"Lark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... particularly those of bringing back the primitive in a big rich way. The primitive is always a new and higher beginning to the man who understands it. Not yet has the producer learned that the feeling of the crowd is patriarchal, splendid. He imagines the people want nothing but a silly lark. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... the meadow lark came to be made, they say. It has a yellow breast and black in the middle, which is the yellow of that morning, and they say the black stripe is made by a smooth buffalo horn worn ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... known deeper sorrow. But no man ever mounted upon his sorrow more surely to higher things. Blessed and beloved, the singer is gone, but his song remains, and its pure and imperishable melody is the song of the lark in ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... round the room, I guess, gay as a lark. Auchmuty came to her "in pity for poor Ingham," who was so bored by the stupid pundit,—and Auchmuty could not understand why I stood it so long. But when Dennis took Mrs. Jeffries down, Polly could not resist standing near them. He was ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... they exchanged their morning greetings sounded strange to them. They knew only the muffled accents transmitted by the echo of the well. And now their voices seemed to them as clear as the notes of a lark. And ah! how delightful it was in that warm corner, in that holiday atmosphere! They still held each other's hands. Silvere leaning against the wall, Miette with her figure slightly thrown backwards. They were about to tell each ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... tells us how it was done. "A sorry yacht, but bearing the English Jack, in August 1671 sails into the midst of the Dutch fleet, singles out the Admiral, shooting twice as they call it, sharp upon him. Which must sure have appeared as ridiculous and unnatural as for a lark to dare the hobby." The Dutch admiral asking "Why," was told "because he and his whole fleet had failed to strike sail to his small craft." The Dutch commander then "civilly excused it as a matter of the first ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... aniseed, and lastly a plant called "Binao," which is used by the natives as bread. Cockatoos, wood pigeons, lories, and black-birds, somewhat larger than those of Europe, abounded in the woods. In the marshes the curlew, sea lark, a species of snipe, and ducks were to be found. The only quadrupeds the country produced ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... and a foolish joke on the part of a sensible man, and he refused to lend himself to it; but the thought that a house might swim into his purse on a tear caused him a peculiar irritation of the glands, which made him look like a sick lark to whom a clyster is being applied with an oiled pinhead—the house ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... year's at the spring And the day's at the morn; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing: The snail's on the thorn; God's in his heaven: All's ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... a lark, So his wife did remark, And some angry words, too, did she mutter. On a lark he went out, Of that fact there's no doubt, But he came in, alas! on ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... when, in a fragrant rush of rain, spring came one day to Punagwandah, fairest of the Channel Islands. Beneath the golden mists of sunrise danced a radiant sea. On steeply sloping hillsides where thickets of wild lilac bloomed, the lark shook from his tiny throat a tumult of glad music. In shadowed niches of the canyons lilies waited to fill with light their gleaming ivory cups. Spring ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... pleasant country sights and sounds. Everything seemed beautiful to them, moors, and hills, and golden harvest-fields. They did not talk much, only now and then one would point out to the other some new object of interest, a glimpse of blue water caught between the hills, or a lark upspringing from some grassy ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... "Gay as a lark, I went to dine at Mr. Venables'. I had previously obtained five shillings from my father, towards re-clothing the poor children of my care, and prevailed on my mother to take one of the girls into the house, whom I determined to teach to work ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... thine ear, Armor's clang, or war steed champing, Trump nor pibroch summon here Mustering clan, or squadron tramping. Yet the lark's shrill fife may come, At the daybreak from the fallow, And the bittern sound his drum, Booming from the sedgy shallow. Ruder sounds shall none be near, Guards nor warders challenge here, Here's no war steed's neigh and champing, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... being very spacious with porches on each side, situated on a high hill, with trees on the lawn giving homes to the birds and shade to the master, mistress and their guests where they could hear the chant of the lark or the melodious voices of the slaves humming some familiar tunes that suited ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Maryland Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... them were guests like ourselves, both men of the north. One ruddy, and of a full habit of body, with copious black hair and beard, the intrepid hunter of France, who thought nothing so small, not even a lark or a minnow, but he might vindicate his prowess by its capture. For such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing like Samson's, his arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, produced a feeling of disproportion ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Thomas Warton, in 1790, was, as a poet, regularly made fun of. In his New Year Odes there were perpetual references to the coming spring: and, in the dearth of more important topics, each tree and field-flower were described: and the lark, and every other bird that could be brought into rhyme, were sure to appear; and his poetical and patriotic olla podrida ultimately ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... "Don't you remember? You said you wished you were a boy again, like me. So you are, you see, exactly like me! What a lark it is, isn't it? But, I say, you can't go up to business like that, you know, can you? I tell you what, you'd better come to Grimstone's with me now, and see how you like it. I shouldn't mind so much if you came too. Grimstone's face would be splendid when ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... out night; and now the herald lark Left his ground-nest, high towering to descry The morn's approach, and greet her with his song, As lightly from his grassy couch up rose Our Saviour, and found all was but a dream; Fasting he went to sleep, and fasting ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... came, this beautiful creature with the large, dark, dreamy eyes that thrilled his heart into love. She carried the town by storm; every young man at the college was deeply, desperately in love. But Basil, the handsomest and wealthiest of them all, thought what a lark it would be to steal a march on them all by marrying the dark-eyed beauty then and there. He not only thought it, but executed it, but it was not the lark that he thought it was going to be. For one short happy week ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... to take over Dot and Dash. Mrs. Merkel and Nell said their good-byes, happily unaware of the dangerous phase of the undertaking. As for the boys, they would not admit it was dangerous. To them it was a great lark. ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... Nicholas. "I am blithe as a lark, and would keep so. That is why I drink. But to return to our ghosts. Since this place must be haunted, I would it were visited by spirits of a livelier kind than old Paslew. There is Isole de Heton, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... been found out! It wouldn't have done. But it has cheered me up many a time when I have had the miserables and felt as if I'd like to cut sojering and make for home. It was nice to have a young officer somewheres about your own age ready for a lark. Poor old Mother Smithers, and that brown juice—what do they call it—cutch and gambia?—as dyes things brown. The officers' clean shirts as was washed in ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... to discover beauties in nature? One can be so happy in a wood! What a charming thing to hear a leaf sing! I know few things more delightful than to watch the triumph of the month of May when the nightingale, the cuckoo, and the lark open the spring in our forests! And then, later, come those beautiful crystal days of autumn—days that are neither warm, nor yet are they really cold! And then the trees—how eloquent they can be made; ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... and house me hillward, Where the field-lark makes his bed, So the gulls can wheel above me, All day long when ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... said, with a sudden burst of laughter, "that we could dress in our old disguises, I as a student of theology you as a mild young novice; what a lark we would have with her!" and the boys went off into such shouts of laughter, that their aunt would have thought them more scatter-brained than ever if she had heard them, while from the tent of Captain ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... the lark from beds of bloom will rise And sail and sing among the very skies, Still mounting near and nearer to the light, Impelled alone by love of upward flight, So Genius soars—it does not need to climb— Upon God-given wings, to heights sublime. Some sportman's shot, grazing the singer's throat, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... through the wet ferns to the edge of the woods. As her eyes swept the russet valley through which they had passed Alice drew a deep breath of pleasure. How good it was to be alive in such a world of beauty! A meadow lark throbbed its three notes at her joyfully to emphasize their kinship. An English pheasant strutted across the path and disappeared into the ferns. Neither the man nor the woman spoke. All the glad day called them to the emotional climax ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... to exchange birds' eggs with any correspondent of YOUNG PEOPLE. I have eggs of the following birds: hedge, song, house, and chipping sparrow, bluebird, swallow, brown and red thrush, peewit, woodpecker, meadow-lark, cat-bird, pigeon, ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was a peasant, and above all, it was all in the dark. Vovo cried like an infant, the Professor defined, and Marya Vasilevna refined. Such a lark! You ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... passing at that moment. First came a splendid cock-a-doodle, all in black and gold, like a herald, blowing his trumpet, and marching with a very dignified step. Then came a rook, in black, like a minister, with spectacles and white cravat. A lark and bullfinch followed,—friends, I suppose; and then the bride and bridegroom. Miss Wren was evidently a Quakeress; for she wore a sober dress, and a little white veil, through which her bright eyes shone. The bridegroom was a military man, in his scarlet uniform,—a plump, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... as by a ladder, and there's a soul that soars naturally as a lark. I don't know that it matters which they do, so long as they both ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... general tall and well formed, they use bows over six feet in length, and but little bent. The facial angle is as good in most cases as in Europeans, and they have certainly as little of the "lark-heel" as whites. One or two of the under front teeth are generally knocked out in ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... good boy and I'll come home before you go to bed! I'll put you to bed," she had promised. "We'll have a regular lark!" ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... go coming the parson over me, Mr. Bowater! It's well known what black coats are, and how they never cry out so loud upon other folks as when they've had a jolly lark among themselves. No concealment now, we're up to a thing or two, and parsons, and capitalists, and squires will have ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feet before we got over the frontier. At the station there was a King's Messenger whom I had seen in France, and a war correspondent who had been trotting round our part of the front before Loos. I heard a woman speaking pretty clean-cut English, which amid the hoarse Dutch jabber sounded like a lark among crows. There were copies of the English papers for sale, and English cheap editions. I felt pretty bad about the whole business, and wondered if I should ever see these homely ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... was in the Strand: he pointed out to me the window of a room in the office of the "Morning Post," where he had consumed much midnight oil; and then for half an hour he talked of the sorrowful joy he had often felt, when, leaving the office as day was dawning, he heard the song of a caged lark that sang his orisons from the lattice of an artisan, who was rising to begin his labor as the poet was pacing homewards to rest after his work all night. Thirty years had passed; but that unforgotten melody, that dear bird's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... no reasoned theme. The music was beautiful in its own self. It rose straight up like the sky-lark from the ground, sheer up against the white light of the sky, and there it sang against heaven's gate. He had never heard harmony like it. He would never again hear such music, so thin and yet so full that it went through and through him, until he felt the strains take a new, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... lark-like spirit of the morning had folded its wings. My musings took on a decidedly somber tinge. "Were the Germans going to make a summary example of me to warn outsiders to cease prowling around the war zone?" "Was I going to be railroaded off to jail, ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... Fourth Street goes winding afar, And away to the Hudson, almost, we shall find A lone-seeming tenement cuddled behind Huge heaps of fresh lumber so piney and sweet, While everything round there is charmingly neat.— Yes, the children are home and as gay as a lark, While the good mother greets us with pleasure;—but hark! A baby-cry comes from the bedroom beyond, And Jenny brings forth a sweet, sunny-haired blonde, Saying: "This is the something we wanted to show you, This two-years-old baby-girl—why, does she know you? She holds out her hands to ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... time to array myself, as an experiment and a lark; and that I sillily did, hurriedly tossing my old garments upon bed and floor, in order to invest with the new. The third bed was occupied when I came in; occupied on the outside by a plump, round-faced, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... wont. Every now and then he could hear Pan whining woefully in his tub a long way off. Since the whipping the spaniel had been in disgrace, and no one would let him loose. Bevis, so delighted with his field to roam about in, quite forgot him, and left him to sorrow in his tub. Presently he heard a lark singing so sweetly, though at a great distance, that he kept quite still to listen. The song came in verses, now it rose a little louder, and now it fell till he could hardly hear it, and again returned. Bevis got up ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... by a sort of instinct she refrained from was Judy herself. When Jasper was in the house Hilda was always glad when Judy retired to her own room. When the gay little voice, happy now, and clear and sweet as a lark's, was heard singing snatches of gay songs all over the house, if Jasper were there, Hilda would carefully close the door of the room he ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... lark, and with the lark to bed," Observes some solemn, sentimental owl; Maxims like these are very cheaply said; But, ere you make yourself a fool or fowl, Pray just inquire about his rise and fall, And whether larks have any beds ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... some of her company. I have seen her with that team. And by George," he exclaimed, "I bet my head the other one was Olive! Of course it was. And she paid toll! Well, well, if that isn't a good one! Olive paying toll! I wish I had been here to take it! That truly would have been a lark!" ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... shone a warm yellow, wet rocks glittered like silver in the strong light, and the higher slopes, where belts of green moss checkered the heather, were streaked by lines of snowy foam. All was very quiet, except for the noise of running water and the joyous notes of a lark. Kit was not much of a philosopher; action was easier to him than abstract thought, but he vaguely felt that the serenity of the dale was marred by human passion. Man was, no doubt, meant to struggle, but Nature was his proper antagonist, and while ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... no other birds do. Flycatchers snap up the weevils near trees and shrubbery. Wrens hunt them out when concealed under bark or rubbish. Blackbirds catch them on the ground, as do the killdeer, titlark, meadow lark, and others; while orioles hunt for them on the bolls. But it is the peculiar function of swallows to catch the weevils as they are making long flights, leaving the cotton fields in search of hiding places in which to winter or entering them to ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Lord," cried the departing Miss Genie, waving a thousand-franc lace fan, as she sagely observed, "Two's company—three's none. We'll have a jolly lark—us four. Don't forget, now!" The polite Major laid his hand upon his heart and played the amiable tiger, although burning inwardly now, in a fierce personal jealousy of Anstruther as he wandered alone around the cold gray halls of the museum, and gazed upon ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... the college here were hoarse or treble by turns, and the priests required thee by force from thy tutors because thou couldst sing. Thou wast a stubborn lad, as pretty as a mimosa and as surly as a caged lion. I can see thee now chanting, with a voice like a lark, and frowning like ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... an English breakfast of eternal boiled eggs, or grilled ham; a nondescript dinner, profuse but cold; and a society which will rejoice your heart. Here are young gentlemen from the universities; young merchants on a lark; large families of nine daughters, with fat father and mother; officers of dragoons, and lawyers' clerks. The last time we dined at "Meurice's" we hobbed and nobbed with no less a person than Mr. Moses, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Suddenly a lark soared upward from the heath, cleaving the silence with its jubilant song. The sleeping echoes woke, the dun moor seemed to smile, and the blithe music fell like dew upon my gloomy spirit, wakening ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that, my bird! Art thou not jealous of her? My princess of the cloud, my plumed purveyor, My far-eyed queen of the winds—thou that canst soar Beyond the morning lark, and howsoe'er Thy quarry wind and wheel, swoop down upon him Eagle-like, lightning-like—strike, make his feathers Glance in mid heaven. [Crosses to chair. I would thou hadst a mate! Thy breed will die with thee, and mine with ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... reck rate reed rill rub rig rim rite ride rise red rag rick rote run reek rib rob rip ruse roar roam rack rid rip rouse Arch farm lark far snare for march harm bark bar spare war larch charm mark hair sure corn starch dark are stair lure born arm spark star ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... talking at once, Moliere in Greek and Aristophanes in German. I thought this odd, because it occurred to me that German was a dead language before Aristophanes was born. Bright-eyed Shelley brought in a fluttering lark which burst into the song of Chaucer's chanticleer. Henry Esmond gave his hand in a stately minuet to Diana of the Crossways. He evidently did not understand her nineteenth century wit; for he did not laugh. Perhaps he had lost his taste for clever women. Anon Dante and Swedenborg ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... he found thee [Str. 4. Made fast as with anchors to land, And broke, that his waves might be round thee, Thy fetters like rivets of sand? And afar by the blast of him drifted Thy blossom of beauty was borne, As a lark by the heart in her lifted To ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... contemplate the beauty of the night's rest that followed on the exhaustion of the day. It was proved to him that if his day was dull at least his sleep was sound. The ideal of society was the cheery artisan and the honest blacksmith, awake and singing with the lark and busy all day long at the loom and the anvil, till the grateful night soothed them into well-earned slumber. This, they were told, was better than the ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... things through a magnifying medium, deem their house the best in the world, their gun the truest, their very pointer a miracle—as Colonel Hanger suggested to economists to do; namely, provide their servants each with a pair of large spectacles, so that a lark might appear as big as a fowl, and a twopenny loaf as large as ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are really nice! There are only two mistresses that are simply dreadful." Dowager lady Chia said smilingly. "When we get drunk shortly, we'll go and sit in their rooms and have a lark!