"Warble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bird wi' oben bill Did warble on, her vaice wer still; An' as she stood avore me, bound In stillness to the flow'ry mound, "The bird's a jay to zome," I thought, "but when he's dum, Her vaice will come, wi' ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... wood. In the air life is audible—circling unseen. Such serenity must be inhabited by happiness. Ha! there thou art, our Familiar—the self-same Robin Redbreast that pecked at our nursery window, and used to warble from the gable of the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... her over her shoulder to warble, "Why, if you would, Mrs. Atwell," and kept on to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... leaning forward, her face alight. There was nothing visible; but a low, continuous warble, interspersed with a sort of liquid rattle, struck the ear. Taking a bunch of millet stalks from her basket, she directed Thor while he tied them to the bough of a birch that trailed its lower branches to the snow. When they had gone forward ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... said Steve, "but they're down there in the Square now stackin' up drive impedimenta and such, red banners, and so forth, tuning up to warble the hymn to free Russia. Hurry if you want to join out ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... Warble not so, thou nightingale, Upon thy blooming spray, Thy sweetness now will burst my heart, I cannot bear ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... undertake to mention the several kinds of Fowl by which this is done: and his curious palate pleased by day, and which with their very excrements afford him a soft lodging at night:-These I will pass by, but not those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... out Faith's 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
... gave out the first bars of his song. Instantly, almost as if it had been a signal, a great tit-mouse sang out, "Tzur ping-ping! tzur ping-ping!" in metallic, ringing notes; a thrush struck in with his brassy, clarion challenge, thrush after thrush taking it up, till, with the clear warble of robin and higher, squeaking notes of hedge-sparrow and wren joining in, the wonderful first bars of the Dawn Hymn of the birds rolled away over the fields to ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... close beside which peeps forth the lovely veronica, while yonder slope is enameled with bright blue violets, and the little white Mayflower. But no children are seen plucking them. The very herds in the field low in a subdued manner, and the birds warble their gladsome spring song with a depth which belongs only to sacred music. None are moving about the streets. The church doors are open, however, for it is the Sabbath. Come with me to yonder mansion—the tasteful shrubbery, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... you. Well, it will be better than the love-making." Then in a very sweet voice she began to warble amorous Moorish ditties that she accompanied upon the lute, whilst Peter, who was weary in body and disturbed in mind, played a lover's part to the best of his ability, and ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... white handkerchiefs, and white aprons, looked like a wide flower bed. The rustling, when they all rose up to prayer, was like the rise of a flock of doves, and when they chanted the church service, it was the warble of a thousand little brooks. As ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the shadowy aisle, and beneath the dim arches of an ancient abbey. One is a temple of nature; the other a temple of art. In one, the soft melancholy of the scene is rendered still more touching by the warble of birds and the shade of trees, and the grave receives the gentle visit of the sunshine and the shower; in the other, no sound but the passing footfall breaks the silence of the place; the twilight steals in through high and dusky windows; and the damps of the gloomy vault lie heavy on the heart, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... of air brought a new and exquisite scent to him, and through the myrtle bushes he could hear the streams singing their way down to the lake; and when he came to the lake's edge he heard the warble that came into his ear when he was a little child, which it retained always. He heard it in Egypt, under the Pyramids, and the cataracts of the Nile were not able to silence it in his ears. But suddenly from among the myrtle bushes a ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... plaintive and far-away manner. He would half open his wings, and 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," ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... hand. We were interrupted by no one, 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 from a bird. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... voyage, as I said before, we had a host in Mr. Edward Lloyd, but he was under contract not to warble until a certain day which had been fixed in New York, and no doubt his presence had a deterrent effect upon the amateur talent, with the exception of one lady, who came up to Mr. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... its questioner, as a stork does over the nestling newly fed when it looks up at her, and then wheeling round, and renewing its warble, concluded it with saying, "As my notes are to thee that understandest them not, so are the judgments of the Eternal to thine earthly brethren. None ever yet ascended into these heavenly regions that did not believe in Christ, either ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... 