Unavailing

All efforts have been unavailing.

By this I reached the roof-top, whence in vain / the luckless Teucrians hurled their unavailing rain.

Weeping she spake, with unavailing woe, / and poured her sorrow to the winds, when lo, / in sight comes Helenus, with fair array, / and hails his friends, and hastening to bestow / glad welcome, toward his palace leads the way; / but tears and broken words his mingled thoughts betray.

The Begums' ministers, on the contrary, to extort from them the disclosure of the place which concealed the treasures, were, […] after being fettered and imprisoned, led out on to a scaffold, and this array of terrours proving unavailing, the meek tempered Middleton, as a dernier resort, menaced them with a confinement in the fortress of Chunargar. Thus, my lords, was a British garrison made the climax of cruelties!

During the next ten years, efforts to secure support for extending the railway south of Hawick were unavailing.