|
|
|
More "Chirrup" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... summit of the hill, he leant slightly forward and gathered up the lines which he had allowed to lie slack upon his horses' backs. A resounding "chirrup" and the weary beasts strained at their neck-yoke. Something moving in amongst the trees attracted their attention. Their snorting nostrils were suddenly thrown up in startled attention. The off-side horse jumped sideways against its companion, and the sleigh was within ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... on. If, however, the leaf had not come at just that moment Chee would have drowned. When the leaf floated in shore they all went home and told Mother Cricky. She stopped chirruping for quite a long time and didn't say anything at all. When Mrs. Cricky began to chirrup again she said it served them just right, and she hoped it had taught them all a lesson. Then they all chirruped together, because Chee was safe, and Mrs. Cricky said: "Now let us all sing a little song to show that we are happy." And this is ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... overlaid with clouds like indigo-sheets, and a tremendous storm of water was falling. The birds looked out from their nests, and saw some monkeys, shivering and starved with the cold, standing under a tree. 'Twit! twit! you Monkeys,' they began to chirrup. 'Listen to us!— ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... of good versification has lowered the price of poets, and therefore, in this marketing world, has robbed them of proper estimation. Doubtless, there have been mighty men of song higher in rank, as earlier in time, than any now who dare to try a chirrup: but there are also many of our anonymous minstrels, with whom the greater number of the so-called old English poets could not with advantage to the ancients justly be compared. Look at 'Johnson's Lives.' Who can read the book, and the specimens it glorifies, without rejoicing in his prose, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... filled with a rage of joy, dashing up and down the smooth white sides of the quarry, multiplied by their blue shadows. They would nestle in crevices, like bits of thistledown caught in a grass-tuft, and would there sun themselves and chirrup. So many hundreds were there, and their shadows so multiplied them, that they seemed less like birds than like some dream of a bird heaven—essential birdhood. They were so quick with life, so warm, with their red-splashed breasts and blue flashing bodies; ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... or any tokens of vitality, are rare indeed in my City churchyards. A few sparrows occasionally try to raise a lively chirrup in their solitary tree—perhaps, as taking a different view of worms from that entertained by humanity—but they are flat and hoarse of voice, like the clerk, the organ, the bell, the clergyman, and all the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... The chirrup brought Rick back to his senses. He wasn't in some marvelous bed, he was in space! But natural forces still bound him to earth, and mother earth would reclaim him with crushing, final impact within a ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... ending, Cricket chirps at need, 50 Executes the hand's intending, Promptly, perfectly,—indeed Saves the singer from defeat With her chirrup low ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... happiest when storms drive thickest and coldest, is the snow bunting, the real snowbird, with plumage copied from the fields where the drifts hide all but the tops of the tallest weeds,—large spaces of pure white touched here and there with black and gray and brown. Its twittering call and chirrup coming out of the white obscurity is the sweetest and happiest of all winter bird sounds. It is like the laughter of children. The fox-hunter hears it on the snowy hills, the farmer hears it when ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... cooing of the Carolinian dove, may be heard among other sounds—the latter suggestive of earth's noblest passion, as its utterer is the emblem of devotion itself. At night other sounds are heard, less agreeable to the ear: the shrill "chirrup" of cicadas and tree-toads ringing so incessantly, that only when they cease do you become conscious of their existence; the dull "gluck-gluck" of the great bullfrog; the sharp cries of the heron ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the constant chirrup of the larks, the brush of their feet through the clover, the faint jingle of some coins in Chrisfield's pocket, and in the distance the irregular snoring of an aeroplane motor. As they walked Andrews leaned over from time to time and picked a couple of ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... cowhide boots, his cap with ear-laps, a knitted comforter about his neck, and his hands glowing in scarlet mittens; and little Sis, in a thick shawl, trudging along behind him, stepping in his tracks. They chirrup, "Good-morning, sir!" As far as you can see them you have to watch them, and something rises in your throat. Lord love 'em! ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... why are you torture to remember? Let me not think how the night slipped into dawn as we roamed, how pale gold filtered through the darkness and bleached the air, how bird after bird with distant chirrup and breaking time announced the day. She left me, and as well it might be night. I wound a strange way home. I questioned if it were the dream of a fevered brain; I wondered, would she remember when next she saw me? None met with me that day; I forgot all. With the night I again ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... moment the prospect was obscured, the trees that filled the gulley, bunched at the summit into a thicket, just discernible in foggy outline. The horses had gained the level, Jim Bailey, who knew the road in his sleep, had cheered them with a familiar chirrup, when the leaders stopped, recoiling in a clatter of slackened harness on the wheelers. The stage came to a halt so violent that Jim Bailey lurched forward against the splashboard, the reins jerked out of his hands. He did not know what had happened, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... if you like, the Cricket DID chime in! with a Chirrup, Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus; with a voice so astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as compared with the kettle; (size! you couldn't see it!) that if it had then and there burst itself like an overcharged gun, if it ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... sort of panic among the poets. The gentler sort have either been scared by the improvisatore warblings of Mr Wakley, or terrified into silence by undue and undeserved apprehensions of the Knout. Seldom now are they heard to chirrup except under cover of the leaves of a sheltering magazine; and although we do occasionally detect a thin and ricketty octavo taking flight from the counter of some publisher, it is of so meek and inoffensive a kind that we should as soon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... filled with music: sweet sounds of love. The bark of the squirrel, the cooing of mated doves, the "rat-ta-ta" of the pecker, and the constant and measured chirrup of the cicada, are all ringing together. High up, on a topmost twig, the mocking-bird pours forth his mimic note, as though he would shame all other songsters ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... you, loud, deep, and hoarse, issuing from a thousand throats in ceaseless continuity of croak. The tree-frog adds her chirping and almost human voice; the kattiedid repeats her own name through the livelong night; the whole tribe of locusts chirp, chirrup, squeak, whiz, and whistle, without allowing one instant of interval to the weary ear; and when to this the mosquito adds her threatening hum, it is wonderful that any degree of fatigue can obtain for the listener ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... the night and the hot air that lagged over from the heat of the day. There was no moon, but in the sky, which the slowly-moving boughs of over-hanging trees seemed to keep in motion, there was a blizzard of stars. From the dust-covered thickets along the road arose the chirrup of insects, the strange noises that make night lonesome; and a small stream, which in the light has flowed without noise over the slick, blue rocks, was rushing now with a loud gurgle, as if to hurry out of ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... it, I know; for one thing, he'd miss me sadly, and chirrup for me all day long, he'd be so lonely. I could not be half so happy a-thinking on him, left alone here by himself. Then, Libbie, he's just like a Christian, so fond of flowers and green leaves, and them sort of things. He chirrups ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... the snow water has come down from the heated high ridges,—it is time to light the evening fire. When it drops off a note—but you will not know it except the Douglas squirrel tells you with his high, fluty chirrup from the pines' aerial gloom—sign that some star watcher has caught the first far glint of the nearing sun. Whitney cries it from his vantage tower; it flashes from Oppapago to the front of Williamson; LeConte speeds it to the westering peaks. The high rills wake ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... fluttering here and there, He never sought to cleave the air, He chirrup'd oft, and, free from care, [iii] Tun'd to her ear his grateful strain. Now having pass'd the gloomy bourn, [iv] From whence he never can return, His death, and Lesbia's grief I mourn, Who sighs, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... of Arvina been less agitated than it was by dark and ominous forebodings, that walk had been a pleasant one, in the calm and breezeless evening. The stars were shining by thousands in the deep azure sky; the constant chirrup of the shrill-voiced cicala, not mute as yet, although his days of tuneful life were well nigh ended, rose cheerfully above the rippling murmurs of the waters, and the mysterious rustling of the herbage rejoicing to drink up the copious ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... contrary, born of an honourable tribe and family and living in the midst of our fellow-citizens, we have fled from our country as hard as ever we could go. 'Tis not that we hate it; we recognize it to be great and rich, likewise that everyone has the right to ruin himself; but the crickets only chirrup among the fig-trees for a month or two, whereas the Athenians spend their whole lives in chanting forth judgments from their law courts.[180] That is why we started off with a basket, a stew-pot and some myrtle boughs[181] and have come to seek a quiet country in which ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... no more, or ask The sun that visits their grave so lightly; Ask of the whispering reeds, or task The mourning crickets that chirrup nightly. All of their life but its love forgot, Everything tender and soft and mystic, These are our Babes in the Woods,—you've got, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... music: sweet sounds of love. The bark of the squirrel, the cooing of mated doves, the "rat-ta-ta" of the pecker, and the constant and measured chirrup of the cicada, are all ringing together. High up, on a topmost twig, the mocking-bird pours forth his mimic note, as though he would shame all other ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... bird or animal of any kind is to be seen, and a deathlike silence reigns through the forest, which is only now and then interrupted by the rattle of the rattlesnake (like a clock going down), and the chirrup of the chitnunck, or squirrel. The sombre colour of the foliage, the absence of all sun even at mid-day, and the vault-like chilliness one feels when entering a cypress swamp, is far from cheering; and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... are laid there, Safe from harm, till baby-birds Chirrup forth to take their places, ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... field, Does one lone cricket chirrup on; Why one surviving butterfly, With all its bright ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... the Cricket DID chime in! with a Chirrup, Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus; with a voice so astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as compared with the kettle; (size! you couldn't see it!) that, if it had then and there burst itself like an overcharged gun, if it had ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... creeper, while many other beautiful blossoms flourished and faded unseen. In that dark dismal place there was an absence of animal life. Sometimes, however, by day we would hear the tuneful wail of the finger-glass bird or an occasional robin would chirrup, while at night great frogs croaked gloomily and the sloth ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... self-satisfaction (not the song) which one often hears in a barn when two Swallows are arranging their plan of operations in the spring. Again, in addition to the shriek of the Martin, there was the note which it utters when on the wing in pursuit of its food. There was also the chirrup of the Greenfinch, and the whee, whee, whee which is the climax of the Linnet's song, by which it is so irresistible as a call-bird, and which appears to bring down the flock in ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... infants "begin to laugh, first sleeping, and then shortly waking;" a curious note, but he does not ask wherefore the sense of humour, or the expression of it, comes to children first in their slumber. Of what do babies dream? And what do the nested swallows chirrup to each other in ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Tree-Frogs are active and utter various sounds, some a pleasing chirrup (like mine), others a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... library alone to wait for Peter who is bringing around the two-seater himself. It is a big dim room with books all the way up to the ceiling and a comfortable leather lounge upon which he sinks, picks up a magazine from a little table beside it and starts ruffling the pages idly. The chirrup of a telephone bell that seems to come out of the wall beside ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... Antenor, elders of the people, were seated by the Scaean gates, with Priam, Panthous, Thymoetes, Lampus, Clytius, and Hiketaon of the race of Mars. These were too old to fight, but they were fluent orators, and sat on the tower like cicales that chirrup delicately from the boughs of some high tree in a wood. When they saw Helen coming towards the tower, they said softly to one another, "Small wonder that Trojans and Achaeans should endure so much and so long, for the sake ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... a chirrup clear and strong, Dispersing all his dream, I thence withdrew, and follow'd long ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... the nice little couple in question. Mr. Chirrup has the smartness, and something of the brisk, quick manner of a small bird. Mrs. Chirrup is the prettiest of all little women, and has the prettiest little figure conceivable. She has the neatest little foot, and the softest little voice, and the pleasantest little ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... no sound of it, as though everything had conspired together to end as quickly as possible that sweet delirium, that madness. Left alone on the platform, and gazing into the dark distance, Gurov listened to the chirrup of the grasshoppers and the hum of the telegraph wires, feeling as though he had only just waked up. And he thought, musing, that there had been another episode or adventure in his life, and it, too, was at an end, and nothing was left of it but a memory. . . . He was moved, sad, and conscious ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... wrought up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm by the recital of the great deeds done in battle, or gallant sacrifices dared in love, the voices of one or more of the listeners will be sure to break into the strain; the whole audience will join in the cheerful chirrup of hai-hai-cha! or the dirge-like wail of wai-wai-wai! and at the finale some deli-kan, inspired perhaps by the sight of maiden faces cautiously peering in at door or window, will scarcely be able to refrain from firing his pistol up the chimney, ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... disgrace. By the time the sad tale was finished, she was worn out with sobs, and sat still, looking straight ahead of her into the fireless stove. But the baby's cries roused her, and she took him in her arms, making a pitiful attempt to chirrup to him. The idiot boy, feeling dimly that something was wrong, came and rubbed his head against her like a faithful dog, whining grievously. She stroked his hair lovingly. "Pore Eddie," she said, "it'd be better if you an' me an' the biby, was ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... into the entry amidst peals of happy laughter from both old and young, calling, when the door opened again to ask me whom I wanted, for the pretty lisping flirt who had proposed the game. After giving me a coquettish little chirrup of a kiss and telling me my beard scratched, she bade me on my return, send out to her "Mithter Billy Lovegrove." I obeyed her; my youngest nephew retired; and after a couple of seconds, during which Tilly undoubtedly got what she proposed the game for, Billy ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... to go if Richard had been willing, but I think he still fancies that Maria (Lady Stisted) would rather not see me, and I am quite for each one doing as he or she likes... The Bird sends his fond love and a chirrup." ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... who is bringing around the two-seater himself. It is a big dim room with books all the way up to the ceiling and a comfortable leather lounge upon which he sinks, picks up a magazine from a little table beside it and starts ruffling the pages idly. The chirrup of a telephone bell that seems to come out of the wall beside ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... remarkable that these human tornados were as violent and brief as those which scourge tropical lands as well as tropical characters. In a quarter of an hour there was a dead calm. The silence of the night, on those still and star-lit waters, was only broken by a sort of chirrup, that might have been mistaken for a cricket, but which I think was a kiss. Indeed, I was rapidly going off again to sleep, when I was called to give the key of the spirit-locker,—a glorious resource that never failed as a solemn seal ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... often impairs the charms of the sex in what is called civilized life, grew warm and slightly clamorous. In the midst of this scene, the Delaware caused his friend to stoop, so as completely to conceal himself, and then he made a noise so closely resembling the little chirrup of the smallest species of the American squirrel, that Deerslayer himself, though he had heard the imitation a hundred times, actually thought it came from one of the little animals skipping about over his head. The sound is so familiar in the woods, that none of the Hurons ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... shells, all silvered used she, And branched with blushing coral to the knee; Where sparrows perched of hollow pearl and gold, Such as the world would wonder to behold. Those with sweet water oft her handmaid fills, Which, as she went, would chirrup through the bills. Some say for her the fairest Cupid pined And looking in her face was strooken blind. But this is true: so like was one the other, As he imagined Hero was his mother. And oftentimes ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... as we were afloat, one poor boy near me began to wheeze, and I turned upon him in exasperation. He saw his danger, and meekly said, "I won't cough, Gunnel!" and he kept his word. For two mortal hours he sat grasping his gun, with never a chirrup. But two unfortunates in the bow of the boat developed symptoms which I could not suppress; so, putting in at a picket station, with some risk I dumped them in mud knee-deep, and embarked a substitute, who after the first five minutes absolutely ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... to its highest speed, that a noise startled him—an amazing little chirrupy sound which corresponded to none of the familiar forewarnings of engine trouble. With his eyes to the front he listened for a repetition of the sound. It rose again—it was like a perplexing cheep and chirrup, changing ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... his eyes, and I led him forth into the silent morning. The chirrup of the birds, the freshness of the rosy air, and a penn'orth of coffee that I got for him at a stall in the Regent Circus, revived him somewhat. When I quitted him, he was not angry but sad. He was desirous, it is true, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pools of water now open in the lake and hurry over the forest-trees, accord well with the shrill cry of the yellow-leg and curlew, and with the general wildness of the scene; while the reviving frogs chirrup gladly in the swamps to see the breaking up of winter and welcome back the spring. This is the spring I write of; and to have a correct idea of the beauties and the sweetness of this spring, you must first spend ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... majestic procession of the Undiscovered Worlds seeming to be no more than bright dots on the measureless expanse of pure ether, . . there, low on the horizon, the yellow moon swooned languidly downwards in a bed of fleecy cloud,—the drowsy chirrup of a dreaming bird came softly now and again from the deep-branched shadows of the heavy foliage,—and the lilies on the surface of the lake nodded mysteriously among the slow ripples, like wise, white elves whispering to one another some secret ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... more ethereal loveliness of September, and watch the subtle amber rays shine through the thinning boughs, and feel that all nature was becoming idealized. The birds were then mostly silent. They had left their best notes on the hawthorns and among the roses; but the crickets made a cheerful chirrup, and the great brown butterflies displayed their richest velvets, and the gossamer-like insects in the dreamy atmosphere performed dances and undulations full of grace and mystery. And all these marvelous changes imparted to love that sweet sadness ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... wine, wear a colour that cannot be rightly named—a transparent, subtle, vaporous tint of golden pink or purple, which is the gift of this warm and wonderful light. A cricket that has climbed up one of the tender shoots strikes a low note, which is like the drowsy chirrup of a roosting bird. It is the first touch of a fiddler in the night's orchestra, and will soon be taken up by thousands of other crickets, bell-tinkling toads, croaking frogs in the valley, and the solitary owl that hoots from the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... rainbow in the sun. A flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your head, the golden oriole or mango bird, the koel, with here and there a red-tufted bulbul, make a faint attempt at a chirrup; but as a rule the deep silence is unbroken, save by the melancholy hoot of some blinking owl, and the soft monotonous coo of the ringdove or the green pigeon. The exquisite honey-sucker, as delicately formed as the petal of a fairy flower, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the ending, Cricket chirps at need, 50 Executes the hand's intending, Promptly, perfectly,—indeed Saves the singer from defeat With her chirrup low and sweet. ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... morning, with the fresh air from balmy fields blowing into your window, penetrated still with the afflatus of last night's thoughts and reveries, wouldn't you be cheerful? Wouldn't the unity of all things come to you, and wouldn't you chirrup like a bird, and buzz like a bee, and turn imaginary somersaults and dance and sing, and feel like cutting up "didoes," and talk a little high strung, and be chipper with the lowliest and level with the highest? Wouldn't your heart flow over with ever so much love and gratitude? ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... coming fifty times in the course of that dreadful lingering night. Nobody came; the silence closed in deeper and deeper around the two silent women. All the world—everything round about them, to the veriest atom—seemed asleep. The cricket had stopped his chirrup in the kitchen, and no mouse stirred in the slumbering house. By times Susan dozed on the sofa, shivering, notwithstanding her shawl, and Nettie took up her needlework for the moment to distract her thoughts. When Susan started from these snatches of slumber, ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... hour, and once a footstep grated on the cement floor, and coals rattled down as if they were disturbed. Once too a soft chirrup from up above like the call of a wood bird, only strangely human and the sounds in the cellar ceased altogether, till another weird note sounded and they ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... He strolled slowly out, while Billy Windsor, mounting a chair, proceeded to chirrup and snap his fingers in the effort to establish the foundations of an entente cordiale ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... admirable neatness. He made a charming picture, with the arched portico over his head, the green grass and low church wall behind him, and then a lovely landscape of wood and pasture and valleys and hillside. Every now and then he would come and chirrup about Joachim, for he was pained and shocked at my having said that his Joachim was some one else and not Joachim at all. I said I was very sorry, but I was afraid the figure was a woman. He asked me what he was to do. He had known it, man ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... dotted about the flower-sprinkled meadows; a brook runs diagonally across the path, and some freshly-laid planks show that inhabitants are not far off; but there is not a living creature in sight. The grasshoppers keep up their perpetual chirrup, and if one looks among the flowers one can see the gleam of their scarlet wings as they jump; for the rest, the flowers and the birds have it all to themselves, and they sing their hymns and offer their incense ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... roses yonder, too, below in the water, the exact image of ourselves—them also I should like to kiss, and the nice little birds below in their nest. There are some above, too; they stretch out their heads and chirrup quite loud: they have no feathers at all, as their fathers and mothers have. They are good neighbors, those below as well as those above. How ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... descend upon him, shout and laugh him away, bully him with dead millionaires, bad corporations and humdrum business men, overawe him with mere history, argue him with statistics, and thunder him with sermons out of the world—if he puts up a faint little chirrup of hope ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... feign (Shame fall 'em they are deaf and blind) But an insect lithe and strong, Bowing the seeded summerflowers. Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel, Vaulting on thine airy feet. Clap thy shielded sides and carol, Carol clearly, chirrup sweet Thou art a mailed warrior in youth and strength complete; Armed cap-a-pie, Full fair to see; Unknowing fear, Undreading loss, A gallant cavalier Sans peur et sans reproche, In sunlight and in shadow, ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... in our mother-tongue several excellent works in verse and prose, and, heaven be praised! but little left of the trash and trumpery stuff of those duncical mumblers of ave-maries and the barbarous foregoing Gothic age, I have made bold to choose to chirrup and warble my plain ditty, or, as they say, to whistle like a goose among the swans, rather than be thought deaf among so many pretty poets and eloquent orators. And thus I am prouder of acting the clown, or any other under-part, among the many ingenious actors in that noble play, than of ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... impossible to take a step without breaking one's shins. Not a bird or animal of any kind is to be seen, and a deathlike silence reigns through the forest, which is only now and then interrupted by the rattle of the rattlesnake (like a clock going down), and the chirrup of the chitnunck, or squirrel. The sombre colour of the foliage, the absence of all sun even at mid-day, and the vault-like chilliness one feels when entering a cypress swamp, is far from cheering; and I don't know any position so likely to give one the horrors as being lost in one, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... when the heavens are overlaid with clouds like indigo-sheets, and a tremendous storm of water was falling. The birds looked out from their nests, and saw some monkeys, shivering and starved with the cold, standing under a tree. 'Twit! twit! you Monkeys,' they began to chirrup. 'Listen ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... his treasure, and begged pardon;—'If you please, my poor bleeding angel, I am sorry. But do not, I entreat, distract me with petitions of any sort, though I will perform anything earthly to satisfy you. Be a good little boat in the wake of the big ship. I will look over at you, and chirrup now and then to you, my dearest, when I am not engaged in piloting extraordinary.'—Very well; I do not mean to sneer at the unhappy boy, Merthyr; I love him; he was my husband's brother in arms; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... very confusion of the household. It was lucky if the children slept till seven o'clock. Usually, soon after six, a chirp was heard, a voice, an excited chirrup began, announcing the creation of a new day, there was a thudding of quick little feet, and the children were up and about, scampering in their shirts, with pink legs and glistening, flossy hair ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... at once; for it is only the weak who make a butt of quiet worth. Therefore she took her remonstrance in silence. She stood quietly near the window, looking at the grand cedar on her lawn watching a bird on one of its lower boughs. Presently she began to chirrup to the bird; soon her chirrup grew clearer; ere long she was whistling; the whistle struck into a tune, and very sweetly and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... a wood to try and get flowers. I only got one good one, but it was very lovely! Two crows were making wild cries for the loss of one of their young ones which some boys had taken, and as I went on I heard the queer chirrup (like a bird's note) of Adjidaumo the squirrel! and he ran across my path and into a hollow tree. It is a much smaller squirrel than ours, about the size of a ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... old Fezziwig, skipping down from his desk with wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!" 25 ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... the starry stitchwort lifted its childish faces and chorused in lines and masses. Never had I seen such a symphony of note-like flowers and tendrils and leaves. And suddenly, in its depths, I heard a chirrup and the whir of ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... if you like, the cricket did chime in with chirrup, chirrup, chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus, with a voice so astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as compared with the kettle (size, you couldn't see it!)—that if it had then and there burst itself, like an overcharged gun, if it had fallen a victim on the spot, and chirruped ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... sunbeams. But the poor little violets drooped for a time, they were so homesick, and whispered to each other, "Let us give up and die!" A beautiful canary in a cage over their heads sang "cheer up! chirrup!" but they would not listen ...
— Buttercup Gold and Other Stories • Ellen Robena Field
... piety, and it may well excuse a little communicativeness when we remember that of the generation he had served so well, few survived to speak his praise. At all events, there was one benefactor whom he never forgot; and the chirrup of the old Cicada softened into something very soft and tender every time he mentioned the name ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the aching field, Does one lone cricket chirrup on; Why one surviving butterfly, With all its ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... the summit of the hill, he leant slightly forward and gathered up the lines which he had allowed to lie slack upon his horses' backs. A resounding "chirrup" and the weary beasts strained at their neck-yoke. Something moving in amongst the trees attracted their attention. Their snorting nostrils were suddenly thrown up in startled attention. The off-side ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... with a purple bloom, but down between the rows, among the dying leaves, the first bolls were opening. The air was still hot, for at noontime the glare in the sandy road was fierce, but the evening was cool, and from out in the gleaming dew came a sweetly, lonesome chirrup, an alarm in the grass, the picket of the insect army, crying the approach of frost. In the atmosphere was felt the influence of a reviving activity; new cotton pens were built along the borders of the fields, and the sounds of hammer and saw were heard in the neighborhood ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... know; Fair hand whose touches thrill, Like golden rod of wonder, Which Hermes wields at will Spirit and flesh to sunder; Light foot, to press the stirrup In fearlessness and glee, Or dance, till finches chirrup, And stars sink ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Chirrup are the nice little couple in question. Mr. Chirrup has the smartness, and something of the brisk, quick manner of a small bird. Mrs. Chirrup is the prettiest of all little women, and has the prettiest little figure conceivable. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... but a little old woman that lives in a cottage alone and spins," and then she sang in a lightsome little chirrup of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... flower—flower is not complete without smell—but I don't care if I never smell a bush till I die. Then the birds they laugh and talk like Christians; they make me split my sides, God bless their little hearts; but they won't chirrup. Oh, dear, no, bless you, they leave the Christians to chirrup—they hold conversations and giggle and laugh and play a thing like a fiddle—it is Australia! where everything is inside-out and topsy-turvy. The animals have four legs, so they jump on two. Ten-foot square ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... croak, peep [frog]; coo [dove, pigeon]; gobble [turkeys]; quack [duck]; honk, gaggle, guggle [goose]; crow, caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, hummingbird]; buzz [flying insects, bugs]; hiss [snakes, geese]; blatter^; ratatat [woodpecker]. Adj. crying &c v.; blatant, latrant^, remugient^, mugient^; deep-mouthed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... scarce a mile further, when all at once the voices of the night became hushed. The cicadas in the trees, and the crickets under the grass, as if by mutual consent, discontinued their cheerful chirrup; and the breeze, hitherto soft and balmy, was succeeded by puffs of wind, exhaling a marshy odour, stifling as the breath ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... tone,—sign that the snow water has come down from the heated high ridges,—it is time to light the evening fire. When it drops off a note—but you will not know it except the Douglas squirrel tells you with his high, fluty chirrup from the pines' aerial gloom—sign that some star watcher has caught the first far glint of the nearing sun. Whitney cries it from his vantage tower; it flashes from Oppapago to the front of Williamson; LeConte speeds it to the westering peaks. The high ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... and sometimes adding a fourth hand or foot to make the appeal more touching. Grass or leaves she draws around her to make a nest, and resents anyone meddling with her property. She is a most friendly little beast, and came up to me at once, making her chirrup of welcome, smelled my clothing, and held out her hand to be shaken. I slapped her palm without offence, though she winced. She began to untie the cord with which she was afterwards bound, with fingers and thumbs, in quite a systematic ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... me disconnected, Maum Susie," said Flor. "'F he's free, w'at's he stayin' here for? Dar 's law for dat. Doan' want none o' yer free niggers hangin' roun' dis yere. Chirrup!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... piercing selection of whistles and small talk, to say nothing of two small bipeds of five and seven, who cap all the rest for noise, till I sometimes wish I had the aural afflictions of the old king. I can, however, quite imagine the irritation the sharp chirrup-chirrup of this little squirrel would cause to an invalid, for there is something particularly ear-piercing about it; but their prettiness and familiarity make up in great measure for their noisiness. They are certainly a nuisance in a garden, and ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... I heard the throstles vamp, Pouring their liquid notes like golden syrup, Out would I go and round the garden tramp, Wearing goloshes if the day were damp, And imitate their chirrup. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... might take care of him. So he caught Ailbe up in his arms, kicking and squealing and biting like the wild little animal he was, and wrapped him in a corner of his great cloak. Then he jumped on his horse with a chirrup and galloped away out of ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... and dreary every mile, and the snow more fine and moist. Would it turn to rain? There were no bells on the horses, and the driver, a surly, silent fellow, had not even an encouraging 'chirrup' for them, while the muffled crunching of the soft snow by the runners seemed to have a somnolent influence upon them, judging from our progress. Occasionally the gentlemen would get out and run up the hills, and once the Englishman ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... poets, and therefore, in this marketing world, has robbed them of proper estimation. Doubtless, there have been mighty men of song higher in rank, as earlier in time, than any now who dare to try a chirrup: but there are also many of our anonymous minstrels, with whom the greater number of the so-called old English poets could not with advantage to the ancients justly be compared. Look at 'Johnson's Lives.' Who can read the book, and the specimens it glorifies, without rejoicing ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... you like, the Cricket DID chime in! with a Chirrup, Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus; with a voice so astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as compared with the kettle; (size! you couldn't see it!) that, if it had then and there burst itself ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... to the cheerful chirrup of robins and the pleasant far-off sound of church bells. He liked the bells. They sounded different in the country he thought. You couldn't hear them in the city anyway. There were too many noises to distract you. There was no Sabbath stillness in the city. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... shortly waking;" a curious note, but he does not ask wherefore the sense of humour, or the expression of it, comes to children first in their slumber. Of what do babies dream? And what do the nested swallows chirrup to each other in ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... in the very bosom of the Apennines, midway between Lucca and Modena. In winter the road is clogged with snow; nothing can pass. Now, there is no sound but the singing of water-falls, and the trickle of water-courses, the chirrup of the cicala, not yet gone to its rest—and the murmur of the hot breezes ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... be known that the conventional "chirrup" (7) to quiet and "cluck" to rouse a horse are a sort of precept of the training school; and supposing any one from the beginning chose to associate soft soothing actions with the "cluck" sound, and harsh rousing actions with the "chirrup," the horse ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... moment it seemed to Edith as if all the world were blotted out, and then again the hum of bees, the chirrup of birds, the fall of a fir-cone, the call of the cock-pheasant in the wood sounded obtrusively, making the girl's voice as she continued speaking appear ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... adventurous snail, half-way up the palm-tree, glues himself to the bark and turns in for a nap. The crocodile has resumed his old position on the rock in the pool, and the flower petal floats on the water. Here comes the brilliant hoopoe with his smart crest and clear chirrup, impatient to bid Gnulemah good morning! All is as before, save that the group beneath ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... travelling full speed, and making little more than a mile an hour throughout the ten miles gone over to-day. The country is a red light soil and covered with abundance of grass, but completely dried up. No rain seems to have fallen here for a length of time. We have not seen a bird, nor heard the chirrup of any to disturb the gloomy silence of the dark and dismal forest—thus plainly indicating the absence of water in and about this country. I therefore retraced my steps towards Nash Springs; passed our last night's camp, and continued on till sundown, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... and sorrowing heart, She flew back to her home, Where Twit and Chirrup trembling ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... the birds, they appear at first sight very few indeed. On the plains one sees a little lark with two white feathers in the tail, and in other respects exactly like the English skylark, save that he does not soar, and has only a little chirrup instead of song. There are also paradise ducks, hawks, terns, red-bills, and sand-pipers, seagulls, and occasionally, though very rarely, ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... he passed a wooded headland, came a sleepy twitter, from some little pink and yellow bill barely withdrawn from its enfolding wing—to be followed by another, and another, and another, till both shores were aquiver with that plaintive chirrup, half threnody for the flying darkness, half welcome to the sun, like the praise of a choir of children roused to sing midnight matins, but still dreaming. Ford's dip was softer now, as though he feared to disturb that vibrant ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... idolatrous, bloody people in the world. Wherefore the people that shall be born, that shall live to serve God in these happy days, they shall see Antichrist only in its ruins; they shall, like the sparrows, the little robins, and the wren, sit and sing, and chirrup one to another, while their eyes behold this dead hawk. 'Here [shall they say] did once the lion dwell; and there was once a dragon inhabited: here did they live that were the murderers of the saints; and there another, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and there the startled chirrup Of strange creatures, as we go, Standing sometimes in the stirrup, Just to get a bigger show; Till we gain our point, the entry— There the pass, no sign of sentry, Not a sound above, below! Clear the coast, the savage gave Never hint to south or norward; Was he napping in his cave, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... any surprise at the grand scene that lay spread out before him. He was taking his bearings and determining how far he could trust the power of his untried wings to take him out of harm's way. After a moment's pause, with a loud chirrup, he launched out, and made tolerable headway. The others rapidly followed. Each one, as it started upward, from a sudden impulse, contemptuously saluted the abandoned nest ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... and opening the window-shutters, looked out on the calm night-scene before me. The air was hushed; the only sounds were the rippling of the stream over its rocky bed below the cottage, and the chirrup of some insects in the neighbouring wood. The stars shone brightly forth from the intense blue sky, their light just glancing on the mimic waves of the rivulet, while the tall trees and wild rocks on either side were thrown ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... there in the spring-time and hope like a blossoming rose, When the wine-blood of youth ran tingling and throbbing in every vein; Chirrup of robin and blue-bird in the white-blossomed apple and pear; Carpets of green on the meadows spangled with dandelions; Lowing of kine in the valleys, bleating of lambs on the hills; Babble of brooks and the prattle of fountains that flashed in the sun; Glad, merry voices, ripples of laughter, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... means thatched cottage or manor-house, home is home; be it ever so homely, there is no place on earth like it. Green grows the house-leek on the roof forever, and let the moss flourish on the thatch. Sweetly the sparrows chirrup and the swallows twitter around the chosen spot which is my joy and rest. Every bird loves its own nest; the owls think the old ruins the fairest spot under the moon, and the fox is of opinion that his hole in the hill is remarkably cozy. When my master's nag knows ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... softly fluttering here and there, He never sought to cleave the air, He chirrup'd oft, and, free from care, [iii] Tun'd to her ear his grateful strain. Now having pass'd the gloomy bourn, [iv] From whence he never can return, His death, and Lesbia's grief I mourn, Who sighs, alas! but ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... are very beneficial to the children: they give them exercise, awaken their attention, animate them, and rouse them to action. It is very bad to have a child even carried about by a dull, inanimate, silent servant, who will never talk, sing or chirrup to it; who will but just carry it about, always kept in the same attitude, and seeing and hearing nothing to give it life and spirit. It requires nothing but a dull creature like this, and the washing and dressing left to her, to give a child the rickets, and make it, instead of being a strong ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... this interesting couple seated themselves in their chairs than a chirrup of welcome sounded in their ears, and a beaming little figure in grey alpaca darted forward to greet them. Though the majority of passengers in an ocean-going boat may be unsociably inclined at the start, ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... pre-empting, would swear to any necessary number of good qualities in his habitation. On a little knoll ahead of the stage he saw what seemed to be a heap of earth. There must have been some inspiration in this mound, for, as soon as it came in sight, Whisky Jim began to chirrup and swear at his horses, and to crack his long whip threateningly until he had sent them off up the hill at a splendid pace. Just by this mound of earth he reined up with an air that said the forenoon route was finished. For this was nothing less than the "Sod Tavern," a house built of cakes ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... cannot be said too often, it went on with this all through the summer, till the next winter came and stopped its mouth with icicles. As the stream chattered, so the birds in the wood sang—Tweet! tweet! chirrup! throstle! Spring! Spring! Spring!—and they twittered from tree to tree, and shook the bare twigs with melody; whilst a single blackbird sitting still upon a bough below, sang "Life!" "Life!" "Life!" with the loudest pipe of his throat, because on such a day it was happiness ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... caution. He would begin running, and at the last, just as he should have done his finest stalking, he would go bounding and barking toward the Ground-squirrel, which would sit like a peg of wood till the proper moment, then dive below with a derisive chirrup, throwing with its hind feet a lot of sand right ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... The sparrow's chirrup on the roof, The slow clock ticking, and the sound, Which to the wooing wind aloof The poplar made, did all confound Her sense; but most she loathed the hour When the thick-moted sunbeam lay Athwart ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... swift bliss, why are you torture to remember? Let me not think how the night slipped into dawn as we roamed, how pale gold filtered through the darkness and bleached the air, how bird after bird with distant chirrup and breaking time announced the day. She left me, and as well it might be night. I wound a strange way home. I questioned if it were the dream of a fevered brain; I wondered, would she remember when next she saw me? None ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... There was a faint chirrup off the river, and once more Nic's heart beat wildly as he answered the signal. Then the sculling began again, the rustling was repeated somewhere behind where Nic crouched, and he felt for the muskets ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... fleeting shadows which rested on the fields, on the dark woods, and on the broken and uncertain line in the southern horizon which indicated the summits of the Pyrenees. The air was full of the perfume of newly-cut hay; the leaves sent forth a trembling murmur; the cricket uttered his sharp chirrup in the meadows; the quail's short, flute-like cry was heard, and all in nature harmonized with the beauty ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... her sewing, bending over her work. Quenu had not listened. He had been cutting some little rounds of onion over a pot placed on the fire; and almost at once the onions began to crackle, raising a clear shrill chirrup like that of grasshoppers basking in the heat. They gave out a pleasant odour too, and when Quenu plunged his great wooden spoon into the pot the chirruping became yet louder, and the whole kitchen was filled with the penetrating perfume of the onions. Auguste meantime was preparing some ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... bottles and needle-books, mending her father's clothes, and laying them out in her drawers; lastly, she had Barney brought in from the country, and every day would creep to the window to see him fed and chirrup to him, whereat the poor old beast would look up with his dim eye, and try to neigh a feeble answer. Kitts used to come every day to see her, though he never said much when he was there: he lugged his great copy of the Venus del Pardo along with him one day, and left it, thinking she would ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... them, and accompanied them to the boundary of the country. Here the first vegetation peeped forth; here Kay and Gerda took leave of the Lapland woman. "Farewell! Farewell!" they all said. And the first green buds appeared, the first little birds began to chirrup; and out of the wood came, riding on a magnificent horse, which Gerda knew (it was one of the leaders in the golden carriage), a young damsel with a bright-red cap on her head, and armed with pistols. It was the little robber maiden, who, tired of being at home, had determined to ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... great woods, and in the turn of the valleys, shadows lingered, which were less actual shadows than blottings of blue light. The birds, busy feeding wide-mouthed, hungry fledglings, had mostly ceased from song. But the drowsy hum of bees and chirrup of grasshoppers was continuous, and told, very pleasantly, of the sunshine and large plenty ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... floated by, and Chee scrambled on. If, however, the leaf had not come at just that moment Chee would have drowned. When the leaf floated in shore they all went home and told Mother Cricky. She stopped chirruping for quite a long time and didn't say anything at all. When Mrs. Cricky began to chirrup again she said it served them just right, and she hoped it had taught them all a lesson. Then they all chirruped together, because Chee was safe, and Mrs. Cricky said: "Now let us all sing a little song to show that we are happy." And this is ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... all, the grasses grow green over the dead, and poppies fringe the parapets where the bayonets glisten, the skylarks sing their songs at dawn between the lines, the frogs chuckle in the ponds at dusk, the grasshoppers chirrup in the dells where the wild iris, jewel-starred, bends mournfully to the breezes of night. In it all, the watching, the waiting, and the warring, is the mystery, the enchantment, and the glamour of romance; and romance is dear to the heart of ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... 