"Owl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better presented to the reader in the Weekly News-books." Hence we find some papers, entitled "News from Hull," "Truths from York," "Warranted Tidings from Ireland," &c. We find also, "The Scots' Dove" opposed to "The Parliament Kite," or "The Secret Owl."—Keener animosities produced keener titles: "Heraclitus ridens" found an antagonist in "Democritus ridens," and "The Weekly Discoverer" was shortly met by "The Discoverer stript naked." "Mercuriua Britannicus" was grappled by "Mercurius Mastix, faithfully lashing all Scouts, Mercuries, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... tried to give vent to his complaints; but his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth: his spirits sunk within him. No sound now reached his ears but the baying of the shepherds dogs, and the drowsy tinklings of the distant folds. The owl, the solemn bird of night, sat buried among the branches of the aged oak, and with her melancholy hootings gave an additional serenity to the scene. At a small distance, on his right hand, he perceived a contiguous object that reflected the rays of the moon, through ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... of the feathered tribe, with one or two animals without feathers. A large wirework aviary is filled with fifty specimens of tropical birds with pretty plumage and names hard to pronounce. A couple of cocos—a species of stork, with clipped wings—run freely about the yard, in company with a wild owl and a grulla, a tall crane-like bird five feet high. In a tank of water are a pair of young caymanes, or crocodiles. These interesting creatures are still in their infancy, and at present measure only four feet six inches from the tips of their hard noses to the points of their flexible ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... myself) I can fancy in such a stormy twilight some such smell of death and fear. The ruined sunset really looks like one of their ruined temples: a shattered heap of gold and green marble. A black flapping thing detaches itself from one of the sombre trees and flutters to another. I know not if it is owl or flittermouse; I could fancy it was a black cherub, an infernal cherub of darkness, not with the wings of a bird and the head of a baby, but with the head of a goblin and the wings of a bat. I think, if there were light enough, I could sit here and write some very creditable ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... knowledge of wood-ranging, heard only the coarser sounds. Therefore he lay half dreaming for some moments after the Indian raised his head and lent an attentive ear to some noise which came from far away. The night-owl's hoot was intermittent; a lone wolf howled mournfully on the hillside; in the swamp a catamount screamed as it pounced upon its prey. But it was none of these sounds which had attracted the Indian's attention. ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... you see that Stalky isn't here, you owl!" said McTurk. "Take down the key, and look sorrowful. King'll only jaw you for half an hour. I'm going to read in ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... shading his eyes with his hand, as he returned the gaze of the Gipsy—"is it you, Bess Airlie: your welcome is like the owl's, and reads the wrong way. But I must not stop. This ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now a roundel and a fairy song; Then, for the third part of a minute, hence; Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds; Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings, To make my small elves coats; and some keep back The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep; Then to your offices, and let ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... reproduce a bit of her own village in the Rhine Valley. She hid herself behind the growth she had fostered, lived under the shade of what she had planted and watered and pruned. In the blaze of the open plain she was stupid and blind like an owl. Shade, shade; that was what she was always planning and making. Behind the high tamarisk hedge, her garden was a jungle of verdure in summer. Above the cherry trees and peach trees and golden plums stood the windmill, with ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... banks of Rio Biobio. The country still presented the same fertile aspect, and abounded in flowers, but animals of any sort only came in sight occasionally, and there were no birds visible, except a solitary heron or owl, and a thrush or grebe, flying from the falcon. Human beings there were none, not a native appeared; not even one of the GUASSOS, the degenerate offspring of Indians and Spaniards, dashed across the plain like a shadow, his flying steed dripping with ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... girls tittered, unawed by Mrs. Aylett's proximity and her brother's owl-like stare ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... you will make a solitary bachelor of yourself, but at least give up your useless toiling at the wine- office. To what end do you plod there every day,—you who are wifeless and childless, and have no need of money for yourself? Give me up this great house in which you live all alone, like an owl in an oak-tree, and let me find you a cottage somewhere in the neighborhood, where I can often come and see you, and where you may spend your days in happiness and comfort." And the little old man shook his head and answered, "Nay, brother ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... walls. He continued past the mouth of the valley's southern arm wherein were entombed the kings of the eighteenth dynasty. Here, in this open space, he could see the circling bats, which before he could only hear above his head. Somewhere among the rocks up the moonlit hollow an owl hooted. But the tombs he sought were in the upper end of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... owl is a bird with a disagreeable scream, instead of a beautiful note; but the mulberries grown about the college would make them sing delightfully. And so would the influence of L, going forth from the college, transform the nature of the tribes about ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... subdivided into horned grazers and fur bearers. Of the many species he claims to find, it seems to us the most satisfactorily identified are the buffalo, moose, deer, or elk; the panther, bear, fox, wolf and squirrel; the lizard and turtle; the eagle, hawk, owl, goose and crane; and fishes. One or two man mounds are known, although most of those so-called are bird mounds—either the hawk or the owl. Sometimes, too, "composite mounds" are found. Nor are these mounds all that are found. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... moaning in the wrath Of winds that blew aloof; The weeds were in the gravel path, The owl was on the roof. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... the Garden Mouse Christina Rossetti Robin Redbreast Unknown Solomon Grundy Unknown "Merry Are the Bells" Unknown "When Good King Arthur Ruled This Land" Unknown The Bells of London Unknown "The Owl and the Eel and the Warming Pan" Laura E. Richards The Cow Ann Taylor The Lamb William Blake Little Raindrops Unknown "Moon, So Round and Yellow" Matthias Barr The House That Jack Built Unknown Old Mother Hubbard Unknown The Death and Burial of Cock Robin ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... was awakened suddenly by the creaking of a door. It was an extraordinary thing at that hour. The whole house hold was asleep. Nothing could be heard save the footsteps of the watch-dogs on the sand, or their scratching at the foot of a tree in which an owl was screeching. An excellent opportunity to use his listening-tube! Upon putting it to his ear, M. Gardinois was assured that he had made no mistake. The sounds continued. One door was opened, then another. The bolt of the front door was thrown ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... o' turkey yes ever put in yer mouth.' An' so he did; an' he said it was the best show he iver was to, and he wouldn't 'a' missed seein' Mary Moran get the prize fur twice the money. An' so he went home with me, ye see, as sober as an owl, and we bought our own turkey; but if he'd gone to the tavern, not a cint would he had of his week's wages, and been drunk beside! An' he used to be swate on Mary too, so there's no knowin' what ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... him of any matter, he was ever ready with a swift and discreet answer. He had lost nothing of his wonderfully clear and shrewd wit; nevertheless, I was not so much at my ease with him as of old time. When my uncle said in jest that the wise owl from Padua seemed to wear a motley of gay feathers, his intent was plain as soon as one looked at my brother; and in the fine clothes he had chosen to wear at supper the noble lad was less to my mind than in the hunting weed which he had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as men have root Deep in apparent and substantial things. Birds on your branches leap and shake their wings, Long ere night falls the soft owl loosens her slow hoot From the unfathomed fountains of your gloom. Late western sunbeams on your broad trunks bloom, Levelled from the low opposing hill, and fold Your inmost conclave with a burning gold. ... Than those night-ghosts awhile more solid, men Pass ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... out while I was asleep. This Tin Man seems a very solemn person"—indeed, the Tin Woodman was looking solemn, just then, for he was greatly disturbed—"so I shall change him into an Owl." ...
— The Tin Woodman of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... you, sir. We take the "owl" stage day after to-morrow morning,—and we tell nobody of our intention.' And Wych Hazel's finger made an impressive little dent ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... right, though, old Galushy is. Nothin' harmful about him. See how easy I get along with him. I shake hands with him and hit him a clip on the back, and, gosh t'mighty, he thinks I'm his best friend on earth. He'd do anything for me, that old owl would." ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl To-who; Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note, While greasy Joan doth ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... quadrupeds, must have holidays, and I have flown hither. But the wind has changed, and the owl, for all his feathers, is a-cold, as the poet observes. I shall return to the Metropolis—templa quam dilecta—as Plautus might have said in his Owlowlaria, if he had liked. I never thought much of these Latin dramatists, and ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... in one age-long instant while he stood in horror on the black shining rock. He saw their heads, red-skinned, pointed, their staring eyes as large as saucers—owl-eyes. They were naked, and their bodies, that would have been almost crimson in the light of day, were blotched and ghastly in the green light. And each one held in long clawlike hands a thing of shining metal—a lava tip like the one ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... light feet scampering upstairs, clattering merrily about on the boards overhead. He sat very still. The glow in the east deepened, spreading a lurid glory over the dark velvety stillness of the woods. Crickets sang and curlews cried in the meadow, and the long ghostly hoot of an owl trembled through the motionless air. Joseph de la Mariniere leaned his elbows on the table, his chin resting on his hands, and gazed up thus into ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... cannot be even mentioned. It is sufficient to name but one—say the example from "Robinson Crusoe" (Blackie), reproduced on page 32—to realise Mr. Gordon Browne's vivid and picturesque interpretation of fact, or "Down the Snow Stairs" (Blackie), also illustrated, with a grotesque owl-like creature, to find that in pure fantasy his exuberant imagination is no less equal to the task. In "Chirp and Chatter" (Blackie), fifty-four illustrations of animals masquerading as human show delicious ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... proportioned to the terrific bulk of the head of the house. He was there, seated at his desk which his belly prevented him from approaching very closely, obese, ill-shaped, and so yellow that his round face with its hooked nose, the head of a fat and sick owl, suggested as it were a light at the end of the solemn and gloomy room. A rich Moorish merchant grown mouldy in the damp of his little court-yard. Beneath his heavy eyelids, raised with an effort, his glance glittered for a second when the accountant entered; he signed to him to approach, and ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... ebbed with none to stanch the failing, By love's sad harvest garnered in the spring, When Love in ignorance wept unavailing O'er young buds dead before their blossoming; By all the gray owl watched, the pale moon viewed, In past grim ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... sitting room, which seemed uncomfortably full when he was in it—not on account of his size, but because he seemed so swollen with a sense of his own importance as to convey the idea that he was cramped for space—very much like an owl in the cage of ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... his odd ways. It might amuse Mrs. Patmore and the children. They'd have more sense than he! He'd be like a Fool kept in the family, to keep the household in good humour with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance set to the mad howl. Madge Owl-et would be nothing to him. "My, how he capers!" [In the margin is written:] One of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... o' Chinamen, Malays, Seedee boys, and all them sort of animals. Laff? You should ha' seen me standing up in the boat, hollerin' at Sartoris, and laffin' so as I couldn't hardly keep me feet. 'Sartoris,' I says, 'when do the animals feed?' An' he looks over the rail, just like a stuffed owl in a glass case, and says nothing. I took a bottle from the boat's locker, and held it up. 'What wouldn't you give for a drop o' that!' I shouts. But he shook his fist, and said something disrespectful about port wine; but I was that roused up with the humour o' the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... could perceive that he was in a room on the ground floor. Outside, shapes flitted by, and these Juve soon found to be bats hurrying to their nearby lairs. An owl hooted in the distance. The detective determined to make an effort to get up. To his surprise he met with no resistance and easily climbed out of the sort of box in ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... flight of partridges, the impudent bark of squirrels, the quavering voices of owls and coons, the music of the winds in the high trees,—all these impressions unite in my mind like parts of a woodland symphony. I soon learned to distinguish the raccoon's mournful call from the quavering cry of the owl, and I joined the hired man in hunting rabbits from under the piles of brush in the clearing. Once or twice some ferocious, larger animal, possibly a panther, hungrily yowled in the impenetrable thickets to the north, but this only lent a still more enthralling interest ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... lost three lovely little owlets,' was the response. 'Darling little fluffy cherubs! Never had an owl-mother three such beauties!' ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... round turn and required to part company with his ears or nose, or to be turned adrift on the cold charity of the world, deprived of his hands by the crude and summary justice of Khorassan. His eyes are brown and large, and spherical almost as an owl's eyes, and they bulge out in a manner that exposes most of the white. He wears long hair, curled up after the manner of Persian la-de-da-dom, and in his crude, uncivilized sphere evidently fancies himself something of ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... decorated with incised patterns filled with white clay. The productions of sculpture were limited to carving of small flat idols of Minerva [Greek: glaukopis][6] of marble, almost in the forms of two discs, which adhered to each other, and upon which the owl's face is rudely scratched. The Trojan treasure certainly shows more art, but it is characterized by an absence of ornamentation. In Mycenae, on the contrary, the monuments which I have brought to light show ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... plumage; made fine speeches in Russ, French and tolerable English; the ladies were exceedingly diverted; everybody laughed except Prince Henri, who stood beside the Empress, and was so grave and so solemn, that he would have performed his part most admirably in the shape of an owl. The Parrot observed him; was determined to have revenge; and having said as many good things as he could to her Majesty, he was hopping away; but just as he was going out of the circle, seeming to recollect himself, he stopped, looked over his shoulder at the formal Prince, and quite in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... they went, and now the track became more distinct, and it led downwards. An owl in a tree overhead hooted as Cuthbert passed by, and something of a cold shiver ran through the young man's frame; he stumbled over the outspread root of a gnarled old oak, and fell, making more ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and wallflower, grown Matted and massed together, hillocks heap'd On what were chambers, arch crush'd, column strown In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescoes steep'd In subterranean damps, where the owl peep'd, Deeming it midnight:—Temples, baths, or halls— Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reap'd From her research hath ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... snake, Or a dove whose ways were wild. A bluefish draped in petticoats, Or a tiger nice and mild. A mackintosh upon an owl To me would be just fine. I'd like to know a kangaroo Who'd ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice
... had the hardihood—as in "The Lion and The Gnat"—to modify the elegance of the original with phrases more appropriate to our contemporary beasts. Animal talk, I feel sure, has lost something of its stateliness since the days when our French author overheard it. The Owl is no less pedantic perhaps, but the Lion certainly has declined in majesty—along ...
— Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks - From the French of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... in the elegance of simplicity, and Smilax extinguished our small fire of buttonwood. Leaning my back against a stalwart pine, I watched the shadows stealing through our avenue of trees. Somewhere above my head a whistling owl, one of those lovable little feathered cavaliers that showers his mate with unstinted adulation, fluttered and courted. Later the mournful call of a whooping ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... musician laid down his violin suddenly. The instrument struck upon a keg of nails, and gave out an abrupt, discordant jangle, startling to the nerves. "Shet up, ye durned squeech-owl!" he exclaimed, irritably. Then, lowering his voice, he asked: "Didn't they 'low down yander in the Cove ez Widder Peters, the day her husband war killed by the landslide up in the mounting, heard a hoe a-scrapin' mightily on the gravel in ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... Korea, he had been wakened by the yammering of a tigress. His terror for a moment had been primal, literally a simian's helpless quaking. Earlier still, he had heard a hoot-owl, and encountered through it, his first realization of phantom horrors; he knew then there was an Unseen, and nether acoustics; here was a key to ghostly doors. A mourning-dove had brought back in a swift passage of consciousness the breast of some savage mother. Night-birds everywhere ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... distance and the dimness, glides along the edge of the wood, then across in front before the fir plantation, next down the hedge to the left, and presently passes within two yards, going towards the wood again along this mound. It is a white owl: he flies about five feet from the ground and absolutely without a sound. So when you are walking at night it is quite startling to have one come overhead, approaching from behind and suddenly appearing. This owl is almost fearless; ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... mopes apart, As owl mopes on a tree; Although she keenly feels the smart, She cannot tell what ails her heart, With its sad "Ah me!" 'Tis but a foolish sigh - "Ah me!" Born but to droop and die - "Ah me!" Yet all the sense Of eloquence Lies hidden in a maid's ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... difficulty; there are many such. And with that fiend-like shape in her cupboard the one ambition of Mistress Croale's life was henceforth inextricably bound up: she would turn that bottle into a witness for her against the judgment she had deserved. Close by the cupboard door, like a kite or an owl nailed up against a barn, she hung her soiled and dishonoured satin gown; and the dusk having now gathered, took the jug, and fetched herself water. Then, having set her kettle on the fire, she went out with her basket, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... you must first decide which one of you is to be the Bird-catcher; the other players then each choose the name of a bird, but no one must choose the owl, as it is forbidden. All the players then sit in a circle with their hands on their knees, except the Bird-catcher, who stands in the center, and tells a tale about birds, taking care to specially mention the ones he knows to have been chosen by the company. As each bird's ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... had set. There were no shadows anywhere as Richard and his sheep went homeward, but on every side the colors of the world were more sombre. Twice his flock roused a covey of partridges which had settled for the night. The screech-owl had come out of his hole, and bats were already blundering about, and the air was cooling. There was as yet but one star in the green and cloudless heaven, and this was very large, like a beacon: it appeared to him symbolical that he ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... look as if he had had a taste of paradise with his houri, for his week, does he? Before we'd heartened him up on the platform a bit—give you my word—he looked as mum as an owl," Jimmy said. "And she looked like an iceberg, as she's done all the time. I've never seen her ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... the Fern Owl, by Rusticus.—Beyond Godalming, on the Liphook road, is a great tract of barren heathy land: it stretches wide in every direction, and includes immense peat-bogs, and several large ponds. One particular district, called the Pudmores, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... you are so ill you must not tire yourself by waiting for me. You will hear me if I cry like an owl. Happily my father taught me to imitate their note. So when you hear the cry three times you will know I am there, and then you must let down the cord. But I shall not come again for some days. I hope then to ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... "Oh, God, let the cost Be my life; if she dies, I am lost, I am lost!" And Joshua Bell smote his breast with a blow That only the frenzy of a lover can know. At a deep hour of night when the hoot of the owl Made the dark glen as lonesome as haunt of a cowl, Josh Bell left his cabin for a cave in the hill, And began the erection of a small mountain still. For weeks here he labored at midnight alone, With a firm resolution and a heart like a stone: Then his ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... see something for which, as Professor Mivart has well said, "to us the word 'mind' is the least inadequate and misleading symbol," as having given to the eagle an eyesight which can pierce the sun, but which, in the night is powerless; while to the owl it has given eyes which shun even the full moon, but find a soft brilliancy in darkness? Or shall we deny that there has been any purpose or design in the fashioning of these different kinds of eyes, and see nothing to make us believe that any living being made the eagle's eye ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... stage. A few evenings later ("Der Freischutz" was being played), I stood with a beating heart behind the scenes, and friend Lipp stood by my side. In my hand I held a string, with which I set the wings of the owl in the wolf's glen in rhythmic motion. My companion performed the wild chase. By turns he whistled through his fingers, cracked a whip, and imitated the yelping of the hounds. It ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... father?" said young Reuben. "Ye've bin a-settin' there shakin' yer head like a old owl since I turned into the road. It be time to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... on over the rolling plateau. I saw a great owl flying before me against the sky, different from the owls of home. I saw Jupiter shining above a cloud and Venus shining below one. The long light lingered in the north above the English sea. At last I came quite unexpectedly upon that delight and plaything ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... her. Wouldn't give her address, but told me that she was appearing this week at the Winter Garten at Berlin. Why that pudding-headed quagga, Bevan, at the Embassy, hasn't kept his eyes open for me, as he promised," he went on a while later, "I don't know! I can understand Eugen Pattenhausen, the owl-eyed coot who runs the International Aid Society, not doing a hand's turn to aid anybody—but Bevan! For Heaven's sake, while you're there call at the Embassy and ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... be illustrated in gold and colours, sumptuously got up, and yet they are failures. Children do not take these to bed with them. I have seen this myself; I bought so many books to please children, but could never do it till by chance some one sent a little American toy-book, 'The History of the Owl and his Little One, and the Manoeuvres of the Fox.' This had a little of the spirit of the woods in it, and was read and re-read for a year. Only the other day a lady was telling me much the same thing, how she had bought book after book but could never hit on anything ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... the day is only a long evening, a waiting for the utter dark. The doctor's little square satchel of instruments, vials, and bandages lay open on the table; he had changed the apartment as utterly as he had changed his face by putting on great, horn-rimmed spectacles. They gave an owl-like look to him, an air of omniscience. It seemed as if no mortal ailment could persist in ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... and ivy, weed and wallflower grow Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped On what were chambers; arch crushed, columns strown In fragments; choked up vaults, where the owl ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... they had come, rode hatchet-faced Crosby; but he, too, was not as before. His saddle had been removed and, in front of him, astride the horse's bare back, warmed by the animal heat, was a brown waif of a boy; not asleep or even drowsy, but wide awake indeed, silently watchful as a prairie owl of every movement about him, every low-spoken word. What whim of satirist chance had put him there, what fate for good or evil, they could only conjecture, could not know, could never know; yet there he was, strangest figure in a land that knew only the bizarre, with whom the ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... a funeral marriage crave, Nor grudge my cold embraces in the grave. I have too just a title in the strife; By me, unhappy me, he lost his life: I called him hither, 'twas my fatal breath, And I the screech-owl that ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... a ring: In One I saw a Robin swing, In Two a Peacock spread his tail, In Three I heard the Nightingale, In Four a White Owl hid with craft, In Five a Green Woodpecker laughed, In Six a Wood-dove croodled low, In Seven lived a quarrelling Crow, In Eight a million Starlings flew, In Nine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... turban was none too long, the branches at the top were so slender. Just as he grasped a thick one, clutching it with both arms and legs, and swaying desperately in the dark, he felt a rush of wings across his face, and a great white owl flew out hooting in her panic. The boy almost missed his catch with fear, and the Maharajah, wakeful in his apartments, lost another good hour's sleep through hearing the owl's cry. It was the worst of omens, the Maharajah believed, and sometimes he ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... before the camp became very quiet. Langdon, Bruce, and the Indian rolled themselves in their blankets and were soon asleep. The fire burned lower and lower. Soon there was only a single smouldering log. An owl hooted a little deeper in the timber. The drone of the valley and the mountains filled the peaceful night. The stars grew brighter. Far away Muskwa heard the rumbling of a boulder rolling down the side of ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... my love, I could get somebody to play piquet with me," Miss Crawley said one night when this functionary made his appearance with the candles and the coffee. "Poor Briggs can no more play than an owl, she is so stupid" (the spinster always took an opportunity of abusing Briggs before the servants); "and I think I should sleep better if ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... portentous silence. Percy stared at the floor. Lady Caroline breathed deeply. Lord Marshmoreton, feeling that something was expected of him, said "Good Gad!" and gazed seriously at a stuffed owl on a bracket. Maud ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... won't." And he added after a moment, "You'd better go to bed. You're sleepy and as stupid as an owl." ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... of noise—and peep through this crack. You'll see the biggest owl that ever you did see, in all your life." Both of them looked through. It was very dark, but Samuel saw two great eyes, like balls of fire, and in a little while he could perceive the body of an owl, which, as John had said, was the largest he had ...
— The Summer Holidays - A Story for Children • Amerel
... what the price of corn, the crow is well and finds life sweet. He is the dusky embodiment of worldly wisdom and prudence. Then he is one of Nature's self-appointed constables and greatly magnifies his office. He would fain arrest every hawk or owl or grimalkin that ventures abroad. I have known a posse of them to beset the fox and cry "Thief!" till Reynard hid himself for shame. Do I say the fox flattered the crow when he told him he had a sweet voice? Yet one of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... day, describing Mr. Perkins to his mother. Mrs. Boswell seldom appeared beyond her special domain—that of the kitchen—but left the rest of the housekeeping to her daughters Bertha and Sue; the management of the Inn to Tom and Tim. "Silent as an owl. Seems to like his food—nothing strange about that. He doesn't act sick, exactly, but tired, or bored, or used up, somehow. Eyes like coals and sharper than a ferret's. I can't make him out. He won't talk to anybody, except now and then a word or two to Mr. Griffith. ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... falls across the vale From nightingale to nightingale; The owl within the ivied tree Makes love to me, makes love to me; But all the tadpoles in the pond Are ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... fearful owl of death, Our nation's terror and their bloody scourge! The period of thy tyranny approacheth. On us thou canst not enter but by death; For, I protest, we are well fortified And strong enough to issue out and fight: If thou retire, the Dauphin, well ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... came knocking, I'm sure - sure - sure; I listened, I opened, I looked to left and right, But naught there was a-stirring In the still dark night; Only the busy beetle Tap-tapping in the wall, Only from the forest The screech-owl's call, Only the cricket whistling While the dewdrops fall, So I know not who came knocking, At ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... with lips of glue, And undisturb'd maintain'd her law; Save when the Owl cry'd "whoo! whoo! whoo!" Or the hoarse Crow ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... riv'd Tree, that stands beside the grave Of the Self-slaughter'd, to the misty Moon Calls the complaining Owl in Night's pale noon; And from a hut, far on the hill, to rave Is heard the angry Ban-Dog. With loud wave The rous'd and turbid River surges down, Swoln with the mountain-rains, and dimly shown Appals the Sense.—Yet see! from yonder cave, Her shelter in the recent, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... you some berries for breakfast," said the Kookooburra, "and she asked me to look after you, and that's why I'm here. That Snake got on you whilst I flew away to consult my doctor, the White Owl, about the terrible indigestion I have. He's very difficult to catch awake; for he's out all night and sleepy all day. He says cockchafers have caused it. The horny wing-cases and legs are most indigestible, he assures me. I didn't fancy them much when I ate them last night, so I took his advice ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... "Ah, no, my little owl, Jean Jacques will wind the boa-constrictor round his neck like a collar, all for love of those he has lost," answered the Judge with emotion; and he caught M. Fille's arm in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... individual who had joined them sat down before Stuart and Jules and treated the two of them to an amiable grin, made all the more amiable and owl-like by those glasses. ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... hair should be grown long enough to hide her ears. Meanwhile the diviners drew omens of her future character from the various birds or animals that flew past or crossed her path. If they saw a parrot, they would say she was a chatterbox; if an owl, she was lazy and useless for domestic labours, and so on.[132] In similar circumstances the Chiriguanos of southeastern Bolivia hoisted the girl in her hammock to the roof, where she stayed for a month: the second month the hammock was let half-way down from the roof; and ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... old owl! What's the matter with you? After all, it's good to be alive! I wish I had a horse as good as Buster and I wouldn't ask ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... cards away in a hurry, as if caught in an incongruous employment; and then the maids and men trooped in to prayers—the windows were still open, and the sounds of the solitary corncrake, and the owl hooting in the trees, mingled with the words spoken. Then to bed; ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... at the seminary a curst Lazarist, who by undertaking to teach me Latin made me detest it. His hair was coarse, black and greasy, his face like those formed in gingerbread, he had the voice of a buffalo, the countenance of an owl, and the bristles of a boar in lieu of a beard; his smile was sardonic, and his limbs played like those of a puppet moved by wires. I have forgotten his odious name, but the remembrance of his frightful precise countenance remains with me, though hardly can I recollect it without trembling; ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... violent earthquake occurred, an owl was seen, thunderbolts descended upon the Capitol and upon the temple of the so-called Public Fortune and into the gardens of Caesar, where a horse of considerable value was destroyed by them, and the temple of Fortune opened of its own accord. In addition to this, blood issuing ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... Owl and eaglet? Have they fled? Then let witch-toads sing! Oaths forgotten, Would they wed? Then let bull-bats, Wild a-wing, Flap the moon from heaven! Deep in the forest— ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... brown owl sits up in the Tree, And if you look well His big eyes you may see. He says Whit a whoo, when the night grows dark, And he hears the dogs and the ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... had hobbled up to bed. The kitchen window was open, and Charity seated herself near it, her idle hands on her knee. The evening was cool and still. Beyond the black hills an amber west passed into pale green, and then to a deep blue in which a great star hung. The soft hoot of a little owl came through the dusk, and between its calls the men's ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... claret with sandwiches of potted egg and things that adoring women make and men never notice. Then back, to surprise the otter grubbing for fresh-water mussels, the rabbits on the edge of the beechwoods foraging in the clover, and the policeman-like white owl stooping to the little fieldmice, till the moon was strong, and he took his rod apart, and went home through well-remembered gaps in the hedges. He fetched a compass round the house, for, though he might have broken every law of the establishment ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... among the country people that every bird chose its mate on Valentine's day; and at one time it was the custom for young folks to go out before daylight on that morning and try to catch an owl and two sparrows in a net. If they succeeded, it was a good omen, and entitled them to gifts from the villagers. Another fashion among them was to write the valentine, tie it to an apple or orange, and steal up to the house of the chosen one in the evening, open the door quietly, ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... leaves of the karan grass and tied to his legs, and made a chain of the grass and let him down to the earth. When he reached the earth he was no longer a man but was an owl." ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... was terrible, like the sin. This man for whom I had abandoned everything—whom I had made my idol—do you know what he said to me the third day after my flight from home? 'You must be more stupid than an owl to have forgotten to take your jewels.' Yes, those were the very words he said to me, with a furious air. And then I could measure the depths of the abyss into which I had plunged. This man, with whom I had been so infatuated, did not love ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... would enter the nuthatch's nest Its figure would have to be much compressed. If the nuthatch had but the face of an owl It would be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... this morning but furnished the occasion or, rather, hastened some crisis that was already near at hand. For some time now I am haunted by most potent premonitions of a violent death. Night after night, dark apparitions hang around my bed, and only last night I awoke to find the Bird of Nu, the Owl, from out the inner Sanctuary of the Temple, perched upon my pillow and shaking his head and croaking ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... Staple, with a host of smaller commercial and economical measures, was of their origination. But it was not till an open breach took place between the baronage and the prelates that their full weight was felt. In the Parliament of 1371, on the resumption of the war, a noble taunted the Church as an owl protected by the feathers which other birds had contributed, and which they had a right to resume when a hawk's approach threatened them. The worldly goods of the Church, the metaphor hinted, had been bestowed on it for the common weal, and could be taken from it on the coming ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... ask any one into the house for the next twelve months. I used to think that nothing would ever knock me up, but now I feel that I'm almost done for. I hardly dare open my mouth to Plantagenet. The Duke of St. Bungay has cut me. Mr. Monk looks as ominous as an owl; and your husband hasn't a word to say left. Barrington Erle hides his face and passes by when he sees me. Mr. Rattler did try to comfort me the other day by saying that everything was at sixes and sevens, and I really took it almost ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... anybody else would be welcome to accompany me who might be willing to come to his shrine of innocence and love in the spirit of the wise men of the East. But, lest anybody should inquire for me at the hospital at the first of the hours aforesaid, this is to give warning that the White Owl has expressly forbidden all intercourse between the members of her staff and the discharged and dishonoured mother. Set it down to my spirit of contradiction that I intend to disregard the mandate, though I am only too well aware that the poor discharged and dishonoured ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... by courtesy, for it was eminently, peaceful in character, in spite of the turret inhabited by my dear "moping owl," H——) was finely situated on an eminence from which the sea, with the picturesque fishing village of Skerries stretching into it on one side, and the Morne Mountains fading in purple distance beyond its blue waters on the other, formed a beautiful prospect. A ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... trenches which sapped their way forward to those pits. When the guns ceased firing the French soldiers often heard the sound of singing. But above the voices of the Germans there came sometimes a series of piercing cries like the screeching of an owl in a terrible plaint, followed by strange and bloodcurdling laughter. It was the voice of a mad woman who was one of those captured from neighbouring villages and brought into the trenches by the Germans. One day the German ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... indifferent Circumstances into Misfortunes, and suffer as much from trifling Accidents, as from real Evils. I have known the shooting of a Star spoil a Night's Rest; and have seen a Man in Love grow pale and lose his Appetite, upon the plucking of a Merry-thought. A Screech-Owl at Midnight has alarmed a Family, more than a Band of Robbers; nay, the Voice of a Cricket hath struck more Terrour, than the Roaring of a Lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable [which [3]] may not appear dreadful to an Imagination that is filled with Omens and Prognosticks. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... point of view, we may assert that he developed himself from the protoplasm of ignorance, and in the gloomy fog of fear and superstition grew by degrees into a formidable monster, being changed by the overheated imaginations of dogmatists into a reptile, an owl, a raven, a dog, a wolf, a lion, a centaur, a being half monkey, half man, till, finally, he became a ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... ivy-mantled tower, The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... out into the night, and ran through the blackness for his life. And a great owl swooped softly ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... with their drivers, passing through the streets of the city. Some of the men have a way of leading the cattle by a peculiar call, a wild, pensive hoot, quite musical, prolong'd, indescribable, sounding something between the cooing of a pigeon and the hoot of an owl. I like to stand and look at the sight of one of these immense droves—a little way off—(as the dust is great.) There are always men on horseback, cracking their whips and shouting—the cattle low—some obstinate ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... voyage of the main party began on the 8th of April, 1805, early passing the mouth of the Big Knife River, one of the five considerable streams that fall into the Missouri from the westward in this region; the other streams are the Owl, the Grand, the Cannonball, and the Heart. The large town of Stanton, Mercer County, North Dakota, is now situated at the mouth of the Big Knife. The passage of the party up the river was slow, owing to unfavorable winds; and they observed ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... of the forest went on as though she were not there. A big owl far off said hurriedly his whoo-whoo-whoo, as though he had the message to deliver and wanted to finish the task. A smaller owl near at hand cried ko-ko-ko-oh with the intonation of a tin horn. Across the river a lynx screamed, ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... up to be an oak with a hundred branches, and then slowly decay down to a withered stump, yet he had never heard of Mabon. 'But I will be your guide to the place where there is an animal which was formed before I was;' and he guides them to the Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd. 'When first I came hither,' says the Owl, 'the wide valley you see was a wooded glen. And a race of men came and rooted it up. And there grew a second wood; and this wood is the third. ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... or unable to disentangle the one from the other: thus the savage attributes bounty or the will to render him service, to any object whether animate or inanimate, such as a stone of a certain form, a rock, a mountain, a tree, a serpent, an owl, &c. if every time he encounters these objects in a certain position, it should so happen that he is more than ordinarily successful in hunting, that he should take an unusual quantity of fish, that he should be victorious in war, or that he should compass any enterprize whatever that ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach |
