"Chirping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is especially interesting as the sole survivor of the illustrious company of poets with whom the mind instinctively associates him. Some burnt out; some died out; some dried up; but he remains the same cosey, chirping, fine-natured, and self-pleased singer, who won the love of Shelley and Keats, and roused the wrath of Gifford and Wilson. We are glad to welcome his collected poems in their appropriate attire of "blue and gold," and trust they will have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... left her and picked his way through the gardens until he came to Kenneth's wing and the stair that led to his room. Here he paused a moment, finding himself surrounded by a profound stillness, broken only by the chirping of the birds in the shrubbery. Perhaps Kenneth was not in. He half decided to retrace his steps, but finally mounted the stair softly and stood within the doorway of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... and jolly, Stupid Dulness is a Folly; 'Tis the Spring that doth invite us, Hark, the chirping Birds delight us: Let us Dance and raise our Voices, Every Creature now rejoyces; Airy Blasts and springing Flowers, Verdant Coverings, pleasant Showers: Each plays his part to compleat this our Joy, And can we be so dull ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... midnight, but far from dark. In the northern heavens a rosy glow proclaimed the midnight sun. Somewhere in the willows a robin was chirping, and from the wide bosom of the river, like the thin howl of a wolf, came the mocking cry of a loon still pursuing its finny prey. And in his little canvas tent, sitting just inside, so as to catch the smoke of the fire that afforded protection from ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... of heaven I dream, But that is a pullet and clouted cream; Myself by denial I mortify— With a dainty bit of a warden-pie; I'm clothed in sackcloth for my sin— With old sack wine I'm lined within; A chirping cup is my matin song, And the vesper's bell is my bowl, ding-dong. What baron or squire, Or knight of the shire, Lives half so well ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... which, on each such occasion, Yarb vented, and the laughter of the pleasant-faced hostess (though always followed by the words "Pray do not tease him any more") and the cheerful candle-light, and the cricket chirping in a corner, and the glass door, and the spring night which, laying its elbows upon the tree-tops, and spangled with stars, and vocal with the nightingales which were pouring forth warbled ditties from the recesses of the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the FIFTH DAY of Creation that the silence was broken by the voice of birds. We are so accustomed to the various cries of animals, the buzzing of insects, and above all to the chirping and twittering and singing of birds, that we can hardly imagine what a voiceless world would ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... pressed into the earth, and all the other ruined things, small and great, mean or lovely, that lay deep in a common grave below the rustling olives, and the still leafless vineyards; and sometimes the mere passive companion of the breeze and the sun, conscious only of the chirping of the crickets, or the loudness of the nightingales, or the flight of a hoopoe, like some strange bright bird of fairy-tale, flashing from one ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lovers suffocate me, Crowding my lips, thick in the pores of my skin, Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night, Crying by day, Ahoy! from the rocks of the river, swinging and chirping over my head, Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush, Lighting on every moment of my life, Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses, Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... dreadful to wait there while they prayed; for they were at it again for twenty minutes, I should judge, and no more interruptions from Mr. How, who, I think, was a shade uneasy. It was a clear June day, beginning to be hot; and the birds were chirping in the trees about the place—for at times the silence was so great that one could hear a pin fall, as they say. Now I felt on the brink of hell—at the thought of the pains that were waiting for my friends, at the memory of that ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... in the court, which lay in the shade, while the great red-brick clock tower was beginning to glow in the sunshine. There were some pigeons on one of the roofs preening their plumes, and a few sparrows chirping here and there, while every window visible from where the boy stood was whitened by the ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... throates beeing conduit pipt with squared narrow shels, & charged siring-wise with searching sweet water, driuen in by a little wheele for the nonce, and fed it afarre of, made a spirting sound, such as chirping is, in bubling vpwards through the rough ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... birds and beasts, and the very insects, seemed utterly to have departed. The faint hum of a single wood-chuck, which, from its confused motions, appeared to have wandered into an unknown territory, and by its uneasy action and frequent chirping, seemed to indicate a perfect knowledge of the fact, was the only object which at intervals broke through the spell of silence which hung so heavily upon the sense. The air of our traveller was that of one who appeared unable, however desirous he might be, to avoid the train of sad thought ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... confused, multitudinous chirping or twittering issued from them at intervals as long as they were moving; but sometimes they ceased from motion, ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... brilliantly-coloured parroquets, and in one opening we came upon what looked at first like a gigantic beech-tree completely alive with tiny blue-and-green parrots about the size of sparrows, climbing, fluttering, chattering, and chirping, now with their heads up, now heads down, and forming one of the prettiest ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... she grew more cheerful; though I did not feel sure that my singing cheered her so much as some happier thought that had come to her out of her own heart. Nobody but my mother, indeed, would have called my chirping singing. But as she did not seem displeased, I went on, a little more confidently, with some hymns that I ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... at him; He knows also that if he were brought into this house wounded I'd nurse him with my feeble hand as I would you, Cousin Hugh, but I would be apt to say when he got well (and here came in her little chirping laugh), 'Good sir, I have not the slightest objection to your going back to Massachusetts, bag and baggage.' By the way, he has another son who has not been much in Charleston—being educated at the North, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... making a succession of small, chirping noises. Glimpse, a short, hurried view. 3. Blur, a dim, confused appearance. 6. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... distance, right up to the horizon, all was bright and glowing. At times a slight breeze passed over, breaking up the landscape and intensifying the brightness; a sunlit vapour hung over the fields. No sound came from the birds; they do not sing in the heat of noonday; but the grasshoppers were chirping everywhere, and it was pleasant as they sat in the cool and quietness, to hear that hot, eager sound of life; it disposed to slumber and inclined ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... November night she sat over her fire; not a human being besides herself in the house; none but she had ever slept there since Willie's death. The farm-labourers had foddered the cattle and gone home hours before. There were crickets chirping all round the warm hearth-stones; there was the clock ticking with the peculiar beat Susan had known from her childhood, and which then and ever since she had oddly associated within the idea of a mother and ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... scampered and Mother Squirrel began at once to plan her housekeeping arrangements and started to gnaw a door between the two rooms with her sharp little teeth. As she was working busily at her task a shadow fell across the door and she heard a strange chirping voice say: "My love, I am sure this is just the place we've been looking for." Her heart began to beat violently with alarm. Peeping through the door she saw two large fat Newly-wed Robins standing on the porch in an affectionate attitude gazing admiringly ...
— Whiffet Squirrel • Julia Greene
... to Mary V to be precious minutes, although they would otherwise have been spent in the wearisome task of waiting until the ranch was asleep. She took her jam sandwiches and pickles and cake to her room, chirping a blithe good-night to her unsuspecting parents. Then, instead of going to bed as she very plainly indicated to those guileless parents that she meant to do, she clothed herself in her riding breeches, shirt, and coat, and was getting her riding shoes and puttees out of the ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... full of mirth, Chirping on my kitchen hearth, Wheresoe'er be thine abode Always harbinger of good, Pay me for thy warm retreat With a song more soft and sweet; In return thou shalt receive Such a strain as I ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... attain by keeping up this incessant din? If a love-song, surely the most optimistic cicada must realise that his amorous strains can never reach the ears of his lady-love, since hundreds of his brethren are all keeping up the same perpetual purposeless chirping, which must obviously drown any individual effort. Have the cicadas a double dose of gaiete francaise in their composition, and is this their manner of expressing it? Are they, like some young men we know, always yearning to turn night ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... the robins, when there were any in the neighborhood. There were plenty on the lawn around the Sagamore Club that dewy June morning, chirping, chirking, trilling, repeating their endless arias from tree and gate-post. And through the outcry of the robins, the dry cackle of the purple grackles, and the cat-bird's whine floated earthward the ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... had been a noise as of an aviary in commotion in the adjoining room. Prattling, shrill chirping, and ringing bursts of laughter could be heard. Then came a noise as of pillows and bolsters flying about, while two little fists continued pummelling the partition as if ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... course through a variety of shrubs and larches and occasional elms which lined its banks. The sun shone bright—the woodpeckers flew from tree to tree, or clung to the rails of the fences—the belted kingfisher darted up and down over the running stream—and the chirping and wild notes of various birds were heard on every side ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... the rapid travelling of a pen; on his awakening, the pen vexed him like a chirping cricket that tells us that cock-crow is long distant when we are moaning for the dawn. Great drops of sweat were on Rinaldo's forehead. He wrote as one who poured forth a history without pause. Barto's wife came to the lamp and beckoned him out, bearing the lamp away. There ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Piercing the dazzling sky beyond the search Of the acutest love: enough for me To hear its song: but now it dies away, Leaving the chirping sparrow to attract The listless ear,—a minstrel, sooth to say, Nearly as good. And now a hum like that Of swarming bees on meadow-flowers comes up. Each hath its just and yet luxurious joy, As if to live were ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... is a fanciful name applied to the beautiful and unique genus of tree-shells (Achatinella), plate XII, that inhabit the Hawaiian woods. The natives are persuaded that these shells have the power of chirping a song of their own, and the writer has often heard the note which they ascribe to them; but to his ear it was indistinguishable from the piping of the cricket. This is the song that the natives credit to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... expressed by these contrasted sounds. And we know too that dogs can understand what many of their master's words signify, as when a shepherd gives directions to his collie. We could even go further down in the scale and find in the shrill chirping of the katydid at the mating season a still more elementary combination of significant instinctive sound elements. To the comparative student the speech of man differs from these lower modes of communication only in its greater complexity, and in its employment ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... of streaky green. A toad sat and took aim with its tongue. It caught a fly at every shot. A hedgehog trotted about in the dried, rustling beech leaves. Dragonflies darted about with glittering wings. The people sat down around the luncheon-baskets. The piping, chirping crickets tried to make their ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... impatient ejaculation as he strode off. When he reached the large white house where he lived he skirted it carefully. The chirping treble of girlish voices came from the open sitting-room window, and he caught a glimpse of a smooth brown head and a high shell comb in front of the candle-light. The young minister tiptoed in the back door and across the kitchen ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... gone as far as Canal Street, and was just about to turn the corner, when he heard a low, chirping sort of whistle. All in a second his face changed its expression. The merry wrinkles melted and his mustache drew itself compactly together. But he did not turn his head or alter his gait. He walked on for several steps until he heard the whistle again, and this time its tone was sharp. ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... head, my bairn, to do the Lord's work? that is what I am wanting to know. I have been listening to you this morning singing like a bird about the house, with all the bit creatures chirping about you, and I said to myself, "What could have put it into her head to leave all her fine friends, and come and wait on the likes of us old and sick folk and ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... down Jimmie's cheeks, but he didn't say anything. Daddy didn't say anything, either. He picked Sally up and hugged her so hard that she grunted and then put her tiny hands on his cheeks and peered into his eyes, chirping at ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... projecting turret upon one of the angles of the old fortress, which, long a favourite haunt of the raven, was popularly called the Corbie's Tower. Beneath, the scene was open and lightsome, and the robin redbreast was chirping his best, to atone for the absence of all other choristers. The fine foliage of autumn was seen in many a glade, running up the sides of each little ravine, russet-hued and golden-specked, and tinged frequently with the red hues of the mountain-ash; while here and there a huge old fir, the native ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... hope that, as we have begun in one way, we may end in another; and that when we are in fact the octogenarians that we seem at present, there shall be no merrier men on earth. It is pleasant to picture us, sunning ourselves in Princes Street of a morning, or chirping over our evening cups, with all the merriment that we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... discovered extended on the ground, asleep; his hair grey, and beard grown to an unusual length.—The hour of the scene is gray dawn and birds from sky and hill are chirping.(133) ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... chicks, this is not a conundrum. So you need not be chirping out, "On their feet, of course;" or some foolish answer of that kind. The real answer is, "Japan,"—at least, so I'm told, and there are such numbers of other queer things there, that I ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... lay flat on his back on the floor, trying to trace the course of human events during the last half-hour. Against the dim suspicion that Amanda had in some way outwitted him rose the staggering evidence of that very live cricket that still hopped about the room, chirping contentedly. ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... afternoon seemed to emerge. The moist leaves shone; far down the aisles of the woods the fugitive mists, in elusive dryadic suggestions, chased each other into the distance. Although the song-birds were all silent, there was a chirping somewhere—cheerful sound! He had almost reached his destination when a sudden rustling in the undergrowth by the roadside caused him to turn and ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... accidental perambulation round a spacious room, accompanied by an only chicken, the sole surviving offspring of a numerous brood, was roused to madness by an unprovoked attack made by a voracious cowardly rat on her unsuspecting chirping companion. The shrieks of the beloved captive, while being dragged away by the enemy, excited every maternal feeling in the affectionate bosom of the feathered dame; she flew at the corner whence the alarm arose, seized the ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... down between the tent and the boat, in which some of the black crew were sleeping, while the rest were near their master's tent. Frequently I stopped to listen for any distant sounds. I could hear occasionally the cries of wild beasts far away to the eastward, and the shrieks of night birds, the chirping of crickets or other insects, and the croaking of frogs; but no human voice reached my ears. I trusted that we should be able to finish our raft early the next day, and begin the voyage down the river. With this hope, having called up one of ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... a few in his hand, and his father took them, saying that he would feed the bird for him. He squeezed out pulp of the berries, and then made a chirping sound, when the bird opened his mouth, and he fed him with the soft pulp, and threw away the skins. After giving the bird two or three berries in this way, they put him back into the nest, and gave the nest to Lucy to hold in her lap, and all the ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... then settled back in his chair, and turned, bowing, towards Monsieur Garon. The avocat's pale face flushed, his long, thin fingers twined round each other and untwined, and presently he said, in his little chirping voice, so quaint as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the ground Like wreaths of wind-caught snow, Uttering a plaintive, chirping sound, And rise and fall, and know not ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... explanation of his patron, and rising from his seat under the fence, he looked over into the garden, and listened for any sounds which might indicate an obstacle in the way of the enterprise; but not a sound could be heard except the chirping of the crickets and the piping of the frogs. With a great deal of care, he climbed to the top of the fence, ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... England the note of the nightingale suddenly ceased, to be succeeded by the mere chirping of the barn-door sparrows, the divine and melancholy voice began to be heard further north. It was during that most barren period of English poetry—extending from Chaucer's death till the beginning of Elizabeth's reign—that Scottish poetry arose, suddenly, splendidly—to be matched only ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... breath. She could foretell exactly what they would say, once they had exhausted the topic of gravel in the shoe. It would be either the new church cushions, or mock mince-pies for the sociable, or the minister's daughter's old canary that had ceased to sing or to echo the chirping of others, and yet was regarded with a devotion the parishioners could not indorse. Mariana had seen both her friends that day, and each of them had been more keenly alive to these topics ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... in the little garden were growing long. The birds were chirping sleepily to each other in the wistaria vine. The iris flowers were nodding their purple heads to the little goldfish in the pond. Everything ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... hall when, instead of singing "Auld Robin Grey," she placed herself at the piano, and, with a smiling glance over her shoulder at the children, broke out in the old bird song which first won Rose. But the chirping, twittering, and cooing were now the burden to three verses of a charming little song, full of springtime and the awakening life that makes it lovely. A rippling accompaniment flowed through it ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Small drowsy chirping met the light, And dim in lowlands far Lone marsh-birds winged their misty flight; What time Her aspect on my sight ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... trees which surrounded it. It did not seem very far away, so they sauntered on slowly, admiring the beautiful ferns and flowers that lined the pathway and listening to the singing of the birds and the soft chirping ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... herself; "only the princess has grown old in the hundred years,—but so prettily old!—and the prince would have to be a stately old gentleman to match her." She went out on the lawn; still there was no sound, save the chirping of grasshoppers and crickets. It was still the golden prime of a perfect June day; what would be the most beautiful thing to do where all was beauty? Read, or write letters? No! that she could do when the glory had begun to fade. She walked about here and there,—"just enjoying herself," ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... sun was shining brilliantly and the air was full of the chirping of birds. I felt stiff and uneasy from sleeping in my clothes, and my foot ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... gasp, travelled round the crowded room and out of the open doors to the swarms buzzing and chirping in the paddocks and the trees, and Gleeson, with obtrusive calm, paused to chalk ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... the night. She used to say I was like a bird, having something birdlike in my small dark head and the way I held it up. Certainly I remember myself as a swift little thing, always darting to and fro on tiptoe, and chirping about our chill and rather ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... fanciful mind it might seem that the robins had gradually resigned their part in the performance to the bobolinks, not one of which is heard until some of the former have concluded their songs. The little hairbird still continues his almost incessant chirping, the first to begin and the last to quit the performance. Though the voice of this bird is not very sweetly modulated, it blends harmoniously with the notes of other birds, and greatly increases the charming ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and has been in his days A chirping boy, and a kill-pot: Kit Cobler it is, I'm a father of his, And he dwells in a lane ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... after the way of sunrise and sunset in tropic lands; and even as I looked there, far on high, was a faint fleck of orange light on a tiny cloud. A few minutes later there were scores, and the birds were singing and chirping in all directions, even the sea furnishing the screams and peculiar cries of the ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... and too restless to sleep, the orphan passed the weary hours of the night in endeavoring to complete a chapter on Buddhism, which she had commenced some days before; and the birds were chirping their reveille, and the sky blanched and reddened ere she lay down her pen and locked up her MS. Throwing open the blinds of the eastern window, she stood for some time looking out, gathering strength from the holy calm of the dewy morning, resolving to ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... wilderness is only a memory. In the fall, on some long tramps, I had occasional glimpses of the little singer, solitary now and silent, stealing southward ahead of the winter. And in the spring he showed himself rarely in the underbrush on country roads, eager, restless, chirping, hurrying northward where the streams were clear and the big woods budding. But never a song in all that time; my ears were hungry for his voice as I leaped out to run eagerly to the big cedar. There were the stakes, and the tin plate, ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... them at twilight. It was far from pleasant, in that uncertain light, to be pushing through the dense trees and shrubbery of the grove beyond. I listened anxiously for the footfall of man or beast. Nothing was stirring but one harmless brown bird, chirping among the branches. I was glad when I gained the open prairie once more, where I could see if anything approached. When I came to the mouth of Chugwater, it was totally dark. Slackening the reins, I let my horse take his own course. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... her through your chirping bills, As you by me are bidden, To her is only known my love, Which from the world is hidden. Go, pretty birds, and tell her so, See that your notes strain not too low, For still methinks I see her frown; Ye ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... membrane window. After some balancing and pirouetting he smashes the window with his bill, runs his long tongue down the passageway, gulps the grub and away he flies to join his comrades down in the birches, chirping gaily ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... in the last stages of sleep that I began to feel the warm morning sun strike my face, and hear the pleasant chirping of birds and crickets. I rolled slowly over, stretched my legs and my back, and stood up, with the last remnants of a dream playing quietly in my mind. But as I came to my feet and got a clear view of where I was, I realized it was not a dream that I had had at all, but something far more sobering. ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... crimson sun warmed up the chilly northern air to a semblance of pleasant heat. The spring sights and sounds were all about; the lambs were bleating out their gentle weariness before they sank to rest by the side of their mothers; the linnets were chirping in every bush of golden gorse that grew out of the stone walls; the lark was singing her good-night in the cloudless sky, before she dropped down to her nest in the tender green wheat; all spoke of brooding peace—but Philip's ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... lay down to rest, but he sat watching the night away. There was a melancholy sleepiness in it; the mockingbirds had ceased singing; the chirping insects had become weary. Only the clock, with its regular "tick, tick," kept the watch ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... in this manner that the strings were pulled which sent Rufin on foot to Montmartre, with the sun at his back and the streets chirping about him. Two young men, passing near the Opera, saluted him with the title of "maitre;" and then the Paris of sleek magnificence lay behind him and the street sloped uphill to the Place Pigalle and all that region where sober, industrious Parisians work like ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... dinner, I am told," M. Perret, the apothecary, was saying in his high voice like that of a grass-hopper chirping in the heat. "Thildette Chalumeau told me: Pot au feu, veal cooked in a casserole in its own juice, rabbits stewed in wine, gigot roti, patisserie—and many other things. Yvonne Gaude is cooking it, but Thildette prepared most of the things with her ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... adorn the festival with their radiant presence; albeit the merry creatures played a strange cross-game on the occasion. The blissful day over, and the happy bride and bridegroom withdrawing from the banquet and the dance, the well-pleased chirping, able little tutor hopped before them, and led them to the hymeneal bower with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... no answer, and they waited in silence. Gradually distance drew soft folds over the sharp cries and muffled them, as women throw their cloaks over the sharp swords of brawlers in the hall. Once again the drone and the chirping became audible about them, and the smile of the sunshine became visible in the air. It occurred to Alwin that the peacefulness of nature was like the gentleness of the Wrestler; and there floated through his head the saying of a wrinkled ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... was walking in the pasture, he found some Grasshoppers chirping merrily in a grassy ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... pleases you." But it must be confessed that he was not singing for Freddie Firefly's benefit at all. He was singing for his own entertainment—and maybe to please some lady of his acquaintance as well. And he chose night time for his chirping because he didn't dare sing during the day. He knew that after sunset almost all the birds were asleep—except for Solomon Owl and Willie Whip-poor-will and a few other feathered folk who preferred ...
— The Tale of Freddie Firefly • Arthur Scott Bailey
... ceased to speak; and only the regular hoof-beat of the trotting horse, and the chirping of insects in the grass, broke the silence. On either hand, the sheaves standing in the fields took, in the vague moonlight, the appearance of tall white women kneeling down; and I abandoned myself awhile to those wonderful childish ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... out delightfully in a garret musical with rain and the plaintive chirping of wet birds huddled under dripping eaves. Unlike the rooms he had left below it was swept and clean. There were trunks in one corner, a great many, and a cedar chest. There should be a cedar chest. It was as essential to an old garret like this ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... the evening hymn; and, rising clear above the low breathed tones, yet in perfect harmony, came a whip-poor-will's plaintive call floating up from the darkness below; the sweet cooing of a wood-dove in a tree on the ridge, and the chirping of a cricket in a nearby crevice of the ledge. Like shadowy spirits, the bats flitted here and there in the gathering gloom. The two on the mountain's shoulder felt themselves alone above it all; above it all, yet ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... little whistle, piping as if gone mad, came from directly ahead and from very near at hand. Gongs sounded on the Martinez. Our paddle-wheels stopped, their pulsing beat died away, and then they started again. The shrill little whistle, like the chirping of a cricket amid the cries of great beasts, shot through the fog from more to the side and swiftly grew faint and fainter. I looked to ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... pleased at the trouble he had excited in that ingenuous soul. "But, come; we are near the dormitory of the little girls. The chirping birds have long left their ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... haven in the breast And calm embrace of silence, while they sing Te Deums to the night, invoking rest For busy chirping voice and tired wing— And in the hush of sleeping trees their sleeping ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... mist through a small door with iron staples, she soon reissued thence with a hencoop, and, seating herself on the steps of the doorway, and setting the coop on her knees, took between her two large palms some fluttering, chirping, downy, golden chicks, and raised them to her ruddy lips and cheeks ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... his cage at night, and when she began looking for him at bedtime to put him there, he always hid himself. She would search a short time, and then sit down, and he always came out of his hiding-place, chirping in a saucy way to make ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... dearer than her eyes, As the fair one knew her mother, So he knew her from another. With his gentle lady wrestling, In her snowy bosom nestling; With a flutter and a bound, Quiv'ring round her and around; Chirping, twitt'ring, ever near, Notes meant only for her ear. Now he skims the shadowy way, Whence none return to cheerful day. Beshrew the shades! that thus devour All that's pretty in an hour. The pretty sparrow thus is dead; The tiny fugitive is fled. Deed of spite! ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... fell upon them. She welcomed it gratefully, aware that it was in no wise due to her own effort, and spreading a hymn-book open for the first song, stooped to allow the small boy next her to look on, then lent her voice as freely as she could to the chirping chorus. As the exercises continued, she became rather more accustomed to her prominent seat, and, inspired by Dorcas Morehouse's austere countenance in the front row below her, she even turned once and looked down ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... call SIGHT? Or how the waves of the atmosphere striking upon the tympanum of the ear—those thin, invisible waves—produce the equally wondrous phenomenon of HEARING, and become the roar of the tornado, the crash of the thunder, the mighty voice of the ocean, the chirping of the cricket, the delicate sweet notes and exquisite trills and variations of the wren and mocking-bird, or the magic melody ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... what do you think of it all?" said I, chirping to the starling, who was whistling wide awake when I turned out next morning at "eight bells" after dreaming of the poor murdered pigs, on my way to the galley to get some hot coffee. "What do you think ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... chirping to us about Love and Service and how we oughta give. Give! Jesus!—we ain't got anything left to give. They ain't anything to give our wives or our children,—no, nor there ain't enough left to feed our own faces or pay for a patch on our pants! ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... and all behave accordingly, chirping and whistling, humming and buzzing, flitting and fluttering, in the unrestrained gaiety of holiday and feast-day humour. Always an impertinent, interfering rascal, the spangled drongo, under the exhilarating influence of melaleuca ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... of a new sound—a noisy chirping and harsh squeaking which seemed to fill the air, and a great cloud of small angry birds assailed the tree. For a while the uproar was immense, and the song ceased; and then, out of the heart of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... of the leaffye Memerill or Arbut full of soft small Apples and fruite, and prettye byrdes as yf they had beene chirping and singing ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... little table in the window, Mollie? I am sure this would be my favourite seat;' and Audrey took it for a moment as she spoke, and looked down at the old arches and the quiet courtyard, with its well-worn flagstones. The martins were twittering about the eaves; some brown, dusty sparrows were chirping loudly. The ivy-covered buildings round the corner were just visible; and a large gray cat moved stealthily between the arches, intent on some subtle mischief. Mr. Charrington's boys were all on the cricket-field, ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... gifts, and I began to envy Cornelia her treasure,—he was so tame, so bold, so intelligent. In that week, by whistling to him in my leisure hours, I taught him to perform almost perfectly that lively aria of Meyerbeer's, 'Folle e quei che l'oro aduna,' and also to mimic beautifully the chirping of a cricket. Well, I sent Don Juan out, and received due information of his safe arrival. The medicine acted like a charm. Cornelia wrote me a grateful letter, full of enthusiastic praises of 'her pet, her darling, the dearest, sweetest, cutest little ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... past nine he pushed back his chair and went outside. The stars had come out by the thousand, and a solitary cricket, which had in some way escaped the deluge, was chirping in the middle distance. With a sudden uplift of the heart he realized that he would see "her" on the morrow. He learned that no matter how philosophically we may have borne a separation, the prospect of its near end shows us how strong the repression has been; the lifting of the bonds makes ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... would lead me to conclude something. Eh! has that Robin been chirping out her fancies? And do you mean to say that you are struck all of a heap by the awful ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bright as Christmas day should be, and generally is. The hoar frost was frozen into fantastic shapes upon his little window, the snow was clinging to the yew branches outside and the robins were hopping and chirping over the thin crust of frozen snow that just covered the ground. The road was hard and brown as on the previous day, and the ice in the park would probably bear. Perhaps Mrs. Goddard would skate in the afternoon between the services, but then—Juxon would ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... lane he went where goldenrod was blooming and where some of the birds that had beaten him on the journey southward were flitting and chirping in the trees. A little brook that bordered the narrow, fragrant way seemed hurrying along at his side, laughing in its pebbly bed, as if to give him a welcome home. Straight ahead he went till he ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... afraid you're a chirping optimist. You'll reduce me to the depths of depression if you insist on being so bright. Rather help me to rail against ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... politeness, though there was a quizzical laugh in her eyes. "Lover? My lover?" she thought. But she did not blush, as some other innocent girls would have done. She had never talked an hour in her life to a young man, or heard from other girls their incessant chirping of "he—he," like that of birds in spring wooing their mates. Her nearest acquaintance with lovers was old Peter's rendering of Romeo or Othello. She remembered them well enough as her eye furtively ran over the jaunty ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... to sit by the road breaking stones, hardly spoke a word to Amrei; he would go sulkily from stone-heap to stone-heap, and his knocking was more incessant than the tapping of the woodpecker in Mossbrook Wood, and more regular than the piping and chirping of the grasshoppers in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... into Dark Forest, vaguely hinted at by the negroes as a place to be avoided. This Dark Forest is a large tract of scrub oak, birch and holly, with dense undergrowths of briar; the haunt of innumerable small birds that dart in and out, chirping faintly. In its depressed portions the 'forest' has degenerated into a marsh through which a sluggish stream wends it way to the distant river. Slimy reptiles bask in the warm sun and glide lazily over the black, oozy soil. At intervals the stillness ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... lakes, shrubs and reeds stood out, as we find in shallow pools. Some high hills appeared suspended in the air, veritable "castles in the air." The weather was dull, the sun sometimes hidden, and it was noon when the phenomena were most observable. At Mazeen a few small birds were hopping and chirping, and two large crows followed us upon the plateau; also a butterfly and a few flies. These are ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the saint, pitying the bird, and unwilling to disturb her, never drew in his hand, but kept it stretched out until she had brought forth her young, and they were fully fledged and flew off with a chirping quartette of thanks to the holy man, for his convaynience." Another is of "how he was once going up Derrybawn, when he met a woman that carried five loaves in her apron. 'What have you there, good woman?' said the saint. 'I have five stones,' said she. ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... of light is seen to fall on Florence, kneeling at the altar with her timid head bowed down. The morning luminary is built out, and don't shine there. There is a meagre tree outside, where the sparrows are chirping a little; and there is a blackbird in an eyelet-hole of sun in a dyer's garret, over against the window, who whistles loudly whilst the service is performing; and there is the man with the wooden leg stumping away. The amens of the dusty clerk appear, like Macbeth's, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... aunty," I called back, gathering up the reins, chirping to Fan, and taking the road to the Curtis girls' house. Certainly I had no time to spend ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... in fact, he took great pains to make the cloth as dirty as possible; and then laughing loudly, "Ho, ho, ho!" leaped on to the hearth, and began teasing the cat; squeaking like a mouse, or chirping like a cricket, or buzzing like a fly; and altogether disturbing poor Pussy's mind so much, that she went and hid herself in the farthest corner, and left him the hearth all to himself, where he lay ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... agency pushed Mr. Wesley about, bumping him against the corner of his desk, and against his door. He would ask for a conversation, but heard only "two or three feeble squeaks, a little louder than the chirping of a bird, but not like the noise of rats, ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... called ronds d'eau. The child who broke the silence "made a cross with her tongue." Where? On the ground. She licked the pavement. The dust, that end of all joys, was charged with the chastisement of those poor little rose-leaves which had been guilty of chirping. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and with half-imitations, as of the Blue-Bird, so that it seemed almost impossible to doubt that there was some specific meaning, to him and his peers, in this endless vocabulary. Yet other birds, as quick-witted as the Robins, possess but one or two chirping notes, to which they seem unable to give more than the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Cloke, at the open door of a deep stone-floored kitchen, made them shyly welcome. They lay in an attic beneath a wavy whitewashed ceiling, and, because it rained, a wood fire was made in an iron basket on a brick hearth, and they fell asleep to the chirping of mice and the whimper ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... broken tale, Singing many a tuneless song. Lavish of a heedless tongue; Simple maiden, void of art, Babbling out the very heart, Yet abandon'd to thy will, Yet imagining no ill, Yet too innocent to blush, Like the linnet in the bush To the mother-linnet's note Moduling her slender throat; Chirping forth thy petty joys, Wanton in the change of toys, Like the linnet green, in May Flitting to each bloomy spray; Wearied then and glad of rest, Like the linnet in the nest:— This thy present happy lot This, in time will be forgot: Other pleasures, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... oysters in a few dips, and opened them for the party. Along the shores wild haws and wild plums still adhered to the bushes, and the stiff-branched persimmon-trees bore thousands of their tomato-like fruit. The partridges were chirping in the corn, the crow blackbirds held a funeral feast around the fodder, some old-time bayside mansions stretched their long sides and speckled negro quarters along the inlets, half hidden by the nut-trees, and in the air soared the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Flutter away, Chirping and singing, "We cannot stay; For in the tree-tops, 'Mong the gray boughs, There is the sparrows' ...
— Finger plays for nursery and kindergarten • Emilie Poulsson
... beast! I knew you didn't mind!" shrieked Bel, snatching at the little cage from which Bartholomew dropped discomfited, and chirping to Cheepsie with a vehemence meant to be reassuring, but failing of its tender intent through frantic indignation. It is impossible to scold and chirp at once, however much one ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... trees and twittering birds. They had found out a fly-catcher's nest in the ivy above the front door, and every evening the two children used to fetch out their father to watch the parent birds catching flies and carrying them to the hungry little ones, whom they could just hear chirping up above the ivy. Olly was wild to get the gardener's ladder that he might climb up and look into the nest, but Mr. Norton would not have it lest it should frighten away the ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... old walnut-tree at the end with a broad, circular seat and a little strip of grass round it was always known as the "Master's summer study." It was here that Margaret read to him in the fresh, dewy mornings when the thrushes were feeding on the lawn, or in the evenings when the birds were chirping their good-nights, and the lark had come down from the gate of heaven to its nest in the corn-field, and the family of greenfinches that had been hatched in the branches of an old acacia-tree were all asleep and dreaming of the ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... waked in the blue room at the White Cellar, the sparrows chirping under the eaves, the smiling chamber-maid at the door saying, "Half-past seven, sir," and the rumble of the Lewes coach in ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... Crossing these, and passing through a gate, he found himself in a rural road, whose lofty hedge-rows, rich with all the varieties of wild fruit and flower, and animated with the cheering presence of the busy birds chirping from every bough and spray, altogether presented a scene which reminded him of the soft beauties of his own country. With some men, to remember is to be sad; and unfortunately for Vivian Grey, there ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield |
