"Poor-will" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the strawberry, the merriest and most rollicking of all bird songs, as that of the bluebird was the tenderest. Then came the hermit thrush, heard only in the depth of the forest, shy and remote in his life and nesting, and the whip-poor-will, in the evening. Each was a new leaf turned over in my book of life, the reading of which was my only happiness. What else, or more, could be expected of an existence hedged in by the terrors of eternity, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... our men as pride of birth could render, As violets our women pure and tender; And when they spoke, their voices' thrill At evening hushed the whip poor-will, At morn the mocking bird was mute and still, In the land where we ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... grandfather's heart, beneath his stiff Puritan garb, beats an unforgettable part. Sorrow for the lost child gave the story its name—"The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish" (then thought to mean in the Indian language, "Place of the Whip-poor-will")and it has been said to describe the settlement of the Fenimore family ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... of thing in our stern climate we knew what it meant. Our fun was over. We sat in silence, speeding down the long hills in the fading light of the afternoon. Those few solemn hours in which I heard only the wagon's rumble and the sweet calls of the whip-poor-will-waves of music on a sea of silence-started me in a way of thought which has led me high and low these many years and still invites me. The day was near its end when we got to the first big clearing. From the top of a high hill we could see above the far forest, the ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... in ghosts, spirits, haunts and conjuration. Many believe in them yet. I can never forget the fright of the time my young master, William was going off to the war. The evening before he went, a whippoorwill lighted on the window sill and uttered the plaintive 'whip-poor-will.' All the slaves on the place were frightened and awed and predicted bad luck to Master Will. He took sick in war and died, just wasted away. He was brought back in rags toward the end ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid; And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katydid; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings And earth and ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... everywhere. The night was as cool as the one when we arrived at Andersonville, the earth, meagerly sodded with sparse, hard, wiry grass, was the same; the same piney breezes blew in from the surrounding trees, the same dismal owls hooted at us; the same mournful whip-poor-will lamented, God knows what, in the gathering twilight. What we both felt in the gloomy recesses of downcast hearts Andrews expressed as he turned to ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy |
