"Twitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... few seconds flitted by that to them seemed unusually long . . . and then suddenly a sound like a distant peal of thunder which appeared to come from the clouds. Desnoyers no longer felt the nervous twitter against his knee. The senator seemed surprised; his expression seemed to say, "And is that all?" . . . The heaps of earth above them had deadened the report, so that the discharge of the great machine seemed no more than the blow of a club upon a mattress. Far more impressive was the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... again with barberries in honey, or orange sherbet. Malanya Pavlovna feared solitude—dreadful thoughts come then—and was almost constantly surrounded by female hangers-on whom she urgently entreated: "Talk, talk! Why do you sit there and do nothing but warm your seats?"—and they began to twitter like canary-birds. Being no less devout than Alexyei Sergyeitch, she was very fond of praying; but as, according to her own words, she had not learned to recite prayers well, she kept for that purpose the widow of ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... TORVALD, if only you won't dismiss KROGSTAD, you can't think how your little lark would jump about and twitter! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... the afterglow fading, fading; he had heard the last sleepy twitter of the birds; he had seen one star, two and three, come out; before his steadfast, brooding stare the trees had slowly lost their green for the somber shade of night. And now it was indeed night; that hushed and awe-inspiring ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... birds and the mystery of the flower blossoms, the invisible riddles of Heaven and earth, of all the concealed secrets beyond the blue of the sky; all the panorama of Nature strung out in a wild, sweet forest song. Jinnie had backed against the wall as she played, and when out of her soul came the twitter of the morning birds, the babbling of the brook on its way to the sea, the scream of the owl in a high woodland tree, Lafe turned to watch her, and from that moment until she dropped exhausted into a chair, he did not take ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... all in a twitter, 'you're never going to leave all that money here, and you away, and the child and me all alone. Can't you—can't you leave one of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... those nooks, the turning into which out of the clashing street, imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton in his ears, and velvet soles on his boots. It is one of those nooks where a few smoky sparrows twitter in smoky trees, as though they called to one another, 'Let us play at country,' and where a few feet of garden-mould and a few yards of gravel enable them to do that refreshing violence to their tiny understandings. Moreover, it is ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... justified in extracting a slightly pleasurable sensation from the transaction. He will say to himself probably, unconsciously indeed, and with no formed words, that the husband is an ass, an ass if he be in a twitter either for that which he has kept or for that which he has been unable to keep, that the lady has shewn a good deal of appreciation, and that he himself is—is—is—quite a Captain bold of Halifax. All the while he will not have the slightest intention ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... he went, he became aware of a sound that was not the stir of leaves, nor the twitter of birds, nor the music of running waters, though all these were in his ears,—for this was altogether different; a distant sound that came and went, that swelled to a murmur, sank to a whisper, yet never ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... will surely quicken soon or late, The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate; So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom, Or in this world, or in the world to come: Sing, voice of Spring! Till I, too, blossom ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... darkness. As to the night-hawks and the other birds which fly in the dark, they swooped around and over him the whole livelong night; and when he began to get a little sleep, about daybreak, every bird in the place began to sing, or twitter, or scream, or crow, or gobble, or chatter, and the Prince might as well have tried to fly as sleep. About eight o'clock, a man came to feed the birds, and seeing the Prince in the aviary, he put him out instantly. The Prince was very ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... was most propitious. The air was balmy. The fragrance of flowers was patent in the breeze. The limpid moonlight, in a glow of beauty, kissed the hills and valleys. While from the vines and bushes the merry twitter of playful birds, symphonies soft and low, entranced with other delight, the romantic party goers. Now a still other delight was in store—some fine music and good singing, which every recipient enjoyed to the ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... loved. Their every motion seems informed with the perfect suavity and spontaneity of pure nature. They tinkle down the air like sunset bells, they float like clouds, they wave like flowers, they twitter like skylarks, they have in them something of the swiftness and the certainty of exquisite physical sensations. In such a transcript as Sir Theodore's all this is lost: Heine becomes a mere prentice-metrist; he sets the teeth on edge as surely as Browning himself; the verse ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... prosaic and matter-of-fact world for one of fantastic improbabilities; but it is safe to assume that the three persons who fell asleep beneath Miss Ludington's roof that morning, just as the birds began to twitter, encountered in dreamland no experiences so strange as those which they had passed through with their ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... erratic timbre and undulant inflection. Yet it was beautiful. It had the ring of childhood in it, though the ring was not pure golden, and at times fell echoless. The SPIRIT of its utterance was always clear and pure and crisp and cheery as the twitter of a bird, and yet forever ran an undercadence through it like a low-pleading prayer. Half garrulously, and like a shallow brook might brawl across a shelvy bottom, the rhythmic little ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... for the others, but apparently the score had been written for them all, since the innumerable strains made one divine harmony. From the full-orbed song from the maple by my window, down to the faintest chirp and twitter, there was no discord; while from the fields beyond the village the whistle of the meadow-larks was so mellowed and softened by distance as to incline one to wonder whether their notes were real or mere ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... our doctor fears that he will not pull through." But Mr. Carlyon forbore to state the fact that each night he had relieved his son, rising from his bed in the gray pearly dawn, before the first bird-twitter was heard, to take his watch beside the fever-stricken stranger. The Carlyons were men whose left hand did not know what their right hand did, and the Rev. Rupert Carlyon's ministry had been a record of humble, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... success, whatever it was, had preceded him hours before. Andrew McBain had hid out, the idle women were all a-twitter; but Mary Roget Fortune was calm. She had heard the news from the very first moment, when L. W. had dropped in on McBain; but the more she heard of his riotous prodigality the more it left her cold. His return to town reminded her painfully of that other time when he ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... were the white streamers of morn. Moorhens were plashing at the loch's edge, and one tall heron rose from his early meal. The world was astir with life: sounds of the plonk-plonk of rising trout and the endless twitter of woodland birds mingled with the far-away barking of dogs and the lowing of the full-uddered cows in the distant meadows. Abashed and enchanted, the girl listened. It was an elfin land where the old witch voices of hill and river were not silenced. With the wind ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... over the garden of the Rev. Mr. Gershom Mendes Seixas, minister of New York's one synagogue, Shearith Israel. The tall pink and white hollyhocks that bordered the prim paths nodded languidly in the warm September breeze. From the trees came the twitter of sparrows, now low and conversational, now high and shrill, "just like people in the synagogue," thought little David Phillips, as he strolled in his grandmother's garden on the other side of the hedge. ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... pilgrims who had forgotten to what shrine they bent their steps, some little notes of bells swinging beneath the tufted chins of goats, the wail of a woman's song, old in its quiet melancholy, Oriental in its strange irregularity of rhythm, and the careless twitter of a tarantella, played upon a reed-flute by a secluded shepherd-boy beneath the bending silver green of tressy olives ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... some early lighted fire out of doors; there are voices of people going and coming, softened by distance. There is the musical jingle of bullock bells here in the compound and out on the road, and there is the twitter of birds. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... an odd colloquy the next morning with Miss Ambient, whom I found strolling in the garden before breakfast. The whole place looked as fresh and trim, amid the twitter of the birds, as if, an hour before, the housemaids had been turned into it with their dust- pans and feather-brushes. I almost hesitated to light a cigarette and was doubly startled when, in the act of doing so, I suddenly saw the sister of my ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... chalk line on the table. The length of the effusion did not matter; a long aria, or a brilliant but spasmodic cadenza, each counted one, and one only. The Bermondsey bird, heedless of the issue at stake, devoted the precious moments to eating, emitting nothing beyond a dyspeptic twitter which didn't count; and his proprietor stood by me evidently chagrined, and perspiring profusely, either from anxiety or superfluous attire. Nearly half the time had gone by before Bermondsey put forth its powers. Meanwhile, Walworth made the most of the opportunity, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... swallow, oft, beneath my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... is!" beginning with a twitter, answered the canary; "but they said I talked too much!"—ending with ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... Thornton's end of the village. There was merely twitter of birds in the silver poplar that shaded his seat, busy chatter of swallows, who were plastering up their mud nests under the eaves of the old blockhouse across the road from him. It was so quiet ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... something more than usual was working under her cap. I looked at every one of the singers, and then at the players, from the big bass-viol down to the tenor, and not a bit of reason could I perceive for the twitter the heads of our pew had certainly got themselves into. There's a pattern old lady, Prudence Clark, presidentess of the Dorcas Society,—a spinster, just Aunt Clara's age,—a woman who knows everything, and more too. She sits in the pew ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... though melancholy. The window was open; and, wrapped up in a thick shawl, I was inhaling the damp moist air, and listening to the rustle of the dried leaves which were being swept from the gravel walk below; the low twitter of some robin-redbreasts was in unison with the scene, and affected me in an Unaccountable manner. My tears fell fast on the book in my hand. This book was the "Christian Year;" that gift of Edward, which I had thrust away in a fit of irritation about a year ago. I had opened it again that morning, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... dolefully, would pass the Nesbit home late at night, hoping that his chirping might reach her heart; at times he made a rather formal call upon the entire Nesbit family, which he was obviously encouraged to repeat by the elders. But Morty was inclined to hide in the thicket of his sorrow and twitter his heart out to the cold stars. Tom Van Dorn pervaded the Nesbit home by day with his flowers and books and candy, and by night—as many nights a week as he could buy, beg or steal—by night he pervaded the Nesbit home ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... the first terror was over, did not appear disconcerted by the change of situation, but hourly fed their young as usual, and testified, by their unwearied twitter of pleasure, the satisfaction and confidence they felt. There the young birds were duly fledged, and from that window they began their ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... rises like a morn When waves at sunrise glitter, Or as in June the golden corn While birds above it twitter. ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... darkness. For a second their wrinkled faces stared, eyes blinked, and short, unhollowed lips stretched over yellow teeth, then, with a flutter of dark garments, the Chinese started away from the fixed beams and were gone into the shadow. Except for the sudden twitter of a voice, the spurt of a stone flung up against the metal of the car, they melted silently out of sight and hearing. Sick with panic, Fanny leant down upon her knees and covered her head with her two arms, expecting a blow from above. Seconds passed, ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... all her faculties, crying out to herself passionately, desperately, "Remember it—remember it as it is—there—before you—just as it is—for ever." As it reached the turning, in the distance of the garden rose the twitter of the flute of Larbi. Androvsky stopped, stood still with his back turned towards her. And Larbi, hidden and far off, showered out his little notes of African love, of love in the desert where the sun is everlasting, and the passion of man is hot as the sun, where Liberty ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... sounded outside the door. There was a pause; a hurried whispering of women's voices; the twitter of a nervous laugh, and then the door was pushed softly opens and the girl to whom the one-eyed Hans had given the necklace of blue and white beads with the filigree cross hanging from it, peeped uncertainly ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... back to her seat behind the table, near the bunk, and tried to take up her knitting again. The silence seemed to her so tremendous that she listened intently for some sound, any sound. Came only the twitter of a little near-by bird, the metallic clank of a meadow lark far off across the meadows. They at least were friendly, these birds. She could have kissed them, held them close to her, these ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... her door, and her aunt's voice called, "Shall I come in?" and before she could faintly consent, her aunt pushed in, and caught her in her arms, and kissed her, and broke into a twitter of welcome and compassion. "You poor child! Did you think I was going to let you go to sleep without seeing you, after you'd come half round the world to see me?" Her aunt was dark and slight like Lydia, but not so tall; she was still a very pretty woman, ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... little room. It was a cosy place, and the partly-opened window let in the fresh air from the surrounding fields, together with the sound of the twitter of birds and the hum ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... a good tongue, or you'll find to your smart From rhyming in cars, you may swing in a cart. You found out my rebus with very much modesty; But thanks to the lady; I'm sure she's too good to ye: Till she lent you her help, you were in a fine twitter; You hit it, you say;—you're a delicate hitter. How could you forget so ungratefully a lass, And if you be my Phoebus, pray who was your Pallas? As for your new rebus, or riddle, or crux, I will either explain, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... tiny birds along the beach," muttered the boy. "They twitter and run into the surf and back again, and I am one of them! I must be, for I feel the water cold, and yet I see you all, so kind to me! Don't whistle for me now; for I don't get much play, gentlemen! ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... General was at it again. "Who are you—the R.T.O.? Well, ring off. Exchange. Exchange. It is the Divisional General speaking. I want my head-quarters. I say, I want my—oh, don't twitter, and the bally thing's singin' now! First it blows and then it sings. ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... taller stalks than those that grow in the meadows. The black flowers of the sedges are powdered with yellow pollen; and dark green sword-flags are beginning to spread their fans. But just across the road, on the topmost twigs of birch poles, swallows twitter in the tenderest tones to their loves. From the oaks in the meadows on that side titlarks mount above the highest bough and then descend, sing, sing, singing, to ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... ear, How the great king thy father held That Maiden's Choice unparalleled. But now the sun has sunk from sight, And left the world to holy Night. Hark! how the leafy thickets sound With gathering birds that twitter round: They sought their food by day, and all Flock homeward when the shadows fall. See, hither comes the hermit band, Each with his pitcher in his hand: Fresh from the bath, their locks are wet, Their coats of bark are dripping yet. Here saints their fires of worship tend, And ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... Nature. The whole pleasurableness of warm air, clear moist sky, the surprise of the shimmer of pale green, of the yellowing blossom on tree tops, the first flicker of faint shadow where all has been uniform, colourless, shadeless; the replacing of the long silence by the endless twitter and trill of birds, endless in its way as is the sea, twitter and trill on every side, depths and depths of it, of every degree of distance and faintness, a sea of bird song; and along with this the sense of infinite renovation to all the earth ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... few score dozen battens, and reckoned it all out on my paper—that would have to do. But it was still too early for a man to live in the forests and hills; the flowers were come, but there were no berries yet. Song and twitter of birds at their mating, flies and midges and moths, but ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... or its location. How we were to get out did not appear, nor for the time being did this greatly concern us; and soon after supper the camp was wrapped in slumber, undisturbed by any coyote duet, or, on this occasion, even the twitter of ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... side, and followed them as far as the boundary of the country. There the first green sprouted forth, and there they took leave of the two Reindeer and the Lapland woman. "Farewell!" said all. And the first little birds began to twitter, the forest was decked with green buds, and out of it, on a beautiful horse (which Gerda knew, for it was the same that had drawn her golden coach) a young girl came riding, with a shining red cap on her head ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... little comer 's coming, the comer o'er the sea, The comer of the summer, all the sunny days to be; How pleasant, through the pleasant sleep, thy early twitter heard— Oh, swallow by the lattice! ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... instincts inappeasable, That did direct him well, Lured from his gelid North which wrought him wrong, Wintered of sunning song; - By happy instincts inappeasable, Ah yes! that led him well, Lured to the untried regions and the new Climes of auspicious you; To twitter there, and in his singing dwell. But ah! if you, my Summer, should grow waste, With grieving skies o'ercast, For such migration my poor wing was strong But once; it has no power to fare again Forth o'er ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... irregular street every house is three to four hundred years old. The projecting upper stories are supported on great timber balks, often with the ends grotesquely carved. Under the projecting eaves the swallows build, and twitter about the diamond-paned windows which reflect so richly the sunset light. In the steep roofs there are dormer-windows, and the old tiles have mellowed to a deep rose-red, stained yellow with lichen, and sink into irregular planes and angles of beautiful, varied colour. There ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... meadows. Through them the stream on which the machinery depended was led by various contrivances, checked or increased in its flow, making small ponds, or locks, or waterfalls. We used to stay for hours listening to its murmur, to the sharp, strange cry of the swans that were kept there, and the twitter of the water-hen to her young among the reeds. Then the father would come to us and remain a few minutes—fondling Muriel, and telling me how things ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and the wheel-house were all dim and bluish, the apple trees but a blurred wilderness; the air smelled of woodsmoke from the kitchen fire. One bird going to bed later than the others was uttering a half-hearted twitter, as though surprised at the darkness. From the stable came the snuffle and stamp of a feeding horse. And away over there was the loom of the moor, and away and away the shy stars which had not as yet full light, pricking white through the deep ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... dreamy feeling when one first wakes on a summer morning, with the twitter of birds in the air, and the fresh breeze coming in at the open window—when, lying lazily with eyes half shut, one sees as in a dream green boughs waving, or waters rippling in a golden light? It is a pleasure very near to sadness, bringing tears to ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... sang, "Twirrr twitter, twirrr twee! In the rosiest rose-bush a rare nest! Twirrr twitter, twirrr twitter, twirrr twitter, twirrrrr tweeeee! In the fun he has found ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... of the historian of the Semitic races broke it by twittering into a laugh behind her fan. Janet met Kendal's eyes instinctively; he was burning red, and his manner was eloquent of his helplessness. Angry with herself for having waited, so long, Janet joined Elfrida just as the twitter made itself heard, and Mr. Jasper's face ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... secrets of her heart if she had had secrets. But, in truth, she had none. She was desperately jealous of Miss Todd, but she herself knew not why. She asked all manner of questions as to his going and coming, but she never asked herself why she was so anxious about it. She was in a twitter of sentimental restlessness, but she did not understand the cause of her own uneasiness. On the days that Sir Lionel came to her, she was happy, and in good spirits; when, however, he went to Miss Todd, she was fretful. Sometimes she would rally him on his admiration ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... Miss Duran?" Suspecting very little was the matter, for Susan was nothing, if not all of a twitter. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... broke. When the wind is easterly you can always see the coming morning much sooner; and about 3.30, when the birds in the sweet hedgerows were just beginning to twitter, the first soft, grey dawn stole over ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... the day after their arrival, the day of the christening. They had not gone into Aaron's house, for you are looked askance at in Thrums if you pay visits on Sundays, but they had stood for a long time gossiping at the door, which is permitted by the strictest. Ailie was in a twitter, as of old, and not able even yet to speak of her husband without an apologetic look to the ladies who had none. And oh, how proud she was of Tommy's fame! Her eyes were an ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... They were very plentiful, and so were the turtle-doves, which used to light on the basin-bank, and pick up the grain scattered there from the boats and wagons. One of the apprentices in the printing-office kept a shot-gun loaded beside the press while he was rolling, and whenever he caught the soft twitter that the doves make with their wings, he rushed out with his gun and knocked over two or three of them. He was a good shot, and could nearly always get them in range. When he brought them back, it seemed to my boy that he had committed the unpardonable ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... hurrying north on his work of redemption. At the bend in the river he found Tom Gresh sitting on the flat stone slab. The light was gleaming through the shrubbery of the little cottage, and the homey sounds of evening and the twitter of late-coming birds ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... verdure in the hedges—where a few green twigs yet stood together bravely, resisting to the last the tyranny of nipping winds and early frosts—took heart and brightened up; the stream which had been dull and sullen all day long, broke out into a cheerful smile; the birds began to chirp and twitter on the naked boughs, as though the hopeful creatures half believed that winter had gone by, and spring had come already. The vane upon the tapering spire of the old church glistened from its lofty station in sympathy with the general gladness; and from the ivy-shaded windows ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... to the east, another brightness began to grow and gather this light into its outstretched wings. In the nearest wood a soft twitter came from a single tiny bird. Another voice answered it. A different note came from a third quarter; there were three or four replies; the sky turned to blue, and began to flush; a mocking-bird flew out of the woods on her earliest quest for family provision; a thrush began to sing; and in a ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... it," he thought, as he went up to his sitting-room. "I wish I wasn't all of a twitter. I wish I knew what ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... but they did not put him into the aircar with the revolving arm again. Instead, four new ones came into his room after he had eaten the strange red and orange fruits that were all of the bug diet he could stomach, and began to twitter very seriously at him, while pointing to various objects, parts of their bodies, the walls around them, and ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... cool themselves, they freshness give, And moisture, that the bowery green may live: So keeping up an interchange of favours, Like good men in the truth of their behaviours Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop From low hung branches; little space they stop; But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek; Then off at once, as in a wanton freak: Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings, Pausing upon their yellow flutterings. Were I in such a place, I sure should pray That nought less sweet, might call my thoughts away, Than ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... hill and valley, Soft flow the stream thro' the even-flowing hours; Fair the day shine, as it shone upon my childhood— Fair shine the day on the house with open door; Birds come and cry there, and twitter in the chimney— But I go for ever and come ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... it is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the North, ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... blazonry of burning Californian sunlight, and away in the distance the ridges and peaks of distant mountains stood out sharply clear against the intense blue of the sky. There was great stillness everywhere,—a pause, as it seemed, in the mechanism of the universe. The twitter of a bird or the cry of some wild animal would have been a relief,—so Seaton felt, though accustomed ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... fell into the arms of Morpheus. She did not mind much if Polly was wakeful—she knew she should never close her eyes all night. The soft spring air floated in through the open window, and she heard the birds twitter and the frogs peep: she heard Abraham Lincoln, the old horse that she used to ride to water before she grew big enough to work, whinney over his hay; and Goliath, the young giant that had come to take his place in the farm work, answer ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... steep grassy ridge springs from the blue-grey rocks to the south-east; and on the precipitous weather side grow low and open scrub and dwarf casuarina. Here is a natural aviary. Pigeons and doves coo; honey-eaters whistle; sun-birds whisper quaint, quick notes; wood swallows soar and twitter. Metallic starlings seek safe sleeping-places among the mangroves, ere they repair last year's villages, and join excitedly in the chorus; while the great osprey wheels overhead, and the grey falcon sits on a bare branch, still as a sentinel, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... wasps disputed her right to the fruit, and drunken bees blundered against her as they met zigzagging homeward much the worse for blackberry wine. She never heeded any of them, though at another time she would gladly have made friends with all, but found compensation for her discomforts in the busy twitter of sand swallows perched on the mullein-tops, the soft flight of yellow butterflies, and the rapidity with which the little canoe received its freight of "Ethiop sweets." As the last handful went in she sprung up crying "Done!" with a suddenness that broke up the Long Parliament ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... only walked for a short time and they did not keep to the road but went on to the moor itself and walked among the heath and bracken. After a little while they sat down and gave themselves up to the vast silence with here and there the last evening twitter of a bird in it. The note made the stillness greater. The flame of the sky was beyond compare and, after gazing at it for a while, Dowie turned a slow ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... road. In front of them, Doorke, like a little black shadow, danced up and down in his cart to the jolting of the wheels as he jogged quietly along. The crickets chirped in the ditch; and from high up in the trees came the dying twitter of birds about to go ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... it, neither the earl nor Lady Julia having said anything on the subject. "Of course we are going," said Mrs Eames, "and it was so very kind. But I've never been out to such a house for so many years, John, and I do feel in such a twitter. I dined there once, soon after we were married; but I never have been ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... of aching demons in his weary limbs promised him surcease if he would. Every stir in nature, each drowsy twitter of the birds, coaxed him to relax his watchfulness, but he resisted. Time seemed a paralytic as Carter waited the passing of the day. A score of times his head bent forward in weariness. He could feel pain pass from him like a sigh, ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... Fairfax heard was the irregular clangor of a bell, and behold it was morning! Some one had been into the dortoir and had opened a window or two. The warm fragrant breath of sunshine and twitter of birds entered. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... pictures of merit upon the walls. Here is a Corot, two Meissoniers, a Bouguereau, a Millais, an Orchardson, and two Alma-Tademas. It seems to me to be a pity to hang pictures over these walls of carved oak. Look at those birds hopping and singing in the branches. They really seem to move and twitter, ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... children out to play, And all the morning long they race Like madcaps round about the place. The robins on the fences sing A gayer song of welcoming, And seems as though they had a share In all the fun they're having there. The wrens and sparrows twitter, too, A louder and a noisier crew, As though it pleased them all to see The youngsters out of doors ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... Mrs. Fitzgerald keeps up a gentle twitter, in the hope of propitiating the wrathful ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... energetic; he seated himself before a piano that looked as if it had led a hard nomadic existence. "Now see here!" Striking a few chords. "Suppose you try this stunt! What's the Matter with Mother? My own composition! Kerry Mackintosh at his best! Now twitter away, if you've any of that angel ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... ceased. The only sound now came from a robin, hunting about the turf and now and then breaking out into an impatient twitter. ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... grandmothers, and nice boys and girls, with a very, very few farmer youth of marriageable age, and more rustic and seafaring elders long past it, all in the Sunday best which they had worn to the graduation exercises at the High School, where we took them mostly up. The womenkind were in a nervous twitter of talk and laughter, and the men tolerantly gay beyond their wont, "passing the time of day" with one another, and helping the more tumultuous sex to get settled in the overcrowded open car. They courteously made room for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with the first twitter of the birds my babies begin to stir. Through the mists of dispersing sleep, their chatter blends with the warblings that fill the morning air, or with the swallows' noisy debates—little cries of joy or woe, which make their way to my heart rather than my ears. While Nais struggles to get ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... weary of replying. His days were full of this perpetual intercourse. So it happened that to get out alone into the absolute stillness, broken only by the rustle of the leaves, the sound of the wind as it brought them down, the twitter of the birds, the tinkle of the little stream, was a new delight to Geoff, unlike anything that had gone before. And to see miles and miles before him, to see all round, roads stretching into the unknown, houses and churches and woods, all nameless and new; was he riding out to seek his fortune, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... doorway slow doth close. The birds begin to twitter and to sing. All nature waketh and on pointed toes Young truant Morpheus stealeth gently in. Oh, happiness of reinstalled repose, And balsam for thy cold and sweated skin! 'Twas worse than all the nightmares, blessed wight; This vigil with ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... lindens Doves fondly rear Their tender fledglings From year to year. With never a pausing, They bill and coo, And twitter ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... lighted saloon now lies between them and the chamber of the ladies of the castle. The double door at the other end is thrown wide open, the walls and windows of the wedding chamber are crimsoning with the early hues of day, silence and solitude pervade them, nothing falls upon the air save the twitter of the birds and the murmur of the fountains. The old man rushes on directly to the open door and toward the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... beats responsive to heart, and the poor dumb hand seeks by varied pressure to tell the emotion within. Often then the soul, with its many organs of utterance, feels itself but a songless bird, whose broken twitter hardens into a cage around it; but even with all those organs of utterance in full play, he is yet farther from his fellow-man than when he is praying to the Father in a desert place apart. The man who prays, in proportion to the purity of ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... when I took the road; the sun shone, spring seemed in the air, it smelt like April or May, and some over-venturous birds sang in the coppices as I went by. I had plenty to think of, plenty to be grateful for, that gallant morning; and yet I had a twitter at my heart. To enter the city by daylight might be compared to marching on a battery; every face that I confronted would threaten me like the muzzle of a gun; and it came into my head suddenly with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the rattle of the dishes? The clink of the spoon against the cup? The moving up of the chairs? The chatter of the voices, each with its own peculiar pitch and quality? The twitter of a bird outside the window? The tinkle of a distant bell? The ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... that could be," she retorted. "I haven't seen even a bird in the grounds. I don't remember hearing a single twitter in the trees. The whole place appeared utterly deserted ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... gamekeepers with a plethora of sovereigns and half-sovereigns in their corduroy pockets, and serious thoughts of the Holborough Savings Bank, and Mr. Granger's chief butler with views that soared as high as Consols. All the twitter and cheerful confusion of many voices in the rooms and corridors of the grand old house dwindled and died away, until Mr. Granger was left alone with his wife and daughter. He was not sorry to see his visitors depart, though he was a man who, after his own fashion, was fond of society. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... absence of snakes or scorpions, for no doubt there were plenty of both in warm weather in this dry country. When there was no wind, the silence of the nights was impressive, with no sound save the lapping of the water against the banks. Sometimes a bird in the trees above would start up with a twitter, then quiet down again. On occasions the air chambers in our boats would contract on cooling off, making a noise like the boom of a distant gun, every little sound being magnified by the ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... of heaven, I shall breathe you once more in freedom!—Reserve all your freshness for that delicious evening when I shall inhale you, and be as free as you myself." Now when he felt it, he sighed and said nothing. The twitter of the sparrows, the pattering of rain, or the moan of the wind, sounds that he used to sit up in his bed to catch with delight, as reminding him of ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... of azure, there is a delightful frolicsome twitter heard. It is not the Nightingale; no, not so clear and mellow as that. Not the Thrush; no, not so loud or gushing as that. It is our little friend the Lark. Oh! how merry he is! more so than either of the other two. And what is he about? He seems to be floating and soaring, sauntering ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... morning, he looked about him for a moment half bewildered, because there was neither a canvas tent, a barn roof, nor the blue sky above him, but a neat white ceiling, where several flies buzzed sociably together, while from without came, not the tramping of horses, the twitter of swallows, or the chirp of early birds, but the comfortable cackle of hens and the sound of two little ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... and the new steward had not thought it worth while to fill up the empty, dusty, broken-up place which had been left in the floor of his room by the removal of the work of art, nor even to cover it over with mats. Not a single cheerful note was audible in the abandoned dwelling but the twitter of the birds which still came morning and evening to perch on the balcony, for Arsinoe and the children had never neglected to strew the parapet with crumbs for them at ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... pointed out, in connection with his train-schedules. And as Mrs. Harrington does not travel to the city, even this charge will not hold against her. And yet I cannot help feeling that neither of the two really hears the catbird say "miaow" or the robin "cheer up," as they pretend to. At the first twitter or chirp from some invisible source Mrs. Harrington stops and with radiant face asks me whether I do not distinctly catch the "pit-pit-pity-me" of the meadow-lark. I say yes; but I really don't, and I don't believe she does. My explanation is that Mrs. Harrington ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... of the evening, but as an hour of morning it has few apologists. It is the early bird that catches the worm; but this should merely set one thinking before he thrusts out a foot into the cold morning, whether he may justly consider himself a bird or a worm. If no glad twitter rises to his lips in these early hours, he had best stay unpecked inside ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... morning he was early in the saddle. The sky was blue and clear, the air full of the fresh odor of earth and clover and wild flowers. The swallows were making a jubilant twitter, the larks singing on the edge of the prairie—the glorious prairie, which the giants of the unflooded world had cleared off and leveled for the dwelling-place of Liberty. In his own way he enjoyed the scene; but he could not, as he usually did, let ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... save on Sunday to set an example. There were no shops open, not a sound about. I went out upon the ramparts to the Mont St. Lambert, where the band plays on Sundays. In all the trees there was not so much as the twitter of a bird. I could hear the river flowing swiftly below the wall, but I could not see it, except as something dark, a ravine of gloom below, and beyond the walls I did not venture to look. Why should I look? There was nothing, nothing, as I knew. But fancy is so uncontrollable, ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... the birds began to twitter; day was breaking. The girl was worn out and panting, and when the sun rose in the purple sky, she stopped, for her swollen feet refused to go any further; but she saw a pond in the distance, a large pond whose stagnant water looked like blood under the reflection of this new day, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... poor Hall—turned his brain. He has done little or nothing since but make-believe about criticism, talk dawdle-poetry with a lisp, write irresistible verses under the name of 'Sedley' in his own magazine, twitter sentimentally about 'little Moore,' his 'dear little Moore'—puffing himself all the time anonymously in the newspaper, while he is damning himself, with unmistakable sincerity, twelve times a year in his own magazine. We do not think very highly of the mutton-headed Athenians at ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... woman having gone to buy food in the village. Mrs Platt slept almost all the day and night through, and she was asleep now: so Margaret sat quite still, holding up her shawl before the pallid face which looked already dead. Nothing broke the silence but the twitter of the young birds in the thatch, and the mutterings of the sick man, whom Margaret imagined to be somewhat disturbed by the unusual light that was in the room. It had not been the custom of the sun to shine into any houses ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... founts, where the birds Twitter and chirp at noon from every tree; I long for blossomed leaves and lowing herds; And Nature's voices say in mystic words, "The green fields wait ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... passed, and paled slowly to gray. Birds began to twitter. Through the door of the cabin the light of day streamed in. The two Indian sentinels were building a fire on the stone hearth. One by one the other savages got up, stretched and yawned, and began the business of the day by cooking ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and flowers; Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley, Soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours; Fair the day shine as it shone on my childhood— Fair shine the day on the house with open door; Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney— But I go for ever and come again ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... muzzle, another with his impertinencies, he makes sport for the rest of the gods? As also that old Silenus with his country dances, Polyphemus footing time to his Cyclops hammers, the nymphs with their jigs, and satyrs with their antics; while Pan makes them all twitter with some coarse ballad, which yet they had rather hear than the Muses themselves, and chiefly when they are well whittled with nectar. Besides, what should I mention what these gods do when they are half ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... dawning; the birds were beginning to twitter softly and the dew was rising noticeably from the ground. Frederick had slid down the trunk and was staring, with his arms crossed back of his head, into the rosy morning light softly stealing in. Suddenly he started, a light flashed ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... by the stalks of the evening-primrose scattered on every hand, the flowers furled now, sleeping. In the groves were pines, small cedars, and a sprinkling of sturdy dwarf oaks. And from their shelter came the welcome sound of a bird's twitter. ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... Montagues, and Philip hoped that he would find Ruth in a different mood. But she was never more gay, and there was a spice of mischief in her eye and in her laugh. "Confound it," said Philip to himself, "she's in a perfect twitter." ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... after studying dilettanteism through the crack of the door for some months, Christie left the "trained canaries" to twitter and hop about their gilded cage, and devoted herself to Hepsey, who gave her glimpses into another sort of life so bitterly real that she never could ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... thatch, Shall twitter near her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my meal, a ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... twenty minutes in excess of his calculations, as a glance at the sky informed him. (He carried no watch.) He hurried home in a twitter of nervousness, which increased as he drew near to his front door. In the passage he stumbled against a pail of water, all but upsetting it, and swore under his breath at his evil luck, which had deferred Mrs ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... mocking-bird, my mocking-bird! When you have been sitting on other front porches, have you, by the divine law of your being, been reproducing your notes as though they were mine, and even pouring forth the little twitter that was ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen |
