"Chirping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Swallow is a summer bird; He in our chimneys, when the weather Is fine and warm, may then be heard Chirping his ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... or her clothes touched in the process, and then opened the window. The autumn air felt keen and sweet; and the little patch of sky that she could see was warmly bright already with the new sunlight. Distant voices of bargemen on the river, and the chirping of birds among the weeds which topped the old city wall, were the only sounds that broke the morning silence. She sat down by the window; and searched her mind for the thoughts which she had lost, when weariness overcame her ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... multitudinous chirping or twittering issued from them at intervals as long as they were moving; but sometimes they ceased from motion, and then ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... by a little door, partly ajar; you ascended to the second storey without meeting anyone, and found a little chapel, through whose windows trees were visible, rocking to the chirping of ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... along this cold weather, and what do I find here? A great open blazing woodfire—warm, fragrant, and cheerful as only such a fire can be! and a humming wheel and a dancing loom, two cheerful girls looking bright as two chirping birds in their nest! This is like a nest! and it is worth the walk to find it. You'll not turn me out for an hour ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... see such a gloomy place?" remarked George. "If it wasn't for the chirping of the birds and the chatter of the little animals it would make me ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... fellows, and, unlike the two I had seen the previous week, who were of much lower degree, were chatty and communicative; they spoke their native language and no other, and seemed to hold Portuguese in great contempt; their magnificent Spanish tones were heard to great advantage amidst the shrill chirping dialect of Portugal. I was soon in deep conversation with them, and was much pleased to find that all of them could read. I presented the eldest of them, a man of about fifty years of age, with a tract in Spanish. He examined ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... he had reached his climax and was circling. Once we distinctly saw him whirling far above us. Then he was lost in the obscurity, and in a few seconds there rained down upon us the notes of his ecstatic song—a novel kind of hurried, chirping, smacking warble. It was very brief, and when it ceased, we knew the bird was dropping plummet-like to the earth. In half a minute or less his "zeep," "zeep," came up again from the ground. In two or three minutes he repeated his flight and song, and thus kept it up during the half-hour or ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... the morning, just as the higher windows of the lofty houses received the first beams of the rising sun. The birds were chirping, perched on the windows sills and deserted thresholds of the doors. I awoke, and my first thought was, Adrian and Clara are dead. I no longer shall be hailed by their good-morrow—or pass the long day in their society. I shall never see them ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... on the tip of Joyce's tongue to tell him that everybody knew that song; that it was as familiar to the children at home as the chirping of crickets on the hearth or the sight of dandelions in the spring-time. But some instinct warned her not to say it. She was glad afterwards, when she found that it was sacred to him, woven in as it was with his one beautiful memory of a home. It was all he had, and the few ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... opening on to the balcony were standing open, and through the vines stole the golden sunset light, the chirping of robins, the smell of new-mown grass, and the heavy sweetness of the locust blooms. Lloyd rubbed her eyes, thinking she surely must be dreaming. There on the vine-covered balcony stood a table all ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the side of the ridge, using our compass, because we couldn't see far ahead. It was getting dark and the woods were awful still. Every time a twig cracked under us it seemed to make a loud noise. There were crickets chirping too. It kind of reminded me of Temple Camp after supper. We kept straight west because we knew that was where the tree was. I guess we all got sort of excited as we came up near to ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... now fallen gloomy, the sky overcast, the wind blowing in from the black, uneasy sea, where floes and gigantic bergs of ice drifted, like frozen ghosts, cold and dead and aimlessly driven; and the hopeful sunshine had left the hills, and the piping and chirping were stilled, and I heard no more fluttering wings or tender love-songs. The fool of Twist Tickle paused in the road to stare vacantly northward. 'Twas there dark with menacing clouds—thick, sombre clouds, tinged with a warning blue, rising implacably above the roughening black of ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... flowing between banks fringed with elms and willows, hills farther away, and in the distance blue mountains; the forest all scarlet, russet, yellow, and crimson. That would be the view. You would hear the crickets chirping, crows cawing, and ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... crippled sparrow fell to the ground, and fluttered about in a vain attempt to regain a place of safety. Some of its mates gathered around it, and seemed eager to help it; but they did not know what to do. Their chirping drew together a good many ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... as an Ass was walking in the pasture, he found some Grasshoppers chirping merrily in a ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... aunty," I called back, gathering up the reins, chirping to Fan, and taking the road to the Curtis girls' house. Certainly I had no time to ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... question. We may cite the LOVE-CALLS produced by many male insects, such as crickets and cicadas. These could only have arisen in animal groups in which the female did not rapidly flee from the male, but was inclined to accept his wooing from the first. Thus, notes like the chirping of the male cricket serve to entice the females. At first they were merely the signal which showed the presence of a male in the neighbourhood, and the female was gradually enticed nearer and nearer by the continued ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... with a start it was broad day. The birds must have finished their morning song, for there was only happy, comfortable chirping in the branches above her. She rose stiffly. Her legs, her whole body, ached; and her feet were burning and blistered. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Fournival, who, in the thirteenth century, lamented in his "Bestiaire d'Amour,"[71] that he was like the wolf, who, when instead of first noticing the man, allowed the man to see him first, lost all his courage; or like the cricket who loves chirping so much that he forgets to eat and allows himself to be caught. Richard was overcome in like manner by the glances of his mistress, and all his songs only served to accomplish his ruin. The woman he loves ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... the robins, when there were any in the neighborhood. There were plenty on the lawn around the Sagamore Club that dewy June morning, chirping, chirking, trilling, repeating their endless arias from tree and gate-post. And through the outcry of the robins, the dry cackle of the purple grackles, and the cat-bird's whine floated earthward the melody of the ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... at the ratio of 32 to one arrive. For the Germans had wasted enough ammunition on the Verdun sector and were trying to economize! Still the arrives were landing in the Avecourt wood every minute or so, and they were disquieting. Only the chirping of our own broad-mouthed Canaries there in the roofless forest gave us cheer. For some way the sound of the shells of our own guns shrieking over us is a deep comfort; it is something like the ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... girls of the district, with here and there a Sister out of another world entirely. Some were reading, some conversing, some laughing, some playing a piano, and some singing. Their voices filled the air like the chirping of birds, and their faces were bright and happy. "Good-evening, Father," they said on entering, and "Good-night, Father," as ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the little garden were growing long. The birds were chirping sleepily to each other in the wistaria vine. The iris flowers were nodding their purple heads to the little goldfish in the pond. Everything was quiet ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the C. macropterus, feed partly on small birds, which they flush from the ground and strike down with their claws. When the harrier appears moving along with a loitering flight near the surface, it is everywhere attended by a little whirlwind of alarm, small birds screaming or chirping excitedly and diving into the grass or bushes; but the alarm does not spread far, and subsides as soon as the hawk has passed on its way. Buzzards (Buteo and Urubitinga) are much more feared, and create a more widespread alarm, and they ars certainly more destructive to birds than ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... those strolls already alluded to the Viscount went much further than usual. It was a bright, balmy and cheerful morning, and the sun's gladdening radiance, the brilliant green of the trees, the fragrant odors from flowers and grass, the chirping of insect life and the wild, intoxicating songs of the birds all contributed to draw him on and to make him forget Monte-Cristo's injunctions as to keeping out of the sight of ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... started after the little feathered songster, which was making a queer, chirping noise. ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis
... town:—"Old crony, give me leave to be a little free with you: how can you bear to live in this nasty, dirty, melancholy hole here, with nothing but woods, and meadows, and mountains, and rivulets about you? Do not you prefer the conversation of the world to the chirping of birds, and the splendor of a court to the rude aspect of an uncultivated desert? Come, take my word for it, you will find it a change for the better. Never stand considering, but away this moment. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... control. And by a pleasant compensation, our aesthetic life may become freer, more self-sufficing, more humbly happy in itself: and without trespassing in any way beyond the modesty of nature, we may consent to be like little children, chirping our human note; since the life of reason in us may well become science in its validity, whilst remaining poetry ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... the old castle of La Tour before him, with its two high, weather-beaten towers, which he had looked at so many times. All around and high up thick ivy covered the old walls, and above them multitudes of merry birds were chirping. Sami had to stop and listen to their happy singing for a while, then he went along by the high old wall around the courtyard, for he wanted to see if it was still the same as before down below in the lonely place where the water kept falling on the old stones and singing ...
— What Sami Sings with the Birds • Johanna Spyri
... other places, there is a shadow as deep as the glow; but along the greater portion sunshine glimmers through shadow, and shadow effaces sunshine, imaging that pleasant mood of mind when gayety and pensiveness intermingle. A bird is chirping overhead among the branches, but exactly whereabout you seek in vain to determine; indeed, you hear the rustle of the leaves, as he continually changes his position. A little sparrow, however, hops into view, alighting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... dancing. It was neither in the old style, nor the new style, nor the French style, nor the English style: though it may have been, by accident, a trifle in the Spanish style, which is a free and joyous one, I am told, deriving a delightful air of off-hand inspiration, from the chirping little castanets. As they danced among the orchard trees, and down the groves of stems and back again, and twirled each other lightly round and round, the influence of their airy motion seemed to spread and spread, in the sun-lighted scene, like an expanding circle ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... about my chickeys, and the shadow 'membered 'em; and I'm glad of it," said Will, scattering dabs of meal and water to the chirping, downy little creatures who pecked and fluttered at his feet. Little shadow hunted for eggs, drove the turkeys out of the garden, and picked a basket of chips: then it went to play with Sammy, a neighbor's child; for, being a small shadow, it hadn't many jobs to do, and plenty ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... sterilised gowns and gloves, took their places. There was no conversation. The only sounds were an occasional sigh from the patient, a direction given in a low tone, and, at intervals, the click of the knives and scalpel. From outside the window came the persistent chirping of a band ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... smooth; and with one exception broken only by the long, narrow loopholes or transoms I have mentioned before. The one exception was a small wicket gate or door. I remembered the various sorties with torches after the chirping frogs, and knew that by this opening the hunting party had emerged. This and the big main gate were the only entrances ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... creature, got up at a very cheap rate, his life is so consistent with his dress; he gives his genius a darkling swagger, and a romantic envelope, which, being removed, you find, not a bravo, but a kind chirping soul; not a moody poet avoiding mankind for the better company of his own great thoughts, but a jolly little chap who has an aptitude for painting brocade gowns, a bit of armour (with figures inside ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... intended for me, you ought to begin chirping right away. But you're not going to tell me you've been "lounjun round en sufferin'" like—wasn't it Uncle Remus's Brer Terrapin? (Catching C.'s look of bewilderment.) What, don't ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various
... Small drowsy chirping met the light, And dim in lowlands far Lone marsh-birds winged their misty flight; What time Her aspect on my sight ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... when all the rest Crushed his spirit with gibe and jest, Whispered softly, "Whatever they say, I know you will build the wheel some day!" Chirping crickets and singing birds Were not so sweet as her heartsome words; Straight he answered, "If ever I do, I know it will only be thanks ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... clear above the low breathed tones, yet in perfect harmony, came a whip-poor-will's plaintive call floating up from the darkness below; the sweet cooing of a wood-dove in a tree on the ridge, and the chirping of a cricket in a nearby crevice of the ledge. Like shadowy spirits, the bats flitted here and there in the gathering gloom. The two on the mountain's shoulder felt themselves alone above it all; above it all, yet ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... chirping along as he perceived the danger-point passed. "I'm a theorist, and a real theorist doesn't have one theory; he has dozens. Let me see; let me think, reflect, cogitate, tickle the thinker. Best way is to start at the A, B, C—first principles, all that ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... light is seen to fall on Florence, kneeling at the altar with her timid head bowed down. The morning luminary is built out, and don't shine there. There is a meagre tree outside, where the sparrows are chirping a little; and there is a blackbird in an eyelet-hole of sun in a dyer's garret, over against the window, who whistles loudly whilst the service is performing; and there is the man with the wooden leg stumping away. The amens of the dusty clerk appear, like Macbeth's, to stick in his throat ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... you and I were young, we heard All sounds of Nature with delight,— The whirr of wing in sudden flight, The chirping of the baby-bird. The columbine's red bells were rung; The locust's vested chorus sung; While every wind his zithern strung To high and holy-sounding keys, And played sonatas in the trees— When you and I were young, my boy, When ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... no! I detest it! Dusty hedges, and chirping sparrows! 'Tis amazing to me any body can exist ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... he had promised to wait for his chum. Mark looked at his watch, and found that he would still have some time to linger before he could expect Jack to return. He sat down on a stone beside the fence, and looked about him. The day was warm for fall, and the last of the crickets were chirping away, while, in distant fields, men could be seen husking corn, or drawing in loads of ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... Delia's baby want it?" she asked enticingly. The General waved his arms and legs wildly; wreathed in smiles, he opened and shut his mouth in quick alternation, chirping and clucking, as she held it up before him; an ecstatic wriggling pervaded him, and he chuckled unctuously. A moment later only his deep-drawn, nozzling breaths could be heard in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... fireplace in the bath-house out of the stones of the old stove, and the crickets flitted thither with the stones— at least their chirping was never heard any more in the dwelling room. Father didn't care a bit, but we children felt, now and then, during the long winter evenings, a strange sort of yearning after old times, so we very often found our way down to the bath- ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... her usual grave politeness, though there was a quizzical laugh in her eyes. "Lover? My lover?" she thought. But she did not blush, as some other innocent girls would have done. She had never talked an hour in her life to a young man, or heard from other girls their incessant chirping of "he—he," like that of birds in spring wooing their mates. Her nearest acquaintance with lovers was old Peter's rendering of Romeo or Othello. She remembered them well enough as her eye furtively ran over the jaunty little ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... 