"Songster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she played less feverishly, but there was nothing slipshod about her performance. The chubby songster found time to proffer brief explanations in asides. "They want the patriotic stuff. It used to be all that Hawaiian dope, and Wild Irish Rose stuff, and songs about wanting to go back to every place from Dixie to Duluth. But now seems it's all these ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... poor fellow appeared relieved from a state of great embarrassment; for, pursuing the direction of the voice—a task that to him was not much less arduous that it would have been to have gone up in the face of a battery—he soon discovered the hidden songster. ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... comparable with the breathing joy of the leaf that feels and sees the wonderful life around it, whispering divine answers to the wooing breeze. The humble nest where it has first seen light is for many days a happy home to the tender songster, soon left behind, when the first wing-strokes waft the small body upwards to the sky, and forgotten as the first glad trill and quaver of the new-found voice roll out the prelude to the glorious life-long hymn of praise. The heart of man—your heart, my dear friend—gave a great leap from ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... bill and feet, black; eye, brown; color, slate color, somewhat lighter beneath; top of head and tail, black; reddish under the wings; arrives in May, leaves in October; nests in bushes; lives in gardens and woodside thickets; has a sharp cry not unlike the mewing of a cat, but is a gifted songster. ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... very poor songster!" Rusty said to his wife. "All he can sing is 'Cuckoo! cuckoo!' in that silly way of his. He has no trills and runs and ripples at all! And he can't even repeat his song ten times a minute, as I give mine. He has to wait at least half an hour before he cries ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey
... silent for a moment, listening to the song of a bird in its leafy bower. When the feathered songster had warbled forth his lay and flown to a distant tree on which to try ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... an active songster among the hazel boughs. Beautifully hooded birds, wood-peckers, fair white birds, herons, sea-gulls, come to visit me." There is no mournful music in his island; and as for loneliness, there is no such ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... enter, and we had the pleasure of listening, under some splendid oaks, to the oriole's song, and of seeing a little cluster of Eucalyptus trees, two surprises we had not looked for. The oriole, a well known and beautiful American bird, also a songster that may be compared to the nightingale, is indeed no stranger here, and, having once heard and seen him, you cannot mistake him for any other bird. His song is an invariable prognostic of rain, as we discover on ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... for there would be enough for all; but the dainty little epicures puncture an indefinite number of berries, merely taking a sip from each. Then the wasps and bees come along and finish the clusters. The cardinal, cat-bird, and our unrivalled songster the wood-thrush, all help themselves in the same wasteful fashion. One can't shoot wood-thrushes. We should almost as soon think of killing off our Nilssons, Nevadas, and Carys. The only thing to do is to protect the clusters; and ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... Nightingale, who had been singing to very thin houses, chanced to encounter a Glow-worm at eventide and prepared to make upon him a light repast. The unfortunate Lampyris Splendidula besought the Songster, in the sacred name of Art, not to quench his vital spark, and appealed to his magnanimity. "The Nightingale who needlessly sets claw upon a Glow-worm," he said, "is a being whom it were gross flattery to term a Luscinia Philomela." The Bird, however, turned a deaf beak to these appeals ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... willing, in a spirit of true philosophy and piety, to extract good from every thing, may save themselves from wretchedness even in this land of exile. While I am writing this paragraph, a bird in my room, (not the Caubul songster that I have already alluded to, but a fine little English linnet,) who is as much a foreigner here as I am, is pouring out his soul in a flood of song. His notes ring with joy. He pines not for his native meadows—he cares not for his wiry ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... wooing, Vainly it trilled its sweetest note, Coldly received was its ardent sueing, Silent the mirrored songster's throat. ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... faltered the White Linen Nurse. "No, not mad, sir,—but very far from well." Coaxingly with a perfectly futile hand she tried to lure one astonished yellow songster back from a swaying yellow bush. "Why, they'll die, sir!" she protested. "Savage cats ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... towards the Indre, the punt, the meadows, showed me that in my absence she had come to many an understanding with those misty horizons and their vaporous outline. Nature was a mantle which sheltered her thoughts. She now knew what the nightingale was sighing the livelong night, what the songster of the sedges ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... sense in sin that lowers. What soul can be so sick, which by thy songs, Attired in sweetness, sweetly is not driven Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs, And lift a reverend eye and thought to heaven? Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raise To airs of spheres, yes, and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... toward the cliff. She had some idea that it would be pleasant to go up to the church town, but just where the trees and underwood came near to the shingle a little bird singing on a May-thorn beguiled her to listen. Then the songster went on and on, as if it called her, and Denas followed its music; until, by and by, she came to where the shingle was but a narrow strip, and the verdure retreated, and the rocks grew larger and higher; and, anon, she was at the promontory between ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... at first to understand why it should be so much more common than other birds. It is not large or strong, or swift on the wing, and it seems to have none of those advantages which would help it to defend itself against enemies. It is not handsome, and it is not a sweet songster, so that man is not disposed to give it much protection. He is often prompted to destroy it, because of the injury which it does to his gardens ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... songster now, From off the hazel-bough pipes shrill, Woodpeckers flock in multitudes With beauteous ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... his father's farm is cradled, the mountain which he used to climb to salt the sheep, the mountain which is the haunt of the hermit thrush. (His nieces and nephews at the old home always speak of this songster as ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... chained beside his kennel is more invariably present, no caged songster more incontestably anchored. If you need his services, you have but to seek his address between the hours mentioned. You may do so with the same assurance of finding him on duty that you would feel, if you left a jug of water out of doors over night in a blizzard, that ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the sun-fish heaped small stones together to make secure places for their spawn; and all this labor they did with their mouth and body, without hands. Presently a little bird, not far from me, raised a song, and while I was looking to see the little songster, its mate, with as much grass as it could hold in its bill, passed close by me, and flew into the bush, where I perceived them, both together, busily employed in building their nest, and singing as their work went on. I entirely forgot my hunting, to contemplate the objects that were before ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... see many birds; indeed the island does not boast of any large number, though the dodo once inhabited it, and perhaps still exists among some of the thick jungles in the interior, into which no human being has as yet penetrated. The only songster is called a martin. He is somewhat larger than a blackbird, and pied like a magpie. He is a lively, chattering fellow, very good-looking into the bargain, and, from his sociable qualities, a great favourite ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... coach-whip bird would scarcely be classed as "sweet." "The tinkle of the bell-bird in the ranges may have gratified his ear; but the likelihood is that the birds which pleased him were the harmonious thrush and the mellow songster so opprobiously named the thickhead, for no better reason than that collectors experience a difficulty in skinning it.* (* Mr. Chas. L. Barrett, a well known Australian ornithologist, and one of the editors of the Emu, knows the Promontory well, and he tells me that he has no doubt that the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... a great favorite for the cage, being preferred by many to the Canary. Whatever he may lack as a songster he more than makes up by his wonderful beauty. These birds are very easily tamed, the female, even in the wild state, being so gentle that she allows herself to be lifted from the nest. They are also ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... disappoint ye," answered Mr. Brimberly, drawing the cork with a practised hand; "my father were a regular songster, a fair ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... magpie, the rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the crow of our woods, with its long, melancholy caw that seems to make the silence and solitude deeper? Compare all the sweet warblers of the songster family—the nightingales, the thrushes, the mocking-birds, the robins; they differ in the greater or less perfection of their note, but the same kind of voice runs through the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was much for grown folks, but the "Patriotic and Amatory Songster," advertised by S. Avery of Boston about the time Weems's biography was published, seems a title ill-suited to the juvenile public for whom Avery ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... as do a few of our birds, but continuously. They make a business of it. The sedge-bird ceases at times as if from very weariness; but wake the bird up, says White, by throwing a stick or stone into the bushes, and away it goes again in full song. We have but one real nocturnal songster, and that is the mockingbird. One can see how this habit might increase among the birds of a long-settled country like England. With sounds and voices about them, why should they be silent, too? The danger of betraying themselves to their natural ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... out a report for this fellow!" said the policeman, who had arrested the songster... "and the 'Salad Basket'[10] passes in an hour's time! ... I ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... father, Oedipus, the towers That fence the city still are faint and far; But where we stand is surely holy ground; A wilderness of laurel, olive, vine; Within a choir or songster nightingales Are warbling. On this native seat of rock Rest; for an old man ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... His notes were clear, loud, metallic and yet soft; their variety was astonishing, and his powers of imitation wonderful; there was not a bird of the forest that he did not imitate so exactly as to deceive. I would on no account allow this songster to be disturbed, and the consequence was that his rich note was the first thing heard at dawn of day, during the greater part of ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... lark!" Sofya raised her head, and looked into the blue expanse of the sky for the merry songster. Her gray eyes flashed with a fond glance, and her body seemed to rise from the ground to meet the music ringing from an unseen source in the far-distant height. At times bending over, she plucked a field flower, and with light touches of her ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... when they were wandering together in some sequestered garden walk or shady lane; and, now, here he had unexpectedly, and undesignedly, found his opportunity at a pic-nic dinner, with half a hundred people close beside him, and his ears assaulted with a songster's praises of piracy and murder. Strange accompaniments to a declaration of the tender passion! But, like others before him, he had found that there was no such privacy as that of a crowd - the fear of interruption probably adding ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... overhang the path, except in spots where a ruthless timber-felling had taken place in previous years for the purpose of sale. It was that particular half-hour of the day in which the birds of the forest prefer walking to flying; and there being no wind, the hopping of the smallest songster over the dead leaves reached his ear from behind the undergrowth. The track had originally been a well-kept winding drive, but a deep carpet of moss and leaves overlaid it now, though the general outline still remained to show that its curves had been set out ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Companion of our lives to be, I'll seek the moral songster's meed, An earthly immortality; Most vain!—O let me, from the past Remembering what to man is given, Lay Virtue's broad foundations fast, Whose glorious ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... attachment. Nor is this surprising. In the country its various associations are essentially impressive and poetical. Moonlight—evening—the still glen—the river side—the flowery hawthorn—the bower—the crystal well—not forgetting the melody of the woodland songster—are all calculated, to make the heart and fancy surrender themselves to the blandishments of a passion that is surrounded by objects so sweetly linked to their earliest sympathies. But this is not all. In rural life, neither the heart nor the eye is distracted by ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... establishment as could be found anywhere upon the whole round globe. Whoever entered the little shop was greeted with such a thrilling and warbling of sweet notes that all the air seemed quivering with music, and the leader of the bird choir was a certain wonderful songster that Andreas had named the Kronprinz, and for which he repeatedly had refused quite fabulous sums. Andreas himself had bred the Kronprinz, and had given him the education that now made him such a wonder among birds, and ...
— An Idyl Of The East Side - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... place was in a kind of songster's pulpit just below me, was wreathed in the complacent air of a man who has discharged a lofty duty and has done it well. He had borne himself throughout as the real master of the entire service, and as one who had ruled from an untitled throne. He cast ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... descending by thirds, as at Port Jackson: the descent of this was waving, in rather a melancholy soothing strain. The song of Bong-ree, which he gave them at the conclusion of theirs, sounded barbarous and grating to the ear; but Bong-ree was an indifferent songster, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... at distance, and an interval of silence was succeded by an earnest discussion of the cause of this prodigy. One supposition only could be adopted, which was, that the strain was uttered by human organs. That the songster was stationed on the roof of the arbour, and having finished his melody had risen into the viewless fields ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... the song of a little wren, a little wren who sang even as to-day in the days of my youth and joy, whose nest is built over the window that was so often a frame for that dearest-loved face. The song brought with it the recollection of all the little songster had outlived—the love, hope, and fear that had sprung up and grown and died, since I had first heard his warbling. And I broke into those quiet tears that are now my only expression of a grief too familiar ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... it grossly and to his face, for he is quite used to praise: he has long lived among those who look up to him as their patron, or gape at him as their principal wit, or glory in him as their chief songster, possibly as the chairman of their drinking club, and as their ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... The tousled songster seized the photograph in righteous anger. "Sure!" he cried, waving it in the face of the tow-headed boy; "you don't think she takes after her mother, ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... height of the dark," suddenly hushes his carol and drops headlong among the corn, as a broad-winged buzzard swings from some wooded peak into the abyss of the valley, and hangs high-poised above the heavenward songster. The air is full of perfume; sweet clover, new-mown hay, the fragrant breath of kine, the dainty scent of sea-weed wreaths and fresh wet sand. Glorious day, glorious place, "bridal of earth and sky," decked well with bridal ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... of this sweet songster, denotes unexpected pleasures. For the young to dream of possessing a beautiful canary, denotes high class honors and a successful passage through the literary world, or a happy ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... to twitter, to fashion little crystal stanzas, and to hurl themselves about the valley as if catapults propelled them. One songster perched on the iron rail of the bridge and practised a vocal lesson, cocking his head from side to side and seeming to approve his ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... "Songster sweet, begin the lay, Ever sweet and ever gay! Bring the joy-inspiring wine, Ever fresh and ever fine! With a heart-alluring lass Gayly let the moments pass, Kisses stealing while you may, Ever fresh and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... European languages. Dante led the way in Italy, and gave to the world the "Divine Comedy"—a masterpiece of human genius, which raised him to the rank of Homer and Virgil. Petrarch followed in his steps, and, if not as profound or original as Dante, yet is unequalled as an "enthusiastic songster of ideal love." He also gave a great impulse to civilization by his labors in collecting and collating manuscripts. Boccaccio also lent his aid in the revival of literature, and wrote a series of witty, though objectionable stories, from which the English Chaucer borrowed ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... reading the new poems of Tennyson. Much has he thought, much suffered, since the first ecstasy of so fine an organization clothed all the world with rosy light. He has not suffered himself to become a mere intellectual voluptuary, nor the songster of fancy and passion, but has earnestly revolved the problems of life, and his conclusions are calmly noble. In these later verses is a still, deep sweetness; how different from the intoxicating, sensuous melody of his earlier cadence! I have ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... listened, but not a sound reached my ear. Was it strange that I felt a momentary pang? Those that look out at the windows are darkened, and all the daughters of music are brought low. Was I never to see or hear the soaring songster at Heaven's gate,—unless,—unless,—if our mild humanized theology promises truly, I may perhaps hereafter listen to him singing far down beneath me? For in whatever world I may find myself, I hope I shall always love our poor little spheroid, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... songster tunes his throat, And the vile knight beats time to every note: So Nero sung while Rome was all in flames, But time shall brand ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... somewhat at fault, we have proof in occasional outcries over the absence of these or those particular persons famous for inspiriting. It sticks and clogs. The improvising songster is missed, the convivial essayist, the humorous Dean, the travelled cynic, and he, the one of his day, the iridescent Irishman, whose remembered repartees are a feast, sharp and ringing, at divers tables descending from the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... who, when his father thought To clip his morning nap by hackneyed praise Of vagrant worm by early songster caught, Cried, "Served him right! 'tis not at all surprising; The worm was punished, sir, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... as I had seen, was accustomed to go some distance from home, and I supposed that one of them, a drake, had got into that brambly thicket and could not make his way out. For half an hour I heard the calls without paying much attention, absorbed in watching the quaint little songster close to me and his curious gestures when emitting his sustained reeling sounds. In the end the persistent distressed calling of the drake lost in a brambly labyrinth got a little on my nerves, and I felt it as a relief when it finally ceased. Then, after a short ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove. ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... lives!—as if his air had more oxygen than ours, or his body less clay. How slight a wound kills him! how exquisite his sensations! how perfect his nervous system! and hence how large his brain! Why, look at the cerebral development of this tiny songster,—almost a third larger, in proportion to the size of its body, than that of Shakspeare even! Does it mean nothing? You may observe that a warbler has a much larger brain and a much finer cerebral organization throughout than a bird of prey, or any of the Picus family even. Does it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... "when lilacs bloom in the garden yard," has neglected, we fear, the wild turkey, simply because the Muse has not given this bird melody, and made it, like the robin-redbreast, which goes so well with bread-crumbs, "an amiable songster." American genius neglects the turkey, and positively takes more interest in the migrations of the transatlantic sparrow. If the nobler fowl can cross the water as safely as the beef and mutton of everyday life, he will receive the honour he deserves in this country. Some students ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... enforce total abstinence from tobacco as well as from alcoholic drinks as a condition of membership or soldiership, but a member of the Army must be a non-smoker before he can hold any office in its rank, or be a bandsman, or a member of a "songster brigade." And in other religious organizations there are yet a few of the "unco' guid" who look askance at pipe or cigarette as if it were a device of the devil. But the numbers of these misguided folk ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... every Russ credential; And was received with all the due grimace By those who govern in the mood potential, Who, seeing a handsome stripling with smooth face, Thought (what in state affairs is most essential) That they as easily might do the youngster, As hawks may pounce upon a woodland songster. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... sufficient respect, and Monsieur Taxile Delord, though a joker by trade, would not hear of any fun on this subject. His genius had shaped itself exactly on Beranger's, and he resented as a personal affront every insult offered to the songster. Of a truth, Beranger's fate was a hard one, and all my attacks on him were not half so bad as this treatment he received at the hands of Monsieur Taxile Delord. Poor Beranger! So Monsieur Taxile Delord took up the quarrel on his account, and relieved his gall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... little songster was missing from its accustomed haunt, and the Dark Image knew more than ever the bitterness of loneliness. Perhaps his little friend had been killed by a prowling cat or hurt by a stone. Perhaps . . . perhaps he had flown elsewhere. But when morning came there floated ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... in my scrap-book testify that another songster, early in Field's Chicago life, enjoyed his friendship and inspired his pen along a line it was to travel many a tuneful metre. The first, with frequent erasures and interlineations, bears date May 25th, 1894, and was inscribed, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... half the width that should their forms enclose; So we should be more modest when we seek To satirize them and their customs-weak, Remembering that we too are much to blame, And like them merit censure and much shame. How wisely Israel's poet songster said, That cleanliness to godliness is wed, For filthiness of body must conduct, Impurities which mental life obstruct. How well are engineers on the alert, To keep their engines free from dust and dirt, Knowing ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... A strange songster was that who, pretending to be captivated by every woman he saw, was, in reality, in love with nature alone—wild, beautiful, solitary nature—her mountains and cascades, her forests and streams, her birds, fishes, and wild animals. Go to, Ab Gwilym, with thy pseudo-amatory odes, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... 1. Thy spirits sister, the lorn nightingale, Mourns not her mate, &c. The reason for calling the nightingale the sister of the spirit of Keats (Adonais) does not perhaps go beyond this—that, as the nightingale is a supreme songster among birds, so was Keats a supreme songster among men. It is possible however—and one willingly supposes so—that Shelley singled out the nightingale for mention, in recognition of the consummate beauty of Keats's Ode to the Nightingale, published in the same volume with ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... galley-slave the most circumstantial I have ever met," said Ferne. "If there are nets about this tree, I will wring your neck for the false songster that you are." ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... Philadelphia vireo comes nearest to the red-eye's, differing from it mainly in tone and inflection rather than in form. In these two respects it suggests the solitary vireo, though it never reproduces the indescribably sweet cadence, the real "dying fall," of that most delightful songster. At the risk of a seeming contradiction, however, I must mention one curious circumstance. On going again to Franconia, a year afterwards, and, naturally, keeping my ears open for Vireo philadelphicus, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... little sang, and slumber'd less— A financier of great success. If e'er he dozed, at break of day, The cobbler's song drove sleep away; And much he wish'd that Heaven had made Sleep a commodity of trade, In market sold, like food and drink, So much an hour, so much a wink. At last, our songster did he call To meet him in his princely hall. Said he, 'Now, honest Gregory, What may your yearly earnings be?' 'My yearly earnings! faith, good sir, I never go, at once, so far,' The cheerful cobbler said, And queerly scratch'd his head,— 'I never ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... tones have been put in regulation, might have supplied the bass of the lamented viol-de-gamba. Halbert, however, who had no temptation to give way to the charms of slumber, remained awake with his eyes fixed on the songster; not that he was better entertained with the words, or more ravished with the execution, than the rest of the company, but rather because he admired, or perhaps envied, the composure, which could thus spend the evening in interminable madrigals, when the next morning was to be devoted ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... go to the place whence the song came. What could the gay little minstrel be? Somewhere I had heard such minstrelsy—but where? There were runs in it that bore some resemblance to certain strains of the Carolina wren's vigorous lays, but this songster's voice was of a finer quality and had less volume than that of the Carolina. The little bird was found flitting among the pines, and continued to sing his gay little ballad with as much vigor as before. Indeed, my presence seemed ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... a buzzard," he told the songster, "nor a crow. You have a gray breast and brown body and a black cap on your head. Wonder who you are. Guess you're a sparrow. I believe I'll get a book telling about birds. They're interesting little devils. Look at him put his head back! Just as though he meant to crack ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... You are conscious of darkness as—Shall I tell you the truth? You think you sing for the Dawn, but you sing in reality to be admired, you—songster, you! [With contemptuous pity.] Is it possible you are not aware that your poor notes raise a smile right through the forest, accustomed to the fluting of ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... sternness over the brighter features of an Italian landscape, drooped heavily in the breezeless air. As she came on the border of the lake, its waves lay dark and voiceless; only, at intervals, the surf, fretting along the pebbles made a low and dreary sound, or from the trees some lingering songster sent forth a shrill and momentary note, ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... first-rate songsters have been produced among them, whose merits have been acknowledged, not only by the Russian public, but by the most fastidious foreign critics. Perhaps the highest compliment ever paid to a songster was paid by Catalani herself to one of these daughters of Roma. It is well known throughout Russia that the celebrated Italian was so enchanted with the voice of a Moscow Gypsy (who, after the former had displayed her noble talent before a splendid ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... the people of Katema a love for singing-birds. One pretty little songster, named "cabazo", a species of canary, is kept in very neatly made cages, having traps on the top to entice its still free companions. On asking why they kept them in confinement, "Because they sing sweetly," was the answer. They feed them on the lotsa ('Pennisetum typhoideum'), of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... array of marmalades, icy tongues reduced by ether to a temperature of minus sixty, Finnane haddock, and oaten meal of rarest bolting, indicated and offered to gratify the erratic taste of a Caledonian. Again, upon another, a Strasburg pie displayed its delicious brown, the members of the emerald songster of the fen lay whitely delicate, and accompanying absinthe revealed the knowledge of Gallic preferences. Upon the fourth, smoking and olent Rio, puddings of Indian, cakes composed of one third butter, one third flour, one third saleratus, and the crisping ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... lattice work in wood, over-trailed with creeping plants, large enough to allow of Heliodora's entering and walking about among the multitude of birds imprisoned. At this amusement Marcian found her. Upon her head perched a little songster; on her shoulder nestled a dove; two fledglings in the palm of her hand opened their beaks for food. Since her last visit a bird had died, and Heliodora's eyes were still moist from the tears she had ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... betrayed, not less than the living face with its roving, astonished eyes, the haggard soul of a haggard generation, whose eagerly-sought refinements had been after all little more than a theatrical make-believe—an age of wild people, of insane impulse, of homicidal mania. The sweet-souled songster had no more than others attained real calm in it. Even in youth nervous distress had been the chief facial characteristic. Triumphant, nevertheless, in his battle for Greek beauty—for the naturalisation of Greek beauty in the brown cloud-lands of the North- -he might have been thinking, contemptuously, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... innocence that villainy often has—just as I once saw a cat charm a bird, which circled nearer and nearer till it almost brushed the cat's whiskers—and had he not been chased away, he would have that day daintily lunched—and there would have been one songster less to join ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... however, before I was up, the puzzling songster visited the little grove under my windows, and I heard his whole song, of which it now appeared the three notes were merely the conclusion. The performance was eccentric. It began with a soft warble, apparently for his sole entertainment, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... tiptoe toward the dwelling, leaped the garden-wall, and finally, undiscovered, but pallid and remorseful, gained the casement. Softly raising his head, he peeped within. The room was full of music; he seemed to grow blind for a moment, when lo! upon the kitchen-table sat the mysterious songster, an ebony-hued negress, scouring the tinware, and singing away. Just as he was peering through the window, the ebony songster discovered him. The soldier's limbs sank beneath him, and the black specimen of ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... birds were asked to dine; Not Jenny's friends alone, But every pretty songster That had ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... "I looked back," says he, "to the time when always, on waking in the morning, I had a song rising to my lips." At present, it seems, being a drunkard, he has no such song. Ay, dear Lamb, but note this, that the drunkard was fifty-six years old, the songster was twenty-three. Take twenty-three from fifty-six, and we have some reason to believe that thirty-three will remain; which period of thirty-three years is a pretty good reason for not singing in the morning, even if brandy has been out ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Gayest songster of the Spring! Thy melodies before me bring Visions of some dream-built land, Where, by constant zephyrs fanned, I might walk the livelong day, Embosomed in perpetual May. Nor care nor fear thy bosom knows; For thee a tempest never blows; But when our northern ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... song-book that formed one of the ornaments which he placed in the room he was preparing for Florence Dombey. Other common titles are the 'Prentice's Warbler,' which Simon Tappertit used, 'Fairburn's Comic Songster,' and the 'Little Warbler,' which is mentioned two or three times. Of the songs belonging to this second period, some are embedded in ballad operas and plays, popular enough in their day, but long since forgotten. An example ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... rivalry of song were the reawakening of the woods in spring? Were man to disappear, annihilated by his own foolish errors, the festival of the life-bringing season would be no less worthily observed, celebrated by the fluting of the yellow-billed songster. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... In later years, by the aid of imagination, his notes were interpreted, "peace and plenty, peace and plenty." But, whatever we might imagine him to say, his song was always the same. He was a welcome visitor and songster, and his appearance in spring ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... Great Spirit! thou whose flame Kindled the Songster sweet of Israel, Who made so high to swell 15 Beyond a mortal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sung, and this is true of a considerable number of his successors, such as Dunbar, and Maitland of Lethington, who were learned men, and wrote with a learned air, even when writing for the people. The Reformation, as surely as it threw down every carved stone, shut up the mouth of every profane songster. Wedderburne's "Haly Ballats" may have been spared for a time by the iconoclasts, because they had helped to build up their own temple; but they could not survive long,—they were cast in a profane mould, they were sung to profane tunes, and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... been long The boast of mere pretenders to the name. The innocent are gay—the lark is gay, That dries his feathers saturate with dew Beneath the rosy cloud, while yet the beams Of day-spring overshoot his humble nest. The peasant too, a witness of his song, Himself a songster, is as gay as he. But save me from the gaiety of those Whose headaches nail them to a noonday bed; And save me, too, from theirs whose haggard eyes Flash desperation, and betray their pangs For property stripped off by cruel chance; From gaiety ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... lyrical estro to which he gives birth. This it is which has imparted any verve, variety, or dramatic character they possess, to the ballads contained in this production. Turpin I look upon as the real songster of "Black Bess;" to Jerry Juniper I am unquestionably indebted for a flash melody which, without his hint, would never have been written, while to the sexton I owe the solitary gleam of light I have been enabled to throw upon the horrors and ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... went the current was not swift and we were able to pull gently along under the great cliffs in shadows made luminous by the brilliancy of the moon. A song the Major was fond of singing, Softly and Sweetly it Comes from Afar, almost involuntarily, sprang from us all, though our great songster, Jack, was not with us. Jack had an extensive repertory, an excellent voice, and a hearty, exuberant spirit. He would sing Write Me a Letter from Home, The Colleen Bawn, The Lone Starry Hours, Beautiful Isle of the Sea, and many others in a way that brought ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... listened while the little songster poured out his joy in liquid cadences that rose and fell and sparkled out upon the morning air like dancing sunbeams turned to music—so light, so rippling, so joyously alive, that the girls' hearts ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... as they darted to and fro, and called out the hours and the state of the night whenever the ship's bell sent its musical note echoing from bank to bank of the creek, and rousing the denizens of the forest around. A bird sang in the grove, tuning its lay to reproduce the notes of every songster that had warbled during the daytime. The scents from the masses of flowers, that clustered the banks and wound their tendrils round the giant trees, floated fragrantly on the night air. There was peace in the heavens above and the downward glances of the quiet-eyed stars; there was peace ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... constantly but the notes of the tanager were more wild and possessed greater resonance of tone. The call of a quail came clear and sweet from a distant wheat field and, like a glorious soloist, Ohio's finest songster, the woodthrush, was casting her ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... to be the most enchanting of warblers; and many might be tempted to encage the mellifluous songster, but for the supposed difficulty of procuring proper food for it. In the village of Cossey, near Norwich, an individual has had a nightingale in cage since last April; it is very healthy and lively, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... perhaps our best songster, according to my taste; full as fine as our English blackbird, and much handsomer in its plumage, which is a glossy, changeable, greenish black. The upper part of the wing of the male bird of full growth is of a lively orange; this is not apparent in the younger birds, nor in ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... when Carrio had departed, addressing the singing-boy, 'array yourself for a journey, and wait with my equipage at the garden-gate. I shall require you to accompany me in my expedition to Aricia. But first, oh! gifted and valued songster, let me reward you for the harmonious symphony that has just awakened me. Of what rank of my musicians ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... nature, the fervid heart, the trembling sensibility, the headlong passion, all thrilling through an intellect strong and keen beyond (p. 204) that of other men. How mysterious to reflect that the same qualities on their emotional side made him the great songster of the world, and on their practical side drove him to ruin! The first word which Burns composed was a song in praise of his partner on the harvest-rig; the last utterance he breathed in verse was also a song—a faint remembrance of some former affection. Between these two he composed ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... remain from the village, but we could not help stopping to listen to the delicious notes of a cinnamon-brown bird, with head and neck of dark olive, which was perched on a bough overhanging our path. Never from a feathered songster had I heard ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... color, the nuthatch is a beautiful bird on account of the pleasing softness and harmonious disposition of his tints; and, in like manner, without being a songster in the strict sense of the word, his voice is so clear and far-reaching and of so pleasing a quality, that it often gives more life and spirit to the woods and orchards and avenues he frequents than ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... and the cock was polite enough to-day to keep from being rude. "You are a real songster," he said, "you do as much with your little voice as it is possible to do; but there requires more noise and shrillness in any one who wishes it to be known ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... is the time when everything is glad, Their vernal greenery the fields renew, Each feathered songster chants with livelier tone, And lambkins leap and cloudless skies are blue, And all is gay and cheerful:—I alone Am singularly sad; Mine erstwhile happiness and calm content Yields to a sense of sorrowful surprise: Things that I thought were thus, ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... remarks I mean to express the feeling that the word lintie conveys to my mind more of tenderness and endearment towards the little songster than linnet. And this leads me to a remark (which I do not remember to have met with) that Scottish dialects are peculiarly rich in such terms of endearment, more so than the pure Anglican. Without at all pretending ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... ought to have occupied him, namely, attention to the long deferred nuptials of Miss Charity Pecksniff. "November blasts! Why it's the warmest, most genial, most intensely bland, delicious, growing, springy, songster-of-the-grovy, bursting-forth-of-the-buddy, day as ever was. At half-past four I shall expect ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster |
