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Knell   Listen
verb
Knell  v. t.  To summon, as by a knell. "Each matin bell, the baron saith, Knells us back to a world of death."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books



... is a conflict between good and evil motives struggling like the mediaeval angels for the soul of the hero. The better power wins triumphantly. The second movement, however, shows doubt and despair, remorse and deep spiritual depression. The climax of this feeling is a death-knell, which, smitten softly, gives an indescribably dismal effect, and thrills without starting. Angelus bells in pedal-point continue through a period of hope and prayer; but remorse again takes sway. The ability to obtain this fine solemnity, and follow it with ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... That hammer stroke was the first act of the period properly called the "Renaissance." It was the knell of the architecture of Venice,—and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... words sounded loud and imperious, and he had got so far when an impatient voice was heard from the room where Frank was lying, calling first one and then another, and a cold chill ran through all present, for the voice sounded as it were the knell of all their hopes. Even the doctor was silenced for the moment, but recalling directly that only the Sheikh could understand his words, he called angrily in a voice of thunder, looking hard at the ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... sitting at her desk, saw through gathering tears the line of First Readers wind around the room and file out the door, the sound of their departing footsteps along the bare corridors and down the echoing stairway coming back like a knell to her sinking heart. Then class after class from above marched past the door and on its clattering way, while voices from outside, shrill with the joy of the release, came up through the open windows in talk, in laughter, together with the patter ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... knell of falling steam, The coal supply is virtually done, And at this price, indeed it does not seem As though we ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley

... them enough is that we speak of them too seldom. We turn away conversation from that subject as though it were a painful one; we let the dead bury their dead, their memory die out in us with the sound of the funeral knell, seeming to forget that a friendship which can end even with death can never have been a true one. Holy Scripture itself tells us that true charity, that is, divine and supernatural love, is stronger than death! It seems to me that as a burning coal not ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... he deluding himself? Did his over-excited imagination make him hear a death knell pealing for his honour and his hopes, which must be borne to their grave? Yet no! All the citizens and peasants, men and women, great and small, who thronged the salt market, which he had just entered, raised their heads to listen with him; for from every steeple at once rang the mournful death knell ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... own conscious single-heartedness. I found I was studying him irresistibly, as one of the sweet problems of childhood that the world is blessed with in rare places; and the news of his death (I was absent from Washington, on a visit to my own children, at the time) came to me like a knell heard ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... powerful antagonist to these societies, who worked by means of the press, was Burke, who, toward the end of this year, published his great work on the subject, entitled "Reflections on the Revolution, &c." a work which sounded the knell of the old Whig confederacy. Some of this party yielded at once to the force of his arguments, while others retreated as they saw the development of the principles against which they were directed. In fact, the result of this work was to make the old ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... custom and law began That still at dawn the sacristan, Who duly pulls the heavy bell, Five and forty beads must tell Between each stroke—a warning knell, Which not a soul can choose but hear From Bratha Head to Wyndermere. Saith Bracy the bard, So let it knell! And let the drowsy sacristan Still count as slowly as he can! There is no lack of such, I ween, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... the duties well, Of ostler, boots, and waiter at the 'Bell.' But Death stepp'd in, and order'd Peter Staggs To feed his worms, and leave the farmers' nags. The church clock struck one—alas! 'twas Peter's knell, Who sigh'd, 'I'm ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... and silence now Is brooding, like a gentle spirit o'er The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds The bell's deep tones are swelling; 'tis the knell Of the departed year. No funeral train Is sweeping past; yet, on the stream and wood, With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred, As by a mourner's sigh; and, on yon ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various

... not in his ears. The knell was at his heart. No work of man had ever voice like that which sounded there, and warned him that it cried unceasingly to Heaven. Who could hear that hell, and not know what it said! There was murder in its every note—cruel, relentless, savage murder—the murder of a confiding man, by ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... of decoy as practised in England of any of the arts employed by the people of a foreign country for the capture of wildfowl. The method alluded to is termed "toling." I am unable to trace the origin of the term, unless it simply implies a death knell, for such it assuredly assumes to those birds which approach within range of the secreted sportsman. This singular proceeding is said to have been first introduced upwards of fifty years ago near ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... her. There was a tone in her voice that he had hungered for all his life; that he had never heard but in his imaginings and in his dreams; that he had heard sounding in the ears of another and sounding at the same time the death-knell of the one hope that until now had made effort worth while. All evening she had played about his spirit as a wistful, changeful light will play over the fields when the moon is bright and clouds run swiftly. She turned on him ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... women, boys, and men, All seeking railway shares and scrip; and when The market rose, how many a lad could tell, With joyous glance, and eyes that spake again, 'Twas e'en more lucrative than marrying well;— When, hark! that warning voice strikes like a rising knell. ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... depict country life. With a penetrative pathos, which puts him in the same rank with the masters of the sentiment of pity in literature, with Meinhold and Victor Hugo, he collects all the traces of vivid excitement which were to be found in that pastoral world—the girl who rung her father's knell; the unborn infant feeling about its mother's heart; the instinctive touches of children; the sorrows of the wild creatures, even—their home-sickness, their strange yearnings; the tales of passionate regret that hang [53] by a ruined farm-building, a heap of stones, a deserted sheepfold; that gay, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... The frying-pan has awful sins to answer for. What untold horrors of dyspepsia have arisen from its smoky depths, like the ghosts from witches' caldrons! The fizzle of frying meat is as a warning knell on many an ear, saying, "Touch not, taste not, if you would not ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... want to say good-bye!" cried the child, giving her reason with a passionate outbreak of sorrow that shook her from head to foot. "Take me with you, Ovid, take me with you!" He did his best to console her, under adverse circumstances. Mrs. Gallilee's warning voice sounded like a knell—"Time! time!" Zo's shrill treble rang out louder still. Zo was determined to write to Ovid, if she was not allowed to go with him. "Pa's going to write to you—why shouldn't I?" she screamed through her tears. "Dear Zoe, you are too young," Maria remarked. "Damned nonsense!" sobbed Mr. Gallilee; ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... I tell, by doleful knell, Lightning and thunder, I break asunder, On Sabbath all, to church I call, The sleepy head, I raise from bed, The winds so fierce, I do disperse, Men's cruel rage, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various

... me through the churchyard, and methought There entering, as I let the iron gate Swing to behind me, that the change was good— The unquiet living, for the quiet dead. And at that moment, from the old church tower A knell resounded—"Man to his long home" Drew near. "The mourners went about the streets;" And there, few paces onward to the right, Close by the pathway, was an open grave, Not of the humbler sort, shaped newly out, Narrow and deep in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... of a race renowned of old, Whose war-cry oft has waked the battle-swell, Since first distinguished in the onset bold, Wild sounding when the Roman rampart fell! By Wallace' side it rung the Southron's knell, Alderne, Kilsythe, and Tibber owned its fame, Tummell's rude pass can of its terrors tell, But ne'er from prouder field arose the name Than when wild Ronda learned the ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... just at day break, we found where Rocket fell, Down in a washout twenty feet below; And beneath the horse, mashed to a pulp,—his spur had rung the knell,— Was our little Texas stray, ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various

... silence stole o'er those youthful brows of mirth, They knew she spoke of the Bridegroom King—the Lord of Heaven and earth; And e'er fleet time of another year had sounded the passing knell, The maiden Clare and her Bridegroom fair ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... every breeze, and cause it to float in the atmosphere of every State in this Union, until your very name becomes a mockery and a by-word! And I call upon the people of Kentucky and Missouri to ring the loud knell of your infamy, from steep to steep, and from valley to valley, until their swelling sounds are heard in startling echoes, mingling with the rush of the criminal's torrent, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... Three! And the drums are his knell. He is heavy, his feet beat the floor As I drag him about in the swell Of the waltz. With a menacing roar, The trumpets crash in through the door. One! Two! Three! clangs ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... aloud proclaim He knows no Heaven but this—no God but Fame. Lord, in refusing to acknowledge Thee, Vain man denies his own reality; But tho' the boon of life he may receive From God, and still affect to disbelieve, What are his views at death's resounding knell? Just Heaven! Sure, man ne'er died an infidel. Stretched on the agonizing couch of pain, All human aid inefficacious, vain, Where shall his tortured spirit rest? Ah, where? The past, all gloom! the future, all despair! 'Tis then, O Lord, the skeptic ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney

... force of a hurricane. The last of the withered leaves of the trees in the drive had fallen and the bare branches were beating together like bundles of rods. The sea was louder than ever, and the bell on St. Mary's Rock, a mile away from the shore, was tolling like a knell under the surging of the waves. Sometimes the clashing of the rain against the window-panes was like the wash of billows over the port-holes of a ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... help her! Her grief will be wild When she hears the mad Hessians have murdered her child; But tell her 'twill be one sweet chime in my knell, That the flag of the South now ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... passing around them as the best medicine, and acted accordingly. They wandered day and night from one tavern to another, and feasted without moderation or bounds. In this way they endeavored to avoid all contact with the sick, and abandoned their houses and property to chance, like men whose death-knell had already tolled. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... came, the second only after death. The neighbouring thanes whom the troubled times did not detain at home, the churls of the estate, the thralls, crowded the precincts of the minster, as the solemn bell tolled the deep funeral knell. At length the monks poured into the church, while the solemn "Domino refugium" arose from their lips—the same grand words which for these thousand years past have told of the eternity of God and the destiny of the creature; speaking as deeply to the heart then as in ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... to mar such innocent pleasures! Shame on them! The funeral knell that tolled over your father's grave must still be ringing in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... person. Nay, he has often leaped up from his lap-board, and, in the strong spirit of exultation, thrust out his leg in attestation of his assertion, slapping it, moreover, with a loud laugh of triumph, that sounded like a knell to the happiness of his emaciated acquaintance. The schoolmaster's philosophy, however, unlike his flesh, never departed from him; his usual observation was, "Neal, we are both receding from the same point; ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... the other, hitherto so silent, sounded at the same time a word that fell upon the ear like a knell of doom: ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison

... in a neighboring steeple was striking the ninth hour, and the old man paused in his muttering and sat counting the strokes as the iron tongue pealed them forth; counting them in his fear as if each stroke was a knell, and so indeed to him it was, and many of the chimes we listen carelessly to, would be knells to us, if we knew what would happen twixt them and ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... croaking of a frog; By the howling of the dog; By the crying of the hog Against the storm arising; By the evening curfew bell, By the doleful dying knell, O let this my direful spell, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... of us, was to send for Monty. His steamer was not supposed to sail for an hour yet. But the thought had hardly flashed in mind when we heard the roar of steam and clanking as the anchor chain came home. The sound traveled over water and across roofs like the knell of good luck—the clanking of ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... and waned before he was having what now I am sure must have been the one passionate love of his life. This was unexpected; a blow in the dark to my pride, and, alas! I fear, also, to my heart. It was the death-knell to my better nature. It gave direction to the formation of my social life. From that moment I am conscious of a change, and for the worse, in my hitherto attractive nature. It was attractive on account of its sweetness and its purity. It was a nature which, ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.

... means of knowing when or where the stealthy Apaches would strike and could only wait for the time in uncertainty and suspense. Many who were in this uncomfortable predicament managed to escape any harm, but others fell victims to savage hatred whose death knell was sounded in the crack of the ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk

... husbands and wives must one day hear the striking of a fatal hour. It is a knell, the death and end of jealousy, a great, noble and charming passion, the only true symptom of love, if it is not even its double. When a woman is no longer jealous of her husband, all is over, she loves him no more. So, conjugal love expires in the last quarrel that a woman gives herself ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac

... Crawford. To what am I indebted for this unexpected pleasure?' her faculties came back, her tongue was loosened, and she replied in a clear voice, which rang through the room like a bell, and was, indeed, the knell to ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... down again and the frost began to creep after it. Already the bulk of vegetation about them (save the hardy firs and kindred trees and shrubs) were black and dead. The change in climate had tolled the knell of all those plants that had withstood heretofore the rigors ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood

... seized the Capitol at once, the fourth intended to do so. It was always the immediate object of every revolt, and the power to ring the great Patarina, the ancient bell stolen by the Romans from Viterbo, had for centuries a directing influence in Roman brawls. Its solemn knell announced the death of a Pope, or tolled the last hour of condemned criminals, and men crossed themselves as it echoed through the streets; but at the tremendous sound of its alarm, rung backward ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... sound of a tolling bell struck my ear. It proceeded from a village church in the valley directly beneath the ridge of a high hill, over which I had taken my way. It was Elizabeth's funeral knell. ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... your cherished guest, Who quits you never on an alien quest. But what that mystic prism shadows forth Hath menace which auxiliar from the North May scarce avert. The scales of Justice tilt Something askew. The curse of high-placed guilt Is on you, if the warning tocsin's knell, Clanging forth fiercely, hath not force to tell The hearer that Fate's hourglass fast runs out. That spectral Comet flames, beset about With miasmatic mist, and lurid fume, Conquering Corruption threatens hideous doom. Yet, yet the Bow of Promise gleams above, Herald ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various

... father lies. Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I hear ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... where there are no railroads, merely for the purpose of standing in a ride and knocking over a certain quantity of half-tame fowls. No, no; I ought to have seen it long ago. I had lost him now, and now I knew his value when it was too late. Too late!—the knell that tolls over half the hopes and half ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... warned thee not to shake it, fool! Back to thy house again, Serpent with forked tongue! Wait till the knell hath rung; Thou shalt not wait in vain! Now clasp it tightly, carry it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... in the ghost all night, And believed in the day as well; And he vowed, with a sorrowing tearful might, All she asked, whate'er befel, If she came to his room, in her garment white, Once more at the midnight knell. ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... beauty and pointed the way to God. It exhaled from the growing perfection of the Church, as fragrance from an opening flower. It is, therefore, peculiarly holy. It is a monitor of especial grace. "It marshals us the way that we are going," like the visionary dagger of Macbeth; but the knell that sounds beneath it summons only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... into the vestibule after Sir Michael had spoken those few quiet words which sounded the death-knell of his hope and love. Heaven knows how much the young man had feared the coming of this day. It had come; and though there had been no great outburst of despair, no whirlwind of stormy grief, no loud tempest of anguish and tears, Robert ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... leans over the shrouded Still form of the mother and wife; Very lonely the way seems, and clouded, As he looks down the vista of life. With the sweet Christmas chimes there is blended The knell for a life that is done, And he knows that his joys are all ended ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... wars, farewell! You have heard my empire's knell, Yet no hostile world's decree Can estrange your hearts from me; Exiled to a tiny isle, Through your tears you well may smile At the realm my foes bestow,— ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... roar profound. [109] Mount through the nearer vapours notes of birds, And merry flageolet; the low of herds, The bark of dogs, the heifer's tinkling bell, Talk, laughter, and perchance a church-tower knell: [110] 420 Think not, the peasant from aloft has gazed And heard with heart unmoved, with soul unraised: [111] Nor is his spirit less enrapt, nor less Alive to independent happiness, [112] Then, when he lies, out-stretched, at even-tide 425 Upon the fragrant mountain's purple side: ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... used to do afterwards. If one finds a pleasant woman," said he, approaching Aminta, "like you, beautiful, intelligent, and I venture to say also full of talent, as you are—we swear we love her, and are really sincere. Reason, however, in the guise of matrimony, hurries to sound the knell of love. At the first peal, it escapes, and whither? The beauty we adore first weeps, and then finds consolation, or rather suffers herself to be consoled. Then, opening her wings like the butterfly, she hurries to find the pleasure she calls ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... was at the end of a steep and narrow street. When she arrived about at the middle of it, she heard strange noises, a funeral knell. "It must be for some one else," thought she; and she pulled the ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert

... twenty-three years previously from London by the Provincial Assembly of Pennsylvania. It bore the portentous text from Scripture: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." A joyous peal from that bell gave notice that the bill had been passed. It was the knell of British domination. ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... for ever with all that makes life bright and precious, and were fronting with calm smile and quiet pulses a grim and desperate conflict, which she well knew could have an end only in the peace of the pall, that long truce, whose signal is the knell and the requiem. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... morning was that, in the course of the night, he had breathed his last; and all day the bells of all the churches round were answering one another with the slow, swinging, melancholy notes of the knell. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the fishermen finding the body, and remembered the shriek which arose on the gusty air. She dared not speak; it would sound her own death-knell. She could not confess her presence at the margin of the ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... every side; but they were still attempting to escape in different directions. Scarcely two of them were agreed as to the place whence the sound proceeded. Yet it came on, at stated intervals, a long, deep, melancholy knell, almost terrific in their present condition. Another council was attended with the same results—opinions being as varied as ever. Still that warning toll had some connection with their fellow-men, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... sofa, but not to sleep. Hour after hour passed onward towards eternity. One, two, three, spoke out the loud voice of Time, and it sounded in the ears of the watcher like his knell. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... folks, yet they failed not to pause in their rustic mirth to pay that tribute to sudden calamity which it seldom fails to receive in cases of infrequent occurrence. To Ochiltree, in particular, the news came like a knell, the rather that he had so lately engaged this young man's assistance in an affair of sportive mischief; and though neither loss nor injury was designed to the German adept, yet the work was not precisely one in which the latter hours of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... to present-day readers since we escape, or seem to escape, from the cool universality of humble life to a focus on an individual grief. To end on a grim note of generalized "doom," would have given the poem a temporary success such as it deserved; and it must be acknowledged that the knell-like sound of "No more ... No more" (lines 20, 21) echoed and re-echoed for decades through the imaginations of gloom-fed poets. But Gray, although an undoubted "graveyard" poet, is no mere graveyard poet: ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray

... to deplore the loss of an affectionate brother and son; to the widow and the orphan, whom war's desolating hand cast into the world to tread alone its dreary path. To Uncle Nathan victory and defeat were alike the messengers of woe. Both were the death-knell of human beings; both carried weeping and wailing to ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... would not; but hear the tale, and you will know why that name sounds in his ears like a death knell. ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... clanging knell," Cried the fair youth with silver voice; "And for devotion's choral swell, Exchange the rude, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... She had entirely forgotten that she had promised to give her services that night at a reception, organised in aid of some charity by the Duchess of Linfield—the shrewish old woman who had paid Diana her first tribute of tears—and the recollection of it sounded the knell to her hopes of seeing Max that day. The morning must perforce be devoted to practising, the afternoon to the necessary rest which Baroni insisted upon, and after that there would be only time to dress and partake of a light meal before she ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... foe. He was for years the recognized "watch-dog of the Treasury." Personal appeals to his courtesy, to permit the present consideration of private bills, had, in the main, as well have been made to a marble statue. His well known and long to be remembered, "I object, Mr. Speaker," sounded the knell of many a well devised raid upon the Treasury. It may be that he sometimes prevented the early consideration of meritorious measures, but with occasional exceptions his objections were wholesome. He kept in close touch with the popular pulse, and knew, as if by instinct, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... A giddy wight who walks in folly's ways. For the long years heap up a grievous load, Scant pleasures, heavier pains, Till not one joy remains For him who lingers on life's weary road And come it slow or fast, One doom of fate Doth all await, For dance and marriage bell, The dirge and funeral knell. Death the deliverer freeth all at last. (Ant.) Not to be born at all Is best, far best that can befall, Next best, when born, with least delay To trace the backward way. For when youth passes with its giddy train, Troubles on troubles follow, toils ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... in, and the report of each successive wave, fraught as it were with my death warrant, struck on my heart like a funeral knell. Was there no hope of escape in the cove itself? no difficult path to the rocks aloft? were the questions I rapidly put to myself. An examination made as well as the darkness of the place permitted, convinced me that my hopes were ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various

... they should issue writs for a free Parliament and bring their own sittings to an end. Their hopes were at once scattered to the winds; and in the wild tumult of bonfires and rejoicings with which Monk's declaration was celebrated in the City, they saw the death-knell of their own power. In the licence of recovered liberty many toasted the King's health, and there was ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... summons imaginary terrors around it. Cain fled when no one pursued. Nero heard invisible trumpets ringing his death-knell around the tomb of his mother. How often has the mountain bandit, whose hand trembled not at murder, shuddered with fear, as he hastened through the forest, at the sound of a branch waving in the wind, or felt his hair stand ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... The sportive Deer were bounding lightly over the hills, and the glad birds were warbling melodiously in the thickets, as if none but the living were moving amongst them; and but for the wild dirge, which mingled with the whispers of the wind, and but for the deep-toned knell which ever and anon rose slowly and mournfully above it, the lone traveller would never have conjectured that Death was conveying its victims through those smiling scenes. As the procession approached the portals of the Abbey, it was met, as was then ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various

... them the dirge, the knell? These were the mourner's share,— The sullen clang, whose heavy swell Throbbed through the beating air; The rattling cord, the rolling stone, The shelving sand that slid, And, far beneath, with hollow tone Rung on the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... links of illness, danger, and disaster are always interposed? Unsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of life ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding when the damper ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... Son of Fergus, with thy latest breath Thou hast lent a joy unto the funeral knell, Welcoming with thy whispered "All is well!" The awful aspect of the Angel Death. As, strong in life, thou couldst not brook to shun The heat and burthen of the fiery day, Fronting defeat with stalwart undismay, And wearing meekly honours stoutly won. Pure lips, pure hands, pure heart were thine, ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... the old church bell Tolls forth its death knell, Mournfully to tell The hour has come at last, In heavy sadness past, To bury the dead, And in silence bid. Then the mourners go, All mournfully slow, Every heart beating low The march of the dead. All with soft and gentle ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar

... each gnome that digged a bone From some bleak pool, and pierce the haze Where censers blaze. Unconquered ghouls Who laugh and leer at demon howls, Make signs unto the hell-lashed foam— Japes that the damn'd fear in each knell! ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... descendant of the stories in the Acta Sanctorum and elsewhere. It embodied their spirit and carried it forward, uniting their delicate feeling for chastity and purity with the ideal of monogamic love. Aucassin et Nicolette was the death-knell of the primitive Christian romance of chastity. It was the discovery that the chaste refinements of delicacy and devotion were possible within the strictly normal sphere of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... cloud, Out rung a nation's knell; Our cause was wrapped in its winding shroud, All fell when ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)

... lines of Federation soldiers, with rifles and fixed bayonets, kept a broad clear passage down to the western doors of the Cathedral. The murmur of thousands of voices suddenly hushed as the Cathedral clock struck the first stroke of twelve. It was the knell of an empire and a despotism. At the last stroke Natas raised his hand ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... round; the birds had ceased to chirp; the parroquets were hiding behind the leaves; the monkeys were clustered motionless upon the highest twigs; only out of the far depths of the forest, the campanero gave its solemn toll, once, twice, thrice, like a great death-knell rolling down from far cathedral towers. Was it an omen? He looked up hastily at Ayacanora. She was watching him earnestly. Heavens! was she waiting for his decision? Both dropped their eyes. The decision was not to come ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... imploringly—their intelligent eyes challenging present sympathy on the ground of past fidelity—all, all in vain: the hour that summons the Mussulman to prayer, equally silently tolls their death-knell; yon glorious sun, setting in a flood of fire, lights them to their untimely grave; one ruthless hand holds the unconscious head, another with deadly aim smashes the skull and scatters the brain—man's faithful friend ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... only one on record. In 1872, his church voted a vacation of six weeks. True to his Indian nature, he planned a deer hunt. He turned his footsteps to the wilds of the Running Water (Niobrara River), where his heart grew young and his rifle cracked the death-knell of the deer and antelope. One evening, in the track of the hostile Sioux and Pawnees, he found himself near a camp of the savage Sicaugu. He was weak and alone. They ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell

... lie close Oh! Love, I have found you at last; Let me hear your low sweet voice The knell of the aching past. The lashes lie on your cheek Oh! lift them and show me your eyes; Twin stars in a mortal face, They are soft, they are kind, they ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson

... at some distance from the Preceptory, broke short their argument. One by one the sullen sounds fell successively on the ear, leaving but sufficient space for each to die away in distant echo, ere the air was again filled by repetition of the iron knell. These sounds, the signal of the approaching ceremony, chilled with awe the hearts of the assembled multitude, whose eyes were now turned to the Preceptory, expecting the approach of the Grand Master, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... hours she knew, Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew, Nor pastimes of the May; They all were with her in her cell; And a wild brook with cheerful knell Did ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... wilt live till Time Shall ring his last oblivious chime, The fruitful theme of story; And man in ages hence shall tell, How greatness, virtue, wisdom fell, When England sounded out thy knell, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... sounded like a knell in his soul. It seemed to him that they had a dark, ominous meaning. He was not a nervous man, rather he was strong, determined, not easily moved; but it seemed as though something had gripped him, and ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking

... on old clock—I love you well, For your silver chime, and the truths you tell— Your every stroke is but the knell Of Hope, or Sorrow buried deep; Say on—but only let me hear The sound most sweet to my listening ear, The child and the mother breathing clear Within the harvest-fields ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... look as if you had heard a knell that summoned you—what are you going to do?" "To tell all ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... still to know that I should be justly hated! And then, tesoro mio!—Mio!—How could I ever say mio? Never, never, never, mio!" she cried, bursting into passionate tears. "No, never mine! The very word itself, which comes so naturally to my lips, tells me, like a knell in my heart, that ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... Alice, we shall that night light such a candle as shall never be put out. Electric light is doomed. The knell of acetylene gas ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... suspense. We know of a thousand things we want to say, but the time slips by wasted, and hangs drearily on our hands. We have not the spirit to look forward, or the heart to look back. We long to have it all over, and yet every stroke of the clock falls like a cruel knell on our ears. We long that we could fall asleep, and wake to find ourselves on the other side of the ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... September was he laid, Poppies these that were his eyes, Of fish-bones were these bluebells made. His fins of gold that to and fro Waved and waved so long ago, Still as petals wave and wave To and fro above his grave. Hearken too! for so his knell Tolls ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... the airy melody of the charming eclogue Phyllida's Love-call to her Corydon, which invites the genius of a Mendelssohn to frame it in music. He might have penned in his prison cell the knell for the tragedy of human life, De Morte. He might have been the shepherd minstrel ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... hamlet in the same commune, M. Fournier, caretaker of a farm at Champbrisset, resided with a Swiss named Knell. The Germans took them on a cart as far as Vaudoy and murdered them. An inhabitant of Voinsles, named Cartier, suffered the same fate. As he passed on his bicycle along a road a little way from Vaudoy, he was stopped by the ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... traps were fly, his rig they spied [8] And ruffles soon they popped on. [9] When evening came, he sought not home, While she, poor stupid woman, Got lushed that night, [10] Oh, saw his sprite, Then heard the knell That bids farewell! Then heard the knell Of St. Pulchre's bell! [11] Now ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... was passing, and Beth still lay there, no tear on her cold white cheeks. The clock struck one, a knell-like sound in the night! Beth lay there, her hands folded on her breast, the prayer unuttered by her still lips—one for death. The rest were sleeping quietly in their beds. They knew nothing of her suffering. They would never know. Oh, if that silent ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt

... refills, no seeds of potent change. So may Death's pale and lingering weeds entwine These hollow globes that still unhindered range Through Heaven. O famished Time! thy jaws devour The suns and slumbers of the broken spheres, Whose knell young stars have heard, whose rounded hour Strikes, and is buried in thy bourneless years. They glow like fevered jewels in the deeps, Like sullen embers in remorseless Night, Like flowers with'ring when the Winter creeps With iron dews their little lives to blight. ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer

... in our wards increased daily. Sick men poured into the hospital. Often they came too late, having remained at the post of duty until fever had sapped the springs of life or the rattling breath sounded the knell of hope, marking too surely that fatal disease, double pneumonia. Awestruck I watched the fierce battle for life, the awful agony, trying vainly every means of relief, lingering to witness struggles which wrung my heart, because I could not resist ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... Mixes jes' like laugh and cry; Deaths and births, and worst and best, Tangled their contrariest; Ev'ry jinglin' weddin'-bell Skeerin' up some funer'l knell.— Here's my song, and there's your sigh.— ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley

... single syllable; and the flask that had been filled for him stood upon the table untouched. He sat with his eyes fixed upon the stranger, and his skin as pale as a corpse. Betty was in the same state of immovable terror. Every word that fell from his lips was a death-knell—every drop of his red drink was as much liquid fire—and every look ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... relative; a bulletin from the field of battle; what the heart sighs for, hopes for—fears, yet welcomes—desires, yet dreads. You seize the letter. Has it a black seal? Yes? The blood leaves your cheeks and rushes to its citadel, frozen with fear, and in your ear sounds the knell of a departed joy. No? Then you heave a long sigh of relief, and gaze for a moment at the missive, wondering from whom it can be. Your doubts are soon resolved, and you rest satisfied or you are disappointed. Recall the emotions which you ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... passing of the hawthorn takes away Heaven: all the spring falls dumb, and all the soul Sinks down in man for sorrow. Night and day Forego the joy that made them one and whole. The change that falls on every starry spray Bids, flower by flower, the knell of springtime toll. ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... that Shakespeare was a man; that he had moods, that he made mistakes, and, above all, that he knew his art was an art and not an attribute of deity. That is what is the matter with the Germans; they cannot "ring fancy's knell"; their knells have no gaiety. The phrase of Hamlet about "holding the mirror up to nature" is always quoted by such earnest critics as meaning that art is nothing if not realistic. But it really means (or at least ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... when the herald's trumpet sent These tidings through the city, To every house a death knell went; Such murder-cries the hot air rent Might move the stones to pity. Then bread grew dear, but good advice Could not ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... following sectional lines. All patriots were genuinely alarmed. "This momentous question," wrote Jefferson, "like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... rang like a desolating knell in the ears of the bewildered, fear-stricken Theos, and startled him from his rigid trance of speechless misery. Uttering an inarticulate dull groan, he made a violent effort to rush forward —to serve as a living shield of defence to his adored friend, . . to ward off the imminent blow! Too late! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... service of his beloved mistress; he could only instruct her by signs to put on a magnificent robe which lay near him, and hasten her departure. She staggered through the town, arrived in the solitary fields, heard the distant knell announce her lover's death, and sunk exhausted to the ground. At length the air revived her; she slowly renewed her journey, and returned to her castle, which, by virtue of her ring, she entered undisturbed. Till the birth of her son, and from that time to the conclusion ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... the window, and the merriment struck chill at her heart like the tolling of a knell. She saw the pale face of Henderson gleam yellow-white among the dancers, and, watching him, the blood-lust of the Indian woke in her heart. The rest of the room was but a blur; the dancers faded into swaying shadows; she saw nothing but Henderson as he danced that he might ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... these merry marriage bells at the Hague a funeral knell was sounding in Brussels. On the 20th February, the governor-general of the obedient Netherlands, Archduke Ernest, breathed his last. His career had not been so illustrious as the promises of the Spanish king and the allegories ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... two words. He Waited! And his waiting sounded the death-knell of a thousand boyhood hopes. HE WAITED!! And health slowly took wings and flew away. HE WAITED!! And the insidious little Devil-of-Fear piece by piece tore down his will-power, sapped his power-of-concentration. HE WAITED!! And that first simple ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue

... sun declines, there is again a gradual reviving, and when the vesper bell rings out his sinking knell, all nature seems to rejoice that the tyrant of the day has fallen. Now begins the bustle of enjoyment, when the citizens pour forth to breathe the evening air, and revel away the brief twilight in the walks and gardens ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the barber was equally deplorable. The awful words pronounced by Merton may be considered his death-knell. They rang ever after in his ears; and, in a few weeks, his head was turned, his shop shut up, and himself sent to Bedlam. "Gracious heavens, what a nose!" This dreadful sentence—more dreadful than the hand-writing on the wall to Belshazzar,—haunted him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various

... laments that her best achievement, man, has become discontented with her in his ungrateful discontent with himself. It is like the whimpering of a hurt animal, and the queer, ingenious metre, with its one rhyme set at wide but distinct and heavily recurrent intervals, beats on the ear like a knell. Blind and dumb forces speak, conjecture, half awakening out of sleep, turning back heavily to sleep again. Many poets have been sorry for man, angry with Nature on man's behalf. Here is a poet who is sorry for Nature, who feels the earth and its ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... to arms! Let the battle-cry rise, Like the raven's hoarse croak, through their ranks let it sound; Set their knell on the wing of each arrow that flies, Till the shouts of the free shake the mountains around; Let the cold-blooded, faint-hearted changeling now tremble, For the war-shock shall reach to his dark-centered ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... disappeared. The tavern had not been able to withstand the united progress of commerce and righteousness; Mr. Cameron's advent had heralded its downfall, and the toot of the railway train through Oro had sounded its death knell. ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... table, were hailed with rapture, and thenceforth sparkling wine was an indispensable adjunct at all the petits soupers of the period. In the highest circles the popping of champagne-corks seemed to ring the knell of sadness, and the victories of Marlborough were in a measure compensated for by this ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... war is mostly the purifying fire in a nation's existence. It is to be hoped that this great convulsion will purify the free States by sounding the death-knell of these small intriguing politicians. The American people at large will acquire earnestness, knowledge of men, and clear insight into its own affairs. Tricky politicians will be discarded, and true men backed ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... do fabling poets tell That thy fleet wings outstrip the wind? Why feign thy course of joy the knell, And call thy slowest ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... of being tolerable had very little power to elevate the imagination of one who had so long been accustomed to praise and ecstacy; but it was some satisfaction to be separated from my mother, who was incessantly ringing the knell of departed beauty, and never entered my room without the whine of condolence, or the growl of anger. She often wandered over my face, as travellers over the ruins of a celebrated city, to note every place which had once been remarkable ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... What shall I tell?— Two mournful sisters, And a tolling knell, Tolling ding and ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... after years, as she looked back over this life, that the news of Father Salvierderra's death was the first note of the knell of their happiness. It was but a few days afterward, when Alessandro came in one noon with an expression on his face that terrified her; seating himself in a chair, he buried his face in his hands, and would neither look up nor speak; not until Ramona ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... out-peer'd, till disappear'd Our star of morn, as high The southern west its blast released, And drown'd in floods the sky— Ah woe! was gone the star that shone, Nor left a visage dry For her, who won as win could none The people's love so well. O, welaway! the dirging lay That rung from Moy its knell; Alas, the hue, where orbs of blue, With roses wont to dwell! How can we think, nor swooning sink, To earth them ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... I found it impossible to quell by any effort of the reason, I perceived the huge jaws at the extremity of the proboscis suddenly expand themselves, and from them there proceeded a sound so loud and so expressive of wo, that it struck upon my nerves like a knell and as the monster disappeared at the foot of the hill, I fell at once, fainting, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... after the echoes of the shot had died away, a spluttering funeral knell. Other natives, laying their spears aside, sprang from behind trees and rocks to the help of their fallen chief. Nobody would harm them; the magic had ceased. They raised him with the greatest solicitude, and bore him ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... public exposure was involved an additional complication of guilt. Perez was not the only favoured votary of the versatile siren. His rival, or rather his partner, was—Philip of Spain! The revelation of promiscuous worship, threatened by Escovedo, sounded like a knell to Perez and the princess. Was it a mad defiance, or a profound prescience, of the consequences, which, when Escovedo, stung on one occasion beyond forbearance by the demonstration of iniquity which Othello in his agony demands of Iago, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... I'll follow thee. Y. Mor. This tatter'd ensign of my ancestors, Which swept the desert shore of that Dead Sea Whereof we got the name of Mortimer, Will I advance upon this castle ['s] walls— Drums, strike alarum, raise them from their sport, And ring aloud the knell of Gaveston! Lan. None be so hardy as to touch the king; But neither spare you Gaveston nor his ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe

... have gathered a host of the most interesting, as well as the most brilliant, souvenirs of our literary history. Here were sold, in "the days that tried men's souls," those stirring pamphlets that sounded the death-knell of British tyranny in the New World; and it was from this old corner that the tender songs of Longfellow, the weird conceptions of Hawthorne, the philosophic utterances of Emerson, first found their way to the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... consented to them, so that I retreated to my post at the gateway with something like confidence, while he, approaching the door, lifted the knocker and let it fall with a resounding clang that must have rung like a knell of ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... like a death-knell into the hearts of the hunters, for they knew that if the savages refused to make peace, they would scalp them all and appropriate their goods. To make things worse, a dark-visaged Indian suddenly caught hold of Henri's rifle, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... Americans sent the first steamship across the ocean—the "Savannah," in 1819. Americans, engaged in a fratricidal war, invented the ironclad in the "Monitor" and the "Merrimac," and, demonstrating the value of iron ships for warfare, sounded the knell of wooden ships for peaceful trade. An American first demonstrated the commercial possibilities of the steamboat, and if history denies to Fulton entire precedence with his "Clermont," in 1807, it may still be claimed for John Fitch, another American, with his imperfect boat on the Delaware ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... the centurion, "thou shalt see with thine own eye, and hear it ring a knell in the purse which holds our common stock." "Which did hold it, as thou wouldst say, most valiant commander," replied the inferior warder; "but what that purse holds now, save a few miserable ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm, With banquet-song, and dance, and wine; And thou art terrible: the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know, or dream, or fear, Of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... fleets had been destroyed and Spain had but one left to protect her own coast cities. The death knell of her once proud colonial empire had sounded. Decrepit as she was, she could not possibly have sent any reinforcements to the Philippines. Besides, the Filipinos would have 'eaten them up.'"—Blount, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... Fell upon my ears Like the knell of a funeral bell. I had fondly expected A whispered "yes" that Would steal into my soul Like the song of an angel From some distant Aidenn. I arose and brushed off The knees of my trousers. "Farewell," I said; "you have ruined my life." "Nonsense," she replied ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall

... from?" The words fell slowly from Mrs. Tobin's lips, and to the two culprits they sounded like the knell of doom. She waited for some response, but none came. "Is it possible that you have had a woman in this cabin," she continued. "Can you ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... end the passing peale Which gaue the warning to a dismall end, And as his words last knell began to faile, This damned Nauie did a glimmering send, By which Sir Richard might their power reueale, Which seeming conquerlesse did conquests lend; At whose appearance Midelton did cry, See where they come, for fame and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt

... having so whirled him in the air full hundred times, Bhima pressed his knee against Jarasandha's backbone and broke his body in twain. And having killed him thus, the mighty Vrikodara uttered a terrible roar. And the roar of the Pandava mingling with that death knell of Jarasandha, while he was being broken on Bhima's knee, caused a loud uproar that struck fear into the heart of every creature. And all the citizens of Magadha became dumb with terror and many women were ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,[384-1] The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... let me bless the region ere I go. Poor house, sad comrade of my watch, farewell! Ye nymphs of meadows where soft waters flow Thou ocean headland, pealing thy deep knell, Where oft within my cavern as I lay My hair was moist with dashing south-wind's spray, And ofttimes came from Hermes' foreland high Sad replication of my storm-vext cry; Ye fountains and thou Lycian water sweet,— I never thought to leave you, yet my feet Are ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... collectivist, provided it keeps the race afoot (the hive and the anthill being as acceptable to her as Utopia), the demonstrations of Socialists, though irrefutable, will never make any serious impression on property. The knell of that over-rated institution will not sound until it is felt to conflict with some more vital matter than mere personal inequities in industrial economy. No such conflict was perceived whilst society had not ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw

... slavery forever. Debt peonage could be fastened on part of the rural South and was; but even here the new Negro landholder appeared. Thus despite everything the Fifteenth Amendment, and that alone, struck the death knell of slavery. ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... a future. But we made shipwreck of those plans, and now it is too late to build them anew. However, let us not mourn over the past, but forget it. This hour has witnessed your last lament over your dead past. Its knell has been rung, let us both now doom it to oblivion. I have retained one thing in my memory, however, and that is the note which the incautious Princess gave you that evening in the greenhouse. Do you ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... tarnished gold of their mountings; one entered no Holy Week, everywhere the "Pange Lingua" and the "Stabat Mater" wailed under the arches, and then came the "Tenebrae," the lamentations, and the psalms, whose knell shook the flame of the brown waxen tapers, and after each halt, at the end of each of the psalms, one of the tapers expired, and its column of blue smoke evaporated still under the lighted circumference of the arches, while the choir ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... flew suddenly before his face. Michu, superstitious like all primitive beings, fancied he heard the muffled tones of a death-knell. The day, however, began brightly enough for lovers, who rarely see magpies when together in the woods. Michu, armed with his plan, verified the spots; each gentleman had brought a pickaxe, and the money was soon found. ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... unalleviated darkness of a hopeless exclusion settles down on these sad five, standing, huddled together, at the door, with the extinguished lamps hanging in their despairing hands. 'Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now.' The wedding bell has become a funeral knell. They were not the enemies of the bridegroom, they thought themselves his friends. They let life ebb without securing the one thing needful, and the neglect was irremediable. There is a tragedy underlying many a life of outward religiousness and inward emptiness, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... original, if I remember rightly, is to be found in 'King's Anecdotes'), who leaves his house one morning for no particular reason, and though living in the next street, does not reveal his existence to his wife for twenty years; and the hero of the 'Wedding Knell,' the elderly bridegroom whose early love has jilted him, but agrees to marry him when she is an elderly widow and he an old bachelor, and who appals the marriage party by coming to the church in his shroud, with the bell tolling as for a funeral—all these bear the unmistakable ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... the grave! How silent did his old companions tread By midnight lamps, the mansions of the dead Through breathing statues, then unheeded things, Through rows of warriors, and through walks of kings! What awe did the slow solemn knell inspire; The pealing organ, and the pausing choir; The duties by the lawn-rob'd prelate paid; And the last words, that dust to dust convey'd! While speechless o'er thy closing grave we bend, Accept these tears, thou dear departed friend. Oh gone for ever! take ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... his dying fear One dreadful sound could the Rover hear, A sound as if with the Inchcape Bell, The fiends below were ringing his knell. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... the city seemed a speck of light below, There 'twixt heaven and earth suspended as the bell swung to and fro; And the sexton at the bell-rope, old and deaf, heard not the bell, Sadly thought, "That twilight curfew rang young Basil's funeral knell." Still the maiden clung more firmly, and with trembling lips so white, Said, to hush her heart's wild throbbing: "Curfew shall not ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... later, I stood alone on the veranda. But I knew well enough where to find Captain Anthony Fenton when I wanted him, although the death knell of Antoun was sounding. I was not in the least melancholy, and despite the tense emotion of that short scene, I had never felt less sentimental in my life. My whole being concentrated itself in a desire to visit the post-office, and to bash ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... hour which judges Gods and men, That God shall plague the Gods that filched His name, And cleanse the Peoples. When ye hear, my sons, That God uprising in His judgment robes And see their dreadful crimson in the West, Then know ye that the knell of Rome is nigh; Then stand, and listen! When His Trumpet sounds Forth from your forests and your snows, my sons, Forth over Ister, Rhenus, Rhodonus, To Moesia forth, to Thrace, Illyricum, Iberia, Gaul; but, most of all, to Rome! Who leads you thither leads you not for spoil: ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... not bear to do this while the knell was vibrating on her ear, and the two coffins being borne across the threshold; so she gathered the orphans within her embrace as she sat on the floor, and endeavoured to find out how much they understood of what was passing, and whether they had any of ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... very first day when he sat beside her in the tiny boudoir of the Square du Roule, and the heavy foot fall of Heron and his bloodhounds broke in on their first kiss, down to this hour which he believed struck his own death-knell, his love for her had brought more tears to her dear eyes than smiles ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... said, sounded like a knell in Sir Robert's ear, and the truth was manifest to him. But unwilling to make a public example of his own wife, he adopted a somewhat unique method of vengeance, and publicly proclaimed that as he could not bestow the ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... man. He appeared unconscious of their presence. Yes, that must be Ferguson! The thought flashed through the boy's mind and, unconscious of his own safety, his lips opened to cry the alarm, which would have sounded his own death knell, when he saw a tomahawk hurtle through the air and bury itself in the man's brain. He fell to his knees without a moan. The Indian, leaping to his side, had scalped him before Rodney realized what had ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane



Words linked to "Knell" :   bell, death knell, ring, sound, peal, toll



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