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 chirrup in its branches. People sometimes call these dark yards 'gardens'; it is not supposed that they were ever planted, but rather that they are pieces of unreclaimed land, with the withered vegetation of the original brick-field. No man thinks of walking in this desolate place, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the shining painted floor; the back of every chair was in its place against the wall. The very hearth-stone shone, and the heads of the large iron nails in the floor were polished to steel. Ellen sat a while listening to the soothing chirrup of the cricket and the pleasant crackling of the flames. It was a fine cold winter's day. The two little windows at the far end of the kitchen looked out upon an expanse of snow; and the large lilac bush that grew close by the wall, moved lightly by the wind, drew its icy ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... seeds or crumbs in sheltered spots, and fixing masses of suet in conspicuous places, to an approving chirrup of dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee-dee, from friendly little throats. The basket was almost emptied by the time they reached the outskirts of the wood and neared the ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... are the nice little couple in question. Mr. Chirrup has the smartness, and something of the brisk, quick manner of a small bird. Mrs. Chirrup is the prettiest of all little women, and has the prettiest little figure conceivable. She has the neatest little foot, and the softest little voice, and the pleasantest little smile, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... and in the turn of the valleys, shadows lingered, which were less actual shadows than blottings of blue light. The birds, busy feeding wide-mouthed, hungry fledglings, had mostly ceased from song. But the drowsy hum of bees and chirrup of grasshoppers was continuous, and told, very pleasantly, of the sunshine and large plenty reigning out ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... insects chirrup in the grass, The birds sing in the tree, And oh! how quick the time would pass If ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... a subordinate, and in five minutes handed her into the frail vehicle. An impatient chirrup and flap of the reins, and the roan shot forth into the dusty road, leaving old Graves shaking his ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... Meudon, alone beneath the trees, when they talked like children, and laughed over the luncheon basket which Madame Bolivard had stuffed full of electrifying edibles; when they lay on their backs and looked dreamily at the sky through the leaves, and listened to the chirrup of insects awakening from winter and the strange cracklings and tiny voices of springtide, and gave themselves up to the general vibration of life which accompanies the working of the sap ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... him—an amazing little chirrupy sound which corresponded to none of the familiar forewarnings of engine trouble. With his eyes to the front he listened for a repetition of the sound. It rose again—it was like a perplexing cheep and chirrup, changing ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... were less absorbed. Yet for a while they all sat silent, looking partly at Lois, partly at each other, partly no doubt at the leaping spray from the broken waves on the reef. There was only the delicious sound of the splash and gurgle of waters—the scream of a gull—the breath of the air—the chirrup of a few insects; all was wild stillness and freshness and pureness, except only that little group of four human beings. And then, the puzzled vexation and perplexity in Tom's face, and the impatient disgust in the face of his sister, were too much ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... rested on the fields, on the dark woods, and on the broken and uncertain line in the southern horizon which indicated the summits of the Pyrenees. The air was full of the perfume of newly-cut hay; the leaves sent forth a trembling murmur; the cricket uttered his sharp chirrup in the meadows; the quail's short, flute-like cry was heard, and all in nature harmonized with the beauty of ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... vanished from sight, and a minute later there was no sound of it, as though everything had conspired together to end as quickly as possible that sweet delirium, that madness. Left alone on the platform, and gazing into the dark distance, Gurov listened to the chirrup of the grasshoppers and the hum of the telegraph wires, feeling as though he had only just waked up. And he thought, musing, that there had been another episode or adventure in his life, and it, too, was at an end, and nothing was left of it but a memory. . . . ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and bare elm branches. A few inches of snow had fallen the day before; the sun had thawed the surface slightly, and then it had frozen in a glittering smooth crust. It was still outside as only leafless winter can be, when there are no wings to flutter, or streams to trickle, or chirrup of insects to break the calm. Not a footfall, not a sleigh bell; not another light in sight, but only the moon. Anybody in the road might have seen another light,—that which came from Dolly's windows. She had been hard to suit about her arrangements; she would not have candles lit, for ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... other. I believe I heaved a deep sigh, and dropped my thimble, which "Joey" instantly seized, and with a low chirrup of intense delight, commenced to poke down between the boards of the verandah. It was too bad of us to give such broad hints by looks if not by words. Poor Mr. C. H—— was a bachelor in those days: he had not been at his little out-of-the-way homestead for some weeks, and was ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... ere swallowing it with a twitter of satisfaction. The wood-swallow wears a becoming suit of soft pearly grey and white, to contrast with its black head and throat. It has a graceful, soaring flight and a cheerful chirrup. At certain seasons scores congregate on a branch, perching in a row, so closely compact that their breasts show as a continuous band of white. When one leaves his place to catch an insect, the others close up the ranks and dress the line, and on returning, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... he tries to catch it; failing that, he puts a charge of shot into it. Some keepers think nothing of shooting their own ferrets if they will not come when called by the chirrup with the lips, or displease them in other ways. They do not care, because they can have as many as they like. Little John made pets of his: they obeyed him very ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... sensitive to vibrations ranging from 16 to 38,000 per second. The bottom and top notes of a piano make respectively about 40 and 4,000 vibrations a second. Of course, some ears, like some eyes, cannot comprehend the whole scale. The squeak of bats and the chirrup of crickets are inaudible to some people; and dogs are able to hear sounds far too shrill to affect ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... excuse a little communicativeness when we remember that of the generation he had served so well, few survived to speak his praise. At all events, there was one benefactor whom he never forgot; and the chirrup of the old Cicada softened into something very soft and tender every time he mentioned the name ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... he was glad to get away from the shadowy houses into the country road. The daisies and the dandelions were still tightly shut, and in the hedgerow a half-awakened chaffinch hopped from twig to twig, too sleepy to chirrup. A streak of green appeared in the east, and the death-like stillness was broken by cock-crows. He could hear them far away in the country and close by, and when he entered his village a little bantam walked up the road shrilling and clapping his wings, advancing to the fight. The priest admired ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... Master Maloney. He strolled slowly out, while Billy Windsor, mounting a chair, proceeded to chirrup and snap his fingers in the effort to establish the foundations of an entente ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... cried; "that sempiternal twitter, that intolerable chirrup that destroys the best and latest hours of sleep! Do you ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... procession of the Undiscovered Worlds seeming to be no more than bright dots on the measureless expanse of pure ether, . . there, low on the horizon, the yellow moon swooned languidly downwards in a bed of fleecy cloud,—the drowsy chirrup of a dreaming bird came softly now and again from the deep-branched shadows of the heavy foliage,—and the lilies on the surface of the lake nodded mysteriously among the slow ripples, like wise, white elves whispering ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... something very condescending in the smile. Another stood guard over the plants, which grew in pots much bigger than herself all the way down the verandah. If any presumed to touch them, she would dart out upon them with an indignant chirrup. For days after the great event—the opening of the Taraha—small parties waited on visitors, formed in procession before and behind, and escorted them round, explaining all mysteries, and insisting upon due admiration. Everything had to be interviewed, from teaspoons to pots of fern. ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... necks and shoulders of all flesh. The small enchanter nothing can withstand, no seniority of age, no gravity of character; uncles, aunts, grandsires, grandams, fall an easy prey: he conforms to nobody, all conform to him; all caper and make mouths, and babble, and chirrup to him. On the strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls the hair of ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... had said, "Whoa, boy," and "Gid a-a-ap." Here they said, "Halt" and "Forward!" But "Reddy" used none of these terms. He pressed with his knees on your withers, loosened the reins, and made a queer little chirrup when he wanted you to gallop. He let you know when he wanted you to stop, by the lightest ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... through it all, the grasses grow green over the dead, and poppies fringe the parapets where the bayonets glisten, the skylarks sing their songs at dawn between the lines, the frogs chuckle in the ponds at dusk, the grasshoppers chirrup in the dells where the wild iris, jewel-starred, bends mournfully to the breezes of night. In it all, the watching, the waiting, and the warring, is the mystery, the enchantment, and the glamour of romance; and romance is dear to the ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... afloat, one poor boy near me began to wheeze, and I turned upon him in exasperation. He saw his danger, and meekly said, "I won't cough, Gunnel!" and he kept his word. For two mortal hours he sat grasping his gun, with never a chirrup. But two unfortunates in the bow of the boat developed symptoms which I could not suppress; so, putting in at a picket station, with some risk I dumped them in mud knee-deep, and embarked a substitute, who after the first five minutes ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to make the appeal more touching. Grass or leaves she draws around her to make a nest, and resents anyone meddling with her property. She is a most friendly little beast, and came up to me at once, making her chirrup of welcome, smelled my clothing, and held out her hand to be shaken. I slapped her palm without offence, though she winced. She began to untie the cord with which she was afterwards bound, with fingers ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... had not come at just that moment Chee would have drowned. When the leaf floated in shore they all went home and told Mother Cricky. She stopped chirruping for quite a long time and didn't say anything at all. When Mrs. Cricky began to chirrup again she said it served them just right, and she hoped it had taught them all a lesson. Then they all chirruped together, because Chee was safe, and Mrs. Cricky said: "Now let us all sing a little song to ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... 