"Skylark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... took all his time to guard the sumac; but his eyes were wide open to all that went on around him, and he envied the blackbird his glossy, devoted little sweetheart, with all his might. He almost strained his voice trying to rival the love-song of a skylark that hung among the clouds above a meadow across the river, and poured down to his mate a story of adoring love and sympathy. He screamed a "Chip" of such savage jealousy at a pair of killdeer lovers that he sent them scampering down the ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... schooling and was a thoroughly self-made man. The strongly marked and energetic swing of the rhythm, fitting in so well with the vigorous out-of-door experiences suggested, has made "A Boy's Song" a great favorite. Other poems of his that are still read are "The Skylark" and the verse ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... in Mexico, says of his song (in "Mexican Notes"): "Its long, liquid, full-throated note is more sweet and thrilling than any other bird note I have ever heard; it is hardly a song, but a flood of melody, elevating, inspiring as the skylark, but with a touch of the tender melancholy of ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... sombre shade of the melancholy yew, to the lively verdure of the poplar and young oak. "For myself," says John Lander, "I was delighted with the agreeable ramble, and imagined that I could distinguish from the notes of the songsters of the grove, the swelling strains of the English skylark and thrush, with the more gentle warbling of the finch and linnet. It was indeed a brilliant morning, teeming with life and beauty, and recalled to my memory a thousand affecting associations of sanguine boyhood, when I ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Pound The Horse From "The Foray" On Landseer's Picture, "Waiting for Master" The Waterfowl Sea Fowl The Sandpiper The Birds of Killingworth The Magpie The Mocking-Bird Early Songs and Sounds The Sparrow's Note The Glow-Worm St. Francis to the Birds Wordsworth's Skylark Shelley's Skylark Hogg's Skylark The Sweet-Voiced Quire A Caged Lark The Woodlark Keats's Nightingale Lark and Nightingale Flight of the Birds A Child's Wish The Humming-Bird The Humming-Bird's Wedding The Hen and the Honey-Bee Song of the Robin Sir Robin The Dear Old Robins Robins quit ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... nor Buddha could help or save me. One in his exquisite balance of body, a skylark-like song of eternal beauty, stood lightly advancing; the other sat sombrously contemplating, calm as a beautiful evening. I looked for sorrow in the eyes of the pastel—the beautiful pastel that seemed to fill with a real presence the rich autumnal leaves ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... wholesome. Through the open casement, the scent of the pines blows in with the breeze from the neighbouring firwood. Keen airs sigh through the pine-needles. Grasshoppers chirp from deep tangles of bracken. The song of a skylark drops from the sky like soft rain in summer; in the evening, a nightjar croons to us his monotonously passionate love-wail from his perch on the gnarled boughs of the wind-swept larch that crowns the upland. But away below in the valley, as night draws on, a lurid glare reddens ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... You remind me of a bird. You have all the quick and easy graces of the skylark. Why should you not ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... The melancholy lute, Were night-owl's hoot To my low-whispered coo - Were I thy bride! The skylark's trill Were but discordance shrill To the soft thrill Of wooing as I'd woo - ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... calculable, consoled dying; no passing to rest like that of the aged burghers of Nuremberg town. No gentle processions to churchyards among the fields, the bronze crests bossed deep on the memorial tablets, and the skylark singing above them from among the corn. But the life trampled out in the slime of the street, crushed to dust amidst the roaring of the wheel, tossed countlessly away into howling winter wind along five hundred leagues of rock-fanged shore. Or, worst of all, rotted down ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... Nature spake;—and as her echo, I Take up her parable, and prophesy: Here, as from spring to spring the swallows pass, Perennial daisies shall adorn the grass; Here the shrill skylark build her annual nest, And sing in heaven, while you serenely rest; On trembling dewdrops morn's first glance shall shine, Eve's latest beams on this fair bank decline, And oft the rainbow steal through light and gloom, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... Paradise Lost would be the story of the Fall as that story exists in the general imagination of a Bible-reading people. The subject of Shelley's stanzas To a Skylark would be the ideas which arise in the mind of an educated person when, without knowing the poem, he hears the word 'skylark.' If the title of a poem conveys little or nothing to us, the 'subject' appears to be either what we should gather by investigating the title in a dictionary or other book of the kind, or else such a brief suggestion as might be offered by a person who had read the poem, and who said, ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... man does without any excuse. Sport is speechless poetry. It would be easy for a foreigner, by taking a few liberties with the facts, to make a satire about the sort of silent Shelley who decides ultimately to shoot the skylark. It would be easy to answer these poetic suggestions by saying that he himself might be responsible for ruining the choirs where late the sweet birds sang, or that the immortal bird was likely to be mortal when he was out with his gun. But these international satires are never just; and ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... blessedly easy to take care of. She knew people, and people knew her, and she was the handsomest thing there—this last a declaration made by Milly, in a sort of soft mid-summer madness, a straight skylark-flight ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... lyrics in our literature which have no palpable or deducible philosophy; but they are the utterance of deep, serious, imaginative natures, and they reach our minds and hearts. Wordsworth's "Daffodils," his "Cuckoo," his "Skylark," and scores of others, live because they have the freshness and spontaneity ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... awe I hail the sacred morn, That slowly wakes while all the fields are still! A soothing calm on every breeze is borne; A graver murmur gurgles from the rill; And echo answers softer from the hill; And sweeter sings the linnet from the thorn: The skylark warbles in a tone less shrill. Hail, light serene! hail, sacred Sabbath morn! The rooks float silent by in airy drove; The sun a placid yellow lustre throws; The gales that lately sighed along the grove Have ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... Nicholson, a rather pretentious critic of Marx, has called sunshine a commodity because of its utility, Elements of Political Economy, page 24. Upon the same ground, the song of the skylark and the sound of ocean waves might be called commodities. Such use of language serves for nothing but the ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... spring:—"Whatever tends to animate the scene, accords with the season, which is full of youth and vigour, fresh and sprightly, brightened by the verdure of the herbage, and the woods, gay with blossoms, and flowers, and enlivened by the songs of the birds in all their variety, from the rude joy of the skylark, to the delicacy of ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... arise, And make happy the skies; The merry bells ring To welcome the Spring; The skylark and thrush, The birds of the bush, Sing louder around To the bells' cheerful sound; While our sports shall be seen On the ...
— Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • William Blake
... soon absorbed even the echo of the young human voices passing away. A light breeze stirred the tender green grass, shaking down a shower of pink almond bloom as it swept fan-like through the luminous air,—a skylark half lost in the brilliant blue, began to descend earthwards, flinging out a sparkling fountain of music with every quiver of his jewel- like wings, and away in the sheltered shade of a small hazel copse, the faint fluty notes of a nightingale trembled with a mysterious ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... poem with Shelley's 'Skylark', and with Wordsworth's poem, on the same subject, written in the year 1825, and the last five stanzas of his 'Morning Exercise' written in 1827; also with William Watson's 'First Skylark of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... remember. It was in the month of May, and not likely to be otherwise than fine. The sun was shining brightly, and the birds filled the air with joyous music. The thrush and blackbird mingled their strong vigorous voices, with the mellowed trilling of the skylark, and over the fields could be heard almost continuously the call of the cuckoo—now here, now there, as the active creature plied her restless wing from one hedge-tree to another. There was a strong sweet perfume in the air like the scent ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... oft in fancy Soared up, the earth above, And sailed the great air-ocean With skylark or ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... statistician, and is even an observer only for the sake of a higher design. He is one who appreciates, and expresses his appreciation so fittingly that it becomes a kind of truth, and a permanently communicable object. That "unbodied joy," the skylark's song and flight, is through the genius of Shelley so faithfully embodied, that it may enter as a definite joy into the lives of countless human beings. The sensuous or suggestive values of nature are caught by the poet's quick feeling for beauty, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... for this race because the biplane was too heavy and clumsy for such fast work, were wheeled to the starting line. Already three of Kelly's machines were there, among them being that of Senora Le Roy, or, as she was billed, the Cuban Skylark, the Only Woman Flyer in the World. It appeared now that she had small claim to the title. The crowd set up a cheer for her as she took her seat in a neat-looking monoplane ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... as the faded flowers drop from the home letter. The flowers are poor enough, and dead enough, but they once grew in a home garden, or blossomed in an English meadow. One of our great novelists tells us how two men in Australia walked many weary miles only to listen to the song of the skylark. That homely bird was precious in their eyes because it reminded them of home. I have read that when Swiss soldiers are abroad, they are not allowed to play, or listen to, their national airs. The music reminds them of their cow-bells ringing among ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... and the long-drawn, half-human sigh of the mountain wind over the chimney seemed to mingle with the wail of the harmonium. And then, to their thrilled astonishment, a tenor voice, high, clear, but tenderly passionate, broke like a skylark over their heads in the lines of the ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody." SHELLEY'S "SKYLARK." ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... sand, The snow on Fusiyama's cone, The midnight heaven so thickly sown With constellations of bright stars, The leaves that rustle, the reeds that make A whisper by each stream and lake, The saffron dawn, the sunset red, Are painted on these lovely jars; Again the skylark sings, again The stork, the heron, and the crane Float through the azure overhead, The counterfeit and counterpart Of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... purer than "The Choir Invisible." There is no poetry in the "beyond." The poetry is here—here in this world, where love is in the heart. The poetry of the beyond is too far away, a little too general. Shelley's "Skylark" was in our sky, the daisy of Burns grew on our ground, and between that lark and that daisy is room for all the real ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to us in trills and spurts, as the wind let it, like the singing of a skylark lost in the sky. Pearse went up to her and whispered something. I caught a glimpse of her face like a startled wild creature's; shrinking, tossing her hair, laughing, all in the same breath. She wouldn't sing again, but crouched in the bows with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... art itself are continually in danger of forgetting the subject's secondary character. I mean the art of literature. Among the works of written speech the boundaries of art are much more ill-defined than they are elsewhere. There is, to be sure, as much difference between Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark" and Todhunter's "Trigonometry" as there is between the Venus de Milo and a battleship; and I conceive that the difference is also of precisely the same kind, being that by which, as we have seen above, ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... did not shed a tear or cast a look of regret at my birthplace; but with a heart as light as a skylark taking his morning flight, I mounted alongside Larry on the top of the coach bound for Dublin. While in that city we saw my uncle, the Counsellor. I do not remember profiting much by the visit. He, however, shook me kindly by the hand, and wishing ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... silver clouds o'er summer stars are flitting, With jocund elves invade "the Moone's sphere, Or hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear;"* Or, list! what time the roseate urns of dawn Scatter fresh dews, and the first skylark weaves Joy into song, the blithe Arcadian Faun Piping to wood-nymphs under Bromian leaves, While slowly gleaming through the purple glade Come Evian's panther car, and the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the god of earth. The skylark springs Far up to catch thy glory on his wings; And thou dost bless him first that highest soars. The bee comes forth to see thee; and the flowers Worship thee all day long, and through the skies Follow thy ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... the skylark down, And it hears the singing of the town; And youth on the highways And lovers in byways Follows and sees: And hearkens the song of the leas And sings the songs ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... filtered through the foliage of the neighbouring wood. It was a solitary nightingale calling his mate; and presently he was answered by flute-like notes which soared above the soft murmur of a viol still strumming in the villa as a skylark cuts the mists. It was not another nightingale as I at first thought, but Imperia's voice from the laurel thicket mocking the melody. As she sang there appeared within the circle of the tiny temple's columns a white-robed figure, outlined against the pale green and lemon ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... no more playing, no more trumpeting 'Chaos Vanquished' is vanquished. 'The Laughing Man' is done for. 'Taratantara' is dead. Dea sleeps on. She does well. If I were she I would never awake. Oh! she will soon fall asleep again. A skylark like her takes very little killing. This comes of meddling with politics. What a lesson! Governments are right. Gwynplaine to the sheriff. Dea to the grave-digger. Parallel cases! Instructive symmetry! I hope the tavern-keeper has barred the door. We are going to die to-night quietly ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and we have to thank, I believe, the high romanticks for it. They must have devilry, it seems, or cayenne pepper. But I say, Scorn not the sentimental, though it be barley-sugar to ambrosia, a canary's flight to a skylark's. Scorn it not; it's the romantic of the unimaginative; and if it won't serve for a magic carpet, it makes ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Suddenly Webb straightened himself from the sowing of the scale-like parsnip-seed in which he was then engaged, and said, "Listen." Remote yet distinct, like a dream of a bird-song, came a simple melody from a distant field. "Welcome," he said. "That's our meadow-lark, Amy; not equal to your skylark, I admit. Indeed, it is not a lark at all, for Dr. Marvin says it belongs to the oriole family. Brief and simple as is its song, I think you will agree with me that spring brings few more lovely sounds. That is the first one that I have heard ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... what it had been, and of all the weary years of battling for this. It had been such a hard fight, and now at last it was won. To me the whole battle with the slum had summed itself up in the struggle with this dark spot. The whir of the lawn-mower was as sweet a song in my ear as that which the skylark sang when I was a boy, in Danish fields, and which gray hairs do not make the ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... around and above. It was the very height of summer. The sun was just rising over gentle sloping uplands. All the dews on the hedgerows sparkled. There was not a cloud in the heavens. Up rose from the green blades of corn a solitary skylark. His voice woke up the other birds. A few minutes more and the joyous concert began. Kenelm reverently doffed his hat, and bowed his head in mute homage ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Shelley have wasted powder upon the skylark; for never such "profuse strains of unpremeditated art" issued from living bird before. Skylark! pooh! who would rise at dawn to hear the skylark if a catbird were ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... feel the sacredness of life even in the water-snakes, the "slimy things" that coil in the rotting sea; and the stages of his penance are marked by suggestions of his return to the privilege of human fellowship. The angels' music is like the song of the skylark, the sails ripple like a leaf-hidden brook—recollections of his happy boyhood in. England; and finally comes the actual land breeze, and he is in his "own countree." Observe the ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... when the violets came, and the primroses, she was out of her wits with joy. She had never even heard of Wordsworth; yet, as she listened to the first cuckoo note, she thought it no bird, but truly "a wandering voice." Of Shelley's glorious lyric ode she knew nothing; and yet she never heard the skylark's song without thinking it a spirit of the air, or one of the angels hymning at Heaven's gate. And many a time she looked up in the clouds at early morning, half expecting to see that gate open, and wondering whereabouts it was ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... red (The sunlight fades upon the sea); To us the absent are the dead, The dead to us must absent be. We, too, the absent ranks must join; And friends will censure and forget: There's metal base in every coin; Men vanish, leaving traces yet Of evil and of good behind, Since false notes taint the skylark's hymn, And dross still lurks in gold refined— The lights ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... have a yacht and take a party," he continued, "and come back when you are all tired of it. I'll ask Sir Robert to let me have the 'Skylark,' because his captain is so reliable. What do you say, Meryl?... Shall you ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... promise to come in the morning and attend to the matter, the government would take his word and let the witness go for the night. The doctor promised, and Jimmie was told that he was free till ten o'clock next morning. He went out like a skylark escaping from a cage! ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... the pines stood by the sea, and how the flames had curled around the heart that men had done their best to break, and how it had remained unburnt in the midst, whilst all the rest drifted in ashes down the wind. He knew nought of the Skylark's ode, and nought of the Cor Cordium; but the scene by the seashore had burned itself as though with flame into his mind, and he spoke of it a thousand times if once, sitting by the edge of the sea ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... a very fine new kite that he and his father had made together. They named it the Skylark, because they thought it would fly higher than any of the other kites. But something was wrong. Instead of sailing up gracefully, as it should, the first time Bobby tried to fly it, the Skylark pitched about so violently that Bobby had ...
— The Goody-Naughty Book • Sarah Cory Rippey
... gone up into her belfry to play the sunset hymn on the noble old carillon. Through the sunset sky the lovely bell-notes floated far and wide, exquisitely chaste and aloof as the high-showering ecstasy of a skylark. ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... profession, I believe, as well as from his innate sense of hospitality, the ex-cook will—as regularly as he was accustomed to do on board ship in his caboose, towards the end of the second dog-watch, when, you may recollect, the hands were allowed to skylark and divert themselves—take up his banjo, which is the identical same one that he brought home with ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... carriage stopped I heard the rapturous warble of the skylark, and finally discovered him, mounting higher still and higher, pressing upwards, and pouring out such rich, delicious music that I wanted to close my eyes and shut out the world, and listen to nothing but that. Not even ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... year as ye can? It may be true that your affairs maun keep you living in the city. But whiles ye can get oot in the free air. Ye can lee doon upon yer back on the turf and look up at the blue sky and the bricht sun, and hear the skylark singing high above ye, or the call o' the auld ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... the Perch and the Sturgeon feign death; according to Couch,[42] the Landrail, the Skylark, the Corncrake adopt the same device. Among mammals, the best-known ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage . . . A skylark wounded on the wing Doth make a ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... They pushed on resolutely, grimly, like blind worms following some directing force from within. This peculiarity of action became more noticeable day by day. We were not on the trail, after all, to hunt, or fish, or skylark. We had set our eyes on a distant place, and toward it our feet moved, even ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... I cannot think any excellent: the Skylark pleases me best, which has, however, more of the epigram ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... of Wordsworth's best nature poems are: "Early Spring," "Three Years She Grew," "The Fountain," "My Heart Leaps Up," "The Tables Turned," "To a Cuckoo," "To a Skylark" (the second poem, beginning, "Ethereal minstrel") and "Yarrow Revisited." The spirit of all his nature poems is reflected in "Tintern Abbey," which gives us two complementary views of nature, corresponding to Wordsworth's ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... not know how old that skylark was, but here was he, Savage Keith Rickman, played out at three and twenty. Was it, he wondered, the result, not of ordinary inebriety, but of the finer excesses of the soul? Was he a precocious genius? Had he ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of my heart, the world is young; Love lies hidden in every rose! Every song that the skylark sung Once, we thought, must come to a close: Now we know the spirit of song, Song that is merged in the chant of the whole, Hand in hand as we wander along, What should we doubt ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... before—reading, working, and occasional conversation; but the subdued talking and moving about did not interfere with one's pleasure in the old man's musical speech any more than the soft murmur and flying about of honey bees would prevent one from enjoying the singing of a skylark. Emboldened by what I saw the others doing, I left my seat and made my way across the floor to Yoletta's side, stealing through the gloom with great caution to avoid making a clatter ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... blackbird telling His love-tale to his mate; And the merry skylark swelling The choir at 'heaven's gate.' The cuckoo away in the thicket Is giving his two old notes; And the pet doves hung by the wicket Are talking with ruffled throats. The honey-bee hums as he lingers Where shadows on clover heads fall; And the wind with leaf-tipped ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... daylight fights. The broad white gun-deck, scrubbed to a gleaming white by hollystone and limejuice, on which the salt-water sailors gathered for their mess or drill, was replaced by a cramped room, with the roof hardly high enough to let the jolly tars skylark beneath without banging their skulls against some projecting beam. Truly it may be said, that, if the great civil war made naval architecture more powerful, it also robbed the war-vessels of all ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... intervals permit fine shades of musical expression unattainable by the Western chromatic scale of 12 semitones. Each one of the seven basic notes of the octave is associated in Hindu mythology with a color, and the natural cry of a bird or beast-DO with green, and the peacock; RE with red, and the skylark; MI with golden, and the goat; FA with yellowish white, and the heron; SOL with black, and the nightingale; LA with yellow, and the horse; SI with a combination of all colors, and ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Bharadwaj.—(A skylark. Name of a great Brahman Rishi or saint.) One of the common eponymous sections of Brahmans. Also a section of Joshi, Lohar, Prabhu, Sunar, and of several clans ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... consciousness of error or offence; no knowledge of any one circumstance but that he was gone. Yet afterwards, long afterwards, she remembered the exact motion of a bright green beetle busily meandering among the wild thyme near her, and she recalled the musical, balanced, wavering drop of a skylark into her nest near the heather-bed where she lay. The sun was sinking low, the hot air had ceased to quiver near the hotter earth, when she bethought her once more of the note which she had impatiently thrown down before half mastering its contents. "Oh, perhaps," she thought, "I have ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... you've gone and joined a club? The Skylarks, indeed! A pretty skylark you'll make of yourself! But I won't stay and be ruined by you. No: I'm determined on that. I'll go and take the dear children, and you may get who you like to keep your house. That is, as long as you have a house to keep—and that ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... were not one but a hundred pictures. To hang it in a different place in the room was to recreate it; it never was the same, whereas the complete portraits of the old masters have this fault—that they never rise above themselves. But a ray of light set Evelyn's portrait singing like a skylark—background, face, hair, dress—cadenza upon cadenza. When the blinds were let down, the music became graver, and the strain almost a religious one. And these changes in the portrait were like Evelyn herself, for she varied a good deal, as Owen had often remarked to Harding; ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Florence, and Pisa, in friendly relations with Byron, Leigh Hunt, Trelawney, &c.; during this time were written his greatest works, "Prometheus Unbound," "The Cenci," his noble lament on Keats, "Adonais," besides other longer works, and most of his finest lyrics, "Ode to the South Wind," "The Skylark," &c.; was drowned while returning in an open sailing-boat from Leghorn to his home on Spezia Bay; "An enthusiast for humanity generally," says Professor Saintsbury, "and towards individuals a man of infinite generosity ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... wears the most of life away: Even the lilies take thought for many things, For frost in April and for drought in May, And from no careless heart the skylark sings. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... was no restraining him, or advising him. He knew no more of discipline than a skylark does. He was either the best scout in the world or no scout at all, as you choose to look at it. He was going upon this business in reckless haste, without forethought or caution. He would stake his life ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... is the anniversary of the death of Robert Southey in 1843. Perhaps his most celebrated poem is the delightful 'Ode to a Skylark,' the beginning of which 'Hail to thee, blithe spirit,' is known to every school child."—New York ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... passed her tender thoughts, and loud and glad As our morn wakens, strong that yesternight slept sad, She sang. The song triumphant upward swelled, Unsorrowed by soft dreams or thoughts of eld— As fresh the full, free, mellow notes did rise As the blithe skylark's strain, anear the skies: ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... Shakespeare, especially where the scene is laid in the primeval forest, his most delicious bits of fancy are inspired by the flitting throng. Wordsworth and Tennyson, and many of the minor English poets, are pervaded with bird notes, and Shelley's masterpiece, The Skylark, will long survive his greater and more ambitious poems. Our own poet, Cranch, has left one immortal stanza, and Bryant, and Longfellow, and Lowell, and Whittier, and Emerson have written enough of poetic melody, the direct inspiration ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... mention—ceased even to think of it. Of course she must be beautiful. It was her right; the natural complement of her other graces but it was to him only what the mother's smile is to the infant, the sunlight to the skylark, the mountain-breeze to the hunter—an inspiring element, on which he fed unconsciously. Only when he doubted for a moment some especially startling or fanciful assertion, did he become really aware of the great loveliness of her who made ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... there were two thrushes, four blackbirds, several chaffinches and green finches, one pair of goldfinches, half-a-dozen linnets and three or four yellow-hammers; a sprinkling of hedge- sparrows, robins and wrens all along the street; and finally, one skylark from a field close by would rise and sing at a considerable height directly above the road. Gazing up at the lark and putting myself in his place, the village beneath with its one long street appeared as a vari-coloured band lying across the pale earth. There were dark and bright spots, ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... is young, what sweets are flung By the violets, hiding, dim, And the lilac that sways her censers high, Whilst the skylark chants a hymn! How sweet is the scent of the daffodil bloom, When blithe spring decks each spray, And the flowering thorn sheds rare perfume Through the beautiful month of May! What a dainty pet is the mignonette, Whose sweets wide scattered are! But sweeter to me than all these yet Is the scent ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... together in the sweet fields of the mind—this is companionship, when thoughts come not by bidding, and argument is taboo; to have the mind as open as that of a child for all impressions, and speak as the skylark sings, this is the ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... and grinding 'is teeth, and at eight o'clock to the minute, Ted Dennis turned up with 'is pistol and helped me take care of the wharf. Happy as a skylark 'e was, and to see him 'iding behind a barrel with his pistol ready, waiting for the ghost, a'most made me forget ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... time the Frost is on the Stock Market and Wall Street is in the Shock, Milt and Henry would do a Skylark Ascension from the Home Nest and Wing away ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... but, not expecting the turn that was taken, I was as excited as if I had never heard remarks of a similar character before, and the first thing I knew I had promised Whythe (he begged me to call him Whythe) to go horseback-riding with him the next day. We went—I on Skylark, who is the joy of my life, and he on a borrowed horse, and we had a perfectly wonderful time. I don't think Whythe will ever be much of a lawyer, but as a love-maker he hasn't an equal on earth—that is, any I ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... silence fell, like sudden sleep, On all the Fians waiting there In sharp suspense and half despair ... The morn was still. A skylark hung In mid-air flutt'ring, and sung A lullaby that grew more sweet Amid the stillness, in the heat And splendour of the sun: the lisp Of faint wind in the herbage crisp Went past them; and around the bare And foam-striped sand-banks gleaming fair, The faintly-panting ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... love to rise in a summer morn, When the birds sing on every tree; The distant huntsman winds his horn, And the skylark sings with me: O what sweet ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... and so make an immense personal epic of a poet's life and work. It is perhaps just as well that the work remained unfinished. The best of his work appeared in the Lyrical Ballads (1798) and in the sonnets, odes, and lyrics of the next ten years; though "The Duddon Sonnets" (1820), "To a Skylark" (1825), and "Yarrow Revisited" (1831) show that he retained till past sixty much of his youthful enthusiasm. In his later years, however, he perhaps wrote too much; his poetry, like his prose, becomes ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... not a very long story," observed Paddy, "for do you see most of the events took place in a somewhat rapid way, my last skylark especially. However, you shall hear. We had just got on board the Onyx, and the commander had ordered the boats to be hoisted up, when, as the men were engaged in the operation, the squall struck her, and over she went in a moment—not a rope parted, nor ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... a low stool to the side of the bed, and, laying her head down on the pillow beside him, she sang, in a voice low and soft but clear as a skylark's, the sweetest of all the sweet Psalmist's holy songs. It must have been a weary day for her too. She got through the first two verses well; but as she began, "Yea, though I walk through death's ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... birthright was privation and ignorance—not peculiar to his family, but the universal environment of his place and time; he burst through those enchaining conditions by the force of native genius and will: vice had no temptation for him; his course was as naturally upward as the skylark's; he won, against all conceivable obstacles, a high place in an exacting profession and an honorable position in public and private life; he became the foremost representative of a party founded on an ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... and it was no doubt this which afterwards when she grew up attracted my kinsman, Percy Aylwin, towards her. It seemed to emanate not from her throat merely, but from her entire frame. If one could imagine a strain of merriment and fun blending with the ecstatic notes of a skylark soaring and singing, one might form some idea of the laugh of Rhona Boswell. Ah, what days they were! Rhona would come from Gypsy Dell, a romantic place in Rington Manor some miles off, especially to show ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... springs at a skylark, so sprang Ivan at Gavryl, saying: "I will tear you into pieces! You shall not get ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... long poem is the Adonas, an elegy on the death of John Keats. It is written in the Spenserian stanza. But this true poet will be best remembered by his short lyrical poems, such as The Cloud, Ode to a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind, Stanzas written in Dejection, and others. —Shelley has been called "the poet's poet," because his style is so thoroughly transfused by pure imagination. He has also been called "the ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... great orators, though it lacks their nervous energy. His pathos is exquisitely tender, and his numerous similes have Spenser's pictorial amplitude. Some of them have become commonplaces for admiration, notably his description of the flight of the skylark, and the sentence in which he compares the gradual awakening of the human faculties to the sunrise, which "first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... pleasant surprises in Honolulu—one that gave the touch of nature which made me feel less a stranger there—was learning that the European skylark had been introduced and was thriving on the grassy slopes back of the city. The mina, a species of starling from India as large as our robin and rather showily dressed, with a loud, strident voice, I had seen and heard everywhere ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... omitted from later editions of his poems by Lowell, perhaps because to his maturer taste the theme was too much moralized in his early manner. "Shelley and Wordsworth," says Mr. Brownell, "have not more worthily immortalized the skylark than Lowell has the bobolink, its ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... standing-room of the Sea Foam was Samuel Rodman, a schoolmate of Donald, whose father was a wealthy man, and had ordered another boat like the Skylark, which had been the model for the new yacht. He had come down to see the craft, and had been invited to take a sail in her; but an engagement had prevented him from going as far as Turtle Head, and the boat-builder and his son had returned to land him, intending ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... the prairies and breed abundantly on the plains of the interior of northern United States and Manitoba. They have a flight song which is said to be fully equal to that of the famous European Skylark. They nest on the ground under tufts of grass or up-turned sods, lining the hollow with fine grasses; their three or four eggs are grayish white, finely specked with grayish black or purplish. Size .85 x .60. Data.—Crescent Lake, Canada. Nest of fine dried grasses, built in the ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... playful!—all his joy was in the birds and flowers! The robins knew him and would perch on his shoulder,—he would call to the cuckoo,—he would race the swallow,—he would lie in the grass and sing with the skylark and talk to the daisies. He was happy with the simplest things—and when we put him to bed in his little hammock under the trees, he would smile up at the stars and say: 'Mother's up there! Good-night, mother!' Oh, the lonely trees, and the empty hammock! Oh, my lad!—my little pretty lad! ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... skylark, love to soar upwards when singing, and at such times when they have risen till their dark bulky bodies appear like floating specks on the blue sky, or until they disappear from sight altogether, the notes become wonderfully etherealized by distance to a soft silvery sound, and it is ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... Dean Howells To an Oriole Edgar Fawcett Song: the Owl Alfred Tennyson "Sweet Suffolk Owl" Thomas Vautor The Pewee John Townsend Trowbridge Robin Redbreast George Washington Doane Robin Redbreast William Allingham The Sandpiper Celia Thaxter The Sea-Mew Elizabeth Barrett Browning To a Skylark William Wordsworth To a Skylark William Wordsworth The Skylark James Hogg The Skylark Frederick Tennyson To a Skylark Percy Bysshe Shelley The Stormy Petrel Bryan Waller Procter The First Swallow Charlotte Smith To a Swallow ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... soberly. "I think so. You mean that when I was a plain scout I could skylark and cut up a bit, but that now I must be out in front setting the pace. I can't ask any of the fellows to be ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... lapsing from his round breast like water over the smooth lip of a pool, then breaking farther on into a sparkling foam of melodious notes, which, glow with subdued enthusiasm, yet without expressing much of the strong, gushing ecstasy of the bobolink or skylark. ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... reversal of the formalities of well-bred life and conventional narrating thereof. According to them, no doubt, it is for the man to talk and the maid to listen; but I state the facts as they were, honestly. And Lily knew no more of the formalities of drawing-room life than a skylark fresh from its nest knows of the song-teacher and the cage. She was still so much of a child. Mrs. Braefield was right—her mind was ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... her). Come, come, my little skylark must not droop her wings. What is this! Is my little squirrel out of temper? (Taking out his purse.) Nora, what do you think I ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... found them pleasant young fellows, though their airs of manliness and gravity had amused him a good deal, but he wished that he had in addition his old friend Joyce, with whom he could occasionally skylark, quarrel, and make it up again, after the manner of boys. The wardroom was large and airy, and there was ample space for the party. At meals they consisted of the three lieutenants, the surgeon, purser, and seven midshipmen. ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... care will be to see things, and their delight will be in the mere vision. They will echo the words of Keats, 'If a sparrow comes before my windows, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel'[117]: they will not treat it as Shelley treats the skylark, or even as Keats and Wordsworth treat the nightingale. Herein is one of the secrets of Greek poetry, for the Greek poets, more than any others, bring us in a manner entirely simple and natural into immediate contact with what they describe, and thus escape ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... labor of a slave, or that there is anything oppressive or forced about its performance; for this could only be anticipated with dread. Heavenly employment must be full of life and joy, bearing us upward like the wings of a skylark, as he bathes in the sunlight of the upper ether, and carols forth his joy. There will undoubtedly be a variety, too, in heavenly employment, corresponding with our varying states, and making tedium impossible. This may be illustrated by imagining what ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... the group, and Captain Joshua Wilson, and Mr. and Mrs. Alec Waterman, and General and Mrs. Wilks, and the wife of Congressman Reynolds—representatives of Montgomery's oldest and best. Phil shook hands with Wayland Brown Bayless and told him she was glad he had quoted Shelley's "Skylark," her favorite poem, whereupon he departed hurriedly to catch a train. It was then that Mrs. King took advantage of the proximity of so many leading citizens and citizenesses, who had just heard pessimism routed and optimism glorified, to address Phil in that resonant tone of authority ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... doctor has been telling us you have a voice like a skylark,' observed Elspeth, 'but I have been thinking it must be more like an angel's voice, my bairn, since you mostly use it to sing the Lord's praises, and to cheer the sick folk round you: that is more than a ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... were characters from more recent books, such as Little Women, Alice in Wonderland, Master Skylark and even Arabella and Araminta, who were dressed ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... poem—"The Raven:" a piece in which the music is highly artificial, and the "exaltation" (what there is of it) by no means particularly "vague." So a portion of the public know little of Shelley but the "Skylark," and those two incongruous birds, the lark and the raven, bear each of them a poet's name, vivu' per ora virum. Your theory of poetry, if accepted, would make you (after the author of "Kubla Khan") the foremost of the poets of the world; at no long distance would come Mr. William Morris ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... skylark springing Up to the broad blue sky, Too fearless in thy winging, Too gladsome in thy singing, Thou also soon shalt lie Where no sweet notes ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... small rock," cried young "Skylark" as soon as he reached the top-gallant-yard and had taken the glass from his shoulders, across which he had slung it ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... referred to are three: first, that the common cuckoo, with rare exceptions, lays only one egg in a nest, so that the large and voracious young bird receives ample food. Secondly, that the eggs are remarkably small, not exceeding those of the skylark—a bird about one-fourth as large as the cuckoo. That the small size of the egg is a real case of adaptation we may infer from the fact of the mon-parasitic American cuckoo laying full-sized eggs. Thirdly, that the young cuckoo, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... 'mongst 'em kinder careless, zif I wasn't t'inkin' ob nuffin' pertik'lar, when I see standin' right in front ob me a little one-eyed gal dat 'minded me mightily ob Vina's George. 'Whose little gal be yer?' says I.—'She's one ob Judge Skylark's niggers,' says a woman standin' by. 'Don't see none ob de udders here: shouldn't wonder if she'd runn'd away to see de racin'.' Wall, I waited till nobody wan't lookin', an' den I axed her what her name was.—'Dey ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the world. Next in order to the finches, the Larks are grouped in a single case (71) with other varieties of the great finch family. These birds sing as they soar into the air; and on cloudless days, how often do the happy notes of the skylark come down to the wanderer upon ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... next pointed out Minerva's owl and the vulture that preyed upon the liver of Prometheus. There was likewise the sacred ibis of Egypt, and one of the Stymphalides which Hercules shot in his sixth labor. Shelley's skylark, Bryant's water-fowl, and a pigeon from the belfry of the Old South Church, preserved by N. P. Willis, were placed on the same perch. I could not but shudder on beholding Coleridge's albatross, transfixed with the Ancient Mariner's crossbow shaft. Beside this bird of awful poesy ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fro, for a few minutes, and then alight, keeping up a constant chirping or call. They seem to prefer the wet portions of the prairie. In the breeding seasons the Longspur's song has much of charm, and is uttered like the Skylark's while soaring. The Longspur is a ground feeder, and the mark of his long hind claw, or spur, can often be seen in the new snow. In 1888 the writer saw a considerable flock of Painted Longspurs feeding along the Niagara river near Fort ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... I cannot answer for it, for in the midst of the explanation the curtain rose again. "You can't be a great artist without a great passion!" Madame Blumenthal was affirming. Before I had time to assent Madame Patti's voice rose wheeling like a skylark, and rained down its silver notes. "Ah, give me that art," I whispered, "and I will leave you your passion!" And I departed for my own place in the orchestra. I wondered afterwards whether the speech had seemed rude, and inferred that it had not on receiving ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... name of stalking. For instance, if you want to find a bird's-nest you have to stalk. That is to say, you watch a bird flying into a bush and guess where its nest is, and follow it up and find the nest. With some birds it is a most difficult thing to find their nests; take, for instance, the skylark or the snipe. But those who know the birds, especially the snipe, will recognize their call. The snipe when she is alarmed gives quite a different call from when she is happy and flying about. She has a particular call when she ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... and amber and gold it grows When the sun sinks late in the West; And the breeze sweeps over the rippling rows Where the quail and the skylark nest. Mountain or river or shining star, There's never a sight can beat— Away to the sky-line stretching far— A ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... hundreds of times, my children, and so have I. When I was a child I thought there was nothing so sweet; and I think so still. It was just the song of a skylark, mounting higher and higher from the ground, till it came so close that Prince Dolor could distinguish his quivering wings and tiny body, almost too tiny to contain ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... no wondering what to say. By the time the lamb fell asleep questions poured forth and Dickon answered them all. He told them how he had found the lamb just as the sun was rising three mornings ago. He had been standing on the moor listening to a skylark and watching him swing higher and higher into the sky until he was only a speck in ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Attend to Chaulieu's wanton lyre; While, fluent as the skylark sings When first the morn allures its wings, The epicure his theme pursues: And tell me if, among the choir Whose music charms the banks of Seine, So full, so free, so rich a strain E'er dictated ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... Eight Bells, in the second dog-watch, the boys, I found, were allowed to skylark about the upper deck and aloft, playing 'follow my leader' up and down the rigging, without any interference or interruption from the officers and instructors, save when it seemed to them the ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... and scan the horizon, and so did many others: but those who were stationed at the look-out were equally on the alert. The ship's company were now in a very fair state of discipline, owing to the incessant practice, and every evening the hands were turned up to skylark—that is, to play and amuse themselves. There was one amusement which was the occasion of a great deal of mirth, and it was a favourite one of the captain's, as it made the men smart. It is called, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... shining little kitchen, with the scoured deal table, chairs and cupboard, and the firelight from the grate winked so on pewter mugs, copper kettle, willow-patterned plates and diamond panes, that Bobby blinked too. Flowers bloomed in pots on the casement sills, and a little brown skylark sang, fluttering as if it would soar, in a gilded cage. After the morning meal Mr. Brown lighted his pipe and put on his bonnet to go out again, when he bethought him that Bobby might be needing something ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... of a tree, or on some long flaunting weed; and as he rises and sinks with the breeze, pours forth a succession of rich tinkling notes; crowding one upon another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the same rapturous character. Sometimes he pitches from the summit of a tree, begins his song as soon as he gets upon the wing, and flutters tremulously down to the earth, as if overcome ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... there's green valleys, An' greeat craggy, towerin' hills, An' breezes at mingle their sweetness Wi' t' music o' sparklin' rills; An' meadows all decked wi' wild-flaars, An' hedges wi' blossom all white, An' a blue sky wheer t' skylark is singin', Just to mak known his ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... explanations of the most shadowy yearnings of our being—which are the most difficult of all things to put into words, and the most delightful when put. I do not know whether you are aware how fond I am of your song on the Skylark; but you ought, if Ollier sent you a copy of the enlarged Calendar of Nature, which he published separately under the title of the Months. I tell you this, because I have not done half or a twentieth part of what I ought to have done to make your writings properly appreciated. But ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... shall be no repetition of his former self, but in a still higher field than mere protest. Accordingly, he attempted in his second part of "Dead Souls" to paint an ideal Russia, just as in the first part he had painted the real Russia. Here, however, he undertook what was above his genius: the skylark is indeed a noble bird, but is unfit for the flight of the eagle. Who was by nature only a protester could not by sheer force of will be transformed into the idealizing constructor. And of this, Gogol himself soon became aware. To the ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... breakfast and dinner with him, he told Mrs. Shelley not to expect him back till the evening. Across the dewy meadows in the fresh June morning, the loveliest part of the day, went John Shelley, startling a skylark every now and then from the ground, from whence it rose carolling forth its matin song, gently at first, but louder and louder as it sprang higher and higher, until lost to sight, its glorious song still audible, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various |
