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Knell   Listen
verb
Knell  v. i.  (past & past part. knelled; pres. part. knelling)  To sound as a knell; especially, to toll at a death or funeral; hence, to sound as a warning or evil omen. "Not worth a blessing nor a bell to knell for thee." "Yet all that poets sing, and grief hath known, Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word, "alone"."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Knell" Quotes from Famous Books



... considered the elephant as bagged. The natives had also heard the report, and people began to accumulate from all quarters for the sake of the flesh. The elephant was not dead, but was standing about ten yards within the grass jungle; however, in a short time a heavy fall sounded his knell, and the crowd rushed in. He was a fine bull, and before I allowed him to be cut up, I sent for the measuring tape; ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... be sold!—like a knell of doom the words fell on our ears—it could not be! Our dear old home, the only one we children had ever known, to be taken from us. We sat in the bright little sitting-room, blankly looking at one another, in dumb astonishment. ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made, Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that can fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange; Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark, now I hear ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... said with some warmth: "I refuse to recognise the divinity of noise; I utterly deny the majesty of monster choruses; clamour and clangour are the death-knell of music as drapery and so-called realism (which means, if it mean aught, that the dress is more real than the form underneath it!) are the destruction of sculpture. It is very strange. Every day art in every other way becomes ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

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

... opened for burials about twenty-seven years ago. At the close of the year 1870 the interments had reached 150,000. From fifteen to twenty interments are made here every day. The deep-toned bell of the great gateway is forever tolling its knell, and some mournful train is forever wending its slow way under the beautiful trees. Yet the sunlight falls brightly, the birds sing their sweetest over the new-made graves, the wind sighs its dirge through the tall trees, and the "sad sea waves" blend with it all their solemn undertone ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

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

... proved the truth of the adage that all signs fail in a dry time by recording itself as one of the quietest and most orderly ever known in the Sage-Brush State. A few editors there were, like Blenkinsop, of The Plainsman, who maintained stoutly that it sounded the death-knell of the machine, but there was no gainsaying the result. The "Paramounters" ticket, with or without the help of the machine, was elected by sweeping majorities everywhere; and Gantry, roaming the corridors and lounging-rooms of the Railway Club ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... is bought and sold, When the wrongs of man are spurn'd, Then the crown's last knell is toll'd, Then, old Time, thy glass has turn'd, And comes flying from thy pack ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... readiness to defend himself, with so vehement a 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 to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... and opened the door of his 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 ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... in a dazed fashion. Had I not heard that her cousin would marry her into one of the royal families of Europe? This, then, was the knell to all my hopes! This was the reason she answered me so coldly: there was something better in store for her than to be the wife of a simple ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

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

... them with a thrill; for they have haunted me many years, and they are speaking to me now. The one is soothing and pleading, and it implores me to write; but the second is like the striking of a revengeful knell. "Confession and Pardon," says the one; "Horror and Remorse," echoes the other. They tinkle and toll thus every midnight, when my hour of penance arrives and I have tried to register my story. It is almost finished now. Let me read the ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... achievement of our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete than was our bondage to the King. They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... have been written by a Pole." All that the funeral train of an entire nation weeping its own ruin and death can be imagined to feel of desolating woe, of majestic sorrow, wails in the musical ringing of this passing bell, mourns in the tolling of this solemn knell, as it accompanies the mighty escort on its way to the still city of the Dead. The intensity of mystic hope; the devout appeal to superhuman pity, to infinite mercy, to a dread justice, which numbers every cradle and watches ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... compensation was given for the loss of fees, the annual payments ranging from L10 8s., to L36 8s. Increased posting facilities, and the infusion of greater activity into the performance of post-office work, were no doubt the things which "rang the parting knell" of these useful servants ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde

... the pleasure of his society she had forgotten some of her misgivings of the day. Now they suddenly returned to her. What news did Jack Elliott bring? Lines from an old poem flashed unbidden into her mind—"there was a sound of revelry by night"—"Hush! Hark! A deep sound strikes like a rising knell"—why should she think of that now? Why didn't Jack Elliott speak—if he had anything to tell? Why did he ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... and prepared eagerly to listen. And the clock, in the altar on which Iphigenia was situated, beginning, after a preparatory convulsion, to toll twelve, the mere tolling seemed as if it would last until one—so prolonged was the knell to the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

