"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and sentiment. Jos was so elated that he told Becky his favourite Indian stories for the sixth time, giving an opening for the lady's "Horn I should like to see India!" But at that critical moment the bell rang for the fireworks, and at the same time tolled the knell of Becky's chances of becoming Mrs. Jos Sedley. For the fireworks somehow created a thirst, and the bowl of rack punch for which Jos called, and which he was left to consume, as the young ladies did not drink it and Osborne did not like it, speedily worked its disastrous effects. In short, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... many feet beneath his window. He gazed out. With colours flying, and with music sounding, Dalzell, victorious, entered Edinburgh. But his banners were dyed in blood, and a band of prisoners were marched within his ranks. The old man knew it all. That martial and triumphant strain was the death-knell of his friends and of their cause, the rust-hued spots upon the flags were the tokens of their courage and their death, and the prisoners were the miserable remnant spared from death in battle to die upon the scaffold. Poor old man! he had outlived ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to believe that Shaw's psychology in this instance is the more sound. It seems incredible that a girl so witty, so beautiful, and so intelligent as Rosalind should waste so much time on that sentimental, uncomprehending creature known as Orlando. Every line of Orlando should have sounded the knell of his fate in her ears. However, it must be remembered that Orlando was young and good-looking, and that, at least in the play, men of the right stamp seemed to be scarce. Of course, it is out of Touchstone that Shaw ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... ripping; James returned, bland, positive, dazzling the man of exclusive clubs; was reminded of young Mrs. Pierson, with whom he shook hands, of young Mr. Pierson, to whom he nodded and said "Ha!" and finally of Francis Lingen. "Ha, Lingen, you here!" Francis shivered. That seemed to him to ring a knell. Since when had he been Lingen to James. Since this moment. Now why had James cold-shouldered him? Was it possible that he had noticed too much devotion?... And if he had, was it not certain that she must have noticed it? ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... hear the firing, several times repeated—that signal that they are unable to answer, or unable to avail themselves of its friendly warning. Situated as they are, it seems sounding a farewell salute—or it may be their death knell. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... of such themes forbear to tell— May never War awake this bell To sound the tocsin or the knell— Hush'd be the alarum gun. Sheath'd be the sword! and may his voice But call the nations to rejoice That War his tatter'd flag has furl'd, And vanish'd from a wiser world— Hurra! the work ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... household, husbands and wives must one day hear the striking of a fatal hour. It is a knell, the death and end of jealousy, a great, noble and charming passion, the only true symptom of love, if it is not even its double. When a woman is no longer jealous of her husband, all is over, she loves him no more. So, conjugal love expires in the last quarrel that ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... und soldiers Vas all de funeral knell; De ring of sporn und carpine Vas all de sacrin bell. Mit hoontin knife und sabre Dey digged de grave a span, From German eyes blue gleamin De holy ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... thy loud bugle's clanging knell," Cried the fair youth with silver voice; "And for devotion's choral swell, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... our wards increased daily. Sick men poured into the hospital. Often they came too late, having remained at the post of duty until fever had sapped the springs of life or the rattling breath sounded the knell of hope, marking too surely that fatal disease, double pneumonia. Awestruck I watched the fierce battle for life, the awful agony, trying vainly every means of relief, lingering to witness struggles which wrung my heart, because I could not resist the appealing glance of dying ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... coffee-coloured mulatto held out a grayish-white palm for the quarter-dollar the passenger was ready to drop into it, and stepped back to the platform of the car. The engine bell tolled slowly, as if it sounded a knell, and the train wound away. The curve of the line carried it out of sight in less than a minute, but in the clear mountain air the quickened ringing of the bell, the pant of the engine, and the roll of the wheels were ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... flags floated from many a tower and steeple. The country was in a frenzy of anger and disappointment. A monster meeting was held on Newhall Hill, and there, in half a dozen words, Muntz sounded the knell of the new Tory Ministry. In tones such as few lungs but his could produce, he thundered in the ears of attentive and eager listeners the words, "To stop the Duke, run for gold." There were no telegraphs ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... and laboriously, and like a knell, the great gong of the prison sounded the first stroke of twelve; but before it had counted three there came suddenly from all the city about them a great chorus of clanging bells and the shrieks ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... Spanish fleets had been destroyed and Spain had but one left to protect her own coast cities. The death knell of her once proud colonial empire had sounded. Decrepit as she was, she could not possibly have sent any reinforcements to the Philippines. Besides, the Filipinos would have ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... ivy, and standing in the centre of a little plot of ground, which, but for the green mounds with which it was studded, might have passed for a lovely meadow. I fancied that the old clanking bell which was now summoning the congregation together, would seem less terrible when it rung out the knell of a departed soul, than I had ever deemed possible before—that the sound would tell only of a welcome to calmness and rest, amidst the most peaceful ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... close to the window, and the merriment struck chill at her heart like the tolling of a knell. She saw the pale face of Henderson gleam yellow-white among the dancers, and, watching him, the blood-lust of the Indian woke in her heart. The rest of the room was but a blur; the dancers faded into swaying shadows; she saw nothing but Henderson as he danced that he might forget the gray of morning, ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... she rose, and went back to the child. Hand in hand the two citizens of the Government of God—outcasts of the government of Man—passed slowly down the length of the room. Then out into the hall. Then out into the night. The heavy clang of the closing door tolled the knell of their ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... a neighboring steeple was striking the ninth hour, and the old man paused in his muttering and sat counting the strokes as the iron tongue pealed them forth; counting them in his fear as if each stroke was a knell, and so indeed to him it was, and many of the chimes we listen carelessly to, would be knells to us, if we knew what would happen twixt them and ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... and now the drums commenced rolling, and the death-knell resounded from the church-steeple. An awful silence reigned in the whole city of Braunau. All the houses were closed; ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... was re-echoed on every side; but they were still attempting to escape in different directions. Scarcely two of them were agreed as to the place whence the sound proceeded. Yet it came on, at stated intervals, a long, deep, melancholy knell, almost terrific in their present condition. Another council was attended with the same results—opinions being as varied as ever. Still that warning toll had some connection with their fellow-men, some link, which, however remote, united them to those who were now slumbering ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... as if in answer to my whisper, Came a voice of some foul fiend from Hell: "No longer live say I, 'Tis better far to die And let the falling snow-flakes sound the knell." ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... that proviso was interrupted for three administrations, but justice moved steadily onward. In the news that the men of California had chosen freedom, Calhoun heard the knell of parting slavery, and on his death-bed he counselled secession. Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison had died despairing of the abolition of slavery; Calhoun died in despair at the growth of freedom. His system ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... where are the successors to my name? What bring they to fill out a poet's fame? Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age; Scarce living to be christened on the stage! For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense, That tolls the knell ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... of less note came one frail form, A phantom among men; companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, Aclaeon-like, and now he fled astray, With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, And his own thoughts along that rugged way Pursued, like raging hounds, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... arms! Let the battle-cry rise, Like the raven's hoarse croak, through their ranks let it sound; Set their knell on the wing of each arrow that flies, Till the shouts of the free shake the mountains around; Let the cold-blooded, faint-hearted changeling now tremble, For the war-shock shall reach to his dark-centered cave, While the laurels that twine round the brows of the victors Shall with ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... in pantomime, the scene lives again—the struggle in the father's heart, the insistence of his brother chiefs, the piteous glance of the girl, and at last the unutterable end; while above and through it all rings like a knell of fate the refrain that is the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... in France; moreover, despair seized him at her hesitation to become his wife, when the course at last seemed clear. His trouble at this time appears to have had a serious effect on his health, and some words spoken half in malice, half in warning by Madame de Girardin, must have sounded like a knell in his ears. He tells them apparently in jest to Madame Hanska to give her an example of the nonsense people talk in Paris. In his accuracy of repetition, however, we can trace a passionately anxious ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... fearful sounds, They seem'd my lover's knell— I heard, that pierc'd with ghastly wounds, My vent'rous ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... they took their departure; but in this hasty and kindly designed visit there was hidden a fund of cruelty which Lizabetha Prokofievna never dreamed of. In the words "as usual," and again in her added, "mine, at all events," there seemed an ominous knell ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... mounted horses and rode off from the opposite side. The traders said they were going after the tribe to exterminate the entire train. They were plainly told that the first shot fired by traders or Indians would sound their own death knell—that they, the traders, would be ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... for burials about twenty-seven years ago. At the close of the year 1870 the interments had reached 150,000. From fifteen to twenty interments are made here every day. The deep-toned bell of the great gateway is forever tolling its knell, and some mournful train is forever wending its slow way under the beautiful trees. Yet the sunlight falls brightly, the birds sing their sweetest over the new-made graves, the wind sighs its dirge through the tall trees, and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... sun—the shades of evening fell, The mournful night-wind sung their funeral knell; And the same day beheld their warriors dead, Their sovereign captive ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... front door resounded as Madame Desvarennes was about to answer, and stopped the words on her lips. This signal, which was used only on important occasions, sounded to Madame like a funeral knell. Serge frowned, and instinctively ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... through Rudolph's heart like a death-knell. His love for her was a jealous, fantastic, weird, hysterical love. Scores of times they were ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... shrine of Charolois is again sounding; but how different its tone from the musical and inspiring chime that summoned the weary vassals to their grateful vespers! The bell of the shrine of Charolois is again sounding. Alas! it tolls a gloomy knell. Oh! valley of sweet waters, still are thy skies as pure as when she wandered by thy banks and mused over her beloved! Still sets thy glowing sun; and quivering and bright, like the ascending soul of a hero, still Hesperus rises from thy dying glory! But she, the maiden fairer than the fairest ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There honor comes a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall awhile repair To dwell a ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... in her iciest tones said to her: 'Good-afternoon, Miss Crawford. To what am I indebted for this unexpected pleasure?' her faculties came back, her tongue was loosened, and she replied in a clear voice, which rang through the room like a bell, and was, indeed, the knell to all ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... pleasures; he had been too absorbed to enjoy them. But now—in a single moment—Ambition was dethroned. At the time, though his eyes were open, he scarcely realized that the old supremacy had passed. Only long afterwards did he ask himself if the death-knell of his success had begun to toll on that golden morning; because a man cannot ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... accomplished, must be as sudden as the danger which it affronts. Even that, even the sickening necessity for hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be vain, self-baffled, and where the dreadful knell of too late is already sounding in the ears by anticipation—even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one particular case, namely, where the agonising appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self-preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of another life besides ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Coningsby, notwithstanding the elation of his heart, and the ethereal joy which flowed in all his veins, the name of Mr. Millbank sounded, something like a knell. However, this was not the time to reflect. He obeyed the hint of Edith; made the most rapid toilet that ever was consummated by a happy lover, and in a few minutes entered the drawing-room of Hellingsley, to ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it the knell of ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... strange contradiction, the chief reproach cast at an order of things which every one was striving to discredit and overthrow was its want of energy. How often, since that time, have I heard that cry "Be strong," which is the invariable death-knell of governments in extremities! ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... manifesto issued by the Duke but the day before. Surely no other great general of the world ever made so colossal, so fatal a blunder. In that arrogant and sanguinary manifesto could be heard the death-knell of the unhappy King of France, or so it seemed to Calvert, who was so deeply impressed with the rashness and danger of his Grace's diplomacy that he made no attempt to conceal the alarm he felt. This open disapproval so offended the Duke and his friend, the Prince-Elector, that the latter received ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... we wince in the East, Unthankful we wail from the westward, Unthankfully thankful, we curse, In the unworn wastes of the wild: I hate them, Oh! I hate them well, I hate them, Christ! As I hate hell! If I were God, I'd sound their knell This day! Who raised the fools to their glory, But black men of Egypt and Ind, Ethiopia's sons of the evening, Indians and yellow Chinese, Arabian children of morning, And mongrels of Rome and Greece? Ah, ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... that on August 12, 1607, in the parish of St. Giles', Cripplegate, was buried "Edward, the base-born son of Edward Shakespeare, Player," and that on December 31 of the same year was buried within the Church of St. Saviour's, Southwark,[211] "Edmund Shakespeare, Player," "with a forenoon knell of the Great Bell."[212] The poet paid every honour he could ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... them bearing, Through sectarian rubbish tearing; The bell and whistle and the steaming, Startle thousands from their dreaming. Look out for the cars while the bell rings! Ere the sound your funeral knell rings. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... rank with the masters of the sentiment of pity in literature, with Meinhold and Victor Hugo, he collects all the traces of vivid excitement which were to be found in that pastoral world—the girl who rung her father's knell; the unborn infant feeling about its mother's heart; the instinctive touches of children; the sorrows of the wild creatures, even—their home-sickness, their strange yearnings; the tales of passionate ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... gleam above the tarnished gold of their mountings; one entered no Holy Week, everywhere the "Pange Lingua" and the "Stabat Mater" wailed under the arches, and then came the "Tenebrae," the lamentations, and the psalms, whose knell shook the flame of the brown waxen tapers, and after each halt, at the end of each of the psalms, one of the tapers expired, and its column of blue smoke evaporated still under the lighted circumference of the arches, while ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... his servant, she said to him that "My lord will not be ready for the candles just yet,"—and then left the Tower, and went to a little lodging in a back street, where she found her husband, and where they both lay hid while the search for Lord Nithsdale was going on, and where they heard the knell tolling when his friends, the other lords, were being led out to have their heads cut off. Afterwards, they made their escape to France, where most of the Jacobites who had been concerned in the rising were living, as best they could, on small means—and some of them by becoming ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... continued pealing out its knell; the shouts and tumult outside were growing louder. Miela spoke hurriedly to the old man, then turned to ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... the fourth intended to do so. It was always the immediate object of every revolt, and the power to ring the great Patarina, the ancient bell stolen by the Romans from Viterbo, had for centuries a directing influence in Roman brawls. Its solemn knell announced the death of a Pope, or tolled the last hour of condemned criminals, and men crossed themselves as it echoed through the streets; but at the tremendous sound of its alarm, rung backward till the tower rocked, the Romans ran to arms, the captains ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... everything. Finally the commanding officer gave orders for all the monkeys to be taken up, but the order was not carried out and he had the doctor chloroform the two large ones and throw them overboard. That made the crew very mad and sounded the death knell to all the ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... saw through gathering tears the line of First Readers wind around the room and file out the door, the sound of their departing footsteps along the bare corridors and down the echoing stairway coming back like a knell to her sinking heart. Then class after class from above marched past the door and on its clattering way, while voices from outside, shrill with the joy of the release, came up through the open windows ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... five thy father lies: Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I hear ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... if that rule had been attended to, neither would Lord Byron have deemed it worth notice that "the knell of parting day," in Gray's Elegy, "was adopted from Dante;" nor would Mr. Cary have remarked upon "this plagiarism," if indeed he used the term. (I refer to "NOTES AND QUERIES," Vol. iii., p. 35.) The truth is, that in every good edition of Gray's Works, there is a note to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... kept ringing in his ears?—"And when she bids die he shall surely die!" But he no longer heard the pathetic vibration of Natalie Lind's voice; the words seemed to him solemn, and distant, and hopeless, like a knell. But only if it were over—that was again his wild desire. In the grave ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... consternation caused by these words, the clock on the mantel behind his back rang out the hour. It was but a double stroke, but that meant two hours after midnight and had the effect of a knell in the hearts ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... city seemed a speck of light below, There 'twixt heaven and earth suspended as the bell swung to and fro; And the sexton at the bell-rope, old and deaf, heard not the bell, Sadly thought, "That twilight curfew rang young Basil's funeral knell." Still the maiden clung more firmly, and with trembling lips so white, Said, to hush her heart's wild throbbing: "Curfew ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... "It is the knell, Monsieur Madeleine. The bell will continue to strike once a minute for twenty-four hours, until the body is taken from the church.