"Skylark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to rise in a summer morn, When the birds sing on every tree; The distant huntsman winds his horn, And the skylark sings with me: ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... than "The Lovers," and none loftier or purer than "The Choir Invisible." There is no poetry in the "beyond." The poetry is here—here in this world, where love is in the heart. The poetry of the beyond is too far away, a little too general. Shelley's "Skylark" was in our sky, the daisy of Burns grew on our ground, and between that lark and that daisy is room for all the real poetry ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... and solitary. A robin was perched on the topmost bar of the old wooden gate, singing his joyous carol. As I approached, he hopped from the gate to the low moss-grown wall, and went on singing as I passed him. I was in the humour to apostrophise skylark or donkey, or to be sentimental about anything in creation, just then; so I told my robin what a pretty creature he was, and that I would sooner perish than hurt him by so much as the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... shortest. When in the air they fly in circles, to and fro, for a few minutes, and then alight, keeping up a constant chirping or call. They seem to prefer the wet portions of the prairie. In the breeding seasons the Longspur's song has much of charm, and is uttered like the Skylark's while soaring. The Longspur is a ground feeder, and the mark of his long hind claw, or spur, can often be seen in the new snow. In 1888 the writer saw a considerable flock of Painted Longspurs feeding along the Niagara ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... semitones. Each one of the seven basic notes of the octave is associated in Hindu mythology with a color, and the natural cry of a bird or beast-DO with green, and the peacock; RE with red, and the skylark; MI with golden, and the goat; FA with yellowish white, and the heron; SOL with black, and the nightingale; LA with yellow, and the horse; SI with a combination of ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... lute, Were night-owl's hoot To my low-whispered coo - Were I thy bride! The skylark's trill Were but discordance shrill To the soft thrill Of wooing as I'd woo - ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the most remarkable birds of the West seems to be a species of skylark, met with on the plains of Dakota, which mounts to the height of three or four hundred feet, and showers down its ecstatic notes. It is evidently akin to several ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... it was she thought. Remarkable things, doubtless; but I cannot answer for it, for in the midst of the explanation the curtain rose again. "You can't be a great artist without a great passion!" Madame Blumenthal was affirming. Before I had time to assent Madame Patti's voice rose wheeling like a skylark, and rained down its silver notes. "Ah, give me that art," I whispered, "and I will leave you your passion!" And I departed for my own place in the orchestra. I wondered afterwards whether the speech had seemed rude, ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... the gentlemen, and the side door for the tradesmen; but there was also the top door for the gods. The chimney is, so to speak, the underground passage between earth and heaven. By this starry tunnel Santa Claus manages—like the skylark— to be true to the kindred points of heaven and home. Nay, owing to certain conventions, and a widely distributed lack of courage for climbing, this door was, perhaps, little used. But Santa Claus's door was really the front door: it was ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... counting them, I found that there were two thrushes, four blackbirds, several chaffinches and green finches, one pair of goldfinches, half-a-dozen linnets and three or four yellow-hammers; a sprinkling of hedge- sparrows, robins and wrens all along the street; and finally, one skylark from a field close by would rise and sing at a considerable height directly above the road. Gazing up at the lark and putting myself in his place, the village beneath with its one long street appeared as a vari-coloured band ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... young, what sweets are flung By the violets, hiding, dim, And the lilac that sways her censers high, Whilst the skylark chants a hymn! How sweet is the scent of the daffodil bloom, When blithe spring decks each spray, And the flowering thorn sheds rare perfume Through the beautiful month of May! What a dainty pet is the mignonette, Whose sweets wide scattered are! But sweeter ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... prime favorites, and tried to make me, through her representation of him, feel what a spirit there was in the man. Although she had been prostrated by the hard work and increasing anxieties of forty years of authorship, when I saw her she was as fresh and independent as a skylark. She was a good hater as well as a good praiser, and she left nothing worth saving in an ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... of the neighbouring wood. It was a solitary nightingale calling his mate; and presently he was answered by flute-like notes which soared above the soft murmur of a viol still strumming in the villa as a skylark cuts the mists. It was not another nightingale as I at first thought, but Imperia's voice from the laurel thicket mocking the melody. As she sang there appeared within the circle of the tiny temple's columns a white-robed figure, ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... rocky. We skirted along a little river; and here and there I had my first view of the prairie. The air above me was thrilling with the song of spring birds. I did not know what they were. Some of them resembled the English skylark in the habit of singing and soaring. But ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... the Frost is on the Stock Market and Wall Street is in the Shock, Milt and Henry would do a Skylark Ascension from the Home Nest and Wing away toward the ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... the god of earth. The skylark springs Far up to catch thy glory on his wings; And thou dost bless him first that highest soars. The bee comes forth to see thee; and the flowers Worship thee all day long, and through the skies Follow thy journey with their earnest eyes. River ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... sent a skylark up To trim the Sky robe right With daisies from the Meadow (You can see ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... and looked around and above. It was the very height of summer. The sun was just rising over gentle sloping uplands. All the dews on the hedgerows sparkled. There was not a cloud in the heavens. Up rose from the green blades of corn a solitary skylark. His voice woke up the other birds. A few minutes more and the joyous concert began. Kenelm reverently doffed his hat, and bowed his head ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... instance, if you want to find a bird's-nest you have to stalk. That is to say, you watch a bird flying into a bush and guess where its nest is, and follow it up and find the nest. With some birds it is a most difficult thing to find their nests; take, for instance, the skylark or the snipe. But those who know the birds, especially the snipe, will recognize their call. The snipe when she is alarmed gives quite a different call from when she is happy and flying about. She has a particular call when she has young ones about. So that those who have watched and listened ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... nightingales; their songs during the love season do not cease by day or by night, so that one wonders when sleep can be taken; but as soon as the young are hatched the music ceases, and harsh croaks are the only sound left.[70] The song of the skylark, with its splendid note of freedom, is more melodious and more frequent in the season of love's delirium.[71] Another bird, the male of the weaver bird, builds an abode of pleasure for himself, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... contumely and ingratitude even while he is living upon him. We hear much of Shelley's unselfishness, but it does not appear that he ever denied himself the indulgence of a whim. The "Ode to the West Wind," the "Ode Written in Dejection near Naples," and "The Skylark" are unsurpassed and unsurpassable; but I can hardly pardon a man for cruelty and turpitude merely because he produces a few ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... in the afternoon: and the following morning the ship's company were electrified by a general order, thus set forth and declared: "D'ye hear there, for and aft! all hands skylark!" ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... be so suggestive as to lead the seer to the very limits of thought and aspiration, like Shelley's "Skylark." As we need the help of the naturalists, who see more accurately than we, we also need the assistance of the poet's clearer vision, with its wider and deeper sweep. How completely Sidney Lanier summed up the mocking bird! and ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... awe I hail the sacred morn, That slowly wakes while all the fields are still! A soothing calm on every breeze is borne; A graver murmur gurgles from the rill; And echo answers softer from the hill; And sweeter sings the linnet from the thorn: The skylark warbles in a tone less shrill. Hail, light serene! hail, sacred Sabbath morn! The rooks float silent by in airy drove; The sun a placid yellow lustre throws; The gales that lately sighed along the grove Have hushed their downy wings in dead repose ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... revolutionary age. He is the poet of hope, as Wordsworth is the poet of wisdom. He has been charged with being intangible and unearthly, but he is so only in the sense in which the future is intangible and unearthly. He is no more unearthly than the skylark or the rainbow or the dawn. His world, indeed, is a universe of skylarks and rainbows and ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... he has nothing but panegyric. His articles on Byron and Coleridge are luminous appreciations of the very diverse excellences belonging to two illustrious predecessors; while in his Notes on the Text of Shelley, high-soaring and incomparable, an unlucky emendation of a line in 'The Skylark—the insertion of a superfluous word conjecturally—by an editor whose work he commends on the whole, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... of course. You remind me of a bird. You have all the quick and easy graces of the skylark. Why should you not have the ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... of life away: Even the lilies take thought for many things, For frost in April and for drought in May, And from no careless heart the skylark sings. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... mast-head and scan the horizon, and so did many others: but those who were stationed at the look-out were equally on the alert. The ship's company were now in a very fair state of discipline, owing to the incessant practice, and every evening the hands were turned up to skylark—that is, to play and amuse themselves. There was one amusement which was the occasion of a great deal of mirth, and it was a favourite one of the captain's, as it made the men smart. It is called, "Follow my leader." One of the men leads, and all who ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of my heart, the world is young; Love lies hidden in every rose! Every song that the skylark sung Once, we thought, must come to a close: Now we know the spirit of song, Song that is merged in the chant of the whole, Hand in hand as we wander along, What should we doubt of the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... in the pilot-house. Island No. 63—an island with a lovely 'chute,' or passage, behind it in the former times. They said Jesse Jamieson, in the 'Skylark,' had a visiting pilot with him one trip—a poor old broken-down, superannuated fellow—left him at the wheel, at the foot of 63, to run off the watch. The ancient mariner went up through the chute, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... poems mentioned, Shelley wrote "The Cenci," "Alastor," "Prometheus Unbound," and many others, including a beautiful little ode to a "Skylark," and the well-known ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... night of slumber he woke; but it was not that morn had unroll'd O'er the pale, cloudy tents of the Orient, her banners of purple and gold: It was not the song of the skylark that rose from the green pastures near, But the sound of his bells that fell softly, as dew on the slumberer's ear. At that sound he awoke and arose, and went forth on the bead-bearing grass— At that sound, with his loving Francesca, he piously knelt at the Mass. If ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... And make happy the skies; The merry bells ring To welcome the Spring; The skylark and thrush, The birds of the bush, Sing louder around To the bells' cheerful sound; While our sports shall be seen ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... we read books that gossip about Shelley, or Coleridge, or Byron. "Give us their poetry," we say, "and leave their characters alone: we do not want tattle about Claire and chatter about Harriet; we want to be happy with 'The Skylark' or 'The Cloud.'" Possibly this instinct is correct, where such a poet as Shelley is concerned, whose life, like his poetry, was as "the life of winds and tides," whose genius, unlike the skylark's, was more true to ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... or her husband. Here is the report of an eyewitness, Tasmanian born, educated, a man who has made money—certainly no fool. In 1886 he was present in a house on Makatea, where two lads began to skylark on the mats, and were (I think) ejected. Instantly after, their bellies began to swell; pains took hold on them; all manner of island remedies were exhibited in vain, and rubbing only magnified their sufferings. The man of the house was called, explained the nature ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the brain that everything takes place. We know now that we do not see with the eyes or hear with the ears. They are really channels for the transmission, adequate or inadequate, of sense impressions. It is in the brain that the poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings. ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... which they have frequent opportunities of hearing." He has given an account of his experiments in the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1773 (Vol. 63); he says: "I have educated nestling linnets under the three best singing larks—the skylark, woodlark, and titlark, every one of which, instead of the linnet's song, adhered entirely to that of their respective instructors. When the note of the titlark linnet was thoroughly fixed, I hung the bird in a room with two common linnets for a quarter ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... throb responsive that My ardent spirit thrills Could, like the skylark's ecstasy, Be vocal in sweet melody, Beyond dividing hills In octaves of the atmosphere Were music wafted ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... best long poem is the Adonas, an elegy on the death of John Keats. It is written in the Spenserian stanza. But this true poet will be best remembered by his short lyrical poems, such as The Cloud, Ode to a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind, Stanzas written in Dejection, and others. —Shelley has been called "the poet's poet," because his style is so thoroughly transfused by pure imagination. He has also been called "the master-singer of our modern race and age; for his thoughts, his words, and his deeds ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... mourning in the village. Andor had always been very popular: good-looking, as merry as a skylark and a splendid dancer, he was always the life and soul of every entertainment. Girls who had flirted with him wept bitter tears, the mothers who thought how rich Andor would have been now that old Lakatos was sure to die very ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... our modern songs are truly songful, and fit to be set to music? Is it not that the writers of them— persons often of much taste and poetic imagination—have gone for their inspiration to the intellect, rather than to the ear? That (as Shelley does by the skylark, and Wordsworth by the cuckoo), instead of trying to sing like the birds, they only think and talk about the birds, and therefore, however beautiful and true the thoughts and words may be, they are ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... power of sustained abstraction. His poems are not lyrics of life, but of an ideal world. His tendency was to insulate qualities or feelings, and hold them up to the mental vision as personalities. The words which he has addressed to his own skylark fitly describe his mind as it soared in ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... more, as always, those pure delights of Nature which the Poets celebrate—walks in the unambitious meadows, and the ever-satisfying companionship of vegetables and flowers—I am nevertheless haunted now and then (but tell it not to Shelley's Skylark, nor whisper to Wordsworth's Daffodils, the disconcerting secret)—I am incongruously beset by longings of which the Lake Poets never sang. Echoes and images of the abandoned City discompose my arcadisings: I hear, in the babbling of brooks, the delicious sound of London gossip, ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... English and French contemporaries, and particularly in his descriptions of what he had never seen or experienced, but only read about. Take, for instance, his Australian scenes in "It is Never Too Late to Mend," where the effect of the song of the English skylark in the gold-diggings is told with touching brevity and pathos. Yet all his information concerning Australia had been gained by reading newspaper correspondence and books on that country. He made no secret of this, and said ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... door—that's what we want. That sawbones feller is right when he says the progress will be slow. Slow! Slow ain't quite the word. No more ain't progress the word—that's my opinion. He just lies on that bed, and the most he can do is to skylark a bit with Nestorius. He don't take no interest in nothin', least of all in his victuals—and a man's in a bad way when he takes no interest in his victuals. Yes, I'll take another pancake, thankin' you kindly. You've ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... for some months on board, soon perceived this, and used to mock him: Jemmy, who was always rather jealous of the attention paid to this little boy, did not at all like this, and used to say, with rather a contemptuous twist of his head, "Too much skylark." It seems yet wonderful to me, when I think over all his many good qualities, that he should have been of the same race, and doubtless partaken of the same character, with the miserable, degraded savages whom we first met here. Lastly, Fuegia Basket was a nice, modest, reserved ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of Shelley's poems, are his lyrics. 'The Skylark' and 'The Cloud' are among the most dazzling and unique of all outbursts of poetic genius. Of the 'Ode to the West Wind,' a succession of surging emotions and visions of beauty swept, as if by the wind itself, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... of the jay which makes it more distressing to the mind to see it pent in a cage than other birds of its family, such as the magpie; just as it is more distressing to see a skylark than a finch in prison, because the lark has an irresistible impulse to rise when his singing fit is on. Sing he must, in or out of prison, yet there can be little joy in the performance when the bird is incessantly teased with the unsatisfied ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... from more recent books, such as Little Women, Alice in Wonderland, Master Skylark and even Arabella and Araminta, who ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... Oakshott's Barn is a desolate place, a place of shadows and solitude, whose slumberous silence is broken only by the rustle of leaves, the trill of a skylark high overhead, or the ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... game hangin' up everywhar to be cured. Sometimes, young William, I envy the Indians. When the weather's right, an' the village is in a good place an' thar's plenty to eat you never see any happier fellers. The day's work an' huntin' over, they skylark 'roun' like boys havin' fun with all sorts o' little things. You wouldn't think they wuz the same men who could enjoy roastin' an enemy alive. Then, they ain't troubled a bit 'bout the future, either. Termorrer kin take care o' itself. I s'pose that's ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... some in his hand to Paul. Through a festooned arch of the pavilion giving upon the terraces, we saw a bird dart down to the fountain, tilt and drink, tilt and drink again, and flash away. Immediately the multitudinous rejoicing of a skylark dropped from upper air. When men would send thanks to the very gate of heaven their envoy should be ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... to her, and one of them made her a present of a little skylark, whose early morning song told the lazy boys and girls that it was time they were ...
— Goody Two-Shoes • Unknown
... rude winds, and beaten down with rain, How can the roses dare to trust again The tricksy mistress whom they once adored? Even the glad heaven, chilled with stormy stain, Grudges its skylark pilgrims of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... a real skylark! Just think of it, Hosy. I've heard a real lark. Well, Hephzibah Cahoon, you may never get into a book, but you're livin' among book things every day of your life. 'And singin' ever soars and soarin' ever singest.' I'd sing, too, if I knew ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... kitchen, with the scoured deal table, chairs and cupboard, and the firelight from the grate winked so on pewter mugs, copper kettle, willow-patterned plates and diamond panes, that Bobby blinked too. Flowers bloomed in pots on the casement sills, and a little brown skylark sang, fluttering as if it would soar, in a gilded cage. After the morning meal Mr. Brown lighted his pipe and put on his bonnet to go out again, when he bethought him that Bobby might be needing something ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... and how the flames had curled around the heart that men had done their best to break, and how it had remained unburnt in the midst, whilst all the rest drifted in ashes down the wind. He knew nought of the Skylark's ode, and nought of the Cor Cordium; but the scene by the seashore had burned itself as though with flame into his mind, and he spoke of it a thousand times if once, sitting by the edge of the sea that had ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the song of the skylark down, And it hears the singing of the town; And youth on the highways And lovers in byways Follows and sees: And hearkens the song of the leas And sings the songs of ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thee, Beloved, in the hills, in the hour of our tryst!" came the far-away answer of the woman's voice, faint and plaintive as an echo, soft and sweet and clear as the notes of the skylark, falling in silvery, rippling cadences of melody from out the gold, ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... its American recruits, and included above all Kate Croy—a young person blessedly easy to take care of. She knew people, and people knew her, and she was the handsomest thing there—this last a declaration made by Milly, in a sort of soft mid-summer madness, a straight skylark-flight ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... gone and joined a club? The Skylarks, indeed! A pretty skylark you'll make of yourself! But I won't stay and be ruined by you. No: I'm determined on that. I'll go and take the dear children, and you may get who you like to keep your house. That is, as long as you have a house to keep—and that won't ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... wander in the great spaces. To idle together in the sweet fields of the mind—this is companionship, when thoughts come not by bidding, and argument is taboo; to have the mind as open as that of a child for all impressions, and speak as the skylark sings, this is the mood ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane |
