"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... successor to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury—is no longer to be found there, and those who seek their fortunes in wills have now to prosecute their researches in that hub of British departmental records, Somerset House. The knell of "the Commons" was rung about twenty years ago, when a campaign against the abuses prevailing in the ecclesiastical courts was begun in the London Times. It unquestionably had been the home ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... 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 of poor ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... remember them enough is that we speak of them too seldom. We turn away conversation from that subject as though it were a painful one; we let the dead bury their dead, their memory die out in us with the sound of the funeral knell, seeming to forget that a friendship which can end even with death can never have been a true one. Holy Scripture itself tells us that true charity, that is, divine and supernatural love, is stronger than death! ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... overshadowed the churchyard. He left the archdeacon's grounds that he might escape attention, and sauntered among the green hillocks under which lay at rest so many of the once loving swains and forgotten beauties of Plumstead. To his ears Eleanor's last words sounded like a knell never to be reversed. He could not comprehend that she might be angry with him, indignant with him, remorseless with him, and yet love him. He could not make up his mind whether or no Mr Slope was in truth a favoured rival. If ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... 14. Better be dead than live in such a world, iv. 2; nay, better never have been born at all, vi. 3. For all is vanity: that is the beginning of the matter, i. 2, it is no less the end, xii. 8. Over every effort and aspiration is wrung this fearful knell. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... the work had been successfully performed, and that they were getting the fire under control, when there suddenly came a terrible burst of flame attended by a roar that drowned all the din of the battle. It was the death knell of 400 men, for the Palestro had blown up with all on board. The great ironclad turret ship and ram of the Italian fleet, the Affondatore, to which Admiral Persano had shifted his flag, far the most powerful vessel in the Adriatic, kept outside of the battle line, and was ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... and law began That still at dawn the sacristan, Who duly pulls the heavy bell, 340 Five and forty beads must tell Between each stroke—a warning knell, Which not a soul can choose but hear ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... laugh at Love to whom the fullness of living has been denied, in whose cold veins, adulterate with inherited disease, a stagnant liquid mocks the purpose of the rich red blood of a healthy race; that in that laugh of theirs is the, knell of them and of their people; that the nation which has ceased to love ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... I done so than the scene in the studio—Wilderspin's story of the model's terror on seeing my mother's portrait—came upon me, and 'Dead! dead!' rang through me like a funeral knell: all the superstructure of Hope's sophisms was shattered in a moment like a house of cards: my imagination flew away to all the London graveyards I had ever heard of; and there, in the part divided by the pauper line, my soul hovered over a grave ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... our wards increased daily. Sick men poured into the hospital. Often they came too late, having remained at the post of duty until fever had sapped the springs of life or the rattling breath sounded the knell of hope, marking too surely that fatal disease, double pneumonia. Awestruck I watched the fierce battle for life, the awful agony, trying vainly every means of relief, lingering to witness struggles which wrung my heart, because I could not resist the appealing glance of dying eyes, the ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... three o'clock: the post knell, not bell, tolls here, and I must send off my scrib: but I will tell you, though I need not, that, now I have taken up Metastasio again, I work at him in every uninterrupted moment. I have this morning attempted his charming pastoral, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... shaken hands for ever with all that makes life 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
... Whittal, excited by his own exertions, broke out into an exhibition of a violence more ruthless even than common, he was openly rewarded by another laugh. The soft, exquisitely feminine tones of this involuntary burst of pleasure, sounded in the ears of Ruth like a knell over the moral beauty of her child. Still subduing her feelings, she passed a hand thoughtfully over her own pallid brow, and appeared to muse long on the desolation of a mind that had once promised ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... these, that were his eyes, Of fish-bones are these blue-bells made; His fins of gold that to and fro Waved and waved so long ago, Still as petals wave and wave To and fro above his grave. Hearken, too! for so his knell Tolls all day ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... Clair was buried there, With candle, with book, and with knell; But the sea caves rung, and the wild winds sung, The dirge ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... "Beautiful." A sweet little village, you can picture it to yourself where you like, in the East, anywhere in Europe, here in England, it is all the same, an "Auburn" among villages, with thatched cottages, and green pastures, and the cows coming home lowing in the evening, when the curfew tolls the knell of passing day. The grey church tower peeping above the lime trees, and the rooks cawing and wheeling above the old trees. The trim gardens blazing with hollyhocks and large white lilies, and the orchards with the apples shewing their rosy cheeks to the sun. The bell is slowly tolling—"Behold, ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... and from fate! If fate forbears us, fancy strikes the blow; We make misfortune; suicides in woe. Superfluous aid! unnecessary skill! Is nature backward to torment, or kill? How oft the noon, how oft the midnight, bell, (That iron tongue of death!) with solemn knell, On folly's errands as we vainly roam, Knocks at our hearts, and finds our thoughts from home! Men drop so fast, ere life's mid stage we tread, Few know so many friends alive, as dead. Yet, as immortal, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... me, when she would not suffer my lord to subscribe my contract for Fentoun, because I would not allow two thousand marks to be kept out of the security, and take her word for them? She said to me, which was a great knell to my heart, that since her coming to the town, she knew that I had been in some dealing with the Earl of Gowrie about Dirleton.' Now Dirleton, according to Sprot, was to have been Logan's payment from Gowrie, for his ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... me tell, The clock struck twelve by its last knell; Watch o'er the fire and o'er the light That no one suffer ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... they were in good hands and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... wicked nurse could not be moved by his tears and prayers, she pierced the second one through with the big gold pin, and then she left them in the depths of the forest, covered with dry leaves; the cuckoos sounded their funeral knell, and the nightingale sang their death dirge. The same day came the handsome knight to the beautiful lady in the castle. And the beautiful lady said to him, full of joy, '"The four eyes" are no longer in our way, the two children lie out there covered with leaves, the ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... early death! Do you not see, every Sabbath, at church, the young man or woman, upon whose fair and delicate structure the peculiar impress of the EARLY DOOMED is stamped? and as a slight but hollow cough comes upon your ear, does it not recall the death-knell which rang in the same sad note before to the father or mother? Who of you has not followed some young friend to his long resting-place, and found that the grass had not grown rank upon the grave of his brother? that the row of white marbles, beneath ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... Australasian seas 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 up thine eyes to the Kingdom for which he fought, That Empire of Peace and Good-will, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the room and closed the door as he passed out. Then it was that Dorothy's laugh sounded like the chilling tones of a knell. It was the laugh of one almost distraught. She came to Madge and me laughing, but the laugh quickly changed to convulsive sobs. The strain of the brief moment during which her father had been in Lady Crawford's room had been too great for even her ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... Theo—seriously?" she gasped; and the repressed eagerness in her tone sounded the death-knell of his ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... with a thick bed of feathers, which have been gathered in the markets and restaurants of Pekin, without much regard to their cleanliness. There is an immense quilt of thick felt the exact size of the hall, and raised and lowered by means of mechanism. When the curfew tolls the knell of parting day, the beggars flock to this house, and are admitted on payment of a small fee. They take whatever places they like, and at an appointed time the quilt is lowered. Each lodger is at liberty to ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... know that on August 12, 1607, in the parish of St. Giles', Cripplegate, was buried "Edward, the base-born son of Edward Shakespeare, Player," and that on December 31 of the same year was buried within the Church of St. Saviour's, Southwark,[211] "Edmund Shakespeare, Player," "with a forenoon knell of the Great Bell."[212] The poet paid every honour he ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... been shewn that the great design of the arrangement was to secure the visible unity of the ecclesiastical commonwealth. The Catholic confederation was supposed to comprehend all the faithful; and it was, no doubt, expected that, not long after its establishment, it would have rung the death knell of schism and sectarianism. According to its fundamental principle, whoever was not in communion with the bishop was out of the Church. To be out of the Church was soon considered as tantamount to be without God and without hope, so that this test condemned all who in any way dissented from the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... hears for the first time this weird song, is told the first and greatest secret of the Northland; to him who has heard it often, it is the solemn knell of lost endeavor. It is the plaint of tortured souls, for in it is invested the heritage of the North, the suffering of countless generations—the warning and the requiem ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... he loves me well; But, when first he breathed his vow, I felt my bosom swell, For the words rang as a knell, And the voice seemed his who fell 10 In the battle down the dell, And who is ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... turn me? whither shall I bend My weary way? thus worn with toil and faint How thro' the thorny mazes of this wood Attain my distant dwelling? that deep cry That rings along the forest seems to sound My parting knell: it is the midnight howl Of hungry monsters prowling for their prey! Again! oh save me—save me gracious Heaven! I am not fit to die! Thou coward wretch Why heaves thy trembling heart? why shake thy limbs Beneath their ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... continued pealing out its knell; the shouts and tumult outside were growing louder. Miela spoke hurriedly to the old man, then ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... bell that ringeth on forever, friend at our feasts, and friend, too, let us call thee, at our burial, what music can equal thine? For in thy mystic globe all tunes abide,—the birthday note for kings, the marriage peal, the funeral knell, the gleeful jingle of merry mirth, and those sweet chimes that float our thoughts, like fragrant ships upon a fragrant sea, toward heaven,—all are thine! Ring on, thou tuneful bell; ring on, while these glad ears may drink thy melody; ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... Funeral March. Evidently Cy thinks this is the death knell to all his hopes of future peace ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... 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 ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... to hab somebody for suah," said the captain's mulatto steward Harry, who by the way was the person who had given out that agonised shriek which I had fancied to be poor Jackson's death knell. "Shark nebber ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... inhabitants of Bohemia and Moravia, as for those of Teuton origin who sympathized with the liberal movement of the time, the battle of the White Mountain and its tragic sequel on that 21st of June was the death-knell ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... the country to toll the church bell upon occasion of the death of any one in the township or parish. A few strokes are rung by way of drawing attention; these are followed, after a little pause, by a single one, if the knell is for man, or two for a woman. Then another short pause. Then follows the number of the years the person has lived, told in short, rather slow strokes, as one would count them up. After pausing once more, the tolling ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... granite coast of the Atlantic to the golden gate of the Pacific, the answer came. It roared from a thousand cannon, it flashed from a million muskets. The sudden gleam of uplifted swords revealed it, the quiver of bristling bayonets wrote it in blood. A knell to the despot, a paean to the slave, it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... was a dungeon grim, And they say that many a chanted hymn Has rung a knell on the moldy air For luckless errant prisoned there, As kneeling monk and pious nun Sang orison at set of sun. A single window, dark and small, Showed opening in the heavy wall, Nor other entrance seemed attained That erst had human footstep gained. I paused before the uncanny place And peered ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... may quell and may awaken romance. When, in some abode of poetized luxury, the "silver knell" sounds musically six, and a door opens toward a glitter that is not pewter and Wedgewood, and, with a being fair and changeful as a sunset cloud upon my arm, I move under the archway of blue curtains ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... dread, a common anxiety, a gloomy foreboding. Such knowledge brought the painful idea of separation. Sir Howard was appointed to prepare the case for presentation. His presence was imperative in England. A heavy blow fell like a death knell on the future hopes of the colonists. Their true friend, sympathizer and ruler was about to take leave. Many mourned his departure as that of a father or brother. Their friend in prosperity and dire adversity; he who had struggled ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... imaginary terrors around it. Cain fled when no one pursued. Nero heard invisible trumpets ringing his death-knell around the tomb of his mother. How often has the mountain bandit, whose hand trembled not at murder, shuddered with fear, as he hastened through the forest, at the sound of a branch waving in the wind, or felt his hair stand erect with terror on beholding a ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... to them. It had become, they knew well enough, a question of life or death where the drifting boat would touch the strand. Now it seemed impossible that she should clear the shallow surf, whose hungry roar sounded a death-knell to any one handed to its tender mercies. Now it seemed certain that she would be carried up the bay without touching land at all. Hope rose as a little later it became obvious that ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... through the muffling storm a knell as mournful as some tolling bell, while into that wild, moaning Friday night, went the desolate woman, wearing henceforth the brand of Cain—remanded to the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... holy hour, and silence now Is brooding like a gentle spirit o'er The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds The bell's deep tones are swelling,—'tis the knell ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... Castledene—of the sad, tragic story, the fair young mother's death, the husband's wild despair. They tell how the beautiful stranger was buried when the sun shone and the birds sang—how solemnly the church-bell tolled, each knell seeming to cleave the clear sunlit air—how the sorrowing young husband, so suddenly and so terribly bereft, walked first, the chief mourner in the sad procession; they tell how white his face was, and how at ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... wave, How solemn on the ear would come The holy matin's distant hum, While the deep peal's commanding tone Should wake, in yonder islet lone, 295 A sainted hermit from his cell, To drop a bead with every knell— And bugle, lute, and bell, and all, Should each bewildered stranger call To friendly feast, and ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... is the sorriest thing that enters Hell? None of the sins,—but this and that fair deed Which a soul's sin at length could supersede. These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves Of anguish, while the scorching bridegroom leaves Their refuse ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I hear them, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the King and implores him to give him a ship that he may go back to his own country and family. These words fall like a knell upon the heart of Nausikaa; she is led out fainting ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... knell of Anne Boleyn!" cried Herne, regarding Henry sternly, and pointing to the Round Tower. "The bloody deed is done, and thou art free to wed once more. Away to Wolff Hall, and bring thy ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... its tenacity when once it gets a foothold it abides. It is peculiarly suited to the humanities of every race, clime, and condition; there is no limit to its expansive adaptability. It is in a special manner voracious in the destruction of other languages; wherever it goes, it sounds the death-knell of all the rest. ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... been filled for him stood upon the table untouched. He sat with his eyes fixed upon the stranger, and his skin as pale as a corpse. Betty was in the same state of immovable terror. Every word that fell from his lips was a death-knell—every drop of his red drink was as much liquid fire—and every look ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... hopeless exclusion settles down on these sad five, standing, huddled together, at the door, with the extinguished lamps hanging in their despairing hands. 'Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now.' The wedding bell has become a funeral knell. They were not the enemies of the bridegroom, they thought themselves his friends. They let life ebb without securing the one thing needful, and the neglect was irremediable. There is a tragedy underlying many a life of outward religiousness and inward emptiness, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... green mounds with which it was studded, might have passed for a lovely meadow. I fancied that the old clanking bell which was now summoning the congregation together, would seem less terrible when it rung out the knell of a departed soul, than I had ever deemed possible before—that the sound would tell only of a welcome to calmness and rest, amidst the most peaceful ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... 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. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... light below, There 'twixt heaven and earth suspended as the bell swung to and fro; And the sexton at the bell-rope, old and deaf, heard not the bell, Sadly thought, "That twilight curfew rang young Basil's funeral knell." Still the maiden clung more firmly, and with trembling lips so white, Said, to hush her heart's wild throbbing: "Curfew shall ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... strokes signified that the departed one was a man; three times two, a woman; twice three, a boy; twice two, a girl. The regular continuity of the tolling suggested that it was the resumption rather than the beginning of a knell—the opening portion of which Stephen had not been near enough ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... He shook, and thought it sacrilege to touch. Now, where are the successors to my name? What bring they to fill out a poet's fame? Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age; Scarce living to be christened on the stage! For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense, That tolls the knell for ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... see Lord Elmwood in the morning"—[never again to see him after this evening,] were like the knell of death to Miss Milner. She felt the symptoms of fainting, and eagerly snatched a glass of water, which the servant was holding to Sandford, who had called for it, and drank it off;—as she returned the glass to the servant, she began to apologize to Mr. Sandford for ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... dugout and found a note from him on the table. It contained few words, but they held a world of meaning. Simple words and few, tolling her knell of doom. ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... of expressing his feelings except action, and where that was impossible they took hardly any recognizable shape. When the first boom of the big bell filled the little study in which we sat, I gave a cry, and jumped up from my chair: it sounded in my ears like the knell of my lost baby, for at the moment I was thinking of her as once when a baby she lay for dead in my arms. Mr. Blackstone got up and left the room, and my husband rose and would have followed him; but, saying he would be back in a few minutes, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... lightly over the hills, and the glad birds were warbling melodiously in the thickets, as if none but the living were moving amongst them; and but for the wild dirge, which mingled with the whispers of the wind, and but for the deep-toned knell which ever and anon rose slowly and mournfully above it, the lone traveller would never have conjectured that Death was conveying its victims through those smiling scenes. As the procession approached the portals ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... exhausted as to be unable to resist any new assailants. Soon the signals of war proclaimed that an army was approaching for the rescue of the fortress. Shouts of exultation rose from the garrison, which fell like the knell of death upon the ears of the besiegers, freezing on the plains. The alarm which spread through the camp was instantaneous and terrible. The darkness of a November night soon settled down over city and plain. With the first rays of the morning the garrison were upon the walls, when, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... the sides of the mountain were sleeping, lying heavy beneath a weight of sadness. The still air was magically clear and transparent. There was never a sound. Only the melancholy music of a stream—water eating away the rock—sounded the knell of the earth, Christophe went to bed in a fever. It the stable hard by the beasts stirred as restlessly and uneasily ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... slowly and laboriously, and like a knell, the great gong of the prison sounded the first stroke of twelve; but before it had counted three there came suddenly from all the city about them a great chorus of clanging bells and the shrieks and tooting of whistles and the booming of ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... where is Fancy bred, Or in the heart, or in the head? How begot, how nourished? It is engendered in the eyes With gazing fed, And Fancy dies in the cradle where it lies. Let us all ring Fancy's knell. I'll begin it—ding, dong, bell. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... now serving out his eighth term in the penitentiary. It is fearful to contemplate these human wrecks. A wasted life, golden opportunities unimproved, a dark and dismal future will constitute the death knell of such fallen beings. Young man, remember the life of this convict, and shun such ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... not speak That parting word of bitterness; the cheek Grows pale when the tongue utters it; the knell Which tells "the grave is ready!" and doth swell On the dull wind, tolling—"the dead—the dead!" Sounds not more desolate. It is a dread And fearful thing to be of hope bereft, As if the soul itself had died, and left The body living—feeling in its breast ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... anomalous position. They see their power going in the dawn of a more socialistic age. They cannot refuse to accept our principles but in their hearts they know that our triumph sounds the death knell to their power. This article of Tallente's would give them a wonderful chance. Out of very desperation ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Francis, Francis,[13] league on league, shall follow The death-dirge of the Lucy once so dear; From yonder steeple, dismal, dull, and hollow, Shall knell the warning horror on thy ear. On thy fresh leman's lips when Love is dawning, And the lisp'd music glides from that sweet well— Lo, in that breast a red wound shall be yawning, And, in the midst ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... thee. Y. Mor. This tatter'd ensign of my ancestors, Which swept the desert shore of that Dead Sea Whereof we got the name of Mortimer, Will I advance upon this castle ['s] walls— Drums, strike alarum, raise them from their sport, And ring aloud the knell of Gaveston! Lan. None be so hardy as to touch the king; But neither spare you Gaveston ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... "The death-knell of me and mine has been sounded unless boys like Gray here keep us alive after death, but the light of your hills is only dawning. It's a case of the least shall be first, for your pauper counties are going to be the richest ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... silence! He 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 ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... something fatalistic in it, their motions are solemn. These unhappy beings seem to want to suck the last juices of the life they mean to leave; their eyes see things invisible, their ears are listening to a death-knell, they pay no attention to the minor things about them. These alarming symptoms Marie perceived one evening at Lady Dudley's. Raoul was sitting apart on a sofa in the boudoir, while the rest of the company were conversing ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... evading it. Any effort, by which such an evasion can be accomplished, must be as sudden as the danger which it affronts. Even that, even the sickening necessity for hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be vain, self-baffled, and where the dreadful knell of too late is already sounding in the ears by anticipation—even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one particular case, namely, where the agonising appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self-preservation, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... drown, perchance, And all their years, a waking dream, Flash pictured by in lightning gleam, His childhood home appears, the mother's glance, The hearth-side smile; the fragrance of the fields: —Now, war's iron knell Wakes the hounds of hell, Whilst o'er the realm her scourge the rushing ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... low standard of intelligence. The sense of their own rescue had overcome the poignancy of grief. I envied them their stolidity, which I explained to my own mind by the rush of the engulfing waters still swirling and singing knell of sudden ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... he takes pleasure in proclaiming to all the tale of his mistakes. Still young in heart and in mind, it seems as if in giving up hope on earth, he tolled the knell of all the enchantments that were passed and gone; that creative head fermenting with the ardor of discovery seems to doubt the future and bow beneath the ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... the bungalow. It stood like a shrouded ghost, and the drip, drip, drip of the rain on the veranda came to him like a death-knell. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... cannot Be call'd our mother, but our grave: where nothing, But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile; Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks that rend the air, Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems A modern ecstasy: the dead man's knell Is there scarce ask'd for whom; and good men's lives Expire before the flowers in their caps, Dying or e'er ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Miles," Dundee said deliberately. "For your wife is already dead!" Then his clear words rang out like the knell ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... will of God, even your sanctification." So far as we are thwarting that will we are playing into the hands of the power of evil. But that power is of limited existence; it draws to its end. Its death knell was struck when the noon-day darkness lifted ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... A knell from the church bell broke harshly on these youthful thoughts. Another! Again! It was tolling for the funeral service. A group of humble mourners entered the gate: wearing white favours; for the corpse was young. They stood uncovered by a grave; ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... his bright rays, and the sea-fowl skimmed over it, dipping their wings ever and anon, as if to refresh them in the liquid element. Everything still wore an aspect of perfect peace. The boats at last got within fifty yards of the ships. A signal flew out from the mast-head of the Phoenix—the knell of many a human being. It was ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... misgivings of the day. Now they suddenly returned to her. What news did Jack Elliott bring? Lines from an old poem flashed unbidden into her mind—"there was a sound of revelry by night"—"Hush! Hark! A deep sound strikes like a rising knell"—why should she think of that now? Why didn't Jack Elliott speak—if he had anything to tell? Why did he just stand ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... joy for the very joyousness of these men; in part, of envy for their fine simplicity; in part, of sorrow in the thought that they were a survival of the past, not types of the present, and that their knell would soon be tolled, and the old elm see their ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... asking, not answer." The words reverberated through her consciousness like a funeral knell. She dropped the stained lily and ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... turned very pale, and is looking greatly distressed, makes no reply. He is repeating over and over again to himself the words he has just heard, as though unable or unwilling to comprehend them. "I care nothing for Sir Adrian!" They strike like a knell upon his ears—a death-knell to all his dearest hopes. And that fellow on his knees before her, kissing her hand, and telling her he will still hope! Hope for what? Alas, he tells himself, he knows ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... winked at him in an insult-in' manner as he was passing by did not prevent Justice Hackett from fining the delinquent ten dollars and costs, which made sad havoc with the poor wife's bank account. So Margaret's married life wore on, and all went merry as a funeral knell. ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... method of centralized production as the proudest achievement of our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete than was our bondage to the King. They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... midst of the consternation caused by these words, the clock on the mantel behind his back rang out the hour. It was but a double stroke, but that meant two hours after midnight and had the effect of a knell in the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... these societies, who worked by means of the press, was Burke, who, toward the end of this year, published his great work on the subject, entitled "Reflections on the Revolution, &c." a work which sounded the knell of the old Whig confederacy. Some of this party yielded at once to the force of his arguments, while others retreated as they saw the development of the principles against which they were directed. In fact, the result of this work was to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a young man of extraordinary promise, 'What learning has perished with him! How vain seems all toil to acquire!'—and the words, as they passed through his mind, seemed to him to ring another death-knell. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... vigorous audacity. In this transitional period it has a certain hectic flush, symptomatic of approaching decay; anxious to give a wide berth to realities, and most at home in the border land where dreams are only half dispelled by the light of common day. 'Don Quixote' had sounded the knell of the old romance, but something of the old spirit still lingers, and can tinge with an interest, not yet wholly artificial, the lives and passions of beings who are thus hovering on the outskirts of the living world. The situations ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... emphatically, and he never did, though he saw her form grow thinner, and her cheek paler every day, and before the winter was gone heard that deep, hollow cough from her, which has so often sounded the knell of hope to the anxious heart. With the coming on of summer this cough passed away, but Mary was oppressed by great feebleness and languor—scarcely less fatal symptoms. Still she omitted none of those ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... David, with an accent of such mingled love and sorrow, remorse and joy, that Christie seemed to hear in it the death-knell of her faith in him. The picture fell from the hands she put up, as if to ward off some heavy blow, and her voice was sharp with ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... of a race renowned of old, Whose war-cry oft has waked the battle-swell, Since first distinguished in the onset bold, Wild sounding when the Roman rampart fell! By Wallace' side it rung the Southron's knell, Alderne, Kilsythe, and Tibber owned its fame, Tummell's rude pass can of its terrors tell, But ne'er from prouder field arose the name Than when wild Ronda learned the ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... her to him. "It's terrible—yes. But think what it means! The knell of all the Rogans been sounded to-day. As soon as the secret of these death-tubes has been analyzed by our science and provided against, my friend and I will return from Earth with a force that shall clear the universe of the slimy devils. Meanwhile, ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... list of all the famous bells, living and dead, that haunt the city, and the tale of what they have done would be a history of France. The bell of the St. Bartholomew over against the Louvre, the tocsin of the Hotel de Ville that rang the knell of the Monarchy, the bell of St. Julien that is as old as the University, the old Bourdon of Notre Dame that first rang when St. Louis brought in the crown of thorns, and the peal that saluted Napoleon, and the ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... sublime dedit; youth should be coupled with all the virtues except truth; earth should never be reminded of her birth; death should never be allowed to stop a mortal's breath, nor the bell to sound his knell, nor flowers from blossoming bowers to wave over his grave or show their bloom upon his tomb. We have rhyming dictionaries,—let us have one from which all rhymes are rigorously excluded. The sight of a poor ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... wintry gloom about the heart; this indistinct horror of the mind, blending itself with the darkness of the chamber. . . . Now comes the peal of the distant clock, with fainter and fainter strokes as you plunge farther into the wilderness of sleep. It is the knell of a temporary death. Your spirit has departed, and strays like a free citizen, among the people of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights, yet without wonder or dismay. So calm, perhaps, will be the final change, so undisturbed, as if among familiar things. The entrance of the soul ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... this come from?" The words fell slowly from Mrs. Tobin's lips, and to the two culprits they sounded like the knell of doom. She waited for some response, but none came. "Is it possible that you have had a woman in this cabin," she continued. "Can you deny it, ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the reader's mind without a shiver." There are sunny gleams upon the pages, but a strange, melancholy chill pervades the book. In "The Wedding Knell", "The Minister's Black Veil", "The Gentle Boy", "Wakefield", "The Prophetic Pictures", "The Hollow of the Three Hills", "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", "The Ambitious Guest", "The White Old Maid", "Edward Fane's Rose-bud", "The ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... always the immediate object of every revolt, and the power to ring the great Patarina, the ancient bell stolen by the Romans from Viterbo, had for centuries a directing influence in Roman brawls. Its solemn knell announced the death of a Pope, or tolled the last hour of condemned criminals, and men crossed themselves as it echoed through the streets; but at the tremendous sound of its alarm, rung backward till ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... and To mildness farewell! Its bristles are low'ring With darkness; o'erpowering Are its waters, aye showering With onset so fell; Seem the kid and the yearling As rung their death-knell. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... more the spell of the Maid fell on the defenders of the place. It was witchcraft, it was some vile art. They had no heart to man the battlements, to fight like their brothers at Orleans and Jargeau in face of all the powers of the evil one: the cry of "Sus! Sus!" was like the death-knell ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... and of gold, 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 of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... fairy hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall henceforth repair And dwell a ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... field, from beginning to end, by Sergeant John Smith, of the 7th I.R.A., company G, might be seen flying where the enemy was thickest, surrounded by a struggling band, each of which was a host himself. Then it was, that the wild cry of "Erin go bragh!" smote on the ear of the foe like a death knell, paralyzed all their energies, and froze the warm current in their heart. At that moment a dozen men in green were worth a regiment of the material he fought against; and thus it was, that the enemy determined to mass all their forces against the gallant O'Neill, who stood ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... The natives had also heard the report, and people began to accumulate from all quarters for the sake of the flesh. The elephant was not dead, but was standing about ten yards within the grass jungle; however, in a short time a heavy fall sounded his knell, and the crowd rushed in. He was a fine bull, and before I allowed him to be cut up, I sent for the measuring tape; ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... 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.)
... and wives must one day hear the striking of a fatal hour. It is a knell, the death and end of jealousy, a great, noble and charming passion, the only true symptom of love, if it is not even its double. When a woman is no longer jealous of her husband, all is over, she loves him no more. So, conjugal love expires in the last quarrel that a woman ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... loud and resonant! It stuns me. It is too sonorous. Does sound flash? Ah! the hour. Another? How long the silver toll swims on the silent air! It is one o'clock,—a passing bell, a knell. If I were at home by the river, the tide would be turning down, down, and out to the broad, broad sea. Is it worth while to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... well-meaning but misguided prince should fall by his own obstinacy; for though his son advised him to seek the alliance of Alfonso, he refused to do so until that alliance could no longer avail him. He himself seemed to think that the knell of his departing greatness was about to sound; and the most melancholy images were present to his fancy, even in sleep. "One night," says an Arabic historian, "he heard in a dream his ruin predicted by one of his sons: he awoke, and the same verses ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... borne to the shore; the boats forming a kind of procession, their oars beating the waves at measured intervals, as a sort of funeral knell—The earth received her dust, and her bereaved husband continued his sad voyage towards his native land, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... respectful, and when Mademoiselle Fifi's body left the Chateau d'Ville 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 any one could desire. Sometimes even, it would start at night, and sound gently through the darkness, seized by strange joy, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... morning just at day break, we found where Rocket fell, Down in a washout twenty feet below; And beneath the horse, mashed to a pulp,—his spur had rung the knell,— Was our little Texas stray, poor ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... on silently; she thought of the past. The dreadful reflection, "If I had not done as I did, how different would it have been now!" had been sounding its knell in her heart so often that she had almost ceased to shudder at it. The very nails of her hands had, before now, entered the palms, with the sharp pain it brought. Stealing over her more especially this night, there, as she knelt, her head lying on the counterpane, came the recollection ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... saloon you could see fair women and brave men wilting in their seats. Imitation...! The word, as Keats would have said, was like a knell! Many of these people were old travellers, and their minds went back wincingly, as one recalls forgotten wounds, to occasions when performers at ships' concerts had imitated whole strings of Dickens' ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... abused as frying. The frying-pan has awful sins to answer for. What untold horrors of dyspepsia have arisen from its smoky depths, like the ghosts from witches' caldrons! The fizzle of frying meat is as a warning knell on many an ear, saying, "Touch not, taste not, if you would not burn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... would doubtless admit, that the instincts of the bee have been acquired for the good of the community. She goes so far as to say that if the theory of ethics advocated in this chapter were ever generally accepted, "I cannot but believe that in the hour of their triumph would be sounded the knell of the virtue of mankind!" It is to be hoped that the belief in the permanence of virtue on this earth is not held by many persons on so weak a tenure.) Nevertheless, the bee, or any other social animal, would gain in our supposed ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... survivors tell How nought from death could save, Till every sound appears a knell, And every ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... the planking, threw out his hand to keep from falling, and watched his father's uncertain, stumbling figure until he was swallowed up in the gloom. The words rang in his ears like a knell. The realization of his position and what it meant, and might mean, rushed over him. For an instant he leaned heavily against the planking until he had caught his breath. Then, with quivering lips and shaking legs, he walked slowly back into the house, ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the word 'farewell!' As if 'twere friendship's final knell; Such fears may prove but vain: So changeful is life's fleeting day, Whene'er we sever—hope may say, We part—to ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... children gives you so much pain, judge what I must suffer. The affection you show them makes me feel most acutely my unhappiness in having none." These words sounded in Josephine's ears like a funeral knell. She saw the spectre of divorce rising before her, and turned pale. From Genoa they went to Turin. Napoleon heard there of the coalition preparing against him, and left suddenly for France with Josephine. Non-commissioned officers of the Grenadiers and the Chasseurs ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... 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
... thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell. Hark! now I hear them,— ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten |