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

... thought of the past. The dreadful reflection, "If I had not done as I did, how different would it have been now!" had been sounding its knell in her heart so often that she had almost ceased to shudder at it. The very nails of her hands had, before now, entered the palms, with the sharp pain it brought. Stealing over her more especially this night, there, as she knelt, her head lying ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... suppose, my tears were 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

... stern arousal to the world of grave business and anxious care, following the mournful announcement of a death—not a birth. From this day the Queen's heavy responsibilities and stringent obligations were to begin. That untimely, peremptory challenge sounded the first knell to the light heart and careless freedom ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... 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 ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... be inheritable at all. Darwinians have at length woke up to the dilemma in which they are placed by the manner in which Mr. Darwin tried to sit on the two stools of use and disuse, and natural selection of accidental variations, at the same time. The knell of Charles-Darwinism is rung in Mr. Wallace's present book, and in the general perception on the part of biologists that we must either assign to use and disuse such a predominant share in modification ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... power of pathos, and of gold, Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling,—no Method 's more sure at moments to take hold Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow More tender, as we every day behold, Than that all-softening, overpowering knell, The ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... let me tell, The clock struck twelve by its last knell; Watch o'er the fire and o'er the light That no one suffer ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... our wards increased daily. Sick men poured into the hospital. Often they came too late, having remained at the post of duty until fever had sapped the springs of life or the rattling breath sounded the knell of hope, marking too surely that fatal disease, double pneumonia. Awestruck I watched the fierce battle for life, the awful agony, trying vainly every means of relief, lingering to witness struggles which wrung my ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... impetuosity of 'Southern chivalry'—with the fall of Sumter, and the inauguration of the war, the only hope for this Union revived! Wicked or foolish people have said that the bombardment of Sumter was the death-knell of the Union;—we believe it was just the reverse;—as the turning point of a great crisis, it signalled the birth of a new era. It threw the trimming and temporizing politicians of the North off their old tracks, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... 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 ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... iv. 2; nay, better never have been born at all, vi. 3. For all is vanity: that is the beginning of the matter, i. 2, it is no less the end, xii. 8. Over every effort and aspiration is wrung this fearful knell. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... with a dreaming ear, Just as the pile above her did descend; She heard the funeral knell, she saw the bier, Which was to seal her most unpleasant end; But fortunately then Mama did send The housemaid to inform the time of day, The Spinx etcetera did their ways amend, Politely bowed, took wing, and flew away; Rose wished them all good ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... the gate of the city they heard a peal of bells solemnly tolling forth a funeral knell. On inquiring the cause of this, the aged ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston

... despair seized him at her 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 ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... street, plunged into the eddying stream, and kept an onward course, without pause, without hindrance, without fatigue. With him I shouted, sang, laughed, exulted, wept. Nor did I retire to rest till, in imagination, I heard the bell of York Minster toll forth the knell of poor ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... different. disuadir to dissuade. divertido amusing. dividir to divide. divino divine. divisar to perceive, descry. doblar to double, fold, bend, give way. doble double, m. passing bell, knell. doblegar to bend, curve. doce twelve. doctrina doctrine. documento document. dolor pain, grief. doloroso sorrowful, painful. domar to subdue. domicilio home. dominar to dominate, rule. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... course connected with "knell," though the only Kneller who has become famous was a German ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... prolonged bellow, as of some giant ox in sore distress, and when it would stop, occasionally, faint and far would come another bellow, mellowed by distance, but sounding unspeakably eerie and frightsome. A bell, too, seemed to be tolling a knell for something, and there was a constant rush of feet on deck, mingled with trumpeted orders and the rattle of cordage. Yet the steamer did not seem to be pitching about at all, as it was when they retired. ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... and To mildness farewell! Its bristles are low'ring With darkness; o'erpowering Are its waters, aye showering With onset so fell; Seem the kid and the yearling As rung their death-knell. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • 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 ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

