"Blackbird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on where you are going," said Professor Jim Crow, for it was the old blackbird who had stopped the little rabbit, ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... torturous and heart-rending treatment to their poor slaves of women, beastly and murderous brutality to their poor children. There is a terrible reckoning coming for the "Gipsy man," who can chuckle to his fowls, and kick, with his iron-soled boot, his poor child to death; who can warm and shelter his blackbird, and send the offspring of his own body to sleep upon rotten straw and the dung-heap, covered over with sticks and rags, through which light, hail, wind, rain, sleet, and snow can find its way without let or hinderance; ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... bright morning in May. The white swans were sailing tranquilly to and fro over the silver basin, and the mavis, blackbird, and nightingale, which haunted the groves surrounding the castle and the town, were singing as if the daybreak were ushering in a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I woke, feeling as if some one had called me. The house was still as an empty church. A blackbird was singing on the lawn. I said to myself, "I will go and tell them I am ashamed, and will do whatever they would have me do!" I rose, and went straight up the stairs to ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... few birds with part of their sustenance, and the principal of these are two well known songsters, the blackbird ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... forest suddenly encompassed them. The morning was pretty far advanced; the merry birds twittered in their dun covert, brushing the dewdrops from the boughs with their restless wings. The thrush and blackbird poured forth a more melancholy note; whilst the timid rabbit, scared from his morning's meal, rushed by and sought his burrow. The wood grew thicker, and the sunbeams that shot previously in broad slopes across their path soon became as lines of intensely-chequered light piercing the grim shadows ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... enraptured eyes of the noble poet. These two caterpillars and a few house-flies are all I saw, heard, or felt, by day or night, of the native fauna of England, except a few birds,—rooks, starlings, a blackbird, and the larks of Salisbury Plain just as they rose; for I lost sight of them almost immediately. I neither heard nor saw the nightingales, to my great regret. They had been singing at Oxford a short time before my visit to that place. The only song ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... accustomed to make engines of one type, to make engines of another type without any intermediate course of training or instruction, and he will make no better figure with his engines than a thrush would do if commanded by her mate to make a nest like a blackbird. It is vain then to contend that the ease and certainty with which an action is performed, even though it may have now become matter of such fixed habit that it cannot be suddenly and seriously modified without rendering ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... was piping lustily in a young tree as she began her task; a blackbird answered from somewhere among the hawthorns with a ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... has ever suspected Mr. ROOSEVELT of a negative personality; and it is certain that he has told a very entertaining story. There are in this volume battle, murder, sudden death, outlaws, cowboys, bears, American politics, and the author's views on the English blackbird, all handsomely illustrated, and the price is only what you would (or would not) pay for a stall to see a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... boughs loaded with young fruit, pricked by the sharp claws and beak of the insolent blackbird, complained to the blackbird with pitious remonstrance entreating her that since she stole its delicious fruits she should not deprive it of the leaves with which it preserved them from the burning rays of the sun, and that she should not divest ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... down, and with the greatest caution drew from her skirt a blackbird's nest in which three wee fledglings were slumbering. She laid it on her plate. The moment the little birds felt the light, they stretched out their feeble necks and opened their crimson beaks to ask for food. Desiree clapped her hands, enchanted, seized ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... overhead; or we have Marban, who, rich in nuts, crab-apples, sloes, watercress, and honey, refuses to go back to the court to which the king, his brother, presses him to return. Now, we have the description of the summer scene, in which the blackbird sings and the sun smiles; now, the song of the sea and of the wind, which blows tempestuously from the four quarters of the sky; again, the winter song, when the snow covers the hills, when every furrow is a streamlet and the wolves range ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... father left the city, to partake of the pleasures of the country.—Scarcely had the blackbird and the thrush begun their early whistle to welcome Louisa, than the weather changed all on a sudden; the north wind roared horribly in the grove, and the snow fell in such abundance, that every thing appeared ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... attitude and gait would at times resemble the movements of a cock pheasant: now stealing along for a few yards, listening for the slightest sound of any animal stirring in the underwood; now standing on tiptoe for a time, with bated breath. Did a blackbird—that dusky sentinel of the woods—utter her characteristic note of warning, he would whisper, "Hark!" Then, after due deliberation, he would add, "'Tis a fox!" or, "There's a fox in the grove," and then he would steal ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... the lake. Very often the wood was like a harp; a breeze touched the strings, and every now and then the murmur seemed about to break into a little tune, and as if in emulation, or because he remembered his part in the music, a blackbird, perched near to his mate, whose nest was in the hawthorns growing out of the tumbled wall, began to sing a joyful lay in a rich round contralto, soft and deep as velvet. 'All nature,' he said, 'is talking ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... transported into Circassia, you would be ready to exclaim, "Is not this England? Here are apple-trees, and pear-trees, and plum-trees, like those in my father's garden: those sounds are like the notes of the blackbird and thrush, which sing among the hawthorns ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... of this little book, is an educated Indian, son of the Ottawa Chief. His Indian name is Mack-aw-de-be-nessy (Black Hawk), but he generally goes by the name of "Blackbird," taken from the interpretation of the French "L'Oiseau noir." Mr. Blackbird's wife is an educated and intelligent white woman of English descent, and they have four children. He is a friend of the white people, as well as of his own people. Brought up as an Indian, with ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... "It is the blackbird, Domine Abbas," said the young monk; "often they sing thus in February, however cold ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... broken parts came together and were made whole; that once on receiving his food in a basket, let down to his otherwise inaccessible cell, the devil vainly tried to vex him by breaking the rope; that once Satan, assuming the form of a blackbird, nearly blinded him by the flapping of his wings; that once, too, the same tempter appeared as a beautiful Roman girl, to whose fascinations, in his youth, St. Benedict had been sensible, and from which he now hardly escaped by rolling himself among thorns. Once, when his austere ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the road into the rickyard, so that the birds which came searching along among the grasses and pieces of wood thrown carelessly aside against the wall could see into the room. Robins, of course, came every morning, perching on the sill and peering in with the head held on one side. Blackbird and thrush came, but always passed the window itself quickly, though they stayed without fear within a few inches of ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... to themselves, but we are shocked at the notion of giving them a similar aid to the realisation of events which, as we say, concern them more nearly than any others, in the history of the world. A stuffed rabbit or blackbird is a good thing. A stuffed Charge of Balaclava again is quite legitimate; but a stuffed Nativity is, according to Protestant ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... and tillage, and men had no longer a reason to consider every cry of the birds or change of the night. Finn, who was always in the woods, whose battles were but hours amid years of hunting, delighted in the "cackling of ducks from the Lake of the Three Narrows; the scolding talk of the blackbird of Doire an Cairn; the bellowing of the ox from the Valley of the Berries; the whistle of the eagle from the Valley of Victories or from the rough branches of the Ridge of the Stream; the grouse of the heather of Cruachan; ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... was not inferior in height to the old one's, but his shoulders were narrower, his features less broad and full, and his hair and beard had the glossy raven hue of the blackbird's plumage. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... out of season just then. But they had their necks for all that; and by their necks alone they do as much surpass all the other birds of our grey climate as they fall in quality of song below the blackbird or the lark. Surely the peacock, with its incomparable parade of glorious colour and the scrannel voice of it issuing forth, as in mockery, from its painted throat, must, like my landlady's butterflies at Great Missenden, have been invented by some skilful fabulist for the consolation and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... such a noise, that the great ugly black snakes lifted up their heads, and stared at them with their wicked spiteful-looking eyes, and the little ducklings swimming among the water-lilies, gathered round their mother, and a red-winged blackbird perched on a dead tree gave alarm to the rest of the flock by calling out, Geck, geck, geck, as loudly as he could. In the midst of their frolics, Nimble skipped into a hollow log—but was glad to run out again; for a porcupine covered with sharp spines was there, and was so angry ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... (She is heard laughing). Shall I stone the raven away from his nest? Beware, you blackbird! (A small stone flies through the air, and falls down near ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... do not leave us at the first cold blast, to find a warmer climate; the least we can do is to recompense them by feeding them when the weather is too severe! Several know me already, and are very tame. There is a blackbird in particular, and a blue tomtit, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... billiard-room when the climax came, a calm evening of late July, the dusk upon the lawn, and most of the house-party already gone upstairs to dress for dinner. I had been standing beside the open window for some considerable time, motionless, and listening idly to the singing of a thrush or blackbird in the shrubberies—when I heard the faint twanging of the harp-strings in the room behind me, and turning, saw that Marion had entered and was there beside the instrument. At the same moment she saw me, rose from ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... was n't fine enough for Fanny's smallest party, and, after receiving a few of the expressive glances by which women convey their opinion of their neighbor's toilet, and overhearing a joke or two "about that inevitable dress," and "the little blackbird," Polly folded away the once treasured frock, saying, with a choke in her voice: "I 'll wear it for Will, he likes it, and clothes can't ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... their perfectness. Not their modes of corruption, disease, or death. Not even, always, their genesis, in the more or less blundering beginnings of it; not even their modes of nourishment, if destructive; you must not stuff a blackbird pulling up a worm, nor exhibit in a glass case a ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... The blackbird sang, the skies were clear and clean We bowled along a road that curved a spine Superbly sinuous and serpentine Thro' silent symphonies of summer green. Sudden the Forth came on us—sad of mien, No cloud to colour it, no breeze to line: A sheet of dark, ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... from thy nest, Robin-redbreast! Sing, birds, in every furrow; And from each hill, let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow! You pretty elves, amongst yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow; To give my Love good-morrow Sing birds, in ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... and I doubt if she will have many more friends among the fisher-lads. They will look upon her as a renegade to her order. The old women will suspect her, and the old men look askance at her with disapproving eyes. The girl will be a white blackbird; the properly colored birds will drive her out of the colony or pick her to death. It is ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... snow is uncovering something that has been delayed. In the garden a blackbird made a sudden cry in the hedge. I did ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... The blackbird has fled to another retreat, Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat; And the scene where his melody charmed me before Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather had changed to fair; the day, one of the last of the treacherous May-time, was warm and windless, and the air had the brightness of the hawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad to think of poor Touchett, it was not too sad, since death, for him, had had no violence. He had been dying so long; he was so ready; everything had been so expected and prepared. There were tears in Isabel's eyes, but they were not tears that blinded. She ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... of the long grass, the luxury of the leaves, and the song in the very air. I seem as if I could feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind calls to being. The endless grass, the endless leaves, the immense strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird; from all of them I receive a little.... In the blackbird's melody one note is mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me, though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have collected the kisses of the morning. Feeling with ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... Mr. Lammeter when the fiddle paused again. "That's "Over the hills and far away", that is. My father used to say to me, whenever we heard that tune, "Ah, lad, I come from over the hills and far away." There's a many tunes I don't make head or tail of; but that speaks to me like the blackbird's whistle. I suppose it's the name: there's a deal in the ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... the fading light, she locked the north door behind her and went off whistling like a blackbird, if a blackbird could whistle the alto of Calkin's Magnificat in B flat. . . . Five minutes climbing of the steep brown floor of the beechwood, and she was out on uplands in the dying fires of day. It had been twilight in the valley, but here the wide plain ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... like this," said the blackbird. "It really was the most extraordinary thing. I made that song last Spring, it came to me all of a sudden. There was the most beautiful she-blackbird that the world has ever seen. Her eyes were blacker than lakes are at night, her feathers were blacker than the night itself, and nothing was ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... are but few; Mr Banks saw none larger than an English blackbird, except some hawks and a vulture; but of water-fowl there is great plenty, particularly ducks. Of fish we saw scarce any, and with our hooks could catch none that was fit to eat; but shell-fish, limpets, clams, and mussels were ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... exception of a casual song of the lark in a fresh morning, of the blackbird and thrush at sunset, or the monotonous wail of the yellow-hammer, the silence of birds is now complete; even the lesser reed-sparrow, which may very properly be called the English mock-bird, and which kept up a perpetual clatter with the notes of the sparrow, the swallow, the white-throat, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... name of Crow Blackbird this fine but unpopular bird is known, unpopular among the farmers for his depredations in their cornfields, though the good he does in ridding the soil, even at the harvest season, of noxious insects and grubs should be set ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... of the siege and relief can be followed. I was there first on a serene evening after rain; and but for some tropical trees it might have been an English scene. All that was lacking was a thrush or blackbird's note; but the grass was as soft and green as at home and the air as sweet. I shall long retain the memory of the contrast between the incidents which give this enclosure its unique place in history and the perfect calm brooding over all. And ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... many species, the sexes of which differ greatly from each other, are certainly monogamous. In Great Britain we see well-marked sexual differences, for instance, in the wild-duck which pairs with a single female, the common blackbird, and the bullfinch which is said to pair for life. I am informed by Mr. Wallace that the like is true of the Chatterers or Cotingidae of South America, and of many other birds. In several groups I have not been able to discover whether the species ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... hear the blackbird in the corn, The locust in the haying; And, like the fabled hunter's horn, Old tunes ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... a yellow canary, and it sings so sweetly. I keep it in a cage, and it is so tame. Mamma and me wishes you would come and see us and our canary. Dear Uncle Jim, I love you.—Your little friend, Milly (aged four years)." Here is the second: "Dear Uncle Jim,—You will want to know about my blackbird. It sits in a tree and picks up the crumbs on the window, and Thomas wants to shoot it for eating the cherries; but I won't let Thomas shoot it, for it is a nice blackbird, and I have wrote all this myself.—Your loving little Bobby (aged five years)." In another, Jacky (aged ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... the palaces so fair, Built for the royal dwelling, In Scotland far beyond compare, Linlithgow is excelling; And in its park, in jovial June, How sweet the merry linnet's tune, How blithe the blackbird's lay; The wild-buck bells from ferny brake, The coot dives merry on the lake; The saddest heart might pleasure take To see all nature gay. But June is, to our sovereign dear, The heaviest month in all the year: Too ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... grew weary of the sameness. Now, the sun, whose ardour was already melting into the tenderness of evening, shone upon a broad valley, where the grass stood high in rich meadows separated from other meadows and green cornfields by hedges, from the midst of which rose many a tall tree. The blackbird's low, flute-like note sounded above the shrilling ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... a terrier which had in some way displeased him. The beast was past assistance when I arrived on the scene, but the devilish pleasure in the lad's face sent a chill through me. In the other, the gardener's lad flung a stone at a blackbird on the wall above the vinery, and Master Lance, who I fancy did not like the gardener's lad, flung one through the glass. Geoffrey, who was angry, but had not seen what I saw, haled the boy before him, and Lance looked him ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... The Bishop of Carlisle has been with me two days at Strawberry, where we saw the eclipse(572) to perfection: -not that there was much sight in it. The air was very chill at the time, and the light singular; but there was not a blackbird that left off singing for it. In the evening the Duke of Devonshire came with the Straffords from t'other end of Twickenham, and drank tea with us. They had none of them seen the gallery since it was finished; even the chapel was new to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... small playing the truant, for I find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty. To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, which I went to see. He tells me he was offered 20s. for him as he came along, he do so whistle. So to my office, and busy all the morning, among other things, learning to understand the course of the tides, and I think ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... bird, of a species common in the desert, with white head or cap, and white tail, except the upper feathers; all the rest, legs and bill, black. It is about the size of a lark, but has a head like a blackbird. We supposed the one found had died from want of water, though it may have been killed by the mother of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... the shade produced: there out of its power I could best appreciate the sun shining in splendour on the wide green hilly earth and in the green translucent foliage above my head. In the upper branches a blackbird was trolling out his music in his usual careless leisurely manner; when I stopped under it the singing was suspended for half a minute or so, then resumed, but in a lower key, which made it seem softer, ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... comming of your ioyous make,% And hearken to the birds love-learned song, The deawy leaves among! For they of ioy and pleasance to you sing, 90 That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring. [* Mavis, song-thrush.] [** Descant, variation.] [@ Ouzell, blackbird.] [$ ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... Suddenly a belated blackbird lit upon the wall, surveyed the group and burst into a jubilant song, that for a moment drowned his rival's notes. Then, as if claiming the reward, he fluttered to the grass, ate his fill, took a sip from the mossy basin by ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... one shall wear our feathers, so that no one will kill us to get them? We want them all ourselves. Your pretty girls are pretty enough without them. We are told that it is as easy for you to do it as for a blackbird to whistle. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 39, August 5, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... sunshine scampered in alarm from their logs. Lizards blinked at him. Moccasin snakes darted wicked forked tongues at him and then glided out of reach of his tomahawk. The frogs had stopped their deep bass notes. A swamp-blackbird rose in fright from her nest in the saw-grass, and twittering plaintively fluttered round and round over the pond. The flight of the bird worried Wetzel. Such little things as these might attract the attention of some Indian scout. But he hoped that in ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... Birds of all sorts assembled in one long continuous flight. The animal kingdom of that region of forest seemed to have become united in their mutual terror—wolf and hare, coyote and jack-rabbit, hawks and blackbird, prairie chicken and grey-owl; all sworn enemies in time of calm prosperity, but now, in their terror, companions to the last. And all the time, in the growing twilight of smoke, came the distant booming as of the ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... own hearth-stone, Bosomed in yon green hills alone,— A secret nook in a pleasant land, Whose groves the frolic fairies planned; Where arches green, the livelong day, Echo the blackbird's roundelay, And vulgar feet have never trod A spot that is sacred to thought ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... come to it. She tried once more. It was a long time before she could call the letters and spell out words, and it was many months before she could read at all without spelling. It was hard work for Nan and harder for her teacher. Before she had half looked at a word she would hear a blackbird or see a hawk after a chicken, or she thought "sure, Miss Lizzy called." I tried to have patience and in the end I conquered. Nan was "mighty proud" when she read the last page ...
— American Missionary, August, 1888, (Vol. XLII, No. 8) • Various
... my lady hostess, to have seen, ere this, among your many other delectables, the fulfilment of your ladyship's promise gracing the table, in the shape of the blackbird pie, wherewith we were to be regaled, at your entertainment, if your polite note of invitation was rightly read ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... weeping ended her words, and I was all abashed with shame and pale with anguish. I stole quietly from my lair unheeded of any, save that one damsel said that a rabbit ran in the hedge, and another that a blackbird stirred in the thicket. Behold me, then, that my quest beginneth again amidst the tangle of lies whereinto I have ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... luncheon, a mass of sparrow feathers was found on the hall-mat. The second day there were feathers of a blackbird. And the third day, when I came down to breakfast, I found a few thrush feathers carelessly left under the breakfast-room table. I began to search my mind, anxiously wondering whether any of my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... the notes of a violin, quite faint and distant, but sweet as the piping of a blackbird amongst the white anemones ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... workin', when in the chain gang, where he's been, off and on, since he was ten years old. Amount of fine an' costs thirty-seven dollars an' a half. A musical nigger, too, who plays the banjo, an' sings jus' like a—like a blackbird. What am I bid for ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... unarticulated hymn, Now walk through rippling waves of wheat, Now sink in mats of clover sweet, Or see before us from the lawn The lark go up to greet the dawn! All birds that love the English sky Throng round my path when she is by; The blackbird from a neighboring thorn With music brims the cup of morn, And in a thick, melodious rain The mavis pours her mellow strain! But only when my Katie's voice Makes all the listening woods rejoice I hear—with cheeks that flush and pale— The ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... (grumbling, of course, for the Kashmiri is a lineal descendant of the horse-leech). The shikari went to Smithson, and the sweeper and permanent coolie were transferred to the assistant forest officer, while Ayata (in charge of Freddie, the blackbird) scrambled into the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... was full of morning sounds as the lads trudged along the Warwick road together. An ax rang somewhere deep in the woods of Arden; cart-wheels ruttled on the stony road; a blackbird whistled shrilly in the hedge, and they heard the deep-tongued belling of hounds far off ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... whispered. Drumsheugh lifted his head and looked eastwards. A faint grey stole over the distant horizon, and suddenly a cloud reddened before his eyes. The sun was not in sight, but was rising, and sending forerunners before his face. The cattle began to stir, a blackbird burst into song, and before Drumsheugh crossed the threshold of Saunders' house, the first ray of the sun had broken on a peak of ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... was full of bird song. What Ernest called the dawn's enchantment was just ending. Blackbird and robin, oriole and mocking bird, piped full-throated from every cactus. To Ernest this was the one redeeming touch to the desert's austerity. To Roger it was the crowning of an almost unbearable charm. ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... placidly: Collins counts: a blackbird sings in the garden. Mrs Bridgenorth puts The Times down in her lap and ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... delight in having a real home and Ernestine's beaming happiness all the time she was in the house. The little girl could return now to that "very nice school" where other nice little girls went. She departed every morning beside the Laundryman, tugging at her arm, skipping and chattering like a blackbird in June. Ernestine saw her safely up the school steps and then took the car to her business. Milly, after the housekeeping and her morning duties, walked up town for her daughter and spent most of the afternoons with her, as she had not much else to do. She ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... yer that too, Dad,' she say—Maria did. 'You didn't ought to call 'im 'Artz Mountain roller, but ha-Hartz Mountain roller. That's the way to call 'im,' she says—impident little 'ussy! But there—what's in a name, as the white blackbird said when 'e sat on a wooden milestone eating a red blackberry? Still, 'e weren't running a live-stock emporium, I expect, when 'e ask such a question as that 'ere. There's a good deal in 'ow you call a bird, or a dawg or a guinea-pig neither, if you want to pass 'im ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... linger. She rode beneath a natural avenue of trees, whose branches met overhead like the arches of a cathedral, and was scarcely conscious of their pleasant shade. She heard neither the song of the wooing thrush, nor the cry of the startled blackbird, nor the evening hymn of the soaring lark. Alike to her was the gorse-covered common, along which they swiftly speeded, and the steep hill-side up which they more swiftly mounted. She breathed not the delicious fragrance of the new-mown hay, nor listened ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... with her lover and her lips and eyes again were his to do with what he would. Later Doctor Lanning came in and she roused to hear the news about the snow. Between Sleepy Cat and Bear Dance two passenger trains were stalled, and on Blackbird hill the snow was reported four feet deep on ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... butterfly spread its brown velvet and gorgeously eyed wings to the sun's warmth; a blackbird with brilliant yellow bill stood astride a peach twig and poured out a bubbling and incessant melody full of fluted grace notes. And on the grass oval a kitten frisked with the ghosts of last month's dandelions, racing ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... a tone of ill-concealed triumph; and plunging his hand into his game-bag, the chasseur produces—a phthisical snipe, a wood pigeon, an extenuated quail, and perhaps something which you at first take for a deformed blackbird, but which turns out to be a water-hen. As far as our own observations go, we do aver this to be a very handsome average of a French sportsman's day's shooting. If by chance he has knocked down a red-legged partridge, (grey ones are very scarce in France,) ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... beneath them.[8] The life of earth is rarely thought of as distinct from the life of man. It is so in a few late epigrams. The complaint of the cicala, torn away by shepherds from its harmless green life of song and dew among the leaves, and the poem bidding the blackbird leave the dangerous oak, where, with its breast against a spray, it pours out its clear music,[9] are probably of Roman date; another of uncertain period but of great beauty, an epitaph on an old bee-keeper who lived alone on the hills with the high woods and ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... laughter, and he put out a hand and tousled the thick curls in his favorite caress. One of the tresses caught in his jewelled ring; and as he bent to unfasten it, he stared at the wavy mass in lazy surprise. It was as soft and rich as the breast of a blackbird, and the fire had laid over it ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... of something inside giving way under the strain, Mr. Vickers restrained himself. He breathed hard, and glancing out of window sought to regain his equilibrium by becoming interested in a blackbird outside. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... But, dear heart, I was the same at your age, and should be now, like enough. Fetch them all, as quick as you like. I am feared to leave Blackbird, or I'd ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... a break in the eastern sky; already here and there a blackbird sang in the garden boughs, and the freshness, the quietude, swept her thoughts back to the Chalet de Lognan. With a great yearning she recalled that evening and the story of the great friendship so quietly ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... blackbird singing In the coppice near, All the blue sky ringing With their notes so clear! The twitt'ring swallows skimming, Through the air of morn,... Happy all, all hymning, Going through ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... on a soft carpet of moss, overhead the gentle summer breeze stirred the great branches of the elms, causing the crisp leaves to mutter a long-drawn hush-sh-sh in the stillness of the night. From far away came the appealing call of a blackbird chased by some marauding owl, while on the ground close by, the creaking of tiny branches betrayed the quick scurrying of a squirrel. From the remote and infinite distance came the subdued ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... himself, for there was plenty of time before five o'clock, and he stopped every few moments to examine some wayside plant, and to listen with the ardor of a true lover of nature to the merry voices of the thrush and blackbird ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... 'tummy'!" she said. Her laughter was contagious. "Just like a baby blackbird's before it has got its feathers. And that big silver disc!—like the family plate on ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Wordsworth, till the policeman turns her off. This is another of her favourite spots." He indicated with a look of concentrated disgust the avenue where we were standing. "This is where she likes to finish up. She comes here to listen to a blackbird." ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... examination, that it is perfectly innocuous. A neighbouring yeoman (to whom I am indebted for some good hints) killed and opened a female viper about the 27th May: he found her filled with a chain of eleven eggs, about the size of those of a blackbird; but none of them were advanced so far towards a state of maturity as to contain any rudiments of young. Though they are oviparous, yet they are viviparous also, hatching their young within their bellies, and then bringing them forth. Whereas snakes lay chains of eggs ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... and the Cat set off by herself to learn how to be happy, and to be all that a Cat could be. It was a fine sunny morning. She determined to try the meadow first, and, after an hour or two, if she had not succeeded, then to go off to the wood. A Blackbird was piping away on a thornbush as if his heart was running over with happiness. The Cat had breakfasted, and so was able to listen without any mixture of feeling. She didn't sneak. She walked boldly up under the bush, and the bird, seeing she had no ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... whose song will match the nightingale's in compass, none whose note is so rich as that of the European blackbird; but for mere rapture I have never heard the bobolink's rival. But his opera-season is a short one. The ground and tree sparrows are our most constant performers. It is now late in August, and one of the latter sings every day and all day long ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... feeding the little ones, and teaching them to fly, there is not much time for singing. It is said that every bird has a different note or call. I wonder how many you know? I fancy I can guess: the cock, the rook, the swallow, the thrush, the blackbird, the lark; if you do not know the notes or calls of all these, try ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... the breeches satin, the doublet soft Flanders velvet. Golden-yellow puffs and slashes stood forth in beautiful relief against the darker stuff. Even the knots of ribbon on the breeches and shoes were as yellow as a blackbird's beak. Delicate lace trimmed the neck and fell on the hands, and a clasp of real gems confined the black and yellow plumes in the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mountain and flood, of heath-clad braes and grassy knowes. Its mountain peaks rise bare and rugged to the skies, where lordly eagles soar. Its brawling burns in their infancy dash down these rugged steeps, but as they grow older flow on through many a hazel dell, where thrush and blackbird fill the woods with melody—through many flowering pastures, where cattle browse and lambkins skip on the sunny braes. Wild-fowl breed on its reedy lochs, and moor-fowl dwell on its heather hills. Its waters ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... first of Spring. The blackbird opens his yellow beak, and whistles cool and clear. There is blue magic in the morning; the sky, deep-blue above, melts into white where it meets the hills. The wind waits for you up yonder—will you go to meet it? Ah, stay here! The hedges have put on their ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... uncle and cousin could wish, save for an angry dislike to being duped and cajoled; and, moreover, a strong curiosity to hear and see more of that little passionate bird, fresh from the convent cage. Her gesture and her eyes irresistibly carried him back to old times, though whether to an angry blackbird in the yew-tree alleys at Leurre, or to the eager face that had warned him to save his father, he could not remember with any distinctness. At any rate, he was surprised to find himself thinking so little in comparison about the splendid beauty and winning manners of his discarded spouse, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... two fowls they ate the duck, which was flanked by the three pigeons and the blackbird, and then the goose appeared, smoking, golden-brown, and diffusing a warm odor of hot, browned roast meat. La Paumelle, who was getting lively, clapped her hands; La Jean-Jean left off answering the baron's numerous questions, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... hair, wool, and rushes are cleverly interwoven. In others, the parts are firmly fastened by a thread, which the bird makes of hemp, wool, hair, or, more commonly, of spiders' webs. Other birds—as, for instance, the blackbird and the lapwing—after they have constructed their nests, plaster the inside with mortar; they then stick upon it, while quite wet, some wool or moss to give warmth; but all alike construct their nests so as to add to ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... fix it," said Earl, "eggs or calf's blood I wont quarrel with you about the eggs, though I never heerd o' blue ones afore, 'cept the robin's and bluebird's and I've heerd say the swamp blackbird lays a handsome blue egg, but I never happened to see the nest myself; and there's the chippin' sparrow; but you'd want to rob all the bird's nests in creation to get enough of 'em, and they aint here in sugar time, nother; but, anyhow, any eggs 'll ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Aunty Biddy here, knowing yourselves to be going to Lawrence, and I told her stay as long as she had a mind. Wisha, she 'd an old apron on her in five minutes' time, an' took hold wit' the wash, and wint singing like a blackbird out in the yard at the line. 'Sit down, Aunty!' says she; 'you 're not so light-stepping as me, an' I 'll tell you all the news from home; an' I 'll get the dinner, too, when I 've done this,' says she. ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... colder and colder as it rained. The sun came out at last, but it shone in a wintry sort of way,—like a duty smile,—as if light, not heat, were its object. A keen wind blew the dead leaves hither and thither in a wild dance that had no merriment in it. A blackbird flew under an old barrel by the wayside, and, ruffling himself into a ball, remarked despondently that feathers were no sort of protection in this kind of climate. A snowbird, flying by, glanced in at the barrel, and observed that anybody who minded a little breeze like ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fortunes have mended at last, Sigurd Jarlsson. It did not appear that the Norman brought you much luck in return for your support." He glanced toward that part of the table where the black locks of Robert the Fearless shone, sleek as a blackbird's wing, in the morning sun. "The Southerner has an overbearing face," he added. "It reminds me of someone I hate, though I ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... 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!" ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the cow blackbird are noticeable at this season, though they take a back seat a little later. It utters a peculiarly liquid April sound. Indeed, one would think its crop was full of water, its notes so bubble up and ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... call Pixies in their madrigal, Fancy's children, here we dwell: Welcome, Ladies! to our cell. Here the wren of softest note 5 Builds its nest and warbles well; Here the blackbird strains his throat; Welcome, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... How do the Blackbird and Thrassel with their melodious voices bid welcome to the cheerful Spring, and in their fixed months warble forth such ditties as no art ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... heather's rich tint every blushing neck glows, In our eyes are all shapes that the blackbird's egg shows; And the plains of thine Erin, though pleasing to see, When the Great Plain is sighted, as deserts ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... matters of wonder and admiration. At every step, almost, I paused to observe something that was new to me; and I could not help feeling surprised at the insensibility of my fellow-traveller, who plodded on, seldom interrupting his whistling, except to cry, 'Gee, Blackbird, aw, woa;' or, 'How now, Smiler;' and certain other words or sounds of menace and encouragement, addressed to his horses in a language which seemed intelligible to them and to him, though utterly ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... hard and fast lines of species had been obliterated and made as meaningless as the concededly evanescent shades of variety, trooping busily over the lawn and blackening the leafless China-trees. But they have a crony never seen by us. This is the crow-blackbird of the South, or jackdaw as it is wrongly called, otherwise known as the boat-tailed grackle, from his over-allowance of rudder that pulls him side-wise and ruins his dead-reckoning when a wind is on. His wife is a sober-looking lady in a suit of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... seeleck men hev raised her pay to four dollars a week 'n' she to board herself, 'n' she's wuth every cent of it. I like to see folks well paid that's got the patience to set in doors 'n' cram information inter young ones that don't care no more 'bout learn in' 'n' a skunk-blackbird. She give me Timothy's writin' book, for you to see what he writ in it yesterday, 'n' she hed to keep him in 't recess 'cause he didn't copy 'Go to the ant thou sluggard and be wise,' as he'd oughter. Now let's see what 't is. My grief! it's poetry sure 's you're ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... stealth come feeling for our faces— We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed, Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed, Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses. Is it that we ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... my whistling mother. It's a queer title, but it's hers in a peculiar way. She always could whistle like a blackbird. She never did it for exhibition; I don't mean that—I should say not—but she did do it for calls to her family, in the woods or in the house when there were no guests about; and she often whistled softly ...
— The Whistling Mother • Grace S. Richmond
... no use opposing her once she had fallen in love with Jacopo. He was a handsome, dark fellow, with insinuating manners, and a voice like a blackbird. When the two were together there was no one else in the world for them. He had flamed up with the fierceness of his southern nature: she with the heat of a heart slow to love, and once fired slow ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... titmice. But above the tree-tops, rising, hovering, sinking, the woodlark is fluting tender and low. Above the pastures outside the skylark sings—as he alone can sing; and close by from the hollies rings out the blackbird's tenor—rollicking, audacious, humorous, all but articulate. From the tree above him rises the treble of the thrush, pure as the song of angels; more pure, perhaps, in tone, though neither so varied nor so rich as the song of the nightingale. And there, in the next holly, ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... by the woodland That hangs upon the hill; Hark! the cock is tuning His morning clarion shrill; And hurriedly awaking From his nest amid the spray, Cheerily now, the blackbird, Whistling, greets the day. For be ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the park some rooks cawed fussily over the choice of their night quarters. Nearer, a blackbird piped an evening song. They sounded restless and plaintive to the lonely boy, and he hid his face in his hands, covering eyes and ears that he might see nothing, hear nothing. Then into his mind there surged a recollection of the dear old free days ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... rustle of birds through the branches, and the dreamy murmur of waters lost in deepest woods, and all the fairy echoes whispering when the leaves are motionless in the noonday heat; then followed notes, cool and soft as the drip of summer showers on the parched grass, and then the song of the blackbird sounding as clearly as it sounds in long silent spaces of the evening, and then in one sweet jocund burst the multitudinous voices that hail the breaking of the morn. And the lark, singing and soaring above the minstrel, sank mute and motionless upon his shoulder, and from all the leafy ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... in the fresh green meadows Sparrow and blackbird sung; Above him their tinted petals The blossoming ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... dream of moody mind, That lists a dirge i' the blackbird's singing; That in gusts hears Nature's own voice complain, And beholds her tears in the gushing rain; When low clouds congregate blank and blind, And Winter's snow-muffled arms are clinging Round Autumn's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... circumstance so called. The selaya, or punei andu, another variety, has the body and wings of deep crimson, with the head, and extremity of its long indented tail, white; the legs red. It lives on the worms generated in the decayed part of old trees, and is about the size of a blackbird. Of the same size is the burong sawei, a bird of a bluish black colour, with a dove-tail, from which extend two very long feathers, terminating circularly. It seems to be what is called the widow-bird, and is ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... of using it; As being loth to wear it out, And therefore bore it not about, Unless on holy-days, or so, As men their best apparel do. 50 Beside, 'tis known he could speak GREEK As naturally as pigs squeek; That LATIN was no more difficile, Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle: Being rich in both, he never scanted 55 His bounty unto such as wanted; But much of either would afford To many, that had not one word. For Hebrew roots, although they're found To flourish ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... up her whole existence, and render her unfit for her daily task. But now she found that, once more, she had underrated the strength of her own impulses. For some time she resisted, but one day, the sun shone out strong and genial, the budding trees spread their branches to the warm air, a blackbird warbled ecstatically from among the Priory shrubberies, and Hadria passed into the garden of ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... he wanted to talk and he could be over-urged to talk if the right pressure was brought to bear. Janice came away, leaving the eagerly curious pecking at him—the one white blackbird in ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... were dilated and clear as though seen through crystal. A far company of pines on the high skyline were magnified into delicate inky figures. The vacant sward below them was as lucent as the slope of a vast approaching wave. A blackbird was fluting after a shower, for the sky was transient blue with the dark rags of the squall flying fast over the hill towards London. The thatched roof of a cottage in the valley suddenly flamed with a light of no earthly fire, as though a god had arrived, and that was the sign. Miss ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... and beautiful afternoon in March, the song of the blackbird and thrush, and the loud chirp of the titmouse, came merrily through the schoolroom window, mixed with the sounds of happy voices in the garden; the western sun shone brightly in, and tinged the white ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a blackbird, sitting on a fir tree, began to sing; the horses scudded away as fast as they could, and there was once more silence in ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... he said musingly, "if I thought I could ever come acrost such a housekeeper as you be, Mariana. But there! that's snarin' a white blackbird." ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... cheerily, and took in the group with a lingering glance: Laura in the shadow of the elms, Di perched on the fence, and Nan leaning far over the gate with her hand above her eyes and the sunshine touching her brown hair with gold. He waved his hat and turned away; but the music seemed to die out of the blackbird's song, and in all the summer landscape his eyes saw nothing but the ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... note of the blackbird Quickens the unclasping hands of hazel, Somewhere the wind-flowers fling their heads back, Stirred by an impetuous wind. Some ways'll All be sweet with white and blue violet. (Hush now, hush. ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... now dropping altogether. A dead bird or two were passed, lying in the snow, claws in air and already stiff: a felt and a yellowhammer were side by side at the bottom of the hill. It was like the dead in gay uniforms, lying scattered after an action. A little further on there was a blackbird, to Murphy's very evident glee. He found it at once, and was for carrying it home; it was still warm. But this was no time for fooling. It was already dark and growing darker; the proper thing to do was to keep together and make for home. Travelling was none too ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... call me the Crow Blackbird, little folks, if you want to. People generally call me by ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... hospitality, was hastily putting them back, when the man, looking up, caught sight of a bundle of oaten pipes among the miscellaneous wares. He plucked one to him, and in a moment the air was full of tender liquid notes—a thrush's roundelay. Then a blackbird called and his mate answered; a cuckoo cried the spring-song; a linnet mourned with lifting cadence; a nightingale ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... therein a great hall paved with vari-coloured marbles and other precious stones and hung with cages of sandal and aloes wood, full of singing-birds, such as the thousand-voiced nightingale[FN48] and the cushat and the blackbird and the turtle-dove and the Nubian warbler. My heart was ravished by the song of the birds and I forgot my cares and slept in the aviary till the morning. Then I opened the fourth door and saw a great hall, with forty cabinets ranged on either side. The doors of the latter stood open; so I entered ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... no nest, but puts its eggs out to be hatched, as does our cow blackbird, and our cuckoo is master of only the rudiments of nest-building. No other bird in the woods builds so shabby a nest; it is the merest makeshift,—a loose scaffolding of twigs through which the ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... ray of light is seen to fall on Florence, kneeling at the altar with her timid head bowed down. The morning luminary is built out, and don't shine there. There is a meagre tree outside, where the sparrows are chirping a little; and there is a blackbird in an eyelet-hole of sun in a dyer's garret, over against the window, who whistles loudly whilst the service is performing; and there is the man with the wooden leg stumping away. The amens of the dusty clerk ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... of striking plumage are the Bluejay, the Bluebird, the Baltimore Oriole, the Scarlet Tanager, the Cedar Waxwing, and Red-winged Blackbird. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... South of France or Italy. A letter dated Feb. 25, from the Alps Maritime, at Cannes, says, "This lovely spot is full of flowers, birds, and butterflies." Who that recalls her Songs on the Voices of Birds, the blackbird, and the nightingale, will not appreciate her happiness with ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... first, jay and blackbird and thrush; They shriek at his coming and curse him, each one; With the clay of the vale on his pads and his brush, It's the Fallowfield fox and he's pretty near done; It's a couple of hours since a whip tally-ho'd him; Now the rookery's stooping to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... blackbirds delight in warm weather,) Is flitting from yonder high spray; He sees the two little ones talking together— No wonder the blackbird ...
— Under the Window - Pictures & Rhymes for Children • Kate Greenaway
... blackbird also craves a boon, Says "Bring a cherry, bring a cherry, soon, soon, soon;" And there in answer to his call The cherry blooms ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... and most forlorn-looking, started running round and round him as if to make a close inspection of his figure, then began to tease him. At first I thought it was all in fun—merely animal spirit which in birds often discharges itself in this way in little pretended attacks and fights. But the blackbird had no play and no fight in him, no heart to defend himself; all he did was to try to avoid the strokes aimed at him, and he could not always escape them. His spiritlessness served to inspire the chaffinch with greater boldness, and then it appeared that the ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... song, some of his notes are as sweet as those of a linnet—almost flute-like in softness, while others prick and tingle like thistles. He is the mocking-bird of squirrels, pouring forth mixed chatter and song like a perennial fountain; barking like a dog, screaming like a hawk, chirping like a blackbird or a sparrow; while in bluff, audacious noisiness he is a ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... but perversely determined to finish his idea. As played by Pachmann, we get it in all its peevish, sardonic humors, especially if the audience, or the weather, or the piano seat does not suit the fat little blackbird from Odessa. Op. 63, No. 3, ends this list of mazurkas in C-sharp minor. In it Chopin has limbered up, his mood is freer, melancholy as it is. Louis Ehlert wrote of this: "A more perfect canon in the octave could not have been written by one who had grown gray ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Yellow-bellied Sapsucker King Bird Cat Bird Towhee Robin Meadow Lark Prairie Horned Lark Baltimore Oriole Orchard Oriole Whip-poor-will Night Hawk Pigeon Hawk Sparrow Hawk Mourning Dove Rose-breasted Grosbeak Evening Grosbeak Purple Finch Red-winged Blackbird Rusty Blackbird Bobolink Mocking Bird Starling Purple Grackle Humming Bird Yellow-breasted Chat Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Tufted Titmouse Brown Creeper House Wren Marsh Wren Brown Thrasher Wood Thrush Hermit Thrush Wilson Thrush Water Thrush Chimney Swift Bank Swallow ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... sober, my lady; the sun has quite set, and the birds are silent and at roost, except the old blackbird, who whistles late, and the wakeful robin, who sometimes bandies music with the nightingale.—Would you ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... laverock, warbling wild, Shall to the skies aspire; The gowdspink, music's gayest child, Shall sweetly join the choir: The blackbird strong, the lintwhite clear, The mavis mild and mellow; The robin pensive autumn cheer, In all her ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... any more, but worked quietly and watched the shadow, feeling sure the faint song came from it. Presently she began to hum the tune she caught by snatches; and, before she knew it, she was singing away like a blackbird. Baby stopped ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... with a head as round and nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an undertaker ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... lark sung about the farms, The blackbird in the wood, When fast locked in each other's arms By hedgerow thorn we stood. It was a pleasant Sabbath day, The sun shone bright and round, His light through dark oaks passed, and lay Like gold ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... through, and all the time looking carefully round for nests. They very soon heard the harsh cry of the jay, who was letting all the inhabitants of the woodlands know that enemies were at hand, and away flew the birds. The blackbird was the first to take the alarm from the jay, and away he flew, crying, "Kink, kink, kink," as he started from his nest in a great ivy tod on an old pollard-tree. The lads soon found the nest, and peeped ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... what time the blackbird Pipes to vespers from his perch, And from out the clattering city Pass'd into the ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... thoughtfully scratching his head with one of those long, compass-like legs of his, and muttering to himself. And here, incidentally, I fell a-wondering how the stork had carried me. In the garden I had often watched a blackbird carrying a worm, and the worm, though no doubt really safe enough, had always appeared to me nervous and uncomfortable. Had I wriggled and squirmed in like fashion? And where would the stork have taken ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... last week of February my joy came home. I remember that it was exquisite weather, the blackbird singing his passionate song in the bare boughs fit to break your heart with its beauty. There were high, white, shining clouds on the blue, and the mountains were grey-lavender. The wall-flower clumps ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... which made a sorrowful impression on Gabriele. The star of the church tower glittered over the grave of her brother, and the look of the moon made her involuntarily think on the pale, mild countenance of her mother. For the rest, the evening was so lovely, the blackbird sang among the alders by the brook, and the heaven lay clear and brightly blue over the earth, whilst the wind and every disturbing sound became more ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... flushed hotly, came into the house, and began to re-arrange the teacups with a nervous haste; for she heard Jamie's steps on the rocky road, and his voice, clear as a blackbird's, whistling gayly "In the Bay of ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... straddling wide forward-step, and his springy side-wise series of hops, and his impudent air, and his cunning way of canting his head to one side upon occasion, he reminds one of the American blackbird. But the sharp resemblances stop there. He is much bigger than the blackbird; and he lacks the blackbird's trim and slender and beautiful build and shapely beak; and of course his sober garb of gray and rusty black is a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
