"Blackbird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the humble spot; A sparrow on the thatch in critic spleen Thus took occasion to reprove the strain: "Dost thou," cried he, "thou dull dejected thing, Presume to emulate the birds of spring? Can thy weak warbling dare approach the thrush Or blackbird's accents in the hawthorn bush? Or with the lark dost thou poor mimic, vie, Or nightingale's unequal'd melody? These other birds possessing twice thy fire Have been content in silence to admire." "With candor judge," ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... asked the cook, in perplexity; "the King has ordered a blackbird pie, and your birds are ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... quantity of jaspers and blood-stones, and others of no value at all. "But look at these two pearl-shaped diamonds," said she; "why, they are a little fortune! and oh!" The stone that struck this fair creature dumb was a rough ruby as big as a blackbird's egg, and of amazing depth and fire. "No lady in England," said she, "has a ruby to compare ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... paid and tipped (grumbling, of course, for the Kashmiri is a lineal descendant of the horse-leech). The shikari went to Smithson, and the sweeper and permanent coolie were transferred to the assistant forest officer, while Ayata (in charge of Freddie, the blackbird) ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... oddly may a jest become perpetuated) known as Saint David Street. Nor is the town so large but a holiday schoolboy may harry a bird's nest within half a mile of his own door. There are places that still smell of the plough in memory's nostrils. Here, one had heard a blackbird on a hawthorn; there, another was taken on summer evenings to eat strawberries and cream; and you have seen a waving wheatfield on the site of your present residence. The memories of an Edinburgh boy are but partly memories of the town. I look back with delight on many an escalade ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... subgens was divided into four sections: 1, Hawk people, under the chief Standing Hawk (now dead). 2, Blackbird people, under the chief Wajina-gahiga. B, Starling or Thunder people. 4, Owl ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... later, while watching with a camera focused on the nest of a blackbird in Mrs. Corson's woods east of town, Raymond, who was assisting me, crept to my side and asked if it would do any harm for him to go specimen hunting. The long waits with set cameras were extremely tedious to the restless spirits of the boy, and the birds were quite ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... have his say. He plumed his feathers and looked severe, As the birds flew in from far and near. A Mocking Bird sat on a limb near by, With a desperate look in his round, dark eye; He was the culprit—a thief he had been, The Thrush and the Blackbird had "run him in." He had stolen the nest of the little brown Wren From the tangled depth of a shady glen. The Hawk was the Judge, and sat in state, Ready to seal the prisoner's fate. "A thief is worse," said the Bobolink, "Than anything else ...
— Nestlings - A Collection of Poems • Ella Fraser Weller
... keen bright eye fixed on the window; then they would stop for two pecks; then stay till they were satisfied. The shyer birds, tamed by their example, came next; and at last one saucy fellow of a blackbird—a sad glutton, he would clear the board in two minutes,—used to tap his yellow bill against the window for more. How we loved the fearless confidence of that fine, frank-hearted creature! And surely he loved us. I wonder the practice is not more general. 'May! May! naughty May!' She has ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... be laughing at, but she settled down very quiet-like with Aunty Biddy here, knowing yourselves to be going to Lawrence, and I told her stay as long as she had a mind. Wisha, she 'd an old apron on her in five minutes' time, an' took hold wit' the wash, and wint singing like a blackbird out in the yard at the line. 'Sit down, Aunty!' says she; 'you 're not so light-stepping as me, an' I 'll tell you all the news from home; an' I 'll get the dinner, too, when I 've done this,' says she. Wisha, but she's ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... spies, who is a Blackbird, flew over the desert to the Land of Oz, and saw the Magic Belt in Ozma's palace," replied the King ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... go a-walking to hear the linnets sing, The blackbird and the throstle a-praising Queen and King: It cheers the heart to hear them, to see the leaves unfold, The meadows covered over ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... a white Blackbird, that was perched on the hedge by the road, began his usual song, ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... much obliged for your extract (187/1. Mr. Wallace had sent Darwin a note about a tufted cock-blackbird, which transmitted the character to some of its offspring.); I never heard of such a case, though such a variation is perhaps the most likely of any to occur in a state of nature, and to be inherited, inasmuch as all domesticated birds present ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Wit, He was very shy of using it, As being loth to wear it out. And therefore bore it not about, Unless on Holydays or so, As Men their best Apparel do. Besides, 'tis known he could speak Greek As naturally as Pigs squeak.: That Latin was no more difficile Than to a Blackbird 'tis to whistle; Being rich in both he never scanted His Bounty unto such as wanted; But much of either wou'd afford, To many that had not one Word: For Hebrew Roots altho they're found To flourish but in barren Ground, He had such Plenty as suffic'd To ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... water. Frogs and turtles warming their backs in the sunshine scampered in alarm from their logs. Lizards blinked at him. Moccasin snakes darted wicked forked tongues at him and then glided out of reach of his tomahawk. The frogs had stopped their deep bass notes. A swamp-blackbird rose in fright from her nest in the saw-grass, and twittering plaintively fluttered round and round over the pond. The flight of the bird worried Wetzel. Such little things as these might attract the attention of some ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... A blackbird (yes, blackbirds delight in warm weather,) Is flitting from yonder high spray; He sees the two little ones talking together— No ...
— Under the Window - Pictures & Rhymes for Children • Kate Greenaway
... species had been obliterated and made as meaningless as the concededly evanescent shades of variety, trooping busily over the lawn and blackening the leafless China-trees. But they have a crony never seen by us. This is the crow-blackbird of the South, or jackdaw as it is wrongly called, otherwise known as the boat-tailed grackle, from his over-allowance of rudder that pulls him side-wise and ruins his dead-reckoning when a wind is on. His wife is a sober-looking lady in a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... near his house. It is such an excellent mimic of other birds' notes that no one can help noticing its performances. A record has been kept of the variety entertainments provided by the bird. Besides its own calls, whistles, and song, it reproduces the song of the blackbird and thrush absolutely correctly, and mimics with equal nicety the calls of the curlew, the corncrake, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... species, the sexes of which differ greatly from each other, are certainly monogamous. In Great Britain we see well-marked sexual differences, for instance, in the wild-duck which pairs with a single female, the common blackbird, and the bullfinch which is said to pair for life. I am informed by Mr. Wallace that the like is true of the Chatterers or Cotingidae of South America, and of many other birds. In several groups I have not been able to discover whether the species are polygamous or monogamous. Lesson ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... was signalized by an artillery salute from Fort Douglas, which resounded through the wretched ruins of the houses burnt the previous year, and over the fields deserted by the Colonists and left to the chattering blackbird and the howling wolf. Almost every race of people—however small—has its bard. Among the Bois-brules was the son of old Pierre Falcon, a French-Canadian, of some influence among the natives. This young poet was a character. He had the French vivacity, the prejudice of race, ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... vulgaris).—Out, with angry scream and chatter at the approach of an enemy, darts the "ousel cock so black of hue, with orange-tawny bill." How dull a lawn would be without his pert movements when he comes down alternately with his russet wife. One blackbird with a broad white feather on each side of his tail haunted Elderfield for two years, but, alas! one spring day a spruce sable rival descended and captivated the faithless dame. They united, chased poor Mr. ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... tangled branches every now and then to get through, and all the time looking carefully round for nests. They very soon heard the harsh cry of the jay, who was letting all the inhabitants of the woodlands know that enemies were at hand, and away flew the birds. The blackbird was the first to take the alarm from the jay, and away he flew, crying, "Kink, kink, kink," as he started from his nest in a great ivy tod on an old pollard-tree. The lads soon found the nest, and peeped in, but instead of eggs there were four wretched-looking little objects, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... both musicians were unhappy, inasmuch as they strove not for honour nor of their free choice, but for their safety and of hard necessity. I should have admired them more if they had pleased men, not beasts. Such solitude were far better suited to birds, to blackbird and nightingale and swan. The blackbird whistles like a happy boy in distant wilds, the nightingale trills its song of youthful passion in the lonely places of Africa, the swan by far-off rivers chants the music of old age. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... emotion never impressed me for an instant, for this reason, that it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in any sort of symbolic sacrifice. Men (I felt) might fast forty days for the sake of hearing a blackbird sing. Men might go through fire to find a cowslip. Yet these lovers of beauty could not even keep sober for the blackbird. They would not go through common Christian marriage by way of recompense to the cowslip. Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals. ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... vain dream of moody mind, That lists a dirge i' the blackbird's singing; That in gusts hears Nature's own voice complain, And beholds her tears in the gushing rain; When low clouds congregate blank and blind, And Winter's snow-muffled arms are clinging Round ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... not," said the Philosopher. "If crime is a condition precedent to the evolution of policemen, then I will submit that jackdaws are a very thievish clan—they are somewhat larger than a blackbird, and will steal wool off a sheep's back to line their nests with; they have, furthermore, been known to abstract one shilling in copper and secrete this booty so ingeniously that it ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... herself and of the use of such rooms. It is interesting to note also in the first case that in her wildest delirium during an acute attack she lived through episodes of her past life. One example may be given. In the course of her delirium she thought that a "blackbird" had flown to her, touched her left wrist and taken away all her vitality. This depended on an experience of her going to Germany when a girl and meeting a young German officer whom she did not like. A few years later she went to Germany and met the officer again. Without going into full details ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... Prompt not their loves:— the patriot bird pursues 5 His well acquainted tints, and kindred hues. Hence through their tribes no mix'd polluted flame, No monster-breed to mark the groves with shame; But the chaste blackbird, to its partner true, Thinks black alone is beauty's favourite hue. 10 The nightingale, with mutual passion blest, Sings to its mate, and nightly charms the nest; While the dark owl to court its partner flies, And owns its offspring ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... giants, who made a bet as to which of them could throw a stone farthest. The stakes were four deer. One giant, called Goli, carried a bird in his hand and threw it instead of the stone; so he won; then he returned to where the Blackbird and the Crow were standing. The Blackbird said to the Crow, "They will not do us any harm until they stoop to pick up a stone." But the Crow replied, "Maybe they bring the stone in their hands." So they flew away, and while they were flying the Crow said, "I am going to the ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... Tom's attitude and gait would at times resemble the movements of a cock pheasant: now stealing along for a few yards, listening for the slightest sound of any animal stirring in the underwood; now standing on tiptoe for a time, with bated breath. Did a blackbird—that dusky sentinel of the woods—utter her characteristic note of warning, he would whisper, "Hark!" Then, after due deliberation, he would add, "'Tis a fox!" or, "There's a fox in the grove," and ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... of a bird awoke her. She recognized at once the sweet, shrill notes of a blackbird. Day was breaking. She began to shake, for she was chilled to the bone. The dampness of the night had made her clothes as wet as though she ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... more! Ever since—fourteen years ago—the day His cousin brought here, 'midst our woolen coifs, The worldly mourning of her widow's veil, Like a blackbird's wing among ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... there are but few; Mr Banks saw none larger than an English blackbird, except some hawks and a vulture; but of water-fowl there is great plenty, particularly ducks. Of fish we saw scarce any, and with our hooks could catch none that was fit to eat; but shell-fish, limpets, clams, and mussels were to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Ivanhoe. A carpenter in the town made for us bows of lancewood, and arrows of poplar, tipped with spikes of iron. With these we could not only split our "willow wand" at 80 yards distant, but the more skilful deemed an arrow hardly worth having until it had been baptized in the blood of blackbird or pigeon, and some of the neighbouring pigeon cotes suffered accordingly. The writer was presented with a bow made of bamboo, and arrows said to be poisoned, which a great traveller, then residing in Horncastle, had brought from the South Sea Islands. He lent these to a brother archer, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... all her wrinkles vanished, and she became young and very beautiful; in all their lives the travelers had never seen so lovely a woman. Her hair, which had been white and scanty, now hung to her feet, dark and glossy as a blackbird's breast. Then, having been clad in fine array, she showed a tall, lithe, and graceful form at ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... musical reputation, but I never heard it get beyond the first bar of "Come into the garden, Maud." Ill as I was, I remember being roused to something like a flicker of animation when I was shown an exceedingly seedy and shabby-looking blackbird with a broken leg in splints, which its master (the same bird-fancying gentleman) assured me he had bought in Melbourne as a great bargain for only 2 pounds ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... full of bird song. What Ernest called the dawn's enchantment was just ending. Blackbird and robin, oriole and mocking bird, piped full-throated from every cactus. To Ernest this was the one redeeming touch to the desert's austerity. To Roger it was the crowning of an almost unbearable charm. The sun wheeled in full glory over the peaks. The adobe ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... warbler, sometimes called the wild canary, flits through bush and tree and trills its gay notes in town and country. Song-sparrows, thrushes, and bluebirds warble far and near, while the red-winged blackbird makes music in wet, swampy places. The robin, who comes to city gardens in the winter, has a summer home in the mountains or redwoods. There, too, the saucy jay screams and chatters, and flashes his blue wings as he flies, ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... the wren of softest note Builds its nest and warbles well; Here the blackbird strains his throat; Welcome, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... bloomed and blushed, And the fragrant Summer Kisses warm and sparkling smiles Gave to each new-comer— 'Birdie's sweet, sweet, sweet,' Sang the blackbird clearly; 'Sweet as daisy-buds, and ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... straddling wide forward-step, and his springy side-wise series of hops, and his impudent air, and his cunning way of canting his head to one side upon occasion, he reminds one of the American blackbird. But the sharp resemblances stop there. He is much bigger than the blackbird; and he lacks the blackbird's trim and slender and beautiful build and shapely beak; and of course his sober garb of gray and rusty black is a poor and humble ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Yesterday I passed a cottage, it is on the Great South Road; far away from here. The house was empty; the people no doubt were gone to labour in the fields; there was a wicker cage hanging to the wall, and in the cage there was a blackbird. The sun beat on his head; his square of sod was a dry clod of bare earth; the heat had dried every drop of water in his pan; and yet the bird was singing. Singing how? In torment, beating his breast against the bars till the blood started, crying to the skies ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... her cousin she cam' there, An', oh, the scene was passing fair! For what in Scotland can compare Wi' the Carse o' Gowrie? The sun was setting on the Tay, The blue hills melting into gray; The mavis' and the blackbird's lay ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... observation had not escaped the penetration of Rodogune) adorn and arrange it as you will, infallibly suggests an idea of solitude, that communicates sadness to the mind. Accordingly your path was here beguiled with the warbling of a thousand birds, the full-toned blackbird, the mellow thrush, and the pensive nightingale. The sorceress had invited them to her retreat, by innumerable assiduities and innumerable conveniences of food and residence, and had suffered no rude intrusion to disturb the sacredness of their haunts. Unused to ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... thought, Peter was right; the creature was a lady. She had a soft, throaty voice, like a blackbird when it talks to itself, and oh, a creamy accent! Miss Rolls would have given anything to extract it, like pith, from the long white stem in which it seemed to live. She would have been willing to pay ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... birds" so interesting to the cultivator. He, as a rule, is not wrapped up in the strawberry or the cherry that in the fulness of time comes to be levied on, in very moderate percentage, by a few of his musical associates. We do not forget that the blackbird has a weakness for planted maize, and that the quota of the cornhill is very truly and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... is fading, with a little wind that has a premonition of spring. In the window panes is a confused mirroring of rosy clouds. The blackbird, the blackbird that he must have heard for thirty years, that he'd have liked to have gone on hearing dead, has come to see if he's listening. Peace. The bedroom and the garden strive quietly light against light: the brightness of the bedroom is stronger and ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... very shy of using it; As being loth to wear it out, And therefore bore it not about, Unless on holy-days, or so, As men their best apparel do. 50 Beside, 'tis known he could speak GREEK As naturally as pigs squeek; That LATIN was no more difficile, Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle: Being rich in both, he never scanted 55 His bounty unto such as wanted; But much of either would afford To many, that had not one word. For Hebrew roots, although they're found To flourish most in barren ground, 60 He had such plenty, as suffic'd ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... he spoke to a grey bird, about the size of a blackbird, which sat on a branch close above his head. This creature is called by the fur-traders a whisky-John, and it is one of the most impudent little birds in the world! Wherever you go throughout the country, there you find whisky-Johns ready to receive and welcome ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... Blackbird, the Chappowow chief, has also sent a belt of peace to Colonel Clark, influenced, he supposes, by the dread of Detroit's being reduced by American arms. This latter place, according to Colonel Clark's representation, is at present defended by so inconsiderable a garrison ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... heart Janet Balchrystie cherished a great ambition. When the earliest blackbird awoke and began to sing, while it was yet gray twilight, Janet would be up and at her work. She had an ambition to be a great poet. No less than this would serve her. But not even her father had known, and ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... watching. Now and again a sound, a scent would make him sick with longing, with longing for an English meadow, for the clean breath of new-mown hay, for the fragrance of June roses, for the song of the thrush, and the sweet piping of the blackbird. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... crisp and nutty coolness, as I did when flirty Liz, My first sweetheart, sent me packing, one Spring mornin'—for a while— And them blossoms cooled my anger—most as much as the arch smile Which won me back to wooin'. There's a blackbird on the top Of yon tall, half bare acacia, pipes as if he'd never stop, Tryin' all his tunelets over, like a sort of talking flute:— "Chip-chip! Tsee-tsee! Chu-chu! Chu-rook!" goes the bird of sable suit. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... dangers ahead. Fires kindled on the banks of the river called neighboring Indians to council. Council Bluffs commemorates one conference, of which there were many with Iowas and Omahas and Ricarees and Sioux. Pause was made on the south side of the Missouri to visit the high mound where Blackbird, chief of the Omahas, was buried astride his war horse that his spirit might forever watch the French voyageurs passing up ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... hung in the air. Regularly, every day, there was a single bird, not singing, but awkwardly chirruping among the green madronas, and the sound was cheerful, natural, and stirring. It did not hold the attention, nor interrupt the thread of meditation, like a blackbird or a nightingale; it was mere woodland prattle, of which the mind was conscious like a perfume. The freshness of these morning seasons remained with me far on into ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flying Indian pony. How beautiful and fresh the picture of her remained in his memory!—the soft white dress she wore, her black hair streaming over her shoulders, her dark eyes flashing delight, her merry laugh rivalling the trill of the blackbird which flew over their heads chattering for very joy. Before him lay the pretty brook with its rustic bridge reflecting itself in the clear water as in a mirror. That path along the bank led down to the willows where the big mossy stones ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... western sky became blood-red and lilac: from the other end of the sky the moon peeped out of night. A hush came and a chill, and a glory of colour, and a dying away of light; and in the hush the mystery of the great oaks became magical. A blackbird blew a tune less of this ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... with game, and that, therefore, it was well that the boys should learn how to shoot. He insisted, however, that only one gun should be taken out at a time, to diminish the danger of accidents. After that the boys took out their guns by turns when they went to work of a morning, and many a dead blackbird soon attested ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... At his cottage he was rarely without one or more tame blackbirds, which flew about the house, or in and out at the door. In summer-time he would go a-birdnesting with his children; and one day he took his little son George to see a blackbird's nest for the first time. Holding him up in his arms, he let the wondering boy peep down, through the branches held aside for the purpose, into a nest full of young birds—a sight which the boy never forgot, but used ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... Bishop of Carlisle has been with me two days at Strawberry, where we saw the eclipse(572) to perfection: -not that there was much sight in it. The air was very chill at the time, and the light singular; but there was not a blackbird that left off singing for it. In the evening the Duke of Devonshire came with the Straffords from t'other end of Twickenham, and drank tea with us. They had none of them seen the gallery since it was finished; even the chapel was new to the Duke, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Fallen Timbers he returned to his Indian wife and children, but remained the friend of the United States. In General Harrison's day he was United States Indian agent at Fort Wayne, but was killed in the massacre of Fort Dearborn, in 1812, by the faithless bands of Potawatomi under the chief Blackbird. ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... said Edna, who, strange to say, could whistle like a blackbird. "You would only have people always telling you, it is not ladylike. I don't know I'm whistling half the time when mamma tells me not to. It ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... no such thing as absolute morals. Morals are as transitory as the sheen on a blackbird's wing; they change perpetually with the necessities of the race. Any people with an abounding vitality will naturally practise customs which a less ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... 135. The Red-wing Blackbird, Ageloeus phoeniceus, of lustrous black, with the bend of the wing red. They are still abundant in the same locality, and indeed across the whole continent to the Pacific Ocean.—Vide Cones's Key, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... How do the Blackbird and Thrassel with their melodious voices bid welcome to the cheerful Spring, and in their fixed months warble forth such ditties as no art or instrument can ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... its tender boughs loaded with young fruit, pricked by the sharp claws and beak of the insolent blackbird, complained to the blackbird with pitious remonstrance entreating her that since she stole its delicious fruits she should not deprive it of the leaves with which it preserved them from the burning rays of the sun, and that she should not divest it of its tender ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... whose salvation she was responsible. No doubt she had put up a hard fight for him and had every reason to be satisfied, though Gabrielle shared the honours of the mother's triumph in her own defeat. We sat there talking until all the birds were silent, but a single blackbird that made a noise in the shrubbery like that of two pebbles knocked sharply together; until the young people on the tennis court could no longer see to play, and the tall Californian poppies at the back of the herbaceous border ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... go!" exclaimed Peter. "I haven't been to the Smiling Pool for some time. I'll just run over and pay my respects to Grandfather Frog, and to Redwing the Blackbird. Redwing was one of the first birds to arrive, and ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... Residency every step of the siege and relief can be followed. I was there first on a serene evening after rain; and but for some tropical trees it might have been an English scene. All that was lacking was a thrush or blackbird's note; but the grass was as soft and green as at home and the air as sweet. I shall long retain the memory of the contrast between the incidents which give this enclosure its unique place in history and the perfect calm ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... my very flesh turns soul, Essenced,' I sighed, 'with bliss!' And the blackbird held his lutany, All fragrant-through with bliss; And all things stilled were as a maid Sweet with ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... eastwards. A faint grey stole over the distant horizon, and suddenly a cloud reddened before his eyes. The sun was not in sight, but was rising, and sending forerunners before his face. The cattle began to stir, a blackbird burst into song, and before Drumsheugh crossed the threshold of Saunders' house, the first ray of the sun had broken on a peak ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... 'The man forlorn Hears Earth send up a foolish noise aloft.' 'And what'll he do? What'll he do?' scoff'd The Blackbird, standing, in an ancient thorn, Then spread his sooty wings and flitted to the croft With cackling laugh; Whom I, being half Enraged, called after, giving ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... leaves flashed, golden-green, on soot-blackened branches of chestnut, plane, and lime. And there were flowers everywhere—in squares and window-boxes and parks; in florists' and milliners' windows; in the baskets of flower-sellers and in women's hats. The paper-boy—blackbird of the London streets—whistled a livelier stave. Girls hurried past smiling at nothing in particular. They were glad ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... very little girl (which is a long time ago), I made a discovery. The place where I made it was not very remote, being a holly-bush at the bottom of our garden; and the discovery was not a great one in itself, though I thought it very grand. I had found a blackbird's nest, with ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... good landscape lovers, the beasts, birds, and insects of Nature were dear to these ancient people. One of the things Finn most cared for was not only his hounds, but the "blackbird singing on Letterlee"; and his song, on page 114, in the praise of May, tells us how keen was his observant eye for animal life and how much it delighted him. The same minute realisation of natural objects is illustrated in this book when ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... go before a faint light stole down to guide his way, and he reached the spot where the passage was roofed in with dead branches and twigs, and as he reached it, just faintly heard, came the shrill cry of a blackbird—Pink-pink-pink!—from somewhere ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... his arrow fitted, and a stricken bird was fluttering at their feet in a few seconds. The flutterings of the fallen bird were more than equalled by those of Foster's heart, as he held the still quivering crow-blackbird which his arrow had brought from the highest twig of a tall spruce. Proud and exultant, yet tears glistened in his eyes as he silently gazed upon the soiled plumage of the bird's beautiful neck and breast, and felt its last faint gaspings ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... her once she had fallen in love with Jacopo. He was a handsome, dark fellow, with insinuating manners, and a voice like a blackbird. When the two were together there was no one else in the world for them. He had flamed up with the fierceness of his southern nature: she with the heat of a heart slow to love, and once fired slow to ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... precinct! Once, through yonder gate, I saw her go, and knew from far Her love-lit form and gentle state. Her dress had brush'd this wicket; here She turn'd her face, and laugh'd, with light Like moonbeams on a wavering mere. Weary beforehand of the night, I went; the blackbird, in the wood Talk'd by himself, and eastward grew In heaven the symbol of my mood, Where one bright star engross'd ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... birds began to sing; And wasn't this a dainty dish to set before the king? The king was in the parlour, counting out his money; The queen was in the kitchen, eating bread and honey; The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes, There came a little blackbird ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies - Without Addition or Abridgement • Munroe and Francis
... seasons of the year, many kinds of birds migrate," answered my friend; "and they are often found at an immense distance from the country where they breed. This beautiful blackbird, for instance, is never seen in Mexico except in the spring, which has caused it to be called ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... young blackbird that was hopping about, caught it with a little shriek of glee, twisted its neck, looked at the dead bird, and dropped it at the foot of a tree without ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... next from a young pig in a dish placed before Mr. Dinsmore, and the song of the blackbird from a pie Grandma Elsie was ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... flushed hotly, came into the house, and began to re-arrange the teacups with a nervous haste; for she heard Jamie's steps on the rocky road, and his voice, clear as a blackbird's, whistling gayly "In ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... Joker, A George Francis the Ubiquitous Glimpses of Fortune Gossip in a School-house Good for Something Better Gravestones For Sale Grant's Blackbird pie Greeley's Aid to Literary Effort Greeley on Bailey Great Canal Enterprise, The Great African Tea Company, The ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... with its emerald leaves and luxuriant flowers. And here and there, silvering the bushes, the elder offered its snowy tribute to the summer. All the insect youth were abroad, with their bright wings and glancing motion; and from the lower depths of the bushes the blackbird darted across, or higher and unseen the first cuckoo of the eve began its continuous and mellow note. All this cheeriness and gloss of life, which enamour us with the few bright days of the English summer, make the poetry in ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... green and bright, and rich in fruity treasure, I've heard the blackbird with delight repeat his merry measure; The ballad was a lively one, the tune was loud and cheery, And yet with every setting sun ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... Amongst the performers was a distant cousin, Cecilia Morland, a young woman rather tall and fully developed; not strikingly beautiful, but with a lovely reddish-brown tint on her face, indicative of healthy, warm, rich pulsations. She possessed a contralto voice, of a quality like that of a blackbird, and it fell to her and to Frank to sing. She was dressed in a fashion perhaps a little more courtly than was usual in the gatherings at Mr Palmer's house, and Frank, as he stood beside her at the piano, could not restrain his eyes from straying every now and then a way from his music ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... saw a big nest with rags woven in it, and I spied a corner of an embroidered handkerchief that was given me a year ago last Christmas. Papa was up in the tree, and he pulled it out and threw it down to me. I think it was a blackbird's nest. The eggs were green, with dark brown ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... them, she saw, somewhat to her alarm, a gipsy man, who was talking to little Giles. The boy, a stout fellow of six, was astride on the balustrade, looking up eagerly into the face of the man, who began imitating the note of a blackbird. Dennet, remembering the evil propensities of the gipsy race, called hastily to her little son to come down and return to her side; but little Giles was unwilling to move, and called to her, "O mother, come! He hath a bird-call!" In ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... King Grumbelo strode angrily out of the garden. He mounted his horse and allowed it to take him wherever it would, for he had no idea where the Wise Woman of the Wood lived, and one way was as good as another. Towards sundown, a blackbird hopped on to his horse's head and sang to him, and something in its song so reminded the King of Lady Whimsical's laughter that he put out his hand to caress it. No sooner did he touch it, however, than it turned into a squirrel, and scampered ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... in the garden Hanging out the clothes, Then came a little blackbird And snapped off ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... runs, smeared all the way down with birdlime. This apparatus he disposes on a hedge or cover of any kind—the little owl (Civetta) sits opposite on his pole—the birds come to tease him, and fly on the birdlime twig, when, if it be a sparrow, he is effectually detained by the viscus only—if a blackbird, pop at him goes an old rusty gun. "We sometimes catch twenty tomtits before breakfast," said a modest-looking sportsman, modestly, but not shamefacedly, showing us one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... is that mademoiselle has put dust in my milk. Do you suppose I am going to drink coffee with ashes in it? Well, I am not surprised; no one can do two things at once. She wasn't thinking of the milk! a blackbird might have flown through the kitchen to-day and she wouldn't have seen it! how should she see the dust flying! and then it was my ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... painted. The window would be open in summer, and my seat was close to it. Outside, a bee was shaking the clematis-blossom, or a red-admiral butterfly was opening and shutting his wings on the hot concrete of the verandah, or a blackbird was racing across the lawn. It was almost more than human nature could bear to have to sit holding up to my face the dreary little Latin book, with its sheepskin cover that smelt of ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... woodlands dim Their unarticulated hymn, Now walk through rippling waves of wheat, Now sink in mats of clover sweet, Or see before us from the lawn The lark go up to greet the dawn! All birds that love the English sky Throng round my path when she is by: The blackbird from a neighboring thorn With music brims the cup of morn, And in a thick, melodious rain The mavis pours her mellow strain! But only when my Katie's voice Makes all the listening woods rejoice I hear—with cheeks that flush and pale— The ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... meadow. Nebbie also knew that presently that same master of his would return again to make the circuit of the garden in the company of Bainton, according to custom,—and as he stretched his four hairy paws out comfortably, and blinked his brown eyes at a portly blackbird prodding in the turf for a worm within a stone's throw of him, he was evidently considering whether it would be worth his while, as an epicurean animal, to escort these two men on their usual round on such a warm pleasant ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... tell yer that too, Dad,' she say—Maria did. 'You didn't ought to call 'im 'Artz Mountain roller, but ha-Hartz Mountain roller. That's the way to call 'im,' she says—impident little 'ussy! But there—what's in a name, as the white blackbird said when 'e sat on a wooden milestone eating a red blackberry? Still, 'e weren't running a live-stock emporium, I expect, when 'e ask such a question as that 'ere. There's a good deal in 'ow you call a bird, or a dawg or a guinea-pig neither, if you want to pass ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... so lately in sunlight assembled, 'Mid those walks over which the laburnum-bough trembled, And the deep-bosom'd lilac, emparadising The haunts where the blackbird and thrush flit and sing, The keenest eye could but have seen, and seen only, A circle of friends, minded not to leave lonely The bird on the bough, or the bee on the blossom; Conversing at ease in the garden's green bosom, Like those who, when Florence was yet in her glories, Cheated death ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... lark is heard Above the silent homes of men; The bright-eyed thrush, the little wren, The yellow-billed sweet-voiced blackbird Mid sallow blossoms blond as curd Or silver oak boughs, carolling With happy throat from tree to tree, Sing into light this morn of spring That sang my dear ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... Sally never did know what she was about,—had no plan or purpose more than a blackbird; and when Moses was gone laughed to think how many times she had made him ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... linnets, goldfinches, ruddocks, Canary-birds, black-birds, thrushes, and divers others."—CAREW: ib., w. Goldfinch. "Of singing birds, they have linnets, gold-finches, blackbirds, thrushes, and divers others."—ID.: ib., w. Blackbird. "Of singing birds, they have linnets, gold-finches, ruddocks, canary birds, blackbirds, thrushes, and divers other."—ID.: ib., w. Canary bird. "Cartrage, or Cartridge, a case of paper or parchment ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... This folly seen, he strove with eager haste To let his leisure run no more to waste, And rose each morn at four or five o'clock, To walk abroad, and gain of health a stock; Or listen to the lark's sweet morning lay, As he rose up to greet the King of Day; Or let the lively, thrilling blackbird's song, Charm his fond ear as he walked slow along. Sometimes through well-fenced fields of new-mown hay— Breathing out fragrance—he was wont to stray; Or climb a bill with firm, elastic tread, While Sol ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... Court, speaking by Chief Justice Marshall, held that New York legislation which excluded from the navigable waters of that State steam vessels enrolled and licensed under an act of Congress to engage in the coasting trade was in conflict with the act of Congress and hence void. In Willson v. Blackbird Creek and Marsh Co.[840] the same Court held that in the absence of an act of Congress, "the object of which was to control State legislation over those small navigable creeks into which the tide flows," the State of Delaware was ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... of her engines, Slowly the boat ascended the swollen and broad Mississippi, Bank-full, sweeping on, with tangled masses of drift-wood, Daintily breathed about with whiffs of silvery vapor, Where in his arrowy flight the twittering swallow alighted, And the belated blackbird paused on the ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... SONGSTERS. The Thrush, Lark, Blackbird, and Nightingale, and one or two choristers more. These are connected with the pheasants in their speckledness, and with the pies in pecking; while the nightingale leads down to the smaller groups ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... of the sameness. Now, the sun, whose ardour was already melting into 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 ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... my foot worse, and had to go slow and take many a rest. When the gloaming came I was on the look out for a place to pass the night. On finding a cosey spot behind a clump of bushes, I took my supper, lay down, and fell asleep, for I was dead weary. The whistling of a blackbird near my head woke me and I saw the sun was getting high. My foot was much worse, but I had to go on. Taking from my bundle of provisions as sparingly as my hunger would let me, I started. It was another fine day and had my hurt foot been well I thought I would reach my mother's parish ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... whin's a dusky yellow And the road a rosy white, And the blackbird's call is mellow At the falling of night; And there's honey in the heather Where we'll make our last abode, My tunes and me together At ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... sound of the Church bell to their ears through the window, half open to admit the breezy breath of spring; the cawing of the rooks and the song of the blackbird came with it; the sky was clear and blue, the buds were bursting ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... singing, a blackbird hopped on to the parapet, looked enquiringly in, his yellow bill moving from side to side, and (p. 097) fluttered away; a lark rose into the heavens warbling for some minutes, a black little spot on the grey clouds; he sang, then sank to earth again, finding a resting ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... fresh green meadows Sparrow and blackbird sung; Above him their tinted petals The blossoming ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... He stood thus for nearly a minute. While he waited, I watched a pair of swans flit ghost-like over the silken surface of the lake. Between us and a dark bank of wood the lights of the house flamed red. The melancholy even-song of a blackbird wailed out from a shrubbery beside us. Then Herbert Brande wrote in his note-book, and tearing out the page, he handed it to me, saying: "That is the address of the ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... her father left the city, to partake of the pleasures of the country.—Scarcely had the blackbird and the thrush begun their early whistle to welcome Louisa, than the weather changed all on a sudden; the north wind roared horribly in the grove, and the snow fell in such abundance, that every thing appeared in ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... lost in deepest woods, and all the fairy echoes whispering when the leaves are motionless in the noonday heat; then followed notes, cool and soft as the drip of summer showers on the parched grass, and then the song of the blackbird sounding as clearly as it sounds in long silent spaces of the evening, and then in one sweet jocund burst the multitudinous voices that hail the breaking of the morn. And the lark, singing and soaring above the minstrel, sank mute ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... very terrible. Sharp and jarring and without premonition are the surprises of youth. This straight young woman turned, for a moment her grey eyes rested on the False Prophet and me, then a smile travelled from her red mouth out through the land of dimples, and she laughed like a blackbird. ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... quite docile, taking his food from my hand and even allowing some of his feathered companions to feed him; but in a few weeks he grew so wild and manifested such a fierce desire for the outdoor world that I was glad to carry him out to the woods and give him his freedom. A young red-winged blackbird and a pair of ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... gentlemen," said the man sturdily, "that it arn't. I says what I says, and I sticks to it, and if we only get these here blackbird catchers on the hop we'll let 'em see what ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... The blackbird sings to him, "Brother, brother, If this be the last song you shall sing, Sing well, for you may not ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... and not unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an undertaker eating ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... through the mist by day, and the moon and stars appear in their brilliancy in the evenings; now that, as if in harmony with the artistic rendering of Easter anthems by your choirs, the thrush and the blackbird twitter forth the disappearance of the foggy winter with its snow, sleet and wet; now that the flocks of fleecy sheep, which for the past four months have been in hiding and conspicuous by their absence, come forward again and spread triumphantly ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... my own hearth-stone, Bosomed in yon green hills alone,— A secret nook in a pleasant land, Whose groves the frolic fairies planned; Where arches green, the livelong day, Echo the blackbird's roundelay, And vulgar feet have never trod A spot that is sacred to ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... Blackbird with bright yellow head and breast is very abundant in some parts of the west, where they nest in large colonies in sloughs and marshes, being especially abundant in the Dakotas and Manitoba. The nests are made of strips of rushes, skillfully ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... tiger moth's deep damasked wings" before the enraptured eyes of the noble poet. These two caterpillars and a few house-flies are all I saw, heard, or felt, by day or night, of the native fauna of England, except a few birds,—rooks, starlings, a blackbird, and the larks of Salisbury Plain just as they rose; for I lost sight of them almost immediately. I neither heard nor saw the nightingales, to my great regret. They had been singing at Oxford a short time before my visit to that place. The only song I heard ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in those branches did sing, Blackbird and throstle and linnet, But she walking there was by far the most fair— Lovelier than all else within it, ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... the King and the flower! And the girl of my heart's delight, The blackbird sings in the bower, And the nightingale sings in the night A song to the ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... proves that the bird intended it should not be easily discovered. In some nests, hair, wool, and rushes are cleverly interwoven. In others, the parts are firmly fastened by a thread, which the bird makes of hemp, wool, hair, or, more commonly, of spiders' webs. Other birds—as, for instance, the blackbird and the lapwing—after they have constructed their nests, plaster the inside with mortar; they then stick upon it, while quite wet, some wool or moss to give warmth; but all alike construct their nests so as to add ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... a sheet of water. And he had on his person garments of a wonderful make; these clothes of mine are by no means beautiful like those. And his face was wonderful to behold; and his voice was calculated to gladden the heart; and his speech was pleasant like the song of the male blackbird. And while listening to the same I felt touched to my inmost soul. And as a forest in the midst of the vernal season, assumes a grace only when it is swept over by the breeze, so, O father! he of an excellent ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a relation than we have to believe that the similar bones in the hand of a man, wing of a bat, and fin of a porpoise, are related to similar conditions of life. No one supposes that the stripes on the whelp of a lion, or the spots on the young blackbird, are of any use ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... bower of trelliced boughs growing fruits single and composite, and small birds on branches sang with melodious recite, and the thousand-noted nightingale shrilled with her varied shright; the turtle with her cooing filled the site; the blackbird whistled like human wight[FN47] and the ring-dove moaned like a drinker in grievous plight. The trees grew in perfection all edible growths and fruited all manner fruits which in pairs were bipartite; with the camphor- apricot, the almond-apricot ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... love' de blackbird' nes', De baby love' his mamy's bres', An' raggy-tag, aw spick-an'-span, De ladies loves de ladies' man. I loves to roll my eyes to de ladies! I loves to sympathize wid de ladies! As long as eveh I knows sugah f'om san' I's bound to be a ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... a broken arrow, a deer-skin pegged out on the ground to dry, a bundle of faggots, a bare and blackened patch of grass, strewn with wood ashes, were tokens of recent habitation, though the reiterations of the nightingale, the deep tones of the blackbird and the hum of insects, were the only sounds ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Italian style while still a boy. At twenty-one he had already written his "Tancredi" and the opera buffa, "The Italians in Algiers." His best work (besides "William Tell") was "The Barber of Seville." Other works are "Cinderella" (La Cenerentola), "The Thieving Blackbird" (La Gazza Ladra), "Moses," and "The Lady of the Lake." These operas were mostly made up of parts of others that were failures, a la Hasse. An engagement being offered him in London, he went there with his wife, and in one season they earned about two hundred thousand francs, which ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... have many more friends among the fisher-lads. They will look upon her as a renegade to her order. The old women will suspect her, and the old men look askance at her with disapproving eyes. The girl will be a white blackbird; the properly colored birds will drive her out of the colony or pick her to death. It ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr |
