"Doleful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... guessing in spite of himself? Does he not live plumped up against mystery every hour of his life, crowded on by ignorance, forced to guess if only to eat? Is he not browbeaten into taking things for granted whichever way he turns? He becomes a doleful, sceptical, contradictory, anxious, disagreeable, disapproving person as a matter ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... sadness, this terrible suspicion of a secret death by poison incorporated itself with the very essence of his melancholy humor, and lurked within him to flash forth in madness at a future period of life. That he was well acquainted with the doleful situation of his family is proved by his first extant letter. Addressed to the noble lady Vittoria Colonna on behalf of Bernardo and his sister, this is a remarkable composition for a boy of twelve.[9] His poor father, he says, is on the point ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... beware of all tampering with these betrayers of the royal interest, and concerns of Christ's kingdom, and listen to no conferences with the ministers and professors of this generation, till the public defections of this land from the doleful source of all our ruin and misery, that sin of the public resolutions, the compliance with prelacy, the church-ruining and dividing indulgences and toleration, until the present sinful course of vindicating all these defections, and burying all the testimonies against the same: I say, until ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... time, in light and dark, the Indians filled the air with dismal chant and doleful incantations to the Great Spirit, and the tum! tum! tum! tum! of tomtoms, a specific feature of ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... "ding, dong! Why do you not come to church like others? Why are you not dressed in your Sunday clothes, and wherefore do you heave such doleful sighs, whilst we ring merrily? Ding, dong! ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... on a sudden, from the thorny brake, E'en as Sir Pertinax thus doleful spake, Leapt lusty loons and ragged rascals four, Rusty their mail, yet bright the ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... sheep. Keeping this in mind, let it be remembered that the shepherds wandered from place to place to find pasture. In doing so, they were sometimes obliged to pass through dark, lonely valleys. Wild beasts, and creatures less formidable, but of hateful sight, and with doleful voices, made it difficult for the flocks to be led through such passages. There was frequently no other way from one pasturage to another but through these places of death-shade, or valleys of the shadow of death,—which was a ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... blossoming of flowers, and the song of birds: but only in strange portents, absurd and lying miracles, which they pretended had happened, because they fancied that they ought to have happened: and so built up a whole literature of unreason, which remains to this day, a doleful monument of human ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... armful of branches to the beach, and started another fire where it could be seen from seawards, after which he went back and sat outside the shelter near Miss Hamilton, while darkness crept up from the eastwards across the Bush. It grew dim and solemn, and the doleful wailing of the pines was curiously ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... then, throw aside your doleful looks. If you show yourself to others in your present state, people will take you for a very ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... said Wallbridge on the fourth day, trying to look doleful, "I haven't made enough this week to pay for the gas—and I ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... wise American poet guess that, away in a little fairy principality of Deutschland, there was a beautiful young fairy prince, being reared by benevolent fairy godmother-grandmothers, especially to disprove all such doleful prophecies, and reverse the usual fate of pretty young Princesses in the case of the "little ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... heaped on, Seldom brings order, but confusion. Might I make choice, long life should be withstood; Nor would I care how short it were, if good: Which to effect, let ev'ry passing-bell Possess my thoughts, "Next comes my doleful knell": And when the night persuades me to my bed, I'll think I'm going to be buried. So shall the blankets which come over me Present those turfs which once must cover me: And with as firm behaviour I will meet The sheet I sleep in as my winding-sheet. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... great grief and doleful widowhood, In which the bloody exit of her lord Has plunged the queen, still in her mind she bears The ancient ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... their corners by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his handle, looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. Now and again, while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone, with his knee raised his instrument, whose hard straps tired his shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried, the music escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under a brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other places at the theatres, sung in drawing rooms, danced to at night under lighted ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... pick him, and fry him, and dip my biscuit in his gravy. Poor Fed, Confed, Confederacy, I place one hand on my heart and one on my head, regretting that I have not another to place on my stomach, and whisper, softly whisper, in the most doleful accents, Good-bye, farewell, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... wounded. Our town exhibited a scene of real sorrow and distress, when our warriors returned and recounted their misfortunes, and stated the real loss they had sustained in the engagement. The mourning was excessive, and was expressed by the most doleful yells, shrieks, and howlings, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... blasted; no