—You see, they play. At recreation hours it suffices to have a ball roll aside, to send them all ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... his occupations, his mode of life, - are acquainted, perhaps, with his inmost thoughts. You are a humane and philanthropic character; reveal all you know - all; but especially the street and number of his lodgings. The post is departing, the bellman rings, - pray Heaven it be not the knell of love and ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... strewed with the bones of women who were not strong enough to bear the burdens of polygamy, and the cemetery here is full of them; but every one of these women will wear a martyr's crown.'" Women who give their consent to the death knell of happiness do it on the ground that their reward will be greater in Heaven, and that the few years in this world is as nothing in view of eternity. Buoyed up by these hopes, women leaving large families at home with infants in their arms, accompany their husbands and give ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... death I tell, by doleful knell; Lightnings and thunder I break asunder; On Sabbath all to church I call; The sleepy head, I raise from bed; The winds so fierce I do disperse; Men's cruel rage, I ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... The time had at length arrived; two feet of earth removed, and Dantes' fate would be decided. He advanced towards the angle, and summoning all his resolution, attacked the ground with the pickaxe. At the fifth or sixth blow the pickaxe struck against an iron substance. Never did funeral knell, never did alarm-bell, produce a greater effect on the hearer. Had Dantes found nothing he could not have become more ghastly pale. He again struck his pickaxe into the earth, and encountered the same resistance, but not the same sound. "It is a casket of wood ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a race renowned of old, Whose war-cry oft has waked the battle-swell, Since first distinguished in the onset bold, Wild sounding when the Roman rampart fell! By Wallace' side it rung the Southron's knell, Alderne, Kilsythe, and Tibber owned its fame, Tummell's rude pass can of its terrors tell, But ne'er from prouder field arose the name Than when wild Ronda learned the conquering ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... there came a cloud, Out rung a nation's knell; Our cause was wrapped in its winding shroud, All fell when the great ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... tongue Suddenly civil that yesterday rung (Like a clapper beating a brazen bell) Each fair reputation's eternal knell; Hands no longer delivering blows, And noses, for counting, arrayed ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... wafted on the balmy summer wind; Forms of pale and pensive loveliness, with eyes like pensile stars, Such as never yet were beaming 'mid this world's discordant jars. And their whispers wild, unearthly, unutterable, fell like a harp-string's dying echo, or a fair young spirit's knell, On my soul amid the shadows of my native forest trees, Rustling melancholy, lowly, in the wailing of the breeze, Till, unknowing pain or agony, I've wept such blissful tears As shall never, never flow again 'mid ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... fact there is only one on record. In 1872, his church voted a vacation of six weeks. True to his Indian nature, he planned a deer hunt. He turned his footsteps to the wilds of the Running Water (Niobrara River), where his heart grew young and his rifle cracked the death-knell of the deer and antelope. One evening, in the track of the hostile Sioux and Pawnees, he found himself near a camp of the savage Sicaugu. He was weak and alone. They ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... heaving like the sea under her close arms—and I was face to face with her, alone, with ruin between us. So with a stamp of her little foot, so with a flick of the fingers, it seems, she had broken her own image and killed love outright. There and then love died, and his funeral knell was the horrid barking laughter with which I greeted this ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... my death-knell?" he asked wearily. "Have I, then, died already, and is it death that is lying so ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... doff thy mortal weed, Mary Mother be thy speed, Saints to help thee at thy need. Hark! the knell is ringing. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... We know of a thousand things we want to say, but the time slips by wasted, and hangs drearily on our hands. We have not the spirit to look forward, or the heart to look back. We long to have it all over, and yet every stroke of the clock falls like a cruel knell on our ears. We long that we could fall asleep, and wake to find ourselves on the other side of the ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... now: she strained her ears, vaguely hoping to catch one last, lingering echo of his voice. But all was silence, save that monotonous clapper, which seemed to beat against her heart like a rhythmic knell of death. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... my gun on the other side of the creek; I didn't want it tollin' our funeral knell all the time we was goin' through the rapids and splittin' the rocks to pieces by bangin' our heads ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... met; Just a little, turn not yet, Thou shalt laugh, and soon forget: Now the midnight draweth near. I have little more to tell; Soon with hollow stroke and knell, Thou shalt count the palace bell, Calling that ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... is worse to tell, The greatest ships had the greatest knell; The brave 'C'ronation' and all her men Was lost and drowned every one, Except the mate and eighteen more What in ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... forgotten; there are memories clinging Round every breast that beats to hope and fear In this drear world, until the death's knell, ringing, Chimes with heart-moanings o'er the solemn bier; Then come love's pilgrims to the sad shrine, bringing The choicest offering ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... wrong may triumph for the moment, but in its very triumph is its death-knell; it cannot always prevail. God has so constituted the moral universe, has so planted in the human heart the sense of right, that ultimately justice is sure to be done. "Ever the Right comes uppermost," is no mere poetic ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... strength desert him as he realized that he was suspected of being a runaway from the Reform School. That smile on the man's face was the knell of hope; and for a moment he felt a flood of misery roll over his soul. But the natural elasticity of his spirits soon came to his relief, and he resolved not to give up the ship, even if he had to fight ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... to the game to race ahead and bring it to bay, circle about it while a messenger brings up the Sahib, who dismounts and advances afoot to a combat wherein the echo of a misplaced shot may sound his own death-knell. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... in the stillness of the night—the Duke remembered it now. What he had thought to be only his fancy had been his death-knell, wafted to him along uncharted waves of ether, from the battlements of Tankerton. It had ceased at daybreak. He wondered now that he had not guessed its meaning. And he was glad that he had not. He was thankful for the peace that had been granted to him, the joyous arrogance in which he had gone ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... pity, truly, to mar such innocent pleasures! Shame on them! The funeral knell that tolled over your father's grave must still be ringing ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the matrimonial knell Of worthy people such as these! Why was I an attorney? Well - Go on to the ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... joyful anticipation some fear of breaking the spell had kept me from any bald circus talk in the presence of them. But Harold, who was built in quite another way, so soon as he discerned the drift of their conversation and heard the knell of all his hopes, filled the room with wail and clamour of bereavement. The grinning welkin rang with "Circus!" "Circus!" shook the window-panes; the mocking walls re-echoed "Circus!" Circus he would have, and the whole circus, ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... famous leaning tower, taking with him a one-hundred-pound shot and a one-pound shot. He balanced them on the edge of the tower, and let them drop together. Together they fell, and together they struck the ground. The simultaneous clang of those two weights sounded the death-knell of the old system of philosophy, and heralded the birth ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... these lofty sentiments as the bells were ringing out the old year—stopping to strike its knell;—the Captain also stopped, to seize a glass and the hand of Brown—wishing him the merriest, maniest, and happiest of New Years;—drinking eternal unity to the B.'s and De C.'s—at the same time shedding a very visible tear, that dropped into ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... exultant mirth sounded like a knell of death. "Great God!" cried Bates, running up to his knees in water after the departing boats, "would you ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... pestilence, are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm, With banquet-song, and dance, and wine; And thou art terrible: the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know, or dream, or fear, Of agony, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... a host of the most interesting, as well as the most brilliant, souvenirs of our literary history. Here were sold, in "the days that tried men's souls," those stirring pamphlets that sounded the death-knell of British tyranny in the New World; and it was from this old corner that the tender songs of Longfellow, the weird conceptions of Hawthorne, the philosophic utterances of Emerson, first found their way to the hearts ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... poor Mr. Plateas had been reading "The Bell" of the poet of Leucadia,—that pathetic picture of the enamored young sailor, who, on returning to his village, throws himself into the sea to reach more speedily the shore, where he hears the tolling knell and sees the funeral procession of his beloved, and as he buffets the waves is devoured by the monster of the deep. The poetical description of this catastrophe had so affected him that he afterwards attributed his misadventure to the influence ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... the midnight knell, that was to summon her to the innumerable sisterhood of departed Years, there came a young maiden treading lightsomely on tiptoe along the street, from the direction of the Railroad Depot. She was evidently a stranger, and perhaps had come to town by ...
— The Sister Years (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him Porthos, nor even Vallon; call him De Bracieux or De Pierrefonds; thou wilt knell out ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... man's death. Archbishop Laud, going into his study (which no one could enter without him being present, as he invariably locked the door and kept the key), found his portrait one day lying on its face on the floor. He was extremely perplexed, for to him it was as his death knell, and he commenced setting his house in order. The sad summons was not long of coming, and death took him ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... later, as she struggled desperately forward, there came, like the knell of hope, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... dying fear One dreadful sound he seemed to hear,— A sound as if with the Inchcape bell The evil spirit was ringing his knell. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... town were lined with spectators to hail the welcome sight. Drums beat to arms, the church bells clanged, and an immense shout arose that was re-echoed from the Plains of Abraham across the river to the Isle of Orleans. It was the acclamation of deliverance for the besieged, the knell of final defeat for the besiegers. The frigate was well named the Surprise, and she carried on board two companies of the 29th regiment with some marines, the whole amounting to two hundred men, ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... we stood ready to back him, fired three shots without the least effect. She did not even move, being senseless with the wound. One of my men then gave him my four-ounce rifle. A loud report from the old gun sounded the elephant's knell, and closed ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the ocean—the "Savannah," in 1819. Americans, engaged in a fratricidal war, invented the ironclad in the "Monitor" and the "Merrimac," and, demonstrating the value of iron ships for warfare, sounded the knell of wooden ships for peaceful trade. An American first demonstrated the commercial possibilities of the steamboat, and if history denies to Fulton entire precedence with his "Clermont," in 1807, it may still be claimed for John Fitch, another American, with his imperfect boat ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... previously from London by the Provincial Assembly of Pennsylvania. It bore the portentous text from Scripture: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." A joyous peal from that bell gave notice that the bill had been passed. It was the knell ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the fruits of victory, although the destruction of Hood's army was the real object to be desired. Yet Atlanta was known as the "Gate-City of the South," was full of founderies, arsenals, and machine-shops, and I knew that its capture would be the death-knell of the ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... lov'st me do not tell me, Joy would make me rave, And the bells of gladness knell me To the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... treasure untold Resides in that heavenly word! More precious than silver and gold, Or all that this earth can afford. But the sound of the church-going bell These valleys and rocks never heard, Ne'er sigh'd at the sound of a knell, Or smiled when a ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... forgotten that she had promised to give her services that night at a reception, organised in aid of some charity by the Duchess of Linfield—the shrewish old woman who had paid Diana her first tribute of tears—and the recollection of it sounded the knell to her hopes of seeing Max that day. The morning must perforce be devoted to practising, the afternoon to the necessary rest which Baroni insisted upon, and after that there would be only time ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... false and precipitate step which had brought down the curse upon me, I had daringly thrust myself upon the fate of another being. What now remained, but where I had sowed perdition, and prompt salvation was urgent—again blindly to rush forward to save?—for the last knell had tolled. Do not think so basely of me, my Chamisso, as to imagine that I should have thought any price too dear, or should have been more sparing with anything I possessed than with my gold? No! ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... strikes one. We take no note of Time But from its loss. To give it, then a tongue Is wise in man; as if an angel spoke I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright It is the knell of my departed hours: Where ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... something drear, distressing As the knell Of all hopes worth possessing!' . . . —What befell Seemed linked with me, but how I could ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... than when it had begun. He was still a boy then in heart and years; now he was well on in manhood. Yosemite, Glacier Point, Gethsemane, Calvary, Jane Reed's grave, were in that year. He longed to hear its death-knell. Yet that year—how much it had meant to his soul! The sanctifying influence of sorrow had softened and purified his life. The abiding Christ was with him; he lived, and yet not he—it was ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... slide I became aware of a sound which, soft as it was, rang the knell of my newly-formed hopes. I had closed the door of the murderers' room and locked it, but had not shot the bolt. Now I could distinctly hear someone fumbling gently at the keyhole, apparently with a picklock. It was most infuriating. At the ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... to this day in Castledene—of the sad, tragic story, the fair young mother's death, the husband's wild despair. They tell how the beautiful stranger was buried when the sun shone and the birds sang—how solemnly the church-bell tolled, each knell seeming to cleave the clear sunlit air—how the sorrowing young husband, so suddenly and so terribly bereft, walked first, the chief mourner in the sad procession; they tell how white his face was, and how at each toll of the solemn bell he winced as though some one had struck him a terrible ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... is engend'red in the eyes, With gazing fed; and fancy dies In the cradle where it lies. Let us all ring fancy's knell: I'll begin it.—Ding, ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... better reason, and the day is not far distant when West Point will stand forth as the proud exponent of absolute social equality. Prejudice weakens, and ere long will fail completely. The advent of general education sounds its death knell. And may the day be not afar off when America shall proclaim her emancipation from the basest of all servitudes, ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... nearest to the system of decoy as practised in England of any of the arts employed by the people of a foreign country for the capture of wildfowl. The method alluded to is termed "toling." I am unable to trace the origin of the term, unless it simply implies a death knell, for such it assuredly assumes to those birds which approach within range of the secreted sportsman. This singular proceeding is said to have been first introduced upwards of fifty years ago near Havre-de-Grace, in Maryland; and, according to traditional ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... he said with gentleness, "is my friend; had I even a heart to give to women, not one sigh should arise in it to his dishonour. But I am deaf to women, and the voice of love sounds like the funeral knell of her who will never breathe ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... original, if I remember rightly, is to be found in 'King's Anecdotes'), who leaves his house one morning for no particular reason, and though living in the next street, does not reveal his existence to his wife for twenty years; and the hero of the 'Wedding Knell,' the elderly bridegroom whose early love has jilted him, but agrees to marry him when she is an elderly widow and he an old bachelor, and who appals the marriage party by coming to the church in his shroud, with the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... silver wave, How solemn on the ear would come The holy matins' distant hum, While the deep peal's commanding tone Should wake, in yonder islet lone, A sainted hermit from his cell, To drop a bead with every knell! And bugle, lute, and bell, and all, Should each bewildered stranger call To friendly ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... nearing knell Tolled in a heart that dreamed no more. Our lips shook, sad as lips in hell; But, fearful of the rending shore, To fill all time with sad farewell We would have ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... their knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is sung: There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay, And Freedom shall awhile repair To dwell a ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... before the pung. So the news of her injury was received with sorrow at the farm-house; and when, later in the evening, the little girl's big brothers went down to the field to put the heifer out of her misery, they vowed that the last feeble jingle of her bells should be the death-knell of the badgers. ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... might be cured or foiled? How heal diseased potatoes? Did spirits have the sense of smell? 490 Where would departed spinsters dwell? If the late Zenas Smith were well? If Earth were solid or a shell? Were spirits fond of Doctor Fell? Did the bull toll Cock-Robin's knell? What remedy would bugs expel? If Paine's invention were a sell? Did spirits by Webster's system spell? Was it a sin to be a belle? Did dancing sentence folks to hell? 500 If so, then where most torture fell? On little ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... thing they heard in early morning was that, in the course of the night, he had breathed his last; and all day the bells of all the churches round were answering one another with the slow, swinging, melancholy notes of the knell. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all this, how did he beare himselfe? 1. When he was brought agen to th' Bar, to heare His Knell rung out, his Iudgement, he was stir'd With such an Agony, he sweat extreamly, And somthing spoke in choller, ill, and hasty: But he fell to himselfe againe, and sweetly, In all the rest ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... better generalship there is no saying but that they would have succeeded in capturing it, as the Imperialists had left quite unguarded the approach by Chingting and Paoting, and the capture of Peking would have sounded the knell of the Manchu dynasty. But the Taepings did not seize the chance—if it were one—and they were far from being in the best of spirits. They had advanced far, but it looked as if it was into the lion's mouth. Their march had been a remarkable one, but it had been attended with ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger |