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Yonder is a woodman, and by his side a little boy. We will approach. Never fear. Spirits cannot be discerned by mortal eyes, and though we come very near, they will be unconscious of our presence. How attractive is childhood. The little fellow is as merry as a lark, and chatters away to his father, who, with silent absorption pursues his work. Suddenly his axe slips, and a large limb, which should have fallen in the other direction, descends with violence upon his foot. Can spirits be deaf at pleasure? If so we ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... select examples which every one can observe, when a canary bird is warbling in its cage and becomes deafening, or when a lark rises straight up in the air and incantat suum tirile tirile—sings its tirile tirile—as Linnaeus picturesquely expresses it; when a tomtit, leaping from branch to branch of a willow or among ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... craft undone! Crank plank, split spritsail—mark, sea's lark! That grey cold sea's old sprees, begun When men lay dark i' the ark, no spark, ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... other girl is of a different sort. She's more used to this kind of life, at least to poverty. I fancy Miss Black-Hair looks on it as a lark. But she'll find out the truth by the time she has mounted ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... vanish'd with the parting day! Alas! that when on spirit-wing we rise, No wing material lifts our mortal clay. But 'tis our inborn impulse, deep and strong, Upwards and onwards still to urge our flight, When far above us pours its thrilling song The sky-lark, lost in azure light, When on extended wing amain O'er pine-crown'd height the eagle soars, And over moor and lake, the crane Still striveth towards its ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... to this, Van," he shouted excitedly. "Mother says they have decided to open the New Hampshire house for Easter. They're going up for my spring vacation and take in the sugaring off. What a lark! And listen to this. She writes: 'You'd better arrange to bring your roommate home with you for the holiday unless he ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... acquainted with busses and the batteau mouche and other lowly forms of transportation and amusement, but spent most of their time in the studio, love-making, of which Adelle did not weary. Archie was used to the devices of a short purse and Adelle thought it all a great lark for love's sake. Besides, it must end soon, and the high noon of prosperity return with the possession of her precious lamp. To hasten that event she wrote a rather peremptory note to the Washington Trust Company, notifying them ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... "The lark sings loud, and the throstle's song Is heard from the depths of the hawthorn dale; And the rush of the streamlet the vales among Doth blend with the sighs of the ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... like, with their stern faces, as well as I knew the English manner of going forward to the day's work, and the hilarious, macabre spirit of the French untried lads crossing the river to look on horrors as if it were a lark. ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... merry lark was up and singing, And the hare was out and feeding on the lea; And the merry merry bells below were ringing, When my ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... Now 'tis mute; Birds delight Day and night, Nightingale, In the dale, Lark in sky— Merrily, Merrily, merrily to welcome ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... like one long, huge lark," put in Belle Meade. "It must be great for young men to be able to enjoy themselves ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... her sequestered haunts, By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove or cell, Where the poised lark his evening ditty chaunts, And Health, and Peace, and ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... "Make a lark of it," said she generously; "take that scapegoat Jerry-Jo McAlpin with you and have it out with him about being a young beast and worrying the heart out of old Jerry, who means well but ain't got no kind of a headpiece. ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... paid off clear of the rent, and all that's due, you'll get the new LASE signed; I'll promise you that upon the word and honour of a gentleman." And there's no going beyond that, you know, sir. So my boy came home as light as a feather, and as gay as a lark, to bring us the good news; only he was afraid we might not make up the rent, guineas and all; and because he could not get paid for the work he done, on account of the mistake in the overseer's tally, I sold the cow to a neighbour—dog-cheap; but needs must, as they say, when old Nick DRIVES,' ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... now at the foot of a peaked hill where Nature has brought the loveliest lines of design together. Man is hunting man, and in a moment they will be locked in fight. Meanwhile the lark is rising. ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... they had not reached Genoa, the lads had tasted the salt of adventure. Giuseppe's father boarded the Red Dragon, and, treating the whole matter as a summer's lark, helped the young sailors to bring their boat about, and tacking across toward Monaco and then out to the deeper sea, gave them a lesson in sailing that made them quickly forget that they were going ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... cawing and sporting round the corner at Landcross, while high above them four or five herons flap solemnly along to find their breakfast on the shallows. The pheasants and partridges are clucking merrily in the long wet grass; every copse and hedgerow rings with the voice of birds; but the lark, who has been singing since midnight in the "blank height of the dark," suddenly hushes his carol and drops headlong among the corn, as a broad-winged buzzard swings from some wooded peak into the abyss ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... the suffering parent's bed, and blessed at length with a firm promise of amendment and recovery, can tell the feelings that sustained my fluttering heart, beating more anxiously the nearer it approached its home. I woke that morning with the lark—yes, ere that joyous bird had spread its wing, and broke upon the day with its mad note—and I left the doctor's house whilst all within were sleeping. There was no rest for me away from that abode, whose gates of adamant, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... what is commonly known as a "good boy;" he was as fond of a lark as any right-minded youngster need be; but he had been taught at home that any one who intended to become a soldier should first learn to obey, and to respect the authority of those set over him. He did not like ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... a corruption of [Greek: staphis]. and usually written 'Staves-acre') a kind of lark-spur considered efficacious in destroying lice. Cf. Marlowe's Dr. Faustus (i. 4)— 'Stavesacre? that's good to kill vermin; then belike, if I serve ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... sigh for the coolness and order and daintiness that he knew would give atmosphere to the breakfast in Mrs. Willis' household. Not that he minded eating in the kitchen—he and his mother often did that when his father was away and thought it a lark; but he did mind the heat and the haste and the silence in which this, his first meal with the Hildreths, ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... whole of England. I have been in this place, though, once before, and for more than a week. The old man was advertising for me then, and a chum I had with me had a notion of getting a couple quid out of him by writing a lot of silly nonsense in a letter. That lark did not come off, though. We had to clear out—and none too soon. But this time I've a chum waiting for me in London, ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... windows. The roses and fuchsias of the cottage gardens seem all the brighter by contrast with that broad expanse of blue. The fresh breath of the salt sea blends with the perfume of new-mown hay and all the homely odours of the farmyard. The lark sings high in the blue vault of heaven above the church, and over the blue of the sea the gull skims white in the sunshine. The fisherman and the farm labourer have their cottages side by side, nestling cosily to leeward of the hilly ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... yet near day, my sweet one; love be my help, the lark lies." In these songs, the women are slight and lithe; they are more gentle than doves; their faces are all pink and white: "If the flowers of the hawthorn were united to the rose, not more delicate would be their colour than that ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... the sceptre is a token that thou rulest in my heart, as well as over broad Scotland, and the three singing laverocks are to remind thee of me, for thou hast oft-times told me that my poor singing reminds thee of a lark." ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... distress in the morning of time; how originally the music of field and forest was nothing more than an exclamation caused by the bird's bodily pain and fear, and how through the ages the primal note of anguish has been evolved and differentiated until it has risen into the ecstasy of the lark, melted into the silver note of the dove, swelled into the rapture of the nightingale, unfolded into the vast and varied music of the sky and the summer. So Christ shows us that out of the personal sorrow which now rends the believer's heart he shall arise in moral and infinite perfection; ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... whisky-drinking, the psychology of American women, and daily life as lived by English county families. Sir Gerald seemed to have heard of all those topics. The McKelveys gave him a Singhalese dinner, and Miss Elnora Pearl Bates, society editor of the Advocate-Times, rose to her highest lark-note. Babbitt read aloud ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... calculated on by the operator, are procured in this way. I allude to hawks, which constantly dash at the call, or play-birds, of the netsman. I remember seeing, taken in a lark net on the racecourse of Corfu—one of the Ionian Isles—a most beautiful male specimen of the hen harrier (Circus cyaneus, Macg.); and here in England I have received, within the last few years, one ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... a lovely Sunday in April. The warm sunlight filled the air and bird-songs the trees. The notes of the lark, the sparrow, and the prairie ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... ordered one of her negroes to put up his horse and conducted him into the house. She had a good supper prepared, Simon ate a hearty meal, spent a few delightful hours in the widow's company, and was then shown to his room. He was soon in the arms of Morpheus, and arose in the morning as gay as a lark. Throwing open the casement, he let in the fresh morning breeze and took in at a glance the rich Southern landscape. Immediately below him, and sloping in well kept terraces to the banks of the Coosa, was a trim garden, filled with flowers, among which, in fine bloom, were numerous varieties of ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... Ishmael awoke with the dawn, and sprang from his pallet in the loft as a lark from its ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... man" was Philiper Flash, And wore "loud clothes" and a weak mustache, And "done the Park," For an "afternoon lark," With a very fast horse of "remarkable dash." And Philiper handled a billiard-cue About as well as the best he knew, And used to say "He could make it pay By playing two ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... from the reflection of her hair in the mirror, and they started gayly forth like two school children out for a lark. He ushered her into a quiet little cafe that had an air of pronounced elegance about it. In a secluded corner behind some palms came the subdued notes of stringed instruments. Derry seemed to be well known here, and his waiter ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... of hooves, presented three large toes, rounded, and unprovided with claws. These animals were all herbivorous. Amongst an immense number of others are found many new reptiles, some of them adapted for fresh water; species of birds allied to the sea-lark, curlew, quail, buzzard, owl, and pelican; species allied to the dormouse and squirrel; also the opossum and racoon; and species allied to the genette, ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... as well as of all the World, crammed to the teeth with dreadful secrets? Lastly—and firstly as the undercurrent of all his quick thoughts—this adventure, though he did not know the English word, was a stupendous lark—a delightful continuation of his old flights across the housetops, as well as the fulfilment of sublime prophecy. He lay belly-flat and wriggled towards the Mess-tent door, a hand on the ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... the Swells, and all that, But I'm blowed if this bunkum don't make me inclined to turn Radical rat. "Riparian Rights," too! Oh Scissors! They'd block the Backwaters and Broads, Because me and my pals likes a lark! Serve 'em right if ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... to hear the watch-dog's honest bark Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home; 'T is sweet to know there is an eye will mark Our coming, and look brighter when we come; 'T is sweet to be awaken'd by the lark, Or lulled by falling waters; sweet the hum Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds, The lisp of children, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... command his patience, might indulge in a reasonable caution, might hesitate on the brink of Black Cliff with the sanction of his self-respect. But if Elizabeth Luke lay ill and in need, a passage of Scalawag Run might be challenged, whatever came of it. And both Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... a moment for the man and ass to reappear, but after all he was not much concerned with them, and began to descend unmindful of the lark which mounted the sky in circles singing his delirious song. Joseph begged Azariah to hearken, but his preceptor was too much occupied with the difficulties of the descent, nor could he be persuaded to give much attention to a flight of doves flying hither and thither as if they had just discovered ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... quarto. The three great songs in "Valentinian" have almost more splendour than any of Shakespeare's, though never quite the intimate beauty, the singing spontaneity of "Under the greenwood tree" or "Hark, hark, the lark." It has grown to be the habit of anthologists to assert Shakespeare's right to "Roses, their sharp spikes being gone." The mere fact of its loveliness and perfection gives them no authority to do so; and to my ear the rather stately procession ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... thinking that she saw an opportunity for a lark, she went promptly and paused beside her ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... work of the exercise; but years of strenuous reducing had hardened her muscles, and she possessed the endurance of a bear. Once the meal had dragged itself to a conclusion, there began the customary round of the dancing-places—this being the popular conception of a lark—and Lorelei allowed herself to be bundled in and out of the Thompson-Bellaire theater-car. There was considerable drinking, Bergman, who devoted himself assiduously to his employee, showing more effect ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... every bird its own outward shape, outward gesture, and voice, and external workings, which declare the inward nature of it? And is not this a staple, known rule in nature, that every thing is known by the effects of it, a lion by his roaring, a lark by its singing, a horse by his neighing, and an ox by his lowing? &c. All these speak forth nothing but sincerity, insomuch, that if these marks and signs should be confounded, and beasts use them indifferently, all human knowledge should suddenly fall to nothing, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... bright, Glow the clouds in the east, laughing heralds of light; Whilst still as the glorious colours decay, Full gushes of music seem tracking their way. Hark! hark! Is it the sheep-bell among the ling, Or the early milkmaid carolling? Hark! hark! Or is it the lark, As he bids the sun good-morrow?— Good-morrow; Though every day ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... than the regular lark, and differs from it in many respects: indeed it more resembles the tit lark than the sky lark, and altogether wants the melodious song of the latter. It is a very common bird all over such parts of Australia as I ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... plasterers, painters, paper-hangers, and a tinner and glazier, and when they learned that I wanted that little house completely renovated in the course of the afternoon, they looked upon the business as a lark, and entered into it with great spirit. The astonished woman of the house did not understand what was about to happen, and even when I had explained it to her, her mind seemed to take in nothing except the fact that the house ought to be ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... a lark," she complained to me one morning. "Tell him that the Breton climate is as difficult to fight as the Breton soldier; and if he does not eat, he will be washed away by the rains. WHAT EYES!" she exclaimed; "quite ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... experience, is that prayer for deliverance precedes praise and triumph, true communion with God is bound to no mechanical order, and may begin with gazing on God, and realizing the mysteries of beauty in His secret place, ere it drops to earth. The lark sings as it descends from the "privacy of glorious light" to its nest in the stony furrows as sweetly, though more plaintively, than whilst it circles upwards to the sky. It is perhaps a nobler effect of faith to begin ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... fish of the bright and twittering fin, Bright fish! diving deep as high soars the lark, So, far, far, far, doth the maiden swim, Wild song, wild light, in ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... theatre of nature," Arnold replied. "If you close your eyes and listen, you can hear the orchestra. There is a lark singing above my head, and a thrush somewhere back in the ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... when that victory was apparently the direct means of establishing this Christian king upon the throne of Strathclyde, and the indirect means which led to the recall of St. Kentigern from St. Asaph's to Glasgow, how is it that the Welsh Triads talk of it enigmatically as a battle for a lark's nest? ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... Ciris, describes this transformation, this bird was of variegated colours, with a purple breast, and legs of a reddish hue, and lived a solitary life in retired spots. It is uncertain what kind of bird it was; some think it was a hawk, some a lark, and others a partridge. It has been suggested that Ovid did not enter into the details of this transformation, because it had been so recently depicted in beautiful language by Virgil. Hyginus says that ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... ravishing, strain, The lark, as he wakens, salutes the glad sun, Who glows in the arms of Aurora again, And blissfully smiling, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... how long I had been thus honourably employed. This was a question which I had anticipated, and, therefore, very readily replied "Only two or three days;" that I had left Portsmouth for what we called "a lark," and I thought ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and pricking up his ears, as different birds sing. 'What bird so sings, but doth so wail? Oh! 'tis the ravished nightingale: "Jug, jug, jug, jug, terue," she cries, and still her woes at midnight rise. Brave prick-song! who is't now we hear? It is the lark so shrill and clear: against heaven's gate he claps his wings, the morn not waking till he sings. Hark, too, with what a pretty note poor Robin Redbreast tunes his throat: Hark how the jolly cuckoos sing "Cuckoo" to welcome in the Spring: "Cuckoo" ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... who mirrors my diffidence, and takes an attitude of pretty awkwardness while she waits till I have done drinking. In the same easily contented spirit as I lounge through the barn-yard, if I find the old hens gone about their family affairs, I do not mind a meadow-lark's singing in the top of the elm-tree beside the pump. In these excursions the watch-dogs know me for a harmless person, and will not open their eyes as they lie coiled up in the sun before the gate. At all the places, I have ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... got there it was just like your young scions of the nobility being given daws or ducks or quails for playfellows: my own case exactly—the moment I arrived they gave me this crow to have a lark with. (looking toward Hegio's house) But there's my master in front of the door— and, yes, my other master back ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... is singing at the top of his voice; the lark is singing clear tidings; May without fault, ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... When the merry lark doth gild With his song the summer hours, And their nests the swallows build In the roofs and tops of towers, And the golden broom-flower burns All about the waste, And the maiden May returns With a pretty haste,— Then, how merry are the times! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Partridges and young Flamingoes. Herons, and young partridges. Cygnets. herons. Dwarf-herons. A reinforcement of Olives. Teals. vinegar intermixed. Thrushes. Duckers. Venison pasties. Young sea-ravens. Bitterns. Lark pies. Geese, goslings. Shovellers. Dormice pies. Queests. Curlews. Cabretto pasties. Widgeons. Wood-hens. Roebuck pasties. Mavises. Coots, with leeks. Pigeon pies. Grouses. Fat kids. Kid pasties. Turtles. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... garden-party was the frantic effort of a sinking man. To Kalora it was a lark. From the pure fun of the thing, she obeyed her father. She wore four heavily quilted and padded gowns, one over another, and when she and Jeneka were summoned from their apartments and went out to meet ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade |
