"Bittern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it, and then gone on with her building. Instinct is not always inerrant. Nature is wasteful, and plays the game with a free hand. Yet what she loses on one side she gains on another; she is like that least bittern Mr. Frank M. Chapman tells about. Two of the bittern's five eggs had been punctured by the long-billed marsh wren. When the bird returned to her nest and found the two eggs punctured, she made no outcry, showed no emotion, but deliberately ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... vineyards—having loitered to draw its circle about the city walls, had fallen under a spell. It met me here a featureless, brimming ditch, and wound away in torpid coils to the monotonous horizon. And now this shrunken city, its edges dead and fallen to decay, these naked levels, where not even a bittern's voice had courage to startle the stillness, filled me, in spite of myself, with a vague apprehensiveness. Just as one who is groping in profound darkness feels his eyes dilate in the effort to catch the least glimmer of light, I found my senses all on the strain, attentive to their ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Sulleaus, equally with mixed tactics, inclusive, singular to say, of much profane Parody, (See Hist. Parl. vii. 51.) are blowing for Altar and Throne. As for Marat the People's-Friend, his voice is as that of the bullfrog, or bittern by the solitary pools; he, unseen of men, croaks harsh thunder, and that alone continually,—of indignation, suspicion, incurable sorrow. The People are sinking towards ruin, near starvation itself: 'My dear friends,' cries he, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... run him for seven miles and more As hard as our nags could split; At the start they were all too weary and sore, And his was quite fresh and fit. Young Marsden's pony had had enough On the plain, where the chase was hot; We breasted the swell of the Bittern's Bluff, And Mark couldn't raise a trot; When the sea, like a splendid silver shield, To the south-west suddenly lay; On the brow of the Beetle the chestnut reel'd, And I bid good-bye to M'Crea— And I was alone when the mare fell lame, With a ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... voices of the night and the solitude. The rattle of carriages, the clatter of mills, human voices—none of these struck the ear. This is the kingdom of swamps, islets, and shallows. From time to time a deep note sounds through the night—the boom of the bittern, that hermit of the marsh. Flights of night-birds strike long-drawn chords in the air, and the breathing wind stirs in the poplars, as it sighs through their quivering leaves. The seal cries in the reeds like the voice of a weeping child, and the cockchafer buzzes ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... bee-hunters. We fancy that we are strangers, and not so intimately domesticated in the planet as the wild man and the wild beast and bird. But the exclusion reaches them also; reaches the climbing, flying, gliding, feathered and four-footed man. Fox and woodchuck, hawk and snipe and bittern, when nearly seen, have no more root in the deep world than man, and are just such superficial tenants of the globe. Then the new molecular philosophy shows astronomical interspaces betwixt atom and atom, shows that the world is all outside; ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and in the wet savannas, six species of the bittern will engage your attention. They are all handsome, the smallest not so ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... kinds, making sad havoc amongst the smaller birds. About the period of my return from the north they all took their departure, and we were soon wholly deserted. We no longer heard the discordant shriek of the parrots, or the hoarse croaking note of the bittern. They all passed away simultaneously in a single day; the line of migration being directly to the N.W., from which quarter we had small flights of ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... excursion. He was traveling fast, for he felt, amidst the short stubble, as if all the world were watching him. And he kept a sharp eye cocked upwards at the sky, lest Henry Hawk should surprise him. Besides, he had heard the boom of a bittern that morning. And the day before he had seen a butcher-bird skimming low ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Romara's heart?— Is it the bittern that, flapping the air, Doth shriek in madness, and downward dart, As if from the bosom of Death she would tear Her perished brood,—or a shroud would have By their side, in the depths ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... reason; but how can you explain such absurdities as Friday being an unlucky day, the terror of spilling salt, or meeting an old woman? I knew a man of very high dignity, who was exceedingly moved by these omens, and who never went out shooting without a bittern's claw fastened to his button-hole by a riband, which he thought ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... not shoot Mr. Clyde, nor did he shoot anything else. Mr. Clyde did shoot a bird, but it fell into the water at a place where the shore was very marshy, and it was impossible for him to get it. He thought it was a heron, or a bittern, or perhaps a fish-hawk, but whatever it was, both ladies said that it was a great pity to kill it, as it was not good to eat, and must have been very happy in its life in ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... mentions Prince Englebert and Jemmy Moore ("alias Cox's Emperor, alias Denbigh"), but wisely adds, these come in about the same time as Victoria, when there is a glut. Early or late varieties usually sell best. A new variety, Bittern, raised (as so many varieties have been) at Sawbridgeworth, by the late Francis Rivers, seems well worth trying: "Fruit rather large, deep purple, very heavy crop, habit bushy, compact, vigorous, excellent early free-bearing variety. R. ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... of the bittern, described by Goldsmith and Nuttall, is frequently heard in our fens, in the morning and evening, sounding like a pump, or the chopping of wood in a frosty morning in some distant farm-yard. The ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... to be seen ahead, and the entire country was a perfect chaos, where the spirit of God apparently had not yet moved upon the waters. There was neither earth nor clear water, nor any solid resting-place for a human foot. Now and then a solitary bittern rose from the marsh, but, beyond a few water-rails, there were no other birds. The grass was swarming with snakes, and also with poisonous ants that attacked the men, and greatly interfered ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... long time" is also described. We read that on the 5th of November (1791) "there was a fog so thick that one might have spread it on bread. In order to write I had to light a candle as early as eleven o'clock." Here is a curious item—"In the month of June 1792 a chicken, 7s.; an Indian [a kind of bittern found in North America] 9s.; a dozen larks, 1 coron [? crown]. ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... rock at the base of which is a cave, on the seashore of La Vendee. Behind stretch the marshes, and the place is shut in and desolate. Birds cry there. The bittern booms in the thickets of grey willow and wet-shot alder. The herons nest upon the pine trees near by, till the stale scent of them comes down the wind from far. Ospreys fish in the waters of the shallow lake behind, and the scales of their prey flash in the sun ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... rude sound shall reach thine ear, Armour's clang, or war-steed champing; Trump nor pibroch summon here, Mustering clan, or squadron tramping. Yet the lark's shrill fife may come At the daybreak from the fallow; And the bittern sound his drum, Booming from the sedgy shallow. Ruder sounds shall none be near, Guards nor wardens challenge here; Here 's no war-steed's neigh and champing, Shouting ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the banks were vocal with the noises of birds, that chattered, whistled, chirruped, croaked, cooed, warbled, or made discordant cries. I doubt if any other part of the earth's surface could show a greater variety of the feathered tribe. A large brown bittern stood motionless amongst the stones of a rapid portion of the stream, crouching down with his neck and head drawn back close to his body, so that he looked like a brown rock himself. Kingfishers flitted ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... thunder in a blossoming orchard). The echoes are in us of great voices long gone hence, the unknown cries of huge beasts on the mountains; the sullen aims of creatures in the slime; the love-call of the bittern. We know, too, echoes of things outside our ken—the thought that shapes itself in the bee's brain and becomes a waxen box of sweets; the tyranny of youth stirring in the womb; the crazy terror of small slaughtered beasts; the upward push of folded grass, and how the leaf feels in all ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... field, cognate with, but not derived from, Lat. ager, occurs in Goodacre, Hardacre, Linacre, Whittaker, etc., and Field itself gives numerous compounds, including Butterfield (bittern, Chapter XXIII), Schofield (school), ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... astringent, these containing much tannin; also for its fruit, which is supplied with malic and citric acids, pectin, and albumen. Blackberries go often by the name of "bumblekites," from "bumble," the cry of the bittern, and kyte, a Scotch word for belly; the name bumblekite being applied, says Dr. Prior, "from the rumbling and bumbling caused in the bellies of children who eat the fruit too greedily." "Rubus" is ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... this treacherous forest, stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots, which afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs, or pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees, startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a firm piece of ground, which ran like a peninsula into the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during their wars with the first colonists. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... shown. It is a great rock or cliff on the loneliest part of the mountains, and, from the flowering vines which clamber about it, and the wild flowers which abound in its neighborhood, is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with water-snakes basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond-lilies which lie on the surface. This place was held in great awe by the Indians, insomuch that the boldest hunter would not pursue his game within its precincts. Once upon a time, however, ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... delicious in its artificial shape, and, above all, the large and broad-backed yellow bass, from two to four pounds weight. While Archer, who had gone forth with Garry only in the canoe, had picked up half a dozen wood-duck, two or three of the large yellow-legs, a little bittern, known by a far less elegant appellative throughout the country, and thirteen ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... falcon, the bustard, the pheasant, the heath-cock, the red-legged partridge, the small gray partridge, the pin tailed grouse, the sand-grouse, the francolin, the wild swan, the flamingo, the stork, the bittern, the oyster-catcher, the raven, the hooded crow, and the cuckoo. Besides these, the lakes boast all the usual kinds of water-fowl, as herons, ducks, snipe, teal, etc.; the gardens and groves abound with blackbirds, thrushes, and nightingales; curlews and peewits are seen occasionally; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... poor fish have enemies enough besides such unnatural fishermen; as namely, the Otters that I spake of, the Cormorant, the Bittern, the Osprey, the Sea-gull, the Hern, the King-fisher, the Gorara, the Puet, the Swan, Goose, Duck, and the Craber, which some call the Water-rat: against all which any honest man may make a just quarrel, but I will not; I will leave them to be quarrelled with and killed by others, for I am not ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... rude sound shall reach thine ear, Armour's clang, or war-steed champing, Trump nor pibroch summon here Mustering clan, or squadron tramping. Yet the lark's shrill fife may come At the daybreak from the fallow, And the bittern sound his drum, Booming from the sedgy shallow. Ruder sounds shall none be near, Guards nor warders challenge here, Here's no war-steed's neigh and champing, Shouting ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... strange birds, too. One, whom you may see in the Zoological Gardens, like a plover with a straight beak and bittern's plumage, from 'The Main,' whose business is to walk about the table at meals uttering sad metallic noises and catching flies. His name is Sun-bird, {93a} 'Sun-fowlo' of the Surinam Negroes, according ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... hue were fluttering; while near at hand one of the gaily-decked patos reales, or royal ducks, with its young brood, floated on the calmer water; and farther off a long-legged water-fowl, of the crane or bittern species, stood gazing at us with a watchful eye as we approached its domain. Had we possessed a larger supply of ammunition, I might have shot the duck for breakfast; but I was unwilling to expend a charge of powder—and besides, I was not sorry to allow the beautiful ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... sound shall reach thine ear, Armor's clang or war-steed champing Trump nor pibroch summon here Mustering clan or squadron tramping. Yet the lark's shrill fife may come At the daybreak from the fallow, And the bittern sound his drum Booming from the sedgy shallow. Ruder sounds shall none be near, Guards nor warders challenge here, Here's no war-steed's neigh and champing, Shouting clans or ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Amfortas So lang in bittern Schmerzen lag, Und ihn die Frage lange mied, Ist ihnen alles Fragen leid; All des Grales Dienstgesellen Wollen sich ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... said the boy, "there is a marsh hard by would swallow all the horses of the Queen's guard. I will into it, and see where you will go then. You shall hear the bittern bump, and the wild-drake quack, ere you get hold of me without my ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... verandah; Mr. Linton in a big basket chair, and Norah curled up at his feet in the way she loved. She could not see his face—just then she did not want to. She said nothing. The moon climbed up slowly, and the frogs were merry in the lagoon. Far off the cry of a bittern boomed across the flats. ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... to lave Their bosoms on the surging wave: Then, when against the driving hail No longer might my plaid avail, Back to my lonely home retire, And light my lamp, and trim my fire; There ponder o'er some mystic lay, Till the wild tale had all its sway, And, in the bittern's distant shriek, I heard unearthly voices speak, And thought the wizard-priest was come To claim again his ancient home! And bade my busy fancy range, To frame him fitting shape and strange, Till from the task my brow I cleared, And smiled to think ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... that they were more as men. To strong, susceptible characters, the music of nature is not confined to sweet sounds. The defiant scream of the hawk circling aloft, the wild whinny of the loon, the whooping of the crane, the booming of the bittern, the vulpine bark of the eagle, the loud trumpeting of the migratory geese sounding down out of the midnight sky; or by the seashore, the coast of New Jersey or Long Island, the wild crooning of the flocks of gulls, repeated, continued by the hour, swirling sharp and shrill, rising and falling ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... frequently, trusting to their protective dress of streaky brown, freeze into most unbird-like attitudes, drawing the feathers close to the body and stretching the neck stiffly upward,—almost bittern-like. Undoubtedly other interesting habits which these strangely picturesque birds may possess are still awaiting discovery by some enthusiastic observer with a pair of opera-glasses and a stock of that ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... through scattered belts of pinewood, where the wild cat howled and the owl screeched, and across broad stretches of fenland and moor, where the silence was only broken by the booming cry of the bittern or the fluttering of wild duck far above our heads. The road was in parts overgrown with brambles, and was so deeply rutted and so studded with sharp and dangerous hollows, that our horses came more than once upon their knees. In one place the wooden bridge ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was one thing more than another about which the colonel prided himself in his bird sanctuary, it was the presence of the bittern. I don't know where the bittern came from, nor does the colonel. Perhaps the head-keeper knew. Bitterns migrate sometimes, but—well, that keeper was no fool, and knew his ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... after 37 per cent of the water has evaporated gypsum begins to separate out, and after 93 per cent has evaporated common salt begins to be deposited. After a large part of the common salt has been precipitated, the residual liquid, called a "bittern" or "mother liquid," contains chiefly a concentration of the salts of magnesium and potassium. Still further evaporation will result in their deposition, mainly as complex salts like those found in the Stassfurt deposit ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... veil of cloud was lifted, and below Glowed the rich valley, and the river's flow Was darkened by the forest's shade, Or glistened in the white cascade; Where upward, in the mellow blush of day, The noisy bittern ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... dwarfed, tufted, vigorous, that sang to every lost wind, travelers like the gypsies who pitched their bush-like tents beneath them; he knew the shaggy ponies, with foals like baby centaurs; the chattering jays, the milky call of the cuckoos in the spring, and the boom of the bittern from the lonely marshes. The undergrowth of watching hollies, he knew too, strange and mysterious, with their dark, suggestive beauty, and the yellow shimmer of their pale ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... in action are the most capable of artistic treatment, such as "The Eagle's Throne" (after Wolf); laemmergeyer carrying off lamb; hawks fighting over a small bird, allowing the latter to escape; peregrine falcon striking a bittern; eagle and wild cat; sea-eagle and gulls; osprey and fish. In connection with the last, one of the very best things I ever saw done with these specimens was in the Fisheries Exhibition, 1883, a piece of work—a study it might be called—executed by a German residing in London. It represented ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... neutrality, aided the Imperialists in putting down the insurrection in such ways as this. The British cruisers assumed that the Ti-Ping junks were pirates, because they captured Chinese vessels. The British ship Bittern and another steamer sank every vessel but two in a rebel fleet, and gave up the crew of one which they captured to be put to death. This is the description of another transaction of the same kind, in the harbor of Shi-poo: "The ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... on the marshes boometh the bittern, Nicker the Soulless sits with his ghittern; Sits inconsolable, friendless and foeless, Bewailing his destiny, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... island of Barbadoes, and the next morning, when the drunken sailors on board the Revenge were able to look about them and consider things, they found their vessel speeding towards the coast of Cuba, and sailed by Black Paul Bittern. ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... flycatcher, the nightjar, the black redstart, the lesser redpole, the snow bunting, the redwing, the reed, marsh, and grasshopper warblers, the siskin, the dotterel, the sanderling, the wryneck, the hobby, the merlin, the bittern, and the shoveller. As occasional visitors may be reckoned the wax-wing, golden oriole, cross-bill, hoopoe, white-tailed eagle, honey buzzard, ruff, puffin, great bustard, Iceland gull, glaucous gull, and ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... eastward by the mastering breeze,— With spongy bogs that drip and fill A yellow pond with muddy rain, Beneath the shaggy southern hill Lies wet and low the Shawinut plain. And hark! the trodden branches crack; A crow flaps off with startled scream; A straying woodchuck canters back; A bittern rises from the stream; Leaps from his lair a frightened deer; An otter plunges in the pool;— Here comes old Shawmut's pioneer, The parson on ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... whose feet were fleeter than the deer's, now walked feebly, and rested oft; she, whose tongue outchirped the merriest birds of the grove, and warbled sweeter music than the song-sparrow, now spoke in strains as gloomy and sad as the bittern that cries in the swamps when night is coming on, or the solitary bird of wisdom perched among the leaves of the oak. The father sat down by her, and asked her ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... increase Indiana's total area of arable soil. "Lew" Wallace and other Hoosier generals and judges used to hunt ducks on the Kankakee; and Maurice Thompson not only camped there, but wrote a poem about the marshes,—a poem that is a poem,—all about the bittern and the plover and the heron, which always, at the right season, called him away from the desk and the town to try his bow (he was the last of the toxophilites!) on winged things he scorned to destroy with gunpowder. (Oh what a good fellow you were, Maurice Thompson, and what songs you wrote ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... died, That she so longe should a counsel hide; Her thought it swell'd so sore about her heart That needes must some word from her astart And, since she durst not tell it unto man Down to a marish fast thereby she ran, Till she came there, her heart was all afire: And, as a bittern bumbles* in the mire, *makes a humming noise She laid her mouth unto the water down "Bewray me not, thou water, with thy soun'" Quoth she, "to thee I tell it, and no mo', Mine husband hath long ass's eares two! Now is ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... with a black neck, plentiful in King's Sound, and a large bird, a species of crane, were also seen. The latter was of a French grey hue, with the exception of the head, which was black and of the shape of a bittern, commonly known among the colonists by the name of native companion. It is difficult to imagine how this name could have originated, as there is no instance of the natives making a pet of anything, except the wild dog of the country, and of that only, it is probable, from its utility ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... ground could not be found. The hills here are partly wooded and in the valleys nestle lakes literally black with wild-fowl—bittern that rise heavy-winged and furry with a boo-m-m; grey geese holding political caucus with raucous screeching of the honking ganders; black duck and mallard and teal; inland gulls white as snow and fearless of hunters; little match-legged phalaropes fishing ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... cooled, had been sewed into their skins, and thus looked almost as if they were alive. There were two pair of cocks which had been roasted, and then covered, one with gold, and the other with silver foil. There was also venison, a swan boiled, roasted pheasant and roasted bittern, with fish of various sorts—pike and perch. A variety of ornaments, too, made their appearance, subtilties, they were called, and ornamental devices in pastry. One was a lofty castle, covered with silver, flags of gold ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... is seen, And desolation saddens all thy green: One only master[3] grasps the whole domain, And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. 40 No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way; Along thy glades, a solitary guest, The hollow sounding bittern guards its nest; Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, 45 And tires their echoes with unvaried cries; Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all, And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall; And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, Far, far away thy children ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... twenty-four hours—double the usual number, owing to the island intercepting a portion of the tidal wave in its flow both ways along the Channel. Southampton comes down from the Romans, and remains of their camp, Clausentum, now known as Bittern Manor, are still to be seen in the suburbs, while parts of the Saxon walls and two of the old gates of the town are yet preserved. The Danes sacked it in the tenth century, and afterwards it was the occasional residence of Canute, its shore being said to be the scene of his rebuke to his courtiers ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... suppose all this can be a sort of vanity? Do you think it was my delight in the sound of my own voice, booming through the crowded streets I love like the bittern across his lonely marshes, that makes me wish you would abandon even such thrilling traffic as trousseau planning, and come back and let me boom some more? For I have found it truth absolute that New York with Miss Maitland in it is a better place than the same city ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... swamp and lonely marsh, Where all is shade and gloom, The Bittern stalks, and you may hear His ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... ocean beautiful. The fishermen were calmly casting their nets, whilst the sea-gulls hovered over the unruffled deep. Everything seemed to harmonise into tranquillity; even the mournful call of the bittern was in cadence with the tinkling bells on the necks of the cows, that, pacing slowly one after the other, along an inviting path in the vale below, were repairing to the cottages to be milked. ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... not a plover of the moors, 'Tis not a bittern of the fen; Nor can it be a barking fox, Nor night-bird chambered in the rocks, Nor wild-cat in a woody ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... with the horse and the boy with the boots walked away, and there was no one left at all. The sun went to bed wrapped in cloth of gold and purple, and long clouds, red and lilac, stretched across the sky, guarded its slumbers. Somewhere far away a bittern cried, a hollow, melancholy sound like a cow shut up in a barn. The cry of that mysterious bird was heard every spring, but no one knew what it was like or where it lived. At the top of the hill by the hospital, in the bushes close to the pond, and in the fields the nightingales were ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of swamps and river marshes all his life, he had never yet observed how the night bittern made its booming or pumping sound, but accepted the explanation of one of his neighbors that it was produced by the bird thrusting its bill in water, sucking up as much as it could hold, and then pumping it out again with four or five heaves of the neck, throwing the water two or ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... Handgemeiner Schlacht! Es entscheide das Treffen, Wer heute sich drfe der Harnische rhmen Oder der Brnnen beider walten!" Da sprengten zuerst mit den Speeren sie an In scharfen Schauern; dem wehrten die Schilde. 65 Dann schritten zusammen sie (zum bittern Schwertkampf),[11] Hieben harmlich die hellen Schilde, Bis leicht ihnen wurde das Lindenholz, ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... o'er some mystic lay, Till the wild tale had all its sway; And in the bittern's distant shriek I heard unearthly voices speak, Or thought the wizard priest was come To claim again his ancient home! And bade my busy fancy range To frame him fitting shape and strange; Till from the dream my brow I cleared, And smiled to think ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller |
