"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... the unseen land, and Grisell made signs to Clemence, while Leonard lifted himself upright, and all breathed the same for the mighty Prince as for the poorest beggar, the intercession for the dying. Then the solemn note became a knell, and their prayer changed to the De ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... knell of my thirtieth birthday sounded, I suddenly realised, with a desolate feeling at the heart, that I was alone in the world. It was true I had many and good friends, and I was blessed with interests and occupations which I had often declared sufficient ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... her desk, 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 in talk, in laughter, together with the patter ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... popular or national resistance to an active or enterprising enemy.' In this Mr. Finlay does but agree with other able writers; but he and they should have recollected, that hardly had that very year 623 departed, even yet the knell of its last hour was sounding upon the winds, when this effeminate empire had occasion to show that she could clothe herself with consuming terrors, as a belligerent both defensive and aggressive. In the absence of her great emperor, and of the main imperial forces, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... to wail, and in the quaint music there seemed a sense of infinite disillusion, of infinite rest; a winding-up, a conclusion, things over and done with, a fever subsided, a toil completed, a clamor abated, a farewell knell, a little folding of the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... that we could not see her, and Palliser creeping up to her, while 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 sport ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... he has almost perished under his burdens, he has been tomahawked in the face; he is now to be roasted alive. A dark forest is selected for the sacrifice; stripped naked, he is bound to a tree, and the inflammable brushwood piled around him. Savage voices sound his death-knell. Fire is applied, when a sudden shower dampens the flame, to burst forth again with renewed strength. Though securely fastened, the limbs of the victim are left some liberty to shrink from the accursed heat. He has thought his last thought of home, of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... like a knell in his soul. It seemed to him that they had a dark, ominous meaning. He was not a nervous man, rather he was strong, determined, not easily moved; but it seemed as though something had gripped him, and he ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... potent change. So may Death's pale and lingering weeds entwine These hollow globes that still unhindered range Through Heaven. O famished Time! thy jaws devour The suns and slumbers of the broken spheres, Whose knell young stars have heard, whose rounded hour Strikes, and is buried in thy bourneless years. They glow like fevered jewels in the deeps, Like sullen embers in remorseless Night, Like flowers with'ring when the Winter ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... hypocritical juggler! May the eyes that looked tamely on the death of my fair-haired boy be melted in their sockets with ceaseless tears, shed for those that are nearest and most dear to thee! May the ears that heard his death-knell be dead hereafter to all other sounds save the screech of the raven, and the hissing of the adder! May the tongue that tells me of his death and of my own crime, be withered in thy mouth—or better, when thou wouldst pray with thy people, may ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... flow ..." murmured Knightley, and of a sudden he flung back into the room. "Let me have the truth of it," he burst out, confronting his brother-officers gathered about the table—"the truth, though it knell out my damnation. If you only knew how up there, at Fez, at Mequinez, I have pictured your welcome when I should get back! I made of my anticipation a very anodyne. The cudgelling, the chains, the hunger, the sun, hot as though a burning glass was held ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... not, death's 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 sailed ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... courtesy, to permit the present consideration of private bills, had, in the main, as well have been made to a marble statue. His well known and long to be remembered, "I object, Mr. Speaker," sounded the knell of many a well devised raid upon the Treasury. It may be that he sometimes prevented the early consideration of meritorious measures, but with occasional exceptions his objections were wholesome. He kept in close touch with the popular pulse, and knew, as if by instinct, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... been known to perform them," said the astrologer. "I remember to have read, though I forget where, that angels tolled the knell when Saint Isidro of Madrid ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... from suffocation. And still the suggestion of it was everywhere. In the garish afternoon, up to the wholesome heights of the Heiligenberg suddenly from one of the villages of the plain came the grinding death-knell. It seemed to come out of the ugly grave itself, and enjoyment was dead. On his way homeward sadly, an hour later, he enters by chance the open door of a village church, half buried in the tangle of its churchyard. The rude coffin is lying there of a labourer who had but a hovel ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... day and night from one tavern to another, and feasted without moderation or bounds. In this way they endeavored to avoid all contact with the sick, and abandoned their houses and property to chance, like men whose death-knell had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... side, she felt, like full-toned bell, A mighty heart heave large in measured play; But as the floating moon aye lower fell Its bounding force did, by slow loss, decay. It throbbed now like a bird; now like far knell Pulsed low and faint! And now, with sick dismay, She felt the arm relax that round her clung, And from her circling ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... the men of God of the South called down blessings upon their armies in words which, with the proper change of names, might have been spoken in Berlin in August, 1914. Thus Dr. Thornwell, one of the leading Presbyterian divines of the South: "The triumph of Lincoln's principles is the death-knell of slavery.... Let us crush the serpent in the egg." And the Reverend Dr. Smythe of Charleston: "The war is a war against slavery, and is therefore treasonable rebellion against the Word, Providence and Government of God." I read in the papers, as I am writing, how the clergy ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... his jest to these Seemed—screamed, shrieked, wreaked on kin for sin! When for mirth's yell earth's knell seemed please Some dumb new grim great whim in him Made ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... have come the airy melody of the charming eclogue Phyllida's Love-call to her Corydon, which invites the genius of a Mendelssohn to frame it in music. He might have penned in his prison cell the knell for the tragedy of human life, De Morte. He might have been the shepherd minstrel ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... curt malevolence of the old man, Cesar was cowed; he heard the knell of failure ringing in his ears, and every jangle woke a memory of the stern sayings his pitiless justice had uttered against bankrupts. His former opinions now seared, as with fire, the soft ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... Titan his tremendous knell, And lash'd his ocean to a loftier swell; Earth groans responsive, and with laboring woes Leans o'er the surge and stills the ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... he be! Had I as many sons as I have hairs. I would not wish them to a fairer death: And so his knell is knolled. Macbeth, Act v. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... silence and between the crisp lights and shadows of the moonlit woods, until suddenly the bell rings out the hour from far-away Chailly, and he starts to find himself alone. No surf-bell on forlorn and perilous shores, no passing knell over the busy market-place, can speak with a more heavy and disconsolate tongue to human ears. Each stroke calls up a host of ghostly reverberations in his mind. And as he stands rooted, it has grown once more so utterly silent that it seems to him he might hear the church ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you know how exultingly we both looked forward to such a future. But we made shipwreck of those plans, and now it is too late to build them anew. However, let us not mourn over the past, but forget it. This hour has witnessed your last lament over your dead past. Its knell has been rung, let us both now doom it to oblivion. I have retained one thing in my memory, however, and that is the note which the incautious Princess gave you that evening in the greenhouse. Do you ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... 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 desire to force Madame Hanska herself to deny the charges brought against her; and perhaps lurking ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... list of Brigadiers and Adjutant-Generals. Adams, fuming, sent the names to the Senate, and they were confirmed in the order in which Washington had written them; but when they came back, jealousy and temper mastered him, and he committed the intemperate act which tolled the death-knell of the Federalist party: he ordered the commissions made out with Hamilton's name third on the list. Knox and Pinckney, he declared, were entitled to precedence; and so the order should stand or not at all. He had not anticipated an outcry, and when it arose, angry and determined, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... night was passing, and Beth still lay there, no tear on her cold white cheeks. The clock struck one, a knell-like sound in the night! Beth lay there, her hands folded on her breast, the prayer unuttered by her still lips—one for death. The rest were sleeping quietly in their beds. They knew nothing of her suffering. They would never know. ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... eyes to catch sight of that boat which was bearing him away so swiftly 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
... poets tell That thy fleet wings outstrip the wind? Why feign thy course of joy the knell, And ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... end of a steep and narrow street. When she arrived about at the middle of it, she heard strange noises, a funeral knell. "It must be for some one else," thought she; and she ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... twilight deepened, waking at intervals in the gloomy stillness, as if from sleep. It filled the room every now and then with a sad, sighing sound, then died out slowly, again to swell, again to fall, sad as the tolling of a funeral knell. He lay listening to it when I went to him, with parted lips and strange solemnity of face. Too heart-broken for speech, I knelt beside him with a stifled moan. 'Magsie,' (that was his pet name for me,) 'I thought ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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
... loved so well Like a full heart is awed to calm, The winter air that wafts his knell Is fragrant with ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... showed himself humble and most respectful, and when Mademoiselle Fifi's body left the Chateau d'Urville on its way to the cemetery, carried by soldiers, preceded, surrounded, and followed by soldiers, who marched with loaded rifles, for the first time the bell sounded its funereal knell in a lively manner, as if a friendly hand were caressing it. At night it sounded again, and the next day, and every day; it rang as much as anyone could desire. Sometimes even, it would start at night, and sound gently ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... Voiceless now, speed on before; Soon shall knell that chapel bell For the songs you'll ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... over; The maggot will die, and the sick will recover. Such a worm was Will Wood, when he scratch'd at the door Of a governing statesman or favourite whore; The death of our nation he seem'd to foretell, And the sound of his brass we took for our knell. But now, since the Drapier has heartily maul'd him, I think the best thing we can do is to scald him; For which operation there's nothing more proper Than the liquor he deals in, his own melted copper; Unless, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... voice sounded on her ears as the knell of hope. But she faced him again with a useless, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... stability and independence. It is not stupidity! It is that the Boer realizes at least one of the inevitable consequences of reform—that the ignorant and incapable must go under. Reform is the death-knell of his oligarchy, and therefore a danger to the independence of the State—as he sees it. Until the European people who have lately become so deeply concerned in Transvaal affairs realize how widely divergent are the two interpretations ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... 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
... sinks from our view, whilst the loud and awful death-cry of five hundred helpless beings, imprisoned in the burning vessel, rings in our ears, curdling our blood, and seeming as if it would burst the very vault of Heaven with its appalling tones. It was a fitting knell to be ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... clarions! The drum doth roll its double notes along, Echoing the horses' tramp; and the sweet fife Runs through the yielding air in dulcet measure, That makes the heart leap in its case of steel; Thou—shalt be knell'd unto thy death by bells, Pond'rous and brazen-tongued, whose sullen toll Shall cleave thine aching brain, and on thy soul Fall with a leaden weight: the muffled drum Shall mutter round thy path like distant thunder: 'Stead of the war-cry, and wild battle roar,— That swells upon the tide of victory, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... home, Knowest thou my path below? Knowest thou the steps I roam, And the devious road I go? Many years have past since I Bade thee here a sad farewell; Many past since thou didst die, Since I heard thy funeral knell. Thou didst go when thou wast young; Scarcely hadst thou oped thine eyes To the world, and it had flung Its bright sunshine from the skies, Ere thy Maker called for thee, Thou obeyed his high behest; Then I mourned, yet knew thou 'dst be Throned on high among the blest. Gently ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... growing perfection of the Church, as fragrance from an opening flower. It is, therefore, peculiarly holy. It is a monitor of especial grace. "It marshals us the way that we are going," like the visionary dagger of Macbeth; but the knell that sounds beneath it summons only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... glance, yes," studied Peters. "But, on the other hand, it would be the death knell of my post-card business, and I'm calculating to go back to Baldpate next summer and take it up again. No, I'm afraid I can't let it be generally known that I've quit living in a shack on the mountain for ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... So brilliant was the spectacle that few took notice of a singular phenomenon that had marked its entrance. At the moment when the bride's foot touched the threshold the bell swung heavily in the tower above her and sent forth its deepest knell. The vibrations died away, and returned with prolonged solemnity as she entered the body ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from the truth. The matter really was a new line, invented by M. Jupille, cast a little further than an ordinary one, and rigged up with a float like a raft, carrying a little clapper. The fish rang their own knell as ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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 of some evil ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... fences coming down this way now," mused Johnny, sullenly. He hated them by training as much as he hated horse-thieves and sheep; and his companions had been brought up in the same school. Barb wire, the death-knell to the old-time punching, the bar to riding at will, a steel insult to fire the ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... Incarnation and Regeneration it was to ring the knell of evolution and deny the hope of any saving energy ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... danger, and disaster are always interposed? Unsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of life ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding when the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... desolate heath, threaded the silent street, plunged into the eddying stream, and kept an onward course, without pause, without hindrance, without fatigue. With him I shouted, sang, laughed, exulted, wept. Nor did I retire to rest till, in imagination, I heard the bell of York Minster toll forth the knell ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... till close enough 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
... 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; all the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... God and of civilization, I will keep spread the unfurled banner of your infamy on every breeze, and cause it to float in the atmosphere of every State in this Union, until your very name becomes a mockery and a by-word! And I call upon the people of Kentucky and Missouri to ring the loud knell of your infamy, from steep to steep, and from valley to valley, until their swelling sounds are heard in startling echoes, mingling with the rush of the criminal's torrent, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... to deplore the loss of an affectionate brother and son; to the widow and the orphan, whom war's desolating hand cast into the world to tread alone its dreary path. To Uncle Nathan victory and defeat were alike the messengers of woe. Both were the death-knell of human beings; both carried weeping and wailing ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... of the people. Looking at a country such as that, is there any man who hears me who does not feel that if, in order to satisfy a greedy appetite for aggrandizement, coming whence it may, Belgium were absorbed, the day that witnessed the absorption would hear the knell of public right and public law in Europe? But we have an interest in the independence of Belgium, which is wider than that—which is wider than that which we may have in the literal operation of the ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... a buxom lass; when I return'd A.B., I bought her ear-rings, hat, and shawl, a sixpence did break we; At last 'twas time to be on board, so, Poll, says I, farewell; She roar'd and said, that leaving her was like a funeral knell. So she did pump, As I did jump In the boat, and said, "Good bye;" But as for me, With the rate A B, To ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... was the chirp of Ariel You heard, as overhead it flew, The farther going more to dwell, And wing our green to wed our blue; But whether note of joy or knell, Not his own Father-singer knew; Nor yet can any mortal tell, Save only how it shivers through; The breast of us a sounded shell, The blood of us a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... volley, reverberating a wild and unearthly death knell among the crags that looked down upon that awful scene. In the clear morning air, the smoke of the guns curled up lazily and hung like a funeral pall over the mangled, bleeding form. Four bullets had pierced his body. He fell on his face and lay motionless for a few seconds. Then he ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... that everybody applauds a singer at a rehearsal of Faust, which has been sung to death for five-and-forty years; but as the trio ended, and the drums rolled the long knell, there was a shout of genuine enthusiasm from the little ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling,—no Method's more sure at moments to take hold[fa] Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow More tender, as we every day behold, Than that all-softening, overpowering knell, The Tocsin ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... by a sob, never rising to violence, but sounding like a distant, monotonous, mournful knell, rent Mathieu's heart. He sought words of consolation, and ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... noble purpose and with high design; Else men who saw the world had gone astray Would only wish it better—and lie down, In vain regret to perish.— How his head Roll'd on the platform with deep, hollow sound! Methinks I hear it now, and through my brain It vibrates like the storm's accusing knell, Making the guilty quake. I am not guilty! It was the nation's voice, the headsman's axe. Why drums it then within my throbbing ear?— ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... uncle into the vestibule after Sir Michael had spoken those few quiet words which sounded the death-knell of his hope and love. Heaven knows how much the young man had feared the coming of this day. It had come; and though there had been no great outburst of despair, no whirlwind of stormy grief, no loud tempest of anguish and tears, Robert took ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Knell out drearily, Measured out wearily, Sad old bells from the steeple gray. Priests chanting slowly, Solemnly, slowly, Passeth the corpse from the portal to-day. Drops from the leaden clouds heavily fall, Drippingly over the plume and the pall; Murmur old folk, as ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... sounds have a different import to different ears. To mine there is a death knell in these ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... frightful struggle; two thousand Sepoys held the garden, and these, caught like rats in a trap, fought with the energy of despair. Nothing, however, could withstand the troops, mad with the long-balked thirst for vengeance, and attacked with the cry—which in very truth was the death-knell of the enemy—"Remember Cawnpore!" on their lips. No quarter was asked or given. It was a stubborn, furious, desperate strife, man to man—desperate Sepoy against furious Englishman. But in such a strife weight and power tell their tale, and not one of the two ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... torture beneath, such should be the all concentrating anxiety to secure safety that there would be neither time nor taste for any thing else. Every object should seem an altar drenched with sacrificial blood, every sound a knell laden with dolorous omen, every look a propitiatory confession, every breath a pleading prayer. From so single and preternatural a tension of the believer's faculties nothing could allow an instant's cessation except a temporary forgetting or blinking of the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... was but early and hasty speculation, and while American ingenuity and experiment in naval warfare had, indeed, sounded the death-knell of wooden ships of war, no great change in the character of navies was immediately possible. Moreover British shipbuilders could surely keep pace in iron-clad construction with America or any other nation. The success of the Monitor was soon regarded by the British Government ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... vessel of darkness bear? The silent calm of the grave is there, Save now and again a death-knell rung, And the flap of the sails ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... tolls, the knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... sometimes so full of joyous meaning and so surrounded with associations of mirth and festivity, now rang in Brooke's ears with a sound as harsh and terrible as that of a death-knell. It was the word which he dreaded more than all others to hear from the lips of Lopez. His heart sank within him, and he knew not what to think, or where to turn for hope. That Talbot would refuse to perform this ceremony he felt convinced, ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... his name. Did anyone spy My papa coming by— Two hundred or more—Oh! he made them all fly! One day, by a blow, He was conquered, I know; But no wonder at last he should yield to a foe: He yielded, poor fellow! The conquering bellow Resounds in my ears as my poor father's knell—Oh!" A Fox then replied, While, leering aside, He laughed at his folly and vapouring pride: "My chattering youth, Your nonsense, forsooth, Is more like a funeral sermon than truth. Let history tell How your old ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... was produced by the shots fired at Sarajevo. It became obvious that the signal for the fall of the Monarchy had been given. The bells of Sarajevo, which began to toll half an hour after the murder, sounded the death knell ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... stream. This was very rapid, and, after a few moments battling with the turbid current, he was overpowered; uttering a loud cry for assistance, which I shall never forget and which rang in my ears like a death knell, he disappeared from the view of the spectators, and, being probably entangled in the trees and debris that were floating down the torrent, he did not rise again. A loud wail arose from the terrified assemblage, who were unable to render the poor ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... rain. Pain does not wander aimlessly, smiting down by mischance and by accident; it comes as the close and dear intention of the Father's heart, and is to a man as a trumpet-call from the land of life, not as a knell from the land of death. And now, dear children, you must leave me, for I have much to do. And I will give you," he added, turning to me, "a gift which shall be your comfort, and a token that you have been here, and seen the worst and the best ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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
... over the shrouded Still form of the mother and wife; Very lonely the way seems, and clouded, As he looks down the vista of life. With the sweet Christmas chimes there is blended The knell for a life that is done, And he knows that his joys are all ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... might follow. They would not learn the lesson, either by destruction or by love. They would not follow the example either from fear or from admiration. Then their hour struck on the bell of Heaven, the knell of the Kshattriya caste. He came to sweep away that caste and to leave only scattered remnants of it, dotted over the Indian soil. It had been the sword of India, the iron wall that ringed her round. He came to shiver that wall ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... old church bell Tolls forth its death knell, Mournfully to tell The hour has come at last, In heavy sadness past, To bury the dead, And in silence bid. Then the mourners go, All mournfully slow, Every heart beating low The march of the dead. All with soft and gentle tread Unto the ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... 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 ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... looked up and round; the birds had ceased to chirp; the parroquets were hiding behind the leaves; the monkeys were clustered motionless upon the highest twigs; only out of the far depths of the forest, the campanero gave its solemn toll, once, twice, thrice, like a great death-knell rolling down from far cathedral towers. Was it an omen? He looked up hastily at Ayacanora. She was watching him earnestly. Heavens! was she waiting for his decision? Both dropped their eyes. The decision was not to ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... beneath the bed. On each application of the fuse to Long Tom the bugle rang out in clarion tones its warning to seek cover. It made plaintive melody in the nocturnal stillness, bespeaking the death-knell perchance of many. Nobody was abroad, excepting a solemn procession of men wending its way to the cemetery with all that was mortal of George Labram. Cannon in front of them volleyed and thundered—to avoid which the late hour had ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... this ringing Bell, Think it is your latest knell: When I cry, Maide in your Smocke, Doe not take it for a mocke: Well I meane, if well 'tis taken, I would have you still awaken: Foure a Clocke, the Cock is crowing I must to my home be going: When all other men doe rise, Then must I shut up ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... however, soon faded out of sight when the drooping, half-hoisted banner was seen on the turrets of Chateau le Surry, and the clang of a knell came slow and solemn on ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... only one which gave a reasonable chance of decisive victory with the troops available. Longstreet, in obedience to the letter of his orders, but contrary to their spirit, refused to sanction Hood's advance. Longstreet's failure to seize a fleeting opportunity sounded the death-knell of the Confederate cause. ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... goddess whose wrath was delaying the fleet at Aulis. In verse, in music, 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 motive of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Battle to seek, canter ye now ahead!" Carries the ensign Amboires of Oluferne; Pagans cry out, by Preciuse they swear. And the Franks say: "Great hurt this day you'll get!" And very loud "Monjoie!" they cry again. That Emperour has bid them sound trumpets; And the olifant sounds over all its knell. The pagans say: "Carlun's people are fair. Battle we'll have, bitter and keenly ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... appeals,—although I grant the power of pathos, and of gold, Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling,—no Method 's more sure at moments to take hold Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow More tender, as we every day behold, Than that all-softening, overpowering knell, The tocsin of the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the usher plays the flute, as Tom Pinch enjoys or exposes his Pecksniff, as the guard blows his bugle while Tom rides to London, as Ruth Pinch crosses Fountain Court or makes the beefsteak pudding, as Jonas Chuzzlewit commits and returns from the murder, and as the storm which is Steerforth's death-knell beats on the Yarmouth shore. To the same kind of power he attributes the extraordinary clearness with which the commonest objects in all his books, the most ordinary interiors, any old house, a parlour, a boat, a school, fifty things that in the ordinary ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... happier times" rang through Frank like a death-knell, for he grasped what his father meant, and tried to speak some words of comfort, but they would not come. Even if they had, they would have been drowned by a tremendous cheer which arose from the crowd ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... sent to this war knew it was to sound their death-knell. They knew that because the newspapers that had no correspondents at the front told them so; because the General Staff of each army told them so; because every man they met who stayed at home told them so. Instead of taking ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... for the purpose of standing in a ride and knocking over a certain quantity of half-tame fowls. No, no; I ought to have seen it long ago. I had lost him now, and now I knew his value when it was too late. Too late!—the knell that tolls over half the hopes and half ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... twice, accompanied by different individuals, and at eight o'clock Makaraig encountered him pacing along Calle Hospital near the nunnery of St. Clara, just when the bells of its church were ringing a funeral knell. At nine Camaroncocido saw him again, in the neighborhood of the theater, speak with a person who seemed to be a student, pay the latter's admission to the show, and again disappear among the shadows ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... Every rut and hollow, every scooped cup on the tors was brimming now; springs unnumbered and unknown had burst their secret places; the water floods tumbled and thundered until their rough laughter rang like a knell in the ears of the husbandmen; and beneath crocketed pinnacles of half a hundred church towers rose the mournful murmur ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... 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! but my ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... soldiery will be bayoneted as they cling to the knees of their destroyers.[64] The common doom of man commuted for the violence of the sword, the bayonet, the sucking boat, and the guillotine, the knell of the nation tolled, and the world summoned to its execution and funeral, will need no preacher to expound the text, Where there is no vision, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... "but the undoubted facts that have yesterday and to-day come to my knowledge, render any additional atrocity on the part of our enemies unnecessary. The volley that they fired yesterday on the glacis of Pampeluna, was the death-knell of their own friends. Count ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... cherished guest, Who quits you never on an alien quest. But what that mystic prism shadows forth Hath menace which auxiliar from the North May scarce avert. The scales of Justice tilt Something askew. The curse of high-placed guilt Is on you, if the warning tocsin's knell, Clanging forth fiercely, hath not force to tell The hearer that Fate's hourglass fast runs out. That spectral Comet flames, beset about With miasmatic mist, and lurid fume, Conquering Corruption threatens hideous doom. Yet, yet the Bow of Promise gleams above, Herald ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... prisoner, lying helpless among his sleeping captors. Silvertip and the guard had fled into the woods, frightened by the appalling moan which they believed sounded their death-knell. And Joe believed he might have fled himself had he been free. What could have caused that sound? He fought off the numbing chill that once again began to creep over him. He was wide-awake now; his head was clear, and he resolved to retain his senses. He told himself there could be ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... 'gene:' the great hour of union Was rung by dinner's knell; till then all were Masters of their own time—or in communion, Or solitary, as they chose to bear The hours, which how to pass is but to few known. Each rose up at his own, and had to spare What time he chose for ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... a luckless day it thus befell— About their surly jailer's wonted hour To bring them food, he enter'd not their cell, But bolted fast their prison's outer door. This on the County's heart rang like a knell— Hope was excluded from this grizzly tow'r. Speechless he sat, despair forbade to rave— This hold was now their dungeon and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... blooming young damsels scantily draped in the guise of Bacchanals placed upon the table, were hailed with rapture, and thenceforth sparkling wine was an indispensable adjunct at all the petits soupers of the period. In the highest circles the popping of champagne-corks seemed to ring the knell of sadness, and the victories of Marlborough were in a measure compensated for by ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... men, back to the great and chivalrous State of old Kentucky and away to the shambles of the South—back to a life-long servitude of hopeless despair. It was a long, sad, silent procession down to the banks of the Ohio; and as it passed, the death-knell of freedom tolled heavily. The sovereignty of Ohio trailed in the dust beneath the oppressor's foot, and the great confederacy of the tribes of modern Israel attended the funeral obsequies, and made ample provision for the necessary expenses! "And it was so, ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society
... but not in his ears. The knell was at his heart. No work of man had ever voice like that which sounded there, and warned him that it cried unceasingly to Heaven. Who could hear that hell, and not know what it said! There was murder in its every note—cruel, relentless, savage murder—the murder of a confiding ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... farthest sombrest cell With an old man who grabbled rusty keys, Fled shuddering, for that immemorial knell With which oblivion buries dynasties Swept like a wounded eagle on the blast, As to the holy heart of Rome ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... the eyes, With gazing fed; and fancy dies In the cradle where it lies. Let us all ring fancy's knell: I'll ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... bright and precious, and were fronting with calm smile and quiet pulses a grim and desperate conflict, which she well knew could have an end only in the peace of the pall, that long truce, whose signal is the knell and the requiem. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... monsieur, in Beethoven's Symphony in A, that knell which ever and ever comes back and beats upon your heart? Yes, I see very well, you feel as I do, music is a communion—Beethoven, ah, me! how sad and sweet it is to be two to ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... is it. Our happiness would, as you say, exceed The whole world's best of blisses: we—do we Deserve that? Utter to your soul, what mine Long since, Beloved, has grown used to hear, Like a death-knell, so much regarded once, And so familiar ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... and scrip; and when The market rose, how many a lad could tell With joyous glance, and eyes that spake again, 'Twas e'en more lucrative than marrying well;— When, hark, that warning voice strikes like a rising knell. ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... the frog, By the howling of the dog, By the crying of the hog Against the storm arising; By the evening curfew bell, By the doleful dying knell, O let this my direful spell, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... who'll ring a knell for thee, Or dress thy couch of clay? Why didst not thou thy death foresee, And dig ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... Surges the solemn lament—O, shall it not come, A glimpse of that mightier union of all mankind? Now, though our eyes, as they gaze on the vision, grow blind, Now, while the world is all one funeral knell, And the mournful cannon thunder his great farewell, Now, while the bells of a thousand cities toll, Remember, O England, remember the ageless goal, Rally the slumbering faith in the depths of thy soul, Lift ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... last of the withered leaves of the trees in the drive had fallen and the bare branches were beating together like bundles of rods. The sea was louder than ever, and the bell on St. Mary's Rock, a mile away from the shore, was tolling like a knell under the surging of the waves. Sometimes the clashing of the rain against the window-panes was like the wash of billows over the port-holes of a ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... rang through the room like a knell, and Courtland could say no more. There was silence in the room. Courtland watched his friend's haggard face anxiously. There were deep lines of agony about his mouth and ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... does always owe. And still as time come in it goes away, Not to enjoy, but debts to pay. Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell Which his hour's work, as well as hour's does tell! Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell. ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley |
