Sigh

“ That sigh is nature, and cannot decay,
'Tis universal as the beams of day;
Man knows and feels its truth; for, Beauty's call
Rouses the coldest mortal of us all;
A glance warms age itself, and gives the boy
The pulse of rapture and the sigh of joy. ”

“ I have heard you sigh, too, very sadly, as though something hurt you, although you are so bright and young and fair. The wind sighs hopelessly, in great sobs of weariness and despair, for he is filled with the ghosts of the past ”

“ What is the use of tongues when a sigh or a groan will tell all men feel while, perforce, they think in silence? Existence with the poor wretches was like a stream under ground sweeping slowly, laboriously on to its outlet, wherever that might chance to be. ”

“ And to what must I attribute my misfortune? You sigh less from love than from grief. The roses of your cheek are faded, a token of secret sorrow. Scarce are your sisters gone than you sigh of regret. Ah! my Psyche, when two hearts are swayed by an equal passion, can their sighs have a different object? and when their love is true, and the loved one nigh, is there room to sigh for relatives? ”

“ Another sigh came from the window—quite a resigned sigh.
“She's life and hope and happiness, my whole world now.”
He felt the quiver of a tear on his eyelid. ”

“ She look’d down to blush, and she look’d up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye. ”

“ Ah, man may breathe a sorrow. Doth then the dumbness of 249his brother bar his sighing? Nay—and hark! The sea doth sigh, and yonder starry jasmine stirreth with a tremorous sigh; and morning’s birth is greeted with the sighing of the world. For what? Ah, for that coming that shall fulfill the promise, and change the sighing to a singing, and loose the tongue of him whom God doth know and, fearful lest he tell His hidden mysteries, hath locked his lips.”
And again she asks: “Needest thou see what God himself sealeth thine eyes to make thee know?” ”

“ Souls in anguish find some consolation in sending sigh after sigh from the bottom of the heart, and even a tear shed breaks the force of affliction. But sighs and tears give us less consolation than the opportunity of telling our troubles to your love. ”

“ They eat well, look merrily, discourse of many things, but nothing of their own restraint and disasters. Yet sometime a divided sigh, martyred as ’twere i’ th’ deliverance, will break from one of them—when the other presently gives it so sweet a rebuke that I could wish myself a sigh to be so chid, or at least a sigher to be comforted. ”

“ when my heart, As wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain, Lest Hector or my father should perceive me, I have, as when the sun doth light a storm, Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile. But sorrow that is couch'd in seeming gladness Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness. ”

“ But now, to my horror again I heard a rustle—light as a sigh, yet it was even more distinct than the brass tube of the Hymn. Thus the last sigh in a man’s life, around him people with their faces pale and with drops of cold sweat upon their foreheads. ”

“ We weep for gladness, weep for grief; The tears they are the same; We sigh for longing, and relief; The sighs have but one name, And mingled in the dying strife, Are moans that are not sad The pangs of death are throbs of life, Its sighs are sometimes glad. ”

“ In grief we sigh, in mirth we laugh: in the latter little stress is laid upon the respiration, and this is performed with less regularity than it is at any other time; all the muscles without, and every thing within feel loose, and seem to have no other motion than what is communicated to them by the convulsive shakes of laughter. ”

“ Nobly he yokes A smiling with a sigh, as if the sigh Was that it was for not being such a smile; The smile mocking the sigh that it would fly From so divine a temple to commix With winds that sailors rail at. ”

“ When trouble haunts me, need I sigh?
No, rather smile away despair; ”

“ All our passions appear to claim the respiratory nerves for outward expression. They are a signal corps which communicate by hoisting the blush, the smile; by letting fall the tear, by the exhalation of a sigh, by the explosions of laughter. The life-breaths of joy and grief tend primitively to the lungs, and they voice the mother-tongue of all emotions.
I have often wondered how animals can avoid being struck with the differences which exist among themselves, so much more salient and intrusive than among [Pg 5] the races of men, in shape, gestures, tones, and habits. ”

“ He weeps!—the falling drop puts out the sun;
He sighs—the sigh earth’s deep foundation shakes.
If in his love so terrible, what then
His wrath inflamed? ”

“ When the mind is affected with ardent desire, or reflects with regret upon some good unattained or lost, it feels an internal emotion, which acting upon the diaphragm, elevates the lungs, and produces a sigh; when the mind perceives no prospect of relief the sighs are repeated, sorrow succeeds, and tears often follow ”

“ The sobbing and sighing attendant upon grief are not convulsive movements, they are occasioned by the sensorial power being so expended on the painful ideas, and their connections, that the person neglects to breathe for a time, and then a violent sigh or sob is necessary to carry on the blood, which oppresses the pulmonary vessels, which is then performed by deep or quick inspirations, and laborious expirations. ”

“ Nay, so great was the extremity of his pain and anguish that he did not only sigh, but roar, and his roarings were poured out like the waters in a full and constant stream. ”

“ Whispering those gentle words so sweet to hear,
And answer'd by flush'd cheek, and downcast eye,
And roselip parted, with half smile, half sigh.
Young, loving, and beloved,—these are brief words,
And yet they touch on all the finer chords,
Whose music is our happiness: the tone
May die away and be no longer known
In the harsh wisdom brought by after years,
Lost in that worldliness which scars and sears,
And makes the misery of life's troubled scene;—
Still it is much to think that it has been. ”

“ Loud are my sighs because they pierce the sky,
Not loud my sighs because they are not heard;
My death begun because I artless cry,
But not begun because I am debarred.
Thus sighs and death my heart no comfort give;
Both life deny, and both do make me live.
Bold are her smiles, her smiles that are not bold,
Wise are her words, those words that are not wise,
[Pg 149] Cold are her lips, those lips that are not cold,
Ice are those hands, those hands that are not ice. ”

“ What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts to-night, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more. ”

“ We are disgusted with that clamorous grief, which, without any delicacy, calls upon our compassion with sighs and tears and importunate lamentations. But we reverence that reserved, that silent and majestic sorrow, which discovers itself only in the swelling of the eyes, in the quivering of the lips and cheeks, and in the distant, but affecting, coldness of the whole behaviour. It imposes the like silence upon us. ”

“ All over the plain are the homes of the men who have come to stay —
I sigh for the good old days in the station whare again;
But the good new days are better — I would not be heard to complain;
It is only the wind that cries with tears in its voice to me
Of the dead men low in the mould who came with me over the sea.
Some of them down in the city under the marble are laid,
Some on the bare hillside in the mound by the lone tree shade,
And some in the forest deeps of the west in their silence lie,
With the dark pine curtain above shutting out the blue of the sky. ”

“ How fair it's lawns and sheltering woods appear!
How sweet it's streamlet murmurs in mine ear!)
Where we, my friend, to happy days shall rise,
'Till our small share of hardly-paining sighs
(For sighs will ever trouble human breath)
Creep hushed into the tranquil breast of Death. ”

“ Among the first reflex movements are crying on contact with the air, sneezing, snuffling, snoring, coughing, sighing, sobbing, gagging, vomiting, hiccuping, starting, moving the limbs when touched, and sucking. ”

“ she is the source of sighs,
The very face to make us sad;
If but to think in other times
The same calm quiet look she had,
As if the world held nothing base,
Of vile and mean, of fierce and bad; ”

“ Crying consists of short deep inspirations and prolonged expiration's with the glottis partially closed. Long-continued crying leads to sobbing, in which sudden spasmodic contractions of the diaphragm cause sudden inspirations and inspiratory sounds generated in larynx and pharynx.
Sighing is a sudden and prolonged inspiration following an unusually long pause after the last expiration. ”

“ At others—what curses—foul or coarse jests—or tales addressed to all—or ribald laughter—or sighings and groanings in these later hours when the straining spirit having struggled to silence, there was supposedly rest for the body and the spirit. ”

“ To reflect back her blushes, Or give sigh for sigh. ”

“ Brings the tears into her eyes?
Does it blow so strong that she must fetch
Her breath in sudden sighs? ”

“ At a sight so dreadful, and, in spite of all my apprehensions, so unexpected, I felt a sensation of sickness which in another moment might have ended in my fainting also, if I had not realized that it would never do for me to lose my wits in the presence of a man who had none too many of his own. ”

“ This Shewing was quick and life-like, and horrifying and dreadful, sweet and lovely. And of all the sight it was most comfort to me that our God and Lord that is so reverend and dreadful, is so homely and courteous: and this most fulfilled me with comfort and assuredness of soul. ”

“ Your cold blood cannot be worked into a fever: your veins are full of ice-water; but mine are boiling, and the sight of such chillness makes them dance.’
‘To get rid of me, answer my question,’ persevered Mr. ”

“ “Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been,’” sighed Psmith. ”

“ And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods Make heaven drowsy with the harmony. Never durst poet touch a pen to write Until his ink were temp'red with Love's sighs; O, then his lines would ravish savage ears, And plant in tyrants mild humility. ”

“ O, how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow!
Her eyes seen in the tears, tears in her eye;
Both crystals, where they view'd each other's sorrow,
Sorrow that friendly sighs sought still to dry;
But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain,
Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again.
Variable passions throng her constant woe,
As striving who should best become her grief;
All entertain'd, each passion labours so,
That every present sorrow seemeth chief,
But none is best: then join they all together,
Like many clouds consulting for foul weather. ”

“ A sightless heaven, a shaven land.
Her shivering Spring feign'd fast asleep,
The bitten buds dared not unfold:
We raced on roads and ice to keep
Thought of the girl we love from cold.
But now the North wind ceases,
The warm South-west awakes,
The heavens are out in fleeces,
And earth's green banner shakes. ”

“ I LEFT thee last, a child at heart,
A woman scarce in years:
I come to thee, a solemn corpse
Which neither feels nor fears.
I have no breath to use in sighs;
They laid the dead-weights on mine eyes
To seal them safe from tears.
Look on me with thine own calm look:
I meet it calm as thou. ”

“ Grant me the shade of thy wings, O Death, for I would rest within.
Weary of smiling faces when the heart is like to break.
Of lips that are too silent when they long the while to speak,
Of tears that fall from eyes too young, of quivering lips that laugh. ”

“ His affections show themselves in the tones of his voice, in the changes of the muscles of his face, and in the various movements of the whole body. They do this naturally, that is, without any purpose or effort on his part. Grief will cause weeping; shame mantles the face with blushes; joy expresses itself by smiles and laughter. ”

“ The sight was tremendous and awfully grand: the large fields of ice, raising themselves out of the water, striking against each other and plunging into the deep with a violence not to be described, and a noise like the discharge of innumerable batteries of heavy guns. The darkness of the night, the roaring of the wind and sea, and the dashing of the waves and ice against the rocks, filled the travellers with sensations of awe and horror, so as almost to deprive them of the power of utterance. ”

“ White hairs, lean cheeks, withered muscles, feeble steps, and that dull, dead feeling about the heart—that utter abandonment of cheer—which would be despair were it not for a certain blunted sensibility—a sort of drowsy indifference to all things that the day brings forth, which, as it takes from life the excitement of every passion, leaves it free from the sting of any. ”

“ There seemed a tension in the air—as if something was going to snap. Doubtless you have often felt it—a sensation as though pins and needles were pricking you all over. As though you wanted to scream—to cry out—against an uncertain sensation that gripped you. ”

“ His mouth also marks a supreme sadness, which depresses the lower lip and seems to weigh upon it, while the upper lip, contracted from the top to the bottom, expresses at once both physical suffering and that of the soul. Under the mouth there is an expression of indignation that seems to protest against an undeserved suffering, and is revealed in the nostrils, which swell out and enlarge and draw upwards. ”