"Twitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leaves Gold stars push; A mist of green Veils the bush. Here a twitter, There a croak! They are coming— The spring-folk! Heart, be not dumb; Let the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the crickets and katydids were chirping in the grass, and the drowsy twitter of birds came from the maples above. The moon, at its full, swung slowly over the hill, and threads of silver light came into the fragrant dusk of the garden. Now and then the moonlight shone full upon Miss Ainslie's face, touching her hair as if with loving tenderness and giving her an ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... grown tired of their endeavors to lure back the dancers, determined to join the excitement, and ceased playing. The leader laid down his violin, the pianist trailed up the key- board with a departing twitter and quit his stool. They all crossed the hall, headed for the crowd, some of them making ready to bet. As they approached the Bronco Kid, his lips thinned and slid apart slightly, while out of his heavy-lidded eyes there flared unreasoning rage. Stepping forward, he seized the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... to the east, another brightness began to grow and gather this light into its outstretched wings. In the nearest wood a soft twitter came from a single tiny bird. Another voice answered it. A different note came from a third quarter; there were three or four replies; the sky turned to blue, and began to flush; a mocking-bird ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... impulse working in them, after all; their natural way of cooling the 'sweating of the corn.'" Then we drove away through the lanes draped with birch tassels and willow wands, while bloodroot and marshmarigold kept pace in the runnels, and I heard the twitter of the first barn-swallow ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... home to her mother and me, and her mother said the same thing, and then that poor young one, she thought she wa'n't wanted nowheres, and she run. She always was as easy to hurt as a baby robin; it didn't take nothing to set her all of a flutter and a twitter; and now she's just flown out of the nest. Oh my God, I wish my tongue had been torn out by the roots before I'd said a word about her blessed little dress; I wish Fan had cut up every old rag I've got; I'd go dressed ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and covered with the tenderest verdure, through which a narrow rill stole silently; and as I set my first foot on it, up jumped, with his beautiful variegated back all reddened by the sunbeams, a fine and full-fed woodcock, with the peculiar twitter which he utters when surprised. He had not gone ten yards, however, before my gun was at my shoulder and the trigger drawn; before I heard the crack I saw him cringe; and, as the white smoke drifted off to leeward, he fell heavily, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... the mystery of the flower blossoms, the invisible riddles of Heaven and earth, of all the concealed secrets beyond the blue of the sky; all the panorama of Nature strung out in a wild, sweet forest song. Jinnie had backed against the wall as she played, and when out of her soul came the twitter of the morning birds, the babbling of the brook on its way to the sea, the scream of the owl in a high woodland tree, Lafe turned to watch her, and from that moment until she dropped exhausted into a chair, he did not ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... associations of sounds rather than their actual quality which make them pleasant or unpleasant. The twitter of sparrows is, in itself, as prosaic a sound as there is in nature, but I never hear it on waking without a feeling of inward peace. It seems to link me with some incredibly remote and golden morning, and with ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... makes sport for the rest of the gods? As also that old Silenus with his country dances, Polyphemus footing time to his Cyclops hammers, the nymphs with their jigs, and satyrs with their antics; while Pan makes them all twitter with some coarse ballad, which yet they had rather hear than the Muses themselves, and chiefly when they are well whittled with nectar. Besides, what should I mention what these gods do when they are half drunk? Now ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... swallow, oft, beneath my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... "Chirp and twitter, The dew-drops glitter, In the hours of sunny spring, I'll sing my best, Till I go to rest, With my head ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the crowds of more populous thoroughfares. Commerce is not turbulent, nor is the public consumer besieged by loud invitations to "buy." Bird-fanciers have sought the congenial tranquillity of the scene; and pigeons coo, and canaries twitter, in Vauxhall Walk. Second-hand carts and cabs, bedsteads of a certain age, detached carriage-wheels for those who may want one to make up a set, are all to be found here in the same repository. One tributary stream, in the great flood of gas which illuminates London, tracks ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... ascend. A peculiarly touching little incident of bird life occurred to a caged female canary. Though unmated, it laid some eggs, and the happy bird was so carried away by her feelings that she would offer food to the eggs, and chatter and twitter, trying, as it seemed, to encourage them to eat! The incident is hardly tragic, neither ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... black veil, was sitting by the bedside reading her book of hours; through the window could be seen a strip of blue sky crossed by some budding tree in the convent garden, little birds were beginning to chirp and twitter amongst the branches. The spring had come in these last days whilst Madelon had been lying there, and in the midst of the glad resurrection of all nature, she too was stirring and awakening to consciousness, and ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... America. It spoilt poor Hall—turned his brain. He has done little or nothing since but make-believe about criticism, talk dawdle-poetry with a lisp, write irresistible verses under the name of 'Sedley' in his own magazine, twitter sentimentally about 'little Moore,' his 'dear little Moore'—puffing himself all the time anonymously in the newspaper, while he is damning himself, with unmistakable sincerity, twelve times a year in his own magazine. ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... noonday woods you hear the foraging squirrels, And the long, crashing fall of the half-eaten nut from the tree-top; When the robins are mute, and the yellow-birds, haunting the thistles, Cheep, and twitter, and flit through the dusty lanes and the loppings, When the pheasant booms from your stealthy foot in the cornfield, And the wild-pigeons feed, few and shy, in the scoke-berry bushes; When the weary land lies hushed, like a seer in a vision, And your life seems but ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... verses make One heart more glad; if they but bring A single smile, for that One's sake I should be satisfied to sing. As Locker said, in phrasing fitter, Pleased if but One should like the twitter. ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... rain, bring the bees and flowers, Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley, Soft flow the stream thro' the even-flowing hours; Fair the day shine, as it shone upon my childhood— Fair shine the day on the house with open door; Birds come and cry there, and twitter in the chimney— But I go for ever ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... in such a twitter that she could hardly stand still, and for the first time in her life refusing, "I can't think of ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... at Thornton's end of the village. There was merely twitter of birds in the silver poplar that shaded his seat, busy chatter of swallows, who were plastering up their mud nests under the eaves of the old blockhouse across the road from him. It was so quiet that he could hear a tumult at the other ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... night-hawks and the other birds which fly in the dark, they swooped around and over him the whole livelong night; and when he began to get a little sleep, about daybreak, every bird in the place began to sing, or twitter, or scream, or crow, or gobble, or chatter, and the Prince might as well have tried to fly as sleep. About eight o'clock, a man came to feed the birds, and seeing the Prince in the aviary, he put him out instantly. The Prince was very angry, and tried to find out what this all meant; ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... sweet and tender glow of evening sunshine upon the purple-tinted sheaves standing with their heads together. The Titan-strewn rocks felt it likewise with all their heather and broom. There was no husbandman in the plain, no song of the solitary goat-girl, no creak of the plough, no twitter even of a bird. It was not yet the hour when Virgil says every field is silent, but the repose of nature ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... blue-grey rocks to the south-east; and on the precipitous weather side grow low and open scrub and dwarf casuarina. Here is a natural aviary. Pigeons and doves coo; honey-eaters whistle; sun-birds whisper quaint, quick notes; wood swallows soar and twitter. Metallic starlings seek safe sleeping-places among the mangroves, ere they repair last year's villages, and join excitedly in the chorus; while the great osprey wheels overhead, and the grey falcon sits on a bare branch, still as a sentinel, each waiting ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... would cut him off even from that. He lay with eyes open, setting his jaw against the prospect, and calling himself an old fool, while his heart beat loudly, and then seemed to stop beating altogether. He had seen the dawn lighting the window chinks, heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the cocks crow, before he fell asleep again, and awoke tired but sane. Five weeks before he need bother, at his age an eternity! But that early morning panic had left its mark, had slightly fevered the will of one who had always had his own way. He would see her as often as he wished! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thought, as he went up to his sitting-room. "I wish I wasn't all of a twitter. I wish I knew what ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... in there and even the chirping of the sparrows was softened into a faint twitter. Here at last was a place set apart, a moment of stillness when he might think ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... slipped like a brown shadow across the Plaza. Stopping at the door of the Exchange Hotel, she leaned against the low slab of petrified wood that for many a year served as a loafer's roost before the hotel doorway. Inside the building Jondo caught the clear twitter of a bird's song at daybreak, twice repeated. A pause, and then it came again, fainter this time, as if the bird were fluttering ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... cattle tread out, without any chance of bad weather to injure, the golden grain of the Sicilian harvest. Here lives the blue-breasted hermit bird in unmolested solitude; and, careless of solitude, the Passer solitarius utters her small twitter in the hollows—a few goats browse amongst the scanty thistles, and one or two dogs protect them. Snakes, hatched in vast number under the warm stones, show you their progress, by the motion they impart to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... little bird, freed from its enemy, nestled into the old man's hand, and he carried it into the house. He stroked its feathers, and told it not to be afraid, for it was quite safe; but as he still felt its heart beating, he put it into a cage, where it soon plucked up courage to twitter and hop about. The old man was fond of all creatures, and every morning he used to open the cage door, and the sparrow flew happily about until it caught sight of a cat or a rat or some other fierce beast, when it would instantly return to ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... is beautiful, in this part of the Correspondence; but much in a twitter,—the Queen of Sheba, not the sedate Solomon, in prospect of what is coming. He plumes himself a little, we perceive, to his d'Argentals and French Correspondents, on this sublime intercourse he has got into with a Crowned Head, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... there, perhaps, last year, That his little house he built; For he seems to perk and peer, And to twitter, too, and tilt The bare branches in between, With a fond, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... for birds is in the air or on the bushy tops of trees or on smooth-shaven lawns. Let them twitter and strut on the greens of golf courses and intimidate the tired business men. Let them peck cinders along the railroad track and keep the trains waiting. But really they have no right to take possession of a man's house ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... picture. Atone side lay a graveyard; birds sang in the surrounding trees, some of which reached out their giant arms and touched the log walls. Swallows had built nests under the eaves outside, and some on the rough projections inside, and joined their twitter to the songs of other birds and the rich organ accompaniment of wind ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... at the quilting bee Held at the farm on the Tappan Zee! Jovial labor with quips and flings, Dances with wonderful pigeon wings, Twitter of maidens and clack of dames, Honest flirtations and rousing games; Platters of savory beef and brawn, Buckets of treacle and good suppawn, Oceans of cider, and beer in lakes, Mountains of crullers and honey-cakes— Such entertainment ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... what is this I hear of your fine charities, master Israel?" said Ben Aboo. "Ah, do not look surprised. There are little birds enough to twitter of such follies. So you are throwing away silver like bones to the dogs! Pity you've got too much of it, Israel ben Oliel; pity you've got too much of ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... are stretched forth below, Tattered by thronging mad torrents descending; Beneath them the naked rocks downward are bending, Still deeper, the wild shrubs and sparse herbage grow; But yonder the forests stand verdant in flora And birds are a'twitter ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... good woman," replied the burly little man, with a look of mingled surprise and pity, "my name is not Thompson. It is Twitter— Samuel Twitter, of Twitter, Slime and—, but," he added, checking himself, under a sudden and rare impulse of prudence, "why do you ask my ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... in a twitter, "I am glad to see you again." She was tremulous, beautiful; she had her old wayward, ardent ways, her childish bloom and roundness had not left her, nor her sumptuousness, nor her allure—and yet I could look calmly into her face and know that she had no charm ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... we were to get out did not appear, nor for the time being did this greatly concern us; and soon after supper the camp was wrapped in slumber, undisturbed by any coyote duet, or, on this occasion, even the twitter of ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... I can't wait to hear it; and besides, you can't play bean-bags, Alexia, with that arm. Well, do go on," and Polly was in quite a twitter for the story ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... with honey. They find more, infinitely more, nectar than they can carry away. The days are long, and every hour is full of joy. But already the tide is at the turn. The nightingale's rapturous song has become a lazy twitter; the bird has done with courtship; it has a family in immediate prospect, if not one already screaming for food, and the musician has half lost his passion for music. It will come again next year. How swiftly all this life ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... to believe that Dr. Levillier was right, and that he had somehow allowed himself to become unnaturally affected and strung up. He could believe this in the air and in the dawn. For he escaped out of prison as he walked, and heard the dirty sparrows begin to twitter as they sank to the brown puddles in the roadway, or soared to the soot that clung round the ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... servant Of the blacksmith, Ilmarinen, Put the gray steed in the harness, Hitched the racer to the snow-sledge, Placed six cuckoos on the break-board, Seven bluebirds on the cross-bars, On the front to sing and twitter; Then he brought the largest bear-skin, Folded it upon the cross-bench; Brought the finest robes of marten, Warm protection for the master. Ilmarinen, forger-artist, The eternal metal-worker, Earnestly entreated Ukko: "Send thy ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... an hour or two they sat lounging and chattering in the warm shade, while the gentle wind brought them every spring scent, every twitter of the birds, every swaying murmur of the forest. David lay on his back against the log, his eyes now plunging into the forest, now watching the curls of smoke from his pipe mounting against the background of green, or the moist fleecy clouds ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... listened intently several moments, but nothing could be heard save the rustling of the leaves, as they were moved back and forth by the morning breeze, or the twitter of birds, as they started out in search of breakfast, and George ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... was early in the saddle. The sky was blue and clear, the air full of the fresh odor of earth and clover and wild flowers. The swallows were making a jubilant twitter, the larks singing on the edge of the prairie—the glorious prairie, which the giants of the unflooded world had cleared off and leveled for the dwelling-place of Liberty. In his own way he enjoyed the scene; but he could not, as he usually did, let the peace of it sink into his heart. He had suddenly ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... how it did titter and twitter and giggle and struggle! It fanned its wings as furiously as a Zizz; it was as wild as a moon-moth in a net, or a bird you hold in your hand. And all the time, it was about to die ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... morning broke. When the wind is easterly you can always see the coming morning much sooner; and about 3.30, when the birds in the sweet hedgerows were just beginning to twitter, the first soft, grey dawn stole over the ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... 'ere histin', creak, creak, creak, Your cappen's heart up with a derrick, This tryin' to coax a lightnin'-streak Out of a half-discouraged hay-rick, This hangin' on mont' arter mont' Fer one sharp purpose 'mongst the twitter,— I tell ye, it doos kind o' stunt The peth an' sperit of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... country was alive with musicians, each one giving out his own notes without any regard for the others, but apparently the score had been written for them all, since the innumerable strains made one divine harmony. From the full-orbed song from the maple by my window, down to the faintest chirp and twitter, there was no discord; while from the fields beyond the village the whistle of the meadow-larks was so mellowed and softened by distance as to incline one to wonder whether their notes were real or ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... have been no chance of their overlooking the hour. If they had been late, Miss Bird would have been spoken to, and on the distressing occasions when that had happened, it had put her, as she said, all in a twitter. ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... overjoyed at the prospect of a wedding in which she was to play a part, and flew from her aunt to Miss Bidwell and Betty, then back to her aunt again in a twitter of excitement at the combination of a journey and festivity as well. General Wolcott's letter to his sister was full of important news. As the seat of Congress was Annapolis, General Wolcott, who was a member of that body, had decided to close the manor house ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... old languor, the dreamy, hushed steps of her former method. Now she appeared to dart about the lawn like a swallow, following the calls of the birds. She would stand poised to listen, her ear would catch a twitter, and she was gone; flitting, skimming, seeming not to touch the earth. She danced to the flowers in her hand, to the trees, the sky, her face aglint with changing smiles, her skirts ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... grunting, because our hands were tied together, we contrived to struggle to our feet. The Selenites made way for our elephantine heavings, and seemed to twitter more volubly. As soon as we were on our feet the thick-set Selenite came and patted each of our faces with his tentacles, and walked towards the open doorway. That also was plain enough, and we followed him. We saw that four ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... Both nest in hollows bored out by their strong beaks, but although full of splinters and sawdust, such a habitation is far superior to the sooty chimneys in which the young chimney swifts break from their snow-white eggs and twitter for food. How impatiently they must look up at the blue sky, and one would think that they must long for the time when they can spread their sickle-shaped wings and dash about from dawn to dark! Is it ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... we might perhaps know a little more, is how they pass away direct into life itself—that is, direct into the living. That is, how many dead souls fly over our untidiness like swallows and build under the eaves of the living. How many dead souls, like swallows, twitter and breed thoughts and instincts under the thatch of my hair and the eaves of my forehead, I don't know. But I believe a good many. And I hope they have a good time. And I hope not too many ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... that woman out of the house quickly and without scandal. Not to let her know for a moment, for the blink and twitter of an eyelid, of her triumph. To eject her with ignominy, retaining one's own dignity in the meantime. Never to let her dream of an uneasiness that might have screamed, an anger that could have bitten and scratched and been happy in the primitive exercise. Was ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... it was, of brittle and erratic timbre and undulant inflection. Yet it was beautiful. It had the ring of childhood in it, though the ring was not pure golden, and at times fell echoless. The spirit of its utterance was always clear and pure and crisp and cheery as the twitter of a bird, and yet forever ran an undercadence through it like a low-pleading prayer. Half garrulously, and like a shallow brook might brawl across a shelvy bottom, the rhythmic little changeling ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... in her sleep that Abby came three times to wake her, and three times went away again, unable to spoil so perfect a picture. At last, however, the dark eyes opened of their own accord, and Marie began to chirp and twitter, like a bird at daybreak in its nest; only instead of daybreak, it was eight o'clock in the morning, a most shocking hour for anybody to be getting up. But Abby had been in the habit of spoiling her sister, who had a theory that she was never able to do ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... toward the whole human race. As he walked down into the city to transact some business he had there with his lawyer, he went out of his way to speak to little children. He gave all his acquaintances a heartier "Good-morning" than usual. He even whistled at passing dogs. The twitter of the sparrows in the trees, their fierce contentions on the grass, amused him. He leaned over the railing of the fountain in the square with the idlers, and took a deep interest in the turtles, who were baking their frescoed backs in the warm sun, as they floated about on pine boards, amid ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... any lark, Dost whet thy beak and trill From misty morn till murky dark, Nor ever pipe thy fill: Hast thou not, in thy cheery note, One poor chirp to confer— One verseful twitter to ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... discover what particular combination of Latin syllables scientists have bestowed upon this or that flitting atom in feathers. Before the student is out of bed, a new warbler-note will distract her; in the twilight some tiny bird will fly over her head with an unfamiliar twitter; each and every one will rouse her to eager desire to see it, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... was nothing ghostly in the shrill chatter as incessant as the twitter of the agitated birds, who found their night snatched from them and hardly knew whether to scold ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... blossoming lindens Doves fondly rear Their tender fledglings From year to year. With never a pausing, They bill and coo, And twitter gently:— "Do ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... swallow, neighbor swallow, Starting on your autumn flight, Pause a moment at my window, Twitter softly your good-night; For the summer days are over, All your duties are well done, And the happy homes you builded Have grown ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... through the countryside. The road lay clear before her, the emerald grass and the white may of the hedges smelled sweet from a week's rain, the clap-clap of the big bay's feet and the birds' twitter were the only sounds. She was between two villages, and only a straggling farm or two at either side broke the distant view; a grey church tower caught the sun far away. The driver's eyes never left the road, as became a good driver, but they seemed to be ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... twitter; for though he fancied his own heart said it, still his ear-drum rattled, as ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... near the toes of one of the sparrows, and he flew. There was a twitter, then a stir all over the tree; but nothing further happening, they tucked in their heads again ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... no one says a word; Not a twitter from a bird, Nor a chatter comes your way, Call again ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... Fallkill, they were at the Montagues, and Philip hoped that he would find Ruth in a different mood. But she was never more gay, and there was a spice of mischief in her eye and in her laugh. "Confound it," said Philip to himself, "she's in a perfect twitter." ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... I have wandered from the commonplace sweetness of the shorn fields, and I almost forgot to speak about the birds. Watch the swallows as they gather together and talk with their low pretty twitter. Their parliament has begun; and surely no one who watches their proceedings can venture to scoff at the transcendental argument which I have just now stated. Those swift, pretty darlings will soon be flying through the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... frog began to stir. He stretched his legs, and went down to the ditch to take his morning bath. The birds began to twitter in the wood, and the bellow of the stag echoed amongst the trees. It was on the point of dawn, and here came the Sun ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... some special bit of Starr's attire for the evening that had not arrived. She was in a twitter of expectancy about it, to be sure it pleased her, and when she heard the bell she rushed to the head of the stairs and was half-way down to see if it had come, when the servant opened the door to Lizzie ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... of snakes or scorpions, for no doubt there were plenty of both in warm weather in this dry country. When there was no wind, the silence of the nights was impressive, with no sound save the lapping of the water against the banks. Sometimes a bird in the trees above would start up with a twitter, then quiet down again. On occasions the air chambers in our boats would contract on cooling off, making a noise like the boom of a distant gun, every little sound being magnified by the utter ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... right under my guns, or nose, as land-lubbers would say. Well, well, either of you could lead a score of them a chase before you signed articles of unconditional surrender," and Mrs. Bodine leaned back in her chair and laughed in her silvery little birdlike twitter. The girls laughed with her, pleased in spite of themselves with visions that, both in their nature and by tradition, accorded with the young romantic period of life. But memory speedily began to restore gravity to Mara's face. Mrs. Bodine recognized this, and her own face grew gentle and sorrowful. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... through her nightly torture before he fell into the arms of Morpheus. She did not mind much if Polly was wakeful—she knew she should never close her eyes all night. The soft spring air floated in through the open window, and she heard the birds twitter and the frogs peep: she heard Abraham Lincoln, the old horse that she used to ride to water before she grew big enough to work, whinney over his hay; and Goliath, the young giant that had come to take his place in ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... Storm called to see the old woman at Martha's Vineyard, and he saw the matron, the house doctor, and a staff nurse as well. His adventure was known to everybody at the hospital. Once or twice he caught looks of amused compassion, and heard a twitter of laughter. As he stood by the bed, the old woman muttered: "I knoo ez it wuzn't the work'us, my dear. He spoke to me friendly and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... for the night; and a calm and tranquil silence ensued, broken only by the gentle rustle of the fitful breeze through the foliage of some firs which were dotted here and there along the precipitous sides of the ravine, the chirping of insects, the occasional twitter of a sleeping bird, or a low murmur here and there in the serried ranks of armed men which stood awaiting the order to rush forth to death or victory. The stars flooded the scene with their subdued and mellow ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... Grosbeak, which Audubon places so high on his list of minstrels, comes annually to one region in this vicinity, but I am not sure of having heard it. The young Pine Grosbeaks come to our woods in winter, and have then but a subdued twitter. Every one knows the Bobolink; and almost all recognize the Oriole, by sight at least, even if unfamiliar with all the notes of his cheery and resounding song. The Red-Eyed Flycatcher, heard even more constantly, is less generally identified by name; but his note sounds all day among the elms ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... guest would come up in snatches to the lonely watcher, and at evening, when the vesper-bell was ringing and the great grey bats slid out of their hiding-places in the belfry roof, the bright-eyed bird would return, twitter a few sleepy notes, and nestle into the arms that were waiting for him. Those were happy days for the Dark Image. Only the great bell of the Cathedral rang out daily its mocking message, "After ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... And then the twitter of fierce laughter rose, shriek on shriek, and was echoed more deeply by the crowd of ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... rather see the incessant stir Of insects in the windrows of the hay, And hear the locust and the grasshopper Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play? Is this more pleasant to you than the whir Of meadow lark, and its sweet roundelay, Or twitter of little fieldfares, as you take Your nooning in the ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over, and slippered feet were propped on the fender; of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries. Toad sat up on end once more, dried his eyes, sipped his tea and munched his toast, and soon began talking freely about himself, and the house he lived in, and his doings there, and how important he was, and what a lot ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... York's essential charm to a New-Yorker cannot express itself in figures, nor, indeed, in any adequate manner. It is the city of his soul. He loves it with a passionate dignity which will not let him swagger like the Cockney or twitter like the Parisian. His love for New York goes frequently unacknowledged even to himself, until a necessary absence of unusual length teaches him how hard it would be to lose the city of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... disposal, a perfect composure, and a freedom from all effort, that were in their way the perfection of breeding. I have seen these often in the peasantry, in the poor. It is your middle classes, with their incessant flutter, and bluster, and twitter, and twaddle; with their perpetual strain after effect; with their deathless desire to get one rung of the ladder higher than they ever can get; with their preposterous affectations, their pedantic unrealities, their morbid dread of remark, their everlasting ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... stretched out and slept. But Jolly Roger sat with his head and shoulders against the bole of a tree, and not until the light of the moon was driven away by the darkness that preceded dawn by an hour or two did his eyes close in restless slumber. He was roused by the wakening twitter of birds and in the cold water of a creek that ran near he bathed his face and hands. Peter wondered why there was no fire and ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... was intensely still. Not even the twitter of a snow-bird marred its silence. For a long time Wabi sat as immovable as the log upon which he had seated himself, resting and listening. Such a day as this held a peculiar and unusual fascination for him. It was as if the whole world was shut out, and ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... pay some of his way: and in the meantime he is a pleasant guest, for he plays the flute with little sentiment but great perfection, and endears himself by his simplicity. To me, especially; I am so weary of finding people approach me with precaution, pick their words, flatter, and twitter; but the muttons of the good God are not at all afraid of the lion. They take him as he comes, and he does not bite—at least not hard. This makes us a party of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, at table; deftly waited on by Mary Carter, a very nice ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... general to exchange a prosaic and matter-of-fact world for one of fantastic improbabilities; but it is safe to assume that the three persons who fell asleep beneath Miss Ludington's roof that morning, just as the birds began to twitter, encountered in dreamland no experiences so strange as those which they had passed through with their eyes ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... man uplift in his shroud, The white white morn is propped on the hill; And adown from the eaves, pointed and chill, The icicles 'gin to glitter; And the birds with a warble short and shrill, Pass by the chamber-window still— With a quick uneasy twitter. Let me pump warm blood, for the cold is bitter; And wearily, wearily, one by one, Men awake with the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the song, like the twitter of sparrows. His voice echoed through the trees, the religious service of a human soul in ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... this lonely hollow to the distant sleeping hills. The bursting barn in the foreground, heaped with grain that fringed its eaves and bristled from its windows and doors until its unlovely bulk was hidden in trailing feathery outlines; the gentle flutter of wings and soothing twitter of swallows and jays around its open rafters, and the drifting shadows of a few circling crows above it; the drowsy song of bees on the wild mustard that half hid its walls with yellow bloom; the sound of faintly-trickling ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... rhythmic blow of the craftsmen's hammers in the goldsmiths' workshops and on the walls of churches, the party-cries of armed factions in the narrow streets, the organ-roll of Dante's verse, the crackle of the fagots around Arnold of Brescia, the twitter of the swallows to which St. Francis preached, the laughter of the ladies listening on the hillside to the quips of the Decameron, while plague-struck Florence howled beneath them—all this and much more I heard, joined in strange unison with voices earlier and more remote, fierce, passionate, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... lifted a corner of the cloth from about that which lay so inertly under the all-hiding cloak, and choked, and stuttered, and then recovering himself, blandly led the Arab to the lift which whirled them to the first floor, leaving the occupants on the verandah all a-twitter, whilst the coffee grew cold and ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... from their congeners by having their legs covered with soft downy feathers down to their toes. They are no songsters, but twitter in a pretty inward soft manner in their nests. During the time of breeding they are often greatly ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... Mr. Gershom Mendes Seixas, minister of New York's one synagogue, Shearith Israel. The tall pink and white hollyhocks that bordered the prim paths nodded languidly in the warm September breeze. From the trees came the twitter of sparrows, now low and conversational, now high and shrill, "just like people in the synagogue," thought little David Phillips, as he strolled in his grandmother's garden on the other side of the hedge. And if David had pulled aside the white curtains of the ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... is crowing, The stream is flowing, The small birds twitter, The lake doth glitter, The green field sleeps in the sun; The oldest and youngest Are at work with the strongest; The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising; There are ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... in the cottage by Fo'c's'le Head. He had full measure o' the looks an' ways that win women. 'Twas the fashion t' fish for un. An' 'twas a thing that was shameless as fashion. Most o' the maids o' Harbor had cast hooks. Polly Twitter, for one, an' in desperation: a pink an' blue wee parcel o' fluff—an' a trim little craft, withal. But Tim Mull knowed nothin' o' this, at all; he was too stupid, maybe,—an' too decent,—t' read the glances an' blushes an' laughter they flung out ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... and when the old, Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold— Far to the left he saw the huts of men, Half hid in mist that hung upon the fen; Before him swallows, gathering for the sea, Took their short flights, and twitter'd on the lea; And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done, And slowly blacken'd in the sickly sun; All these were sad in nature, or they took Sadness from him, the likeness of his look, And of his mind—he ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... promptly on hand when the hour arrived, and seated herself in a great twitter before the machine. She began bravely enough: "My dear father," and then she paused, but slowly went on till she had completed half a page of typewritten words. Miss Dorothy did not offer any suggestions, but sat at the ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... but I beg leave to affirm, that the solemn operations of nature are subjects of contemplation, not of ridicule. Therefore I make it my earnest request to the merry fellows, and giggling girls about town, that they would not put themselves in a high twitter, when they go to visit a general lying-in of his first child; his officers serving as midwives, nurses and rockers dispensing caudle; or if they behold the reverend prelates dressing the heads and airing the linnen at court, I beg they will remember that these offices must be fill'd ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... country moult twice during the year, and those of the most brilliant colours exchange their gaudy hues for a sober grey or brown. Several varieties sing beautifully; the swallow also sings, although in Europe I have never heard it attempt more than its well-known twitter. ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... And turned the children out to play, And all the morning long they race Like madcaps round about the place. The robins on the fences sing A gayer song of welcoming, And seems as though they had a share In all the fun they're having there. The wrens and sparrows twitter, too, A louder and a noisier crew, As though it pleased them all to see The youngsters ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... faces stared, eyes blinked, and short, unhollowed lips stretched over yellow teeth, then, with a flutter of dark garments, the Chinese started away from the fixed beams and were gone into the shadow. Except for the sudden twitter of a voice, the spurt of a stone flung up against the metal of the car, they melted silently out of sight and hearing. Sick with panic, Fanny leant down upon her knees and covered her head with her two arms, expecting a blow from above. Seconds ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... hillock where she had so often scattered flowers. A squirrel leaped and frisked in the boughs above her, and she startled a rabbit from the thick grass and fallen yellow leaves: but neither these, nor the twitter of gossiping orioles, nor the harsh, hungry cry of a bluebird told her a syllable of all that had ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... neighbors were not likely to be up to notice it. So he lit his pipe and listened. There was still a light in her window; but David St. Clair did not come. Her window stood open, and Jamie listened hard to hear if she were crying. Shortly after midnight the birds in the square began to twitter, as if it were nearly dawn. Then they went to sleep again, but Jamie went ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... supporting themselves on their palms, stretched forward, open-mouthed. There was the rippling surface, carrying the shadow of the walls. Nothing came up. A cow could be heard lowing on the bluffs to her lost calf. The morning twitter of birds became an aggressive and ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Mr. Cowan put forth some questions about her qualifications, and at each answer, his colleagues were given to understand by a faint twitter of his eyes that Miss Watson ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... while the sky behind them warmed with a faint dun glow. A cock in the Beaumanoir yard woke suddenly and crowed, and the challenge was answered from La Vauroque. Jeanne Falla's pigs grunted sleepily at the disturbance. The pigeons rumbled in their cote, and the birds began to twitter in the trees about the house. And behind the white curtains there, Carette ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... there is a rustling overhead in the feathery branches of the palms in the cobwebby spaces among the leaves that give the bats of Africa a home. A twitter of angry bat voices, shrill squeaks and flutters in the darkness. Then stillness—of a sudden—and the ground trembles with a far-off throbbing as a convoy of motor lorries approaching thunders past us, rumbling over the bridge and out into ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... the lawyer rose from his bed, and at that very moment a thousand little birds, who lived in his room, began to twitter and trill. "Awake so early, little ones!" whispered the lawyer. He ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... her bower window—all these have disappeared from the actual world, and lead existence now as songs. Verses and snatches of these ballads are continually haunting and twittering about my memory, as in summer the swallows haunt and twitter about the eaves of my dwelling. I know them so well, and they meet a mortal man's experience so fully, that I am sure—with, perhaps, a little help from Shakspeare—I could conduct the whole of my business by quotation,—do all its love-making, pay all its tavern-scores, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... discover that something more than usual was working under her cap. I looked at every one of the singers, and then at the players, from the big bass-viol down to the tenor, and not a bit of reason could I perceive for the twitter the heads of our pew had certainly got themselves into. There's a pattern old lady, Prudence Clark, presidentess of the Dorcas Society,—a spinster, just Aunt Clara's age,—a woman who knows everything, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... detractors—who complain that his style is mere word-twisting, a mere inversion of the most ancient truisms—are actuated by the very basest jealousy. Let us listen, then, and be duly edified as he reads in a low, sweet voice, and the birds twitter about ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... was rapidly turning the brown, withered sward of winter into emerald. The sun shone through a slight haze, but shone warmly. The birds had opened the day with full orchestra, but at noon there was little more than chirp and twitter, they seeming to feel something of Edith's languor, as she leaned on the railing of the porch, and watched for the coming of Malcom. She sighed as she looked at the bare brown earth of the large space that she purposed for strawberries, and work there and everywhere seemed repulsive. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... comforted him strangely. His mind seemed to pass from the earthly grave to the heavenly Resurrection with a thrill of hope that matched with the sunshine, the bursting of green leaves, the twitter of the birds and the ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... fading, fading; he had heard the last sleepy twitter of the birds; he had seen one star, two and three, come out; before his steadfast, brooding stare the trees had slowly lost their green for the somber shade of night. And now it was indeed night; that hushed and awe-inspiring span of gloom when worlds most sin; when men and women do their ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... dispassionate soliloquy, became half audible, and ceased. As we gave ear to the silence, we became aware that a cool stir in the darkness was growing into a breeze. After a time, the thin crowing of game-cocks in distant villages, the first twitter of birds among the highest branches, told us that night had turned to morning. A soft patter of bare feet came along the deck, a shadow stood above us, and the low voice of the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... ceased their shuffling dance, were arrested with the spears in their hands in as many poses. Bakahenzie's scream was stoppered as if by a hand upon his mouth. In the silence their heavy breathing rivalled the twitter and hum of the forest. Birnier sketched furiously, glaring portentously from the group to the paper. Bakahenzie took a step forward, a nervous step, and yelled, "Kill!" but his voice released those of the warriors. In one loud ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... as the castle; in the long, irregular street every house is three to four hundred years old. The projecting upper stories are supported on great timber balks, often with the ends grotesquely carved. Under the projecting eaves the swallows build, and twitter about the diamond-paned windows which reflect so richly the sunset light. In the steep roofs there are dormer-windows, and the old tiles have mellowed to a deep rose-red, stained yellow with lichen, and sink into irregular planes and angles of beautiful, varied colour. There ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... every one of the beloved than when eye meets eye, heart beats responsive to heart, and the poor dumb hand seeks by varied pressure to tell the emotion within. Often then the soul, with its many organs of utterance, feels itself but a songless bird, whose broken twitter hardens into a cage around it; but even with all those organs of utterance in full play, he is yet farther from his fellow-man than when he is praying to the Father in a desert place apart. The man who prays, ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... pleasant, one, in Spring, And Nature's varied voice is tuned to sing. The swallows twitter underneath the eaves, And zephyrs stir the newly-opened leaves; The cock's loud crowing sounds on every hand, Each bird is warbling praises through the land. Young COOPER thinks it were indeed a sin If ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... I am, the first hour after release, sitting on the porch of a villa, looking across a valley at amethyst mountains, crowned with a sprinkling of blue and white snow. The noises that come to me are not raucous;—the twitter of birds, a rooster crowing, a well-pump throbbing its heart out, the shouts of some children at play, a distant school bell, with no silver in its alloy, however, the swish of a wood-sawing machine in some ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... of all on such a day are the reveries that come and go over the heart, under the shade of a noble oak that lifts its crowned head to the clouds, while birds twitter love-songs among its branches, and lovers lie dreaming ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... like a morn When waves at sunrise glitter, Or as in June the golden corn While birds above it twitter. ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... find you're a broken-down critter, Who is all of a trimmle and twitter, With your palate unpleasantly bitter, As if you'd just eaten a pill— When your legs are as thin as dividers, And you're plagued with unruly insiders, And your spine is all creepy with spiders, And you're highly gamboge in the gill— When ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... them, from Dr. Mead to Dr. Thompson, and from Bath to the iron pear-tree water. I should sooner have expected to hear that good Dr. Cocchi(405) was in the Inquisition than in prescribing to a snuff-twitter-nerve-fever! You say people tell you that leaving off snuff all at once may be attended with bad consequences—I can't conceive what bad consequences, but to the snuff-shop, who, I conclude by your lamentations, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... with alert ears turned toward the Big Mountain in front of us, listen for the dog. But not a sound is heard. A flock of snow buntings pass high above us, uttering their contented twitter, and their white forms seen against the intense blue give the impression of large snowflakes drifting across the sky. I hear a purple finch, too, and the feeble lisp of the redpoll. A shrike (the first I have seen this season) finds occasion to come ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... demanded the accomplishment of her wishes as imperiously as, in organisms of another sort, hunger claims satisfaction for the body. She was by nature a flame and a bird. The riddle of her existence was involved in two words: to blaze and to fly. Besides, she had impulse and caprice; she loved to twitter, and to laugh quietly in a corner. From the thoughtfulness into which she dropped oftener and oftener, she woke up as a gladsome and petted child; that room was filled with her quick speech, her thin voice, her gestures, almost theatrical, her laughing, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... still in that ineffable Something which they alone possessed: a casket little people will be wise in not hurrying our Father Time to open for them, if they would continue to enjoy the jewel they suppose it to contain. Finally, these energetic young ladies said their prayers by the morning twitter of the birds, and went to their beds, less from a desire for rest ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... himself justified in extracting a slightly pleasurable sensation from the transaction. He will say to himself probably, unconsciously indeed, and with no formed words, that the husband is an ass, an ass if he be in a twitter either for that which he has kept or for that which he has been unable to keep, that the lady has shewn a good deal of appreciation, and that he himself is—is—is—quite a Captain bold of Halifax. All the while he will not have the slightest intention ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... still!" and, worn out with the contest, the man from Tennessee fell asleep under the grateful shade of the nooning tree. So deep was the slumber that settled over exhausted body and troubled spirit that the gathering clouds, the sudden darkness, the distant muttering of thunder, the frightened twitter of the birds, passed unnoticed. A heavy drop of rain pierced the thick foliage and fell on his face, but the storm within had been too fierce for him to heed the ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... my thatch, Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... many, many times from the shallow drinking-place by the brook to his half-built nest. Sometimes the pair of them cling to the mortar they have fixed under the eave, and twitter to each other about the progress of the work. They dive downwards with such velocity when they quit hold that it seems as if they must strike the ground, but they shoot up again, over the wall and the lime trees. A thrush ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... The day its gray discloses, Already morning breezes blow, Already bend the eastern roses, As fresh as Ingeborg's can glow; The winged songsters mount and twitter (The thoughtless throng!) along the sky, And life starts forth, and billows glitter, And far the shades and ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... "how all Nature welcomes the sunshine, hear the birds twitter, see the cattle slowly moving on that rise. All Nature here joins in a hymn of peace, yet far beyond those western ridges three million men lay trenched through the winter and stared in hellish hate at each other across ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... wheat-sacks and water-mill. And then I get it down.... Yes, I get it down and show it to her"—this slowly and reminiscently. "And then, my lady, I look round, and there's the poor old soul, all of a twitter!" This was ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... that truckled to Dan But keep a good tongue, or you'll find to your smart From rhyming in cars, you may swing in a cart. You found out my rebus with very much modesty; But thanks to the lady; I'm sure she's too good to ye: Till she lent you her help, you were in a fine twitter; You hit it, you say;—you're a delicate hitter. How could you forget so ungratefully a lass, And if you be my Phoebus, pray who was your Pallas? As for your new rebus, or riddle, or crux, I will either explain, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift |
