"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the sick man, and seemed to him, in the gathering excitement of this fearful hour, to grow louder and louder, till each tick sounded to his sharpened sense like the vibrations of a bell, and seemed to be the funeral knell of his destiny; sounding thus to his ears, solemnly, fatefully, bodingly; pealing forth thus with every sound the announcement that second after second out of those few minutes of time which were still left him had passed away from him forever. Each one of those seconds was prolonged to his ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... day it thus befell— About their surly jailer's wonted hour To bring them food, he enter'd not their cell, But bolted fast their prison's outer door. This on the County's heart rang like a knell— Hope was excluded from this grizzly tow'r. Speechless he sat, despair forbade to rave— This hold was now their dungeon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... tolls the knell of falling steam, The coal supply is virtually done, And at this price, indeed it does not seem As though ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... knot knap sack knob knave knife knock knowledge knucks knead knight knoll knuckle knarl knee knit know knell knout ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... said, but in his words the deep agony of a mortal struggle rang strangely—the knell of the old life and the birth-chime of the new. One by one, the words he had never thought to speak fell from his lips, distinctly; the oracle of the heart answered the great question of fate ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... clouds that hold the stormy rain, They moved gently o'er the dewy meads To where Saint Alban's holy shrines remain. There did they find that both their knights were slain. Distraught they wander'd to swoln Redbourne's side, Yell'd there their deadly knell, sank in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... lured me as far as the chateau de- ——— which had witnessed the betrothal and the death of Marie, and the birth of Marguerite. My heart tolled a knell within me when I saw once more that peaceful abode, which, despite the scenes of sorrow enacted within its walls, speaks, with its white pillared facade, of naught save elegant opulence and luxurious repose. I was so overcome that, to save myself from falling, I ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... leaders are in a curiously anomalous position. They see their power going in the dawn of a more socialistic age. They cannot refuse to accept our principles but in their hearts they know that our triumph sounds the death knell to their power. This article of Tallente's would give them a wonderful chance. Out of very desperation they will seize ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... expressing his feelings except action, and where that was impossible they took hardly any recognizable shape. When the first boom of the big bell filled the little study in which we sat, I gave a cry, and jumped up from my chair: it sounded in my ears like the knell of my lost baby, for at the moment I was thinking of her as once when a baby she lay for dead in my arms. Mr. Blackstone got up and left the room, and my husband rose and would have followed him; but, saying he would be back in a few minutes, he shut the door and left us. It was half an hour, a dreadful ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... affected for any specification of what these were. The first thing they heard in early 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
... will grieve for me when I tell you that our baby went away from us quite suddenly this morning, while the Easter bells were ringing so joyfully. They rang the knell of a mother's heart, for they rang my baby's spirit ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... 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. The part of the forest where it was buried ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... least afraid, and only thought, even when those doleful words seemed to ring like a knell through the roar of the waves, "Tom will be saved if I reach the shore, and if I don't, Pirate is sure to land and make his way to a house at once. That will tell as well ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... 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 their ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... of this disaster fell like the knell of their own doom on the ears of the inhabitants of Granada. It seemed as if the hand of Providence itself must have been stretched forth to smite the stately city, which, reposing as it were under the shadow of their own walls, and in the bosom ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... mind Mr. Asquith's speech. I am sorry that he ever made that speech. For, in my humble opinion, it betrayed to say the least, a confusion of thought. Could he think of the Turkish people as apart from the Ottoman Government? And what is the meaning of the death-knell of Ottoman Dominion in Europe and Asia if it be not the death knell of Turkish people as a free and governing race? Is it, again, true historically that the Turkish rule has always been a blight that 'has withered ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... received in a much better spirit by some of the Northern papers, which could see no good in it—"no Union spirit in it"—but declared that it breathed the spirit of Sectionalism and mischief, and "is the knell and requiem of the Union, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... so full of joyous meaning and so surrounded with associations of mirth and festivity, now rang in Brooke's ears with a sound as harsh and terrible as that of a death-knell. It was the word which he dreaded more than all others to hear from the lips of Lopez. His heart sank within him, and he knew not what to think, or where to turn for hope. That Talbot would refuse to perform this ceremony he felt ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... his study (which no one could enter without him being present, as he invariably locked the door and kept the key), found his portrait one day lying on its face on the floor. He was extremely perplexed, for to him it was as his death knell, and he commenced setting his house in order. The sad summons was not long of coming, and death took him ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... forgotten; there are memories clinging Round every breast that beats to hope and fear In this drear world, until the death's knell, ringing, Chimes with heart-moanings o'er the solemn bier; Then come love's pilgrims to the sad shrine, bringing The choicest ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... one of loathing escaped her lips and with a jerk she freed her skirt from his clutch. Then she ran quickly up the stairs. Outside the door of her own room on the first landing she paused for one minute, and from out of the gloom her voice came to him like the knell of passing hope. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... the first book merchant first displayed his wares here, there 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 hearts of ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... three of those men 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 till the tower rocked, the Romans ran to arms, the captains of ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... 'tis the knell of the Browning Society, Wind-bags are bursting all round us to-day; FURNIVALL fails, and for want of his diet he Pines like a love-stricken ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... shrine of Charolois is again sounding; but how different its tone from the musical and inspiring chime that summoned the weary vassals to their grateful vespers! The bell of the shrine of Charolois is again sounding. Alas! it tolls a gloomy knell. Oh! valley of sweet waters, still are thy skies as pure as when she wandered by thy banks and mused over her beloved! Still sets thy glowing sun; and quivering and bright, like the ascending soul of a hero, ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... shivering, her voice had a cristalline sonority that pierced Rodolphe's heart like a funeral knell, and filled it with a mournful alarm. He looked at her more attentively. It was no longer Mimi, but ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... perhaps between the foot and the | | bar is that the latter always begins with a rhythmic stress, | | whereas the foot may begin with an unstressed element. | | | | [24] Some metrists, holding that every foot should begin | | with a stress, divide thus: | | | | The | curfew | tolls the | knell of | parting | day. | | | | Such a division can be justified on several grounds, but it | | remains awkward and obscures the plain fact of rising | | rhythm. It does not affect the division of word and foot; | | for compare Shelley's line: | | | | Ne | cessi | ty! ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... house looking worried and gloomy. His servants saw him return twice, accompanied by different individuals, and at eight o'clock Makaraig encountered him pacing along Calle Hospital near the nunnery of St. Clara, just when the bells of its church were ringing a funeral knell. At nine Camaroncocido saw him again, in the neighborhood of the theater, speak with a person who seemed to be a student, pay the latter's admission to the show, and again disappear among the shadows of ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... 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 ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... wounded 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 ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... yet, at thy last breath, with mindless note The borough clocks but samely tongued the hour, The Avon just as always glassed the tower, Thy age was published on thy passing-bell But in due rote With other dwellers' deaths accorded a like knell. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... pity, truly, to mar such innocent pleasures! Shame on them! The funeral knell that tolled over your father's grave must still be ringing ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... bells of the cathedral tolled out a funeral knell as a solemn procession marched to a transport ship. They were dust covered, haggard men, with a hunted look, chained in pairs. On either side marched a file of soldiers with fixed bayonets. Pierola's men were being taken ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... who were all on the lookout as they neared the landing place. Just at that moment the tolling bell rang out on the air. Its tones fell sadly on the ear of a tall, beautiful girl, who was impatiently pacing the deck, and looking anxiously in the direction of the city. The knell was repeated, and she murmured, "Oh, what if that should be for Richard!" The thought overpowered her, and sitting down on a seat near her she ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... lock sounded the death knell to the one course of amusement that had lain open to him. His mother pulled down the window shades and stooped over in the ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... be accomplished, must be as sudden as the danger which it affronts. Even that, even the sickening necessity for hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems destined to be vain, self-baffled, and where the dreadful knell of too late is already sounding in the ears by anticipation—even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one particular case, namely, where the agonising appeal is made not exclusively to the instinct of self-preservation, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... magnanimity, that it was clearly seen the man had a claim on him. Lord Elling, however, when he was told of these systematic assaults upon one of his guests, announced his resolve to bring the law into operation. Algernon heard it as the knell ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... five thy 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 ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... the sacring bell, Keep your hours, and tell your knell, Rise at midnight at your matins, Read your Psalter, sing your latins, And when your blood shall kindle pleasure, Scourge your self in ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare
... a thoughtful 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
