"Doleful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Orsino! What brings thee here? Those words, my father's life, Like spells by witches breathed to raise the dead, Filled my heart's circle with a crowd of phantoms, Doleful and strange, which groan to be released. Thy news! thy news! Oh! speak them in one word, And ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... not, old man, such a doleful 'heigh-ho,' Dost think I possess not the will to say, 'No'? And shake not thy head, I could pitiless be Should supplicants come even ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... so far as she was able, she took good care I should not see them. While I was thus terribly afflicted, I beheld the figure of a man enter my chamber, twisted in his body into the form of a capital S. He raised a lamentable, doleful voice, like one who announces their last hour to men condemned to die upon the scaffold, and spoke these words: "O Benvenuto! your statue is spoiled, and there is no hope whatever of saving it." No ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... nearly to his waist, while the latter was as bare as a billiard-ball. Preparing himself for the effort with a wine-glass full of raw cognac, this gentleman leaned back in his chair, stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and plunged at once into a doleful ballad about one Mademoiselle Rosine, and a certain village aupres de la mer, which seemed to be in an indefinite number of verses, and amused no one but himself. In the midst of this ditty, just as ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... lever, and left to decay, as the ship-timber had done. Thus Mordecai was again seated in the king's gate, by means of the very system intended for his ruin. As soon as this state of things became perceptible, the South commenced active hostility with manufactures. Doleful pictures of Southern desolation and decay were given, and all attributed to manufactures. The North was said to be plundering the South, while she, poor dame, was enriching her neighbors, and growing poor upon ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... associates, Messrs. Thomas Wycroft and Jacob Harmon, were rather less attractive and less brilliant. Jacob Harmon was a thick wit socially, but no fool financially. He was big and rather doleful to look upon, with sandy brown hair and brown eyes, but fairly intelligent, and absolutely willing to approve anything which was not too broad in its crookedness and which would afford him sufficient protection to keep him out of the clutches ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... that, at certain seasons, the ostentatious favours she would squander upon other young masculine boarders in my presence did reduce me to the doleful dump of despair, so that even the birds and beasts of forest shed tears at my misery, and frequently at meal-times I have sought to move her to compassion by neighing like horse, or by the incessant rolling of my visual organs; ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... never have parted from the inn if it had not been for the following, apparently insignificant, circumstance: for two mornings in succession his dog, sitting before the windows, had kept up a prolonged and doleful howl. He went out into the road the second time, looked attentively at the howling dog, shook his head, went up to town and the same day agreed on the price with a man who had been for a long time anxious to purchase it. A week later ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Britomart decided not to open it, but to take up her vigil fully armed beside the altar. As the clock struck midnight, the mysterious door flew open, and through its portals came a strange procession of beasts and queer mortals, leading the doleful Amoret, who had a dagger thrust into her heart and stumbled along in mortal pain. Although Britomart would fain have gone to Amoret's rescue, she was rooted to the soil by a spell too powerful to break, and, therefore, remained inactive ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... watched her closely until now; 'is your brother himself; no doubt, just come down. As he seems to be loitering in this direction, it may be as well, perhaps, to walk towards him, and throw ourselves in his way. He has been very silent and doleful of late. Perhaps, his brotherly conscience is touched - if there are such things as consciences. Though, upon my honour, I hear of them much too often ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... what I'll end by re-writing it. It is not the technicalities that shocked you, it was my bad art. It is very strange that X. should be so good a chapter and IX. and XI. so uncompromisingly bad. It looks as if XI. also would have to be re-formed. If X. had not cheered me up, I should be in doleful dumps, but X. is alive anyway, and ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hardly finished his doleful story, when there was a pattering of heavy feet, a noise of men shouting and laughing outside, and a voice, above all, calling for the monk by name, which made that good man crouch behind the curtain of Lady Godiva's ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... given. "I too was once in love," he says of himself in the former. It could not well have been in Ajaccio, and it must have been the memories of the old Valence, of a pleasant existence now ended, which called forth the doleful confession. It was the future Napoleon who was presaged in the antithesis. "I go further than the denial of its existence; I believe it hurtful to society, to the individual welfare of men." The other trenchant document demolishes the cherished hypothesis of Rousseau as to man in a state of nature. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... to start out on the links; the guests, the gallery, and the servants gathered to see the finish of the impromptu race, murmurs arising as it was seen how close it was likely to be. And close it was, for when the two machines, with doleful whinings of brakes, came to a stop in front of the house, the front wheels were in such perfect alignment that there was ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... was the likeness which they spoke of. By the roadside there chanced to be an old beggar-woman and two little beggar-children, stragglers from some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, held out their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteously beseeching charity. A yellow claw—the very same that had clawed together so much wealth—poked itself out of the coach-window, and dropt some copper coins upon the ground; so that, though the great man's name seems to have been Gathergold, he might just as suitably have ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... killed Alexander Roney, Mrs. Dougherty, Mrs. Hornbeck and her children, Mrs. Buffington and her children, and many others; and made prisoners, Mrs. Roney and her son, and Daniel Dougherty. Jonathan Buffington and Benjamin Hornbeck succeeded in making their escape and carried the doleful tidings to Friend's and Wilson's forts. Col. Wilson immediately raised a company of men and proceeding to Leading creek, found the settlement without inhabitants, and the houses nearly all burned. He then pursued after the savages, but not coming up with them as soon as was expected, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... ceremony over, one of the boys put wood on the fire, and Snap took a jews'-harp out of his pocket and began to extract doleful discords from it, for which George kicked at him in disgust, finally causing him to leave the circle and repair to the cedars, where he twanged ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... that river flows under the Breiddon hills from the county of Montgomery into that of Salop. It is frequently inundated in winter, and, consequently, very productive in summer. They say that if a Melverley man is asked in winter where he belongs, the doleful and downcast reply is, "Melverley, God help me;" but asked the same question in summer, he answers quite jauntily, "Melverley, and what do you think?" A friend informs me that the same story appertains to Pershore in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... chamber sitteth lonely, And weepeth heavy, bitter tears; To whom in doleful colours, only Of want and ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... you I am the victim of hopeless ennui, am driven to the verge of desperation; for Mr. Allston will probably not return until to- morrow, and it is raining so hard that I can not wander out of doors. Here I am shut up in this dreary house, which reminds me of the descriptions of that doleful retreat for sinners in Normandy, where the inmates pray eleven hours a day, dig their own graves every evening, and if they chance to meet one another, salute each other with 'Memento mori!' Ugh! if there remains one latent spark of chivalry in your soul, I beseech you be merciful! Do ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... to whistle softly to himself. Phil was familiar with this trick of her father's. She knew the processes of his mind and the range of his memories well enough to supply the conclusion of such sentences as the one that had resolved itself into a doleful whistle. As he was an excellent amateur musician, the lugubrious tone of his whistling was the subject of ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... time may amuse and edify themselves with my copy of John Sebastian Bach's Variations for the Piano-forte, published by Nageli in Zurich, and who find my marks at the end of the thirtieth variation, and, led on by the great Latin Verte, (I will write it down the moment I get through this doleful statement of grievances,) turn over the leaf ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the wildest sort of hubbub and disorder at the Mountain Farm all night. Mrs. Mountain had wept and wrung her hands, and rocking herself to and fro, had poured forth doleful prophecy. Samson, who had begun with bluster, had fallen into anxiety, and had himself traced the course of the brook for a full mile by lanthorn-light. The farm hands had been sent abroad, and had tracked every road ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... for you know downstairs us could eat Grandmamma's treat. I could—I could snap it up in a minute, and the tea too, and yet I can't eat any more bread and milk!" and she gazed at the bowl with a puzzled as well as doleful expression. "I'm afraid—yes, I'm afraid, Duke, that us is dainty like Master Frederick and Miss Lucy in 'Amusing Tales.' And Nurse says it is so very naughty to be dainty when so many poor children would fink our bread and milk such a ...
— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth
... knee the boy did stand, within the dais so fair, The golden shears were in her hand, to clip his curled hair; And ever as she clipped the curls, such doleful words she spake, That tears ran from Gayferos' eyes, for his sad ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... the praises of Athelstane in a doleful panegyric; another, in a Saxon genealogical poem, rehearsed the uncouth and harsh names of his noble ancestry. Jesters and jugglers were not awanting, nor was the occasion of the assembly supposed to render the exercise of their profession indecorous or improper. Indeed the ideas ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... gloomy. There were some dozen others who shared our captivity. Here we had rather a doleful time. We were supplied with food three times a day; but the supply was scanty, and we had meat but once in two days. We gathered that it was intended to send us to Richmond; but from day to day there was a delay in doing so. We decided that our chance ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... on these obscure abodes; Disbark the sheep, an offering to the gods; And, hellward bending, o'er the beach descry The doleful passage to the infernal sky. The victims, vow'd to each Tartarian power, Eurylochus ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... said in my last letter, we started out for Chedcombe, not abreast, as we had been before, but strung along the road, and me and Mr. Poplington pretty doleful, being disappointed and not wanting to talk. But as for Jone, he seemed livelier than ever, and whistled a lot of tunes he didn't know. I think it always makes him lively to get rid of seeing sights. The sun was shining brightly, and there was no reason to expect rain for two or ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... the midst of the disturbance caused by so rude a call the first thought in the mind of all was that the town was on fire, or that the army of some enemy had mysteriously landed under cover of night and could put the citizens to the edge of the sword. But the doleful, intermittent sounds of all these fills, which disturbed the silence at regular and distant intervals, were an invitation to the faithful to pray for a passing soul, and it was soon evident that no disaster threatened the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... doleful at being one step above John in this the beginning of their career. But she dared not offer to lend to him, he had been so very insistent upon paying her back her penny, and paying for his own breakfast ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... poor, derided of strangers, deserted by her sons, roped in as a prize-ring where selfish men struggle ignobly for sordid gains The children of the land fled from it sick with despair. Its deserted houses were full of all doleful things. Cormorants and the daughters of the owl lodged in the ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... admirable humour of Eunuch Kafur, whose "half lie" is known throughout the East. Here also the lover's agonies are piled upon him for the purpose of unpiling at last: the Oriental tale-teller knows by experience that, as a rule, doleful endings ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... sister's school besides good manners, which now seem to me the best part of my education, I learned to draw and to sing; and in which I delighted most, it were hard to say. Never before had I heard any music, except that of the doleful and droning church choir. We sang simple songs about nature, conduct, duties to the Heavenly Father, to parents and teacher. Their notes lingered in my ears for a great many years, and I can still hum some ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... from their places; and Celsus tells us of a priest whose soul would be ravished into such an ecstasy that the body would, for a long time, remain without sense or respiration. St. Augustine makes mention of another, who, upon the hearing of any lamentable or doleful cries, would presently fall into a swoon, and be so far out of himself, that it was in vain to call, bawl in his ears, pinch or burn him, till he voluntarily came to himself; and then he would say, that he had heard voices as it were afar off, and did ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... this all day, and breathe an atmosphere so thick with dust that even the bits of blue sky framed in by the open windows in the summer time were like strips of some dark thunder-cloud,—it was this, this dull monotony of dizzy sight and doleful sound and changeless post of duty, that made their task ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... morning was over. The Pit knew it. Grossmann, obstinate, hypnotized as it were by one idea, still stood in his accustomed place on the upper edge of the Pit, and from time to time, with the same despairing gesture, emitted his doleful outcry of "'Sell twenty-five May ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... thy lover's corse attend; With eyes averted light the solemn pyre, Till all around the doleful flames ascend, Then, slowly sinking, by ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... illuminated shop window. The drug store on the opposite corner showed a bright interior, where two small boys devoured ice cream sodas with solemn rapture. Somewhere up a side street a choir was practising a hymn, making a noise infinitely doleful. ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... things, to amuse her father and brothers as well as she could, and to try to persuade her sisters to join her in dancing and singing. But they would do nothing of the sort, and because she was not as doleful as themselves they declared that this miserable life was all she was fit for. But she was really far prettier and cleverer than they were; indeed, she was so lovely that she was always called Beauty. After two years, when they were all beginning to get used to their new life, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... thicker and faster, As black just as pitch was the sky, When truly a doleful disaster Befel three poor sailors and I. Ben Buntline, Sam Shroud, and Dick Handsail, By a blast that came furious and hard, Just while we were furling the mainsail, Were every soul swept from the yard. But sailors were born for all weathers, Great guns ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... exploded, throwing down the pile of wood, and dashing the savage several paces distant violently on the ground, and blackening and scorching his face and hair in a terrible manner. The other Indians instantly prostrated themselves on their faces, and uttered the most doleful lamentations. Thus they remained a few minutes, evidently impressed with the belief that the Great Spirit had interfered to prevent the destruction of the prisoners. Hastily gathering up their arms, they fled precipitately in the direction of their distant home, and their yells ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... cedars, Chant yet your doleful monotone, ye winds; Indue again your grey funereal pall, Ye solemn junipers; for here he fell, And ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... umbrella, and move off Strandward beneath it. She continued to look for a long time, in an aimless, ruminating way, at the dismal prospect revealed by the window and the glass of the door. The premature night was closing in miserably, with increasing rain, and a doleful whistle of rising wind round the corner. At last she shut up the unconsidered cash-book, lighted another gas-jet, and striding to the door, rapped sharply on ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... defect; he paid little attention to dust, provided that things were in their wonted order. Mrs. Hopper was not a resident domestic; she came at stated hours. Obviously a widow, she had a poor, loose-hung, trailing little body, which no nourishment could plump or fortify. Her visage was habitually doleful, but contracted itself at moments into a grin of quaint drollery, which betrayed her for something of ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... peace-victims, but among the holocausts and victims for sin, which man was obliged to offer at times. Moreover these birds, on account of their lofty flight, were befitting the perfection of the holocausts: and were suitable for sin-offerings because their song is doleful. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... the sizzling sixties we catch a glimpse of Mark Twain and his buddy, Steve Gillis, pausing in doorways to sing "The Doleful Ballad of the Neglected Lover," an old piece of uncollected erotica. One morning, when a dog began to howl, Steve awoke "to find his room-mate standing in the door that opened out into a back garden, holding a big revolver, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "it would hurt the little mouses. I didn't say a 'tick—I said a piece of 'ting. I fink you'se welly unkind, Bee, to hurt the poor little mouses," and he grew so very doleful about it that Bee was quite glad when Martha called ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... morning was a rather doleful meal. Davy, for the first time in his life probably, could not eat, but blubbered shamelessly over his porridge. Nobody else seemed to have much appetite, save Dora, who tucked away her rations comfortably. Dora, like the immortal and most prudent Charlotte, who "went ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for Kenneth to enlarge on the merits of the Latimers, Jake grew restless. He shifted his weight from one cowhide booted leg to the other, and finally he heaved a doleful sigh. Then he drew ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... not as frisky as usual the balance of that afternoon, being content to cuddle down, and rest. Phil saw a serious look on the usually merry countenance of his chum. He knew from this that Larry had really suffered very much while facing such a doleful end. Nor did he blame ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... time, in light and dark, the Indians filled the air with dismal chant and doleful incantations to the Great Spirit, and the tum! tum! tum! tum! of tomtoms, a specific feature of their wild prayer ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... look—I was festooned a little out o' the ordinary—an' then he begins. First he'd sing a chant about how tickled he was to meet up with me, an' then he'd sermonize most doleful about how untasteful it was to commit such a havoc as that in a hotel lobby, especially with a dog what had been trained to have quiet an' refined manners. I finally refused to hold my safety valve down any longer; an' I grabbed him under the arms an' waltzed him ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... sat by the open window of her room that evening her depression had become doleful to ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... greatness and glory filled her heart, and the additional respect that was universally paid her, contributed not a little to increase them. The queen was given over by her physicians: the few Portuguese women that had not been sent back to their own country filled the court with doleful cries; and the good nature of the king was much affected with the situation in which he saw a princess, whom, though he did not love her, yet he greatly esteemed. She loved him tenderly, and thinking that it was the last ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... rowed steadily on till he was skirting round the edge of the perpendicular mass of rock about whose base the waves foamed and fretted, as if weary with their efforts at trying to wash it down. The birds squealed and hissed, and now and then one uttered a doleful wail as it swept here and there, showing its pearly grey breast and the delicate white feathers ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... never forgot or forgave the terrors of the New England Sabbath, its strict observance, its bad singing, doleful prayers and interminable sermons, the impress of those all-day sessions in church and Sunday-school was never eradicated from his life and writings. Nothing else influenced his work or affected his style as much as the morals and the literature ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the foul, smoke-reeking air, and looked doubtfully at Blake. He held up his hand. Across the hush that fell upon the room quavered a doleful wail from the Irish foreman: "Leave av hivin, Misther Griffith, can't ye broibe th' weather bur-r-reau? Me Schlovaks an' th' Eyetalians'll be afther a-knifin' wan another, give 'em wan ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... of September, a Frenchwoman, at the risk of being torn in pieces by the furious Muscovites, ventured to leave her hiding-place. She wandered a long time through extensive quarters, the solitude of which astonished her, when a distant and doleful sound thrilled her with terror. It was like the funeral dirge of this vast city; fixed in motionless suspense, she beheld an immense multitude of persons of both sexes in deep affliction, carrying their effects and their sacred images, and leading their children ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... unexpected thing happened. The door of the very building into which Professor Scotch had been carried was flung wide open, allowing a broad bar of light to shine out. Then, out of this lighted doorway streamed a dozen men, and a bell began to clang in a doleful manner. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... tired, faint, and low-spirited, but the doleful aspect of his henchman was so comic that he burst ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... could ask a reason—for it was not her fashion to obey at word of command—the air was filled with the doleful hum of a gray swarm of mosquitoes, ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... man, whose periwig was all Awry, and who looked, on the whole, a most doleful figure,—"yes, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... to a small cellar, he descended. The cellar was filled with debris, two small window casements opening to the exterior air were broken and decayed to the last degree of dilapidation, and the icy wind whistled through the rubbish of the doleful spot. He ran back to the laboratory, where Peters was hunting about, hoping to find Masusaelili alive, yet fearing to find his emaciated form lying lifeless amid the mass of chemical and mechanical appliances which littered the room. Several of the large vase-like ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... fanaticism. He was one of the framers of the Holy Alliance, which grew out of the thorough fright which he and his friend the Czar felt during the saddest days of 1813. Alexander told a Prussian clergyman, named Egbert, in 1818, that, during one of their flights before Napoleon,—probably on that doleful day when they had to retreat from Dresden, amid wind and rain, and before the French reverse at Kulm had put a good face on the affairs of the Alliance,—Frederick William III. said to him: "Things cannot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... his body wasted into the slender shape of a bird, and was covered with bright blue feathers; his eyes became round and beady; his nose an ivory beak; and his crown was a white plume on the top of his head. He began to speak in a singing voice, and then uttering a doleful cry, fled away as far as possible from ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... waited to see if she had aught further to say. But the woman remained standing where she was, slightly aloof and with her arms folded. Her sleepy eyes were watching the last dying gleam of daylight away in the west. Suddenly, out upon the still air, came a doleful cry. It was long-drawn-out and mournful, but it travelled as mountain cries will travel. It came waving upon the air with a certain rise and fall in it like the rippling of water. It rose up, up, and then lingeringly died out. The men listened, and looked in the direction ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... captain of the "Alaska" said to himself, as he walked the deck of his vessel, after giving orders to steer to the westward. And to these doleful thoughts was added a feeling of remorse that he had permitted his friends to share the dangers and fatigue of his useless expedition. It was doubly useless, since Tudor Brown had found Nordenskiold before the "Alaska," and also preceded them to the Island of Ljakow. They must then return ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... to begin; but at the same moment Hell shrieked with rage, and the sun and stars were extinguished. The gloomy night of chaos enveloped the world, plaintive sounds issued from mountains, rocks, and caverns,—Nature wept, and a doleful voice was heard exclaiming in the air, 'The human race is ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the heiau were those of the priests, and the "sacred house" of the king, in which he resided during the seasons of strict Tabu. A doleful place this heiau is, haunted not only by the memories of almost unimaginable terrors, but by the sore thought that generations of Hawaiians lived and died in the unutterable darkness of this ignorant worship, passing in long procession from these grim rites into the presence ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Scout! Always on duty!" he called after her. (The wind was keen and drew water to his eyes again, and again he brushed it away.) "Always on duty," he went on repeating, with a doleful effort ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... glance of the eye, he took in the whole room. He made the round of the tables, and abruptly again found himself face to face with the three women. He must have had a doleful and queer expression of countenance, for all three together ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... is yon House that holds the parish poor, Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door; There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play, And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;— There children dwell who know no parents' care; Parents who know no children's love dwell there! Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed; Dejected widows, with unheeded tears, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... incumbent in person. Some ecclesiastical ladies, young and middle-aged, who, rightly or wrongly, believe their mission is music, and to whom the curate is very probably an attraction, aid his efforts. Serious young men read, and others of a more mundane turn of mind sing doleful "comic" songs, culled from the more presentable of the music-hall repertoire. In many cases skilled amateurs or professionals lend their valuable assistance; and it is not too much to say that many a ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... of amusement in observing the various personages that daily passed and repassed beneath my window. The character which most of all arrested my attention was a poor blind fiddler, whom I first saw chanting a doleful ballad at the door of a small tavern near the gate of the village. He wore a brown coat, out at elbows, the fragment of a velvet waistcoat, and a pair of tight nankeens, so short as hardly to reach below his calves. A ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... spot in which to sink the steel. There were no softer spots. And the pick helve grew so intensely cold! Jim dropped it to the ground, and with hands thrust into his armpits, for the warmth afforded, he hunched himself dismally and scanned the prospect with doleful eyes. Why couldn't the hill break open, anyhow, and show whether anything worth the having were contained in its ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... some cross-saddles they made for me at Thompson's. Do be amiable and help us eat our salad. What a ghastly place town is in September! It's bad enough in the country this year; all the men wear long faces and mutter dreadful prophecies. Can you tell me, Duane, what all this doleful talk is about?" ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... moved along after the singing of a doleful hymn, the sobbing and wailing increased. The preacher eulogized the departed, praising his many good deeds while on earth, and urged his hearers on to added hysteria with, "Sing Brother Tom's favorite hymn, Oh, ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... was being enacted under the shade-tree, another amusement, in connection with the fiesta of San Marcos, was in progress in front of the church. The musicians with the long horns made doleful music; a dozen gayly-costumed dancers took part. They wore dark trousers slitted up the sides; bright kerchiefs, with the point hanging down in front, were tied about the waists; crowns of plumes were on the heads; red vests and kerchiefs, crossed at the neck, completed ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... in Hapsburg Castle was dull; in times of war it was doleful. War is always grievous, but my good mistress, the Duchess of Styria, was ever in such painful dread lest evil should befall her only child, Maximilian, that the pains of war-time were rendered doubly keen to ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... maiden—prithee, tell me true (Hey, but I'm doleful, willow, willow waly!) Have you e'er a lover a-dangling after you? Hey, willow waly O! I fain would discover If you have a lover? ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... fault directly are so in this way, that they are sent as sharp and wholesome lessons to us; and if we were what we ought to be, we should not want those lessons. Do not fancy that that is a sad and doleful thought to begin the new year with. God forbid! It would be doleful and sad indeed if any one of us, in spite of all his right-doing, might be plunged into any hopeless misery, through the fault of other ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... boy of a naturally vivacious disposition the part of a blighted being presented difficulties. I had an excellent appetite, I liked society, I liked out-of-door sports, I was fond of handsome clothes. Now all these things were incompatible with the doleful character I was to assume, and I proceeded to cast them from me. I neglected my hair. I avoided my playmates. I frowned abstractedly. I didn't eat as much as was good for me. I took lonely walks. I brooded in ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... dark; and though I have lain Awake, as I guess, an hour or twain, I have not once open'd the lids of my eyes, But I lie in the dark, as a blind man lies. O Rain! that I lie listening to, You're but a doleful sound at best: I owe you little thanks, 'tis true, For breaking thus my needful rest! Yet if, as soon as it is light, O Rain! you will but take your flight, I'll neither rail, nor malice keep, Though sick and sore for ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... twice a week in the Capital grounds, and Senators, Cyprians, Ethiops, and children rallied to enjoy; a theatre or two played time-honored dramas with Thespian companies; a couple of scholars lectured in the sombre Smithsonian Institution; an intrigue and a duel filled some most doleful hiatus; and a clerk absconded with half a million, or an Indian agent robbed the red men and fell back to the protection of his "party." A very dismal, a very dirty, and a very Democratic settlement was the American Capital, till ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... accountants and others, making so free with the great mysteries, the Books; or now and then to go on tiptoe into Mr Dombey's empty room, and stir the fire; or to take an airing at the door, and have a little more doleful chat with any straggler whom he knew; or to propitiate, with various small attentions, the head accountant: from whom Mr Perch had expectations of a messengership in a Fire Office, when the affairs of the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... him a prisoner in his own room. Surely Thurston, instead of himself, had played the detective. While in this despondent mood one of his brother officers made his appearance and was greeted with a decidedly doleful "Good morning, Nick." ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... the second son had come home again with his doleful tale, Boots sat and thought and thought about what had happened. After a while, however, he rose up and shook the ashes from his clothes and said that now it was his turn to have a try at winning the Princess for ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... delightful stories, so great a gift of manner, so immense a personal charm—all to disappear into the pit! And for what? To put into his place a ruffian without redeeming qualities. Was it worth while to put down Lucifer only to enthrone Beelzebub? I could only check this doleful strain of reflection by sternly recalling myself to the real question—the state of the fortunes of me, John Martin. And to me the revolution was necessary. I might get the money; at least I should gain time. And I might satisfy ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... instance the predictions of the doleful lady seemed likely to be verified; for David Means continued to "fail up." Always a slight man, he was now mere skin and bone, and his cheerful smile grew pathetic to see. He was a distant cousin of Anne Peace's, and had something of her ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... unfortunate landlady, placed her on the sofa, and Dartmore administered a plentiful potation of the Curacoa punch. By slow degrees she revived, gave three most doleful suspirations, and then, starting up, gazed wildly around her. Half of us were still laughing—my unfortunate self among the number; this the enraged landlady no sooner perceived than she imagined herself the victim of some preconcerted villainy. Her lips trembled with passion—she uttered ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to relieve pressure on limbs only too often covered with festering and verminous sores. Still, the noise of a file might be detected as an unusual sound; but Hernando and Johnnie took the ring tightly in the palm of the hand, and filed so carefully that Jeffreys, by droning a doleful tune, was able to cover all the ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... patience enough in life," said Lady Roehampton; "years of patience, the most doleful, the most dreary, the most dark and tragical. And I bore it all, and I bore it well, because I thought of you, and had confidence in you, and confidence in your star; and because, like an idiot, I had schooled myself to ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... Paganel, in a doleful voice. "Monsieur Deville was on board the government corvette, La Decidee, when she touched at the Cape Verde Islands, and he explored the most interesting of the group, and went to the top of the volcano in Isle Fogo. What is left for me to do ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... ranged themselves in two divisions, one at the head, and the other at the feet of the corpse. The bards and croteries had before prepared the funeral Caoinan. The chief bard of the head chorus began by singing the first stanza, in a low, doleful tone, which was softly accompanied by the harp: at the conclusion, the foot semichorus began the lamentation, or Ullaloo, from the final note of the preceding stanza, in which they were answered by the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... uttered forth her sighings after liberty, the door, at a sign, was flung wide open, and she swam into the Prince's sight, bright-eyed, and with her colour somewhat freshened by the exercise of singing. It was a great dramatic entrance, and to the somewhat doleful prisoner within ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... made of a city an heap, of a defenced city a ruin ...Their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there,'" he quoted softly; adding after a pause, "Mother had a great weakness for old Isaiah. She used to say he and the minor prophets knew all about Rajasthan. The owls of Amber are blue pigeons. But ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... was as suddenly chased away by his hearing the voice of Jane crooning over the words of some doleful old West Country ballad, not of a cheering nature certainly, but sufficient to prove that someone ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... rang. Aroused from his doleful reverie by the sound, Daniel jumped from his chair and, going to the hall, shouted for Azuba. Then he remembered that Azuba was not on the premises and answered the ring himself. He had forgotten to push the button of the porch light and, peering out into the dark, he could see only that ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... therefore, no firmer in their unbelief than in their faith. They live in an ebbing and flowing tide, which unceasingly carries them from one to the other. [Footnote: Montesq., i. 251. Letter lxxv.] Making a large allowance for satire, we have yet an interesting and doleful picture of a small but important part of the French nation. And it is noticeable that the Persian Letters precede by thirteen years Voltaire's "Philosophical," or "English ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... has an honorable place in Roman literature. To this school belongs Ovid, born 43 B.C., died 18 A.D., whose "Tristia," a doleful description of the evils of exile, were much admired by the Romans. His most famous work was his "Metamorphoses," mythologic legends involving transformations,—a most poetical and imaginative production. He, with that self-conscious genius common to poets, declares ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... good suggestion for worriers? Write down everything which you think is going to turn out badly, and then put the list aside. You will be surprised to see what a small percentage of the doleful things ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... he mounted, And upon the seat he sat him, And with gloomy thoughts he hastened, With a heart all sad and doleful, Homeward to his dearest mother, Unto ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous |
