"Shrilling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sophist sit; Falsehood shall bear her plaited brow: Fair-fronted Truth shall droop not now With shrilling shafts of subtle wit. Nor martyr-flames, nor trenchant swords Can do away that ancient lie; A gentler death shall Falsehood die, Shot thro' and ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... of these desolate scenes had little impressed him, and now it came upon him heavily. The shrilling of a solitary locust somewhere in the gums, the brisk crackle of dry bark and twigs as he trod, the melancholy sighing of the wind-stirred leafage, offered him those inexplicable contrasts ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... the tenderness of evening, shone upon a broad valley, where the grass stood high in rich meadows separated from other meadows and green cornfields by hedges, from the midst of which rose many a tall tree. The blackbird's low, flute-like note sounded above the shrilling of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... tore myself from her, fat and short-breathed, while she wept that no longer I loved her, and I went out to the night-fighting and dawn-fighting, where, to the singing of bowstrings and the shrilling of arrows, feathered, sharp-pointed, we showed them, the kinky-heads, the skill of the killing and taught them the wit and ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... wind to stir the leaves, The harsh leaves overhead; Only the querulous cricket grieves, And shrilling locust weaves A ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... broken by something shrilling in his brain, sending little chills racing up and down his spine. Digger! A small, oddly canine-like creature with telepathic powers, a space-dweller which men found when first they came to the asteroids. The relationship between spacehounds and men was much the same as between man and dog ...
— The Beast of Space • F.E. Hardart
... flower-laden South. At night as she lay down to sleep she did not hear the tinkle of music nor the voice of night-singing birds, which in the scenes of her girlhood had been familiar sounds. The moan of the wind in the short, hard grass was different from its whisper in the peach trees, and the shrilling of the coyotes made but rude substitute for the trill of the love-bursting mocking bird that sang its myriad song far back ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... had darkened over, and a shrilling of the wind sounded through the garden foliage—fir, and cypress, and laurel. Just as Godwin reached the gate, he was met by Miss Warricombe and Fanny, who were returning from a walk. They wore the costume appropriate to March weather ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... that was as ancient as the other stars, but still so young that it was tranquilly fixed in the joy of its first awakening, knowing very little yet, guessing nothing of its beginning nor of its end; still infantile, with all life before it, its voice merely the tiny shrilling of a grasshopper. The rocks were poised so precariously above the quivering plain of the sea that they appeared to tremble in mid-air, being things of no weight, in the rush of the planet. The distant headlands and moors dilated under the generating sun. It was then that I pulled Ecclesiastes ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... of voices, he thought—rose in a roar, a long-drawn Yaaayyyyy...! Brett thought of a stadium crowd as the home team trotted onto the field. He could hear a band now, a shrilling of brass, the clatter and thump of percussion instruments. Now he could see the mouth of the alley ahead, a sunny street hung with bunting, the backs of people, and over their heads the rhythmic bobbing of a passing procession, tall shakos ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... and women, tired of adulatory crowds, weary of their own greatness, flee from the metropolis, and write exquisite articles about their gardens, and the peace that lurks under a thatched roof, and the simple life, lived far from shrilling crowds but near to nature, and very near to ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... flowed down into the great Russian maelstrom from out a Georgian stronghold. His idiom bears strongly the imprint of that body; suggests strongly that heredity. It is patently the expression of a personality who desired exuberant bright sound and color, needed the brandishing of blades and the shrilling of Tartar fifes and the leaping dance of Tartar archers, had nostalgia for the savage life that had spawned upon the steppes. And as such it is distinct from that of the other composers of the group. His music has none of the piercingness and poignancy ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... water. Her repentance had come back and lay heavily on her heart. She longed unutterably to recall those evil thoughts—to have another chance out there beyond to summon Jemmy Three with the little shrill old signal. How she would send it shrilling forth now! ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... are crickets shrilling Beyond the deep bassoon of frogs. They cease for a moment As the rattling clangor Of the trolley Bumps by. I hear footsteps Hollow on the pavement Now deserted And blank of sound. They die. The crickets now are sleeping; Even ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... rare as a thawing Christmas—and it cut like knives through any garmenting lighter than fur or leather. The cab of the 206 was old and weather-shaken, and Ford pulled the collar of his buffalo coat about his ears when the grunting of the exhaust and the shrilling of the wheels on the snow-shod rails ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... was troubled by an invisible blurring mist, evidenced only through a subtle effect on the subconsciousness. Every leaf above us, in the circle of our firelight, depended absolutely motionless from its stem. The insects had ceased their shrilling; the night birds their chirping; the animals, great and small, their callings or their stealthy rustling to and fro. Of the world of sound there remained only the crackling of our fires, the tiny singing of the blood in our ears, and that far-off portentous ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... the drowsy middle of the afternoon and the heat was intense. All the grey-green and golden land of Tuscany lay still and helpless at the mercy of the sun. The birds had long ceased singing, and only the thin shrilling of the locusts broke the August silence. The parched earth was pale, and great cracks that only the autumn rains could fill had opened on the hillsides, but the ripening maize lay snug within its narrow sheaths of green, and the leaves of the vines hid great bunches of purpling grapes. In the fields ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... rose and threw open a window, and stood looking into the moonlit garden. The world bathed in a mist of blue and silver. There was a breeze that brought him sweet, warm odors from the garden, together with a blurred shrilling of crickets and the ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... at the table were in plain gray, others in black. All eyed them silently. There was a constant stir among them as one or another rose and disappeared and others sat down. The pipes and reeds were shrilling furiously, and the susurration of Yillian conversation from the other tables rose ever higher ...
— The Yillian Way • John Keith Laumer
... justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded in the great court of the palace. Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the royal captives who followed in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell, in the abused shape of the vilest of women. After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... for a while. Far above him sounded the ecstatic music, the cry of trumpets and the shrilling of the flutes; but they were as insignificant street-noises to one who was falling asleep. He was within the veil of things now, beyond the barriers of sense and reflection, in that secret place to which he had learned the road by endless effort, in that strange region where realities are evident, ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... Cherokee, he wagged his tail among the cold ashes till he stirred up a cloud of gritty particles; then he made his way across the room to the speaker, wheezing and sniffing, and bantering for a romp, till he was caught by the muzzle and, squeaking and shrilling, thrust ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... oh, your poo-oor boy, too; and eh, that brute Tam Brodie——" Even as she came through the door the voluble clatter was shrilling out the big tidings, before she was aware of Gourlay's presence. She faltered beneath ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... well-heeled boots, whose knell Afar along the pavement sounds, Blent with the tinkling muffin-bell, Or milkman, shrilling on his rounds. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... female friends were quite ready to be milked. Their calves answered them dutifully from the English grass paddock, and between the two I could see Mr. U——'s tall figure stalking down the flat with his cattle dog at his heels, and hear his merry whistle shrilling through the silent air. Then all the ducks and fowls about the place were inquiring, in noisy cackle, how long it would be before breakfast was ready, whilst "Helen's" whinneying made me turn my head to see her, with a mob ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... breeze has ceased to whisper and the night is soft and still, Save the awe-provoking shrilling of the ghastly whippoorwill, As the moonbeams pour down brightly on the woodland, hill and dale, I oft listen at my window to the queenly nightingale; But no song of merry woodland, neither hill, nor dale, nor dell, Has ever smote my bosom, nor has ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... from below, upon the alarm being given, and he now instructed the ship's bugler to sound the alarm, and to sound it with all his strength, while at the same time a blank charge was fired as a warning to the other ships to be on the alert. Immediately afterward a bugle was heard shrilling from the Almirante Cochrane, and this was taken up by every ship in the squadron, for the whole fleet was now thoroughly ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... long been shrilling themselves hoarse with their cries of "Sun' 'Eral'Jour'Wor—rul'! Pape's!" before Glory woke and found herself alone. By the light in the room and the hunger she felt, she knew that it must again be very late; and a feeling that her grandfather ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... on chirping and shrilling and rasping and kricking and tapping and whizzing and whirring and buzzing all about you; and if you listen sharp, perhaps you can understand some of ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... desire to hear some new things as Paul said the men of Athens were. At times they were in a perfect gale of laughter at what we told them about America. Afterwards some of the women confessed to me that they liked to hear us speaking English together; it sounded like the whistling of birds or the shrilling of locusts. But they were perfectly kind, and though they laughed it was clear that they laughed at what we were saying, and never at us, or at least ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... out of Mrs. Brenner's sight as quickly as they could. The other men piled out of the door, blocking the last vision of her son, but his bleating cries came shrilling back on ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the sea of generation, Or by knowledge grown too bright To hit the nerve of feebler sight. Straightway a forgetting wind Stole over the celestial kind, And their lips the secret kept, If in ashes the fire-seed slept. But, now and then, truth-speaking things Shamed the angels' veiling wings; And, shrilling from the solar course, Or from fruit of chemic force, Procession of a soul in matter, Or the speeding change of water, Or out of the good of evil born, Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn, And a blush tinged the upper sky, And ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... cave of the Troll King, who only wanted to make tiny slits in his eyeballs so that forever afterwards he'd see reality just a little differently. And as I ran, the master-anachronism of that menacing mad march music was shrilling in my ears. ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... came within hearing; and people trying to think cursed the day that they were born, when he went shrilling by. His hands in his pockets, his shining face uplifted to the sky of June, he passed down the street, singing his way into the heart's deepest hatred of all ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... note of a whistle shrilling down the narrow passage without—the passage where Dollops, in Apache garb, had been set on watch; and, hearing it, Cleek clamped his jaws together and breathed hard. A single whistle—short and sharp, such as this one was—was the signal agreed upon that the real ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... duties elsewhere stampeded out of the mess. Overhead there was a thud of feet and ropes ends and the shrilling of pipes as the watch fell in. A Midshipman thrust his head inside the door of the Wardroom. "Boat's alongside, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... with grass and mint. There was moon-bright dew upon the clover and high upon the ridge a tree showed dark and full against the moon in lonely silhouette. It was an enchanted wood of moonlit depth and noisy quiet, of shrilling crickets, the plaintive cries of tree frogs, the drowsy crackle of the camp fire, or the lap of water by the shore, with sometimes the lonely hoot of ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... tasks to run, Thus Nature disciplines her son: Meeter, she says, for me to stray, And waste the solitary day, In plucking from yon fen the reed, And watch it floating down the Tweed; Or idly list the shrilling lay With which the milkmaid cheers her way, Marking its cadence rise and fail, As from the field, beneath her pail, She trips it down the uneven dale: Meeter for me, by yonder cairn, The ancient shepherd's tale to learn; Though oft he stop in rustic fear, Lest his old ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... then turned with sudden activity. It all had faded, faded in the blast of a shrilling wind, bringing upon its breast the cutting assault of sleet and the softer, yet no less vicious swirl of snow. Quickly the radiator was drained and refilled. Once more, huddled in the driver's seat, Barry Houston gripped the wheel and felt the crunching ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... swung his head and looked back at Chip, beckoning, coaxing, swearing under his breath. His eyes sought for sign of his goddess, who had disappeared most mysteriously. Throwing up his head, he sent a protest shrilling through the air, and looked ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... her father important, she was installed beside him on high. And they spanked along, beside the high, flourishing hedge-tops, surveying the activity of the countryside. When people shouted a greeting to him from the road below, and Brangwen shouted jovially back, her little voice was soon heard shrilling along with his, followed by her chuckling laugh, when she looked up at her father with bright eyes, and they laughed at each other. And soon it was the custom for the passerby to sing out: "How are ter, Tom? Well, my lady!" or else, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... slow stir of a tropical wind through palm leaves. But soon it quickened with rising tones from perfectly concerted voices; it soared up; its tenor changed; it became fierce, lustful, eager for blood, eager for the sacrifice, a heathen chant shrilling for sight of a girl's body in the god's, ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... driving scud, The wan moon shows in plight forlorn; Then, pinched in visage, fades and fades Like to the faces drowned at morn, When deeps engulfed the flag-ship's crew, And, shrilling round, ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... a throbbing, muffled tumult of harp sounds, mellownesses of myriads of wood horns, the subdued sweet shrilling of multitudes of flutes, Pandean pipings—inviting, carrying with them the calling of waterfalls in the hidden places, rushing brooks and murmuring forest winds—calling, calling, languorous, lulling, dripping into the brain like ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... captive saying, "Ho, my slave the Bird, dost thou not perceive the Asylum of the Universe is here that thou payest him not due homage and worship?" Hearing these words the Speaking- Bird forthright ceased his shrilling and at the same moment all the other songsters sat in deepest silence; for they were loyal to their liege lord nor durst any one utter a note when he held his peace. The Speaking-Bird then spake in human voice saying, "O great King, may Almighty ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... could produce such a lavish profusion of roses and buds and blossoms of every hue and tint, to say nothing of such a sun and sky. The children's corner was literally like a garden, and nothing could be prettier than the effect of their little voices shrilling up through the summer air, as, obedient to a lifted wand, they burst into the chorus of the national anthem when the governor and mayor drove up. Cheers from white throats; gruff, loud shouts all together of Bayete! (the royal salute) and Inkosi! ("chieftain") from black ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... showing her gaunt outline a moment against it before she left it to throw its softened light into the parlour where they sat. The autumn moonshine, almost as mellow, fell in through the open windows, which let in the shrilling of the crickets and grasshoppers, and wafts of the ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... sewing-bags. Rocking-chairs, tiptilted against veranda railings, were swung round front-face. Greetings, light as rubber balls, bounded from porch to porch. Fine needles flashed through dainty fabrics stretched like drum parchment across embroidery hoops; young children, shrilling and shouting in the heat of play, darted beneath maternal eyes; long-legged girls in knee-high skirts strolled up and down the sidewalks, ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... Convention was held in the upper story, which was unbroken by partition; and with the windows open upon what looked to be a virgin forest, so many were the ancient trees remaining in the little town, the singing of birds, the shrilling of crickets, the murmur of the leaves in an almost constant breeze, the old Court-house of Poughkeepsie was by no means a disagreeable gathering-place. Moreover, it was as picturesque within as it was arcadian without; ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... their parents, looked back at the group on the castle terrace before the trees hid them from sight, and Jock sent the pewit call shrilling through the dusk. It was answered ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... road. It was now afternoon, and the heat lay like a veil upon wood and field and the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge. The dust rose behind the carriage, then sank upon and further whitened the milkweed and the love vine and the papaw bushes. The blaze of light, the incessant shrilling of the locusts, the shadeless pines, the drouth, the long, dusty road—all made, thought Unity, a dry and fierce monotony that seared the eyes and weighed upon the soul. She wondered ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... at the portico of the temple they found two greatly terrified holy men, shrilling their "Ai! Ai!" in lamentation and beating ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... leaned together heavy with foliage, and the bordering walls were all hidden under bushes and vines. Everywhere on bush and vine were spikes and corymbs of lusty blossoms. Birds were calling to their mates and their young; the locusts were shrilling out of depths of sunlight. Dorothy, in the midst of this uncontrolled passion of summer, was herself in utter tune and harmony with it. She was just as sweet and gracefully courtesying among her sisters as any flower ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... applied any spur the pursuers might have needed. Confident they were now going to gather in at least two bushwhackers, the shouting behind took on a premature shrilling of triumph. There was a blast of shooting, and Drew marveled that neither man ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... the joy of my little ones. As I walked but slowly, the night wained apace. The labourers of the day were all retired to rest; the lights were out in every cottage; no sounds were heard but of the shrilling cock, and the deep-mouthed watch-dog, at hollow distance. I approached my little abode of pleasure, and before I was within a furlong of the place, our honest mastiff came running ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... I had the means to go to the Centennial," mourned Betsey Lane, stopping so suddenly that the others had to go on croaking and shrilling without her for a moment before they could stop. "It seems to me as if I can't die happy 'less I do," she added; "I ain't never seen nothin' of the world, an' here ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... celestial harmonies, audible to him alone; the little room resounded with the thunder of a mighty orchestra, in which every instrument sang to him individually—the piccolo, the flute, the oboes, the clarionets, filling the air with a silver spray of notes; the drums throbbing, the trumpets shrilling, the four horns pealing with long, stately notes, the trombones and bassoons vibrating, the violins and violas sobbing in linked sweetness, the 'cello and the contra-bass moaning their under-chant. And then, in the morning, when the first rough sketch was written, the glory ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... we began; and long before we were through with the tussle, peculiar shrilling cries caught our attention, and, turning to face down stream, we saw a dense cloud approaching—skimming along and above the river: a shrilling, moving cloud, keeping all the while to the river, but reaching right across it, and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... lined the procession through all its length, came a band of fifers, very fine, in scarlet tunics and stiff beaver-hats; shrilling a dirge as they walked; and immediately behind them a funeral herald in black, walking very upright and stiff, with a bell in one hand which he rang, while he cried out in a great mournful ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... perishing in the flame. All wiles, common or extraordinary, were put in practice to entice or force the honest farmer and his wife to open the door; and when the like success attended every new stratagem, silence for a little while ensued, and a long, loud, and shrilling laugh wound up the dramatic efforts of the night. In the morning, when Laird Macharg went to the door, he found standing against one of the pilasters a piece of black ship oak, rudely fashioned into something like human form, and which skilful people declared would ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... the dim sky, above the conical roof of the dear church, the pigeons fled in rapid quest, and in Garden Court, beneath the plane-trees, old folk dozed, listening to the rippling tune of the fountain and the shrilling of the sparrows. In King's Bench Walk the waving branches were full of their little brown bodies. Sparrows everywhere, flying from the trees to the eaves, hopping on the golden gravel, beautifully carpeted ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... study, there was very loud talking and often a row. Yes, and once in the village street, Rosalie had seen two men stand up and thump one another with their fists and fall down and get up and thump again. When two women, her sisters or others, quarrelled, they only shrilled, and went on and on shrilling. It was impossible to imagine the collision of two women producing anything so exciting and splendid as invariably was produced by the collision of ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... our report, and count the bullet-holes on the machine. In ten minutes' time you will find us around the mess-table, reconstructing the fight over late afternoon tea. In the intervals of eating cake I shall write you, and the gramophone will be shrilling "Chalk Farm to ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... hills where the haze of heat hung blue, and brown at the edges. It lay upon the hill-tops like a mist. The sky was grey, and the land was pale, burned to the bone. Heavy masses of trees in the hanging wood showed lifeless and black. No bird sang, but there were crickets in the bents, shrilling inconceivably. The swoon of midsummer was over all, and Sanchia ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... speed accompanied me back to the unhappy home. Entering the door, our ears were greeted with a shriek that came piercing down the hall till the very echoes shuddered as with fear. It was the patient's voice shrilling from the sleeper's room up stairs:—"O God! My boy! my boy! I want my boy, and he will not waken for me!" An instant later we were ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... unmeaning laughter, And my voice with the vocal trees Weeping. And Hatred followed after, Shrilling madly ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... catch his breath—shrilling it into his lungs in one great sob—and then he stood, white and shaking, beside the desk, looking at Trevison as the young man went out of the door—a laugh on his lips, mirthless, bitter, ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... no such thing. She jes likes to hear me sing. You're crazy!" The tramp-boy's young voice had its fashion of breaking and shrilling into a high soprano, like a girl's, for emphasis; he was as red as a beet, and he put his foot back in the stirrup, thrust out his under jaw and looked at the stirrup as though he had to determine how much wood ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... not surer, evidences of hostility are the spears bristling above their heads, and the slings in their hands, into which they are seen slipping stones to be ready for casting. Their cries, too, shrilling over the water, are like the screams of rapacious birds about to pounce on prey which ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... the water. He marvelled altogether to behold so many islands therein, and at the rocks thereof. He was astonied beyond measure at the number of the eagles and their eyries, at the clamour and the shrilling of their cries. He deemed in his heart that never had he gazed upon so beautiful a sight. "Hoel, fair nephew," said Arthur, "very marvellous this water seems in your eyes. Your astonishment will be the more when you look upon yet another mere that I know. Near ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... And think of the innumerable eyes That have beheld its vision sunset-crowned. The peasant in his field of rice or tea, The prince in gardens dreaming by the sea, The priest to whom the semi in the tree Was but some shrilling soul's ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... where I had thrust Evarin's bird. I struck out, encountered something warm and breathing, and grappled with it in the darkness. A foul-smelling something gripped over my mouth. I tore it away and struck hard with the skean. There was a high shrilling. The gripping filth loosened and fell away and something died on ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... shiftless manner, so as easily to be taken; and again, though provided with a curious apparatus of wings, yet they never exert them when there seems to be the greatest occasion. The males only make that shrilling noise, perhaps, out of rivalry and emulation, as is the case with many animals which exert some sprightly note during their breeding-time. It is raised by a brisk friction of one wing against the other. They are solitary ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... Clare wrapped a worn piece of blanket about her shoulders. At frequent intervals she gazed with palpable delight at her feet, shod in the "real buck." A deep, melancholy chorus of frogs rose from the creek, mingling with the high, metallic shrilling of crickets, the reiterated calling of whippoorwills ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to stone. Mechanically, she listened to the voice of the priest reciting the De Profundis; she listened to the call of the crickets shrilling through the summer night without; she listened to the heart-breaking sobs of faithful black Mandy crouching on the floor by the side of her "li'l Missy;" she listened to those shuffling footsteps as they entered the house, slowly mounted the staircase and paused ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... with horrible certainty, the disease spread, after a while bleaching their heads white, eating holes in their lips and eyelids, and covering their bodies with scales; then it fell to their throats shrilling their voices, and to their joints, hardening the tissues and cartilages—slowly, and, as the mother well knew, past remedy, it was affecting their lungs and arteries and bones, at each advance making the sufferers more and more loathsome; ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... to tell me that the fire-boat-walks-on-mountains had its track at Jamestown, and might appear at any moment. As I was watering the ponies, a peculiar shrilling noise pealed forth from just beyond the hills. The ponies threw back their heads and listened; then they ran snorting over the prairie. Meanwhile, I too had taken alarm. I leaped on the back of one of the ponies, ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... intellectual Fountain of Eternal Youth. Ever fresh pictures flowed from his white-fringed lips. As he spoke, the moonlight bathed his beard in a silver flood. The crickets accompanied the narrator's voice with the shrilling of their wing-cases, and ever and anon his words, uttered in the softest of all dialects of human speech, would be answered by the fluted plaintive croaking of the frogs, which hearkened from across the road—a friendly, if ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... woe betide the shrilling horn, The chase's surly cheer! And ever that hunter is forlorn Whom first at morn ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... a few cigars or a bundle of yerba was replaced at once by the stern duty mood of an officer setting out to visit the outposts of an encamped army. One loud blast of the whistle that hung from his neck provoked instantly a great shrilling of responding whistles, mingled with the barking of dogs, that would calm down slowly at last, away up at the head of the gorge; and in the stillness two serenos, on guard by the bridge, would appear walking noiselessly towards ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... deer. When De Aquila's great horn blew we went forward, a line half a league long. Oh, to see the fat clerks, their gowns tucked up, puffing and roaring, and the sober millers dusting the under-growth with their staves; and, like as not, between them a Saxon wench, hand in hand with her man, shrilling like a kite as she ran, and leaping high through the fern, all for joy of the sport.' 'Ah! How! Ah! How! How-ah! Sa-how-ah!' Puck bellowed without warning, and Swallow bounded forward, ears ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... was seated at the fireside at Johnstone Bank; the laird had laid aside his bonnet to take the Book, when a shriek mair loud, believe me, than a mere woman's shriek—and they can shriek loud enough, else they're sair wranged—came over the water of Corrie, so sharp and shrilling, that the pewter plates dinneled on the wall; such a shriek, my douce grandmother said, as rang in her ear till the hour of her death, and she lived till she was aughty- and-aught, forty full ripe years after the event. But there is another matter, which, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... defeats and in a few months had shaken off all blood and tradition of them, emerging as bright and valiant as a new one; thrusting out of sight the memory of disaster, and appearing with the valor and confidence of unconquered legions. The shrilling voices of the people at home would pipe dismally for a time, but various generals were usually compelled to listen to these ditties. He of course felt no compunctions for proposing a general as a sacrifice. He could not tell who the chosen for the barbs might be, so he could center no direct ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... so early Was snow on the Ben, And, the glen of the hill in, The storm-drift so chilling The linnet was stilling, That couch'd in its den; And poor robin was shrilling ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... crowd began to eddy and to whirl toward the next corner. There rose the clang of gongs, the shrilling of a Chinese pipe playing a mournful air in that five-toned scale Whose combinations suggest always the mystery of the East. About that corner swept the procession of the Good Lady, priests before, women worshippers behind. The priests set up a falsetto chant, the banner-bearers lifted their ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... is shrilling in the grass about him. Suddenly he starts up sitting. A railway-train ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... to national musical color other than their own, had a great deal to do with it in this case. Whatever the cause, the popular attitude toward the opera was displayed in the manner peculiar to Italy, the discontented majority whistling, shrilling on house keys, grunting, roaring, bellowing, and laughing in the good old-fashioned manner which might be set down as possessed of some virtuous merit if reserved ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to the house to converse upon domestic matters with Mrs. Howe until the shrilling of the donkey whistle brought forty-odd lumberjacks swinging down ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of covert, rode past, saluting, and dashed in again. A jay came out with a screech, dived, and doubled back; a hare made off across the fallow—the light-brown lopping creature was barely visible against the brownish soil. Pigeons, very high up, flew over and away to the next wood. The shrilling voices of the whips rose from the covert-depths, and just a whimper now and then from the hounds, swiftly wheeling their noses among the fern ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was awakened by a continuous sound which presently shaped itself to my ear as a multitudinous shrilling of bird voices. I knew what it meant. For the last few days I have seen the swallows gathering, now they were ranged upon my roof, perhaps in the last council before their setting forth upon the great journey. I know better than to talk about animal instinct, and to wonder in ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... children had now grown so faint and far as to be scarcely audible,—and the call of the cuckoo shrilling above the plaintive murmur of the wood pigeons, soon absorbed even the echo of the young human voices passing away. A light breeze stirred the tender green grass, shaking down a shower of pink almond bloom as it swept fan-like through the luminous ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... snowbreak from the mountains, for every staircase is a melted brook, it storms; tumultuous, wild-shrilling, towards the Hotel-de-Ville. Tumultuous, with or without drum-music: for the Faubourg Saint-Antoine also has tucked up its gown; and, with besom-staves, fire-irons, and even rusty pistols (void of ammunition), ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... shrilling alarm the words spread through the city, reverberating from the dome, seeking out those who were in hiding. From every corner of the city, from its deepest cellars and its darkest alleys, poured out a mass of humanity that ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... feeling of being hurried out beyond one's depth—caught and whiffed away by the all-compelling sweep of some rabid vigour into a new, foreign element. Something akin I have experienced in an 'express' as it raged with me—winged, rocking, ecstatic, shrilling a dragon Aha!—round a too narrow curve. It was a sensation very ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... traversing them. Montrose did not allow their spirits time to subside. He ordered the pipes to play in the van the ancient pibroch entitled, "HOGGIL NAM BO," etc. (that is, We come through snow-drift to drive the prey), the shrilling sounds of which had often struck the vales of the Lennox with terror. [It is the family-march of the M'Farlanes, a warlike and predatory clan, who inhabited the western banks of Loch-Lomond. See WAVERLY, Note XV.] The troops advanced with the nimble alacrity ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... to hear the same little voice above his head shrilling, "Here I am, here I am, Sir Eagle. Look up and see me, look!" And there, sure enough, he was fluttering above the Eagle's head. "And now, since I have mounted so much higher than you, will you agree that ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... butterflies quivering there, Hovering, flickering, never at rest, Quickened flecks of the upper air Brought down by seeing the earth so blest; And the grasshoppers shrilling their quaint delight At having been born in a ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... shallow platters of unglazed earthenware; primeval pottery suku-makemasu!' Eh! what is all this? A little booth shaped like a sentry-box, all made of laths, covered with a red-and-white chess pattern of paper; and out of this frail structure issues a shrilling keen as the sound of leaking steam. 'Oh, that is only insects,' says Akira, laughing; 'nothing to do with the Bonku.' Insects, yes!—in cages! The shrilling is made by scores of huge green crickets, each prisoned in a tiny bamboo cage by itself. 'They are fed with eggplant and melon ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... Eager to finish the chase, I sprang down, carelessly neglecting to throw the bridle rein over my horse's head. Dropping flat, I rested on my elbow and fired carefully once more. This time the animal rolled over dead. I rose, throwing up my hat with a shout of victory, and I heard, shrilling to me across the distance, her own cry of exultation, as that of some native ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... notes of the drum And fife tones shrilling on the ear, The music of our nation's hymns Rose 'neath the elm trees loud and clear; When on the Common's grassy plain The city poured her countless throng, And blessings fell like April rain On each ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... light, When the downward-dipping tails are dank and drear, Comes a breathing hard behind thee, snuffle-snuffle through the night— It is Fear, O Little Hunter, it is Fear! On thy knees and draw the bow; bid the shrilling arrow go; In the empty mocking thicket plunge the spear; But thy hands are loosed and weak, and the blood has left thy cheek— It is Fear, O Little ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford |