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 ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... have heard that larks, in England's realm, Fly from the earth, at morning's golden blush, And fill the whole bright arch with golden songs? And I have reasoned they sung only love, Which teaches them that strangest melody, Which they soar nearest heaven to warble out. Oft have I seen the beams that leave the sun, Embrace within the clouds, with shining arms— And form a splendid arch in earth and heaven, Which shines eternal covenant of Love— Toward which our hearts forever mount and sing, As skylarks mount and sing to morning's flash. Oft have ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... couldn't compute it; and that fine statue, too, on the brink of the pond, with its finger on its lip; (it's no use, is it Jemmy?) the birds won't "hush" for the daintiest bit of marble ever sculptured; nested to their minds; no taxes to pay;—nothing to do but warble. May no sportsman's gun send them quivering ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... spirit of a Frank and the dignity of his master Otho. Yet his sincerity cannot disguise the abasement of his first audience. When he approached the throne, the birds of the golden tree began to warble their notes, which were accompanied by the roarings of the two lions of gold. With his two companions Liutprand was compelled to bow and to fall prostrate; and thrice to touch the ground with his forehead. He arose, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... his heirlooms, laboriously disengaging himself from his kilt. Fitfully throughout this process he would warble snatches of an air which Miss Gallosh ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... monotones of locust, or sounds of katydid—I hear the latter at night, and the other both day and night. I thought the morning and evening warble of birds delightful; but I find I can listen to these strange insects with just as much pleasure. A single locust is now heard near noon from a tree two hundred feet off, as I write—a long whirring, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... It wears its first streak! Ye 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 me, Be mingled and stirred, Know ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... makes light of every difficulty. She felt her voice improving, and when she sang to herself the old songs she was no longer satisfied with the old degree of accuracy. A world of which she had had no suspicion was opening to her; music began to mean something quite different from the bird-warble which was all that she had known. Moreover, she began to have an inkling of the value of her voice. Mrs. Ormonde had scarcely with a word commended her singing, and had spoken of the lessons as something that might be useful, with no more emphasis. The master, of course, ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... and had been expelled from a boarding school for misconduct, but he had a number of schoolboy accomplishments that gave him a tinge of passing glory. He could tie a lot of curious knots in a string. He could make a wonderful birdy warble, and he spoke a language that he called Tutnee. Yan was interested in all, but especially the last. He teased and bribed till he was admitted to the secret. It consisted in spelling every word, leaving the five vowels as they are, but doubling each consonant and putting a "u" ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... not understand a word, Being no Grecian; but he had an ear, And her voice was the warble of a bird, So soft, so sweet, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... rossignolet de mon ame! Would thou wert ever by my side! fain would I keep thee for myself in a golden cage, and feed thee on the tongues of other nightingales, so thou mightst warble every day, and all day long. By some strange congenital mystery the native tuning of thy voice is such, for me, that all the pleasure of my past years seems to go forever ringing in every single note. Thy dear mother speaks ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... 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 ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... still, in patches, cultivated to the very 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 ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... Waramoff's beautiful 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 ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... here, here, here, happy year!" O warble unchidden, unbidden! Summer is coming, is coming, my dear, And all the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... pounce onto 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 ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... armament of a 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 ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... 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 ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... a companionable little fellow and possessed of a cheery voice, his warble in no respects resembles the charming singing of the nightingale, and why he should be mentioned in connection with the sweet midnight songster of the English woodlands is something of a mystery. His song is a mere "clickety click" repeated rapidly several times. His popularity ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... crust of rime Milder spring can soften; Ere to greet the blither time Robins warble often; O'er the undulating wild, Rising like a hardy child, There the Mayflower sweet, unseen, Spreads its leaves ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... have seen the blonde young Gretchen, beauteous and pure at her spinning-wheel, gay and frolicsome before that box looking-glass and that kitchen table,—have heard her tender vows of affection and her passionate outbursts of despair. You have heard the timid Siebel warble out his adolescent longings for the gentle maid in the very scantiest of tunics, as becomes the fair proportions of the stage girl-boy. You have seen the respectable old Martha faint at the news of her husband's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... a miniature avalanche from the spray on which he alighted. The little creature sat still a moment, then lifted and stretched one wing by an odd coquettish movement while it uttered its low musical warble. ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... 