"Lark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... luxuriant tapestry of ferns and ivies and blossoming vines. Even the roofs are covered with flowers; every cranny bears a blossom or a tuft of green. Then above, long stretches of barren heath (with a few twisted and wind-tortured trees), where the sheep pasture and the sky-lark sings, and in and out of the red-fronted cliffs the querulous sea-gulls flash in the sunshine, and make their plaintive moan. Near Lynton there is the famous Valley of Rocks, where the wise woman, Mother Melldrum, had her winter ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... salient diamonds of her highest voice, which arches like the tall shaft of a fountain sparkling in the sun. The introduction, a bold, exhorting strain, in grandiose style, full of large intervals, was given with a glorious fervor, and no lark ever carolled more blithely or more at ease than her voice as it soared to F in alt! Benedict's English ballad, 'Take this Lute,' she sang with a simplicity and pathos that won the audience completely; and no part seemed more genuine or more expressive than the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... courtyard into the park beyond. Presently the sky began to soften in the east, and the gray uncertain light gave place to the blushing dawn. Soon the dark shadows that lurked under the trees fled before the golden beams of the sun. Suddenly the note of a lark rang out silvery and joyous. Bird after bird took up the note until from every tree and shrub there swelled a grand chorus as larks and throstles poured forth their ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... a small voice, sweet and flute-like, which seemed to come from above. Agnella raised her head and saw a lark perched on the top of the front door. "You revenge yourself too cruelly for an injury inflicted, not upon you in your character of a fairy but upon the ugly and disgusting form in which it has pleased you to ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... be orchards filled with fruit, And song of meadow lark and song of flute; Far from the city there are lover's fields, Lips eloquent ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... the lark of the thing, I should like, for the present, to leave her in ignorance of my connection ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... nesting over there, and you will find some varieties of southern birds which do not come to England, but go straight up from Eastern or Central Europe to breed in the cool of the North. Amongst these may be mentioned the blue-throated warbler, ortolan bunting, Lapland bunting, shore lark, red-throated pipit, tree warbler, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... a rare lark that night, partly with Biggs, his lordship's chauffeur, and partly with a motor expert who came along on a bicycle, and said he'd have my Renault going in twenty minutes. I'm not one that can stand a billet in servants' quarters, and I chose rather to put up at the ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... unpleasant predicament over this business, I can tell yer. You profess to know who I am. D'yer want to know what I'm worth? Yer'd better put me ashore, I say, and stop this nonsense. I don't mind a joke, but this is carrying a lark too far. Why," he shrieked, "here we are a-drawing on to Northfleet! Yer 'd better let me go." And so he ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... the cheerful morn, No lark more blithe, no flower more gay And like the bird that haunts the thorn, So merrily sung ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... discussions and pretences, when boon Nature, reticent no more, was singing that full-throated song of hers that thrills and claims control of every fibre. The air was wine; the moist earth-smell, wine; the lark's song, the wafts from the cow-shed at top of the field, the pant and smoke of a distant train,—all were wine,—or song, was it? or odour, this unity they all blended into? I had no words then to describe it, that earth-effluence of which I was ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... cream. In London the day stretches before a man, if he has no regular and appointed work to do, like a long, white, dusty road. It seems impossible to get to the end of it without vast effort. But in the country every hour has its amusements. Up with the lark. Morning dip. Cheery greetings. Local color. Huge breakfast. Long walks. Flannels. The ungirt loin. Good, steady spell of work from dinner till bedtime. The prospect fascinated him. His third novel was already in a nebulous state in his brain. A quiet week or two in the country ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... next day, in the land o' the hay, the lady bird an' he. The bobolink came an' the wife o' the same An' the lark an' the fiddle de dee. An' the crow came down in a minister gown—there was nothing that he ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... this disability to mar the music; but it didn't; save that now and again a note would come out metallic and over-shrill, the tones were under good control. The whole manner and method had certainly a strong element of oddness; but no one incapable of condemning as unmanly the song of a lark would have called it affected. I had met young men of whose enunciation Swinburne's now reminded me. In them the thing had always irritated me very much; and I now became sure that it had been derived from people who had derived it in old Balliol ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... flute! Now 'tis mute; Birds delight Day and night, Nightingale, In the dale, Lark in sky— Merrily, Merrily, merrily to welcome ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... where I had gone to find work I had fallen in with some young fellows who "knew the ropes," and being far from home and lonesome I was glad to accept their companionship. They invited me to join them in an "evening lark" to which no loyal Christian would lend himself, and though I was a nominal Christian I was tempted sorely. I regarded myself as "my own ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... was the verdure of the hills— A rich luxuriant green, o'er which the sky Of blue, translucent, clear without a cloud, Outspread its arching amplitude serene. With many a gush of music, from each brake Sang forth the choral linnets; and the lark, Ascending from the clover field, by fits Soar'd as it sang, and dwindled from the sight. 'Mid the tall meadow grass the ox reclined, Or bent his knee, or from beneath the shade Of the broad beech, with ruminant mouth, gazed forth. Rustling with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... farm to live, Johnnie Green had thought it quite a lark to drive or ride Ebenezer. Now, however, Johnnie paid little heed to the old horse. And, to tell the truth, Ebenezer was content to be ...
— The Tale of Pony Twinkleheels • Arthur Scott Bailey
... was that the Roman rose. Not that the earliest lark rises so early in Latium as the earliest lark in England; that is, during summer: but then, on the other hand, neither does it ever rise so late. The Roman citizen was stirring with the dawn—which, allowing for the shorter longest-day and longer ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... do we care? Won't it be the greatest lark that ever happened? You're the smartest woman in the world ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... gold-fever; and, like most other fevers, it was then at its height. Parties had been on the hill soon after the previous midnight awaiting the dawn, resolved to be the first at the diggings that morning, and 'have their fortunes made before others arrived.' But the lark had not got many yards high in his heavenward ascent, and only struck the first note of his morning-carol, when the mountain concaves sent back echoes of music from a whole band of men, marching at the head ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... everything reminds me of the times when others were with me, and then the moors seem a wilderness, featureless, solitary, saddening. My sister Emily had a. particular love for them, and there is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The distant prospects were Anne's delight, and when I look round, she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon. In the hill-country silence, their poetry comes by lines and stanzas into my mind: once I loved it; now I ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bellies like the sky, and are hence less visible to the hawk, who passes under them or over them. Those birds which are much amongst flowers, as the gold-finch (Fringilla carduelis), are furnished with vivid colours. The lark, partridge, hare, are the colour of the dry vegetables or earth on which they rest. And frogs vary their colour with the mud of the streams which they frequent; and those which live on trees are green. Fish, which ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... Yes, yes, quite happy, quite happy. Up early this morning and all round the place like a little lark." ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... be such a lark to play the hostess to a stranger!" she exclaimed. "When is he coming?—I suppose it is a 'he,'" ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... my Pilgrim hug and love, Esteem it much, yea, value it above Things of a greater bulk: yea, with delight, Say, My lark's leg is better than a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... air which made him forget for a moment his desire for repose. He looked about him, breathing deep draughts of its coolness. The robins which, though not so well advertised, rise just as punctually as the lark, were beginning to sing as they made their simple toilets before setting out to attend to the early worm. The sky to the east was a delicate blend of pinks and greens and yellows, with a hint of blue behind the grey which was ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... The busy lark, messenger of day, Saluteth in her song the morrow gray; And fiery Phoebus riseth up so bright, That all the orient ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the Abbotstoke rabbits, don't you remember how much he said about its being disgraceful, and ordering us never to have anything to do with their gunnery? And he will think it so very bad to have gone out on a lark just now! Oh, I wish ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... confidently. "I keep these beggars in the little shop for coal, just outside the door. It ain't the law, I know; but what's the odds as long as they're happy? They think it no end of a lark. I once had a Newfunland, and tried him there; but the obstinate brute considered it too small for him, and barked himself in such an unnatural manner, that at last he'd got no wool on the top of his head, - just the place where the wool ought to grow, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the acceleration the Lark will be capable of, and also that on some other worlds, which we hope to visit, this needle will weigh more ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... is another bird which loves the sandy, pebbly margin of the sea. Have you ever watched him there? He is not much larger than a plump lark, and he runs quickly along the beach, stooping now and again to pick up the morsels of food ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... adventurous side in the character, not only of his own, but of all nations, that Marryat is largely human. He is the enslaver of youth, not by the literary artifices of presentation, but by the natural glamour of his own temperament. To his young heroes the beginning of life is a splendid and warlike lark, ending at last in inheritance and marriage. His novels are not the outcome of his art, but of his character, like the deeds that make up his record of naval service. To the artist his work is interesting as a completely successful expression of an unartistic ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... it was a long way, and the wind or a squall might get up at any moment, or the tide might be contrary, and he positively forbade us to entertain any such idea. All this, however, only increased our desire for the "lark," as we called it, and about 9 o'clock, having rowed about quietly for a while, we suddenly bade good-bye to the "Mary Anne" and steered straight for the Heads, where we had been told Port Lyttelton lay. Our crew consisted of Smith, the two Leaches, ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... close to morning now," she went on, slowly. "I can hear the doves cooing on the tiles, the wind is blowing over the water-meadows, and the lark is in the blue—ah, God! how beautiful this dear world of ours! It is the May-time, little brother, and the arbutus will be in bloom—the shy, pink blossoms that nestle on the sunny slopes of the rocks and at the roots of the birch-trees. We will gather them—you and I—and bring them ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... three plates balanced on one arm, and the remark: "I 'urried up the pudden, sir. You'll find plenty o' lark in it to-day." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of a certain famous pianist, he said: 'He plays Beethoven with velocity and Czerny with expression.' But to hear Sarasate play romantic music, his own 'Spanish Dances' for instance, was all like glorious birdsong and golden sunshine, a lark ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... his feet clean on a splinter of wood that was there. The splinter broke off and, when the bird flew away, there was quite a little heap of earth left. Next day a swallow came and next a lark and gradually quite a ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... find the diamond; but afterwards, thinking it over, he relented a little. He was a gambling hound, was this Potter, a little queer at cards, and this kind of prize-packet business must have suited him down to the ground. Anyhow, he offered, for a lark, to sell the birds separately to separate people by auction at a starting price of L80 for a bird. But one of them, he said, he meant ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... was a little village in the valley of the Seine. As a lark drops its nest among the grasses, so a few peasant people had dropped their little farms and cottages amid the great green woods on the winding river. It was a pretty place, with one steep, stony street, shady with poplars and with elms; quaint houses, about whose thatch a ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... they exchanged their morning greetings sounded strange to them. They knew only the muffled accents transmitted by the echo of the well. And now their voices seemed to them as clear as the notes of a lark. And ah! how delightful it was in that warm corner, in that holiday atmosphere! They still held each other's hands. Silvere leaning against the wall, Miette with her figure slightly thrown backwards. They were about to tell each other all the soft things which they ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Forest of Seale lay the little village of Birnewood Fratrum, like a lark's nest in a meadow of tall grass. It was approached by green wood-ways, very miry in winter. The folk that lived there were mostly woodmen. There was a little church, the stones of which seemed to have borrowed the hue ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... could drop her off after making the circuit, just before he reached the camps, so that he would come in alone as he started and no one would be the wiser. They were just a couple of fool kids on a kid lark." ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... I hear him I close my eyes and picture the downs and oaked hills of England, and fancy I'm listening to the nightingale or the lark." ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... never will be. [She walks straight up to him]. I didnt do it for a lark, Bob: I did it out of the very depths of my nature. I did it because I'm that sort of person. I did it in one of my religious fits. I'm hardened at eighteen, as they say. So what ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... on by the operator, are procured in this way. I allude to hawks, which constantly dash at the call, or play-birds, of the netsman. I remember seeing, taken in a lark net on the racecourse of Corfu—one of the Ionian Isles—a most beautiful male specimen of the hen harrier (Circus cyaneus, Macg.); and here in England I have received, within the last few years, one great grey shrike (Lanus excubitor, 1.), four or five hobby hawks (Falco subbuteo, 1.), a dozen ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... the cab, this amateur bloodhound carolled away like a lark while I meditated upon the many-sidedness ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... symphony, when every scrap of turf has its performer. I am inclined to place the Cricket at the head of the choristers of spring. In the waste lands of Provence, when the thyme and the lavender are in flower, the Cricket mingles his note with that of the crested lark, which ascends like a lyrical firework, its throat swelling with music, to its invisible station in the clouds, whence it pours its liquid arias upon the plain below. From the ground the chorus of the Crickets replies. It is monotonous and artless, yet how well it harmonises, in its very simplicity, ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... from that gentleman's narrative: "In proportion as we got deeper into the desert, the soil became more and more arid; at daybreak I could still discover a few withered plants of Caligonum and Salsola, and not far from the same spot I saw a lark and another bird of a whitish colour, the last living things that we beheld in this dismal solitude.... The desert had now completely assumed the character of a land accursed, as the natives call it. Not the smallest blade of grass, no indication of animal life vivified the prospect; no sound ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of a vague well-being; then of a longer or shorter—often a very short—spell of vague ill-being; and so, the end. Nor is it possible to doubt that the experience of some animals includes a great deal of positive rapture. If the lark be not really the soul of joy, he is the greatest hypocrite under the sun. Many insects seem to be pin-points of vibrant vitality which we can scarcely believe to be unaccompanied by pleasurable sensation. The mosquito which ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... sorrowful, and gazed at the chirping birds that hopped contentedly from branch to branch, "they are much better off than I! To fly must be a heavenly art; and happy do I prize that creature in which it is innate. Yes! Could I exchange my nature with any other creature, I fain would be such a happy little lark!" ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... in each soul is born the rapture Of yearning upward, and away, When o'er our heads, lost in the azure, The lark sends down her thrilling lay, When over crags and pine-clad highlands The poising eagle slowly soars, And over plains and lakes and islands The crane sails ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... "No," she answered, "it's two of them and I can't decide. One is rich and homely as a hedge fence and always says 'drawring' and 'reel,' but has lots of money and a fair enough family back of him. The other is handsome and oh, my! gay as a lark, but he had about run through with a fortune, and I'm afraid he will flirt now that the restraint of my serious and ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... said to myself, is not the English countryside the work of the English poets—the English spring, the English wild flowers, the English lark, the English nightingale, and so forth? That longing of Browning expressed in ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... sunrise; cockcrow, cockcrowing[obs3]; the small hours, the wee hours of the morning. spring; vernal equinox, first point of Aries. noon; midday, noonday; noontide, meridian, prime; nooning, noontime. summer, midsummer. Adj. matin, matutinal[obs3]; vernal. Adv. at sunrise &c. n.; with the sun, with the lark, "when the morning dawns". Phr. "at shut of evening flowers" [Paradise Lost]; entre chien et loup[Fr]; "flames in the forehead of the morning sky" [Milton]; "the breezy call of incense-breathing ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... seen the plains in the morning—a June morning, when the spurred lark soars and sings—when the plover calls, and the curlew pipes his shriller notes to the rising sun? Then is there music, indeed, for no bird outsings the spurred lark; and thanks to OLD-man he is not wanting in numbers, either. The plains are wonderful then—more wonderful than ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... Overhead the singing lark and underfoot the heather, Far and blue in front of us the unplumbed sky, Me and stick and bundle, O, we jogs along together, (Changeable the weather? Well, it ain't all pie!) Weather's like a woman, sir, and if she wants to quarrel, If her eyes ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Daisy thought. No doubt this poor woman must have things to eat, but there was not much fun in bringing them to her. Daisy was inclined to wonder how she had ever come to marry anybody with so lively a name as Lark. But before she got away, Mrs. Lark asked Daisy to go in and see her mother, and Daisy, not knowing how to refuse, went in ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... songsters all secure, The merle, the lark, shall come and sit Amongst her emerald chevelure And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... University of Oxbridge, where my friend Mr. Arthur Pendennis passed some period of his life, I made the journey in the railroad by the side of a young fellow at present a student of Saint Boniface. He had got an exeat somehow, and was bent on a day's lark in London: he never stopped rattling and talking from the commencement of the journey until its close (which was a great deal too soon for me, for I never was tired of listening to the honest young fellow's jokes and cheery laughter); and when we arrived at the terminus ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the world, little sister, and you will have to keep a sharp lookout or you will lose your heart to one of them. Frank Howard will count it a lark. He has stuck to the "business" as faithfully as if he were not heir to it, and he will come sure to-morrow night. Dear old Phil—my many years' chum—will come because I ask him. These two are all right, and we can count on them. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... next morning, a carriage draws up before Aristide Dauvray's home. Josephine is busied with the household. Louise, singing like a lark, gayly aids her foster-mother. Aristide is far away. He toils at the new structures of beauty. Arm in arm, the young artists ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... rails, as large as a pigeon, of a variegated grey colour, with a rusty neck; a black sort with red eyes, not larger than a lark; large violet-coloured coots, with red bald crowns; two sorts of fly-catchers; a very small swallow; and three sorts of pigeons, one of which is le ramier cuivre of Mons. Sonnerat;[171] another, half the size of the common sort, of a light green on the back ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... Austrian life of yours was a mere caprice—that you took "a cast," as we call it in the hunting-field, amongst those fellows to see what they were like and what sort of an existence was theirs—but that being your aunt's heir, and with a snug estate that must one day come to you, it was a mere "lark," and not to be continued ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... yet it is day: While the sweet sunlight is warm on the brae! Hark to the lark singing lay upon lay, While the brown squirrel eats nuts on the spray And in the apple-leaves chatters the jay! Play, play, even as they! What though the cowslips ye pluck will decay, What though the grass will be presently hay? What ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... the wild notes of the lark floating far over the blue sky, And my foolish heart went after him, and, lo! I blessed him as he rose. Foolish; for far better is the trained boudoir bullfinch, Which pipeth the semblance of a tune and mechanically draweth up water. For ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... broach the subject of the ring to him. Another topic which by a sort of instinct she refrained from was Judy herself. When Jasper was in the house Hilda was always glad when Judy retired to her own room. When the gay little voice, happy now, and clear and sweet as a lark's, was heard singing snatches of gay songs all over the house, if Jasper were there, Hilda would carefully close the door of the ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... the Leconte de Lisle. He had no new creed to proclaim nor old creed to denounce, the inherent miseries of human life did not seem to touch him, and of the languors and ardours of animal or spiritual passion there are none. What is there? a pure, clear song, an instinctive, incurable and lark-like love of the song. The lily is white, and the rose is red, such knowledge of, such observation of nature is enough for the poet, and he sings and he trills, there is silver magic in every note, and the song as it ascends rings, and all the air quivers with the everwidening ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... him good luck. I ricolleck one time I seed a big feller a bullyin' a po' little devil, an' I told him to quit an' he wouldn't, an' I whaled him. Didn't think nuthin' about it till I got nearly home an' I foun' myse'f a whistlin' like a bird, an' all that day I was as happy as a lark." ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... Yes, yes, a frightened child who cannot speak, who stays as still as a lark that has been taken in a snare. Why, neither of her sisters can compare with this, and, besides, the elder one had a quite ugly mole upon her thigh—But that old rogue Balthazar Valori has a real jewel to offer, this time. Well, ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... dark when Harold came running up to the school-room, and, bursting open the door, cried cheerily: "Such a lark, Dulcie; just listen. Hullo," he ...
— Laugh and Play - A Collection of Original stories • Various
... to kill him," said Dannie. "People rave over the lark, but I vow I'd miss the quail most if they were both ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the rocky dells, The moor-lark in the air, The bee among the heather-bells That hide my ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... silver-clasped volume. He would rather have been bred a clerk and scholar than a knight's son, and his happiest moments were when he served mass for the chaplain in the early morning, and felt his heart flutter up and up like a lark, up and up till it was lost in infinite space and brightness. Almost as happy were the hours when he sat beside the foreign painter who came over the mountains to paint the chapel, and under whose brush celestial faces grew out of the rough wall as if he had sown some magic seed which flowered ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... extracts or by anybody's extracts from his last-published volume.[68] Do you remember his grand ode upon Childhood—worth, to my apprehension, just twenty of Dryden's 'St. Cecilia's Day'—his sonnet upon Westminster Bridge, his lyric on a lark, in which the lark's music swells and exults, and the many noble and glorious passages of his 'Excursion'? You must not indeed blame me for estimating Wordsworth at his height, and on the other side I readily confess to you that he is occasionally, and not ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... castles he took from the English, and leaving them standing did but offer safe harbors for the foe, so it was ever his custom to dismantle, as utterly to prevent their reestablishment; and if he did this with the castles of his own friends, who all, as the Douglas saith, 'love better to hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak,' it was not likely he would spare Buchan's. But there was one castle, I remember, cost him a bitter struggle to demolish. It was the central fortress of the district, distinguished, I believe, by the name of 'the Tower of Buchan,' and had been the residence of ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... first intelligence he received of me. I observed there was the flesh of several animals, but could not distinguish them by the taste. There were shoulders, legs, and loins, shaped like those of mutton, and very well dressed but smaller than the wings of a lark. I eat them by two or three at a mouthful, and took three loaves at a time, about the bigness of musket-bullets. They supplied me as fast as they could, showing a thousand marks of wonder and astonishment at my bulk ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... There was a peasant, and above all, it was all in the dark. Vovo cried like an infant, the Professor defined, and Mrya Vaslevna refined. Such a lark! You ought ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... day, my sweet one; love be my help, the lark lies." In these songs, the women are slight and lithe; they are more gentle than doves; their faces are all pink and white: "If the flowers of the hawthorn were united to the rose, not more delicate would be their colour than that on my lady's ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... this, Van," he shouted excitedly. "Mother says they have decided to open the New Hampshire house for Easter. They're going up for my spring vacation and take in the sugaring off. What a lark! And listen to this. She writes: 'You'd better arrange to bring your roommate home with you for the holiday unless he ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... starts the Bass with Grave Majestic Air, And up the Treble mounts with shrill Career, With softer Sounds in mild melodious Maze Warbling between, the Tenor gently plays And, if th' inspiring Altos joins the Force See! like the Lark it Wings its towering Course Thro' Harmony's sublimest Sphere it flies And to ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... yawl no more for fairy-land, I stick to the piazza. It is my box-royal; and this amphitheatre, my theatre of San Carlo. Yes, the scenery is magical—the illusion so complete. And Madam Meadow Lark, my prima donna, plays her grand engagement here; and, drinking in her sunrise note, which, Memnon-like, seems struck from the golden window, how far from me the weary ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... 'fighting for the right.' I was too young and too ignorant to realize that older, better men than I on the other side felt just as right as I did. In those days war was the only tool and we thought it right, and some of us went hating it and some of us went shouting like fools. I went for the lark of it, for I knew no better. I marched away in a new uniform with the band playing and the flags snapping. And on the little old farm my father gave me I left a nineteen-year-old wife with ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... occasional squirm, to tweak their ribs now and then, so that they believed his heart was in the sport. Really he got quite a little rest while they were scuffling. No one knew exactly what was the imagined purpose of the lark—whether he was supposed to be trying to escape from them, or they from him. Like all the best games, it had ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... not try to discover beauties in nature? One can be so happy in a wood! What a charming thing to hear a leaf sing! I know few things more delightful than to watch the triumph of the month of May when the nightingale, the cuckoo, and the lark open the spring in our forests! And then, later, come those beautiful crystal days of autumn—days that are neither warm, nor yet are they really cold! And then the trees—how eloquent they can be made; with a little teaching ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... hour is nigh, The sun has left the lea, The orange flower perfumes the bower, The breeze is on the sea. The lark, his lay, who thrilled all day, Sits hushed, his partner nigh, Breeze, bird, and flower, confess the hour, But where is ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little moue. "Next time you'll take orders direct, and save time, won't you? Isn't it a lark, getting ready for a party? Oh, would you please straighten out these chairs? They have to go all round the room—so! Then perhaps you'd help Debby with the favors. They are in that box by the window. Kitty got the sweetest things in Boston. I do hope some ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... towards the horizon; through the wide nostrils it drank the wind in great draughts. The litter swayed, and rose and fell like a boat in the waves. Dried leaves in occasional beds rustled underfoot. Sometimes a perfume like absinthe sweetened all the air. Lark and chat and rock-swallow leaped to wing, and white partridges ran whistling and clucking out of the way. More rarely a fox or a hyena quickened his gallop, to study the intruders at a safe distance. Off ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... opened the window; a bright yellow streak crossed the sky, and seemed to divide in half the poplars, which stood out in black relief on the horizon. In the clover-fields beyond the chestnut-trees, a lark was mounting up to heaven, while pouring out her clear morning song. The damps of the dew bathed the head of Villefort, and refreshed his memory. "To-day," he said with an effort,—"to-day the man who holds the blade of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with the lark for all I care," said Linda. "Early morning in the desert is a mystery and a miracle, and the larks have been there just long enough to get their voices properly tuned ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Poet Laureate in succession to Thomas Warton, in 1790, was, as a poet, regularly made fun of. In his New Year Odes there were perpetual references to the coming spring: and, in the dearth of more important topics, each tree and field-flower were described: and the lark, and every other bird that could be brought into rhyme, were sure to appear; and his poetical and patriotic olla ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... public opinion, and possibly the permanent welfare of society, and had avowed, beside, her own horror of a doctor's simplest duties. But poor Miss Fraley looked at her young friend as a caged bird at a window might watch a lark's flight, and was strangely glad whenever there was a chance to spend an hour in ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... question which makes me say it virtually of myself. That is a way you keen lawyers have. Very well; I shall be an honest witness, even against myself. That I wasn't up with the lark this morning goes without saying. The larks that I know much about are on the wing after dinner in the evening. The forenoon is a variable sort of affair with many people. Literally I suppose it ends at ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... boyish enthusiasm. "And wizards, too—and, I'm ashamed to admit it—ghosts. Good-bye. Thank you for the spell you've cast upon us. I think it has done all of us a lot of good. I undertook a task that was beyond me, bringing these youngsters here for a lark. But you see, I had promised them the trip, and I don't believe in going back on a promise. The governess left us yesterday, most unexpectedly. She said her sister was ill, but—well, I shouldn't say anything unkind. Perhaps her sister really is ill. So, then, I brought ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... do the birds care for appropriate surroundings; anything does for them, they do not aim at effect. I heard a tit-lark singing his loudest, and found him perched on the edge of a tub, formed of a barrel sawn in two, placed in the field for the horses to drink from, as there was no pond. Some swallows are very fond of a ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... seaward the long breakers, snow-flecked and white crested, came rolling in with a long, monotonous murmur toward the land. Above, the grey sky was changing into blue. Almost directly over her head, rising higher and higher in little circles, a lark was singing. Jeanne half closed her eyes and stood still, engrossed by the unexpected beauty of her surroundings. Then suddenly a voice came travelling to ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... something was needed from the station, and I rode Buckskin down to get it. The station was a couple of miles from Jordan's house. Thirty or forty cowboys were there on a lark, and all had ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... winter they're silent—the wind is so strong; What it says, I don't know; but it sings a loud song. But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather, And singing, and loving—all come back together, But the lark is so brimful of gladness and love, The green fields below him, the blue sky above, That he sings, and he sings; and forever sings he— "I love my Love, and my ...
— Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading - Selected from English and American Literature • Horace Elisha Scudder, editor
... lisp the first syllables of the marvellous tale. Witness the clear, sweet whistle of the Gray-Crested Titmouse,—the soft, nasal piping of the Nuthatch,—the amorous, vivacious warble of the Bluebird,—the long, rich note of the Meadow-Lark,—the whistle of the Quail,—the drumming of the Partridge,—the animation and loquacity of the Swallows, and the like. Even the Hen has a homely, contented carol; and I credit the Owls with a desire to fill the night with music. All ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... light, an invigorating air. After all, there was something wide, it seemed, in war, something sweet. It was bright and hot—they were going, clean and childlike, to help their fellows at the bridge. When, near at hand, a bugle blew, high as a lark above the stress, he followed the sound with a clear delight. He felt no fatigue, and he had never seen the sky so blue, the woods so green. Chance brought him for a moment in line with his ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... you could get the news?" asked Max. "I suppose I could manage alone, but I'd like to have the paper fuller and better than ever, and I thought if you girls would go in, we could have a lark out of it, and not ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... have one. Already they saw themselves in their shirt-sleeves, at the edge of a plat-band, pruning rose trees, and digging, dressing, settling the ground, growing tulips in pots. They would awaken at the singing of the lark to follow the plough; they would go with baskets to gather apples, would look on at butter-making, the thrashing of corn, sheep-shearing, bee-culture, and would feel delight in the lowing of cows and ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... Mary, Where we sat side by side On a bright May mornin' long ago, When first you were my bride; The corn was springin' fresh and green. And the lark sang loud and high— And the red was on your lip, Mary, And the love-light in ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... encored the prettiest of the girls, and swaggered in the lobby between acts, with cigarettes. There we ran across the one man I knew in Philadelphia, and had supper after the play with three or four fellows who, on hearing my story, persisted in believing that I had sailed on the Ella as a lark or to follow a girl. My simple statement that I had done it out of necessity met with roars of laughter and finally I let it go ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... get the idea that this is going to be a space lark," said Strong. "It's very important for the people of the Solar Alliance to know what kind of work we're doing here at the Academy. And you three have been selected as representatives of the entire Cadet Corps. So see that you conduct ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell |