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 some pretty response for every solemn utterance of the wise ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... that it set him to dancing and skipping as he went along. All the wood-flowers were as wide awake as he. They nodded at Archie, as if saying "Good-morning," and sent out fresh smells into the air. Busy birds flapped and flew, doing their marketing, and fetching breakfast to hungry nestlings, chirping and whistling to each other, as they did so, that the sun was up and it was a fine day. A pair of striped squirrels frisked and laughed and called out something saucy as Archie trotted by. None of these wild things feared the child: he ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... a fair, and all behave accordingly, chirping and whistling, humming and buzzing, flitting and fluttering, in the unrestrained gaiety of holiday and feast-day humour. Always an impertinent, interfering rascal, the spangled drongo, under the exhilarating influence of melaleuca nectar, degenerates into ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... rabbits often sat out; and by stopping the entrance and carefully removing the stones they might occasionally be taken by hand. Next by the barn where in spring the sparrows made a continuous noise, chirping and quarrelling as they carried on their nesting operations: they sometimes flew up with long green bennets and grass fibres as well as ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... disturbed by my presence, and keep up a loud, emphatic chirping, which attracts the attention of their sympathetic neighbors, and one after another they come to see what has happened. The Chestnut-Sided and the Blackburnian come in company. The Black-and-Yellow Warbler pauses a moment and hastens away; the Maryland Yellow-Throat peeps shyly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... combinations, and with half-imitations, as of the Blue-Bird, so that it seemed almost impossible to doubt that there was some specific meaning, to him and his peers, in this endless vocabulary. Yet other birds, as quick-witted as the Robins, possess but one or two chirping notes, to which they seem unable to give more than the very rudest variation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... up, Piercing the dazzling sky beyond the search Of the acutest love: enough for me To hear its song: but now it dies away, Leaving the chirping sparrow to attract The listless ear,—a minstrel, sooth to say, Nearly as good. And now a hum like that Of swarming bees on meadow-flowers comes up. Each hath its just and yet luxurious joy, As if to live were to ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... in the last stages of sleep that I began to feel the warm morning sun strike my face, and hear the pleasant chirping of birds and crickets. I rolled slowly over, stretched my legs and my back, and stood up, with the last remnants of a dream playing quietly in my mind. But as I came to my feet and got a clear view of where I was, I realized it was not a dream that I had had at ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... through the unknown ways their journey take; The asses wild that hide in wilderness, Do thither come, their thirst for to refresh. The shady trees along their banks do spring, In which the birds do build, and sit, and sing, Stroking the gentle air with pleasant notes, Plaining or chirping through their warbling throats. The higher grounds, where waters cannot rise, By rain and dews are watered from the skies, Causing the earth put forth the grass for beasts, And garden-herbs, served at the greatest feasts, And bread that is all viands' firmament, ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... went a long walk up the avenues and across half the alphabet in the streets, and through the pretty squares and circles, where the statues were sometimes beautiful and always picturesque; and the sparrows made a vernal chirping in the naked trees and on the green grass. In two or three they sat down on the iron benches ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... wise woman, and thought to himself 'These are splendid things she has promised me, if only they come to pass!' So he walked on about a hundred yards, and then he heard above him in the branches such a screaming and chirping that he looked up, and there he saw a heap of birds tearing a cloth with their beaks and feet, shrieking, tugging, and fighting, as if each wanted it for himself. 'Well,' said the Hunter, 'this is wonderful! ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... when Red awoke, arrows of gold were shooting through the holes in the old barn, and outside, the bird life, the twittering and chirping, the fluent whistle and the warble, the cackle and the pompous crow, ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... impressions by nods of the head, drawing flourishes and faces on their blotting-pads the better to fix their attention; a detail that harmonized with the schoolboy-like noise in the corridors, a muttering as of lessons being recited, and the flocks of sparrows chirping under the windows in a flagged courtyard surrounded by arches, a veritable school-yard. The report adopted, they sent for M. Sarigue to make some supplementary explanations. He appeared, pale-faced, abashed, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the same effect. The boys listened in silence, meek as lambs, and no more fires were started by us that night. But the hours seemed interminably long, and it looked like the night would never come to an end. At last some little woods birds were heard, faintly chirping in the weeds and underbrush near by, then some owls set up a hooting in the woods behind us, and I knew that dawn was approaching. When it became light enough to distinguish one another, we saw that we presented a doleful appearance—all hollow-eyed, with blue noses, pinched faces, and shivering ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... little voice replied, "Not yet, Ezra—not yet—I don't need the pension yet. And as for the Home—it's not lonesome there. A lot of 'em are bedfast and stricken and I get a certain amount of fun—chirping 'em up on cloudy days. They like to hear from Emerson and John A. Logan, and Sitting Bull and Huxley and their comrades. So I guess I'm being more or less useful." He stroked his scraggy beard and looked at the fire. "And then," he added, "she always seems ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... remained for Corliss to snatch her and the canoe out from underneath. Again they fell, this time under the trees, the sun sifting down upon them through the green pine needles, the robins singing overhead, and a colony of crickets chirping in the warmth. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... woke the sun was shining brilliantly and the air was full of the chirping of birds. I felt stiff and uneasy from sleeping in my clothes, and my foot was numb from ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... larches and occasional elms which lined its banks. The sun shone bright—the woodpeckers flew from tree to tree, or clung to the rails of the fences—the belted kingfisher darted up and down over the running stream—and the chirping and wild notes of various birds were heard ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... knocketh evermore? Thou seest how around the tree, With scarlet head for hammer, he Probes where the haunts of insects be. The worm in labyrinthian hole Begins his sluggard length to roll; But crafty Rufus spies the prey, And with his mallet beats away The loose bark, crumbling to decay; Then chirping loud, with wing elate, He bears the morsel to his mate. His mate, she sitteth on her nest, In sober feather plumage dressed; A matron underneath whose breast Three little tender heads appear. With bills distent from ear to ear, Each clamors for the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... in recognizing acquaintances by their natural voices, and in detecting the counterfeit voices of companions; in arranging and classifying the elementary sounds of the language, and in determining all the different musical tones; in judging of the genus and species of birds by their chirping, of the distance and nature of sonorous bodies of various kinds, etc., etc. These are some of the direct means of improving this sense: others will suggest themselves to ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... ruins. He had shown them the dungeons, the room in which a prince had been murdered and the havoc wrought upon the walls by Cromwellian cannon. The ever recurring theme of his trembling narrative was the prowess and the splendor of the Dawns. He was like a weak-voiced cricket chirping in the sunshine. His stories of bygone lords, who had died in rebellions and crusades, were too ancient to grip the imagination. At first his veneration for the race which he served inspired an outward show ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... are by no means inferior creatures; they understand magic and are possessed of much knowledge, and may assist the Tarahumares in making rain. In spring, the singing of the birds, the cooing of the dove, the croaking of the frog, the chirping of the cricket, all the sounds uttered by the denizens of the greensward, are to the Indian appeals to the deities for rain. For what other reason should they sing or call? For the strange behaviour of many animals in the early spring the Tarahumares ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... reach me if I uncovered myself in the night. She used to say I was like a bird, having something birdlike in my small dark head and the way I held it up. Certainly I remember myself as a swift little thing, always darting to and fro on tiptoe, and chirping about our chill ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... back of a buffalo or pig or on the skeleton of any animal, it was a bad omen. Tanks or rivers were likely places for booty in the shape of resting travellers, whose death the appearance of the crow might portend; whereas in the other positions it might prognosticate a Thug's own death. The chirping of the small owlet was considered to be a bad omen, whether made while the bird was sitting or flying; It was known as chiraiya and is a low and melancholy sound seldom repeated. They considered it a very bad omen to hear the hare squeaking; this, unless ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... are derived from the "auspices," or outlook on nature which these seers practised. For they were in truth the Roman seers. Their business was to look, at midnight, into the starry heavens; to observe thunder, lightning, meteors; the chirping or flying of birds; the habits of the sacred chickens; the appearance of quadrupeds; or casualties of various kinds, as sneezing, stumbling, spilling salt or wine. The last relics of these superstitions are to be found in the little books sold in Rome, in which ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... night is seldom quiet, what with the croaking of frogs, the chirping of the cicadas, and some bird, insect, or reptile that imitates the winding in of a fishing-reel for hours together, but really the noise of the Jamaican nights after the earthquake was quite unbearable. Negroes are very hysterical, and some black preachers had ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... our own land, however, did the birds welcome the coming sun with a full chorus of song. They were not altogether silent; but even in that spring time of the year they only exhibited their pleasure by a faint untuneful twittering and chirping. Bruin was, I found, an early riser. I saw first one leg come out of his bed-place, then another, as he stretched them forth; then up went his arms, and I heard a loud yawn. It was rather more like a grunt. Then he began to growl, and to make all sorts of other ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... to be so many petrified waterfalls. We saw no animals moving among the stony brakes; scarcely even a dozen little birds in the whole course of the ride. The sparrows are all at Jerusalem, among the housetops, where their ceaseless chirping and twittering forms the most ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... no sound but the scratching of the quill pen as it flies over the paper, and the chirping of a bullfinch in a cage in ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... work was made of sandalwood and wood of aloes. It contained a vast number of nightingales, goldfinches, canary birds, larks, and other rare singing birds, and the vessels that held their seed were of the most sparkling jasper or agate. The sun went down, and I retired, charmed with the chirping notes of the multitude of birds, who then began to perch upon such places as suited them for repose during the night. I went to my chamber, resolving on the following days to open all the rest of the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... voice: with these the scenes uniformly close, and with them the singer never fails to make his exit. It appears as if, proud of having played off this highest triumph of feeling, he left the spectators to their astonishment at witnessing the chirping of the passions in the recitatives rising at last in the air, to the fuller nightingale tones. At present we require in an opera more frequent duos and trios, and a crashing finale. In fact, the most difficult problem for the opera poet is to reduce the mingled voices of conflicting passions ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... is not a conundrum. So you need not be chirping out, "On their feet, of course;" or some foolish answer of that kind. The real answer is, "Japan,"—at least, so I'm told, and there are such numbers of other queer things there, that I don't ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... sitting in this very room only a few days after, and the air began to grow dark and heavy, and all became still. There had been two or three cocks crowing and answering one another down by the river, and others at a distance; and they all ceased: and there had been birds chirping in the roof, and they ceased. And it grew so dark that I laid down my needle and went to the window, and there at the end of the street over the houses there was coming a great cloud, with wings like ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... two first days, we retraced our steps. It was very wearisome work, as the road generally ran across a glaring hot sandy plain, not far from the coast. I noticed that each time the horse put its foot on the fine siliceous sand, a gentle chirping noise was produced. On the third day we took a different line, and passed through the gay little village of Madre de Deos. This is one of the principal lines of road in Brazil; yet it was in so bad a state ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... clay-cold breast, The Arctic Robin rais'd its nest, And rear'd its little fluttering young, Where Death in awful quiet slept, And fearless chirp'd, and gaily sung Around the babe its parents wept. It was the guardian of the grave, And thus its chirping seem'd to say:— "Tho' naught from Death's chill grasp could save, Tho' naught could chase his power away— As round this humble spot I wing, My thrilling voice shall daily sing A requiem o'er the faded flower, That bloom'd and wither'd in an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... They're chirming and chirping like as many sparrows." The old man twisted about. "I should have thowt as thou'd have been in the thick of the thrang thysel', ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... sound of the birds going to roost came to the ears. It was now spring, the gladsome period of the year. The cooing and chirping brought no charm to the prisoner's ear. These birds were as the birds of Shideyama (in Hell). Mournful the dirge they sang. Filled with foreboding, with dread for self and the passing from the darkness of the womb to the darkness ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... the horizon, all was bright and glowing. At times a slight breeze passed over, breaking up the landscape and intensifying the brightness; a sunlit vapour hung over the fields. No sound came from the birds; they do not sing in the heat of noonday; but the grasshoppers were chirping everywhere, and it was pleasant as they sat in the cool and quietness, to hear that hot, eager sound of life; it disposed to slumber and ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... spurred boots. Then he went to the door of the bedroom and listened in the darkness. A slight breeze came from the garden and moved the lowered window-blind with the regularity of a pendulum. Somewhere in the grass a cricket was chirping; and through the slight noises the deep contented breathing of the two sleepers could be heard, slow and deep the mother's, and the child's soft ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... happy. "If I could just sit here forever," she mused. "If someone could enchant me, just as I am, with the sun warm on the tips of my toes and this little wind, so full of flowers, cool upon my face. If I need never again hear anything save the drone of sleepy bees, the chirping of fat robins and the hum of ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... bitterish savor in the brain, Tonic, it may be, not delectable, And turned, reluctant, for a parting look At those old weather-pitted images Of bygone struggle, now so sternly calm. About their shoulders sparrows had built nests, And fluttered, chirping, from gray perch to perch, 740 Now on a mitre poising, now a crown, Irreverently happy. While I thought How confident they were, what careless hearts Flew on those lightsome wings and shared the sun, A larger shadow crossed; and looking ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... yet fledged, that hath hopped out of his nest to be chirping on a hedge, and will be straggling abroad at what peril soever. His backwardness in the university hath set him thus forward; for had he not truanted there, he had not been so hasty a divine. His small standing, and time, hath made him a proficient only ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... off smiling, 'I'm calling the little birds to sing.' He showed me his little cups. 'The chaffinches answer splendidly! You, at your tender years, take delight, no doubt, in the feathered songsters' notes! Listen, I beg; I will begin chirping, and they'll answer ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... and chirping away with Noemi. Their conversation sounded like the fresh, clear, never-ending babbling of a brook, breaking off now and again in a peal of laughter and dying away in a whisper. Noemi, who was very guarded at first, soon gave herself up to the delight of ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... Lee Surrender Jones lay flat on his back on the floor, trying to trace the course of human events during the last half-hour. Against the dim suspicion that Amanda had in some way outwitted him rose the staggering evidence of that very live cricket that still hopped about the room, chirping contentedly. ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... a thirsty sparrow gave her thoughts a pleasant turn, for, sitting motionless, she watched the little creature trip down to the pool, drink and bathe, then flying to a willow spray, dress its feathers, dry its wings, and sit chirping softly as if it sang its evening hymn. Warwick saw her interest, and searching in his pocket, found the relics of a biscuit, strewed a few bits upon the ground before him, and began a low, sweet whistle, ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... their murmur to a continuous whisper, soothing and caressing. The tinkle of the creek became more metallic and pronounced. Near by, down the stream, a sudden chorus of frogs burst into croaking, their isolated notes blended by the chirping undertone of the crickets and tree toads. There were other sounds, mysterious, untraceable, but all musical in greater or ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... every appearance of a beautiful day; the country beginning to have quite a green appearance, and the valleys being covered with lilies in full bloom, birds singing and chirping all around as if in spring. I am quite shut out for the present from Eyre's Creek; so will not attempt it. At midday the party arrived with the meat of the bullock and shortly after, when cutting it up for jerking, ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... the lawyer left her and picked his way through the gardens until he came to Kenneth's wing and the stair that led to his room. Here he paused a moment, finding himself surrounded by a profound stillness, broken only by the chirping of the birds in the shrubbery. Perhaps Kenneth was not in. He half decided to retrace his steps, but finally mounted the stair softly and stood within the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... birds. They had found out a fly-catcher's nest in the ivy above the front door, and every evening the two children used to fetch out their father to watch the parent birds catching flies and carrying them to the hungry little ones, whom they could just hear chirping up above the ivy. Olly was wild to get the gardener's ladder that he might climb up and look into the nest, but Mr. Norton would not have it lest it should frighten away ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... accommodates two horribly-ugly, black-faced pugs, underneath the driving seat of his vehicle; and you may generally hear his approach, when distant more than a mile, through the chirping, and squeaking, and ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Castile. The descent soon became so rapid and precipitous, that we were fain to dismount from our horses and to drive them before us. Into the woods we plunged deeper and deeper still; night-birds soon began to hoot and cry, and millions of crickets commenced their shrill chirping above, below, and around us. Occasionally, amidst the trees at a distance, we could see blazes, as if from immense fires. "They are those of the charcoal-burners, mon maitre!" said Antonio; "we will not go near them, however, for they are savage people, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... oysters in a few dips, and opened them for the party. Along the shores wild haws and wild plums still adhered to the bushes, and the stiff-branched persimmon-trees bore thousands of their tomato-like fruit. The partridges were chirping in the corn, the crow blackbirds held a funeral feast around the fodder, some old-time bayside mansions stretched their long sides and speckled negro quarters along the inlets, half hidden by the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... parent's trespass on the child. 50 Oft, where his feather'd foe had rear'd her nest, And laid her eggs and household gods to rest, Burning for blood in terrible array, The eighteen-inch militia burst their way: All went to wreck; the infant foeman fell, Whence scarce his chirping bill had broke the shell. Loud uproar hence and rage of arms arose, And the fell rancour of encountering foes; Hence dwarfs and cranes one general havoc whelms, And Death's grim visage scares the pigmy realms. ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... garden. That wall was destined to be at a later time a very familiar haunt of mine, for on the Thursday holidays during my college life I spent many a happy hour sitting upon it contemplating the peaceful and quiet country, and there I mused, to the chirping accompaniment of the crickets, of those distant countries fairer and sunnier than my own. And upon that summer day those gray and crumbling stones, defaced by the sun and weather, and overgrown with mosses, gave me for the first time an indefinable impression of the persistence of things; ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... a curious thrill as the bird, perched on his hand, and extended to his utmost, sang his song. The other birds having finished all the crumbs stood chirping and twittering in the grass. Then, as if by a given signal, all of them, including the one on Henry's hand, united in a single volume of song and flew up into the crevices of the green roof. He felt that a serenade had been given to him, one that few ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... considerable body of herrings. As we raised them over the gunwale, they felt warm to the hand, for in the middle of a large shoal even the temperature of the water is raised—a fact well known to every herring fisherman; and in shaking them out of the meshes, the ear became sensible of a shrill, chirping sound, like that of the mouse, but much fainter—a ceaseless cheep, cheep, cheep, occasioned apparently—for no true fish is furnished with organs of sound—by a sudden escape from the air-bladder. The shoal, a small one, had spread over only three of the nets—the three whose buoys had so ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... kept you waiting so long." One of the troop, who had been plying the Cornet's old stingo pretty freely, interrupted him, in a voice as opposite to that of the Cornet as the roaring of a cannon is to the chirping of a cricket, and replied "Never mind, Sir, about any apology, but put on your regimentals as fast as you can, or we shall get to Salisbury after all the mischief is done." The Cornet proceeded—"I am very sorry, Gentlemen; ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... just outside the door, humming a song, and watching the approach of evening, which gradually enfolded the forest. Her gray eyes smiled softly at some one. The reddening rays of the sun fell more and more aslant. The busy chirping of the birds died away. The forest darkened, and seemed to grow denser. The trees moved in more closely about the choked-up glade, and gave it a more friendly embrace, covering it with shadows. Cows were lowing in the distance. The tar men came, all four together, ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... visible, and behind the filmy curtain solid masses of swordsmen and spearmen appeared. The fortunate interposition of a small knoll in some degree protected the advance of the Lincoln Regiment, but in both Highland battalions soldiers began to drop. The whole air was full of a strange chirping whistle. The hard pebbly sand was everywhere dashed up into dust-spurts. Numerous explosive bullets, fired by the Arabs, made queer startling reports. The roar of the rifles drowned even the noise of the artillery. All the deployed battalions began to suffer. But they and the assaulting columns, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... noises do I hear? They keep me wide awake." "The chirping crickets, little dear; What funny ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... with beating hearts as he crept on and on, his savage eyes turned up ever and anon when he stepped towards their nest, where their young ones were chirping merrily, unconscious of danger. In another instant he might make his fatal spring, and seize them in his cruel jaws. The heart of the tender mother urged her to risk her own life for the sake of her offspring. Downward she flew, uttering loud screams of anger almost within ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... magnificent image of Him as throned above 'the circle of the earth,' and so far above that all the busy tribes of men 'are as grasshoppers,' their restless activity but aimless leaping, and 'the tumult of the peoples' only as a meaningless chirping. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... visions of an unfettered imagination. All we hear or say in a dream that is fair and beautiful is like the gold of the subterranean spirits; it is rich and splendid when it is given us, but viewed by daylight we find only withered leaves. Alas!" he sighed quite sorrowful, and gazed at the chirping birds that hopped contentedly from branch to branch, "they are much better off than I! To fly must be a heavenly art; and happy do I prize that creature in which it is innate. Yes! Could I exchange my nature with any other creature, I ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... separated, and took up their positions on each side of the path. They could hear nothing but the chirping of the birds, and the sighing of the wind through the branches above their heads; but they had not been long in their concealments before they found that Dick had not been deceived. The clatter of a horse's hoofs on the hard path, faint and far off at first, but growing ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... saileth on the waves of the sea. We also found grapes, both white and purple, hanging down in clusters from the trees, over which the vines did run, nigh upon as large as those which the Jews of old plucked at Eschol. The air was sweet and soft, and there was a clear, but not a hot sun, and the chirping of squirrels, and the noise of birds, and the sound of the waves breaking on the beach a little distance off, and the leaves, at every breath of the wind in the tree- tops, whirling and fluttering down about me, like so many yellow ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... nearest bend of a line of yarra river-trees. There we found, after riding two miles, another diminutive Lachlan, precisely similar to the former, but rather less: it was very sinuous in its course and full of holes, but surrounded by green bushes with chirping birds; but it was too obvious that these holes had been long, long dry. Thence I pursued a course 24 degrees North of East over naked ground, evidently subject at times to inundation, towards other large trees; being anxious to cross all the arms of the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... of small, chirping noises. Glimpse, a short, hurried view. 3. Blur, a dim, confused appearance. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... on the FIFTH DAY of Creation that the silence was broken by the voice of birds. We are so accustomed to the various cries of animals, the buzzing of insects, and above all to the chirping and twittering and singing of birds, that we can hardly imagine what a ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... which are briefly and inartistically described, soon disappear, and we plunge abruptly into the subject of the dialogue. We are reminded by contrast of the higher art of the Phaedrus, in which the summer's day, and the cool stream, and the chirping of the grasshoppers, and the fragrance of the agnus castus, and the legends of the place are present to the ...
— Laws • Plato
... the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows; The young birds are chirping in the nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows; The young flowers are blowing toward the west: But the young, young children, O my brothers! They are weeping bitterly. They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... brooded in every corner; the big house-cat stretched its limbs on the straw mat and arched its back against Reinhard's hand, which he unthinkingly held out to it. Outside in the garden the sparrows were already chirping their patter [Footnote: Literally, "sang out pompously, like priests." The word seems to have been coined by the author. The English 'patter' is derived from Pater noster, and seems an appropriate translation.] from among the ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... laid him back gently on the snow and prayed for that unprepared and guilty spirit, and as he prayed the sun came up at a bound, and the robins began chirping in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there chirping to us about Love and Service and how we oughta give. Give! Jesus!—we ain't got anything left to give. They ain't anything to give our wives or our children,—no, nor there ain't enough left to feed our own faces or pay for a patch on our pants! Give? Hell! The interests took ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... seeks in particular the Great Boat-Tail (Quiscalus major) which nests in the reeds at the edge of marshes and ponds. When the young have come out and are expecting from their parents the food which the chances of the hunt may delay, they do not cease chirping and calling by their cries. But the parents are not alone in hearing these appeals. They may also strike the ears of the alligator, who furtively approaches the imprudent singers. With a sudden stroke of his tail he strikes the ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay |
