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More "Chirp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... awakened a whole city household; but slumber in the country has a slumber of its own: in summer time a slumber born of night-air, laden with the odors of vegetation, and silent except for the drowsy chirp of birds that stir in vine and tree. The wife awoke first, listened for a second, and aroused her husband, who went to the window. He raised the screen and ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... have been two happier and more excited girls somewhere in Canada or the United States at that moment, but I doubt it. Every snip of the scissors, as rose and peony and bluebell fell, seemed to chirp, "Mrs. Morgan is coming today." Anne wondered how Mr. Harrison COULD go on placidly mowing hay in the field across the lane, just as if nothing were ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... September, when they were idling along by the woods, about noon, the heat was so great and the air so still that the smoke of their little fire, instead of rising straight into the air, fell like water and crept among the briars. The grasshopper had ceased its dull monotonous chirp, not the buzzing of a fly was to be heard, nor the warbling of a bird. The oxen and the cows, with sleepy eyes half-closed, their knees bent under them, were resting together under a spreading oak in the meadow, now and then lowing ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... protuberance at yer, an' go cayvortin' 'round after ther same old style, seekin' whomsoever he kin sock a bullet inter. Then you'll hate yerself, an' wish ye'd tooken my advice ter hang ther whelp, sheriff or no sheriff. You hear me chirp!" ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... gave a cheerful chirp. Everybody knew that Grandfather Mole was the champion digger of Pleasant Valley. And if he couldn't answer Mrs. Robin's question, ...
— The Tale of Grunty Pig - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... backing Munchausen in a corner and dragging his medals away from him, "that's the answer, You for the Burbs! You for the chateau up the track! Henceforth, you for the cage in the country where the daffydowndillys sing in the treetops and buttercups chirp from ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... the nightingale's origin would, of course, in classical times, give the character of melancholy to its song; and it is rather remarkable that AEschylus makes Cassandra speak of the happy chirp of the nightingale, and the Chorus to remark upon this as a further proof of her insanity. (Shakspeare makes Edgar say, "The foul fiend haunted poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale."—King ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... going to send father some books to read, and some papers, and father said he was more comfortable than downstairs, as I did not mind his pipe, and Tom has hung my linnet there,' pointing to the window, 'and if you open the cage, miss, you will see him hop all over the bedclothes, and chirp in the ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Each least chirp that rings from every nest, Each least touch of flower-soft fingers pressing Aught that yearns ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the little sparrows chirp, An' answers th' raven's call; He'll never see one want for owt, ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... with us both all the wood through, The lark, linnet, throstle, and nightingale too; Winds over us whispered, flocks by us did bleat, And chirp went the grasshopper under our feet. But now she is absent, though still they sing on, The woods are but lonely, the melody's gone: Her voice in the concert, as now I have found, Gave everything else its ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... went with us both all the Wood thro', The Lark, Linnet, Throstle, and Nightingale too; Winds over us whisper'd, Flocks by us did bleat, And chirp went the Grasshopper under our Feet. But now she is absent, tho' still they sing on, The Woods are but lonely, the Melody's gone: Her Voice in the Consort, as now I have found, Gave ev'ry ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the chickens, one and all, Crowd around her at her call! One chick, missing, peeps to say: "Chirp, chirp, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... 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 mere ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... A cricket began to chirp upon the hearth, then the branch of a sycamore, moved by the wind, struck violently against the low eaves of the house. Rand arose, put his hands to his temples, and ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... long-familiar, chanting monotones fainted and died in the portals of her ears like a nurse's song, while her sinking eyelids shut not out, but in, one tallish Rosemont senior who had risen in prayer visibly heavy with the sleep he had robbed from three successive nights. The chirp of a lone cricket somewhere under the floor led her forth in a half dream beyond the town and the gleaming turnpike, across wide fields whose multitudinous, tiny life rasped and buzzed under the vibrant heat; ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... Sammy Chirp passed a few things from his right to his left hand and searched a few pockets; passed a few things from his left to his right hand, dropped the lady's handkerchief and picked it up, smiled feebly upon everybody, and then at last produced ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... the soft twilight of a summer's morning, and the little birds had begun to chirp their matins, and the lark to brush the dew from her speckled breast, waiting for the first gaze of the sun. The old man pressed the infant closer to his bosom as he drew nigh to the steep acclivity, the solitary dwelling of the eagle. He kissed the babe; then ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... such extraordinary luxuriance that few of the sun's rays could penetrate the massy net-work of leaves and branches forming the roof of our fairy passage. Not a single bird could be seen, either seated or on the wing; nor was even a chirp distinguishable above the dreamy hum of millions of mosquitoes floating about, in a calm so profound, that it seemed as if the surface of the water had never been disturbed since the Creation. The ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... Once more, chirp of cricket, croak of frog and the rush of waters through the valley were the only sounds, and I darted across to the camp shadow. Lying flat, I began to crawl cautiously and laboriously towards my horses. One gave a startled snort as I approached and this set the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... her hands, and the party again ranged themselves on the sward. Each lady beside each gallant. "You, Mariana, if not fatigued," said the Queen, "shall take the lute and silence these noisy grasshoppers, which chirp about us with as much pretension as if they were nightingales. Sing, sweet subject, sing; and let it be the song our dear friend, Signor Visdomini, (I know not if this be the same Visdomini who, three years afterwards, with one of the Medici, conducted so gallant a reinforcement to Scarperia, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... mock other birds. Sometimes I warble and chirp at the same time. Then it sounds like two birds singing. My tongue is short and thick, and this helps me to talk. But I have been talking too much. My ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... autumn days, the creaking of crickets is heard at noon over all the land, and as in summer they are heard chiefly at nightfall, so then by their incessant chirp they usher in the evening of the year. Nor can all the vanities that vex the world alter one whit the measure that night has chosen. Every pulse-beat is in exact time with the cricket's chant and the tickings of the deathwatch in the wall. Alternate ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... hats were turned sociably towards one another, now and then, as they exchanged a syllable or two, and there was a mild luminousness of pleasure in the recesses of their pale-blue eyes. The evening darkened fast into night. The plaintive half-chirp, half-whistle of a tree-toad fell in monotonous repetition ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... distinguished from Father Dan's, there comes first the recollection of a big room containing a big bed, a big wardrobe, a big dressing table, a big praying-stool with an image of Our Lady on the wall above it, and an open window to which a sparrow used to come in the mornings and chirp. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... might have sent a couple of his lazy negroes. Or, if he had only fired a shot or two as a signal. I stopped and listened, in hopes of hearing the crack of a rifle. But the deepest stillness reigned around, scarcely the chirp of a bird was heard—all nature seemed to be taking the siesta. As far as the eye could reach was a waving sea of grass, here and there an island of trees, but not a trace of a human being. At last I thought I had made a discovery. The nearest clump of trees was undoubtedly the same which I had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... their trail. They came to more rocky ledges and walked along them for a long distance, then found and went up a wide and shallow stream. Slowly the pale light of dawn diffused itself through the forest. In the branches overhead myriads of birds began to flutter and chirp, the squirrels commenced their ceaseless chattering, and through the white mist, at bends of the stream, they saw deer coming from the fern of the forest to drink. A great hill rose before them, bare of trees, covered only ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... tone, as if it could have told a lamentable story, had it only been gifted with human language. And when he attempted to drive it away, the bird flew no farther than the bough of the next tree, and again came fluttering about his head, with its doleful chirp, as soon as he showed ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... a low, peculiar chirp, not very fierce, but bantering and confident. They quickly come to blows, but it is a very fantastic battle, and, as it would seem, indulged in more to satisfy their sense of honor than to hurt each other, for neither party gets the better of the other, and they separate a few paces and ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... his ancient and formidable hat, and in an instant seemed to come a century nearer to his neighbors. His stature was reduced, his unsociableness seemed modified; he now looked to be a smallish, friendless person, as if some ownerless dog had darted through the street, and heard a kind chirp at the tavern door, where his reception had been stones. His voice, with a little tremor in it, emboldened ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... their dismal noise; flocks of parrots and blue macaws pass overhead, the different kinds of cawing and screaming of the various species making a terrible discord. Added to them are the calls of strange cicada—one large kind perched high on the trees setting up a most piercing chirp. It begins with the usual harsh jarring tone of its tribe, rapidly becoming shriller, until it ends in a long and loud note resembling the steam whistle of a locomotive engine. A few of these wonderful performers make a considerable item in the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... because there was neither a canvas tent, a barn roof, nor the blue sky above him, but a neat white ceiling, where several flies buzzed sociably together, while from without came, not the tramping of horses, the twitter of swallows, or the chirp of early birds, but the comfortable cackle of hens and the sound of two little voices chanting the ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... looked so pretty 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 ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... risk it? She stretched out her hand towards the bird and softly and tremulously whistled to it in Hoodie's well-known call. The wavering balance of birdie's intentions was turned—it cocked its head on one side, and with a pretty chirp flew towards Magdalen and perched on her finger! Slowly and cautiously, whistling softly all the time, she slipped her hand into the cage, and quickly withdrawing it the instant birdie hopped ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... is the most beautiful of all months. Then it is, that all nature seems to awaken from its winter slumbers. The grass springs up, the little birds sing and chirp, and display their beautiful plumage. The trees shoot forth their buds, the fruitful covering of future foliage. We no longer greet each other in the warmed room, but, "Good morning," is sweetly spoken from the open ...
— The Girl's Cabinet of Instructive and Moral Stories • Uncle Philip
... wind in the trees; the gentle rustle of the grass as it is swayed by the passing breeze; the musical ripple of water as it gurgles from the spring; the piping of the quail as it calls to its mate; the twitter of little birds flitting from bush to bough; the chirp of the cricket and drone of the beetle are among the sounds that are heard and ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... we found ourselves on a lonely brae-side, sorely weary, hungry and faint in spirit; a few whin-bushes were on the bank, and the birds in them were beginning to chirp,—we sat down and wist not ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... food conserver is the chipping squirrel, or chipmunk, so named because his cry sounds like the chirp of little chickens. His method of dress is most unusual; he is brownish grey in colour, with five stripes of black and two of pale yellow running along the back of his coat; the throat and lower part of his body is snowy white. These colours occasionally vary, when the grey and ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... strawstack, a wee little mite Of a cricket went chirping by day and by night; And further down, still, a cunning blue mouse In a snug little nook of that strawstack kept house! When the cricket went "chirp," Miss Mousie would squeak "Come in," and a blush would enkindle her cheek! She thought—silly girl! 't was a beau come to woo, But I guess it was ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... their heads in their cloaks and, fasting and unfed, lay down all that night and the day, awaiting a piteous death. But apart the maidens huddled together lamented beside the daughter of Aeetes. And as when, forsaken by their mother, unfledged birds that have fallen from a cleft in the rock chirp shrilly; or when by the banks of fair-flowing Pactolus, swans raise their song, and all around the dewy meadow echoes and the river's fair stream; so these maidens, laying in the dust their golden hair, all through the night wailed their piteous lament. And there all would ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... black minstrels of the night, chirp under the log upon which you are resting, and the katydids repeat over and over again "Katy's" wonderful achievement, though just what this amazing conquest was no one has been able to discover. The cicadas join the chorus ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... With night came new voices—the hideous voices of the nocturnal swamp; the qua-qua of the night-heron, the screech of the swamp-owl, the cry of the bittern, the cl-l-uk of the great water-toad, the tinkling of the bell-frog, and the chirp of the savanna-cricket—all fell upon my ear. Sounds still harsher and more, hideous were heard around me—the plashing of the alligator, and the roaring of his voice; these reminded me that I must not go to sleep. To sleep! I durst not have slept ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... Grasshoppers chirp and crickets chir, The rich-tagged alders nod and pur, The kine bells drowse the distant pasture,— All nature waits for ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... heather. We have to move with extreme caution, for the colour of their soft feathers is scarcely distinguishable from the ground which they have selected as a table for their morning meal. Nicasio is in advance of me, tracking a company of guinea-fowls, whose melodious chirp has caught his accustomed ear. They are not yet visible, but my sporting friend has halted behind a bush, and thrown away his white tell-tale panama. This means mischief. The dark-grey clothes and sun-burnt face of my companion blend naturally ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... dreaming, content. And it was then that he caught and imprisoned in colour the nameless beauty which was the foundation for his first famous picture, whose snowy splendour silenced all except those little critics who chirp automatically, eternally, on the ruddy hearthstone of ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... around him Roger saw, emerging from the semi-dark, faces turning like his own to the summits of the mountains and the billowy splendors there. It grew so dark he could see no more. There fell a deep silence, not a sound but the occasional chirp of a bird or the faint whirr of an insect. Even the glow on the peaks was gone. Darkness, ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... there were Jews who held their heads high, let the following legend tell: Few men could shuffle along more inoffensively or cry "Old Clo'" with a meeker twitter than Sleepy Sol. The old man crawled one day, bowed with humility and clo'-bag, into a military mews and uttered his tremulous chirp. To him came one of the hostlers with ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... mosquitoes and gnats. The dark shades of the heavy forests were seldom brightened by a ray of sun. The stream was full of alligators, that lay lazily on the banks all day, and bellowed dismally all night. The chirp of a bird was rarely heard. In its place were the discordant screams of cranes, or hisses of the moccasins or cotton-mouths. When at last the carpenters' clatter had ceased, and the ram, ready for action, lay in the little river, the crew were mustered ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... flapped by the winds; red leaves on the tree tops swaying to and fro; groves picture-like, half stripped of foliage; the western breeze coming with sudden gusts, and the wail of the oriole still audible; the warm sun shining with genial rays, and the cicada also adding its chirp: structures, visible to the gaze at a distance in the South-east, soaring high on various sites and resting against the hills; three halls, visible near by on the North-west, stretching in one connected line, on the bank of the stream; strains of music filling the pavilion, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... if we could examine the brain of a person who has grown up in an environment rich in stimuli to the eye, where nature, earth, and sky have presented a changing panorama of color and form to attract the eye; where all the sounds of nature, from the chirp of the insect to the roar of the waves and the murmur of the breeze, and from the softest tones of the voice to the mightiest sweep of the great orchestra, have challenged the ear; where many and varied odors and perfumes have assailed the nostrils; ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... leant forward in his low chair. The chaffinch gave a light chirp, as if to recall him to his duty. Hadria performed it for him. The chaffinch ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the readers of YOUNG PEOPLE would like to hear about a young robin my papa found under a cherry-tree near the house. He thought I could raise him, and take him back to New York for a pet. But after I had kept him two days in my room, he would chirp so mournfully when he heard the other birds singing merrily outside that it made me feel so sorry, I took him and put him on a branch of the tree. Oh, I wish you could have seen him flap his wings with delight. Then the old birds came, ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... first robin in Hackensack, the stirring of the maple sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along Main Street in Syracuse, the first chirp of the bluebird, the swan song of the Blue Point, the annual tornado in St. Louis, the plaint of the peach pessimist from Pompton, N. J., the regular visit of the tame wild goose with a broken leg to the pond near Bilgewater Junction, the base attempt ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... a bird sang; its note was clear and bold. Its silvery trill seemed to melt into the air that was full of the soft, caressing splash of the waves. The silence that followed was broken by the nervous chirp of a cricket ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... in the mild sunlight of the autumn morning. Suddenly, great excitement in the cages. The Chaffinches chirp their rallying-cry: ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... the woods in flocks, this continual hailing is carried on between them to satisfy their desire for each other's company. A similar conversation passes between the individuals of a flock of Chickens, when scattered over a farmyard; one, on finding itself alone, will chirp until it hears a response, when it seems immediately satisfied. The call-notes of the Chicadee are very lively, with a mixture of querulousness in their tone, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the boy almost cried with laughter—and old Bob and his wife, who came running from the kitchen, DID cry.) He had a third appellation for himself—"Just little Hamilton"; but this was only when the creaky voice could hardly chirp at all and the weazened face was drawn to one side with suffering. When he told us he was "Just little ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... clouds, and of long, shady country roads winding in and out and about the hills; of lanes bordered with blackberry-bushes and sumac, clematis and wild-rose; of dewy nooks full of ferns; of the songs of birds and the chirp of insects; and it seemed to him that he must put some of all this beauty into some shape of his own creation—picture or poem, song or speech; and then came a sudden sharp twinge of pain, and the brightness ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... the grasshopper called a "shuttle"? What does the word still mean here? Who are the "elfin clan"? By whom is the sheaf tenanted? What is a reveille? Does the grasshopper chirp at night? Why is its cry ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... silence for a few minutes. The sun was sinking low in the western sky, the chirp of the birds was growing faint in the trees. She raised her colorless ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... quietly in the garden and watch the evening pass into night. Nature, in these climes, chooses her vocalists from more humble performers than in Europe. A small frog, of the genus Hyla, sits on a blade of grass about an inch above the surface of the water, and sends forth a pleasing chirp: when several are together they sing in harmony on different notes. I had some difficulty in catching a specimen of this frog. The genus Hyla has its toes terminated by small suckers; and I found this ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of another kind. When the canary bird of the heart begins to chirp, reason puts her fingers in her ears. The maiden was going to be married, but—well, it's an every-day story, and we will let ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... fashions of ten years past, and the aprons were too often frayed and darned, and relics of some former, more opulent owners. There were multitudes of children, but they were without the gambols which characterize the young of all animals; and there was not even the chirp of a winter bird about them; their faces were prematurely aged and hardened, and their bold eyes revealed that sin had no surprises for them. And every one of these showed that intense look which marks the awful struggle for food and life upon which they had just entered. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... with the sweetest look on her face encouraged the birds to fly away. The poor little creatures cowered and hesitated, not knowing at first what use to make of their new liberty; but at last one, the boldest of the company, hopped to the door and with a glad, exultant chirp flew straight upward. Then the others, taking courage from his example, followed, and all were lost to view in the twinkling of ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... has no sympathy," the fluttering gentlemen chirp. "We admire his art and intellectual brilliancy, we all admire his art and intellectual brilliancy, his dazzling technique and rare rhythmical sense; but . . . he is totally devoid of sympathy." Dear! Dear! What is to be understood by this? Should he sprinkle his pages with sympathetic adjectives, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... sweet, Was its first soft tumultuous beat! I little thought that beat could be The harbinger of misery; And daily, when the morning beam Dawned earliest on wood and stream, When, from each brake and bush were heard, The hum of bee, and chirp of bird, From these, earth's matin songs, my ear Would turn, a sweeter voice to hear— A voice, whose tones the very air Seemed trembling with delight to bear; From leafy wood, and misty stream, From bush, and brake, and morning ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... wandered dismally up and down, stretching their hands nervously as if unused to gloves. Presently they fell back, and the organ, in the hands of an amateur performer and an inadequate blower, began to chirp and hoot merrily, by which we knew the bridal ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... when the winds are singing In the happy summer time— When the raptured air is ringing With earth's music heavenward springing, Forest chirp and village chime— Is there, of the sounds that float Unsighingly, a single note Half so sweet, and clear, and wild, As ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... she; "her William will leave her and forget her. The wild rose will bend over her grave—the brook will murmur low at her cold feet—the rabbit will nip the tender grass by her tombstone at night-fall—the katydid will chirp over her, and the whippor-will will sing in vain. William will forget her! ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... heart got heavier and heavier; for it did seem hard that in a great city full of fine things, there should be none for poor Nono, Sep, and little Speranza. Just as Tessa's tears began to tumble off her eyelashes on to her brown cheeks, the cricket began to chirp. Of course, he didn't say a word; but it really did seem as if he had answered her question almost as well as a fairy; for, before he had piped a dozen shrill notes, an idea popped into Tessa's head—such a truly splendid idea ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... burying himself in its perusal. That same night, while Ishmael, having finished his day's work, was refreshing himself by strolling through the garden, inhaling the fragrance of flowers, listening to the gleeful chirp of the joyous little insects, and watching the light of the stars, he heard an advancing step behind him, and presently his arm was taken by Mr. Middleton, who, walking on ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... firmament, and then, like the tearing of a veil, the opening grew larger and the beautiful azure sky, clear and fathomless, spread over the world. A fresh and gentle breeze passed over the earth like a happy sigh, and as they passed beside gardens or woods they heard occasionally the bright chirp of a bird as ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Pussy-cat, and down went he; Down came Pussy-cat, and away Robin ran: Says little Robin Red-breast, "Catch me if you can." Little Robin Red-breast hopp'd upon a wall, Pussy-cat jump'd after him, and almost got a fall. Little Robin chirp'd and sang, and what did Pussy say? Pussy-cat said, "Mew," and Robin ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... discern. In fairyland I soar, not that I would become a butterfly like Chang. So long I for my old friend T'ao, the magistrate, that I again seek him. In a sound sleep I fell; but so soon as the wild geese cried, they broke my rest. The chirp of the cicadas gave me such a start that I bear them a grudge. My secret wrongs to whom can I go and divulge, when I wake up from sleep? The faded flowers and the cold mist make my feelings of anguish know ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... calm, and fresh, and still; Alone the chirp of flitting bird, And talk of children on the hill, And bell ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... winter had evidently been pleasant, hopped about the garden after her, occasionally seeking shelter on the lower bough of a tree if she turned, or came too near. "Don't be afraid," she called, aloud, then laughed, as with a farewell chirp and a flutter of wings, the robin took himself beyond the reach of ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... but his instruments To hasten their own swift and sudden fall, I see the beauty of his providence In the King's order: blind, he will not let His doom part from him, but must bid it stay 120 As 't were a cricket, whose enlivening chirp He loved to hear beneath his very hearth. Why should we fly? Nay, why not rather stay And rear again our Zion's crumbled walls, Not, as of old the walls of Thebes were built, By minstrel twanging, but, if need should be, With ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... between her slender fingers. Stars that looked upon her early in the night had gone down into blue abysms below the horizon, and the midnight song of a mocking-bird, swinging in a lemon-tree beneath her window, had long since hushed itself with the chirp of crickets and ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... The shrieks of pigs were trifles to the yelling of that Eskimo child's impatience. The caterwauling of cats was as nothing to the growls of his disgust. The angry voice of the Polar bear was a mere chirp compared with the furious howling of his disappointment, and the barking of a mad walrus was music to the roaring ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... pretended to growl, even at her, sometimes; it was so funny to see her look up and chirp on after it, like some little bird to whom the language of beasts was no language at all, and passed by on the air as a very big sound, but one that ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... now adieu—I've chirp'd too long, Must leave the finish of my song To some more learned bird's son; Whose mellow notes can charm the ear With no discordant chatter near; So now, dear Sir, I'm your sincere And ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... and proceeded to limp about the apartment, clearing his throat the while with that odd musical chirp which had already grown so irritating in the ears of Denis de Bealieu. He first possessed himself of some papers which lay upon the table; then he went to the mouth of the passage and appeared to give an ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... daily importuned to buy monkeys, parrots, cocks, or song birds. I took a tiny bird that was never known to so much as chirp, but he grew fond of me, would perch upon my shoulder or would turn his little head right or left as if to ask if I were pleased with his silent attentions. The last morning of my stay in Jaro I went to the window and set him free but he immediately came back and clung to my hand. I ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... it came, leaving the trenches running with water, like the gutters of a city street after a spring shower; and the men soon sopped them up with their overcoats and blankets, and in half an hour the sun had dried the wet uniforms, and the field-birds had begun to chirp again, and the grass was warm and fragrant. The sun was terribly hot. There was no other day during that entire brief campaign when its glare was so intense or the heat so suffocating. The men curled up in the trenches, with their heads pressed ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... fox had made its hole halfway down; there was still water at the bottom of the well. Here, plunged in the darkness, Angelot sat on the edge of the well and waited. There were odd little sounds about him, the squeaking of young animals, the sleepy chirp of easily disturbed birds; a frog dived with a splash into the well, and then in a few unearthly croaks told his story to his mates down there. The bracken smelt warm and dry; it was not a bad place to spend a summer night in, for any one who knew wild ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... seats, and remain quietly until the Senator from Kentucky had concluded his remarks. They did so and no word of complaint reached my ears. Hour after hour during the long summer day the speech drew itself along. At length as the shadows were lengthening and the crickets began to chirp, the speech ended and the Senator took his seat. I promptly replaced my pistols and motioned the visitors to move out. They did so on excellent time. As the last man was passing out, he quietly remarked to me, 'Mister, that was all right, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... it would be possible to keep up for hours longer. He felt no desire for sleep; on the contrary, his nerves were strained to their greatest tension, and he could hear sounds outside as if they had been magnified—the chirp of some grasshopper-like insect, or the impatient stamp of a horse in ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... was flooding in at the open lattice and, as if borne upon this shaft of glory, came the mingled fragrance of herb and flower and ripening fruit with the blithe carolling of birds, a very paean of thanksgiving; the chirp of sparrows, the soft, rich notes of blackbirds, the warbling trill of thrushes, the far, faint song of larks high in the blue—it was all there, blent into one harmonious chorus of joy, a song that spoke of hope and a fair future to such as were blessed with ears to hear. And by this, our Barnabas, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... neither Babe nor [5] me, Other play-mate can I see. Of the countless living things, 45 That with stir of feet and wings (In the sun or under shade, Upon bough or grassy blade) And with busy revellings, Chirp and song, and murmurings, 50 Made this orchard's narrow space, And this vale so blithe a place; Multitudes are swept away Never more to breathe the day: Some are sleeping; some in bands 55 Travelled into distant lands; Others slunk to moor and wood, Far from human neighbourhood; And, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... with liquor. Chirping glass, a cheerful glass, that makes the company chirp like ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... in the jail! Some people would have jumped to have had this chance of going to live in a palace, but this farmer said, "Give me my farmhouse and my quiet grave beside my mother." Elevation may undo us. A sparrow could only chirp even though in a golden cage. Barzillai felt, "A rustic, like I am, seems all right among my ploughs and cattle, but I should not fit a palace." Many a man has made himself a laughing stock because he left the place he was fitted ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... Countess had turned in hers; and long before the Abbot could get alone with Dom Galors he was sighing for his breakfast. He had, indeed, seen the dawn come in, caught the first shiver of the trees, the first tentative chirp of the birds, watched the slow filling of the shadowy pools and creeks with the grey tide of light. From brake to brake he struggled, out of the shade into the dark, thence into what seemed a broad lake of daylight. He met no living thing; or ever the sun kissed the ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... spectacle and mere picture for His own eye. How full and crowded with life, and happy life, His creation is! Go forth from inclosing city walls, and, in the summer noontide, stop in solitude and apparent silence and listen; and soon the sounds of this joyous life shall come to your ear: the chirp of the insects—the rustle of wings—the crackling of the leaves, as the blithesome airy creatures pass—the short, thick warble of the bird by your side, or its varied tune, clearer than viol or organ, from the thicket beyond—while, from time to time, the deep low of ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... stones before you, crying, "wet-feet, wet-feet!" and bowing and teetering in the friendliest manner, as if to show you the way to the best pools. In the thick branches of the hemlocks that stretch across the stream, the tiny warblers, dressed in a hundred colours, chirp and twitter confidingly above your head; and the Maryland yellow-throat, flitting through the bushes like a little gleam of sunlight, calls "witchery, witchery, witchery!" That plaintive, forsaken, persistent note, never ceasing, even in the noonday silence, comes from the wood-pewee, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... the woods to-day, a chipmunk running about, a cricket which dares not chirp," and she glanced up into the stern eyes with a merry light, "a grasshopper who takes long strides, a bee who goes buzzing, a glad, gay bird who says to his mate, 'Come, let us go to the unknown land and spend a winter in idleness, with no nest to build, no hungry, crying babies ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... was choked by her sobs. The whole valley was deserted and silent in the dazzling light and the overwhelming heat, and only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill, continuous chirp among the sparse yellow grass on ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... carried her head down, and when she ran she scuttled, and when she stopped she was absolutely still, except for her eyes, which she turned about brightly in every direction. Mrs. Cricky was looking for food for Chee, Chirk and Chirp. Usually Mr. Cricky brought home the food, but he was a member of the Marsh Grass Vesper Quartette—made up of himself, Miss K. T. Did, Mr. Frisky Frog and Mr. Tree Toad Todson, first cousin to Toadie Todson—and they had all been out very late the night before, so ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... chirp, An answers th' raven's call; He'll nivver see one want for owt, 'At's worth ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... winds are 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 {417} Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... had averted a tragedy in the sumac. He did not learn to use caution for himself; but after that, if a gun came down the shining river, he sent a warning "Chip!" to his mate, telling her to crouch low in her nest and keep very quiet, and then, in broken waves of flight, and with chirp and flutter, he exposed himself until he had lured danger ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... quite died down, leaving a suffocation in the air that is difficult to explain; but I've felt something like it on a sultry summer day when the sky is black with slowly advancing clouds, when the birds have become too awed to chirp and every leaf in the trees hangs motionless. It is in these suspenses of unpleasant expectation, when at any moment the heavens will open with a hissing smash of fire and nature be turned to fury, that one breathes heavily. There is no other feeling like it, except ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... (26. The Hon. Daines Barrington, 'Philosophical Transactions,' 1773, p. 252.); and thus she expresses her joy. Some social birds apparently call to each other for aid; and as they flit from tree to tree, the flock is kept together by chirp answering chirp. During the nocturnal migrations of geese and other water-fowl, sonorous clangs from the van may be heard in the darkness overhead, answered by clangs in the rear. Certain cries serve as danger signals, which, as the sportsman knows to his cost, are understood by the same ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... bravely, resisting to the last the tyranny of nipping winds and early frosts—took heart and brightened up; the stream which had been dull and sullen all day long, broke out into a cheerful smile; the birds began to chirp and twitter on the naked boughs, as though the hopeful creatures half believed that winter had gone by, and spring had come already. The vane upon the tapering spire of the old church glistened from its lofty station in sympathy with the general gladness; and from the ivy-shaded ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... boisterous revel of the forst geister, that meets his ear? or is it but the chirp of insects, replying ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... wise sky, the clouds that on the grass Let their vague shadows dreamlike trail and pass; The conscious woods, the stony meadows growing Up to birch pastures, where we heard the lowing Of one disconsolate cow. All the warm afternoon, Lulled in a reverie by the myriad tune Of insects, and the chirp of songless birds, Forgetful of the spring-time's lyric words, Drowsed round us while we tried to find the lane That to our coming feet had been so plain, And lost ourselves among the sweetfern's growth, And thickets of young pine-trees, nothing loath, Amidst the wilding ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... little lonesome cell, Where never romping playmates come, Nor bashful sweethearts, cunning-dumb— An April burst of girls and boys, Their rainbowed cloud of glooms and joys Born with their songs, gone with their toys; Nor ever is its stillness stirred By purr of cat, or chirp of bird, Or mother's twilight legend, told Of Horner's pie, or Tiddler's gold, Or fairy hobbling to the door, Red-cloaked and weird, banned and poor, To bless the good child's gracious eyes, The good child's wistful charities, And crippled changeling's hunch to make Dance on his ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... nature, and peace, and holy love. But now—at evening, when I see the round red sun sink quietly down behind those woody hills, leaving them sleeping in a warm, red, golden haze, I only think another lovely day is lost to him and me; and at morning, when roused by the flutter and chirp of the sparrows, and the gleeful twitter of the swallows—all intent upon feeding their young, and full of life and joy in their own little frames—I open the window to inhale the balmy, soul-reviving air, and look out upon the lovely landscape, ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the speech of the bird with a peculiar whistling sound in his throat, that was a marvelous imitation of a sparrow's chirp, and the little boy clapped his hands with delight, and insisted ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... a sombre air of homelessness about the whole region. Not a bird was flying in the air, no cattle were grazing in the fields, even the merry chirp of the crickets was no longer to be heard in the wayside ditches. The road itself was overgrown with grass on both sides, scarce leaving room for a little winding ribbon of a track in the centre, and even there the ruts, ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... very silly part. He listen'd a moment to the clatter of the carts, and the tramp of early passengers on the pave below, as they wended along to commence their daily toil. It was just sunrise, and the season was summer. A little canary bird, the only pet poor Lingave could afford to keep, chirp'd merrily in its cage on the wall. How slight a circumstance will sometimes change the whole current of our thoughts! The music of that bird abstracting the mind of the poet but a moment from his sorrows, gave a chance for his natural buoyancy to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... leaves and moss to cover her; But while he perking there did pry About the arch of either eye, The lid began to let out day, At which poor robin flew away, And seeing her not dead, but all disleav'd, He chirp'd for joy ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... and clay, And by-and-by, like heath-bells gilt with dew, There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers, Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue; And there I witnessed, in the summer hours, A brood of Nature's minstrels chirp and fly, Glad as the sunshine and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... when you'd chirp up, Tom," Beresford grinned cheerfully. "Sometimes I think I'm fed up for life on the hissing of snowshoe runners. The human voice sure sounds good up here. Yes, Great Bear Lake. And after ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... louder and more loud; the cricket's measured chirp seemed to grow more painfully audible; the wind whistled through the leafless boughs without, and in the lulls of the abating storm the low rumble of the ghyll could be heard within. What kept Ralph away? It was no unusual thing for him to be abroad from dawn to dusk, but ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... fool's bolt misses! What help? the world is full of loves; Night after night of running kisses, Chirp ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Shrill chirp the insects in the grass; All about the hoppers spring. While I my husband do not see, Sorrow must my bosom wring. O to meet him! O to greet him! Then my heart would rest ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... savanna sparrow, who sings habitually from the ground. But even he shares the common feeling, and stretches himself to his full height with an earnestness which is almost laughable, in view of the result; for his notes are hardly louder than a cricket's chirp. Probably he has fallen into this lowly habit from living in meadows and salt marshes, where bushes and trees are not readily to be come at; and it is worth noticing that, in the case of the skylark and the white-winged blackbird, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... ladies dined at Belgrave House, but to-night she was to be there. For the first time Fern's gentle nature felt jarred and out of tune. The bright little fire had burned hollow; there was a faint clinging mist from the fog outside; the cricket had ceased to chirp. Fern glanced round her disconsolately; how poor and shabby it must look to him, she thought, after the ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... excited tones of the Governor's voice. The desire was vanquished at last and the dying man had gone back in delirium to the battle he had fought beyond the river. On the hearth the resinous pine still blazed and from somewhere among the stones came the short chirp of a cricket. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... of debris, now disintegrated into one solid mass, and covered with vegetation. You can lie on the blossoming clover, where the bees hum and the crickets chirp around you, and can look through the arch which frames its own fair picture. In the foreground lies the steep slope overgrown with bayberry and gay with thistle blooms; then the little winding cove with its bordering cliffs; and the rough pastures with their grazing sheep beyond. Or, ascending ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... "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
... lifted a flint-tipped spear over his head and emitted a shriek compared to which the Rebel yell was a chirp from the weakened lungs of the dove ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... you've been pretty horrid about writing him, and he's been blue-black at not getting letters from you; but at present he is having a good time with a very jolly girl from the West who is at their hotel. Chirp him something cheerful, Canary Bird. If I were younger or Billy older you shouldn't have him. I'd have him myself. I'm not going to stand for bad treatment of him, and if those Southern boys who make love to every pretty girl they see, ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... his presence. The weather still continued calm, and I could hear any occasional sounds very distinctly. I heard what resembled the pattering of little feet, as of the rat running over the lid of an empty box; and once or twice I clearly distinguished the short, shrill cricket-like "chirp" that rats are wont to utter. I can think of no more disagreeable sound than the voice of a rat, and at that time it sounded doubly disagreeable. You may smile at my simple fears, but I could not help them. I could not help a presentiment that somehow or other my life was ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... seemed the ruling passion of his soul. With a heart open to all innocent pleasures, purged from the leaven of malice and uncharitableness, it was as natural that he should be full of mirth as it is for the grasshopper to chirp or bee to hum, or the birds to warble in the spring breeze ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farm-house away among the hills; but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bull-frog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and turning suddenly in ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... sum of nearly five thousand dollars in gold, and the Father's first thought on waking, was of this money. Rising on his elbow, he listened. Hearing nothing, he was about to lie down, when again came the sound which had disturbed him, scarcely louder than the chirp of a far-away cricket, and which, but for the utter silence of the night, would have been swallowed up in the thick depths of the adobe wall between the two rooms. Springing out of bed, he threw on his clothes, and without a thought of danger to himself, hurried out to the cloisters and the ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... to the pine-woods above Lamteng in this month, and chirp shrilly in the heat of the day; and glow-worms fly about at night. The common Bengal and Java toad, Bufo scabra, abounded in the marshes, a remarkable instance of wide geographical distribution, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... that the pitcher has the best chance to do the little turn I want done, and that's why I've come to you. Now, don't go off half-cocked! Hold hard, and hear me chirp. Every young fellow at college needs money, and they need a right good bit of it, too. I don't allow that you are any exception. Now, I reckon I can show you how you can make a smart bit of a pile and do it dead easy. Nobody but you and me will ever know you did it at all, and there isn't any ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... garden; the song-thrush warbled with a sweet melancholy his long-drawn contralto notes; the lark, like a prima donna, hovering conspicuously in mid air, poured forth her joyous soprano solo; and the robin, quite unmindful of the tempo, filled out the pauses with his thoughtless staccato chirp. Augusta, who was herself the early bird of the pastor's family, had paid a visit to the little bath-house down at the brook, and was now hurrying homeward, her heavy black hair confined in a delicate muslin hood, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the evening I sit near my poker and tongs, And I dream in the firelight's glow, And sometimes I quaver forgotten old songs That I listened to long ago. Then out of the cinders there cometh a chirp Like an echoing, answering cry,— Little we care for the outside world, My friend the cricket, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... down on the gray twilight field. And fur away over the green hills and woods of the east, the moon was a risin', big and calm and silvery. And we could hear the plaintive evenin' song of the thrush, and the crickets' happy chirp, till we got nearer the schoolhouse, when they sort o' blended in with 'There is a fountain filled with blood,' and 'Come, ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... fearful love approach his home, What time, 'mid western mists, the broad, red sun, Sinking, calls out from heaven the earliest star; And the crisp blazing of the dry Yule-log Flickers upon the pictured walls, and lights By fits the unshutter'd lattice; but, in vain, Thy chirp repeated earnestly; the flap, Against the obdurate pane, of thy small wing;— He hears thee not—he heeds not—but, at morn, The ice-enamoured schoolboy, early afoot, Finds thy small bulk beneath the alder stump, Thy bright eyes closed, and tiny ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... as he stood in the lee of a block of granite, sheltered from the cold night wind, found the pipe, and raised it to his lips to blow through the stem, but stopped short with every sense on the alert, for from below to his left he heard a light chirp such as might have been given by a bird, but which he argued certainly was not, for he knew of no bird likely to utter such a note at that time of the evening, when the flood of darkness had risen and risen till it had filled up everything high ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... all that he has written to her from Whitford under her pillow, and she kept spreading them out, and making us read them, and—oh! their braveness and cheeriness—they did quite seem to hold one up! And then poor little Minna's constant little robin-chirp of faith, "God will not let them hurt him." One could not bear to tell the child, that though indeed they cannot hurt him, it may not be in her sense! Look here! These are her slippers. She has worked on all day to finish ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thing," he cried as he sprang up, "you too are shut within this terrible prison. This thick darkness must be as hard for you to bear as it is for me." He went toward the cage, and, as he drew near, the bird gave a glad little chirp. ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... little things; I love to hear them chirp," commented Miss Katie, turning a sweet glance toward us, and then the party moved to go and we saw the six hats loaded with their mournful freight file off to the house. We followed the retreating hats with sad eyes till they were lost ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... thicket the angler glides; Or the simpler comes, with basket and book, For herbs of power on thy banks to look; Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me, To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee. Still—save the chirp of birds that feed On the river cherry and seedy reed, And thy own wild music gushing out With mellow murmur of fairy shout, From dawn to the blush of another day, Like traveller ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... latter. What distinguishes the dead from the living is their inactivity. They lie in Aralu without doing anything. Everything there is in a state of neglect and decay. The dead can speak, but the Babylonians probably believed, like the Hebrews, that the dead talk in whispers, or chirp like birds.[1163] The dead are weak,[1164] and, therefore, unless others attend to their needs, they suffer pangs of hunger, or must content themselves with 'dust and clay' as their food. Tender care during the last moments of life was essential to comparative ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... Hawaii, a fact of marked interest to science in observing environmental effect upon the differentiation of species. One of these the natives call pupu kani oi or "shrill voiced snail," averring that a certain cricketlike chirp that rings through the stillness of the almost insectless valleys is the voice of this particular species. Emerson says that the name kahuli is applied to the land snail to describe the peculiar tilting motion as the snail crawls first to ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... bobolink along the meadow-brook; indeed, the birds of all sorts were astir, skimming along the ground or rising to the sky, keeping watch especially over the garden and the fruit-trees, carrying food to their nests, or teaching their young broods to fly and to chirp the songs of summer. And from the woodshed the shrill note of the scythe under the action of the grindstone. No such vivid ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the notes of the wild birds, and imitating them patiently, til you could scarcely tell which was boy and which was bird; and if you could, the birds couldn't, for many a time he coaxed the bobolinks and thrushes to perch on the low boughs above his head and chirp to him as if he were a feathered brother. There was nothing about the building of nests with which he was not familiar. He could have taken hold and helped if the birds had not been so shy, and if he had had beak and claw instead of clumsy fingers. He ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pursued their way in silence. It was one of those cold, but calm, bright days in winter, when the very air seems filled with silent ripples of gladness; when the sunshine rests like a glory on the leafless trees, and bright-eyed robins chirp and peck the moss, as they hop from bough to bough; when the light of heaven is so over all, that even the dun-colored earth, the decayed leaves and rotten branches, which the autumn blast has laid ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... you will hear voices, and see the gleam of a red garment, and then find a man of the roads, with dusky wife and child. You speak one word, "Sarishan!" and you are introduced. These people are like birds and bees, they belong to out-of-doors and nature. If you can chirp or buzz a little in their language and know their ways, you will find out, as you sit in the forest, why he who loves green bushes and mossy rocks is glad to fly from cities, and likes to be free of the joyous ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... clear tones reciting the contest between the hum of the kettle and the chirp of the cricket; the music of his voice lending added charm to the dual song. Then there followed in constantly increasing intensity the happy home life of bewitching Dot Perrybingle and her matter-of-fact husband, John the Carrier, with sleepy Tilly Slowboy and the Baby to fill ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... closed in on the meeting as the Senior Surgeon resumed his seat. It was broken by an enthusiastic chirp from the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee. She had never attempted to keep her interest for him concealed in the bud, causing much perturbation to the House Surgeon, and leading the Disagreeable ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... sings the latest, Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest, Where the nestlings chirp and flee, That's the way for ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... wood, if it be near mid-day, or before the decline of the sun, the notes of two small birds will be sure to attract our attention. These notes are very similar, and as slender and piercing as the chirp of a grasshopper, being distinguished from the latter only by a different and more pleasing modulation. The birds to which I refer are the Red Start (Muscicapa ruticilla) and the Speckled Creeper (Sylvia varia). The first is the more rarely seen of the two, being a bird of the deep forest, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... be it but a barrel-organ or a phrase, holds one as with an hypnotic power? I confess that I can never genuinely pity a knife-grinder, however needy. Think of the pleasure of driving that wheel all day, the merry chirp of the knife on the stone, and the crisp, bright spray of the flying sparks! Why, he does 'what some men dream of all their lives'! Wheels of all kinds have the same strange charm; mill-wheels, colliery-wheels, spinning-wheels, ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... breaking of waves. And sometimes, close at hand, the branches move, a moan goes through the thicket, and the wood thrills to its heart. Perhaps you may hear a carriage on the road to Fontainebleau, a bird gives a dry continual chirp, the dead leaves rustle underfoot, or you may time your steps to the steady recurrent strokes of the woodman's axe. From time to time, over the low grounds, a flight of rooks goes by; and from time to time the cooing of wild doves falls upon the ear, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with his family a few months in the summer. That is the reason he is called the "Bird of Society." When he is merry, he gaily sings, "Conk-quer-ree." When he is angry or frightened he screams, "Chock! Chock!" When he is flying or bathing he gives a sweet note which sounds like ee-u-u. He can chirp—chick, check, chuck, to his little ones as softly as any other bird. But only his best friends ever hear his sweetest tones, for the Blackbirds do not know how to be polite. They all talk at once. That is why most people think they only ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... made a chicken, And Christ, by grace, those dead in sin doth quicken. The egg, when first a chick, the shell's its prison; So's flesh to the soul, who yet with Christ is risen. The shell doth crack, the chick doth chirp and peep, The flesh decays, as men do pray and weep. The shell doth break, the chick's at liberty, The flesh falls off, the soul mounts up on high But both do not enjoy the self-same plight; The soul is safe, the chick now ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and fresh, and still; Alone the chirp of flitting birds And talk of children on the hill, And bell ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... from your nest, And cannot find your nest again; To hear you chirp a little while I wrung your ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... out Of bulging little socks and shoes— A joy at which I could but choose To listen enviously, because I'm always just "Old Santa Claus,"— But ere my rising sigh had got To its first quaver at the thought, It broke in laughter, as I heard A little voice chirp like ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... passing her dry tongue along her lips. The officer talked a great deal, delivering a homily to her. The mother realized what pleasure he derived from his words. But they did not reach her; they did not disturb her; they were like the insistent chirp of a cricket. It was only when he said: "It's your own fault, little mother, that you weren't able to inspire your son with reverence for God and the Czar," that she answered dully, standing at ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... poems, I hear the locusts in Syria as they strike the grain and grass with the showers of their terrible clouds, I hear the Coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling on the breast of the black venerable vast mother the Nile, I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule, I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque, I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches, I hear the responsive ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... white and cold, and underneath her breath she kept crying, "Oh, will they never come—will they never come?" and a cricket somewhere about the house began to chirp. ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... night came out—the owls, and the bats, and the night moths—and looked with wonder at the queer little pair lying prone amongst the green clover. Thousands of wonderful night noises also began to awaken in all directions—the merry chirp of the cricket, the whir of the bat on its circling flight, the hum of the moths—but the children heard nothing, although the creatures of the night were curious about these strange little beings who, by good rights, ought not to be ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... the wood, if it be near mid-day, or before the decline of the sun, the notes of two small birds will be sure to attract our attention. These notes are very similar, and as slender and piercing as the chirp of a grasshopper, being distinguished from the latter only by a different and more pleasing modulation. The birds to which I refer are the Red Start (Muscicapa ruticilla) and the Speckled Creeper (Sylvia varia). The first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... of the cricket says that the pitch of the song varies with the temperature. He has even worked out a formula by which one can tell the pitch of the chirp, if he knows the temperature, or, knowing the temperature, can determine the pitch. Of course this is too mechanical; yet it indicates that there must be considerable relation between the two; the warmer the cricket the ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... regard it reverently because they cannot comprehend it. They may not know of all this,—how their guardian bends over their pillow nightly, and lets no word of their careless talk drop unheeded, hails every brightening gleam of reason, and records every sob of infant grief; and every chirp of childish glee,—they may not know this, because they could not understand it aright, and each little heart would be inflated with pride, each little mind would lose the grace and purity of its unconsciousness: but the guardianship is not the less real, constant, and tender, for ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Pauline followed the flight of his thought with difficulty. After the third phrase anything read aloud made her feel drowsy, and the affairs of her household took on an absurd importance; one might say that the voice of the reader made them chirp like birds in a cage. It was in vain that she tried to follow on Clerambault's lips, and even to imitate with her own, the words whose meaning she no longer understood; her eye mechanically noted a hole in the cloth, her fingers picked at the crumbs on the ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... lantern. The meadows, ever breathing freshness, are now saturated with dew, and I feel the damp of the night air on my heated limbs. A Cicada, a fellow-lodger in the house, attracts me by its domestic chirp back into my bedroom, and is there my social companion, while, in a happy dreaming state, I await the coming day, kept half awake by the buzz of the mosquites, the kettle-drum croak of the bull-frog, or the complaining ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... 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 sky in her ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... all dis, Mr. Lion, he shake he mane en say he gwine ter larrup Mr. Man anyhow. He went on down de big road, he did, en bimeby he come up wid Mr. Jack Sparrer, settin' up in de top er de tree. Mr. Jack Sparrer, he whirl 'roun' en chirp, en flutter 'bout up dar, en ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... boys, in the bow of the whaleboat, made the peace sign with his palm extended outward and weaponless, and began to chirp in the unknown Su'u dialect. Van Horn held his aim and waited. The dandy lowered his Snider, and breath came more easily to the chests of ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... four the next morning, the robin in the nest above Mary's window stretched out his left wing, opened one eye, and gave a short and rather drowsy chirp, which broke up his night's rest and restored him to the full consciousness that he was a bird with wings and feathers, with a large apple-tree to live in, and all heaven for an estate,—and so, on these fortunate premises, he broke into a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... breast. Yet how ecstatically sweet, Was its first soft tumultuous beat! I little thought that beat could be The harbinger of misery; And daily, when the morning beam Dawned earliest on wood and stream, When, from each brake and bush were heard, The hum of bee, and chirp of bird, From these, earth's matin songs, my ear Would turn, a sweeter voice to hear— A voice, whose tones the very air Seemed trembling with delight to bear; From leafy wood, and misty stream, ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... of all creation blest, Sweet insect, that delight'st to rest Upon the wild wood's leafy tops, To drink the dew that morning drops, And chirp thy song with such a glee, That happiest kings may envy thee. Whatever decks the velvet field, Whate'er the circling seasons yield, Whatever buds, whatever blows, For thee it buds, for thee it grows. Nor yet art thou the peasant's fear, To him thy friendly notes are dear; For thou art mild as matin ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... to speak to his father and Ethel, whose voices he heard in low conversation on the front porch. They ceased for a moment, as though the speakers had heard the sound of his footsteps, and paused to listen. The night was still, so still that the chirp of a cricket under the piazza sounded loudly. It was a cheerful little note, and Donald hated it for its cheer, and started hastily away ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... culverts and bridges to prevent the damming of the waters and the danger of washing away the road. The jungle is full of busy life. The air is thick with the low, murmuring hum of busy insect-life, birds shriek, whistle, call, hoot, peep, chirp, and sing among the intertwining branches, and frogs croak hoarsely in the watery shallows beneath. Noises, too, are heard, that would puzzle, I venture to say, many a scholarly, book-wise and specimen-wise naturalist ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... wae, on yon snaw-cover'd thorn, Mournfu' and lane is the chirp o' the Robin, He looks through the storm, but nae shelter can see; Come, Robin, and join the sad concert wi' me. Oh, lang may I look o'er yon foam-crested billow, And Hope dies away like a storm-broken willow; Sweet Robin, the blossom again ye may see, But ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... late that night in the East Chamber; and laid schemes and discussed movements and probabilities and the like, until the dawn began to glimmer through the cracks of the shutters and the birds to chirp in the eaves; and Sir Nicholas at last carried to bed with him an anxious and a heavy heart. Mr. Stewart, however, did not seem so greatly disturbed; possibly because on the one side he had not others dearer to him than his own life involved ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... fragrance, as they were flapped by the winds; red leaves on the tree tops swaying to and fro; groves picture-like, half stripped of foliage; the western breeze coming with sudden gusts, and the wail of the oriole still audible; the warm sun shining with genial rays, and the cicada also adding its chirp: structures, visible to the gaze at a distance in the South-east, soaring high on various sites and resting against the hills; three halls, visible near by on the North-west, stretching in one connected line, on the bank of the stream; strains of music filling the pavilion, imbued with an unwonted ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... outcropping rock. He stood silent a few minutes—quite motionless—as if he were listening to the forest and the night. But there was utter stillness. There was not even a breeze to stir a leaf, or a half-wakened bird to sleepily chirp. ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... makes the wicked but his instruments To hasten their own swift and sudden fall, I see the beauty of his providence In the King's order: blind, he will not let His doom part from him, but must bid it stay 120 As 't were a cricket, whose enlivening chirp He loved to hear beneath his very hearth. Why should we fly? Nay, why not rather stay And rear again our Zion's crumbled walls, Not, as of old the walls of Thebes were built, By minstrel twanging, but, if need should be, With the more potent music of our swords? Think'st thou that score ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... few leaves late in Autumn, when other trees shed theirs, and drooping in the effort, lingers on all crackled and smoke-dried till the following season, when it repeats the same process; and perhaps, if the weather be particularly genial, even tempts some rheumatic sparrow to chirp in ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... George came close behind them. And around him Roger saw, emerging from the semi-dark, faces turning like his own to the summits of the mountains and the billowy splendors there. It grew so dark he could see no more. There fell a deep silence, not a sound but the occasional chirp of a bird or the faint whirr of an insect. Even the glow on the peaks was ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... Heard flatterers of a woman's singing say Her voice was silvery:—to compare 't with gold Is sure a new conceit. But, sir, you praise My singing, who have not yet heard me sing." And he: "I take it that a woman's speech Is to her singing what a bird's low chirp Is to its singing: and if Philomel Chirp in the hearing of the woodman, he Knows 'tis the nightingale that chirps, and so Expects nought meaner than its sovereign song. Madam, 'tis thus your speaking-voice hath given ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... moulded ample curves of air. He shut his eyes tight in delight, his body shrinking, and blew a sweet chirp from his lips. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... near the Sixth Avenue entrance. The sun was rising. It was the first sunrise he had ever seen in New York. The effect on his imagination was startling. The red rays streaming through the park and the chirp of birds in the bushes were magic touches that transformed the world. He was back again in the South, where Nature is the one big fact of life, and the memories of the girl he had learned to love beside its beautiful waters again ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... the tables were clear'd with the utmost decorum. When they gaily had caroll'd till peep of the dawn, The Lark gently hinted, 'twas time to be gone; And his clarion, so shrill, gave the company warning, That Chanticleer scented the gales of the morning. So they chirp'd, in full chorus, a friendly adieu; And, with hearts beating light as the plumage that grew On their merry-thought bosoms, away they ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... Before the ancient chimney-place. Upon the painted tiles are mosques And minarets, and here and there A blind muezzin lifts his hands, And calls the faithful unto prayer. Folded in idle, twilight dreams, I hear the hemlock chirp and sing, As if within its ruddy core It held the happy heart of Spring. Ferdousi never sang like that, Nor Saadi grave, nor Hafiz gay; I lounge, and blow white rings of smoke, And watch them rise ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... blows. They had agreed to collaborate. Balzac was to contribute the scenario, Gautier the dialogue. One morning Balzac came with the scenario of the first act. "Here it is, Gautier! I suppose you can let me have it back finished by to-morrow afternoon?" And the old gentleman would chirp along in this fashion till midnight. I would then accompany him to his rooms in the Quartier Montmartre—rooms high up on the fifth floor—where, between two pictures, supposed to be by Angelica Kauffmann, M. Duval had ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... His dried lips tried to laugh. "Ef it ain't the dicky-bird!" The bird looked at him. "Ef that doesn't beat—" but he could not think what it "beat." The bird cocked its head. "Ain't ye afeard o' me?" It gave a feeble chirp. "Well, I'm damned!" said the man, and after this mild expression of his feelings, forgot to curse again. He even began to eye the island with a vague questioning wonder, as if asking himself what means might be thought ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... here; Warm on my cheek the sunshine burns, And fledged birds chirp, and far and near Floats the strange sweetness of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... the sunset and see into the streets of heaven. He is dressed in black, and is rather more clerical in appearance than most English curates are nowadays; but he does not wear the collar and waistcoat of a parish priest. He is roused from his trance by the chirp of an insect from a tuft of grass in a crevice of the stone. His face relaxes: he turns quietly, and gravely takes off his hat to the tuft, addressing the insect in a brogue which is the jocular ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... the master wrote. He heard the scratching of his pen on the paper, and the patter of rain-drops outside, for the night was stormy. There was another sound in the shop, softer than fall of the rain, and finer than chirp of a cricket, or humming sound of a mosquito: the toys in the window ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the rock beside the shining things it coveted, it dropped dried and shriveled fruit. Dalgard's fingers separated two of the gleaming marbles, rolled them toward the animal, who scooped them up with a chirp of delight. But it did not leave. Instead it peered intently at the rest of the beads. Hoppers had their own form of intelligence, though it might not compare with that of humans. And this one was enterprising. In the end it delivered three more loads of fruit from its burrow ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... money and his wife's, and, being after his natural term of days laid away in a tomb at Mt. Auburn, ends his existence without making any more impression upon the world's history than a falling rose leaf, or an August cricket's faintest chirp." ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... tree the sparrows made their home; the rustling of the leaves and twigs commingled with the chirp and joyous noise of the birds; in the eaves of the house the doves had built their nests, and the place was filled with their speech, cooing and calling to each other, entreating and discussing as is customary between doves, ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... couple of his lazy negroes. Or, if he had only fired a shot or two as a signal. I stopped and listened, in hopes of hearing the crack of a rifle. But the deepest stillness reigned around, scarcely the chirp of a bird was heard—all nature seemed to be taking the siesta. As far as the eye could reach was a waving sea of grass, here and there an island of trees, but not a trace of a human being. At last I thought I had made a discovery. The nearest clump of trees was undoubtedly the same ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... peered, with cheek on the cool leaves pressed, And spied a bird upon a nest: Two eyes she had beseeching me Meekly and brave, and her brown breast Throbbed hot and quick above her heart; And then she opened her dagger bill,— 'Twas not a chirp, as sparrows pipe At break of day; 'twas not a trill, As falters through the quiet even; But one sharp solitary note, One desperate, fierce, and vivid cry Of valiant tears, and hopeless joy, One passionate note of victory; Off, like ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... of the first robin in Hackensack, the stirring of the maple sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along Main Street in Syracuse, the first chirp of the bluebird, the swan song of the Blue Point, the annual tornado in St. Louis, the plaint of the peach pessimist from Pompton, N. J., the regular visit of the tame wild goose with a broken leg to the pond near Bilgewater Junction, the base attempt of the Drug ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... scene, I almost forgot my natural history, and wanted to feast my eyes for hours on its ever-changing beauty; but presently I was brought back to a consciousness of my special vocation by a sharp chirp. Was it a bird, or only one of those playful little chipmunks that abound in the Rockies? Directly there sounded out on the serene air another ringing chirp, this time overhead, and, to my delight and surprise, a little bird swung over the summit, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... paper and burying himself in its perusal. That same night, while Ishmael, having finished his day's work, was refreshing himself by strolling through the garden, inhaling the fragrance of flowers, listening to the gleeful chirp of the joyous little insects, and watching the light of the stars, he heard an advancing step behind him, and presently his arm was taken by Mr. Middleton, who, walking on with ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... and starred spaniels sprawling themselves on the grass. I invite amid these trees the larks, and the brown thrushes, and the robins, and all the brightest birds of heaven, and they stir the air with infinite chirp and carol. And yet the place is a desert filled with darkness ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... inactivity. They lie in Aralu without doing anything. Everything there is in a state of neglect and decay. The dead can speak, but the Babylonians probably believed, like the Hebrews, that the dead talk in whispers, or chirp like birds.[1163] The dead are weak,[1164] and, therefore, unless others attend to their needs, they suffer pangs of hunger, or must content themselves with 'dust and clay' as their food. Tender care during the last moments ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... He looked up and round; the birds had ceased to chirp; the parroquets were hiding behind the leaves; the monkeys were clustered motionless upon the highest twigs; only out of the far depths of the forest, the campanero gave its solemn toll, once, twice, thrice, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... air of a half-articulate murmur and awakening. How still the morning is! It is at such times that we discover what music there is in the souls of the little slate- colored snowbirds. How they squeal, and chatter, and chirp, and trill, always in scattered troops of fifty or a hundred, filling the air with a fine sibilant chorus! That joyous and childlike "chew," "chew," "chew" is very expressive. Through this medley of finer songs and calls, there is shot, from time to time, the clear, strong ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... if, by any dispensation, one were removed, five daughters of the horse-leech would still remain, with ravenous appetites unappeased. Yet the poor old bird was cheerful, and sometimes, after supper, would chirp quite merrily. Honneur au courage malheureux. Let us stand aside in the cloak-room, and salute her as she passes out with all the ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... fainted and died in the portals of her ears like a nurse's song, while her sinking eyelids shut not out, but in, one tallish Rosemont senior who had risen in prayer visibly heavy with the sleep he had robbed from three successive nights. The chirp of a lone cricket somewhere under the floor led her forth in a half dream beyond the town and the gleaming turnpike, across wide fields whose multitudinous, tiny life rasped and buzzed under the vibrant heat; and so on to ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... marked interest to science in observing environmental effect upon the differentiation of species. One of these the natives call pupu kani oi or "shrill voiced snail," averring that a certain cricketlike chirp that rings through the stillness of the almost insectless valleys is the voice of this particular species. Emerson says that the name kahuli is applied to the land snail to describe the peculiar tilting motion as the ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... once more struggling against her own increasing agitation. "Listen! there's Peter chirping as he always does when he's put about, frightened like; and you know he that's gone could never abide to hear the canary chirp ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... heavier; for it did seem hard that in a great city full of fine things, there should be none for poor Nono, Sep, and little Speranza. Just as Tessa's tears began to tumble off her eyelashes on to her brown cheeks, the cricket began to chirp. Of course, he didn't say a word; but it really did seem as if he had answered her question almost as well as a fairy; for, before he had piped a dozen shrill notes, an idea popped into Tessa's head—such a truly splendid idea that she clapped her hands and burst out laughing. 'I'll do ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... little black minstrels of the night, chirp under the log upon which you are resting, and the katydids repeat over and over again "Katy's" wonderful achievement, though just what this amazing conquest was no one has been able to discover. The cicadas join the chorus with their strident voices, their ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... have not been able yet to procure the third. No two birds can differ more in their notes, and that constancy, than those two that I am acquainted with; for the one has a joyous, easy, laughing note; the other a harsh loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two drams and a half; while the latter weighs but two: so the songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being the first summer-bird of passage ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... and I think the little bird that I was holding to my bosom must have felt it, for it began to chirp in a low murmur as if it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... picturesque spectacle the boy almost cried with laughter—and old Bob and his wife, who came running from the kitchen, DID cry.) He had a third appellation for himself—"Just little Hamilton"; but this was only when the creaky voice could hardly chirp at all and the weazened face was drawn to one side with suffering. When he told us he was "Just little ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... at this early hour; the birds were only beginning to chirp, and the vultures were just lazily assembling to see if they could discover one more morsel at the slaughtering-place of ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... canaries out of his cage, and forgetting that he was out we left open the door of the room where he was. When we remembered the bird we were much afraid lest he should have flown out of the room. We hunted high and low, calling his name, "Carmen," to which he often answers with a chirp. At last I happened to push aside a little low stool, and there, crouching down so as not to be found (as he dislikes being put into his cage) was Carmen. He has tried since then to hide; but we know his tricks, so he ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the trees; the gentle rustle of the grass as it is swayed by the passing breeze; the musical ripple of water as it gurgles from the spring; the piping of the quail as it calls to its mate; the twitter of little birds flitting from bush to bough; the chirp of the cricket and drone of the beetle are among the sounds that are heard and ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... trail and pass; The conscious woods, the stony meadows growing Up to birch pastures, where we heard the lowing Of one disconsolate cow. All the warm afternoon, Lulled in a reverie by the myriad tune Of insects, and the chirp of songless birds, Forgetful of the spring-time's lyric words, Drowsed round us while we tried to find the lane That to our coming feet had been so plain, And lost ourselves among the sweetfern's growth, ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... in Wai-pi'o, Beheld Hi'i-lawe, the grand. We brought and cut for our love-wreath The rich hala drupe from Naue's strand, 5 Tufted lehua that waves on the cliff; Then sat and gave ear to song of o-o, Or harked the chirp ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... notes. Ave has all that he has written to her from Whitford under her pillow, and she kept spreading them out, and making us read them, and—oh! their braveness and cheeriness—they did quite seem to hold one up! And then poor little Minna's constant little robin-chirp of faith, "God will not let them hurt him." One could not bear to tell the child, that though indeed they cannot hurt him, it may not be in her sense! Look here! These are her slippers. She has worked on all day to finish ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... septfoil harsh, And the soft slimy mallow of the marsh; Low on the ear the distant billows sound, And just in view appears their stony bound; No hedge nor tree conceals the glowing sun, Birds, save a wat'ry tribe, the district shun, Nor chirp among the reeds where bitter waters run. "Various as beauteous, Nature, is thy face," Exclaim'd Orlando: "all that grows has grace: All are appropriate—bog, and marsh, and fen, Are only poor to undiscerning men; Here may the nice and ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... and she did it so gently that it did not frighten the rabbit, although he flirted his ears a little when he heard the "click, click!" Everything was so quiet that he probably thought he heard some insect, probably a young or ignorant cricket that did not know how to chirp properly. ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... their never-ending flight from the law, and many other nights with neither moon nor stars had they felt out their trails together. But always, under him and over him on all sides of him, there had been life. And tonight there was no life, nor smell of life. There was no chirp of night bird, or flutter of owl's wing, no plash of duck or cry of loon. He listened in vain for the crinkling snap of twig, and the whisper of wind in treetops. And there was no smell—no musk of mink that ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... over the larch, as if to inspect whether her little brood was safe, she disappeared again. In a few minutes more, she returned, skimming round to reconnoitre that all was safe, she perched upon the nest. Instantly the little nestlings were awake to the summons of her touch and chirp, and, opening their mouths wide, were ready for what she would give. She dropt a small fly into the mouth of one of them, and, having no more, flew away to provide for the other hungry mouths as fast as she could. As soon as she was gone, they again ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... fuss. Do you not know that I have more regard for your life than for my own? Therefore don't lose courage; come with me, and you shall see what I can do." So saying off she flew, and alighted in the wood, where as soon as she began to chirp, there came a large flock of birds about her, to whom she told the story, assuring them that whoever would venture to deprive the sorceress of sight should have from her a safeguard against the talons of the hawks and kites, and a letter of protection against ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills—but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bullfrog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... came Pussy-cat, and away Robin ran; Says little Robin Redbreast, "Catch me if you can." Little Robin Redbreast flew upon a wall, Pussy-cat jumped after him, and almost got a fall; Little Robin chirp'd and sang, and what did Pussy say? Pussy-cat said "Mew," and Robin ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... that hunter Damayanti of eyes like lotus leaves, went onwards through that fearful and solitary forest ringing with the chirp of crickets. And it abounded with lions, and leopards, and Rurus and tigers, and buffaloes, and bears and deer. And it swarmed with birds of various species, and was infested by thieves and mlechchha tribes. And it contained Salas, and bamboos and Dhavas, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... suddenly, for she was choked by her sobs. The whole valley was deserted and silent in the dazzling light, and the overwhelming heat, and only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill, continuous chirp among the sparse, yellow grass on both sides ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... sensibly longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... number, average .56 by .44, are pure white, profusely spotted with red, and sometimes have also a few spots of purplish grey. On the 15th June I found a nest with four young ones on the south side of the Pir-Pinjal Pass. This bird has no song, only a double chirp in addition to its callnote. The double chirp, which is very loud, is intended for a song, for the male bird incessantly repeats it as he feeds from tree to tree near where the female is sitting ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... contralto notes; the lark, like a prima donna, hovering conspicuously in mid air, poured forth her joyous soprano solo; and the robin, quite unmindful of the tempo, filled out the pauses with his thoughtless staccato chirp. Augusta, who was herself the early bird of the pastor's family, had paid a visit to the little bath-house down at the brook, and was now hurrying homeward, her heavy black hair confined in a delicate muslin ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the maiden, he sprang from his horse, lifted her into the saddle, seated himself before her, so that she could cling to him, and then hastened homewards. The moon shone so brightly between the trees that the soldiers could not miss the track. Presently the birds roused up, and began to chirp and twitter in the dawning light. And if the maiden had had time to listen to their warnings, they would have profited her more than the honeyed words of her lover, which were all that reached her ear. But she saw and heard nothing ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... ciphers. In short, the British were a handful of hawks; the poor Carolinians a swarm of rice-birds, and rather than be plucked to the pin feather, or picked to the bone, they and their little ones, they were fain to flatter those furious falcons, and oft times to chirp and sing when they were much in the humor to ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... us forget for a moment the chirp of the family housekeeper over her gods. Let us gather up the broken fragments that are more than the meal, and humbly own the Miracle that created them. It is idle to argue with the intelligence that can see "a want of imagination" in Holbein. But we can find proof and to spare that it is ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... loudly they call on the host of stars, And the cold and dimly shining moon, And the spirits, that watch by night in the air, Or chirp in the hollow oak[E], to see The plighting of their hands: They married themselves, And man and ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... of July, There could not run the smallest breath of wind But all the quarter sounded like a wood; And in the chequered silence and above The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois, Suburban ashes shivered into song. A patter and a chatter and a chirp And a long dying hiss - it was as though Starched old brocaded dames through all the house Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky Even in a ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eyes now, as you sing it, And hear her low answerin' words; And then the glad chirp of the crickets, As clear as the twitter of birds; And the dust in the road is like velvet, And the ragweed and fennel and grass Is as sweet as the scent of the lilies Of Eden ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... there were two brasses level with the pavement, and in the chancel hung the faded hatchments of the dead. For the pedigree went back to the Battle of Hastings, and there was scarce room for more heraldry. From week's end to week's end the silent nave and aisles remained empty; the chirp of the sparrows was the only sound to be heard there. There being no house attached to the living, the holder could not reside; so the old church slumbered in the midst of the meadows, the hedges, and woods, day after day, ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... above, the Pines make sweet music; sad, plaintive, for must there not be a tone of "infinite sadness" in all the places of Earth's finite gladness? From a spray of jessamine I hear the chirp of a little bird—a young beginner; it tries over and over again "its one plain passage of few notes"—the prelude to the full-voice anthem which summer will harmonize. Ah! what shades and sunlight! what ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... to sit quietly in the garden and watch the evening pass into night. Nature, in these climes, chooses her vocalists from more humble performers than in Europe. A small frog, of the genus Hyla, sits on a blade of grass about an inch above the surface of the water, and sends forth a pleasing chirp: when several are together they sing in harmony on different notes. I had some difficulty in catching a specimen of this frog. The genus Hyla has its toes terminated by small suckers; and I found this animal could crawl up a pane of glass, when placed ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... fellow creatures better. 'Untiring humor seemed the ruling passion of his soul. With a heart open to all innocent pleasures, purged from the leaven of malice and uncharitableness, it was as natural that he should be full of mirth as it is for the grasshopper to chirp or bee to hum, or the birds to warble in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "wet-feet, wet-feet!" and bowing and teetering in the friendliest manner, as if to show you the way to the best pools. In the thick branches of the hemlocks that stretch across the stream, the tiny warblers, dressed in a hundred colours, chirp and twitter confidingly above your head; and the Maryland yellow-throat, flitting through the bushes like a little gleam of sunlight, calls "witchery, witchery, witchery!" That plaintive, forsaken, persistent note, never ceasing, even in the noonday silence, comes from the wood-pewee, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... arm blown off, but they say he's goin' to be all right. I was at the regimental aid post when they fetched him in. Oh, he was a dirty mess, face all cut up, and his arm hangin', and not a word out of him until the Pilot comes along. Then he begins to chirp up and the Pilot starts jollyin' him along one minute and sayin' Psalms to him the next minute, and little prayers, and the boys around listenin', sometimes grinnin' and sometimes all choked up, but I'm awful glad Captain Neil is comin' ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... am going to feed my snow-birds with them; and I should be very happy to have you go with me. I know you will enjoy seeing how merrily they hop about and flutter their wings, and seem to chirp out their thanks as they pick up ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... blackbirds of letters—the harmless, kind singing creatures who line the hedge-sides and chirp and twitter as nature bade them (they can no more help singing, these poets, than a flower can help smelling sweet), have been treated much too ruthlessly by the watch-boys of the press, who have a love for flinging stones at the little innocents, and pretend that it is ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... pass overhead, the different kinds of cawing and screaming of the various species making a terrible discord. Added to them are the calls of strange cicada—one large kind perched high on the trees setting up a most piercing chirp. It begins with the usual harsh jarring tone of its tribe, rapidly becoming shriller, until it ends in a long and loud note resembling the steam whistle of a locomotive engine. A few of these wonderful performers make a considerable ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... heard a faint noise. Routing out the good old creature, that I might take observations, eggs still, and no chickens, were discernible, but the tiniest, little, silvery, sunny-hearted chirp that you ever heard, inside the eggs, and a little, tender pecking from every imprisoned chick, standing at his crystal door, and, with his faint, fairy knock, knock, knock, craving admission into the great world. Never can I forget or describe the sensations of that moment; and, as promise ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... trees they had ever seen. Not much moonlight could come through, but the leaves would glimmer white in the wind at times. The tree was full of giant birds. Every now and then, one would sweep through, with a great noise. But, except an occasional chirp, sounding like a shrill pipe in a great organ, they made no noise. All at once an owl began to hoot. He thought he was singing. As soon as he began, other birds replied, making rare game of him. To their astonishment, the children found they could understand every word they sang. ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... the pine-woods above Lamteng in this month, and chirp shrilly in the heat of the day; and glow-worms fly about at night. The common Bengal and Java toad, Bufo scabra, abounded in the marshes, a remarkable instance of wide geographical distribution, for a Batrachian which is common at the level of ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... migrate together; the Tartars migrate all the year through, crossing the steppes in winding and devious but fixed paths, paths settled for each family, and kept without a map, though invisible to strangers. It is only necessary to watch the common sparrow. In spring his merry chirp and his few notes of song are heard on the roof or in the garden; here he spends his time till the broods are reared and the corn is ripe. Immediately he migrates into the fields. By degrees he is joined by those left behind to rear ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... The drowsy chirp of crickets, and shrill voices of katydids in the lush grass near by, told of the summer night. Many times had Frank listened to this same chorus as he lay in his blanket on the open prairie, playing the part of night-wrangler to the herd of saddle horses belonging ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... those meadow-lands of the world: the sunset was not more glorious than the gentle slopes that swept to our feet like a long wave of the sea, and then broke in a foam of flowers. Not only was the delicious day promise-crammed, but the night, loud with the chirp of the cricket and the cry of the sentinel owl, seemed the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... pretty little stranger! Welcome to my lone retreat! Here, secure from every danger, Hop about, and chirp, and eat: Robin! how I envy thee, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the sound of a human voice almost at her elbow when she could see no sign of the speaker, Peace let go her hold on the frightened captive, and with a relieved chirp, it flew out of sight among the thick branches. But she made no attempt to follow its flight, she was too scared. "Are—are—was it a real woman which did that talking?" chattered Peace, wetting ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... spring made a change in the tanager. He had not so completely given up the world as it appeared. He began to chirp, to call, and at last to sing. He was still so shy he went down behind his screen to sing, but sing he must and did. Now, too, he began to resent the attentions of his admirer, occasionally giving the poor little toes a nip, as they clung to the tin band ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... the hill, where the road became level again, and on the left as she looked toward the village, was the white house, surrounded by a garden and a hedge, which she supposed was Miss Ainslie's. A timid chirp came from the grass, and the faint, sweet smell of growing things floated in through the open window at the other ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... away up a little river, plagued by mosquitoes and gnats. The dark shades of the heavy forests were seldom brightened by a ray of sun. The stream was full of alligators, that lay lazily on the banks all day, and bellowed dismally all night. The chirp of a bird was rarely heard. In its place were the discordant screams of cranes, or hisses of the moccasins or cotton-mouths. When at last the carpenters' clatter had ceased, and the ram, ready for action, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... bottom of the tunnel was excavated quite to the bark. With my thumb I broke the thin wall, and the young, which were full-fledged, looked out upon the world for the first time. Presently one of them, with a significant chirp, as much to say, "It is time we were out of this," began to climb up toward the proper entrance. Placing himself in the hole, he looked around without manifesting any surprise at the grand scene that lay spread out before him. He was taking his bearings, and determining ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... long before the hour of his advent shall have been completed, the birds, which till now have been all activity, will become torpid, the pigeons will have given over their cooing, and the sparrow his chirp; so the fish that has not yet breakfasted had better make haste, for his are chariot-wheels which have been looked after overnight, and linchpins that never come out; nor has he had one break-down or overturn since he first set off on his Macadamized way. In haste to escape from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... about, Inverting one swart foot suspensively, And wagging his dread jaw at every chirp Of bird above him on the olive-branch? Frighten him then away! 'twas he who slew Our pigeons, our white pigeons peacock-tailed, That feared not you and me—alas, nor him! I flattened his striped sides along my knee, And reasoned with him on his bloody mind, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... to hear a cricket chirp now, I'd screech. This isn't really quiet. It's like waiting for a cannon cracker to go off just before the fuse is burned down. The bang isn't there yet, but you hear it a hundred times in your mind ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... it had long ago obscured the sun; a weird twilight had fallen upon the scene; the stagnant air had grown even more oppressively hot than at first; not a bird uttered a single note; not an insect raised a chirp; not a leaf stirred; and in the profound silence the roar of the surf on the reef became thunderous in its resonance. They dined somewhat earlier than usual that night, and while they sat over their meal the darkness fell ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the return boys, in the bow of the whaleboat, made the peace sign with his palm extended outward and weaponless, and began to chirp in the unknown Su'u dialect. Van Horn held his aim and waited. The dandy lowered his Snider, and breath came more easily to the chests of all ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... while the grass yet glittered with pearls of water, and as the birds began to chirp, Belton was led forth to die. Little did those birds know that they were chirping the funeral march of the world's noblest hero. Little did they dream that they were chanting ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... these joys, he saw the necessity of a sunshade—the advantage of having a great lady to complain of, instead of chewing the stems of roses bought for fivepence apiece of Mme. Prevost, after the manner of the callow youngsters that chirp and cackle in the lobbies of the Opera, like chickens in a coop. In short, he resolved to centre his ideas, his sentiments, his affections upon a woman, one woman?—LA ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... by Storborg, by Breidablik, and the sound follows them all the way from the hills here and there; 'tis no military music like in the towns, nay, but voices—a proclamation: Spring has come. Then suddenly the first chirp of a bird is heard from a treetop, waking others, and a calling and answering on every side; more than a song, it is a hymn of praise. The emigrant feels home-sick already, maybe, something weak and helpless in him; he is going off to America, and none could be more fitted to ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... I sit near my poker and tongs, And I dream in the firelight's glow, And sometimes I quaver forgotten old songs That I listened to long ago. Then out of the cinders there cometh a chirp Like an echoing, answering cry,— Little we care for the outside world, My friend ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... little thing," he cried as he sprang up, "you too are shut within this terrible prison. This thick darkness must be as hard for you to bear as it is for me." He went toward the cage, and, as he drew near, the bird gave a glad little chirp. ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... clouds that on the grass Let their vague shadows dreamlike trail and pass; The conscious woods, the stony meadows growing Up to birch pastures, where we heard the lowing Of one disconsolate cow. All the warm afternoon, Lulled in a reverie by the myriad tune Of insects, and the chirp of songless birds, Forgetful of the spring-time's lyric words, Drowsed round us while we tried to find the lane That to our coming feet had been so plain, And lost ourselves among the sweetfern's growth, And thickets of young ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... And the veery, Answer each other. I hear the voices Of happy children And the baying of hounds Float up from the valley; The chirp of the cricket At my feet, and, then, The silence ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... Down came Pussy-cat, and away Robin ran: Says little Robin Red-breast, "Catch me if you can." Little Robin Red-breast hopp'd upon a wall, Pussy-cat jump'd after him, and almost got a fall. Little Robin chirp'd and sang, and what did Pussy say? Pussy-cat said, "Mew," and ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... and concealed in the grasses and moss which grew out of the decaying wood; now among the sedges covering the mudbanks where the brook had silted up; now in the hedge which divided the willows from the meadow. Still the peculiar sparrow-like note, the ringing chirp, came continually from their throats; the warm sultry day delighted them. One clung to the side of a slender flag, which scarcely seemed strong enough to support it, yet did not even bend under its weight; ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... with my fellow bird or brute So strangely metamorphis'd, either ney Or bellow loud: or if 't may better sute Chirp out my joy pearch'd upon higher spray. My passions fond with impudence rehearse, Immortalize ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... it all was! Underfoot the dirt was cool. It yielded itself deliciously to Gwendolyn's bare tread. Overhead, shading the way, were green boughs, close-laced, but permitting glimpses of blue. Upon this arbor, bouncing along with an occasional chirp of contentment, and with the air of one who has assumed the lead, went ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Pan no more, That guarded once the shepherd's seat, They chatter of their rustic lore, They watch the wind among the wheat: Cicalas chirp, the young lambs bleat, Where whispers pine to cypress tree; They count the waves that idly beat Where breaks the ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... become intimate with the movements of the tides, the glacier, and the planets; must translate the bubbling fountain and the eruption of Vesuvius; must be able to interpret the whisper of the zephyr and the diapason of the forest; must be able to hear music in the chirp of the cricket as well as in the oratorios; must be able to delve into the recesses of the mine and scale the mountain tops; must know the heart throbs of Little Nell as well as of Cicero and Demosthenes; must be able to see the processions of history ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... up and down, stretching their hands nervously as if unused to gloves. Presently they fell back, and the organ, in the hands of an amateur performer and an inadequate blower, began to chirp and hoot merrily, by which we knew the bridal party was about ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... turned into the forest, and they had not gone very far before they became aware of a strange silence, if silence it could be called, for when they listened the silence was full of sound, innumerable little sounds, some of which they recognised; but it was not the hum of the insects or the chirp of a bird or the snapping of a rotten twig that filled Joseph with awe, but something that he could neither see, nor hear, nor smell, nor touch. The life of the trees—is that it? he asked himself. A remote and mysterious ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... tree tops swaying to and fro; groves picture-like, half stripped of foliage; the western breeze coming with sudden gusts, and the wail of the oriole still audible; the warm sun shining with genial rays, and the cicada also adding its chirp: structures, visible to the gaze at a distance in the South-east, soaring high on various sites and resting against the hills; three halls, visible near by on the North-west, stretching in one connected line, on the bank of the stream; strains of music ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... I had a sense all this time that I was, so to speak, in hospital, being tended and cared for, and not allowed to do anything wearisome or demanding effort. But I became more and more aware of other spirits about me, like birds that chirp and twitter in the ivy of a tower, or in the thick bushes of a shrubbery. Amroth told me one day that I must prepare for a great change soon, and I found myself wondering what it would be like, half excited ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... suddenly when I awoke in the shepherd's hut one morning at Ripon. The instant I awoke I knew it. It was very early in the morning, just before sunrise, but there was a little wood behind me, and the birds were beginning to chirp. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... like to say, I'm sure, I shouldn't like to say, Why all the birds should chirp of you, Who live so far away. Robin and oriole sing to me From the leafy depths of our apple-tree, With trunk so gnarled and gray— But why your name should their burden be I ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... near the birds once more begin to chirp and trill, they salute the setting sun and fly away to rest. Then the monkeys commence their screeching and chattering and soon after the owls and other night birds take their turn, making the now dense darkness more terrible with their harsh, ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... little girl listen to a pewee twittering in a thorn-bush and the lusty call of a robin from an apple-tree. A bluebird flew over-head with a merry chirp—its wistful note of autumn long since forgotten. These were the first birds and flowers, he said, and June, knowing them only by sight, must know the name of each and the reason for that name. So that Hale found himself walking the woods with an interrogation point, ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... majestic rhythm to the cool tumult of interstellar conflict, to the onset of starry hosts, to the impact of cold suns and the flaming up of nebular in the darkened void; and through it all, unceasing and faint, like a silver shuttle, ran the frail, piping voice of man, a querulous chirp amid the screaming of planets and the crash ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... plume your wings, and chirp and flutter, And swing, light-poised upon the pendant bough;— Fondly I deem he hears the calls ye utter, And stirs in his light sleep to ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... and four the next morning, the robin in the nest above Mary's window stretched out his left wing, opened one eye, and gave a short and rather drowsy chirp, which broke up his night's rest and restored him to the full consciousness that he was a bird with wings and feathers, with a large apple-tree to live in, and all heaven for an estate,—and so, on these fortunate premises, he broke into a gush of singing, clear and loud, which Mary, without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... music) was undertaken by a courtier. As this went on, the darkness of night began to diminish, and the hues of the flowers in the garden, and the countenance of each of the party, became gradually visible, while the birds themselves began to chirp in the trees. It was a pleasant dawn. Several presents were made to the company by the Imperial-mother, and to the Lord-Lieutenant a robe was given in addition, as an acknowledgment of his services as judge in the competition. And so the ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... poor Little, "how happy a workman must be that plies his trade here in the fresh air. And how unfortunate I am to be tied to a power-wheel, in that filthy town, instead of being here, where Nature turns the wheel, and the birds chirp at hand, and the scene and the air ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... the bobolink along the meadow-brook; indeed, the birds of all sorts were astir, skimming along the ground or rising to the sky, keeping watch especially over the garden and the fruit-trees, carrying food to their nests, or teaching their young broods to fly and to chirp the songs of summer. And from the woodshed the shrill note of the scythe under the action of the grindstone. No such vivid realization of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the semi-dark, faces turning like his own to the summits of the mountains and the billowy splendors there. It grew so dark he could see no more. There fell a deep silence, not a sound but the occasional chirp of a bird or the faint whirr of an insect. Even the glow on the peaks was gone. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... will visit his pale face when you chirp tenderly to him, and a faint tinge comes upon his cheek when you lay your soft tiny hand upon it; yet all the while there is that desperate secret lying next his heart, and, like a vampire, sucking away, drop by ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... single tear a sound broke the stillness, making her prick up her ears. It was only the soft twitter of a bird, but it seemed to be a peculiarly gifted bird, for while she listened the soft twitter changed to a lively whistle, then a trill, a coo, a chirp, and ended in a musical mixture of all the notes, as if the bird burst out laughing. Rose laughed also, and, forgetting her ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... but scarcely had he uttered the words when the cricket in the chimney corner chirped loudly, and his shrill notes seemed to say: "The king—the king." Rodolph could hardly believe his ears. How had the cricket learned to chirp these words? It was beyond all understanding. But still the cricket chirped, and still his musical monotone seemed to say, "The king—the king," until, with an angry frown, Rodolph strode from his house, leaving the child to hear ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... note that proceeds from the little warbling host, is the shrill chirp of the hairbird,—occasionally vocal at an hours on a warm summer night. This strain, which is a continued trilling sound, is repeated with diminishing intervals, until it becomes almost incessant. But ere the hairbird has uttered many notes, a single robin begins to warble from a neighboring ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the river. The willows Are yellowed with bud. White clouds roar up from the south And darken the ripples; but they cannot darken my heart, Nor the face like a star in my heart!... Rain falls on the water And pelts it, and rings it with silver. The willow trees glisten, The sparrows chirp under the eaves; but the face in my heart Is a secret of music.... I wait in the rain and am silent." Listen again!... It says: "I have worked, I am tired, The pencil dulls in my hand: I see through the window Walls upon walls of ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... beyond the Waltham Hills. The shadows of the maples were lengthening upon the lawns, and the chirp of the crickets was heard in the old walls. Charlie seemed quite dissatisfied with Gentleman Jo's story. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... But ours is finer. I should, however, be glad if we had it up here in our nest, for it keeps one warm. I am curious to know at what the ducks were so frightened; at us, surely not; 'tis true I said 'chirp,' to you rather loud. In reality, the thick-headed roses ought to know, but they know nothing; they only gaze on themselves and smell: for my part, I am ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... feel his chilling touch as we pass along. But from above the pleasant sunshine comes trickling down between the branches, and the warm south wind blows cheeringly among the trees. Didst thou not hear yon swallow sing, Chirp, chirp?—In every note he seemed to say, "'T is ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... the desk to whisper to swell to chirp sneering more and more he climbed the pulpit steps they ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... have grown sensibly longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... on the sill; The look of leaves a-twinkle With windlets clear and still; The feel of a forest rill That wimples fresh and fleet About one's naked feet; The muzzles of drinking herds; Lush flags and bulrushes; The chirp of rain-bound birds - To live, I think ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... few minutes. The sun was sinking low in the western sky, the chirp of the birds was growing faint in the trees. She raised her colorless ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... in the meadow, Where the grass is so even, Lived a gray mother cricket And her little crickets seven. "Chirp!" said the mother; "We chirp," said the seven: So they chirped cheery notes In the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... asked a stupid donkey feeding near to come and put his heavy foot on the bush. He did it, and crack went the branch, splash went the poor chicks into the water, and all were drowned but Cocky, who flew across and was saved. Poor little Hop, Chirp, and Downy went floating down the brook like balls of white foam, and were never seen again. All the hens mourned for them, and put a black feather in their heads to show how sorry they were. Mamma Partlet was heart-broken to lose three darlings at once; but Cocky comforted her, ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... lazily and luxuriously on his father's money and his wife's, and, being after his natural term of days laid away in a tomb at Mt. Auburn, ends his existence without making any more impression upon the world's history than a falling rose leaf, or an August cricket's faintest chirp." ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... boulders near the Sixth Avenue entrance. The sun was rising. It was the first sunrise he had ever seen in New York. The effect on his imagination was startling. The red rays streaming through the park and the chirp of birds in the bushes were magic touches that transformed the world. He was back again in the South, where Nature is the one big fact of life, and the memories of the girl he had learned to love beside its beautiful waters ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... The allusions to "little Robert"—evidently William Roscoe's son—do not occur in the former, and many slight improvements, tending to make the verses more rhythmical and flowing, are introduced. The whole passage, "Then close on his haunches" (p. 7) to "Chirp his own praises the rest of the night," &c. (p. 10), is an interpolation in this later edition. It is, I believe, certain that the verses were written by Roscoe for his children on the occasion of the birthday of his son Robert, who was ...
— The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast • Mr. Roscoe
... me no one had been here? (Shakes his finger at her.) My little song-bird must never do that again. A song-bird must have a clean beak to chirp with—no false notes! (Puts his arm round her waist.) That is so, isn't it? Yes, I am sure it is. (Lets her go.) We will say no more about it. (Sits down by the stove.) How warm and snug it is here! ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... calm and fresh and still; Alone the chirp of flitting bird, And talk of children on the hill, And bell of wandering ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... inflection of the voice, a bend of that curious long thin body which seems to be embodied gesture, she can suggest, she can portray, the humour that is dry, ironical, coarse (I will admit), unctuous even. Her voice can be sweet or harsh; it can chirp, lilt, chuckle, stutter; it can moan or laugh, be tipsy or distinguished. Nowhere is she conventional; nowhere does she resemble any other French singer. Voice, face, gestures, pantomime, all are different, all are ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... sure chirp some language. Believe you me, a guy had orto carry an interpreter around with him. Me and Skinny went out to a swell English camp today to take a peep at English trainin methods; outside we sees a tipical Tommy Atkins settin down fixin sumpin wrong with his kicks; as we ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... neither troubled nor afraid. She lay there with her face upturned to the pelting rain, watching it patter from leaf to leaf, listening to the chirp of the birds in the nests, listening to the crying of the wind. She liked the sound. She had a dim notion that it was like an old camp-meeting hymn that she had heard Creline sing sometimes. She never understood the words, but the music came back like a dream. She wondered if Massa Linkum ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... of old responded in a manner similar to these. They did "peep" and "mutter;" their speech was low out of the dust; they spoke out of the ground, and whispered; or, as in the margin, did "peep" or "chirp" out of the dust. These "rap" and mutter. They respond from ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... cage door, and with the sweetest look on her face encouraged the birds to fly away. The poor little creatures cowered and hesitated, not knowing at first what use to make of their new liberty; but at last one, the boldest of the company, hopped to the door and with a glad, exultant chirp flew straight upward. Then the others, taking courage from his example, followed, and all were lost to view in the twinkling of ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... caroll'd till peep of the dawn, The Lark gently hinted 'twas time to be gone; And his clarion, so shrill, gave the company warning, That Chanticleer scented the gales of the morning, So they chirp'd in full chorus, a friendly adieu; And, with hearts beating light as the plumage that grew On their merry-thought bosoms, away they ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... presence I wondered that the garden was always so full of singing birds. But the Captain never meddled with them. Probably he understood that his master would not have tolerated it for a moment. So there was always a song or a chirp somewhere. Overhead flew the gulls and the cranes. The wind in the pines always made a glad salutation. Abel and I paced the walks, in high converse on matters beyond the ken of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and scarcely feathers—a kind of downy hair. I can hardly express how pleased I was to see him. I tell you, Robinson Crusoe don't make near enough of his loneliness. But here was interesting company. He looked at me and winked his eye from the front backwards, like a hen, and gave a chirp and began to peck about at once, as though being hatched three hundred years too late was just nothing. 'Glad to see you, Man Friday!' says I, for I had naturally settled he was to be called Man Friday if ever he was hatched, as soon as ever I found the egg in the canoe had ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... O the young cock crew i' the merry Linkem, An' the wild fowl chirp'd for day; The aulder to the younger did say, 'Dear brother, ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... very sad, I was very solemn— I had worked all day whittling out a column. I said, "I'll bet a nickel I can chirp such a chant," And Mr. Geoffrey Parsons said, "I'll bet you can't." I bit a chunk of chocolate and found it sweet, And I listened to the trucking on ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... meet, And robins pipe amid the cedars nigher. Thro' the still elms I hear the ferry's beat. The swallows chirp about the towering spire; The whole air pulses with its weight of sweet, Yet not quite ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... blood-poisoning, which might cause death without the assistance of any particular toxic venom. The rattlesnake, however, which is rather too common in the desert, is a different sort of a chap. If he strikes you, you may just as well make your will, and chirp your death song, as to monkey with physicians, and squander some of the good wealth which may ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... and silvery gray and brown, a coyote yapped a falsetto message and was answered by one nearer at hand—his mate, it might be. In a bush under the bank that made of it a black blot in the unearthly whiteness of the sand, a little bird fluttered uneasily and sent a small, inquiring chirp into the stillness. From somewhere farther up the arroyo drifted a faint, aromatic odor ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... which characterized all her movements, she then opened the casement and inhaled the air. All was still in the narrow lane; the shops yet unclosed. But on the still trees behind the shops the birds were beginning to stir and chirp. Chanticleer, from some neighbouring yard, rang out his brisk rereillee. Pleasant English summer dawn in the pleasant English country village. She stretched her graceful neck far from the casement, trying to catch a glimpse of the blue river. She had seen its majestic ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wood and clay, And by-and-by, like heath-bells gilt with dew, There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers, Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue; And there I witnessed, in the summer hours, A brood of Nature's minstrels chirp and fly, Glad as the sunshine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... greedily drank it off, for I was intensely thirsty. Axinya had quite recently scrubbed the table and benches, and there was that smell in the kitchen which is found in bright, snug kitchens kept by tidy cooks. And that smell and the chirp of the cricket used to lure us as children into the kitchen, and put us in the mood for hearing fairy tales and playing ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note; Braggart, and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat, Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Never was I afraid of man, Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... afterwards it became dark, and the mules being much distressed, we could only proceed at a slow pace. The fatigue of riding was much lessened by having an English saddle; still it was a hard day's travelling: but the air was deliciously balmy, and the glowworm's lamp and cricket's chirp helped to cheer the weariness of a road which seemed interminable. Presently, we met country people returning from the market at Ajaccio, lights were seen more frequently on the hills, and, at last, the lantern on the pier-head—a welcome beacon—came in view. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... his ear mysterious words. Here a shrill chirp; there a click, like the click made with the tongue; further on, plaintive murmurs; in the distance a tinkle like that of the bell on the neck of the wandering ox. Suddenly Rey heard a strange sound, a rapid ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... blackbird sings upon the budding spray, I hear the clarion tones of chanticleer, And robins chirp about from break of day,— All pipe their carols ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... back into the bank building, the deputy in the chair yawned, stretched and opened his eyes, staring stupidly at him. There was no mistaking the dancing glitter in Trevison's eyes, no possible misinterpretation of his tense, throaty whisper: "One chirp and you're a dead one!" And the deputy stiffened in the chair, dumb ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of a hedge I peered, with cheek on the cool leaves pressed, And spied a bird upon a nest: Two eyes she had beseeching me Meekly and brave, and her brown breast Throbb'd hot and quick above her heart; And then she oped her dagger bill,— 'Twas not a chirp, as sparrows pipe At break of day; 'twas not a trill, As falters through the quiet even; But one sharp solitary note, One desperate, fierce, and vivid cry Of valiant tears, and hopeless joy, One passionate note of victory: Off, like a fool afraid, I sneaked, Smiling the smile the ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... forgot their hardships; But not to chant and carol in the air, Or lightly swing upon some waving bough, And merrily return each other's notes; No; silently they hop from bush to bush, Yet find no seeds to stop their craving want, Then bend their flight to the low smoking cot, Chirp on the roof, or at the window peck, To tell their wants to those who lodge within. The poor lank hare flies homeward to his den, But little burthen'd with his nightly meal Of wither'd greens grubb'd from the farmer's garden; A poor and scanty portion snatch'd in fear; And fearful creatures, ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... wild flutter of tiny wings, A faint low chirp of pain, A throb of the little aching heart And birdie was free again. Oh sorrowful anguished mother-heart, 'Twas all that she could do, She had set it free from a captive's life In the only ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... carefully in the center of the coop, she put the little chickens close by it. Finding it soft and warm, they cuddled up against the flannel cover, and began to chirp as contentedly as if it were a mother hen. Then she pinned a square of flannel to the upper side of the can, letting it spread either way like a mother hen's wings, and leaving the ends open for the chickens ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37. No. 16., April 19, 1914 • Various
... to pale and the sky brightened. Day came suddenly, almost instantaneously. I turned for another look at the blue night, and it was gone. Everywhere the birds began to call, and all manner of little insects began to chirp and hop about in the willows. A breeze sprang up from the west and brought the heavy smell of ripened corn. The boys rolled over and shook themselves. We stripped and plunged into the river just as the sun came up ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... temple was building it was credibly reported that at least 10,000 sparrows sitting on the trees round declared that it was entirely wrong—quite contrary to received opinion—hopelessly condemned by public opinion, etc. Nevertheless it got finished and the sparrows flew away and began to chirp in the same note ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... them and behind them, as the soldier and Constance joined the desultory fag-end of the procession. On either side of the road waved the mournful cypress, draped by the hoary tillandsia, and from the somber depths of foliage came the chirp of the tree-crickets and the note of the swamp owl. Faint music, in measured rhythm, a foil to disconnected wood-sound, was wafted from a ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... heart, Infant, you're a martyr to our long tongues!" cried Patricia, jumping up and putting out the light. "Go to sleep now. We won't chirp a single ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... ice; now the sky is full of radiant warmth, and the air of a half-articulate murmur and awakening. How still the morning is! It is at such times that we discover what music there is in the souls of the little slate- colored snowbirds. How they squeal, and chatter, and chirp, and trill, always in scattered troops of fifty or a hundred, filling the air with a fine sibilant chorus! That joyous and childlike "chew," "chew," "chew" is very expressive. Through this medley of finer songs and calls, there is shot, from time to time, the clear, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... a low, insistent chirp. One monkey leaped into the cage, the others following as fast as they could stretch up their hands and grab the tail board of the wagon. Instantly they began scrambling for the nuts and candies that ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... robin-redbreast, who, at view, Not seeing her at all to stir, Brought leaves and moss to cover her; But while he perking there did pry About the arch of either eye, The lid began to let out day, At which poor robin flew away, And seeing her not dead, but all disleav'd, He chirp'd for joy to ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... got into the automobile, I gave another feeble chirp about the fair, but the secretary was adamant, so we yielded temporarily, and ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... with the officers spreads to the men. Some cases of terrorism have occurred at Delhi which are a disgrace to our race. And of course we know what follows. Cowardice and cruelty being twins, the man who runs terror-stricken into his barrack to-night because he mistook the chirp of a cricket for the click of a pistol, indemnifies himself to-morrow by beating his bearer to within an ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... willow- sprays of them shinin' bars a layin' down on the gray twilight field. And fur away over the green hills and woods of the east, the moon was a risin', big and calm and silvery. And we could hear the plaintive evenin' song of the thrush, and the crickets' happy chirp, till we got nearer the schoolhouse, when they sort o' blended in with 'There is a fountain filled with blood,' and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... derived from his friendship in early days with the painter-astrologer Varley. If a horse stopped for no ascertained reason or if a house martin fell they wondered what it portended. They disliked the bodeful chirp of the bat, the screech of the owl. Even the old superstition that the first object seen in the morning—a crow, a cripple, &c.—determines the fortunes of the day, had his respect. "At an hour," he comments, "when the senses are most impressionable ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... she disappeared again. In a few minutes more, she returned, skimming round to reconnoitre that all was safe, she perched upon the nest. Instantly the little nestlings were awake to the summons of her touch and chirp, and, opening their mouths wide, were ready for what she would give. She dropt a small fly into the mouth of one of them, and, having no more, flew away to provide for the other hungry mouths as fast as she could. As soon as she was ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... the tree, as they had been prematurely expanded by the heat of party politics. The strain of that song was of a higher mood. In those days, when American literature spoke with faint and feeble voice, like the chirp of half-awakened birds in the morning twilight, we need not say what cordial welcome was extended to a poem which embodied in blank verse worthy of anybody since Milton thoughts of the highest reach and noblest power, or what wonder was mingled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... flit, ghost-like, round the seductive light of my lantern. The meadows, ever breathing freshness, are now saturated with dew, and I feel the damp of the night air on my heated limbs. A Cicada, a fellow-lodger in the house, attracts me by its domestic chirp back into my bedroom, and is there my social companion, while, in a happy dreaming state, I await the coming day, kept half awake by the buzz of the mosquites, the kettle-drum croak of the bull-frog, or the complaining ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... that he has written to her from Whitford under her pillow, and she kept spreading them out, and making us read them, and—oh! their braveness and cheeriness—they did quite seem to hold one up! And then poor little Minna's constant little robin-chirp of faith, "God will not let them hurt him." One could not bear to tell the child, that though indeed they cannot hurt him, it may not be in her sense! Look here! These are her slippers. She has worked on all day to finish them, that they might be done and out of sight when he came home this evening. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... years past, and the aprons were too often frayed and darned, and relics of some former, more opulent owners. There were multitudes of children, but they were without the gambols which characterize the young of all animals; and there was not even the chirp of a winter bird about them; their faces were prematurely aged and hardened, and their bold eyes revealed that sin had no surprises for them. And every one of these showed that intense look which marks the awful struggle for food and life upon which they had just ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... I wander'd by the mill,— I could not hear the brook flow, The noisy wheel was still; There was no burr of grasshopper, Nor chirp of any bird; But the beating of my own heart Was all ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... other; the bird has soft warm feathers, and the fish has scales, overlapping each other as the slates on the roof of a house do, thus making a perfectly waterproof coat for its whole body; the bird has legs and wings, and the fish has neither; the bird can chirp and sing, while fishes generally make ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... growl, even at her, sometimes; it was so funny to see her look up and chirp on after it, like some little bird to whom the language of beasts was no language at all, and passed by on the air as a very big sound, but one that in no wise ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... slight sounds, unnoticed before, are heard; the ticking of the clock, the chirp of a sparrow in the garden, the flight of a butterfly. The world becomes full of imperceptible sounds which invade that deep silence without disturbing it, just as the stars shine out in the dark sky without banishing the darkness of the night. It is almost the discovery ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... examine the brain of a person who has grown up in an environment rich in stimuli to the eye, where nature, earth, and sky have presented a changing panorama of color and form to attract the eye; where all the sounds of nature, from the chirp of the insect to the roar of the waves and the murmur of the breeze, and from the softest tones of the voice to the mightiest sweep of the great orchestra, have challenged the ear; where many and varied odors and perfumes have assailed the nostrils; where a great ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... moon be my mate, I can't discern. In fairyland I soar, not that I would become a butterfly like Chang. So long I for my old friend T'ao, the magistrate, that I again seek him. In a sound sleep I fell; but so soon as the wild geese cried, they broke my rest. The chirp of the cicadas gave me such a start that I bear them a grudge. My secret wrongs to whom can I go and divulge, when I wake up from sleep? The faded flowers and the cold mist make my feelings of anguish ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... we got into the automobile, I gave another feeble chirp about the fair, but the secretary was adamant, so we yielded temporarily, and were ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... busily, establishing an imperishable record of our shame. Then they loosed the men and bade them form in rank. The soldiers came out of the dark vans, in which they had been confined, with some eagerness, and began at once to chirp and joke, which seemed to me most ill-timed good humour. We waited altogether for about twenty minutes. Now for the first time since my capture I hated the enemy. The simple, valiant burghers at the front, fighting bravely as they had been told 'for their farms,' claimed respect, if not sympathy. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... that the blackbirds of letters—the harmless, kind singing creatures who line the hedge-sides and chirp and twitter as nature bade them (they can no more help singing, these poets, than a flower can help smelling sweet), have been treated much too ruthlessly by the watch-boys of the press, who have a love for flinging stones at the little innocents, and pretend that it is their duty, and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... as a nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note; Braggart, and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat, Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Never was I afraid of man, Catch me, cowardly knaves, if ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... was heavy. I held my watch to my ear. It had not stopped. I jumped up and walked to the window, and I saw at once the reason why I had imagined that night had fallen. From east to west and from north to south a dense pall of cloud hung over the earth. Not a leaf moved, and except for the shrill chirp of a grasshopper, not a sound broke ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... laughter and sullener grew— The sun was too hot—the skies were too blue, The grass, he was certain, was damp where he lay, All things had conspired to annoy him that day, He could bear neither sunshine, the mirth that he heard, The hum of the bees, nor the chirp of a bird. How silly they seemed—it made him so cross— The pleasures of life were nothing but dross, So he hastened away in a fit of despair; All things were against him and "nothing was fair." And now, little people, does any one know A child who ...
— Nestlings - A Collection of Poems • Ella Fraser Weller
... said the poor little brown bird; "and I did not know how to make a fine nest such as those in the hedges. Oh, my pretty eggs!—my heart aches for them! I shall never hear my little nestlings chirp!" ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... on the marble hand of the Madonna. Then, with a joyful chirp, dropped straight to the couch on which ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... sofa on the rug, Before the ancient chimney-place. Upon the painted tiles are mosques And minarets, and here and there A blind muezzin lifts his hands, And calls the faithful unto prayer. Folded in idle, twilight dreams, I hear the hemlock chirp and sing, As if within its ruddy core It held the happy heart of Spring. Ferdousi never sang like that, Nor Saadi grave, nor Hafiz gay; I lounge, and blow white rings of smoke, And watch ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... under the tree were pleased in their own way. The labourers cooled their sweating brows by wiping them with the shirtsleeves the rain had wet; Trenholme and his friend saw with contentment the dust laid upon their road, listened to the chirp of birds that had been silent before, and watched the raindrops dance high upon the sunny surface of ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... indeed, in less than a quarter of an hour, he will have stared us quite out of countenance, and, long before the hour of his advent shall have been completed, the birds, which till now have been all activity, will become torpid, the pigeons will have given over their cooing, and the sparrow his chirp; so the fish that has not yet breakfasted had better make haste, for his are chariot-wheels which have been looked after overnight, and linchpins that never come out; nor has he had one break-down or overturn ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... again; but no one minded that. I don't, nor you needn't, no more than other folk; for the tongue, be it never so bitin', it can't draw blood, mind ye, and hard words break no bones; and I'll make a cup o' tea—ye like a cup o' tea—and we'll take a cup together, and ye'll chirp up a bit, and see how pleasant and ruddy the sun shines on ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... low, peculiar chirp, not very fierce, but bantering and confident. They quickly come to blows, but it is a very fantastic battle, and, as it would seem, indulged in more to satisfy their sense of honor than to hurt each other, for neither party gets the better of the other, and they ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... birds silent in the trees, watch the rich glow of the day god as it comes peeping through the windows of the morning, then see the birds leave their bowers, the larks to fly away to the fields, the mocking-bird to sing in the cedar at the garden gate, the robin to chirp to its mate, and you will see a picture which will pale that of the ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... dried lips tried to laugh. "Ef it ain't the dicky-bird!" The bird looked at him. "Ef that doesn't beat—" but he could not think what it "beat." The bird cocked its head. "Ain't ye afeard o' me?" It gave a feeble chirp. "Well, I'm damned!" said the man, and after this mild expression of his feelings, forgot to curse again. He even began to eye the island with a vague questioning wonder, as if asking himself what means might be ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... yellow and gray. Helen sat down on a stone, and listened to the small wood sounds around her. A beech leaf, twisted like the keel of a fantastic boat, came pattering down on the dead leaves; a bird stirred in the pine behind her, and now and then a cricket gave a muffled chirp. ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... had he uttered the words when the cricket in the chimney corner chirped loudly, and his shrill notes seemed to say: "The king—the king." Rodolph could hardly believe his ears. How had the cricket learned to chirp these words? It was beyond all understanding. But still the cricket chirped, and still his musical monotone seemed to say, "The king—the king," until, with an angry frown, Rodolph strode from his house, leaving the child to hear the ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... the glories of the sunset and see into the streets of heaven. He is dressed in black, and is rather more clerical in appearance than most English curates are nowadays; but he does not wear the collar and waistcoat of a parish priest. He is roused from his trance by the chirp of an insect from a tuft of grass in a crevice of the stone. His face relaxes: he turns quietly, and gravely takes off his hat to the tuft, addressing the insect in a brogue which is the jocular assumption of a gentleman and not the ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... He lives lazily and luxuriously on his father's money and his wife's, and, being after his natural term of days laid away in a tomb at Mt. Auburn, ends his existence without making any more impression upon the world's history than a falling rose leaf, or an August cricket's faintest chirp." ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... hurt you, little mother. Don't be afraid," whispered the child; and, as if it understood, the bird settled down on her nest with a comfortable chirp, while its mate hopped up to give her a ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... sir, pour me in some more water; if my head begins to ache, I shall be sending for your master to talk to you.—You know, gentlemen, what megrims I get, and what a numskull mine is. After drinking, we will chirp a little as is our wont; 'tis not amiss to ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... Father without loving and blessing you. Let Mr. Powell come and see us happie; it may tend to make him soe. Let him and his abide with us, at the leaste, till the Spring; his Lads will studdy and play with mine, your Mother will help you in your Housewiferie, the two olde Men will chirp together beside the Christmasse Hearth; and, if I find thy Weeklie Bills the heavier 'twill be but to write another Book, and make a better Bargain for it than I did for the last. We will use Hospitalitie without grudging; and, as for your owne Increase ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... he met her very often. Few ladies dined at Belgrave House, but to-night she was to be there. For the first time Fern's gentle nature felt jarred and out of tune. The bright little fire had burned hollow; there was a faint clinging mist from the fog outside; the cricket had ceased to chirp. Fern glanced round her disconsolately; how poor and shabby it must look to him, she thought, after ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... darned, and relics of some former, more opulent owners. There were multitudes of children, but they were without the gambols which characterize the young of all animals; and there was not even the chirp of a winter bird about them; their faces were prematurely aged and hardened, and their bold eyes revealed that sin had no surprises for them. And every one of these showed that intense look which marks the awful struggle for food and life upon which they had just entered. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... the thousands of little birds that began to chirp in the bushes as soon as he came near. "Sleep a bit longer, ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... very white and cold, and underneath her breath she kept crying, "Oh, will they never come—will they never come?" and a cricket somewhere about the house began to chirp. ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... with their carts and asses hastening home. Over on the Pincian Mount the dark green masses of the splendid gardens of Pompeius and of Lucullus were just visible. The air was filled with the croak of frogs and the chirp of crickets, and from the river came the creak of the sculls and paddles of a cumbrous barge that was working its way ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... Lion, he shake he mane en say he gwine ter larrup Mr. Man anyhow. He went on down de big road, he did, en bimeby he come up wid Mr. Jack Sparrer, settin' up in de top er de tree. Mr. Jack Sparrer, he whirl 'roun' en chirp, en flutter 'bout up dar, en 'pariently make ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... the presence of other people and the support we derive from seeing their belief in a common reality—all this slipped from him. So he might have felt if the earth had dropped from his feet, and the empty blue had hung all round him, and the air had been steeped in the presence of one woman. The chirp of a robin on the bough above his head awakened him, and his awakenment was accompanied by a sigh. Here was the world in which he had lived; here the plowed field, the high road yonder, and Mary, stripping ivy from the trees. When ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... with both ends saluting one another, on the velvet rug before the fender, and at a civil distance away is a purring bundle of gray and white pussy, with her paws doubled in and her eyes blinking at the half-burned coals. There is a bird cage in each window, and an odd little lullaby chirp or the grating of the little iron swings is the only sound besides the loosening and falling of the embers every ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... hear the wood-thrush And the veery, Answer each other. I hear the voices Of happy children And the baying of hounds Float up from the valley; The chirp of the cricket At my feet, and, then, The ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... cheerful &c. adj.; have the mind at ease, smile, put a good face upon, keep up one's spirits; view the bright side of the picture, view things en couleur de rose[Fr]; ridentem dicere virum[Lat], cheer up, brighten up, light up, bear up; chirp, take heart, cast away care, drive dull care away, perk up. keep a stiff upper lip. rejoice &c. 838; carol, chirrup, lilt; frisk, rollick, give a loose to mirth. cheer, enliven, elate, exhilarate, gladden, inspirit, animate, raise the spirits, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... sensitive years have never known such a night. The world was stifling in a deluge of gray, cold mists, unstirred by a breath of air. A robin with feathers all ruffled, and head hidden, sat on the gate-post, and chirped a little mournful chirp, like a creature dying in a vacuum. The very daisy that nodded and drooped in the grass at my feet seemed to be gasping for breath. The neighbor's house, not forty paces across the street, was invisible. I remember the sensation it gave me, as ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... still in the woods; just the chirp of a grasshopper now and then, or the note of a bird, or the click of a ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the distant watershed of the lower bank of the Congo. From the cliff above starlings flew out to seek their feeding-haunts where the big game fed; and there was a familiar visitor near them in the black and drab stone-chat, whose scolding chirp they had so often heard in England among the gorse and bramble. The metallic cry of guinea-fowl down by the little river had a farm-yard ring; but the chatter of parrots flying overhead was still new, and so with many other calls, so that they ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... sandpiper will run along the stones before you, crying, "wet-feet, wet-feet!" and bowing and teetering in the friendliest manner, as if to show you the way to the best pools. In the thick branches of the hemlocks that stretch across the stream, the tiny warblers, dressed in a hundred colours, chirp and twitter confidingly above your head; and the Maryland yellow-throat, flitting through the bushes like a little gleam of sunlight, calls "witchery, witchery, witchery!" That plaintive, forsaken, persistent note, never ceasing, even in the noonday silence, comes from the wood-pewee, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... pleasure in the world can a parcel of little eggs afford you, compared with the delight that the poor harmless mother takes in them as she sits in her warm house, of her own making, listening for the first faint chirp of the tiny creature within? Birds only bring up one family in a year; and if you take from them the eggs that are to produce that one, you rob them of all the happiness for which they took so much trouble. You are not enough of a hen to hatch the eggs, though you may be ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth
... sides of the shell, as the chick enlarges, but is at the same time applied closer to the internal surface of the shell; when the time of hatching approaches the chick is liable to break this air-bag with its beak, and thence begin to breathe and to chirp; at this time the edges of the enlarged air-bag extend so as to cover internally one hemisphere of the egg; and as one half of the external shell is thus moist, and the other half dry, as soon as the mother hearing the chick chirp, or the chick itself wanting respirable ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... hour of tea and visiting. The simultaneous sound of his well-known rap at the door with the stroke of the clock announcing six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in the families which this dear old bachelor gladdened with his presence. Then was his forte, his glorified hour! How would he chirp, and expand, over a muffin! How would he dilate into secret history! His countryman, Pennant himself, in particular, could not be more eloquent than he in relation to old and new London—the site of old theatres, churches, streets gone to decay—where Rosamond's ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Grandpa and Grandma and the children sat on the porch, listening to the chirp of the katydids and the call of ...
— A Hive of Busy Bees • Effie M. Williams
... spent the day at Lancaster and returned to Greenwald at seven-thirty. He started with springing step out the country road in the soft June twilight. It was a twilight pervaded by blended perfumes and the sleepy chirp of birds. David drew in deep breaths of the fresh ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... the moving stream, And fling, as its ripples gently flow, A burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below; The winds are 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 katy-did; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills—but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bullfrog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and turning suddenly ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... day, at the same hour, when the balmy September air was everywhere, and the mid-afternoon sun was filling the house with golden light, and the crickets' chirp was heard in the long grass, and the robins were singing in the tree-tops, another scene was presented in the sick room, where Frank Tracy knelt at his dying daughter's side, with his face bowed on his hands, while her fingers played feebly with his white hair as she spoke to Arthur, who had just ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the glades there were glimpses of brilliant color in the foliage—the glow of the laburnum, the lilac blaze of the rhododendron bushes. And how still the place was! Far off there was a dull roar of carriages in Piccadilly; but here there was nothing but the bleating of the sheep, the chirp of the young birds, the stir of the wind among the elms. Sometimes he could now catch the sound of ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... all was! Underfoot the dirt was cool. It yielded itself deliciously to Gwendolyn's bare tread. Overhead, shading the way, were green boughs, close-laced, but permitting glimpses of blue. Upon this arbor, bouncing along with an occasional chirp of contentment, and with the air of one who has assumed the ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... humor seemed the ruling passion of his soul. With a heart open to all innocent pleasures, purged from the leaven of malice and uncharitableness, it was as natural that he should be full of mirth as it is for the grasshopper to chirp or bee to hum, or the birds to warble in the spring breeze and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... ac's more fearsome like an' won't hop quite so near, The cricket's chirp is sadder, an' the sky ain't ha'f so clear; When ev'nin' comes, I set an' smoke tell my eyes begin to swim, An' things aroun' commence to look all blurred an' faint an' dim. Well, I guess I 'll have to own up ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... running by without, crying and moaning; but I could not join in. I was going I knew not where; it was impossible to take my bird, for even if I could carry him, he would starve. So I took him out of his cage, kissed his little yellow head, and tossed him up. He gave one feeble little chirp as if to ascertain where to go, and then for the first and last time I cried, laying my head against the gate-post, and with my eyes too dim to see him. Oh, how it hurt me to lose my little bird, one Jimmy had ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... bursting trees long before it is felt by those who walk beneath their slight shelter. Rapidly does the landscape brighten under the influence of the welcome shower; and as it becomes more rich and extensive, all nature seems to rise up and rejoice. The birds chirp merrily among the foliage; the flowers raise their drooping heads, and the thirsty ground drinks in with eager haste the mellowing rains. All day long, perhaps, does the rain continue to fall, until the earth is fully moistened and "enriched ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... settling on his cage, by play, And chirp, and kiss, he seem'd to say, You must not live alone— Nor would he quit that chosen stand, Till I, with slow and cautious hand, Return'd ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... sweet chirp of a bird, gently echoed in the adjoining woods, announced that the storm had ceased, and nature resumed her wonted calm. On arising, I went to the door, and the unclouded effulgence of dawn bursting through the dripping boughs ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... grasshopper called a "shuttle"? What does the word still mean here? Who are the "elfin clan"? By whom is the sheaf tenanted? What is a reveille? Does the grasshopper chirp at night? Why ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... no longer,' little Mary Samm made answer firmly. 'I love my sisters dearly, dearly,' she raised her voice unconsciously as she spoke, and a chaffinch on a branch overhead filled in the pause with an answering chirp, 'I love my mother too. Didst thou really say thou wert expecting her to visit thee right soon? My dear, dear mother! But I love my dear grandfather best of all, for he hath nobody but me to care for him. At least, of course, he hath thee, Aunt Joan,' she added hastily, noticing a slight shade pass ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... groves picture-like, half stripped of foliage; the western breeze coming with sudden gusts, and the wail of the oriole still audible; the warm sun shining with genial rays, and the cicada also adding its chirp: structures, visible to the gaze at a distance in the South-east, soaring high on various sites and resting against the hills; three halls, visible near by on the North-west, stretching in one connected line, on the bank of the stream; strains of music filling the pavilion, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... could not get near enough to see this queer inflation, but now the frogs do not seem so shy. Garter snakes wiggle through the grass down the bank of the creek and the crickets are just beginning to chirp the love chorus which is soon to swell incessantly till the fall frosts come. Butterflies, dragon flies, saw flies and gall flies are busy and we see evidences of their work in the crimson galls on the willow leaves and the ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... shoes— A joy at which I could but choose To listen enviously, because I'm always just "Old Santa Claus,"— But ere my rising sigh had got To its first quaver at the thought, It broke in laughter, as I heard A little voice chirp like a bird,— ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... soft twilight of a summer's morning, and the little birds had begun to chirp their matins, and the lark to brush the dew from her speckled breast, waiting for the first gaze of the sun. The old man pressed the infant closer to his bosom as he drew nigh to the steep acclivity, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... world. The seat was under the currant-bushes still. Very little time ago; but she was a woman now,—and, look here! A chance ray of sunlight slanted in, falling barely on the dust, the hot heaps of wool, waking a stronger smell of copperas; the chicken saw it, and began to chirp a weak, dismal joy, more sorrowful than tears. She went to the cage, and put her finger in for it to peck at. Standing there, if the life coming rose up before her in that hard, vacant blare of sunlight, she looked at it with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Siegfried went out into the early morning, and how the light glittered on the trembling leaves and sifted through in little splashes. He stood still, listening to the stir of the leaves and the hum of the bees and the chirp of the birds. Two birds were singing as they built a nest, and he wondered what they said to one another. He cut a reed and tried to mock their words, but it was like nothing. He began to wish that he might speak to some one like himself, and he wondered about his mother; why had she left ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee
... Cauld, cold. Caup, cup. Celness, coldness. Cess, excise, tax. Chafe, chafing. Change-house, tavern. Chapman, peddler. Chapournelie, hat. Chelandri, goldfinch. Cheres, cheers. Cheves, moves. Chirm, chirp. Church-giebe-house, grave. Claes, clothes. Claithing, clothing. Clamb, climbed. Claught, catch up. Clinkin, smartly. Clinkumbell, the bell-ringer. Clymmynge, noisy. Cockernony, woman's hair gathered up with a band. Cofte, bought. Cog, basin. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... The crickets chirp from sunset to sunrise, and often during the day when the weather is cloudy. The bete-rouge is exceedingly numerous in these extensive wilds, and not only man, but beasts and birds, are tormented by it. Mosquitos are very rare after you pass the third island in the Demerara, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... May is the most beautiful of all months. Then it is, that all nature seems to awaken from its winter slumbers. The grass springs up, the little birds sing and chirp, and display their beautiful plumage. The trees shoot forth their buds, the fruitful covering of future foliage. We no longer greet each other in the warmed room, but, "Good morning," is sweetly spoken from the open window, ...
— The Girl's Cabinet of Instructive and Moral Stories • Uncle Philip
... it was too late in the year for the chirp of any insects; the moving air, which could hardly be called wind, swept over in slow waves, and a few dry leaves rustled on an old hawthorn tree which grew beside the hollow where a house had been, and a low sound came from the river. The whole country side seemed ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... robin, cocking his head on one side, answered, "Chirp, chirp," and then spreading ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... perfectly, but have not been able yet to procure the third. No two birds can differ more in their notes, and that constantly, than those two that I am acquainted with; for the one has a joyous, easy, laughing note, the other a harsh, loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two drams and a half, while the latter weighs but two; so the songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... I thought I heard a faint noise. Routing out the good old creature, that I might take observations, eggs still, and no chickens, were discernible, but the tiniest, little, silvery, sunny-hearted chirp that you ever heard, inside the eggs, and a little, tender pecking from every imprisoned chick, standing at his crystal door, and, with his faint, fairy knock, knock, knock, craving admission into the great world. Never can I forget or describe the sensations of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... in his ear mysterious words. Here a shrill chirp; there a click, like the click made with the tongue; further on, plaintive murmurs; in the distance a tinkle like that of the bell on the neck of the wandering ox. Suddenly Rey heard a strange sound, a rapid note, that could be produced only by the human ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... creatures could hardly be less like each other; the bird has soft warm feathers, and the fish has scales, overlapping each other as the slates on the roof of a house do, thus making a perfectly waterproof coat for its whole body; the bird has legs and wings, and the fish has neither; the bird can chirp and sing, while ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... beginning with the officers spreads to the men. Some cases of terrorism have occurred at Delhi which are a disgrace to our race. And of course we know what follows. Cowardice and cruelty being twins, the man who runs terror-stricken into his barrack to-night because he mistook the chirp of a cricket for the click of a pistol, indemnifies himself to-morrow by beating his bearer to within an inch ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... had forgot their hardships; But not to chant and carol in the air, Or lightly swing upon some waving bough, And merrily return each other's notes; No; silently they hop from bush to bush, Yet find no seeds to stop their craving want, Then bend their flight to the low smoking cot, Chirp on the roof, or at the window peck, To tell their wants to those who lodge within. The poor lank hare flies homeward to his den, But little burthen'd with his nightly meal Of wither'd greens grubb'd from the farmer's garden; A ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... morning and seven at night the nightingale came on the lawn to feed, and was every morning chased by a surly John Bull of a robin. When the young are coming out of the nest the parents chide them, or strangers, in a peculiarly harsh chirp. ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... vodka. I poured myself out a teacupful and greedily drank it off, for I was intensely thirsty. Axinya had quite recently scrubbed the table and benches, and there was that smell in the kitchen which is found in bright, snug kitchens kept by tidy cooks. And that smell and the chirp of the cricket used to lure us as children into the kitchen, and put us in the mood for hearing fairy tales and playing at "Kings" . ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... clear. The moon is at its full. Not another boat is to be seen. The moonlight glimmers on the ripples. Solitude reigns on the banks. The distant village sleeps, nestling within a thick fringe of trees. The shrill, sustained chirp of the cicadas is the ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... translation of "suzumushi," a kind of cricket with a distinctive chirp like a tiny bell, whence ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... about the Roman villa as soon as Marcus was left alone. All seemed to have grown painfully still. It was fancy, no doubt, but, to the boy, the birds had ceased to sing and chirp among the trees, the sounds from the farm were distant, and though more than once Marcus listened intently he did not hear Serge go to or from his room, nor his step ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... leg, And laid it down like a cribbage-peg, For the Rout was done and the riot: The Square was hush'd; not a sound was heard; The sky was gray, and no creature stirr'd, Except one little precocious bird, That chirp'd—and then ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... semi-dark, faces turning like his own to the summits of the mountains and the billowy splendors there. It grew so dark he could see no more. There fell a deep silence, not a sound but the occasional chirp of a bird or the faint whirr of an insect. Even the glow on the peaks was gone. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... statements given in such a way that they are audible and intelligible. A few lessons in elementary elocution are generally vitally necessary. The man with the bassoon voice must be tamed, and the birdlike old lady made to chirp more loudly. But all this is the self-evident preparation which must take place in every case, and while highly important is of far less interest than the development of the circumstantial evidence which is the next ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... swiftly, capably busy, her tawny hair, her sun-browned cheeks and the creamy curve of her brow, the blue and flash and fathomless depths of her eyes. I remembered the sunlight and freshening breeze upon the hills, the chirp and gentle stirring of the day, the azure sea and far-off, tender mist, the playful breakers, flinging spray high into the yellow sunshine. 'Twas no time now, thought I, to be busied with craft in the gloomy cabin of the Shining Light, which was all well enough in its way; 'twas ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... graceful trees, rising in one unbroken line toward the skies, their slender branches forming a dark network overhead, and their lofty proportions lessening in the distance, until lost in the solemn gloom beyond. A religious silence prevailed, broken only by the occasional chirp of the wren, or the soft pattering of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the screw in mid-air. The captain glanced at the barometer, drew his body to its full height, reached for his storm-coat, slipped it on, and was about to swing back the door opening on the deck, when the chirp of a canary rang through the room. At the sound he turned quickly and walked back to where ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the matter with you and Billy? Pat says (Pat is Patricia, Billy's sister) that you've been pretty horrid about writing him, and he's been blue-black at not getting letters from you; but at present he is having a good time with a very jolly girl from the West who is at their hotel. Chirp him something cheerful, Canary Bird. If I were younger or Billy older you shouldn't have him. I'd have him myself. I'm not going to stand for bad treatment of him, and if those Southern boys who make love to every pretty girl they see, and make it better than any boys on earth, have ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... the boisterous revel of the forst geister, that meets his ear? or is it but the chirp of insects, replying from brake ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... twenty-four hours, arter which he'll thumb his nasal protuberance at yer, an' go cayvortin' 'round after ther same old style, seekin' whomsoever he kin sock a bullet inter. Then you'll hate yerself, an' wish ye'd tooken my advice ter hang ther whelp, sheriff or no sheriff. You hear me chirp!" ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... "That was the chirp of Ariel You heard, as overhead it flew, The farther going more to dwell And wing our green to wed our blue; But whether note of joy or knell Not his own Father-singer knew; Nor yet can any mortal tell, Save only how it shivers through; The breast of us ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shet my eyes now, as you sing it, And hear her low answerin' words; And then the glad chirp of the crickets, As clear as the twitter of birds; And the dust in the road is like velvet, And the ragweed and fennel and grass Is as sweet as the scent of the lilies Of Eden of old, ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... laughing at their own little jokes, prattling and prattling away unceasingly, until mamma appears with her awful didactic countenance, or the governess with her dry moralities, and the colloquy straightway ceases, the laughter stops, the chirp of the harmless little birds is hushed. Lady Clara being of a timid nature, stood in as much awe of Ethel as of her father and mother; whereas her next sister, a brisk young creature of seventeen, who was ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... carry all its days along the road Of its serene existence! Christian-like, It toils with patience, seeking sweet repose Within itself when wearied with the throes Of its life-struggle. The low sounds that strike Upon the ear in wafts of melody, Are cruel mockeries, O snail, of thee. The cricket's chirp, the grasshopper's shrill tone, The locust's jarring cry, all mock thy lone And dumb-like presence. May this heart of mine, When tried, put on a resignation such ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... ascend to the pine-woods above Lamteng in this month, and chirp shrilly in the heat of the day; and glow-worms fly about at night. The common Bengal and Java toad, Bufo scabra, abounded in the marshes, a remarkable instance of wide geographical distribution, for a Batrachian which is common at the level of ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the latest, Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest, Where the nestlings chirp and flee, That's the way for ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... tear me limb from limb, were now leaping and licking my hands, and rolling on the leaves around me. I listened awhile in the fear of hearing the voices of men following the dogs, but there was no sound in the forest save the gurgling of the sluggish waters of the creek, and the chirp of black squirrels in the trees. I took courage and started onward once more, taking the dogs with me. The bell on the neck of the old dog, I feared might betray me, and, unable to get it off her ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... sweetest; she drew such glowing pictures of bliss within the law and the limits of the conscience, till at last, worn out, Lucy murmured "Peepy, dear Berry," and the soft woman gradually ceased her chirp. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... day she carefully cleaned her house, chirping while she worked. Sometimes her voice was sweet and pleasant. But at other times—though it was still sweet—it was not pleasant at all. And whenever Rusty heard that second kind of chirp he was always careful to find some errand that took him ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey
... unexpectedly before her, having walked over from the Thurman ranch after doing the chores. To him she observed that Frank was an hour late, and Swan, whistling softly to Jack—Lorraine was surprised to hear how closely the call resembled the chirp of a bird—strode away without so much as a pretence at excuse. Lorraine stared after him wide-eyed, wondering and yet not ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... creature running around with a butterfly net or an insect box. A true naturalist is simply a man or boy who keeps his eyes and ears open. He will soon find that nature is ready to tell him many secrets. After a time, the smell of the woods, the chirp of a cricket and the rustling of the wind in ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... ever in my breast. Yet how ecstatically sweet, Was its first soft tumultuous beat! I little thought that beat could be The harbinger of misery; And daily, when the morning beam Dawned earliest on wood and stream, When, from each brake and bush were heard, The hum of bee, and chirp of bird, From these, earth's matin songs, my ear Would turn, a sweeter voice to hear— A voice, whose tones the very air Seemed trembling with delight to bear; From leafy wood, and misty stream, ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... to come and put his heavy foot on the bush. He did it, and crack went the branch, splash went the poor chicks into the water, and all were drowned but Cocky, who flew across and was saved. Poor little Hop, Chirp, and Downy went floating down the brook like balls of white foam, and were never seen again. All the hens mourned for them, and put a black feather in their heads to show how sorry they were. Mamma Partlet was heart-broken to lose three darlings at once; but Cocky comforted her, and never told ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... the way the faint tinkle of a piano, the far-off rattle of the elevated, a muffled laugh from a window, above, the rat-tat of a cab-horse, the breeze in the ivy clinging to the walls of the church next door, the quarrelsome chirp of the sleepy sparrows; and then, recurrence. Only the poet or the man in pain opens ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... willows Are yellowed with bud. White clouds roar up from the south And darken the ripples; but they cannot darken my heart, Nor the face like a star in my heart!... Rain falls on the water And pelts it, and rings it with silver. The willow trees glisten, The sparrows chirp under the eaves; but the face in my heart Is a secret of music.... I wait in the rain and am silent." Listen again!... It says: "I have worked, I am tired, The pencil dulls in my hand: I see through the window Walls upon walls of windows with ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... are here; Warm on my cheek the sunshine burns, And fledged birds chirp, and far and near Floats the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... lead with much docility. Truesdale was profoundly impressed by his sister's aspect under these novel conditions; Bertie Patterson seemed to find in her the incarnation of all the town's philanthropy; even Aunt Lydia was almost too deeply affected to chirp and chatter with ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... tree—yea, it seemed as if every branch sent forth the music of singing birds, and the very air was redolent with melody, from the bold songs of the thrush and the lark to the love-note of the wood-pigeon; and even the earth rejoiced in the chirp of the grasshopper, its tiny but pleasant musician. The fields and the leaves were in the loveliness and freshness of youth, luxuriating in the sunbeams, in the depth of their summer green; and the butterfly sported, and the bee pursued its errand from flower to flower. The mighty mountains ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... Stars that looked upon her early in the night had gone down into blue abysms below the horizon, and the midnight song of a mocking-bird, swinging in a lemon-tree beneath her window, had long since hushed itself with the chirp of crickets and ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... their inactivity. They lie in Aralu without doing anything. Everything there is in a state of neglect and decay. The dead can speak, but the Babylonians probably believed, like the Hebrews, that the dead talk in whispers, or chirp like birds.[1163] The dead are weak,[1164] and, therefore, unless others attend to their needs, they suffer pangs of hunger, or must content themselves with 'dust and clay' as their food. Tender care during the last moments of life was essential to comparative well-being in ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... looks content, With quiet eyes unfaithful to the truth, And point thee forward to a distant light, Or seem to lift a burthen from thy heart And leave thee freer, till thou wake refresh'd, Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grown Full quire, and morning driv'n her plow of pearl [6] Far furrowing into light the mounded rack, Beyond the fair green field and ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... the ease with which a human being can be made to look like a magnified toad—all which feats yielded high delight and satisfaction to the assembled spectators. After which, the voice of Mrs. Pott was heard to chirp faintly forth, something which courtesy interpreted into a song, which was all very classical, and strictly in character, because Apollo was himself a composer, and composers can very seldom sing their own music or anybody else's, either. This was succeeded by Mrs. Leo Hunter's recitation ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... nave; and where Durdles, waving his lantern, waves the dim angels' heads upon the corbels of the roof, seeming to watch their progress. Anon they turn into narrower and steeper staircases, and the night-air begins to blow upon them, and the chirp of some startled jackdaw or frightened rook precedes the heavy beating of wings in a confined space, and the beating down of dust and straws upon their heads. At last, leaving their light behind a stair—for it blows fresh ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... had chosen, they tell me, a dusk so fair One almost thought there were not such another—there. The air was full of the perfume of pines, and the sweet Sleepy chirp of birds, long the lush soft grass ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... necessarily trying. On Saturday, however, came a clear day. The sun shone, the drenched trees shook themselves, and the wind came and blew softly and warmly through their branches to dry the tender foliage. The birds popped out of their hiding-places and began to sing and chirp as though they never could be glad enough for this change in ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... know the gracious mother's wiles And dear delusive smiles! No callow fledgling of her singing brood But tastes that witching food, And hearing overhead the eagle's wing, And how the thrushes sing, Vents his exiguous chirp, and from his nest Flaps forth—we know the rest. I own the weakness of the tuneful kind,— Are not all harpers blind? I sang too early, must I sing too late? The lengthening shadows wait The first pale stars ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... London now that April's there, And whoever walks in London sees, some morning, in the Square, That the upper thousands have come to Town, To the plane-trees droll in their new bark gown, While the sparrows chirp, and the cats miaow In London—now! And after April, when May follows And the black-coats come and go like swallows! Mark, where yon fairy blossom in the Row Leans to the rails, and canters on in clover, Blushing and drooping, with her head bent low! That's the wise child: she makes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... held his ground, and said, "Yet hear how sweetly it sings! No wild, untaught bird of earth could sing like that." Whereat they were vastly merry, and one cried, Why, it is quite a common 'tweet-tweet!' It is no more than the chirp of a vulgar, everyday thrush or linnet!" And another, "Were I you, I would wring the bird's neck; it must be a terrible nuisance if it always makes such a noise!" And a third, "Let it fly, we cannot hear ourselves speaking for its screaming!" ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... must be rarely beautiful. It has trees in front and a yard and a garden and a squash court: a sort of tennis you play against the angles of walls covered smooth with cement. Also a studio as large as a theatre. Outside the trees beat on the windows and birds chirp there. The river flows only forty feet away, with great brown barges on it, and gulls whimper and cry, and aeroplane all day. I have a fine room, and about the only one you can keep as warm as toast SHOULD be, and in ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... papers, and father said he was more comfortable than downstairs, as I did not mind his pipe, and Tom has hung my linnet there,' pointing to the window, 'and if you open the cage, miss, you will see him hop all over the bedclothes, and chirp in ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in a facetious frame of mind, as being descriptive of the very opposite of her character, for she was gentle as a lamb, tender in the mouth, playful in her moods, and sensitive to a degree both in body and spirit. No curb was ever needed to restrain Vixen, nor spur to urge her on. A chirp sent an electric thrill through her handsome frame; a "Quiet, Vic!" sufficed to calm her to absolute docility. Any child could have reined her in, and she went with springy elasticity as though her limbs were made of vivified steel and indiarubber. But she was ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... its direction continually. This is the Great Bird of Paradise going to seek his breakfast. Others soon follow his example; lories and parroquets cry shrilly, cockatoos scream, king-hunters croak and bark, and the various smaller birds chirp and whistle their morning song. As I lie listening to these interesting sounds, I realize my position as the first European who has ever lived for months together in the Aru islands, a place which I had hoped ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... netsukes Uttered in every silent pause Dry, bony laughs from tiny jaws; The painted monkeys on the wall Waked up with chatter impudent; Pottery, porcelain, bronze, and all Broke out in ghostly merriment, - Faint as rain pattering on dry leaves, Or cricket's chirp on summer eves. ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... ventured to close my eyes again before there begins a chirp, a twitter, a general thrill of sound. All the birds are awake, and are soon in full chorus. Presently a flush of color will run around the horizon, and it will be dawn. The actual night has flown. I can hear Smith, our grocery-man ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the water, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... aware of a strange silence, if silence it could be called, for when they listened the silence was full of sound, innumerable little sounds, some of which they recognised; but it was not the hum of the insects or the chirp of a bird or the snapping of a rotten twig that filled Joseph with awe, but something that he could neither see, nor hear, nor smell, nor touch. The life of the trees—is that it? he asked himself. A remote and mysterious life was certainly breathing ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... woodbine and honey-suckle climbing over the wall, and starred spaniels sprawling themselves on the grass. I invite amid these trees the larks, and the brown thrushes, and the robins, and all the brightest birds of heaven, and they stir the air with infinite chirp and carol. And yet the place is a desert filled with darkness ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... really picturesque spectacle the boy almost cried with laughter—and old Bob and his wife, who came running from the kitchen, DID cry.) He had a third appellation for himself—"Just little Hamilton"; but this was only when the creaky voice could hardly chirp at all and the weazened face was drawn to one side with suffering. When he told us he was "Just little Hamilton" we were ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... butterflies. Others are ant-lions or caddis-flies. The curve of the fragment of wing also suggested its probable size when unbroken. It was perhaps two inches long. As there are little horny rings round the wing base like those which crickets have, on which they rub their legs and so "chirp," it is also quite likely that this insect of hoary antiquity did the same, and enlivened the silence of Devonian fern groves with a prehistoric hum. It is quite in keeping with modern ideas that in that age of fishes ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... from the little warbling host, is the shrill chirp of the hairbird,—occasionally vocal at an hours on a warm summer night. This strain, which is a continued trilling sound, is repeated with diminishing intervals, until it becomes almost incessant. But ere the hairbird has uttered many notes, a single robin begins to warble ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of mighty pow'r, Compact in frame, and strong of limb; Went with a chirp from hour to hour; Whip-cord! 'twas never made ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... turned sociably towards one another, now and then, as they exchanged a syllable or two, and there was a mild luminousness of pleasure in the recesses of their pale-blue eyes. The evening darkened fast into night. The plaintive half-chirp, half-whistle of a tree-toad fell in monotonous repetition upon ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... watched, they began to pale and the sky brightened. Day came suddenly, almost instantaneously. I turned for another look at the blue night, and it was gone. Everywhere the birds began to call, and all manner of little insects began to chirp and hop about in the willows. A breeze sprang up from the west and brought the heavy smell of ripened corn. The boys rolled over and shook themselves. We stripped and plunged into the river just as the sun came up ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... childish suns and showers, Oh! girlish thorns and flowers, Oh! fruitless days and hours, Oh! groundless hopes and fears: The birds still chirp and twitter, And still the sunbeams glitter: Oh! barren years and bitter, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
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