birds are to be seen, except a few smoky sparrows; and for miles on miles a black waste spreads around, where furnaces continually smoke, steam-engines thud and hiss, and long chains clank, while blind gin-horses walk their doleful round. From time to time you pass a cluster of deserted roofless cottages of dingiest brick, half-swallowed up in sinking pits or inclining to every point of the compass, while the timbers point up like ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... crimson might be the tide of thought that flowed through the minds of those present, in memory of what had occurred during the last few days, the light of mirth played on the surface. The times afforded themes for jest, rather than doleful predictions. Indeed, in accordance with a principle in human nature, there was a tendency to disguise feelings and anxiety by words so light as to border on recklessness. Questions as to future action were coming ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... you force me to proclaim From clime to clime, the triumph of your scorn, Let hell itself inspire my tortured breast With mournful numbers, and untune my voice; Whilst the sad pieces of my broken heart Mix with the doleful accents of my tongue, At once to tell my griefs and thy exploits, Hear, then, and listen with attentive ear— Not to harmonious sounds, but echoing groans, Fetched from the bottom of my laboring breast, To ease, in spite ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Fountain remained, and one could still determine with accuracy what its designer's intentions had been. It stood in sore need of just one last kindness; and if the thing had possessed any friends they would have done that doleful shovelling ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... the obsession of the winter seized her again. She brooded perpetually over the doleful Romney story—the tale of a great painter, born, like her John, in this Northern air, and reared in Kendal streets, deserting his peasant wife—enslaved by Emma Hamilton through many a passionate year—and coming back at last that the drudge of his youth might nurse him through his ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and no courage to make inquiries of station officials because he spoke no word of French. I asked on his behalf and after jostling for half an hour in the crowd and speaking to a dozen porters who shrugged their shoulders and said, "Je n'en sais rien!" came back with the certain and doleful news that the last train had left that night for Basle. The little Swiss was standing between his packages with his back to the wall, searching for me with anxious eyes, and when I gave him the bad news tears ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... winter—began to run short. That was enough to make the fellows sick for home, and they were ready to dance for joy when the gay flag was hoisted at last. Gaily the Esperanza rattled through the fleet, and envious men cried "What cheer!" in a doleful manner. After a twelve hours' run the wind fell away, and the sky began to look funny. Hoarse vague noises came over the sea, and it seemed as if certain sounds were growing weary and swooning away. Little breaths of air came softly—oh, so softly, and so deadly cold!—but the tiny ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... that it is true what they say: a stork can seldom open his bill without complaining. But what made the thing he said sound even more doleful was that it was difficult for him to speak out. He stood for a long time and only clattered with his bill; afterward he spoke in a hoarse and feeble voice. He complained about everything: the nest—which was situated at the very top of the roof-tree at Glimminge castle—had been totally destroyed ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... largest part of the trading in American waters was conducted by these Yankee coasters, so by far the heaviest blows, and those most keenly felt, fell upon them. Bulletin after bulletin came to port with its doleful tale of this vessel burned or that vessel scuttled, this one held by the pirates for their own use or that one stripped of its goods and sent into port as empty as an eggshell from which the yolk had ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... treason—I did never stain it—and I am betrayed.—And when the trumpets blow, And when the banners beat against the wind, Give thou a thought to thine old comrade then! And on some mighty day of battle, when Upon the field of slaughter the priest lifts His hands amid the doleful noises, offering up The sacrifice to heaven for the dead, Bethink thyself of me, for I too thought To ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... of these thoughts, she had very little sympathy to bestow upon Mrs. Tadman, whose fragmentary lamentations only worried her, like the murmurs of some troublesome not-to-be-pacified child; whereby that doleful person, finding her soul growing heavier and heavier, for lack of counsel or consolation, could at last endure this state of suspense no longer in sheer inactivity, but was fain to bestir herself somehow, if even ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... remarked that he would never have known anything of mine hadn't he by an extraordinary chance been detained on shore by Captain Falk. He didn't like to stay late ashore—he added with a sigh. The something doleful in his tone I put to his sympathy with my ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... traffic is to-day in active operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the south; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... a safe distance, and eyeing the team askance, refused to stir. Suddenly he raised his nose in the air and gave vent to a long, melancholy howl. He watched the wagon out of sight, and even followed for a hundred yards or so, raising his voice from time to time in the most doleful howlings. ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... dismal room so doleful with her talk that aunt Corinne began to feel terribly about life, and Robert Day wished he had gone ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... found it, as I had expected, transcendently dismal. The slowly changing shadows waved on it from the heavy trees, were doleful in the last degree; the house was ill-placed, ill-built, ill-planned, and ill-fitted. It was damp, it was not free from dry rot, there was a flavor of rats in it, and it was the gloomy victim of that indescribable decay which settles ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... waiting until the King should be ready to set out, she went down all alone through the garden into a little wood, where she sat down upon a mossy bank and began to think. And her thoughts were so doleful that very soon she began to cry, and she cried, and cried, and forgot all about going back to the palace, until she suddenly saw a handsome page standing before her. He was dressed in green, and the cap which he held in his hand was adorned with ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... melodious and in good tune with the accompaniment of dingling bells hanging from the camels' necks. There was a musician in our party—Ali Murat's young brother—who carried a flute in his girdle during the day, but played upon the instrument the whole night—some doleful tunes of his own composition, which were not bad. True, when one had listened to the same tune, not only scores but hundreds of times during one night, one rather felt the need of a change, but still even the sound of his flute was a great relief in the dreary night marches. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... substantially the same thing, and both suggest the same idea. When cloud fills the sky it darkens the earth, and shuts out the sunshine and the blue, it closes the petals of the little flowers, it hushes the songs of the birds. Sin makes for the sinning man 'an under-roof of doleful grey,' which shuts out all the glories above. Put that metaphor into plain English, and it is just this, 'Your sins have separated between you and your God, and your iniquities have hid His face from you that He will not hear.' It is impossible for a man that has his heart all stiffened by the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... back into the cave, noiselessly filled the battered coffee-pot and set it on the coals, said a few reassuring words to Kate and begged her to remember him in her prayers, laughed at her doleful and despairing reply and ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... The first doleful fact that impressed them was that it was still raining. A peep through the single front window with which their room was provided showed the dull leaden sky, with its infinite reservoir, from which the drops ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... one, beginning "Steig, o Mutter aller Schmerzen, auf den Altar meiner Toene!" that the background of poignant noise supplied by the composer was more than apposite, and in the mood-key of the poem. The flute, bass clarinet, and violoncello were so cleverly handled that the colour of the doleful verse was enhanced, the mood expanded; perhaps the Hebraic strain in the composer's blood has endowed him with the gift of expressing sorrow and desolation and the abomination of living. How far ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... kettle boiling water. Also our tent was warm and cozy. We were quietly resting with pleasant thoughts of supper to soothe us, when suddenly a howling and laughter as though from some inferno burst upon us from just outside the tent, while from the other side of the valley came the long and doleful howls in answer. ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... my broken slumbers—for I was ill with fever—disturbed by a brace of curlews, which were uttering their depressing cries within a few hundred yards of me, and how I at last became so wrought up and almost frenzied by the persistency of their doleful notes, that I followed them up with a Winchester rifle, mile after mile, wasting my cartridges and exhausting mind and body in the vain attempt to shoot them in the dark. There is to my knowledge nothing so mournful as the call of the curlew, ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... and sunless way, Far from thy beams, Apollo, god of day— The melancholy bark Bound for the common bourn, the harbour of the dark! Look up, look yonder! from the home Antigone, Ismene come, On the last, saddest errand bound, To chant a dirge of doleful sound, With agony of equal pain Above their brethren slain! Their sister-bosoms surely swell, Heart with rent heart according well In grief for those who fought and fell! Yet—ere they utter forth their woe— We must awake the rueful strain ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... weeps Troy's painted woes: For sorrow, like a heavy-hanging bell, Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; Then little strength rings out the doleful knell: So Lucrece set a-work sad tales doth tell To pencill'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow; She lends them words, and she their looks ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... you been doing?" she rallied them. "You looked as if you had been intending to read the marriage service through together, and had read the funeral one by mistake; or possibly because it appealed to you more!... You both seemed doleful enough for anything." ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... for his ankle. In leaping a ditch, the master has hurt himself against a stake; he has dislocated and twisted his ankle, broken his head by falling on a stone, while his Gorgon shot far away from his buckler. His mighty braggadocio plume rolled on the ground; at this sight he uttered these doleful words, "Radiant star, I gaze on thee for the last time; my eyes close to all light, I die." Having said this, he falls into the water, gets out again, meets some runaways and pursues the robbers with his spear at their backsides.[261] But ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... sadly in fear that my sweetest damsel does not like our Suffolk cheese?" said Levina in a most doleful tone. ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... death rushed upon him at this time with such incessant importunity that they took possession of his mind, when he first waked, for many hours together.' Writing to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield on Oct. 27, 1781, he says:—'All here is gloomy; a faint struggle with the tediousness of time, a doleful confession of present misery, and the approach seen and felt of what is most dreaded and most shunned. But such is the lot of man.' Piozzi Letters, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... dark and gloomy. There were some dozen others who shared our captivity. Here we had rather a doleful time. We were supplied with food three times a day; but the supply was scanty, and we had meat but once in two days. We gathered that it was intended to send us to Richmond; but from day to day there was a delay in doing so. ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... accomplished, with every grace and virtue, and for whom I had the most perfect regard. No sooner had the boat left the shore than this young lady was seized with an alarming disorder, which, from the great pain attending it, caused her to scream in the most doleful manner. The physicians attributed the cause to spasms of the heart, which, notwithstanding the utmost exertions of their skill, carried her off a few days after my arrival at Liege. As the history of this young lady is remarkable, I shall relate it ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... but I worship you always. A word, a look from you, will always recall me to a sense of duty, and this duty will be sweet when you deign to remind me of it. As I write to you, Edmee, the sky is full of clouds that are darker and heavier than lead; the thunder is rumbling, and doleful ghosts of purgatory seem to be floating in the glare of the lightning. The weight of the storm lies on my soul; my bewildered mind quivers like the flashes which leap from the firmament. It seems as if my whole being ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... inclined, for reasons of their own, to join in the doleful chorus. They desired that the condition of the peasantry should be further improved by legislative enactments, and accordingly they painted the evils in as dark colours ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... as the doleful tidings reached the city, the people were bid to prayer by a general ringing of the bells. Great numbers of the faithful sought the approaches to the Vatican. Many entered and crowded the halls and ante-chambers ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... solitude ... it grew darker ... the birds of night began to shoot with fitful wing along their mazy courses ... unthinkingly he pulled a straggling root from the earth, and on the instant heard with affright a stifled moan underground, which winded downwards in doleful tones, and died plaintively away in the deep distance. The sound went through his inmost heart; it seized him as if he had unwittingly touched the wound, of which the dying frame of Nature was ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight of famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights and flaming towns, and sinking ships and pray- ing hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong. Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... my virgins, To that kind voice. My lord, my love, my refuge! Happy my eyes, when they behold thy face! My heavy heart will leave its doleful beating At sight of thee, and bound with sprightly joys. Oh smile! as when our loves were in their spring, And ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... and age openly expressed their discontent. The Abbe de Rance allowed them to go and get pleasure in other monasteries, and contrived to collect around him youths whom it was easy to delude, and a few elderly misanthropes; with these he formed his doleful wailing flock. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... midnight before the mess servants could turn out a meal at Brandewijnskuil for the staff. Two doleful candles but added to the depression bred of the hour and the disappointment which was uppermost in every mind. We had had our chance and failed. The brigadier alone was philosophic: his natural gaiety would not allow of depression: his manly ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... before you set off, Mistress Lucy, nor look so doleful. The clouds will clear away, I doubt not, and you will return to my sister, the Countess, to be blythe and happy in learning all Mistress Crawley would fain teach you of handicraft, and still more, all my sister can instruct you in, for ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... it be separated from it." Nothing can be truer, my dear mistress, and I, miserable sinner, have found it out. Heaven rest the soul of my poor Martin! when he was alive my complexion was like a cherub's; I was plump and comely, my eyes sparkled brightly, and I felt happy: now I am doleful. In those pleasant times, which flew away like lightning, I went to bed, in the very depth of winter, without kindling a fire in the room; even airing the sheets appeared then to me ridiculous; but now I shiver even in the dogdays. In short, madam, ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... drapery which the close clinging garments of ladies produced at that season. The door opened, and as the visitor entered Farnham rose in surprise. He had expected to see the usual semi-mendicant, with sad-colored raiment and doleful whine, calling for a subscription for a new "Centennial History," or the confessed genteel beggar whose rent would be due to-morrow. But there was nothing in any way usual in the young person who stood before him. She was a tall and robust girl of ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... of love, and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years. On this head she knew by prevision what most women learn only by experience: she had mentally walked round love, told the towers thereof, considered its palaces, and concluded that love was but a doleful joy. Yet she desired it, as one in a desert would ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... silence that is quite remarkable. When the sun goes down and as the gloaming deepens, the bird's