... in Beethoven's Symphony in A, that knell which ever and ever comes back and beats upon your heart? Yes, I see very well, you feel as I do, music is a communion—Beethoven, ah, me! how sad and sweet it is to be two to understand ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... security had been roughly dispelled, and the life in all its lawlessness and violence had stood forth before her. The warnings and denunciations which only a few hours before, when Reuben May had uttered them, she had laughed to scorn as idle words, now rang in her ears like a fatal knell: the rope he had said would hang them all was then a sieve of unsown hemp, since sprung up, and now the fatal cord which dangled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... hesitation to become his wife, when the course at last seemed clear. His trouble at this time appears to have had a serious effect on his health, and some words spoken half in malice, half in warning by Madame de Girardin, must have sounded like a knell in his ears. He tells them apparently in jest to Madame Hanska to give her an example of the nonsense people talk in Paris. In his accuracy of repetition, however, we can trace a passionately anxious desire to force Madame Hanska herself to deny the charges brought against ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... 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 conquering shout ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... continued pealing out its knell; the shouts and tumult outside were growing louder. Miela spoke hurriedly to the old man, then turned to leave ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... Cardinal Pole encouraged her belief adds zest to Froude's satisfaction. No purer soul ever set himself to right the world than Reginald Pole; no one failed more completely in his cherished plans. He and Mary died on the same day; the bells that tolled their knell rang out the order for which they stood. But the utter failure of their hopes roused no emotion save that of bitter contempt in Froude. He saw no merit in the "hysterical dreamer" who had sacrificed his all for his religion; he saw no pathos in the life of that lone woman ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... 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 all ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... heart, earth welcomes me now. I come and bear with me a measureless flow, Of infinite joy and of infinite woe: The banquet's light jest and the penitent prayer, The sweet laugh of gladness, the wail of despair, The warm words of welcome, and broken farewell, The strains of rich music, the funeral knell, The fair bridal wreath, and the robe for the dead, O how will they meet in the path I shall tread! O how will they mingle where'er I pass by, As sunshine and storm in the ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... 550 And cross themselves thrice; And the mournful Pomyeshchick Uncovers his head, As he piously crosses Himself, and he answers: "'Tis not for the peasant The knell is now tolling, It tolls the lost life Of the stricken Pomyeshchick. Farewell to the past, 560 And farewell to thee, Russia, The Russia who cradled The happy Pomyeshchick, Thy place has been stolen And filled by another!... Heh, Proshka!" (The brandy Is given, and quickly ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us,—of the definite with the indefinite—of the substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails,—we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer—note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies—it disappears—we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... ye now ahead!" Carries the ensign Amboires of Oluferne; Pagans cry out, by Preciuse they swear. And the Franks say: "Great hurt this day you'll get!" And very loud "Monjoie!" they cry again. That Emperour has bid them sound trumpets; And the olifant sounds over all its knell. The pagans say: "Carlun's people are fair. Battle we'll have, bitter and ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... the table may quell and may awaken romance. When, in some abode of poetized luxury, the "silver knell" sounds musically six, and a door opens toward a glitter that is not pewter and Wedgewood, and, with a being fair and changeful as a sunset cloud upon my arm, I move under the archway of blue curtains toward the asphodel and the nectar, then, O Reader! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... inhabitants of Bohemia and Moravia, as for those of Teuton origin who sympathized with the liberal movement of the time, the battle of the White Mountain and its tragic sequel on that 21st of June was the death-knell of their hopes. ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... close arms—and I was face to face with her, alone, with ruin between us. So with a stamp of her little foot, so with a flick of the fingers, it seems, she had broken her own image and killed love outright. There and then love died, and his funeral knell was the horrid barking laughter with which I greeted this ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 stamp ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... knell-like ring. Do philosophies tend also to cast those who adopt them into a mould? These were of the self-same breed, indubitably the followers of Antonelli. The men wore their hair long, affected, like their leader, soft felt hats and loose black ties that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... all. A weight like that of a mountain fell upon my heart, and I walked on some distance without speaking. To me, the words of my excellent guardian sounded like the knell of a ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... besieged city. The salute of twenty-one guns fired by the fleet was joyful music to the people of Quebec. Amid the thundering of the guns from the citadel, the great bell of the Cathedral clanged the death knell to ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... 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 to ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... coming down this way now," mused Johnny, sullenly. He hated them by training as much as he hated horse-thieves and sheep; and his companions had been brought up in the same school. Barb wire, the death-knell to the old-time punching, the bar to riding at will, a steel insult to fire the blood—it had ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... 