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Plaint   Listen
noun
Plaint  n.  
1.
Audible expression of sorrow; lamentation; complaint; hence, a mournful song; a lament. "The Psalmist's mournful plaint."
2.
An accusation or protest on account of an injury. "There are three just grounds of war with Spain: one of plaint, two upon defense."
3.
(Law) A private memorial tendered to a court, in which a person sets forth his cause of action; the exhibiting of an action in writing.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Plaint" Quotes from Famous Books



... Calvinists were stirred by the peril of their brethren in France, and the zeal of the preachers was roused by a revival of the old worship in Clydesdale and by the neglect of the Government to suppress it. In the opening of 1563 they resolved "to put to their own hands," and without further plaint to Queen or Council to carry out "the punishment that God had appointed to idolaters in his law." In Mary's eyes such a resolve was rebellion. But her remonstrances only drew a more formal doctrine of resistance from Knox. "The sword of justice, madam, is God's," said the stern preacher, "and is ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... this paragraph of plaint calls for no elaboration. Arnold Toynbee took as the terminal dates of the Industrial Revolution the years 1760 and 1830. The last generation of the eighteenth century brought to birth the great inventions, but it was the first generation of the nineteenth that founded ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... efficiently interrupted, and the attention of the 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

... Another plaint is heard, deeper and more universal, that of all souls in which regret for their established church and forms of worship ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... He sat silent and immovable until the light in the valley had quite faded, and the twitter of the birds had been superseded by the monotonous, mournful plaint of a whip-poor-will in a distant tree.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 a ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... audible: A yellow leaflet to the ground Whirled noiselessly: with wing of gloss A hovering sunbeam brushed the moss, And, wavering brightly over it, Sat like a butterfly alit: The owlet in his open door Stared roundly: while the breezes bore The plaint to far-off places drear,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... imagine it bending above the 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

... 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 ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... manner in the midst of the darkness, and that at a depth where no human eye had ever penetrated. Fear lent my sight, and all my senses, an unheard-of subtlety of perception. For several seconds I heard very distinctly the evening plaint of a cricket down at the edge of the wood, a dog barking far away, very far in the valley. Then my heart, compressed for an instant by emotion, began to beat furiously and I no ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... time mothers have come to the author with the piteous plaint: "O Aunt Fanny! we are perfectly worn out with your 'Nightcaps,' 'Mittens,' and 'Socks;' we have read them to our little children, who have not yet conquered the compound mysteries of the alphabet, until we know them by heart; do, do write some books in words of one syllable, which they can ...
— The First Little Pet Book with Ten Short Stories in Words of Three and Four Letters • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... et cela malgre les instances de l'Ambassadeur qui a fait valoir, comme un bon cote de la proposition, le groupement mixte des Puissances grace auquel on evitait l'opposition de l'Alliance a l'Entente, ce dont s'etait si souvent plaint Jagow lui-meme. ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... effect Of loitering here, of death defrauded long; Of old so gracious (and let that suffice), MY VERY MASTER KNOWS ME NOT. I've been so long remembered I'm forgot. * * When in his courtiers' ears I pour my plaint, They drink it as the Nectar of the Great; And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow. * * Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy, Court favour, yet untaken, I BESIEGE. * * If this song lives, Posterity shall know One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred, Who thought, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... that the Inhabitants of the said Province or Territory, or any of them, shall at any Time hereafter, be compelled or compellible, or be any ways subject, or liable to appear or answer to any Matter, Suit, Cause, or Plaint whatsoever, out of the Province or Territory aforesaid, in any other of our Islands, Colonies or Dominions in America, or elsewhere, other than in our Realm of England ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... is hardly necessary to say that Mary Todd was one of the culprits. The young ladies originated the scheme more to poke fun at the personal weaknesses of Shields than for the sake of party effect, and they embellished their simulated plaint about taxes with an embroidery of fictitious social happenings and personal allusions to the auditor that put the town on a grin and Shields into fury. The fair and mischievous writers found it necessary to consult Lincoln about how they should frame ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... weak creatures. Kittens and puppies had ever found a welcome and a meal at Rena's hands, only to be chased away by Mis' Molly, who had had a wider experience. No shiftless poor white, no half-witted or hungry negro, had ever gone unfed from Mis' Molly's kitchen door if Rena were there to hear his plaint. Little Albert was pale and sickly when she came, but soon bloomed again in the sunshine of her care, and was happy only in her presence. Warwick found pleasure in their growing love for each other, and was glad to perceive ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... Europe and Asia? that men brake the plighted peace by theft? Did I the Dardan lecher lead, who Sparta's jewel reft? Did I set weapons in his hand, breed lust to breed debate? Then had thy care for thine been meet, but now indeed o'erlate With wrongful plaint thou risest up, and ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... in the work we do? We go half-hungry from day to day anyhow. Children are born; there's no time to look after them on account of the work that doesn't give us bread." She walked up to the mother, sat down next to her, and spoke on stubbornly, no plaint nor mourning in her voice. "I had two children; one, when he was two years old, was boiled to death in hot water; the other was born dead—from this thrice-accursed work. Such a happy life! I say a peasant has no business to marry. He only ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... mountains; the hush deepened upon the valley, a hush in which the voice of the stream was audible, cool—a sound immemorially old, lingering from the timeless past through vast, dim changes, cataclysms, carrying the melancholy, eloquent, incomprehensible plaint of ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... whisk the 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 Miss ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... days and nights how many birds, Flittering above the fields and streams all frozen, Watched hungrily the tended flocks and herds— Earth's chosen nourished by earth's wise self-chosen! How many birds suddenly stiffened and died With no plaint cried, The starved heart ceasing when the pale sun ceased! And when the new day stepped from the same cold East The dead birds lay in the light on the snow-flecked field, Their song and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various

... further plaint, signed with Phoebe's name, in a rather more uneven hand. Ishmael found himself remembering, as his eye met them again, her little tricks with the pen—the wandering tails to her words, the elaborate capitals which gave a touch of individuality ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... wind's sounding dirge, As 'twere old ocean's moaning surge, Around our dwelling; I well may tell the reason why, But oh! the teardrops in mine eye Are swiftly swelling. The world is sad, and I am so; Does Marian hear my plaint? Oh, no; She's far away. Ye envious streams—ye hateful hills! Ah me! what cruel anguish thrills My heart to-day! But soon may Fortune learn to smile Upon her sad and helpless child, And let us meet, No ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley

... genuine Tennysonian harmony, pitched in the keys that most fittingly suit the singer's mood, are interspersed through the drama, and serve to relieve the narratives of their gloom and plaint. Their presence, we cannot help thinking, recalls work better done, and more within the limitations of the poet's genius, than this drama of "Queen Mary." As a dramatic representation the drama had the advantage of being produced at the Lyceum Theatre, London, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... for my soul doth faint. I'm sick of noise and care: and now mine ear Longs for some air of peace, some dying plaint That may the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... deux goriaulx Than shal I haue two coliers 28 Pour mes cheuaulx de querue. For my horses of the plowh. Xpristiene la fylle Xpristine the doughter Se plaint du serrurier, Complayned her of the lokyer, Pour ce quil nye By cause that he denyeth 32 Dun enfant quil gaigna. Of ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton

... can remember the plaint of the wind on the moor, Crying at dawning, and crying at shut of the day, And the call of the gulls that is eerie and dreary and dour, And the sound of the surge as it breaks on the beach ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard

... good cause you have to make such plaint! Now certes we have come upon days of great lament— Our land is taken away, and so's our increase, And ne'er we may look for any help or surcease. It must be, as long I have both dreamt and said, That the promise to ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... sigh, that there was not, but returned to her plaint over the sinfully wasted kopeks. Once I offered her some "tea-money" in the shape of a basket of raspberries, which she wished to preserve and drink in her tea, with the privilege of purchasing them herself. As ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... unutterable grief, like Eve's retrospective look at Eden. Quivering with strange tremor, again she stood before me, with clasped hands and tearful eyes, in the very attitude of that memorable apparition, and again fell upon my ears the mysterious plaint and the uncompleted question,—'You have been the cause of all this; oh, why did ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... who robbed the navigators of all they brought from the land they had visited, the most important loss being the journal of the expedition. On his arrival at Honfleur, De Gonneville immediately entered a plaint before the Admiralty Court of Normandy, and wrote a report of his voyage, which was signed by the principal officers of ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... young creature radiantly facing life, but as a tired little child in this very room stepping' defeated from the fountain, because she could not make her desires come true! She was listening to the old plaint: "I have used the old games—I want ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... lamp in the star-spangled heavens, and shed her silvery rays across the plain, the hunter may lead forth the village belle, and foot it merrily on the mossy greensward, to the sound of the bagpipe and the rustic flute, by fountains which never cease their monotonous but soothing plaint, and under the long shadows of the ancient ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... dear Brother of the Pen, Maker of sunshine for the minds of men, Lord of bright cheer and master of our hearts— What plaint is fit when such a friend departs? Not with mere ceremonial words of woe Come we to mourn—you would not have it so; But with our memories stored with joyous fun, Your constant largesse till your life was done, With quips, that flashed through frequent twists and bends, Caught ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... baise ce rivage, De quoi se plaint-elle a ses bords? Pourquoi le roseau sur la plage, pourquoi le ruisseau sous l'ombrage, Rendent-ils de tristes accords? De quoi gemit la tourterelle? Tout naist, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... 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 she ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... employment whatsoever, and shall forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred pounds, one-half thereof to his Majesty, and the other half to such person or persons that shall sue for the same by any action of debt, bill, plaint, or information, in any court of record whatsoever."—7 Will. III. Ir. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... due to misunderstandings. And even more." Shaking his finger, the professor recited oracularly, "'Oh, wad some pow'r the giftie gie us to see oursel's as ithers see us.' Van Manderpootz is that power, Dixon. Through my attitudinizor, one may at last adopt the viewpoint of another. The poet's plaint of more than two centuries ago is ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... consecrated earth, 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 ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... her wild look and excited manner and her heart went out in sympathy to the lonely girl. Colonel Hathaway, too, intuitively recognized Alora's plaint as a human cry for help, and did not need to guess the explanation. The man in the vineyard had called her father "the Student" and said he was a reserved man and never was seen without a book in his hand. This would mean that he was not companionable and Alora's protest plainly ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... the throng, to put those pale lost lilies out of mind." Always verging on a poetic feeling not just like ourselves in these days, and yet Dowson was a poet. He caressed words until they sang for him the one plaint that he asked of them. That he was obsessed of the beauties and the intimations of Versailles, is seen in everything he did, or at least he imbibed this from Verlaine. He was himself a pale wanderer down soft green allees, he had a twilight mind struggling ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... you that are rich, you that have been great sinners, listen to the voice of Jesus; listen to the plaint of Mary during this month of November; "My children are now dead; come lay thy prayers up for them, and they shall live." Hear Mass for the poor souls; say your beads for them; supplicate Jesus and Mary and Joseph in their behalf. Fly to St. Catherine of Genoa and ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... soul-hunger is there, the restlessness of the savage, the wail of the wanderer, and the plaint is ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... lack of time and opportunity; for when, as a young gentleman of means and great expectations, I should have been writing sonnets to the eyebrow of some "ladye fayre," or surreptitiously wooing some farmer's daughter, in common with my kind, I was hearkening to the plaint of some Greek or Roman lover, or ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... 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 Flamins at their service quaint; And the chill Marble seems to sweat, While each peculiar ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... am come to lay plaint before you of Nabigant of the Rock that challengeth me of the land whereof I am your man, and saith that he will defend it against none but you only. Sir, the day is full nigh, and if you come not to the day, I shall have lost my quarrel, and you held me thereof ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown

... the plaint of modern Germany. We seek, they say, to do merely what England and France—it were indiscreet to mention Austria—did in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They were vigorous peoples with an impulse to expand and to extend their civilisation over backward ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe

... If he were, He would be shrewder, and not be paying money For what this woman is glad to do for naught. Nothing is cooked, and nobody is warmed,— A most unthrifty fire! Do you bid the Duke, Until he show me sounder cause for plaint, Permit this woman to gather unmolested Dead wood in his forest, and bear it home.—Lisa, Take care you break no half-green boughs.—The ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... surprised that none of them attempted to cross-question; but they perceived that the matter was gone against them too far, and so, not one of these learned disputers opened his mouth; only a pettifogger of the courts said, that he would lay a plaint of false imprisonment against Lucifer. "You shall now have cause enough to complain," said the Fiend, "and yet never have an opportunity of seeing a court with your eyes." Then, putting on his red cap, Lucifer, with an arrogant, insufferable look, said, "take the justices ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... the exact repetition of their plaint. Harrowing as it was, the sounds were almost like a recitation of the alphabet. A woman who had adopted me as her nephew said they called it the "Ue haaneinei" That, literally, is "to make a weeping on the side." The etiquette of it was ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... lives—men who in a fortnight had fallen from a high plane of life to the pitiful level of brutes. Only here and there was an exception. This man, Crittenden, was one. When sane, he was gentle, uncomplaining, considerate. Delirious, there was never a plaint in his voice; never a word passed his lips that his own mother might not hear; and when his lips closed, an undaunted spirit kept ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... intervals of tiresome frequency, for his wife. He had, from the very starting-place in the upper waters of Bayou Sauvage, declared in favor of the Rigolets as—wind and tide considered—the most practicable of all the passes. Now that they were out, he forgot for a moment the self-amusing plaint of conjugal separation to flaunt his triumph. Would any one hereafter dispute with him on the subject of Louisiana sea-coast navigation? He knew every pass and piece of water like A, B, C, and could tell, faster, much faster than he could repeat the multiplication table (upon ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... air. Rang out a sweet bird's song, No feeble, weak, uncertain note, No plaint of grief or wrong, No "Miserere Domine," No "Dies Irea" sad, But "Gloria in Excelsis" rang, In accents wild ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins

... except the monotonous plaint of the screw, no sound was to be heard. A footstep came from the cabin, where Dave was at work, or appeared to be, for he had been stationed there for his part of the programme which was presently ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... from the shores the notes of an innumerable variety of insects, which filled the air with a strange but not inharmonious concert; while ever and anon was heard the melancholy plaint of the whip-poor-will, who, perched on some lone tree, wearied the ear of night with his incessant moanings. The mind, soothed into a hallowed melancholy, listened with pensive stillness to catch and distinguish ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... the twain, Sir Gawain nor Sir Lancelot, but the tears fell from their eyes when they heard the knight's tale. Such pity had they for him, they waxed pale, and red, and discovered their faces, when they heard his plaint. ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston

... surroundings was lost in the distance. It was as if the strong desiccating wind, which seemed to spring up at his horse's feet, had cleanly erased the flimsy structures from the face of the plain, swept away the lighter breath of praise and plaint, and dried up the easy-flowing tears. The air was harsh but pure; the grim economy of form and shade and color in the level plain was coarse but not vulgar; the sky above him was cold and distant ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... temptations to social excess were great; is it not all the more creditable to Burns that he did not sink under those temptations and become the besotted wreck conventional biography has attempted to make him? If those who raise this plaint mean to insinuate that Burns became a confirmed toper, then they are assuredly wrong; if they be only drawing attention to the fact that drinking was too common in Scotland at that time, then they are attacking not the ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... cried at the comical idea which Sandy's plaint always brought up, of half-a-dozen negro preachers sitting in solemn judgment upon that cakewalk,—it had certainly been a good cakewalk!—and sending poor Sandy to ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... phrases declare, "He shall perish," leading to the chorus, "Woe to him!" After a few bars for the instruments, Obadiah, in an exquisite recitative, counsels him to fly to the wilderness. In the next scene we behold Elijah alone, and in a feeble but infinitely tender plaint he resigns himself. It is hard to conceive anything grander and yet more pathetic than this aria, "It is enough," in which the prophet prays for death. A few bars of tenor recitative tell us that, wearied out, he has fallen asleep ("See, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... own vessel filled to the brim with grief, had he not let the waters of its bitterness overflow into the heart of the soutar? The wail of that violin echoed now in Robert's heart, not for Flodden, not for himself, but for the debased nature that drew forth the plaint. Comrades in misery, why should they part? What right had he to forsake an old friend and benefactor because he himself was unhappy? He would go and see him the very next night. And he would make friends once more ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... le plaint de tout son c[oe]ur, mais qu'il ne se dcourage pas. Grce son travail acharn, il pourra dans deux on trois ans passer l'examen qui lui ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet

... 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

... bitterness in all this to Phineas himself of which he could not but make plaint to his companion. "The truth is," he said, "that a man in office must be a slave, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... Roland who suffers yonder. On my soul, I swear, there is battle. Some one hath betrayed him. If I mistake not, it is he who now deceives thee. Arm, Sire, arm! Sound the trumpets of war. Long enough hast thou hearkened to the plaint of Roland." ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... or night the bell said the same words. No matter when, by whom, how hard or how gently it was struck, the bell moaned the one plaint as if crying, "I want to go back to Miidera." "I want to go ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... a lad's song, far and faint, There is no sound in all the wood; 10 The murmuring pines are still; their plaint At ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... more struggled into my eyes soothing yet bitter; and after I had wept much and called with unavailing anguish, with outstretched arms, for my cruel father; after my weak frame was exhausted by all variety of plaint I sank once more into reverie, and once more reflected on how I might find that which I most desired; dear to me if aught were dear, a ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

... the Marquis of Lorne when he motioned to the conductor of the orchestra. He was quite willing to allow these sons of submissive Frenchmen to feel a regret, perhaps even a flickering hope. The first on his feet, he listened to that fine plaint with respect, but he smothered its last echo beneath the English ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... 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

... 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 music, and she was able to realize ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... and not far off, I trow, And to himself he maketh ruth and woe. "Alas," quoth he, "this is a wicked jape! Now may I say that I am but an ape. Allen may somewhat quit him for his wrong: Already can I hear his plaint and song; So shall his 'venture happily be sped, While like a rubbish-sack I lie in bed; And when this jape is told another day, I shall be called a fool, or a cokenay! I will adventure somewhat, too, in faith: 'Weak heart, worse fortune,' as ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... "I bring a plaint against M. de La Tour d'Azyr! You are out of your senses, I think. Oh, you are mad; as mad as that poor friend of yours who has come to this end through meddling in what did not concern him. The language he used here to M. le Marquis on the score of Mabey was of the most offensive. Perhaps ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... White Hall with Sir W. Pen. So to Mr. Montagu, where his man, Mons. Eschar, makes a great com plaint against the English, that they did help the Spaniards against the French the other day; and that their Embassador do demand justice of our King, and that he do resolve to be gone for France the next week; which I, and all that I met with, are very glad of. Thence to Paternoster ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... know if there's going to be any painting done and I haven't thought of any summer clothes—and with those two great growing girls! I suppose if we're going to the seashore we ought to make some reservations, too——" and Mrs. Westley concluded her plaint with a sigh that came ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... vibrating to the shock, lingered, growing fainter, till it leapt up again into tumultuous ringing, when a new idea started a new rush of words and brought down the heavy hand again. At last the quarrelsome shouting ceased, and the thin plaint of disturbed glass died ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... no doubt already excessive, for an irresistible stupor once more took possession of him, his head dropped, his eyes closed, and he seemed to fall asleep again, continuing his plaint, as if in a dream, moaning ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... their way down through the darkness, and into the spheres of men, and that all heaven was in a tumult of expectation, whilst in yonder city men slept, as they always sleep unconscious when God is near. And then, when the feeble plaint broke from Mary's lips, I cannot go further, and the gentle beast turned aside into the rocks and whins, and called to his companions of the stable, and the meek-eyed ox looked calmly at the intruders, and there—there—dear God! to think of it all—In mundo ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... Goethe. Even "Wilhelm Meister" seemed to be only a symptom of decline, of a moral "going to the dogs". The "Menagerie of tame cattle," the worthlessness of the hero in this book, revolted Niebuhr, who finally bursts out in a plaint which Biterolf(8) might well have sung: "nothing so easily makes a painful impression as when a great mind despoils itself of its wings and strives for virtuosity in something greatly inferior, while it renounces more lofty aims." But the most indignant of ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... yacht's saloon below a violin sang its very soul out upon the summer night, weaving its plaint into the soft, adagio ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... 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, close the foe pursued, And oft the bitter conflict ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... not, neither uttered cry nor plaint, nor did its subtle air vibrate with the slightest tinkle—so soft was the fall of the retreating steps. They sounded for a time, and then were silent. And the evening stillness became pensive, stretched itself out in long shadows, ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... 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 ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt

... was wed 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 thou art—should have no will in such matters but that of those ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... the Mississippi the plaint heard by this traveler from fellow passengers who lived at Natchitoches, was that they could not get enough boats to bring the cotton down the Red. The descending steamers and barges on the great river itself were half of them heavy laden with cotton ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... 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 Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... inscription to the Samvat era." Thus, e.g., Cunningham (in his "Arch. Survey of India," iii. 31, 39) directly assigns an inscription dated Samvat 5 to the year "B.C. 52," &c., and winds up the statement with the following plaint: "For the present, therefore, unfortunately, where there is nothing else (but that unknown era) to guide us, it must generally remain an open question, which era we have to do with in a particular inscription, and what date consequently the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... reads 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... The plaint gave Wallie such a pang that he could not answer, but with a twig played a game of tick-tack-toe in the dust, while he thought bitterly that no one could blame Helene Spenceley for preferring Canby to a person ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... the rustling leaves and with the buzzing murmur of the myriads of living things inhabiting the wooded height, that it almost seemed like the music of nature; as a sound it resembled nothing more than a distant monotonous plaint. ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... ours who are bidden to that home that it is an enchanted isle, and that he only brushes it with his wings, gliding over, and turns the scythe away and holds the hour-glass steady. Even the children feel it: it is a half-jesting, half-serious plaint with them that the goats, the donkeys, and the ponies to which they successively transfer their affections can never secure immortal youth by a yearly sojourn in that happy kingdom. I offered once to rebuild our old bridge—to make it a drawbridge, even, and thus keep our treasure safe, but ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... 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, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... oft-times did Tyri make plaint to King Olaf, and cried bitterly thereover, because albeit had she such great possessions in Wendland yet had she none in this country, and that she should have such deemed she but seemly for a Queen; & thinking that by fair words would she get her own prayed she him ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson

... tranquillity of earth, sea, and sky, rather tended to reveal to us how quiet the world round us really was. Such sounds as I refer to were the peculiar, melancholy—yet, it seemed to me, cheerful—plaint of sea-birds floating on the glassy waters or sailing in the sky; also the subdued twittering of little birds among the bushes, the faint ripples on the beach, and the solemn boom of the surf upon the distant coral reef. We felt very glad in our hearts as we walked ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... a charming little poem, Nucis Elegia—the plaint of the Walnut tree—because beaten with sticks and pelted with stones, in return for the generosity with which it bestows ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... and more aboard the Jersey. When the wind sets from the south, on still mornings, I have heard a strange moaning—a low, steady, monotonous plaint, borne inland over the city. But, as you say, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... plaint of the land-holders, one not devoid of equity and, therefore, awakening a response in the minds of timid and sober business men, who were as yet unaffected by the danger. But some of these found their own personal interests at stake. So good had the tenure seemed, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... words and phrases that are merely poetical: such as, morn, eve, plaint, corse, weal, drear, amid, oft, steepy;—"what time the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... tinted by the colors of the sinking sun. There was a murmur of wind in the tops of the trees and a stirring of linen-clad girls near the temple entrance—voices droning from the near-by booths behind the shrubbery— one flute, like the plaint of Orpheus summoning Eurydice—a blossom- scented air and an ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy

... win the honour and glory of the 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 never ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... bed; I sat at the fireside sewing. The wind was wailing at the windows; it had wailed all day; but, as night deepened, it took a new tone—an accent keen, piercing, almost articulate to the ear; a plaint, piteous and disconsolate to the nerves, trilled in ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... personally, but was denied the civil governorship of Mexico, although military control was given him, and the title of Marques del Valle. But although he returned to Mexico, he was no longer in the dominant position of former years. Cortes returned to Spain in 1540 from Mexico, once more to lay the plaint of his unjust treatment before Carlos V., a result of his disputes with the first viceroy, Mendoza. He was treated with indifference and coldness; his life terminated in disappointment and regrets, and he died in ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... serf who shrieked. The Emperor uttered no plaint. A puff of white-gray smoke rose to heaven. And those who watched there no doubt ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... plaint drew forth unfeigned tears From many eyes, and pierced each worthy's heart; Each one condoleth with her that her hears, And of her grief would help her bear the smart: If Godfrey aid her not, not one but swears Some tigress gave him suck on roughest part Midst the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... undisturb'd, fair Saint! Pour out your praise or plaint Meekly and duly; I will not enter there, To sully your pure ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... sing. It was melody without words. Now and then she recalled a French verse or two, then it settled into some melancholy Indian plaint, or the evening song of a belated bird. She was not singing for ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas

... plaint and humor, that it always seemed to him that no one ever gave an abbreviation or an abstract of anything which he had written, without very nearly spoiling the original. This would be preeminently true of an abstract of this examination; abbreviation can be only mutilation. It ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... to Cape Chidley from Baffin Land. Even in Labrador there are many different dialects. The "Northerners," the people inhabiting the northwest arm of the peninsula, have many words that the Koksoagmiut do not understand. The intonation of the Ungava Eskimos, particularly the women, is like a plaint. At Okak they sing their words. Each settlement on the Atlantic coast has its own dialect. It is a difficult language to learn. Words are compounded until they reach a great and almost unpronounceable length.* Naturally the coming of the trader has introduced ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... The summons and plaint charged that this letter written to the father of the plaintiff by Lady Wilde was a libel reflecting on the character and chastity of Miss Travers, and as Lady Wilde was a married woman, her husband Sir William Wilde was ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... round in a circle went he and Christopher, the lad constantly trying to brighten and encourage, and the clerk as invariably bringing up with this same doleful plaint. He ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett



Words linked to "Plaint" :   Britain, wail, allegation, Great Britain, lament, lamentation, U.K.



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