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 ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... earliest of the year, By hands unseen are show'rs of violets found: The redbreast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... was a pause. The ticking of the little Swiss clock, the joyous warble of the thrushes, the soft rustle of the trees sounding preternaturally loud. Beatrix Stuart sat white to the lips, with anger, mortification, amaze, disappointment. Then she covered her face with her hands, and burst into a vehement ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... there the last of September, 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 ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... am wretched! The feeble Frank Henley is a poor miserable being! The sun shines, the birds warble, the flowers spring, the buds are bursting into bloom, all nature rejoices; yet to me this mirth, this universal joy, seems mockery—Why is this? Why do I suffer my mind thus to be pervaded by melancholy? Why am I ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... be "fine" or "pretty," it was all one to the birds. The woods were vocal with the cackling of robins, the warble of bluebirds, and the trills of pine warblers. Flickers were shouting—or laughing, if one pleased to hear it so—with true flickerish prolixity, and a single downy woodpecker called sharply again and again. A mocking-bird near me ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... 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 ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... were English letters neglected. Spenser gave the earliest turn to the boy's poetic genius. In spite of the war between playwright and precisian, a Puritan youth could still in Milton's days avow his love of the stage, "if Jonson's learned sock be on, or sweetest Shakspere, Fancy's child, warble his native woodnotes wild," and gather from the "masques and antique pageantry" of the court-revel hints for his own "Comus" and "Arcades." Nor does any shadow of the coming struggle with the Church disturb ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... 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, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... had another argument For staying; how the lovely dale for you Was mountain air and winged warble too. ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... the North, is derived from Italy. The nightingales of English song who make our oak and beech copses resonant in spring with purest melody, are migratory birds, who have charged their souls in the South with the spirit of beauty, and who return to warble native wood-notes in a tongue ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... culture. Its first loud manifestation may be heard in the prose of Carlyle and his school; yet even now its influence has permeated our whole literature so much, that, when reading some of our latest poetry, tones and melodies will come like distant echoes from the groves on the hillsides where warble the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... saw his first deer. Suma had sensed his presence and stood tense and alert while the cub, a few feet in her wake, gazed at the fringe of swaying reeds in the tops of which black birds with red heads sat and trilled a cheery warble. Suddenly the stems parted and the head of a deer, crowned with wide-spreading antlers appeared framed in the mass of green. Warruk was fascinated by the sight of the magnificent animal which seemed to challenge them and expected his mother to hurl ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... not 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... 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
... 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, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... 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 ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... outflow of another fountain to 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 there, where now the blackbird's ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... on earth, She loved this leafy dell, and knew by name All things of sylvan birth; Squirrel and bird chirped welcome, when she came: Yet now, in careless mirth, They frisk, and build, and warble all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... 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 Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... do not see him. We were interrupted by no one, 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 from a bird. ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... a peculiar warble, and at its sound a score of fishes thrust their heads above the surface of the water. Some of them were gold-fish and some silver-fish, but others had opal tints that were very pretty. Their faces were jolly in expression and their eyes, Chubbins thought, must be diamonds, because ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... 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 well-known couplet, ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... wandered. From the time that 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... on, 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
... by harmonious love, Soft as the songs that warble through the grove! Oh! sweeter joys her converse can impart! Sweet to the sense, and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... 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
... fond they play! Do not disturb their sport; But let them warble forth their songs, ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... dazzle and a bird lighted on the branch above her, and poured out such a melodious warble that she was entranced. A bird from some other tree answered. Ah! what delight to eat her fill to measures of sweetest music, and she suddenly ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... 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 ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... which 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 in her Ursuline home—gathering a little choir about her in ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... sunk beneath reproach; In vain affected raptures flush the cheek, And songs of pleasure warble from the tongue, When fear and anguish labour in the breast, And all within is darkness and confusion. Thus, on deceitful Etna's flow'ry side, Unfading verdure glads the roving eye; While secret flames, with unextinguish'd rage, Insatiate on her wasted entrails prey, And ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... streams that smoothly flow; Ye vernal airs that softly blow; Ye plains, by blooming spring arrayed; Ye birds that warble through the shade. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... 