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, and, ere he was aware, plucked ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... Lockier a Trooper who was shot to death by Sentence of the Court Martial was buried in this manner. About one thousand went before the Corps, and five or six in a file, the Corps was then brought with six Trumpets sounding a Soldier's Knell, then the Trooper's Horse came clothed all over in mourning and led by a Footman. The Corps was adorned with bundles of Rosemary, one half stained with blood, and the Sword of the deceased with them. Some thousands followed in Ranks and Files, all had Sea-green ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... garden, and these, caught like rats in a trap, fought with the energy of despair. Nothing, however, could withstand the troops, mad with the long-balked thirst for vengeance, and attacked with the cry—which in very truth was the death-knell of the enemy—"Remember Cawnpore!" on their lips. No quarter was asked or given. It was a stubborn, furious, desperate strife, man to man—desperate Sepoy against furious Englishman. But in such a strife weight and power tell their tale, and not one of the two thousand men who formed the garrison ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... those fair, smiling women bravely striving to hide their anxieties and loneliness, and to lend enthusiasm to the celebration of the nation's anniversary. One after another they were startled from the deep slumber of early morning by the knocking at the door,—"the first knell of disaster,"—and who that saw the old Missouri post when the fearful news was finally made known to all will ever forget the scene that ensued? May God avert the possibility ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... on Lionel like a knell. He foresaw trouble. "Sibylla," he gravely said, "I have been ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... after-season of grief and suspense among anxious and at length despairing relations at home, around many a cheerless hearth, and in many a darkened chamber, and the sadly frequent notice in the obituaries of all our public journals, so significant of the disaster, and which must have rung so heavy a knell to so many affectionate hearts, 'Killed in the Khyber Pass.' To find passages of parallel calamity in the history of at least civilised countries, we have to ascend to the times of the Roman empire during ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... 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
... public calamity. It is not an exaggeration to say that, in ten thousand Southern homes, tears came to the eyes not only of women, but of bearded men, and that the words, "Lee is dead!" fell like a funeral-knell ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... of the gas yet shining through the crack beneath her door. She listened. The house was still as the grave. Not a sound from all the world outside, except the striking of a fire alarm for the seventh district. The deep notes vibrated upon her quickened hearing like a knell. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... publicly, whether Pitt should go to England to finish his education. It began to be spoken of in Pitt's letters too; he supposed it would come to that, he said; his mother and father had set their hearts on Oxford or Cambridge. Colonel Gainsborough heartily approved. It was like a knell of fate ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... "The knell of the highest society is tolling," said a Russian Prince. "Do you hear it? And the first stroke is your ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... opinion of those people who were confined within the walls of Chao-t'ong city—the silence of their own homes broken up by the distant uproar of a frantic chorus of yells and angry disputations, sounding, as it were, their very death-knell, as if they were to form a manacled procession dragging their chains of martyrdom to their own slow doom—before we show contempt for the opinion of those who would tell the truth. There is more of Boxerism in the far-away ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... you a list of all the famous bells, living and dead, that haunt the city, and the tale of what they have done would be a history of France. The bell of the St. Bartholomew over against the Louvre, the tocsin of the Hotel de Ville that rang the knell of the Monarchy, the bell of St. Julien that is as old as the University, the old Bourdon of Notre Dame that first rang when St. Louis brought in the crown of thorns, and the peal that saluted Napoleon, and the new Bourdon that is made of the ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... hours of useless shouting the mob rolled away. Laud had his revenge; a drummer who had joined in the attack was racked mercilessly, and then hanged and quartered. But retaliation like this was useless. The gathering of the Long Parliament sounded the knell of the sturdy little minister who had ridden England so hard. At the close of October he is in his upper study—it is one of the pleasant scholarly touches that redeem so much in his life—"to see some ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... wandering far beyond accustomed limits, had disturbed one of the spring-gun communications on the sands. A sputtering volley, which his trained ear recognized as the firing of muzzle-loaders, sounded the death-knell of his ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... cross had paled before the brow Of Pallas, radiant type of Reason's power. But human reason fails in hours of woe, And wisdom's goddess ne'er reopes the grave. What knows chill Pallas of corruption's doom? Upon her massive, rounded, glittering brow The Bird of Doubt had chos'n a fitting place To knell into my heart forever more: 'Ah ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and hell, The alphabet whereby he strives to spell His lines of life, nor where he bends his knee, Since, with his grave before him, he can see White Peace above it, while the churchyard bell Poised in its tower, poised now, to boom his knell, Seems but the waiting ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... down his stick. The tray sounded, loud and bell-like. He heard me coming, and raised his stick again. The second clang would be the death-knell of my beloved! ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the departed one was a man; three times two, a woman; twice three, a boy; twice two, a girl. The regular continuity of the tolling suggested that it was the resumption rather than the beginning of a knell—the opening portion of which Stephen had not been near ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... John Ericsson, the world owes the screw propeller. 