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

... to understand and quick to choke down and smother the understanding; swift to leap up in flame at a mention of that hope, which spoke volumes to her vanity and her love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston; swift, also, to recognise in his stumbling or throttled utterance the death-knell of these expectations, and constant, poor girl! in her large-minded madness, to go on and to reck nothing of the future. But these unfinished references, these blinks in which his heart spoke, and his memory and reason rose up to silence it before the words ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... kept ringing in his ears?—"And when she bids die he shall surely die!" But he no longer heard the pathetic vibration of Natalie Lind's voice; the words seemed to him solemn, and distant, and hopeless, like a knell. But only if it were over—that was again his wild desire. In the ...
— Sunrise • William Black

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

... Shakespeare is described in the Burial Register as "a Player," to which the Monthly Account adds that he was "buried in the church with a forenoon knell of the great bell," costing 20s. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley

... any mode of 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 ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... once to the House of Commons and heard a debate on Russell's abortive Reform Bill, which was to sound the knell of that Minister's career. Ishmael heard Gladstone in the Bill's defence defying an attack by Lowe, whilst Mr. Disraeli leant back with a slight smile on his face, which was a blot of pallor beneath his dark, oiled ringlets. Ishmael was stirred, yet in him something felt amazement and ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

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

... Knell stepped up, and it was easy to see, from the way Fletcher relinquished his part in the situation, that a man greater than he ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

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

... so swiftly now: she strained her ears, vaguely hoping to catch one last, lingering echo of his voice. But all was silence, save that monotonous clapper, which seemed to beat against her heart like a rhythmic knell of death. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... thought that I had really found Willie Hughes in Elizabethan literature. In a wonderfully graphic account of the last days of the great Earl of Essex, his chaplain, Thomas Knell, tells us that the night before the Earl died, 'he called William Hewes, which was his musician, to play upon the virginals and to sing. "Play," said he, "my song, Will Hewes, and I will sing it to myself." So he did it most joyfully, ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... 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 ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... hind legs. We passed a big hall clock, and it struck just when we were near it, and of all the "Hark, from the tombs" sounds I ever heard, that clock took the cake. Dad thought it sounded like a death knell, and he would have welcomed the turning in of a fire alarm as a sound that meant life everlasting, beside that ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck

... death's nearing knell Tolled in a heart that dreamed no more. Our lips shook, sad as lips in hell; But, fearful of the rending shore, To fill all time with sad farewell We would ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth

... 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... the wave With every year have dearer grown; Is it so great a thing to crave To call my native land, mine own? But why these useless plaints renew? Farewell! That word, it seems a knell! If still I'm dear, kind hearts, to you, 'Tis all I ask, ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... 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 the waves, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... the great door swung to with a crash that sounded like a knell in the ears of Derrick Sterling, for he knew that it closed with a powerful spring lock, the key of which was in ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe

... beyond the Pyrenees and the Pillars of Hercules, to the very soil of ancient Carthage. Victorious banners were already floating on the margin of the Great Desert, and they were not the banners of Caesar. Some vigorous hand was demanded at this moment, or else the funeral knell of Rome was on the point of sounding. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that, had the imbecile Carinus (the brother of Numerian) succeeded to the command of the Roman armies at this time, or any other than Dioclesian, the empire of the west would have fallen to pieces within ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... see her, and Palliser creeping up to 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

... were something about 'the curfew tolling the knell of parting day,' but I can never recollect more of ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... she at length preceded him downstairs and into the little sitting-room she wondered if the hammering of her heart reached him, so tremendous were its strokes. They seemed to her to be beating out a death-knell in her soul. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... of the fatal verdict fell like a knell in the silent Court of Assize, and many a face ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

