"Plaint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... begins with a stifled moan, like the moan of a bad dream,— mounts into a long, long wail, like a wailing of wind,—sinks quavering into a chuckle,—rises again to a wail, very much higher and wilder than before,—breaks suddenly into a kind of atrocious laughter,—and finally sobs itself out in a plaint like the crying of a little child. The ghastliness of the performance is chiefly—though not entirely—in the goblin mockery of the laughing tones as contrasted with the piteous agony of the wailing ones: an ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... no one sings it as you do. And in the print store on Second Street there was a laughable picture of such a pretty, doleful Cupid shut out of doors in the cold, that I said to Harry, 'Mistress Primrose Henry sings the most cunning plaint I know, and you ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... attention to this boyish plaint, for he was fumbling in the locker, then withdrew his hand and uncoiled an ordinary fish-line, with ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... the Premier has learned that practical politics is a game that taxes all a man's technique in Christianity. Autocratic Hydro and Mackenzie the loosening octopus; New Ontario preaching up the old plaint of secession; better roads and prodigal Mr. Biggs; what to do with Education that Cody had not started to do; how to stave off commissions on reform of the school system; the constant queues of moral reformers; the new menace of the movies and the censorship farce; the timber stealers; ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... a woman of my plaint complaining, If she was a woman at all half discreet, Would shudder to think every day she is maiming Her stomach with trash, and such ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
... courtiers' ears I pour my plaint, They drink it as the nectar of the great; And squeeze my hand, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... sway like dancing girls; or an afternoon at Kiyomidzu, in the old, old summer-house, where everything is like a dream of five hundred years ago,—and where there is a great shadowing of high woods, and a song of water leaping cold and clear from caverns, and always the plaint of flutes unseen, blown softly in the antique way,—a tone-caress of peace and sadness blending, just as the gold light glooms into blue ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... heart you'd be meaning," he corrected. "'Tis the very heart and throat of love that are yours this night. And for the first time, dear lady, have I heard the full fair volume that is yours. Never again plaint that your voice is thin. Thick it is, and round it is, as a great rope, a great golden rope for the mooring of argosies in the harbors ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... in any of the small happenings of home, the frank rivalry of Eudora's suitors, the bickerings of the girls and boys over the division of household labor. The one thing that had momentarily aroused his somnolent intelligence was a revival of his wife's plaint anent the unbuilt bird-house. That, and a certain furtive anxiety during supper lest his daughter Eudora should forget to keep his plate piled high, were the only signs of a participation ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... harsh voice of Tom Plate on the stairs indicated his coming up. He reached toward Tom with one hand, holding a cocked pistol with the other; but Tom slid easily out of his wavering grasp and fled along the deck. He followed his footsteps until he lost them, and picked up instead the angry plaint of the negro cook ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... not answer. He sat silent and immovable until the light in the valley had quite faded, and the twitter of the birds had been superseded by the monotonous, mournful plaint of a whip-poor-will in a distant tree. Then he stirred and looked up at Eleanor with ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... best of the early poems are: "The Ruined City," reflecting the feeling of one who looks on crumbling walls that were once the abode of human ambition; "The Seafarer," a chantey of the deep, which ends with an allegory comparing life to a sea voyage; "The Wanderer," which is the plaint of one who has lost home, patron, ambition, and as the easiest way out of his difficulty turns eardstappa, an "earth-hitter" or tramp; "The Husband's Message," which is the oldest love song in our literature; ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... takes on a more vivid hue in a poem written shortly after God's Funeral, called A Plaint to Man, where God remonstrates with man for having created Him at all, since His life was to be so short and ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... I am going to do my duty to myself!" Whereat Harry Hardwicke was suddenly aware that Cupid carries a double-barreled gun, sometimes. In her own apartment, Nadine Johnstone listened to Janet Fairbarn's sobbing plaint, as the heart-happy Mattie Jones flew around the rooms making her young mistress's boxes. Nadine was still in an entrancing dream of freedom, life, and love, and the cunning Scotswoman's plaint was all unheeded. Major Hardwicke ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... to her lord, the good Earl of Gloucester, with but little liking of her side, and yet less on his. Nathless, she made no plaint, but submitted herself, as a good maid should do—for mark thou, Clarice, 'tis the greatest shame that can come to a maiden to set her will against those of her father and mother in wedlock. A good maid—as I trust ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... grief. I should entone No plaint to thee; no loss should I bemoan! I should be patient, I, though full of care, And not attempt, by bias of a prayer, To sway thy spirit, or to urge anew A claim contested. For my days are few; My days, I think, are few upon the earth Since I must ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... among the knolls he chases and slays the wild beasts, the God, with keen eye, and at evening returns piping from the chase, breathing sweet strains on the reeds. In song that bird cannot excel him which, among the leaves of the blossoming springtide, pours forth her plaint and her honey-sweet song. With him then the mountain nymphs, the shrill singers, go wandering with light feet, and sing at the side of the dark water of the well, while the echo moans along the mountain crest, and the God leaps hither and thither, and goes into the midst, with ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... we always miss, And so to seek and fly the sun, By turns, around which love should run, Perverts the ineffable delight Of service guerdon'd with full sight And pathos of a hopeless want, To an unreal victory's vaunt, And plaint of an unreal defeat. Yet no less dangerous misconceit May also be of the virgin will, Whose goal is nuptial blessing still, And whose true being doth subsist, There where the outward forms are miss'd, In those who learn and keep ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... person or persons being of the same fellowship of English Merchants for discouery of newe trades, or their successors in any court of Record, or in any other Court or courtes within this Realme, or els where, by Action of debt, action of detinue, bill, plaint, information, or otherwise: in which suite no essoine, protection, wager of lawe, or iniunction shal be allowed, for, or on the behalfe of the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... below a violin sang its very soul out upon the summer night, weaving its plaint into the soft, adagio rippling ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... city of stones and the sea that wrought so on his spirit. Tourgenieff was right; only the young should come here, not those who had seen with Virgil the tears of things. And then he recalled the lines of Catullus—the sad, stately plaint of the classic world, like the suppressed sob ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... to her in the form of the song under her window. Great Heavens! you find an outrage in this! But M. Flaubert has only done what Shakespeare and Goethe have done, who, at the supreme moment of death, have not failed to make heard some chant, or perhaps plaint, or it might be raillery, which recalls to him who is passing to eternity some pleasure which he will never more enjoy, or some fault to be atoned. ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... of a semaphore signalling national events. She sprang before Aminta to stop her retreat, and stamped and gibbed, for sign that she would not be driven. She fell away to Mr. Morsfield, for simple hearing of her plaint. He appeared emphatic. There was a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had lost a friend; and the others, too, seemed equally affected by the scene, even Bob turning his back on the beach without a murmur at their going indoors so early, as he would otherwise have done; this being the young gentleman's usual plaint. But, if depressed for the moment, on reaching "the Moorings" the thermometer of their spirits ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... here to enjoy this fine spring morning. It is like April, bright, calm, warm, and dreamy, sparrows singing, robins and blue birds calling, hens cackling, crows cawing, while now and then the ear detects the long drawn plaint of the meadow lark. The ice in the placid river floats languidly by and I dare say your hunting ground is alive with ducks. I am boiling sap on the old stove set up here in the chip yard. I have ten trees tapped and lots of sap. ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... the earth," down to "A woman shall not speak in church, but shall ask her husband at home," the tendency of the Bible has been to crush out aspiration, to deaden human faculties, and to humiliate mankind. From Adam's plaint, "The woman gave me and I did eat," down to Christ's "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" the tendency of the Bible has been degradation of the divinest half of humanity—woman. Even the Christian Church itself is not based upon Christ as a savior, but upon its own teachings that woman brought ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... complain that he felt worse. It was then that he became the ranch's incubus, its harpy, its Old Man of the Sea. He shut himself in his room like some venomous kobold or flibbertigibbet, whining, complaining, cursing, accusing. The keynote of his plaint was that he had been inveigled into a gehenna against his will; that he was dying of neglect and lack of comforts. With all his dire protestations of increasing illness, to the eye of others he remained unchanged. His currant-like eyes were as bright and diabolic as ever; his ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... mighty Father, she, with plaint and prayer, departed: Then from fierce Aetna to the sea a ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... to the action. These rules exclude in a vast degree the pitiable defects and vices that mark all the unprofessional arguments one ever hears; for on a breach of any one of the said rules the other party can demur; the demurrer is argued before the judges in Banco, and, if successfully, the faulty plaint or faulty plea is dismissed, and often of course the cause won or lost thereby, and the country saved the trouble, and the suitors the expense of trying ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Thou mourner fair, Nor pour the fruitless tear! The plaint of woe is all too low— The ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... carefulness. Suddenly he paused. His dark eyes, in vague, alcoholic meditation, sought the distant peaks stained with the blush-rose of sunset. The evening-purple of the hills fringed the bay with mystery. Gulls floated high on lavender wings, their intermittent plaint answering the Indian voices that drifted up from the beach where the ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... And on the holy hearth, The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint; In urns, and altars round, A drear and dying sound Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint; And the chill marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar power foregoes ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... was eager to get away, for he feared his mother's plaint for money. He knew nothing of the three five-hundred-dollar bills now sewed up in the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... no word or plaint, Clasping the child unto her bosom still, Unflagging when all else began to faint, Intent to save her little one from ill; And they look'd on her as she sped along, Wond'ring what made ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... settled down in his seat as one who has made up his mind. "Let the case of the summoner be laid before me," said he. "Justice shall be done, and the offender shall be punished, be he noble or simple. Let the plaint be ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were a-holding of their sides with laughter. Jack Lewthwaite drew the Chancellor, and right well he carried him. Ere their Majesties abdicated, and the Court dispersed, had we rare mirth, for Aunt Joyce laid afore the throne a 'plaint of one of her maids for treason, which was Gillian, that could no way keep her countenance: and 'twas solemnly decreed of their Majesties, and ratified of the Chancellor, that the said prisoner be put in fetters, and made to drink poison: the which fetters were a long piece of silver lace that ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... my song, When the green grass answers to my plaint, When in sighs respond to my moan, Then my voice shall be heard in his praise: Linger, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... she fared. The love withheld she never sought, She grew uncherished—learnt untaught; To her the inward life of thought Full soon was open laid. I know not if her friendlessness Did sometimes on her spirit press, But plaint she never made. The book-shelves were her darling treasure, She rarely seemed the time to measure While she could read alone. And she too loved the twilight wood And often, in her mother's mood, Away to yonder hill would hie, Like her, to watch the setting sun, Or see the ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... continued, still flowed forth, all reason and respect being swept away amidst that distracted plaint of a wounded soul, that ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... What precious hopes are severed one by one! What hearts lie crushed and sick by 'hope deferred!' How many dear ones, stretched along the sand, Bleed out their lives beneath a blighting sun— With but a word— 'Mother!' for plaint or prayer! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... there were no other, it is considered a sufficient answer to the German Chancellor's plaint that the United States "brusquely" broke off relations without giving "authentic" reasons ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... valley below answered her call. A trembling seized her and feeling her way to the bed where Bertie lay, she crept in beside him, cuddling the soft, warm little body close, and checking her sobs that they might not wake him. Long after the whippoorwill had ceased its plaint, she lay there staring into the darkness, ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... forward. He shrieked out for mercy from every saint in the calendar, and entreated one or all of them to carry him on shore, even if it was but to the sandy coast of Africa. "Ah! misericordia, misericordia, misericordia!" was the burden of his plaint. ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... not each ditty with the glorious tale?[60] Ah! such, alas! the hero's amplest fate! When granite moulders and when records fail, A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date.[bw] Pride! bend thine eye from Heaven to thine estate, See how the Mighty shrink into a song! Can Volume, Pillar, Pile preserve thee great? Or must thou trust Tradition's simple tongue, When Flattery sleeps with thee, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... degree, that loftiness of courage, and stern, uncomplaining acceptance of the decrees of a hostile fate, which so often ennobled the otherwise gloomy and repellent traits of the Indian character. He raised no plaint over what had befallen his race; "the Great Spirit above directs us so that whatever hath been said or done must be good and right," he said in a spirit of strange fatalism well known to certain creeds, both Christian and heathen. He was careful ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Had heard the boy's heart-rending plaint. He soothed his grief, his tears he dried, Then called his sons to him, and cried: "The time is come for you to show The duty and the aid bestow For which, regarding future life, A man gives children to his wife. This hermit's son, whom here you see A suppliant, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... came alongside, crying their never-ending begging word "yammerschooner," were two squaws and one Indian, the hardest specimens of humanity I had ever seen in any of my travels. "Yammerschooner" was their plaint when they pushed off from the shore, and "yammerschooner" it was when they got alongside. The squaws beckoned for food, while the Indian, a black-visaged savage, stood sulkily as if he took no interest at all in the matter, but on my turning my back for some biscuits and jerked beef for ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... this plaint! Did any aspirant for literary or dramatic honors ever pass to fame through such an antechamber of horrors? Did poet of the day ever have his head so maltreated? To be dipped in the rain-water tub, soused again and again; to ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I mooved at her piteous plaint, And felt my heart nigh riven in my brest 30 With tender ruth to see her sore constraint; That, shedding teares, a while I still did rest, And after did her name of her request. "Name have I none," quoth she, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... half-drowsing infant out of her attendant's arms, clasp it frantically to her breast, and then go parading up and down the room weeping over the wondering little face, speedily bringing on a wailing accompaniment to her own mournful plaint. It was more than ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... Plaint of Adolphe Culpepper Ferguson, Salesman of Fancy Notions, held in durance of his Landlady for a failure to connect on ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... below With pity stains my cheek, which thou for fear Mistakest. Let us on. Our length of way Urges to haste." Onward, this said, he mov'd; And ent'ring led me with him on the bounds Of the first circle, that surrounds th' abyss. Here, as mine ear could note, no plaint was heard Except of sighs, that made th' eternal air Tremble, not caus'd by tortures, but from grief Felt by those multitudes, many and vast, Of men, women, and infants. Then to me The gentle guide: "Inquir'st thou not what spirits Are these, which thou beholdest? Ere thou pass Farther, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... white mist came up from the river, the crickets chirped under the trees in the cemetery. The bells began to ring: first the highest of them, alone, like a plaintive bird, challenging the sky: then the second, a third lower, joined in its plaint: at last came the, deepest, on the fifth, and seemed to answer them. The three voices were merged in each other. At the bottom of the towers there was a buzzing, as of a gigantic hive of bees. The air and the boy's heart ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... crowded around him. The venerable matrons drew up their esparto-seated chairs in order to hear better. He was about to sing a romance of his own composition; a relacion, accentuated, according to the custom of the country, by a quavering plaint, a cry of pain drawn out as long as the singer had air left ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... disgusting—I shall speak to your father," with which, going to the chair he had given up, his mother sank down again with her heavy book. There was no anger, however, in her voice, and not even a harsh plaint; only a detached accepted disenchantment. Mrs. Brookenham's supreme rebellion against fate was just to show with the last frankness how much she ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... say, "I will forget," but perhaps the hardest task given us is to lock up a natural yearning of the heart, and turn a deaf ear to its plaint, for captive and jailer must inhabit the same small cell. Sylvia was proud, with that pride which is both sensitive and courageous, which can not only suffer but wring strength from suffering. While she struggled with a grief and ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... of all, In Olaf's hall Now sits in state on high; Whilst up in heaven Amidst the shriven Sits Olaf's majesty. For not in cell Does our hero dwell, But in realms of light for ever: As a ransom'd saint To heal our plaint, Be glory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... grieving voice, trembling and faint, Blends with the hollow sobbings of the sea; Like the sad music of a siren's plaint, But shriller than Leander's voice should be, Unless the wintry death had changed its tone,— Wherefore she thinks ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... spitcat's plaint was as follows: "It ain't That I am to music a foe; For fiddle-strings bide in my own inside, And I twang them soft ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... eyes; but Frank could see nothing but a long wide stretch of desert country, at the horizon of which were a few palms overshadowing dingy, sun-baked mud buildings, houses formed of the brick made of straw now as in the days when the taskmaster-beaten Israelitish bondmen put up such pitiful plaint. ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... "she lives I know not where, and that is my sorrow; banished by Torismond, and that is my hell: for might I but find her sacred personage, and plead before the bar of her pity the plaint of my passions, hope tells me she would grace me with some favor, and that would suffice as a recompense of all my ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... many ways, But still 'tis a riddle to me, Whose mystery is hid from the eye; But Oedipus, showing the souls All fettered, imbruted and blained, Who point where its blazonry rolls, And wail the sad plaint of the chained,— Asserts, 'There ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... wreck of their love-life. Such a Billy she could not love; in its nature such a Billy was not lovable nor capable of love. And then, at the thought of offspring, she shuddered. It was too terrible. And at such moments of contemplation, from her soul the inevitable plaint of the human went ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... little serpents of the sistrum as they lifted their melodious voices to bid Typhon depart, or watching the dancing women's rhythmic movements, or smiling half kindly, half with irony, upon the lovelorn maiden who made her plaint: ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... stood back from one another, hand in hand, and smiled as they listened to the tuneful plaint. Then the man unfolded a wonderful plan to this girl whom he loved. Her willing ears drank in the details like one whose heart is set with a great purpose. They also talked of their love in their own practical way. There was little display of ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... repose. Indeed, it was a very patient little sufferer, if such a term may be applied to so young a child. But it was strange that an infant so pale, thin, and sickly, deprived of its mother's nursing care besides, should have made so little plaint and given so little trouble. Perhaps in the lack of human pity he had the love of heavenly spirits, who watched over him, soothed his pains, and stilled his cries. We cannot tell how that may have been, but it is certain that Ishmael was an angel ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... methinks I hear the bitter plaint Of the passing of a haughty race, The wronged, friendly, childlike, peaceable tribes, The swarthy archers of the wilderness, The red men to whom Nature opened all her secrets, Who knew the haunts of bird and fish, The hidden virtue of herb and root; All the travail of man and beast they knew— Birth ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... certain Martinez, a young policeman who patrolled that part of the shore, spending the noon hours under the cafe shelter, his rifle across his knees, his eyes vaguely fixed on the horizon of the sea, and his ears filled with the running plaint of the tavernkeeper. A handsome chap Martinez was, an Andalusian from Huelva, slender and trim of person, natty as could be in the old service uniform which he sported with a truly martial swagger, twirling the corner of his blond mustache with an air that ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... been so for years; but I am blurred, inhabit the debatable frontier of sleep, and have but dim designs upon activity. All is at a standstill; books closed, paper put aside, the voice, the eternal voice of R. L. S., well silenced. Hence this plaint reaches you with no very great meaning, no very great purpose, and written part in slumber by a heavy, dull, somnolent, superannuated son ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... claims a place. Retiring, and unknown or but to few, Her latter days were hid from public view; But I have often witness'd, when alone— The prayer uplifted, and the sigh unknown. When no eye saw her, but with God shut in, She pour'd her plaint to Him, who saw, unseen; Then from the sacred word she succour drew, 'To hoary hairs I bear, I carry you.' This promise still her drooping spirit cheered, And shed its starlight when the night appeared. Bold, in her weakness, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... and the other mighty men in Israel are like the ruder instruments of music—the trumpet of Sinai, with its one prolonged note. David is like his own harp of many chords, through which the breath of God murmured, drawing forth wailing and rejoicing, the clear ring of triumphant trust, the low plaint of penitence, the blended harmonies ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... songs the influence of Gilchrist's early training in hymns is patent. In only a few instances do they follow the latter-day methods of Schumann and Franz. "A Song of Doubt and a Song of Faith" is possibly his best vocal solo. It begins with a plaint, that is full of cynic despair; thence it breaks suddenly into a cheerful andante. "The Two Villages" is a strong piece of work on the conventional lines of what might be called the Sunday ballad. "A Dirge for Summer" has a marked originality, and is of that deep brooding which ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... see that?" gasped Bobolink, proving that his plaint about his eyes closing up could hardly ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... drama played itself under the open sky and in the free air with such orchestral effects as the soughing woods or some rippling stream afforded. It was not interrupted when a squirrel dropped a nut on us from the top of a tall hickory; and the plaint of a meadow-lark prolonged itself with unbroken sweetness from one ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... again the plaintive, tender notes that stole out like wounded birds and fluttered away on broken wings to the sunlight, Kitty realized that she was an ear-witness to the interpretation of a soul's pain. Though she had never heard of Jean Paul Richter's plaint to music—"Thou speakest to me of those things which in all my endless days I have found not, nor shall find"—something of the torment embodied in those exquisitely bitter words came to her through Rosanne's ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... the smouldering wound. And no bird spreading its light wings can cross that water; but in mid-course it plunges into the flame, fluttering. And all around the maidens, the daughters of Helios, enclosed in tall poplars, wretchedly wail a piteous plaint; and from their eyes they shed on the ground bright drops of amber. These are dried by the sun upon the sand; but whenever the waters of the dark lake flow over the strand before the blast of the wailing wind, then they roll on in a mass into Eridanus with swelling tide. But the Celts have ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... plaint, femme deult, Femme est malade quand elle veult, Et par Sainte Marie! Quand elle veult ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... heard this plaint over and over for about a week, I said: "Perhaps you ought not to have had that little daughter, the little ewe-lamb. Maybe she was one too many." "Oh, no," came the quick response. "I couldn't have spared her." Then I went down the line of ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... felicitous manner. There are sighs and plaints, all haunting in their extreme expressiveness, a great variety beneath an appearance of monotony, and from time to time two wailing notes. These notes are always the same, as the chorus gives them as a plaint, and they are both affecting and artistic. At the end comes a dim ray of light and hope. This is the only one in the work save the Amen at the end, for Faith and Hope should not be looked for here. The supplications sound like prayers which do ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... few or no pessimists among the birds. One might think the call of the turtle-dove, which sounds to us like "woe, woe, woe," a wail of despair; but it is not. It really means "love, love, love." The plaint of the wood pewee, pensive and like a human sigh, is far from pessimistic, although in a minor key. The cuckoo comes the nearest to being a pessimist, with his doleful call, and the catbird and the jay, with ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... This plaint was answered from the distance and soon a number of anti-renters hastened to the spot. Mauville, in vicious humor, moved toward the threshold. One of the panels was already broken and an arm thrust into the opening. The land baron bent forward and coolly ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... in the development of Genius is, first, Complaint; second, Plaint; third, Love. Complaint, which is the condition of Persius, lies not in the province of poetry. Erelong the enjoyment of a superior good would have changed his disgust into regret. We can never have ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... qui la vertu Etait moins que la table encensee; On ne plaint point la femme abattue, Mais ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... and fallen stones bestrew the ground: In loosen'd garb derang'd, with scatter'd hair, His bosom open to the nightly air, Lone, o'er a new heap'd grave poor Basil bent, And to himself began his simple plaint. ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... first robin in Hackensack, the stirring of the maple sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along the main street in Syracuse, the first chirp of the blue bird, the swan song of the blue point, the annual tornado in St. Louis, the plaint of the peach pessimist from Pompton, N.J., the regular visit of the tame wild goose with a broken leg to the pond near Bilgewater Junction, the base attempt of the Drug Trust to boost the price of quinine foiled in the House by Congressman Jinks, the first tall poplar struck ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... way along, his heart was glad. His foot was on holy ground, and at every step new associations came floating into his thoughts. These were the mountains to which Moses had looked from Pisgah; here Jephthah's daughter had made plaint for her young life; hither had come Mary in the joy of the angel's message; the stones on which he stumbled might have felt the feet of Christ. At the hill called Mount Joy they should have seen Jerusalem; but the air was thick, and they could only make out the Mount ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... the foam fringe of the ocean the town of seven towers once lay, now stand upon a wave-washed cliff, and that he who looks forth from its shattered mullions to-day sees only the marshland and the wrinkled waters, hears only the plaint of the circling gulls and the weary crying of ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... amethyst. And robed in her mantle of mist the sprite Her low wail poured on the silent night. Then the spirit spake, and the floods were still— They hushed and listened to what she said, And hushed was the plaint of the whippowil In the silver-birches above her head: 'Wiwaste,—the prairies are green and fair, When the robin sings and the whippowil; But the land of the Spirits is fairer still, For the winds of winter ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... each of us be the centre of his own gravity. Maggie Delafield had, perhaps, that spark in the brain for which we have but an ugly word. We call it "pluck." And by it we are enabled to win a losing game—and, harder still, to lose a losing game—without much noise or plaint. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... What further inch of ground was there for a fight? And if the fight were over, why should he rob his boy of one sparkle from off the joy of his triumph? Silverbridge was now standing before him abashed by that plaint, inwardly sustained no doubt by the conviction of his great success, but subdued by his father's wailing. "However,—perhaps we had better let that pass," said the Duke, with a long sigh. Then Silverbridge took his father's hand, and looked up in his ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... but rather increases them. When the day's duties are over, and all the house is still, I lie tossing ceaselessly, torn by conflicting doubts and fears. E'en as the wakeful bird sits darkling all night long, and pours her endless plaint, now low and mellow, now piercing high and shrill, so wavers my spirit in its purpose, and threads the unending maze of thought. Sweet home of my wedded joy, must I leave thee, and all the faces which I love so well, and the great possessions which he gave into my keeping? Shall I become a ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... the sacred page, How Abram was the friend of God on high; Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage With Amalek's ungracious progeny; Or how the royal bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heav'n's avenging ire; Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry; Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy seers that tune ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... my plaint, I cry to Thee; Be pitiful, and pardon me, For I have sinned; O, give me grace To seek in ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie
... swarthy-rolling eye are cast:— "Ha! Harrald," scream'd he, "have we met at last?" For the first time, the youth felt terror's force; Pale grew his cheek, as that of clammy corse, Chill was his blood, his nervous arm was faint, While thus he stammer'd forth his lowly plaint: ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... Sometimes the voices of our humanity as they rise blend and compose into one great cry that is lifted, shivering and tingling, to the stars, "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!" Sometimes and more often they sink into a subdued and minor plaint, infinitely touching in its human solicitude, perplexity and pain. Again, James Stephens has phrased it for us in ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... hath spoke of every one These noble wives, and these lovers eke. Whoso that will his large volume seek Called the Saintes' Legend of Cupid: There may he see the large woundes wide Of Lucrece, and of Babylon Thisbe; The sword of Dido for the false Enee; The tree of Phillis for her Demophon; The plaint of Diane, and of Hermion, Of Ariadne, and Hypsipile; The barren isle standing in the sea; The drown'd Leander for his fair Hero; The teares of Helene, and eke the woe Of Briseis, and Laodamia; The cruelty of thee, Queen Medea, Thy little children hanging by the halse*, *neck ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... ever live, But told, expires; pray then, reveale (To show our wound is half to heale), What mortall nymph or deity Bewail you thus? Who ere you be, The shepheard sigh't, my woes I crave Smotherd in me, me in my grave; Yet be in show or truth a saint, Or fiend, breath anthemes, heare my plaint, For her and thy breath's symphony, Which now makes full the harmony Above, and to whose voice the spheres Listen, and call her musick theirs; This was I blest on earth with, so As Druids amorous did grow, Jealous of both: for as one day This star, as yet but set in clay, By ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... feeble plaint, quickly silenced by a thunder crash. "If we were only home with mama," he mourned, "I shouldn't ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... claimed upon them of a long while,] consanguinity, affinity, or any other lawful cause whatsoever, there be no lawful impediment on this behalf; and that there be not at this time any action, suit, plaint, quarrel, or demand, moved or depending before any judge ecclesiastical or temporal, for or concerning any marriage contracted by or with either of you; and that the said marriage be openly solemnized in the church above-mentioned, between the hours of eight ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... sank into his heart, The plaint of the ladye, He deems she pleads to him for help, And will ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... wae I hear zour plaint; Sair, sair I rew the deid, That eir this cursed hand of mine Had gard his body bleid. Dry up zour tears, my winsome dame, Ze neir can heal the wound; Ze see his head upon the speir, His heart's ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... customs. The Dispensary work calls also for much time and strength, nursing often having to accompany the medicine; the very ignorance and superstition of the patients and their friends making the task doubly trying. Then one must be ever at hand to hear the plaint of and to shelter and reconcile the runaway slave or wife or the threatened victim of oppression and superstition. Visitors are to be received, and all the bothersome and, to European notions, stupid details of native etiquette are to be observed ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... smallest consoling idea has a strength of its own that is not to be found in the most magnificent plaint, the most exquisite expression of sorrow. The vast, profound thought that brings with it nothing but sadness is energy burning its wings in the darkness to throw light on the walls of its prison; but the timidest thought of hope, or of cheerful acceptance ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Lamentation. — N. lament, lamentation; wail, complaint, plaint, murmur, mutter, grumble, groan, moan, whine, whimper, sob, sigh, suspiration, heaving, deep sigh. cry &c. (vociferation) 411; scream, howl; outcry, wail of woe, ululation; frown, scowl. tear; weeping ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, And naught is heard on the lonely hill, But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill, Of the gauze-winged katydid, And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will {417} Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in her ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... garrulous twelve was finally given to the presiding officer. For a moment, silence fell. It was broken by Ruth Howard, a girl with large, soulful brown eyes and a manner of rapt earnestness, who uttered her plaint in a tone of ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... plaint of woe! Beautiful youth! Outstretched and pale he lies, Untimely cropped in early bloom; The heavy night of death has sealed his eyes;— In this glad hour of nuptial joy, Snatched by relentless doom, He sleeps—while echoing to the sky, Of sorrow ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... book and buttoned my coat. Soo-hoo! the wind was here and the cloud—soo-hoo! drawing out longer and more plaintive in the thin mouthpiece of the chink. The cloud had no more rain in it, but it shut out the sun; and all that afternoon and all that night the low plaint of the wind continued in sorrowful hopelessness, and little sounds ran about the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... campaign, which she knew beforehand would bring to her renown, the like of which no woman in the world's history has ever won. She would have gone back gladly, I truly believe, to her home in Domremy, and uttered no plaint, even though men ceased after the event to give her the praise and glory; for herself she ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... about the angles and under the wide reaching eaves. It sets the door creaking with a sound that startles the occupants. It passes on and forces its way through the dense, complaining forest trees. The opposition it receives intensifies its plaint, and it rushes angrily through the branches. Then, for awhile, all is still again. But the coming of that breath from the mountain top has made a difference in the outlook. Something strange has happened. One looks about and cannot ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... said: "The plaint of Citronella is full of a passion of dream that only the Italian poets have found ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... tenth year of Abbot Sampson's abbacy we monks, after full deliberation in chapter, laid our formal plaint before the abbot in his court. We said that the rents and revenues of all the good towns and boroughs in England were steadily growing and increasing to the enrichment of their lords, in every case save in that of our town of St. Edmund. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green |