activity increases, and it begins its nightly duties, emitting from time to time, like a sentry on his post or a watchman of the night, the doleful call which has given the bird its ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... of the pestilence, was drawn by a horse of the large black Flanders breed, and decorated with funeral trappings. To Leonard's inexpressible horror, the cart again stopped opposite him, and the driver ringing his bell, repeated his doleful cry. While another coffin was brought out, and placed with the rest, a window in the next house was opened, and a woman looking forth screamed, "Is Anselm ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... bursting cloud reiterated roars, Shakes his straw roof, and jars his bolted doors: The slow-wing'd storm along the troubled skies Spreads its dark course; the wind begins to rise; And full-leaf'd elms, his dwelling's shade by day, With mimic thunder give its fury way: Sounds in his chimney top a doleful peal, Midst pouring rain, or gusts of rattling hail; With tenfold danger low the tempest bends, And quick and strong the sulph'urous flame descends: The fright'ned mastiff from his kennel flies, And cringes at the door ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... offers her opinion and her logic for what they are worth, the clergy preach doleful sermons about her losing her beautiful home character, about her innocence being gone, about their idea of her glorious exaltation as wife and mother being destroyed. Then they grow florid and exclaim that "man is after all subject to her, that he is born for the rugged path ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... rich orange, bluish-grey, and greenish-yellow, are his predominant colours—resumes his love-plaint in bubbling bass. "Bub-loo, bub-loo maroo," he says over and over again in unbirdlike tone, without emphasis or lilt. "Bub-loo, bub-loo maroo," a grievance, a remonstrance and a threat in one doleful phrase; but to the flattered female it is all compliment and gallantry. That other, known as the allied—so like his cousin that his dissonant accents, "quok—quok—quoo," are more to be relied upon as ready means of identification than any striking difference ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... not alarmed this time, but vexed. He went and complained to Bayne; and that worthy came directly and contemplated the writing, in silence, for about a minute. Then he gave a weary sigh, and said, with doleful resignation, "Take the chalk, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... the beautiful Quay and river of Dublin which is now lined and filled with ships in a most delightful order, would then be scattered to other harbours, as also the new Range, there and now a building, would be left, nothing but empty places all as doleful as the weeping river, deserted by her fleets and armies of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... communications, he received the Custos of Kingston. As the Custos told his news the governor's eyes were running along the line of busts of ancient and modern philosophers on the gilt brackets between the Doric pilasters. They were all in bronze, and his mind had the doleful imagination of brown slave heroes placed there in honour for services given to the country. The doors at the south end of the great salon opened now and then into the council chambers beyond, and he could see the surgeons operating on the cases returned ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ye darkling cedars, Chant yet your doleful monotone, ye winds; Indue again your grey funereal pall, Ye solemn junipers; for here he fell, And ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... but it's too hard work," was the doleful response of Victor, the face of his brother showing ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... real cause of that dismal protest—whether it was the sight of him, his doleful singing, or the flinging of the sack. All he knew was that it was very dreadful, and must be stopped as quickly as possible. So, to that end, he began to cajole the children, while he surreptitiously let fly a ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... to describe, or even to conceive, the apprehensions or distresses of a people in the circumstances of our venerable ancestors, during this doleful winter. All the horrors of a dreary wilderness spread themselves around them. They were compassed with numerous fierce and cruel tribes of wild and savage men who could have swallowed up parents and children at pleasure, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... and warningly. There was a sighing of the wind about the windows, as if it sought admittance to reason and remonstrate with her. A cricket sang his monotonous song on the hearth. In the wainscot of the room a deathwatch ticked its doleful omen. The dog in the courtyard howled plaintively as the hour of midnight sounded upon the Convent bell, close by. The bell had scarcely ceased ere she was startled by a slight creaking like the opening of a door, followed by a whispering and the rustle of a woman's ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... many people shared in this feeling that the poplars were all cut down and elms planted in their stead. The Johnstown academy and churches were large square buildings, painted white, surrounded by these same sombre poplars, each edifice having a doleful bell which seemed to be ever tolling for school, funerals, church, or prayer meetings. Next to the worms, those clanging bells filled me with the utmost dread; they seemed like so many warnings of an eternal future. Visions of the Inferno were strongly impressed on my childish imagination. It was ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... but down he sat, And heaved a doleful sigh, Then at the table took his aim And rolled a ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... absented myself from the house, having instructed my interpreter how to act. I took my station in a small grove of pines, close by, watching for the appointed signal to apprise me of the departure of the Indian. My attention was suddenly arrested by most doleful cries at the house; and presently the voice of my interpreter was heard, calling me loudly by name. I ran at the top of my speed, and arrived just in time to save the life of a poor old woman, who had been making sugar in my neighbourhood. ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... "Little time was allowed Alvetham for preparation. That very night the fearful sentence was carried out. The stone was removed, and a new pallet placed in the cell. At midnight the prisoner was brought to the dormitory, the brethren chanting a doleful hymn. There he stood amidst them, his tall form towering above the rest, and his features pale as death. He protested his innocence, but he exhibited no fear, even when he saw the terrible preparations. When all was ready he was led to the breach. At that awful moment, his ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... noise recommenced more furiously than ever, and Ninny Moulin's rattle sent forth the most doleful sounds. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... over, one of the boys put wood on the fire, and Snap took a jews'-harp out of his pocket and began to extract doleful discords from it, for which George kicked at him in disgust, finally causing him to leave the circle and repair to the cedars, where he twanged with ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... rag-time junk, and one phrase that has caught the fancy of all hands, and which they roar out at all times, is: "It's a bear! It's a bear! It's a bear!" This morning Nancy, evidently very strongly urged, gave a doleful rendering of Flying Cloud. Yes, and in the second dog-watch last evening our three topaz- eyed dreamers sang some folk-song strangely sweet ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... word, and I'll bring my mighty brain to bear on them, and set them in order for you in no time! No? Are the men going out on a strike, then? or is your great-grandma down with the measles? Then, for Heaven's sake, why such a doleful expression? It is enough to give one the blues to look at you!" and he re-crossed his legs and looked searchingly ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... affirmed Drake. "I had it straight from the boys themselves not five minutes ago. They sure are in the doleful dumps." ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... and angry, as he drove southwards his adventurous geese; while the rushes bent before him chaunting plaintively and low, like enslaved rowers of some fabulous trireme, bending and swinging under blows of the lash, and singing all the while a doleful song. ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... sufficient to wipe of such ridiculous Imputations; and 'tis a most lamentable Truth, that they have often-times had in their Charge Villains of the deepest Die; Persons of Quality and great Worth, for whom no Entreaties, no Sums how large soever have been able to interfere between the doleful Prison, and the ...
— The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard • Daniel Defoe
... clown, his voice doleful in contrast to the cheery smile he assumed, when it came time for all to go to the cook- tent for dinner, "I dessay we'll 'ave to stop calling you Jack Snipe. Wot's more, David, you'll be going back to Virginia at once and settling ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... grown a very old woman in two hours. I found them winding of Marcello's corse; And there is such a solemn melody, 'Tween doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies; Such as old granddames, watching by the dead, Were wont t' outwear the nights with that, believe me, I had no eyes to guide me forth the room, They were ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... horrible, on all sides round, As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... ecclesiastical ladies, young and middle-aged, who, rightly or wrongly, believe their mission is music, and to whom the curate is very probably an attraction, aid his efforts. Serious young men read, and others of a more mundane turn of mind sing doleful "comic" songs, culled from the more presentable of the music-hall repertoire. In many cases skilled amateurs or professionals lend their valuable assistance; and it is not too much to say that many a programme ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... stout, vigorous weeds. The sun's rays threw a brilliant light on the tree-tops, and, filtering through the branches, here and there reached the ground in pale streaks and patches. Birds I scarcely heard—they do not like great forests. Only from time to time there came the doleful, thrice-repeated call of a hoopoe, and the angry screech of a nuthatch or a jay; a silent, always solitary bird kept fluttering across the clearing, with a flash of golden azure from its lovely feathers. At times the ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... I have learned by a doleful experience that this fly, commonly called "the weavil," is quite at home on Loelia purpurata; in fact, it will prey on ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... that the landed gentry and farmers were rapidly proceeding to ruin in consequence of free-trade, and their vaticinations of frightful calamities to the nation were singular displays of extraordinary hypocrisy, or delusions. Amongst the most doleful prophets and lugubrious friends of agriculture was Benjamin Disraeli. He was also the most acrimonious of advocates, while defending claims ignored by the nation as unjust, denounced by political economists as injurious; and, obviously in the exclusive and selfish interests ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... there or not He never knew, he never colde For never since that doleful day Was British Arthur seen ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... And yet the stuff of which these yearnings are made, is of the flimsiest: if but the thermometer fall a little below its ordinary Mediterranean level, or a wind come down from the snow-clad Alps behind, the spirit of his fancies changes upon the instant, and many a doleful vignette of the grim wintry streets at home returns to him, and begins to haunt his memory. The hopeless, huddled attitude of tramps in doorways; the flinching gait of barefoot children on the icy pavement; ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... assumption. And first, that the controverted ceremonies pertain not to the conservation of religion, but contrariwise to the hurt and prejudice of the same, experience hath, alas! made it too manifest; for O what a doleful decay of religion have they drawn with them in this land! Let them who have seen Scotland in her first glory tell how it was then, and how it is now. Idle and idol-like bishopping hath shut too the door ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... of Rome childish because they played practical jokes and yelled at night in the streets, returning from the Caffe Greco or the cellar in the Via Palombella; but am I not as childish to the full—I, melancholy wretch, whom they called Hamlet and the Knight of the Doleful Countenance? ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... Army at Bothwell Bridge. A Cameronian muse was awakened from slumber on this doleful occasion, and gave the following account of the muster of the royal forces, in poetry nearly as melancholy as ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... their doleful faces. "She will soon be with us again," she declared. "I'll tell you a secret. She is coming home to the houseboat day after to-morrow. She whispered to me to-day that there was really no reason why she should stay any longer with Mrs. Curtis, and that she did not wish to presume on her hospitality. ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... are scattered the toys she loved, and the doll Beautiful hath come down all battered and grim,—yet, oh! so very precious to me, from those distant years; yonder fareth the Queen of Sheba in her service as handmaiden unto me and mine,—gaunt and doleful-eyed, yet stanch and sturdy as of old. The garden lieth under the Christmas snow,—the garden where ghosts of trees wave their arms and moan over the graves of flowers; the once gracious arbor is crippled ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... No sooner was this doleful news communicated, than we saw such prodigious numbers of praws and large boats coming out of the river, as were quite wonderful. The master gave immediate orders to the gunner to get the ordnance in readiness, which was done with all speed. The vast fleet ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... through the room toward his own table—his for years, and which was placed in the far corner overlooking the doleful little garden with its half-starved vine and hanging baskets—Peter had been obliged to speak to everybody he passed (some of the younger men rose to their feet to shake his hand)—until he reached the proprietor and gave ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... then about to retire into a corner to mourn in secret, when Miss Charity, calling him in an audible whisper a 'little pet,' gave him leave to come and sit beside her. It is to be hoped, for the general cheerfulness of mankind, that such a doleful little pet was never seen as Mr Moddle looked when he complied. So despondent was his temper, that he showed no outward thrill of ecstasy when Miss Pecksniff placed her lily hand in his, and concealed this mark of her favour from the vulgar gaze by covering it with a corner of her ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... undertones, some unfathomable mystery connected with the varying attitude of two distinct breeds of terriers toward rats. Across the room, just within reach of the flickering ruddy firelight from the hearth, the American guest, Miss Madden, was seated at the piano, playing some low and rather doleful music. Thorpe bent his head, and assumed an air of attention, but in truth he listened to neither the Honourable Balder nor the piano. His thoughts were concentrated jealously upon his own position in this novel setting. He said to himself ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... a mad younker I knew an aged man in Warwickshire Who used to say, "Ah, mercy me," for sadness Of change, or passing time, or secret thoughts. If it was spring he sighed it, if 'twas fall, With drifting leaves, he looked upon the rain And with doleful suspiration kept This habit of his grief. And on a time As he stood looking at the flying clouds, I loitering near, expectant, heard him say it, Inquired, "Why do you say 'Ah, mercy me,' Now that it's April?" So he hobbled off And left me ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... of austere mold was the new major,—one of the old Covenanter type, who would march to battle shouting hymn tunes, and to Christmas and Thanksgiving chanting doleful lays. He hailed, indeed, from old Puritan stock; had been a pillar in the village church in days before the great war, and emulated Stonewall Jackson in his piety, if he did not in martial prowess. Backed by local, and ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... insult him, they threaten him, they raise malicious lying charges against him, and finally they clap him in irons and leave him—Imagination being the ringleader throughout. Left alone once more Pity sings a lament over the wickedness of the times, whereof the doleful refrain is 'Worse was it never'. A ray of light in his affliction comes with the return of Contemplation and Perseverance, who, releasing him, send him off to fetch his persecutors back. Fortune is on their side, for scarcely has Pity gone when Freewill enters ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... exceed, but he reckons on having a good long sleep. With aching head and fevered hands he makes a wild rush next morning, and arrives at the shop only to find himself shut out. He is horrified and doleful, when up come a few of his friends. They laugh the matter off. "It's only a quarter lost! There's time for a pint before we go in." So the drinking is begun again, and the men have none of the delicacy and steadiness of hand that are needed. Is it not an old story? The loss of "quarters," half-days, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... doleful mockery lieth under these joyful tidings of thine; since thou hast already partly told me to my sad bewilderment what the life of man shall be in those days. Yet will I now for a little set all that ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... between whom and old Jolyon primal aversion had changed into attachment with the years. Close to his chair was a swing, and on the swing was seated one of Holly's dolls—called 'Duffer Alice'—with her body fallen over her legs and her doleful nose buried in a black petticoat. She was never out of disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat. Below the oak tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the fernery, and, beyond that refinement, became ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for you, Mr. Fisher, depart; you must never return hither again." In vain he solicited Archer and De Grey to intercede for him. Everybody turned away with contempt; and he sneaked out, whimpering in a doleful voice, "What shall I say to my ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... pine in wonder why he felt so incomplete. With ointments compounded of dead men's flesh she could transform a lover into a beaver, or an innkeeper into a frog swimming in his own vat of wine and with doleful croak inviting his former customers to drink; or herself, with the aid of a little shaking, she could convert into a feathered owl uttering a queasy note as it flitted out of the window. Indeed, the whole of nature was uncertain, especially if disaster ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... To what a doleful pass had these gentlemen come, who lately had so lorded it among us—these proud and testy autocrats of County Tryon, with their vast estates, their baronial halls, their servants, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... were no softer spots. And the pick helve grew so intensely cold! Jim dropped it to the ground, and with hands thrust into his armpits, for the warmth afforded, he hunched himself dismally and scanned the prospect with doleful eyes. Why couldn't the hill break open, anyhow, and show whether anything worth the having were contained in its bulk ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... to the altar, and as she took her place before it another clang resounded from the belfry. The bridegroom was not there. Again and again the brazen throat and iron tongue sent out a doleful knell, and faces grew pale and anxious, for the meaning of it could not be guessed. With eyes fixed on the marble tomb of her first husband, the woman tremblingly awaited the solution of the mystery, until the door was darkened by something that made her catch her ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... claim to have lost in that engagement thirty-three of their chiefs, and their feelings in view of it are said to have been sad in the extreme. [Footnote: "The mourning was excessive, and was expressed by the most doleful yells, shrieks and howlings and ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... side. Mary gave up all hope as soon as she saw it. There was not room even for one pansy. The windows looked out on chimneys and roofs and other backyards, with lines of wet clothes flapping in the sun. Not a tree was to be seen. Any one might be excused for thinking it doleful; and Mary, having made up her mind beforehand to dislike it, found it easy to ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... spray with a trembling finger and his voice was rich with doleful emphasis, but the commander held his course and carried on. There seemed neither sympathy nor understanding on that unsteadiest of ships. Curley Crothers, solemn-faced as Nemesis and looking half as compassionate, moved his wheel a trifle. Joe Byng in ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... began to utter the most wild and discordant cries, and McKinley, at the same time, lifting up his voice in concert, the two together sent forth notes so doleful as to alarm the whole town. Women, who are generally the first to hear and spread news, were now the first to come to McKinley's assistance. But so strange and unearthly was the harmony within the schoolhouse, that they hesitated long before venturing to enter. At length, the boldest ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... seemed to clutch her heart; still, eagerly as she listened to Medea's words, her sharp ears heard the doleful gasping and whimpering behind the hanging; and this distressed and dismayed her; her breath came short, and a deep, torturing sense of misfortune possessed her wholly. The wailing child-spirit within, a portion of whose joys Medea said had been allotted to her—nay, she had not robbed him, certainly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... went home with Aleck yesterday, and we were going out to spend the day to-day and come home with them. But of course we couldn't on account of the rain, and there is nobody at home but Carie and Sukey, for Helen is at Aunt Marcia's." The tone in which Bess spoke was so doleful it was ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell. Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night's lodgings. His friends had all deserted him. Furthermore he had a row with Lenehan and called him to Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of a number of other uncalledfor expressions. He was out of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Tubars. As the heat was intense, I availed myself of the light of the full moon and travelled at night. Now and then the read touched the big river where the croaking of the frogs was intensely doleful and monotonous, but withal so loud that on a quiet night like this they could easily be ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... the strange Absurdity of the Attempts, upon which the Knight chuses to exercise his Prowess; Its Poignancy is highly quicken'd, and consequently the Pleasure it gives you, by his miserable Disasters, and the doleful Mortifications of all his Importance and Dignity;—But here, after the Knight, by diverting you in this manner, has brought himself down to the lowest Mark, he rises again and forces your Esteem, by his excellent Sense, Learning and Judgment, upon any Subjects which are not ally'd to his ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris |
