"On the wing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Israelites, "to fill the camp." I soon succeeded in getting an Enfield rifle, a gun not designed for such small game. By beating Minie-balls out flat, then cutting the plates into square blocks or slugs, I prepared my ammunition, and in the first eleven shots killed nine quail on the wing. I was shooting for the pot, and shot ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... and his reputation damaged, he turned fiercely upon him whom he considered as his persecutor and betrayer. It is fortunate for Palmerston that the matter has broken out at the end of the Session when people are all on the wing and there is not time to sift anything to the bottom, but still the charges are so grave, and they involve such serious consequences and considerations, that it is absolutely necessary the truth should be manifested one way or another.[21] The Foreign Ministers all believe that Palmerston ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... strongly apparent, not merely by the M. flavo-cinctus being marked with yellow where the other bird is white, but by the general distribution of the colours. In this respect, M. flavo-cinctus resembles more closely the true Orioles, particularly in the yellow fascia which is formed on the wing, when closed by the junction of the apical ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... prisoner. They found him quite stupid unmovable by all that could be urged, or rather, perhaps, the style of the address, as it was described to me, was fitted to confound find bewilder the man rather than enlighten him. In the midst of all this, Mr. Carleton came in he was just then on the wing for America, and he had heard of the poor creature's condition in a visit to his father. He came my informant said like a being of a different planet. He took the man's hand he was chained ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... legends are connected. There is a bird, probably the peewit, which during dry weather may be seen always on the wing, and piteously crying Peet, Peet,[432] as if begging for water. Of it the following tale is told. When God created the earth, and determined to supply it with seas, lakes and rivers, he ordered the birds to convey the waters to ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... This was Mme. de Tencin.... I soon perceived that the guests came there prepared to play their parts, and that their wish to shine did not leave the conversation always free to follow its easy and natural course. Every one tried to seize quickly and on the wing the moment to bring in his word, his story, his anecdote, his maxim, or to add his dash of light and sparkling wit; and, in order to do this opportunely, it was often rather far-fetched. In Marivaux, the impatience to display ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... grisette, running about free and unshackled in her loose draperies, quite unabashed in her state of semi-nudity—gay, reckless, wooing pleasure on the wing, surely she might have posed as the embodied archetype of France itself. So has this pagan among modern nations borrowed something of the antique spirit of wantonness. Along with its theft of the Attic charm and grace, it has captured, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... woodpecker for climbing trees and for seizing insects in the chinks of the bark? Yet in North America there are woodpeckers which feed largely on fruit, and others with elongated wings which chase insects on the wing; and on the plains of La Plata, where not a tree grows, there is a woodpecker, which in every essential part of its organisation, even in its colouring, in the harsh tone of its voice, and undulatory flight, told me plainly of its close blood-relationship to our common species; ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... or used to claim, to be the literary metropolis of the United States. A prose volume by Mrs. Blake and a volume of her poems lie before us, and for elegance of typography do credit to their Boston publishers. "On the Wing"—lively sketches of a trip to the Pacific, all about San Francisco and the Yosemite Valley, and Los Angeles, and Colorado, but ending with this ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... the two seamen, Trimble Rogers made a try at shooting him on the wing but the musket ball failed to find the mark. It was necessary to hunt him down for the sake of their own safety. They might have gone their way in the pirogue but this would have been to abandon the sea-chest without an effort to drag it up or fix ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Ancient Mariner(1) did towards him after he had shot the albatross. But the pewees came back at last, and one of them is now on his wonted perch, so near my window that I can hear the click of his bill as he snaps a fly on the wing with the unerring precision a stately Trasteverina shows in the capture of her smaller deer. The pewee is the first bird to pipe up in the morning; and during the early summer he preludes his matutinal ejaculation of pewee ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... I am about to leave this country, because I have no longer any link to bind me to it, any resting-place on its soil, and that my spirit is already on the wing? I know not, but it seems to me I have never as clearly seen and comprehended it as to-day. And more even than ever, do I find it little, aged, with worn-out blood and worn-out sap; I feel more fully its antediluvian antiquity, its centuries ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... of course many occasions for extracting interesting and comical conversation and incident. Jokes of all kinds are constantly on the wing, and no one can consider himself safe from collision with them. Ridiculous nicknames become attached—no one knows how—to the most dignified characters, and altogether usurp the places of the genuine cognomens. No person possesses the art of concealment to such a degree that all his foibles ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I am but a bird of passage that lights on the boughs of different nationalities. I belong to no flock; my home may be among the palms of Syria, the olives of Italy, the oaks of England, the elms that shadow the Hudson or the Connecticut; I build no nest; to-day I am here, to-morrow on the wing. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and then, play peep with the young birds. They fly almost up to the nest, and poise themselves for an instant on the wing, just long enough to say, "Bo-peep!" and then away! almost before they can be seen. Pretty soon they return again, generally bringing some nice morsel with them. They often first alight on a small branch of the vine, below the nest, and ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... to quicken, A supper I knew was the thing; But now, from my turkey and chicken, They're tempted by birds on the wing! They shoulder their terrible rifles ('Tis really too much for my nerves!) And, slighting my sweets and my trifles, Prefer ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... 'Bout as hot As the ole Gran'-Jury room Where they sot!— Fight 'twixt Mike an' Dock McGriff— 'Pears to me jes' like as if I'd a dremp' the whole blame thing— Allus ha'nts me roun' the gizzard When they're nightmares on the wing, An' a feller's blood's jes' friz! Seed the row from a to izzard— 'Cause I wuz a-standin' as clost to 'em As ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... you, miss. I must get back to Wendover to-night. Fact is, I'm on the wing again," said the young man, stammering and blushing. "Business of importance calls me to—to Charlottesville, miss. So if you should have a letter or a message to send to—to Mrs. Grey I should be happy ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... most soldier-like bird in the world—with their high-perched vedettes when alighted, and their military line of march when on the wing, afford some lessons of diversion and instruction. It would seem as if all the ravens of the United States had congregated here, having been attracted by the carrion of battle-fields and the refuse of camps. ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... however, it has occurred at other times and been overlooked. As it may have occasionally been mistaken for the more common Common Buzzard, I may say that it is always to be distinguished from that bird by the feathered tarsus. On the wing, perhaps, when flying overhead, the most readily observed distinction is the dark band on the lower part of the breast. I have, however, seen a very dark variety of the Rough-legged Buzzard, in which ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... French approaching, they rose up in fine order and ranged themselves in their lines of battle, that of the Prince of Wales right in front, and the Earls of Northampton and Arundel, who commanded the second, took up their place on the wing, right orderly and all ready to support the prince, if need should be. Well, the lords, kings, dukes, counts, and barons of the French came not up all together, but one in front and another behind, without plan or orderliness. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... unseen, And shows him glories yet to be revealed. Not slothful he, though seeming unemployed, And censured oft as useless. Stillest streams Oft water fairest meadows; and the bird That flutters least is longest on the wing. Ask him, indeed, what trophies he has raised, Or what achievements of immortal fame He purposes, and he shall answer—None. His warfare is within. There unfatigued His fervent spirit labours. There he fights, And there obtains fresh triumphs o'er ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... quietly opened, when one or two of the strangers soon make their appearance, wondering, evidently, where they are, but apparently resolved to make the most of their new circumstances. At last, they rise slowly on the wing, and buzz round and round their new habitation for some time, taking, no doubt, special note of its every peculiarity. The circle of observation is then gradually enlarged, till it is thirty or forty yards in circumference, when the earnest reconnoitrer ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... dead, Have sung the song you sing? Some by an arrow were sped; Some by a dagger's sting.' 'Like a bird in the night is my song—a bird on the wing!' ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... our fellow-creatures? What though the duty may try your soul and stagger your capabilities? "Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests." Bear up with patient courage—"the bird that flutters least is longest on the wing." "Duty is the stern daughter of the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... humming-birds are found in the hottest countries of the New World. They are quite numerous and seem to be confined between the two tropics, for those which penetrate the temperate zones in summer only stay there a short time. They seem to follow the sun in its advance and retreat; and to fly on the wing of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Marjorie had been leisurely but steadily gathering up her toilet accessories preparatory to making her morning ablutions. Jerry, who stood idly watching her chum, suddenly realized that time was on the wing. ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... enough for her to see the brilliant waters lying many feet below her, with the sea-birds of which we had talked winging their undulating way between heaven and ocean. It is when first you have a chance of looking a bird in the face on the wing that you know what the marvel of flight is. There it hangs or rests, which you please, borne up, as far as eye or any of the senses can witness, by its own will alone. This Connie, quicker than I in her observation of nature, had already observed. Seated on the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... sail, the magnificent yacht shot over the blue waters of the Mediterranean with the speed of an eagle on the wing. It sped past Corsica and Sardinia, and soon the arid, uninviting shores of Tunis were visible; then it passed between Sicily and Malta, steering directly toward the ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... of research; in other words, with the problem of what particular powers of insight the human mind must use, if its vision of reality is to be of any deeper or more permanent value than the "passing on the wing," so to speak, of individual ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... crumbs of love as Henry and I stole in moments of ecstasy in park and parlor, in pavilion and veranda, on our drives and rides, be blessed a hundred times. Ah, the harvest of little tendernesses, the sweet words I caught on the wing—recompense for the weeks of ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... as he sat there, Of the days when with such arrows He had struck the deer and bison, On the Muskoday, the meadow; Shot the wild goose, flying southward On the wing, the clamorous Wawa; Thinking of the great war-parties, How they came to buy his arrows, Could not fight without his arrows. Ah, no more such noble warriors Could be found on earth as they were! Now the men were all like women, Only used their ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... the blackbirds jawin' as they foller up the plow— Oh, theyr bound to git theyr brekfast, and theyr not a-carin' how; So they quarrel in the furries, and they quarrel on the wing— But theyr peaceabler in pot-pies than any other thing: And it's when I git my shotgun drawed up in stiddy rest, She's as full of tribbelation as a yeller-jacket's nest; And a few shots before dinner, when the sun's a-shinin' right, Seems ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... Strong, however, objected to the younger members of his family expending the large amount of powder and shot they were apt to fire away. He would allow them, he said, only the use of bows and arrows, promising, however, to give each a rifle when they could bring a parrot down on the wing, an emu running, or a kangaroo bounding over the ground. We therefore employed ourselves during the longer evenings of winter in manufacturing bows and feathering a large supply of arrows, for both of which objects we ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... slanting over the gorse in earnest, but Joan hesitated and hung back. Louder than the wind, louder than the cry of the birds, than the howling of Tregagle, than the calling of the cleeves, spoke something. And it said "Turn, on the wing of the storm; fly before it, alone. Let this man walk in the teeth of the gale if he will; but you, Joan Tregenza, follow the wind and set your face to the east, where the sole brightness now left in the sky ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... Harpalion (XIII. 650). The light-armed Locrians are all bowmen and slingers (XIII. 716). Acamas taunts the Argives as "bowmen" (XIV. 479). "The war-cry rose on both sides, and the arrows leaped from the bowstrings" (XV. 313). Manifestly the arrows are always on the wing, hence the need for the huge Homeric and Mycenaean shields. Therefore, as the Achaeans in Homer wore but flimsy corslets (this we are going to prove), the great body- covering shield of the Mycenaean prime did not go out of vogue ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... the tropic-bird, forever on the wing, For them nor night nor breaking morn may peace nor shelter bring. All drooping from the weary cruise or shattered from the fight, No dear home-haven opes to them its arms with ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... prove so. But what might you think, When I had seen this hot love on the wing,— As I perceiv'd it, I must tell you that, Before my daughter told me,— what might you, Or my dear majesty your queen here, think, If I had play'd the desk or table-book, Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb; Or look'd upon this love with idle sight;— ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... wide-awake, serene in watching its mysterious actions. "Are you the one who killed the swan?" Gurnemanz asks him sternly. And he answers, unabashed, quite as Siegfried might have done: "Certainly! Whatever flies I shoot on the wing!" But at once after this the difference between the two is manifest. To both whole regions of emotion are unknown, but certain emotions which are outside the nature of one, are potentially the very strongest in the other. Siegfried is not pitiful. The ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... with a groan, For under the sun is no hope of release. 'Tis a sadness I ween, how the glow and the sheen Of the rosiest mien from their glory subside; How hurries the hour on our race, that shall lower The arm of our power, and the step of our pride. As scatter and fail, on the wing of the gale, The mist of the vale, and the cloud of the sky, So, dissolving our bliss, comes the hour of distress, Old age, with that face of aversion to joy. Oh! heavy of head, and silent as lead, And unbreathed as the dead, is the person of Age; Not a joint, not a nerve—so ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... The Fox flies or deceives the hounds that pursue him; the bear, when overtaken, boldly resists and attacks them; the hen, the very timid hen, fights for the preservation of her chickens, nor does she decline to attack, and to meet on the wing even the swift kite. Shall man, then, provided both with instinct and reason, unmoved, unconcerned, and passive, see his subsistence consumed, and his progeny either ravished from him or murdered? Shall fictitious ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... henchman of the race, he could not fail in his fidelity to the ship under his command. The iron of all his years of iron training was there manifest. While mutiny spread red, and death was on the wing, he could not forget his charge, the ship, the Elsinore, the insensate fabric compounded of steel and hemp and woven cotton that was to him glorious ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... isn't built for running. There is an old story, one which certainly has the appearance of truth, to the effect that when Nature manufactured the first of these birds she forgot to give him any legs at all, and that he had started off on the wing before she noticed her mistake. Then she picked up the first pair that came to hand and threw them after him. Unfortunately they were a misfit, and, what was, perhaps, still worse, they struck his body in ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... seem to crowd on us — so much to do; New fields to conquer, and time's on the wing. Grey hairs are showing, a wrinkle or two; Somehow our footstep is losing its spring. Pleasure's forsaken us, Love ceased to smile; Youth has been funeralled; Age travels fast. Sometimes we wonder: is it worth while? There! we have gained to ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... we must not exercise That roughness here, as where conviction lies In nature, is because those thus ensnared Want nature's light and help to be repair'd. A spirit hath them taken, they are gone, Delusions supernat'ral they're on The wing of; They are out o' th' reach of man Nothing but God, and gospel reach them can. Now since we cannot give these people eyes, Nor regulate their judgment, wherein lies, Our work with them, if not, as has been said, In exercising ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... near by, and then a sound like great flies buzzing, which I really attributed, for a moment, to some early insect. Turning, I saw two Crows flapping their heavy wings among the trees, and observed that they were teasing a Hawk about as large as themselves, which was also on the wing. Presently all three had risen above the branches, and were circling higher and higher in a slow spiral. The Crows kept constantly swooping at their enemy, with the same angry buzz, one of the two ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... remember, Where I was used to swing, And thought the air must rush as fresh To swallows on the wing; My spirit flew in feathers then, That is so heavy now, And summer pools could hardly cool The ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... beginning, the tops of the Serapis had not been unsupplied with marksmen, yet they had long since been cleared by the overmastering musketry of the Richard. Several, with leg or arm broken by a ball, had been seen going dimly downward from their giddy perch, like falling pigeons shot on the wing. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... harriers would soon be knocked up, and would have their feet blistered, nay lamed, for a long time. Besides, the ground is so thickly covered with sturdy vegetation that the hounds could not derive much help from their noses. Mere shooting on the wing the King had long since quitted, and he had ceased to mount his horse; thus the chase simply resolved ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... pausing before a shop window in which an active young man of admirably mobile countenance is holding forth in dumb show. Your progress is slackened as you edge about the throng with the intention of proceeding on your way. As it were, you poise on the wing. Then, like a warming liquor stealing through the veins, the awakening of your interest in the artful antics of this young man makes fainter and fainter your will to proceed on your course, until it ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... accompanied us. It is something remarkable that they only inhabit the colder latitudes, for in a warmer climate it is a rare thing to find them. Sometimes a few weary land-birds that have strayed from their homeward way, skim over the ocean, or rest upon the masts; how they maintain themselves on the wing cannot be conjectured, but certain it is, they have been seen on the trackless ocean, when no point of land was ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... tossed what was left of his bread into the air, above the river; and the Duchessa, easily, deftly, threw up a hand, and caught it on the wing. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water teem with delighted existence. In a spring noon, or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes myriads of happy beings crowd upon my {18} view. 'The insect youth are on the wing.' Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy, and the exultation which they feel in their lately discovered faculties.... ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... feel it is good that one who has the ear of the insiders should say it. I wrote Wolfe Murray a week ago that he was a successor to those Commissioners who were sent out by the French Republic in its early days. Actually, I am very glad to have him. Lies are on the wing, and he, armed with the truth, will be able to knock some of them out hereafter when he meets them in ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... tale to scream than sing," The Book-man said. "Well, fancy, then," The Reader answered, "on the wing The sea-birds shriek it, not for men, But in the ear of wave and breeze!" The Traveller mused: "Your Manisees Is fairy-land: off Narragansett shore Who ever saw the isle or heard its ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... some years very abundantly on the potato-vines in Southern Illinois, and also in Missouri, and according to Dr. Harris, it is occasionally found even in New-England. In some specimens the broad outer black stripe on the wing-cases is divided lengthwise by a slender yellow line, so that, instead of two, there are three black stripes on each wing-case; and often in the same field may be noticed all the intermediate grades; thus proving that the four-striped ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... on the wing, with bwirris, or whilst resting on the ground, or in the water, or upon branches of trees. They are also taken by spearing, by snaring, by noosing, and by netting. In spearing them the natives make use of a very light reed spear (kiko), which is pointed with hard wood, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Australis), and I had the good fortune to shoot on the wing a specimen of this beautiful variety of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... Wren is not only one of our most interesting and familiar neighbors, but it is useful as an exterminator of insects, upon which it feeds. Frequently it seizes small butterflies when on the wing. We have in mind a sick child whose convalescence was hastened and cheered by the near-by presence of the merry House Wren, which sings its sweet little trilling song, hour after hour, hardly stopping long enough to find ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... clear sunshine that gave their whiteness something of a crystalline appearance; or flying to and fro along the face of the cliff, purely for the delight of bathing in the warm lucent air. Gradually a change came over them. One by one those that were on the wing dropped on to some projection, until they had all settled down, and, letting my eyes range up and down over the huge wall of rock, it was plain to see that all the birds were watching me. They had made the discovery that I was a stranger. In my rough old travel-stained clothes ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... There is no rustling in the lofty elm That canopies my dwelling, and its shade Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint And interrupted murmur of the bee, Settling on the sick flowers, and then again Instantly on the wing. The plants around Feel the too potent fervors: the tall maize Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover droops Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms. But far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills With all their growth of woods, silent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... pool was a perfectly circular basin of brickwork in the meadows, full of the clearest water. To birds on the wing its glassy surface, reflecting the light sky, must have been visible for miles around as a glistening Cyclops' eye in a green face. The grass about the margin at this season was a sight to remember long—in a minor sort of way. Its activity in sucking ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... party was usually made up every day, and we sallied out with the natives, perhaps a score of men and boys, the former armed with Winchesters and the latter with slings, which projected a row of five or six balls cut out of walrus teeth. To shoot a duck on the wing with a bullet is not easy, but the natives seldom returned empty handed; and many a time I have seen a tiny lad of ten or twelve years old bring down his bird with a sling at twenty or thirty yards. Once I saw Yemanko, with the same weapon, put a stone clean through a biscuit ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... refining their cruel propensities, and teaching them to be kind to the feathered tribe which are the farmer's friends. By reading it they soon lay aside their traps, nets, and snares, with which they capture whole covies of the dear little Bob-whites, and disdain to touch a feather, only when on the wing, and then with their light, hammerless breach loader. Such reading as that ties the farmer's boys to country life, and makes them contented under the parental roof-tree until they are ready to build ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... distance from the hill there are villages, where the people all have bad and erroneous views, and do not know the Sramanas of the Law of Buddha, Brahmanas, or devotees of any of the other and different schools. The people of that country are constantly seeing men on the wing, who come and enter this monastery. On one occasion, when devotees of various countries came to perform their worship at it, the people of those villages said to them, "Why do you not fly? The devotees whom we have seen hereabouts all fly"; and the strangers answered, on the spur of the moment, ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... diaries are less systematic than I hoped; she only had a blessed habit of noting and narrating. She summarised, she saved; she appears seldom indeed to have let a good story pass without catching it on the wing. I allude of course not so much to things she heard as to things she saw and felt. She writes sometimes of herself, sometimes of others, sometimes of the combination. It's under this last rubric that she's usually most vivid. But ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... learning, not only from the external, but the remote. England, like every Christian thing, had thriven on outer things without shame. From the roads of Caesar to the churches of Lanfranc, it had sought its meat from God. But now the eagles were on the wing, scenting a more distant slaughter; they were seeking the strange things instead of receiving them. The English had stepped from acceptance to adventure, and the epic of their ships had begun. The scope of the great religious movement ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... behind it another destroyer, and still others, lean, catlike, but running as if legless, with greased bodies sliding over the sea. We snapped out a message to them and they answered like passing birds on the wing, before they swept out of sight behind a headland with uncanny ease of speed. Literal swarms of destroyers England had running to and fro in the North Sea, keen for the chase and too quick at dodging and too fast to be in any danger of the under-water dagger thrust of the assassins ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... concealed, To maids alone and children are revealed: What though no credit doubting wits may give? The fair and innocent shall still believe. Know, then, unnumbered spirits round thee fly, The light militia of the lower sky: These, though unseen, are ever on the wing, Hang o'er the box, and hover round the ring. Think what an equipage thou hast in air, And view with scorn two pages and a chair. As now your own, our beings were of old, And once enclosed in woman's ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... home after the first shoot, I saw a falcon catch a swallow on the wing. It had missed one and we were watching it. It flew straight and rather fast past us, just within shot, fairly high. A swallow came sailing at full speed from the opposite direction and would have passed above ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... were passed chiefly in Utah, were full of color and events. Life became very strenuous for the Honorable Herbert Henry Heathcote. He learned how to take his meals on the wing, as it were, to run for trains, to snatch two hours' sleep anywhere between midnight and morning, and to be jostled by rude crowds that failed to recognize his superiority. The full-backed light overcoat, ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... incapable of estimating the arguments or feelings of those who prefer honour and principle to fortune, and even to life. The young hawk, accustomed only to the fostering care of its dam, must be tamed by darkness and sleeplessness, ere it is trusted on the wing for ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the new spirit of things. This sudden cheer, this laughter of the old world, these overwhelming flashes of wit, of which the sparkling verse of Voltaire, the Persian Letters, give us a faint idea! Even the most brilliant books have not succeeded in catching on the wing this airy chatter, which comes, goes, flies elusively. This is that spirit of ethereal nature which, in the Thousand and One Nights, the enchanter confined in his bottle. But what phial would have ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of the affair. I am a woman of the nomadic sort, and when I have no case before the courts I make it a habit to visit continental spas: not that I have ever been ill; but then I am no longer young, and I am always happy in a crowd. Well, to come more shortly to the point, I am now on the wing for Evian; this incubus of a house, which I must leave behind and dare not let, hangs heavily upon my hands; and I propose to rid myself of that concern, and do you a very good turn into the bargain, by ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... coming, I am coming! Hark! the little bee is humming; See, the lark is soaring high In the blue and sunny sky; And the gnats are on the wing, Wheeling round in ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... Cup, and in the Fire of Spring The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing. ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fancy is ever awake, awake, My fancy is never asleep; Like a bird on the wing, like a swan on the lake, Like a ship far away ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the branches start to music! As if from a secret spring Thousands of sweet bills are bubbling In the nest and on the wing. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of Swallows perched on the telegraph wires beside the highway where it passed Orchard Farm. They were resting after a breakfast of insects, which they had caught on the wing, after the custom of their family. As it was only the first of May they had plenty of time before nest-building, and so were having ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... impotently wanting to say. And a year or so afterwards—when I praised his poem—he would shrink in a more than deprecating attitude: I might just as well have extolled him for seducing the wife of his dearest friend. His later poems, of which he was immodestly proud—"Sensations Captured on the Wing," he defined them—left me cold and unsympathetic. So, for these reasons, the boy and I had drifted apart. Until I had caught him in flagrante delicto of walking with his arm round the waist of pretty Phyllis Gedge, I had not seen him ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... say there never was a time when he couldn't go out and catch some sort of fish and sell it for enough to get us something to eat. And then this Mr. Gabriel, he had such a winning way with him, he was as quick at wit as a bird on the wing, he had a story or a song for every point, he seemed to take to our simple life as if he'd been born to it, and he was as much interested in all our trifles as we were ourselves. Then he was so sympathetic, he felt everybody's troubles, he went ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... a hunting trip. They hunted high in the air and they hunted low over the meadow. They hunted afar off along the stream and they hunted near by in the barnyard. And all the game they caught they captured on the wing, and they ate it fresh at a gulp without pausing in their flight. As they sailed and swirled, they were good to watch, for a swallow's strong long ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... during the storm of the night before, or have been injured by striking telephone or telegraph wires, an accident which often happens. Once I picked up a Loon after a stormy night. Apparently it had recovered its strength after a few hours' rest, but, as this bird can rise on the wing only from a body of water, over the surface of which it can paddle and flap for many rods, and as {78} there was no pond or lake in all the neighbouring country, the Loon's fate was evident ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... of a species, that at first sight appeared to be a teal. It went in small flocks, and as it got on the wing made a long shrill plaintive kind of note. The deep glossy rifle-green colour of their back, and the transparent streak of white across the wing, gave them a most beautiful appearance, as the sun's rays lit up their rich plumage in their circuitous ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... southern friends, jump up and run! Oh no; to a man they have been taught to read; to a man they have been instructed to KNOW, and dearer than life to prize, the blessings of FREEDOM. Their bodies are lying behind ditches, but their thoughts are on the wing, darting through eternity. The warning voice of God still rings in their ears. The hated forms of proud merciless kings pass before their eyes. They look back to the days of old, and strengthen themselves as they think what their gallant forefathers dared for LIBERTY and for THEM. They looked forward ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... Gavotte tucked her feet away clear, Just an inch to one side of the fallen man's ear, With a flash of horse wisdom as she went on the wing Not to tread on man's body, ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... touched with the greatest spirit. Aristotle had reason to say, he was the only poet who had found out "living words;" there are in him more daring figures and metaphors than in any good author whatever. An arrow is "impatient" to be on the wing, a weapon "thirsts" to drink the blood of an enemy, and the like, yet his expression is never too big for the sense, but justly great in proportion to it. It is the sentiment that swells and fills out the diction, which rises with it, and forms itself about it, for in the same degree that ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... beware at the hunting, young men, I rede you, beware at the hunting, young men; Take some on the wing, and some as they spring, But cannily steal on a ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... colder as we go north. We are about opposite the north of Corsica, and a cold wind bears down on us from the Continent. Two small birds have accompanied us the whole day, resting in the rigging at times, but spending much time on the wing. I cannot make out what they are, some say chaffinches, but that is certainly a mistake, they are too small. A lark fell on deck in the forenoon utterly exhausted, lying for some time on its breast with wings spread ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... before the bird had left the tree, and as soon as he saw it on the wing, followed it again the whole of that day, with no better success than he had done the last, eating nothing but herbs and fruits as he went. He did the same for ten days together, pursuing the bird, and keeping it in view from morning to night, lying always under the tree where it roosted. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... some, it is to be feared, never become skilled in its use. In order to introspect one must catch himself unawares, so to speak, in the very act of thinking, remembering, deciding, loving, hating, and all the rest. These fleeting phases of consciousness are ever on the wing; they never pause in their restless flight and we must catch them as they go. This is not so easy as it appears; for the moment we turn to look in upon the mind, that moment consciousness changes. The thing we meant ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... fine shot, Davy," remarked his Uncle Dunston in speaking about the partridge. "As fine a shot on the wing ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... me," I responded. "If I could produce those voices I would go on the vaudeville stage to-morrow. I give you my word I am acting in entire good faith. I am quite as eager for the truth as any of you.—But, hark! the cone is on the wing again." ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... house-flies into the ray from a shutter-crack in a darkened room, and float away again uncaptured, or whizz and burr round and against each other as the flies do, and then decide—as the flies do—that neither concerns the other and each may go his way. But he was nowise bound to catch these things on the wing, or persuade them to live in peace with one another. If they came, they came; and ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... flags and rushes; Of the past the old man's thoughts were, And the maiden's of the future. He was thinking, as he sat there, Of the days when with such arrows He had struck the deer and bison, On the Muskoday, the meadow; Shot the wild goose flying southward, On the wing, the clamorous Wawa; Thinking of the great war-parties, How they came to buy his arrows, Could not fight without his arrows. Ah, no more such noble warriors, Could be found on earth as they were! Now the men were all like women, Only used their tongues for weapons! She was thinking ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... away, like a bird on the wing, And the little boys dance on the sands in a ring. The wind may fall, or the wind may rise— You are foolish to go; you will stay if you're wise. The little boys dance, and the little girls run: If it's bad to have money, it's ...
— Under the Window - Pictures & Rhymes for Children • Kate Greenaway
... better shoot at stationary objects, however, than at game on the wing. Hard by his cottage a hare had burrowed in a potato-field. Every morning and every evening Murger fired at the hare, but with such little effect, that the hare soon took no notice either of Murger or his gun, and gambolled before them both as if they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... frequent references to history, his allusions to various kinds of knowledge, and his images selected from art and nature, with his observations on the operations of the mind and the modes of life, show an intelligence perpetually on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and diligent, eager to pursue knowledge, and attentive to retain it. From this curiosity arose the desire of travelling, to which he alludes in his verses to Jervas, and which, though he never found an opportunity to gratify it, did not ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... She made me read it three times over, and in the evening she copied it with her light and steady hand. Her writing flew upon the paper like the shadow of the wings of thought, with the swiftness, elegance, and freedom of a bird on the wing. The next day she sent it to Paris. M. de Bonald replied by many obliging auguries respecting my talents. This was the beginning of my acquaintance with that most excellent man, whose character I have always admired and loved since, without sharing ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... disturbs, no cares molest, and no danger invades—where the heart is weaned from carnal attachments, the grosser appetite subdued and chastised, and the soul wafted to divine regions of philosophy and truth, on the wing of studious contemplation. But his eloquence was lost upon me, whom two considerations enabled to withstand his temptation; namely, my promise to my uncle, and my aversion to an ecclesiastical life; for ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... to-day, June 29th, so there is a hurried finishing up of loose ends. A loud yowl as of a lost soul letting go of life starts the lake echoes! No hand is staining itself in brother's blood. The treaty doctor, who visits these people, to use their own word, "as a bird on the wing," has just succeeded in extracting a tooth for a Chipewyan bride, Misere Bonnet Rouge. Misere looks ashamed of her howl when the operation is over, and lisping, "Merci very," bears off in expansive triumph ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... setting-pole, the better to restrain the speed of the boat at the most rapid and dangerous passes, and struck out into the current, adown which, under the quick and skilful strokes of its experienced oarsman, it was borne with almost the swiftness of a bird on the wing, till it reached the quiet waters of the pond; and, this being soon passed over, they entered and descended the next reach of rapids with equal speed and safety. All the dangers and difficulties were now over; and, leisurely rowing homeward, they ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... at the spring, And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven— All's right ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... snags and fence rails. It is then apparently lifeless, with the antennae resting close along the back, above which the wings are folded. But one or two warm days are necessary to restore it to activity, and I have seen it on the wing as early as the 2d of March, hovering over the open flowers of the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... with good things by way of luncheon, Our heroines were starting on their way, With ham and tongue, and wine an infant puncheon, With spirits buoyant, and a jolly day; The sun upon them shot his summer ray, Above, the pendent lark was on the wing, The fair ones, each and all, had lots to say, And absolutely laughed like anything; The very air with their ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... Oriole's food seems to be almost entirely of an animal nature, consisting of caterpillars, beetles, and other insects, which it seldom pursues on the wing, but seeks with great activity among the leaves and branches. It also eats ripe fruit. The males of this elegant species of Oriole acquire the full beauty of their plumage the first ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... base I ever saw, on the whole, is a Byzantine one in the Baptistery of St. Mark's, in which the spur profile approximates to that of No. 10 in Plate XI.; but it is formed by a cherub, who sweeps downwards on the wing. His two wings, as they half close, form the upper part of the spur, and the rise of it in the front is formed by exactly the action of Alichino, swooping on the pitch lake: "quei drizzo, volando, suso il petto." But it requires noble management to confine such a fancy within ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... refreshment!" said the doctor; "butterflies cannot live on the wing. Linden! have you been singing all the evening, in the character of ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... have observed with what ingenuity and sureness dragon-flies distinguish, follow, and catch the smallest insects on the wing. Of all insects, they have the best sight. Their enormous convex eyes have the greatest number of facets. Their number has been estimated at 12,000, and even at 17,000. Their aerial chases resemble those of the swallows. By trying ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... stepped aside in complete and marked indifference to anything that might follow. Johnson—at home—stood with his back to a native house built on posts and with its walls made of mats. In his left hand he held a banana. Out of the right he dealt another dollar into space. The woman captured this one on the wing, and there and then plumped down on the ground to look ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... thing That when Kent bines produce their crop, Swelldom is always "on the wing," And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... us, flying around the ship but never settling upon it, and dipping occasionally into the waters behind us to gather up crumbs or particles of food. The other birds, which are all much larger, would like to deprive them of their sustenance, but they do not have the quickness of the little flyers on the wing. When anything is thrown overboard, they dart as quick as a flash under the noses of the larger and more clumsy birds, and pick up a mouthful or two before the latter can reach them. Then there are whale birds, and cape pigeons, and also the cape dove, which is somewhat ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the wandering albatross—the "Diomedia exulans," as naturalists term it—which sailors believe to float constantly in the upper air, never alighting on land or sea, but living perpetually on the wing! ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... this kind, indeed, whenever we follow to the end, the cinematographical tendency of perception and thought. Our perception and thought begin by substituting for the continuity of evolutionary change a series of unchangeable forms which are turn by turn, "caught on the wing," like the rings at a merry-go-round, which the children unhook with their little stick as they are passing. Now, how can the forms be passing, and on what "stick" are they strung? As the stable forms have been obtained by extracting ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... compassion taught, Have wept o'er human sorrows;—who have sought Want's dismal cell, and pale as from the dead To life and light the speechless orphan led;— Trust that the deed, in Mercy's book enrolled, Approving spirits of the just behold! Meanwhile, new virtues here, as on the wing Of morn, from Sorrow's dreary shades shall spring; 180 Young Modesty, with fair untainted bloom; And Industry, that sings beside her loom; And ruddy Labour, issuing from his hatch Ere the slant sunbeam strikes the lowly thatch; And ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... week after this I saw Lady Mary at her own house, the last person, she said, left in town, and just on the wing for Brighton, for the London season was quite over. She told me that she had heard from Mr. Jenning's niece, Martha, in Shropshire. There was nothing to be gathered from her letter, more than that he was low and nervous. In those words, of which healthy people think so lightly, ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... return From Ilium, ye have shorn my substance close, Lain with my women forcibly, and sought, While yet I lived, to make my consort yours, 40 Heedless of the inhabitants of heav'n Alike, and of the just revenge of man. But death is on the wing; death for you all. He said; their cheeks all faded at the sound, And each with sharpen'd eyes search'd ev'ry nook For an escape from his impending doom, Till thus, alone, Eurymachus replied. If thou indeed art he, the mighty Chief Of Ithaca ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... heart, but you have lost your senses. You must listen to me. I am an old and sensible man. We will talk kindly together a little; I have not done so remarkably well in the world as folks think; a poor bird on the wing could easily fly away with the little I have; your father handled it roughly, indeed he did. Let us care for ourselves in this world, it is the best thing we can do. It is all very well for the school-master to talk, for he has money himself; so has the ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... her, she had passed him with a rush like a swallow on the wing and was gone from ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... seized. As soon as he was drawn on board he flapped about more helpless than anything I have ever seen, falling into everything he could fall into, biting several of the crew. You know the sonnet in which Baudelaire compares the bird on the wing to the poet with the Muse beside him, and the albatross on deck to the poet in the drawing-room. You remember the sonnet, how the sailors teased the bird with their ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... asserts itself, and he will often dog their footsteps for a great distance, in hopes of securing a straggler. Birds are struck down by a single blow of the puma's ready paw, and so quick are his movements that even though a bird has risen on the wing, he can often make one of his wonderful bounds, and with a light, quick stroke, arrest the winged prey before it has time to soar beyond reach. The puma is a good angler. Sitting by the water's edge he watches for his victims, and no sooner does an unfortunate ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... watched him curiously he launched himself into the air and came speeding down the center of the field, making for the pines at the opposite end. Instantly every crow was on the wing; they shot out from both sides, many that I had not seen before, all cawing like mad. They rushed upon the old fellow from the hickory, and for a few moments it was impossible to make out anything except ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... not These hours of precious time With stupid book or useless work— It is indeed a crime; But haste with me to the wood-lands green, Where forest warblers sing And bees are humming—like them, too, We must be on the wing. ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... who say, in these enlightened days, That splendid lies are all the Poet's praise; That strained invention, ever on the wing, Alone impels the modern Bard to sing. 'Tis true that all who rhyme, nay, all who write, Shrink from that fatal word to genius, trite: Yet Truth will sometimes lend her noblest fires, And decorate the verse ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... distance from my house, and, after remaining seated for some time, one of them, who appeared to be commander-in-chief, kept flying about in all directions, and at length, with a sharp and loudly repeated call, he darted up into the air. In an instant the whole congregation were on the wing, following their leader in a sort of spiral track. In a little time they had risen so high that I lost sight of them, but after a short absence they again returned and took up their position on the tree which ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... to change my quarters, it so happened, owing to a series of petty procrastinations and accidents, that nearly a week elapsed before my bargain was made and my letter of recall on the wing to Tom; and, in the meantime, a trifling adventure or two had occurred to your humble servant, which, absurd as they now appear, diminished by distance, did certainly at the time serve to whet my ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... with the real cause, vented its rage on a secondary object. He darted a quick glance of indignation and hatred at the young girl. She ran back in startled terror to her companions, a hurried consultation followed, and in another moment the whole bevy of girls, old women, and children were on the wing, shrieking and crying, to ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... length. "They've got their hands on a heap of money in the last ten days; all they'll have a chance to grab for some time. And they've come out into the open. So there's not much doubt of their next move—they'll be on the wing." ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... man peremptorily. "No time to be lost, dear old artist. Time is on the wing, the light is fadin', an' if we want to put this jolly old country—God bless ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... whatever as to their identity. The bill alone, of which I had taken particular note, ought in all reason to be held conclusive. So much for one side of the case. On the other hand, however, the second trio were unmistakably crossbills. (They had been joined on the wing by several others, as I ought to have mentioned, and with their characteristic chattering cry had swept out of sight up the mountain). It was certainly a curious coincidence: three grosbeaks—two males and a female—had dropped out of a tree into the undergrowth; and ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... chuck, when the old ones flew over them. A sun-bird, with bright scarlet throat and breast, had its nest on another branch, it was formed like the weaver's nest, but without a tube. I observed the dam picking out insects from the bark and leaves of the baobab, keeping on the wing the while: it would thus appear to be insectivorous as well as a honey-bibber. Much spoor of elands, zebras, gnus, kamas, pallahs, buffaloes, reed-bucks, with tsetse, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... the left, and then everywhere in general, and yet nowhere in particular. To be seen and admired is the object of both. They are all finery, and that is so in their way they can neither sit, walk, nor stand conveniently in it. They are never happy, but when on the wing." ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... licence (or certificate) relates to killing game. There is nothing said of bringing it down. I may, as you say, have induced a cock pheasant to descend. I certainly didn't kill him. As a matter of fact he was lightly touched on the wing, and he ran like ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... the booming noise we had often heard sounding through the woods. Two men, each carrying in his hand a long club, shaped large at one end, appeared in the meadow and began looking among the long grasses which sheltered the nests of some meadow larks. A number of the larks were on the wing, others sat on the rail fence rolling out cadenzas in concert in a gush of melody from their downy throats. The men moved cautiously nearer under cover of the weeds. Raising their long clubs to their shoulders they gazed along their narrow points a moment. Without exactly knowing why, we ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... big adventure's on the wing, doesn't it! Well, I don't mind chasing the old tub, or doing any other damphule thing in reason, but what's the game? Put me next! When was this earthquake that loosened all your little rivets? Speak ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... next cases (56, 57) contain the Flycatchers, which catch insects on the wing. The varieties to be seen here include the South American pikas and shrikes, with their gay plumage. These shrikes[2]—better known as butcher-birds—are so called from the cruelty with which they treat their prey. In the second case of flycatchers are grouped the true flycatchers, which are ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... each other's lives, who may like or dislike, wish to avoid or to draw near to each other, but who cannot pretend that they are complete strangers, wholly indifferent to each other. They met in the sky, almost as one bird may meet another on the wing. And, to Domini, at any rate, it seemed as if the depth, height, space, colour, mystery and calm—yes, even the calm—which were above, around and beneath them, had been placed there by hidden hands as a setting for their ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... down to a most capital dinner,—a joint of roast-beef, fine fish, and Canvass-backs, that had been on the wing within a couple of hours, together with the Red-head, Teal, and two or three other specimens; all excellent in their way, but not comparable for delicacy, fat, or flavour with that inimitable work of nature the right Canvass-back duck of these ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... only paused like a bird on the wing, pouncing on morsels of things to eat, and having got his second cup of tea he flew off again instantly to Mrs. Majendie, whom he was regaling with a shrill soliloquy. Thus for a moment Daisy and Aunt Alice were alone ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... mob from hill to hill, from range to range, across open country and back again to the hills, over flats and gullies, through hop-scrub and stringybark ridges; and all the time White-when-he's-wanted was on the wing of the mob, pulling double. The mares and foals dropped out, the colts and young stock pulled up dead beat, and only the seasoned veterans were left. Most of our horses caved in altogether; one or two were kept in the hunt by judicious nursing ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson |