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 ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... her, while we stood ready to back him, fired three shots without the least effect. She did not even move, being senseless with the wound. One of my men then gave him my four-ounce rifle. A loud report from the old gun sounded the elephant's knell, and closed the ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... and hasty speculation, and while American ingenuity and experiment in naval warfare had, indeed, sounded the death-knell of wooden ships of war, no great change in the character of navies was immediately possible. Moreover British shipbuilders could surely keep pace in iron-clad construction with America or any other nation. The success of the Monitor was soon regarded ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... morning 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 ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... to Ramona in 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; ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... then! 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 cave, While the laurels that twine round the brows ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... horse lashed through the heavy mire, tired, foaming, panting, while his strong arm urged it on, with whip and spur; I can hear the exulting beating of his heart, that wild refrain that was raging as his death-knell—"Mine! Mine at last!" I could hear it, I say. It rung in my ears all night. He held her in his power; she must be his; hastily, yet carefully he performs his toilet; I dare say he stopped to think ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... from some merry souls at the "Saba" to the actor-manager; and Ned Alleyn turns white and red when he hears it. Then he laughs a confident laugh, and accepts the bet. Some theatre-goers, flushed with wine, have dared him to attempt certain parts in which Bentley and Knell vastly please them. Ned is incredulous that men should be so willing to fling away their money; yet here is Will a witness, and Burbage is staying on at the "Saba" not to ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... indifferent to all. He beheld—as the spirits fair may be supposed to look upon the earth a moment before the sweeping pestilence that comes to thin it—life, vigorous and active, in that house of business, whose latest hour had come—whose knell was already sounding; but it moved him not. He heard men speak his name in tones of kindness, whose lips on the morrow would deal out curses. He saw others, hat in hand, begging for an audience, who would avoid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... can bring to us. We have the right to challenge the fact and investigate it, and either to say: "It is fact"; or: "To me it is not fact"; but we have no right to say to any human being: "You shall not search nor speak," for that would be the death-knell of our liberty, that the denial of the foundation ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... high-spirited people. Were there no courts of justice? The conduct of the lord lieutenant was highly commendable. The system recommended by Lord Moira would only tend to villify the Irish Government.' Then came the fatal announcement which sounded the death-knell of thousands of the Irish people, and caused the destruction of millions' worth of property. The home secretary said: 'The contrary system must, therefore, be persevered in; and to the spirited exertions of the British military should ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... my feet and echud the words. She repeated them in a tone so mournfully distinct, that they had the finality of a death-knell. I ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Burns was dead, sounded through all Scotland like a knell announcing a great national bereavement. Men woke up to feel the greatness of the gift which in him had been vouchsafed to their generation, and which had met, on the whole, with so poor a reception. Self-reproach mingled with the universal ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... "Base Saxon churl!" she exclaimed—"vile hypocritical juggler! May the eyes that looked tamely on the death of my fair-haired boy be melted in their sockets with ceaseless tears, shed for those that are nearest and most dear to thee! May the ears that heard his death-knell be dead hereafter to all other sounds save the screech of the raven, and the hissing of the adder! May the tongue that tells me of his death and of my own crime, be withered in thy mouth—or better, when thou wouldst pray with thy people, may the Evil One guide it, and give voice to blasphemies ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... appearance of his friend, to the increasing lustiness of his 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; you increase in flesh, whilst I, Heaven ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... feet beneath his window. He gazed out. With colours flying, and with music sounding, Dalzell, victorious, entered Edinburgh. But his banners were dyed in blood, and a band of prisoners were marched within his ranks. The old man knew it all. That martial and triumphant strain was the death-knell of his friends and of their cause, the rust-hued spots upon the flags were the tokens of their courage and their death, and the prisoners were the miserable remnant spared from death in battle to die upon ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dream. Crittenden's own face grew tense as he watched 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 like a ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... of the consternation caused by these words, the clock on the mantel behind his back rang out the hour. It was but a double stroke, but that meant two hours after midnight and had the effect of a knell in the hearts ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men. A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell. But, hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell! ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... 