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 sprite! and ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... is almost invariably placed in the closest proximity to some mountain-stream, on the rocks and boulders of which the male so loves to warble; sometimes on a mossy bank; sometimes in some rocky crevice hidden amongst drooping maiden-hair; sometimes on some stream-encircled slab, exposed to view from all sides, and not unfrequently curtained in by the babbling ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... lawn, The brier fades, the thistle is withdrawn. Behold, where glass-clear brooks are flowing, The splendor of the myrtle blowing! The garden-tree has doffed her widow's veil, And shines in festal garb, in verdure pale. The turtle-dove is cooing, hark! Is that the warble of the lark! Unto their perches they return again. Oh brothers, carol forth your joyous strain, Pour out full-throated ecstasy of mirth, Proclaiming the Lord's glory to the earth. One with a low, sweet song, One echoing loud and long, Chanting the music ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... 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, and indulged in a short, but spirited, rehearsal under a large ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... hand in good symmetry; then, knocking them together, made such a noise as the lepers of Brittany use to do with their clappering clickets, yet better resounding and far more harmonious, and with his tongue contracted in his mouth did very merrily warble it, always looking fixedly upon the Englishman. The divines, physicians, and chirurgeons that were there thought that by this sign he would have inferred that the Englishman was a leper. The counsellors, lawyers, and decretalists conceived that by doing this he would have concluded ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of one or two bars repeated three or four times, and then another and another, clear and sweet and yet defiant—for the great "storm-cock" loves to sing when rain and wind is coming on, and faces the elements as boldly as he faces hawk and crow—down to the delicate warble of the wren, who slips out of his hole in the brown bank where he has huddled through the frost with wife and children, all folded in each other's arms like human beings. Yet even he, sitting at his house-door in the low sunlight, says grace for all mercies in a song so rapid, so shrill, so ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... I have been all this day to avoid him. He is too disputable for my company: I think of as many matters as he; but I give heaven thanks, and make no boast of them. Come, warble, come. ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... antique pageantry; Such sights as youthful poets dream, On summer-eves 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 native wood-notes wild. And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes with many a winding bout Of linked ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... 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 sire; ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the deeper tones of her companion, and two pairs of dark eyes again met, full of joyous mirth, for they well knew who was deaf, and who had quicker hearing than even the nightingale, which, perched on the green fig-tree outside, was exultingly hailing the sunrise, now with a clear, flute-like warble, now with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in a 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 ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... might 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 ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... I imbibed my full share. After the 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
... from them: Yet for you And me their notes are blown in many a way Lost in our murmurings for that old day That fared so well, without us.—Waken to The pipings here at hand:—The clear halloo Of truant-voices, and the roundelay The waters warble in the solitude Of blooming thickets, where the robin's breast Sends up such ecstacy o'er dale and dell, Each tree top answers, till in all the wood There lingers not one squirrel in his nest Whetting his ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... 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 ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... yeast-jar, 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
... verses have no literary atmosphere about them: they smell neither of the midnight oil nor of that smoke of fame the fumes of which Byron tells us "are frankincense to human thought." They seem to have been written as spontaneously as a bird might warble on a bough, and no bird was ever more careless of auditors than Blake. It was not until twelve years after his death that a selection from his poems was given to the general public by the elder Pickering, and twenty-four years after (eleven years ago) a more general ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... merry grasshopper then sing, The black-clad cricket bear a second part, They kept one tune, and played on the same string, Seeming to glory in their little art. Shall creatures abject thus their voices raise? And in their kind resound their Master's praise: Whilst I, as mute, can warble ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... the pressure; and, cautioning Thames, "not to let the ruffles drop, or they might tell a tale," began to warble the following fragment of a ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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 ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... stole in a heavy throbbing, like the beating of a great, muffled heart, and with a slow and solemn movement, rolled and swept in long chains of sound through the house, till, at last, a clear, sweet, flutelike warble broke in and ran up and down, seeming to wind in and out with the heavy undertone. Hagar came in just then with her flaming candle, and began to rattle about ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... of their summer residences, and have no time to sit on a twig and pour forth solemn hymns, or overtures, operas, symphonies, and waltzes. Anxious questions are asked; grave subjects are settled in quick and animated debate; and only by occasional accident, as from pure ecstasy, does a rich warble roll its tiny waves of golden sound through the atmosphere. Their little bodies are as busy as their voices; they are all a constant flutter and restlessness. Even when two or three retreat to a tree-top to hold council, they wag their tails and heads ...
— Buds and Bird Voices (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Song-sparrows warble on the tree, I hear the purling brook, And from the old manse on the lea Flies slow the cawing crow— (In ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... speak the intelligible language of sublimity itself, and tell of the kindness and protection of our Father who is in heaven. It would not be like the sweet notes of the choral songsters of the grove, for they warble hymns of gratitude to God; not like the boding of the distant owl, for that tells the profound solemnity of night; not like the hungry lion roaring for his prey, for that tells of death and plunder; ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... their zeal. Their sons return at the vacations, from Oxford and 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. Old Rome will win, so you ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... 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 Bulbul—a ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... 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 maid ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... "and now I'll sing you the song of the Barlow family; they won't sing it themselves, but when you learn it, you and I can warble ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... and down the room, overpowered by contending emotions. The severity of her voice, that voice that hitherto had fallen upon his ear like the warble of a summer bird, filled him with consternation. The idea of having offended her, of having seriously offended her, of being to her, to Henrietta, to Henrietta, that divinity to whom his idolatrous fancy clung with such rapturous devotion, in whose very smiles and accents it is no exaggeration to ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 and romantic ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... expression of the bluebird, and his enchanting little warble, could not be better described in a page of writing than the poet has here ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... 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, were in ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... 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 ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... out into the old clearing, or down through the pasture, you find other and livelier birds,—the robins, with his sharp, saucy call and breathless, merry warble; the bluebird, with his notes of pure gladness, and the oriole, with his wild, flexible whistle; the chewink, bustling about in the thicket, talking to his sweetheart in French, "cherie, cherie!" and the song-sparrow, perched on his favourite ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... soft and soul-like murmurs into the lurid reek; for as yet leaves and flowers and blue skies and pure breezes were not,—nothing but whiffs of mephitic and lethal vapor ascending, as from a vast charcoal brazier. No lark or linnet or redbreast or mocking-bird could live, much less warble, in those carbonic times. The world, like a Mississippi steamer, was coaling, with an eye to the needs of its future biped passengers. The embryotic earth was then truly a Niflheim, or Mistland,—a dun, fuming region. Those were the days, perhaps, when Nox reigned, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... my hearers ever stood, in the calm of a summer evening, in Shelley's native land, listening to the lovely warble of the nightingale, making earth joyful with its unpremeditated strains, and the woods re-echo with its melody? Or gazed upwards with anxious ken towards the skylark careering in the "blue ether," far above this sublunary sphere of gross, sensual earth, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... faint; So others, with division, hide The light of sense, the poet's pride: 20 But you alone may proudly boast That not a syllable is lost; The writer's and the setter's skill At once the ravish'd ears do fill. Let those which only warble long, And gargle in their throats a song, Content themselves with Ut, Re, Mi:[3] Let words, and sense, be set by thee. [1] 'Lawes': an eminent musical composer, who composed the music for Milton's ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... 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 boil, Cold as a ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... the task 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 ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sweetening influences of the day and the place, of the merry sunbeams at play amid the leaves of the arbour, of the frank perfume of the honeysuckle, of the warble of the birds before they sank into the taciturn repose of ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have you 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 ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... a 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, from May to ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... [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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... rose, Called Lakshman gently from repose: "Awake, the pleasant voices hear Of forest birds that warble near. Scourge of thy foes, no longer stay; The hour is ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... panting tow'rds the sky, A foil'd ascent, while 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 with anguish audible and brief, And pander-bards ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... Nightingales warble about it All night under blossom and star; The wild swan is dying without it, And the eagle crieth 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— O more, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Bernard dogs. Neither can the benevolence of the good monks be too highly praised. To those accustomed to behold the habitations of man, surrounded by flowery gardens, green and pleasing meadows, rivulets winding and sparkling over their pebbly bottoms, and groves in which songsters haunt and warble, the sight of a large monastery, situated on a gigantic eminence, with clouds rolling at its foot, and encompassed only by beds of ice and snow, must be awfully impressive. Yet amidst these boundless labyrinths of rugged glens and precipices, in the very rudest seasons, as often as it ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... a delightful spring: the birds warble, but you do not understand their song? Well, hear it ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... attire The lily and rose, that neither sow'd nor spun. What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well-touched, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of these delights can judge, and spare To interpose them ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... 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 ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... snow on the 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
... son of a moonsheed (singer in the Mosque), and at night he used to sit and warble to us, with his little baby-voice, and little round, innocent face, the most violent love-songs. He was about eight years old, and sang with wonderful finish and precision, but no expression, until I asked him for a sacred song, which begins, 'I cannot sleep for longing for thee, O Full Moon' (the ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... passes on a terrace overlooking a dark river. Behind the 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 in the almond scent ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... joyously in his veins, felt like singing, and so he began to warble a "fighting song," over and over inviting his ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish |
