"Bleat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a soul in sight. Only the cows, their red, burnished coats gleaming like the skin of a horse-chestnut in the hot sun, cast ruminative glances at her white-cloaked figure as it passed, and occasionally a peacefully grazing sheep emitted an astonished bleat at the unusual vision and ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... student of commercial matters: rivalries of Banks; Foreign and Municipal Loans, American Rails, and Argentine; new Companies of wholesome appearance or sinister; or starting with a dram in the stomach, or born to bleat prostrate, like sheep on their backs in a ditch; Trusts and Founders; Breweries bursting vats upon the markets, and England prone along the gutters, gobbling, drunk for shares, and sober in the possession of certain of them. But when, as Colney says, a grateful England has conferred the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... heard, From yon huge breast of rock, a solemn bleat; Sent forth as if it were the Mountain's voice! As if the visible Mountain made the cry! Again!"—The effect upon the soul was such As he expressed; for, from the Mountain's heart The solemn bleat appeared ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... put him on the Varsity, and forty-'leven coaches stood over his defenseless form and hammered football into him for eight solid hours on Wednesday and Thursday. And Bi took it all like a little woolly lamb, without a bleat. But it just made you sick to think what was going to happen to Bi when Jordan got ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... would rather have the cow." "But you have eaten the cow, and the pleasure is over." "Oh, but all the same, we would sooner have had the cow!" Gordon adds, "The other child of twelve years old, like her parents did not care a bit. A lamb taken from the flock will bleat, while here you see not the very slightest vestige of feeling." Such an incident shows how the human heart can, under certain circumstances, degenerate to being "without natural affection." It is not the people who are to blame, but their cruel conquerors. Not ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... pointed to a spot some distance off the road, but Kitty's city-bred eyes could make out nothing. Just then there came a feeble bleat, and in a second Blue Bonnet had slipped from the saddle and handed the reins ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... shrill vituperation and, crowding about him, began to bleat their explanations and appeals. But he threw out his arms, pushed them back a safe distance from the panting Dominick and roared them into silence, brandishing his fists, as he would ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... wrong, with hatred rife; Oh, blessed night! with sober calmness sweet, The sad winds moaning through the ruined tower, The age-worn hind, the sheep's sad broken bleat— All nature groans opprest with toil and care, And wearied craves for rest, and ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... soon lost to sight as they soared overhead, singing faintly as they rose; the rooks gave prolonged and melancholy caws as they took their early flight, and the cocks crowed querulously in the yard, while now and then there was a pitiful bleat from the old ewe which ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... red. Heavy chains weighed upon his feet. Behind him moved a face whose physiognomy indicated a lusty goat-nature. And I saw at times long, hairy hands seize assistingly the strings of the violin on which Paganini was playing. They often guided the hand which held the bow, and then a bleat-laugh of applause accompanied the melody, which gushed from the violin ever more full of sorrow and anguish. They were melodies which were like the song of the fallen angels who had loved the daughters of earth, and being exiled from the kingdom of the blessed, sank into the underworld with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... sir, had an amiable low, And some such strange bull leapt your fathers Cow, A got a Calfe in that same noble feat, Much like to you, for you haue iust his bleat. Enter brother, Hero, Beatrice, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... one else's case? Saving some one else's seat? Hearing with a solemn face People of importance bleat? No, I think we should not still Waste our time ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... cheery, hospitable light through the window-panes, and she is tempted to shorten her steps and steal a look into the room where the family sits grouped around the firelight. No such sanctuary for her ever was or ever can be. Even the lowing of a cow in the yard, and the answering bleat of a calf within the barn, seem to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... hour after hour while his brothers and sisters were playing, and look up at the mountains or on to the altar, and wish and pray and vex his little soul most woefully; and his ewes and his lambs would crop the grass about the entrance, and bleat to make him notice them and lead them farther afield, but all in vain. Even the dear sheep he hardly heeded, and his pet ewes Katte and Greta and the big ram Zips rubbed their soft noses in his hand unnoticed. So the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... from above with a strange spectral glare, and coiling about them like the trailing garments of an army of ghosts. From the unseen abysses all round came the growl and wash of wave on rock and shingle, from the cliff above Pegane came the frightened bleat of a lamb, and an invisible gull went squawking over their heads on his ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... his new realm, a low bleat came to him from a sheltered hollow close by, and, looking down, he saw a small white ewe with a new-born lamb nursing under her flank. Here was his new realm peopled at once. Here were followers of ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... What words were these you sang as you came in? Show pity to others, we then can talk of pity to yourself. You can be the one thing or the other, but I will be no party to half-way houses. If you're a striker, strike, and if you're a bleater, bleat!" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the grasslands, under high hazel hedges. The new leaves dripped showers at every gust of the wind, then a gleam of wan sunlight brightened distant vistas of the way, while Joan heard the patter of a hundred hoofs in the mud, the bleat of lambs, the deeper answer of ewes, the barking of a shepherd's dog. Soon the cavalcade came into view—a flock of sheep first, a black and white dog with a black and white pup, which was learning ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... in her green mantle blithe Nature arrays. And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes, While birds warble welcome in ilka green shaw; But to me it's ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... night has passed, the day-star fades from sight, And morning's softest tint of rose and gold Tinges the east and tips the mountain-tops. The silent village stirs with waking life, The bleat of goats and low of distant herds, The song of birds and crow of jungle-cocks Breathe softest ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... to revise his plans. There was a good deal of the loafer, but it was all soft. Releasing his hold when Archie's heel took him shrewdly on the shin, he received a nasty punch in what would have been the middle of his waistcoat if he had worn one, uttered a gurgling bleat like a wounded sheep, and collapsed against the wall. Archie, with a torn coat, rounded the corner, and sprinted down ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... by a joyous bleat from the goat, which had at last forced the door of the stable open. Two bounds and the animal was close to her, bending its forelegs, and affectionately rubbing its horns against her. To the priest, with its pointed beard and obliquely set eyes, it seemed to wear a diabolical ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... different cries, and sometimes seem to imitate each other in the strangest fashion. He had not long to wait. The wild voice sounded again and again, so insistently, so appealingly that the Child became greatly excited over it. The sound was something between the bleat of an extraordinary, harsh-voiced kid and the scream of a badly frightened mirganser, but more penetrating ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... his mouth open in a curious quiver, as if he, too, had thoughts of Mr. Vyse, had seen round, through, over, and beyond Mr. Vyse, had weighed Mr. Vyse, grouped him, and finally dismissed him as having no possible bearing on the subject under discussion. That bleat of Tibby's infuriated Helen. But Helen was now down in the dining-room preparing a speech about political economy. At times her voice could be ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... the doctor; and as this was done the sheep gave a dismal bleat, and hung from the pole, with its head and legs out,—a ridiculous-looking object, which made Nic smile, but Brookes's face made the smile expand, so soured and puckered did it become, for the sheep was heavy, the farm ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... of devotion, listened, as he heard the voice, now here, now there, and thought about angels and the Millennium. Solemnly and tenderly there floated in at his open study-window, through the breezy lilacs, mixed with low of kine and bleat of sheep and hum of early wakening life, the little silvery ripples of that singing, somewhat mournful in its cadence, as if a gentle soul were striving to hush itself to rest. The words were those of the rough old version of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... of their whereabouts or guessed that those responsible for the signal-fire were Colonel Gideon Ward and Eleazar Bodge. He followed behind, steeling his soul to meet those victims of the complicated plot. An astonished bleat from Hiram Look, who led the column, announced them. Colonel Ward was doubled before the fire, his long arms embracing his thin knees. Eleazar Bodge had just brought a fresh armful of driftwood to ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... over, the old man selected a fat kid, caught it by the hind leg and dragged it, bleating in wild terror, to a gallows behind the house, where he hung it up and skilfully cut its throat, leaving it to bleat and bleed to death while he wiped his knife and went on talking volubly with his guest. The occasional visits of Ramon were the most interesting events in his life, and he always killed a kid to express his appreciation. Ramon reciprocated ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... of innocence — go, scare your sheep together, The blundering, tripping tups that bleat behind the old bell-wether; And if they snuff the taint and break to find another pen, Tell them it's tar that glistens so, and ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... was made that called upon him to be a snivelling, solemn, whispering chap—sneaking about as if he couldn't help it, and expressing himself in a most unpleasant snuffle—but that it was as natural for him to laugh as it was for a sheep to bleat, a pig to grunt, or ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Genius of Farce, who presides so particularly over all Irish affairs, put it into the lamb's head to bleat. The sound at first did not strike Tom Durfy as singular, they being near a high hedge, within which it was likely enough a lamb might bleat; but Biddy, shocked at the thought of being discovered in the fact of making her jaunting-cart a ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... his revolver and fired shots over the greyhounds' heads, hoping to scare them into submission, but they seemed to draw fresh stimulus from each report, and yelped and bounded faster. A little more and the end would be. Then we saw a touching sight. The hindmost fawn let out a feeble bleat of distress, and the mother, heeding, dropped back between. It looked like choosing death, for now she had not twenty feet of lead. I wanted Eaton to use his gun on the foremost hound, when something unexpected happened. The flat was crossed, the Blacktail ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... chimney pots that suggests Howe Street; though I think the shrillest spot in Christendom was not upon the Howe Street side, but in front, just under the Miss Graemes' big chimney stack. It had a fine alto character - a sort of bleat that used to divide the marrow in my joints - say in the wee, slack hours. That music is now lost to us by rebuilding; another air that I remember, not regret, was the solo of the gas-burner in the little ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mantling on her womanly face. The blue distances overhead were deepening with sundown, and the great sweeps of field and wild were sombre with the hill shadows that began to fall. In a copse near where she stood a little bird was busy with her fledglings, and from a meadow came the plaintive bleat of a late yeaned lamb. From the distant village the wind carried to her ears the cry of an infant—a cry that lingered and echoed and started strange melodies in the awakening soul of Miriam. Child of the hills as she was, never before ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... forth, with gentle whispered calls of 'Nan, nan, nan!' and insidious and soothing words, but more especially with the aid of scraps of carrot, sparingly but judiciously distributed. An occasional low, querulous bleat from a youthful nanny awakened from dreams of clover-fields, or a hoarse, imperious inquiry in a deep baritone 'baa' from a patriarchal he-goat, was the only noise that followed the invasion. Then, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... horse from the full manger turns his head, Does his loved floods and pastures scorn, Hates the shrill trumpet and the horn, Nor can his lifeless nostril please With the once-ravishing smell of all his dappled mistresses; The starving sheep refuse to feed, They bleat their innocent souls out into air; The faithful dogs lie gasping by them there; The astonished shepherd weeps, and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... nicely packed, and addressed to "Mr. the Director of my Imperial Palace of the Louvre, at Paris. This side uppermost." The Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Italians, &c., should be free to come and visit my capital, and bleat with tears before the pictures torn from their native cities. Their ambassadors would meekly remonstrate, and with faded grins make allusions to the feeling of despair occasioned by the absence of the beloved works of art. Bah! I would offer them a pinch of snuff out of my box ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... another sn which may perhaps be derived from the Latin sinuo, as snake, sneak, snail, snare; so likewise snap and snatch, snib, snub. Bl imply a blast; as blow, blast, to blast, to blight, and, metaphorically, to blast one's reputation; bleat, bleak, a bleak place, to look bleak, or weather-beaten, black, blay, bleach, bluster, blurt, blister, blab, bladder, blew, blabber lip't, blubber-cheek't, bloted, blote-herrings, blast, blaze, to blow, that is, blossom, bloom; and ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... darlin'," I've heard her say to a bright-eyed, gentle lamb, her especial delight. The little creature would run to her and bleat by way of telling her it was hungry, and when she had fed it it would rub its pretty head against her knee and look love at her, just as I have seen babies look ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... be still, mother," said Mary, with a piteous, hopeless voice, like the bleat of a dying lamb; "but I did not think he could die! I never thought of that!—I never thought of it!—Oh! mother! mother! mother! oh! what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... treeless, houseless, a dull haze was creeping like a shroud, and the long knotted grass was swept by the chill breath of evening. Nothing broke the wide silence of the desolate space except the lowing of cattle, the bleat of sheep that were moving in masses like the woolly waves of a sea, the bark of big white dogs, the shouts of cowherds carrying long staves, and of shepherds riding on shaggy ponies. Here and there were wretched ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... some twenty minutes; and Tinker's skill, sureness, and lightness of movement was the prettiest sight. Sometimes, with a snorting bleat, Billy would turn sharply at the end of his charge, and charge again; then the concentration on the matter in hand, which his father had so carefully cultivated in Tinker, proved a most fortunate possession: he was never caught off his guard. But he was beginning to think that he had had enough ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... to represent the roll of thunder, the noise of wind and hail, or the creaking of wheels, and pulleys, and the various sounds of flutes, pipes, trumpets, and all sorts of instruments: he will bark like a dog, bleat like a sheep, or crow like a cock; his entire art will consist in imitation of voice and gesture, and there will ...
— The Republic • Plato
... dread the raven in the sky; Night and day thou art safe,—our cottage is hard by. Why bleat so after me? why pull so at thy chain? Sleep—and at break of day I will come ...
— Phebe, the Blackberry Girl - Uncle Thomas's Stories for Good Children • Anonymous
... you there, the stout and staunch, "Red flag" in one hand and "ten swords" in t'other; Saw the strong sword-belt bursting from your paunch; Pitied the foes you'd fall upon and smother; Heard you make droves of pale policemen bleat, Running amok to "slay them ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... safe enough: There's none but sheep in sight for three miles round: And they're all huddled up against the dykes, With lollering tongues too baked to bleat "Stop thief!" Look slippy! I'm half-scumfished by these walls— A weak flame, easily snuffed out: the stink Of whitewash makes me queasy—sets me listening To catch the click of the cell-door behind me: I feel cold bracelets round my ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... woods and orchards without birds! Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams As in an idiot's brain remembered words Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams! Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds Make up for the lost music, when your teams Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more The feathered gleaners ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... a pleasure and a sport of Korak's to rob Numa of his prey whenever possible, and Meriem too had often enjoyed in the thrill of snatching some dainty morsel almost from the very jaws of the king of beasts. Now, at the sound of the kid's bleat, all the well remembered thrills recurred. Instantly she was all excitement to play again the game of hide ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... knowing where it is going, or that it is going anywhere; it goes, and goes, and goes, and at last it finds out that it is away from its beat on the hillside—for sheep keep to one bit of hillside generally, as any shepherd will tell you—and then it begins to bleat, and most helpless of creatures, fluttering and excited, rushes about amongst the thorns and brambles, or gets mired in some quag or other, and it will never find its way back of itself until some one comes ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... arrived, moonlit and cloudless. A platform had been constructed in a comfortable and conveniently placed tree, and thereon crouched Mrs. Packletide and her paid companion, Miss Mebbin. A goat, gifted with a particularly persistent bleat, such as even a partially deaf tiger might be reasonably expected to hear on a still night, was tethered at the correct distance. With an accurately sighted rifle and a thumbnail pack of patience cards the sportswoman awaited the coming of ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... the Plover seemed to arrest the advance of the timid sheep: they waited in a closely-packed flock, looking around. But presently the old leader gave a deep bleat, and they moved forward towards the water. "Shriek! Shriek!" cried the Plover from the bushes, screaming as they rose and flew away; and suddenly the flock of sheep broke and hurried back to the open plain. At the same instant ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... society sinners, Who chatter and bleat and bore, Are sent to hear sermons From mystical Germans Who preach from ten to four: The amateur tenor, whose vocal villainies All desire to shirk, Shall, during off-hours, Exhibit his powers To Madame Tussaud's waxwork: The lady who dyes a chemical yellow, Or stains her grey hair puce, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... shoot it before it had jumped for the lamb it had been stalking. The coyote missed his prey, but the lamb, which had been feeding a little apart from the others, ran into the herd with a terrified bleat and the whole band fled ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... consent of all, A courtier ape appointed general. He went, he led; arranged the battle stood, The savage foe came pouring like a flood; 60 Then Pug, aghast, fled swifter than the wind, Nor deign'd in threescore miles to look behind, While every band fled orders bleat in vain, And fall in slaughter'd heaps upon the plain. The scared baboon, (to cut the matter short) With all his speed, could not outrun report; And, to appease the clamours of the nation, 'Twas fit his ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the oxen lowed, The sheep's "Bleat! Bleat!" came over the road; All seeming to say, with a quiet delight, "Good ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... first rays of the full moon became visible from behind Mount Tarrengower. The night was awful quiet, and not a living thing had approached us, and not a sound had we heard, except an occasional bleat of a lamb, off towards ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... of the Great Knife was now cleared of all but Cap'n Bill, who was tied in his frame, and of Trot and the moaning Boolooroo, who lay hidden behind the benches, the goat gave a victorious bleat and stood in the doorway to face any enemy that might appear. Trot had been as surprised as anyone at this sudden change of conditions, but she was quick to take advantage of the opportunities it afforded. First ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... that there are many patriots, who, while they bleat about the "cause of liberty," act in so interested a manner that they are evidently looking more after ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... of the shot, Nell's scream, and a short, shrill bleat resounded at the same moment. Stas jumped towards Nell, and covering her with his own body, he aimed again at ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... still more remote form of language. More recent periods derive new light from the Etruscan tombs and the Assyrian bricks. Linguists deem themselves in sight of something better than the "bow-wow" theory, and are no longer content to let the calf, the lamb and the child bleat in one and the same vocabulary of labials, and with no other rudiments than "ma" and "pa" "speed the soft intercourse from pole to pole." As yet, that part of mankind which knows not its right hand from its left is the only one possessed of a worldwide lingo. The flux that is to weld all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... others with the same contagious merriment. "Come thou home now," he said to Ambrose; "my good woman hath been in a mortal fright about thee, and would have me come out to seek after thee. Such are the women folk, Master Headley. Let them have but a lad to look after, and they'll bleat after him like an old ewe that has ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he sang like a bird in the summer! And, if sometimes you fancied a bleat, That, too, was the voice of the shepherd, And not of the lambs at ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... high, Sweetheart mine, Echo mocks the cuckoo's cry, Sweetheart mine, From each hillock low the steers, Bleat of lambs falls on our ears, In the bushes, sweet and low, Birds ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... chamber in the house behind him came the faint, gasping cry of a day-old baby. That cry drowned the cooing of the doves, the song of the robin, and the chirping of the dwellers in the grass; to Jimmy the bleat of the little human lamb sounded like the roar of a lion. He could endure penal servitude on his Saturday, with a patience born of something approaching a philosophy; he could wear a checked gingham apron, even as a saint wears an unbecoming halo; but the arrival of the new baby—the fifth addition ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... his walks, he might find his floors flooded by a shower through the broken roof; but could spare no money for its reparation. In time his expenses brought clamours about him that overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song, and his groves were haunted by beings very different from fauns and fairies. He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... the wind, nor of grass beside the stream,—no motion but their own mortal shivering, the deathful crumbling of atom from atom in their corrupting stones; knowing no sound of living voice or living tread, cheered neither by the kid's bleat nor the marmot's cry; haunted only by uninterrupted echoes from far off, wandering hither and thither among their walls, unable to escape, and by the hiss of angry torrents, and sometimes the shriek of a bird that flits near the face of them, and sweeps frightened back from under ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... knocked his head on the ground, and gave vent to repeated assenting utterances: "Oh, quite so, Sir! Our elder brother Mr. Pao has," he continued, "already read up to the third book of the Book of Odes, up to where there's something or other like: 'Yiu, Yiu, the deer bleat; the lotus leaves and duckweed.' Your servant wouldn't presume to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... nor pastoral bleat In former days within the vale; Flapped in the bay the pirate's sheet; Curses were on the gale; Rich goods lay on the sand, and murdered men: Pirate and wrecker ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... wanted to eat him up. You see he had run away, just gone away from the Good Shepherd and his mother and his home, when he did not need to. And now he wanted to get back, but he didn't know how; and then he began to complain and to bleat (that's his way of crying), and to run this way and that, but he didn't ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... the little stuffy rose-coloured room, and the street noises of New York came up to them—a loose chain flapping against the mud guard of a taxi; the jolt of a flat-wheeled Eighth Avenue street car; the roar of an L train; laughter; the bleat of a motor horn; a piano in the apartment next ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... less a chirp, and least of all a song. It is not a bark—not quite. It is hardly a growl or a grunt or a snort; I should be sorry to call it a bray or a yelp. And yet I am not going to admit that it is a quack or a bleat; and it isn't a screech or a squeal or a sob. Nor is it a croak, though now we are getting nearer to it. The puzzling thing about it is that it was clearly meant by Nature to be an interjection. Uttered once, suddenly, from the far side of a hedge ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... men working frantically to build a net of something around his bed, while a wet, thick thing flopped and drooled beyond the door, apparently immune to the attacks of the hospital staff. There were shouting orders involving the undine. The salamander in Dave's chest crept deeper and seemed to bleat at each cry of the monstrous ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... young and giddy, went gamboling on; until suddenly, without even time for a bleat of terror, he fell crashing through the rotten ice, and disappeared from view into one ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... of her laugh is an extravagance; though the effect of the reverberation of voices in some parts of these mountains is very striking. There is, in 'The Excursion,' an allusion to the bleat of a lamb thus re-echoed and described, without any exaggeration, as I heard it on the side of Stickle Tarn, from the precipice that stretches on ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Ghyll. He was visibly perturbed; he walked with head much bent, stopped suddenly at times, then snatched impetuously at the trailing bushes, and passed on. When he was under Hindscarth, the sharp yap of dogs, followed by the bleat of unseen sheep, caused him to look up, and he saw a group of men, like emmets creeping on a dark bowlder, moving over a ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... oxen lowed, The sheep's "bleat, bleat" came over the road, And all seemed to say, with a quiet delight, "Good little ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... Lamb uttered a bleat of delight when she saw her old friend restored to his natural shape. The others were all there, not having found the Goose. The fat Gillikin woman, the Munchkin boy, the Rabbit and the Glass Cat crowded around the Wizard ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... seeds have perished in the hard winter glebe. Oh, my lord! though we galvanize corpses into St. Vitus' dances, we raise not the dead from their graves! Though we have discovered the circulation of the blood, men die as of yore; oxen graze, sheep bleat, babies bawl, asses bray—loud and lusty as the day before the flood. Men fight and make up; repent and go at it; feast and starve; laugh and weep; pray and curse; cheat, chaffer, trick, truckle, cozen, defraud, fib, lie, beg, borrow, steal, hang, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... and his eyelids blinked strangely, like the flutter of a sere leaf against the wall. There came a roar of voices, and, in the tumult, the Captain's sword flashed quickly, and fell. Then, with a broken cry like a sheep's bleat, the great seamed face fell separate from the body, and a fountain of blood rose into the air from the severed neck, and splashed heavily upon the sanded floor of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... has to be pumped up, by our petitions, by our search, but like water in some fountain, rising sparkling into the sunlight by its own inward impulse. He is His own motive; and came to a forgetful and careless world, like a shepherd who goes after his flock in the wilderness, not because they bleat for him, while they crop the herbage which tempts them ever further from the fold and remember him and it no more, but because he cannot have them lost. Men are not conscious of needing Christ till He comes. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the door, and thought she saw a poor man standing in the darkness outside; but it was no such thing, only a bear, who poked his thick black head through the door. Rose-red screamed aloud and sprang back in terror, the lamb began to bleat, the dove flapped its wings, and Snow-white ran and hid behind her mother's bed. But the bear began to speak, and said: "Don't be afraid: I won't hurt you. I am half frozen, and only wish to warm myself a little." "My poor bear," said the mother, "lie ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... ground, Their snow-white plumage flecked with crimson drops, I wept, and thought I turned towards you to weep: But you were gone; while rustling hedgerow tops Bent in a wind which bore to me a sound Of far-off piteous bleat of lambs ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... seeking. Thor remembered a trick that Corney had told him. He gently stooped, took up a broad blade of grass, laid it between the edges of his thumbs, then blowing through this simple squeaker he made a short, shrill bleat, a fair imitation of a Fawn's cry for the mother, and the Deer, though a long way off, came bounding toward him. He snatched his gun, meaning to kill her, but the movement caught her eye. She stopped. Her mane bristled a little; she sniffed and looked inquiringly at ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Devil, plying the Saint with many knotty theological questions, wholly fails to overcome him, and suddenly departs. Another of these monkish miracles makes St. Serf discover the theft of a sheep by ordering it to bleat forth the story of its wrongs from the guilty stomach of the thief, and to redden his face with shame for having denied his crime! St. Serf's memory survives here in the well called after him, with its plentiful supply of water. As lately as 1760 the parishioners were wont to be drawn by a lurking ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... which the cock crows, enables the dog to bark, the baby to cry, the horse to neigh, the sheep to bleat and the cow to low, just as in our own rubber goods. The same end is accomplished in the one case as in the other. The two, three or twenty cash doll does for the Chinese girl what the two, three or twenty dollar one does for her antipodal sister,—develops the instinct of motherhood, ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... one man is still our only living source of inspiration and help. Every new thought must pass through the brain, every moral ideal through the conscience, of an individual. Voices, voices, we want—not echoes. Better the mistaken voice of honest individuality than the soulless bleat of the flock. There are too many of Kipling's Tomlinsons in the world, whose consciences are wholly compact of on dits, on whom the devil himself, sinned they never so sadly, would refuse to waste his good pit-coal. "Bad taste"—that ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the year, I hear the young lambs bleat, The clamouring birds i' the copse I hear, I hear the waving wheat, Together laid ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... his beard That ev'n so white as thorn in blossom seems; He'll no way hide, whateer his fate may be, Then to his mouth he sets a trumpet clear, And clearly sounds, so all the pagans hear. Throughout the field rally his companies. From Occiant, those men who bray and bleat, And from Argoille, who, like dogs barking, speak; Seek out the Franks with such a high folly, Break through their line, the thickest press they meet Dead from that shock they've ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... thither, and the fox stole the little lamb, took it to the wolf, and went away. The wolf devoured it, but was not satisfied with one; he wanted the other as well, and went to get it. As, however, he did it so awkwardly, the mother of the little lamb heard him, and began to cry out terribly, and to bleat so that the farmer came running there. They found the wolf, and beat him so mercilessly, that he went to the fox limping and howling. "Thou hast misled me finely," said he; "I wanted to fetch the other lamb, and the country folks surprised me, and have beaten me to a ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... April came with her suns and rains and again the waters brimmed full in the valleys. Under the clear, shining sky the lambing went on, and the faint bleat of sheep brooded on the hills. In a land of young heather and green upland meads, of faint odours of moor-burn, and hill-tops falling in clear ridges to the sky-line, the veriest St. Anthony would not abide indoors; so I flung all else to ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Ralph stopped continually to consult his compass, and occasionally gave a loud "cooee", in case they might find some wandering shepherd or countryman who would be able to help them. There was no answer to his calls, however—only the occasional bleat of a sheep that sounded far off and muffled through the mist. They knew there was neither cottage nor farm within hail, and unless they could strike the road they might wander on hour after hour over the moors, only getting farther and farther out of their way. Tired out with the ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... to peep Gone was the bitter day, She heard the milky ewes Bleat to their lambs astray. Her heart cried for her lamb Lapped cold in the churchyard sod, She could not think on the happy children At play with the Lamb ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... lion or a snake Were quite enough one's nerves to shake; But in this classic beast we find A lion and a snake combined, And, just as if that weren't enough, A goat thrown in to make it tough. Let scientists the breed pooh! pooh! Come with me to some Social Zoo And hear the bearded Lion bleat Goat-like on patent-kidded feet, Whose "Civil leer and damning praise" The serpent's cloven tongue betrays. Lo! lion, goat, and snake combined! Thus Nature doth repeat ...
— The Mythological Zoo • Oliver Herford
... while his brother drove his sharp dirk into its white and throbbing throat. The kid turned its soft blue eyes upon him and gave a plaintive bleat. Its warm breath rose visible in the morning air and then ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... carrion festering we snuff, And gathering down upon the breeze, Release the valley from disease; If longing for more fresh a meal, Around the tender flock we wheel, A marksman doth some bush conceal. This very morn, I heard an ewe Bleat in the thicket; there I flew, With lazy wing slow circling round, Until I spied unto the ground A lamb by tangled briars bound. The ewe, meanwhile, on hillock-side, Bleat to her young—so loudly cried, She heard ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... it he drew back, knowing what I was going to do just as I suddenly knew it. It was a moment when he seemed to me to bleat—yes, that's the word—to ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... sages. He adored Polly, was dutifully kind to her mother, and had stood by T. Snow, Jr., in many an hour of tribulation with fraternal fidelity. Though he had long blushed, sighed, and cast sheep's eyes at the idol of his affections, only till lately had he dared to bleat forth his passion. Polly loved him because she couldn't help it; but she was proud, and wouldn't marry till Aunt Kipp's money was hers, or at least a sure prospect of it; and now even the prospect of a prospect was destroyed by that irrepressible Toady. They were talking ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... a' the toun she trotted by him; A long half-mile she could descry him; Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him, She run wi' speed: A friend mair faithfu' ne'er cam ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... irrepressible; I remember my first terror hearing the howl of weird, amorous cats; I remember the scream of a terrified, injured horse, the sheet-lightning And running away from the sound of a woman in labor, something like an owl whooing, And listening inwardly to the first bleat of a lamb, The first wail of an infant, And my mother singing to herself, And the first tenor singing of the passionate throat of a young collier, who has long since drunk himself to death, The first elements of foreign ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... nearly to the ground that she might lay her hands on his horns, which were very large; he then lifted her gently from the ground by raising his head. If she chanced to leave her flock feeding, as soon as they discovered she was gone, they all began to bleat most piteously, and would continue to do so till she returned; they would then testify their joy by rubbing their sides against her ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... While, as an aureole crowns a burning lamp, Above all beauty of the body and brain Shone beauty of a soul benign with love. Even as a tawny flock of huddled sheep, Grazing each other's heels, urged by one will, With bleat and baa following the wether's lead, Or the wise shepherd, so o'er the Moldau bridge Trotted the throng of yellow-caftaned Jews, Chattering, hustling, shuffling. At their head Marched Rabbi Jochanan ben-Eleazar, High priest in Prague, oldest ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... account of the sheep—an animal which one is accustomed to regard as of a timid and inoffensive nature. When I set out at a brisk pace to walk to the house I have spoken of, in order to make some inquiries there, a few of the sheep that happened to be near began to bleat loudly, as if alarmed, and by and by they came hurrying after me, apparently in a great state of excitement. I did not mind them much, but presently a pair of horses, attracted by their bleatings, also seemed struck at my appearance, and came at ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... The cry of a child! Weak and faint, indeed, but telling of the continuance of life! But again and again, after scaling heights or creeping down comes, they were doomed to disappointment. It was but the bleat of a strayed lamb! That night a larger party set out with lanterns and torches, and once more ranged the hills shouting for the child; but once again ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... the right, at not so very great a distance, came the bleat of a goat, while further away still could be heard the awe-inspiring roar of ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... bell, book, and candle,—candle, book, and bell,— Forward and backward, to curse Faustus to hell! Anon you shall hear a hog grunt, a calf bleat, and an ass bray, Because it is ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... my breast and the air on my limbs and the foam on my feet? For surely this earnest man has none Of the night in his soul, and none of the tune Of the waters within him; only the world's old wisdom to bleat. ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... had only recovered from the measles" began to wail. It was then he had his first good taste of the teacher's floggings. "A little boy must not look where it is forbidden. A little boy must not bleat like a calf." ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... me forcibly. The country people, those belonging to the Mornet, declare that at night one can hear talking going on in the sand, and then that one hears two goats bleat, one with a strong, the other with a weak voice. Incredulous people declare that it is nothing but the cry of the sea birds, which occasionally resembles bleatings, and occasionally human lamentations; but belated fishermen swear that they have met an old shepherd, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... was ready with the rope, he gave the word, and the gate was opened; the cow ran in immediately, and, hearing her calf bleat, went into the cow-house, the door of which was shut upon her. A minute afterward Humphrey cried out to them to haul upon the rope, ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river-sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... the desert's splendors. It seemed to her that the nameless unknown Mystery toward which her life was drifting was embodied in this infinite silence. So sleep would not come to her until dawn. Then the stir of the wind in the trees, the bleat of sheep, the trill of mocking-birds lulled her ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... rattling of the oarlocks, the chant of the rowers as they dipped their oars, and the rippling of the water against the sides of the boat. Up to this time the black lamb had lain quietly in Melas' arms, but now something seemed to disturb him. He lifted his head, gave a sudden bleat, and somehow flung himself out of Melas' arms directly into the basket of eels! Such a squirming as there was then! The eels squirmed, and the lamb squirmed, and if his legs had not been securely tied together he undoubtedly ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... Hatton—whom the Queen calls her sheep, and he's as silly as one, too, with his fool's face and his bleat and his great eyes. He trots about after her Grace, too, like a pet lamb. Bah! I'm sick of him. That's enough of the ass; ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... bleat and baa, dona like goats, Gorge down black sheep, and strain at motes, Array their backs in fine black coats, Then seize their negroes by their throats, ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... and stood near her. Golda caressed the animal's neck, and Meir did the same smiling. The goat gave a short bleat, jumped aside, and in the twinkling of an eye was biting ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... wolf, in ambush by the fold, sore beat With winds, at midnight howls amid the rain. The lambs beneath their mothers safely bleat. He, mad with rage, and faint with famine's pain, Thirsts for their blood, and ramps at them in vain; So raves fierce Turnus, as his eyes survey The walls and camp. Grief burns in every vein, As round he looks for access ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil |