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

... The move was successful as regards Ludovico of Milan; he withdrew from the alliance, and much against the wish of the other allies the peace of Bagnolo was concluded in August, 1484. To Sixtus the news came as the knell of his dearest hopes. He gave way to one wild outburst of passion, in which he cursed all who had been engaged in making peace, then apoplexy supervened, and within a few hours he was a corpse. He was succeeded by Cardinal Cybo, a warm friend ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... under the law existing before secession but "the male citizens of said state, twenty-one years old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, ... except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion or for felony at common law." This was the death knell to the idea that the leaders of the Confederacy and their white supporters might be permitted to share in the establishment of the new order. Power was thus arbitrarily thrust into the hands of the newly emancipated ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... 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 ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... A knell from the church bell broke harshly on these youthful thoughts. Another! Again! It was tolling for the funeral service. A group of humble mourners entered the gate: wearing white favours; for the corpse was young. They stood uncovered by a grave; and there was a mother—a ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... parent, to consumption and early death! Do you not see, every Sabbath, at church, the young man or woman, upon whose fair and delicate structure the peculiar impress of the EARLY DOOMED is stamped? and as a slight but hollow cough comes upon your ear, does it not recall the death-knell which rang in the same sad note before to the father or mother? Who of you has not followed some young friend to his long resting-place, and found that the grass had not grown rank upon the grave of his brother? that the row of white marbles, beneath which slept his parents and sisters, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... to this day in Castledene—of the sad, tragic story, the fair young mother's death, the husband's wild despair. They tell how the beautiful stranger was buried when the sun shone and the birds sang—how solemnly the church-bell tolled, each knell seeming to cleave the clear sunlit air—how the sorrowing young husband, so suddenly and so terribly bereft, walked first, the chief mourner in the sad procession; they tell how white his face was, ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)

... survivors tell How nought from death could save, Till every sound appears a knell, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth

... not I waver: Ah! no; it is the certainty of all Which I must do doth make me tremble thus. But let these last and lingering thoughts have way, To which you only and the night are conscious, And both regardless; when the Hour arrives, 490 'Tis mine to sound the knell, and strike the blow, Which shall unpeople many palaces, And hew the highest genealogic trees Down to the earth, strewed with their bleeding fruit, And crush their blossoms into barrenness: This will I—must I—have I sworn to do, Nor aught can turn me from my destiny; But still I ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... not see the name of Nola, daughter of Menecreta, amongst those whom the State doth not guarantee for skill, health or condition," rejoined the praefect quietly, and his rough voice, scarcely raised above its ordinary pitch, seemed to ring a death-knell in ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... borne away To sound of funeral knell, Affection's tribute thus we pay, And in earth's shelt'ring bosom lay The friend to whom but yesterday We gave the ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... my soul the toll of bell Trembles. Thou art calmly sleeping While my weary heart is weeping: I cannot listen to thy knell: Fare-thee-well. ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... ..." murmured Knightley, and of a sudden he flung back into the room. "Let me have the truth of it," he burst out, confronting his brother-officers gathered about the table—"the truth, though it knell out my damnation. If you only knew how up there, at Fez, at Mequinez, I have pictured your welcome when I should get back! I made of my anticipation a very anodyne. The cudgelling, the chains, the hunger, the sun, hot as though a burning glass ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... my lord he loves me well; But, when first he breathed his vow, I felt my bosom swell— For the words rang as a knell, And the voice seemed his who fell In the battle down the dell, And ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... silent creatures of Dreams, which go away with mocks and mows at cockcrow. And then I think of the words Christobel's father used (bless me, I have dipt in the wrong ink) to say every morning by way of variety when he awoke—"Every knell, the Baron saith, Wakes us up to a world of death," or something like it. All I mean by this senseless interrupted tale is, that by my central situation I am a little over companied. Not that I have any animosity ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... not for ever open. The time may come when those shall stand before them unto whom the words, "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me," shall sound the death-knell of all hopes throughout an ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... understood it 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

... turn me? whither shall I bend My weary way? thus worn with toil and faint How thro' the thorny mazes of this wood Attain my distant dwelling? that deep cry That rings along the forest seems to sound My parting knell: it is the midnight howl Of hungry monsters prowling for their prey! Again! oh save me—save me gracious Heaven! I am not fit to die! Thou coward wretch Why heaves thy trembling heart? why shake thy limbs Beneath their ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... had seen the 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 ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... closed the door as he passed out. Then it was that Dorothy's laugh sounded like the chilling tones of a knell. It was the laugh of one almost distraught. She came to Madge and me laughing, but the laugh quickly changed to convulsive sobs. The strain of the brief moment during which her father had been in Lady ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... The mournful knell, as she spoke, came dull from the roofs of the city afar, borne to their ears by the exceeding stillness of the atmosphere. Edith crossed herself, and murmured a prayer according to the custom ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... low standard of intelligence. The sense of their own rescue had overcome the poignancy of grief. I envied them their stolidity, which I explained to my own mind by the rush of the engulfing waters still swirling and singing knell of sudden doom ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... father?" said the young lady in a very sweet and gentle tone, which, however, sounded like the knell of doom to poor Somers. "I have been waiting ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... was right when she said that 'nevermore' was the saddest and most expressive word in the English tongue" (so harsh to her ears, usually). "I think she called it the sweetest, too, in sound; but to me it is simply the most sorrowful, a knell of doom, and it fills my soul to-day to overflowing, for 'never, never more' ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... oaken floor. Lighting the pine-torch that he bore, He watched its lurid beams explore The gloomy precincts, and passed on, As one who knew each winding well, To a low room that lay beyond, And echoed to the south wind's knell. Upon the threshold crushed and lone, By rude marauder's hand o'erthrown, The holy volume lay; He raised it from its station there, And smoothed the crumpled leaves with care, Then sadly turned away To gaze upon a portrait near, Whose thoughtful eyes, so calm and clear, And chastened look and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... anything, but not knowing what measure to adopt. Camille Desmoulins, a young man, more daring than the rest, one of the usual orators of the crowd, mounted on a table, pistol in hand, exclaiming: "Citizens, there is no time to lose; the dismissal of Necker is the knell of a Saint Bartholomew for patriots! This very night all the Swiss and German battalions will leave the Champ de Mars to massacre us all; one resource is left; to take arms!" These words were received with violent acclamations. He proposed that cockades should ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... a list of Brigadiers and Adjutant-Generals. Adams, fuming, sent the names to the Senate, and they were confirmed in the order in which Washington had written them; but when they came back, jealousy and temper mastered him, and he committed the intemperate act which tolled the death-knell of the Federalist party: he ordered the commissions made out with Hamilton's name third on the list. Knox and Pinckney, he declared, were entitled to precedence; and so the order should stand or not at all. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... boys, In weeds of Greek the church-yard's peace annoys, With classic Weston, Charley Coote and Tew, In dismal dance about the mournful yew. But first in notes Sicilian placed on high, Bates sounds the soft precluding symphony; And in sad cadence, as the bands condense, The curfew tolls the knell of parting sense." ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various

... valley, Voiceless now, speed on before; Soon shall knell that chapel bell For the songs you'll ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... that noise? A clatter as of falling boards. There is a sound as of hammering. At first it seems to Romeo Augustus like Mephibosheth's death-knell. Thud, thud, thud, go the blows. Drawn almost against his will, Romeo Augustus stealthily approaches the window. He glances fearfully out. What does he see? His father pounding busily, making—what is he making? Can it be? It is—it is ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... of his noble mother with every manifestation of regret and veneration. This melancholy event caused the postponement of the marriage ceremony for a short time, as it was not deemed decorous that epithalamiums should be shouted and requiems chanted from the same lips in the same hour. The knell tolling the burial of the dead would not blend harmoniously with the joyous peals of the marriage bell. Henry was not at all annoyed by this delay, for no impatient ardor urged him to his nuptials. Marguerite, ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... things without life, as twixt a pair of bellowes We feele a forcible aire, having of it self Force and being, no more is this breathing block But for his use in kinde.—Give out in some bursse or congregation Among the multitude Philautus[271] death. Let all the customarie rights of funerall, His knell or what else, be solemnly observed. Ile take order for his winding sheete, And further, to furnish it with further suertie, Ile have a potion that for twentie houres Shall quench the motion of his breath. Goe, spread, Let me alone ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

