"Chirp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... long-familiar, chanting monotones fainted and died in the portals of her ears like a nurse's song, while her sinking eyelids shut not out, but in, one tallish Rosemont senior who had risen in prayer visibly heavy with the sleep he had robbed from three successive nights. The chirp of a lone cricket somewhere under the floor led her forth in a half dream beyond the town and the gleaming turnpike, across wide fields whose multitudinous, tiny life rasped and buzzed under ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... the morning broke, and the early birds began to chirp in the ivy and to prune their plumage and flutter among the leaves; and down the street tramped the feet of the toilers on their way to forge and dock. Over the harbor came the daffodil light from the sun-tipped ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... over, when they hop away, scolding furiously at being disturbed. They are fond of bathing, and after a rain may be seen in crowds fluttering and splashing in the pools of water in the street. The cold winter does not molest them. They continue as plump and jolly and independent as ever, and chirp and hop about as merrily on a ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... modeled it within with wood and clay. And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew, There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers, Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue: And there I witnessed in the summer hours A brood of Nature's minstrels chirp and fly, Glad as the ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... bear was gone, the little gray robin hopped near. Her chirp was quite sad. She, too, saw nothing but a little heap of ashes as gray as her ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... its fierce-looking paint and naturally stern lineaments with a bright gleam of human feeling, "Chingachgook heard the laugh of Wah-ta-Wah, and knew it from the laugh of the women of the Iroquois. It sounded in his ears, like the chirp ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... Reality underlying all phenomena. The same may be accomplished with the "audible," which is indeed part of the same physical film, though this is not at first easy to recognise. As pointed out in View No. 1, there is little in common between our sense of sight and hearing; but the chirp of birds, the hum of bees, the rustle of wind in the leaves, the ripple of a stream, the distant sound of sheep bells, and lowing of cattle form a background of sound which may be coaxed to approach you; the only ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... horse of mighty pow'r, Compact in frame, and strong of limb; Went with a chirp from hour to hour; Whip-cord! ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... bowling along the quiet country road, only the chirp of many locusts, the rumble of the wheels, and the sound of their own voices to break the stillness. Ferry leaned forward. Constance was at the farther end of the ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... Robin, thou hast left us, We shall hear thy chirp no more; Very lonely hast thou left us, And our ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... put a block the under side of the log, above the skids, to keep it from rolling back. Having given a hard lift, and tugging with all his might, the father called out, "There, Johnny, put under your block quick." John started nimbly, and snatched up his block, when suddenly the loud chirp of a squirrel struck his ear. Instantly, down went his block, and away he ran after the squirrel, leaving his father and the other man to hold the log ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... dried lips tried to laugh. "Ef it ain't the dicky-bird!" The bird looked at him. "Ef that doesn't beat—" but he could not think what it "beat." The bird cocked its head. "Ain't ye afeard o' me?" It gave a feeble chirp. "Well, I'm damned!" said the man, and after this mild expression of his feelings, forgot to curse again. He even began to eye the island with a vague questioning wonder, as if asking himself what means might be thought of that would enable him ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... background of dark foliage, were silently and dexterously maneuvered by small yellow men, stark naked, with long hair piled up in womanlike fashion on their heads. Gradually, as we advanced further up the green channel, the perfumes became more penetrating, and the monotonous chirp of the cicalas swelled out like an orchestral crescendo. Above us, on the luminous sky, sharply delineated between the mountains, a species of hawk hovered about, screaming out with a deep human voice, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... Windermere; every bush, every tree—yea, it seemed as if every branch sent forth the music of singing birds, and the very air was redolent with melody, from the bold songs of the thrush and the lark to the love-note of the wood-pigeon; and even the earth rejoiced in the chirp of the grasshopper, its tiny but pleasant musician. The fields and the leaves were in the loveliness and freshness of youth, luxuriating in the sunbeams, in the depth of their summer green; and the butterfly sported, and the bee pursued its errand from flower to flower. The mighty ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... door when Swan appeared unexpectedly before her, having walked over from the Thurman ranch after doing the chores. To him she observed that Frank was an hour late, and Swan, whistling softly to Jack—Lorraine was surprised to hear how closely the call resembled the chirp of a bird—strode away without so much as a pretence at excuse. Lorraine stared after him wide-eyed, wondering and yet not daring ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... the utmost decorum. When they gaily had caroll'd till peep of the dawn, The Lark gently hinted, 'twas time to be gone; And his clarion, so shrill, gave the company warning, That Chanticleer scented the gales of the morning. So they chirp'd, in full chorus, a friendly adieu; And, with hearts beating light as the plumage that grew On their merry-thought bosoms, away ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... would have jumped to have had this chance of going to live in a palace, but this farmer said, "Give me my farmhouse and my quiet grave beside my mother." Elevation may undo us. A sparrow could only chirp even though in a golden cage. Barzillai felt, "A rustic, like I am, seems all right among my ploughs and cattle, but I should not fit a palace." Many a man has made himself a laughing stock because he left the place he was fitted for, and so looked like ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... fragment of wing also suggested its probable size when unbroken. It was perhaps two inches long. As there are little horny rings round the wing base like those which crickets have, on which they rub their legs and so "chirp," it is also quite likely that this insect of hoary antiquity did the same, and enlivened the silence of Devonian fern groves with a prehistoric hum. It is quite in keeping with modern ideas that in that age of fishes one of the most remarkable insects should have been ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... hot—the skies were too blue, The grass, he was certain, was damp where he lay, All things had conspired to annoy him that day, He could bear neither sunshine, the mirth that he heard, The hum of the bees, nor the chirp of a bird. How silly they seemed—it made him so cross— The pleasures of life were nothing but dross, So he hastened away in a fit of despair; All things were against him and "nothing was fair." And now, little people, does ...
— Nestlings - A Collection of Poems • Ella Fraser Weller
... dusty blossoms blackbirds meet, And robins pipe amid the cedars nigher. Thro' the still elms I hear the ferry's beat. The swallows chirp about the towering spire; The whole air pulses with its weight of sweet, Yet not ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the bushes and found the nest, low enough for Billy to reach. There were two other little baby-birds in it and when Billy put in the little bird that had fallen, they all began to chirp, "Peep! Peep! Peep!" That meant "Thank you!" Then the mother-bird hopped around so gladly and said "Thank you, little ...
— The Grasshopper Stories • Elizabeth Davis Leavitt
... strawstack, a wee little mite Of a cricket went chirping by day and by night; And further down, still, a cunning blue mouse In a snug little nook of that strawstack kept house! When the cricket went "chirp," Miss Mousie would squeak "Come in," and a blush would enkindle her cheek! She thought—silly girl! 't was a beau come to woo, But I guess it was only ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid; And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katydid; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings And earth and ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... feathers, and the fish has scales, overlapping each other as the slates on the roof of a house do, thus making a perfectly waterproof coat for its whole body; the bird has legs and wings, and the fish has neither; the bird can chirp and sing, while fishes generally ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... and cracking of the trees in the frosty air, the fall of a decayed branch, the tapping of a solitary woodpecker, two or three small species of which still remain after all the summer birds are flown; and the gentle, weak chirp of the little tree-creeper, as it runs up and down the hemlocks and pines, searching the crevices of the bark for insects. Yet in all this seeming death lies hidden the life of myriads of insects, the huge beast of the forest, asleep in his lair, with many ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... me no one had been here? (Shakes his finger at her.) My little song-bird must never do that again. A song-bird must have a clean beak to chirp with—no false notes! (Puts his arm round her waist.) That is so, isn't it? Yes, I am sure it is. (Lets her go.) We will say no more about it. (Sits down by the stove.) How warm and snug it is here! (Turns ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... a nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note. Braggart, and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can, Chee, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... much less startling sound would have awakened a whole city household; but slumber in the country has a slumber of its own: in summer time a slumber born of night-air, laden with the odors of vegetation, and silent except for the drowsy chirp of birds that stir in vine and tree. The wife awoke first, listened for a second, and aroused her husband, who went to the window. He raised the screen ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... at nightfall, when the sun has sunk under the hills, and the crickets chirp,—"gone." Say it to yourself when the night is far over, and you wake with some sudden start from pleasant dreams,—"gone." Say it to yourself in some country churchyard, where your father, or your mother, sleeps under the blooming violets of spring,—"gone." ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... he lives in the corner by the fireplace. When all is still we hear his cheery chirp! ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... horses, and mowing down the thick, waving grass, as a war hero mows down his enemies. And as he stepped into the office he seemed to hear the clicking noise of the reaper, the soft swish of falling grass and the shrill chirp and light flutter of ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... smile will visit his pale face when you chirp tenderly to him, and a faint tinge comes upon his cheek when you lay your soft tiny hand upon it; yet all the while there is that desperate secret lying next his heart, and, like a vampire, sucking away, drop by drop, ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... doomsman." Her words seem'd to fall With a weight of tears in them. He look'd up, and saw That sad serene countenance, mournful as law And tender as pity, bow'd o'er him: and heard In some thicket the matinal chirp of a bird. ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... grass Let their vague shadows dreamlike trail and pass; The conscious woods, the stony meadows growing Up to birch pastures, where we heard the lowing Of one disconsolate cow. All the warm afternoon, Lulled in a reverie by the myriad tune Of insects, and the chirp of songless birds, Forgetful of the spring-time's lyric words, Drowsed round us while we tried to find the lane That to our coming feet had been so plain, And lost ourselves among the sweetfern's growth, ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... in his Port, though, to do him justice, he wrestled hard with this great heresy. His friends perceived the decay in his belief sooner than he did himself. He was sour in the evening as in the morning. There was no chirp in him when the bottle went round. He had never one hour of a humane mood to be reckoned on now. The day, indeed, is sad when we see the skeleton of the mistress by whom we suffer, but cannot abandon her. The squire drank, knowing that the issue would be the terrific, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was choked by her sobs. The whole valley was deserted and silent in the dazzling light and the overwhelming heat, and only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill, continuous chirp among the sparse yellow grass on both sides of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the willow-wrens: two I know perfectly; but have not been able yet to procure the third. No two birds can differ more in their notes, and that constancy, than those two that I am acquainted with; for the one has a joyous, easy, laughing note; the other a harsh loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two drams and a half; while the latter weighs but two: so the songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being the first summer-bird of passage that is heard, the wryneck sometimes ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... twilight of a summer's morning, and the little birds had begun to chirp their matins, and the lark to brush the dew from her speckled breast, waiting for the first gaze of the sun. The old man pressed the infant closer to his bosom as he drew nigh to the steep acclivity, the solitary dwelling of the eagle. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... wild pink rose! How rich that buoyant air with changing scent Of pungent pine, fresh flowers and salt cool seas! And when all echoes of the chase had died, Of horn and halloo, bells and baying hounds, How mine ears drank the ripple of the tide On that fair shore, the chirp of unseen birds, The rustling of the tangled undergrowth, And the deep lyric murmur of the pines, When through their high tops swept the sudden breeze! There was my world, there would my heart dilate, And my aspiring soul dissolve in prayer Unto that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... repeated, and then answered from behind them, and followed directly after by a piping whistle and a chirp. ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... the skies, their slender branches forming a dark network overhead, and their lofty proportions lessening in the distance, until lost in the solemn gloom beyond. A religious silence prevailed, broken only by the occasional chirp of the wren, or the soft pattering of some smaller ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... air was tremulous with sounds: The thrilling chirp of insects, twittering birds, Barking of shepherds' fierce, white, Roman dogs; While from the narrow path, far down below, We heard a mournful rondinella ring, Sung ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... rest, Must burn for ever in my breast. Yet how ecstatically sweet, Was its first soft tumultuous beat! I little thought that beat could be The harbinger of misery; And daily, when the morning beam Dawned earliest on wood and stream, When, from each brake and bush were heard, The hum of bee, and chirp of bird, From these, earth's matin songs, my ear Would turn, a sweeter voice to hear— A voice, whose tones the very air Seemed trembling with delight to bear; From leafy wood, and misty stream, From bush, and brake, and morning beam, Would turn away ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... she went on tiptoe to extinguish the candle. All was silent: the grey light of the morning was now spreading over every object; the sun rose slowly, and Susan stood at the lattice window, looking through the small leaded, cross-barred panes at the splendid spectacle. A few birds began to chirp; but, as Susan was listening to them, her mother started in her sleep, and spoke unintelligibly. Susan hung up a white apron before the window to keep out the light, and just then she heard the sound of music at a distance in the village. ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... the Mistress's soft chirp. It had not reached his dulling ears;—the ears which, of old, had caught her faintest whisper. Yet, he would have followed her, as ever, without such summons, had not his nostrils suddenly become ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... baa^, bleat [lamb]; low, moo [cow, cattle]; troat^, croak, peep [frog]; coo [dove, pigeon]; gobble [turkeys]; quack [duck]; honk, gaggle, guggle [goose]; crow, caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, hummingbird]; buzz [flying insects, bugs]; hiss [snakes, geese]; blatter^; ratatat [woodpecker]. Adj. crying &c v.; blatant, latrant^, remugient^, mugient^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... brook-side, I wandered by the mill,— I could not hear the brook flow, The noisy wheel was still; There was no burr of grasshopper, No chirp of any bird, But the beating of my own heart Was all ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... the marble hand of the Madonna. Then, with a joyful chirp, dropped straight to the couch on ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... spear over his head and emitted a shriek compared to which the Rebel yell was a chirp from the weakened lungs ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... rippling tides, From thicket to thicket the angler glides; Or the simpler comes, with basket and book, For herbs of power on thy banks to look; Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me, To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee. Still—save the chirp of birds that feed On the river cherry and seedy reed, And thy own wild music gushing out With mellow murmur of fairy shout, From dawn to the blush of another day, Like traveller singing along ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... trained. (Good children run in the family.) I record, pridefully, that the sunny head of the least of the band has never drooped drowsily while the tale went on, and that his chirp was distinct in the general plea for, "More—to-morrow night?" with which the conclave brought up at the call to prayers and to pillows. This has not so far flattered me out of my sober senses as to beget a hope ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... Considering his presence I wondered that the garden was always so full of singing birds. But the Captain never meddled with them. Probably he understood that his master would not have tolerated it for a moment. So there was always a song or a chirp somewhere. Overhead flew the gulls and the cranes. The wind in the pines always made a glad salutation. Abel and I paced the walks, in high converse on matters beyond the ken of cat ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lesser quantities. The eggs, four or five in number, average .56 by .44, are pure white, profusely spotted with red, and sometimes have also a few spots of purplish grey. On the 15th June I found a nest with four young ones on the south side of the Pir-Pinjal Pass. This bird has no song, only a double chirp in addition to its callnote. The double chirp, which is very loud, is intended for a song, for the male bird incessantly repeats it as he feeds from tree to tree near where the female is sitting upon ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... seeing their belief in a common reality—all this slipped from him. So he might have felt if the earth had dropped from his feet, and the empty blue had hung all round him, and the air had been steeped in the presence of one woman. The chirp of a robin on the bough above his head awakened him, and his awakenment was accompanied by a sigh. Here was the world in which he had lived; here the plowed field, the high road yonder, and Mary, stripping ivy from the trees. When he came up with her ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Babel streams we'll weep, To think upon our Zion; And hing our fiddles up to sleep, [hang] Like baby-clouts a-dryin'; Come, screw the pegs wi' tunefu' cheep, [chirp] And o'er the thairms be tryin'; [strings] O, rare! to see our elbucks wheep, [elbows jerk] And a' like lamb-tails flyin' Fu' ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... the melody of the bobolink along the meadow-brook; indeed, the birds of all sorts were astir, skimming along the ground or rising to the sky, keeping watch especially over the garden and the fruit-trees, carrying food to their nests, or teaching their young broods to fly and to chirp the songs of summer. And from the woodshed the shrill note of the scythe under the action of the grindstone. No such vivid realization of summer ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... now in earnest, and the beaming colored boy holds his lantern to guide us along the path, while Maggie whinnies after us her adieu. The grasshoppers chirp merrily in the sodden grass, and now and then a startled rabbit darts out of the wood and crosses close to our feet. The light is almost blinding as we enter the cheerful dining-room, where supper is laid on the snowy cloth, and are introduced to the charming family circle of the ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... Storborg, by Breidablik, and the sound follows them all the way from the hills here and there; 'tis no military music like in the towns, nay, but voices—a proclamation: Spring has come. Then suddenly the first chirp of a bird is heard from a treetop, waking others, and a calling and answering on every side; more than a song, it is a hymn of praise. The emigrant feels home-sick already, maybe, something weak and helpless in him; he is going off to America, and none could ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... betray the presence of their nests, but the Kentucky warblers seldom do so, knowing too well how to keep their procreant secrets. They have evidently learned the use of strategy, as you will see: One day a pair began to chirp vigorously as I approached their demesne in a lonely hollow, and I felt a thrill of joy at the prospect of finding a nest. One of them even flitted about with a worm in its bill—a sure sign of nestlings in the neighborhood. ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... Pauline followed the flight of his thought with difficulty. After the third phrase anything read aloud made her feel drowsy, and the affairs of her household took on an absurd importance; one might say that the voice of the reader made them chirp like birds in a cage. It was in vain that she tried to follow on Clerambault's lips, and even to imitate with her own, the words whose meaning she no longer understood; her eye mechanically noted a hole in the cloth, her fingers picked at the crumbs on the table, her ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farm-house away among the hills; but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bull-frog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and turning suddenly in ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... train-schedules. And as Mrs. Harrington does not travel to the city, even this charge will not hold against her. And yet I cannot help feeling that neither of the two really hears the catbird say "miaow" or the robin "cheer up," as they pretend to. At the first twitter or chirp from some invisible source Mrs. Harrington stops and with radiant face asks me whether I do not distinctly catch the "pit-pit-pity-me" of the meadow-lark. I say yes; but I really don't, and I don't believe she does. My explanation is that Mrs. ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... Milly's credit that she took rather less satisfaction in all this social flattery than in the happiness her engagement brought into the little Acacia Street house. Horatio began to chirp once more, after the interview with his prospective son-in-law. The inspissated gloom of the days of stringency had passed. The golden beams of prosperity seemed to radiate from ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... uncovered, and revealed the light on the desk where the master wrote. He heard the scratching of his pen on the paper, and the patter of rain-drops outside, for the night was stormy. There was another sound in the shop, softer than fall of the rain, and finer than chirp of a cricket, or humming sound of a mosquito: the toys in ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... percussive smack; still another, a sharp, prolonged hissing or sibilant but at the same time metallic note, compared by some one to the sound produced by milking a cow into a tin pail—a very good description. There are other lesser notes: a musical, thrush-like chirp, repeated slowly, and sometimes rapidly till it runs to a bubbling sound; also there is a horny sound, which is perhaps produced by striking upon the edges of the lower mandible with those of the upper. But it is quite unlike ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... sensitive years have never known such a night. The world was stifling in a deluge of gray, cold mists, unstirred by a breath of air. A robin with feathers all ruffled, and head hidden, sat on the gate-post, and chirped a little mournful chirp, like a creature dying in a vacuum. The very daisy that nodded and drooped in the grass at my feet seemed to be gasping for breath. The neighbor's house, not forty paces across the street, was invisible. ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... alarmed at the expression in his companion's face, rose also, and for several minutes the silence was only broken by the crackling of the burning wood in the fireplace, the shrill chirp of a cricket and the plaintive call of a whip-poor-will from without. Then with a look of superstitious awe and terror upon his thin face, the moonshiner gasped, in a choking voice, "Boyd City—Richard Falkner—Mister, aint yo' mistaken? Say, ar' ye ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... laburnum, the lilac blaze of the rhododendron bushes. And how still the place was! Far off there was a dull roar of carriages in Piccadilly; but here there was nothing but the bleating of the sheep, the chirp of the young birds, the stir of the wind among the elms. Sometimes he could now catch the sound ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... yesterday, sweet child, Prattling thus happily! So fledglings wild, New-hatched in warmer nest 'neath sheltering bough, Chirp merrily to feel their feathers grow. Your mouth's a rose, Jeanne! In these volumes grand Whose pictures please you—while I trembling stand To see their big leaves tattered by your hand— Are noble lines; but nothing ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... fleece, and littering the black soil with leaves among which runs a constant querulous hissing and rustling. Also, storks are uttering their snapping cry, sleek rooks cawing, steppe grasshoppers maintaining their tireless chirp, sturdy, well-grown husbandmen uttering shouts like words of command, the threshing-floors of the rolling steppe diffusing a rain of golden chaff, and eddying whirlwinds catching up stray poultry feathers, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... sings upon the budding spray, I hear the clarion tones of chanticleer, And robins chirp about from break of day,— All pipe their ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... in Sister Lizzie's bed, and looked so pretty in her sleep that Abby came three times to wake her, and three times went away again, unable to spoil so perfect a picture. At last, however, the dark eyes opened of their own accord, and Marie began to chirp and twitter, like a bird at daybreak in its nest; only instead of daybreak, it was eight o'clock in the morning, a most shocking hour for anybody to be getting up. But Abby had been in the habit of spoiling her ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... chirp of cricket, croak of frog and the rush of waters through the valley were the only sounds, and I darted across to the camp shadow. Lying flat, I began to crawl cautiously and laboriously towards my horses. One gave a startled ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... The chirp and chatter of the young of birds which build in concealed or inclosed places, like the woodpeckers, the house wren, the high-hole, the oriole, is in marked contrast to the silence of the fledglings of most birds that build open and exposed nests. ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... building in a tall tree overhead; and the sweet, clear notes of one of them delighted Master Sunshine until he heard the mate answering back with a harsh, scraping noise not unlike a dull saw making its way through a log of knotted wood. A robin gave a mellow chirp; and the Peabody bird was filling the air with ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... heard a faint noise. Routing out the good old creature, that I might take observations, eggs still, and no chickens, were discernible, but the tiniest, little, silvery, sunny-hearted chirp that you ever heard, inside the eggs, and a little, tender pecking from every imprisoned chick, standing at his crystal door, and, with his faint, fairy knock, knock, knock, craving admission into the great world. Never can I forget or describe the sensations of that moment; and, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... interval of silence, resembling that which usually precedes the falling of the gallows drop. So profound, that the chirp of a tree cricket, even the rustling of a leaf, would seem a loud noise. So ominous, that the vultures perched upon the summit of the cliff crane out their ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... suns and showers, Oh! girlish thorns and flowers, Oh! fruitless days and hours, Oh! groundless hopes and fears: The birds still chirp and twitter, And still the sunbeams glitter: Oh! barren years and bitter, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... in these retired waters. Her undertakings are secure and never fail. If I were awakened from a deep sleep, I should know which side of the meridian the sun might be by the aspect of nature, and by the chirp of the crickets, and yet no painter can paint this difference. The landscape contains a thousand dials which indicate the natural divisions of time, the shadows of a thousand styles point to ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... extraordinary luxuriance that few of the sun's rays could penetrate the massy net-work of leaves and branches forming the roof of our fairy passage. Not a single bird could be seen, either seated or on the wing; nor was even a chirp distinguishable above the dreamy hum of millions of mosquitoes floating about, in a calm so profound, that it seemed as if the surface of the water had never been disturbed since the Creation. The air, though cool, felt so heavy and choky, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... the hut, because Granny would have some work to do in the village after selling her bundle of sticks and twigs. It was during these long days that little Gretchen had taught herself to sing the song which the wind sang to the pine branches. In the summer time she learned the chirp and twitter of the birds, until her voice might almost be mistaken for a bird's voice; she learned to dance as the swaying shadows did, and even to talk to the stars which shone through the little square window when Granny came home too late ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... her pillow, and she kept spreading them out, and making us read them, and—oh! their braveness and cheeriness—they did quite seem to hold one up! And then poor little Minna's constant little robin-chirp of faith, "God will not let them hurt him." One could not bear to tell the child, that though indeed they cannot hurt him, it may not be in her sense! Look here! These are her slippers. She has worked on all day to finish them, that they might be done and out of sight when he came ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... greedily drank it off, for I was intensely thirsty. Axinya had quite recently scrubbed the table and benches, and there was that smell in the kitchen which is found in bright, snug kitchens kept by tidy cooks. And that smell and the chirp of the cricket used to lure us as children into the kitchen, and put us in the mood for hearing fairy tales and playing at ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... night as Barry and his crew spent up the river, waiting for the moon; and the mysterious night noises from the shore were lulling and drowsy. Gradually the schooner blurred into a vague mass of shadow, out of which the two lights twinkled uncertainly. And mingling with the chirp of insects and the fitful cries of dreaming monkeys came a gnawing and rasping of wood that seemed to echo throughout ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... they were flapped by the winds; red leaves on the tree tops swaying to and fro; groves picture-like, half stripped of foliage; the western breeze coming with sudden gusts, and the wail of the oriole still audible; the warm sun shining with genial rays, and the cicada also adding its chirp: structures, visible to the gaze at a distance in the South-east, soaring high on various sites and resting against the hills; three halls, visible near by on the North-west, stretching in one connected line, on the bank of the stream; strains of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... chick enlarges, but is at the same time applied closer to the internal surface of the shell; when the time of hatching approaches the chick is liable to break this air-bag with its beak, and thence begin to breathe and to chirp; at this time the edges of the enlarged air-bag extend so as to cover internally one hemisphere of the egg; and as one half of the external shell is thus moist, and the other half dry, as soon as the mother hearing the chick chirp, or the chick itself ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... gracious mother's wiles And dear delusive smiles! No callow fledgling of her singing brood But tastes that witching food, And hearing overhead the eagle's wing, And how the thrushes sing, Vents his exiguous chirp, and from his nest Flaps forth—we know the rest. I own the weakness of the tuneful kind,— Are not all harpers blind? I sang too early, must I sing too late? The lengthening shadows wait The first pale stars of twilight,—yet ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cautiously, the key in Link's pocket, they drifted through the swing door, as air might have circulated, identifying the mouse's scuttle, the rattle of a rat among the loose coal in the cellar bin, the throaty chirp of a cricket outside in ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... shot, the fool's bolt misses! What help? the world is full of loves; Night after night of running kisses, Chirp after ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... moon-lit nave; and where Durdles, waving his lantern, waves the dim angels' heads upon the corbels of the roof, seeming to watch their progress. Anon they turn into narrower and steeper staircases, and the night-air begins to blow upon them, and the chirp of some startled jackdaw or frightened rook precedes the heavy beating of wings in a confined space, and the beating down of dust and straws upon their heads. At last, leaving their light behind a stair—for it blows fresh up here—they look down on Cloisterham, fair to see ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... sparrows made their home; the rustling of the leaves and twigs commingled with the chirp and joyous noise of the birds; in the eaves of the house the doves had built their nests, and the place was filled with their speech, cooing and calling to each other, entreating and discussing as is customary between doves, these noisy ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the walls. The night was interminably long, yet she prayed to hold back the dawn. What would another day bring forth? The blackness of her room seemed blacker for the sad, entering gray of morning light. She heard the chirp of awakening birds, and fancied she caught a faint clatter of hoofs. Then low, dull distant, throbbed a heavy gunshot. She had expected it, was waiting for it; nevertheless, an electric shock checked her heart, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... are little else; do you not chirp all over, Mohi? By my demi-god soul, were I not what I am, this wine would almost get the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... to the pine-woods above Lamteng in this month, and chirp shrilly in the heat of the day; and glow-worms fly about at night. The common Bengal and Java toad, Bufo scabra, abounded in the marshes, a remarkable instance of wide geographical distribution, for a Batrachian which is common at the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... night comes on apace; The cricket's chirp, the woodland murmur's swell, Bid nature's changeling melodies efface The glamour of yon phantom spell. The flashing morn adown the glist'ning aisles, A dew-embowered hill and grove and lea, With ruthless light will scatter fairy wiles, Nor leave my ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... in his own handwriting: the second, the fourth, and the concluding verses bear the Burns' stamp, which no one has been successful in counterfeiting: they resemble the verses of Beattie, to which Chambers has compared them, as little as the cry of the eagle resembles the chirp of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... forward in his low chair. The chaffinch gave a light chirp, as if to recall him to his duty. Hadria performed it for him. The chaffinch ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... dreaming, content. And it was then that he caught and imprisoned in colour the nameless beauty which was the foundation for his first famous picture, whose snowy splendour silenced all except those little critics who chirp automatically, eternally, on the ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the morning. Mrs. Cricky carried her head down, and when she ran she scuttled, and when she stopped she was absolutely still, except for her eyes, which she turned about brightly in every direction. Mrs. Cricky was looking for food for Chee, Chirk and Chirp. Usually Mr. Cricky brought home the food, but he was a member of the Marsh Grass Vesper Quartette—made up of himself, Miss K. T. Did, Mr. Frisky Frog and Mr. Tree Toad Todson, first cousin to Toadie Todson—and they had all been out very late the night before, so Mrs. Cricky didn't wish ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... a few months in the summer. That is the reason he is called the "Bird of Society." When he is merry, he gaily sings, "Conk-quer-ree." When he is angry or frightened he screams, "Chock! Chock!" When he is flying or bathing he gives a sweet note which sounds like ee-u-u. He can chirp—chick, check, chuck, to his little ones as softly as any other bird. But only his best friends ever hear his sweetest tones, for the Blackbirds do not know how to be polite. They all talk at once. That is why most people think they only scream and chatter. Did you ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... them. And around him Roger saw, emerging from the semi-dark, faces turning like his own to the summits of the mountains and the billowy splendors there. It grew so dark he could see no more. There fell a deep silence, not a sound but the occasional chirp of a bird or the faint whirr of an insect. Even the glow on the peaks was ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... they gaily had caroll'd till peep of the dawn, The Lark gently hinted 'twas time to be gone; And his clarion, so shrill, gave the company warning, That Chanticleer scented the gales of the morning, So they chirp'd in full chorus, a friendly adieu; And, with hearts beating light as the plumage that grew On their merry-thought bosoms, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... silently, for even the domestics hardly spoke above a whisper; and then we sat in the soft moonlight and looked on the sleeping scene before us. The summer sounds of rural life had long died away, and nothing but the untiring chirp of the tree-toad was to be heard. The melancholy monotony of the scene hushed Mary's spirit to a quiet she had not for a long time known, and at last she became conscious ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... did not annoy her to-day. She stepped rapidly through the expanse of it that girdled the forest, and hurried on through the firs to the cottage. The whole wood was alive with hum and cry. Wherever a group of other trees rose amid the firs, the loud chirp of the chaffinch was heard, or the eager twitter of some little newly-wedded birds, disputing about the position of their nest. The beetle in his black cuirass droned around the buds of the chestnut; at times a wild bee, newly wakened from its winter sleep, came humming by; even brown ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... chirp and chaffer, come and go For pleasure or profit, her men alive— My business was hardly with them, I trow, 35 But with empty cells of the human hive— With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch, The church's apsis, aisle, or nave, Its crypt, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Pines make sweet music; sad, plaintive, for must there not be a tone of "infinite sadness" in all the places of Earth's finite gladness? From a spray of jessamine I hear the chirp of a little bird—a young beginner; it tries over and over again "its one plain passage of few notes"—the prelude to the full-voice anthem which summer will harmonize. Ah! what shades and sunlight! what coloring! Green in the grass and trees, blue in the ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... that tender, touching little act except a grimy sparrow on the leads, and he flew off with a loud chirp, and, joining a neighbour on the old stunted tree, made so much noise that it was just possible he was delivering his opinion of the ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... lord, after dinner. I work hard all the morning at serious things, sometimes till I get a headache, which, however, does not often trouble me. After dinner I like to crack my bottle and chirp and talk nonsense, and fit myself for the company of ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... out another little chirp of laughter. "You'll remember what they say of a secret, Captain—too big for one, right for two, tight ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... questioningly, and when at last she recognized him, she burst out into a merry peal of laughter. "Truly," said she, "my mother had a rendezvous with her husband, and I have disturbed an enchanting marriage chirping. You have also listened to my married chirp, and know all my secrets. Well, what do you say, dear stepfather, to my mother having brought me so soon under the coif, and made her wild, foolish little Camilla the wife ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... field. And fur away over the green hills and woods of the east, the moon was a risin', big and calm and silvery. And we could hear the plaintive evenin' song of the thrush, and the crickets' happy chirp, till we got nearer the schoolhouse, when they sort o' blended in with 'There is a fountain filled with blood,' and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... bow, staggering under tons of water, and the whir of the screw in mid-air. The captain glanced at the barometer, drew his body to its full height, reached for his storm-coat, slipped it on, and was about to swing back the door opening on the deck, when the chirp of a canary rang through the room. At the sound he turned quickly and walked back ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... far before they became aware of a strange silence, if silence it could be called, for when they listened the silence was full of sound, innumerable little sounds, some of which they recognised; but it was not the hum of the insects or the chirp of a bird or the snapping of a rotten twig that filled Joseph with awe, but something that he could neither see, nor hear, nor smell, nor touch. The life of the trees—is that it? he asked himself. A remote and mysterious life was ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... general level, and provided with numerous culverts and bridges to prevent the damming of the waters and the danger of washing away the road. The jungle is full of busy life. The air is thick with the low, murmuring hum of busy insect-life, birds shriek, whistle, call, hoot, peep, chirp, and sing among the intertwining branches, and frogs croak hoarsely in the watery shallows beneath. Noises, too, are heard, that would puzzle, I venture to say, many a scholarly, book-wise and specimen-wise naturalist to define as coming from the articulatory organs ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... and the door of the wing swung open for the first time in four long months. There, Peter, in the side of the wing where you see the ends of two or three bricks protruding from a circular hole in the clapboards, is the nest of a pair of wrens that year after year come back to rear a new family, and chirp and chatter away the summer, when their labors have ceased. If it were a few weeks later, you might get acquainted with the comical little occupants, who are as brisk and busy as if they were not in reality great grand-parents ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... Willie Wallace came through the caboose, and the train stopped. I looked out and saw we was alongside a corn-crib—nothin' else; but we began to back on to a switch, and pretty soon stopped. And now it was so still that you could hear the crickets chirp in the grass. It was a lonely country here—flat and sandy. Mitch and I got down and went to the back platform to see what Willie Wallace was doin'. He was standin' by the switch. And pretty soon the passenger train ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... the fire was out, and that the man was cold. He fluttered among the ashes until he found a bit of live coal. With a glad chirp, he flew out through the roof. Soon he was back, with his bill full of dried twigs. He placed them on the fire and began to fan them into flame with his wings. Soon the twigs were blazing. Then he flew out for more twigs,—and ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... house your trembling form, There shall your shiv'ring breast be warm: And, when your little heart grows strong, I'll ask you for your simple song; And, when you will not tarry more, Open shall be my wicket-door; And freely, when you chirp "adieu," I'll wish you well, sweet warbler! too; I'll wish you many a summer-hour On top of tree, or abbey-tow'r. When Spring her wasted form retrieves, And gives your little roof its leaves, May you (a happy lover) find A kindred partner ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... of the bird with a peculiar whistling sound in his throat, that was a marvelous imitation of a sparrow's chirp, and the little boy clapped his hands with delight, and insisted ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... nor you needn't, no more than other folk; for the tongue, be it never so bitin', it can't draw blood, mind ye, and hard words break no bones; and I'll make a cup o' tea—ye like a cup o' tea—and we'll take a cup together, and ye'll chirp up a bit, and see how pleasant and ruddy the sun shines ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... chair for a moment and close my eyes. I am back once more in the dear old lane among the haws and the filberts. I catch once more the smell of the brier. I see again the squirrel up there in the oak and the rabbit under the hedge. I listen as of old to the chirp of the grasshopper in the stubble, to the hum of the bees among the foxgloves, to the song of the blackbird on the hawthorn, and, best of all—yes, best of all for brain unsteadied and nerve unstrung—I see ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... the readers of YOUNG PEOPLE would like to hear about a young robin my papa found under a cherry-tree near the house. He thought I could raise him, and take him back to New York for a pet. But after I had kept him two days in my room, he would chirp so mournfully when he heard the other birds singing merrily outside that it made me feel so sorry, I took him and put him on a branch of the tree. Oh, I wish you could have seen him flap his wings with delight. Then the old birds came, so glad to greet him. And ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... when Dame Nature brought back the spring, Brought back the birds to chirp and sing, Melted the snow and warmed the sky, Little Jack Frost went pouting by. The flowers opened their eyes of blue, Green buds peeped out and grasses grew; It was so warm and scorched him so, Little Jack Frost ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... winter, in the hope of finding, among the myriads of short, stiff catkins, one which has lengthened and softened until it is ready to pour its golden pollen into our palms. We find neither this nor the crimson stars of the fertile flowers, but the chirp of a white-throated sparrow directs our eyes to a young aspen tree from whose every ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... superlatively absurd. "Where was the object?" I would ask myself. Moreover, it was too late; and I went on dreaming with open eyes, careering on horseback through the savannas, listening at break of day to the prattle of the parrots in the guava-trees, at nightfall to the chirp of the grillos in the cane-fields, or else smoking my cigar, taking my coffee, rocking myself in a hammock,—in short, enjoying all the delights that are the very heart-blood of a guajiro, and out of the sphere of which he can see but death, or, what is worse to him, the feverish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... mouthful of burnt tail-feathers. Whitebird was safe, safe in the narrow passage where the dragon could not follow. Up and up and up and up he feebly fluttered into the light of the dear outside world, and then he gave a chirp of joy to find that he really had escaped. But oh, how tired and ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... felt neither troubled nor afraid. She lay there with her face upturned to the pelting rain, watching it patter from leaf to leaf, listening to the chirp of the birds in the nests, listening to the crying of the wind. She liked the sound. She had a dim notion that it was like an old camp-meeting hymn that she had heard Creline sing sometimes. She never understood the words, but the music came back like a dream. She wondered ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... and proceeded to limp about the apartment, clearing his throat the while with that odd musical chirp which had already grown so irritating in the ears of Denis de Beaulieu. He first possessed himself of some papers which lay upon the table; then he went to the mouth of the passage and appeared to give an order to the men behind the arras; and lastly he hobbled ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... against me—for the moment. Camma—well, well, I never found the woman I could not force or wheedle to my will. She will be glad at last to wear my crown. And I will make Galatia prosperous too, And we will chirp among our vines, and smile At bygone things till that (pointing to SINNATUS) eternal peace. ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... [ur] her bird work urn fern sir word turn term stir worm hurt herd girl world purr jerk first worst burn ever chirp worth churn serve whirl worse burst perch thirst worship church kernel fir worthy curve verse firm worry curb verb third fur germ birth blur herb birch ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... and down, stretching their hands nervously as if unused to gloves. Presently they fell back, and the organ, in the hands of an amateur performer and an inadequate blower, began to chirp and hoot merrily, by which we knew the bridal ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Hawaii, a fact of marked interest to science in observing environmental effect upon the differentiation of species. One of these the natives call pupu kani oi or "shrill voiced snail," averring that a certain cricketlike chirp that rings through the stillness of the almost insectless valleys is the voice of this particular species. Emerson says that the name kahuli is applied to the land snail to describe the peculiar tilting motion as the snail crawls ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... that years ago a beautiful little brown sparrow made her home in the garden of a certain great and renowned magician. She built her nest in the grass, and was content to hop and chirp about in the rose thicket, and to keep very near the ...
— Harper's Young People, October 12, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... cabin, the mother stirred from an uneasy sleep. She shook her husband and listened intently. The only sound that came from without was the chirp of crickets and the distant call of a coyote from ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... the winds are singing In the happy summer time— When the raptured air is ringing With earth's music heavenward springing, Forest chirp and village chime— Is there, of the sounds that float Unsighingly, a single note Half so sweet, and clear, and wild, As ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... Solomon's temple was building it was credibly reported that at least 10,000 sparrows sitting on the trees round declared that it was entirely wrong—quite contrary to received opinion—hopelessly condemned by public opinion, etc. Nevertheless it got finished and the sparrows flew away and began to chirp in the ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... hurt you, little mother. Don't be afraid," whispered the child; and, as if it understood, the bird settled down on her nest with a comfortable chirp, while its mate hopped up to give her a nice plump worm ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... for the reg'lars came [1] Whenever a pannie was done:— [2] Oh! who would chirp to dishonour his name, And betrays his pals in a nibsome game [3] To the traps?—Not I for one! [4] Let nobs in the fur trade hold their jaw, [5] And let the jug be free:— [6] Let Davy's dust and a well-faked claw [7] For fancy coves be the only law, [8] And a double-tongued squib to keep in ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... Carlin, old woman. Cates, dainties. Cauld, cold. Caup, cup. Celness, coldness. Cess, excise, tax. Chafe, chafing. Change-house, tavern. Chapman, peddler. Chapournelie, hat. Chelandri, goldfinch. Cheres, cheers. Cheves, moves. Chirm, chirp. Church-giebe-house, grave. Claes, clothes. Claithing, clothing. Clamb, climbed. Claught, catch up. Clinkin, smartly. Clinkumbell, the bell-ringer. Clymmynge, noisy. Cockernony, woman's hair gathered up with a band. Cofte, bought. Cog, basin. Cood, cud. Coost, cast. Corbie, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... chorusing together—feet clattered, passages echoed—it was a very Babel of noise and confusion. What strange beings we are! Not two hours before, I had said and felt that laughing was catching; now, although the merry chirp of youth mingled with it, I wished the whole party at the residence of an old gentleman whose name I care not to mention. May we not truly say of ourselves what the housemaid says of the missing article—"Really, sir, I don't know nothing at all about it?" A ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... and the party again ranged themselves on the sward. Each lady beside each gallant. "You, Mariana, if not fatigued," said the Queen, "shall take the lute and silence these noisy grasshoppers, which chirp about us with as much pretension as if they were nightingales. Sing, sweet subject, sing; and let it be the song our dear friend, Signor Visdomini, (I know not if this be the same Visdomini who, three years afterwards, with one of the Medici, conducted so gallant ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... his pity for the dumb helplessness of suffering animals was deep and true. He would lift the worm from his path lest a careless foot should crush it, and would encourage his "little sister grasshopper" to perch upon his hand, and chirp her song to his gentle ear. He tamed the fierce wolf of Gubbio, and fed the robins with crumbs from ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... whose head is in the headsman's hand sleepeth not anights. [583] However, fatigue and lack of sleep for four days past caused slumber get the mastery over him; [584] so he slept till break of morn, when he awoke at the chirp [585] of the sparrows. He arose and going to a stream there which flowed into the city, washed his hands and face; then, making the ablution, he prayed the morning-prayer and after returned and sat under the windows of the ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... and their straw hats were turned sociably towards one another, now and then, as they exchanged a syllable or two, and there was a mild luminousness of pleasure in the recesses of their pale-blue eyes. The evening darkened fast into night. The plaintive half-chirp, half-whistle of a tree-toad fell in monotonous repetition ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... I can hardly express how pleased I was to see him. I tell you, Robinson Crusoe don't make near enough of his loneliness. But here was interesting company. He looked at me and winked his eye from the front backwards, like a hen, and gave a chirp and began to peck about at once, as though being hatched three hundred years too late was just nothing. 'Glad to see you, Man Friday!' says I, for I had naturally settled he was to be called Man Friday if ever he was ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the chipping squirrel, or chipmunk, so named because his cry sounds like the chirp of little chickens. His method of dress is most unusual; he is brownish grey in colour, with five stripes of black and two of pale yellow running along the back of his coat; the throat and lower part of his ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... just over his head; and it had turned from lead to black. Many people were still on the ground grouped about the bases of the trees and holding on. Several such clusters were praying, and in one the Mormon missionary was exhorting. A weird sound, rhythmical, faint as the faintest chirp of a far cricket, enduring but for a moment, but in the moment suggesting to him vaguely the thought of heaven and celestial music, came to his ear. He glanced about him and saw, at the base of another tree, a large cluster of people holding on by ropes and by one another. He could see their ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... the Wise, pluck out their Eyes, To set forth a Book worth a Groat; We Mad-men are quicker, grow Learn'd with good Liquor, And Chirp a Merry note. Then ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... grew the morning light, and more and more clearly perceptible became the greens, the browns, and the grays about them. Now the birds began to chatter and chirp, and squirrels ran along the branches of the trees, while a young rabbit bounced out from some bushes and went bounding along the road. This early morning life was something they had not seen in their camp, for it was all over before ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... man; he loves us; we need not fear him." 6. All the birds of the grove were soon his fast friends. They were on the watch for him, and would fly down from the green tree tops to greet him with their chirp. 7. When he had no work on the walks to do with his rake or his hoe, he took crusts of bread with him, and dropped the crumbs on the ground. Down they would dart on his head and feet to catch them as they fell from his hand. 8 He showed me how they ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... (beating time to music) was undertaken by a courtier. As this went on, the darkness of night began to diminish, and the hues of the flowers in the garden, and the countenance of each of the party, became gradually visible, while the birds themselves began to chirp in the trees. It was a pleasant dawn. Several presents were made to the company by the Imperial-mother, and to the Lord-Lieutenant a robe was given in addition, as an acknowledgment of his services as judge in the competition. ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... he whispered to the thousands of little birds that began to chirp in the bushes as soon as he came near. "Sleep a bit longer, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... sympathy," the fluttering gentlemen chirp. "We admire his art and intellectual brilliancy, we all admire his art and intellectual brilliancy, his dazzling technique and rare rhythmical sense; but . . . he is totally devoid of sympathy." Dear! Dear! What is to be understood by this? ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... a great effort, and making a start away from the rail managed to drag his slippers as far as the binnacle. There he stopped again, exhausted and bored. From under the lifted glass panes of the cabin skylight near by came the feeble chirp of a canary, which appeared to give him some satisfaction. He listened, smiled faintly muttered "Dicky, poor Dick—" and fell back into the immense silence of the world. His eyes closed, his head hung low over the hot brass of the binnacle top. Suddenly he stood up with a jerk and said sharply ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... the circle? Why is it that the turning of anything, be it but a barrel-organ or a phrase, holds one as with an hypnotic power? I confess that I can never genuinely pity a knife-grinder, however needy. Think of the pleasure of driving that wheel all day, the merry chirp of the knife on the stone, and the crisp, bright spray of the flying sparks! Why, he does 'what some men dream of all their lives'! Wheels of all kinds have the same strange charm; mill-wheels, colliery-wheels, spinning-wheels, water-wheels, and wheeling ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... he had reached Central Park and was seated in the little summer house on a big pile of boulders near the Sixth Avenue entrance. The sun was rising. It was the first sunrise he had ever seen in New York. The effect on his imagination was startling. The red rays streaming through the park and the chirp of birds in the bushes were magic touches that transformed the world. He was back again in the South, where Nature is the one big fact of life, and the memories of the girl he had learned to love beside its ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... the hill, where the road became level again, and on the left as she looked toward the village, was the white house, surrounded by a garden and a hedge, which she supposed was Miss Ainslie's. A timid chirp came from the grass, and the faint, sweet smell of growing things floated in through the open window at the ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed |
