"Wail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after earnest prayer, one of the brethren felt this passage laid solemnly on his heart, 'To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.' Then some converted stone-diggers pleaded for a blessing. The answer of four years' prayers came, and the feeble infant wail was heard from one after another amid weeping and sobbing. Surely the angelic host had songs of praise while, in that holy stillness, these young men had a sight of themselves. Oh, pray on that our faith waver not, for we believe we shall see still ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... the Great Spirit's children dwelt Forever hushed is the papoose's wail, and stilled the squaw's low-crooning lilt. No longer shimmers starlight from eyes of savage maids Worshippers of the fire and sun, poor dwellers of the caves— The sisters of the deer and lo, shy startled fawns of Aztec race Or ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... moment, a piercing shriek arrested the attention of both gentlemen. It was a deep wail of agony, as though it came from a crushed heart. It emanated from the house, and the first motion of the two in conversation was to start forward in that direction; but recalling the words of the proprietor, that he was never to enter his dwelling again, Hadley paused ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... that whilom wail'd those Briton kings, Who unto her in vision did appear, Craves leave to strengthen her night-weathered wings In the warm sunshine of your golden Clere [clear]; Where she, fair Lady, tuning her chaste lays ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... her sadness, strangely enough, was the rapidly returning strength of Dan. While he was helpless he belonged to her. When he was strong he belonged to his vengeance on Jim Silent; and when she heard Dan whistling softly his own wild, weird music, she knew its meaning as she would have known the wail of a hungry wolf on a winter night. It was the song of the untamed. She never spoke of her knowledge. She took the happiness of the moment to her heart and closed her ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... moan, the orphan's wail, Come round thee; but in truth be strong! Eternal Right, though all else fail, Can ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... be sacrificed? and what are we all coming to, and where are you all going to, and where will Boston be if this thing goes on?" But these thoughtless and jeering bachelors will not stop to hear the wail of their challengers; they feel no pity for their despair; they have no stomach for their agony; but go their ways, leaving the wretched females rooted, transfixed, the picture of perfect hopelessness, and greeting them, ere they disappear ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... glade, and tarn, and the spring breeze was not powerful enough to raise the veil, though from the wild sounds which were heard occasionally on the ridges, and through the glens, it might be supposed to wail at a sense of its own inability. The route of the travellers was directed by the course which the river had ploughed for itself down the valley, the banks of which bore in general that dark grey livery which Sir Aymer de Valence had intimated to be the prevalent tint of the country. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... almost every one else, that the water-route was the only safe and sure and economical way of transportation. When the railroad was built from Albany to Schenectady the first idea was to have the engine tow canal-boats. Peter Cooper heard the wail of the Baltimoreans, and said, "I'll knock an engine together in six weeks that will pull carriages ten miles an hour and beat any canal-boat ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... the immense masses, who appeared flying with terror or pursuing with fear. To the alarming confusion was added the bellowing of oxen, the vociferations of the yet unvanquished warriors, mingled with the groans of the dying, and the widows' piercing wail, and the cries from infant voices. The enemy again directed their course toward a town which was in possession of a tribe of the same people still more numerous. Here again another desperate struggle ensued, when they appeared determined to inclose ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... present trouble. Partial, my dog, abandoned in the long boat, began barking furiously. There came an answering hail which assured me that yon varlet, Davidson, had heard. I was conscious of the sound of a scuffle somewhere forward. Below, at my side, Aunt Lucinda gave voice to a long shrill wail of terror. John, my Chinaman, his cue still held fast in the jammed edges of the door, chimed in dismally. Midships I heard a muffled knocking ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... suddenly resounds through the stillness, a long-drawn, mysterious utterance, passing drearily, difficult to locate, more difficult to name—one of those sounds by which Nature at times reaches to the dark places of our spirit and terrifies us with vague dread of the unknown. Is it the wail of an owl or other bird of the night? It pervades the air wildly and lingeringly. Those who come late to the ford and hear this sudden strange call draw rein and turn backward; it is better to drive the weary distance to the bridge than to brave a crossing ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... the battle field, and the cold pale moon Look'd down on the dead and dying, And the wind pass'd o'er with a dirge and a wail, Where the young and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... I must not let stray sorrows out; They are ill to fledge, and if they feel blithe air They wail and chirp untunefully. Would God I had been a man! when I was born, men say, My father turned his face and wept to think ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... means homoeopathic doses of the Latin grammar in my early years, I was able to gather the meaning of these elegiac effusions, and when the last stanza embodying poor Pussy's posthumous wail was discovered to be none other than the despairing death-cry of the "infelix Dido" as immortalized by Virgil—the one step from the sublime to the ridiculous seemed ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... proof of unspirituality that the welfare of the Kine, with whose wail the call of the prophet began, is steadily kept in view during his mission. The agriculturists are on the side of the righteous being, good and ever-better tillage is a means of pleasing him; it is his will that the kine should be freed from alarms ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... anything should go wrong!" in a faint half wail; "if anything could happen!" She could not bear the mere thought. It would break her heart. She had been so happy. God had ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of every name: begin the wo, Ye woods, and tell it to the doleful winds; And doleful winds, wail to the howling hills; And howling hills, mourn to the dismal vales; And dismal vales, sigh to the sorrowing brooks; And sorrwing brooks, weep to the weeping stream; And weeping stream, awake the groaning deep; And let the instrument take up the song, Responsive to the voice—harmonious ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... a wry smile and ironically quotes from the wisdom of Paragot: "What does it matter where the body finds itself, so long as the soul has its serene habitations?" This wail is too typical of most of our hotel experiences. As a rule we found the humble, cheaper hotels best, and, whenever we had a choice of ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... repeat it before she understood; she was numb with terror. She rose with difficulty to her feet, clasping the child, whose wail was now weak with exhaustion. The peering crowd made a ring of brute faces about them, full of menace and mystery, but the new power in him moved them to right and left at his gesture, and they gave him passage, with the woman behind him, across the road. The stupefied policeman ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... Grump, And their language, I'm told, is a whine— You may have been troubled by sound of that speech, But I hope that fate won't be mine. And sometimes, from down in the depths of the vale, The whine rises up in a terrible wail; And the people who hear are like to turn pale, And flee from the Valley of Grump, my dears, Far away from ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 34, August 23, 1914 • Various
... Day rode into the town of Dunwich. Only that morning they had landed at Yarmouth after a long, long journey whereof the perils and the horrors may be guessed but need not be written. France, through which they had passed, seemed to be but one vast grave over which the wail of those who still survived went up without cease to the ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... of his patient, and the clear flame arising from this put the spectres to flight and dispelled the malign influences, a prayer describing the enchantments and their effects being afterwards recited. "The baleful imprecation like a demon has fallen upon a man;—wail and pain have fallen upon him,—direful wail has fallen upon him,—the baleful imprecation, the spell, the pains in the head!—This man, the baleful imprecation slaughters him like a sheep,—for his god has quitted his body—his goddess has withdrawn herself in displeasure ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... stock still, raised his nose, and emitted a long wail, a mournful, a ghastly sound, with a broken-hearted quaver at the end. Kate Cumberland shrank back still farther until the wall blocked her retreat. Black Bart had never acted like this before. He followed her with a green light in his eyes, which shone phosphorescent and ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... scorn the thrilling tale Of Carolina's high-souled daughters, Which echoes here the mournful wail Of sorrow from Edisto's waters, Close while ye may the public ear— With malice vex, with slander wound them— The pure and good shall throng to hear, And tried and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... bush, Have come at cold of midnight-tide To ask thee, Why and when Grief smote thy heart so thou dost sing In solemn hush of evening, So sorrowfully, lovelorn Thing— Nay, nay, not sing, but rave, but wail, Most melancholic Nightingale? Do not the dews of darkness steep All pinings of the day in sleep? Why, then, when rocked in starry nest We mutely couch, secure, at rest, Doth thy lone heart delight to make Music for sorrow's sake?" A Moon was there. So still her beam, It seemed the whole world lay ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... a coarse, enveloping pinafore opened the door. Her hands and arms were red and dripping and from a dim region at the rear came the smell of dishwater. Down the narrow, precipitate stairway floated an infant's thin, protesting wail and Jane felt a sick sense of ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... dinner to the theatre, thence to bed, thence to breakfast, thence to work, and so on. Or, if in hard luck, we struggle and wail, "cursing our day," or more ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... the garden, telling them not to come back to the court till she was happy once more, then gave orders that the flowers should henceforth cease to smell so sweet that every human being would carry them away, the winds wail so piteously that no mortal could help weeping to hear them, the springs send forth bitter waters, and the sun daily cast seven times seven cold rays into the world. After saying all these things, she went to the great wheel on which the threads of human life are ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... no fill—to wail and wander With short unsteady steps—to pause and ponder— To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle; To nurse the image of unfelt caresses 5 Till dim imagination just possesses ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the company of men, That grows more hateful, as the world grows old. We'll teach the murm'ring brooks in tears to flow, And steepy rock to wail our passed woe. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... Cripplegate widows are loud in their wail! And Mary-Axe orphans all trembling and pale! For the Alderman glory has melted away, As mists are dispersed by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... the low front guard that Hugh darted also and held her arm as she bent over, while close upon the cry came a woman's long, unmistakable wail for her dead. Twice it filled the air, then melted out over the gliding waters and into the night, above the regardless undertones of the boat's majestic progress. Grandfather, nurse, mother, brothers pressed after the girl and Hugh. Clutched by the ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... desolateness of the barren, icy hills and the black hollows between, and of the angry red sky with its purple shadows lowering over the unhappy land—and would make fickle friendship with some human thing. Charming Billy, hearing the crooning wail of it, knew well the portent and sighed. Perhaps he, too, felt something of the desolateness without and perhaps he, too, ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... Cloinne," the Lament for the Children, that Patrick Mor, one of the pipers of Macleod of Skye, had composed to the memory of his seven sons, who had all died within one year? And now the doors were opened, and the piper boy once more entered. The wild, sad wail arose: and slow and solemn was the step with which he walked up the hall. Lady Macleod sat calm and erect, her lips proud and firm, but her lean hands were working nervously together; and at last, when the doors were closed on the slow ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... blessedness that I was alone in the winters of suffering. But what are the winters now?—they are far off"—here Mordecai again rested his hand on Deronda's arm, and looked at him with that joy of the hectic patient which pierces us to sadness—"there is nothing to wail in the withering of my body. The work will be the better done. Once I said the work of this beginning was mine, I am born to do it. Well, I shall do it. I shall live in you. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... at evening made Their hideous wail, Mutely thy musing eye surveyed Bright themes for thought around displayed, Perched on ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... what he was suffering. He wanted to blame her, in fact he knew that he ought to blame her, that she had betrayed him and had sinned beyond all hope of forgiveness; and yet in his ears there was still ringing her heart-broken wail, "I did it all for you Jimmy, I did it ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... acrobats and riders—they watched for his coming, and clung to him and adored him with their pathetic eyes, as if their present and future safety and happiness were dependent on him. Often, in the middle of the night, he would be awakened by the wail of a child, and with eyes still half closed, and his mind only half awake, would make his way to it, give it a drink, and sometimes fall asleep with the poor little thing nestled up against him. To them he was no longer "Mr. Green," but "Syd," ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... curiously. Everything had been against her. She had had a bad company and a stupid first-night audience, and had from the first been crippled by want of money. She recapitulated all her disadvantages, dwelling on each and making the most of it. But this was only by way of beginning a long wail of lament. The undisguised coldness of his demeanour towards her ever since the night of her debut had wounded her deeply, though she had been too proud to say anything. Her indictment against him was bitter and severe. The discontinuance of his slavish admiration for her ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... a little hour, and the life of the race is done. And here he builds a nebula, and there he slays a sun And works his own fierce pleasure. All things he shall fulfill, And O, my poor Despoina, do you think he ever hears The wail of hearts he has broken, the sound of human ill? He cares not for our virtues, our little hopes and fears, And how could it all go on, love, if he knew of laughter ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... flowers hanging from hedges emitting their fragrance, as they were flapped by the winds; red leaves on the tree tops swaying to and fro; groves picture-like, half stripped of foliage; the western breeze coming with sudden gusts, and the wail of the oriole still audible; the warm sun shining with genial rays, and the cicada also adding its chirp: structures, visible to the gaze at a distance in the South-east, soaring high on various sites and resting against the hills; three halls, visible near by on the North-west, stretching ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... to tremble between life and death as she stretched forth her arms to them with a low wail that almost unnerved ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... little wail came from Derry. Rachael, her heart turned to ice, slowed down—stopped and leaned into the half darkness in the back of the car. The child's lovely eyes were opened. Rachael could barely ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... behold this place as it appeared in their day, when owls sent their mysterious greetings and the melancholy plaint of the whippoorwill, like voices from wandering spirits, mingled with the wail of night winds, you would not wonder why the red man chose this spot to practice his strange rites with wild, savage ceremonies to invoke the Evil Spirit. "Here the Medicine Men worked themselves into a frenzy by their violent and strange ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... wrought. Then he gave unto Fafnir my brother the soul that feareth nought, And the brow of the hardened iron, and the hand that may never fail, And the greedy heart of a king, and the ear that hears no wail. ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... a wail, then Mrs. Zapp's elephantine slowness on the stairs from the basement. She appeared, buttoning her collar, smiling almost pleasantly, for she disliked Mr. Wrenn less than she did ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... suddenly hurled his soul-freezing battle-cry upon my ear and leapt forward with uplifted knife. Perceiving the action from an angle of my eye even as he propelled himself through the air, I could not restrain an ignoble wail of despair, and not scrupling to forsake the maiden, I would have taken refuge beneath a couch had he not seized my outer robe and hurled me to the ground. From this point to the close of the entertainment the vigorous person in ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... men. And stranger still is the fact that the absence of this consciousness of evil has never been felt to be itself evil and a blot. Think of a David's agony of penitence. Think of a Paul's, 'Of whom I am chief!' Think of the long wail of an Augustine's confessions. Think of the stormy self-accusations of a Luther; and then think that He who inspired them all, never, by word or deed, betrayed the slightest consciousness that in Himself there was the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... on the girl as they left the town, padding noiselessly through the outskirts where no one met them, and no sound was to be heard save for the barking of dogs, and the occasional wail of an infant; for the strangeness of everything had suddenly made her realise that of her own will she was standing on the threshold of a new life, laden—though this the usual narrow outlook and education of the West prevented ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... such a theme; but one has to learn that there are different ways for every thing, and no one who knows much will assume that he has the best. Owing to the change of the scale, I suppose I missed the sentiment of every piece performed. When I thought they were giving us a wail for the dead it turned out to be a warm welcome, and an assurance on the part of those pretty maidens of their happiness in being permitted the great honor of performing before such illustrious visitors. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... curl'd around in many a winding fold; The topmost branch a mother-bird possess'd; Eight callow infants fill'd the mossy nest; Herself the ninth; the serpent, as he hung, Stretch'd his black jaws and crush'd the crying young; While hovering near, with miserable moan, The drooping mother wail'd her children gone. The mother last, as round the nest she flew, Seized by the beating wing, the monster slew; Nor long survived: to marble turn'd, he stands A lasting prodigy on Aulis' sands. Such was the will of Jove; and hence we dare Trust in his ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Alexis Ivanovitch! Good heavens, what a stupid fellow!" came in a despairing wail from ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... startled, and made almost indignant at the firmness of the girl's words. She gave him up as though it were a thing quite decided, and uttered no expression of her own regret in doing so. There was no soft woman's wail in her words. But there was in them something which made him unconsciously long to get back the thing which he had so nearly thrown away from him. They inspired him with a doubt whether he might yet ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... government, how could he carry his conception into execution? Conception is always easier than its realization, and between the design and its execution there is always a weary distance. The poetry of all nations is a wail over unrealized ideals. It is little that even the wisest and most potent statesman can realize of what he conceives to be necessary for the state: political, legislative or judicial reforms, even when loudly ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... said Rachel in a kind of wail, "you have heard. It is a matter of your life. What am ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... when the negro patriarch's strong sable sons supported their decrepit sire homeward, with their wives, "black, but comely," bearing the glistening, satin-skinned babies on their backs, and their other little ebony responsibilities trudging in the rear, there must have been a dismal wail; for there was the ancestral tree, its foliage shrivelled with fire, stretching out its desolate arms over the ashes of the ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... destroyer flaunts its pennons amidst the reed-thatched roofs; the sparks leap up, the black smoke curls towards the sky, whilst on the neighbouring hills the negro women, with their babes in their arms, wail woefully, for those rude huts, with all their barbarous trappings, meant home—aye, home and happiness—to them. The flames roll onward now in two long lines, for the Kaffir encampment had sundered them, and now they look, ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... could be expected of six clumping boots and an unlimited quantity of animal spirits in a high state of effervescence. As they trooped off, an unmistakable odor of burnt milk pervaded the air, and the crash of china, followed by an Irish wail, caused Mrs. Dean to clap on her three shawls again and ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... resentment left him. Until he heard that pitiful wail his only thoughts had been ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Freedom wept her child, He left the world his garland bright. Wail, Ocean, surge in tumult wild, To sing ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... the sound of hoofs and wheels rose above the wail of the storm, sharp for a moment as it passed, quickly dimmed, quickly lost. It was a night to be beneath one's own roof, beside one's own fire, feeling the thankfulness for such plain comforts which one passes ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... the little bee's words produced was indescribable. The ladies-in-waiting set up a loud wail, the officers at the door turned pale and made as if to dash off and sound the alarm, the aide said: "Good God!" and wheeled completely round, because he wanted to see on ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... for some scores of Shinto priests and the favoured spectators. The ceremony lasted two hours. It carried us magically away from a Japan of frock coats to Japan of a thousand, it may be two thousand years ago. Between the wail of ancient wood and wind instruments and the cinema operators who missed nothing external and some bored top-hatted spectators who furtively puffed a cigarette before the ceremony came to an end,[82] what a gulf! Platter after platter of food, sometimes rice, sometimes vegetables, sometimes fruit, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... she had formed the night before seemed impossibilities. The face of nature had changed wonderfully. In place of radiant sunshine there was falling a steady, dismal rain; the clouds bent low, and looked like lead; the wind was moaning in a dismal way, that felt like a wail; and nothing but umbrellas, and water-proofs, and rubber over-coats, and dreariness, ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... but the story we can not unfold; They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold; They grieved, but no wail from their slumber will come; They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... expected! However, in Teufelsdrockh, there is always the strangest Dualism: light dancing, with guitar-music, will be going on in the fore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint whimpering of woe and wail. We transcribe the ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... little heathens brought into the Christian fold in his own parish without the permission of the Rector! It was indeed enough to try any clergyman's temper. Through the entire narrative Miss Dora broke in now and then with a little wail expressive of her general dismay and grief, and certainty that her dear Frank did not mean it. Mrs Morgan repeated apart to Miss Wentworth with a troubled brow the fact that all they had seen of Mr Wentworth ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... wake. From the saloon companionway drifted intermittently a confusion of voices, Liane's light laughter, muted clatter of chips, now and then the sound of a popping cork. Forward the ship's bell sounded two double strokes, then a single, followed by a wail in minor key: "Five bells and all's well!" ... And of a sudden Lanyard suffered the melancholy oppression of knowing his littleness of body and soul, the relative insignificance even of the ship, that impertinent atom of human organization which traversed with unabashed effrontery the waters ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... clink of metal under the hill, above wail of straining pulley, rose the screech of a man in agony, the raucous male squall whose timbre is more hideous than ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... wail and sob much nearer to us. Griff hastily swallowed the ale in his tumbler, and, striking a theatrical attitude, exclaimed, 'Angels and ministers of ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... crackerboxes, and everything else that would stop a bullet, in such manner as to form a square barricade, two sides of which were the wagons, with the mules haltered to the wheels. Every man then supplied himself with all the ammunition he could carry, and the Mandan scouts setting up the depressing wail of the Indian death-song, we all awaited the attack with the courage ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... a heart-broken voice out on the sidewalk, in the darkness beyond. Then, as the policeman stepped down from the steps, Hoof suddenly let out a wail and darted ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... servants of the United States falls into three periods: Before 1829, 1829-65, and 1865-83. In the first period they were commonly treated as permanent officials. Rarely had they been removed for partisan purposes, although it had been the wail of Jefferson that "few die, and none resign." Appointments had often been given as the reward for past services, but none had felt a need for a general proscription of officials upon the ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... stragglers. I thought of the Prince, Cluny, Lord Murray, Creagh, and a score of others, wondering if they had been taken, and fell at last to troubled sleep, from which ever and anon I started to hear the wild wail of the pibroch or the ringing Highland slogans, to see the flaming cannon mouths vomiting death or the fell galloping of the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... And now her too accustomed plaint and wail Repeating, of Rogero's cruelty Fair Bradamant renewed the wonted tale; She cursed her hard and evil destiny; Then loosening to tempestuous grief the sail, Heaven that consented to such perjury, — And did not yet by some plain token speak — She, in ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... an older form of this jest is found in the Katha Manjari, a Canarese collection, where a wretched singer dwelling next door to a poor woman causes her to weep and wail bitterly whenever he begins to sing, and on his asking her why she wept, she explains that his "golden voice" recalled to her mind her donkey that died a month ago.—The story had found its way to our own country ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... A wail of fear went up from the wreck and was echoed from the beach, but by the blessing of Providence she kept afloat until we made our way under her bowsprit and rescued every man ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to grow lighter, and even to vanish altogether; but when she turned to go home by the shortest way, it returned. "Hold fast! hold fast!" and the words came quite clear, though they were like the croak of a frog or the wail of a bird, "A grave! dig me ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... solitude, its distance from mankind, supported me. The cry of a night bird out on the prairie told that it, too, was preying, or being preyed upon; and, as if being stirred by this, a panther sent his wail across the night. I listened for a mate to answer, but she did not. A large, whitish moth flying out of the shadows passed clumsily within a few inches of my face, its wings swishing as a bird's; and it, too, was without ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Delaven struck the guitar with the heel of his boot, there was a crash of resonant wood, and a wail of the strings, and it reached the ears of Masterson and the orderly, who were about to enter the side door from ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... squall to the dull roar of the fifty-mile wind in between. The thunder crackled, without any after-rumble, and the trembling of the ground could be felt from the pounding of the terrific waves half a mile away. Then, in a long-drawn-out descending wail, like the howl of a calling coyote, the hurricane died ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Cain, What hast thou done? Upon the blighted earth I hear a melancholy wail resounding; Among the blades of grass where flowers have birth I hear a new-born tone mournfully sounding. It is thy brother's blood Crying aloud to God In ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... sounded like the croaking of some dismal raven. Jurgis sat with his hands clenched and beads of perspiration on his forehead, and there was a great lump in Ona's throat, choking her. Then suddenly Teta Elzbieta broke the silence with a wail, and Marija began to wring her hands and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... deeper and drearier sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral strain of the spirits of the blast, who in old Indian times had their dwelling among these mountains, and made their heights and recesses a sacred region. There was a wail along the road, as if a funeral were passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine branches on their fire, till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once again a scene of peace and humble happiness. The ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tilted back his head, twisted his face to a hideous grimace, and then opening his shapeless mouth emitted a tremendous wail which took ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... assembling sons and thanes of the ill-starred monarch, that, "confusion now has made its masterpiece, most sacrilegeous murder has broken open the Lord's anointed temple, and stolen hence the life o' the building," was the outcry and disorder on the discovery of Amanda's absence; and the wail and lamentation rung in Claude's ear as he rode away from the gate to return to Montreal, where, still pacing the library, the advocate anxiously awaited him. By the ratiocination, as well as by the ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... not, O wise one! for each it is better, His friend to avenge than with vehemence wail him; Each of us must the end-day abide of 5 His earthly existence; who is able accomplish Glory ere death! To battle-thane noble Lifeless lying, 'tis at last most fitting. Arise, O king, quick let us hasten To look at the footprint ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... later the ship came gently to earth in the Great Place before M'Bongwele's palace. The village appeared at first sight to be deserted, for not a soul was to be seen in any direction; but the low wail of an infant, suddenly breaking in upon the silence, and issuing from one of the huts, betrayed the fact that at least one small atom of humanity still lingered about the place; and where so small a baby was, the mother would ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... general wail arose, and Mrs. Wing fainted entirely away. Madam Sooty-back was quite satisfied with the effect she had ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... to avoid the mind that shuts the divine up in some far off heaven to be reached only by formal telephony called prayer; that fails to see the infinite in all things—in sunlight and flower, in children's laughter, and in misery's wail, in factories and stores, as well as in churches. We need the mind that argues not about omnipresence, but in duty and delight cries, Always and everywhere, Thou ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... seemed welded to the metal. From head to foot the shooting agony went on. With his teeth ripping his lower lip till the blood came, Berrington tried to fight down the yell of pain that filled his throat, but the effort was beyond human power. A long piteous wail of agony and entreaty came from him. It was only when the third or fourth cry was torn from him and he felt the oppression of a hideous death, that the thing suddenly ceased and Sartoris's gentle, mocking laughter took the place ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... place shall serve me, and sustain Their plagues, their torments suffer, sorrows bear, And they his absence shall lament in vain, And wail his loss and theirs with many a tear:' Thus talking to herself she did ordain A false and wicked guile, as you shall hear; Thither she hasted where the valiant knight Had overcome and slain ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... call for the mourners, and raise the lament, Let the tresses be torn, and the garments be rent; But weep not for him who is gone to his rest, Nor mourn for the ransom'd, nor wail for the blest. The sun is not set, but is risen on high, Nor long in corruption his body shall lie— Then let not the tide of thy griefs overflow, Nor the music of heaven be discord below; Rather loud be the song, and triumphant the chord, Let us joy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... imprisoned Nature free, and filled the sky with silvery haze, and called home the stork and crane, summoning forth the tender buds, and clothing the bare branches with delicate green. "Balder is the mildest, the wisest, and the most eloquent of all the AEsir," says the "Edda." A voice of wail went through the palaces of Asgard when Balder was slain by the mistletoe dart. Hermod rode down to the kingdom of Hela, or Death, to ransom the lost one. Meantime his body was set adrift on a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... The pretty conceit of the Lute (vol. v. 244) is afterwards carried out in the Song (vol. viii. 281), which is a masterpiece of originality[FN294] and (in the Arabic) of exquisite tenderness and poetic melancholy, the wail over the past and the vain longing for reunion. And the very depths of melancholy, of majestic pathos and of true sublimity are reached in Many-columned Iram (vol. iv. 113) and the City of Brass (vol. vi. 83): the metrical part of the latter shows a luxury of woe; it is one long wail of despair ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... soldiers in the armies of the United States seriously offended the Southern view of "the eternal fitness of things." No action on the part of the Federal Government was so abhorrent to the rebel army. It called forth a bitter wail from Jefferson Davis, on the 12th of January, 1863, and soon after the Confederate Congress elevated its olfactory organ and handled the subject with a pair of tongs. After a long discussion the following ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... which overhangs the fountain, he fell and broke his little neck upon those stones. Alas, our little neighbour! Oh, would that thou had lived to bury us, our little neighbour!" And everyone began to rock and wail anew. ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... with its Red-men, its Buffalo, its Moose, and its Wolves; I have seen the Great Lone Land with its endless plains and prairies that do not know the face of man or the crack of a rifle; I have been with its countless lakes that re-echo nothing but the wail and yodel of the Loons, or the mournful music of the Arctic Wolf. I have wandered on the plains of the Musk-ox, the home of the Snowbird and the Caribou. These were the things I had burned to do. Was I content? Content!! Is ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... attention, food is eaten by those present. Fires are kept burning within the house and also outside, and after each meal the people strike one another's legs with firebrands in order to forget their grief. Members of the family, who begin to wail immediately after his death, continue to do so constantly for seven days, and they wear no red garments until after the tiwah feast which constitutes his second funeral. The coffin is buried in the ground or placed on a crude platform, and, when this work is ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... brought him at last to the famous abode of the princes, He on a fair-carv'd bed was compos'd, and the singers around him Rang'd, who begin the lament; and they, lifting their sorrowful voices, Chanted the wail for the dead, and the women bemoan'd at its pausings. But in the burst of her woe was the beauteous Andromache foremost, Holding the head in her hands as she mourn'd for the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... occasion, but our great doings by land and sea have seldom been suitably recorded in verse. Drayton's Song of Agincourt is imperishable, but was composed nearly two centuries after the battle. The wail of Flodden Field still floats over the Border; but Miss Elliot's famous ballad was published in 1765. Even the Spanish Armada had to wait for Macaulay's spirited fragment. Mr. Addison's Blenheim stirred no ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... had befallen to himself. He and his companions had agreed to keep within call of each other; but as he advanced, he conceived he heard the voice of a child crying behind him to the right, on which he turned off in that direction, but heard no more of the wail. As he was searching, however, he perceived an ourang-outang steal from a thicket, which, nevertheless, it seemed loath to leave. When he pursued it, it fled slowly, as if with intent to entice him in pursuit from the spot; but when he turned towards the thicket, it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... increasing as the keraphyllocele enlarges. Should this be the case, other symptoms present themselves. The coronet is hot, and tender to the touch, sometimes even perceptibly swollen, and percussion over the wail is met with flinching on the part of the animal. In other cases one is led to suspect the condition by the prominence of the horn of the wall of the toe. This is distinctly ridge-like from the coronet to the ground, while on either side of it the quarters appear ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... that Time my mien may change and hair, Ere, with true pity touch'd, shall greet my eyes My idol imaged in that laurel green: For, unless memory err, through seven long years Till now, full many a shore has heard my wail, By night, at noon, in summer ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... granaries, well filled with food, locked, and, by his own profusion and high living, excited his starving subjects to revolt. The prelate ordered the rebels to be arrested, confined them in a building, and set it on fire. Not content with this outrage, he added insult to injury by mocking the wail of the sufferers, and comparing their cries with the squeaking of mice. In the night which followed the diabolical deed, a swarm of mice penetrated to the apartments of the archbishop's palace, attacked him, and tried to tear the flesh ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... Shaykh, his lip curling, his eyes gleaming. "They will tear their clothes, and cut their shaven crowns, and wail, 'Woe's me, O Ali!' then kiss the Kaaba with defilement on their beards. The curse of the Shaykaim is on them—may it ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... spoke aloud, his voice rising to a wail. Then as he let the folds of canvas fall, a voice ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... bleat, as of a new-born lamb, high above her head; she started and looked up. Then a wail from the cliffs, as of a child in pain, answered by another from the opposite rocks. They were but the passing snipe, and the otter calling to her brood; but to her they were mysterious, supernatural goblins, come to answer to her call. Nevertheless, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... moral is the same. So like an outcast, dowerless and pale, Thy daughter went; and in a foreign gale Spread her young banner, till its sway became A wonder to the nations. Days of shame Are close upon thee; prophets raise their wail. When the rude Cossack with an outstretched hand Points his long spear across the narrow sea,— "Lo! there is England!" when thy destiny Storms on thy straw-crowned head, and thou dost stand Weak, helpless, mad, a by-word in the land,— God grant ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... Will no one dare For her sweet sake the flaming stair?" Look, one steps forth with muffled face, Leaps through the flames with fleetest feet, on trembling ladder runs a race With life and death—the window gains. Deep silence falls on all around, Till bursts aloud a sobbing wail. The ladder falls with crashing sound— A flaming, treacherous mass. O God! she was so young and he so brave! Look once again. See! see! on highest roof he stands—the fiery wave Fierce rolling round—his arms enclasp the child—God help him yet to ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... than usual and sweeps away his home and his plantations; when the smallpox stalks through the land, and day and night the corpses float down the river past him, and he finds them jammed among his canoes that are tied to the beach, and choking up his fish traps; and then when at last the death-wail over its victims goes up night and day from his own village, he will rise up and call upon this great god in a terror maddened by despair, that he may hear and restrain the evil workings of these lesser devils; but ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the depths of his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster, obstinately counting and counting; and the roar of the city changed to this extent—that it still rolled in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices that he knew, in the ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... and animated voices, everywhere seen and heard among the commingling throng, seemed to tell only of a scene of universal joy and triumph. But as joyous and lively as was the scene, in its predominating features, it was yet not without its painful contrasts. The broken sob, or the low wail of sorrow, was heard rising sadly on the night air, in every interval that occurred in the more boisterous but irrepressible manifestations which characterized the hour. And, even in the same dwellings, these two contrasted phases in war's exciting ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... that we are forbidden to dispute. Then how pitiful a thing seems the approval or disapproval of these creatures of the conventions of the hour, as one figures the merciless vastness of the universe of matter sweeping us headlong through viewless space; as one hears the wail of misery that is for ever ascending to the deaf gods; as one counts the little tale of the years that separate us from eternal silence. In the light of these things, a man should surely dare to live his ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... sky, partially obscuring the last tints of the sunset. The wind had ceased. The air was hot, oppressive, laden with the scents of dry earth. Sounds carried far in the stillness. The stamp of a horse in a stall, the low, throaty notes of a cow nuzzling her calf, the far-off evening wail of a coyote—all seemed strangely near at hand, borne by some telephonic quality ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... not come within five yards, but, after curving in, literally shot out again towards the middle of the river and was borne down, the boy uttering a despairing wail as he saw his help ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... cable's-length away, and both ships quickened up their speed, by such small degrees as to be imperceptible, to nine knots, which was as fast as the cruiser's consort could steam. Presently a long, dismal wail came floating across the water from the Union, and Douglas saw that she wished to attract his attention to a signal which she ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... smoke; and mixed with the immense roaring I heard mysterious hubbubs of tumblings and rumblings, which I could not at all comprehend, like the moving-about of furniture in the houses of Titans; while pervading all the air was a most weird and tearful sound, as it were threnody, and a wild wail of pain, and dying swan-songs, and all lamentations and tribulations of the world. Yet I was aware that, at an hour so early, the flames must be far from general; in fact, they had ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... horror rose from the lines of tonsured heads which skirted the high wall—a wail which suddenly died away into a long hushed silence, broken at last by a rapturous cry of thanksgiving and ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Irishmen, they could not tear themselves away from England, and they paraded that country where parade was not so urgent, and they made orations there until the mere accent of an Irishman must make Englishmen wail ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... did not take her long to decide that she had no desire for a closer acquaintance with their owners. One was a man's voice, sonorous and weighty, that sounded as if it were accustomed to propound mighty problems from the pulpit. The other was a woman's, high-pitched as the wail of a cat on a windy night, that caused the listening girl to nestle back on her pillow with the instant resolution to remain where she was until the intruders saw fit to depart, even if by so doing she had to ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... cried the other, starting from her seat. "Oh, what are you made of? Is it water that runs in your veins? you that he loves"—her voice broke into a wail—"you who ought to be so proud to know he loves you even though your heart be broken! You refuse to go to him, refuse his last request!... Come to the light," she went on, seizing the girl's wrists again; "let me look at you. Bah! you never ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was very dry. The wind and the wires took up the story with a long lamenting wail. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... feet, as though haunted by a vision, and began to howl at something invisible, unknown, and doubtless horrible, for he was bristling all over. The gamekeeper with livid face cried: 'He scents him! He scents him! He was there when I killed him.' The two women, terrified, began to wail in concert ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... tender look Left me even so! Richer treasure earth has none Than I once possessed— Ah! so rich, that when 'twas gone Worthless was the rest. Little brook! adown the vale Rush and take my song: Give it passion, give it wail, As thou leap'st along! Sound it in the winter night When thy streams are full, Murmur it when skies are bright Mirror'd in the pool. Happiest he of all created Who the world can shun, Not in hate, and yet unhated, Sharing thought with none, Save one faithful friend, revealing ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... little gold mine, do you call that a joke? It was a wail of the soul, a cry from the heart, that burst through my lips. My love for you and Zuzu is immense. [Gaily] Oh, rapture! Oh, bliss! I cannot look at you two without a ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... yet well-known to the eye of faith! Ah, I have heard that wail far, far away In distant lands, by many a sheltered bay, When slumbered in his cave the water-wraith And the waves gently kissed the classic shore Of France or Italy, beneath the moon, When earth lay tranced in a dreamless ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... put the cheese and egg in his pocket, the milk in the basket, then started. The place where they delivered the wash made Mickey feel almost prosperous. He picked up his milk bottle and stepped from the door, when a long, low wail that made him shudder, ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... fine morning he sold his cow, his gun and his dog, and wrapped sixty silver dollars in a leathern bag, which he sewed fast to the girdle he wore about his waist. That same night some one was heard playing wildly up in the birch copse above the Skogli mansion; now it sounded like a wail of distress, then like a fierce, defiant laugh, and now again the music seemed to hush itself into a heart-broken, sorrowful moan, and the people crossed themselves, and whispered: "Our Father;" but Borghild sat at her gable window ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen |