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

... the knack of expressing himself clearly. Those concluding words rang like a knell. They even called Watts back from the slumber of unconsciousness; the "chief" stirred himself where he lay on the floor of the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... the parish of St. Giles', Cripplegate, was buried "Edward, the base-born son of Edward Shakespeare, Player," and that on December 31 of the same year was buried within the Church of St. Saviour's, Southwark,[211] "Edmund Shakespeare, Player," "with a forenoon knell of the Great Bell."[212] The poet paid every honour he could ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... led him to a dark and dismal cell. Where they left him. Sad and solemn, heavy, awful as a knell, Seemed the fading of their footsteps, as he heard them slowly glide Through the long and vaulted corridor till their very ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... truth and be saved. "This is the will of God, even your sanctification." So far as we are thwarting that will we are playing into the hands of the power of evil. But that power is of limited existence; it draws to its end. Its death knell was struck when the noon-day darkness ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... are heard in desert spaces of the air, and (as some have said), in unreal worlds, that mock our own, and repeat, for ridicule, the vain and unprofitable motions of man, then too surely, about this hour, began to toll the funeral knell of my earthly happiness—its final ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew Richard so perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual decay, that what my dear girl had said to me in the fullness of her foreboding love sounded like a knell in ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... Anselmo? Dost thou say to part? No, no; thou shalt not die,—we must not part. What false, already! How could'st thou utter That which, to me, must be the knell of death? ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

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

... and silence and between the crisp lights and shadows of the moonlit woods, until suddenly the bell rings out the hour from far-away Chailly, and he starts to find himself alone. No surf-bell on forlorn and perilous shores, no passing knell over the busy market-place, can speak with a more heavy and disconsolate tongue to human ears. Each stroke calls up a host of ghostly reverberations in his mind. And as he stands rooted, it has grown ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... night was passing, and Beth still lay there, no tear on her cold white cheeks. The clock struck one, a knell-like sound in the night! Beth lay there, her hands folded on her breast, the prayer unuttered by her still lips—one for death. The rest were sleeping quietly in their beds. They knew nothing of her suffering. ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt

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

... to the Prerogative Court of Canterbury—is no longer to be found there, and those who seek their fortunes in wills have now to prosecute their researches in that hub of British departmental records, Somerset House. The knell of "the Commons" was rung about twenty years ago, when a campaign against the abuses prevailing in the ecclesiastical courts was begun in the London Times. It unquestionably had been the home par excellence of sinecures and monopolies, which culminated in the office of registrar of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... not one so peculiarly perilous. From this they made a turn to the left into a lane that would have led them back again to a little village, through which they had already passed, the bell of which was already sounding their death-knell. The constabulary, by turning into the narrow lane at the left, unconsciously approached the very ambush into which the people, or rather their more disciplined leaders, had intended to decoy them. ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... courage and ability and grateful for his services. The highest and lowest classes of England cannot be in sympathy with the free North. No dynasty can look the fact of successful, triumphant self-government in the face without seeing a shroud in its banner and hearing a knell in its shouts of victory. As to those lower classes who are too low to be reached by the life-giving breath of popular liberty, we cannot reach them yet. A Christian civilization has suffered them, in the very heart ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... wid my gun on the other side of the creek; I didn't want it tollin' our funeral knell all the time we was goin' through the rapids and splittin' the rocks to pieces by bangin' our ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... not speak That parting word of bitterness; the cheek Grows pale when the tongue utters it; the knell Which tells "the grave is ready!" and doth swell On the dull wind, tolling—"the dead—the dead!" Sounds not more desolate. It is a dread And fearful thing to be of hope bereft, As if the soul itself had died, and left The body ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... the King and implores him to give him a ship that he may go back to his own country and family. These words fall like a knell upon the heart of Nausikaa; she is led out ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... the strategical movement would be to have him march south and re-enforce Sherman. That would mean the death knell ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... slow hours indeed to those waiting at the harbour's mouth. Then across the water came the boom of three guns, the knell of the old reign of tyranny and cruelty, the message of joy and release to many an anxious heart. The prison doors were opened; the English Consul and his fellow-prisoners, half expecting to be led to ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... many seek to engross the product of others' work, yet do little or none themselves. If the secret were but out, that no man can really enjoy more than his own moderate daily labor would produce, and none can truly enjoy this without doing the work, the death-knell of Slavery in general—in its subtler as well as its grosser forms—would be rung. Until that truth shall be thoroughly diffused, the cunning and strong will be able to prey upon the simple and feeble, whether the latter be called slaves or ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... room like a knell, and Courtland could say no more. There was silence in the room. Courtland watched his friend's haggard face anxiously. There were deep lines of agony about his mouth and dark circles ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... gone to Seth's dugout and found a note from him on the table. It contained few words, but they held a world of meaning. Simple words and few, tolling her knell of doom. ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... him. "It's terrible—yes. But think what it means! The knell of all the Rogans been sounded to-day. As soon as the secret of these death-tubes has been analyzed by our science and provided against, my friend and I will return from Earth with a force that shall clear the universe of the slimy devils. Meanwhile, your people are safe ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst

... stones scarcely swelling, without a gleam above the tarnished gold of their mountings; one entered no Holy Week, everywhere the "Pange Lingua" and the "Stabat Mater" wailed under the arches, and then came the "Tenebrae," the lamentations, and the psalms, whose knell shook the flame of the brown waxen tapers, and after each halt, at the end of each of the psalms, one of the tapers expired, and its column of blue smoke evaporated still under the lighted circumference of the arches, while ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... off his coat and plunged into the stream. This was very rapid, and, after a few moments battling with the turbid current, he was overpowered; uttering a loud cry for assistance, which I shall never forget and which rang in my ears like a death knell, he disappeared from the view of the spectators, and, being probably entangled in the trees and debris that were floating down the torrent, he did not rise again. A loud wail arose from the terrified assemblage, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... that? How loud and resonant! It stuns me. It is too sonorous. Does sound flash? Ah! the hour. Another? How long the silver toll swims on the silent air! It is one o'clock,—a passing bell, a knell. If I were at home by the river, the tide would be turning down, down, and out to the broad, broad sea. Is it worth while to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... is the unification of the white races to disfranchise the coloured races, and not to promote union between all races in South Africa." The passage of the Union Bill sounded the political death knell of the South ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... face of light Float the clouds of sullen Night! Odin's warriors watch for me By the earth-encircling sea! The water's dirges howl my knell; 'Tis time ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... he were likely to be a "single" gentleman, or burdened with a "wife and family." These and similar discussions were increasing in vivacity, and kindling more and more gayety of repartee, when suddenly, with the effect of a funeral knell upon their mirth, a whisper began to circulate that there was one Masque too many in company. Persons had been stationed by Adorni in different galleries, with instructions to note accurately the dress of every person in the company; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... forth to battle, are led on With sprightly trumpets and shrill clam'rous clarions! The drum doth roll its double notes along, Echoing the horses' tramp; and the sweet fife Runs through the yielding air in dulcet measure, That makes the heart leap in its case of steel; Thou—shalt be knell'd unto thy death by bells, Pond'rous and brazen-tongued, whose sullen toll Shall cleave thine aching brain, and on thy soul Fall with a leaden weight: the muffled drum Shall mutter round thy path like distant thunder: 'Stead of the war-cry, and wild battle roar,— That swells upon the tide ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various

... tower, taking with him a one-hundred-pound shot and a one-pound shot. He balanced them on the edge of the tower, and let them drop together. Together they fell, and together they struck the ground. The simultaneous clang of those two weights sounded the death-knell of the old system of philosophy, and heralded the birth ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... couch. I had just extinguished my candle and lain down, when a deep, low, mighty tone swung through the night. At first I knew it not; but it was uttered twelve times, and at the twelfth colossal hum and trembling knell, I said: "I lie in ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... should receive no advances from her. But she was secretly unhappy. Her nature craved sunshine and peace, and the conduct of her lover she could not possibly understand. In all her imaginings how far was she always from the truth! She did not dream that he believed his death-knell had been rung, and that he attributed her silence to her righteous and inexorable indignation over the story she had heard from the lips of Liz Hepburn. He never for one moment doubted that she had told, and between conscience and disappointed love he had a very ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

