"Wren" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Breathe fixed tranquillity. The rivulet Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice In its own being. Softly tread the marge, Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren That dips her bill in water. The cool wind, That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee. Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass Ungreeted, and shall give ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... wren is very small, The humming-bee is less; The ladybird is least of all, And beautiful in dress. The pelican she loves her young, The stork its parent loves; The woodcock's bill is very long, And innocent are doves. In Germany they hunt the boar, The bee brings honey home, The ant lays ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... wonder that all the mother birds in the neighborhood used to warn their children to beware of Timothy Turtle. Did not Long Bill Wren, who lived among the reeds on the bank of Black Creek, have a narrow escape when he was ...
— The Tale of Timothy Turtle • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the Redbird to the Wren, "Don't you wish you could sing so now and then?" "Not me," said the Wren as she shook her Head; "I think his Mamma ought to ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... Danby persuaded Charles to keep them. In 1698 they were barely saved from fire at Whitehall, and finally, by command of William III., they were properly repaired and a room was built at Hampton Court to receive them, by the architect, Sir Christopher Wren. At present they are in the South Kensington Museum, London. Of the original eleven ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... Eagle would catch him, so that as soon as he reached the trees on the mountains he turned himself into a Wren and sought the small bushes under the tall trees. The Eagle saw the change, and at once began turning over and over in the air. When he had reached the ground, instead of an Eagle a Sparrow-hawk chased ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... the title of The Daily Universal Register, the proprietor and printer of which was John Walter, of Printing House Square, a quiet, little, out-of-the-way nook, nestling under the shadow of St. Paul's, not known to one man in a thousand of the daily wayfarers at the base of Wren's mighty monument, but destined to become as famous and as well known as any spot of ground in historic London. This newspaper boasted but four pages, and was composed by a new process, with types consisting of words and syllables ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... lighting near my window, greeted me with a song. The bird sitting on the wall is a wren. Lighting describes without restricting; sitting restricts—limits the application of bird to ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... polyglottis, or buffoon-bird, is never found north of 46 deg. N. latitude in the summer. This bird pours forth all sorts of notes in a short space of time, without any apparent order. The thrush, the wren, the jay, and the robin are imitated in as short a time as it takes ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... harvesters tossing their sheaves; The robin darts out from his bower of leaves; The wren peereth forth from the moss-covered eaves; And the rain-spattered urchin now gladly perceives That the beautiful bow bendeth over ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of men, and even without a friend with thee, thou wouldst not find it solitary. The crowing of the hannaquoi will sound in thine ears like the daybreak town-clock; and the wren and the thrush will join with thee in thy matin hymn to thy Creator, to thank Him for thy ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... analogous to this Indian worship of the snake have survived in Europe into recent times, and doubtless date from a very primitive paganism. The best-known example is the "hunting of the wren." By many European peoples—the ancient Greeks and Romans, the modern Italians, Spaniards, French, Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, English, and Welsh—the wren has been designated the king, the little king, the king of birds, the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... starling will display the red That lights his wings; The wren will know the sweet things said By him who swings And ducks and dips his crested head And ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... Miss Brown. "There were eighteen mounted policemen in here just now. I was talking to the Inspector—such a nice young man, an intimate friend of the late Sir CHRISTOPHER WREN, who, he informs me privately, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... or twice from Litchfield that next summer to fetch Sylvia and to administer comfort to Hannah. He was a quaint, prim little gentleman, neat as any wren, but mild-mannered as wrens never are, and in a moderate way kindly and sympathetic. When the children had haled their lovely sister away to see their rustic possessions, Parson Everett would sit down in a high chair, lay aside ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... "The birds can fly, an' why can't I? Must we give in," says he, with a grin, "That the bluebird an' phoebe Are smarter'n we be? Jest fold our hands an' see the swaller An' blackbird an' catbird beat us holler? Does the little, chatterin', sassy wren, No bigger'n my thumb, know more than men? Jest show me that! Ur prove't the bat Hez got more brains than's in my hat, An' I'll back down, an' not till then!" He argued further, "Nur I can't see What's the use o' wings to a bumble-bee, Fur to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... was as enthusiastic as the girls; she climbed over fallen tree trunks, grubbed among dead leaves, jumped the brook and scaled fences with delightful energy. It was she who pointed out the heron sailing overhead, and noticed the gold-crested wren's nest hanging under the branch of a fir, a little battered with autumn rain, and too high, alas! to be taken, but a most interesting item to go down in the note-books. The girls could hardly be persuaded to tear themselves away from the glory of the woods, and would have spent the whole ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... political old hen had hatched out her various sort of eggs. We expected that her motley brood would afford us some fun. Here we expected to see a young hawk, and there a goslin, and next a strutting turkey, and then a dodo, a loon, an ostrich, a wren, a magpie, a cuckoo, and a wag-tail. But the old continental hen has now set so long, that we conclude that her eggs are addled, and incubation frustrated. During all this time, the Gallick cock is on his roost at Elba, with his ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the Abbey, as seen from the outside, of which I have not spoken—the western towers. These were built as far as the roof by Abbot Islip, who witnessed the erection of Henry VII.'s Chapel. Two hundred and thirty years afterwards Sir Christopher Wren restored Islip's work, and designed the upper portions. The edifice is not yet complete, as the square central tower requires a lofty ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... pipe of wheaten straw, The wren his little note doth swell, And every living thing that flies, Of his ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Arun, too, has heard thy strains And echo 'midst my native plains Been sooth'd by Pity's lute; There first the wren thy myrtles shed On gentlest Otway's infant head— To him thy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... least I can show something for it," said Fred; "they allow me a lark's diet instead of a wren's, I can hold up my head like other people now, and I actually made my own legs and the table's carry me to the window yesterday, which is what I call getting on. But I do not think it is so with mamma. A fortnight ago she used to be up by ten or eleven o'clock; now I don't believe ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... disease,—that of taking away the principal characteristic of a portico, (namely, the pediment), and destroying at once the august appearance which it gives to the building; we find in all the churches of Sir Christopher Wren the campanile to form a distinct projection from the ground upwards; thus assimilating nearer to the ancient form of building them entirely apart from the main body of the church. I should conceive, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... were pulled down: In this room the fine fifteenth century oaken roof, with its carved ornaments, has been preserved, but at Salisbury the roof is modern, with a plaster ceiling. Lincoln's new library, designed by Wren and erected in 1674, is next to this old room. According to a 1450 catalogue now preserved at Lincoln the library contained one hundred and seven works, more than seventy of which now remain. Among the most important manuscripts are a mid-fifteenth ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... slope, from the beginning of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. The seventeenth century is rich in individual geniuses; but they are individual. The level of art is very low. The big names of El Greco, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Vermeer, Rubens, Jordaens, Poussin, and Claude, Wren and Bernini (as architects) stand out; had they lived in the eleventh century they might all have been lost in a crowd of anonymous equals. Rembrandt, indeed, perhaps the greatest genius of them all, is a typical ruin of his age. For, except in a few of his ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... to know better the handling of the keys and the resources of the instrument. In his company, Dr. Upham examined some of the best instruments in London. He made many excursions among the old churches of Sir Christopher Wren's building, where are to be found the fine organs of "Father Smith," John Snetzler, and other famous builders of the past. He visited the workshops of Hill, Gray and Davidson, Willis, Robson, and others. He made a visit to Oxford ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... balustrades. The trees are clothed with green buds and tender leaves; when I throw open my jingling casement I smell the odour of mignonette, and hear the hum of the bees from the flowers against the sunny wall, with the varied song of the throstle, and the cheerful notes of the tuneful little wren. ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... visit the school, and just after the games, while the children were at the tables, the door opened and a young man came in holding a dirty hat in both hands. He sat down near the door and never said a word; only looked at the children. He was evidently a tramp, and Miss Wren and her assistant Miss Kyle were a little frightened at first, but he sat there very quietly and after a few minutes he ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... you doubt it, Hear how Darius reasoned about it. "The birds can fly an' why can't I? Must we give in," says he with a grin. "That the bluebird an' ph[oe]be Are smarter'n we be? Jest fold our hands an' see the swaller An' blackbird an' catbird beat us holler? Doos the little chatterin', sassy wren, No bigger'n my thumb, know more than men? Just show me that! Ur prove 't the bat Hez got more brains than's in my hat. An' I'll back down, an' not till then!" He argued further: "Nur I can't see What's th' use o' wings to a bumble-bee, Fur to git a livin' with, more'n ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... oblong of the pupils of a spotty-eyed cat going stealthily under the comb of the hedge, with her stomach wired in, and her spinal column fluted, to look like a wrinkled blackthorn snag. But still worse is it for that poor thrush, or lintie, or robin, or warbler-wren, if he flutters in his bosom when he spies that cat, and sets up his feathers, and begins to hop about, making a sad little chirp to his mate, and appealing to the sky to protect him ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... will, won't consent to set one aside, which the testator declared on his death-bed was null and void; who refused to come and keep house for a childless old man, who would have treated her in every respect as an honored guest; who flew off like a fussy little wren, when her affluent cousin offered to provide for her; and who, last of all, rejects one of nature's noblemen—the best match in the city—the deuce knows for what; I consider non compos mentis, and quite unable to take ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... manuscript on the table, and also some proofs. They were part of Our Mutual Friend, which was then appearing in monthly numbers; and on that morning a proof of one of the illustrations had arrived from Mr. Marcus Stone. It was the one in which 'Miss Wren fixes her idea.' I was then about sixteen or seventeen, and Dickens said, 'You are setting out in life; mind you always fix your idea.' He asked me what I was going to be, and I said a farmer. He said, 'Better be that than an author or poet;' and after I had had two glasses ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... Crane Express How the Mole became Little Black Sambo Blind The Lantern and the Fan How Fire was brought to Why the Bear has a Short the Indians Tail Echo Why the Fox has a White Piccola Tip to his Tail The Story of the Morning- Why the Wren flies low Glory Seed Jack and the Beanstalk The Discontented Pine The Talkative Tortoise Tree Fleet Wing and Sweet Voice The Bag of Winds The Golden Fleece The Foolish Weather-Vane The Little Boy who wanted The Shut-up Posy the Moon Pandora's ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... young nobleman from a college where he declined to learn, and where he only did harm by his riotous example. Indeed, I believe he nearly set fire to Nevil's Court, that beautiful new quadrangle of our college, which Sir Christopher Wren had lately built. He knocked down a proctor's man that wanted to arrest him in a midnight prank; he gave a dinner party on the Prince of Wales's birthday, which was within a fortnight of his own, and the twenty young gentlemen ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and sunshine all belonged to them, plenty for everybody, no need to get there first and snatch at the best places. There was no hurry, life had just begun. They seemed to have dug a hole in space and curled up cosily inside it. They whispered curious natural things to one another. "A wren is settling on my hair," said Judy: "a butterfly on my neck," said Uncle Felix: "a mouse," Tim mentioned, "is making its nest in my trousers pocket." And the Tramp kept murmuring in his voice of wind and water, "I'm full of air and sunlight, floating in them, floating away... ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... count their lord; but the letters were received with scoffs, and the messengers were kept in prison. At this news Van Artevelde said, "We must make alliance with the English; what meaneth this King Wren of France? It is the Duke of Burgundy leading him by the nose, and he will not abide by his purpose; we will frighten France by showing her that we have the English for allies." But Van Artevelde was under a delusion; Edward III. was no longer King of England; the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... oriole, The linnet and the wren— When shall I see their fairyships, And hear their ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... subsequent voyage of his into those parts (and he made many) was lost upon Olimpia. Captain Mosca, honest man, made a preposterous accomplice. His rusty cloak, the white of his observant eye, the craning of his neck, the very angle of his sword—cocked up for frolic like a wren's tail—spoke the profuse conspirator. He spent money liberally, seemed to have plenty more, had his finger to his nose with every other word. He brought a troop of underlings; a bevy of young women ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... is for her towers, especially, that she is famous. Glorious as St. Mary's is, it certainly does not surpass Magdalen Tower; and it may well be doubted whether the genius of Wren has not excelled both Magdalen and St. Mary's in "Tom" Tower. Gothic purists, of course, do not like it. There is a well-authenticated story of a really great architect who, in the early days of ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... James's, where he was utterly at home. A strange architecture, parsimoniously plain on the outside, indeed carrying the Oriental scorn for merely external effect to a point only reachable by a race at once hypocritical and madly proud. The shabby plainness of Wren's church well typified all the parochial parsimony. The despairing architect had been so pinched by his employers in the matter of ornament that on the whole of the northern facade there was only one of his favourite ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... man, who preferred the peace of an approving conscience to the vain honours of the world—also were connected with the place. I remember being shown a bush in which the conventicle preacher used to hide himself when the enemy, in the shape of the myrmidons of Bishop Wren, of Norwich, were at his heels. That furious prelate, as many of us know, drove upwards of three thousand persons to seek their bread in a foreign land. Indeed, to such an extent did he carry out his persecuting system, that the trade and manufactures of the country materially suffered ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... had flown with his heart-break to some distant copse, two song-sparrows came to persuade us with their blithe melody that life was worth living, after all; and cheerful little domestic birds, like the jenny-wren and the chipping-sparrow, pecked about and put in between whiles their little chit-chat across the boughs, while the bobolink called to us like a comrade, and the phoebe-bird gave us a series of imitations, and the scarlet ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... swamp, where the red-winged blackbird is building her bulky nest between the stems of the cat tail, and the prairie marsh wren is making her second or third little globular nest in a similar place, there is a blaze of yellow from the marsh marigolds which make masses of succulent stems and leaves, crowned with pale gold, as far up the marsh as the eye can reach. ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... king: When I do stare, see how the subject quakes. I pardon that man's life.—What was thy cause?— Adultery?— Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No: The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive; for Gloster's bastard son Was kinder to his father than my daughters Got 'tween the lawful sheets. To't, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers.— Behold yond simpering ...
— The Tragedy of King Lear • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... boldest wing and brightest hues—the denizens of the woods and the waters—of every variety of plumage, habit, song, and size—from the splendid macaw and toucan to the uncouth pelican and the shapeless puffin—from the gigantic ostrich to the beautiful but diminutive golden wren; in short, all the birds which are congregated in this spot come, literally, from every corner of our globe. The great alpine vulture may have sailed above the heights of Hohenlinden; the Egyptian vulture have roosted on the terraced roofs of Cairo, or among the sacred walls of Phylae; the condor, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... scientists had been in the habit of meeting at some place in London to discuss philosophical and scientific subjects for mental advancement. In 1648, owing to the political disturbances of the time, some of the members of these meetings removed to Oxford, among them Boyle, Wallis, and Wren, where the meetings were continued, as were also the meetings of those left in London. In 1662, however, when the political situation bad become more settled, these two bodies of men were united under a charter from Charles II., and Bacon's ideas were practically ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... each fitted with a small, red, goblet-shaped pitcher and seed-rack, in which they are imported from Germany; parrots, macaws, cockatoos, and lories; larks, thrushes, blackbirds; starlings, magpies, and such like—down to the common hedge-sparrow and poor little Jenny wren. ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in life with prudence and sobriety. Nutcracker Lodge was a hole in a sturdy old chestnut overhanging a shady dell, and was held to be as respectably kept an establishment as there was in the whole forest. Even Miss Jenny Wren, the greatest gossip of the neighbourhood, never found anything to criticise in its arrangements; and old Parson Too-whit, a venerable owl who inhabited a branch somewhat more exalted, as became his profession, was in the habit of saving himself much trouble in his parochial exhortations by telling ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm And (when gay tombs are robb'd) sustain no harm; ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... piece of work, or a clerk who will leave a few minutes writing only because the clock has struck the hour, is little better than a money-making machine. Work done in such a spirit did not give us men like Wren or Stephenson. Read their lives and you will see what I mean. If your work is thoroughly and honestly done, you have a right to your own price for it, if you can find a purchaser. You have a right to sell your labour at your own price, but the master has an equal right to buy or to refuse. ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... picture against picture, when he arranges his thoughts under the eaves of his mind. To step into the Art world is to step out of the beaten path of British dreams. Shakespeare is still king, not Rossetti, nor yet Christopher Wren. Moreover, it was the book-reading colonial who led our rebellion against the very royalty that founded the Academy. The public-speaking American wrote the Declaration of Independence. It was not the work of the painting or cathedral-building Englishman. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... met his calmly enough as he said without any preface: "I have come to answer your note. I prefer that my wife should keep out of your circle. You used to have doves about you, who could protect a wren, but they are fluttering away now and your own plumage is appalling." With the phrase his eyes became conscious of her emeralds and her shimmering Cean silks and then travelled to the nude grace of Venus the Plunderer. He faced her violently. "Clodia," ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... thought to welcome the ingenious, sprightly Wren? With his pretty, joyous carol, which should thrill the heart of men? Now that is music, mind you! And how small the throat that sings! Besides, he lets your fruit alone, and lives on other things! Inspired by this trim fairy, many souls will swell the strain: Confound the odious "Robins," ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... the solace of these hills and vales That rise and fall? What is there glorious in the greenwood glen, Or twittering thrush or wing of darting wren? Give me the gusty, Raucous and rusty Call of the sea gull in the echoing sky, The wild shriek of the winds that cannot die, Give me the life that follows the bending sails, Or none ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... Palatinate, was once an ecclesiastical peculiar; it consists of four streets between South and East Streets. In West Street is the Prebendal school at which Selden commenced his education. This street has a very fine specimen of seventeenth-century architecture, built by Wren and dated 1696. There are several good old residences of about this date in ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... he could see all that went on. Ol' Mistah Buzzard began to grin as soon as he saw that tin pail on Buster's neck. Then came others,—Redtail the Hawk, Scrapper the Kingbird, Redwing the Blackbird, Drummer the Woodpecker, Welcome Robin, Tommy Tit the Chickadee, Jenny Wren, Redeye the Vireo, and ever so many more. They came from the Old Orchard, the Green Meadows, and even down by the Smiling Pool, for the voices of Sammy Jay and Blacky the Crow carried far, and at the sound of them everybody ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... an hour; that is, they carried the juices of it to their cells. The humming-bird alone can reach the bottom of the nectary of the honeysuckle; but even here the instinct of the bee is seen. The small birds, such as the wren, make an incision on the outside, near the bottom of the flower, and extract a part of the juices. The bee takes advantage of this opening, and avails itself of what is left. The scent of bees is so acute, that every flower which has a powerful odour can ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... island like a little book Full of a hundred tales, Like the gilt page the good monks pen, That is all smaller than a wren, Yet hath high towns, meteors, and men, And ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... plaintive note of a white-tufted tyrant-flycatcher (Myiobius albiceps) may be heard, concealed near the summit of the most lofty trees; and more rarely the loud strange cry of a black woodpecker, with a fine scarlet crest on its head. A little, dusky-coloured wren (Scytalopus Magellanicus) hops in a skulking manner among the entangled mass of the fallen and decaying trunks. But the creeper (Oxyurus tupinieri) is the commonest bird in the country. Throughout the beech forests, high up and low down, in the most gloomy, wet, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... decorations. If we look at some of the restorations of our churches of the beginning of the eighteenth century , we shall find them a most barbarous mixture of Gothic forms and Grecian and Roman ornaments. Such are the western towers of Westminster Abbey, designed by Wren; the attempts at Gothic, by the same architect, in one or two of his City churches; Gibbs's quadrangle of All Souls' College, Oxford; and the buildings in the same style of Kent, Batty, Langley, etc. To these Strawberry is greatly superior: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... periods for real achievement. But all this is on the human side. Correggio and Titian in painting; Bacon and Bailey in sculpture; Raphael and Michael Angelo in sculpture and painting; and Sir Christopher Wren in architecture,—the works of art of such as these elevate and purify one's thought and feeling. But the profoundest impressions that come to one from travel, come alone from the works of nature. The Crystal ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... observable, that Fowls, for the most part, lay a greater number of Eggs than Birds, even many more than they can sit upon at one time. I have known about thirty Eggs lay'd by one common Poultry-Hen, but it is seldom that any Bird lays more than five or six, except the Wren, and the Tom-tit, and the Pigeon not more than two. Again, the Poultry, contrary to others of the winged Race, are armed with Spurs; and it is observable, that the Cocks of the common Poultry distinguish themselves from ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... certain ominous appearances in a sacrifice which he was offering, advised him to beware of some danger, which threatened to befall him before the ides of March were past. The day before the ides, birds of various kinds from a neighbouring grove, pursuing a wren which flew into Pompey's senate-house [94], with a sprig of laurel in its beak, tore it in pieces. Also, in the night on which the day of his murder dawned, he dreamt at one time that he was soaring above the clouds, and, at another, that he had joined hands with Jupiter. His ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... bird on the farm that didn't dislike Miss Kitty Cat. And there was only one bird family that didn't live in dread of her. That was the Wren family. And they had a good reason for feeling ...
— The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... traceries and hanging bosses of marvellous workmanship of the time of Inigo Jones—designed, some say, by him, for he used to stay at Eversley, hard by, with a friend and fellow-pupil of Sir Christopher Wren. Then comes the long gallery, running the whole width of the building, stored with curiosities, where we used to run races and play hide-and-seek with the children of the house in bygone days, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... kingfishers—the first victim falling to my gun on a day of rain, as it darted across a field to avoid the windings of a brook. I also became a specialist at finding their nests. Birds are so conservative! They are at your mercy, if you care to study their habits. The golden-crested wren builds a nest which is almost invisible; once you have mastered the trick, no gold-crest is safe. I am sorry, now, for all those plundered gold-crests' eggs. And the rarer ones—the grey shrike, that ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... always imagine in the equatorial forest—the song that will set you dreaming while you are basking under palm trees—the actual traveller will find the greatest disappointment of all in that respect. With one or two exceptions, such as the Troglodytes fuscus, a small brown wren which emits sweet musical notes, most birds of the Amazon have grating voices and harsh piercing whistles, or monotonous deep repetitions of two or three funereal notes which are more apt to drive you insane than to fascinate you. Among the most unmusical singers of the lower Amazon ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... her to go to dinner with me and my wife to-day. After all this to my Lord, who lay a-bed till eleven o'clock, it being almost five before he went to bed, they supped so late last night with the King. This morning I saw poor Bishop Wren ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Of the many churches, new and old, that known as Westminster Abbey is the most interesting, being the shrine of England's illustrious dead. It has been a sacred temple and a royal sepulchre for many centuries; but the towers were completed by the famous English architect, Sir Christopher Wren, who also designed St. Paul's Cathedral, the grandest structure of its kind in the country. Old St. Paul's was destroyed by fire in 1665-6. A Christian church has occupied the same site from a very early period. The present edifice is five hundred ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... blocked by mauser-fire from a very ominous, black-looking kopje which stretched down into the valley from the high ground on our left. The guns came into action against this hill at a range of about two thousand yards, and it seemed as if a golden-crested wren could not have escaped if it had been unlucky enough to be there. The shrapnel kept up an almost incessant hail, covering the wooded sides of the kopje with jets of round white balls of smoke, while every ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... Archaeologists, Architects, and others interested in the history of Tectonic art, have been trying without avail to discover what is called "the lost secret of Gothic Architecture"; even Sir Christopher Wren had a try and expressed his opinion that it was lost for ever. They were all looking in the wrong direction, confining themselves to the mists of physical intellectual perception, and could not get beyond that limited range of thought. I propose now, in ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... through the boy's sullen shyness. Still Jim was the first at the chopping block when Annie wanted wood, and when the task took on something of the charm of Tom Sawyer's fence by reason of a winter wren, so tame from overfeeding that he perched himself now and then upon the handle of the ax, Jim fell back with resentment and resigned the ax to Marty Fay who spat upon his hands, doubled up his fists, sparred, ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... happened several years ago at a place called Novastoshnah, or North East Point, on the Island of St. Paul, away and away in the Bering Sea. Limmershin, the Winter Wren, told me the tale when he was blown on to the rigging of a steamer going to Japan, and I took him down into my cabin and warmed and fed him for a couple of days till he was fit to fly back to St. Paul's again. Limmershin is a very quaint ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... that we have possessed among ourselves great architects, although opportunities for displaying their genius have been rare. This the fate and fortune of two Englishmen attest. Without the fire of London we might not have shown the world one of the greatest architects, in Sir CHRISTOPHER WREN; had not a St. Paul's been required by the nation he would have found no opportunity of displaying the magnificence of his genius, which even then was mutilated, as the original model bears witness to the world. That great occasion served this noble architect to multiply his powers in other ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... slightest breeze. The little grey squirrels awoke, and looked sleepily out from the leafy screen that shaded their mossy nest. The early notes of the wood-thrush and song-sparrow, with the tender warbling of the tiny wren, sounded sweetly in the still, dewy morning air; while from a cedar swamp was heard the trill of the green frogs, which the squirrels thought very pretty music. As the sun rose above the tops of the trees, the mist rolled off in light fleecy clouds, and soon was lost in the blue sky, or lay in large ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... and the preservation of birds, concerning which he was rabid. His liking for birds began with Miss Sally Ruth's pigeons and the friendly birds in our garden. And as he learned to know them his love for them grew. I have seen him daily visit a wren's nest without once alarming the little black-eyed mother. I have heard him give the red-bird's call, and heard that loveliest of all birds answer him. And I have seen the impudent jays, within reach of his hand, swear at him unabashed and unafraid, because he ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... vertebrae by the slightest force, without loss of blood or evident pain to the animal, and sometimes, as it would seem, from the effect of fear alone) within a little time, like the mutilated claw of a lobster, begins to renew itself. They are produced from eggs about the size of the wren's, of which the female carries two at a time, one in the lower, and one in the upper part of the abdomen, on opposite sides; they are always cold to the touch, and yet the transparency of their bodies gives an opportunity of observing that ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... a French ear conveyed the idea of 'chicken,' or of the young of birds in general. (Is it from 'pousser,' as if they were a kind of budding of bird?) Everybody seems to agree in feeling that this is a kind of wren among the dabchicks. Bewick's name, 'Little Gallinule,' meaning of course, if he knew it, the twice-over little Gallina;—and here again the question occurs to me about its voice. Is it a twice-over little crow, called a 'creak,' or anything like the Rail's more provokingly continuous ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... days are come, The saddest of the year, Of wailing winds and naked woods, And meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, The autumn leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, And to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, And from the shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow Through all ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... grieves her deck for the sailors whose hearty brawls are done! Only the wandering gull brings word of the open wave, With shrill scream at her taffrail deriding her alien grave. Around the keel that raced the dolphin and the shark Only the sand-wren twitters from barren dawn till dark; And all the long blank noon the blank sand chafes and mars The prow once swift to follow the lure ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... bird-nesting, so seldom was it trodden save by a few farm-labourers at early morning or when the day's work was over. Hubert passed with a glance of recognition the bramble in which he had found his first spink's nest, the shadowed mossy bank whence had fluttered the hapless wren just when the approach of two prowling youngsters should have bidden her keep close. Boys on the egg-trail are not wont to pay much attention to the features of the country; but Hubert remembered that at a certain meadow-gate he had always rested for a moment to view the valley, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... went to see various other curious places in and near these two great towers. One of these places was called the model room, where there is a very large model of a plan for a church which Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who built St. Paul's, first designed. By most good judges, it is thought to be a better design than the one which was finally adopted. There were, besides this, various other curious models and old ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... Kenelm, gravely, "that your change of dress betokens the neighbourhood of those pretty girls of whom you spoke in an earlier meeting. According to the Darwinian doctrine of selection, fine plumage goes far in deciding the preference of Jenny Wren and her sex, only we are told that fine-feathered birds are very seldom songsters as well. It is rather unfair to rivals when you ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a Jenny Wren, now," said Pete. "Look at the bogh smiling in his sleep. Just like a baby mermaid on the egg of a dogfish. But where's the ould man at all? Has he seen it? We must have it in the papers. The Times? Yes, and the 'Tiser too. 'The beloved wife of Mr. Capt'n ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... that's a damask table-cloth belonging to Jenny Wren; look how it's stained with currant wine! It's very bad ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... trouble briefly to tell me, whether you believe that the plainer head and less bright colours of female chaffinch, the less red on the head and less clean colours of female goldfinch, the much less red on the breast of the female bullfinch, the paler crest of golden-crested wren, etc., have been acquired by them for protection? I cannot think so, any more than I can that the considerable differences between female and male house-sparrow, or much greater brightness of male Parus caeruleus ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... popped Jenny Wren, and she was so mad that she couldn't sit still a second. My, my, my, how she ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Mocker • Thornton W. Burgess
... seemed tempted to let fall a sapient proverb of anything but a funereal tone. On stepping into the kitchen and seeing the provision that had been made for a repast, he did indeed intimate his intention of assisting at the ceremony in the language of the time-honored wren who cried "I helps" as she let a drop of water fall into the sea. At this moment the clergyman from the chapel-of-ease on the Raise arrived at the Moss, and Matthew prepared to put ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... shepherdesses gather flowers for garlands. Gloomy caves appear, surrounded by hawthorn and holly that "outdares cold winter's ire," and sheltering old hermits, skilled in simples and the secret power of herbs. Sometimes the poet describes a choir where the tiny wren sings the treble, Robin Redbreast the mean, the thrush the tenor, and the nightingale the counter-tenor, while droning bees fill in the bass; and shows us fairy haunts and customs with a delicacy only equaled by ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... and all would go right. She, who was ever patient in illness, tried hard to bear up and bear on. But the dreadful sickness increased and increased, till the very sight of food occasioned nausea. "A wren would have starved on what she ate during those last six weeks," says one. Tabby's health had suddenly and utterly given way, and she died in this time of distress and anxiety respecting the last daughter of the house she had served so long. Martha tenderly waited on her ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... she recited from memory, looking very wild and lovely. The Toast was silver-cake, with Veerie wine. Pirlaps himself, although he was toastmaster, responded to a Toast called "Sara's Questions—Bless Their Hearts!" and his Toast was chocolate-cake, with Wren wine. The Snoodle was too young to make a speech, but they had taught him to respond to a simple little Toast, "On Being Older than Snoodles," and it was very charming to hear him lisp, "How do you do, Toast?" like the others. His Toast was a plum-cake; and you should have seen how pleased ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... pleasant hush all about. The bubbling ecstasy of a bobolink floated above the grasses of a meadow, and near at hand a wren hopped about in the alders and chirped dozy notes. Peace and restfulness brooded. The man at the brook leaned low and thrust his head into the water and then rose and shook the drops from his thick thatch of brown hair. He did ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... wrestle wren wrist writing wreak wrong wrote wreck wrest writ wring wraith awry write wrought wrath wretch wreath ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... Fox in 1520, which almost fills the eastern end of the choir. This fine work had been more or less mutilated through the iconoclastic zeal of ultra-reformers, who deprived it of the sculptured figures in the niches. It was further ill-treated during the architectural supremacy of Sir Christopher Wren and his school, when the smaller canopies and other projections were pared off to make a level surface for the classical piece of woodwork placed in front of it. When this incongruous structure was removed and the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... partridge from the heather, and flew low. Here, too, the Doctor flushed a "White's thrush," close to an outlying belt of forest, and got into a great state of excitement about it. "The only known bird," he said, "which is found in Europe, America, and Australia alike." Then he pointed out the emu wren, a little tiny brown fellow, with long hairy tail-feathers, flitting from bush to bush; and then, leaving ornithology, called their attention to the wonderful variety of low vegetation that they were riding ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... leaving are— Excitement. Foreboding of Wren's and fellows there. Sorrow at leaving Eton. Pride as being an old Etonian. Certain pleasure in leaving for many trivial matters. Feeling of importance. Frightful longing for ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fallen out over a question of space. It was Silver's opinion that Wren's nest ought to have been built a foot or two further to the left. He stated baldly that he had not room to breathe, and requested the red-headed one to ease off a point or so in the direction of his next-door neighbour. Wren had refused, and, after a few moments' chatty ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Church, next arose, and said that he came there intending to say nothing, but the scene moved him to a few words. He remembered once standing in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, and seeing therein the name of the architect, Sir Christopher Wren, inscribed, and under it this inscription: "Stranger, if you would see his monument look about you." And the thought came to him that if you would see the monument of him who lies there, look about you and see it built in ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... verk'i, -o; funkcii. worm : vermo. wormwood : absinto. worn (out) : eluzita. worry : maltrankvil'igi, -igxi; cxagrenadi, gxenadi. worship : adori; Diservo; kulto. worth : ind'o, -eco, valoro. wound : vundi. wrap : faldi, envolvi. wreath : girlando. wreck, (ship-) : sxippereo; periigi. wren : regolo. wrestle : lukti. wretched : mizer(eg)a. wring : tordi. wrinkle : sulketo, sulkigi. wrist : manradiko. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... mentioned are not the only visitors whose society our friends enjoy. The swallows gracefully skim through the air, and greet them with their merry voices. The wren often favours them with one of his sweetest melodies, and the blue-bird flies around the corner to sing a song on the walnut-tree. He has a curious little nest of his own, hidden away under the eaves. The cat-birds, of course, are always near, as they ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... no very eminent painters or sculptors, though foreign artists, such as Rubens and Van Dyck, were welcomed there. Among architects the most famous was Sir Christopher Wren, who did much to popularize the Renaissance style of building. [31] A great fire which destroyed most of old London during the reign of Charles II gave Wren an opportunity to rebuild about fifty parish churches, as well as St. Paul's Cathedral. His tomb in the crypt of the cathedral ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... and we could not; but the Lieutenant of the Tower would send for him to his lodgings, if we would: so we put it off to another time. To Captain Cocke's to dinner; where Lord Brouncker and his lady, Matt. Wren, and Bulteale, and Sir Allan Apsly; the last of whom did make good sport, he being already fallen under the retrenchments of the new Committee, as he is Master Falconer; which makes him mad. With my Lord Brouncker and his mistress to the King's Playhouse, and there saw "The Indian ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... is said to less in size than the wren. The bill is thick; the upper parts of the body brown, and the under parts white. The tail is forked, and each feather is tipped with ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... Hunt to the end. It was mainly through him that Hunt came to Pisa in June, 1822, to join with Byron in 'The Liberal'. But he doubted whether the alliance between the "wren and the eagle" could continue ('Life of Shelley', vol. ii. p. 519). Keats, on the other hand, lost his faith in Hunt. In a letter to Haydon (May, 1817), speaking ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... of old St. Paul's, the morning star and focal beacon of England through centuries and dynasties, from old Augustine and Mellitus, up to those Paul's Cross sermons whose thunders shook thrones, and to noble Wren's masterpiece of art, he asked, 'Whither all this? Coleridge's dictum, that a cathedral is a petrified religion, may be taken to bear more meanings than one. When will life return to this ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... walled gardens run into wild confusion, and little neglected and dismantled shrines, and crosses here and there, with long wreaths of rose and honeysuckle trailing over them, and birds' nests in curious places. My Viscount laughed with a new pleasure when I showed him the wren's bright eye peeping out from her nest, and he could not think how I knew the egg of a hedge-sparrow from that of a red-breast. Even he had never been allowed to be out of sight of his tutor, and he ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pyramidal roof and belfry (to serve as a lookout station), has just been built. A stage ahead, architecturally, of the log meeting-house with clay-filled chinks, thatched roof, oiled-paper windows, earthen floor, and a stage behind the charming steeple style made popular by Sir Christopher Wren, and now multiplied in countless graceful examples all over New England, the Old Ship is entirely unconscious of the distinction which is awaiting it—the distinction of being the oldest house for public worship in the United States ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... White took from Red Oak led the posse to the camp on Pryor Creek. It was on a ledge on a hillside. The fires had been built under a jutting rock. Only a bush wren could have hidden its nest more completely—Bruce had been lucky in spying it out. He told White that there was but one unprotected approach—a long unused trail that led down from the cliff-top and ended in a briar tangle fifty feet above the ledge. That trail, it ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... wags, a thing of jest And open scorn; the very pipits mock it; A jenny wren, I'm told, has built her nest In one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... a Trumpet, your merit to raise; V is a Vulture, on other birds preys. W a Wren, that ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... finished supper when old Bob Wren, a bachelor who farmed about two miles from us, arrived. He used to come over every mail-night and bring his newspaper with him. Bob could n't read a word, so he always got Dad to spell over the paper to him. WE did n't ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... were styled, and then of the combined forces formed in 1682 by the union of this organisation and the "Duke of York's Company." This was the house into which Nance Oldfield came as a modest debutante. It had been built from the designs of Wren, to replace the old theatre ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... a wooer's gift, A stone which glimmers in the shade Of yonder silent colonnade, Over against the slates that hold Marie in lines of slender gold, A token wrought by fictive fingers, A garland, last year's offering, lingers, Hung out of reach, and facing north. And lo! thereout a wren flies forth, And Gertrude, straining on toetips, Just touches with her prayerful lips The warm home which a bird unskilled In grief and hope knows how ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... him once again, There in the throng with his wife (An eagle matched with a pitiful wren!) Bitter in sooth has his portion been— Chained to a clog for life! Strange that our eyes as of yore should meet And hold each other a breathless space, That the dawn-light of old should illumine ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... to the large cycle of tales in which is represented a war between the winged creatures of the air and the four-footed beasts. In these stories, as Grimm says in his notes to No. 102, "The Willow-Wren and the Bear," "the leading idea is the cunning of the small creatures triumphing over the large ones .... The willow-wren is the ruler, for the saga accepts the least as king as readily as the greatest." ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... hawk and the hummingbird, the spider and the honey bee, the turkey gobbler and the mocking-bird, the butterfly and the eagle, the ostrich and the wren, the tree toad and the elephant, the giraffe and the kangaroo, the wolf and the lamb should all be the descendants of a common ancestor? Yet these and all other creatures must be blood relatives if man is next of ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... at the church of St. Alban, Wood Street, Cheapside. This church was rebuilt by Sir C. Wren, and finished 1685; showing that the hour-glass was in use subsequent ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... close cabin to the airy deck. The graceful spire of old St. Michael's cuts sharply against the sky, reminding you, if you have visited the suburbs of London, of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, that fine specimen of Sir Christopher Wren's style, after which it was modeled. The old customhouse looks just as it did when Governor Rutledge had the tea locked up in its store-rooms, and the gray moss droops in weeping festoons from the live-oaks of beautiful Magnolia. I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Yang-tse-kiang; the Southern lady suspected her of literary gifts; the architect walked with her through the woods to the rustic shelter where the Vicomte had kissed her hand, and told her that he now comprehended the feelings of Christopher Wren when he conceived St. Paul's Cathedral, of Michael Angelo when he painted the Sistine Chapel. Even the serious young lawyer succumbed, though not without a struggle. When he had first seen Miss Leffingwell, he confessed, he had thought her ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Front Court to the staircase of the Octagon Room (the original entrance to the Observatory as erected by Sir Christopher Wren), a small porch-shelter has been often desired. I proposed to fix there a fan-roof of quadrantal form, covering the upper flat stone of the external steps.—On a critical examination of the micrometer-screws of the Transit Circle it was found that the corrections, which range from -1 deg.38" to ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... used as a fortress in the Civil Wars, and was considerably battered. The first Duke of Devonshire about the year 1700 rebuilt the mansion, employing the chief architects, artists, designers, and wood-carvers of his time, among them Sir Christopher Wren. In the grounds, not far from the bridge over the Derwent, is the "Bower of Mary Queen of Scots." There is a small, clear lake almost concealed by foliage, in the centre of which is a tower, and on the top a grass-grown garden, where are also several fine trees. ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... trees. In my garden this Pinus is never without them, but I never saw a bird perch on Thuja occidentalis or Juniperus sabina, although the thick foliage of these latter trees affords birds a better shelter than the loose leafage of other trees. Not even a wren ever finds its way to one of them. Perhaps the scent of the Thuja and the Juniperus is offensive to them. I have spoiled one of my meadows by cutting away the bushes. It formerly bore grass four feet high, because many umbelliferous plants, such as Heracleum spondylium, Spiraea ulmaria, Laserpitium ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... 'Doesn't matter,' the wren replied; 'birds is everywhere, and always hungry. Wherever you drop crumbs you may be sure they'll be acceptable. Remember that. Now, is there anything ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... it. The clustered pillars really encased the Norman, as they have done in other cathedrals similarly treated. At Winchester, William of Wykeham cut the massive Norman into Perpendicular order, but at St. Paul's an outer encasement covered the Norman, as Wren showed when he wrote his account of the ruined church. A steeple was erected in 1221. There was a great ceremony at the rededication, by Bishop Roger Niger, in 1240, the Archbishop of Canterbury ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... one toil at the great task with this hurry and tumult of birds just outside the open window? I hear the Thrush, and the Blackbird, that romantic liar; then the delicate cadence, the wiry descending scale of the Willow-wren, or the Blackcap's stave of mellow music. All these are familiar—but what is that unknown voice, that thrilling note? I hurry out; the voice flees and I follow; and when I return and sit down again to my task, the Yellowhammer trills ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... of birds most choyce, To doe her best shall straine her voyce; And to this bird to make a Set, The Mauis, Merle, and Robinet; The Larke, the Lennet, and the Thrush, That make a Quier of euery Bush. But for still musicke, we will keepe The Wren, and Titmouse, which to sleepe 110 Shall sing the Bride, when shee's alone The rest into their chambers gone. And like those vpon Ropes that walke On Gossimer, from staulke to staulke, The tripping Fayry tricks shall play The euening ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... degradation. And then the Renaissance of pagan types, from which the Gothic had derived its being by a rational development, was by the revivalists of those days hotch-potched into a more or less homogeneous mass, which even the genius of Wren ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... All this will be clearly and logically explained by the professors of the academies. They will further add that after the accession of the Stuarts the building art gradually declined, with only a few flashes of brilliant light in the works of Inigo Jones and Wren. The Commonwealth was prudish in art as in manners, and the Restoration was a reign of revel and wild license. The social worlds of William and Mary and of Queen Anne, stiff, starched, and formal, left their impress upon the buildings of their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... verses ... mad and ribald ... often tedious ... but with wild flashes of beauty interwoven through his poems ... the poem about his mistress's sparrow ... the elegy on its death ... where he prayed God to give it the little wren of the Virgin Mary, as a wife, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... is none here but we two? When didst thou see the starveling schoolmaster? That rat, that shrimp, that spindle-shank, That wren, that sheep-biter, that lean chitty-face, That famine, that lean envy, that all-bones, That bare anatomy, that Jack-a-Lent, That ghost, that shadow, that moon in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... we no residential parrot, though cockatoos are plentiful; no scrub turkey though the megapode scampers in all directions in the jungle; no common black crow, nor butcher bird, though other shrikes (the magpie for instance) come and go; no wren, no finch, no lark? Scrub turkeys (TALLEGALLA LATHAMI), mound builders like the megapode, are plentiful all along the coast, at certain seasons visiting the scrub which margins the opposite beach, but they are not found on these islands. The blue mountain parrot (red-collared lorikeet), the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... sturdier mediums employed in the making of pictures evolving a greater severity of form and a commendable rigidity of line. He has learned like so many moderns that the ruled line offers greater advantages in pictorial structure. You shall find his approach to the spirit of Christopher Wren is as clear and direct as his feeling for the vastiness of New England speechlessness. He has come up beyond the dramatisation of emotion to the point of expression for its own sake. But he is nevertheless to be included among the arrived water-colorists, because ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... presented a petition to the Archbishop of Canterbury, stating that the palace was in a ruinous condition, and was too large for the revenues. A number of commissioners, amongst whom were Sir John Vanbrugh and Sir Christopher Wren, were accordingly appointed to examine into the matter and report upon it. The purport of their report was that, after taking down "the bakehouse and the pastry-house, which adjoined to the kitchen, and all the buildings to the northward of the great dining-room, there would be left between ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... (day's herald) got on wing, Bidding each bird choose out his bough and sing. The lofty treble sung the little wren; Robin the mean, that best of all loves men; The nightingale the tenor, and the thrush The counter-tenor sweetly in a bush. And that the music might be full in parts, Birds from the groves flew with right willing hearts; ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... centre of the front hall, and turning right and left on the story above. It is said that after the year eighteen hundred the quality of this decoration sensibly declined; it was soon replaced by more prosaic forms, and now the tools no longer exist that can make it. Sir Christopher Wren and Inigo Jones would have admired it. America, excepting in New York City, escaped the false rococo taste of the ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... finding a house where food can be had and lodging; whereas, such is the noble desolation of our magnificent country, that in many a direction for a thousand miles, I will engage a dog shall not find shelter from a snow-storm, nor a wren find ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... see how long it takes to carry out well-known and wanted improvements—take the Thames Embankment for example. Originally suggested by Wren after the great fire of London in 1666, and afterwards by William Paterson, the founder of the Bank of England, about 1694, the matter slumbered until 1767, when the Corporation of the City of London embanked one mile of the river. The question arose spasmodically ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... this morning by a beautiful little bird, not much larger than our gold-crested wren. I hailed it as a bird of good omen—a little messenger sent to bid us welcome to the New World, and I felt almost a childish joy at the sight of our little visitor. There are happy moments in our lives when we draw the greatest pleasure ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... daughter, yet her reserve and quietness prevented the fulfilment of their wishes. Weeks and months rolled on; the old house had been repaired and beautified. Mr. Cramp, Sarah's law agent and 'man of business,' advised her to let the house, of which she occupied about as much as a wren could fill of the nest of an eagle; and, strangely enough, finding that the house of her childhood was to let, she took it, removing thither all the furniture which her father made her promise never ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Wren's Dome has whispered with man's prayer Have angels leaned to wonder out of Heaven At such uprush of intercession given, Here where to-day one soul two nations share, And with accord send up thro' trembling air Their vows to strive as Honour ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... famous, for the school was begun as long ago as the time of Henry VIII, who was the founder. The visitor may see the name of the poet, Dryden, on one of the desks; he was a pupil there, as were also Sir Christopher Wren, the architect; Ben Jonson; Southey, the poet; ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... names, and nothing more—King Street, Ryder Street, York Street, Jermyn Street, the spelling of which seems to have puzzled last century writers greatly, for they wrote it "Jermyn," "Germain," "Germaine," and even "Germin." St. James's Church, Wren's handiwork, is all that remains from the age of Anne, with "the steeple," says Strype, fondly, "lately finished with a fine spire, which adds much splendor to this end of the town, and also serves as a landmark." Perhaps it sometimes served as a landmark to Richard Steele, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... period other philosophers had been occupied with the same subject. Sir Christopher Wren had many years before endeavored to explain the planetary motions "by the composition of a descent toward the sun, and an impressed motion; but he at length gave it over, not finding the means of doing it." In January, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... said, 'when I tell them that within a few minutes' walk of Baker Street Station, and the incessant din of Marylebone Road, such birds as the cuckoo, flycatcher, robin and wren have reared their young.'"—Observer. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... bleat about the Middle Ages," Gilbert exclaimed. "I'm surprised to hear you, Roger, talking like that fat papist, Belloc. One 'ud think to hear you talking that no one ever did shoddy work until the nineteenth century, but Christopher Wren let a lot of shoddy stuff into St. Paul's Cathedral. There were fraudulent contractors then, and jerry-builders, just as there are now, and there probably always will be people who give a bad ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... precious information; to Theodore Flournoy, of Geneva, to Canning Schiller of Oxford, and to my colleague Benjamin Rand, for documents; to my colleague Dickinson S. Miller, and to my friends, Thomas Wren Ward, of New York, and Wincenty Lutoslawski, late of Cracow, for important suggestions and advice. Finally, to conversations with the lamented Thomas Davidson and to the use of his books, at Glenmore, above Keene Valley, I owe more obligations than ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... of the day was the sight of the winter wren, the first time he had been seen this winter. He was working among the stumps of trees at the brink of the river, under the ice which had been left clinging to the trees when the high water receded. ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... "Correct!" said Long Bill Wren. "And you want to avoid that. Maybe you've noticed that my wife and I built our nest off the ground. We fasten it to the reeds so we'll be dry, no matter if ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... verse. That in the name of all inspired souls— From Homer the great thunderer, from the voice That roars along the bed of Jewish song, And that more varied and elaborate, Those trumpet tones of harmony that shake Our shores in England—from those loftiest notes, Down to the low and wren-like warblings, made For cottagers and spinners at the wheel And sunburnt travellers resting their tired limbs Stretched under wayside hedgerows, ballad tunes Food for the hungry ears of little ones And of old men who have survived their joys— 'Tis just that in behalf of these, the works, And of ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... song on the spinet quite by myself, one afternoon. And the dainty Phoebe bird, and the wren with her few small notes. Do you know, I think the wren a Quaker bird, only her gown is not quite gray enough. We went out to great-aunt's farm one day, and oh, the birds! Some had on such dazzling plumage and flew so swiftly. We went to the woods and found trailing ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... wren may be taken by striking the bough upon which it is sitting, sharply, with a stone or stick. The timid bird immediately drops to the ground, and generally dead. As their skins are tender, those who want them for stuffing will find this preferable to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... such fishing anywhere, they believed; in fact, everything the country boy could wish for was to their hand. Collect?—I should think they did: eggs, from those of the birds of prey to the tiny dot of the golden-crested wren; butterflies and moths, from the Purple Emperors that were netted as they hovered over the tops of the scrub oaks, and hawk-moths that darted through the garden, the only level place about the bottom of the glen. Fishing too—the artist who came down was only too glad to make them ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... hazard of flight was manifest, for he could see now that the face of the country outside on the level was spread as with a tablecloth, its white surface undisturbed, ready for the impress of so light an object as a hopping wren. To make his way across it would be to drag his bonds behind him, plainly asking the world to pull him back. Obviously there must be a more tactical retreat, and without more ado he followed the river's course, keeping ever, as he could, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro |
