"Mournful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spot I ever wept at leaving. I loved it then, and I love it now, as I love no other place on earth and Carl felt the same way. We were mournful, indeed, as that train ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... of the company and he introduced Lavinia to the leading lady, Mrs. Haughton, who was to play the mournful, weeping Monimia in Otway's dismal tragedy. But for Spiller the "star" actress would hardly have deigned to notice the girl; as it was she received Lavinia with affability marked by condescension. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... in a low, mournful, voice, as if he were reciting to himself a story that had long ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the fire and looked down at his wife with mild excitement. Then, seeing her pale, apathetic face, her look of weary, mournful absorption, a wave of irritation swept through him. He felt he ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... in relation to me they were sterile and inactive. His own interest required that he should purchase my kindness; but he preferred to govern me by terror, and watch me with unceasing anxiety. I ruminated with the most mournful sensations upon the nature of my calamity. I believed that no human being was ever placed in a situation so pitiable as mine. Every atom of my frame seemed to have a several existence, and to crawl within me. I had but too much reason to believe that Mr. Falkland's threats ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... that her daughter was a confirmed invalid, and that their circumstances were such as compelled her taking it upon herself. The countenance of this lady, made beautiful and saintly with an evidently complete giving up of her life to privation and sorrowful tenderness, her gentle and mournful voice urging its plea, her long-forgotten but habitually and unconsciously refined manners, and her appealing and yet appreciative mention of the claims and abilities of her son, disclosed at once the presence of one ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... plundering they gave us two weeks ago, will hardly leave us even the shelter of our roof. O my dear Home! How can I help but cry at leaving you forever? For if this fight occurs, never again shall I pass the threshold of this house, where we have been so happy and sad, the scene of joyous meetings and mournful partings, the place where we greeted each other with glad shouts after even so short a parting, the place where Harry and father kissed us good-bye and never came ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... mournful or plaintive poems. It was formerly a part of Jeremiah and represents the sorrows of Jeremiah when the calamities which he had predicted befell his people, who had often despised and rejected him for his messages. He chose to live with them in their suffering and out of his weeping pointed ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... The drums ceased beating, the cornets interrupted their dolorous bleating, and the bands were hushed. The images of Jesus and Mary were face to face. A plaintive, tremulous voice began to recite in monotone some stanzas which told how very sad and mournful the whole scene was. Tio Grancha, an aged velvet-spinner, came down from Valencia every year to declaim those couplets, and his art was one of the attractions of the festival! What a voice! How it went to your heart! And that ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... bred in joy and love, Nancy hopped out of Mother Carey's warm nest one day, and fixing her bright eyes and sunny, hopeful glance on the lonely, frowning little neighbor, stretched out her hand in friendship. Olive's mournful black eyes met Nancy's sparkling brown ones. Her hand, so marvellously full of skill, had never held another's, and she was desperately self-conscious; but magnetism flowed from Nancy as electric currents from a battery. She drew Olive to her by some unknown force ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the same moment a cold draught coming from somewhere set the tapers flickering. Shadows danced around the room, over the bier, across the dead man's face; and in the quick change of light and shadow it seemed to her that the rigid features became more living, that a mournful smile formed itself on the closed lips, that the tightly-shut eyelids quivered. A wild cry rang through the whole room. With a desperate shriek: "His eyes! He is looking at me!" the general's wife staggered forward and ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... to Dorset (George-John Frederick), fourth Duke of 'LINES occasioned by the death of' Dorville, Mr Dovedale, Lord Byron's eulogy of the scenery of Dramatists, old English, 'full of gross faults' 'Not good as models' 'DREAM,' The The most mournful and picturesque story that ever came from the pen and heart of man 'One of the most interesting' of Lord Byron's poems Dreams Drummond, Sir William His 'OEdipus Judaicus' ——, Mr., Lord Byron's schoolfellow at Harrow Drury, Rev. Henry, Lord Byron's letters to ——, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... without, and fresh company entered. These were no other than four very dismal dogs, who came pattering in one after the other, headed by an old bandy dog of particularly mournful aspect, who, stopping when the last of his followers had got as far as the door, erected himself upon his hind legs and looked round at his companions, who immediately stood upon their hind legs, in a grave and melancholy row. Nor was this the only remarkable circumstance about ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... loving request to Phillis to come to her at as early a moment as possible. With a deep sense of gratitude to Mrs. Wheatley for countless blessings bestowed upon her, Phillis hastened to return to Boston. She found her friend and benefactor just living, and shortly had the mournful satisfaction of closing her sightless eyes. The husband and daughter followed the wife and mother quickly to the grave. Young Mr. Wheatley married, and settled in England. Phillis was ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... have stated these facts thinking that they may afford to you, and to the bereaved widows they have left, a mournful consolation. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... the river's bank I stray'd— Now gazing on the corn-fields ripe and rich; Now listening to the carol of the birds From bush and brake, that with mellifluous notes Fill'd the wide air; and now in mournful thought— That yet was full of pleasure—running through The mazy past. I know not how it was, But from the sounds—the season—and the scene— Soften'd my heart; and, as the swallow wings In autumn back to softer sunnier climes— When summer, like a bright fallacious dream, Hath with its flowers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... which followed Mr. Lockhart's death at Abbotsford was a mournful one. Mrs. Hope-Scott had been deeply attached to her father. She had shared his griefs, as we have seen. Her earlier years had been somewhat lonely; her disposition, with all its reserve, was excessively sensitive and excitable, and a change of scene had doubtless ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... local pith; as having disowned their country, as having ceased to be the representative spirits of the nations. In order to receive them, indeed, Rome had performed on them a cruel operation: they were enervated, bleached. Those great centralized deities became in their official life the mournful functionaries of the Roman Empire. But the decline of that Olympian aristocracy had in no wise drawn down the host of home-born gods, the mob of deities still keeping hold of the boundless country-sides, of the woods, the hills, the fountains; still intimately ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... low and mournful, and her pale face, which still retained many traces of former beauty, expressed so strongly her maternal anxiety, that the hearts of all ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... Dr. B. "Mournful evidence will be found that a confused and painfully bewildered state is often produced by it. They are practically at work in their thoughts to choose between the three, sometimes actually and decidedly preferring one to another; doubting how to adjust their ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... losing hope and perishing. Yesterday, for the fete of the 9th of Thermidor, not a sign of rejoicing; on the contrary, symptoms of general and profound depression, tottering specters in the streets, mournful shrieks of ravaging hunger or shouts of rage, almost every one, driven to the last extremity of misery, welcoming death as ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Gryce no less so. Never had either of them been confronted by a blinder or more bewildering case. An incomprehensible crime and a suspect it was impossible to associate with a deed of blood! There must be some other explanation of the mournful circumstance they were considering. There had been twenty or more people in the building, but—and here was the rub—if the chart which they had drawn up was correct and the calculations which they had drawn from it were to be depended upon, this man was the only person who had been in ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... little knobby hills to the north of my farm. We were as usual sketching, and Auber had been going on all the afternoon about the mournful scenery, talking of nothing but browns, and grays, and "mountain melancholy." He had a way of stringing out a ceaseless jargon while he worked,—an irritating trick caught in the Paris studios. At the end of the afternoon, he held up a remarkable sketch, suggesting the color scheme for a picture ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... passed, and brought in the new year—'51. Overleaping that short lapse of time, Mr. Brock paused, with a heavy heart, at the next event; to his mind the one mournful, the one memorable event of the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... what must not Harold's marriage have been to him! Into the common home, hitherto peaceful if mournful, was brought this coarse, violent, uneducated woman, jealous of him and his family, unmeasured in rudeness, contemning all the refinements to which he clung, and which even then were second nature ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a soul not insensible to the splendid accidents of existence, she yielded her heart to one who could repay the rich sacrifice only with devotion. His poverty, his pride, his dangerous and hereditary gift of beauty, his mournful life, his illustrious lineage, his reserved and romantic mind, had at once attracted her fancy and captivated her heart. She shared all his aspirations and sympathised with all his hopes; and the ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... canoe out into the stream again, and then, with his rifle and pack in his hands, turned his small tear-stained face toward the wooded slope beyond. As he toiled up it in the wide silence of the dawn, a mournful wind burst out of the north, filling the air about him with withered leaves and the dead ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... delivered by revolution. Sentiment urged them in the same direction. Proud and sensitive they resented the dominance of an alien race; they held the wrongs of their forefathers in remembrance, and looked back with mournful longing to the age, invested by their poetic imagination with glory and happiness, when Ireland was yet unconquered. The United Irishmen told them that a fresh conquest would be attempted, that the Orangemen, encouraged by government, designed to rob ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... Our mournful meditations were in some degree disturbed by a loud dispute on board the vessel. At the request of a gentleman present, one of the passengers was compelled, instead of flying, as he had intended, with bag and baggage to Hungary, to return ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... on one occasion he expressed his sympathy for Mills on seeing him come into his rooms wearing a tall hat completely covered in crape. Mills, however, replied, with a smile, that no one was dead—it was only the evil condition of his hat that had made him assume so mournful a disguise. I have often thought that the incident was still fresh in Oscar Wilde's mind when he introduced John Worthing in 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' in mourning for his ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... survive to witness the restoration of amicable relations with France. On the 14th of December, 1799, after a brief illness, he departed this life, at Mount Vernon, aged sixty-eight years. On receiving this mournful intelligence, Congress, then in session at Philadelphia, passed the ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... was close to the window pane, and he was struck by its mournful look. 'Wish I could make her look happy!' he thought. 'A pretty face, but sad!' And taking up his can of hot water he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... oh my!" wailed the mournful caterpillar. "He said we should sleep in cradles of silk and wake up with wings of purple! It has been the dream of my life to be a butterfly with wings of gold ...
— Little Bear at Work and at Play • Frances Margaret Fox
... honoured with a royal visit in the year 1130, when Henry I., the Archbishop of Canterbury, and many of the nobility were present at the consecration of St. Andrew's Church, then just finished: but their mirth was turned into sorrow, by their being mournful spectators of a dreadful conflagration which broke out on the 7th of May, and, without any regard to the majesty of the king, grandeur of the church, or solemnity of the occasion, laid the city in ashes and much damaged the new church." The Chronicle says, as to ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... advantage. It fostered, besides, extensive cod-fishing and even whaling enterprises. Its harbor has suffered since; the rails too have gone through to Spain, and St. Jean is left mildly and interestingly mournful, in its lessened power, its ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... a strong idea that, ere this mournful epistle from your ill-fated brother can reach the trembling hand of my ever dear and much afflicted Nessy, she must have been informed of the final issue of my trial on Wednesday morning, by my honoured friend Dr. Scott, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... the East! all desolate and lone, No more shall nations bow before thy throne. Low in the dust thy boasted beauty lies; Loud through thy princely domes the bittern cries, And the night wind in mournful cadence sighs. The step of man and childhood's joyous voice Are heard no more, and never shall rejoice Thy lonely echoes; savage beasts shall come And find among thy palaces a home. The dragon there shall rear her scaly brood, ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... field of graves. In the calmness and beauty of this solitary place an equal calm seemed to come over her; a sense of how wonderfully events had linked themselves together and worked themselves out; how even poor Tom's mournful death had brought about this meeting, which might end in restoring to her beloved mistresses their lost sheep, their outcast, miserable boy. She did not reason the matter out, but she felt it, and felt that in making her in some degree His instrument God had ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... rummage the basket for those songs which had the most tragical pictures—for Sally had a most tender heart, and delighted in whatever was mournful—Rachel looked steadfastly in her face, and told her she knew by her art that she was born to good fortune, but advised her not to throw herself away. "These two moles on your cheek," added she, "show ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... When I came to myself I was alone in the church. They had gone away without seeing me. I was standing beside the monument, leaning on the carved Crusader. The sun was again shining, and the old church was full of light. But the sunshine had changed to me, and I felt very mournful. I should see the sweet face, hear the lovely voice, no more in this world. I endeavoured to realize the thought, but could not, and I left the church hardly conscious of anything but a ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... enemy from the opposite side of the river recalled us to our duty. They had heard of their success down the river. Our men, who had in various ways evinced their feelings—some in weeping, some in swearing, some in mournful silence—now exhibit demoniac energy. The heavy guns are loaded, traversed and fired, as if they were field-pieces—too much hurry for precision. 'Take your time, men; don't throw away your fire, my lads.' 'No, sir, but we will give it to them hot ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... a frank British accent, which grated on a fastidious ear. The dwarf rose, made two solemn bows, and declared himself enchanted. Although his head was too large for his body, he was neither ill-made nor repulsive. He looked about thirty-five. A high forehead, dark, mournful eyes, and a black moustache and imperial gave him an odd resemblance to ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Senator Hanway outtopped him as a tree outtops a shrub. In a moment the situation, so flattering to Senator Hanway, was changed disastrously. Those winds which builded him into the most imposing sand-cone of all that dotted the plains of party had shifted, and with mournful effect. Senator Hanway, beneath their erosive influence, shrunk from a certainty to a probability, from a probability to a possibility, and then wholly disappeared. And this disheartening miracle was worked before the eyes of Senator Hanway, and before the eyes ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... brook— In sight uv Marthy's winder, where The same could set and look And wonder if his cradle in That green patch long 'nd wide Wuz ez soothin' ez the cradle that Wuz empty at her side; And wonder of the mournful songs The pines wuz singin' then Wuz ez tender ez the lullabies She'd never sing again; And if the bosom uv the earth In which he lay at rest Wuz half ez lovin' 'nd ez warm Ez ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... as he rode home. He met two or three friends, who asked, sympathetically, "No news yet, Master Hall?" and he felt unable to respond except by a mournful shake ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... this virgin soul, whose past was a blank, there was nothing for memory or resignation to cling to; nothing before that last journey, as nothing after; unless it be mournful vigils by the side of the brother she nursed—the almost demented brother, whose life was wrecked by his idleness and a great unfortunate passion; who became an incurable opium-eater and drunkard. Then, shortly before her twenty-ninth birthday, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... gloom, To finish the baby's pinafore. She stitched away with a steady hand, Though her heart was sore, to the very core, To think of the troublesome little band, (There were seven, or more), And the trousers, frocks, and aprons they wore, Made and mended by her alone. "Slave, slave!" she said, in a mournful tone; "And let us slave, and contrive, and fret, I don't suppose we shall ever get A little home which is all our own, With my own front door Apart from the store, And the smell of ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... stirrin' in the leaves, An' sparrers chirpin' 'igh the 'ole day long; An' on the air a sad, sweet music breaves A bonzer song— A mournful sorter choon thet gits a bloke Fair in the brisket 'ere, an' makes ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... Paris went out to meet. The daughter of Louis XVI., who had shared the captivity of her parents and of her brother, the sole survivor of her deeply-wronged house, now returned as Duchess of Angouleme. The uniquely mournful history of her girlhood, and her subsequent marriage with her cousin, the son of the Count of Artois, made her the natural object of a warmer sympathy than could attach to either of the brothers of Louis XVI. But adversity had ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... kinds, and to feed all their live stock during the winter. She did not look in health, and said they had all had ague in 'the fall' but she seemed contented, and proud of her independence; though it was in somewhat a mournful accent that she said, ''Tis strange to us to see company: I expect the sun may rise and set a hundred times before I shall see another human that does not belong to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... representment that I became in doubt which of them stood before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech. "We are not of Alice nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing, less ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... boys remained silent for several minutes, waiting to hear that mysterious voice again. But only the mournful hum of the breeze through a clump ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... communicated by it. Incidentally, indeed, facts are stated which a thoughtful physician may easily turn to professional account. The literary man will naturally feel how much more attractive the book might have been made had these separate and sometimes disjoined threads of mournful personal histories been woven into a more coherent whole; but the book has not been made for literary men. The philanthropist, whether a theoretical or a practical one, will find in its pages little preaching after his particular vein, either upon the vice or the danger of opium-eating. ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... contention is another of the things which one feels to be derogatory to an age of general progress. No longer are men permitted to kill each other in vindication of opinion, but how mournful to witness persecution by inuendo, vituperation, and even falsehood. Individuals and classes are seen bombarding each other in vile, abusive, and certainly most unchristian language, all ostensibly in the name of a religion which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... this point. Mrs Gildea laid it down upon the earlier ones and took another from the little pile which she had spread in sequence for perusal. She smiled to herself in mournful amusement. For she scarcely questioned the probability that her friend would in due course become disillusioned of a very ordinary individual—he certainly sounded a little like an adventurer—who ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... fearlessly and confidingly in my face. When I now see a wagtail at home in Scotland, I cannot but look upon it as an old friend, reminding me of my departed youth, and recalling many soothing as well as mournful recollections.] ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... over him. He is known to have commanded trading vessels in the Eastern seas, and to have returned five times from India. But the details are all lost, and accident has only parted the clouds for a moment to show us the mournful setting with which he, too, went down ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of this scene of desolation, a clear sweet song interrupted the mournful silence of the chamber of the dying boy. Violette started. This soft melody seemed to bring consolation and happiness; she raised her head and saw a lark perched upon ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... hysteria. A military spirit tends towards brutality. Liberty leads to licence, restraint to tyranny. The pride of race is distended to blustering arrogance. The fear of God produces bigotry and superstition. There appears no exception to the mournful rule, and the best efforts of men, however glorious their early results, have dismal endings, like plants which shoot and bud and put forth beautiful flowers, and then grow rank and coarse and are withered by the winter. It is only when we reflect that the decay gives birth to ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... there was not much popular receptivity for acrobatics in the streets; coppers came in slowly; the outlay was heavy; and the outlook altogether was of the gray without the gold. But his wife's words were always cheerful, though the tone of them had not a little of the mournful. Their tone came of temperament, the words themselves of love and its courage. The daughter of a gamekeeper, the neighbors regarded her as throwing herself away when she married Franks; but she had got an honest and brave husband, and never when ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... rich-flavored fruit, nestling in the trellis-work on the garden wall, hidden beneath its long green leaves—this small vegetable production, that a dormouse would nibble up without a thought, was sufficient to recall to the memory of this great monarch the mournful shade of ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... to holy duties, to prior engagements, to earlier vows. God denied his blessing to the guilty project, and my course was arrested in a fearful manner. Pray for me, Edward, and bring back the ring, my ring," continued the voice, in a mournful tone of appeal. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... of the camp to the other, capturing thirty or forty guns as we went along, which fired at twenty paces from us, and were served obstinately. The brave men drew up in an excellent line, and cheered Gough and myself as we rode up the line, the regimental colours lowering to me as if on parade. The mournful part is the heavy loss I have sustained in my officers. I have lost ten aides-de-camp hors de combat, five killed and five wounded. The fire of grape was very heavy from one hundred pieces of cannon. The Sikh army ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... poultry lean, incline flat, level flat, vapid sharpness, acerbity sharpness, acrimony shepherd, pastor word, vocable choke, suffocate stifle, suffocate clothes, raiment witness, spectator beat, pulsate mournful, melancholy beginning, incipient drink, imbibe light, illuminate hall, corridor stair, escalator anger, indignation fight, combat sleight-of-hand, prestidigitation build, construct tree, arbor ask, interrogate wench, virgin frisk, caper fill, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... as the mother folded up the letter. Then they were silent, thinking of the dear brother who wanted so much to be in the dreadful battle; and the little mother was looking very mournful when there came ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... —Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... naturally pot him easy enough. But I got a hunch that he couldn't get fur enough away to feel safe afterward. The fellow with a hankering for a good useful kind of suicide could get it right there. Any candidates? You-all been looking kinda mournful lately, Windy; s'pose you be the human benefactor and rid the world ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... said a musical but somewhat mournful voice, that of the great but ill-starred LUIS DE CAMOENS himself. "I wrote much of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... spring and summer when he is happy and gay, his song is extremely soft and agreeable, while it grows very mournful and plaintive as cold weather approaches. He is mild of temper, and a peaceable and harmless neighbor, setting a fine example of amiability to his feathered friends. In the early spring, however, he wages war against robins, wrens, swallows, and other birds ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... murdered by the natives, and to attempt such a thing was altogether madness, I journeyed on to Tripoli, where I entered with all my soul and might into the undertaking. But as in Tunis so in Tripoli, I heard the birds of evil-omen uttering the same mournful notes of discouragement:—"I should never reach Ghadames, no one else had done so, or no one else had gone and returned. I should perish by the hand of banditti, or sink under the burning heat. I was not the man; it required a frame of iron. Enthusiasm ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... spirit, though both the Effinghams scarce wetted their lips. Eve stole a timid glance at her father, and her own eyes were filled with tears as she withdrew them; for she knew that every allusion of this nature revived in him mournful recollections. As for her cousin Jack, he was so confirmed a bachelor that she thought nothing of his want of sympathy ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... nameless, pathless woods; the breath of an earlier time, of a younger season of the earth, seemed to lie yet upon the untroubled forest ways; the whisper of the unseen waters had a dream-like, unreal cadence; in the deep shade, in the warm fragrance and the heavy gloom, there was a voluptuous yet mournful charm—the world seemed so far, the stars shone so near; there were the sweetness of rest and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... was a pretty sloping garden, and below this stretched a broad clearing, now waving with corn, amidst which rose up a number of scattered, lofty, dead trees, which had been purposely killed by ringing the bark. How mournful they ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... salutariness. And yet Caron La Boulaye was a man of most excellent exterior, and, when passion had roused him out of his restraint and awkwardness, of most ardent and eloquent address. The very sombreness that—be it from his mournful garments or from a mind of thoughtful habit—seemed to envelop him was but an additional note of poetry in a personality which struck her now as eminently poetical. In the seclusion of her own chamber, as she recalled the burning words and the fall of her father's whip upon the young man's ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... appealingly sorrowful, and yet so coldly sad, that one pitied and admired and loved in the one glance. The long, dark lashes that fringed the white lids, and rested languidly on the pallid cheeks, every now and then shaded the deepest, dreamiest and most mournful eyes Guy had ever seen, and the subdued passion and smothered emotion that the keen glance might detect trembling on her full, red lips, was grander to Guy than anything else human he could conceive. Then the large, creeping waves of the dry, dark hair ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... let you in," said the widow. "He won't me, but I think he favors you, Janice," she added innocently, shaking her head with a continued mournful air. "He come right in and said: 'Mother Beaseley, I don't believe I can eat any dinner to-day,' and then shut and locked his door. I didn't know what had happened till 'Rene Hopper, she that works for Mrs. Cross Moore, run in to borry my heavy flat-iron, an' she tol' me about the stolen ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... about to reach over to Skipper Zeb to wake him, when all at once the stillness was broken by a terrifying, heartrending howl, rising and falling in mournful cadence, and echoing through the forest behind them. The howling creature was separated from Charley only by the thickness of the canvas, and Charley's blood ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... woman's eyes wandered absently away; then she began studying the parcel, and appeared about to unfold it once more, then thought better of it, and at last said, still speaking in the same absent mournful tone: "I've got a room to myself up there," indicating the upper end of the street. "You can come and sleep along with me, if you like. One bloater ain't much for two, but there's tea and bread, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... land; when, instead of meeting the calamity with measures of relief, he sought to stifle every important inquiry; when he called that a partial and temporary evil which was both long-lived and universal, he could not look on such a mournful crisis, in which public misfortune was insulted by ministerial apathy, without hailing any prospect of change in the system that produced such a state of feeling. What, he asked, could be said of the ignorance which could attribute the distress to the introduction ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... my heart, crying in the sand, All night long crying with a mournful cry, As I lie and listen, and cannot understand The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea, O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I? All night long the water is crying ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... natural instinct we know that by white all the world hath understood joy, gladness, mirth, pleasure, and delight. In former times the Thracians and Cretans did mark their good, propitious, and fortunate days with white stones, and their sad, dismal, and unfortunate ones with black. Is not the night mournful, sad, and melancholic? It is black and dark by the privation of light. Doth not the light comfort all the world? And it is more white than anything else. Which to prove, I could direct you to the book of Laurentius ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... worked back along the ridge toward camp, and headed several ravines that ran and widened down into the big canyon. All at once R.C. held up a warning finger. "Listen!" With abatement of breath I listened, but heard nothing except the mournful sough of the pines. "Thought I heard a whistle," he said. We went on, all eyes ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... would find ourselves engaged in heated arguments, the disputants breathing quickly, muttering unheeded phrases, seeking in vain for a loophole or a pause. It generally ended by Hugh saying with mournful pathos that he could not understand why everyone set on him—that he never argued in any other circle, and he could only entreat to be let alone. It is true that we were accustomed to argue questions of every kind with tenacity and even with invective. ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... swarm around a hive, the maids of La belle France Went mad about our LIONEL and thirsted for his glance; In short they were reduced unto a state of used-up coffee lees By this mild, melancholic, maudlin, mournful Mephistopheles. He rallied them in French, in which he had the gift of rep- artee, and sunnily they smiled, the Damsels ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... been? what have you been doing all this time?' she exclaimed. 'We've had ever so many games, and now tea will be ready directly. What are you looking so mournful about, Margaret, and you so excited, Frances? You haven't—oh no, you couldn't have ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... this the soil, the clime, Said then the lost archangel, this the seat That we must change for Heaven; this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so, since he Who now is sov'rain can dispose and bid What shall be right: farthest from him is best, Whom reason hath equal'd, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell happy fields, Where joy for ever dwells: ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the tones of the clock, chiming the hour, vibrated above his head. This time it was midnight. Roland counted the twelve strokes, one after the other. The last hung, quivering upon the air, like a bird with iron wings, then slowly expired, sad and mournful. Just then the young man, thought he heard a moan. He listened in the direction whence it came. Again he heard it, this time nearer ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... elephant that had died, and dragged it piecemeal to their cave. The same would possibly apply to some of the other large animals, for hyaenas, unless in great extremes of hunger never attack a living animal. They have a loud and mournful howl, beginning low and ending high, and also a maniacal ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... and queen, whose mournful humiliating dress was changed for magnificent robes, went with all their court to the house built by the intendant of the gardens, where the emperor presented the princes Bahman and Perviz, and the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... no need of dwelling on such mournful things, Clarissa. Nora is not so ill that we need think the worst, much less talk ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... Mugwump sniffs and sneers; Gregarious 'votes of thanks' and sheepish 'cheers' Stir him to satire scornful. But when sleek Culture apes, irate and loud, The follies of the Caucus and the Crowd, The spectacle is mournful." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... with semblance of the Summer brave, Soft, pitying airs float o'er its cold death-bed; Bright flowers and motley leaves flaunt o'er its grave: As in Earth's Autumn—so, through weeping showers, Love sighs a mournful requiem ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... port. The sun was just setting, and the western sky glowed with the same gorgeous colouring which it had worn on the evening of the funeral. The sight reminded me of the sad incident, and I wondered whether we were to have a sadder one yet. I sat for some time lost in mournful thought, when there was a slight stir in the cot, and I heard little Fisher's voice ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... boy of Greek parentage; Androkulos was his right name—but it was too much to expect any one to get that straight in a coal-camp. Hal noticed him at the store, and was struck by his beautiful features, and the mournful look in his big black eyes. They got to talking, and Andy made the discovery that Hal had not spent all his time in coal-camps, but had seen the great world. It was pitiful, the excitement that came into his voice; he was yearning for life, with its joys and adventures—and it was his ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... falls between them still. Then, I fancy, he is thinking of an art that has slipped away from him, and she of a loyalty she could not hold. The only person whose equanimity is entirely undisturbed is Buddha. In his place among the mournful Magdalens of Mrs. Bell's drawing-room ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... minute attention which Villemet paid to her, though all in good taste, but with an anxious, if not mournful air, as if he were appointed to watch over her health, and was not quite happy ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... upon the Chinaman as a being more than humanly endowed, began to take possession of Seton Pasha. He regretted having entered the place so overtly, he regretted having shown a light. Keen eyes, vigilant, regarded him. It was perhaps a delusion, bred of the mournful night sounds, the gloom, and the uncanny resourcefulness, already proven, of the Kazmah ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the scene around me now: A little churchyard on the brow Of a green pastoral hill; Its sylvan village sleeps below, And faintly here is heard the flow Of Woodburn's summer rill; A place where all things mournful meet, And yet the sweetest of the sweet, The stillest of the still! With what a pensive beauty fall Across the mossy, mouldering wall That rose-tree's clustered arches! See The robin-redbreast ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... I won't ever find him again," he said, in so mournful a tone that Uncle Daniel knew the tears ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... could scarcely see his face, but his attitude was convincing. It was not a thing of chance either. I made some remark about him to an attendant, and he told me that night after night that man had occupied the same seat, always following every line of the play with the same mournful concentration, never speaking to any one, never moving from his seat from the beginning of the ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... darkness to find the head-quarters of the commanding General—two little fires of rubbish and two ambulances—with Lee lying on a blanket under the open sky. He rose, as Dan drew near, and the firelight fell full on his bronzed and mournful face. He looked so sad and so noble that the boy's heart was wrenched, and as Dan ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... water-hen continues plentiful: when alarmed by kites, etc. it pursues them uttering a low mournful scream, until it has succeeded in getting its enemy off to some distance; it then returns, I suppose to its young; otherwise its cry is something like the mewing of a cat, or rather a low hollow moan. The hills are plainly visible to- ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... up in your heart by his presence. I do not know when this may be, I say, but you must have patience, and till he lays his hand on your head, you must be content to wash his feet with your tears. Only he will be better pleased if your faith keep you from weeping and from going about your duties mournful. Try to be brave and cheerful for the sake of Christ, and for the sake of your confidence in the beautiful teaching of God, whose course and scope you cannot yet understand. Trust, my daughter, and let that ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... will not enlarge upon these mournful comparisons, especially when I want to write about Aniela. I am quite certain my feelings towards her have not changed, but I seem to see her a long distance off, shrouded in a blue haze and less real than at Ploszow. I do not feel her through my senses. When I compare my present feelings with ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... That went down scornful under many spears; Who soon as we are born are straight our friends, And live in simple music, country songs, And mournful ballads ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... on his face with a very mournful gaze while he was speaking, but he was busy with his argument and ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... begins with the words [Hebrew: wM tncli] only; the whole remaining part of the verse is of a mournful character. In the words, "Travail and break forth," one aspect only of the figure of the parturient woman is brought into view, viz., the pain; but not the joy following upon the pain; compare remarks on v. 2. The Imperative ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... appearance' sake, stammered out a word or two, but his voice was lost in the harsh and mournful cries of a great flight of black birds, which made the arches echo as they descended upon the court. 'Why, here are the Duchess's rooks!' said the woman, with a respectful wave of the hand towards the bare plane-trees of the ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... in buckskin garments, with a rug made of coyote skins about her shoulders; she wore the beaded leggings and moccasins of her race, and her hair, jet black, hung in ragged plaits about her dark face, from which mournful eyes looked out ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... talents. MONVEL is a man of genius. Thus gifted, it is not astonishing that he has a just diction, and is not deficient in intelligence. Some persons doubt whether he has real sensibility; but he at least presents the appearance of it. He, in some measure, breaks his voice, and vents mournful accents which produce much effect. With a constitution extremely weak, it is impossible that he should perform characters which require energy and pride. He therefore confines himself to those in which the pathetic is ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... preferred the Holt in his absence. She did not understand his discursive comments on all things in art or nature, and he was in a mood of flighty fitful spirits, which perplexed her alike by their wild, satirical mirth, and their mournful sentiment. She thought Miss Charlecote was worried and perplexed at times by his tone; but there was no doubt of his affection and attention for his 'Sweet Honey,' and Phoebe rejoiced that her own absence should be at ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... patriarch and his friends, as the Song of Songs is a dramatic dialogue between the Lover and the Loved One, so the Book of Ecclesiastes is a drama of a still more tragic kind. It is an interchange of voices, higher and lower, mournful and joyful, within a single human soul. It is like the struggle between the two principles in the Epistle to the Romans. It is like the question and answer of 'The Two Voices' of our modern poet.... Every speculation and ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... so pale and wan He looked, so great and High, So noble was his manly front, So calm his steadfast eye, The rabble rout, forbore to shout, And each man held his breath, For well they knew the hero's soul Was face to face with death. And then a mournful shuddering Through all the people crept, And some that came to scoff at him ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... the greatest altitude at which I found them being on the sides of Bald Mountain, above Seven Lakes and a little below the timber-line. To this day their sad refrains are ringing in my ears, bringing back the thought of many half-mournful facts and incidents that ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... the smoke troubled them. Near the edge of the wood they found a deer still alive and with a broken leg, tripped in its panic-stricken flight or struck by a fallen tree. Henry approached cautiously and slew him with his clasp knife. He felt strong pity as the fallen animal looked at him with great mournful eyes, but they were two hungry boys, and they must have a food supply if they would ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... her veil when he turned to look. She blushed suddenly, so much was not to be mistaken; and the eyes that met his were remarkable for other reasons than the sheer loveliness of them, in that, even in the one flash of them he caught, they meant so many things at one time. They were sparkling, yet mournful; and they were wistful, although undeniably lively with the gayest comprehension of the recipient of their glance, seeming to say, "Oh, it's you, young man, is it!" And they were shy and mysterious with youth, full of that wonder at the world which has the appearance, sometimes, ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... of the present age has perhaps fallen somewhat in estate. It was natural that it should rush to a high perfection in the halcyon days of its growth. It is easy to make mournful predictions of decadence. The truth is the symphony is a great form of art, like a temple or a tragedy. Like them it has had, it will have its special eras of great expression. Like them it will stay as a mode of utterance for new ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... he had for seeking to commence the study of music, it holds even in more important matters that, if the thing pursued be good, there is a hope of the pursuit purifying the motive. And Robert no sooner heard the fiddle utter a few mournful sounds in the hands of the soutar, who was no contemptible performer, than he longed to establish such a relation between himself and the strange instrument, that, dumb and deaf as it had been to him hitherto, it would respond to his touch also, and tell him the secrets of its ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... when all the dogs were taken for the last exercise of the day. Every kind, of dog was there, but especially the fat and pampered variety—Poms, King Charles, Pekinese, Dachshunds—a few bigger dogs, and even one mournful-eyed Dane who walked with melancholy superiority, as a king ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... put a counter on his wife's card, who sat watching first the cousin from Paris and then Eugenie, without thinking of her loto, a prey to mournful presentiments. From time to time the young the heiress glanced furtively at her cousin, and the banker's wife easily detected a crescendo of surprise and ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... as the master sounded again, loud and clear, the call for the assembly, all the dogs about the place, young and old, homekeepers and warriors, came pouring in with heads uplifted, each pealing out his sweet and mournful music. Blount spoke to dozens of them, calling each ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... image of more perfect loveliness never glanced through a lady's lattice. She carelessly took up her cithern. A few wild chords flew from her touch. She bent her head towards the instrument, as if wooing its melody—the vibrations that crept to her heart. She hummed a low and plaintive descant, mournful and tender as her own thoughts. The tone and feeling of the ballad we attempt to preserve ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... up smoking, or to work less or to work more, or to go to bed early or to get up late, or to ride, or to fence, or to play golf, or to go to Upper Egypt or the Engadine, or anything that fancy may dictate and opportunity suggest. So the kind physician advises his mournful self- tormentor, and then he himself flies round the corner and consults some brother-healer about his ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... 'restless' discord. 'Nimble notes' was used in the Shakespearian time as we should use the term 'brilliant music.' Lucrece was in no humour for trills and runs, but rather for Dumps, where she could keep slow time with her tears. The Dumpe (from Swedish Dialect, dumpa, to dance awkwardly) was a slow, mournful dance. [See Appendix.] There is another quibble in l. 1131, on strain. A 'strain' is the proper Elizabethan word for a formal phrase of a musical composition. For instance, in a Pavan, Morley (Introduction to Practical Music, 1597) says a 'straine' should consist of 8, 12, or 16 semibreves ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... still able without much effort to pin White down to the banks of the Klip River. The inactivity of the garrison, as well as the daily increasing hospital camp at Intombi under the shadow of Bulwana and the mournful processions to the cemetery hard by, showed that sickness, the waning physical and moral strength of those who were still on duty, and the expenditure of stores, supplies, and ammunition, were slowly impairing White's power of resistance; and that the numbers of the besieging force, which ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... its pungent odors round her as the blossoms died—strange wild songs that she had learned in the two years of her tropic life; ancient and plaintive Spanish airs; Moorish songs whose savage tunes were sweet as the honey of the rocks; wild and mournful Indian airs that the Spaniards might have heard in those Caribbean islands when first they burst upon their peaceful seas; and by and by a sleepy nocturne that seemed to lull the wind, to charm the ship, and hold the great moon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... to hurry back and report what we had discovered. On hearing it, Captain Norton resolved to occupy the fort. Our first business on entering was to carry out the bodies of the late garrison. It was a mournful task, as we had no means of burying them, or, at all events, no time to devote to this object. As soon as this duty was performed, we set to work to repair the fort. Most of the men had axes, which they vigorously plied, and soon ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... invisible, being nevertheless present alway, in the minds of at least three persons there. My lord was exceeding gentle and kind. Whenever he quitted the room, his wife's eyes followed him. He behaved to her with a kind of mournful courtesy and kindness remarkable in one of his blunt ways and ordinary rough manner. He called her by her Christian name often and fondly, was very soft and gentle with the children, especially with the boy, whom he did not love, and being lax about church generally, he went thither and performed ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray |
