"Linnet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very Arcadian and un-Cockney-like in the idea of linnet-singing in Lock's Fields. Imagination pictures so readily the green pastures and the wild bird's song, and Corydon with his pipe and his Phyllis, that it seems a pity to disabuse that exquisite faculty of our nature ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... and who knows but I may yet reap the sweetest and best revenge for her former scorn?—that were indeed a masterpiece of courtlike art! Let me but once be her counsel-keeper—let her confide to me a secret, did it but concern the robbery of a linnet's nest, and, fair Countess, thou art mine own!" He again paced the room in silence, stopped, filled and drank a cup of wine, as if to compose the agitation of his mind, and muttering, "Now for a close heart and an open and unruffled brow," he left ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... my Stronghold: stout of heart am I, Greeting each dawn as songful as a linnet; And when at night on yon poor bed I lie (Blessing the world and every soul that's in it), Here's where I thank the Lord no shadow bars My skylight's vision of ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... commission. At the opening of the season, the American vessels lay in Otter Creek; and, just as they were ready to leave port, the enemy appeared off the mouth of the creek with a force consisting of the brig "Linnet" and eight or ten galleys. The object of the British was to so obstruct the mouth of the creek that the Americans should be unable to come out. With this end in view, they had brought two sloops laden with stones, which they intended to sink in the narrow channel. But, luckily, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... that the arbitress of my life—my genius for good or evil—waited there in humble guise. I did not know it, even when, on the occasion of Mesrour's accident, it came up and gravely offered me help. Childish and slender creature! It seemed as if a linnet had hopped to my foot and proposed to bear me on its tiny wing. I was surly; but the thing would not go: it stood by me with strange perseverance, and looked and spoke with a sort of authority. I must be aided, and by that hand: ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... him with sparkling eye as an old acquaintance: the cuckoo haunts him with sounds of early youth not to be expressed: a linnet's nest startles him with boyish delight: an old withered thorn is weighed down with a heap of recollections: a grey cloak, seen on some wild moor, torn by the wind, or drenched in the rain, afterwards becomes an object of imagination to him: even the lichens on the rock have ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... sleeping in their cabins, dreaming dreams of victory and glory, when Wangewaha, or the Hard Heart, sleeping in his tent, was aroused by the tread of a light foot on the earth at his side, and the music of a voice sweeter than that of the linnet or the thrush. Looking up he saw, by the beams of the moon, a tall and beautiful woman, straight as a hickory, and graceful as a young antelope. She wore over her shoulders a cloak made of the tender ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... behold must love. But, if to suit a form like thine, Thy voice be as divine; If both in these together meet, The feather'd race must own Of all their tribe there's none, Of form so fair, of voice so sweet. Who'll then regard the linnet's note, Or heed the lark's melodious throat? What pensive lovers then shall dwell With raptures on their Philomel? The goldfinch shall his plumage hide, The swan abate her stately pride, And Juno's bird no more display His various glories to the sunny day: Then grant thy Suppliant's ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Philomela's tongue, The thrush's note, or warbling song Of blackbird, lark, or linnet; I'd then more gratitude display, Striving to raise a sweeter lay, I'd sing the fleeting hours away, Nor silent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... cease," the husband cried, "to scold "And take your whim. I ne'er could hold "My own against a screaming wife; "You'll drive me mad, upon my life. "Her belly-full our Kate may get "Of nightingale or of linnet." The thing was settled. Kate obeyed, And in a trice her bed was made, And lover signalled. Who shall say How long to both appeared that day, That tedious day! But night arrived And Richard too; he had contrived ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... has fallen by the chance of fortune. METASTASIO and TIRABOSCHI received what had been accorded to PETRARCH and to POGGIO. Germany, patriotic to its literary characters, is the land of the enthusiasm of genius. On the borders of the Linnet, in the public walk of Zurich, the monument of GESNER, erected by the votes of his fellow-citizens attests their sensibility; and a solemn funeral honoured the remains of KLOPSTOCK, led by the senate of Hamburgh, with fifty thousand votaries, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... A linnet sings and sings, A shrill swift cleaves the air with blackest wings; White twinkletails Run frankly in their meadow ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... upon a thorn At evening chime. Its sweet refrain fell like the rain Of summer-time. Of summer-time when roses bloomed, And bright above A rainbow spanned my fairy-land Of hope and love! Of hope and love! O linnet, cease Thy mocking theme! I ne'er picked up the golden cup In all my dream! In all my dream I missed the prize Should have been mine; And dreams won't die! though fain would I, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... "When, linnet-like, confined, I With shriller note shall sing The mercy, sweetness, majesty, And glories of my king; When I shall voice aloud how good He is, how great should be, Th' enlarged winds that curl the flood ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... dove, the linnet rare, Perched on one rose tree, mellow in one note. Thou art fair Juliet and Romeo fair, Singing across the night with one ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... did my heart foretell? What shook my spirit, as I woke, Like the vibration of a bell Of which I had not heard the stroke? Was it some happy vision shut From memory by the sun's fresh ray? Was it that linnet's song; or but A natural gratitude for day? Or the mere joy the senses weave, A wayward ecstasy of life? Then I remember'd, yester-eve I won Honoria ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... the woods anon, And heard the wild birds sing How sweet you were; they warbled on, Piped, trill'd the self-same thing. Thrush, blackbird, linnet, without pause The burden did repeat, And still began again ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... said the blacksmith, significantly shaking his head. He was snared as neatly by this simple face as ever was a swallow by a linnet hidden in a cage among ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... smaller than the linnet; its plumage is a violet-coloured blue, and its wings, which serve it for a cope, are entirely violet-colour. Its notes are so sweet, so variable, and tender, that those who have once heard it, are apt to abate in ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... He said to the Linnet, "Thou canst fly over the tops of the tall trees and canst see the whole world. Tell me, canst thou see ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... respond to him who approaches them as though hurried by temporal care. There befits the garment of solemn leisure, the thought attuned to peace. I open the volume somewhat formally; is it not sacred, if the word have any meaning at all? And, as I read, no interruption can befall me. The note of a linnet, the humming of a bee, these are the sounds about my sanctuary. The page scarce ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... nightingale is rather rare and yet they say you'll hear him there At Kew, at Kew in lilac time (and oh, so near to London!) The linnet and the throstle, too, and after dark the long halloo And golden-eyed TU-WHIT, TU WHOO of owls ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... bee; As dawn beyond the orient Cumbraes shone, Thy northern slope, Byrone, From Ascog's rocks, o'erflung with woodland bowers, With scarlet fuschias, and faint myrtle flowers, My steps essay'd; brushing the diamond dew From the soft moss, lithe grass, and harebell blue. Up from the heath aslant the linnet flew Startled, and rose the lark on twinkling wing, And soar'd away, to sing A farewell to the severing shades of night, A welcome to the morning's aureate light. Thy summit gain'd, how tranquilly serene, Beneath, outspread that panoramic scene Of continent and isle, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... seemed woven into the fabric of Peregrine's life, and he belonged to them as exclusively as the grouse or mountain linnet. He knew every rock upon their crests and every runnel of water that fretted its channel through the peat; he could mark down the merlin's nest among the heather and the falcon's eyrie in the cleft of the scar. If he started ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... thy song, thou green linnet!' rejoined lady Margaret. 'What song was it of which I said to thee that the singer deserved, for his very song's sake, that whereof he made his moan? Whence thou hadst it, from harper ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage, The linnet born within the cage, That never knew ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the gorse is gay, And England's lanes and fallows Are decked with broom whose winsome grace The hovering linnet hallows; But the robin sings from his maple bow, "Ah, linnet, lightly won, Your bloom to my blaze of wayside gold Is the wan moon to ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... polyanthus mean—the dapper daisy, Sweet-William, and sweet marjoram—and all The tribe of single and of double pinks! Now, too, the feather'd warblers tune their notes Around, and charm the listening grove. The lark! The linnet! chaffinch! bullfinch! goldfinch! greenfinch! But O, to me no joy can they afford! Nor rose, nor wallflower, nor smart gillyflower, Nor polyanthus mean, nor dapper daisy, Nor William sweet, nor marjoram—nor lark, Linnet nor all ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... of the 27th, a small land bird, resembling a linnet, was seen; at noon we were in 10 deg. 28' south and 146 deg. 7' east, and the current had set W. N. W., three quarters of a mile an hour, since the 25th. The wind, which had been at south-east, then shifted suddenly to north, and blew fresh with squally weather; ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... Scarlet Tanager, Summer Redbird, Blue Heron, Humming Bird, Yellowbird, Whip-poor-will, Water Wagtail, Woodpecker, Pigeon Woodpecker, Indigo Bird, Yellowthroat, Wilson's Thrush, Chickadee, Kingbird, Swallow, Cedar Bird, Cowbird, Martin, Veery, Chewink, Vireo, Oriole, Blackbird, Fifebird, Wren, Linnet, Pewee, Phoebe, Yoke ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... voice of the flood Hoarse breaking upon the rough shore, As a linnet remembers the wood And ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and some are little. Knowing nothing, he generalizes in the highest degree; he simplifies, in his inability to perceive the complex. Later he will learn that the Sparrow is not the Bullfinch, that the Linnet is not the Greenfinch; he will particularize and to a greater degree each day, as his faculty of observation becomes more fully trained. In the beginning he saw nothing but resemblances; he now sees differences, but still not plainly ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... and the under-side of the wings and tail of a plain scarlet colour, though blackish above, with a crimson streak running from the angle of the mouth, a little down the neck on each side. The third and fourth, are a small bird of the finch kind, about the size of a linnet, of a dark dusky colour, whitish below, with a black head and neck, and white bill; and a sand-piper, of the size of a small pigeon, of a dusky brown colour, and white below, except the throat and breast, with a broad white band across the wings. There are also humming-birds, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... happily to eat and drink, while Thora served him, and Conall smoked and watched them with a now-and-then smile or word or two, while Rahal and Barbara talked, and Ian played charmingly—with soft pedal down—quotations from Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony" and "Hark, 'Tis the Linnet!" ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... robin red-breast! Sing, birds, in every furrow! And from each bill let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cocksparrow, You pretty elves, among yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow! To give my Love good-morrow! Sing, birds, in ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... loftiness, careless of pomp or insignia, all delicate dates and exquisite viands; but neither the keen and stimulating odors of savory meat, the crisp whiteness of freshest bread, nor the slow-dropping gold of honeycomb could tempt her to eat. The simplest peasant's fare, in measure too scanty for a linnet, sustained her life; but the Curse lit even upon her food, and those lips of fire burned all things in their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the woods, and sat, shadowed by the long bent branch; watching mechanically the slow rounding and yellowing of the beam of sunlight over the thick floor of moss, up against the fir-stems. The chaffinch and the linnet flitted off the grey orchard twigs, singing from new stations; and the bee seemed to come questioning the silence of the woods and droning disappointed away. The first excess of any sad feeling is half voluntary. Emilia could not help smiling, when she lifted her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... when the troubles of life are still; The bees wandered lost in the depths of June, And I paused where the chime of a silver rill Sang the linnet and lark to ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wood, and field and cottage, in one continuous blaze of glory. We had walked on in silence for the last half hour; but I could sometimes hear my companion muttering as he went; and when, in passing through a thicket of hawthorn and honeysuckle, we started from its perch a linnet that had been filling the air with its melody, I could hear him exclaim, in a subdued tone of voice, "Bonny, bonny birdie! why hasten frae me?—I wadna skaith a feather o' yer wing." He turned round to me, and I could see that his eyes were ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... also do the like in their particular seasons, as namely the Laverock, the Tit-lark, the little Linnet, and the honest Robin that loves ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... complacency on her failures. The songs of Mr. Aubrey de Vere are not well enough known; they are sometimes singularly charming. Other poets have once or twice succeeded in catching this clear natural treble,—the living linnet once captured in the elm, as Tusitala puts it; but this has not been a gift largely enjoyed by our ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... all we have related in Two long octaves, pass'd in a little minute; But in the same small minute, every sin Contrived to get itself comprised within it. The very cannon, deafen'd by the din, Grew dumb, for you might almost hear a linnet, As soon as thunder, 'midst the general noise ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... in spite of logic, then, a lack means about twelve thousand pounds: and four of them, according to Cocker, some fifty thousand. It would appear then, that with the produce of the Begum's diamonds, converted into money long ago, and some of them as big as linnet's eggs—and not to take account of Mrs. Green's trifling pinch of the five Exchequer bills, all handed over at once to Emily—the General's present fortune was exactly one hundred ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... spring, occasionally tuning his voice before the arrival of the multitudinous choir, is the Crimson Finch or American Linnet (Fringilla purpurea). I have frequently heard his notes on warm days in March, and once, in a very mild season, I heard one warbling cheerily on the 18th of February. But the Linnet does not persevere ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... road, and arrived with a pocket full of emptiness. There she fell in, at the Porte St. Denise, with a company of soldiers, placed there for a time as a vidette, for the Protestants had assumed a dangerous attitude. The sergeant seeing this hooded linnet coming, stuck his headpiece on one side, straightened his feather, twisted his moustache, cleared his throat, rolled his eyes, put his hand on his hips, and stopped the Picardian to see if her ears ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... a marriage-tie which will be broken without much pain! But she fills me with impatience, poor empty-headed linnet, with her laughter, and I turn my back upon her ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... Ride Caroline E. S. Norton The Watcher James Stephens The Three Sisters Arthur Davison Ficke Ballad May Kendall "O that 'Twere Possible" Alfred Tennyson "Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead" Alfred Tennyson Evelyn Hope Robert Browning Remembrance Emily Bronte Song,"The linnet in the rocky dells" Emily Bronte Song of the Old Love Jean Ingelow Requiescat Matthew Arnold Too Late Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Four Years Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Barbara Alexander Smith Song, "When I am dead, my dearest" Christina Georgina Rossetti Sarrazine's Song to Her Dead ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... inlet, yet it proved but a deep bay, the end whereof in four hours I attained, and there leaving the boat well manned, went with the rest of my company three or four miles into the country, but found nothing, nor saw anything, save only gripes, ravens, and small birds, as lark and linnet. ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... into the air with a sort of suspended, hovering flight, like certain of the finches, and bursts into a perfect ecstasy of song,—clear, ringing, copious, rivaling the goldfinch's in vivacity, and the linnet's in melody. This strain is one of the rarest bits of bird melody to be heard, and is oftenest indulged in late in the afternoon or after sundown. Over the woods, hid from view, the ecstatic singer warbles his finest strain. In this song you instantly detect his relationship to the water-wagtail,—erroneously ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... me are yon humble broom bowers, Where the blue-bell and gowan lurk lowly unseen; For there, lightly tripping amang the wild flowers, A listening the linnet, aft wanders my Jean. ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... meadows in their mantles of green and around the ruined, tenantless homes along the Meuse, how the primrose and violet were covering up the scars made by unnumbered shells. The air was filled with the joyous notes of the lark, and the linnet and the black-cap warbled among the hedgerows. Here where once had dwelt the peasant, the cuckoo called from the evergreens and nightingales made the evening breeze vocal with their rapturous notes. This wealth ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... the blossom where the wild bees hum; Then through the broomy bound with ease they pass, And press the sandy sheep-walk's slender grass, Where dwarfish flowers among the gorse are spread, And the lamb browses by the linnet's bed; Then 'cross the bounding brook they make their way O'er its rough bridge—and there behold the bay! - The ocean smiling to the fervid sun - The waves that faintly fall and slowly run - The ships at distance and the boats at hand; And now they walk upon the sea-side sand, Counting ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... his unfinished task. The block on which these lines are traced, perhaps, Was once selected as the corner-stone 15 Of that [5] intended Pile, which would have been Some quaint odd plaything of elaborate skill, So that, I guess, the linnet and the thrush, And other little builders who dwell here, Had wondered at the work. But blame him not, 20 For old Sir William was a gentle Knight, Bred in this vale, to which he appertained [6] With all his ancestry. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... did not enable him to celebrate his instincts; and suddenly from his thicket of forest trees and greening bushes he began to pour forth a thrilling little tide of song, with the native sweetness of some human linnet unaware ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... flood: Along whose shelving bank the violet blue And primrose pale in lovely mixture grew. High overarched the bloomy woodbine hung, The gaudy goldfinch from the maple sung; The little warbling minstrel of the shade To the gay morn her due devotion paid Next, the soft linnet echoing to the thrush With carols filled the smelling briar-bush; While Philomel attuned her artless throat, And from the hawthorn breathed ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... if you stirred a book you brought enough snuffy dust into the air to make you sneeze for ten minutes. But his own room, which was above the shop, was blithe enough, and it was there I had my lessons. Mr. Davies kept a piping bullfinch in it, and a linnet, and there was a little window garden on the sill, where tulips bloomed in their season, and under a glass case there was a plaster model of the Arch of Titus in Rome, of which he was exceedingly proud, and which I thought very pretty, and at one ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... how full of melody is an English wood, when thrush, blackbird, mavis, linnet, and a thousand warblers flit from tree to tree. How the choir rings out its full anthem of sweetest sound, till every bush and tree seems a centre of sweet strains, soft, low, liquid trills, and full ripe gushes of melody and song. But it is not thus in an Indian forest. There ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... A crown for Hope!—I dread the boasted lights That all too often are but fiery blights, Killing the bud o'er which in vain we grieve. Go, seek, when Christmas snows discomfort bring, The counter Spirit found in some gay church Green with fresh holly, every pew a perch In which the linnet or the thrush might sing, Merry and loud, and safe from prying search, Strains offered only ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... too, the linnet you made me a present of died last Sunday. It made me cry a good deal, though I am sure I ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... picturesque they were, feeding and flying in close order. Besides these must be mentioned the yellow-throated vireo, the bay-winged bunting, the swamp sparrow, the field sparrow, the purple finch, the red-poll linnet, the savanna sparrow, the tree sparrow, the night-hawk (whose celebrated tumbling trick may often be witnessed by evening strollers in the Garden), the woodcock (I found the body of one which had evidently met its death against the electric ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... still points its moral to the heart. That faithful monitor 'twas heav'n to hear! When soft it spoke a promis'd pleasure near: And has its sober hand, its simple chime, Forgot to trace the feather'd feet of Time? That massive beam, with curious carvings wrought, Whence the caged linnet sooth'd my pensive thought; Those muskets, cas'd with venerable rust; Those once-lov'd forms, still breathing thro' their dust, Still from the frame, in mould gigantic cast, Starting to life—all whisper of the past! As thro' the garden's desert paths I rove, What fond ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... about, and he then told me that the bigger boy who had just run away was always on the common searching for nests, just to destroy them and kill the young birds; that he, my informant, had come there where he came every day just to have a peep at a linnet's nest with four eggs in it on which the bird was sitting; that the other boy, concealed among the bushes had watched him go to the nest and had then rushed up and pulled the nest out of ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... heavy, and when the sun burst through the thick array of clouds that impended over the French coast, the cordage and sails discharged a sparkling shower of large pellucid drops. In the course of the forenoon, a small bird of the linnet tribe perched on the rigging in a state of exhaustion, and allowed itself to be caught. It was thoughtlessly encaged in the crystal lamp that lighted the cabin, where it either chafed itself to death, or died from the intense heat of the noon-day sun, which shone almost vertically ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... two pun' fer th' best pair o' shackles wot 'is men could make. There worn't many o' us as wor 'ands at shackles, an' there wor only th' Dutchman an' a white man in it—a Cockney 'e wos, name o' Linnet——" ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... seatmate, Dicky Ray, was naughty in school, and Miss Linnet called him up, opened her desk, took out a little riding whip—it was a bright blue one—and then and there administered punishment. And because he cried, when recess came, Tommy said: "Isn't Dick Ray just a reg'lar girl cry-baby?" (He had learned that word from some of the ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... silence, broken only by the rustle of the leaves in the summer breeze, by the note of a linnet singing in ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... Linnet and Matthew Henry, and this was the order of their ages—Annet nine, Linnet seven, and Matthew Henry rising five. On fine days they attended school at Inniscaw, being rowed to and fro across the Sound by John Nanjulian (Old ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... out of bed! But, as the captain said, who looks at the clock at Christmas time? So Martha and her daughters curtsied themselves out of the room, and Mr. Crayshaw stood at the door talking quite cheerily with old Kiah, while Betty kept Pete back a minute to ask about her linnet, which was ill—Pete ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... sound. Before me, glimmering like a crescent moon, The dim half circle of the choir awaits Its own appointed time. Beside me now, Watching my wand, plump and immaculate From buckled shoes to that white bunch of lace Under his chin, the midget tenor rises, Music in hand, a linnet and a king. The bullfinch bass, that other emperor, Leans back indifferently, and clears his throat As if to say, "This prelude leads to Me!" While, on their own proud thrones, on either hand, The sumptuously bosomed midget queens, Contralto and soprano, ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... the Drongo shrike, and a bird very like the grey linnet, with a thick reddish bill, assemble in very large flocks now that it is winter, and continue thus till November, or period ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... brevity of a short one excludes." Surely the lyric, like the short story, cannot see life steadily and whole. It reflects, as we have seen, a single situation or desire. "Short swallow-flights of song"; piping "as the linnet sings"; have not the lyric poets themselves confessed this inherent shortcoming of their art in a thousand similes? Does not a book of lyrics often seem like a plantation of carefully tended little trees, rather ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... to do with fashions, anyway?" screamed a linnet. "If it were the fashion to wear knooks perched upon women's hats would you be contented to stay ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... had taught Cosette music in the convent; Cosette had the voice of a linnet with a soul, and sometimes, in the evening, in the wounded man's humble abode, she warbled melancholy songs which ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... singing? Does the lark soar as high as ever? And does the linnet dress herself as smartly?' But here the ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... to them when they stepped out of doors; and they came back to the house for luncheon in the gayest of humour, Athalie chattering away blithe as a linnet in a thorn bush, and Clive not a whit ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... The sparrow and linnet will feed from your hand, Grow tame by your kindness, and come at command: Exert with your husband the same happy skill, For hearts, like your birds, may ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... bright-coloured rug on the floor, and bright coloured pictures of Mount Vesuvius and of Garibaldi on the walls. Also there was a cabinet with many interesting treasures to look at—a bit of coral and a conch-shell, a shark's tooth and an Indian arrow-head, and a stuffed linnet with a glass cover over him. A while back Hal would not have thought of such things as especially stimulating to the imagination; but that was before he had begun to spend five-sixths of his waking hours in ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... the birds say? The sparrow, the dove, The linnet, and thrush say 'I love, and I love!' In the winter they're silent, the wind is so strong; What it says I don't know, but it sings a loud song. But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather, And singing and loving—all come back together. But the lark is so brimful of gladness and ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... black-cock trims his jetty wing, 'T is morning prompts the linnet's blithest lay, All Nature's children feel the matin spring Of life reviving, with reviving day; And while yon little bark glides down the bay, Wafting the stranger on his way again, Morn's genial influence roused a minstrel gray, And sweetly o'er the lake was heard thy strain, Mixed ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Shenstone's expenses were beyond his means,— that he spent his estate in adorning it—that at last the clamours of creditors "overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and that his groves were haunted by beings very different from fauns and fairies." But this is gross exaggeration. Shenstone was occasionally, indeed, in slight pecuniary difficulties, but he could always have protected himself from ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... A linnet who had lost her way Sang on a blackened bough in Hell, Till all the ghosts remembered well The trees, the wind, ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... "When, linnet-like, confined I With shriller note shall sing The mercye, sweetness, majesty, And glories of my King; When I shall voyce aloud how good He is, how great should be, Th' enlarged winds that curl the flood ...
— Westminster - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... He has given an account of his experiments in the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1773 (Vol. 63); he says: "I have educated nestling linnets under the three best singing larks—the skylark, woodlark, and titlark, every one of which, instead of the linnet's song, adhered entirely to that of their respective instructors. When the note of the titlark linnet was thoroughly fixed, I hung the bird in a room with two common linnets for a quarter of a year, which were full in song; the titlark linnet, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... acquaintance, and among them the Ferrets of Hollow-oak were the most intimate. Now it so happened that one evening, when out for a ramble in the woods, a branch of a tree on which Miss Weasel had mounted in order to get nearer to young Linnet, with whom she wished to be on intimate terms, broke suddenly off, and the poor young lady was precipitated to the ground and sadly hurt. Her cries brought to her assistance her younger brother Tom, who, as soon as he had helped her home, ran ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... Starling, And the wonderful Peacock; The Lapwing and Peewit, The bold Yellowhammer, The bad Willy-wagtail, The Raven so awful, And the Cock with his Hens; Stone-checker, Hedge-sparrow, And Lint-white and Lark, The Tom-tit and Linnet, And brisk little Sparrow, The King-fisher too, ...
— The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said • Padraic Colum
... of ecstasy and wonder; Love is a poignant and accustomed pain. It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder; It is a linnet's fluting after rain. Love's voice is through your song; above and under And in each note to ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer
... before strangers, was that of whistling. Few people have heard the exquisite notes that can be produced by an adept in the art, but there are whistlers and whistlers, whose notes differ as much as those of the linnet and the crow. While accompanying herself on the piano, Dexie could produce such wonderful trills and quavers, with such purity of tone, that she could almost rival the very birds themselves, and she never failed to surprise and charm all ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... and he did not improve it; his care was of his grounds. When he came home from his walks, he might find his floor flooded by a shower through the broken roof; but could spare no money for its reparation. In time his expences brought clamours about him, that overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and his groves were haunted by beings very different from fawns and fairies. He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. It is said, that if he had lived ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... welcome me, and the rosiest and sweetest of lips coaxingly pressed to mine; all my cares forgotten, all my vexations subdued by her soothing caresses and tender words. And then how enchanting as she warbles like a linnet for my ear alone; how enchanting to lean her bewitching little head on my shoulder, and inhale the balmy fragrance of her breath. O! I ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... rising surpass other trees, And twinkle as moved by the scarce mountain breeze, And the wild oleander in rose-colour'd bloom, With trill of the linnet, ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... saw a wee brown linnet Dancing on a tree, Dancing on a tree. How her feet flew every minute As she danced at me-e-e; How her feet flew every minute As she danced ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... summer: thrush and linnet sung their gladsome summer-lay; Through the fir trees' cooling vista rose the cataract's white spray; And the light blue smoke of even o'er the darksome forests fell— Rose and lingered like a lover loath to bid ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... girl, a true child of Nature, fresh as a wild flower, awaking and rising every day of the year from her peaceful happy couch with the birds of heaven, always smiling and singing. Herminie was the joy, the favourite of the old man,—she was the linnet, the darling, and the life of the house. One autumnal day, (the period at which, as I have before remarked, our province abounds with strangers,) her figure attracted the attention of one of those cursed beings, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... king of | | were passed by others of | all. Well, just as they were on | | stronger wing. But the eagle | the hinges of being off, what | | went up beyond them all, and | does the little rogue of a wren | | was ready to claim the victory, | do but hop up and perch himself | | when the gray linnet, a very | unbeknown on the eagle's tail. So | | small bird, flew from the | they flew and flew ever so high, | | eagle's back, where it had | till the eagle was miles above | | perched unperceived, and, being | all the rest, and could not fly | | fresh and unexhausted, | another stroke, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... couple, not producing young, there is evidence of another kind, that their sexual functions are thus disturbed. For many cases have been recorded of the loss by male birds when confined of their characteristic plumage. Thus the common linnet (Linota cannabina) when caged does not acquire the fine crimson colour on its breast, and one of the buntings (Emberiza passerina) loses the black on its head. A Pyrrhula and an Oriolus have been observed to assume the quiet plumage of the hen-bird; and the Falco albidus ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... Quakeress; for she wore a sober dress, and a little white veil, through which her bright eyes shone. The bridegroom was a military man, in his scarlet uniform,—a plump, bold-looking bird, very happy and proud just then. A goldfinch gave away the bride, and a linnet was bridesmaid. The ceremony was very fine; and, as soon as it was over, the blackbird, thrush and nightingale burst out in a ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... eagle dancing with a linnet, or a giant with a fairy, when the big Lieutenant led out la petite Adrienne, as everybody called her. The honor of Beverley's attention sat unappreciated on Adrienne's mind, for all her thoughts went with her eyes toward Rene and Alice. Nor was Beverley so ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... given to self-analysis than her pet linnet, did not appreciate Brandon's potent reasons, and was in a flaming passion when she received his answer. Rage and humiliation completely smothered, for the time, her affection, and she said to herself, over and over again: "I hate the low-born wretch. Oh! ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... nest, but is does not improve the moss by plucking it. We pluck feathers from birds, and less directly wool from wild sheep, for the manufacture of clothing and cradle-nests, without improving the wool for the sheep, or the feathers for the bird that wore them. When a hawk pounces upon a linnet and proceeds to pull out its feathers, preparatory to making a meal, the hawk may be said to be cultivating the linnet, and he certainly does effect an improvement as far as hawk-food is concerned; ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... a Linnet shot two days ago. I next place in the cage a Bluebottle, one only, to avoid confusion. Her fat belly proclaims the advent of laying-time. An hour later, when the excitement of being put in prison is allayed, my captive is in labour. With eager, jerky steps, she explores the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... linnet was beating at the bars of its cage. Before she was aware of it she wanted to escape from the sleepy old scene, and had begun to be consumed with longing for the great world outside. On summer evenings she would go up Peel Hill and lie on the heather, where she had first seen John Storm, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... reins of government, and womanlike she twisted them this way and that, her foolish head slightly turned by adulation and flattery. Louis adored her: he gave her a cameo brooch, a beaded footstool (which his mother had used), and the loveliest cock linnet, which used to fly about all over the place, singing songs ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... known cherry was in that garden in abundance; but even the gardener himself did not know the extent of the produce. Birds of all kinds flocked there in enormous numbers, and banqueted gloriously during the summer. No one disturbed them except the painted sportsman; and the song of the linnet and the thrush was heard all day, and that of the nightingale during ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... said gently the Puritan maiden, "Dreaming all night, and thinking all day, of the hedgerows of England,— They are in blossom now, and the country is all like a garden; Thinking of lanes and fields, and the song of the lark and the linnet, Seeing the village street, and familiar faces of neighbors Going about as of old, and stopping to gossip together. Kind are the people I live with, and dear to me my religion; Still my heart is so sad that I wish myself back in Old England. You will say it ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... Linnet and woodpecker, red-cap and jay, Shriek that a doom shall fall One day, one day, on my pitiless way From the sky that is over us all; But the great blue hawk of the heavens above Fashioned the world for his prey,— King and queen and hawk and dove, We shall meet ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes |