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 ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... the sentence even in his own mind. He could not bear to think that it was possible he might hear his death-knell from the lips he worshipped. He had gladly seized upon the opportunity afforded by this visit ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come 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 ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... laid; Poppies these, that were his eyes, Of fish-bones are these blue-bells 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 all day each ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... 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 drove ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... 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 erect with terror on beholding a distant bush fantastically enlightened ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall awhile repair, To dwell a ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... was re-echoed on 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, some link, which, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... her. And Emmy Lou, left 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 ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... end our 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 ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... day of barge and raft reach its zenith, had heard the first steam packet's shrieking whistle which sounded the death-knell of the ancient order, though the shifting of the trade was a slow matter and the glory of the old did not pass over to the new at once, but lingered still in mighty fleets of rafts and keel-boats and in the Homeric carousals of some ten ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... is worse to tell, The greatest ships had the greatest knell; The brave 'C'ronation' and all her men Was lost and drowned every one, Except the mate and eighteen more What ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... figure had vanished; his features seemed concentrated almost to a point; he glanced toward every part of the House in succession; and, sounding the death-knell of the Secretary's forbearance and prudence, with both his clinched hands upon the table, he hurled at him an accusation more dreadful in its gall, and more torturing in its effects than ever had been hurled at mortal man within ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... 'that was the object of the present expedition. I fancied it possible—but let us go ring fancy's knell. I'll ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the rose should hear, he told her of his love; and Rose, the fairest flower of all which bloomed around that bower, clasped her hand upon her heart, lest he should see its wild throbbings, and, forcing back the tears which moistened her long lashes, listened to the knell of all her hopes. Henceforth her love for him must be an idle mockery, and the time would come when to love him as she loved him then would be a sin—a wrong to herself, a wrong to him, and a ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... period of joyful anticipation some fear of breaking the spell had kept me from any bald circus talk in the presence of them. But Harold, who was built in quite another way, so soon as he discerned the drift of their conversation and heard the knell of all his hopes, filled the room with wail and clamour of bereavement. The grinning welkin rang with "Circus!" "Circus!" shook the window-panes; the mocking walls re-echoed "Circus!" Circus he would have, and the whole circus, and nothing but the circus. No compromise for him, ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... cell. A dim lamp faintly illuminated the long vaulted galleries, and the monks, like shadows, were gliding to midnight prayer. In the dreariness of the night, with the solemn words sounding in his ear like a warning knell, he came to the satisfactory conclusion that all was vanity, and to the determination that the very next day he would retire from the world, join this holy brotherhood, and bind himself to be a Carmelite friar for life. The day brought counsel, the cheerful ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... quietus, give a coupe de grace. behead, bowstring, electrocute, gas &c. (execute) 972. hunt, shoot &c. n. cut off, nip in the bud, launch into eternity, send to one's last account, sign one's death warrant, strike the death knell of. give no quarter, pour out blood like water; decimate; run amuck; wade knee deep in blood, imbrue one's hands in blood. die a violent death, welter in one's blood; dash out one's brains, blow out one's brains; commit suicide; kill oneself, make away ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... dripped into Allan's consciousness. Beyond them, he could hear movements, exclamations. But they meant nothing to him. Only the one thought tolled, knell-like, within him. "We seven are the only ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... she who shaped my ways, Or works, or thoughts," he said. "I scarcely marked her living days, Or missed her much when dead." But O, his joyance knew its knell When ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it. While I threat, he lives, Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives; I go and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... upon the 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
... knee-deep, o'er head and ears a fork'd one!— Go, play, boy, play:—thy mother plays, and I Play too; but so disgrac'd a part, whose issue Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour Will be my knell.—Go, play, boy, play.—There have been, Or I am much deceiv'd, cuckolds ere now; And many a man there is, even at this present, Now while I speak this, holds his wife by the arm That little thinks ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... a funeral knell: hope hears the ringing Of birthday bells on high. Faith, Hope and Love make answer with soft singing, Half ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... seemed dead. The forests which covered the sides of the mountain were sleeping, lying heavy beneath a weight of sadness. The still air was magically clear and transparent. There was never a sound. Only the melancholy music of a stream—water eating away the rock—sounded the knell of the earth, Christophe went to bed in a fever. It the stable hard by the beasts stirred as restlessly and uneasily ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... my death-knell?" he asked wearily. "Have I, then, died already, and is it death that is lying so heavily ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... what treasure untold Resides in that heavenly word! More precious than silver and gold, Or all that this earth can afford. But the sound of the church-going bell These valleys and rocks never heard, Ne'er sigh'd at the sound of a knell, Or smiled when ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... soon faded out of sight when the drooping, half-hoisted banner was seen on the turrets of Chateau le Surry, and the clang of a knell came slow and solemn on ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... What shall I tell?— Two mournful sisters, And a tolling knell, Tolling ding and ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... 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
... uttered shriek after shriek, so wild, so piercing, they fell like a knell upon the ears of Dierich Brower and his men. All started to their feet ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... civil that yesterday rung (Like a clapper beating a brazen bell) Each fair reputation's eternal knell; Hands no longer delivering blows, And noses, for ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... Having described, in those compressed sinewy phrases which Shakespeare has at command, the change in his nature, he adds, "When he walks, he moves like an engine, and the ground shrinks before his treading. He is able to pierce a corselet with his eye; he talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery. He sits in his state, as a thing made for Alexander. What he bids be done is finished with his bidding: he wants nothing of a god but eternity and ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... what is worse to tell, The greatest ships had the greatest knell; The brave C'ronation and all her men Was lost and drowned every one, Except the mate and eighteen more What in ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... after excluding the mass, who have too much to do to live, to trouble themselves with concerns so remote, so far as my knowledge extends, the great majority on this side the Atlantic, without much distinction of country, Switzerland excepted, are waiting with confidence and impatience for the knell of the Union. I might repeat to you many mawkish and unmeaning declarations to the contrary of all this, but I deem them to be mere phrases of society to which no one, in the least acquainted with the world, can attach any importance; and which, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... throb, And thus she heard their burden go, "Marry, mar-marry, mar-Guillot!" Bells were not then left to hang idle: A week,—and they rang for her bridal But, woe the while, they might as well Have rung the poor dame's parting knell. The rosy dimples left her cheek. She lost her beauties plump and sleek, For Guillot oftener kick'd than kiss'd, And back'd his orders with his fist, Proving by deeds as well as words, That servants ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... doubt," seemed to fill up the silence like a knell, and give to my homeward journey a terror and a pang which proved that however I had deceived myself, hope had not quite given up its ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... the world had gone astray Would only wish it better—and lie down, In vain regret to perish.— How his head Roll'd on the platform with deep, hollow sound! Methinks I hear it now, and through my brain It vibrates like the storm's accusing knell, Making the guilty quake. I am not guilty! It was the nation's voice, the headsman's axe. Why drums it then within my throbbing ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... hand, fell back step by step, till they found the support of a tree- trunk, when they waited for the attack. From time to time the low growls gave warning of the enemy's close presence, and to them each sound was as a death-knell; for what were their knives against a foe so powerful, who had, too, the advantage ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... Highland clans, man! I fear my Lord Panmure is slain, Or fallen in Whiggish hands, man, Now wad ye sing this double fight, Some fell for wrang, and some for right; But mony bade the world gude-night; Then ye may tell, how pell and mell, By red claymores, and muskets knell, Wi' dying yell, the Tories fell, And Whigs to hell did flee, man. La, la, la, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... President, I do not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On the contrary, I believe that whenever you establish that doctrine, whenever you crystallize that idea in the public mind of this country, you ring the death-knell ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... tears of joy for the very joyousness of these men; in part, of envy for their fine simplicity; in part, of sorrow in the thought that they were a survival of the past, not types of the present, and that their knell would soon be tolled, and the old elm ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea; I watched them slowly wend their weary way, But, ah, a Purple ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... the loud and awful death-cry of five hundred helpless beings, imprisoned in the burning vessel, rings in our ears, curdling our blood, and seeming as if it would burst the very vault of Heaven with its appalling tones. It was a fitting knell to be ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... cold; I have lost my voice Most irrecoverably. Farewell, glorious villains. This busy trade of life appears most vain, Since rest breeds rest, where all seek pain by pain. Let no harsh flattering bells resound my knell; Strike, thunder, and strike loud, ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... plan of campaign of putting each soldier into his sentry-box and casting both him and the box into the running stream. The call for help was unavailing; none came, and soon no voices were heard, but the following day the funeral knell was sounded by the roar of the cannon from the gunboats, splashing shot into the river with the hope that the vibration would resurrect the bodies of the victims from their muddy tomb. Many of them were brought to ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman |
