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interjection
Alack  interj.  An exclamation expressive of sorrow. (Archaic. or Poet.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Alack" Quotes from Famous Books



... "Alack a day!" said she, "it was the school-house indeed; but to be sure, sir, the squire has pulled it down because it stood in the way ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... a recommendation," he answered, "and may be as far away as—any other engagement—of mine, that is." And in saying it poor Stuyvesant realized it was an asinine thing. So, alack, did she! An instant agone she was biting her pretty red lips for letting the word escape her, but his fatuity gave her all the advantage in spite of herself. It was the play to see nothing that called for reply in his ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... him to be young Romeo, and she expostulated with him on the danger to which he had exposed himself by climbing the orchard walls, for if any of her kinsmen should find him there, it would be death to him being a Montague. "Alack," said Romeo, "there is more peril in your eye, than in twenty of their swords. Do you but look kind upon me, lady, and I am proof against their enmity. Better my life should be ended by their hate, than that hated life should be prolonged, to live without your ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... still for a little while, then Button meowed to Stubby to tell him what he could see on the shelf for them to eat, and where Billy could find some potatoes and other vegetables. Stubby crawled out from under the tubs and ran to where Button said the shelf was, but alas, alack! how was he to get at the things on the shelf? It was six feet above him and so hung from the ceiling that there was absolutely no way for him to climb up ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery

... brindled Tiger loud may roar, High may the hovering Vulture soar, Alas! regardless of them all, Soon shall the empurpled glutton sprawl— Soon, in the desert's hushed repose, Shall trumpet tidings through his nose! Alack, unwise! that nasal song ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... what sleeping in the front bedroom means. Tony's sister gave birth to a boy about ten o'clock. On hearing that everything was as it should be, I went to bed, but, alack! not to sleep. For the subdued chatter grew into an uproar which continued till fully midnight. All the women in the neighbourhood seemed to have come this way; and they meg-megged, and they laughed, and when their children awoke they shouted up at the windows from outside. I ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... Through the velvet leaves the wind, All unseen, 'gan passage find; That the lover, sick to death, Wished himself the heaven's breath. Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow; Air, would I might triumph so! But, alack, my hand is sworn Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn: Vow, alack, for youth unmeet; Youth so apt to pluck a sweet. Do not call it sin in me That I am forsworn for thee: Thou for whom e'en Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiope were, And deny himself ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... "Alack! alack!" said the monk: "no embassy had I, luckless sinner, as well thou wottest, but to take to my abbey in safety the treasure ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... sails into the waiting bay, (The day is long, alack,) But what would that matter to me, I pray If the ship that sailed out yesterday ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun To give it my loving friends to keep! Nought man could do, have I left undone: And you see my harvest, what I reap This very day, now a year ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... is over, and the serious business of the day commences. The chair is taken by the parish priest of Tiernaur, whose initial oration is peculiar in its character. The tone and manner of speaking are excellent, but alack for the matter! A more wandering, blundering piece of dreary repetition never bemused an audience. In fairness to the priest, however, it must be admitted that a Government reporter is on the platform, and that the presence of that official may perhaps exercise a blighting influence on the budding ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... me, and my neck was stiffened, my head poised. I gathered together certain certificates of goods and chattels, pointed my heel towards him and his cabbages, and journeyed townward. I was yet a man. There was naught in those certificates to be ashamed of. But alack-a-day! While my heels thrust the cabbage-man beyond the horizon, my toes were drawing me, faltering, like a timid old beggar, into a roaring spate of humanity—men, women, and children without end. They had no concern with me, nor I with them. I knew it; I felt it. Like ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... and Westley, and Black, With Mawman, and Kirby, and Cole, And Souter, and Wilson—alack! I cannot distinguish ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... after supper, entertained with the Glastonbury Thorn. When we have wondered at that a little, "Father," saith the son, "let us have the Spirit in the Wood." After that, "Now tell us how you served the robber." "Alack!" saith Sir Harry, with a smile, "I have almost forgotten that; but it is a pleasant conceit, to be sure;" and accordingly he tells that and twenty more in the same order over and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... as Maundering and Piffle and Drool made! And all he had accomplished so far had been the earnest support of the postal service. Far back at the beginning he had been unfortunate enough to sell a sonnet for ten shillings. Alack! You sell your first sonnet, you win your first hand at cards, and then ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... 'alack! what were it, But with my body my poor soul's pollution? They that lose half with greater patience bear it Than they whose whole is swallow'd in confusion. That mother tries a merciless conclusion Who, having two sweet babes, when death takes one, ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... a step or two, then stopped. "Alack, Dame," said she, "that is not the way to do. You may be sure the others would not dare, if my master had not shown them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... I met them—the unassuming celebrity, and the young entrepreneur. The great humorist, alack! will never read the tale as I have told it, but I am hopeful, that in "The Tale of Timber Town," his erstwhile companion and the public will perceive the literary value of the theme which arrested the attention of so great a ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... wee bit leaf o' Ireland, Alack and well-a-day! For ilka hand is free to pu' An' steal the gem away. But the thistle in her bonnet blue Still bobs aboon them a'; At her the bravest darena blink, Or gie ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... TIM, where PRUE, alack! Where mother fondly pliant now? Where for that matter too is JACK, And where the grisly Giant now? In lonely stall, with vacant brow I sit and eye the coryphees: In my time they were Fairies; now They seem to me ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various

... up-stairs she paused to look wistfully out of a staircase window. Still raining—alack! She thought with longing of the open fields, and the shooters. Was there to be no escape all day from the ugly oppressive house, and some of its inmates? Half shyly, yet with a quickening of the heart, she remembered Marsham's farewell to her of that morning, his look of the ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... ray of light pierced the gloom; and the little boy hurried towards it. He was holding his cage tight in his arms; and the first thing he did was to look at his bird.... Alas and alack, what a disappointment awaited him! The beautiful Blue Bird of the Land of Memory had turned quite black! Stare at it as hard as Tyltyl might, the bird was black! Oh, how well he knew the old blackbird that used to sing ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc

... Alack and alas! But the new Mrs. Bond Means mischief, we fear, with her kind "Dilly, Dilly!" And well may the Turtles droop fins and despond. When the snug isolation of which they're so fond, They must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various

... Alack for the luck of the Baron von Blitzenberg! Out of the very door they were approaching stepped a solitary lady, sole passenger from the south train, and at the sight of those three, linked arm in ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... Willis's beautiful ring for the small sum of thirty shillings. That thirty shillings had purchased cambric and embroidery and lace, and even a few knots of coloured ribbon, to make three charming frocks for Nora Lorrimer, but alack and alas, though the frocks lay neatly folded up in their drawer waiting to be worn on the first festive occasion, poor Annie had not the faintest idea how to get back the ring. That morning's post had certainly been an important one. It had not only brought a letter ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade

... no possibility of inspecting the books in the cupboard—where is the key?" "Alack, sir," rejoined the landlady, "what is there that thus disturbs you in the sight of those books? Let me shut the closet-door and take away the key of it, and you will then sleep in peace." "Sleep in peace!" resumed Ferdinand—"sleep in wretchedness, you mean! ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... good Launcelot. Alack, what heinous sin is it in me, To be asham'd to be my father's child! But though I am a daughter to his blood, I am not to his manners: O Lorenzo, If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife; Become a Christian, and thy ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare

... said he, that you seem so sad, O fisher of the sea? (Alack! I know it was my love, Who ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson

... were covered with steel: the points of steel reflected the rays of the sun; and this steel, so hard, was borne by a people with hearts still harder. The flash of steel spread terror through-out the streets of the city. 'What steel! alack, what steel!' Such were the bewildered cries the citizens raised. The firmness of manhood and of youth gave way at sight of the steel; and the steel paralyzed the wisdom of graybeards. That which I, poor tale-teller, mumbling and toothless, have attempted to depict in a long description, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... I say, were the outlines of Dr. Slop's figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling thro' the dirt upon the vertebrae of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour—but of strength,—alack!—scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.—They were not.—Imagine to yourself, Obadiah mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... whose heart art thou? The lord who govern'd yonder giant place, And ruled a thousand vassals at his bow. Alack! how narrow and how small a space Of what was human vanity and show Serves for the maggot, when 'tis his to chase The greatest and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various

... in muslin array, Loll upon couches the live long day, Looking more lovely than we can say— Though, alas! they are rapidly melting away "Bring me an ice!" they languidly cry, But alas and alack! it is "all in my eye"— For before it reaches the top of the stairs, It's turned into water quite "unawares," While John with his salver, looks red and stares, And the moist confectioner inwardly swears, As he wipes with ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various

... Alack! for dread of being hanged, With voice so piercing shrill he twanged The word of luckless sound, His beast sprang forward at the cry, And plumb the priest dropped down from ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock

... my arms ... who now is slain! ... I would not kiss my sister's lips again, For shame and fulness of the heart to meet My bridegroom. All my kisses, all my sweet Words were stored up and hid: I should come back So soon to Argos! And thou, too: alack, Brother, if dead thou art, from what high things Thy youth is outcast, and the pride of kings Fallen! And this the goddess deemeth good! If ever mortal hand be dark with blood; Nay, touch a new-made mother or one slain In war, her ban is on him. 'Tis a stain She ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides

... it seems; then I go also to Milan. Five days now departed; but they can travel but slowly;— I quicker far; and I know, as it happens, the home they will go to.— Why, what else should I do? Stay here and look at the pictures, Statues and churches? Alack, I am sick of the statues and pictures!— No, to Bologna, Parma, Piacenza, Lodi, and Milan, Off go we to-night,—and the Venus go ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough

... her face glowing, although her strange eyes were cast down. Alack! the Colonel's face was equally flushed, and his own beady eyes were on his desk. To any other woman he would have voiced the banal gallantry that he should now, himself, look forward to that reward, but the words never reached his lips. He ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... to lecture and dilate upon the joys, griefs, duties, and vicissitudes comprised within that seemingly small circle—the wedding-ring. We say, seemingly small; for the thing, as viewed by the vulgar, naked eye, is a tiny hoop made for the third feminine finger. Alack! like the ring of Saturn, for good or evil, it circles a whole world. Or, to take a less gigantic figure, it compasses a vast region: it may be Arabia Felix, and it ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold

... as they were out of sight, Tom threw up both, hands in mock tragedy, "Alack, Horatio, this excitement killeth me!" he cried in a stage whisper. "Sent blackberrying to keep us out of mischief! Sam, ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield

... tinkle frae the west, My lambs are bleating near; But still the sound that I lo'e best, Alack! I canna hear. Oh, no! sad and slow, The shadow lingers still; And like a lanely ghaist I stand, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... of the road are chiefly these, A Purple Cow that no one sees, A grove of green and a sky of blue, And never a hope that cow to view. But a firm conviction deep in me That cow I would rather be than see. Though, alack-a-day, there be times enow, When I see pink snakes and a ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells

... You need only take a sheet of paper and write at the top "A Ballad," then begin like this, "Heigho, alack, my destiny!" or "the Cossack Nalivaiko was sitting on a hill and then on the mountain, under the green tree the birds are singing, grae, voropae, gop, gop!" or something of that kind. And the thing's done. Print it ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... Only a minute, half a minute, but—surely the Enemy tempted her!—too long; for ere Miss Wimple, quick as she was to take the alarm, could turn and lead her away, Madeline's vigilant, fierce glance had caught sight of him, (alack! Philip Withers!) and, ashen-pale, with parted lips and suspended breath, and wide, blazing eyes, she stood, rooted there, and stared at him. But Miss Wimple dragged her away just in time,—no, he had not seen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... epithets; but I take her to be an artful young baggage; and had I a young handsome butler or steward, she'd soon make her market of one of them, if she thought it worth while to snap at him for a husband. Alack-a-day, sir, said she, it is early days with Pamela; and she does not yet think of a husband, I dare say: and your steward and butler are both men in years, and think nothing of the matter. No, said he, if they were younger, they'd have more wit than ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... of the bridal, she turned to Mubarek and said to him, "God upon thee, O Mubarek, tell me, I conjure thee by the life of thy lord the Amir, are we yet far from the dominions [132] of my bridegroom, the Amir Zein ul Asnam?" And he said to her, "Alack, O my lady, it irketh me for thee and I will discover to thee that which is hidden. To wit, thou deemest that Zein ul Asnam, King of Bassora, is thy bridegroom. Far be it! [133] He is not thy bridegroom. The writing of the writ of ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne

... and alack About six o'clock The good ship strack On the Almond Rock And split like ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... from among them and be ye separate; touch not the accursed thing!" he thundered; and out they came, obedient to his stentorian mandate; but alack, how many treasures in earthen vessels did they overlook in their terror of the curse! The good people made such haste to flee the city, that they imagined themselves as having already, in the spirit, reached the land that is very far ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless

... speech the cook for rage grew black, And would have stormed, but could not speak, alack! So mumbling something, from his horse fell he, And where he fell, there lay he patiently, Till pity on his shame his fellows took. Here was a pretty horseman of a cook! Alas! that he had held not by his ladle! And ere again they got him on his ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... across the water Against our ears is borne, Of threatenings and of slaughter, Of rage and spite and scorn: We have not, alack, an ally to befriend us, And the season is ripe to extirpate and end us: Let the German touch hands with the Gaul, And the fortress of England must fall; And the sea shall be swept of her seamen, And the waters ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... "Alack! good Grifone, what sayings are these for a day that should be happy?" urged the warm-hearted girl, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... be found in the country around. We merrily grew up into happy maidens, as merry as could be found, and the glass told us, even if others had been silent, that we were as pretty too. We sang and laughed from morn till night, and, alack, were somewhat thoughtless too; but we were not idle. Our parents had a farm, and we helped our mother in the dairy, and there was plenty of work for us. It was a pleasant life. We were up with the lark and to bed in ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston

... hold of me * And sleep betrayed mine eyes to wake a prey. The day they went I wept, but showed no ruth * The severance-spy and flared the flames alway: Alas for lowe o' Love that fires me still! * Alack for pine that melts my heart away! To whom shall I complain of care, when thou * Art gone, nor fain a-pillow head I lay? And day by day Love's ardours grow on me, * And far's the tent that holds my fondest may: O Breeze o' Heaven, bear for me a charge * (Nor ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... QUEEN. Alack, what heart then shall I have to jest? There is no woman jests in such a wise— For the shame's sake I pray you hang him not, Seeing how I love him, save indeed in silk, Sweet twisted silk of my sad handiwork. Nay, and you will not do so much for me; You vex your lip, biting the blood ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... goes; The birds fly down, alack! "You cannot have our feathers, dear," They say, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... striven hard to be pleased with my new situation. The country, the house, and the grounds are, as I have said, divine. But, alack-a-day! there is such a thing as seeing all beautiful around you—pleasant woods, winding white paths, green lawns, and blue sunshiny sky—and not having a free moment or a free thought left to enjoy them in. The children ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... youthful blee; * Then on all six be best salams from me! They are my hearing, seeing, very life; * My meat, my drink, my joy, my jollity: I'll ne'er forget the favours erst so charmed * Whose loss hath turned my sleep to insomny: Alack, O longsome pining and O tears! * Would I had farewelled all humanity: Those eyes, with bowed and well arched eyebrows[FN386] dight, * Like bows have struck me with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... Exchequer, or other minister of State, past or present; and that had he been at the head of affairs we should not have lost our North American Colonies, or have got plunged over head and ears in debt as we are, alack! already; and now, with war raging and all the world in arms against us, getting deeper and deeper into the mire." Without holding my worthy principal in such deep admiration as our head clerk evidently did, I had a most sincere regard and respect ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... drill And their courage and skill, And declared that the ladies of Richmond would rave O'er such matchless perfection, and gracefully wave In rapture their delicate kerchiefs in air At their morning parades on the Capitol Square. But alack! and alas! Mark what soon came to pass, When this army, in spite of his flatteries, Amid war's loudest thunder Must stupidly blunder Upon those accursed "masked batteries." Then Beauregard came, Like a tempest of flame, To consume them in wrath On their perilous path; And Johnston bore down in a ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... painful. Isabel Gowdie, a Scotch witch, bore clear testimony to this point: "The youngest and lustiest women," she stated, "will have very great pleasure in their carnal copulation with him, yea, much more than with their own husbands.... He is abler for us than any man can be. (Alack! that I should compare him to a man!)" Yet her description scarcely sounds attractive; he was a "large, black, hairy man, very cold, and I found his nature as cold within me as spring well-water." His foot was forked and cloven; he was sometimes like a deer, or a roe; ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... baked apples and dry bread over in Ashete village, and methinks that soup would suit them better. Madam, we must set the pot boiling, and I will take them some. And, madam, dear, there must be a cupboard in this house.' 'Alack, my pretty one,' said I, 'of cupboards we already have enow. There is King Charles's cupboard in which we hid his Majesty after Worcester fight, and the green and blue closet, as well as many others. Sure, you prattle of that of which you do not know.' She shook her fair, bright head, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... said the old man: "faithful is he that hath promised, and will do it. Mine, alack, is a changing heart; but he changeth not. I believe that he hath laid up a crown of glory for me; and though the old enemy of souls sometimes tells me I shan't have it, I believe in Christ sooner than in him, and I trust I ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... frae the west, My lambs are bleating near, But still the sound that I lo'e best, Alack! I canna' hear. Oh no! sad and slow, The shadow lingers still, And like a lanely ghaist I stand And croon ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: Even so my sun one early morn did shine With all-triumphant splendour on my brow; But, out, alack! he was but one hour mine, The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now. Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; Suns of the world may stain ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... the good old soul went on to say, "if Simon's wentured out without his hat to cool a head-ache: his grand-father—peace be with him! died, poor man, in a Lunacy 'Sylum: alack, Si, I wish you mayn't be going the same road. No, no, I hope not—he's always so prudent-like, and wise, and good; so kind, too, to a poor old fool like me:" and the poor old ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... fire in the Parlour, and then go into the house for tea; after which they would prepare their lessons, and then go back in a body to the Parlour to discuss the enormities of that wicked girl who called herself Hollyhock. But, alack and alas! the daughter of the Earl of Crossways and the daughters of the Marquis of Killin had never lit a fire in their lives, and did not know in the least how to set about it. They were not particularly strong girls, and did ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade

... alack, I turn me slowly back, On my hard bench, My hands to clench, And set my heart To learn ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... but finesse with him, that they might get the ass at their own price; but, when they went away from him and he had long in vain awaited their return, he cried out, saying, 'Woe!' and 'Ruin!' and 'Alack, my sorry chance!' and shrieked aloud and tore his clothes. So the people of the market assembled to him and questioned him of his case; whereupon he acquainted them with his plight and told them what the sharpers had said ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... the morning after the good giant had shown him that there wasn't any gold at the end of the rainbow. The old gentleman rabbit looked where a place had been set for him at the table, but alas and alack a-day, the table was almost as high from the floor as the church steeple is from the ground, and Uncle Wiggily could not reach up ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis

... taen out his little pen knife, That hanget low down by his gare, And he gaed Earl Douglas a deadly wound, Alack! a ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang

... that nothing would induce her to accept such a position, when a quick thought darted through her mind. She could scarcely hope to make anything of her mother, for, alack and alas! Mrs. Howland was one of those weak characters who slip away from you even as you try to grasp them. But Martin, with his terrible vulgarity and awful pleasantry, was at ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade

... Alack-a-day! Was you to see the plays when they are brought to us—a parcel of crude undigested stuff. We are the persons, sir, who lick them into form—that mould them into shape. The poet make the play ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... were necessary—oh, how she had been tormented about the etiquette of this "at home"—the cloud darkened over her again. What should she do or say to these strange people?—the worse, that they were not quite strangers—that she knew them by report or by sight—and, alack! from her father's ill name they knew her only too well. How they would talk her over and criticise her, in that small way in which women do criticise one another, and which she now, for the first time in her life, had experienced. Was it the habit of all University ladies? If so, how ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... glances bright, all on a Summer Day, My Lady of Delight she stole my heart away; And though I humbly beg and plead with her, alack! My Lady of Delight, she will not give it back. I seem to see her now, with tangled golden curl, With dancing eyes, and smiling lips,—My ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... Alack-a-day! what a climb down from such high flights my life has been. The ship in which I was to have sailed to the west was suddenly countermanded to the east. She was to leave for China the following week, and I was already appointed to her, not ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... banished from Dresden, and had become an agent for the King of Prussia. . . . He notified me on behalf of his Majesty that I was not to leave Frankfort till I had restored the valuable effects I was carrying away from his Majesty. 'Alack! sir, I am carrying away nothing from that country, if you please, not even the smallest regret. What, pray, are those jewels of the Brandenburg crown that you require?' 'It be, sir,' replied Freytag, 'the work of poesy of the king, my gracious master.' 'O! I will give him back his prose and verse ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... I was thought to do pretty well here in the country till he came; but alack a day, I 'm ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar

... "Alack!" said Dirk, with a great sigh, "it wur a fine lad. I never knowed kinder nor better. Ye ken all say that, women, an' this be the sorriest night I ever knowed, 'cept when my little gal died. He wur good to my little ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord

... when some one told her he could do every thing, she wondered why he did not make her more comfortable, and give her nice warm clothes to wear. Finally, little Nellie began to think him a cruel, harsh God, and at last she came to hate him. Terribly depraved, you will say, dear reader; but, alack, was she to blame? God help us! there are many more like her ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... true of the brave old knight, Sir Thomas More, put a ban upon hunting in his Utopia. Alas and alack for the wayward proclivities of our Utopians, predaceous creatures all, hunting was to them as the breath of their nostrils, for to them, unlike the sons of Adam, it was given—with their brothers resting upon the tranquil river—to lay upon the altar of their homes alike the fruits ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce

... threnetic^. in tears, with tears in one's eyes; with moistened eyes, with watery eyes; bathed in tears, dissolved in tears; like Niobe all tears [Hamlet]. elegiac, epicedial^. Adv. de profundis [Lat.]; les larmes aux yeux [Fr.]. Int. heigh-ho!, alas!, alack!^, O dear!, ah me!, woe is me!, lackadaisy!^, well a day!, lack a day!, alack a day!^, wellaway!^, alas the day!, O tempora O mores!^, what a pity!, miserabile dictu! [Lat.], O lud lud!^, too true!, Phr. tears standing in the eyes, tears starting ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... she cried. "Let me go and give my life for Christ! Alack the day! The Lord counts me ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt

... the gray uniforms and red-banded caps had indeed seemed the good geniuses of the excursion, but alack! they exhibited a different aspect when they had conducted their party back to the entrance of the funicular railway. Not satisfied with the payment which the government tariff allowed them to charge, they demanded from each of the visitors ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... palate were of the acute kind, and so were a continual source of the penalties of gluttony. Whatever else there might be alack with me, there was never a lack of appetite. I was able to eat at each meal food enough which, if fully digested, would have redeemed the wastes of any day of labor; and not only this, but also enough of sugar-enticing foods to anticipate ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... the right And was not utterly to blame, For I was ever wont to leave Her lonely there while every night To sleep at the inn with my mules I came. I wished thus that she might remain As a refuge for my old age, Like a Medina counterpane, But she saw through me and alack 480 Must view the matter in a rage And ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente

... "Alack," said the peasant, "an it shall not displease your Reverence, the lesson comes too late for me, for I am but a maimed man; but I will tell my two brethren, who serve the rich Rabbi Nathan Ben Samuel, that your mastership says it is more lawful ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... Mir. Alack, for pitty: I not remembring how I cride out then Will cry it ore againe: it is a hint ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... creep from there to the old laundry as soon as all were assembled. About a dozen were already there, but, when the scout returned with such dire tidings, they decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and all made haste to get back to their rooms ere the enemy appeared. But, alack-a-day! that enemy could flit about in a surprisingly lively manner, and, ere some of them had reached safety behind their own doors, she came in view. To get to their rooms now was out of the question, so, making a virtue of necessity, they all ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... "Alack-a-day! There were a hundred pints in the cask at the start, and I have taken me a pint every day this month of June—it being to-day the thirtieth thereof—and if my Lord Abbot can tell me to a nicety how much good wine I have taken in all, let him ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... striven hard to be pleased with my new situation. The country, the house and the grounds are, as I have said, divine; but, alack-a-day! there is such a thing as seeing all beautiful around you—pleasant woods, white paths, green lawns, and blue sunshiny sky—and not having a free moment or a free thought left to enjoy them. The children are constantly with me. ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... corn-fields trim Unfruitful darnel and wild oats have sway. Wherefore, unless thou shalt with ceaseless rake The weeds pursue, with shouting scare the birds, Prune with thy hook the dark field's matted shade, Pray down the showers, all vainly thou shalt eye, Alack! thy neighbour's heaped-up harvest-mow, And in the greenwood from a shaken oak Seek solace for thine hunger. Now to tell The sturdy rustics' weapons, what they are, Without which, neither can be sown nor reared The fruits of harvest; ...
— The Georgics • Virgil

... my Corydon, my Corydon, Been, alack! her swain— Cor. Had my lovely one, my lovely one, Been in Ida plain— Phyl. Cynthia Endymion had refused, Preferring, preferring, My Corydon to play withal. Cor. The Queen of Love had been excused Bequeathing, bequeathing, My Phyllida ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... Alack, for the instability of human prospects! When the House, fairly full, beheld the sunny presence at the table, watched it produce the vaporous folds of manuscript, noted the shrug of satisfaction with which it set about its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various

... have we not at home there, in Moscow? Such a garden and flowers as you could never see here, and fresh air and apple-trees coming into blossom,—and a beautiful view to look upon. Ah, but what must she do but go travelling abroad? Alack, alack!" ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Copenny dragged the sleeves over his wrists; he held on to his hat with both hands, despite the grip of the elastic under his chin, and he stamped and screamed in a manner that he had heretofore known to inspire awe and respect in the nursery and disarm authority. Alack, it had lost its efficacy now! Most of the men took no notice whatever of his callow demonstrations of wrath, though old Clenk, with a curious duality of mental process, laughed indulgently at his antics of infantile rage, despite his own absorptions, his sense of danger, his smart of loss ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... got a gun, I see, Perhaps you'll point it soon at me, And when I am shot, alack! Pop me in your little sack. When upon my fate I think I grow faint, my ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright

... woe, woe is me, Alack and well-a-day! For pity, sir, find out that bee Which bore my ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... he looks it! Alack that my sorry need of medicines compels me to give quarter! Would I might swing this fat Secretary from a topsail yard! And a rogue of a lawyer ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... side of the world, alas and alack, the very name is a misnomer. Coffee-house: a place where people drink coffee. Not at all. You cannot obtain coffee in such a place for love or money. True, you may call for coffee, and you will have brought you something ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... Alas and alack! All of Clitheroe's sufferings could be traced to the cool, calculating hardness of the Christian's heart. Probably it was prejudice alone that caused him to trust the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... HANAN. Alack, good man, what should he do more than he hath done? I dare say no father hath better taught his son, Nor no two have given better example of life Unto their children than both he and his wife: As by their ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley

... It was not difficult, alack! Letters of a lover in an extremity of love, crying for help, are as curious to cool strong men as the contortions of the proved heterodox tied to a stake must have been to their chastening ecclesiastical ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... a tone meant to make her comprehend the importance of her answer, had she not been already aware of it. The ice was broken, however, and with less pause than at first, she now replied,—"Alack! alack! she never breathed word ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... unhealthy-looking law-books, hypochondriacal heaps of medical experiences, plodding folios of industrious polemics, slow elaborations of learned dullness, we spare your native dust; letters unnumbered, in all stages of cacography, both physical and metaphysical, alack! most of you must slip through the meshes of our definition yet unwove; poor deciduous leaves of the forest, that, at your best, serve only—it is yet a good purpose—to dress the common soil of human kindness, without ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... a backward tug, A well-resisted squirm, Then calm indifference as before. But oh, alack, ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles

... Assyria and Niniveh how Haykar the Sage had been done to die and slain by his Sovran; and the lieges of all those regions, one and all, keened[FN50] for him aloud and shed tears and said, "Alas for thee, O Haykar, and alack for the loss of thy lore and thy knowledge! Woe be to us for thee and for thy experience! Where now remaineth to find thy like? where now shall one intelligent, understanding and righteous of rede resemble thee and stand in thy stead?" Presently the King fell to regretting the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... Alack and well-a-day! What a theme for regret, and how down in the mouth you must be, judging from the sound of your voice! But since you're not running from the police, from whom are ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... were there Pease? Ah, no, dear Farmers, no! The course of Nature is not ordered so. For when we want a vegetable most, She holds it back; And when we boast To our week-endly friends Of what we'll give them on our farm, alack, Those things the ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... lion with his own spear; and right glad you village folks should be to see it, for it was a very fierce lion—just see his teeth and his claws—his claws!—they are enough to make a poor silly old woman like me shriek to look at them! And the body there, the dead body—the lion slew it. Alack! he's an Osiris[*] now, the body—and to think of it, but an hour ago he was an everyday mortal like you or me! Well, away with him to the embalmers. He'll soon swell in the sun and burst, and that will save them the trouble of cutting him ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... woman, that the Lord hath no love for such frivolities! and alack! but 'tis a sign of the times that an English Squire should favor ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... it would have staggered even the gay salamander that is said to accept so thoroughly the gospel of caloric. And what was the Markerstown without the Great Captain? What was the Victory with no Nelson? Hence, like the patriarch, I went out to meditate at the eventide. But, alack! there were no camels, no Rebekah, no comfort. Even in subterranean grots there was nothing drawn but Tropic's XXX. Every water-cock let on a geyser. But by-and-by Apollo Archimagirus, wearying of gastronomy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... Nay! Nay! Your Majesty, go not Within that orchard, now I pray! The Witch and Ogre are in league. They've wrought you fearful harm this day. She brewed a draught to change the prince Into a dog! Oh, woe is me! I passed the tower and heard him bark: Alack! That I must ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston

... weak to battle with his grief, Sir Tristram breathed a sigh— "Alack, that Isoude's sweet relief Should fail me where I lie: Sith not for me her face to see, Is ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... for a few times, but suppose they should live to celebrate their silver wedding? Alack for Pink, that a mental arithmetic problem suddenly popped ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... "Alack, my lord, such credit is due only to the blessed saints, especially St. Wilfred, whom you first learned to love at Aescendune, as ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... mist gains the upper hand, and we begin to be afraid that we shall not get any of those wide views from the west of Albert over the Somme country which are possible in clear weather. Again the high upland, and this time three tanks on the road, but motionless, alack! the nozzles of their machine guns just visible on their great sides. Then a main road, if it can be called a road since the thaw has been at work upon it. Every mile or two, as our chauffeur explains, ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... query, I search for Love; His eyes are as blue as the skies above, And his smile as bright as the midst of May When the truce-bird pipes: Has he passed this way? And one says: "Ay; but his face, alack! Frowned as he passed, ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley

... Alack! is there no painter of English history bold enough to immortalize himself by painting this trial? Sir Thomas More was beheaded on Tower Hill, in the bright sunshine of the month of July, on its fifth day, 1535, the king remitting the disgusting quartering ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... Alack, good sire of feeble knees, New penance waits thee; since—when thus Thou shouldst have wept for all of us— Thou mournest thine ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore

... have gone, alack! Deep into war's mire and muck. If you want to put it again on its track, Don't shift your load on another man's back: Don't ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Alack-a-day and all the year round! that men perceive not how the women differ from them in the very source of thought Albert never dreamed that his cousin, after doing so long without him, had now relapsed quite suddenly into her childish dependence upon him. And when she heard, ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: Even so my sun one early morn did shine With all-triumphant splendor on my brow; But out, alack! he was but one hour mine; The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now. Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth; Suns of the world may stain, when ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... me to reside at Mrs Clay's, a desired member of the household, or perish in the attempt. Alack! I had plenty time to spend in such a trifle, for I was but a derelict, broken in fierce struggle and hopelessly cast aside into smooth waters, safe from the stormy currents now too strong for my timbers. That I had means to lie at anchor in some genial boarding-house, instead of being dependent ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... alack the day! (he answered); and that is why, no doubt, my shoulder ached for more than five days afterwards, as if I had been bitten by some fell beast, and methought I felt a sort of scraping at the ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon

... the churches, Nearer and nearer the sky - But alack for their creeds while the poor man's needs Grow deeper as ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... blew a pleasant gale, As a frite under sail, Came a-bearing to the south along the strand. With her swelling canvas spread. But without an ounce of lead, And a signalling, alack t she was ill-manned." ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

... Darjeeling came at last, but alack! no mountains, only piled-up banks of white clouds. It was bitterly cold, and we were glad to get out and stamp up to the hotel, where we found great fires burning in ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... devil might take the moon and her horns into the bargain." "Did ever Tramontane make such an answer?" cries Jones. "Prithee, Partridge, wast thou ever susceptible of love in thy life, or hath time worn away all the traces of it from thy memory?" "Alack-a-day!" cries Partridge, "well would it have been for me if I had never known what love was. Infandum regina jubes renovare dolorem. I am sure I have tasted all the tenderness, and sublimities, and bitternesses of the passion." ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... wish it were all to live again. Doesn't the Scripture somewhere say, By reason of strength men oft-times may Even reach fourscore? Alack! who knows? Ten sweet, long years of life! I would paint Our Lady and many and many a saint, And thereby win my soul's repose. Yet, Fra Bernardo, you shake your head: Has the leech once said I must die? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... 'alack, what were it, But with my body my poor soul's pollution? They that lose half with greater patience bear it Than they whose whole is swallow'd in confusion. That mother tries a merciless conclusion Who, having two sweet babes, when death takes one, Will ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... 'em know I was hearkening, or they'd have 'greed in a moment for to give me a hiding. Besides, I had no need to cudgel my brains; I'd only to ask you plump. You'll tell me, I know. Which is it, Mistress? I'm for Gaunt, you know, in course. Alack, Mistress," gabbled this voluble youth, "sure you won't be so hard as sack my Squire, and him got a bullet in his carcass, for love of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... any crime, Stole all, and left me but the empty sack. Before me lay a long and lonely track Of darkling hills and barren steeps to climb; Behind me lay in shadows the sublime Lost lands of Love's delight. Alack! Alack! ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Sister, alack! think how our father fell, O'erwhelmed with hatred and with infamy Through sins which his own act had brought to light, His eyes bereft of sight by his own hand; How she that was his wife and mother too Perished, self-strangled with a twisted cord, And lastly our two brothers ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith

... Alack and alas, how good it all was! How pleasant was the air, how genial the simple life! How Betty and Sylvia and Hester rejoiced in it, and how ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... "Alack!" answered the now furious Renee. "This puts an end to the fighting of this day, and we'd soon have had the second Britisher. All hands below and ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... with this society, alack! a tremendous squabble ensued. It had fallen almost entirely into the hands of the boarders, and they seemed determined to keep all its privileges to themselves. They fixed upon a play, shared the cast among them, ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... he said compassionately. "Alack, 'tis no marvel. These traitor loons have hanged his father. And never, methinks, did ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... earth have gone, alack! Deep into war's mire and muck. If you want to put it again on its track, Don't shift your load on another man's back: Don't ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox



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