"Owl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... think that she has any wish to strain an argument with a view to "bolstering up her own art and ritual theory." It can, indeed, be no matter for surprise that such suspicions should be aroused. When, for instance, an educated man hears that the Israelites worshipped a golden calf, or that the owl and the peacock were respectively sacred to Juno and Minerva, he can readily understand what is meant. But when he is told that an Australian Emu man, strutting about in the feathers of that bird, does ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... as melancholy as an owl of late,' retorted Mab, caressing the old lady; 'ever since the arrest of that man Mosk she has ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... protested Nancy, in whom Judith confided. "She's just busy with the play—you know she's to be the heroine—and she's writing on her diploma examination too. Cheer up, Judy, don't look so like an owl." ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... still a hawk in spirit, was proved on an occasion of almost equal interest. A neighbour had sent us a very fine specimen of the smaller horned owl (Strix brachyotus,) which he had winged when flying in the midst of a covey of partridges; and after having tended the wounded limb, and endeavoured to make a cure, we thought of soothing the prisoner's captivity by a larger degree of freedom than he had in the hen-coop which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... breathing the cool air, and remarking the evening tints of the mountains. Neither the paintings of Count this, nor the antiquities of the Marquis t'other, could tempt me from my aerial situation; I refused hunting out the famous Paolos scattered over the town, and sat like the owl in the Georgics, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... Ruby a final good night and went below, and Ruby, who could not persuade himself that it was final, continued to walk the deck until his eyes began to shut and open involuntarily like those of a sick owl. Then he also went below, and, before he fell quite asleep (according to his own impression), was awakened by the bell that called the men to land on the ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... "The owl sings at night, my son, it is his hour. Now it is dark, Henri, so dark that one might take the day for the night, and I sing what you ought to ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... in the gathering gloom while he pulled slowly on his pipe. The evening was very quiet; the birds had ceased their twittering; the wind had died away; it was too early for the bay of a wolf, the wail of a panther, or hoot of an owl; there was ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... lay prone, and a few flickering lights in empty streets marked the places where their cities were built. Red and yellow omnibuses were crowding each other in Piccadilly; sumptuous women were rocking at a standstill; but here in the darkness an owl flitted from tree to tree, and when the breeze lifted the branches the moon flashed as if it were a torch. Until all people should awake again the houseless animals were abroad, the tigers and the stags, and the elephants ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... man's hearing with a distinctness that drew his muscles rigid and set his eyes staring about him in wild search. Just beyond the hanging pails a moose-bird hopped out upon the snow. It chirped hungrily, its big, owl-like eyes scrutinizing Dixon. The man stared back, fearing to move. Slowly he forced his right foot through the snow to the rear of his left, and as cautiously brought his left behind his right, working himself backward step by step ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... odd about that," she exclaimed impatiently. "Don't be so enigmatical. If you've anything to say, say it! Don't look at me like an owl!" ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... kindnesses I have done you? I shall soon make you both feel what you deserve." She said no more, but taking water in her hand, threw it in his face with these words, "Quit the form of man, and take that of an owl." These words were soon followed by the effect, and immediately she commanded one of her women to shut up the owl in a cage, and give ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... lay imbedded in the flints of his rock. For so costly was the mould in which Uncle Jack and the Anti-Publisher Society had contrived to cast this exposition of Human Error that every bookseller shied at its very sight, as an owl blinks at daylight, or human error at truth. In vain Squills and I, before we left London, had carried a gigantic specimen of the Magnum Opus into the back parlors of firms the most opulent and adventurous. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she said: "Since I have dwelt in your house your fields have yielded larger crops, and you have obtained the highest selling prices. And that is something after all. But now, when young and old, you are comfortably established, you wish to act like the fledgling owl, who picks out his own mother's eyes as soon as he is ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... of originating elsewhere, it is to be regretted, for the sake of science, that he did not boldly enunciate the formula of life as taught by the eagle-eyed prophet of the Bible, and not as proclaimed by the owl-eyed professors ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... an owl in the sudden glare. "Good even to you, comrades! Hola! a woman, by my soul!" and in an instant he had clipped Dame Eliza round the waist and was kissing her violently. His eye happening to wander upon the maid, however, he instantly abandoned the mistress ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Discoboli, or Quoit-throwers—was found by the present writer in the Montreal Museum of Natural History; it was, however, banished from public view, to a room where were all manner of skins, plants, snakes, insects, &c., and in the middle of these, an old man, stuffing an owl. The dialogue—perhaps true, perhaps imaginary, perhaps a little of one and a little of the other—between the writer and this old man gave rise ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... her walk home with Bobby, you idiot! He had to take the owl train home, and she won't see him for a month. Didn't you ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... ivirybody's kind to me, honey! But nobody has ivir loved me—that way. The good Lord made me a fright, honey—ain't ye noticed? I've a face like an owl. An' they told me from th' cradle up I'd nivir land a man. An' I didn't, honey; they all ran from me—an' so I become a bride o' th' Church. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... he acknowledges it!" roared the magician. "Wretch, dotard, owl, mole, miserable buzzard! I have no reason to tell thee now that thy form is monstrous, that children cry, that cowards turn pale, that teeming matrons shudder to behold it. It is not thy fault that thou art thus ungainly: but wherefore so blind? wherefore so conceited of thyself! I tell thee, Poinsinet, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the woods floated on the air: the spicy fragrance of the firs; the breath of hidden banks of twin-flower. Muskrats swam noiselessly in the shadows, diving with a great commotion as the canoe ran upon them suddenly. A horned owl hooted from the branch of a dead pine-tree; far back in the forest a fox barked twice. The moon crept up behind the wall of trees and touched the ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... wandring Shepherd did I see, Or Shepherdess, or drew into mine ear The sound of living thing, unless it were The Nightingale among the thick leav'd spring That sits alone in sorrow, and doth sing Whole nights away in mourning, or the Owl, Or our great enemy that still doth howl Against the ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... now—saw them in one age-long instant while he stood in horror on the black shining rock. He saw their heads, red-skinned, pointed, their staring eyes as large as saucers—owl-eyes. They were naked, and their bodies, that would have been almost crimson in the light of day, were blotched and ghastly in the green light. And each one held in long clawlike hands a thing of shining metal—a lava tip ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... an' chafe an' lame an' fight — 'e smells most awful vile; 'E'll lose 'isself for ever if you let 'im stray a mile; 'E's game to graze the 'ole day long an' 'owl the 'ole night through, An' when 'e comes to greasy ground 'e splits 'isself in two. O the oont, O the oont, O the floppin', droppin' oont! When 'is long legs give from under an' 'is meltin' eye is dim, The ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... with the first shiver of dismay. Her limbs seemed ready to collapse. The flush of anger and excitement left her face; a white, desolate look came in its stead. Her eyes grew wide and she blinked her lashes with an awed uncertainty that boded ill for the stability of her adventure. An owl hooted in mournful cadence close by and she felt that her hair was going straight on end. The tense fingers of one hand gripped the handle of the travelling-bag while the other went spasmodically ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... do I ululate, dear my dearie, Coiled on a nastily mildewed tomb, When the horned owl hoots, and the world is weary, Weary of sorrow, and swamped in gloom? Childie my child, 'tis a cogent question; Dearie my dear, if you wish to know, Tis not that I suffer from indigestion, But that ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... through the close-growing firs, starting in fear as an owl flew out above them, hooting dismally. It was not easy to find anything, for the moonlight was scarcely able to filter through the branches. Jim took the lead, and presently they scattered to look for the tree. Something big ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... supported by a tortoise. Mahomet decided that the mountains are great weights to keep the world from being blown away into space. But we refuted these orientals by asking triumphantly what the tortoise stands on? Freethinkers asked which came first: the owl or the egg. Nobody thought of saying that the ultimate problem of existence, being clearly insoluble and even unthinkable on causation lines, could not be a causation problem. To pious people this would have been flat atheism, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... ten," he cried, running wildly up and down till his dressing-gown flapped round him like the wings of an owl. "So he has made nearly three thousand dollars! I have always had a bad opinion of that man; now I know what he is. He is a rascal—a double dealer. He never advanced the seven thousand either; his whole shop is not worth ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... mother's direction to find her real father. With the help of her grandmother she reaches Kuaihelani. Here she bathes in the taboo pool and plucks the taboo flowers. She is about to be slain for this act when her aunt, in the form of an owl, proclaims her name, and the chief recognizes his daughter. Her beauty shines like a light. Kahikiula, her half brother, on a visit to his father, becomes her lover. When he returns to his wife, Kahalaokolepuupuu in Kahikiku, she follows in the ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... Who smote the wasted cities, and the world Made as a wilderness—SHE, in her turn, Sinks to the gulf oblivious at the voice Of HIM who sits in judgment on her crimes! Who, o'er her palaces and buried towers, Shall bid the owl hoot, and the bittern scream; And on her pensile groves and pleasant shades 80 Pour the deep waters of forgetfulness. On that same night, when with a cry she fell, (Like her own mighty idol dashed to earth,) ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... name was Ko-ko, the Owl; and hearing much of the wonderful achievements of the Wearer of the Ball, Ko-ko put on a big look, and announced that he was going to ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... to say that Blacky is afraid of the dark. It isn't the dark itself that Blacky fears, but it is one who is abroad in the dark. It is Hooty the Owl. Hooty would just as soon dine on Blacky the Crow as he would on any one else, ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess
... simple supper at an "Owl" lunch-cart, totally unaware that, across the street, a couple of Cosmos men were waiting for him to come out. And, after this, buying a Socialist paper, he strolled into Evans Park to sit and read, a while, by the red light of ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... existence. Look where you will, in every high place there sits an Ass, settled beyond the reach of all the greatest intellects in this world to pull him down. Over our whole social system, complacent Imbecility rules supreme—snuffs out the searching light of Intelligence with total impunity—and hoots, owl-like, in answer to every form of protest, See how well we all do in the dark! One of these days that audacious assertion will be practically contradicted, and the whole rotten system of modern society will come ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... and her ugly subjects thou dost fright, And sleep, the lazy Owl of night; Asham'd and fearful to appear, They skreen their horrid shapes, with ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... upward through blues and greens and yellows to a spun-gold glitter at their summits. Jack rabbits loped away through the brush. Now and then a coyote, ears pricked up, trotted along, his tail dragging. Tecolote, the little desert owl, came from his hole and sat on the pile of dirt beside it, while his wife peeked out with her round head just above the ground and gave silent approval to her lord and master's ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... ten, the moment approaches; if the light does not leave you time to count beyond five, your escape is fixed for the following night; if it reappears no more, it is fixed for the same evening; then the owl's cry, repeated thrice in the courtyard, will be the signal; let down the ladder when ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... iron chest for years. On mounting the cockade, he hail taken up shooting as a martial exercise, inasmuch as the burning of gunpowder was an attendant of the recreation. He had never killed but one bird in his life, and that, was an owl, of which he took the advantage of daylight and his stocking feet to knock off a tree in the deanery grounds, very early after his arrival. In his trials with John, he sometimes pulled trigger ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... more wicked, and more silent questions, than anyone has ever asked on earth before.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Trust in life has vanished; life itself has become a problem.—But let no one think that one has therefore become a spirit of gloom or a blind owl! Even love of life is still possible,—but it is a different kind of love.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} It is the love for a woman ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... the night-sky, rose the quaint, ponderous, but broken walls of the ancient stronghold, where an owl hooted weirdly in the ivy, and where the whispering of the waters ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... their connection with the British. There was Winamac, the Potawatomi, who afterwards slaughtered the surrendered garrison at Fort Dearborn, and boasted of his murder. There were Silver Heels and Pecan, Five Medals and The Owl. But above them all stood Little Turtle, the Miami. He had been present at the defeat of Harmar and the slaughter of St. Clair's army. He had fought against Wayne at Fallen Timbers. In 1797 he had visited the great white father at Philadelphia, ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... The owl he has eyes that are big for his size, And the night like a book he deciphers; "Too-woop!" he asserts, and "Hoo-woo-ip!" he cries, And he means to remark he is awfully wise; But he lags behind us, who are "on" to the lies ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... the Western Sea, they did,— To a land all covered with trees; And they bought an owl and a useful cart, And a pound of rice, and a cranberry-tart, And a hive of silvery bees; And they bought a pig, and some green jackdaws, And a lovely monkey with lollipop paws, And forty bottles of ring-bo-ree, And no end of Stilton cheese. Far and few, far and few, Are ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... An owl answered with a creepy cry of alarm. Selwyn muttered impatiently at the trick played upon him by his nerves, and turning over, was about to settle again to slumber, when he heard a door softly opening. Light footsteps passed ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... keep off the evil eye. If a weasel crosses his path, he stops, and either throws three pebbles into the road, or, with the innate selfishness of fear, lets someone else go before him, and attract to himself the harm which may ensue. He has a similar dread of a screech-owl, whom he compliments in the name of its mistress, Pallas Athene. If he finds a serpent in his house, he sets up an altar to it. If he pass at a four-cross-way an anointed stone, he pours oil on it, kneels ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... occurred in our regiment at this period. Prior to the action of the Nivelle, an owl had perched itself on the tent of one of our officers (Lieut. Doyle). This officer was killed in the battle, and the owl was afterwards seen on Capt. Duncan's tent. His brother-officers quizzed him on the subject, by telling him that he ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... about half through its leg when the man came. I remember that he had a cat with a little red collar on its neck, and an owl in his hand, both of them dead, for he was Giles, the head-keeper, going round his traps. He was a tall man with sandy whiskers and a rough voice, and he carried a single-barrelled gun ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... and were able to supply themselves with more warlike stores than they had possessed before. Aristotle even says that Pericles himself was before this beaten by Melissus in a sea-fight. The Samians branded the figure of an owl on the foreheads of their Athenian prisoners, to revenge themselves for the branding of their own prisoners by the Athenians with the figure of a samaina. This is a ship having a beak turned up like a swine's snout, but with a roomy hull, so as both to carry ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... without resorting to a book. Count the fauna: Eagle River, Bald Eagle, Buffalo Lake, Great Bear Lake, Salmon Falls, Snake River, Wolf Creek, White Fish River, Leech Lake, Beaver Bay, Carp River, Pigeon Falls, Elkhorn, Wolverine, Crane Hill, Rabbit Butte, Owl, Rattlesnake, Curlew, Little Crow, Mullet Lake, Clam Lake, Turtle Creek, Deerfield, Porcupine Tail, Pelican Lake, Kingfisher, Ravens' Spring, Deer Ears, Bee Hill, Fox Creek, White Rabbit—can any one mistake the animals haunting these places in ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... but not towards us Americans. Towards us you are little and insignificant and superfluous. Your eyes, though of wondrous efficacy in their way, blink in our atmosphere like those of an owl in broad sunlight; and if you come flying here, it is the privilege of the smallest birds—of which you are quite at liberty to esteem me one—to pester you back into your ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... unless there was something living inside of it." When the witch-girl heard this her fright increased, so that, to make matters worse, she pulled her gown in under the bed, upon which Clara kneeled down, lifted the coverlet, and found the owl in its nest. Now she had to creep out weeping and howling, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... is as a worm in a pumpkin." "Thy friend has an acquaintance, and the acquaintance of thy friend has also an acquaintance; be discreet." The unworthy child of a good father is called "vinegar, the son of wine." "If the opportunity fails the thief, he deems himself honest. The cock and owl await together the morning dawn. Says the cock to the owl, 'Light profits me, but how does it profit thee?' Youth is a crown of roses, old age a crown of thorns. Many preach well, but do not practise well. It is the punishment of liars, that men don't listen ...
— Hebrew Literature
... bit o' turkey yes ever put in yer mouth.' An' so he did; an' he said it was the best show he iver was to, and he wouldn't 'a' missed seein' Mary Moran get the prize fur twice the money. An' so he went home with me, ye see, as sober as an owl, and we bought our own turkey; but if he'd gone to the tavern, not a cint would he had of his week's wages, and been drunk beside! An' he used to be swate on Mary too, so there's no knowin' ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... children. At nightfall the village and its surrounding meadows soon become slumberous. The field-paths and lanes become utterly lonely and solemn. Bats swoop down, and around the isolated farms may be heard the strange cry of the owl. It is little wonder that superstition dies slowly in such an atmosphere; and there was one such superstition that long lingered around the Gannel gorge. Perhaps it is not yet quite dead, but is told by some mothers ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... refer to the position occupied by our army more at length, and shall only refer now to the general position of our encampment, as on a wooded plateau, accessible to attack only from the direction of Corinth, the river being in our rear, Snake Creek and Owl Creek on our right flank, and Lick Creek on our left. In places there were small fields with their adjuncts of deserted cabins. Our troops were camped wherever there was an opening in the woods or underbrush sufficiently large for a regiment. ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney
... of land-birds were driven on board—a case not uncommon during storms—and an owl and a hawk were observed perched on the swinging table on the poop, without shewing any alarm at the presence of the ship's company. It was not noticed what became of them. This circumstance tended to shew the intensity ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... about these prairie-dogs (perhaps, considering their size, we should call them prairie-doggies), another thing about them, we say, was that each doggie lived with an owl, or, more correctly, an owl lived with each doggie! This is such an extraordinary fact that we could scarce hope that men would believe us, were our statement not supported by dozens of trustworthy travellers who have visited and written about these regions. The whole plain was covered with these ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... this," said a deep hollow voice; and looking up, Bevis saw the face of the owl at the mouth of a hole in the pollard-tree. He was winking in the light, and could not persuade himself to come out, which was the reason the council was held at the foot of his house, as it was necessary ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... awfully lonely; not a sound, except the frogs croaking their vespers, and one dismal owl screaming in the distance. And how cold it has turned now the sun has gone down; and how ghostly the beeches look in their green mantles; there is something awful in a wood ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... were so filled with sleep that I could not understand anything he said. When we reached the office, where as yet it was hardly light, the Bailiff, behind a huge inkstand and piles of books and papers, looked at me from out of his huge wig like an owl from out its nest, and began: "What's your name? Where do you come from? Can you read, write, and cipher?" And when I assented, he went on, "Well, her Grace, in consideration of your good manners and extraordinary ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... stood, crying, Alas! Alas! and wept, and gnashed their teeth, and groaned; And with the owl, that on her ruins sat, Made dolorous concert in the ear ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... owl boat. Let the public roar and come home early to its wife. And there's that last car that connects with the 12:45 boat at Twenty-second and Hastings. Cut it out. I can't run it for two or three passengers. Let them take an earlier boat home or walk. This is no time for philanthropy. And ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... himself; but when he wished to see human beings, he found Mr. and Mrs. Thaxter very pleasant. Mrs. Thaxter sent Una a necklace of native shells with a gold and coral clasp, Julian a plume made of white owl feathers, and Rosebud a most exquisite wreath of sea-moss upon a card. I kept a journal for my husband, according to his express injunction. The children missed papa miserably, and I could not bear the trial very well. I could not eat, sitting opposite his empty chair at table, and ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the moonlight on a crooked, half uprooted elm overhanging the creek, until the world grew worshipfully still as it does twenty miles from a railroad; their quiet, contented thoughts undisturbed by the call of the whippoorwills in the near thickets and the hooting of a great owl far ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... and the upper third in Vermont. Its extreme length from north to south is about thirty miles, its breadth varying from one to three miles. It is semi-circular in form and bestudded with islands; while on its western shore rise mountains of no ordinary attractions, among them Owl's Head, which towers about 2,500 feet above the surface of the lake, affording from its summit a panoramic view of surpassing loveliness. It was at "The Outlet" of this lake there was born, Oct. 27, 1834, Helen Mar, the youngest daughter of Abel B. and Polly JOHNSON; and there she spent—with ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... her former husband's honor'd shade Assiduous worship, daily vows she paid: There, when the night, unroll'd her sable pall She hears his voice in doleful murmurs call, While from the roof the fated owl alone 575 In deep complaint prolongs the funeral tone. Beside, what ills had been foretold before, Now on her mind, a dread impression bore. Her aching eyes did broken slumbers close, AEneas like a vengeful fury rose: 580 Alone—forsaken—distant from ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... cried Peterkin. "Nobly spoken, Jack!—Hand me a drop of water, Ralph.—Why, girl, what's wrong with you? You look just like a black owl blinking in the sunshine!" ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... an owl, once again," said Vincent; "if he has nothing left to buy cheese and radishes, he will only dine a day the sooner with some patron or some player, for that is his fate five days out of the seven. It is unnatural that ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... It is unfortunate that I am so often compelled to corroborate your statements, when all the acumen with which you credit my mind is turned towards the task of proving you a purse-proud fool, puffed up in your own conceit, and as short-sighted as an owl in the summer sunlight. However, let us stick to our text. If what I said had been true, although of course you know it isn't, you have nevertheless enough common sense to be aware that I would certainly show a pardonable reluctance about visiting my father's Palace. It is thronged with spies of ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... deserlate till Cheap Jack took it in hand there ain't a owl in the wood that would have liked to live in it; but Jack hammers a bit of wood here, and a plank there, and a bit o' matting up agen the walla, and puta in a stove from Petersfield, and makes it as snug as a burd's nest. I've smoked many a pipe with him alongside ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... thoughts. He was alone and apparently unconscious of the nearness of his companions until a lad about his own age joined him and inquired, "Say, Ralph, what are you thinking of? You look as wise as an owl." ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... it not I that caught you then, And kiss'd you on the saddle-bow? Did not the blue owl mark the men Whose spears stood like ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... break the silence, except the faint murmur which now and then the trees will make in the quietest night, as if they were dreaming, and talked in their sleep; for the motion does not seem to pass beyond them, but to swell up and die again in the heart of them. This and the occasional cry of an owl was all that broke the silent flow of the undivided moments,—glacier-like flowing none can tell how. We seldom spoke, and at length the house within seemed possessed by the silence from without; but we were all ear,—one hungry ear, whose ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... artisan, said to himself; "They say he is a cutter of false stones; if so, he would not fear their being stolen. Just as well to know that. I take! Then again, Mother Mathieu, who comes here so often, is a dealer in real; and those she has in her casket are real diamonds. I will put the Owl up to this!" ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... knew. And then there would be high-balls and stories, and he would hurry home to dinner a little late but feeling good, and a little sorry for the poor Standard Oil Company. On this evening as he entered he heard some one say: "Babbitt was in last night as full as a boiled owl." ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... The Lewiston Hermit The Dead Ship of Harpswell The Schoolmaster had not reached Orrington Jack Welch's Death Light Mogg Megone The Lady Ursula Father Moody's Black Veil The Home of Thunder The Partridge Witch The Marriage of Mount Katahdin The Moose of Mount Kineo The Owl Tree A Chestnut Log The Watcher on White Island Chocorua Passaconaway's Ride to Heaven The Ball Game by the Saco The White Mountains The Vision on Mount Adams The Great Carbuncle Skinner's Cave Yet they call it Lover's Leap Salem and other Witchcraft The Gloucester Leaguers Satan ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... rest of the day he hung about the shack, as solemn as an owl. And once in the night he got up and lighted the lamp and came over and studied my face. I blinked up at him sleepily, for I was dog-tired and had been dreaming that we were back in Paris at the Bal des Quatz Arts and were about to finish up with an early ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... issued full-armed from the brain of Zeus, and in this way the child of both wisdom and power; wears a helmet, and bears on her left arm the aegis with the Medusa's head; the olive among trees, and the owl among animals, were sacred ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... this unpleasant episode, had started to go after him, when the weird cry of an owl, a long drawn, tremulous: "Hoo-oo-oo!" came from somewhere in the forest, close at hand. It startled her. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... offshoots. One would imagine beforehand that no two birds could be more unlike in every respect than the gaudy, noisy, gregarious cockatoos and the sombre, nocturnal, solitary owls. Yet the New Zealand owl-parrot is, to put it plainly, a lory which has assumed all the outer appearance and habits of an owl. A lurker in the twilight or under the shades of night, burrowing for its nest in holes in the ground, it has dingy brown plumage like the owls, with an ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... on strike," said the Brown Owl (he was head of the Ministry of Wisdom). "They always go on strike if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... be mostly actingers or actorines," he allowed. "Say!" turning ferociously to Francis, "what business has a boy looking like an owl? Loosen up, and have ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... conquest of himself. The haughty empires one did rear have long since crumbled into dust; the wild goat browses in their deserted capitals, the lizard sleeps upon their broken thrones, and the owl hoots from their forgotten altars and ruined fanes; but the philosophy of the other lives on from age to age, to point the folly of such mad rainbow-chasing as that of him who thought to make the ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... deep folds on each side of his mouth. The round orbits of his eyes radiated fine wrinkles. More than ever he recalled an irritable and staring fowl—something like a cross between a parrot and an owl. He still manifested an outspoken dislike for "intriguing fellows." He seized every opportunity to state that he did not pick up his rank ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... away; still Rosalind remained at the window. As there was no inclination to sleep, she determined to remain in her position until morning. She knew that it must be far beyond midnight, and at the thought there sprung up a faint hope within her breast. But she was startled by the dismal hoot of an owl. She sprang up, with a beating heart, listening intently and painfully; but no other sound was heard. Trying to smile at her trepidation, she again seated herself and listened; in a moment that cry was repeated, now in an opposite direction ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... was a little owl, a dog, a nigger, a bust, a Cupid in gold, bronze, china or enamel, it had to have some human meaning, some recognisable expression which made it lovable and familiar to him. He did not care for the fantastic, ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... either one of two women, throwing the other overboard. He was bound to marry: he was bound to take to himself one of them: and whichever one he selected would cast a lustre on his reputation. At least she would rescue him from the claws of Lady Busshe, and her owl's hoot of "Willow Pattern", and her hag's shriek of "twice jilted". That flying infant Willoughby—his unprotected little incorporeal omnipresent Self (not thought of so much as passionately felt for)—would not be scoffed at as the luckless with women. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "Brothers of Pity and other tales of men and beasts," will be found Among the Merrows; A Week spent in a Glass Pond; Tiny's Tricks and Toby's Tricks; The Owl in the Ivy Bush, and Owlhoots I. II., whilst Sunflowers and a Rushlight has been put amongst the Flower Stories in ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... serve as the New York home of F. Hopkinson Smith's Colonel Carter of Cartersville, was at one time the quarters of the Tile Club, where, in the golden days, men ceased to be known by the stiff and formal names used in more ceremonious surroundings, and became instead the Owl, or the Griffin, or the Pagan, or the Chestnut, or the Puritan, or the O'Donoghue, or the Bone, or the Grasshopper, or the Marine, or the Terrapin, or the Gaul, or the Bulgarian, or Briareus, or Sirius, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... ponder like an owl," he said at last; "You always did, and here you have a cause. For I'm a confirmation of the past, A vengeance, and a flowering of ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... good food we discourse far into the night of weird things tinged with our friend's strange superstition and curious lore. Outside the coyotes howl, far away on the plain, and the mournful cry of the tecolote, or Mexican night owl, faintly reaches my ears, as, wrapped in my blankets with a saddle for a pillow, I fall asleep upon ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... upon a vast group of dark figures and a thousand gleaming eyes peered out of the velvety canopy around us. The mournful distressing notes of the ghost bird broke the stillness. The scream of some passing night bird replied as if in answer to their weird calls. A great horned owl made us shiver with his "hoo, hoo, hoo," as the flame shot upward in scarlet circles. The night wind stirred the branches, which sighed audibly, and died away leaving the place lonelier than before. Then the sharp bark of a fox rang out from a neighboring ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... incident of the passing owl that he had come upon, and startled into uttering its shriek of dread on finding itself suddenly in such close contact with its great enemy, man, having confused him a little as to his direction, and it was some moments before he was ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... painting, the vases were decorated with incised patterns filled with white clay. The productions of sculpture were limited to carving of small flat idols of Minerva [Greek: glaukopis][6] of marble, almost in the forms of two discs, which adhered to each other, and upon which the owl's face is rudely scratched. The Trojan treasure certainly shows more art, but it is characterized by an absence of ornamentation. In Mycenae, on the contrary, the monuments which I have brought to light show a high state of civilization, and the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... it!" she exclaimed. "Now I know why you're sitting there like an owl this morning! In love with a fair unknown, are you, Dick? Be careful. Monte Carlo is full of young ladies whom it would be just as well to know a little about before you thought of taking ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... obey ye, ye was allus a good perwider and I don't perpose to see yer want for nothin', but ye have got to hold up yer right hand and swear to obey me for the rest of yer nateral life,' and he did it. He got well, and he is tougher'n a biled owl, if he is eighty-six. But the cold sorter settled in his ears, and he's deef as an adder. Ef angel Gabriel blew his horn now I'm ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... Vane, "she lies awake and wonders. And then she gets out of bed, and perhaps the moon is up, shining cold and white on the water that lies in front of her window. And the trees are throwing black shadows, and somewhere in the depths of an old patriarch an owl is hooting mournfully. For a while she stands in front of her open window. The air is warm, and the faint scent of roses comes to her from outside. A great pride wells up in her—a great pride and a great love, for the sleeping glory in front of her belongs to her; to her and her father ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... heaven. What I saw was the reflection of the after-glow, but the glow in the sky was hidden. Sometimes, as the rocks were fading again and a star was already glittering like steel against the dark blue, another flush arose in the dusk, and a faint redness still rested upon the high crags, when the owl flew forth with a shriek to hunt along ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... uninhabited, and the keys either lost, or consigned to the care of some aged butler or housekeeper, whose trembling steps, about the middle of the second volume, were doomed to guide the hero, or heroine, to the ruinous precincts? Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title-page? and could it have been possible for me, with a moderate attention to decorum, to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... jack-rabbit, whose black bead-like eye betrays his presence among the snow-drifts in spite of his snow-white fur, is common enough; and the childlike wailing of the coyotes is heard every night. But with the exception of the shriek of the snow-owl or the yelping of a fox emerged from his lair, there is no sound of life during seven or eight or nine months of winter on the Barren Grounds; unless the traveller is able to hear the rushing sound—some can hear it, others cannot—of ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... black on a purple sky. The after-glow in the west had faded. It was dark in the cloisters. Thunder growled in the distance; an owl ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... of twisted snakes: Which in the nicest fashion curl'd, (Like toupees[2] of this upper world) With flower of sulphur powder'd well, That graceful on his shoulders fell; An adder of the sable kind In line direct hung down behind: The owl, the raven, and the bat, Clubb'd for a feather to his hat: His coat, a usurer's velvet pall, Bequeath'd to Pluto, corpse and all. But, loath his person to expose Bare, like a carcass pick'd by crows, A lawyer, o'er his hands and face Stuck artfully a parchment case. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... every one in the town knows which way to go," answered their guide; "and it isn't often we have visitors. Last week a gray owl stopped with us for a couple of days, and we had a fine ball in her honor. But you are the first humans that have ever been entertained in our town, so it's quite an event with us." A few minutes later she said: "Here we are, at the Mayor's house," and as they ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
... squirrel, with a funny little yelp and a troglodyte habitation, lives in villages or cities of from five hundred to five thousand dens, each (or most of them) tenanted in common with him by a harmless little Owl and a Rattlesnake of questionable amiability. The Owl sits by the mouth of the hole till driven away by your approach, when he follows his confrere's example by diving; the Rattlesnake stays usually below, to give any prowling, thieving prairie-wolf, or other carnivorous intruder, the worst ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in my face and very wickedly. I gazed at her as with dazzled eyes—I suppose as the feathered prey do at the owl that glares on them by night. I neither moved back nor forward, but stared at her ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... with the ol' man. You don't know what that means. I do. Mos' usually, askin' a lady's pardon for the way of sayin' it, it means Hell. Capital H. An' to-night the ol' man has got the door locked an' he's two games behind an' he's sore as a hoot-owl an' he says that anybody as breaks in on his play is— No, I can't say it; not in the presence of a lady. There's times when the ol' man is so awful vi'lent he's purty near vile ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... industrious Darry with owl-like solemnity. Finally the latter handed a duplicate receipt and a copy of the ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... up the amiable impudence you did, to persuade the commander-in-chief to give me letters to the ambassador: nor could I have got up such a turn-out, nor have fitted the turn-out so well as you do. I should have been as stupid as an owl, just doing what I have done the whole of the blessed morning for want of your company—looking after one of the floating bridges across the river, and spitting into the stream, just to add my mite to the ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... nine o'clock on a working day morning, steady, reliable, dependable, automatic Andrew Daney having imbibed Dutch courage in lieu of Nature's own brand, was, for the first time in his life, jingled to an extent comparable to that of a boiled owl. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... at our desire, The little clamorous owl shall sit Through her still time; and we aspire To make a law (and know not it) Unto the life ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... the night an owl hooted, and Nap turned his head sharply, as one accustomed to take note of every sound. A while longer he stood, seeming to listen, every limb alert and tense, then swiftly he wheeled and gazed full at the drooping ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... from the dappled flatting of the heav'ns Looks out the ev'ning star.—— The lover skulking in the neighb'ring copse, (Whose half-seen form shewn thro' the thicken'd air, Large and majestic, makes the tray'ller start, And spreads the story of the haunted grove,) Curses the owl, whose loud ill-omen'd scream, With ceaseless spite, robes from his watchful ear The well known footsteps of his darling maid; And fretful, chaces from his face the night-fly, Who buzzing round his head doth often skim, With flutt'ring wing, across his glowing cheek: For all but him in deep ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... though not so loud as a screech owl, and then she tottered, swayed, and lost her senses. If she'd fallen to the left no harm had overtook her; but to the right she fell and dropped unconscious, face forward ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... in short, carry a map in his brain of any region that he has marched or galloped through. Another man takes no note of any of these things; always follows somebody else's lead when he can, and gets lost if he is left to himself; a mere owl in daylight. Just so some men have an eye for an equation, and would read at sight the one that you puzzled over. It is told of Sir Isaac Newton that he required no demonstration of the propositions in Euclid's Geometry, but ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of all kinds, rows of bee-hives standing in the sun, roses and raspberries growing side by side. The breaths of thyme and balm, lavender and myrtle, were always in that parlour. You know the sheep-fold and the paddock, the old tree over the west gable where the owl made his nest—the owl that used to come and sit on our school-room windowsill and hoot at night. You know, the sun-dial where the screaming peacock used to perch and spread his tail; the dove-cote, where the silver-necks and fan-tails used to coo and ruffle their ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... it was an owl; The other he said nay; The third said 'twas an old man, And his beard ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... the carriage at a half mile beyond Servas, put his head out of the window, made a trumpet of his hands, and gave the hoot of a screech-owl. The imitation was so perfect that another owl answered from ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... night comes like an owl to its lair, The black clouds follow fast, And the sun-gleams die, and the lightnings glare, And the ships go heaving past, past, past— The ships go heaving past! Bar the doors, and higher, higher Pile the faggots on the fire: Now abroad, by ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... the Poema Morale in the same MS. has undergone a drastic revision which sets it apart among the versions of that poem, and the version of the Owl and Nightingale has suffered, though not to the same extent. On the other hand MS. T was copied by a man who was incapable of remodelling it; though a ruin, it often preserves ...
— Selections from early Middle English, 1130-1250 - Part I: Texts • Various
... that he "shall live." Jesus says: "I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall have the light of LIFE. In him is light, and the light is the LIFE of men." But if the sinner, like the owl, closes his eyes to the light of truth, and his ears to the voice of the Lord, he will abide in death, and, like the owl, love darkness rather ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... 'neath his foot, And made an eerie sound, A neighboring owl began to hoot, All else was ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... right out in the night, like a hoot owl only fiercer!" insisted one of her followers. "And she ain't safe to be loose with a ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... That was why Owl Eyes, the Wisest Medicine-man, invited two of his cronies to sit with him on the bluff overlooking the salt-marsh and watch the ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... God save you, sir, and give you all contentment in your fair choice, here! Before, I was the bird of night to you, the owl; but now I am the messenger of peace, a dove, and bring you the glad wishes of many friends to the ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... dose, we confess, is pretty potent, and skilfully enough prepared. But what shall we say to the ass of Silenus, who, if we may trust to classic lore, by his own proper sounds, without thanks to cat or screech-owl, dismayed and put to rout a whole army of giants? Here was anti-music with a vengeance,—a whole Pan-Dis-Harmonicon in a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Germans will find it out before I'm gathered to the bosom of Abraham. I have a right to disapprove of my President if I feel like it, but I'll be shot if I'll let anybody else pick on him." And Cappy shook his head emphatically several times like a squinch-owl. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... followed,—miles and miles beside roaring brooks and mist-filled ravines, through gloomy woods where no light entered, and over bare ridges where the big stars sparkled just over his ears as he hung, limp as a rabbit skin, from his mother's great jaws. An owl hooted dismally, whoo-hooo! and though he knew the sound well in his peaceful nights, it brought now a certain shiver. The wind went sniffing suspiciously among the spruce branches; a startled bird ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... stood the crooked and charred stems of furze with which it had been covered before the fire passed. A white owl floated rather than flew by, following the edge of the forest; from far down the slope came the chattering notes of a brook-sparrow, showing that there was water in the hollow. Some large animal moved into the white mist that hung there and immediately concealed it, ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... can,' he called to her; 'tell me if you see a squirrel stirring, or the eyes of an owl looking out ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... pace as I could manage, uttering from time to time a lusty halloo, in hopes of making myself heard by some belated reaper or returning woodman. But my calls had no other effect than to awake the mocking echoes of the wood, or the mysterious and almost human shout of the screech-owl, and to leave me to a still more intense feeling of solitude, when these had died away. I found myself at length in a deep, hollow field-road, like those which abound in South Devon, and high overhead, on the lofty bank, stood a two-branched, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... reply to "The Appeal to the Dead," that Barres, like an owl perched on a cypress in a graveyard, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... leaves would glimmer white in the wind at times. The tree was full of giant birds. Every now and then, one would sweep through, with a great noise. But, except an occasional chirp, sounding like a shrill pipe in a great organ, they made no noise. All at once an owl began to hoot. He thought he was singing. As soon as he began, other birds replied, making rare game of him. To their astonishment, the children found they could understand every word they sang. And what they said was something ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... with herself that she would turn the page before she ate another. In fact she slept. But then her day had been a long one, Mother Stuart had thrown the tea-cosy;—there are formidable sights in the streets, and though Florinda was ignorant as an owl, and would never learn to read even her love letters correctly, still she had her feelings, liked some men better than others, and was entirely at the beck and call of life. Whether or not she was a virgin seems a matter of no importance whatever. Unless, indeed, it is ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... for me in the morning?" the old wheels rattled all the way out the Riverfield ribbon, and I thought an old owl hooted the question at me from a dead tree beside the road, while I felt also that a mocking-bird sang it from a thicket of dogwood in ghostly bloom opposite. "Will there be word in ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... light" in him—caliginem nimiae lucis, which makes him as inaccessible to us as the other, the over-proportion of that glorious majesty of God to our low spirits, being as the sun in its brightness to a night owl, which is dark midnight to it. Hence it is, that those holy men who know most of God, think they know least, because they see more to be known but infinitely surpassing knowledge. Pride is the daughter ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... croon me a lullaby, And trickle the white moonbeams To my face on the balsam where I lie While the owl hoots at ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... Euripides, The Captain crowed out, "Euoi, praise the God! Ooep, boys, bring our owl-shield to the fore! Out with our Sacred Anchor! Here she stands, Balaustion! Strangers, greet the lyric girl! Euripides? Babai! what a word there 'scaped Your teeth's enclosure, quoth my grandsire's song Why, fast as snow in Thrace, the voyage through, Has she been falling thick in flakes of ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... the gleaming puddles—dimensionless pools of thin, unsubstantial gold. Turning sharply to the left, she followed a narrow wagon road, serving to avoid a dark body on the ground. She looked up as an owl hooted mournfully from a solitary tree. Just ahead of her she could see the trestle that led to the railroad bridge and the steps mounting up to it. The ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Tacitus, and Livy, and Cicero; after Horatius of the bridge, and Cincinnatus, the farmer oligarch; after Scipio, and Cassius, and Constantine, and Caesar. Her war-eagle, blinded by flying too near the sun, came reeling down through the heavens, and the owl of desolation and darkness made its nest in the forsaken aerie. Mexican Empire, dead! French Empire, dead! You see it is no unusual thing for a government to perish. And in the same necrology of nations, and in the same cemetery of expired governments, will ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... of grass are plump, roly-poly, black-and-white birds, with soft musical voices and the gentlest possible manners. They may have already brought out one brood in thick, deep grassy nests, well lined with rabbit fur or Snow Owl feathers, that they know so well how to tuck under a protecting ledge of rock or bunch of grass. Now and then a male Snowflake will take a little flight and sing as merrily as his cousin the Goldfinch, but he never stays long away from the ground where seeds are ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... they loved to lie up in the airy wooden belfry; the great gaping bell hanging darkly above them, the mouldering cross-beams glimmering far up under the dim shadows of the roof, where dwelt a great brown owl that, unfrightened at their familiar presence, stared down at them with his round, solemn eyes. Below them stretched the white walls of the garden, beyond them the vineyard, and beyond that again the far ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... corresponding bones of the living apteryx. Among these relics are the 'skulls' and 'mandibles' of two genera, the 'Dinornis' and 'Palapteryx'; and of an extinct genus, 'Notornis', allied to the 'Rallidae'; and the mandibles of a species of 'Nestor', a genus of nocturnal owl-like parrots, of which only two living species ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... owls at midnight, Hooting, laughing in the forest, "What is that?" he cried in terror; "What is that," he said, "Nokomis?" And the good Nokomis answered: "That is but the owl and owlet, Talking in their native language, Talking, scolding at ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... there on the lone praire-e-e Where the owl all night hoots mournfulle-e-e And the blizzard beats and the wind blows free O'er his lonely grave on ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... De big Owl holler en cry fer his mate, My honey, my love! Oh, don't stay long! Oh, don't stay late! My honey, my love! Hit aint so mighty fur ter de Good-by Gate, My honey, my love! Whar we all got ter go w'en we sing out de night, My honey, my ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... you having a cosy tte—tte with a young barrister of many inches and little brains," she laughed. "Come, Lorraine, spout away. What is your favourite hors d'oeuvre? Did you feel like a boiled owl at your first appearance? And which horse do you back ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... said the peacock there, "The Lord of Love, that mighty prince, y-wis, He is received here and ev'rywhere: Now Jubilate sing:" "What meaneth this?" Said then the linnet; "welcome, Lord of bliss!" Out start the owl with "Benedicite," "What meaneth all this merry fare?"* ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind; and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry: "The spider has wove his web in the Imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... watch her with fascinated eyes; and for every one she has sweet and gracious words and beaming smiles; she holds them to the last. The children troop about her as she is led away to change her bridal-dress for the journey. 'Tis approaching midnight and the "owl train" leaves within the hour; and they hang about the stairways waiting for her reappearance, and hover in mysterious fascination about Captain Ray as he comes in his travelling suit of mufti, and wonder why he should discard his uniform and ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... Sheriff, The egg-nogs gethered him in; And Shelby's boy Leviticus Was, New Year's, tight as sin; And along in March the Golyers Got so drunk that a fresh-biled owl Would 'a' looked 'longside o' them two young men, ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... our times, was never found fault with. How finely, how, clearly, has Hippolytus, Bishop of Porto pointed out beforehand the power of Antichrist, the times of Luther! They call him, therefore, "a most babyish writer, an owl." Cyprian, the delight and glory of Africa, that French critic Caussee, and the Centuriators of Magdeburg, have termed "stupid, God-forsaken corrupter of repentance." What harm has he done? He has written On Virgins, On the Lapsed, On the Unity of the Church, such ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... a huge saber, Friar Tuck has forgotten his cowl; And we're quite at a stand-still with Weber, For want of a lizard and owl: And then, for our funeral procession, Pray get us a love of a pall; Or how shall we make an impression On feelings, at ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various |
