"Wail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the court-room stirred with excitement. Some weak-nerved woman with a child at her breast began to cry, and the little one joined its feeble wail to hers. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a-fishing and, sure enough, he caught the same fish again, and it said, "I am the King of the Fishes, if you let me go you shall always have your nets full." So the fisherman let him go again; and when he went back to his home he told his wife that he had done so. She began to cry and wail and said, "I told you I wanted such a fish, and yet you let him go; I am sure you do not love me." The fisherman felt quite ashamed of himself and promised that if he caught the King of the Fishes again he would bring him home to his wife for her to cook. So next ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... found that there was no necessity for her to continue her speech, and indeed no possibility of her doing so even if she were so minded. The children began to wail and cry, and the mothers also mixed loud sobbings with their loud prayers; and Emmeline and Mary, dissolved in tears, sat themselves down, drawing to them the youngest bairns and those whom they had loved the best, kissing their sallow, famine-stricken, unwholesome faces, and weeping over them ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... coming quickly, her eyes filled with the star-like pride and glory of the Woman who has found a Master. For a moment they stood facing each other in the white stillness of the forest, and in that moment there came to them the low and mourning wail of a dog beyond them. And then the full voice of the pack burst through the wilderness, a music that was wild and savage, and yet through which there ran a strange and plaintive note ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... faint, straight pathway in the sand. Rabbit gave a long sigh, turned his head to look back at his master, and then stood motionless again. Far on a hilltop a coyote pointed his nose to the moon and yap-yap-yapped, with a shrill, long-drawn tremolo wail that made the girl catch her breath. Behind them the nine goats moved closer together and huddled afraid beside a clump of bushes. The little breeze whispered again. A night bird called in a hurried, frightened ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... "Poems" (op. 31) based on poems of Heine's are particularly successful, especially in the excellent opportunity of the lyric describing the wail of the Scottish woman who plays her harp on the cliff, and sings above the raging of sea and wind. The third catches most happily the whimsicality of the poet's reminiscences of childhood, but hardly, I think, the contrasting depth and wildness of his complaint that, along with childhood's games, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... changed, the moral is the same. So like an outcast, dowerless and pale, Thy daughter went; and in a foreign gale Spread her young banner, till its sway became A wonder to the nations. Days of shame Are close upon thee; prophets raise their wail. When the rude Cossack with an outstretched hand Points his long spear across the narrow sea,— "Lo! there is England!" when thy destiny Storms on thy straw-crowned head, and thou dost stand Weak, helpless, mad, a by-word ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... drawn on in these days of stress and need, and Dowie was an efficient person. The cousin whose husband had been killed in Belgium, leaving a young widow and two children scarcely younger and more helpless than herself, had no relation nearer than Dowie, and had sent forth to the good woman a frantic wail for help in her desolation. The two children were, of course, on the point of being added to by an almost immediately impending third, and the mother, being penniless and prostrated, had remembered the comfortable creature with her solid bank account ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of pain.] 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 &c. v.; flood of tears, fit of crying, lacrimation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... born into this world of woe? In never-ceasing streams let sorrow flow; Be from that hour the house with sables hung, Let lamentations dwell upon thy tongue; E'en from the moment that he first began To wail and whine, let him not see a man; Lock, lock him up, far from the public eye; Give him no opportunity to buy, Or to be bought; B——, though rich, was sold, And gave his body up to shame for gold. ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... little seat in the fragrant bosom of some evergreen shrubs, where often I remain for hours. It is almost like death to mount to my favorite spot, the path is so steep and stony; but it is new life, when I arrive there, to sit in the shadow of the pines and listen to the plaintive wail of the wind as it surges through their musical leaves, and to gaze down upon the tented Bar lying in somber gloom (for as yet the sun does not shine upon it) and the foam-flaked river, and around at the awful mountain splashed here and there with broad patches of snow, or reverently ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... Richard), I whipt forward with a handkerchief to cover the horror out of sight. This I would have done, though all had seen it; the King had seen it, and that white-hearted traitor Count had seen it, and sprung away with a wail, "O Christ! O Christ!" The King stood up, and with his lifted hand stopped me in the pious act. All held their breaths. I saw the priest at the altar peer round the corner, his mouth making a ring. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... Ford Foster was saying, when there came a sort of wail from a group at a little distance, and it seemed ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... injured leg to the ground with hardly a limp, and again drawing it up and running on three feet. In a moment he passed out of sight behind a slight rise of ground to the left of the ash-heaps, and at some little distance. He did not reappear. Instead, a long, shrill wail came wavering towards the doctor and Dan Barry. It raised the hair on the head of the doctor and sent a chill through his veins; but it sent Whistling Dan racing towards the place behind which Black Bart had disappeared. The doctor hurried after as fast as he might and came ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... vigour that he not only displaced the block of wood, but burst in several planks which concealed the entrance to a cavern. They fell on the stone floor with a crash that aroused a multitude of echoes in the dark interior. At the same moment something like a faint shriek or wail was heard within, causing the hearts of the three listeners ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... blackness of darkness a light is shining. The valley of the shadow of death is no longer "a land of darkness and where the light is as darkness." The presence of a serene and holy life pervades it. Above its pale tombs and crowded burial-places, above the wail of despairing humanity, the voice of Him who awakened life and beauty beneath the grave-clothes of the tomb at Bethany is heard proclaiming, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." We know not, it is true, the conditions of our future ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... The wail of forests vast Thro' which pour storms like light, Whilst rending in the blast, They feebly own its might! Deep thund'rings o'er the main: The short shrill smother'd cry, Hurl'd to the skies in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... sword. ... Our great hope on earth, the City of London, has played nipshot [i.e. miss-fire or burnt priming]: they are speaking of dissolving the Assembly." [Footnote: Ibid. II. 362.]—To understand this wail of Baillie's we have again to turn to ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... by "that clumsy Admiral Gray who came over with the Frasers, and had the impudence to almost force me to dance with him—gouty old horror!" But I know it was the rent in her vanity, not her dress, which made her gurgle, and wail, and choke, until frightened Sir Samuel patted her on the back, and she stopped ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... victim uttered a wail, at the third a piercing shriek. Garofoli lifted his hand; Ricardo stopped with raised whip. I thought Garofoli was going to show mercy, but it was ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... the next few months was not likely to make Constance feel more at home at Cardiff than before. It was one constant funeral wail. On the 24th of March, 1394, her aunt Constanca, Duchess of Lancaster, died of the plague at Leicester; in the close of May, of the same disease, the beloved Lollard Queen; and on the first of July her cousin, Mary Countess of Derby. Constance grew ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... had been working hard at his senatorial duties, and had made some telling speeches upon the Irish land question. People talked of him as a rising politician; and, whenever his name appeared in the morning papers, Mrs. Winstanley uplifted her voice at the breakfast-table, and made her wail about Violet's folly in refusing ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... sum. Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, I am; and lately was not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The answer lies around, written in all colours and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious Nature: but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God-written Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning? We sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and Dream-grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest century, lies not even ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought. And with old woes new wail ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... months after the birth of Photogen, the dark lady also gave birth to a baby: in the windowless tomb of a blind mother, in the dead of night, under the feeble rays of a lamp in an alabaster globe, a girl came into the darkness with a wail. And just as she was born for the first time, Vesper was born for the second, and passed into a world as unknown to her as this was to her child—who would have to be born yet again before she ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... steadfast into the dying west With lips apart to greet the evening star; And one with eyes that caught the strife and jar Of the sea's heart, followed the sunward breast Of a lone gull; from a slow harp one drew Blind music like a laugh or like a wail; And in the uncertain shadow of the sail One wove a crown of berries and of yew. Yet even as I said with dull desire, "All these were mine, and one was mine indeed," The smoky music burst into a fire, And I was left alone in my great need, One foot upon the thin horn of my lyre And all its strings ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... that?" I exclaimed, as a plaintive cry, which ended in a wail of anguish, such as might be given by a lost soul in ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... darkness born, Relieve my anguish, and restore the light, With dark forgetting of my cares, return; And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth; Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn Without the torment of the night's untruth. Cease, Dreams, th' imag'ry of our day-desires, To model forth the passions of the morrow, Never let rising sun approve you liars, To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow. Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain; And never wake ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... few and timorous birds, and of fewer trees. But all across the dews of the grasses lay a tinge of powdered gold, as if yellow flowers were blooming in abundance there. I saw no horses, no sign of life; heard no sound but the cadent wail of the ash-grey birds in their flights. And when I turned my eyes nearer home, and compared the distant beauty of the forests and their radiant clouds with the nakedness and desolation here, I gave up looking from the window with ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... farther away, until the country grew rougher and he was full ten miles from home. At last, stopping upon a small hill to reconnoitre, the searcher heard far in the distance a sound he recognized and which sent his cheek pale—the faint dying wail of a wounded steer. It came from a deep draw between two low hills, one cut into a steep ravine by converged floods and hidden by the tall surrounding weeds. Bye knew the place well and the significance of the ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Spaniards, seem to find their music in a hurdy-gurdy swell of sound. The other day we met a little girl, walking and spinning, and singing all the while, whose song was just another version of this chant. It has a discontented plaintive wail, as if it came from some vast age, and were a ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... breathed the word, but it sounded like a wail of despair. Then she caught Kenneth's eye, and his glance of steadfast courage ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... serenity of atmosphere necessary for creative art. A greater than Jonson donned the suppliant's robes, like Coriolanus, and with the inscrutable honeyed smile about his lips begged for the "most sweet voices" of the journeymen and gallants who thronged the Globe Theatre. Only once does the wail ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... "aside the shroud of battle cast" and we heard a faint bugle—call, like an echo, wail in the distance, from beyond the hill. It was instantly answered by the loud, startling blare of a dozen of the light infantry bugles above us on the hill—side, and we could see them suddenly start from their lair, and form; while ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... bent over it, and was soothing it ere its existence penetrated at all to the old woman's preoccupied brain. Its pipings had been like an unheeded wail of wind round some centre of tragic experience. Even when she realized the child's existence her brain groped for some seconds in search ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... when Lum got back. Smoke was coming out of his rickety chimney, and the wail of an old ballad reached his ears. Singing, the girl did not hear him coming, and through the open door he saw that the room had been tidied up and that she was cooking supper. The baby was playing on the floor. She turned at the ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... stripped handkerchief, coat, vest, all to shelter Sidney; and he felt a kind of strange pleasure through the dark, even to hear Sidney's voice wail and moan. But that voice grew more languid and faint—it ceased—Sidney's weight hung ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... tender look Left me even so! Richer treasure earth has none Than I once possessed— Ah! so rich, that when 'twas gone Worthless was the rest. Little brook! adown the vale Rush and take my song: Give it passion, give it wail, As thou leap'st along! Sound it in the winter night When thy streams are full, Murmur it when skies are bright Mirror'd in the pool. Happiest he of all created Who the world can shun, Not in hate, and yet unhated, Sharing thought with none, Save one faithful friend, revealing ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... pondering what this loneliness could mean, and wherefore we were unable to make an entrance even into the little auberge that professed to loger a pied et a cheval, a kind of low wail or chaunt began to make itself heard from the other side of the river; wild and strange, yet full of a music of its own, it took my friend and myself so much by surprise that we almost thought for the moment that we had trespassed on to the forbidden ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... obedience to the order, with threats of death to every one who delayed his departure; and the whole city was a scene of mourning and lamentation, and in every quarter nothing was heard but one universal wail, matrons tearing their hair, and about to be driven from the homes in which they had been born and brought up; the mother who had lost her children, or the wife who had lost her husband, about to be torn from the place rendered sacred by their shades, clinging ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... known. A shrieking wind came over the hills, driving a scud of snow before it The stock in the stables, we all came in, soon after dinner, and sat comfortably by the fire with cider, checkers and old sledge. The dismal roar of the trees and the wind-wail in the chimney served only to increase our pleasure. It was growing dusk when mother, peering through the sheath of frost on a window pane, uttered an ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... gently rocking it to and fro. But when he began a strange humming song to it, which brought all Glashgar before her eyes, Ginevra knew beyond a doubt that it was Gibbie. At the sound the child ceased to wail, and presently the woman with difficulty rose, laying a hand for help on Gibbie's shoulder. Then Gibbie rose also, cradling the infant on his left arm, and making signs to the mother to place the child on his right. She did so, and turning, went feebly ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... The monotonous wail of the instruments, the pungency of the incense, the subdued light, the humid breath of the roses carried the thoughts of Mr. Tutt far away. Before him, against the blue misty sunshine, rose the yellow temples of Peking. He could hear the faint ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... such hopes and I worked so hard. I suffered in the flesh for every hour of it, and I failed. Oh but I hate the word! If I knew where she is right now, Bel, I'd give anything I've got. But there's no use to wail and get sorry for myself. That's against the law of common decency. I'll take a swim, sleep it off, straighten up the herbs a little, and go at it again, old fellow; that's a man's way. She's somewhere, and she's got to be found, no matter what ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... after my arrival I called on Madame Audibert, and had the pleasure of finding my niece wail pleased with the efforts her friend was making in her favour. Madame Audibert had spoken to her father, telling him that his daughter was with her, and that she hoped to obtain his pardon and to return to his house, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... now I will thee tell, If I live, thou goest to hell— I must die here for thy sake.' 'Son, Thou art so mild and kind, Nature, knowledge have enjoined I, for Thee, this wail must make.' ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... laughed, and fogs delayed work, and Kami was unkind and even sarcastic, and girls in other studios were painfully polite. It had a few bright spots, in pictures accepted at provincial exhibitions, but it wound up with the oft repeated wail, 'And so you see, Dick, I had no success, though ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... a low wail of terror and the delicate blue veins in her temples throbbed with feverish excitement. Reginald Hawthorne had crouched down in his chair and buried his face in his hands. ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... it was he who trimmed the oil-lamp and brought it in, and drew the check curtains across the low casement, as if there were prying eyes to see me on the opposite bank. Then a deep, deep stillness crept over the solitary place—a stillness strangely deeper than that even of the daytime. The wail of the sea-gulls died away, and the few busy cries of the farm-yard ceased; the only sound that broke the silence was a muffled, hollow boom which came up the ravine ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... his essay on the Function of Criticism at the Present Time, is moved by the case of Poor Wragg, who was "in custody," to the following wail— ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... A wail from Ariadne's room gave warning that the child had wakened, as she not infrequently did, terrified by a bad dream. Lydia fled in to comfort her, and later, when she came back, leading the droll little figure in its pink sleeping-drawers, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... to wail. Margalida's mother, forgetting all prudence, clasped her hands and raised her eyes with an expression of ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... after the scene in the arbor, and all was mourning in the so lately happy, hospitable house; everybody looked through tears. There were subdued breathings, a low murmur, as of many listeners, a voice of prayer, and the wail of a funeral hymn,—and then the heavy tread of bearers, as, beneath the black pall, she was carried over the threshold of her home, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... shamed, humiliated, agonized radical—thus made a mark for gibes instead of winning honor as a martyr for the cause—began to wail and plead the men who were nearest the scene of flagellation started to laugh. The laughter spread like a fire through dry brambles. It ran crackling from side to side of the great square. It mounted into higher bursts of ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... hundred though it be, Balance all Europe in the other scale. Them liken I to those who, in the tale, Mountain on mountain piled, presumptuously Warring with Heaven and Jove. The earth clave he, And hurled them down beneath huge rocks to wail: So take you up your bolt with energy; A happy consummation ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... end. Yet even to himself he did not admit it. He hated the fact, mortally. His will was rigid. He could not bear being overcome by death. For him, there was no death. And yet, at times, he felt a great need to cry out and to wail and complain. He would have liked to cry aloud to Gerald, so that his son should be horrified out of his composure. Gerald was instinctively aware of this, and he recoiled, to avoid any such thing. This uncleanness of death repelled ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Emperor, or some mandarin of exalted rank, has been so fortunate as to hold the winning number in the Annual State Lottery. So vengeance-laden and mournful was the combined and evidently preconcerted wail, that Yin was compelled to shield his ears against it; yet the inconsiderable Tsin-Su-Hoang, on whose account it was raised, seemed in no degree to be affected by it, he, doubtless, having become hardened by hearing a similar outburst, at ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... The wail of a distant shell rose to a shriek and the explosion was instantaneous. The little man suddenly went limp and his rifle rolled down the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... was in this very uncomfortable state of mind, with the jungle wrapped in profound silence as well as gloom, there broke on the night air a wail so indescribable that the very marrow in Nigel's bones seemed to shrivel up. It ceased, but again broke forth louder than before, increasing in length and strength, until his ears seemed to tingle with the sound, and then it died away to a sigh ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the direction of the south. A fourth one was heard farther off, and both voices united in a plaintive wail. Any one unacquainted with the remarkable perfection with which the Navajos imitate the nocturnal chant of the so-called coyote, would have been deceived, and have taken the sounds for the voices of the animals themselves; but Tyope recognized them as signals through which four ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... rejected and the lust of war prevail, Soon within these ancient chambers will resound the sound of wail! ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... Sing we a litany,— Sing for poor maiden-hearts broken and weary; Domine, Domine! Sing we a litany, Wail we and ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the candles shine around his narrow bier, Escorted by the crowds of poor with many a bitter tear; No more, alas! can he the sad and anguished-laden cure— Oh, wail! For Durand is no ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... chin down on the fiddle-tail, his white eyeballs glaring in the lamplight. Harvey swung out of his bunk to hear better; and amid the straining of the timbers and the wash of the waters the tune crooned and moaned on, like lee surf in a blind fog, till it ended with a wail. ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... toward the great, still Christ, appealing—and who dare say, in vain?—from man to God. Her lips were opened to speak; but the words that should have come from them reached God's ear alone; for in an instant Peter struck her down, the dark mass closed over her again, ... and then wail on wail, long, wild, ear-piercing, rang along the vaulted roofs, and thrilled like the trumpet of ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... You raise the wail of Ecclesiastes, "All is vanity and a striving after wind, and there is no profit under the sun." The Preacher and Omar and Swinburne are pathetically human, and we who are also human respond to their finality, to ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... the venomous green path, not thirty yards away, I saw the head and shoulders and upstretched, appealing arms of Van Roon. Even as the lightning flickered and we saw him, he was gone; with one last, long, drawn-out cry, horribly like the mournful wail of a sea gull, ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... shall the wicked be cast out, and they shall have cause to howl, and weep, and wail, and gnash their teeth; and this because they would not hearken unto the voice of the Lord; therefore the Lord redeemeth ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... "You wail worse than a dog of a Lutheran under the yoke," he said in as good a voice as he could muster with a cut in his lip. "What matter how much Eminence it took to make a father for me—or how many duchesses to make a mother? I am labelled ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... which seemed to be wandering at random overhead. He remembered his childhood, his mother; he remembered her death, how they had carried him in to her, and how, clasping his head to her bosom, she had begun to wail over him, then had glanced at Glafira Petrovna—and checked herself. He remembered his father, at first vigorous, discontented with everything, with strident voice; and later, blind, tearful, with unkempt ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... a wail of anguish. One would have thought the ape's trifling booty an inestimable treasure, for he rode so furiously toward Ciacco that the ape dropped the melon and scampered up a neighbouring tree. But my blood was ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... it loved the darkness better for this spirit of the night, and some shivered as if with dread. For Solomon had sounded his hunting call, and, as with the baying of hounds or the tune of a hunter's horn, one ear might find music in the note and another hear only a wail. ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... night divine— Alone, another weeps elsewhere: Her love for him is unlike mine, Her wail she ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... thy friendes from thee fail, And death by rene hend[48] their life, Why shouldest thou then weep or wail? It is nought against God to strive: it ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... ones who are in China, and God cares for them and yearns over them," and men who were in England respectable artisans, with an imperfect hold of their own language, come to China, in response to the "wail of the dying millions," to stay this "awful ruin of souls," who, at the rate of 33,000 a day, are "perishing without hope, having ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... wail from next door, and called to the children from her door; and glad enough were they to take refuge with a grown-up person who smiled and spoke cheerfully, in spite of ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... uttered a wail of despair. To be left to follow—to follow alone, in the dark, through unknown roads, with scarce a clue and on a strange horse—the prospect might have appalled a hardier soul. He was saved from it by Sir George's servant, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Wheeling, Virginia, to learn the trade of a saddler. He learned more than that. Wheeling, as he tells us, was then a great thoroughfare for the traffickers in human flesh. Their coffles passed through the place frequently. "My heart," he continues, "was grieved at the great abomination. I heard the wail of the captive, I felt his pang of distress, and the iron entered into ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... around his neck, his minstrel cloak across his shoulders, and out into the pale moonlight he walked. And as he walked the wind touched the strings of the elfin harp and drew forth a wail so full of dole that those who heard it whispered: 'It is ...
— Stories from the Ballads - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... All-Merciful, All-Compassionate! Have mercy on Thy servant! I swear by the beard of Thy holy Prophet that I will attend more closely to my duties to Thee if Thou wilt get me loose from this ill-begotten monstrosity! Help me or I perish!" The last words were a wail. ...
— Hanging by a Thread • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the lighted door, then stumbled over a small form on the ground and there rose another wail, now of terror ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... thou weeping mother, We grieve; our pity hears Thy wail, O wife; the fallen, For them we have no tears; No—but with pride we name them, For grief their memory wrongs; Our proudest thoughts shall claim them, And our ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... shrunken stream is Lethe's water wan Unsought of any man: Grass Ceres sowed by alien hands is mown, And now she seeks Persephone alone. The gods have all gone up Olympus' hill, And all the songs are still Of grieving Dryads, left To wail about our woodland ways, bereft, The endless summertide. Queen Venus draws aside And passes, sighing, up Olympus' hill. And silence holds her Cyprian bowers, and claims Her flowers, and quenches all her altar-flames, And strikes dumb in their throats Her doves' complaining ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... deeper and drearier sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral strain of the spirits of the blast who in old Indian times had their dwelling among these mountains and made their heights and recesses a sacred region. There was a wail along the road as if a funeral were passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine-branches on their fire till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once again a scene of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about them fondly and caressed them ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... their tiny feet while waving overhead a dirty cloth in their beautifully-shaped hands, is feeble in the extreme. A band of musicians is usually engaged, after protracted haggling, to enliven the proceedings. Two or three native fiddles of most primitive make wail incessantly, cymbals clash recklessly, a kind of flute resembling bagpipes in sound squirls, while a wooden drum adds to the deafening din. The girls squeak and posture, the place reeks with pungent tobacco smoke and the smell of garlic, the guests munch dried melon seeds, spitting the ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... roar of the storm, which at the moment had somewhat lulled, there rose a prolonged wail, or rather shriek, as of many human voices rising slowly in one passionate appeal to the mercy of Heaven, and dying away in sobbing, shuddering despair as the wild blast broke out again with the mocking laughter of all the fiends in the pit—a cry ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... worked like Trojans. There was no need to drive us, nor was a single harsh word spoken. Nothing was heard but the almost incessant clatter of the windlass pawls, abrupt monosyllabic orders, and the occasional melancholy wail of a gannet overhead. No word had been spoken on the subject among us, yet somehow we all realized that we were working for a large stake no less than our lives. What! says somebody, within a few miles of Hong Kong? Oh yes; and even ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... whose expression and accents say, "You are the hair that breaks the camel's back of my endurance, you are the last drop that makes my cup of woe run over;" persons whose heads drop on one side like those of toothless infants, whose voices recall the tones in which our old snuffling choir used to wail ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... bereaved nation, from Thy high and holy Habitation look down upon us and suitably impress us to-day, with a sense that God only is great. Kings and Presidents die; but Thou, the Universal Ruler, livest to roll on thine undisturbed affairs forever, from Thy Throne. A wail has gone up from the heart of the nation to heaven—O, hear, and pity, and assuage, and save. We pray that Thou wilt command thy blessing now, which is life forevermore, upon the family of the President dead; upon the President living upon ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... his knees and so remained, looking steadfastly before him into the woods. The wind came sighing through the pines with a wail and a sob. Macdonald shuddered and then fell on his face again. The Vision was upon him. "Ah, Lord, it is the bloody hands and feet I see. It is enough." At this Ranald slipped back awe-stricken to the camp. ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... piercing cry, raised by hundreds of voices, a cry which resounds through the streets of the city, and which is echoed by the surrounding hills. What can be the matter? What can be the cause of this mournful wail? ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... my work as I felt through these ten years, and successful by the blessing of God, yet I continually heard, and chiefly during my last years in the Divinity Hall, the wail of the perishing Heathen in the South Seas; and I saw that few were caring for them, while I well knew that many would be ready to take up my work in Calton, and carry it forward perhaps with more efficiency than myself. Without ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... rights of humanity this nefarious business was allowed to flourish triumphant. The bitter wail of widows and orphans was silenced by the clamour for gold until all nature revolted against it. The earth and the waters under the earth seemed to call aloud for the infamy to be stayed. The rumbling noise of a vigorous agitation permeated ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... good a chance in the world as anyone else. I put a bit of fun into him. I liked the kid. I—I like him now. If he wanted a good time to-morrow I'd run round with him again. But I'm no movie heroine—I'm not out for poison and funerals and slow music. Life's too damn serious for my sort to make a wail and ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... you in your wail about the markets being "flat." Wait a while, patiently, and they will ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various
... isolated there. Purblind Galitzin, on express order, does attack these 12,000 (night of September 17th-18th):—'Hurrah' of the devouring Russians about midnight, hoarse shriek of the doomed 12,000, wail of their brethren on the southern shore, who cannot, help:—night of horrors 'from midnight till 2 A.M.;' and the 12,000 massacred or captive, every man of them; Russian loss 600 killed and wounded. Whereupon the Turk Army bursts into unanimous insanity; and flows home in deliquium of ruin. Choczim ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... is that awful wail that suddenly smites the stillness as with a blow? It seems like the wailing of all the lost souls of the war. It sounds like the crying of the more than five million sorrowing women there are left comfortless in Europe. It ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... good prepared position, with sound trenches and decent wiring. Above all I wanted reserves—reserves. The word was on my lips all day and it haunted my dreams. I was told that the French were to relieve us, but when—when? My reports to Corps Headquarters were one long wail for more troops. I knew there was a position prepared behind us, but I needed men to ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... lay dying, and I had no power to hold Death backward from such dread intent. In another room, I heard the little wail of the child; and the wail of the child waked my wife back into this life, so that her hands fluttered white and desperately needful ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... with a prolonged wail that seemed to Patty the funniest thing she had ever heard, and she fairly ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... known all through the household that Anisim was sentenced to penal servitude, the cook in the kitchen suddenly broke into a wail as though at a funeral, imagining that this ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... 'perfectly darling confidential friend,' as girls' chums are! Moreover, you haven't shed such gallons of first-class well-salted tears as this young person has. No, Son, I'm sorry to leave you behind, but you didn't weep and wail ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... strong sable sons supported their decrepit sire homeward, with their wives, "black, but comely," bearing the glistening, satin-skinned babies on their backs, and their other little ebony responsibilities trudging in the rear, there must have been a dismal wail; for there was the ancestral tree, its foliage shrivelled with fire, stretching out its desolate arms over the ashes of ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... I, with the plaintive wail of a heroine. "Take all I have, pocket-book and all, but, oh, spare me; ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... Would it not long to leave the bliss of Heaven, Bearing a little water in its hand To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain With Him we call our Father? Or is all So changed in such as taste celestial joy They hear unmoved the endless wail of woe, The daughter in the same dear tones that hushed Her cradled slumbers; she who once had held A babe upon her bosom from its voice Hoarse with its cry ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... regular trainer went to Coney Island, and got drunk, and we either had to cut out that performance, or give back the money, and the manager was wailing about it, 'cause nothing makes a circus man wail like giving back good money. Then pa said he would save the day by taking charge of the animal act. He said he had watched it every day, and knew how to do it, and he could dress up in the clothes of the regular trainer, and the animals ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... stillness had been broken by the first clatter of sabots—that wooden noise, measured, unmistakable, approaching. Two pairs of sabots and a long road. Two broad backs bent under bulging loads; an infant's wail; a knock at the Red Cross Door—but that ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... may we wail for thee, Orestes, when thy mother can exult Over her child's poor ashes. Is ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... Came the raucous wail of a siren. Then the engine-exhaust ceased; and a voice, raised in some annoyance, hailed loudly through ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... awkward question put out of his way. He had reddened with embarrassment, but was grateful to Ray for taking the trouble off his mind. As they left the house, and poor Hogan, looking over the banisters up-stairs, broke into an Irish wail of grief, and the corporal of the guard instinctively brought his left hand up to the shoulder in a salute that made his musket ring, a casual observer would have said that Mr. Ray was showing his visitors to their ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... far away down the reach a ferry-boat lifted its infinitesimal wail, and then the silence of the night river came down once more, profound and inscrutable. A corner of the wick above my head sputtered ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... Mark into his room. Papa's room. You could hear her feet going up and down in it, and the squeaking wail of the wardrobe door as she opened and ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... Cripplegate widows are loud in their wail! And Mary-Axe orphans all trembling and pale! For the Alderman glory has melted away, As mists are dispersed by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... song. He abruptly left the room, and went out once more into the cool night-air and the darkness. But even here he was not allowed to forget the sorrow he had been vainly endeavoring to banish, for in the far distance the pipes still played the melancholy wail of Lochaber. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... no more kindness. She had been far more bitterly disappointed than she had confessed even to her uncle; and yet the very bitterness of the disappointment had been the first thing that had driven her father's dying wail from her ears—that cry repeated so often and so bitterly in the brief moments left after his accident—"My children! My children!" He had not sufficient faith to commit them to God's mercy; he knew he had not been a faithful steward; and he could not bring ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... to-morrow we must work at it again. The affairs of the dead must give place to those of the living. I could not endure the thought of leaving Gibson's last resting-place unknown, although Bunyan says, "Wail not for the dead, for they have now become the companions of the immortals." As I have said, my mind could not rest easy without making another attempt to discover Gibson; but now that the Circus water was gone, it would be useless to go from ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... wormed through somehow and caught Drury by the hand, but the first tug brought from him such a wail of anguish that the man fell back. He could not budge the body clamped with steel. He could only wrench it. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... collection of these mournful melodies have been made, and these lorn lyrists have been induced to glance over it, it seems to us that they must have received it with inextinguishable laughter. Each delicate little wail when taken by itself was not so bad, but the united wail of this band of broken-hearted singers would have produced, instead of tears, laughter both long and deep. This doleful period lasted long after ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... rightly come to the marriage of her daughter who can deny? But what will she say when she knoweth my purpose? And of the maiden, what shall I say? Unhappy maiden whose bridegroom shall be death! For she will cry to me, 'Wilt thou kill me, my father?' And the little Orestes will wail, not knowing what he doeth, seeing he is but a babe. Cursed be Paris, who hath wrought ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church |
