"Robin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her sleep, by the joyous notes of a robin, that had perched close beside her window, and was shaking the dew in showers from the leaves, with every motion of his restless little wings. She sprang out upon the floor, fancying for a moment, that it was her ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... everywhere. The robin and the bluebird were piping sweetly in the blossoming orchard. The sparrows were chirping, and hungry crows were calling loudly for food. The farmers of Killingworth were plowing the fields, and the broken clods, too, ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... so that none of the articles inside protruded, and the rug, being longer than the others, hid all the ends, and, when strapped round just tightly enough to hold all together comfortably without unnecessary squeezing, it made such a neat-looking roll as compelled even Robin's admiration. Ella's travelling-cap had been inside the bundle before, but Kate took it out and advised her to carry it in her hand-bag, as being easily accessible if she did not wish ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... are most familiar to me on this hillside. One is the voice of the day, the other of the night. Throughout the day the robin sings his song with unflagging spirit. It is not a very brilliant song, but it is indomitably cheerful. Wet or fine, warm or cold, it goes on through the November day from sunrise to sunset. The little fellow hops about, in his bright red waistcoat, ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... do you know that she may not know That the meadow all over is lettered, "Love," Or hear the mystic syllable low In the grasses' growth and the waters' flow? How do you know that she may not know What the robin ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... Robin Getley held his breath and turned his ear toward the south. The far-off murmur was a mutter now, defined and positive, and, as the two friends listened, grew into a drumming roll, and all at once above it came a shrill, high sound like the buzzing ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... her eyes to find the red roses cheerfully facing her from the back of the rocking-chair. A robin had hopped upon the window-sill just outside the patched and rusty screen and was joyfully caroling to her his views of life. Through the window vines in which the bird was almost meshed the sunlight sifted softly into the stripped, bare, and lonely room. Angy felt strangely encouraged and comforted. ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... o' that, Sir,' urged Mr. Weller, shaking his head. 'If you know'd who was near, sir, I rayther think you'd change your note; as the hawk remarked to himself vith a cheerful laugh, ven he heerd the robin-redbreast ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... be very welcome. Lord Lyttelton's vision has revived the taste; though it seems a little odd that an apparition should despair of being able to get access to his Lordship's bed in the shape of a young woman, without being forced to use the disguise of a robin-red-breast.' In the Gent. Mag. 1815, i. 597, and 1816, ii. 421, accounts are given of this vision. In the latter account it is said that 'he saw a bird fluttering, and afterwards a woman appeared in white apparel, and said, "Prepare to die; you will not exist three days."' Mrs. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... flooring Win at present," said his father, "and getting him down and rolling him over, is that problem of the robin that eats half a pint of grasshoppers and then doesn't weigh a bit more than ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... sometimes called, Robin Goodfellow) was a shrewd and knavish sprite, that used to play comical pranks in the neighboring villages; sometimes getting into the dairies and skimming the milk, sometimes plunging his light and airy form into the butter-churn, and while he was dancing his fantastic ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... have never seen them in a state of nature imagine that a tolerably correct idea of their appearance can be gained from Gould's colossal monograph. The pictures there, however, only represent dead humming-birds. A dead robin is, for purposes of bird-portraiture, as good as a live robin; the same may be said of even many brilliant-plumaged species less aerial in their habits than humming-birds. In butterflies the whole ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... pour remonter les batteaux, machines pour—a great many things which you would like to see I am sure over my father's shoulder. And my aunt would like to see the new staircase, and to see a kitcat view of a robin redbreast sitting on her nest in a sawpit, discovered by Lovell, and you would both like to pick Emmeline's fine strawberries round the crowded oval table after dinner, and to see my mother look so much better in ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... to him and Mr. Robbie that their joint proposal to mortgage my inheritance for a flying broomstick took no account of the working-model of the whole Rock and Castle of Edinburgh, which I dragged about by an ankle chain. Anon I was pelting with Rowley in a claret-coloured chaise through a cloud of robin-redbreasts; and with that I awoke to the veritable chatter of birds and the white light ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... leaf, and stirs up life Within the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned, And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved, Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down By the wayside a-weary. Through the trees The golden robin moves. The purple finch, That on wild cherry and red cedar feeds, A winter bird, comes with its plaintive whistle, And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud From cottage roofs the warbling blue-bird sings, And merrily, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... "Look here. Master Robin, I get enough o' that from the men. If you say I'm so fat, I'll pitch you into the first patch o' brambles ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... first day danced with the first night, no dancing was more natural—at least to a dancer of genius. True, the dance could be tyrannous. It was an importunate fashion. When the Bishop of Hereford, compelled by Robin Hood, in merry Barnsdale, danced in his boots ("and glad he could so get away"), he was hardly in worse heart or trim than a seventeenth century author here and there whose original seriousness or work-a-day piety would have been content to go plodding flat-foot or halting, ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... two years the question of colour has greatly preoccupied the French military authorities, who have been seeking an invisible blue; and the range of their experiments is proved by the extraordinary variety of shades of blue, ranging from a sort of greyish robin's-egg to the darkest navy, in which the army is clothed. The result attained is the conviction that no blue is really inconspicuous, and that some of the harsh new slaty tints are no less striking than the deeper shades they have superseded. But to this scale of experimental blues, other ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... company of banditti; but I cannot say that this excitement was caused by aversion alone. The truth was, the Bad Madigans fascinated me. They stood out from all the others, proudly and disdainfully like Robin Hood and his band, and I could not get over the idea that they said: "Fetch me yonder bow!" to each other; or, "Go slaughter me a ten-tined buck!" I felt that they were fortunate in not being held down to hours like the rest of us. Out of bed at six-thirty, at table by seven, tidying bedroom ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... the wild bird's untutored melodies. A voice for him 'neath twilight heavens dim, Who mourneth for his dead, while round him fall The wan and noiseless leaves. A voice for him Who sees the first green sprout, who hears the call Of the first robin on the first spring day. A voice for all whom Fate hath set apart, Who, still misprized, must perish by the way, Longing with love, for that they lack the art Of their own soul's expression. For all these Sing the unspoken hope, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... robin that became Tania's particular friend. He used to hop about near her window and nod and chirp to her as though to reassure her. "Your friends will come for you to-day, I am quite sure of it," he used to say, until one day Tania really spoke aloud to him and ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... since, Robin Redbreast has continued to come and build his nest close to the lodges of men, for Robin Redbreast is ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... Ashton, and Amy Robsart, the lovely Effie Deans, and her homely yet glorious sister Jenny, the bewitching Di Vernon, and Minna and Brenda Troil, of the northern isles, stand radiant amid a host of lesser beauties. Then comes Rob Roy, the Robin Hood of the hills; then Balfour of Burley issues, a stalwart apparition, from his hiding-place, and of infinite humor and strangeness of aspect. Where is there a band like this—the Baron of Bradwardine, Dominie Sampson, Meg Merrilies, Monkbarns, Edie Ochiltree, Old Mortality, Bailie Nicol Jarvie, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... heads the robin in the cherry tree by the door sat high up on a twig and chirped a good-night song to his nestlings. "Cherries are ripe, cherries are ripe, cherries are ripe in June," sang the robin. At least that is what Leneli told the baby he said, and ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... second with a flash of indigo; the whole dancing, sparkling, shimmering in a glory which words cannot convey; and on the other side, and far astern, the subsiding waves calming back to normal in a flare of robin's-egg blue. ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... Robin Hood and his Huntesmen" in Metropolis Coronata, I am not aware that any of Munday's ballads are extant—unless indeed the "ditties" in The Banquet of daintie Conceits may be regarded as such; but there is no doubt that they were numerous, and hence, in the present ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... good luck, too, that my birth fell in April, a month in which so many other things find it good to begin life. Father probably tapped the sugar bush about this time or a little earlier; the bluebird and the robin and song sparrow may have arrived that very day. New calves were bleating in the barn and young lambs under the shed. There were earth- stained snow drifts on the hillside, and along the stone walls and through the forests that covered the mountains the coat of snow showed unbroken. ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... to the pond, caught up the skates and went behind a tree and put them on, and was soon skating across the pond. After a while she went to Robin, who was standing by the ...
— Pages for Laughing Eyes • Unknown
... cornfields blazing with Poppies; woods carpeted with Bluebells, Anemones, Primroses, and Forget-me-nots; commons with the yellow Lady's Bedstraw, Harebells, and the sweet Thyme; marshy places with the yellow stars of the Bog Asphodel, the Sun-dew sparkling with diamonds, Ragged Robin, the beautifully fringed petals of the Buckbean, the lovely little Bog Pimpernel, or the feathery tufts of Cotton Grass; hedgerows with Hawthorn and Traveller's Joy, Wild Rose and Honeysuckle, while underneath are the curious leaves and orange fruit of the ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... favourite with performers; they dance the sand dance to it.' And he expounded the sand dance. Then suddenly, it would be a long, 'Hush!' with uplifted finger and glowing, supplicating eyes, 'he's going to play "Auld Robin Gray" on one string!' And throughout this excruciating movement,—'On one string, that's on one string!' he kept crying. I would have given something myself that it had been on none; but the hearers were much awed. I called for a tune or two, and thus introduced myself to the notice of the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... harmony. Mrs. Montresor joined Lady Albina in some touching Italian duets; Pembroke supported both ladies in a fine trio of Mozart's; Mr. Hopetown requested another favorite son of his country, "Auld Robin Gray," and himself repaid Lady Albina's kind assent by a magnificent voluntary on his part, "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled." Mary accompanied that well known pibroch of "The Bruce" with a true responsive echo ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... become a new France, and he, Poutrincourt, must be its father. He gained from the King a confirmation of his grant, and, to supply the lack of his own weakened resources, associated with himself one Robin, a man of family and wealth. This did not save him from a host of delays and vexations; and it was not until the spring of 1610 that he found himself in a condition to embark on ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... loud grating, shrikish notes; then instantly shook his wings with an extraordinary flapping noise, and followed that with several highly curious and startling cries, the concluding one of which sometimes suggested the cackle of a robin. All this he repeated again and again with the utmost fervor. He could not have been more enthusiastic if he had been making the sweetest music in the world. And I confess that I thought he had reason to be proud ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... and the blackbird (alas! poor colonists) are not the joy of New Zealanders—the farmers hate them. The European settlers had the audacity to introduce also the most beautiful and beloved of all birds, our own perfect "Robin Redbreast," and they add want of manners to their violent and uncalled-for hospitality by speaking ill of this sweetest and brightest of living things. After this, I am rather glad to report that the esteemed ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... she remarked, "that the tears which used to be shed over 'Oft in the sully night,' or 'Auld Robin Gray,' or 'A place in thy memory, dearest,' were honest tears, coming from the true sources of emotion. There was no affectation about them; those songs came home to the sensibilities of young people,—of all who had any sensibilities ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... yon snaw-cover'd thorn, Mournfu' and lane is the chirp o' the Robin, He looks through the storm, but nae shelter can see; Come, Robin, and join the sad concert wi' me. Oh, lang may I look o'er yon foam-crested billow, And Hope dies away like a storm-broken willow; Sweet Robin, the blossom ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... in stranger quarters than in butcher's shops or tailor's attics—it has lived and nourished in the dens of robbers, and in the gross and fetid atmosphere of taverns. There was an Allen-a-Dale in Robin Hood's gang; it was in the Bell Inn, at Gloucester, that George Whitefield, the most gifted of popular orators, was reared; and Bunyan's Muse found him at the disrespectable trade of a tinker, and amidst the clatter of pots, and ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... and demagogues; of kings, warriors, buccaneers, philanthropists, and brigands. It is thus we count among our ships a Hercules and a Joan of Arc; with Apollos, Minervas, Canovas, Hogarths, John Howards, and Robin Hoods, with a dense sprinkling of Mammoths and Mosquitoes, Tigers and Humming Birds, Whales and Butterflies, Nondescripts, Demons, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... there. On the highway were to be encountered waggons loaded with brushwood and logs. The ground had become more solid, and in places was touched with frost. Already had the snow begun to fall and the branches of the trees were covered with rime like rabbit-skin. Already on frosty days the robin redbreast hopped about on the snow-heaps like a foppish Polish nobleman, and picked out grains of corn; and children, with huge sticks, played hockey upon the ice; while their fathers lay quietly on the stove, issuing forth ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... youthful May, yet the melting fire of a full black eye, and the genial glow of a ripe and crimson cheek, made her a lively type of the fruitful and jovial August. Dame Gillian used to make it her boast, that she could please every body with her gossip, when she chose it, from Raymond Berenger down to Robin the horse-boy; and like a good housewife, who, to keep her hand in use, will sometimes even condescend to dress a dish for her husband's sole eating, she now thought proper to practise her powers of pleasing on old Raoul, fairly conquering, in her successful sallies ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... sweeter; There is never a wind in all the sky But makes some bird's wing fleeter; There is never a star but brings to earth Some silvery radiance tender, And never a sunset cloud but helps To cheer the sunset's splendor. No robin but may cheer some heart, Its dawnlight gladness voicing; God gives us all some small sweet way To set the ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... nightingale: "Jug, jug, jug, jug, terue," she cries, and still her woes at midnight rise. Brave prick-song! who is't now we hear? It is the lark so shrill and clear: against heaven's gate he claps his wings, the morn not waking till he sings. Hark, too, with what a pretty note poor Robin Redbreast tunes his throat: Hark how the jolly cuckoos sing "Cuckoo" to welcome in the Spring: "Cuckoo" to welcome in the Spring.' This is very English, and pleasant, I think: and so I hope you will. I could have sent you many a more sentimental thing, but nothing better. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... man in a blue robe sat under a tree, with his feet stuck out in front. By the black clay pipe he was smoking, and by his hair that was red enough to keep a man surprised as not harmonious with his robin's-egg blue robe, the same ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... plumage could be. Some thought that he was on trial for his discordant screeching, which alarmed all the inhabitants of the woods. The charge against the jay was, however, far more serious. He had been caught while making his breakfast of some baby birds which a mother robin had just hatched. The quail and every other small bird present called for vengeance on this ruthless destroyer of their homes. The gardener also added that the bird ate ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... windows, two pedestals, surmounted by busts of Mademoiselle Clairon and Mademoiselle Dangeville, stood, one on each side of the great regulator—made by Robin, clockmaker to the king—which dominated the bust of Moliere—after Houdon—seeming to keep guard over all this gathering of ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... Endless, consisting of roast lamb and a cake; but just as the lawyer sits down to it, Crop, with Margaretta, knocks at the door. Endless is concealed in a sack, and the supper is carried away. Presently Robin, the sweetheart of Margaretta, arrives, and Crop regrets there is nothing but bread and cheese to offer him. Margaretta now volunteers a song, the first verse of which tells Crop there is roast lamb in the house, which is accordingly produced; the second verse tells him there is ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... throat is sore, You can chirp this fall no more; Robin red-breast, summer's past, Did you think 'twould always last? Fly away to sunny climes, Lands of oranges and limes; With the squirrels we shall stay And put our store of nuts away. O the spiny chestnut burrs! O the prickly chestnut burrs! Harsh without, but ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... ingenuity of treatment. The third act opens with a charmingly sentimental aria for Anna ("With what delight I behold"), followed in the third scene by a stirring chorus of mountaineers, leading up to "the lay ever sung by the Clan of Avenel,"—the familiar old ballad, "Robin Adair," which loses a little of its local color under French treatment, but gains an added grace. It is stated on good authority that two of Boieldieu's pupils, Adolph Adam and Labarre, assisted him in the work, and that the lovely ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... people will frequent me then,) one may sit and scribble verses against Crouch-back'd Richard, and dirges on the sweet babes. If I die there, and have my body thrown into a wood, I am too old to be buried by robin ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... England's Sabbath bells!—when last We heard their merry chime, The air was rife with pleasant sounds; For 'twas the glad spring-time! The robin to those tuneful peals Poured forth a thrilling strain; O, 'tis our dearest hope to hear Those ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... who had done it, though she knew twenty swords would have beaten him flat as a fritter if she had given his name. I got her to sit to me some days after. I pleased her with her own picture. I asked her to tell me why she would not say who had ill-treated her. She put her head on one side like a robin, and told me, in a whisper: 'It was one of my comrades—because I would not steal for him. I would not have the army know—it would demoralize them. If a French soldier ever does a cowardly thing, another French soldier must not betray it.' That was Cigarette—at seven years. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... down to Champ-au-Haut the next afternoon. Here and there on the mountain side and along the highroad he noticed the massed pink and white clusters of the sheep laurel. Every singing bird was in full voice; thrush and vireo, robin, meadow lark, song-sparrow and catbird were singing as birds sing but once in the whole year; when the mating season is at its height and the long migratory flight northwards is forgotten in the supreme instinctive joy of the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... I imagined that I was at the Academy of Music, and that the orchestra were tuning their instruments for the overture. A louder strain than usual caused me to start up, and I saw through the open window a robin on a maple bough, with its tuneful throat swelled to the utmost. This was the leader of my orchestra, and the whole country was alive with musicians, each one giving out his own notes without any regard for the others, ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... the ladder to Ike and back, half feeling that he was imposing upon me, but in too much trouble to resent it, and as I stared about a robin came and sat upon the broken branch, and seemed to be examining how much ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... even hear her words. The ocean moans his secret to unheeding ears. The agony of the underworld finds no speech in the mountain-peaks, bare and grand. The old oaks stretch out their arms in vain. Grove whispers to grove, and the robin stops to listen, but the child plays on. He bruises the happy buttercups, he crushes the quivering anemone, and his cruel fingers are stained with the harebell's purple blood. Rippling waterfall and rolling river, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... island in the fens; their corpses rotted on gallows beneath every Norman keep; their few survivors crawled into monasteries, with eyes picked out, or hands and feet cut off, or took to the wild wood as strong outlaws, like their successors and representatives, Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John, Adam Bell, and Clym of the Cleugh, and William of Cloudeslee. But they never really bent their necks to the Norman yoke; they kept alive in their hearts that proud spirit of personal independence, which they brought with them from the moors of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Frank's, remonstrated gently but resolutely and eloquently, and soon convinced the majority, sane and insane, that a creature so meek and useful merited special kindness, not cruelty. One keeper, The Robin, alias Tom Wales, an ex—prize fighter, was a warm convert to this view. Among the maniacs only one held out, and said ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... twos and threes they sang together. It is no great thing, a hat of any quality; but a small thing may ring dramatic on the right metal, and in the vivid idea of Lorne Murchison and his sister Advena a Robin Hood walked in every Independent Forester, especially in the procession. Which shows the risks you run if you, a person of honest livelihood and solicited vote, adopt any portion of a habit not familiar to you, and go marching ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... be in Robin Hood's time, if only for the sake of Maid Marian," said Caroline. "She will be quite ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... The robin red-breast from his fading bower of hawthorns warbled in the early dawn of the cold, bright, autumnal day. The first rays of the sun gilded the gay changing leaves of the vine that clustered about the windows with hues of the richest dye, and the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... bird world build no nests for themselves, but slyly deposit their egg in the nest of some other bird from the size of a Robin down, probably the greater number being in Warblers and Sparrows nests; the eggs are hatched and the young cared for by the unfortunate birds upon which they are thrust. The eggs are white, spotted and speckled all over, more or less strongly with brown and yellowish ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... once succeeded in resuscitating a favourite bullfinch which had nearly drowned itself in a great water jug—and we shall find the man of sixty-nine, on the very last day of his life, trying to revive a half-drowned robin. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... general more superstitious than at Otaheite. At the first visit I made the chief after our arrival, he desired I would not suffer any of my people to shoot herons and wood-peckers; birds as sacred with them as robin-red-breasts, swallows, &c. are with many old women in England. Tupia, who was a priest, and well acquainted with their religion, customs, traditions, &c. paid little or no regard to these birds. I mention this, because some amongst us were of opinion that these birds are ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... which might be placed by the side of the famous Porteous mob of later days, and which throws a somewhat lurid light upon the record of this most triumphant moment of the early Reformation. The Papists and bishops, Knox says, had stirred up the rasckall multitude to "make a Robin Hood." We may remark that he never changes his name for the mob, of which he is always sternly contemptuous. When it destroys convents and altars he flatters it (though he acknowledges sometimes a certain ease in finding the matter thus settled for ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... far from merry for him. For Freddie Firefly feared all birds. At night he used his trusty light to frighten Mr. Nighthawk or Willie Whip-poor-will. But he didn't intend to run any risk in the daytime, with Jolly Robin ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... porridge, with the eating of which the man in the South burnt his mouth. Here is a portrait of the man in the moon, when he came down too soon to inquire the way to Norwich. In one of the other gables of this house I can show you Mother Goose's cap frill. And here is the arrow with which Cock Robin was cruelly murdered by the sparrow. This is the original and genuine arrow; all others are humbugs. This is the bone that Mother Hubbard went to look for, but failed to find. Here are the skates ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... ruining one's self with one's Eyes open; besides it is really doing her an Injury. This last Consideration, forsooth, of injuring her in persisting, made him resolve to break off upon the first favourable Opportunity of making her angry. When he was in this Thought, he saw Robin the Porter who waits at Will's Coffee-House, passing by. Robin, you must know, is the best Man in Town for carrying a Billet; the Fellow has a thin Body, swift Step, demure Looks, sufficient Sense, and knows the Town. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Robin Goodfellow, is the leader of the fairy band. He is the Ariel of the MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM; and yet as unlike as can be to the Ariel in the Tempest. No other poet could have made two such different characters out of the same fanciful materials and situations. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Duke named Frederick, who took the dukedom that should have belonged to his brother, sending him into exile. His brother went into the Forest of Arden, where he lived the life of a bold forester, as Robin Hood did in Sherwood Forest in ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... October came a round-robin from the Carrolls. Would Susan come to them for Thanksgiving and stay until Josephine's wedding on December third? "It will be our last time all together in one sense," wrote Mrs. Carroll, "and we really need you to help us over the dreadful ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... solemn call of the owl, as he sits among the limbs, looking out from between the branches with his great round grey eyes. Listen again and you will hear the voice of the catbird, the brown thrush, the chervink, the little chickadee, the wood robin, the blue-jay, the wood sparrow, and a hundred other nameless birds that live and build their nests and sing among these ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... the robin sings, And swarms of bright and happy things Flit all about with sunlit wings, But I am cheerless, Rosaline! The violets in the hillock toss, The gravestone is o'ergrown with moss; For nature feels not any loss, But ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... opened my eyes at the words. Somebody's arms were about me; warm tears were falling on my head, and the scent of roses was in the air. Where was I? Was this my own little bed, with its snowy curtains and soft, fresh pillows? Was Baby Robin lying beside me, stroking my cheek with his tiny hand? I was not dead, then? Where were the water and the cold sea-weed? A kiss fell on my forehead, and a voice murmured soft love-words in my ear. "Allie! my little girl! ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... man wha first did shape [Woe to] That vile wanchancie thing—a rape! [dangerous] It maks guid fellows girn an' gape, [growl] Wi' chokin' dread; An' Robin's bonnet wave wi' crape ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... was one of my great faults. I can not tell how often my mother had scolded, threatened, and punished me for it. Even at that moment there came vividly before me the remembrance of a time when I had killed a robin, and brought it and showed her what I had done—for I must do myself the justice to say I was always frank in confessing my faults. She took the poor dead bird in her hands, and with tears in her eyes talked to me in a tone of deeper anger and sorrow ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in the household proverb of "An apple, an egg, and a nut." Then, its range of tints, so varied, so subdued, and so beautiful,—whether of pure white, like the Martin's, or pure green, like the Robin's, or dotted and mottled into the loveliest of browns, like the Red Thrush's, or aqua-marine, with stains of moss-agate, like the Chipping-Sparrow's, or blotched with long weird ink-marks on a pale ground, like the Oriole's, as if it bore inscribed some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... man will not then regret having listened to the first impulse of his heart, which urged him to come to you," said Robin, with a touching expression. "You will sometimes remember me in that world to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... carrying deadly missiles. If to-morrow conflict and strife should spring up in each garden—if the rose should strike its thorn into the honeysuckle; if the violet from its lowly sphere should fling mire upon the lily's whiteness; if the wheat should lift up its stalk to beat down the barley; if the robin should become jealous of the lark's sweet voice, and the oriole organize a campaign for exterminating the thrush, we should have a conflict in nature that would answer to the strife and warfare in society. ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... sunshine, or bespread With but the tiny coverlet And pillow for the baby's head; And pray Thou, may The door stand open and the day Send ever in a gentle breeze, With fragrance from the locust-trees, And drowsy moan of doves, and blur Of robin-chirps, and drone of bees, With afterhushes of the stir Of intermingling sounds, and then The good-wife and the smile of her Filling the silences again— The cricket's call, And the wee cot, Dear Lord ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... of the editorial board of The New York Times (whose articles on Castro as the Robin Hood of Cuba built that communist hoodlum a worldwide reputation and helped him conquer Cuba) spoke to the Council twice, once on "A Political Appraisal of Latin American Affairs," and ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... you are almost sure to be quite alone; you may stand, as Christian was accustomed to do, on any one of the bridges which connect the college buildings and college grounds, and see nothing but the little robin hopping about and impressing tiny footprints after yours in the path, then flying on to the branches of the nearest willow, which, heavy with a weight that is not leaves, but snow, dips silently into the ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... been silence both day and night; now during the sunny hours there was music. The whistle of prancing stallions pealed in from the grassy ridges. Innumerable birds had come and, like the northward-journeying ducks, they had tarried to stay. The song of meadow-lark and blackbird and robin, familiar to Madeline from childhood, mingled with the new and strange heart-throbbing song of mocking-bird and the piercing blast of the desert eagle and ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... is streaked with red, The weary night is done, And from his distant ocean bed Rolls up the morning sun. The dew, like tiny silver beads Bespread o'er velvet green, Is scattered on the wakeful meads By angel hands unseen. "Good-morrow, robin in the trees!" The star-eyed daisy cries; "Good-morrow," sings the morning breeze Unto the ruddy skies; "Good-morrow, every living thing!" Kind Nature seems to say, And all her works devoutly sing A hymn to birth of day, So, haste, without delay, Haste, fairy ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... court was pleased with the theft, Which made the whole family swear and rant, Desiring, their Robin in the lurch being left, The thief might be punished ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... we are beginning to get in the inevitable reaction from such realism as Main Street and Moon-Calf, a romantic story of age and youth, of love and hate, of bitter unyielding hardness, and of melting pity and tenderness. It begins with the Robin, age seven, with burnished curls, viewing with awestruck delight five polished swords against the shining dark wall in Colonial House, where she had gone to deliver the Colonel's boots! She forgot the boots. She lifted two of the swords ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... spring days came they awoke with the first light of the morning, and they knew the very minute when the lark would begin to sing, and when the thrush and the blackbird would pour out their liquid notes, and when the robin would make the soft, green, tender leaves tremulous ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... years younger than he, she was; but, for all that, a happier couple never breathed; and they two used to seem as if the regiment, and India, and all the natives were made on purpose to fall down and worship the two little golden idols they'd set up—a little girl and a little boy, you know. Cock Robin and Jenny Wren, we chaps used to call them, though Jenny Wren was about a year and a half the oldest. And I believe it was from living in France a bit, that the colonel's wife had got the notion of dressing ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... dearie!" said the old woman, looking on her with satisfaction. "You'll run like a hare yet, and be as rosy as Robin-run-by-the-hedge." ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... lively, stirring family, and used to go roving all over the farm; but never was there a better behaved, or more thoroughly trained set of children. If a hawk, or even a big robin, went sailing over head, how quickly they scampered, and hid themselves at their mother's note of warning! and how meekly they all trotted roost-ward at the first sound of her brooding-call! I wish all little folks were as ready to go to bed at ...
— The Nursery, March 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... Serena gravely,—"master hard; but it can be done with help." They sat there on the shady doorstep for some minutes without speaking. A robin was chirping loud, as if for rain, high in one of the elms overhead, and the sun was getting low. Presently Serena was mindful of her evening duties and rose to go in, but not before Betty had put both arms round her and ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... impressed itself sharply upon Page's mind—the fine sunlit room, with its gay open spaces and the glimpse of green leaves from the conservatory, the view of the smooth, trim lawn through the many windows, where an early robin, strayed from the park, was chirruping and feeding; her beautiful sister Laura, with her splendid, overshadowing coiffure, her pale, clear skin, her slender figure; Jadwin, the large, solid man of affairs, with his fine cigar, his gardenia, his well-groomed ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... that Robin hight, Renown'd for pinching maids by night, Has bent him up aloof; And full against the beam he flung, Where by the back the youth he hung To ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... the volume would have suited me better; but not being able to satisfy myself in this direction, I cast about for a word thoroughly in the atmosphere and spirit of the book, which I hope I have found in "Wake-Robin," the common name of the white Trillium, which blooms in all our woods, and which marks the arrival ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... and swing, Of a plaintive note, and long; 'Tis a note no human throat could sing, No harp with its dulcet golden string,— Nor lute, nor lyre with liquid ring, Is sweet as the robin's song. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... well enough for another year, if he decided to build! The times were good for building, money had not been so dear for years; and the site he had seen at Robin Hill, when he had gone down there in the spring to inspect the Nicholl mortgage—what could be better! Within twelve miles of Hyde Park Corner, the value of the land certain to go up, would always fetch more than he gave for it; so that a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the cave folk are the following: Perthichoaren, Denbighshire, wherein were found the remains of Platycnemic man—so named from his having sharp shin-bones; Cefn, St. Asaph; Uphill, Somerset; King's Scar and the Victoria Cave, Settle; Robin Hood's Cave and Pinhole Cave, Derbyshire; Black Rock, Caldy Island, Coygan Caves, Pembrokeshire; King Arthur's Cave, Monmouth; Durdham Downs, Bristol; and sundry others, near Oban, in the valleys of the Trent, Dove, and Nore, and of the Irish ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... retrace Laurel's steps, but passed through a narrow wicket to the garden that lay directly behind the house. The enclosure was full of robin-song and pouring sunlight; the lilac trees on either side of the summer-house against the gallery of the stable were blurred with their new lavender flowering; the thorned glossy foliage of the hedge of June roses on Briggs Street glittered with diamonds of water; and the rockery in ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... last a vessel took me off, and I wasn't sorry for it, for raw rats are not very good eating. I went home again, and I hadn't been on shore more than two hours, when who should I see but my first wife, Bet, with a robin-redbreast in tow. 'That's he!' says she. I gave fight, but was nabbed and put into limbo, to be tried for what they call biggery, or ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... linked them together, marked them as the conceptions of one brain. Alphonse pointed to them as the work of a clever fellow, lately dead, who had been launched and supported by the 'Trois Rats' and its frequenters. One series in particular, representing a robin overcome by the seduction of a glass of absinthe and passing through all the stages of delirium tremens, had a grim inventiveness, a fecundity of half humorous, half pathetic fancy, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... melodious as the song-birds, and the winds had voices. He knew where to find the first blossom of spring and the latest of autumn, the ripest fruit and most abundant vines. He could tell just where the nests were and the number of eggs, whether of the robin or the waterfowl. He knew the sunniest bank and shadiest dell, the smoothest path, with its carpet of pine-needles and fringe of fern, or the roughest crag and darkest abyss. He could read the clouds like an open page, and predict fine weather or the coming ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... declared Shirley in her clear little voice that always reminded Winnie of a robin's chirp. "I thought Mother would want to take the cannas to Rainbow Hill with us—we can plant them ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... has been an interesting character for many generations of schoolboys, and among the ballads concerning him (Volume III, page 436) are several good selections for reading aloud. Most children know something about Robin Hood and many of them have read full accounts, yet probably the old ballads are not familiar. The note on page 436 gives information about the ballads and tells what it is necessary to know about Robin Hood himself. Suppose we take as a subject the ballad on page 444, Robin Hood and the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... looked out and saw the fields still covered with snow, and saw the huge snowdrifts like mountains and castles along the fences and the whirling snowflakes in the air, and thought, "Robin ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... they gained possession of Stuurman and one of his brothers (the other having been killed hunting the buffalo), and sent them to Cape Town, from whence, against all justice, they were sent as prisoners to Robin Island, where malefactors are confined. They made their escape, and returned to Caffre-land. Three years afterwards, Stuurman, anxious to see his family, returned to the colony without permission. He was discovered ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and the Son of a Druid, and I had learned the language of the birds. And one morning, as I walked abroad, I heard a blackbird and a robin talking, and when I heard what they said I ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... Englishman I know who, having spent some three weeks in the United States, loathes the people and all the institutions thereof, almost solely (though the noise of the elevated trains in New York has something to do with it) because he found that they applied the name of "robin" to what he calls "a cursed great thrush-beast." Nearly every English visitor to the United States has been irritated at first by discovering this, or some similar fact; but it is not necessary on that account to hate the American people, to express contempt for their art and ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... upon a tree, Up went pussy-cat, and down went he; Down came pussy-cat, and away Robin ran; Said little Robin Redbreast, "Catch me ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... the back wall is the sideboard, parallel to the table. The rest of the furniture is mostly dining-room chairs, ranged against the walls, and including a baby rocking-chair on the lady's side of the room. The lady is a placid person. Her husband, Mr Robin Gilbey, not at all placid, bursts violently into the room with a letter in ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... emeralds? Yes, they were flawless, messire. The smallest was larger than a robin's egg. But I recall another ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... sometimes one way, sometimes the other. Before him he could see down the garden walk, with its trim rows of shrubbery, and beyond farther on, the very lovely hills that closed in the lake of Clearwater, the shore of which was but a little way off. John Robin, his son, who owned the house and farm, owned also part of the lake, and there was a path, leading from the other side of the road in front of the house, down to the shore where the horses were taken to water and where the farmer kept his boats. It was a ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... generalities and come to particulars, as we dip into the stores of earlier centuries the broadsheets reveal almost nothing intended for children—the many Robin Hood ballads, for example, are decidedly meant for grown-up people; and so in the eighteenth century we find its chap-books of "Guy, Earl of Warwick," "Sir Bevis, of Southampton," "Valentine and Orson," are still addressed to ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... were other songs which Aunt Elspeth asked for, "Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast," and "Robin Adair." Then came a long tiresome pause when Georgina didn't know what to do next, and Aunt Elspeth turned her head restlessly on the pillow ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Miss Brown. "There were eighteen mounted policemen in here just now. I was talking to the Inspector—such a nice young man, an intimate friend of the late Sir CHRISTOPHER WREN, who, he informs me privately, did not kill Cock Robin." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... learned in the nomenclature of familiar spirits, gives, in his Guide to Grand Jurymen, 1630, 12mo, the following list of the names of the more celebrated familiars of English witches. "Such as I have read of are these: Mephistophiles, Lucifer, Little Lord, Fimodes, David, Jude, Little Robin, Smacke, Litefoote, Nonsuch, Lunch, Makeshift, Swash, Pluck, Blue, Catch, White, Callico, Hardname, Tibb, Hiff, Ball, Puss, Rutterkin, Dicke, Prettie, Grissil, and Jacke." In the confession of Isabel Gowdie, a famous Scotch witch, (in Pitcairne's Trials, vol. ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Earls of the North, of whom Huntly was the fickle leader, with Bothwell, "come to work what mischief he can," are accused by Knox of a design to seize Edinburgh, before the Parliament in May 1561. Nothing was done, but there was a very violent Robin Hood riot; the magistrates were besieged and bullied, Knox declined to ask for the pardon of the brawlers, and, after excursions and alarms, "the whole multitude was excommunicate" until they appeased the Kirk. They may have borne the ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang |
