a plaintive cry: ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... that the fields were laboured only by slaves and cattle. The legions could no longer be recruited but from foreign bands, vast tracts of pasturage overspread even the fields of Lombardy and the Compagna of Naples, and it was the plaintive confession of the Roman annalist, that the mistress of the world had come to depend for her subsistence on the floods ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... And pray him look inside the huts at his horse-palace door, and bethink himself is it well to house his horses, and stable his folk.' Said he, ''Twill give sore offence.' 'But,' said I, 'ye must do it discreetly and choose your time.' So he promised. And riding on we heard plaintive cries. 'Alas,' said I, 'some sore mischance hath befallen some poor soul: what may it be?' And we rode up, and lo! it was a wedding feast, and the guests were plying the business of drinking sad ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... enthusiastic tone, he commenced a soft plaintive love-song, and then, after striking the chords for some time in a wild but masterly manner, retired. I confess I felt much interested in this poor fellow's performance, he seemed so deeply to feel every note he uttered, particularly at one time, when he touched upon his own misfortune, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... of a summer day in 1818, Thomas Hughes was riding horseback through Trumbull county. The dust on the highway deadened the sound of his horse's feet. While passing a log cabin, half hidden from the road by intervening trees and shrubs, he heard the plaintive voice of a woman who was in the garden, out of sight. The clergyman stopped his horse and listened. He heard the woman earnestly praying that some way might be opened for her children to obtain such education as should fit them for the duties of life. Riding on, the clergyman ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... or twenty mules made filing along the side of a steep grassy slope,—a picture which he has preserved in his late volume, "Out-Door Pastimes of an American Hunter,"—our attention was attracted by plaintive, musical, bird-like chirps that rose from the grass about us. I was almost certain it was made by a bird; the President was of like opinion; and I kicked about in the tufts of grass, hoping to flush the bird. Now here, now there, arose this sharp, but bird-like note. Finally we found that it was ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs
... audience (still excepting Mr. Jarvis, who was tickling one of the cats and whistling a plaintive melody) there was a tendency toward awkward silence. To start assailing a seeming nonentity and then to discover he is the proprietor of the paper to which you wish to contribute is like kicking an apparently empty hat and finding your rich uncle inside it. Mr. Renshaw in particular ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... examined, as a surgeon, as to the causes of these losses, and 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. Others obstinately refused to take sustenance; ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... was a low long-drawn moan, so exceeding plaintive and full of pain that it made Fleda shake like an aspen. But after a moment she spoke again, bearing more heavily with her ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... fifty dollars' worth of printing and advertising, and was the most distressed and frightened creature on the Pacific coast. I could not sleep—who could, under such circumstances? For other people there was facetiousness in the last line of my posters, but to me it was plaintive with a pang when ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the windows! It was from the shores of Borva that young Monaltrie must have fled. It must have been in Borva that his sweetheart sat in her bower and sang, the burden of all her singing being "Return, Monaltrie!" And then, as Sheila sang now, making the monotonous and plaintive air wild and strange— ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... 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
... slow-motion fashion, to become interested in them. Slowly, heavily, numbly, they congregated about them—the equivalent of a herd of several hundred elephants of all the colors of the rainbow, with small heads wearing plaintive but persistent expressions. Long necks ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... "Come away, Death," in the Shakespearian Illyria. There is so often a threatening note, something blatant and metallic, in the voice of bells, that I believe we have fully more pain than pleasure from hearing them; but these, as they sounded abroad, now high, now low, now with a plaintive cadence that caught the ear like the burthen of a popular song, were always moderate and tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of still, rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or the babble of a rookery in spring. I could have asked the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I fell vaguely a-wondering what should have roused me, hearkening to the distant roar of the surf that seemed to me now plaintive and despairing, now full of an ominous menace ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... the fourth time. It was strangely miserable and plaintive. One felt that after that last effort, more mechanical than voluntary, the cry would probably be extinguished. It was an expiring exclamation, instinctively appealing to the amount of aid held in suspense in ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of Pen, and thrust him back; the axe fell on the floor, making a deep gash. Johnson, Bell, and Simpson gathered around Hatteras, and seemed determined to support him. But plaintive, grievous cries arose from the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... coming on, and she had not come, so the other keys were fetched from the sexton's, and Dr. May and his daughter set off to storm her fortress. Like Minna, the Doctor was almost overpowered by the wonderful plaintive sweetness of the notes that were floating through the atmosphere, like a wailing voice of supplication. They had almost unnerved him, as he waited while Mary ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... plants, and many more, she wove into her fanciful garlands and borders.—On one of the pages were some musical notes. I touched them from curiosity on a piano belonging to one of our boarders. Strange! There are passages that I have heard before, plaintive, full of some hidden meaning, as if they were gasping for words to interpret them. She must have heard the strains that have so excited my curiosity, coming from my neighbor's chamber. The illuminated border she had traced round the page that held these notes took the place of the words they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the banjo striking soft staccato chords. He mustered the men, he raced the horses with excited calls of "Git up thar," and gave clever imitation of fleeing hoofs, "to-bucket, to-bucket, to-bucket," in a rapid, low, chanting song. Then the leading hound opened with a plaintive bay "how!-oo-oo-oo, how!-oo-oo-oo," and one by one the others joined in with varying notes till it swelled to a weird chorus of baying hounds which the banjo and the musician's voice made most realistic. Next the fox was spied and there were cries of "Hello! ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... celestial 'minions thou hast seen His proudest temples sink into decay, Grim desolation and desuetude; The silent hush succeed the plaintive hymn, The anthem cease to swell in rhythmic praise, Or vaulted dome re-echo with the sound Of pipe, of organ, harp and dulcimer; The voice of sacerdotal eloquence Become as silent as the unborn thought; The fragrant perfume of the frankincense, The scent of ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... midnight reign, Dark muffled, viewed the dreary plain; Still crowding thoughts, a pensive train, Rose in my soul, When on my ear this plaintive ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... young companion in animation. The chorus then began again, and this alternation was repeated several times, till the young songstress whose motions had been growing more and more vehement, suddenly fell down as dead. Langediu's song then became lower and more plaintive: he bent over the body, and seemed to express the deepest sorrow; the whole circle joined in his ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... I remained in a sort of painful drowsiness. My heart suffered as much as my flesh. Warm tears ran slowly down my cheeks. Amidst the nightmare that accompanied the fever, I heard a moan similar to the continuous plaintive cry of a child in suffering. At times, I awoke and stared at ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... mind 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, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... we were awoke by the merry elelta—the shrill cry of joy uttered by the Abyssinian beau sexe on great and happy events. On this occasion a peculiar mixture of joyous and plaintive strains slightly modified its usual character, and it was a sharp but also tremulous sound that greeted the arrival of the Emperor Theodore on the Amba. Carpets were at once spread on the open space in front of his house, the ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... wind had risen at nightfall, and it came softly across the snow, and tried the doors and windows as with a furtive hand. She could hear it coming as from an immense distance, passing with a sigh, returning plaintive, homeless, forlorn, to ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... Lizzie came to her; she still liked Lizzie best. They would sit together, one on each side of the fireplace, talking. Harriett's voice came thinly through her thin lips, precise yet plaintive, Lizzie's finished with a snap of ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... the swart Savoyard (filius nullius) issues forth on his diurnal pilgrimage, "remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," to excruciate on his superannuated hurdy-gurdy that sublime melody, "the hundred and seventh psalm," or the plaintive sweetness of "Isabel," perhaps speculating on a breakfast for himself and Pug, somewhere between Knightsbridge and Old Brentford. Poor fellow! Could he procure a few bones of mutton, how hard would it be for his hungry comprehension to understand the displeasure which similar objects occasioned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... on some red deal boards, his feet buried in beautifully curled shavings, and the whole place redolent of the delicious scent of turpentine. Every time his plane travelled along the edge, to my childish fancy, the board said in plaintive tones of remonstrance, in crescendo, his name, "Snewin, Snewin," and again, "SNEWIN," and even now the scent and action of planing a deal board always brings back the scene clearly ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... stopped him with plaintive appeal. "I know all that. I know it. Don't you realize that the longer the flight into the open blue of the skies, the harder the return to a gilt cage? But, dearest—there is such a thing as keeping one's ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... he regards with love and friendship; whatever is trite he views with ecstasy. Nature appears charming; in the dead woods and monotonous forest his mind becomes overwhelmed with delight. I speak for myself, as a careful analysation of the attack, in all its severe, plaintive, and silly phases, appeared to me. I used to amuse myself with taking notes of the humorous and the terrible, the fantastic and exaggerated pictures that were presented to me—even while suffering the paroxysms ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... called; "can't you hear the crunching on the pines?" Now his tone was so plaintive it ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... specimen in the Liverpool Museum. It has in its natural state an antipathy to the light, and in the open day is quite moped and inanimate. When kept in a darkened place it seems at its ease, and sometimes makes use of the note or call from which it takes its name, and which is rather plaintive than harsh. The flesh, of which I have eaten, perfectly resembles that of the common pheasant (tugang), also found in the woods, but the body is of much larger size. I have reason to believe that it is not, as supposed, a native of the North or any part of China. From the Malayan Islands, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Claudia, oh, forgive me! I did not mean to wound you; if I spoke harshly it was because I felt for both! Claudia, come back, love!" cried Bee, hurrying after her; but Claudia was gone. Bee would have followed her; but little Lu's voice was heard in plaintive notes. Bee returned to the room to find her little sister lying awake with wide-open, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... spindle-legged ancient chair; a very droll porcelain figure of Zitzenhausen was bowing to a very stiff soldier in terre cuite of Ulm; an old violin of Cremona was playing itself, and a queer little shrill plaintive music that thought itself merry came from a painted spinet covered with faded roses; some gilt Spanish leather had got up on the wall and laughed; a Dresden mirror was tripping about, crowned with flowers, and a Japanese bonze was riding along ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... their artless notes in simple guise; They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim: Perhaps 'Dundee's' wild-warbling measures rise, Or plaintive 'Martyrs,' worthy of the name; Or noble 'Elgin' beets the heavenward flame, The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays. Compared with these, Italian trills are tame; The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise; Nae unison hae they with ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... the reason he walked half-a-mile out of his homeward way, through Belgrave Square, to haunt the street in which she lived, looking wistfully into those gardens whence he had seen her emerge that very day with her mysterious companion—gazing with plaintive interest on the bell-handle and door-scraper of his mother's house—vaguely pondering how he could ever bear to enter that house again—and going through the whole series of those imaginary throes, which are indeed real sufferings with people who have been foolish enough to exchange the ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... to her? Her husband is faithful to her, with a fidelity that knows no hypocrisy; she is happy and is proud of her maternity; she can still dance and strike chords upon her krob, modulate a plaintive ditty on her ciniloi and sing whilst she beats on her bamboo sticks an accompaniment that tortures well-tuned ears. For the rest, if her beauty soon fades, her ugliness does not create the least feeling of disgust amongst ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... back at Rosebury," said little Daisy, in a very sad and plaintive voice. "I don't think London is at all a cheerful place. We made a great mistake about it, didn't we, Jasmine? Oh, Jasmine, darling, you are not going to leave me by myself, for I really don't feel well ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... old costume, wrapped in kaftans, and charming young ladies, with Tacticos on their heads, and their beautiful figures, which no stays had ever tortured, draped in half-oriental costumes. Native music, soft and plaintive, sounded, as we would watch Mademoiselles Peiser, Athanaso, Fonton, Tricon, &c., dance the Romaika. Nothing exists, nowadays, of what was so seductive then. The Orient has kept its sunshine and its colouring, but that horrible cosmopolitanism has invaded everything. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... against which they were directed; and the ready obedience of the Pagans protected them from the pains and penalties of the Theodosian Code. [57] Instead of asserting, that the authority of the gods was superior to that of the emperor, they desisted, with a plaintive murmur, from the use of those sacred rites which their sovereign had condemned. If they were sometimes tempted by a sally of passion, or by the hopes of concealment, to indulge their favorite superstition, their humble repentance ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... rushed into the crowd now, as if to break through it. The audience ceased to howl, so as to look with greater attention. Amidst the howling and whining were heard yet plaintive voices of men and women: "Pro Christo! Pro Christo!" but on the arena were formed quivering masses of the bodies of dogs and people. Blood flowed in streams from the torn bodies. Dogs dragged from each other the bloody limbs of people. The odor of blood and torn entrails was ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the purity that makes them so unskillful. It is only when she descends to particulars that we can turn round on the Pretty Preacher—only when a burning and impassioned invective against Cider Cellars suddenly softens into the plaintive inquiry, "But, oh, Charlie, dear, what are the Cider Cellars?" So long as the preacher keeps in the sphere of the indefinite, we lie at her mercy, and hear the soft thunders ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... intimate, underhand knowledge of political and economic conditions. But he was emphatically not of that sort, so continued to lead his disreputable, roving life for a period of ten years. At the end of which time he met a plaintive little Englishwoman, just out from Home, and she, knowing nothing whatever of Rivers, but being taken with his glib tongue and rather handsome person, ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... "When they were told that he was dead, they seemed much concerned, and pronounced some words in a plaintive voice. So much had this man's superior knowledge, and his ability to converse in their language, rendered him valuable and beloved, even among a nation in a state of barbarism. Perhaps with the capacity which Providence had allotted to him, and which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... were shining with delight in spite of her mother's plaintive discouragements, and now as they both turned away from the plain little supper-table, she took hold of her hand and held it fast as they went out to the kitchen together. They very seldom indulged in any ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the cranberries which the frost has not loosened. The first flock of geese is seen beating to north, in long harrows and waving lines; the gingle of the song-sparrow salutes us from the shrubs and fences; the plaintive note of the lark comes clear and sweet from the meadow; and the bluebird, like an azure ray, glances past us in our walk. The fish-hawk, too, is occasionally seen at this season sailing majestically over the water, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... children learned to consider it as a pearl beyond all price in the trials that awaited them in their eventful career. To her knowledge of religious truths young Catharine added an intimate acquaintance with the songs and legends of her father's romantic country; often would her plaintive ballads and old tales, related in the hut or the wigwam to her attentive auditors, wile ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... women with chalked faces and vermilion-spotted lips, simpering and melancholy. By day, there was work, or now and then a lesson with Dr. Earle's teacher, a little aged Chinaman of intricate, refined, and plaintive courtesy. Under his guidance Rudolph learned rapidly, taking to study as a prodigal might take to drink. And with increasing knowledge came increasing tranquillity; as when he found that the hideous cry, startling him at every ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... hands of the boy and girl slid into her own as she arose. A curiously startled look lay in her eyes, and an inquiring, plaintive ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... it 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
... morning, a week before the Friendship Carnival, she passed down Daphne Street with her plaintive, musical "Busy, busy, busy ..." Doctor June and the young Reverend Arthur Bliss sat on Doctor June's screened-in porch discussing a deficit in the Good Shepherd's Orphans' Home fund for the fiscal year. Ever since the wreck of the Through, Friendship ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... to lay afresh—though this time only three or four eggs,—and again has recourse to the down on her body. But her greedy persecutors once more rifle her nest, and oblige her to line it for the third time. Now, however, her own stock of down is exhausted, and with a plaintive voice she calls her mate to her assistance, who willingly plucks the soft feathers from his breast to supply the deficiency. If the cruel robbery be again repeated, which in former times was frequently the case, the poor eider-duck ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... play for me, that same, plaintive piece you were playing as I came in,—something of Grieg's I think it ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
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