Knell

The clatter of his precious pans as they fell down into the dark was like a death-knell to his heart.

They had rung the bells when King Robert died, she remembered, but this was different, no slow dolorous death knell but a joyful thunder.

A knell from the church bell broke harshly on these youthful thoughts.

"Take these," he said, "and study them well. You will need all your faith, even you who have had such an experience as that of today. What is here told," he laid his hand heavily and gravely on the packet of papers as he spoke, "may be the beginning of the end to you and me and many another; or it may sound the knell of the Un-Dead who walk the earth. Read all, I pray you, with the open mind; and if you can add in any way to the story here told do so, for it is all-important. Then we shall go through all these together when we meet."

" My line! Gone?—gone? What means that little word?—What death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as if he were the belfry. The harpoon, too!—toss over the litter there—d'ye see it?—the forged iron, men, the white whale's—no, no, no—blistered fool! I'll ten times girdle the unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight through it, but I'll slay him yet!"

Never did funeral knell, never did alarm-bell, produce a greater effect on the hearer.

In the words "as usual," and again in her added, "mine , at all events," there seemed an ominous knell of some evil to come.

"It is the knell, Monsieur Madeleine. The bell will continue to strike once a minute for twenty-four hours, until the body is taken from the church.—You see, they play. Those cherubs are devils."

Gone is that last dear son of Italy, Who being man died for the sake of God, And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully, O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto's tower, Thou marble lily of the lily town! let not the lour Of the rude tempest vex his slumber, or The Arno with its tawny troubled gold O'er-leap its marge, no mightier conqueror Clomb the high Capitol in the days of old When Rome was indeed Rome, for Liberty Walked like a bride beside him, at which sight pale Mystery Fled shrieking to her farthest sombrest cell With an old man who grabbled rusty keys, Fled shuddering, for that immemorial knell With which oblivion buries dynasties Swept like a wounded eagle on the blast, As to the holy heart of Rome the great triumvir passed.

The sleep into which I now sank refreshed me; and when I awoke, I again felt as if I belonged to a race of human beings like myself, and I began to reflect upon what had passed with greater composure; yet still the words of the fiend rang in my ears like a death-knell; they appeared like a dream, yet distinct and oppressive as a reality.

On Old Wyk her uncle's hellhorn had blown a death knell for her dreams, and now Hagen was sounding what might well be her last hour on earth.