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 chirrup in its branches. People sometimes call these dark yards 'gardens'; it is not supposed that they were ever planted, but rather that they are pieces of unreclaimed land, with the withered vegetation of the original ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... 'em they are deaf and blind) But an insect lithe and strong, Bowing the seeded summerflowers. Prove their falsehood and thy quarrel, Vaulting on thine airy feet. Clap thy shielded sides and carol, Carol clearly, chirrup sweet Thou art a mailed warrior in youth and strength complete; Armed cap-a-pie, Full fair to see; Unknowing fear, Undreading loss, A gallant cavalier Sans peur et sans reproche, In sunlight and in shadow, The ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and living in the midst of our fellow-citizens, we have fled from our country as hard as ever we could go. 'Tis not that we hate it; we recognize it to be great and rich, likewise that everyone has the right to ruin himself; but the crickets only chirrup among the fig-trees for a month or two, whereas the Athenians spend their whole lives in chanting forth judgments from their law-courts.(2) That is why we started off with a basket, a stew-pot and some myrtle boughs(3) and have come to seek a quiet country in which to settle. We are going to Tereus, ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... With a chirrup and a blow the horse started forward, and the mud-bespattered vehicle was rapidly moving down the road ere Helen had recovered her surprise at recognizing Mark Ray, who shook the raindrops from his hair, and ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... but"—with a slight accent of exultation—"they've never found it. Come on. Old Nigger knows it; many a time has he trodden its soft and shaking surface. Good old horse!" and she patted the black neck of her charger as she turned his head towards the distant hills and urged him forward with a "chirrup." ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... still about her skinny red elbows, catching up Zoe from the cradle as she passed, at sight of whom Gray, in spite of the pain and the deadly faintness that was dimming his eyes and clutching his breath, made an effort to chirrup and snap his fingers at ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... comical fashion, giving away everything she owned, down to her treasures of colored bottles and needlework's, mending her father's clothes, and laying them out in her drawers; lastly, she had Barney brought in from the country, and every day would creep to the window to see him fed and chirrup to him, whereat the poor old beast would look up with his dim eye, and try to neigh a feeble answer. Kitts used to come every day to see her, though he never said much when he was there: he lugged his great copy of the Venus del Pardo ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... that no animosity keeps me from Edinburgh. I should have been quite pleased to go if Richard had been willing, but I think he still fancies that Maria (Lady Stisted) would rather not see me, and I am quite for each one doing as he or she likes... The Bird sends his fond love and a chirrup." ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... that evening I listened to his monotonous chirrup about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver, the depreciation of the rupee, and the ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... chirrup on the roof, The slow clock ticking, and the sound, Which to the wooing wind aloof The poplar made, did all confound Her sense; but most she loathed the hour When the thick-moted sunbeam lay Athwart the chambers, and the day Was sloping [9] toward his western bower. Then, said she, "I am very dreary, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... one thing I should wish for,—to kiss the sun, because it is so bright and warm.* The roses yonder, too, below in the water, the exact image of ourselves—them also I should like to kiss, and the nice little birds below in their nest. There are some above, too; they stretch out their heads and chirrup quite loud: they have no feathers at all, as their fathers and mothers have. They are good neighbors, those below as well as those above. How ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... oppressive clamor beats the air. Along the ocean, where crevices of the descending iron-chiselled cliffs are fugitively green with ribbons of pale grass, downy-winged ducks purr, mating guillemots coo incessantly, and tremulous oogzooks chirrup ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... little thing home to his kind wife, that she might take care of him. So he caught Ailbe up in his arms, kicking and squealing and biting like the wild little animal he was, and wrapped him in a corner of his great cloak. Then he jumped on his horse with a chirrup and galloped away out of the ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... running, and at the last, just as he should have done his finest stalking, he would go bounding and barking toward the Ground-squirrel, which would sit like a peg of wood till the proper moment, then dive below with a derisive chirrup, throwing with its hind feet a lot of sand right into ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... violent and brief as those which scourge tropical lands as well as tropical characters. In a quarter of an hour there was a dead calm. The silence of the night, on those still and star-lit waters, was only broken by a sort of chirrup, that might have been mistaken for a cricket, but which I think was a kiss. Indeed, I was rapidly going off again to sleep, when I was called to give the key of the spirit-locker,—a glorious resource that ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... old corner of the Rue Neuve, heaped together like eggs. These people are loaded with provisions. At the farther end, square-paved, one picks out swarthy outlines of the Epinal type, and faces as brightly colored as apples. Groups of children flutter and chirrup; little girls with their dolls play at being mothers, and little boys play at brigands. Respectable people take their stand more ceremoniously than the common crowd, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... our forefathers, in the days of Chaucer, felt the holiday-making instinct of the spring, and that instinct has not been affected by the lapse of the centuries. It stirs us even in London, when the impetuous lilacs are bursting into bud, and the sooty sparrows chirrup love-songs, and "a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove"—or, to be more accurate, pigeon—which swells and straddles as if Piccadilly were all his own. The very wallflowers and daffodils which crown the costers' barrows help to weave the spell; and, though pleasure-jaunts are ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... rays shine through the thinning boughs, and feel that all nature was becoming idealized. The birds were then mostly silent. They had left their best notes on the hawthorns and among the roses; but the crickets made a cheerful chirrup, and the great brown butterflies displayed their richest velvets, and the gossamer-like insects in the dreamy atmosphere performed dances and undulations full of grace and mystery. And all these marvelous changes imparted to love that sweet ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... advice must be in my own interest, though I wish I could find your confidence. I am a poor creature, and do not know how. It is you who must encourage the faith I feel starting somewhere in this room, like a chimney swallow that would fain fly out. Chirrup, chirrup to it, and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... lonesome and dreary every mile, and the snow more fine and moist. Would it turn to rain? There were no bells on the horses, and the driver, a surly, silent fellow, had not even an encouraging 'chirrup' for them, while the muffled crunching of the soft snow by the runners seemed to have a somnolent influence upon them, judging from our progress. Occasionally the gentlemen would get out and run up the hills, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... flower-sprinkled meadows; a brook runs diagonally across the path, and some freshly-laid planks show that inhabitants are not far off; but there is not a living creature in sight. The grasshoppers keep up their perpetual chirrup, and if one looks among the flowers one can see the gleam of their scarlet wings as they jump; for the rest, the flowers and the birds have it all to themselves, and they sing their hymns and offer their incense ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... his habitation. On a little knoll ahead of the stage he saw what seemed to be a heap of earth. There must have been some inspiration in this mound, for, as soon as it came in sight, Whisky Jim began to chirrup and swear at his horses, and to crack his long whip threateningly until he had sent them off up the hill at a splendid pace. Just by this mound of earth he reined up with an air that said the forenoon route was finished. For this was nothing less than the "Sod Tavern," ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... the pink-white eggs are laid there, Safe from harm, till baby-birds Chirrup forth to take their ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... of morning, close to the open window, uttered a feeble chirrup. Into Stephen's mind there leaped without reason recollection of the morning after his first term at school, when, awakened by the birds, he had started up and fished out from under his pillow his catapult ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... some sleep, for we shall get but little rest to-morrow night," I exclaimed as I arose, and opening the window-shutters, looked out on the calm night-scene before me. The air was hushed; the only sounds were the rippling of the stream over its rocky bed below the cottage, and the chirrup of some insects in the neighbouring wood. The stars shone brightly forth from the intense blue sky, their light just glancing on the mimic waves of the rivulet, while the tall trees and wild rocks on either side were ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... Buskins of shells, all silvered used she, And branched with blushing coral to the knee; Where sparrows perched of hollow pearl and gold, Such as the world would wonder to behold. Those with sweet water oft her handmaid fills, Which, as she went, would chirrup through the bills. Some say for her the fairest Cupid pined And looking in her face was strooken blind. But this is true: so like was one the other, As he imagined Hero was his mother. And oftentimes into her bosom flew, About her naked neck his bare arms ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... refuge from the weather, and tempted him, for the same reason, to aggravate a slight cough, and declare he felt but poorly. Such were still his thoughts more than a full hour afterwards, when, supper over, he still sat with shining jovial face in the same warm nook, listening to the cricket-like chirrup of little Solomon Daisy, and bearing no unimportant or slightly respected part in the social ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... cabin overgrown with the multiflora and bignonia. There he seemed to see familiar faces of comrades who had grown up with him from infancy; he saw his busy wife, bustling in her preparations for his evening meals; he heard the merry laugh of his boys at their play, and the chirrup of the baby at his knee; and then, with a start, all faded, and he saw again the canebrakes and cypresses and gliding plantations, and heard again the creaking and groaning of the machinery, all telling him too plainly that all that phase of ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that lay spread out before him. He was taking his bearings, and determining how far he could trust the power of his untried wings to take him out of harm's way. After a moment's pause, with a loud chirrup, he launched out and made tolerable headway. The others rapidly followed. Each one, as it started upward, from a sudden impulse, contemptuously saluted the abandoned ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Fondlewife, so was Fisher superb in the uxorious husband whom the demure child-wife bamboozles, in the comedies of Moliere. No man has ever better depicted than he did a sweet nature shocked by calamity and bowed down with grief, or, as in Joe Chirrup, in Elfie, manliness chastened by affliction and ennobled by true love: yet his impersonation of Fagin was only second to that of J.W. Wallack, Jr.; his Moody, in The Country Girl, was almost tragic ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... bark of the squirrel, and the soft cooing of the Carolinian dove, may be heard among other sounds—the latter suggestive of earth's noblest passion, as its utterer is the emblem of devotion itself. At night other sounds are heard, less agreeable to the ear: the shrill "chirrup" of cicadas and tree-toads ringing so incessantly, that only when they cease do you become conscious of their existence; the dull "gluck-gluck" of the great bullfrog; the sharp cries of the heron and qua-bird; ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... tribe, exhibit a wonderful persistency of type. The cockroaches of the carboniferous epoch are exceedingly similar to those which now run about our coal-cellars; and its locusts, termites and dragon-flies are closely allied to the members of the same groups which now chirrup about our fields, undermine our houses, or sail with swift grace about the banks of our sedgy pools. And, in like manner, the palaeozoic scorpions can only be distinguished by the eye of a ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... appear at first sight very few indeed. On the plains one sees a little lark with two white feathers in the tail, and in other respects exactly like the English skylark, save that he does not soar, and has only a little chirrup instead of song. There are also paradise ducks, hawks, terns, red-bills, and sand-pipers, seagulls, and occasionally, though very ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... beetle into a box, which he placed on a table; he then put a male Cerambyx on the table, some four inches from the box. When he touched the female she began to chirrup, whereupon the male turned his antennae toward the box, "as if to determine from which direction the sound came, and then marched straight toward the female." Will concluded from this that the ears of the beetle were located ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... to say nothing of two small bipeds of five and seven, who cap all the rest for noise, till I sometimes wish I had the aural afflictions of the old king. I can, however, quite imagine the irritation the sharp chirrup-chirrup of this little squirrel would cause to an invalid, for there is something particularly ear-piercing about it; but their prettiness and familiarity make up in great measure for their noisiness. They are certainly a ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... slow, Back to their simple dwellings go— [Walls of earth, that stoutly stand, Neatly smoothed with wetted hand— Straw roofs, yellow once and gay, Turned by time and tempest gray—] Where the merry minahs crowd Unbrageous haunts, and chirrup loud— And shrilly talk the parrots green 'Midst the thick leaves dimly seen— And through the quivering foliage play, Light as buds, the squirrels gay, Quickly as the noontide beams Dance upon the rippled ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... winterisgone!" And, on the principle that a good thing cannot be said too often, it went on with this all through the summer, till the next winter came and stopped its mouth with icicles. As the stream chattered, so the birds in the wood sang—Tweet! tweet! chirrup! throstle! Spring! Spring! Spring!—and they twittered from tree to tree, and shook the bare twigs with melody; whilst a single blackbird sitting still upon a bough below, sang "Life!" "Life!" "Life!" with the loudest pipe of his throat, because ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... dead millionaires, bad corporations and humdrum business men, overawe him with mere history, argue him with statistics, and thunder him with sermons out of the world—if he puts up a faint little chirrup of hope ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... parrakeet, which has a most piercing selection of whistles and small talk, to say nothing of two small bipeds of five and seven, who cap all the rest for noise, till I sometimes wish I had the aural afflictions of the old king. I can, however, quite imagine the irritation the sharp chirrup-chirrup of this little squirrel would cause to an invalid, for there is something particularly ear-piercing about it; but their prettiness and familiarity make up in great measure for their noisiness. They are certainly a nuisance ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... confusion of the household. It was lucky if the children slept till seven o'clock. Usually, soon after six, a chirp was heard, a voice, an excited chirrup began, announcing the creation of a new day, there was a thudding of quick little feet, and the children were up and about, scampering in their shirts, with pink legs and glistening, flossy ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... on, scattering seeds or crumbs in sheltered spots, and fixing masses of suet in conspicuous places, to an approving chirrup of dee-dee, chick-a-dee-dee-dee, from friendly little throats. The basket was almost emptied by the time they reached the outskirts of the wood and neared ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... three times in the week, jogging along before the square-topped chaise, upon some highway that leads into the town, with the parson seated within, with slackened rein, and in thoughtful mood, from which he rouses himself from time to time with a testy twitch and noisy chirrup that urge the poor beast into a faster gait. All the while the little wife sits beside him, as if a twittering sparrow had nestled itself upon the same perch with some grave owl, and sat with him side by side, watching for the big eyes to turn upon her, and chirping ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... they?" Ask no more, or ask The sun that visits their grave so lightly; Ask of the whispering reeds, or task The mourning crickets that chirrup nightly. All of their life but its love forgot, Everything tender and soft and mystic, These are our Babes in the Woods,—you've got, Well—human ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... 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 how far he could trust the power of his untried wings to take him out of harm's way. After a moment's pause, with a loud chirrup, he launched out and made tolerable headway. The others rapidly followed. Each one, as it started upward, from a sudden impulse, contemptuously saluted the abandoned nest with ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... a clear half tone,—sign that the snow water has come down from the heated high ridges,—it is time to light the evening fire. When it drops off a note—but you will not know it except the Douglas squirrel tells you with his high, fluty chirrup from the pines' aerial gloom—sign that some star watcher has caught the first far glint of the nearing sun. Whitney cries it from his vantage tower; it flashes from Oppapago to the front of Williamson; ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... snow, the coats of the horses ruffled up, and they stepped sluggishly. Asa had to chirrup constantly to the six ahead, and those behind lagged at their halters. The storm increased and we got on slowly. By four o'clock ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... to hear his heart beat through the words. It was almost too much for her even then. But she held herself back, for there was that in her woman's soul that clamoured to be heard—the patter of tiny feet that had never ceased to echo there, the high chirrup of a baby's voice, the vision of a toddling child with ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... close by, his gorgeous plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow in the sun. A flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your head, the golden oriole or mango bird, the koel, with here and there a red-tufted bulbul, make a faint attempt at a chirrup; but as a rule the deep silence is unbroken, save by the melancholy hoot of some blinking owl, and the soft monotonous coo of the ringdove or the green pigeon. The exquisite honey-sucker, as delicately formed ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... L, past lighted lunchrooms, oyster saloons, and pawnshops, Miss Chapman resumed her sway. With the delightful velocity of thought his mind whirled in a narrowing spiral round the experience of the evening. The small book-crammed sitting room of the Mifflins, the sparkling fire, the lively chirrup of the bookseller reading aloud—and there, in the old easy chair whose horsehair stuffing was bulging out, that blue-eyed vision of careless girlhood! Happily he had been so seated that he could study her without seeming to do so. The line of her ankle where the firelight danced upon ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... putting forth a 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 chirrup in its branches. People sometimes call these dark yards 'gardens'; it is not supposed that they were ever planted, but rather that they are pieces of unreclaimed land, with the withered vegetation of the original ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... water, and set them in an open window where they could see the blue sky and feel the kisses of the sunbeams. But the poor little violets drooped for a time, they were so homesick, and whispered to each other, "Let us give up and die!" A beautiful canary in a cage over their heads sang "cheer up! chirrup!" but they would not listen to ...
— Buttercup Gold and Other Stories • Ellen Robena Field
... snipping, and then sewing, I am sure with admirable neatness. He made a charming picture, with the arched portico over his head, the green grass and low church wall behind him, and then a lovely landscape of wood and pasture and valleys and hillside. Every now and then he would come and chirrup about Joachim, for he was pained and shocked at my having said that his Joachim was some one else and not Joachim at all. I said I was very sorry, but I was afraid the figure was a woman. He asked me what he was to do. He ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