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

... 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 I ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

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

... often that everybody applauds a singer at a rehearsal of Faust, which has been sung to death for five-and-forty years; but as the trio ended, and the drums rolled the long knell, there was a shout of genuine enthusiasm from the ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... simple-hearted old Charley! It was the imminent danger only to the Cause that made his heart sink in that seemingly fateful hour. When we heard in the malignant and triumphant roar of the Rebel cannon in our rear what might be the death-knell of the last great experiment of civilized men to establish among the nations of the world a united republic, freed from the curse of pampered kings and selfish, grasping aristocrats—it was in that moment, in his simple language, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... had not waxed and waned before he was having what now I am sure must have been the one passionate love of his life. This was unexpected; a blow in the dark to my pride, and, alas! I fear, also, to my heart. It was the death-knell to my better nature. It gave direction to the formation of my social life. From that moment I am conscious of a change, and for the worse, in my hitherto attractive nature. It was attractive on account of its sweetness and its purity. It was a nature which, until ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.

... draw a log to the pile, and when I came up to it, I observed that it appeared to be hollow; but stepping forward, with the chain in my hand, ready to attach it to the log, when, oh, horror! the warning rattle of a snake sounded like a death knell in my ears, proceeding from the log I was about to lay hold of. I was so much frightened by the sound, that I dropped the chain as though it were red hot, left my team, and ran with all the speed in my power, screaming "murder, murder!" ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward

... Lady Home said to me, when she would not suffer my lord to subscribe my contract for Fentoun, because I would not allow two thousand marks to be kept out of the security, and take her word for them? She said to me, which was a great knell to my heart, that since her coming to the town, she knew that I had been in some dealing with the Earl of Gowrie about Dirleton.' Now Dirleton, according to Sprot, was to have been Logan's payment from Gowrie, for his aid in ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang

... that they had bought by their resolution, their energy, and their perseverance, the Ministers regarded the fall of Napoleon as a party triumph which could only serve to confirm their power. But the last cannon-shot that was fired on the 18th of June, was in truth the death-knell of the golden age of Toryism. When the passion and ardour of the war gave place to the discontent engendered by a protracted period of commercial distress, the opponents of progress began to perceive that they had to reckon, not with a small ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... for the green mounds with which it was studded, might have passed for a lovely meadow. I fancied that the old clanking bell which was now summoning the congregation together, would seem less terrible when it rung out the knell of a departed soul, than I had ever deemed possible before—that the sound would tell only of a welcome to calmness and rest, amidst the most peaceful ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... chill of sorrow numbs my thought: methinks I hear the passing knell; As dies across yon thin blue line the ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... answer was returned that they could not be spared; and the Republican army having increased rapidly in numbers and gained several posts, a council of war was held to deliberate as to the advisability of longer holding the place. The result was that Toulon must be abandoned. It was the death-knell ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston

... instrument in the drawing-room, and when asked to do so and sing, she answered, "I can't; I can't. It would bring it all back and shake up the bottle. I hate the memory of it when I sang to the crowd and they applauded. I hear them now; it is baby's death knell. I can never sing again as ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... Knell out drearily, Measured out wearily, Sad old bells from the steeple gray. Priests chanting slowly, Solemnly, slowly, Passeth the corpse from the portal to-day. Drops from the leaden clouds heavily fall, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... be kept away from the skies, in spite of os homini sublime dedit; youth should be coupled with all the virtues except truth; earth should never be reminded of her birth; death should never be allowed to stop a mortal's breath, nor the bell to sound his knell, nor flowers from blossoming bowers to wave over his grave or show their bloom upon his tomb. We have rhyming dictionaries,—let us have one from which all rhymes are rigorously excluded. The sight of a poor creature grubbing for rhymes to fill up his sonnet, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... 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 henceforth repair And ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes



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



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