"Bleat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Shafto, doubled up in a cramped position on a machan, felt painfully stiff and was obliged to deny himself the comfort of a cigarette. There was no sound beyond the bleat of the victim—unwittingly summoning its executioner, the buzz of myriads of insects, the bass booming of frogs and the stealthy, mysterious movements of night birds and small animals. Then by degrees the moon waned and the stars faded—though the sky was still light. It was about three ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... then, thou need'st not dread The raven in the sky; Night and day thou'rt safe; Our cottage is hard by. Why bleat so after me? Why pull so at thy chain? Sleep, and at break of day, I will come to ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... whose physiognomy indicated a lusty goat-nature. And I saw at times long, hairy hands seize assistingly the strings of the violin on which Paganini was playing. They often guided the hand which held the bow, and then a bleat-laugh of applause accompanied the melody, which gushed from the violin ever more full of sorrow and anguish. They were melodies which were like the song of the fallen angels who had loved the daughters of earth, and being exiled from the kingdom ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... States, free, great, and most capacious, To come to poor old England (where the laws but make the many fit To lick a Royal person's boots), and all for England's benefit. To preach to us, and talk to us, to tell us how effete we are, How like a flock of silly sheep who merely baa and bleat we are. And how "this petty little land," which prates so much of loyalty, Is nothing but a laughing-stock to Pittsburg Iron-Royalty. How titles make a man a rake, a drunkard, and the rest of it, While plain (but wealthy) democrats in Pittsburg have the best of it. How, out in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... led her pony back, mounted, and made a wide detour until she struck the trail above. Already she could hear the distant bleat of sheep which told her that the herd was entering the pass. Recklessly she urged her pony forward, galloping into the saddle between the peaks without regard to the roughness of the boulder-strewn path. A voice from above hailed her with a startled shout as she flew past. Again, ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... pointed to a spot some distance off the road, but Kitty's city-bred eyes could make out nothing. Just then there came a feeble bleat, and in a second Blue Bonnet had slipped from the saddle and handed ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... by which the cock crows, enables the dog to bark, the baby to cry, the horse to neigh, the sheep to bleat and the cow to low, just as in our own rubber goods. The same end is accomplished in the one case as in the other. The two, three or twenty cash doll does for the Chinese girl what the two, three or twenty dollar one does for her antipodal ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... nations would howl with rage as my gendarmes took off the pictures, nicely packed, and addressed to "Mr. the Director of my Imperial Palace of the Louvre, at Paris. This side uppermost." The Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Italians, &c., should be free to come and visit my capital, and bleat with tears before the pictures torn from their native cities. Their ambassadors would meekly remonstrate, and with faded grins make allusions to the feeling of despair occasioned by the absence of the beloved works of art. Bah! I would offer them a pinch of snuff out ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... life with a placid smile. Nothing is on all hands completely blessed. A premature death carried off the celebrated Achilles; a protracted old age wore down Tithonus; and time perhaps may extend to me, what it shall deny to you. Around you a hundred flocks bleat, and Sicilian heifers low; for your use the mare, fit for the harness, neighs; wool doubly dipped in the African purple-dye, clothes you: on me undeceitful fate has bestowed a small country estate, and the slight inspiration ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... by a joyous bleat from the goat, which had at last forced the door of the stable open. Two bounds and the animal was close to her, bending its forelegs, and affectionately rubbing its horns against her. To the priest, with its pointed beard and obliquely ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... answered me. "For once I can do you a turn; but if you're going to bleat about it, I shall not. Do you want ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... lord of the whole place. "Rammie, rammie, what have you done with your wool?" asked the wild geese, who rode by up in the air. "That I have sent to Drag's woollen mills in Norrkoeping," replied the ram with a long, drawn-out bleat. "Rammie, rammie, what have you done with your horns?" asked the geese. But any horns the rammie had never possessed, to his sorrow, and one couldn't offer him a greater insult than to ask after them. He ran ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... of facts to get straight, or lacked what is so pithily termed "come-back." The latter, I incline to think; for come-back needs no facts, it is a self-feeder, and its entire absence in the anti-Englishman looks as if he had been a German. Germans do not come back when it goes against them, they bleat "Kamerad!"—or disappear. Perhaps this man was a spy—a poor one, to be sure—yet doing his best for his Kaiser: slinking about, peeping, listening, trying to wedge the Allies apart, doing his little bit towards making friends enemies, just as his breed ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... the surf was far off and all unlike the ceaseless rush and countless noises of the labouring ship at sea. There came a little drone of chanting from the chapel a hundred yards away, and there was now and again the bleat of a sheep, and the homely crow of the cocks, sounding as if shut up somewhere still. For a time I stayed, enjoying the unwonted calm, and then the sunlight crept into the little window, and I rose, and went out. My two comrades ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... the lifted blow: The generous horse from the full manger turns his head, Does his loved floods and pastures scorn, Hates the shrill trumpet and the horn, Nor can his lifeless nostril please With the once-ravishing smell of all his dappled mistresses; The starving sheep refuse to feed, They bleat their innocent souls out into air; The faithful dogs lie gasping by them there; The astonished shepherd weeps, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft. And gathering swallows twitter in the ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... proclaiming, while the rest, As voice in all those thousands none had been Heard mute; and, in resplendent armor clad, With martial order terrible advanced. 515 Not so the Trojans came. As sheep, the flock Of some rich man, by thousands in his court Penn'd close at milking time, incessant bleat, Loud answering all their bleating lambs without, Such din from Ilium's wide-spread host arose. 520 Nor was their shout, nor was their accent one, But mingled languages were heard of men From various climes. These Mars to battle roused, Those Pallas azure-eyed; nor Terror thence Nor Flight was ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... declared themselves differently; for at that moment there was a chorus being carried on at no great distance, in a variety of most unmusical sounds,—comprising the bark of the dog, the neigh of the horse, the snorting scream of the dromedary, the bleat of the sheep, and the sharper cry of its near kindred the goat,—along with the equally wild and scarce more articulate utterances of savage men, ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... as the place went up in a rush of flames and sparks, the assault from outside ceased, the enemy drawing off under cover of the mist; and an hour later silence fell upon the horrible scene of carnage, not even a bleat ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... hour, while his brothers and sisters were playing, and look up at the mountains or on to the altar, and wish and pray and vex his little soul most woefully; and his ewes and his lambs would crop the grass about the entrance, and bleat to make him notice them and lead them farther afield, but all in vain. Even his dear sheep he hardly heeded, and his pet ewes, Katte and Greta, and the big ram Zips, rubbed their soft noses in his hand unnoticed. So the summer droned ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... swift sure rush and a savage snarl, he brought the little deer from hiding. There was a short, swift chase, an agonized bleat or two, and Black Bruin had a breakfast that well repaid him for all his watching ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... things! Not all so quiet, though! There is a party of these young lambs as wide awake as heart can desire; half a dozen of them playing together, frisking, dancing, leaping, butting, and crying in the young voice, which is so pretty a diminutive of the full-grown bleat. How beautiful they are with their innocent spotted faces, their mottled feet, their long curly tails, and their light flexible forms, frolicking like so many kittens, but with a gentleness, an assurance of sweetness and innocence, which no kitten, nothing that ever is to be a cat, can have. How ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... narrow wadi, closed on all sides by huge mountain walls. The most sequestered, the most dreary place, I have yet seen. Here, though unwilling, the dusk of the December day having set in, I lay down the staff of wayfare. And as I enter the little village, I am greeted by the bleat of sheep and the low of the kine. The first villager I meet is an aged woman, who stands in her door before which is a pomegranate tree, telling her beads. She returns my salaam graciously, and invites me, saying, 'Be kind to tarry overnight.' But can one be ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... been marching for some time and Billy was getting tired of the slow gait and being made to stay between the engine and hose-cart instead of riding on the hose-cart as he had been in the habit of doing, when he heard the plaintive bleat of a goat and the sound of ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... dread the raven in the sky; Night and day thou art safe,—our cottage is hard by. Why bleat so after me? why pull so at thy chain? Sleep—and at break of day I will come ...
— Phebe, The Blackberry Girl • Edward Livermore
... rapture on the lonely shore, there was indeed rapture here high above it, blown upon by the sweet, soft winds. I heard the bleat close at hand. Turning, I saw a she-goat with little kid scarce a foot high. She crossed a patch of cactus. The kid essayed to follow here, but found the way too thorny. He bleated—a tiny, pin-pointed ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... pair. When his breakfast was ready she would sometimes call him with a low murmuring, and he would answer her with a little bleat; but those were almost the only sounds that were ever heard from them, except the rustling of the dry leaves around their feet. Yet they understood each other perfectly, and they were very happy together. There was little need of speech, for all they had to do the livelong ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... purple heath is seen, but bare its brow, And deep-intrenched, and all beneath it spread With massy fragments riven from its top. 100 Amidst the crags, and scarce discerned so high, Hangs here and there a sheep, by its faint bleat Discovered, whilst the astonished eye looks up, And marks it on the precipice's brink Pick its scant food secure:—and fares it not Ev'n so with you, poor orphans, ye who climb The rugged path of life without a friend; And over broken crags bear hardly on, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... when they had left the castle. During several hours, they travelled through regions of profound solitude, where no bleat of sheep, or bark of watch-dog, broke on silence, and they were now too far off to hear even the faint thunder of the cannon. Towards evening, they wound down precipices, black with forests of cypress, pine and ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... over, the old man selected a fat kid, caught it by the hind leg and dragged it, bleating in wild terror, to a gallows behind the house, where he hung it up and skilfully cut its throat, leaving it to bleat and bleed to death while he wiped his knife and went on talking volubly with his guest. The occasional visits of Ramon were the most interesting events in his life, and he always killed a kid to express his appreciation. Ramon ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... breathing freely, for the deep-toned bleat of the goat arose, and he looked out, to see that it was answerable ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... taller than a rabbit, was bounding about through the grass, running around the prostrate body of its mother, and uttering its tiny bleat. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... you there, the stout and staunch, "Red flag" in one hand and "ten swords" in t'other; Saw the strong sword-belt bursting from your paunch; Pitied the foes you'd fall upon and smother; Heard you make droves of pale policemen bleat, Running amok to "slay them in ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... assenting utterances: "Oh, quite so, Sir! Our elder brother Mr. Pao has," he continued, "already read up to the third book of the Book of Odes, up to where there's something or other like: 'Yiu, Yiu, the deer bleat; the lotus leaves and duckweed.' Your servant wouldn't presume to tell ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... and long, The eyes that smiled through lavish locks, Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song, And bleat of flocks. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... corn-field and orchard-plot, grateful earth lies lightly over his grey temples, and the earliest flowers of spring blossom above his dust.[41] The lovely lines of Leonidas,[42] in which Clitagoras asks that when he is dead the sheep may bleat over him, and the shepherd pipe from the rock as they graze softly along the valley, and that the countryman in spring may pluck a posy of meadow flowers and lay it on his grave, have all the tenderness ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... back from her deep-sea fishing she would go straight to their playground and call as a sheep calls for a lamb, and wait until she heard Kotick bleat. Then she would take the straightest of straight lines in his direction, striking out with her fore flippers and knocking the youngsters head over heels right and left. There were always a few hundred mothers hunting for their children ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... of Farce, who presides so particularly over all Irish affairs, put it into the lamb's head to bleat. The sound at first did not strike Tom Durfy as singular, they being near a high hedge, within which it was likely enough a lamb might bleat; but Biddy, shocked at the thought of being discovered in the fact of making her ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... is beauty all, and grateful song around, Joined to the low of kine, and numerous bleat Of flocks thick-nibbling through the clovered vale: And shall the hymn be marred by thankless man, Most favored; who, with voice articulate, Should lead the chorus of this ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... artificial hymns of which we are to speak in their place, the memory of the joyful country life comes over him. He praises Hiero, because Hiero is to restore peace to Syracuse, and when peace returns, then 'thousands of sheep fattened in the meadows will bleat along the plain, and the kine, as they flock in crowds to the stalls, will make the belated traveller hasten on his way.' The words evoke a memory of a narrow country lane in the summer evening, ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... place where they are seated, passes onward with cautious step and eyes that interrogate the ground in front, as if she anticipated seeing some one; like a young hind that has stolen timidly out of the covert, on hearing the call-bleat of the stag. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... bowed his head nearly to the ground that she might lay her hands on his horns, which were very large; he then lifted her gently from the ground by raising his head. If she chanced to leave her flock feeding, as soon as they discovered she was gone, they all began to bleat most piteously, and would continue to do so till she returned; they would then testify their joy by rubbing their sides against her petticoat ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... chant of the rowers as they dipped their oars, and the rippling of the water against the sides of the boat. Up to this time the black lamb had lain quietly in Melas' arms, but now something seemed to disturb him. He lifted his head, gave a sudden bleat, and somehow flung himself out of Melas' arms directly into the basket of eels! Such a squirming as there was then! The eels squirmed, and the lamb squirmed, and if his legs had not been securely tied together he undoubtedly would have flopped ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... know what to do with myself. So I'm compelled to live in the violence itself. In a storm. A kind of Walkyrie on a broomstick. But, good God, what else is there? Sit and scribble words about fictitious characters. Bleat out rhapsodies. Art is something I can spit out in conversation. If I do anything it's got to be something too difficult for me to do. My damned cleverness puts me beyond artists who find a destination for their energies in the struggle to achieve the thing with which ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... gather about their shepherd and bleat for pasture and shelter. They answered his prayer for him. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... below Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide, From world to world, the vital ocean round, On Nature write with every beam His praise. The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world; While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn. Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocks Retain the sound: the broad responsive low, Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd reigns, And His unsuffering kingdom ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... mantle blithe Nature arrays. And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes, While birds warble welcome in ilka green shaw; But to me it's delightless—my ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... is not the least of the desert's splendors. It seemed to her that the nameless unknown Mystery toward which her life was drifting was embodied in this infinite silence. So sleep would not come to her until dawn. Then the stir of the wind in the trees, the bleat of sheep, the trill of mocking-birds lulled ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... year, when the fawns are young. The Indian wanted to find the little one after he had shot the dam, so he sounded a decoy whistle, to imitate the call of the doe, and the harmless thing answered it with a bleat, thinking no doubt it was its mother calling to it. This betrayed its hiding-place, and it was taken unhurt by the hunter, who took it home, and gave it to my little friend Ellen to feed and ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... I pray you, think you question with the Jew: You may as well go stand upon the beach And bid the main flood bate his usual height; You may as well use question with the wolf Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb; You may as well forbid the mountain pines To wag their high tops and to make no noise, When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven; You may as well do any thing most hard, As seek to soften that—than which what's harder?— ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... skipped into the open and stared inquisitively at the Keeper of the Fires. As the man waved the animal back from the sacred ground, the goat lowered its head and threatened to charge, suddenly recollected its mate lying in the shade a few feet away, and began to bleat absent-mindedly. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... a picture, the joyous freshness of which seemed almost heavenly to me in my extreme weakness. The air, too, was full of the chirping of millions of insects and lizards, the lowing of distant cattle, the bleat of sheep, the rifle-like crack of waggon-drivers' whips, the voices and laughter of men close beneath my window, and a multitude of other ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... to appreciate him as a diligent student of commercial matters: rivalries of Banks; Foreign and Municipal Loans, American Rails, and Argentine; new Companies of wholesome appearance or sinister; or starting with a dram in the stomach, or born to bleat prostrate, like sheep on their backs in a ditch; Trusts and Founders; Breweries bursting vats upon the markets, and England prone along the gutters, gobbling, drunk for shares, and sober in the possession of certain of them. But when, as Colney says, a grateful England ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... old man, sitting in a shop, and making toys. Once he had been a soldier, but now he was able to do nothing but sit at his work bench carving, and gluing, and painting playthings for children. The Child went in and watched him work. There were wooly lambs that would bleat, and toy horses with harnesses on the shelves of the toy shop. There were dolls with blue eyes, and dolls with brown eyes, and dolls that could talk, and dolls that could walk, all waiting there for Christmas ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... The pastoral bleat, the drone of bees, The flail-beat chiming far away, The cattle-low at shut of day, The voice of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... arrived, moonlit and cloudless. A platform had been constructed in a comfortable and conveniently placed tree, and thereon crouched Mrs. Packletide and her paid companion, Miss Mebbin. A goat, gifted with a particularly persistent bleat, such as even a partially deaf tiger might be reasonably expected to hear on a still night, was tethered at the correct distance. With an accurately sighted rifle and a thumbnail pack of patience cards the sportswoman awaited the ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... dull society sinners, Who chatter and bleat and bore, Are sent to hear sermons From mystical Germans Who preach from ten to four: The amateur tenor, whose vocal villainies All desire to shirk, Shall, during off-hours, Exhibit his powers To Madame Tussaud's waxwork: The lady ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Lamb uttered a bleat of delight when she saw her old friend restored to his natural shape. The others were all there, not having found the Goose. The fat Gillikin woman, the Munchkin boy, the Rabbit and the Glass Cat crowded around the Wizard and asked ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... and orchards without birds! Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams As in an idiot's brain remembered words Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams! Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds Make up for the lost music, when your teams Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more The feathered gleaners follow to your door?" FROM "THE ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... hands of innocence — go, scare your sheep together, The blundering, tripping tups that bleat behind the old bell-wether; And if they snuff the taint and break to find another pen, Tell them it's tar that glistens so, ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... and another half-smothered bleat,—Dorothy released the yearling and plunged to the rescue. "Go after that lamb, Reuby!" she cried, with exasperation in her voice. Reuby followed the yearling, which had disappeared over the orchard slope, upsetting an obstacle in its path, which happened to be Jimmy. He was now wailing on ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... on his Poems late in life, Wordsworth said of this one:—'The effect of her laugh is an extravagance; though the effect of the reverberation of voices in some parts of the mountains is very striking. There is, in the "Excursion," an allusion to the bleat of a lamb thus re-echoed, and described without any exaggeration, as I heard it, on the side of Stickle Tarn, from the precipice that stretches on ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... moments. It was so like old times to be walking there together. The early stars shone faintly; but the clouds were still pink in the west; not a leaf stirred, not a breath; no sound save a night-bird calling to its mate in the pine-wood yonder, and the bleat of lambs in the distance. Presently Arthur broke the silence with sweet, tender words of sorrow for ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... ways at the prospect of draggin' down a pay envelope reg'lar and being able to look the rent agent in the face. But say, what does he do but scrape his foot and wriggle around like he'd been asked to swallow a non-skid headache tablet. At last he gets out this bleat about how he'd always held his art to be too sacred a thing for him to commercialize and he really didn't know whether he could bring himself to drawin' ad. pictures or not. He'd have to have ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... sweet, O fountain of Bandusian onyx, To-morrow shall a goatling's bleat Mix with the sizz of ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... neighed, and the oxen lowed, The sheep's "Bleat! Bleat!" came over the road; All seeming to say, with a quiet delight, "Good little girl, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... long, mobile muzzle he began to tug appealingly at a convenient fold of the man's woollen sleeve. Smiling complacently at this sign of confidence, the man left him, and started the team at a slow walk up the trail. With a hoarse bleat of alarm, thinking he was about to be deserted, the calf followed after the sled, his long legs ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... We passed the sharp promontory of Siddick, and, skirting the land within a stonecast, glided along the shore till we came within sight of the ruined Abbey of Sweetheart. The green mountain of Criffel ascended beside us; and the bleat of the flocks from its summit, together with the winding of the evening horn of the reapers, came softened into something like music over land and sea. We pushed our shallop into a deep and wooded bay, and sat silently looking on the serene beauty of the place. The moon ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... calf to wait between meals. As early as four o'clock in the afternoon those calves would begin to bawl for their supper; by half past five one could hardly make himself heard in the barn, unless there chanced to fall a moment's silence, while the hungry little fellows were all catching breath to bleat again. Then they would all peal forth together ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... families The neighbours come, in sledge approach, Britzka, kibitka, or in coach. Crush and confusion in the hall, Latest arrivals' salutations, Barking, young ladies' osculations, Shouts, laughter, jamming 'gainst the wall, Bows and the scrape of many feet, Nurses who scream and babes who bleat. ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... I too, threttanello![760] I want to imitate Cyclops and lead your troop by stamping like this.[761] Do you, my dear little ones, cry, aye, cry again and bleat forth the plaintive song of the sheep and of the stinking goats; follow me with erected organs like lascivious goats ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... valleys. Two examples may suffice, although by no means the worst in some respects. A woman takes refuge in a cave, with her little babe and a goat, which furnished the means of their subsistence. Unfortunately the poor animal was heard to bleat by some of the soldiers who happened to be near. These wretches seized the child and, in the presence of its mother, threw it over the precipice, and then led the mother herself to a jutting crag that she might die there in the greatest agony. A second case is that of the pastor of Guigot, ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... greyhounds' heads, hoping to scare them into submission, but they seemed to draw fresh stimulus from each report, and yelped and bounded faster. A little more and the end would be. Then we saw a touching sight. The hindmost fawn let out a feeble bleat of distress, and the mother, heeding, dropped back between. It looked like choosing death, for now she had not twenty feet of lead. I wanted Eaton to use his gun on the foremost hound, when something ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... in their courting days she had expressed herself pleased at his attempts, and of this he took care, in his turn, to remind her. It was his idea that if the game were played at all, she should take a hand also. If he was to blither, it was only fair that she should bleat back. As he explained, for the future they would both be lovers all their life long; and no logical argument in reply could she think of. If she tried to write a letter, he would snatch away the paper her dear hands were pressing and fall to kissing it—and, of course, smearing it. When he wasn't ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... that there are many patriots, who, while they bleat about the "cause of liberty," act in so interested a manner that they are evidently looking more after ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... my dressing-room's retreat My native wood-notes wilt and sag; Not there those raptures I repeat; My bellow now becomes a bleat (For reasons, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... the little stuffy rose-coloured room and the street noises of New York came up to them—a loose chain flapping against the mud guard of a Taxi; the jolt of a flat-wheeled Eighth Avenue street car the roar of an L train; laughter; the bleat of a motor horn; a piano in the apartment next door, or ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... hastened across the field, and stationed myself against a small cedar. He was still clicking high overhead, but soon alighted silently within twenty yards of where I was standing, and commenced to "bleat," prefacing each yak with a fainter syllable which I had never before been near enough to detect. Presently he started once more on his skyward journey. Up he went, in a large spiral, "higher still and higher" till the cedar cut off my view for an instant, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... and, crowding about him, began to bleat their explanations and appeals. But he threw out his arms, pushed them back a safe distance from the panting Dominick and roared them into silence, brandishing his fists, as he would have ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... frantically to build a net of something around his bed, while a wet, thick thing flopped and drooled beyond the door, apparently immune to the attacks of the hospital staff. There were shouting orders involving the undine. The salamander in Dave's chest crept deeper and seemed to bleat at each cry of the monstrous ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... of many saints and sages. He adored Polly, was dutifully kind to her mother, and had stood by T. Snow, Jr., in many an hour of tribulation with fraternal fidelity. Though he had long blushed, sighed, and cast sheep's eyes at the idol of his affections, only till lately had he dared to bleat forth his passion. Polly loved him because she couldn't help it; but she was proud, and wouldn't marry till Aunt Kipp's money was hers, or at least a sure prospect of it; and now even the prospect of a prospect was destroyed by that irrepressible ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... away through the dense forest and hide in the recesses of Panther Gorge; yes, time enough. But there was the fawn. The cry of the hound was repeated, more distinct this time. The mother instinctively bounded away a few paces. The fawn started up with an anxious bleat. The doe turned; she came back; she couldn't leave it. She bent over it, and licked it, and seemed to say, "Come, my child; we are pursued; we must go." She walked away toward the west, and the little thing skipped ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... to be still, mother," said Mary, with a piteous, hopeless voice, like the bleat of a dying lamb; "but I did not think he could die! I never thought of that!—I never thought of it!—Oh! mother! mother! mother! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... trembling veil of gauze is stretched athwart The shadowy hill-sides and dark forest-flanks; A soothing quiet broods upon the air, And the faint sunshine winks with drowsiness. Far sounds melt mellow on the ear: the bark, The bleat, the tinkle, whistle, blast of horn, The rattle of the wagon-wheel, the low, The fowler's shot, the twitter of the bird, And even the hue ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... like a well-grooved parrot. Mandleco turned east, then south, then south-by-east, like a compass on a binge; he looked as if he wanted to roar, but his voice came out as a frantic bleat: "Why, this is crazy! Goddam it, it's crazy! Do you realize what this will—" He confronted Arnold wildly. "What the hell does it MEAN, I say! Untenable? And who ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... A tremulous bleat answered, but as he neared the flock it scattered swiftly, the errant leaders darting shyly behind the looming outlines of sassafras bushes. Again he called, and again the plaintive cry responded, growing fainter as ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... nor pastoral bleat In former days within the vale; Flapped in the bay the pirate's sheet; Curses were on the gale; Rich goods lay on the sand, and murdered men: Pirate and wrecker ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Sweeten and make soft your dreams: The purling springs, groves, birds, and well-weav'd bowers, With fields enamelled with flowers, Present their shapes; while fantasy discloses Millions of lilies mix'd with roses. Then dream ye hear the lamb by many a bleat Woo'd to come suck the milky teat: While Faunus in the vision comes to keep From rav'ning wolves the fleecy sheep. With thousand such enchanting dreams, that meet To make sleep not so sound as sweet: Nor can these figures so thy rest endear As not to rise when Chanticlere Warns the last ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... some dearer son of rhyme; Let them, as far as decency permits, Without suspicion, play the fool with wits, 'Gainst fools be guarded; 'tis a certain rule, Wits are false things, there's danger in a fool. Let them, tho' modest, Gray more modest woo; Let them with Mason bleat, and bray, and coo; Let them with Franklin, proud of some small Greek, Make Sophocles disguis'd, in English speak; Let them with Glover o'er Medea doze; Let them with Dodsley wail Cleone's woes, Whilst ...
— English Satires • Various
... stumbled into brush and knew it for red cedar. Patches of it grew thick on the high ridges, matted close for cover. As the travelers crept under it they heard the rustle of shoulder against shoulder, the moving click of horns, and the bleat of yearlings for their mothers. They had stumbled in the dark on the bedding-place of ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... unhumorous longshore sailormen who endeavour to temper its fury to the shorn landsman by palming off a final verse, which gives one to understand that the previous stanzas have been only 'Johnny's' little fun, and which makes him bleat: ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... long sleep of exhaustion, she was conscious of a stifling atmosphere, and moreover of the crow of a cock in her immediate vicinity, then of a dog growling, and a lamb beginning to bleat. She raised herself a little, and beheld, lying on the ground around her, dark heaps with human feet protruding from them. These were interspersed with sheep, goats, dogs, and fowls, all seen by the yellow light of the rising sun which made its way in not only through the doorless aperture, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... began to bleat. A rippling crash, a splintering of wood, told of an irresistible onslaught on the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... struck me forcibly. The country people, those belonging to the Mornet, declare that at night one can hear talking going on in the sand, and then that one hears two goats bleat, one with a strong, the other with a weak voice. Incredulous people declare that it is nothing but the cry of the sea birds, which occasionally resembles bleatings, and occasionally human lamentations; but belated fishermen swear that they have met an old shepherd, whose head, which ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... which would stir their hearts with renewed hope. The cry of a child! Weak and faint, indeed, but telling of the continuance of life! But again and again, after scaling heights or creeping down comes, they were doomed to disappointment. It was but the bleat of a strayed lamb! That night a larger party set out with lanterns and torches, and once more ranged the hills shouting for the child; but once again morning dawned ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... execute them. She would make no attempts upon her life henceforward. Weeks and months passed on. The snow came, and lay long, and melted away. Beyond the garden wall she saw sprinklings of young grass among the dark heather; and now the bleat of a lamb, and now the scudding brood of the moor-fowl, told her that spring was come. Long lines of wild geese in the upper air, winging steadily northwards, indicated the advancing season. The whins within view burst into blossom; and the ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... It was after this, I think, that we met the Satyr and the Ape-man. The Satyr was a gleam of classical memory on the part of Moreau,—his face ovine in expression, like the coarser Hebrew type; his voice a harsh bleat, his nether extremities Satanic. He was gnawing the husk of a pod-like fruit as he passed us. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... overcame his amazement. The curious-looking creature over there on the knoll was defying him, was challenging him. At this time of year his blood was hot and quick for any challenge. He gave vent to a short, harsh, explosive cry, more like a grumbling bleat than a bellow, and as unlike the buffalo's challenge as could well be imagined. Then he fell to thrashing the nearest bushes violently with his antlers. This, for some reason unknown to the mere human chronicler, seemed to be taken by Last Bull as a crowning ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... with my grandfather in the speret," Perdue declared, and running his fingers through his fiery whiskers he laughed with a hack that cut like the bleat of a sheep. ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the western hills of Judea, and the stillness of night had covered the earth. The heavens were illumined only by numberless stars, which shone the brighter for the darkness of the sky. No sound was heard but the occasional howl of a jackal or the bleat of a lamb in the sheepfold. Inside a tent on the hillside slept the shepherd, Berachah, and his daughter, Madelon. The little girl lay restless,—sleeping, waking, dreaming, until at last she roused herself and ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... Bleat the sheep, the ganders hiss, Crows the cock upon the wall; Ove Hals was sore beset, Must to the ...
— Niels Ebbesen and Germand Gladenswayne - two ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... in some locust-trees in one corner of the yard. An aged darkey was swinging an axe at the woodpile and two little pickaninnies were gathering a basket of chips. Already the air was filled with the twilight sounds of the farm—the lowing of cattle, the bleating of calves at the cowpens, the bleat of sheep from the woods, and the nicker of horses in the barn. Through it all, Crittenden could hear the nervous thud of Raincrow's hoofs announcing rain—for that was the way the horse got his name, being as black ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr. |
