"Warble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... British vessel. The vessel becoming disabled, the gun was then mounted on wheels and placed on a bluff at Ticonderoga, where it was captured by the Americans. Right glad we were that the place knows no harsher sound than the soft, melodious warble of the bluebird and cherry carol of the robin. We thought how glorious the time when all monuments may be not merely grim reminders of war, but give shelter to the "color- bearer of the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... to swell, And woods the bluebird's warble know, The yellow violet's modest bell Peeps from the last year's ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... stopped making faces. He stopped still and made no sound. A lovely musical voice, a young woman's voice, grave and sweet, was heard. Christophe pricked his ears. As she went on with her words he turned again, keenly interested to see what bird could warble so. He saw Ophelia. In truth she was nothing like the Ophelia of Shakespeare. She was a beautiful girl, tall, big and fine like a young fresh statue—Electra or Cassandra. She was brimming with life. In spite ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... had opened the windows, and there came in a spicy breath from the woods, together with the wild warble of a wood-thrush. It was so wild and sweet, they both were still to listen. The notes almost broke Diana's heart, but she would not ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... like many other creatures, Bear fleeting memories, that come and go; Nor can they oft recall familiar features, By absence touched, or clouded o'er with woe. Then rest content with sorrow: for there be Many that must that lesson learn with thee; And still thy wild notes warble cheerfully, Till, when thy tiny voice begins to fail, For thy lost bliss sing but one parting wail, Poor little ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... as our maidens buy nowadays, for their crosses and ducats, off the Moscow pedlars who visit the villages with their baskets; that her little mouth, at sight of which the youths smacked their lips, seemed made to warble the songs of nightingales; that her hair, black as the raven's wing, and soft as young flax, fell in curls over her shoulders, for our maidens did not then plait their hair in pigtails interwoven with pretty, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... being a superficial observer, he did not spy to see more than the world would when Nataly entered the dining-room at the quiet family dinner. She performed her part for his comfort, though not prattling; and he missed his Fredi's delicious warble of the prattle running rill-like over our daily humdrum. Simeon Fenellan would have helped. Then suddenly came enlivenment: a recollection of news in the morning's paper. 'No harm before Fredi, my dear. She's a young woman now. And no harm, so to speak-at least, not against ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... How Hartmann von Aue hits the meaning of a story! how loud and clear rings the crystal of his words! Did not Heinrich von Veldeke "imp the first shoot on Teutish tongues" (graft French on German poetry)? With what a lofty voice does the nightingale of the Bird-Meadow (Walther) warble across the heath! Nor is it unpleasant to come shortly afterwards to our old friends Apollo and the Camoenae, the nine "Sirens of the ears"—a slightly mixed reminiscence, but characteristic of the union of classical ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... [cow, cattle]; troat[obs3], croak, peep [frog]; coo [dove, pigeon]; gobble [turkeys]; quack [duck]; honk, gaggle, guggle [obs3][goose]; crow, caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, hummingbird]; buzz [flying insects, bugs]; hiss [snakes, geese]; blatter[obs3]; ratatat [woodpecker]. Adj. crying &c. v.; blatant, latrant[obs3], remugient[obs3], mugient[obs3]; deep-mouthed, full-mouthed; rebellowing[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... here, With the flowers thou dost appear; Yes, sweet little Whippowil, Thou art singing by the rill; Where the silver moonbeam plays Thou dost chant thy hymn of praise; Thy shrill voice I love to hear, And I'd have thee warble near. Come, sweet bird, the moonlight shines Through the verdant row of pines, Standing by our cottage door, Come, where thou hast sang before, When I heard thy thrilling note On the twilight breezes float, Ming'ling ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... beechen buds begin to swell, And woods the blue-bird's warble know. The yellow violet's modest bell Peeps from the last ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... light from the doorway picking him out from the surrounding gloom, he seemed to bear with him a mystic radiance. The young man knelt instinctively and pressed his forehead to the ground; while the voice of the priest, now grown tender and melodious, seemed to warble far above him like a voice from heaven. An angel stood in the ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... replied Jack; "and though a Frenchman, he was a deuced fine fellow in his day—quite a tip-top macaroni—he could skip and twirl like a figurant, warble like an opera-singer, and play the flageolet better than any man of his day—he always carried a lute in his pocket, along with his snappers. And then his dress—it was quite beautiful to see how smartly he was rigg'd ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in old "China,"—that strange, wild warble, whose quaintly blended harmonies might have been learned of moaning seas or wailing winds, so strange and grand they rose, full of that intense pathos which rises over every defect of execution; and as they sung, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in this matter: he fills a very peculiar niche, he is a lodestar to enthusiastic undergraduates; he is the joy of sober common-rooms. I wish with all my heart that the convenances of life permitted Egeria herself to stray into those book-lined rooms, dim with tobacco-smoke, to warble and sing to the accompaniment of Perry's cracked piano, to take her place among the casual company. But as Egeria cannot go to Perry, and as Perry will not go to Egeria, they must respect each other from a distance, and do ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Tompkins. He was purty near as bad as Aristotle, though. He roped a puma up on th' Sacramentos, an' didn't punch no more fer three weeks. Well, here comes my pardner an' I reckons I'll amble right along. If yu needs any referee or a side pardner in any ruction yu has only got to warble up my ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... hymn. The only difficulty would be in keeping Aunt Becky Burnham from pitching it in a key where nobody but a soprano skylark, accustomed to warble at a great height, could possibly sing it. It was generally given at the grave, when Elder Weeks officiated; but it never satisfied Aunt Hitty, because the good elder always looked so unpicturesque when he threw ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I found that the forepart of the vessel was crowded with the bodies of natives, every one of whom was testifying the soundness of his repose by notes both loud and deep. Having selected the only spot where there was room even to sit down, I began, in a somewhat high key, to warble a lively strain calculated to cheer the drooping spirits of such of my neighbours as had that evening undergone the pang of parting from their friends. This proceeding soon had the effect of drawing all eyes upon me, and, indeed, not a few ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... stopna, bonnie bird, that strain, Frae hopeless love itsel' it flows; Sweet bird, oh! warble it again, Thou'st touch'd the string o' a' my woes; Oh! lull me with it to repose, I 'll dream of her who 's far away, And fancy, as my eyelids close, Will meet ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... I warble myself for the dead one there I loved? And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone? And what shall my perfume be, for the ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... northern root of some aged oak. As one goes early to a concert-hall with a passion even for the preliminary tuning of the musicians, so my ear sits alone in the vast amphitheatre of Nature and waits for the earliest warble of the blue-bird, which seems to start up somewhere behind the heavenly curtains. And the scent of spring, is it not the first lyric of the nose—that despised poet of ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... me rest!" It was the voice of one Whose life-long journey was but just begun. With genial radiance shone his morning sun; The lark sprang up rejoicing from her nest, To warble praises in her Maker's ear; The fields were clad in flower-enamelled vest, And air of balm, and sunshine clear, Failed not to cheer That yet unweary pilgrim; but his breast Was harrowed with a strange, foreboding fear; ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... What flowers, with no slug to gnaw the root! What atmosphere, with no frost to chill and with no heat to consume! Bright colors tangled in the grass. Perfume in the air. Music in the sky. Bird's warble and tree's hum, and waterfall's dash. Great scene of ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... swelled and vibrated in the still November air; while in between the pauses came the warble of birds, the scream of the jay, the hoarse call of hawk and eagle, going on with their forest ways all unmindful of the new era which had been ushered in with those ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Caecuban, And batter Wisdom in her own stronghold. Now the noon has pass'd the full, Yet sure you deem swift Time has made a halt, Tardy as you are to pull Old Bibulus' wine-jar from its sleepy vault. I will take my turn and sing Neptune and Nereus' train with locks of green; You shall warble to the string Latona and her Cynthia's arrowy sheen. Hers our latest song, who sways Cnidos and Cyclads, and to Paphos goes With her swans, on holydays; Night too shall claim the ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... of all sorts began to warble in the trees, and with their varied and gladsome notes seemed to welcome and salute the fresh morn that was beginning to show the beauty of her countenance at the gates and balconies of the east, shaking from her locks a profusion of liquid pearls; in which ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Will. "I'm itching for a row like they say drovers in Monty's country itch for mile-stones! Let Fred warble. I'll fight whoever comes!" ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... twinkle them caressingly as if beckoning his mate to his heart. One morning she had come, but was shy and reserved. The fond male flew to a knot-hole in an old apple-tree and coaxed her to his side. I heard a fine confidential warble—the old, old story. But the female flew to a near tree and uttered her plaintive, homesick note. The male went and got some dry grass or bark in his beak and flew again to the hole in the old tree, and promised unremitting devotion; but the other said "Nay," and flew away in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... old home; you stock it, as far as may be, with the old luxuries; a new harp is in the place of that one which beguiled so many hours of joy; new and cherished flowers bloom again upon the windows; her birds hang, and warble their melody where they warbled it before. A pony—like as possible to the old—is there for Madge; a fete is secretly contrived upon the lawn. You even place the old, familiar ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... exceeding chagrin, they took their leave and as they returned to Florence, Bruno said to Calandrino, 'I can tell thee thou makest her melt like ice in the sun. Cock's body, wert thou to fetch thy rebeck and warble thereto some of those amorous ditties of thine, thou wouldst cause her cast herself out of window to come to thee.' Quoth Calandrino, 'Deemest thou, gossip? Deemest thou I should do well to fetch it?' 'Ay, do I,' answered Bruno; and Calandrino went on, 'Thou wouldst ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... adverse fortune flings Her strong link'd meshes o'er his flutt'ring wings, Sinks, while exalted Ignorance supine, Unheeded slumbers like the pamper'd swine; Obsequious slaves in his voluptuous bowers Young pleasures warble, while the dancing Hours In sickly sweetness languishingly move, Like new-waked virgins flush'd with dreams of love— Him, when by Death's dark angel swept away From sloth's embrace, in premature decay, Surviving friends, donation'd into grief, Shall mourn ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... song of the "Krasneya Sarafan," which Sarsha began at once to warble. The characteristic of Russian gypsy-girl voices is a peculiarly delicate metallic tone,—like that of the two silver bells of the Tower of Ivan Velikoi when heard from afar,—yet always marked with fineness and strength. This is sometimes startling in the ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... mission. Had your wife maintained those feelings of unmixed generosity and kindness which have heretofore marked her conduct, the ransom would have been complete. When the leaves began to bud, and the birds to sing their sweet songs of love, and to warble their gentle burdens of gratitude for the return of their beloved spring, our mission would have been successfully terminated. The deceased husband and wife would then have been each returned to the arms of his ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... it powerful quick if we don't grab it while it's passin'; it's a good long name, and what if it does make a chap sling the muscles of his jaw to warble it? All the better; it'll make him think well of his town, which I prophesy is going to be the emporium of ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... morning our starting was delayed by the rain, and we took advantage of it to hear mass in the Abbey and enjoy the heavenly music. The latter was of the loftiest kind; there was one voice among the singers I shall not soon forget. It was like the warble of a bird who sings out of very wantonness. On and on it sounded, making its clear, radiant sweetness heard above the chant of the choir and the thunder of the orchestra. Such a rich, varied and untiring strain of melody I have ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... domes and minarets a yellow moon dreams like an odalisque, her hand on the circle of her breast; and through the torrid silence of the garden, through the odour of over-ripe fruit and the falling sound thereof, comes the melancholy warble of a fountain. Or is it the sorrow of lilies rising through the languid air to the sky? The night is blue and breathless; the spasms of the lightning are intermittent among the minarets and the domes; the hot, fierce fever of the garden waxes ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... enrich a part of the plain. It was made good for the cultivation of a large tract; although very wild and disorderly cultivation. As we went, every spot within sight was full of interest; rich with associations; the air was warm but pleasant; the warble of the orange-winged blackbird - I don't know if I ought to call it a warble; it was a very fine and strong note, or whistle, - sounding from the rocks as we went by, thrilled me with a wild reminder of all that had once been busy life ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Warble on, ye feathered songsters, Lift your praises loud and high, Merry lark, and thrush, and blackbird, In the grove and in the sky Make your music, shame our dumbness, ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... earliest of ye Year By hands unseen, are Show'rs of Violets found; The Red-breast loves to build & warble there, And little Footsteps lightly ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... accomplishments. She loves a man whom her father wishes her to lure to his death by her singing, and she sings entrancingly enough to bring about the meeting between her lover's back and her father's knife. That she does not warble herself into the position of "particeps criminis" in a murder she owes only to the bungling of the old man. Having done this, however, she turns physician and nurse and brings the wounded man back to health, thus sacrificing ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... would not sound. She looked around her with an eye glittering with unnatural fire, as if to supplicate some invisible and hovering spirit to her rescue, or that some floating and angelic chorus might warble the thrilling word whose expression seemed absolutely necessary to her existence. Her cheek is flushed, her eye wild and tremulous, the broad blue veins of her immaculate brow quivering and distended; her waving hair falls back over ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... when Red awoke, arrows of gold were shooting through the holes in the old barn, and outside, the bird life, the twittering and chirping, the fluent whistle and the warble, the cackle and the pompous crow, ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... have made one fear he was about to cleave the already cracked head of the diplomatist Not so! It was only to offer wine to his pretty neighbour, who did not hear him, being absorbed by a semi-whispered conversation in a soft and lively foreign warble with two young men seated next to her. She bent to them, and grew animated. Little frizzles of hair were seen shining in the light against a dainty, transparent, rosy ear... Polish, Russian, Norwegian?.. from the North certainly; and a pretty song of those distant lands coming ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... ye Winds, that from four quarters blow, Breathe soft or loud: and wave your tops, ye Pines, With every plant, in sign of worship wave. Fountains, and ye that warble, as ye flow, Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise. Join voices all ye living Souls. Ye Birds, That, singing, up to Heaven-gate ascend, Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise. Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk The ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... understand a word, Being no Grecian; but he had an ear, And her voice was the warble of a bird,[155] So soft, so sweet, so delicately clear, That finer, simpler music ne'er was heard;[bq] The sort of sound we echo with a tear, Without knowing why—an overpowering tone, Whence Melody descends as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... earth. They have branches of silver and golden apples; they have magical supplies of fruit, they produce wonderful music which sometimes causes sleep or oblivion; and birds perch in their branches and warble melody "such that the sick would sleep to it." It should be noted also that, as Miss Hull points out, in some tales the branch of a divine tree becomes a talisman leading the mortal to Elysium; in this resembling the golden ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... garden, in a thicket of lilac bushes, a wood-dove greeted her with its first morning warble ... and where she vanished, the milk-white sky flushed a ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... back at her over her shoulder to warble, "Why, if you would, Mrs. Atwell," and kept on to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the bell rings, and the curtain rises; and out from the gorgeous scenery glide the actors, greeted with the vociferation of the expectant multitudes. Concert-halls are lifted into enchantment with the warble of one songstress, or swept out on a sea of tumultuous feeling by the blast of brazen instruments. Drawing-rooms are filled with all gracefulness of apparel, with all sweetness of sound, with all splendor of manner; mirrors are catching up and multiplying the scene, until ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... and leaving in March and April. The habits of these birds of the central regions are very similar to those of the eastern, but more wary and silent. Even their love song is said to be less loud and musical. It is a rather feeble, plaintive, monotonous warble, and their chirp and twittering notes are weak. They subsist upon the cedar berries, seeds of plants, grasshoppers, beetles, and the like, which they pick up largely upon the ground, and occasionally scratch for among the leaves. During the fall ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... later Dexie's supple fingers were dancing over the keys in a delightful prelude. Then Lancy's voice filled the room as he sang the well-known song, accompanied by the exquisite notes of the southern mocking bird, and the continuous warble that poured from Dexie's throat during the chorus made her listeners start as if a veritable bird were concealed ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... proves one thing to me, Chappy. You're wiser than the run of 'em, but you've got your weak spot, and now I know what it is: You think in a groove, Chappy, and this time, by looking at the far end of the groove, you can see little old Warble-Twice-on-the-Hudson looming up. And you won't have to look very hard to see it, either.... Well, I see Gulwing has taken a tumble to himself and has gone on a run to look for his umbrella. Suppose we start on our little taxi ride, old ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... arrowing light from clime to clime, Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland rhyme. Warble bird, and open flower, and, men, below the dome of azure Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... walking about in the cloister gardens in holy contemplation heard their seductive songs: the penitents in their cells, mortifying the flesh heard them also. Their alluring warble mingled itself with their murmured prayers; and in the heart of many a monk, who had long since renounced the world and its pleasures, the remembrance of them was gently awakened, and sweet sinful things were whispered ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... or the next perchance see this bird sitting on a stake in the fence lifting his wing as he calls cheerily to his mate. Its notes now become daily more frequent; the birds multiply, and, flitting from point to point, call and warble more confidently and gleefully. Their boldness increases till one sees them hovering with a saucy, inquiring air about barns and out-buildings, peeping into dove-cotes and stable windows, inspecting knotholes and pump-trees, intent ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... country stone wall. June blossomed in the yellow barberry by the road-side, and in the bright rhodora and the pale orchis in the dark woods. June sang in the whistle of the robin swinging on the elm and the cherry, and the gushing warble of the bobolink tumbling, and darting, and fluttering in the warm meadow. June twinkled in the keen brightness of the fresh green of leaves, and swelled in the fruit buds. June clucked and crowed in the cocks and hens that stepped about the yard, followed by the ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... "unprofitably gay," as the poet says it does. "Not even a wheatear!" I said, for I had counted on that bird in the intervals between the storms, although I knew I should not hear his wild delightful warble in such weather. ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... The field blushes not for its blades, though they are such as for immemorial times have spired from the sod; the boughs publish their annual book of many a verdant scroll without apprehension of having become commonplace at last; the bobolink pours his warble in cheery sureness of acceptance, unmindful that it is the same warble with which the throats of other bobolinks were throbbing before there was a man to listen and smile; and night after night forever the stars, and age after age the eyes of women and men, shine on without apology, or the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that, and nobody the wiser. I don't mean open-face coats, neither. Just some good clothes that have got class will do fine. And we can git a shave there, and go to the Frolic and have some regular chow, bo, and listen to the tra-la-la girlies warble whilst we eat. Come on. Be a regular guy ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... the world, yet cannot make a living in Paris, the modern home of art. He is altogether and irretrievably bad—despite the harmony in which his soul is steeped! Think of a hawk outwarbling a nightingale—of a demon flooding the world with melody most divine! We may now expect Mephistopheles to warble "Nearer My God to Thee" between the acts! Trilby can sing no more than a burro. Like the useful animal, she has plenty of voice, and, like him, she can knock the horns off the moon with it or send it on a hot chase after the receding ghost of Hamlet's ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... arose the varied warble of other frogs. The little polliwogs had all been put to bed; and now, came stealing on, the season for silent thoughts. Always anxious to improve her mind, Miss Frog gazed about her to find a subject on which to fasten ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... things could be seen but confusedly; the dark bank of Brierley Park with its giant trees rose up against the sky, there was no gleam on the little river, the outlines of nearer trees and bushes were merged and indistinct; but what a hum and stir and warble and chitter of happy creatures! how many creatures to be happy! and what a warm breath of incense told of the blessings of the summer day in store for them! For them, and not for Dolly? It smote her hard, the question and the answer. It was for her too; it ought to ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... the real music lessons, and taught him how to whistle and how to warble and trill. "Good Cheer! Good Cheer!" intoned the king. "Coo Cher! Coo Cher!" imitated the Cardinal. These songs were only studied repetitions, but there was a depth and volume in his voice that gave promise of future greatness, when age should have developed him, and experience ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... full of cheer, With the warble of birds overflowing, The wind through the fresh grass blowing And ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... birds has grown enthusiastic on the subject, and Bradford Torrey alone among them does it scant justice, when he says this Vireo "is admirably named; there is no one of our birds that can more properly be said to warble. He keeps further from the ground than the others, and shows a strong preference for the elms of village streets, out of which his delicious music drops upon the ears of all passers underneath. How many of them hear it and thank the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... and the sky O'erhead is both mild and serene, Save where a few drops from on high, Like gems, twinkle over the green: And glowing fair, in the black north, The rainbow o'erarches the cloud; The sun in his glory comes forth, And larks sweetly warble aloud. ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... making sweet music in its winding course, ever murmuring a sweet requiem to the dead. Birds warble their matin songs in the branches, and the night dew water the graves with their tears, while the winds sigh over the grassy mounds; and all on earth must make their bed with them, and every step we ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... will swing in the branches, And carol, and whistle and sing. The thrush, who is coming to-morrow, Will a charming solo bring. The wrens will warble in chorus, Rare music, so touching and sweet; The orioles sent for their tickets, And will ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... woods The fiercest beasts; love through the waves attends Swift gliding dolphins and the sluggish whales. That little bird which sings.... Oh, had he human sense, 'I burn with love,' he'd cry, 'I burn with love,' And in his heart he truly burns, And in his warble speaks A language, well by his dear mate conceived, Who answering cries, 'And I ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the birds, the pretty birds, That play among the trees; 'Twould make the earth a cheerless place, Should we dispense with these. The little birds, how fond they play! Do not disturb their sport; But let them warble forth their songs, Till winter cuts ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... to beg of you, and I not only beg of you, but conjure you, by all your wishes and by all your hopes, that the muse will spare the satiric wink in the moment of your foibles; that she will warble the song of rapture round your hymeneal couch; and that she will shed on your turf the honest tear of elegiac gratitude! Grant my request as speedily as possible—send me by the very first fly or coach for this place ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... tops below the clear warble of the purple finch proclaimed that under the fronds twilight had fallen. The vast green surface of the hills was streaked here and there with irregular peaks of darkness dwindling eastward. The ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... other. First one hops a few feet, then the other, each one standing erect in true military style while his fellow passes him and describes the segment of an ellipse about him, both uttering the while a fine complacent warble in a high but suppressed key. Are they lovers or enemies? the beholder wonders, until they make a spring and are beak to beak in the twinkling of an eye, and perhaps mount a few feet into the air, but rarely actually deliver blows upon each other. Every thrust ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... required for coupling-joints of two and a half inches diameter of clear water-way), and levelled to the proper uniform thickness. The leather used is taken from hides of the very best description, perfectly free from flesh-cuts, warble-holes, or any other blemish, and stuffed as high as possible.[M] Not more than four breadths are taken from each hide, and none of the soft parts about the neck, shoulders, or belly are used. No piece of leather is less than ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... barley, watered by many channels from the brook Kelt, are waving and glistening around us. Quails are running along the edge of the road, appearing and disappearing among the thick grain-stalks. The bulbuls warble from the thorn-bushes, and a crested hoopoo croons in a jujube-tree. Larks are on the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... of finding jobs faster than invention can take them away—is not defeatism. To warble easy platitudes that if we would only go back to ways that have failed, everything would be ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... possession of soul and body too, when at last I comprehended the sanctity that true feeling imparts to love, when memories of Clochegourde were bringing me, in spite of distance, the fragrance of the roses, the warmth of the terrace, and the warble of the nightingales,—at this frightful moment, when I saw the stony bed beneath me as the waters of the torrent receded, I received a blow which still resounds in my heart, for at every hour its ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... that's my warble I never heard it before! It's a marvelous atmosphere that makes a rag time tune sound like a nightingale's music. If 'Forty-niner' would join it——Hello! what's up? ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... poets dream On summer eyes by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... which my mind had to conceal a smile and turn its consciousness quickly elsewhere, to prevent an obtrusive reality from dimming this last addition to the picture. The gentle, unmistakable, velvet warble of a bluebird came over the hillside, again and again; and so completely absorbed and lulled was I by the gradual obsession of being in the midst of a northern scene, that the sound caused not the slightest excitement, even internally and mentally. ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... hallowed strain it comes. The bell Of every village o'er the plain doth tell, From its high seat, within the sacred tower Above the house of God, from hour to hour, A joyous song; and in cathedral town The gladsome peals break forth and warble down; While through the city every belfrey gives A glad reply, which seems to say, "He lives! He lives!" The song of praise is heard ascend, Raised to the heavenly throne, in one to blend With angels' song, from many a cottage rung, Where on this day the father ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... to try to be broadly funny, but to undertake the light and graceful business, like a jeune premier. I was, in short, to be the tenor, or rather the tenorino, of that little company for which Mr. Punch beats time with his immortal baton, and to warble in black and white such melodies as I could evolve from my contemplations of the gentler aspect of English life, while Keene, with his magnificent, highly trained basso, ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... smiles and blushes, Steal upon the blooming year; Then, amid the enamour'd bushes, Thy sweet song shall warble clear: Then shall I, too, join with thee— Swell the hymn ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... cried Griffin, stepping on a chair and beginning to beat time with a big paint-brush. "Now then, all together, my children. Warble!" ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... a warble Than you by a sketch in plaster; You wanted a piece of marble, I needed ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... with a chorus something about "Houp, houp, houp a tra-la-la-la!" the singer standing on the top of an empty barrel to warble, and as he set the fashion, so every succeeding singer followed suit, and mounted the "pulpit," as they dubbed ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... I see my trees repair their boughs; And he, the wondrous child, Whose silver warble wild Outvalued every pulsing sound Within the air's cerulean round,— The hyacinthine boy, for whom Morn well might break and April bloom, The gracious boy, who did adorn The world whereinto he was born, And by his ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... laughing with the breeze; Gladness spreads itself around; Songsters warble in the trees; Nature ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... declining day, And bring the hour my pensive spirit loves; When, o'er the mountain flow descends the ray That gives to silence the deserted groves. Ah, let the happy court the morning still, When, in her blooming loveliness array'd, She bids fresh beauty light the vale, or hill, And rapture warble in the vocal shade. Sweet is the odour of the morning's flower, And rich in melody her accents rise; Yet dearer to my soul the shadowy hour, At which her blossoms close, her music dies— For then, while languid nature droops her head, She wakes the ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... the breezes flutter from the land where thou dost dwell, Their wafts o'er the earth, sun-weaned, a grateful coolness throw. Peace be on thee, my beloved, as long as the cushat flies, As long as the turtles warble, as long as ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... grip of an irresistible subconscious complex, Warble scoops up the caterpillar and in an instant has fed him into the gaping maw at the back of that ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... smoothed its feathers in an instant, and, uttering a little note of delight, flew to Emanuel, putting his beak to his lips, as if kissing him, and then, perching on his head, it began a gurgling warble of pleasure, not by any means so varied or so clear as the song of the others, but which pleased Libbie more; for she was always one to find out she liked the gooseberries that were accessible, better than the grapes that were beyond her reach. The price too was just right, so she gladly took ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... the air: They sow not, neither do they reap; Yet kings have not more healthful fare, Nor rest in calmer, sweeter sleep. They have no barns nor hoarded grain, Yet all day long a soft, sweet strain They warble forth from forest tree; Ever happy and ever free, Teaching a lesson dear to me. So free from care, O sylvan band; Fed by a heavenly Father's hand. Your freedom, O ye fowls of heaven, New courage to my soul hath given; I no more can ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... another prominent singer in England, namely, the robin,—the original robin redbreast,—a slight, quick, active bird with an orange front and an olive back, and a bright, musical warble that I caught by every garden, lane, and hedge-row. It suggests our bluebird, and has similar habits and manners, though it is a ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... for the singer failed to find it, until we noted that the bird on the nest seemed to be singing. Then, as we watched, over and over again the bird was seen to lift up its head and pour out the long, rich warble—a most delicious sight and sound. Are such ways usual among birds, or did we chance to see and hear an ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... but you had another argument For staying; how the lovely dale for you Was mountain air and winged warble too. ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... any one came in till he went out, this bird made the vocal explosions to which it owes its name; and the good professor was certain, without ever being mistaken, that somebody was coming to his laboratory. He was notified. My Jaco in Paris has a warble that answers the ringing of the bell. If we have not heard the bell, we are notified by Jaco of its ringing, and, going to the door, find some one there. I have been told of a parrot belonging to the steward of a lyceum which had heard the words ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... scattered oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen are frequent violets found; The robin loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... down the muddy road, avoiding the puddles which the sun turned into pools of liquid flame. He heard the catbirds mewing in the alders; he heard the evening carol of the robin—that sweet, sleepy, thrushlike warble which always promises a melody that never follows; he picked a spray of rain-drenched hemlock as he passed, crushing it in his firm, pale fingers to inhale the fragrance. Now in the glowing evening the bull-bats were soaring ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... steep hill, and approach the hemlocks through a large sugar-bush. When twenty rods distant, I hear all along the line of the forest the incessant warble of the red-eyed vireo, cheerful and happy as the merry whistle of a schoolboy. He is one of our most common and widely distributed birds. Approach any forest at any hour of the day, in any kind of weather, ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... the earliest of the year, By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; The red-breast loves to build and warble here, And little ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... be the meed, that thy song creates a thousand-fold echo! Sweet as the warble of woods, that awakes at the gale of the morning! List! the Hearts of the Pure, like caves in the ancient mountains Deep, deep in the Bosom, and from the Bosom resound it, Each with a different tone, complete or in musical fragments— 5 All have welcomed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... an expression of serious intent on his face. Some cooks sing when they make bread; the Scotchman I told you of in a previous letter invariably trilled "Stop yer ticklin', Jock," and his bread was invariably below par. But this cook does not warble. He only releases the stopper with a crack like a gun-shot, flings the liquid "doughshifter" over the lake in a devastating shower, and commences to knead, swearing softly. Anon the exorcism changes to a noise like that affected by ostlers as they tend their charges, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... Examiners. Providence, however, reserves him for lower things. The Examiners triumph, and the career of the Servant of Society begins in earnest. The position of his parents secures for him an entrance into good houses. He is a young man of great tact and of small accomplishments. He can warble a song, aid a great lady to organise a social festivity, lead a cotillon, order a dinner, and help to eat it, act in amateur theatricals, and recommend French novels to inquiring matrons. His manners ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... wi' flow'rs, Mony tinted, fresh an' gay, An' the birdies warble blythely, For my Faether made them sae; But these sights an' these soun's Will as naething be to me, When I hear the angels singin' In my ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... costs a guinea, as I'm a sinner, To hear the sounds at a public dinner! One pound one thrown into the puddle, To listen to Fiddle, Faddle, and Fuddle! Not to forget the sounds we buy From those who sell their sounds so high, That, unless the managers pitch it strong, To get a signora to warble a song, You must fork out the ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... entrance. The songs of the birds were heard in an aviary hard by, and the branches of laburnums and rose acacias formed an exquisite framework to the blue velvet curtains. Everything in this charming retreat, from the warble of the birds to the smile of the mistress, breathed tranquillity and repose. The count had felt the influence of this happiness from the moment he entered the house, and he remained silent and pensive, forgetting that he was expected to renew the conversation, which had ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... In Saffron robe, with Taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique Pageantry, Such sights as youthfull Poets dream On Summer eeves by haunted stream. 130 Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonsons learned Sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespear fancies childe, Warble his native Wood-notes wilde, And ever against eating Cares, Lap me in soft Lydian Aires, Married to immortal verse Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes, with many a winding bout Of lincked sweetnes long drawn out, 140 With wanton heed, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Clinton, as he vies in his sports with the birds and squirrels; gives chase to butterflies and bees; and races around the house drawing smiles on his antics; darting from sight now and then like a spirit, and making house, and fields and woods resound with his merry warble and glee. ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... fate,—not knowing how weary may be the youth who stands, how false the girl who sings. But he does not dream that his life is to be altered for him, because he has chanced to hear the daughter of a duchess warble through a window. And so it was with this girl. The youth was very sweet to her, intensely sweet when he told her that he would be a brother, perilously sweet when he bade her not to grudge him one kiss. But she knew that she was not as he was. That she had lost ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... Miss Amory's voice in the drawing-room," said Arthur. "Take the bag to a dressing-room, if you please;" and, passing by the porter, he walked straight toward that apartment, from which, as the door opened, a warble of melodious ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... A solitary sorrow best befits Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief. Leave them, O Muse! for thou anon wilt find Many a fallen old Divinity Wandering in vain about bewildered shores. Meantime touch piously the Delphic harp, 10 And not a wind of heaven but will breathe In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute; For lo! 'tis for the Father of all verse. Flush every thing that hath a vermeil hue, Let the rose glow intense and warm the air, And let the clouds of even and of morn Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills; Let the red wine within the goblet ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... could not understand a word, Being no Grecian; but he had an ear, And her voice was the warble of a bird, So soft, so ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... had ended The well-tuned warble of her nightly sorrow, And solemn night with slow sad gait descended To ugly hell; when, lo, the blushing morrow Lends light to all fair eyes that light will borrow: But cloudy Lucrece shames herself to see, And therefore still in ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... except a short call now and then from Elizabeth Hoar, who can hardly be called an earthly inhabitant; and Mr. Emerson, whose face pictured the promised land (which we were then enjoying), and intruded no more than a sunset, or a rich warble ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Again: the songs we warble in the night are those that show we have real faith in. God. Many men have just enough faith to trust God as far as they can see Him, and they always sing as far as they can see providence go right; but true faith can sing when its possessors ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... Violets, I scatter, Now turn into eyes! And thou, sunshiny Water, Of blood take the guise! Let these Hyacinth boughs Be his long flowing hair, And wave o'er his brows, As thou wavest in air! 400 Let his heart be this marble I tear from the rock! But his voice as the warble Of birds on yon oak! Let his flesh be the purest Of mould, in which grew The Lily-root surest, And drank the best dew! Let his limbs be the lightest Which clay can compound, 410 And his aspect the brightest On earth to be found! Elements, near ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... my manners, Simon Renard, Because these islanders are brutal beasts? Or would you have me turn a sonneteer, And warble those ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Nightingales warble about it, All night under blossom and star; The wild swan is dying without it, And the eagle cryeth afar; The sun he doth mount but to find it, Searching the green earth o'er; But more doth a man's heart mind it, Oh, more, ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... Cambridge, puppies, full of the nonsense which they have imbibed from Platitude professors; and this nonsense they retail at home, where it fails not to make some impression, whilst the daughters scream—I beg their pardons—warble about Scotland's Montrose, and Bonny Dundee, and all the Jacobs; so we have no doubt that their papas' zeal about the propagation of such a vulgar book as the Bible will in a very little time be terribly diminished. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... rooms and giddy crowd with an air of utter abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of an orchestra, and, looking about for some time with a vacant air, that showed her insensibility to the garish scene, she began, with the capriciousness of a sickly heart, to warble a little plaintive air. She had an exquisite, voice; but on this occasion it was so simple, so touching, it breathed forth such a soul of wretchedness—that she drew a crowd, mute and silent, around her and melted every ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... The dulled bronze jangle of cow-bells came soothingly to him. An owl called a little way off. Swallows flashed by in long graceful flights. A bat circled near, indecisively, as if with a message it hesitated to give. Once he heard the flute-like warble of a skylark. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... can fly In the bright blue sky, They'll warble a song to me; And then if I'm sad It will make me glad To think they are ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... once been assured of its existence. Our first inquiries naturally enough relate to the tenants of our own species; we then ask what description of quadrupeds are found over its plains, and how far they enlarge or circumscribe the enjoyments and liberty of sovereign man; the birds that warble in its groves, the insects that flutter in its breeze, the fish that tenant its seas, rivers, and lakes, and the plants that wave in wild luxuriance on its hills and dales; and by comparing all these varieties with the natural characteristics of our own country, and contrasting their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... anwyl." So sings the lorn and lonely nightingale, Sighing in sombre thicket all day long, Weaving its throbbing heartstrings into song For absent mate, with sorrowing unavail. And every warble seems to say—"Alone!" While every pause brings musical reply: Sad Philomel! Each sweet responsive sigh Is but the dreamy echo of ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... established rule which proclaimed it an Elijah season, and had chosen to give St. Paul, that night. Thayer liked the oratorio. It seemed to him more original, more inspired, infinitely more human than the other. Moreover, it would be restful to keep silent and let the tenor warble himself to a lingering death. Even fiery chariots become monotonous in time, and an indignant mob affords a welcome variety. He had not heard the tenor since they had sung together in Berlin, two years before, and he was looking forward ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... my hostess's daughter, had a most beautiful voice, and had, of course, enjoyed all the advantages to be derived from Parisian masters. Whilst she was singing, we all observed that a nightingale perched upon one of the neighbouring trees continued silent; the moment she stopped, he began to warble forth his 'wood-notes wild.' This occurred not once, but repeatedly. He was far, however, from showing the same attention to the chevalier. Apparently not entertaining an equally good opinion of the old man's musical talents, from the moment that gentleman began to ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... will you do in Ireland for six months? Remember all my preachments, and never be in spirits at supper. Seriously I am sorry you are out of order, but am alarmed for you at Dublin, and though all the bench of bishops should quaver Purcell's hymns, don't let them warble you into a pint of wine. I wish you were going among catholic prelates, who would deny you the cup. Think of me ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... of our passions: no one ever had to so much perfection the art of moving. This all her family know, and have equally feared and revered her for it. This I know too; and doubt not more and more to experience. How charmingly must this divine creature warble forth (if a proper occasion be given) her melodious elegiacs!—Infinite beauties are there in a weeping eye. I first taught the two nymphs below to distinguish the several accents of the lamentable ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... side were ever changing. Over a sky intensely blue sailed the fleecy April clouds before the soft west wind, and whenever the sun shone out with unveiled splendour, the rays fell with summer warmth. While the tinkling of sheep-bells from the ledges of the rocks came down to me, the passionate warble of nightingales, that could not wait for the night, must have risen from the leafy valley to the ears of the listless shepherd-boy gathering feather-grass where goats would not dare to venture, or eating his dark bread in the sun on the edge of a ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... warble-fly. They deposit their eggs on the legs of cattle during the fall. The animal, licking the parts, takes the eggs into its mouth. These eggs gradually migrate into the gullet, where they hatch and burrow through the tissues, and in the early spring will be found in the region ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... brown thrushes at sunrise in summer After the May-flowers have faded away, Warble to show unto every new-comer How to hush stars, yet to waken the Day: Singing first, lullabies, then, jubilates, Watching the blue sky where every bird's heart is; Then, as lamenting the day's fading light, Down through the twilight, when wearied with flight, Singing divinely, they ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... presence; the fish-hawk makes his nest in the trees on the bank; the small blue heron wades pensively along the margin; and the common wood-birds, such as blackbirds, bluebirds, jays, sparrows and woodpeckers, chatter or warble or scold among the branches. Sometimes the redbird flashes like a living flame through the green tree-tops, or the brilliant orange-and-black plumage of the Baltimore oriole contrasts with the lilac-gray bark of an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... affectionate. Lave us laugh an' sing th' octopus out iv existence. Betther blue but smilin' lips anny time thin a full coal scuttle an' a sour heart. As Hogan says, a happy peasanthry is th' hope iv th' state. So lave us warble ti-lire-a-lay—' Jus' thin Euclid Aristophanes Madden on th' quarther deck iv th' throlley car give a twisht to his brake an' th' chief ixicutive iv th' nation wint up in th' air with th' song on his lips. He wint up forty, some say, fifty feet. Sicrety Cortilloo says three ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... golden, then faded in the purple west—but still he came not! The other dwellers in the oak returned to their homes, yet they brought no tidings of the wanderer. After a while their happy voices were hushed in sleep, the Blackbird ceased to warble his evening hymn, and all were buried in slumber, ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... light at night and shade at noon, Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day. Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune; And as soft waters warble to the moon, Our answering spirits ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... did you ever hear Bonci or Caruso or any of that mob warble? No? Well, then I'll have to tell you. Look at Hermy there. Take a good long gaze at him. And—sh-h-h! After he's had one show at the Metropolitan he'll have that ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... come anon." The servant takes Hugo aside to tell him something, and Hagar changes the cups for two others which are harmless. Ferdinando, the 'minion', carries them away, and Hagar puts back the cup which holds the poison meant for Roderigo. Hugo, getting thirsty after a long warble, drinks it, loses his wits, and after a good deal of clutching and stamping, falls flat and dies, while Hagar informs him what she has done in a song of exquisite ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... is better than yours, isn't she? 'cause she can walk and talk and sing and dance, and yours can't do anything, can she?" asked Jamie with pride, as he regarded his Pokey, who just then had been moved to execute a funny little jig and warble the ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... been with Bowers here? Do you like the old grouch? So do I. I've come to tell him about a new soprano I heard at Bayreuth. He'll pretend not to care, but he does. Do you warble with him? Have you anything of a voice? Honest? You look it, you know. What are you going in for, something ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... of the crab as the little red fish which walks backwards, it contains only three demonstrable errors. Shakespeare does not warble, his notes are not woodnotes, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... inchoate modern sandstone. The trees want thinning; the undergrowth is so dense as to be impenetrable; but the heads are all carefully trimmed, the first time we have seen such industry in Midian. The shade attracts vipers, chiefly the Echis: and I was startled by hearing the gay warble of the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... I feared the tribe of bluebirds were on the verge of extinction from the enormous number of them that perished from cold and hunger in the South in the winter of '94. For two summers not a blue wing, not a blue warble. I seemed to miss something kindred and precious from my environment — the visible embodiment of the tender sky and the wistful soil. What a loss, I said, to the coming generations of dwellers in the country — no bluebird in the spring! ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... top; but for the most part they are clothed in restful green. Overhead, in the summer haze, turkey-buzzards wheel gracefully, occasionally chased by audacious hawks; and in the woods, we hear the warble of song-birds. Shadowy, idle scenes, these rustic reaches of the lower Ohio, through which man may dream in Nature's lap, all regardless of the ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... round low laugh, so incontrovertibly merry and musical that it changed Mr. Simlins' face on the instant. It came to an end almost as soon, but short as it was it was better than the warble of any nightingale; inasmuch as the music of a good sound human heart is worth all the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... language, so far as to be understood when he talks it, had not necessarily an ear for music, in other words, an ear for sounds and for the rhythm of speech; but he was deficient in the organ of tune, phrenologically speaking, though I have heard him warble a Scotch air on the flute with uncommon sweetness—and feebleness—without tonguing, and play two or three other tunes, which had been adapted in the choir of his church, upon glass goblets, partly filled with water and set upon a table before him, as if he enjoyed every touch and thrill,—his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... aptitude for expressing personal independence, recklessness, and jollity; its antiquity—having begun no doubt with Adam—or its modes of production; as, when created grandly by the whistling gale, or exasperatingly by the locomotive, or gushingly by the lark, or sweetly by the little birds that "warble in the flowering thorn." ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... soft and musical tenor, died away and changed to a plaintive whistle, leaving the scene more lonely than ever. For a few moments nothing was to be seen except the endless expanse of wilderness, and nothing was to be heard save the mournful warble of the singer. Then a horse and rider were suddenly framed where the sparse timber opened ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... ceased singing I heard an incessant warble of sweet, though feeble, notes and, looking above my head, saw the composer, his bride, dressed in olive and gold, weaving on the pendulous nest of moss and horse hair, near the tips of the overhanging limb. I then knew why his song had changed and understood ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... Guy Mannering and The Kniqht of Snowdon] happens to find the notes, or some lark teaches Stephens [Catherine (1794-1882): a vocalist and actress who created Susanna in the Marriage of Figaro, and various parts in adaptation of Scott.] to warble the air—we will risk our credit, and the taste of the Lady of the Lute, by preserving the verses, simple and even rude ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... began to weary of himself. Seeing a deer he drew an arrow and stealing silently to the game was just about to shoot, when despite himself the wild, unearthly sound broke forth like a demon's warble. The deer bounded away, and the young man cursed! And when he reached Old Town, half dead with hanger, he was worth little to make laughter, though the honest Indians at first did not fail to do ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... effusions, as he would have called them, are almost ludicrously wanting in grace of movement. We cannot expect in a modern poet the thrush-like improvisation, the impulsively bewitching cadences, that charm us in our Elizabethan drama and whose last warble died with Herrick; but Shelley, Tennyson, and Browning have shown that the simple pathos of their music was not irrecoverable, even if the artless poignancy of their phrase be gone beyond recall. We feel this lack in Wordsworth all the ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... her green mantle blithe Nature arrays. And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes, While birds warble welcome in ilka green shaw; But to ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... living network, while selaginellas and lindsayas, and film ferns, and trichomanes radicans drape the rocks in feathery green, along with mosses scarcely distinguishable from ferns. Little rivulets flash out in foam among the dark foliage, and mingle their musical warble with the deep bass of the torrent, and there are twilight depths of leafy shade into which the sunshine never penetrates, damp and cool, in which the music of the water is all too sweet, and the loveliness too entrancing, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... that they are. Hardly has the sunniest icicle begun to drop tears, when a song sparrow flits to the top of a bush, clears his throat with sharp chirps and shouts as loud as he can: "Hip! Hip! Hip! Hurrah—!" Even more boreal visitors feel the new influence, and tree and fox sparrows warble sweetly. But the bluebird's note will always be spring's dearest herald. When this soft, mellow sound floats from the nearest fence post, it seems to thaw something out of our ears; from this instant winter seems on the defensive; the crisis has come and gone in an instant, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... while the rain has pattered and murmured, have I heard the notes of the Robin and the Wood-Thrush; the Red-Eyed Flycatcher has pursued his game within a few feet of my window, darting with a low, complacent warble amid the dripping leaves, looking as dry and unruffled as if a drop of rain had never touched him; the Cat-Bird has flirted and attitudinized on my garden-fence; the House-Wren stopped a moment between the showers, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... second song I was called on to play, and lifted my poor old flute in air with tumultuous, beating heart; for I had no confidence in that or in myself. But, 'du Himmel!' Thou shouldst have heard mine old love warble herself forth. To my utter astonishment, I was perfect master of the instrument. Is not this most strange? Thou knowest I had never learned it; and thou rememberest what a poor muddle I made at Marietta in playing ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... greatly charmed the audience. Among the early pupils was a child of twelve, whose disposition was so gentle that she received the name of Agnes, and whose ear was naturally so attuned to all sweet sounds, that she was considered capable of being taught to accompany her own warble on the said wonderful instrument. When her parents removed her in due time from school, still she sang God's praises among the echoes of the woods— not only sang herself, but taught to others the hymns she had learned ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... albeit proceeding from a very moist eyelid! How gladly the white smoke arises once more, spirally, from the large chimneys, after having been so long depressed by the heavy atmosphere! and how the massive ivy that covers the gable end, responds to the songs of the birds that warble their evening gladness amongst its gleaming leaves! The face of the dwelling is as cheerful as are the sun, river, mountains and meads, that it looks down upon from its slight elevation. Every leaf of the vine and pyrus-japonica that covers its front, is bedecked with a diamond; ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... that smoothly flow; Ye vernal airs that softly blow; Ye plains, by blooming spring arrayed; Ye birds that warble through ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... as the princess reached home, she placed the cage in the garden, and the Bird no sooner began to warble than he was surrounded by nightingales, chaffinches, larks, linnets, goldfinches, and every species of birds of the country. The branch of the Singing Tree was no sooner set in the midst of the parterre, a little distance from the house, than it took root and in a short time became a large tree, ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... leaf, for a frozen gutter, as for a draught of water in the desert. The green fields and meadows enamelled with painted flowers, how one detests them! how one would rejoice to see them well sprinkled with frost or burnt up to brown in the dry days! the birds, the birds which warble through every sonnet, canzone, sirventes, glosa, dance lay, roundelay, virelay, rondel, ballade, and whatsoever else it may be called,—how one wishes them silent for ever, or their twitter, the tarantarantandei of ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... solemn and affecting, sustained as it was by the pathetic warble of a voice which had naturally been a fine one, and which weakness, if it diminished its power, had improved in softness. Archibald, though a follower of the court, and a pococurante by profession, was confused, if not affected; the dairy-maid blubbered; ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to haunt your memory, and you try again and again to reproduce it, but in vain. It has a kind of gurgling quality, as if the bird were pressing his notes through an aqueous lyre, if such a conception is possible. Besides, I have, on more than one occasion, heard a jay warble a soft, reserved little lay that was continued for many minutes. It sounded very like the song of the brown thrasher, much modulated and partly uttered under its breath—a sort of flowing, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... "Then I shan't warble at all," announced Hippy. "I am a man of few words, but when I say I must have food for my services as a soloist, I mean it. There must be no uncertainty. Do I feed or ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... yet, and the song of countless robins wakes Floyd Grandon. How they fling their notes back at one another, with a merry audacity that makes him smile! Then a strange voice, a burst of higher melody, a warble nearer, farther, fainter, a "sweet jargoning" among them all, that lifts his soul in unconscious praise. At first there is a glimmer of mystery, then he remembers,—it is his boyhood's home. There were just such songs in ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... people have fingered those ardentes sagittas which Love sharpens on his whetstone, and are stabbed, scarred, pricked, perforated, tattooed all over with the wounds, who recovered, and live to be quite lively. Wir auch have tasted das irdische Glueck; we also have gelebt and—und so weiter. Warble your death-song, sweet Thekla! Perish off the face of the earth, poor pulmonary victim, if so minded! Had you survived to a later period of life, my dear, you would have thought of a sentimental ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray |
