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More "Chirp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... how ecstatically sweet, Was its first soft tumultuous beat! I little thought that beat could be The harbinger of misery; And daily, when the morning beam Dawned earliest on wood and stream, When, from each brake and bush were heard, The hum of bee, and chirp of bird, From these, earth's matin songs, my ear Would turn, a sweeter voice to hear— A voice, whose tones the very air Seemed trembling with delight to bear; From leafy wood, and misty stream, From bush, ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... seemed as if every branch sent forth the music of singing birds, and the very air was redolent with melody, from the bold songs of the thrush and the lark to the love-note of the wood-pigeon; and even the earth rejoiced in the chirp of the grasshopper, its tiny but pleasant musician. The fields and the leaves were in the loveliness and freshness of youth, luxuriating in the sunbeams, in the depth of their summer green; and the butterfly sported, and the bee pursued its errand from flower to flower. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... Double-visaged stand the mountains in imperial multitudes, And with shadows dappled men sing to him, Hail, O Beneficent! For they shudder chill, the earth-vales, at his clouding, shudder to black; In the light of him there is music thro' the poplar and river-sedge, Renovation, chirp of brooks, hum of the forest—an ocean-song. Never pearl from ocean-hollows by the diver exultingly, In his breathlessness, above thrust, is as earth to Helios. Who usurps his place there, rashest? Aphrodite's loved one it is! To his son the flaming Sun-God, to the tender ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Brought leaves and moss to cover her; But while he perking there did pry About the arch of either eye, The lid began to let out day, At which poor robin flew away, And seeing her not dead, but all disleav'd, He chirp'd for ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... account, he met her very often. Few ladies dined at Belgrave House, but to-night she was to be there. For the first time Fern's gentle nature felt jarred and out of tune. The bright little fire had burned hollow; there was a faint clinging mist from the fog outside; the cricket had ceased to chirp. Fern glanced round her disconsolately; how poor and shabby it must look to him, she thought, after the rooms at ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... May sharply to the night-air sing, But there no more shall withered hags Refresh at ease their broomstick nags, Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters As beverage meet for Satan's daughters; No more their mimic tones be heard, The mew of cat, the chirp of bird, Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter Of the fell demon following after! The cautious goodman nails no more A horseshoe on his outer door, Lest some unseemly hag should fit To his own mouth her bridle-bit; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... rye-beard lance I'd push it along, And they'd think, "All at once we are wondrous strong!" In the nest of the robin, under the eaves Of the apple-leaves, I'd drop a worm in the gaping throats That answer my chirp of the mother's notes. When bonny Miss Harebell thirsts in vain For a drop of rain, I would fill at the brook my shining cap, And lay it all dripping ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... sexual enlightenment must on no account be over-estimated. Rather should the words of the old proverb always be kept in mind: "As the old birds sing, so will the young birds chirp." Those who guide their own conduct in accordance with this principle, will find the sexual enlightenment of their children an easy matter; but in other houses, the theoretical enlightenment may be effected as carefully as you please, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... On this quiet, late summer evening, whatever sound arose in so secluded a district—the chirp of a bird, a call from a voice, the turning of a wheel—extended over bush and tree to unwonted distances. Very few sounds did arise. But as Grace invisibly breathed in the brown glooms of the chamber, the small remote noise ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... not stopped. I jumped up and walked to the window, and I saw at once the reason why I had imagined that night had fallen. From east to west and from north to south a dense pall of cloud hung over the earth. Not a leaf moved, and except for the shrill chirp of a grasshopper, not a sound ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... unexpectedly before her, having walked over from the Thurman ranch after doing the chores. To him she observed that Frank was an hour late, and Swan, whistling softly to Jack—Lorraine was surprised to hear how closely the call resembled the chirp of a bird—strode away without so much as a pretence at excuse. Lorraine stared after him wide-eyed, wondering and yet ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... followed the flight of his thought with difficulty. After the third phrase anything read aloud made her feel drowsy, and the affairs of her household took on an absurd importance; one might say that the voice of the reader made them chirp like birds in a cage. It was in vain that she tried to follow on Clerambault's lips, and even to imitate with her own, the words whose meaning she no longer understood; her eye mechanically noted a hole in the cloth, her fingers picked at the crumbs on the table, her mind flew back to a troublesome ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... and I think the little bird that I was holding to my bosom must have felt it, for it began to chirp in a low murmur as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... happier and more excited girls somewhere in Canada or the United States at that moment, but I doubt it. Every snip of the scissors, as rose and peony and bluebell fell, seemed to chirp, "Mrs. Morgan is coming today." Anne wondered how Mr. Harrison COULD go on placidly mowing hay in the field across the lane, just as if nothing were ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... again. Nothing improves one so much as friendly correspondence. Write again—and if there is anything in this memorial of yours that refers to anything in particular, do not be backward about explaining it. We shall always be happy to hear you chirp. 'Very truly, etc., "'MARK TWAIN, 'For James ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... winds; red leaves on the tree tops swaying to and fro; groves picture-like, half stripped of foliage; the western breeze coming with sudden gusts, and the wail of the oriole still audible; the warm sun shining with genial rays, and the cicada also adding its chirp: structures, visible to the gaze at a distance in the South-east, soaring high on various sites and resting against the hills; three halls, visible near by on the North-west, stretching in one connected line, on the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... SENSORY STIMULI.—No doubt if we could examine the brain of a person who has grown up in an environment rich in stimuli to the eye, where nature, earth, and sky have presented a changing panorama of color and form to attract the eye; where all the sounds of nature, from the chirp of the insect to the roar of the waves and the murmur of the breeze, and from the softest tones of the voice to the mightiest sweep of the great orchestra, have challenged the ear; where many and varied odors and perfumes have assailed the nostrils; where a great ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... lie silent in sunlight. Not a living thing is to be seen save some lean Tom that slinks from his gutter feast as you approach. From some tree there will sound perhaps a fretful chirp: but the London sparrow is no early riser; he is but talking in his sleep. The slow tramp of unseen policeman draws near or dies away. The clatter of your own footsteps goes with you, troubling you. You find yourself trying to walk softly, as one does in echoing cathedrals. A voice is everywhere ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... ketch glimpses through the willow- sprays of them shinin' bars a layin' down on the gray twilight field. And fur away over the green hills and woods of the east, the moon was a risin', big and calm and silvery. And we could hear the plaintive evenin' song of the thrush, and the crickets' happy chirp, till we got nearer the schoolhouse, when they sort o' blended in with 'There is a fountain filled with blood,' and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... Carlin, old woman. Cates, dainties. Cauld, cold. Caup, cup. Celness, coldness. Cess, excise, tax. Chafe, chafing. Change-house, tavern. Chapman, peddler. Chapournelie, hat. Chelandri, goldfinch. Cheres, cheers. Cheves, moves. Chirm, chirp. Church-giebe-house, grave. Claes, clothes. Claithing, clothing. Clamb, climbed. Claught, catch up. Clinkin, smartly. Clinkumbell, the bell-ringer. Clymmynge, noisy. Cockernony, woman's hair gathered up with ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... the crickets are then full-grown, and have large wing covers. At first, in the early summer, they have no wings, and so of course, we could not see them chirp. ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... this early hour; the birds were only beginning to chirp, and the vultures were just lazily assembling to see if they could discover one more morsel at the slaughtering-place of the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... if he knew that my sister was talking to him, would chirp away, and seem quite happy. As soon as the warm weather came, his visits were not so frequent; but, every now and then, he would make his appearance, as if to say, "Don't forget me, Helen. I may want some more crumbs when the cold ...
— The Nursery, May 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 5 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... After he had entered the house a wren was brought, and let fly in the hall where the eagle was feeding. The wren perched upon a beam, and was no sooner perceived by the eagle, than he left off feeding, flew into a corner, and hung down his head. The little bird, on the other hand, began to chirp and appear angry, and a moment after flew upon the neck of the eagle, and pecked him with the greatest fury, the eagle all the while hanging his head in a cowardly manner, between his feet. The wren, after satisfying its animosity, returned to ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... she had not been long asleep when something wakened her. What it was she knew not. There was a soft stir in the tree-tops, as if a light breeze were blowing—an occasional chirp from some bird which had been disturbed, perhaps by a dream that its eggs were broken; but otherwise all was still. Kathie was sleeping soundly, and Laura closed her own eyes again, but again was aroused, and this time by a cold something poking ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... poems, I hear the locusts in Syria as they strike the grain and grass with the showers of their terrible clouds, I hear the Coptic refrain toward sundown, pensively falling on the breast of the black venerable vast mother the Nile, I hear the chirp of the Mexican muleteer, and the bells of the mule, I hear the Arab muezzin calling from the top of the mosque, I hear the Christian priests at the altars of their churches, I hear the responsive base and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... year since I've set eyes on my son," he added in a voice which took the whole car into his friendly confidence; "and it seems like ten. How are you feeling, Hal? You look chirp ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... music ceased, the garden became deserted. The light that had loitered in the corners crept upward to the roofs, cast its last rays upon the highest windowpanes, followed by the birds, the swallows, which saluted the close of day with a farewell chirp from the gutter where they ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... eternal-springing hope in his little flat chest he trots down to the graveyard corner every day, and every day Uncle Robert says, with a cheery chirp in italics, "Wall, ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... in his low chair. The chaffinch gave a light chirp, as if to recall him to his duty. Hadria performed it for him. The chaffinch flew off with ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the whole country was alive with musicians, each one giving out his own notes without any regard for the others, but apparently the score had been written for them all, since the innumerable strains made one divine harmony. From the full-orbed song from the maple by my window, down to the faintest chirp and twitter, there was no discord; while from the fields beyond the village the whistle of the meadow-larks was so mellowed and softened by distance as to incline one to wonder whether their notes were real or mere ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... And Christ, by grace, those dead in sin doth quicken. The egg, when first a chick, the shell's its prison; So's flesh to the soul, who yet with Christ is risen. The shell doth crack, the chick doth chirp and peep, The flesh decays, as men do pray and weep. The shell doth break, the chick's at liberty, The flesh falls off, the soul mounts up on high But both do not enjoy the self-same plight; The soul is safe, the chick now fears ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... after selling her bundle of sticks and twigs. It was during these long days that little Gretchen had taught herself to sing the song which the wind sang to the pine branches. In the summer time she learned the chirp and twitter of the birds, until her voice might almost be mistaken for a bird's voice; she learned to dance as the swaying shadows did, and even to talk to the stars which shone through the little square window when Granny came home too late ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... continued to do so. For at this juncture, as had so often happened when this girl and I were closeted, the conversation once more went blue on us. The night breeze whispered, but not the Bassett. A bird twittered, but not so much as a chirp escaped Bertram. It was perfectly amazing, the way her mere presence seemed to wipe speech from my lips—and mine, for that matter, from hers. It began to look as if our married life together would be rather like twenty ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... behind them. And around him Roger saw, emerging from the semi-dark, faces turning like his own to the summits of the mountains and the billowy splendors there. It grew so dark he could see no more. There fell a deep silence, not a sound but the occasional chirp of a bird or the faint whirr of an insect. Even the glow on the peaks ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... seem to amount to much when you are up, like this, on a mountain, near the sky, with the world spread out below and not missing you; and a boy's voice, or a man's, is about the size of a cricket's chirp. The silence is one of the best things you find. So we sat and ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... again. Bonnie in soft, white garments sitting beside the bed, watching. A strange contraction of fear and hate passed over her face as she looked, and she spoke in an insolent, sharp little voice, weak as a sick bird's chirp. ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... was choked by her sobs. The whole valley was deserted and silent in the dazzling light and the overwhelming heat, and only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill, continuous chirp among the sparse yellow grass on both ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... romping playmates come, Nor bashful sweethearts, cunning-dumb— An April burst of girls and boys, Their rainbowed cloud of glooms and joys Born with their songs, gone with their toys; Nor ever is its stillness stirred By purr of cat, or chirp of bird, Or mother's twilight legend, told Of Horner's pie, or Tiddler's gold, Or fairy hobbling to the door, Red-cloaked and weird, banned and poor, To bless the good child's gracious eyes, The good child's wistful charities, And crippled changeling's hunch to make Dance on his ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the vault above grew taller and more grotesque. It must be midnight; it must be two; it must be three in the morning. The loopholes, when he stood between them and the candle, were growing grey; the birds were beginning to chirp. Presently the sun would rise, and through the narrow windows he would see its beams flashing on the distant water. But the windows looked north-west, and many hours must pass before a ray would strike into his ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... Park and was seated in the little summer house on a big pile of boulders near the Sixth Avenue entrance. The sun was rising. It was the first sunrise he had ever seen in New York. The effect on his imagination was startling. The red rays streaming through the park and the chirp of birds in the bushes were magic touches that transformed the world. He was back again in the South, where Nature is the one big fact of life, and the memories of the girl he had learned to love beside its ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... orchestra combine to play the great symphony of the yearly festival of June. Winds whisper in the birches and sigh among the firs; bees are busy with their irredolent labor among the heather, a myriad birds chirp in the green temples of the forest trees, and the voice of the river prattling over stony places, bubbling into pools, chuckling and gulping round corners, gives you the sense that many presences and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... mother, and what her state of mind was, and how she sat up on the pillows and cried, while things went on from bad to worse, and a verdict of 'willful murder' was brought against your father by the crowner's men, and you come headlong, without so much as the birds in the ivy to chirp about you, right into the thick of the worst of it. I do assure you, Miss Erema, when I look at your bright eyes and clear figure, the Lord in heaven, who has made many cripples, must have looked down special to have brought you as you are. For trouble upon trouble ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... along the whole sweep of devouring flame, the forms of men wither as in a furnace heat. The whole front goes down. For an instant the chirp of the cricket and grasshopper in the fresh-mown hay might almost be heard; then the groans of the wounded, then the shouts of impatient yeomen who spring forth to pursue, until recalled to silence and duty. Staggering, but reviving, grand in the glory of their manhood, heroic ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... conversation develops I am going indoors. Does Arnold want to penetrate into the hidden meaning of that cricket's chirp—or is he going to give us the chemical formula for ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... within with wood and clay. And by and by, with heath-bells gilt with dew, There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers, Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue: And there I witnessed, in the summer hours, A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly, Glad as the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... fascination of the circle? Why is it that the turning of anything, be it but a barrel-organ or a phrase, holds one as with an hypnotic power? I confess that I can never genuinely pity a knife-grinder, however needy. Think of the pleasure of driving that wheel all day, the merry chirp of the knife on the stone, and the crisp, bright spray of the flying sparks! Why, he does 'what some men dream of all their lives'! Wheels of all kinds have the same strange charm; mill-wheels, colliery-wheels, spinning-wheels, water-wheels, and wheeling waters: there may—who knows?—have ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... the bank building, the deputy in the chair yawned, stretched and opened his eyes, staring stupidly at him. There was no mistaking the dancing glitter in Trevison's eyes, no possible misinterpretation of his tense, throaty whisper: "One chirp and you're a dead one!" And the deputy stiffened in the chair, dumb with astonishment ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... endure the life of an Indian slave under the Mohammedan task-masters. Liberty! liberty! free and wild as partridges, with no disposition to earn their bread by the sweat of the brow, ran through their nature like an electric wire, which the chirp of a hedge-sparrow in spring-time would bring into action, and cause them to bound like wild asses to the lanes, commons, and moors. They have always refused to submit to the Mohammedan faith: in fact, the Djatts have accepted neither ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... it, you mortals are little else; do you not chirp all over, Mohi? By my demi-god soul, were I not what I am, this wine would almost get ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... would hear a discharge of musketry, and knew that some poor, trembling wretch had bid farewell to mortal things here below. It seemed to be but a question of time with all of us as to when we too would be shot. We were afraid to chirp. So far now as patriotism was concerned, we had forgotten all about that, and did not now so much love our country as we feared Bragg. Men were being led to the death stake every day. I heard of many being shot, but did not see but two men shot myself. I do not know to what regiment they belonged, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid; And naught is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katydid; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings And earth and sky ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, And naught is heard on the lonely hill, But the cricket's chirp and the answer shrill, Of the gauze-winged katydid, And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will {417} Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in her ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... (Good children run in the family.) I record, pridefully, that the sunny head of the least of the band has never drooped drowsily while the tale went on, and that his chirp was distinct in the general plea for, "More—to-morrow night?" with which the conclave brought up at the call to prayers and to pillows. This has not so far flattered me out of my sober senses as to beget a hope that my reminiscences will find such loving interest and attention ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... you and Billy? Pat says (Pat is Patricia, Billy's sister) that you've been pretty horrid about writing him, and he's been blue-black at not getting letters from you; but at present he is having a good time with a very jolly girl from the West who is at their hotel. Chirp him something cheerful, Canary Bird. If I were younger or Billy older you shouldn't have him. I'd have him myself. I'm not going to stand for bad treatment of him, and if those Southern boys who make love to every pretty girl they see, and make it better ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... in these climes, chooses her vocalists from more humble performers than in Europe. A small frog, of the genus Hyla, sits on a blade of grass about an inch above the surface of the water, and sends forth a pleasing chirp: when several are together they sing in harmony on different notes. I had some difficulty in catching a specimen of this frog. The genus Hyla has its toes terminated by small suckers; and I found this animal could crawl up a pane of glass, when placed absolutely perpendicular. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... but scarcely had he uttered the words when the cricket in the chimney corner chirped loudly, and his shrill notes seemed to say: "The king—the king." Rodolph could hardly believe his ears. How had the cricket learned to chirp these words? It was beyond all understanding. But still the cricket chirped, and still his musical monotone seemed to say, "The king—the king," until, with an angry frown, Rodolph strode from his house, leaving the child to hear the ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... Her voice was silvery:—to compare 't with gold Is sure a new conceit. But, sir, you praise My singing, who have not yet heard me sing." And he: "I take it that a woman's speech Is to her singing what a bird's low chirp Is to its singing: and if Philomel Chirp in the hearing of the woodman, he Knows 'tis the nightingale that chirps, and so Expects nought meaner than its sovereign song. Madam, 'tis thus your speaking-voice hath given Earnest of what your singing-voice will be; And therefore ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... seem a strange remedy. But somehow it just suited Johnnie Green. He pattered barefooted down the stairs. And later, when he went to bed again, and Chirpy Cricket began to chirp once more, all ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... charge of the three boats. Our ears were more likely to serve us than our eyes, considering the thick darkness with which we were surrounded. My boat was the headmost—that is, farther up the river than the rest. Grampus was with me. "Hist, sir, didn't you hear the chirp of a block?" said he in a whisper. "The lubbers should have taken care to use more grease if they wanted to surprise us." I fancied I had heard the same sound. We listened breathlessly while the crew lay on their oars. It came from up the river, directly ahead of us. "Ah! there it is again," said ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... indeed, in less than a quarter of an hour, he will have stared us quite out of countenance, and, long before the hour of his advent shall have been completed, the birds, which till now have been all activity, will become torpid, the pigeons will have given over their cooing, and the sparrow his chirp; so the fish that has not yet breakfasted had better make haste, for his are chariot-wheels which have been looked after overnight, and linchpins that never come out; nor has he had one break-down or overturn since he first ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... going to feed my snow-birds with them; and I should be very happy to have you go with me. I know you will enjoy seeing how merrily they hop about and flutter their wings, and seem to chirp out their thanks as they pick up the ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... silent mill, That stands beneath yon snow-clad hill; There will I house your trembling form, There shall your shiv'ring breast be warm: And, when your little heart grows strong, I'll ask you for your simple song; And, when you will not tarry more, Open shall be my wicket-door; And freely, when you chirp "adieu," I'll wish you well, sweet warbler! too; I'll wish you many a summer-hour On top of tree, or abbey-tow'r. When Spring her wasted form retrieves, And gives your little roof its leaves, May you (a happy lover) find A kindred partner to your mind: And when, amid the tangled spray, ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... its serene existence! Christian-like, It toils with patience, seeking sweet repose Within itself when wearied with the throes Of its life-struggle. The low sounds that strike Upon the ear in wafts of melody, Are cruel mockeries, O snail, of thee. The cricket's chirp, the grasshopper's shrill tone, The locust's jarring cry, all mock thy lone And dumb-like presence. May this heart of mine, When tried, put on a ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... out her thanks, Marianna heard a faint "chirp, chirp," and looking down, beheld a little yellow bird crouching on the hearthstone. Every now and then he hid his head under his wings and cried unhappily. It was the yellow bird which had brought the message from ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... mildness. The arrows of the pleasant sunshine fell back, frostbitten, from the cold panoply of her unthrilled bosom. The odour of the flowers waked no soft sentiments in the unexplored recesses of her dormant heart. The chirp of the sparrows gave her a pain. She mocked ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... his ear mysterious words. Here a shrill chirp; there a click, like the click made with the tongue; further on, plaintive murmurs; in the distance a tinkle like that of the bell on the neck of the wandering ox. Suddenly Rey heard a strange sound, a rapid note, that could be produced only by the human ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... snails of a single genus, Achatinella, are to be found in the mountains of Hawaii, a fact of marked interest to science in observing environmental effect upon the differentiation of species. One of these the natives call pupu kani oi or "shrill voiced snail," averring that a certain cricketlike chirp that rings through the stillness of the almost insectless valleys is the voice of this particular species. Emerson says that the name kahuli is applied to the land snail to describe the peculiar tilting motion as the snail ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... were as novel as the combinations of colours which marked their bodies. They were the scene of a perpetual whirl and flutter of wings, and before they betrayed themselves to the sight their locality could be detected by the sense of hearing from the never-ceasing hum and chirp of the insects and the calls of the birds which frequented them. They were the scenes of an eager, busy, active life; whilst in the twilight depths of the forest everything was deathlike, everything was still—the very air was motionless, not a leaf stirred. The silence was weird, oppressive, ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... one another, on the velvet rug before the fender, and at a civil distance away is a purring bundle of gray and white pussy, with her paws doubled in and her eyes blinking at the half-burned coals. There is a bird cage in each window, and an odd little lullaby chirp or the grating of the little iron swings is the only sound besides the loosening and falling of the embers every ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... the day, awaiting a piteous death. But apart the maidens huddled together lamented beside the daughter of Aeetes. And as when, forsaken by their mother, unfledged birds that have fallen from a cleft in the rock chirp shrilly; or when by the banks of fair-flowing Pactolus, swans raise their song, and all around the dewy meadow echoes and the river's fair stream; so these maidens, laying in the dust their golden ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... sparrows made their home; the rustling of the leaves and twigs commingled with the chirp and joyous noise of the birds; in the eaves of the house the doves had built their nests, and the place was filled with their speech, cooing and calling to each other, entreating and discussing as is customary between doves, these noisy ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... into the cage, seized the little canary- bird with the red ribbon, and squeezed him so closely that the poor little creature gave one faint chirp and died. The man drew him out, and hurled him against ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... little mother. Don't be afraid," whispered the child; and, as if it understood, the bird settled down on her nest with a comfortable chirp, while its mate hopped up to give her a nice plump ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... then sowes his herbs, his flowers & roots And carefully manures his trees of fruits. The Pleiades their influence now give, And all that seemed as dead afresh doth live. The croaking frogs, whom nipping winter kil'd Like birds now chirp, and hop about the field, The Nightingale, the black-bird and the Thrush Now tune their layes, on sprayes ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... just commemorated, a stranger, leading in his hand, a young child, entered the churchyard of H——. The sun had not long set, and the short twilight of deepening summer reigned in the tranquil skies; you might still hear from the trees above the graves the chirp of some joyous bird;—what cared he, the denizen of the skies, for the dead that slept below?—what did he value save the greenness and repose of the spot,—to him alike the garden or the grave! As the man and the child passed, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... coo, the squirrel's chirp, The wild-bird's thrilling lay, Brought freshen'd pleasure to his heart, At ev'ry ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... the militia pushed forward into this doubtful passage, until the whole body, with the exception of the rear-guard, had entered it. Behind them came the baggage-wagons. All was silent, unnaturally silent, for not even the chirp of a squirrel nor the rustle of a prowling ground-animal broke the stillness. The fort was not far distant. The hurrying provincials hoped soon ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... childish suns and showers, Oh! girlish thorns and flowers, Oh! fruitless days and hours, Oh! groundless hopes and fears: The birds still chirp and twitter, And still the sunbeams glitter: Oh! barren years and ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Styles were very beautiful. After the walk across the open park, it was pleasant to saunter lazily through the cool glades. There was hardly a breath of wind, the very chirp of the birds was faint and subdued. I strolled on a little way, and finally flung myself down at the foot of a grand old beech-tree. My thoughts of mankind were kindly and charitable. I even forgave Poirot for his absurd secrecy. In fact, I ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... of downy hair. I can hardly express how pleased I was to see him. I tell you, Robinson Crusoe don't make near enough of his loneliness. But here was interesting company. He looked at me and winked his eye from the front backwards, like a hen, and gave a chirp and began to peck about at once, as though being hatched three hundred years too late was just nothing. 'Glad to see you, Man Friday!' says I, for I had naturally settled he was to be called Man Friday if ever he was hatched, as soon ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... out again, wrenching up great stones in its blind, aimless struggle. What a piece of chaos is this! Yet come here again, two months hence, and you shall find all this desolation clothed with beauty and with fragrance, one vast bower of soft green leaves and graceful tendrils, while summer-birds chirp and flutter amid these sunny arches all the livelong day. "Out of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... narrow lane and the vision of the flaming fort, the August holidays brought him home at a time of great heat. It was one of those memorable years of English weather, when some Provencal spell seems wreathed round the island in the northern sea, and the grasshoppers chirp loudly as the cicadas, the hills smell of rosemary, and white walls of the old farmhouses blaze in the sunlight as if they stood in Arles or Avignon ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... lips tried to laugh. "Ef it ain't the dicky-bird!" The bird looked at him. "Ef that doesn't beat—" but he could not think what it "beat." The bird cocked its head. "Ain't ye afeard o' me?" It gave a feeble chirp. "Well, I'm damned!" said the man, and after this mild expression of his feelings, forgot to curse again. He even began to eye the island with a vague questioning wonder, as if asking himself what means might be thought of that would enable him to reach it; but the problem seemed to be beyond ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... the little sparrows chirp, An answers th' raven's call; He'll nivver see one want for owt, 'At's worth aboon ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... late in Autumn, when other trees shed theirs, and drooping in the effort, lingers on all crackled and smoke-dried till the following season, when it repeats the same process; and perhaps, if the weather be particularly genial, even tempts some rheumatic sparrow to chirp in ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... quarters full, was hanging over the barn, and made a peaceful, snowy light about the house. She went to the window, opened it, and breathed the cool air of the April night. The "herring-frogs" were keeping up an incessant, birdlike chirp down the glen, and nearer at hand the plunging water of the mill-race made a soothing noise. It really seemed that the poor creature had found ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... twain were lodged in Wai-pi'o, Beheld Hi'i-lawe, the grand. We brought and cut for our love-wreath The rich hala drupe from Naue's strand, 5 Tufted lehua that waves on the cliff; Then sat and gave ear to song of o-o, Or harked the chirp ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... them to satisfy their desire for each other's company. A similar conversation passes between the individuals of a flock of Chickens, when scattered over a farmyard; one, on finding itself alone, will chirp until it hears a response, when it seems immediately satisfied. The call-notes of the Chicadee are very lively, with a mixture of querulousness in their tone, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the papers of the poet, in his own handwriting: the second, the fourth, and the concluding verses bear the Burns' stamp, which no one has been successful in counterfeiting: they resemble the verses of Beattie, to which Chambers has compared them, as little as the cry of the eagle resembles the chirp of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... chirp of surprise and terror at the strange new world, fluttered in a circle, spread his wings ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... eggs, four or five in number, average .56 by .44, are pure white, profusely spotted with red, and sometimes have also a few spots of purplish grey. On the 15th June I found a nest with four young ones on the south side of the Pir-Pinjal Pass. This bird has no song, only a double chirp in addition to its callnote. The double chirp, which is very loud, is intended for a song, for the male bird incessantly repeats it as he feeds from tree to tree near where the female ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... with recollections and regrets, deepening into a horror of loss and darkness, and then slowly brightening into the calm prelude of a day of farewell. The birds began to chirp and twitter in the ivy; the thrush uttered her long-drawn notes, sweetly repeated and sustained in the dusky bushes. That sound was much connected in my mind with Aveley. To be awakened thus in the summer dawn, to listen awhile to the delicious sound, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he had chosen, they tell me, a dusk so fair One almost thought there were not such another—there. The air was full of the perfume of pines, and the sweet Sleepy chirp of birds, long the lush ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... odours rising from the spring buds of the aromatic plants around, and a morning bell rang from the great monastery church. With that she saw the house door open, and Master Lambert in a fur cap and gown turned up with lambs'-wool come out into the garden, basket in hand, and chirp to the birds to ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... air of homelessness about the whole region. Not a bird was flying in the air, no cattle were grazing in the fields, even the merry chirp of the crickets was no longer to be heard in the wayside ditches. The road itself was overgrown with grass on both sides, scarce leaving room for a little winding ribbon of a track in the centre, and even there the ruts, which the last luckless cart had left behind it, were hidden by weeds. It was ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... flight over the hills with Sherrill, Philip had bathed and shaved, whistling thoughtfully to himself. Now as he descended the steep Sherrill lane to the valley, ravine and hollow were already dark with twilight. From the rustling trees arching the lane overhead came the occasional sleepy chirp and flutter of a bird. Off somewhere in the gathering dusk a lonely owl hooted eerily. Still there was storm in the warm, sweet air to-night and back yonder over the hills to the north, the sky brightened fitfully ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... palette,—great splashes of red and orange and gold. The ponds and streams bear upon their bosoms leaves of all tints, from the deep maroon of the oak to the pale yellow of the chestnut. In the glens and nooks it is so still that the chirp of a solitary cricket is noticeable. The red berries of the dogwood and spice-bush and other shrubs shine in the sun like rubies and coral. The crows fly high above the earth, as they do only on such days, forms of ebony floating across the azure, and the buzzards look like kingly birds, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... that is not how the human eye apprehends a scene. The human mind takes a central point, and groups the accessories round it. In art, I think everything depends upon centralisation. Two lovers part, and the birds' faint chirp from the leafless tree, the smouldering rim of the sunset over misty fields, are true and symbolical parts of the scene; but if you deal in botany and ornithology and meteorology at such a moment, you cloud ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... head. A much less startling sound would have awakened a whole city household; but slumber in the country has a slumber of its own: in summer time a slumber born of night-air, laden with the odors of vegetation, and silent except for the drowsy chirp of birds that stir in vine and tree. The wife awoke first, listened for a second, and aroused her husband, who went to the window. He raised the screen and ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... the forest, and they had not gone very far before they became aware of a strange silence, if silence it could be called, for when they listened the silence was full of sound, innumerable little sounds, some of which they recognised; but it was not the hum of the insects or the chirp of a bird or the snapping of a rotten twig that filled Joseph with awe, but something that he could neither see, nor hear, nor smell, nor touch. The life of the trees—is that it? he asked himself. A remote and mysterious life was certainly breathing about him, and he regretted he was ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... small, soft, little, pretty, fine gentlemen, who having some little wit, some little modesty, some little remain of conscience and country religion, could not hector it as the former, but quickly learnt to chirp and giggle when t'other clapt and shouted." But "the Don-admirers, and Box-friends of Mr. Hobbes are men of gravity and reputation, who will scarce simper in favour of the philosopher, but can make shift to nod and nod again." Even amid this wild ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... which a human being can be made to look like a magnified toad—all which feats yielded high delight and satisfaction to the assembled spectators. After which, the voice of Mrs. Pott was heard to chirp faintly forth, something which courtesy interpreted into a song, which was all very classical, and strictly in character, because Apollo was himself a composer, and composers can very seldom sing their own music or anybody else's, either. This was succeeded by Mrs. Leo Hunter's ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... up all your bowers. Bid the shepherds and their swains See the beauty of their plains; And command them with their flocks To do reverence on the rocks; Where they may so happy be As her shadow but to see: Bid the birds in every bush Not a bird to be at hush: But to sit, and chirp, and sing To the beauty of the Spring: Call the sylvan nymphs together, Bid them bring their musicks hither. Trees their barky silence break, Crack yet, though they cannot speak Bid the purest, whitest swan Of her feathers make her fan; Let the hound the hare go chase; ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... is calm and fresh and still; Alone the chirp of flitting bird, And talk of children on the hill, And bell of wandering ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... birds are singing Low, as thou passest, where in leaves they lie; With timid chirp unto their soft mates clinging, They greet that presence without which they die,— Die, even with Nature's universal heart, When thou, her queen, dost in thy pride ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... peered, with cheek on the cool leaves pressed, And spied a bird upon a nest: Two eyes she had beseeching me Meekly and brave, and her brown breast Throbb'd hot and quick above her heart; And then she oped her dagger bill,— 'Twas not a chirp, as sparrows pipe At break of day; 'twas not a trill, As falters through the quiet even; But one sharp solitary note, One desperate, fierce, and vivid cry Of valiant tears, and hopeless joy, One passionate note of victory: Off, like a fool afraid, ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... by the chirp of the cheery little teakettle. The immense responsibility of setting the Grand Plan in motion was not to be lightly assumed. The utter vagueness of Billy's "waste places" was dismaying, to say the least. There might be many nice, ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... pretty baby-treat; Nor, I deem, for me unmeet; [4] Here, for neither Babe nor [5] me, Other play-mate can I see. Of the countless living things, 45 That with stir of feet and wings (In the sun or under shade, Upon bough or grassy blade) And with busy revellings, Chirp and song, and murmurings, 50 Made this orchard's narrow space, And this vale so blithe a place; Multitudes are swept away Never more to breathe the day: Some are sleeping; some in bands 55 Travelled into distant lands; Others slunk to moor and wood, Far from human neighbourhood; And, among ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... they call on the host of stars, And the cold and dimly shining moon, And the spirits, that watch by night in the air, Or chirp in the hollow oak[E], to see The plighting of their hands: They married themselves, And man and wife Became in ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... They might chirp and chaffer, come and go For pleasure or profit, her men alive— My business was hardly with them, I trow, 35 But with empty cells of the human hive— With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch, The church's apsis, aisle, or nave, Its ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... cricket; he lives in the corner by the fireplace. When all is still we hear his cheery chirp! ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... together over each other's immoralities, and have a moral code so elastic that it will pardon anything except innocence; who gossip over each other's dresses, and each other's passions, in the self-same, self-satisfied chirp of contentment, and who never resent anything on earth, except any eccentric suggestion that life could be anything except a perpetual fete a la Watteau in a perpetual blaze ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... mind what stumps and logs were in the way. We did. Our agility was distinctly forced. But it was a charming morning, and Christmas was out for pleasure. In an hour or so the monotony of the picnic began to pall on Christmas, and as Tom began to chirp at him familiarly, if not quite authoritatively, I sat down in the shade to reflect that while Christmas had been violently exercising me, some of the charm of the day had filtered through my aching fingers. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... toward the skies, their slender branches forming a dark network overhead, and their lofty proportions lessening in the distance, until lost in the solemn gloom beyond. A religious silence prevailed, broken only by the occasional chirp of the wren, or the soft pattering of some ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... in low, clear tones reciting the contest between the hum of the kettle and the chirp of the cricket; the music of his voice lending added charm to the dual song. Then there followed in constantly increasing intensity the happy home life of bewitching Dot Perrybingle and her matter-of-fact husband, John the Carrier, with sleepy Tilly Slowboy ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Rudolf called out: I have eaten too much. Whether it's healthy is very questionable. After such a greasy lunch I really feel uncomfortable. But I belch beautifully and smoke Cigarettes now and then. Lying on my heavy belly, I chirp nothing but songs of spring. Longingly, as though on a ramp The voice squeals from the throat. And like an old lamp The wind ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... closed in on the meeting as the Senior Surgeon resumed his seat. It was broken by an enthusiastic chirp from the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee. She had never attempted to keep her interest for him concealed in the bud, causing much perturbation to the House Surgeon, and leading the Disagreeable Trustee ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... attendants sitting round their watch-fires, and close to them were picketed the horses, to take advantage of the protection afforded by the fires against any prowling bear or active leopard. Perfect silence never reigns in these grand solitudes. Near us I could hear the incessant metallic chirp of the hyla, the shrill call and reply of the tree cricket, and the hum of myriads of insects of every description, while from a distance resounded the hoarse voices of thousands of tank frogs, which kept up a spirited concert ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... fragment of wing also suggested its probable size when unbroken. It was perhaps two inches long. As there are little horny rings round the wing base like those which crickets have, on which they rub their legs and so "chirp," it is also quite likely that this insect of hoary antiquity did the same, and enlivened the silence of Devonian fern groves with a prehistoric hum. It is quite in keeping with modern ideas that in that ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... recollection of a big room containing a big bed, a big wardrobe, a big dressing table, a big praying-stool with an image of Our Lady on the wall above it, and an open window to which a sparrow used to come in the mornings and chirp. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... blossoms blackbirds meet, And robins pipe amid the cedars nigher. Thro' the still elms I hear the ferry's beat. The swallows chirp about the towering spire; The whole air pulses with its weight of sweet, Yet not quite satisfied ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... necessarily mean to be some kind of a queer creature running around with a butterfly net or an insect box. A true naturalist is simply a man or boy who keeps his eyes and ears open. He will soon find that nature is ready to tell him many secrets. After a time, the smell of the woods, the chirp of a cricket and the rustling of the wind in the pines ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... been more careful; he shed his coat, swiftly climbed th' tree an' boldly advanced on th' foe. His inimy give th' low growl iv his hated thribe. How manny a time have I heerd it in Englewood an' shuddered with fear. But th' dauntless Tusky answered back with his battle song, th' long chirp iv th' wild wolf, his wife accompanyin' him fr'm th' foot iv th' tree on a sheep bone. With wan spring th' inthrepid wolf sprang at his inimy. She thried to sink her venomous fangs into his wish-bone, but with incredulous ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... mild sunlight of the autumn morning. Suddenly, great excitement in the cages. The Chaffinches chirp ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... tower is full of debris, now disintegrated into one solid mass, and covered with vegetation. You can lie on the blossoming clover, where the bees hum and the crickets chirp around you, and can look through the arch which frames its own fair picture. In the foreground lies the steep slope overgrown with bayberry and gay with thistle blooms; then the little winding cove with its bordering cliffs; and the ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... foliage—the glow of the laburnum, the lilac blaze of the rhododendron bushes. And how still the place was! Far off there was a dull roar of carriages in Piccadilly; but here there was nothing but the bleating of the sheep, the chirp of the young birds, the stir of the wind among the elms. Sometimes he could now catch the sound ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... wandered dismally up and down, stretching their hands nervously as if unused to gloves. Presently they fell back, and the organ, in the hands of an amateur performer and an inadequate blower, began to chirp and hoot merrily, by which we knew the bridal party was ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... lay for Iago at the stage door with a brick You have missed the moral of the play. He will have a midnight supper with Othello and his wife. They will chirp together and be gay. But the things Iago stands for must go down into the dust: Lying and suspicion and conspiracy and lust. And I cannot hate the Kaiser (I hope you understand.) Yet I chase the thing he stands for with a brickbat ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... much, the sparrows begin to chirp: in the dead of winter they are silent; but so soon as the warmer winds blow, if only for a day, they begin to chirp. In January this year I used to listen to the sparrows chirping, the starlings whistling, and the chaffinches' "chink, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... song-thrush warbled with a sweet melancholy his long-drawn contralto notes; the lark, like a prima donna, hovering conspicuously in mid air, poured forth her joyous soprano solo; and the robin, quite unmindful of the tempo, filled out the pauses with his thoughtless staccato chirp. Augusta, who was herself the early bird of the pastor's family, had paid a visit to the little bath-house down at the brook, and was now hurrying homeward, her heavy black hair confined in a delicate ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... cages at the open windows chirp and put their pretty little heads aside when they hear him coming; they know perfectly well who he is and what he brings, and their twitter shapes itself into a greeting. The old raven perched on the edge of the basket feels like ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... hawks, honey-buzzards and kestrels flew whizzing under the motionless tree-tops; variegated wood-peckers tapped loudly on the stout bark; the blackbird's bell-like trill was heard suddenly in the thick foliage, following on the ever-changing note of the gold-hammer; in the bushes below was the chirp and twitter of hedge-warblers, siskins, and peewits; finches ran swiftly along the paths; a hare would steal along the edge of the wood, halting cautiously as he ran; a squirrel would hop sporting from tree to tree, then suddenly sit still, with its tail ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... sorts were astir, skimming along the ground or rising to the sky, keeping watch especially over the garden and the fruit-trees, carrying food to their nests, or teaching their young broods to fly and to chirp the songs of summer. And from the woodshed the shrill note of the scythe under the action of the grindstone. No such vivid ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... silence, resembling that which usually precedes the falling of the gallows drop. So profound, that the chirp of a tree cricket, even the rustling of a leaf, would seem a loud noise. So ominous, that the vultures perched upon the summit of the cliff crane out their necks ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... forgetting that he was out we left open the door of the room where he was. When we remembered the bird we were much afraid lest he should have flown out of the room. We hunted high and low, calling his name, "Carmen," to which he often answers with a chirp. At last I happened to push aside a little low stool, and there, crouching down so as not to be found (as he dislikes being put into his cage) was Carmen. He has tried since then to hide; but we know his tricks, so ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... where the master wrote. He heard the scratching of his pen on the paper, and the patter of rain-drops outside, for the night was stormy. There was another sound in the shop, softer than fall of the rain, and finer than chirp of a cricket, or humming sound of a mosquito: the toys in ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of radiant warmth, and the air of a half-articulate murmur and awakening. How still the morning is! It is at such times that we discover what music there is in the souls of the little slate- colored snowbirds. How they squeal, and chatter, and chirp, and trill, always in scattered troops of fifty or a hundred, filling the air with a fine sibilant chorus! That joyous and childlike "chew," "chew," "chew" is very expressive. Through this medley of finer songs and calls, there is shot, from time to time, the clear, strong note of the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... and heavier; for it did seem hard that in a great city full of fine things, there should be none for poor Nono, Sep, and little Speranza. Just as Tessa's tears began to tumble off her eyelashes on to her brown cheeks, the cricket began to chirp. Of course, he didn't say a word; but it really did seem as if he had answered her question almost as well as a fairy; for, before he had piped a dozen shrill notes, an idea popped into Tessa's head—such ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... stopped by the outcropping rock. He stood silent a few minutes—quite motionless—as if he were listening to the forest and the night. But there was utter stillness. There was not even a breeze to stir a leaf, or a half-wakened bird to sleepily chirp. ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... those few breathless moments, Ray examined his rifle coolly enough, and listened to the chirp of a solitary cricket that sung its thin strain so unbrokenly on the edge of strife as to represent something sublime in its petty indifference. He was stationed on the extreme left; near him the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... object?" I would ask myself. Moreover, it was too late; and I went on dreaming with open eyes, careering on horseback through the savannas, listening at break of day to the prattle of the parrots in the guava-trees, at nightfall to the chirp of the grillos in the cane-fields, or else smoking my cigar, taking my coffee, rocking myself in a hammock,—in short, enjoying all the delights that are the very heart-blood of a guajiro, and out of the sphere of which he can see but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... the strawstack, a wee little mite Of a cricket went chirping by day and by night; And further down, still, a cunning blue mouse In a snug little nook of that strawstack kept house! When the cricket went "chirp," Miss Mousie would squeak "Come in," and a blush would enkindle her cheek! She thought—silly girl! 't was a beau come to woo, But I guess it was only the cricket, ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... moo [cow, cattle]; troat^, croak, peep [frog]; coo [dove, pigeon]; gobble [turkeys]; quack [duck]; honk, gaggle, guggle [goose]; crow, caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, hummingbird]; buzz [flying insects, bugs]; hiss [snakes, geese]; blatter^; ratatat [woodpecker]. Adj. crying &c v.; blatant, latrant^, remugient^, mugient^; deep-mouthed, full-mouthed; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Peter Kenny's door, his diffident fingers evoked from the bell but a single chirp—a sound that would by no means have gained him admission had Peter not been sitting up in bed, reading to while away the ache of ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... chick enlarges, but is at the same time applied closer to the internal surface of the shell; when the time of hatching approaches the chick is liable to break this air-bag with its beak, and thence begin to breathe and to chirp; at this time the edges of the enlarged air-bag extend so as to cover internally one hemisphere of the egg; and as one half of the external shell is thus moist, and the other half dry, as soon as the mother hearing the chick chirp, or the chick itself wanting respirable air, strikes the egg, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Harrow my soul? why calls thy cruel power The fields of England to my exil'd eyes, The joys which once were mine? even now I see The lowly lovely dwelling! even now Behold the woodbine clasping its white walls And hear the fearless red-breasts chirp around To ask their morning meal:—for I was wont With friendly band to give their morning meal, Was wont to love their song, when lingering morn Streak'd o'er the chilly landskip the dim light, And thro' ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... affair of the last night, I commenced my journey. The day was a fine one; the sun cheery and bright without being oppressive; and soon, gliding through the broad avenues, lined with noblest trees, which conducted us from the city to the forests, we had the pleasant carol of birds, and the lively chirp of ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... on wistfully, "When I was nine, I found these little books in our library and after that I enjoyed vicariously the life I had never lived. That's why I like it here—Mrs. Flippin's kettle sings—and the crickets chirp—and Mr. and Mrs. ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... young Plornishes, who partook of the evening meal as if their eating the bread and butter were rendered almost superfluous by the painful probability of the worst of men shortly presenting himself for the purpose of eating them. Mr Baptist, by degrees began to chirp a little; but never stirred from the seat he had taken behind the door and close to the window, though it was not his usual place. As often as the little bell rang, he started and peeped out secretly, with the end of the little curtain in his hand ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... elaborate dressing and pluming, had kept one eye on the infant in the grass below, apparently to see how he got on by himself. When at last the little one stood panting and discouraged, he called, a single "chirp." The relieved youngster recognized it and answered, and at once ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... events you will want the floor well covered with straw, then raise the left fore leg and strap it so that your horse will stand on three legs, then tie a strap just above his right fore foot, and standing on the left side of the horse, holding the strap in your hand, chirp to him, and the moment he attempts to move forwards, he is on his knees; you may then fasten the strap to that on the left leg, or hold it in your hand, as you please; then after the horse gets done struggling and working, rub his nose and ears gently, and put the halter on and take it off repeatedly, ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... between them to satisfy their desire for each other's company. A similar conversation passes between the individuals of a flock of Chickens, when scattered over a farmyard; one, on finding itself alone, will chirp until it hears a response, when it seems immediately satisfied. The call-notes of the Chicadee are very lively, with a mixture of querulousness in their tone, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... far more so), his divination." [507] Some of it, however, was derived from his friendship in early days with the painter-astrologer Varley. If a horse stopped for no ascertained reason or if a house martin fell they wondered what it portended. They disliked the bodeful chirp of the bat, the screech of the owl. Even the old superstition that the first object seen in the morning—a crow, a cripple, &c.—determines the fortunes of the day, had his respect. "At an hour," he comments, "when the senses are most impressionable the aspect of unpleasant ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Each least chirp that rings from every nest, Each least touch of flower-soft fingers pressing Aught that yearns and trembles ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... fasting and unfed, lay down all that night and the day, awaiting a piteous death. But apart the maidens huddled together lamented beside the daughter of Aeetes. And as when, forsaken by their mother, unfledged birds that have fallen from a cleft in the rock chirp shrilly; or when by the banks of fair-flowing Pactolus, swans raise their song, and all around the dewy meadow echoes and the river's fair stream; so these maidens, laying in the dust their golden hair, all through the night wailed their piteous lament. And there all would ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... brook-side, I wander'd by the mill,— I could not hear the brook flow, The noisy wheel was still; There was no burr of grasshopper, Nor chirp of any bird; But the beating of my own heart Was all the ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... began to be strange sounds in the forest. The birds had ceased to sing, save for a chirp now and then as Gigi's passing wakened some tired songster. But there were other noises which Gigi did not understand, and which set his heart to knocking fearfully; the cracking of twigs far off and near at hand; little scurries in the underbrush as he approached; ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... often frayed and darned, and relics of some former, more opulent owners. There were multitudes of children, but they were without the gambols which characterize the young of all animals; and there was not even the chirp of a winter bird about them; their faces were prematurely aged and hardened, and their bold eyes revealed that sin had no surprises for them. And every one of these showed that intense look which marks the awful struggle for food and life upon which they had just entered. The multitude seemed, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... fact of marked interest to science in observing environmental effect upon the differentiation of species. One of these the natives call pupu kani oi or "shrill voiced snail," averring that a certain cricketlike chirp that rings through the stillness of the almost insectless valleys is the voice of this particular species. Emerson says that the name kahuli is applied to the land snail to describe the peculiar tilting motion as the snail crawls first to one side and then to the other of the leaf. ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... grew very white and cold, and underneath her breath she kept crying, "Oh, will they never come—will they never come?" and a cricket somewhere about the house began to chirp. ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... breath of wind But all the quarter sounded like a wood; And in the chequered silence and above The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois, Suburban ashes shivered into song. A patter and a chatter and a chirp And a long dying hiss - it was as though Starched old brocaded dames through all the house Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky Even in a wink had ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grew stiller and stiller; here and there fell a dry leaf which had been driven from its old dwelling place by a fresh one; here and there a young bird gave a soft chirp when its mother squeezed it in the nest; and from time to time a gnat hummed for a minute or two in the curtain, till a spider crept on tip-toe along its web, and gave him such a gripe in the wind-pipe as soon spoiled ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... wok-wok-wok," which resounds through the forest, changing its direction continually. This is the Great Bird of Paradise going to seek his breakfast. Others soon follow his example; lories and parroquets cry shrilly, cockatoos scream, king-hunters croak and bark, and the various smaller birds chirp and whistle their morning song. As I lie listening to these interesting sounds, I realize my position as the first European who has ever lived for months together in the Aru islands, a place which I had hoped rather than expected ever to visit. I think how many besides my self have longed to ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of their own, of course, and we knew them all apart, although they looked just alike to other people. There was Prince Pouter, Brownie, and Goldilegs; Bright-Eye, Chirp, and Gray Friar; Hop-o'-my-Thumb, Croaker, Baby Mine, Nimblefoot, ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the gloating of many eyes. About a dozen cameras were clicking busily, establishing an imperishable record of our shame. Then they loosed the men and bade them form in rank. The soldiers came out of the dark vans, in which they had been confined, with some eagerness, and began at once to chirp and joke, which seemed to me most ill-timed good humour. We waited altogether for about twenty minutes. Now for the first time since my capture I hated the enemy. The simple, valiant burghers at the front, fighting bravely as they had been told 'for ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... of the whole scene; the year seemed rejoicing in its youthful vigour, and to express its delight by millions of mute voices, which spoke out of each leaf and twig that danced in the breeze. Nor were other and audible voices wanting. The lark was singing in the sky, the grasshopper had begun its chirp, the rills and rivulets that splashed or trickled from the hills, gave out their indistinct murmur; whilst, heard far above these voices of nature, the toll of the matin bell resounded through the valley, calling the devoutly disposed to their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... head under the moonshiner's arm for warmth while he steered the craft. Indeed, when the boat was at length run into one of the small, untenanted islands and the party disembarked, the little boy began to chirp genially and to laugh for joy as a fire was kindled amidst the rocks and brush of the interior, invisible from the shores. He basked in the blaze and grew pink and gay, and even sought to initiate ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... an hour we lay laughing and whispering, as we waited for the signal from Sally. At last we heard a cricket chirp shrilly under the window, and flying up, saw a little ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... some papers, and father said he was more comfortable than downstairs, as I did not mind his pipe, and Tom has hung my linnet there,' pointing to the window, 'and if you open the cage, miss, you will see him hop all over the bedclothes, and chirp in the ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... message and was answered by one nearer at hand—his mate, it might be. In a bush under the bank that made of it a black blot in the unearthly whiteness of the sand, a little bird fluttered uneasily and sent a small, inquiring chirp into the stillness. From somewhere farther up the arroyo drifted a faint, aromatic ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... have any right to see,—how you can see; "It must be somehow that you stole the light from us." They do not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... their meal, and were still sitting, no one speaking, as they all felt somewhat tired, when Walter, hearing a whistle or chirp close behind him, turned his head and saw standing not far off a large bird of dark plumage,—or rather with feathers, for he saw no wings,—with a helmet-like protuberance at the top of its head resembling mother-of-pearl darkened with black-lead. It had enormous feet and legs ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... wae, on yon snaw-cover'd thorn, Mournfu' and lane is the chirp o' the Robin, He looks through the storm, but nae shelter can see; Come, Robin, and join the sad concert wi' me. Oh, lang may I look o'er yon foam-crested billow, And Hope dies away like a storm-broken willow; Sweet Robin, the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Once more, chirp of cricket, croak of frog and the rush of waters through the valley were the only sounds, and I darted across to the camp shadow. Lying flat, I began to crawl cautiously and laboriously towards my horses. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... presence of their nests, but the Kentucky warblers seldom do so, knowing too well how to keep their procreant secrets. They have evidently learned the use of strategy, as you will see: One day a pair began to chirp vigorously as I approached their demesne in a lonely hollow, and I felt a thrill of joy at the prospect of finding a nest. One of them even flitted about with a worm in its bill—a sure sign of nestlings in the neighborhood. For nearly four hours I watched the chirping couple, and peered, as I thought, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... circle? Why is it that the turning of anything, be it but a barrel-organ or a phrase, holds one as with an hypnotic power? I confess that I can never genuinely pity a knife-grinder, however needy. Think of the pleasure of driving that wheel all day, the merry chirp of the knife on the stone, and the crisp, bright spray of the flying sparks! Why, he does 'what some men dream of all their lives'! Wheels of all kinds have the same strange charm; mill-wheels, colliery-wheels, spinning-wheels, water-wheels, and wheeling waters: there ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... called out: I have eaten too much. Whether it's healthy is very questionable. After such a greasy lunch I really feel uncomfortable. But I belch beautifully and smoke Cigarettes now and then. Lying on my heavy belly, I chirp nothing but songs of spring. Longingly, as though on a ramp The voice squeals from the throat. And like an old lamp The wind ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... He stood silent a few minutes—quite motionless—as if he were listening to the forest and the night. But there was utter stillness. There was not even a breeze to stir a leaf, or a half-wakened bird to sleepily chirp. ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... quite out of countenance, and, long before the hour of his advent shall have been completed, the birds, which till now have been all activity, will become torpid, the pigeons will have given over their cooing, and the sparrow his chirp; so the fish that has not yet breakfasted had better make haste, for his are chariot-wheels which have been looked after overnight, and linchpins that never come out; nor has he had one break-down or overturn since he first set off on his Macadamized way. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... a little bit awkward at first. Seem like I never will git so thet I can sass back in church 'thout feelin' sort o' impident—but I reckon I'll chirp up an' ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... with a sweet melancholy his long-drawn contralto notes; the lark, like a prima donna, hovering conspicuously in mid air, poured forth her joyous soprano solo; and the robin, quite unmindful of the tempo, filled out the pauses with his thoughtless staccato chirp. Augusta, who was herself the early bird of the pastor's family, had paid a visit to the little bath-house down at the brook, and was now hurrying homeward, her heavy black hair confined in a delicate muslin hood, and her lithe form hastily wrapped in a loose morning ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... day, and at times was very heavy; but just before sunset it died away to a faint sputter and crackle of rifles, and at dark ceased altogether. The moon rose in an unclouded sky over the dark tree-tops east of the camp; the crickets began to chirp in the thicket across the brook; sounds like the rapid shaking of a billiard-ball in a resonant wooden box came from nocturnal birds or tree-toads hidden in the depth of the forest; and the teeming ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... inflection of the voice, a bend of that curious long thin body which seems to be embodied gesture, she can suggest, she can portray, the humour that is dry, ironical, coarse (I will admit), unctuous even. Her voice can be sweet or harsh; it can chirp, lilt, chuckle, stutter; it can moan or laugh, be tipsy or distinguished. Nowhere is she conventional; nowhere does she resemble any other French singer. Voice, face, gestures, pantomime, all are ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... uno avulso thus comes every day Non deficit alter is also in play: For the vacant parts are, one and all, Soon taken by puppets just as small; Who chirp, chirp, chirp, with a grasshopper's glee, We're the lamps of the Universe, We! We! We! But Time, whose speech is never long,— He hasn't time for it—stops the song And says—Lilliput lamps! leave the twopenny boxes, And shine ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... dear little things; I love to hear them chirp," commented Miss Katie, turning a sweet glance toward us, and then the party moved to go and we saw the six hats loaded with their mournful freight file off to the house. We followed the retreating hats with sad eyes till they were lost ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... the glade to disturb Peter's thoughts except a murmur of human voices from some of the innumerable privacies of the place, and the occasional chirp of a waxwing busy ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... of his presence. The weather still continued calm, and I could hear any occasional sounds very distinctly. I heard what resembled the pattering of little feet, as of the rat running over the lid of an empty box; and once or twice I clearly distinguished the short, shrill cricket-like "chirp" that rats are wont to utter. I can think of no more disagreeable sound than the voice of a rat, and at that time it sounded doubly disagreeable. You may smile at my simple fears, but I could not help them. I could not help a presentiment that somehow or other my life was in danger from ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... silent in among the trees, whose great trunks towered up so high, and though we could hear a chirp now and then far above us in the leaves, all was as still as possible, not so much as a beetle or fly breaking the silence ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... happy a workman must be that plies his trade here in the fresh air. And how unfortunate I am to be tied to a power-wheel, in that filthy town, instead of being here, where Nature turns the wheel, and the birds chirp at hand, and the scene and the air are all purity ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... commemorated, a stranger, leading in his hand, a young child, entered the churchyard of H——. The sun had not long set, and the short twilight of deepening summer reigned in the tranquil skies; you might still hear from the trees above the graves the chirp of some joyous bird;—what cared he, the denizen of the skies, for the dead that slept below?—what did he value save the greenness and repose of the spot,—to him alike the garden or the grave! As the man and the child passed, the robin, scarcely scared by their tread from ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bathing, and after a rain may be seen in crowds fluttering and splashing in the pools of water in the street. The cold winter does not molest them. They continue as plump and jolly and independent as ever, and chirp and hop about as merrily on a ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... him Roger saw, emerging from the semi-dark, faces turning like his own to the summits of the mountains and the billowy splendors there. It grew so dark he could see no more. There fell a deep silence, not a sound but the occasional chirp of a bird or the faint whirr of an insect. Even the glow on the peaks ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... halfway down; there was still water at the bottom of the well. Here, plunged in the darkness, Angelot sat on the edge of the well and waited. There were odd little sounds about him, the squeaking of young animals, the sleepy chirp of easily disturbed birds; a frog dived with a splash into the well, and then in a few unearthly croaks told his story to his mates down there. The bracken smelt warm and dry; it was not a bad place to spend a summer night in, for any one who knew wild nature ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... trail and pass; The conscious woods, the stony meadows growing Up to birch pastures, where we heard the lowing Of one disconsolate cow. All the warm afternoon, Lulled in a reverie by the myriad tune Of insects, and the chirp of songless birds, Forgetful of the spring-time's lyric words, Drowsed round us while we tried to find the lane That to our coming feet had been so plain, And lost ourselves among the sweetfern's growth, And thickets of young pine-trees, nothing loath, Amidst the wilding ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... air, not a human being near but the soldiers at the gates below, and the monk above with me; not a sound was heard but those occasional noises of the night, the bark of a dog, the chimes from churches and convents, the chirp of a bird, which only served to make silence audible. Though I have seen the Coliseum a dozen times before, I never was so delighted with its beauty and grandeur as to-night. No description in poetry or painting ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Cares for my owne Father without loving and blessing you. Let Mr. Powell come and see us happie; it may tend to make him soe. Let him and his abide with us, at the leaste, till the Spring; his Lads will studdy and play with mine, your Mother will help you in your Housewiferie, the two olde Men will chirp together beside the Christmasse Hearth; and, if I find thy Weeklie Bills the heavier 'twill be but to write another Book, and make a better Bargain for it than I did for the last. We will use Hospitalitie without grudging; and, as for ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... streets lie silent in sunlight. Not a living thing is to be seen save some lean Tom that slinks from his gutter feast as you approach. From some tree there will sound perhaps a fretful chirp: but the London sparrow is no early riser; he is but talking in his sleep. The slow tramp of unseen policeman draws near or dies away. The clatter of your own footsteps goes with you, troubling you. You find yourself trying to walk softly, as one does in echoing cathedrals. ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... round. gitano gypsy; gitanico (dim.). globo globe. gloria glory. glorioso glorious. gobierno government. golpe m. blow; golpecito (dim.) tap. golleria dainty, excess in eating. gordo fat, corpulent. gorjeo quaver, chirp. gorra bonnet, cap. gorro cap. gozar to enjoy. gozoso joyous. gracia grace, pardon; pl. thanks. grado degree. graduar to grade, estimate. granadero grenadier. granadino of Granada. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... the Tartars migrate all the year through, crossing the steppes in winding and devious but fixed paths, paths settled for each family, and kept without a map, though invisible to strangers. It is only necessary to watch the common sparrow. In spring his merry chirp and his few notes of song are heard on the roof or in the garden; here he spends his time till the broods are reared and the corn is ripe. Immediately he migrates into the fields. By degrees he is joined by those ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... lost in shadow. Between the low boundary of the garden and the hills swept one or two green meadows; Ruth looked into the grey darkness till she traced each separate wave of outline. Then she heard a little restless bird chirp out its wakefulness from a nest in the ivy round the walls of the house. But the mother-bird spread her soft feathers, and hushed it into silence. Presently, however, many little birds began to scent ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... their slender branches forming a dark network overhead, and their lofty proportions lessening in the distance, until lost in the solemn gloom beyond. A religious silence prevailed, broken only by the occasional chirp of the wren, or the soft pattering ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... giving it up, but with all arrangements definitely made I could do nothing but go on. The weather was clear and warm, with an odorous south wind drawing forth the leaves, and as I fell to work, raking up the yard, the smell of unfolding blooms, the call of exultant "high-holders" and the chirp of cheerful robins brought back with a rush, all the sweet, associated memories of other springs and other gardens, making my gold-seeking expedition seem not only chimerical, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... importuned to buy monkeys, parrots, cocks, or song birds. I took a tiny bird that was never known to so much as chirp, but he grew fond of me, would perch upon my shoulder or would turn his little head right or left as if to ask if I were pleased with his silent attentions. The last morning of my stay in Jaro I went to the window and set him free but he immediately came back and clung to my hand. I ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... their seats, and remain quietly until the Senator from Kentucky had concluded his remarks. They did so and no word of complaint reached my ears. Hour after hour during the long summer day the speech drew itself along. At length as the shadows were lengthening and the crickets began to chirp, the speech ended and the Senator took his seat. I promptly replaced my pistols and motioned the visitors to move out. They did so on excellent time. As the last man was passing out, he quietly remarked to me, 'Mister, that was all ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... wild, but green and bright In the summer warmth and the mid-day light, There's the hum of the bee and the chirp of the wren, And the dash of the brook from the older glen. There's the sound of the bell from the scattered flock, And the shade of the beach lies cool on the rock, And fresh from the west is the free-wind's breath. There is nothing here that ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... complacency; hedonics^, hedonism. V. be cheerful &c adj.; have the mind at ease, smile, put a good face upon, keep up one's spirits; view the bright side of the picture, view things en couleur de rose [Fr.]; ridentem dicere virum [Lat.], cheer up, brighten up, light up, bear up; chirp, take heart, cast away care, drive dull care away, perk up. keep a stiff upper lip. rejoice &c 838; carol, chirrup, lilt; frisk, rollick, give a loose to mirth. cheer, enliven, elate, exhilarate, gladden, inspirit, animate, raise the spirits, inspire; perk up; put in good ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... another day. He learned all the sounds of the late night and early morning, and how they had different voices in the dark; the faint whisper of the maple-branches, the occasional stir and muffled chirp of a bird, the hushed, secret murmur of the little brook which ran between his garden and the Crittenden yard, and the distant, deeper note of the Necronsett River as it rolled down the Ashley valley to The ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... for his world had come to an end, but he pretended to an extravagant joy and managed to chirp: "Good news— the first I've had since we went pardners. I'll sure kick up my heels. What'll we ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... in sins and darkness dwell. The egg, when laid, by warmth is made a chicken, And Christ, by grace, those dead in sin doth quicken. The egg, when first a chick, the shell's its prison; So's flesh to the soul, who yet with Christ is risen. The shell doth crack, the chick doth chirp and peep, The flesh decays, as men do pray and weep. The shell doth break, the chick's at liberty, The flesh falls off, the soul mounts up on high But both do not enjoy the self-same plight; The soul is safe, the chick now fears ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... savanna sparrow, who sings habitually from the ground. But even he shares the common feeling, and stretches himself to his full height with an earnestness which is almost laughable, in view of the result; for his notes are hardly louder than a cricket's chirp. Probably he has fallen into this lowly habit from living in meadows and salt marshes, where bushes and trees are not readily to be come at; and it is worth noticing that, in the case of the skylark and the ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... do in the village after selling her bundle of sticks and twigs. It was during these long days that little Gretchen had taught herself to sing the song which the wind sang to the pine branches. In the summer time she learned the chirp and twitter of the birds, until her voice might almost be mistaken for a bird's voice; she learned to dance as the swaying shadows did, and even to talk to the stars which shone through the little square window when Granny came home too late ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... she did not have to get up and go to the office was Una's chief impression at awakening, but she was not entirely obtuse to the morning, to the chirp of a robin, the cluck of the hens, the creak of a hay-wagon, and the sweet smell of cattle. When she arose she looked down a slope of fields so far away that they seemed smooth as a lawn. Solitary, majestic trees cast long shadows ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... all creation blest, Sweet insect, that delight'st to rest Upon the wild wood's leafy tops, To drink the dew that morning drops, And chirp thy song with such a glee, That happiest kings may envy thee. Whatever decks the velvet field, Whate'er the circling seasons yield, Whatever buds, whatever blows, For thee it buds, for thee it grows. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... I little thought that beat could be The harbinger of misery; And daily, when the morning beam Dawned earliest on wood and stream, When, from each brake and bush were heard, The hum of bee, and chirp of bird, From these, earth's matin songs, my ear Would turn, a sweeter voice to hear— A voice, whose tones the very air Seemed trembling with delight to bear; From leafy wood, and misty stream, From bush, and brake, and morning beam, Would turn ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... great rejoicing in the royal castle, but the horse did not feed, the bird did not chirp, and the princess ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... the old horse was caught and brought back into bondage. After that Virginia took long drives with her father, and coming home, they would sit in the summer house high above the Merimec, listening to the crickets' chirp, and watching the day fade upon the water. The Colonel, who had always detested pipes, learned to smoke a corncob. He would sit by the hour, with his feet on the rail of the porch and his hat tilted back, while Virginia read to him. Poe and Wordsworth and Scott he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and the support we derive from seeing their belief in a common reality—all this slipped from him. So he might have felt if the earth had dropped from his feet, and the empty blue had hung all round him, and the air had been steeped in the presence of one woman. The chirp of a robin on the bough above his head awakened him, and his awakenment was accompanied by a sigh. Here was the world in which he had lived; here the plowed field, the high road yonder, and Mary, stripping ivy from the trees. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... upon millions of insects, that dance in the air and creep on every leaf and blade upon the ground. About noon all this is hushed. The hot rays of the sun beat perpendicularly down upon what seems a vast untenanted solitude, and not a single chirp breaks the death-like stillness of the great forest, with the solitary exception of the metallic note of the uruponga, or bell-bird, which seems to mount guard when all the rest of the world has gone to sleep. As the afternoon approaches they all wake up, refreshed ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the leaf a great lake covered the spot. My great-great-grandmother has an acute conductor of sound that she has invented, so exquisite in mechanism as to reveal the voice of the tiniest insect. She put it to my ear, and the bellowing of the animals in battle, the chirp of the insects and the voices of the feathered mites could be clearly heard, but attenuated like the delicate note of two threads of ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... brookside, I wandered by the mill; I could not hear the brook flow, The noisy wheel was still, There was no burr of grasshopper No chirp of any bird, But the beating of my own heart Was all the ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... in a corner and dragging his medals away from him, "that's the answer, You for the Burbs! You for the chateau up the track! Henceforth, you for the cage in the country where the daffydowndillys sing in the treetops and buttercups chirp ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... bowling along the quiet country road, only the chirp of many locusts, the rumble of the wheels, and the sound of their own voices to break the stillness. Ferry leaned forward. Constance was at the farther end of the wagon, ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... calm, and fresh, and still; Alone the chirp of flitting birds And talk of children on the hill, And bell ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... hour of tea and visiting. The simultaneous sound of his well-known rap at the door with the stroke of the clock announcing six, was a topic of never-failing mirth in the families which this dear old bachelor gladdened with his presence. Then was his forte, his glorified hour! How would he chirp, and expand, over a muffin! How would he dilate into secret history! His countryman, Pennant himself, in particular, could not be more eloquent than he in relation to old and new London—the site of old theatres, churches, streets gone to decay—where Rosamond's pond stood—the Mulberry-gardens—and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... happened, by accident, to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn; and another in a large shell, which was, the following year, suspended in the same place. You have, no doubt, my dear children, all observed vast flocks of swallows assemble together on the roofs of houses; they chirp, and chatter, and seem very busy, preparing for their ensuing migration, and consulting, as it were, upon the plan most proper to be adopted on this occasion. I have often wished, at such times, that I could understand ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... Lydia. "Just the other night I woke up with the old fear and then—it was very curious—I heard the lap-lapping of the lake, and the little murmur of the wind in the pine and the frogs cheeping and the steady chirp of the crickets, and, Mr. Levine, the queerest sense of comfort came to me. I can't put it into words. Somehow it was as if Something behind all those little voices spoke to me and told me things ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... round their watch-fires, and close to them were picketed the horses, to take advantage of the protection afforded by the fires against any prowling bear or active leopard. Perfect silence never reigns in these grand solitudes. Near us I could hear the incessant metallic chirp of the hyla, the shrill call and reply of the tree cricket, and the hum of myriads of insects of every description, while from a distance resounded the hoarse voices of thousands of tank frogs, which kept up a ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... at skies, and that—have seen too many of them. You young folk, go and chirp under the tree. What I want is a little rum ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... said Benlli, groaning aloud. "When the owls cry and the crickets chirp, my wife leaves my bed, and until the daystar appears, I lie alone, torn with curiosity, to know where she is, and what she is doing. I fall again into heavy sleep, and do not awake until sunrise, when I ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... upon her slender hands, swiftly, capably busy, her tawny hair, her sun-browned cheeks and the creamy curve of her brow, the blue and flash and fathomless depths of her eyes. I remembered the sunlight and freshening breeze upon the hills, the chirp and gentle stirring of the day, the azure sea and far-off, tender mist, the playful breakers, flinging spray high into the yellow sunshine. 'Twas no time now, thought I, to be busied with craft in the gloomy cabin of the Shining Light, which ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... curves of air. He shut his eyes tight in delight, his body shrinking, and blew a sweet chirp from his lips. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... species of the willow-wrens: two I know perfectly; but have not been able yet to procure the third. No two birds can differ more in their notes, and that constancy, than those two that I am acquainted with; for the one has a joyous, easy, laughing note; the other a harsh loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two drams and a half; while the latter weighs but two: so the songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being the first summer-bird of passage that ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... gathered around me dark and dismal. With night came new voices—the hideous voices of the nocturnal swamp; the qua-qua of the night-heron, the screech of the swamp-owl, the cry of the bittern, the cl-l-uk of the great water-toad, the tinkling of the bell-frog, and the chirp of the savanna-cricket—all fell upon my ear. Sounds still harsher and more, hideous were heard around me—the plashing of the alligator, and the roaring of his voice; these reminded me that I must not go to sleep. To sleep! I durst not have ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... the baskets and talks with the women; but Manenko has heard the call of the honey-bird, the brisk little chirp of "Chiken, chiken, chik, churr, churr," and she is away to the wood to follow his call, and ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... just above his head. A much less startling sound would have awakened a whole city household; but slumber in the country has a slumber of its own: in summer time a slumber born of night-air, laden with the odors of vegetation, and silent except for the drowsy chirp of birds that stir in vine and tree. The wife awoke first, listened for a second, and aroused her husband, who went to the window. He raised the screen and ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... skin is stretched like a drum-head, which thus reacts to the vibration. This seems to be very often "tuned," as it were, to the sounds made by the particular species in which it is found. A cricket will at times be unaffected by any sound, however loud, while at the slightest "screek" or chirp of its own species, no matter how faint, it will start its own little tune in ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... translation of "suzumushi," a kind of cricket with a distinctive chirp like a tiny bell, ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... without; listen to the hum of the city awakening to all its cheerful activities; the new day has brought with it new desires, new hopes. He threw open the windows. The morning air was cold and sweet—the sparrows were beginning to chirp in the garden-plots below. Surely that black night was ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Then gently he set the head in place where it should be and, as his tears fell upon the Robin's neck, it seemed to grow again to the body. The feathers ruffled and the limp wings fluttered feebly; the black eyes opened, and out of the bill came a little chirp. Then the Robin hopped out of Kentigern's hands and across the floor to Saint Servan's feet, and flew up on his master's shoulder. There he sat and sang such a carol of joy as made the great hall ring again. But all the guilty ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... such an extent that he spoke a half-dozen sentences to them. He knew the crow of the cock on sentinel duty when he signals to others; he knew the cry of warning, and the run-to-shelter cry of the hen; her command to her little ones to fly; and the "lie low" cluck; then at last the "all's well" chirp. ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... such a night. The world was stifling in a deluge of gray, cold mists, unstirred by a breath of air. A robin with feathers all ruffled, and head hidden, sat on the gate-post, and chirped a little mournful chirp, like a creature dying in a vacuum. The very daisy that nodded and drooped in the grass at my feet seemed to be gasping for breath. The neighbor's house, not forty paces across the street, was invisible. I remember the sensation it gave ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... rushes, and over all the arch of blue summer sky. One or two carriages rolled along the distant road as they sat there; but otherwise; the stillness was unbroken save by the twitter of birds in the woods behind them, the chirp of sand-peeps or the scream of gulls on the beach, and the soft intermittent ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... steps taken to have their statements given in such a way that they are audible and intelligible. A few lessons in elementary elocution are generally vitally necessary. The man with the bassoon voice must be tamed, and the birdlike old lady made to chirp more loudly. But all this is the self-evident preparation which must take place in every case, and while highly important is of far less interest than the development of the circumstantial evidence which is the next ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... "Chirp and twitter, The dew-drops glitter, In the hours of sunny spring, I'll sing my best, Till I go to rest, With my head ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... my sofa on the rug, Before the ancient chimney-place. Upon the painted tiles are mosques And minarets, and here and there A blind muezzin lifts his hands, And calls the faithful unto prayer. Folded in idle, twilight dreams, I hear the hemlock chirp and sing, As if within its ruddy core It held the happy heart of Spring. Ferdousi never sang like that, Nor Saadi grave, nor Hafiz gay; I lounge, and blow white rings of smoke, And watch them rise ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... with dense shadows where the moonlight failed to penetrate, and the peace of a world at rest was upon the countryside, when even the birds had ceased to chirp and flutter in their nests, the air would feel charged with expectancy. A footfall without would cause Meredith to lift his head from his papers or book, wondering if there was a message for him—Joyce taken ill—or the ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... Pines make sweet music; sad, plaintive, for must there not be a tone of "infinite sadness" in all the places of Earth's finite gladness? From a spray of jessamine I hear the chirp of a little bird—a young beginner; it tries over and over again "its one plain passage of few notes"—the prelude to the full-voice anthem which summer will harmonize. Ah! what shades and sunlight! what coloring! Green in the grass and trees, blue in ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... June felt neither troubled nor afraid. She lay there with her face upturned to the pelting rain, watching it patter from leaf to leaf, listening to the chirp of the birds in the nests, listening to the crying of the wind. She liked the sound. She had a dim notion that it was like an old camp-meeting hymn that she had heard Creline sing sometimes. She never ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... out of countenance, and, long before the hour of his advent shall have been completed, the birds, which till now have been all activity, will become torpid, the pigeons will have given over their cooing, and the sparrow his chirp; so the fish that has not yet breakfasted had better make haste, for his are chariot-wheels which have been looked after overnight, and linchpins that never come out; nor has he had one break-down or overturn since he first set off on his Macadamized way. In haste to escape ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... gave one helpless chirp of surprise and terror at the strange new world, fluttered in a circle, spread his wings at last and ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... The drowsy chirp of crickets, and shrill voices of katydids in the lush grass near by, told of the summer night. Many times had Frank listened to this same chorus as he lay in his blanket on the open prairie, playing the part of night-wrangler to the herd of saddle horses ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... the door when Swan appeared unexpectedly before her, having walked over from the Thurman ranch after doing the chores. To him she observed that Frank was an hour late, and Swan, whistling softly to Jack—Lorraine was surprised to hear how closely the call resembled the chirp of a bird—strode away without so much as a pretence at excuse. Lorraine stared after him wide-eyed, wondering and yet not ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... this conversation develops I am going indoors. Does Arnold want to penetrate into the hidden meaning of that cricket's chirp—or is he going to give us the chemical formula for the ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you're a martyr to our long tongues!" cried Patricia, jumping up and putting out the light. "Go to sleep now. We won't chirp a single note. Good-night, ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... were flapped by the winds; red leaves on the tree tops swaying to and fro; groves picture-like, half stripped of foliage; the western breeze coming with sudden gusts, and the wail of the oriole still audible; the warm sun shining with genial rays, and the cicada also adding its chirp: structures, visible to the gaze at a distance in the South-east, soaring high on various sites and resting against the hills; three halls, visible near by on the North-west, stretching in one connected line, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... little Mary Samm made answer firmly. 'I love my sisters dearly, dearly,' she raised her voice unconsciously as she spoke, and a chaffinch on a branch overhead filled in the pause with an answering chirp, 'I love my mother too. Didst thou really say thou wert expecting her to visit thee right soon? My dear, dear mother! But I love my dear grandfather best of all, for he hath nobody but me to care for him. At least, of course, he hath thee, Aunt Joan,' ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... time that I was, so to speak, in hospital, being tended and cared for, and not allowed to do anything wearisome or demanding effort. But I became more and more aware of other spirits about me, like birds that chirp and twitter in the ivy of a tower, or in the thick bushes of a shrubbery. Amroth told me one day that I must prepare for a great change soon, and I found myself wondering what it would be like, half excited about it, and half afraid, unwilling as I ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... little grove free from undergrowth and stopped. He was about to lie down, rifle by his side, and seek sleep, but his ear, attuned to the wilderness, caught a faint sound. It was not the wind among the leaves, nor the gliding of a snake nor the chirp of an insect, but a sound that was not a part of the night harmony. The sensitive ear had given him warning, as the instinct of an animal warns that an enemy ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the desk to whisper to swell to chirp sneering more and more he climbed the pulpit steps they never did ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... extreme caution, for the colour of their soft feathers is scarcely distinguishable from the ground which they have selected as a table for their morning meal. Nicasio is in advance of me, tracking a company of guinea-fowls, whose melodious chirp has caught his accustomed ear. They are not yet visible, but my sporting friend has halted behind a bush, and thrown away his white tell-tale panama. This means mischief. The dark-grey clothes and sun-burnt face of my companion blend ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... comfortable on that porch with its southern exposure, the fireflies dancing to the chirp of the crickets, the span of the railroad trestle looking like a fairy bridge against the background of the sky. Mr. Keeler ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... beginning to draw off from the point and out into mid-stream, and there must be no more talking upon any pretence whatever. The noise of the insects will tell us when we are drawing in with the other bank. On a night like this one has to be guided in a great measure by sound, and even the chirp of the grasshoppers may be ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... afterwards it became dark, and the mules being much distressed, we could only proceed at a slow pace. The fatigue of riding was much lessened by having an English saddle; still it was a hard day's travelling: but the air was deliciously balmy, and the glowworm's lamp and cricket's chirp helped to cheer the weariness of a road which seemed interminable. Presently, we met country people returning from the market at Ajaccio, lights were seen more frequently on the hills, and, at last, the lantern on the pier-head—a welcome beacon—came ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... died. All over that great rambling structure not even the reassuring chirp of a cricket! I stood perfectly still. What the deuce should I do? Turn back? As I formed this question in my mind a draft of wind slammed the door shut. I was in for it, sure enough; I was positive that I could never find that door again. There was nothing ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... suddenly, for she was choked by her sobs. The whole valley was deserted and silent in the dazzling light and the overwhelming heat, and only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill, continuous chirp among the sparse yellow grass on both sides of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... bed, and looked so pretty in her sleep that Abby came three times to wake her, and three times went away again, unable to spoil so perfect a picture. At last, however, the dark eyes opened of their own accord, and Marie began to chirp and twitter, like a bird at daybreak in its nest; only instead of daybreak, it was eight o'clock in the morning, a most shocking hour for anybody to be getting up. But Abby had been in the habit of spoiling her sister, who had a theory that she was never able to do ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... Peter, in the side of the wing where you see the ends of two or three bricks protruding from a circular hole in the clapboards, is the nest of a pair of wrens that year after year come back to rear a new family, and chirp and chatter away the summer, when their labors have ceased. If it were a few weeks later, you might get acquainted with the comical little occupants, who are as brisk and busy as if they were not in reality great grand-parents to a whole republic of wrens. See! on the top of the wood-shed, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... respect for Siller. Finally, just at the close of a long prayer, she happened to spy Daddy Wiggins, who was sleeping with his mouth open, and the sight was too much for Patty: she giggled out-right. It was a very faint laugh, hardly louder than the chirp of a cricket; but it reached the sharp ears of Deacon Turner, the tithing-man,—the same one who sat in church watching to see if the children behaved well, and he called right out in meeting, ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... play among the leaves At hide-and-seek, and chirp and sing; While, flashing to and from the eaves, The swallows ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... broke the quiet air, chill and dank. Leaves pattered against each other, twigs rubbed faintly, brittle things broke under the lightest foot. Still hardly a wing unfolded ever so little, not a distressful chirp heralded the slaughter that threatened. Gradually, to eyes growing used to the gloom, differing shades of darkness became apparent; it was faintly marked by them as the silence by ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... no wind," he said to himself; and directly after there came the sharp chirp of a bird, and then ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... has many fitful moods Ere the merry summer closes,— From the first chirp of the robin-broods To the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... I remember the day as well as yesterday, because I took notice of it at the time, and had better cause to remember it before all was over. Everything looked so lovely as I began to clear the foot hills of Nulla Mountain. The birds seemed to chirp and whistle gayer than they ever did before. The dewdrops on the grass and all the twigs and shoots of the trees looked as if it was covered with diamonds and rubies as the sun began to shine and melt some of them. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... this from his wife, said, for that he was an old man and maybe therefore somewhat cross-grained, 'What nightingale is this to whose song she would sleep? I will yet make her sleep to the chirp of the crickets.' Caterina, coming to know this, more of despite than for the heat, not only slept not that night, but suffered not her mother to sleep, still complaining of the great heat. Accordingly, next morning, the latter repaired to her husband ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of July, There could not run the smallest breath of wind But all the quarter sounded like a wood; And in the chequered silence and above The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois, Suburban ashes shivered into song. A patter and a chatter and a chirp And a long dying hiss—it was as though Starched old brocaded dames through all the house Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky Even in a wink had over-brimmed in rain. Hark, in these shady parlours, how it talks Of the near Autumn, how the smitten ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that her features were sharp. On the contrary, they were neat and rounded and well formed, telling of great beauty in youth, but her little face and mouth were of such a form that one was led irresistibly to expect to hear her chirp; she fluttered rather than walked and twittered rather than talked. Altogether she was a charming little old lady, with a pair of bead-like eyes as black as sloes. Happy that captain—a sea-captain, by the way, long since dead—round whom she had fluttered in days gone bye, and happy ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... frogs that fill the swamps of America whistle or chirp so exactly like little birds, that many people, upon hearing them for the first time, have mistaken them for the feathered songsters of the groves. Their only fault is that they scarcely ever ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... Where the grass is so even, Lived a gray mother cricket And her little crickets seven. "Chirp!" said the mother; "We chirp," said the seven: So they chirped cheery notes In the ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... famine and frost; Not a morsel of fruit or of grain; And the bird gave a piteous chirp, And tapped with ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1875 • Various
... quantities. The eggs, four or five in number, average .56 by .44, are pure white, profusely spotted with red, and sometimes have also a few spots of purplish grey. On the 15th June I found a nest with four young ones on the south side of the Pir-Pinjal Pass. This bird has no song, only a double chirp in addition to its callnote. The double chirp, which is very loud, is intended for a song, for the male bird incessantly repeats it as he feeds from tree to tree near where the female is ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... and y'u'll see them pass here in a few minutes. Seems that Bannister's wound opened up on him and he couldn't go any farther. Course Mac wouldn't leave him. Sheriff Burns and his posse dropped in on them and had them covered before Mac could chirp." ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... the law. Surely no man can be his own judge, least of all His own doomsman." Her words seem'd to fall With a weight of tears in them. He look'd up, and saw That sad serene countenance, mournful as law And tender as pity, bow'd o'er him: and heard In some thicket the matinal chirp ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... thrust it back. It did not suit to-day. Hours passed. The night crept on towards morning, colder, stiller. Faint bars of gray fell on the stretch of hill-tops, broad and pallid. The shaggy peaks blanched whiter in it. You could hear from the road-bushes the chirp of a snow-bird, wakened by the tramp of his horse, or the flutter of its wings. Overhead, the stars disappeared, like flakes of fire going out; the sky came nearer, tinged with healthier blue. He could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... of a hedge I peered, with cheek on the cool leaves pressed, And spied a bird upon a nest: Two eyes she had beseeching me Meekly and brave, and her brown breast Throbb'd hot and quick above her heart; And then she oped her dagger bill,— 'Twas not a chirp, as sparrows pipe At break of day; 'twas not a trill, As falters through the quiet even; But one sharp solitary note, One desperate, fierce, and vivid cry Of valiant tears, and hopeless joy, One passionate note ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... we lay laughing and whispering, as we waited for the signal from Sally. At last we heard a cricket chirp shrilly under the window, and flying up, saw a little ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... cautiously, the key in Link's pocket, they drifted through the swing door, as air might have circulated, identifying the mouse's scuttle, the rattle of a rat among the loose coal in the cellar bin, the throaty chirp of a cricket outside in the grass, ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... length, while some were two or three hundred yards across, but all were clothed with the most beautiful green foliage and shrubbery. As the pale yellow of the eastern sky began to grow red, ducks and gulls bestirred themselves. Early risers among them first began to chirp, and scream, and whistle their morning song,—for there are lazy ones among the birds, just as there are among men. Sometimes, when the canoe rounded a point of rocks a flock of geese were found floating ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... the grand court-martial. Almost every day we would hear a discharge of musketry, and knew that some poor, trembling wretch had bid farewell to mortal things here below. It seemed to be but a question of time with all of us as to when we too would be shot. We were afraid to chirp. So far now as patriotism was concerned, we had forgotten all about that, and did not now so much love our country as we feared Bragg. Men were being led to the death stake every day. I heard of many being shot, but did not see but two men shot myself. I do not ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... "Do hear the little bird! It begins to chirp already! No, he is not here yet; but Pietro says he will come soon, and Pietro knows ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... gold-green turf, sweetbrier and wild pink rose! How rich that buoyant air with changing scent Of pungent pine, fresh flowers and salt cool seas! And when all echoes of the chase had died, Of horn and halloo, bells and baying hounds, How mine ears drank the ripple of the tide On that fair shore, the chirp of unseen birds, The rustling of the tangled undergrowth, And the deep lyric murmur of the pines, When through their high tops swept the sudden breeze! There was my world, there would my heart dilate, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... their tongue now and again; but no one minded that. I don't, nor you needn't, no more than other folk; for the tongue, be it never so bitin', it can't draw blood, mind ye, and hard words break no bones; and I'll make a cup o' tea—ye like a cup o' tea—and we'll take a cup together, and ye'll chirp up a bit, and see how pleasant and ruddy the sun shines on the ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... longer before setting out upon the adventure that had brought him to this isolated spot. He rested his head against the rock, and thought. He had been thinking for hours. Back in the thicket he heard the prowling of some small animal. There came the sleepy chirp of a bird and the rustling of tired wings settling for the night. A strange stillness hovered about him, and with it there came over him a loneliness that was chilling, a loneliness that made him homesick. It was a new and unpleasant sensation to Captain ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... Uttered in every silent pause Dry, bony laughs from tiny jaws; The painted monkeys on the wall Waked up with chatter impudent; Pottery, porcelain, bronze, and all Broke out in ghostly merriment, - Faint as rain pattering on dry leaves, Or cricket's chirp ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... for we need take no account of those earlier blossoms, plucked untimely from the tree, as they had been prematurely expanded by the heat of party politics. The strain of that song was of a higher mood. In those days, when American literature spoke with faint and feeble voice, like the chirp of half-awakened birds in the morning twilight, we need not say what cordial welcome was extended to a poem which embodied in blank verse worthy of anybody since Milton thoughts of the highest reach and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... over his head; and it had turned from lead to black. Many people were still on the ground grouped about the bases of the trees and holding on. Several such clusters were praying, and in one the Mormon missionary was exhorting. A weird sound, rhythmical, faint as the faintest chirp of a far cricket, enduring but for a moment, but in the moment suggesting to him vaguely the thought of heaven and celestial music, came to his ear. He glanced about him and saw, at the base of another tree, a large cluster ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... should I with my fellow bird or brute So strangely metamorphis'd, either ney Or bellow loud: or if 't may better sute Chirp out my joy pearch'd upon higher spray. My passions fond with impudence rehearse, Immortalize my madnesse in ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... put his hand into the cage, seized the little canary- bird with the red ribbon, and squeezed him so closely that the poor little creature gave one faint chirp and died. The man drew him out, and hurled him against the wall ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... floor well covered with straw, then raise the left fore leg and strap it so that your horse will stand on three legs, then tie a strap just above his right fore foot, and standing on the left side of the horse, holding the strap in your hand, chirp to him, and the moment he attempts to move forwards, he is on his knees; you may then fasten the strap to that on the left leg, or hold it in your hand, as you please; then after the horse gets done struggling and working, ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... Even my own body or my own head seemed a great thing in that emptiness. I note the feeling the more readily as it is the contrary of what I have read of in the experience of others. Day and night, above the roar of the train, our ears were kept busy with the incessant chirp of grasshoppers—a noise like the winding up of countless clocks and watches, which began after a while to seem proper to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very soon, and scarcely feathers—a kind of downy hair. I can hardly express how pleased I was to see him. I tell you, Robinson Crusoe don't make near enough of his loneliness. But here was interesting company. He looked at me and winked his eye from the front backwards, like a hen, and gave a chirp and began to peck about at once, as though being hatched three hundred years too late was just nothing. 'Glad to see you, Man Friday!' says I, for I had naturally settled he was to be called Man Friday if ever he was ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... himself and walked in the twilight. The air was warm and sultry, full of fragrance and the low chirp of crickets. Within his breast was a full uneasy sensation of imminent catastrophe. Something was rising in him—great—terrible—precious. It bewildered him to try to think of himself, of his strange emotions, when his mind seemed to hold ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... white bear was gone, the little gray robin hopped near. Her chirp was quite sad. She, too, saw nothing but a little heap of ashes as ...
— Stories of Birds • Lenore Elizabeth Mulets
... first robin in Hackensack, the stirring of the maple sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along Main Street in Syracuse, the first chirp of the bluebird, the swan song of the Blue Point, the annual tornado in St. Louis, the plaint of the peach pessimist from Pompton, N. J., the regular visit of the tame wild goose with a broken leg to the pond near Bilgewater ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... more than her eyes she loved; for sweet as honey was it and its mistress knew, as well as damsel knoweth her own mother nor from her bosom did it rove, but hopping round first one side then the other, to its mistress alone it evermore did chirp. Now does it fare along that path of shadows whence naught may e'er return. Ill be to ye, savage glooms of Orcus, which swallow up all things of fairness: which have snatched away from me the comely sparrow. O deed of bale! O sparrow ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... of a train; sometimes with a long steady rush, like the breaking of waves. And sometimes, close at hand, the branches move, a moan goes through the thicket, and the wood thrills to its heart. Perhaps you may hear a carriage on the road to Fontainebleau, a bird gives a dry continual chirp, the dead leaves rustle underfoot, or you may time your steps to the steady recurrent strokes of the woodman's axe. From time to time, over the low grounds, a flight of rooks goes by; and from time to time the cooing of wild doves falls upon the ear, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... homestead. All the top of it was in ruins; a fox had made its hole halfway down; there was still water at the bottom of the well. Here, plunged in the darkness, Angelot sat on the edge of the well and waited. There were odd little sounds about him, the squeaking of young animals, the sleepy chirp of easily disturbed birds; a frog dived with a splash into the well, and then in a few unearthly croaks told his story to his mates down there. The bracken smelt warm and dry; it was not a bad place to spend a summer night in, for any one ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... brothers did not think they sang as sweetly: they whistled more in the way of the blackbird. The ground here, too, was quite honeycombed with the burrows of the little petrels, and into these their footsteps broke every moment. It was odd to hear the muffled chirp and feel the struggling birds beneath their feet as they stepped over the grass-grown soil. The ground had not the slightest appearance of being undermined by the mole-like petrels, its hollowness being only proved when it gave way to the tread; although, ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... he lives in the corner by the fireplace. When all is still we hear his cheery chirp! ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... erect for his young clambring hops. Now digs then sowes his herbs, his flowers & roots And carefully manures his trees of fruits. The Pleiades their influence now give, And all that seemed as dead afresh doth live. The croaking frogs, whom nipping winter kil'd Like birds now chirp, and hop about the field, The Nightingale, the black-bird and the Thrush Now tune their layes, on ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... four the next morning, the robin in the nest above Mary's window stretched out his left wing, opened one eye, and gave a short and rather drowsy chirp, which broke up his night's rest and restored him to the full consciousness that he was a bird with wings and feathers, with a large apple-tree to live in, and all heaven for an estate,—and so, on these fortunate premises, he broke into a gush of singing, clear and loud, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... day is done, And my weary little one Rocketh gently to and fro; When the night winds softly blow, And the crickets in the glen Chirp and chirp and chirp again; When upon the haunted green Fairies dance around their queen— Then from yonder misty ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... know how to describe his utterance. It could not without extravagance be called a note, still less a chirp, and least of all a song. It is not a bark—not quite. It is hardly a growl or a grunt or a snort; I should be sorry to call it a bray or a yelp. And yet I am not going to admit that it is a quack or a bleat; and it isn't a screech or a squeal or a sob. Nor is it a croak, though now we are getting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... of the fragment of wing also suggested its probable size when unbroken. It was perhaps two inches long. As there are little horny rings round the wing base like those which crickets have, on which they rub their legs and so "chirp," it is also quite likely that this insect of hoary antiquity did the same, and enlivened the silence of Devonian fern groves with a prehistoric hum. It is quite in keeping with modern ideas that in that age of fishes one of the most remarkable insects should have been a ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... very sad, I was very solemn— I had worked all day whittling out a column. I said, "I'll bet a nickel I can chirp such a chant," And Mr. Geoffrey Parsons said, "I'll bet you can't." I bit a chunk of chocolate and found it sweet, And I listened to the ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... birds began to chirp, and the "blacksmith" (as I named one of the first to wake, whose two sharp ringing notes exactly resemble the blows of a hammer upon an anvil) told me that it was nearly daybreak. The grey of morning had just appeared when I heard voices, and I saw Mrs. Baker coming along the field with a party ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... hole; but he got only a mouthful of burnt tail-feathers. Whitebird was safe, safe in the narrow passage where the dragon could not follow. Up and up and up and up he feebly fluttered into the light of the dear outside world, and then he gave a chirp of joy to find that he really had escaped. But oh, how tired and frightened ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... characterized all her movements, she then opened the casement and inhaled the air. All was still in the narrow lane; the shops yet unclosed. But on the still trees behind the shops the birds were beginning to stir and chirp. Chanticleer, from some neighbouring yard, rang out his brisk rereillee. Pleasant English summer dawn in the pleasant English country village. She stretched her graceful neck far from the casement, trying to catch a glimpse of the blue river. She had seen its majestic flow on the day they had ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... following morning, the kite was still flying high, no bird was to be seen as far as the eye could reach from Castra Regis. But there followed in turn what proved even a worse evil. All the birds were cowed; their sounds stopped. Neither song nor chirp was heard—silence seemed to have taken the place of the normal voices of bird life. But that was not all. The silence spread to ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... on the baskets and talks with the women; but Manenko has heard the call of the honey-bird, the brisk little chirp of "Chiken, chiken, chik, churr, churr," and she is away to the wood to follow his call, and bring ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews
... embarrassing hush closed in on the meeting as the Senior Surgeon resumed his seat. It was broken by an enthusiastic chirp from the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee. She had never attempted to keep her interest for him concealed in the bud, causing much perturbation to the House Surgeon, and leading the Disagreeable Trustee to ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... the name when in a facetious frame of mind, as being descriptive of the very opposite of her character, for she was gentle as a lamb, tender in the mouth, playful in her moods, and sensitive to a degree both in body and spirit. No curb was ever needed to restrain Vixen, nor spur to urge her on. A chirp sent an electric thrill through her handsome frame; a "Quiet, Vic!" sufficed to calm her to absolute docility. Any child could have reined her in, and she went with springy elasticity as though her limbs were made of vivified steel and indiarubber. But she was getting ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... into the automobile, I gave another feeble chirp about the fair, but the secretary was adamant, so we yielded temporarily, and were whirled about ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... clouds, and of long, shady country roads winding in and out and about the hills; of lanes bordered with blackberry-bushes and sumac, clematis and wild-rose; of dewy nooks full of ferns; of the songs of birds and the chirp of insects; and it seemed to him that he must put some of all this beauty into some shape of his own creation—picture or poem, song or speech; and then came a sudden sharp twinge of pain, and the brightness faded, and the room was dark, and ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... licking my hands, and rolling on the leaves around me. I listened awhile in the fear of hearing the voices of men following the dogs, but there was no sound in the forest save the gurgling of the sluggish waters of the creek, and the chirp of black squirrels in the trees. I took courage and started onward once more, taking the dogs with me. The bell on the neck of the old dog, I feared might betray me, and, unable to get it off her neck, I twisted some of the long moss of the trees around it, so as ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... spear over his head and emitted a shriek compared to which the Rebel yell was a chirp from the weakened lungs ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... enlarges, but is at the same time applied closer to the internal surface of the shell; when the time of hatching approaches the chick is liable to break this air-bag with its beak, and thence begin to breathe and to chirp; at this time the edges of the enlarged air-bag extend so as to cover internally one hemisphere of the egg; and as one half of the external shell is thus moist, and the other half dry, as soon as the mother hearing the chick chirp, or the chick itself ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... dexterous audacity pinned their handiwork on to the cap of her neighbour Denis O'Meara, who sat all unawares. Thus it came to pass that when Hugh was at last roused to a vague sense of tittering all round him, which reached him much as the clacking chirp of sparrows gets meaninglessly into our frayed morning dreams, and looking up out of his reverie, stared about him for an explanation, the first thing his eyes lit on was Denis's smart cap surmounted by a mass of gaudy yellow ribbon in immense bows and loops and streamers, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... tumultuous beat! I little thought that beat could be The harbinger of misery; And daily, when the morning beam Dawned earliest on wood and stream, When, from each brake and bush were heard, The hum of bee, and chirp of bird, From these, earth's matin songs, my ear Would turn, a sweeter voice to hear— A voice, whose tones the very air Seemed trembling with delight to bear; From leafy wood, and misty stream, From bush, and brake, and morning beam, Would turn away my wandering eye, A dearer ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... warmth, and the air of a half-articulate murmur and awakening. How still the morning is! It is at such times that we discover what music there is in the souls of the little slate- colored snowbirds. How they squeal, and chatter, and chirp, and trill, always in scattered troops of fifty or a hundred, filling the air with a fine sibilant chorus! That joyous and childlike "chew," "chew," "chew" is very expressive. Through this medley of finer songs and calls, there is shot, from time to time, the ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... window in the rear was still uncovered, and revealed the light on the desk where the master wrote. He heard the scratching of his pen on the paper, and the patter of rain-drops outside, for the night was stormy. There was another sound in the shop, softer than fall of the rain, and finer than chirp of a cricket, or humming sound of a mosquito: the toys in the window ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... only blank walls before my windows. On the side of the street a pug dog has been barking for an hour, a parrot screaming, and a parroqueet imitating the chirp of sparrows. On the side of the yard the washerwomen are singing, and another parroqueet cries incessantly, 'Shoulder arrms!' How ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... latest, Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest, Where the nestlings chirp and flee, That's the way for Billy ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... effort, and making a start away from the rail managed to drag his slippers as far as the binnacle. There he stopped again, exhausted and bored. From under the lifted glass panes of the cabin skylight near by came the feeble chirp of a canary, which appeared to give him some satisfaction. He listened, smiled faintly muttered "Dicky, poor Dick—" and fell back into the immense silence of the world. His eyes closed, his head hung low over the hot brass of the binnacle top. Suddenly he ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... have been two happier and more excited girls somewhere in Canada or the United States at that moment, but I doubt it. Every snip of the scissors, as rose and peony and bluebell fell, seemed to chirp, "Mrs. Morgan is coming today." Anne wondered how Mr. Harrison COULD go on placidly mowing hay in the field across the lane, just as if ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... round Styles were very beautiful. After the walk across the open park, it was pleasant to saunter lazily through the cool glades. There was hardly a breath of wind, the very chirp of the birds was faint and subdued. I strolled on a little way, and finally flung myself down at the foot of a grand old beech-tree. My thoughts of mankind were kindly and charitable. I even forgave Poirot for his absurd secrecy. In fact, I was ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... pity. He had the expression of a man that's fell down a hundred-foot prospect hole and been struck by lightning before he touched bottom. He grabbed aholt of the minister and swallered and swallered, unable to chirp. ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... written to her from Whitford under her pillow, and she kept spreading them out, and making us read them, and—oh! their braveness and cheeriness—they did quite seem to hold one up! And then poor little Minna's constant little robin-chirp of faith, "God will not let them hurt him." One could not bear to tell the child, that though indeed they cannot hurt him, it may not be in her sense! Look here! These are her slippers. She has worked on all day to finish them, that ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... crying fretfully, across the way the faint tinkle of a piano, the far-off rattle of the elevated, a muffled laugh from a window, above, the rat-tat of a cab-horse, the breeze in the ivy clinging to the walls of the church next door, the quarrelsome chirp of the sleepy sparrows; and then, recurrence. Only the poet or the man in pain opens ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... her passion, her own, She chanteth—her sister forgot, with the Daulian crime long-agone. Hush! Hark! Draw around to the circle . . . Ah, loitering Summer, say when For me shall be broken the charm, that I chirp with the swallow again? I am old: I am dumb: I have waited to sing till Apollo withdrew. —So Amyclae a moment was mute, and for ever a wilderness grew.— Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... were glimpses of brilliant color in the foliage—the glow of the laburnum, the lilac blaze of the rhododendron bushes. And how still the place was! Far off there was a dull roar of carriages in Piccadilly; but here there was nothing but the bleating of the sheep, the chirp of the young birds, the stir of the wind among the elms. Sometimes he could now catch the sound of ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... lovely, and still. Lonely—save when, by thy rippling tides, From thicket to thicket the angler glides; Or the simpler comes with basket and book, For herbs of power on thy banks to look; Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me, To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee. Still—save the chirp of birds that feed On the river cherry and seedy reed, And thy own wild music gushing out With mellow murmur and fairy shout, From dawn to the blush of another day, Like ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... a notable housewife, said to me one day, "Now, my dear, we shall soon have plenty of eggs, for I have been buying a lot of young chickens." There they were, each one with as many feathers as a grasshopper, and a chirp not louder. Of course, we looked forward with pleasant hopes to the period when the first cackle should announce the milk-white egg, warmly deposited in the hay which we had provided bountifully. ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... Moths flit, ghost-like, round the seductive light of my lantern. The meadows, ever breathing freshness, are now saturated with dew, and I feel the damp of the night air on my heated limbs. A Cicada, a fellow-lodger in the house, attracts me by its domestic chirp back into my bedroom, and is there my social companion, while, in a happy dreaming state, I await the coming day, kept half awake by the buzz of the mosquites, the kettle-drum croak of the bull-frog, or the complaining cry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... door of the room where he was. When we remembered the bird we were much afraid lest he should have flown out of the room. We hunted high and low, calling his name, "Carmen," to which he often answers with a chirp. At last I happened to push aside a little low stool, and there, crouching down so as not to be found (as he dislikes being put into his cage) was Carmen. He has tried since then to hide; but we know his ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... vibration. This seems to be very often "tuned," as it were, to the sounds made by the particular species in which it is found. A cricket will at times be unaffected by any sound, however loud, while at the slightest "screek" or chirp of its own species, no matter how faint, it will start its own little tune in ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... Pauline followed the flight of his thought with difficulty. After the third phrase anything read aloud made her feel drowsy, and the affairs of her household took on an absurd importance; one might say that the voice of the reader made them chirp like birds in a cage. It was in vain that she tried to follow on Clerambault's lips, and even to imitate with her own, the words whose meaning she no longer understood; her eye mechanically noted a hole in the cloth, her fingers picked at the crumbs on the table, her mind ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... wold, Or bleat of lamb within its fold, Or cooing of love-legends old To dove-wives make not quiet less; Ecstatic chirp of winged thing, Or bubbling of the water-spring, Are sounds that more than silence bring Itself ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... statement that she and the sailors had lived for a fortnight upon the broiled remains of Mr. Meeson. One interviewer, being a small man, and, therefore, unable to kick and fight his way through the ring which surrounded Augusta and Mrs. Thomas, seized upon little Dick, and commenced to chirp and snap his fingers at him in the intervals of asking him such questions as he thought suitable ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... felt alike, and could look and see for ourselves? You don't seem to amount to much when you are up, like this, on a mountain, near the sky, with the world spread out below and not missing you; and a boy's voice, or a man's, is about the size of a cricket's chirp. The silence is one of the best things you find. So we sat ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... shouldn't like to say, I'm sure, I shouldn't like to say, Why all the birds should chirp of you, Who live so far away. Robin and oriole sing to me From the leafy depths of our apple-tree, With trunk so gnarled and gray— But why your name should their burden be I shouldn't ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... an extent that he spoke a half-dozen sentences to them. He knew the crow of the cock on sentinel duty when he signals to others; he knew the cry of warning, and the run-to-shelter cry of the hen; her command to her little ones to fly; and the "lie low" cluck; then at last the "all's well" chirp. ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... of tumult and terror, of pouring rain, flashing lightning, and pealing thunder. At last the tempest dies away, and in the trio and chorus, "Now cease the Conflicts," night comes on, with its song of the quail,—which Beethoven subsequently utilized in his Pastoral Symphony,—the chirp of the crickets, the croaking of the frogs, the distant chime of the evening bells, and the invocation to sleep. Of the frog episode, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... bird-trap was quite empty, as he had caught nothing, and he had to kill a pied Partridge, which he had tamed for a decoy. The bird entreated earnestly for his life: "What would you do without me when next you spread your nets? Who would chirp you to sleep, or call for you the covey of answering birds?" The Birdcatcher spared his life, and determined to pick out a fine young Cock just attaining to his comb. But the Cock expostulated in piteous tones from his perch: "If you kill me, who will announce ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... much as friendly correspondence. Write again—and if there is anything in this memorial of yours that refers to anything in particular, do not be backward about explaining it. We shall always be happy to hear you chirp. 'Very truly, etc., "'MARK TWAIN, 'For James W. N——-, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gracious mother's wiles And dear delusive smiles! No callow fledgling of her singing brood But tastes that witching food, And hearing overhead the eagle's wing, And how the thrushes sing, Vents his exiguous chirp, and from his nest Flaps forth—we know the rest. I own the weakness of the tuneful kind,— Are not all harpers blind? I sang too early, must I sing too late? The lengthening shadows wait The first pale stars of twilight,—yet how sweet The flattering whisper's cheat,— ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... went on tiptoe to extinguish the candle. All was silent: the grey light of the morning was now spreading over every object; the sun rose slowly, and Susan stood at the lattice window, looking through the small leaded, cross-barred panes at the splendid spectacle. A few birds began to chirp; but, as Susan was listening to them, her mother started in her sleep, and spoke unintelligibly. Susan hung up a white apron before the window to keep out the light, and just then she heard the sound of music at a distance in the village. As it approached nearer, ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... she was a woman now,—and, look here! A chance ray of sunlight slanted in, falling barely on the dust, the hot heaps of wool, waking a stronger smell of copperas; the chicken saw it, and began to chirp a weak, dismal joy, more sorrowful than tears. She went to the cage, and put her finger in for it to peck at. Standing there, if the vacant life coming rose up before her in that hard blare of sunlight, she looked at it with the same still, waiting ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... on the sill; The look of leaves a-twinkle With windlets clear and still; The feel of a forest rill That wimples fresh and fleet About one's naked feet; The muzzles of drinking herds; Lush flags and bulrushes; The chirp of rain-bound birds - To live, I think ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... city. [581] He [582] lay that night under the tree in all ease; but he whose head is in the headsman's hand sleepeth not anights. [583] However, fatigue and lack of sleep for four days past caused slumber get the mastery over him; [584] so he slept till break of morn, when he awoke at the chirp [585] of the sparrows. He arose and going to a stream there which flowed into the city, washed his hands and face; then, making the ablution, he prayed the morning-prayer and after returned and sat under the windows ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... went Pussy-cat, and down went he; Down came Pussy-cat, and away Robin ran; Says little Robin Redbreast, "Catch me if you can." Little Robin Redbreast flew upon a wall, Pussy-cat jumped after him, and almost got a fall; Little Robin chirp'd and sang, and what did Pussy say? Pussy-cat said "Mew," ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... the quiet country road, only the chirp of many locusts, the rumble of the wheels, and the sound of their own voices to break the stillness. Ferry leaned forward. Constance was at the farther end of the ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... knew, too, that if, by any dispensation, one were removed, five daughters of the horse-leech would still remain, with ravenous appetites unappeased. Yet the poor old bird was cheerful, and sometimes, after supper, would chirp quite merrily. Honneur au courage malheureux. Let us stand aside in the cloak-room, and salute her as she passes out with all the ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... a year, then, yesterday, sweet child, Prattling thus happily! So fledglings wild, New-hatched in warmer nest 'neath sheltering bough, Chirp merrily to feel their feathers grow. Your mouth's a rose, Jeanne! In these volumes grand Whose pictures please you—while I trembling stand To see their big leaves tattered by your hand— Are noble lines; but nothing half ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... red fields of sarasson, hedged by long banks of earth, which were masses of golden gorse and bronzed and crimson ferns. The sun shone, the clover-scented air was full of the joyous buzzing of bees and chirp of birds. ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... all exactly like that; but that is not how the human eye apprehends a scene. The human mind takes a central point, and groups the accessories round it. In art, I think everything depends upon centralisation. Two lovers part, and the birds' faint chirp from the leafless tree, the smouldering rim of the sunset over misty fields, are true and symbolical parts of the scene; but if you deal in botany and ornithology and meteorology at such a moment, you cloud and dim the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of marked interest to science in observing environmental effect upon the differentiation of species. One of these the natives call pupu kani oi or "shrill voiced snail," averring that a certain cricketlike chirp that rings through the stillness of the almost insectless valleys is the voice of this particular species. Emerson says that the name kahuli is applied to the land snail to describe the peculiar tilting motion as the snail crawls first to ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... found him in all things contemptible, especially in his vanity begotten by what he called "reason"; he, the miserable little cricket, vaingloriously jumping out of the grass in an effort to poke his nose among the stars, then falling back to chirp, had almost taken away from the devil all desire to tempt him to evil doings. "Knowest thou Faust?" asks the Divine Voice; and Mefistofele tells of the philosopher's insatiable thirst for wisdom. Then he offers the wager. The scene, though brief, follows ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to the pine-woods above Lamteng in this month, and chirp shrilly in the heat of the day; and glow-worms fly about at night. The common Bengal and Java toad, Bufo scabra, abounded in the marshes, a remarkable instance of wide geographical distribution, for a Batrachian which is common at the level of the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... out louder and more loud; the cricket's measured chirp seemed to grow more painfully audible; the wind whistled through the leafless boughs without, and in the lulls of the abating storm the low rumble of the ghyll could be heard within. What kept Ralph away? It was no unusual thing for him to be abroad ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... produce blood-poisoning, which might cause death without the assistance of any particular toxic venom. The rattlesnake, however, which is rather too common in the desert, is a different sort of a chap. If he strikes you, you may just as well make your will, and chirp your death song, as to monkey with physicians, and squander some of the good wealth which may be useful ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... their cloaks and, fasting and unfed, lay down all that night and the day, awaiting a piteous death. But apart the maidens huddled together lamented beside the daughter of Aeetes. And as when, forsaken by their mother, unfledged birds that have fallen from a cleft in the rock chirp shrilly; or when by the banks of fair-flowing Pactolus, swans raise their song, and all around the dewy meadow echoes and the river's fair stream; so these maidens, laying in the dust their golden hair, all through the night wailed their piteous lament. ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... peep [frog]; coo [dove, pigeon]; gobble [turkeys]; quack [duck]; honk, gaggle, guggle [obs3][goose]; crow, caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, hummingbird]; buzz [flying insects, bugs]; hiss [snakes, geese]; blatter[obs3]; ratatat [woodpecker]. Adj. crying &c. v.; blatant, latrant[obs3], remugient[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... like a damp to the really arid white walls, when the brothers led us down a wide staircase to the vaulted space beneath the basement, we came upon some hundreds of small bird-cages, containing each a miserable linnet, titmouse, or finch, condemned to chirp out its wretched existence in this airless underground region. In reply to our pitying exclamation, we were told that the bachelors' friend who occupied the corner apartment on the ground-floor was a great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... pale and the sky brightened. Day came suddenly, almost instantaneously. I turned for another look at the blue night, and it was gone. Everywhere the birds began to call, and all manner of little insects began to chirp and hop about in the willows. A breeze sprang up from the west and brought the heavy smell of ripened corn. The boys rolled over and shook themselves. We stripped and plunged into the river just as the sun came up over ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... freshens, the distant doors clap to, with a sudden sound. The trees are heavy with leaves; and the gardens full of blossoms, red and white. The whole atmosphere is laden with perfume and sunshine. The birds sing. The cock struts about, and crows loftily. Insects chirp in the grass. Yellow butter-cups stud the green carpet like golden buttons, and the red blossoms of the clover like rubies. The elm-trees reach their long, pendulous branches almost to the ground. White clouds sail aloft; and vapors fret the blue sky with silver threads. ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... is because the crickets are then full-grown, and have large wing covers. At first, in the early summer, they have no wings, and so of course, we could not see them chirp. ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... would chirp truculently, "you 'tend to your business, and let me 'tend to mine. Anybody would think that we were all to save ourselves in this house but you. As for my typing, it's funny if I can't save you something on those miserable ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... your throat is sore, You can chirp this fall no more; Robin red-breast, summer's past, Did you think 'twould always last? Fly away to sunny climes, Lands of oranges and limes; With the squirrels we shall stay And put our store of nuts away. O the spiny chestnut ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... a few minutes. The sun was sinking low in the western sky, the chirp of the birds was growing faint in the trees. She raised her ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... comes first the recollection of a big room containing a big bed, a big wardrobe, a big dressing table, a big praying-stool with an image of Our Lady on the wall above it, and an open window to which a sparrow used to come in the mornings and chirp. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... never known such a night. The world was stifling in a deluge of gray, cold mists, unstirred by a breath of air. A robin with feathers all ruffled, and head hidden, sat on the gate-post, and chirped a little mournful chirp, like a creature dying in a vacuum. The very daisy that nodded and drooped in the grass at my feet seemed to be gasping for breath. The neighbor's house, not forty paces across the street, was invisible. I remember the sensation it gave ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... secret of the fascination of the circle? Why is it that the turning of anything, be it but a barrel-organ or a phrase, holds one as with an hypnotic power? I confess that I can never genuinely pity a knife-grinder, however needy. Think of the pleasure of driving that wheel all day, the merry chirp of the knife on the stone, and the crisp, bright spray of the flying sparks! Why, he does 'what some men dream of all their lives'! Wheels of all kinds have the same strange charm; mill-wheels, colliery-wheels, spinning-wheels, water-wheels, ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... these parts), and goes down headlong. Run to fetch your hat—and it's night. Wink at the right time of black night—and it's morning. Everything is in extremes. There is an insect here that chirps all day. There is one outside the window now. The chirp is very loud: something like a Brobdingnagian grasshopper. The creature is born to chirp; to progress in chirping; to chirp louder, louder, louder; till it gives one tremendous chirp and bursts itself. That is its ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... I thought I heard a faint noise. Routing out the good old creature, that I might take observations, eggs still, and no chickens, were discernible, but the tiniest, little, silvery, sunny-hearted chirp that you ever heard, inside the eggs, and a little, tender pecking from every imprisoned chick, standing at his crystal door, and, with his faint, fairy knock, knock, knock, craving admission into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the cool tumult of interstellar conflict, to the onset of starry hosts, to the impact of cold suns and the flaming up of nebular in the darkened void; and through it all, unceasing and faint, like a silver shuttle, ran the frail, piping voice of man, a querulous chirp amid the screaming of planets ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... fire illuminated the whole chimney with a glow of light; and the Cricket on the Hearth began to chirp! 166 ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... designed that its waters should be arrested in their course to turn a saw-mill,—the party collected to return: with two others, I decided upon walking back, and pleasant it is to walk through these quiet wild wood-paths, where the chirp of the birds and the rustle of the leaves alone break ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... strawstack, a wee little mite Of a cricket went chirping by day and by night; And further down, still, a cunning blue mouse In a snug little nook of that strawstack kept house! When the cricket went "chirp," Miss Mousie would squeak "Come in," and a blush would enkindle her cheek! She thought—silly girl! 't was a beau come to woo, But I guess it was ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... a dozen cameras were clicking busily, establishing an imperishable record of our shame. Then they loosed the men and bade them form in rank. The soldiers came out of the dark vans, in which they had been confined, with some eagerness, and began at once to chirp and joke, which seemed to me most ill-timed good humour. We waited altogether for about twenty minutes. Now for the first time since my capture I hated the enemy. The simple, valiant burghers at the front, fighting bravely as they had been told 'for their farms,' claimed respect, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... indeed, the birds of all sorts were astir, skimming along the ground or rising to the sky, keeping watch especially over the garden and the fruit-trees, carrying food to their nests, or teaching their young broods to fly and to chirp the songs of summer. And from the woodshed the shrill note of the scythe under the action of the grindstone. No such vivid realization ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... conscious woods, the stony meadows growing Up to birch pastures, where we heard the lowing Of one disconsolate cow. All the warm afternoon, Lulled in a reverie by the myriad tune Of insects, and the chirp of songless birds, Forgetful of the spring-time's lyric words, Drowsed round us while we tried to find the lane That to our coming feet had been so plain, And lost ourselves among the sweetfern's growth, And thickets of young pine-trees, nothing loath, ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... when condemned men and milkmen rise up from where they lie, when sick folk die in their beds and the drowsy birds begin to chirp themselves awake found the men of this particular battalion in shallow front-line trenches on the farther edge of a birch thicket. There they crouched, awaiting the word. The flat cold taste of before sunup was clammy in ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... fashions of ten years past, and the aprons were too often frayed and darned, and relics of some former, more opulent owners. There were multitudes of children, but they were without the gambols which characterize the young of all animals; and there was not even the chirp of a winter bird about them; their faces were prematurely aged and hardened, and their bold eyes revealed that sin had no surprises for them. And every one of these showed that intense look which marks the awful struggle for food and life upon which they had just entered. The multitude seemed, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... seem hard that in a great city full of fine things, there should be none for poor Nono, Sep, and little Speranza. Just as Tessa's tears began to tumble off her eyelashes on to her brown cheeks, the cricket began to chirp. Of course, he didn't say a word; but it really did seem as if he had answered her question almost as well as a fairy; for, before he had piped a dozen shrill notes, an idea popped into Tessa's head—such a truly splendid idea that she clapped her hands and burst out laughing. 'I'll ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... gives its owner good luck in bringing the buffalo close, so that they may be killed. The stone is found on the prairie, and any one who finds one is thought to be very lucky. Sometimes a man who is going along on the prairie will hear a queer faint chirp, such as a little bird might make. He knows this sound is made by a buffalo stone. He stops and searches for it on the ground, and if he cannot find it, marks the place and comes back next day to look for it again. If it is found, he and all ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... rock beside the shining things it coveted, it dropped dried and shriveled fruit. Dalgard's fingers separated two of the gleaming marbles, rolled them toward the animal, who scooped them up with a chirp of delight. But it did not leave. Instead it peered intently at the rest of the beads. Hoppers had their own form of intelligence, though it might not compare with that of humans. And this one was enterprising. In the end it delivered three more loads of fruit from its burrow and took away ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... Let their vague shadows dreamlike trail and pass; The conscious woods, the stony meadows growing Up to birch pastures, where we heard the lowing Of one disconsolate cow. All the warm afternoon, Lulled in a reverie by the myriad tune Of insects, and the chirp of songless birds, Forgetful of the spring-time's lyric words, Drowsed round us while we tried to find the lane That to our coming feet had been so plain, And lost ourselves among the sweetfern's growth, And thickets of young pine-trees, nothing loath, Amidst ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... inability to satisfy them. She knew, too, that if, by any dispensation, one were removed, five daughters of the horse-leech would still remain, with ravenous appetites unappeased. Yet the poor old bird was cheerful, and sometimes, after supper, would chirp quite merrily. Honneur au courage malheureux. Let us stand aside in the cloak-room, and salute her as she passes out with ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... and the sweet, clear notes of one of them delighted Master Sunshine until he heard the mate answering back with a harsh, scraping noise not unlike a dull saw making its way through a log of knotted wood. A robin gave a mellow chirp; and the Peabody bird was filling the air with its ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... things contemptible, especially in his vanity begotten by what he called "reason"; he, the miserable little cricket, vaingloriously jumping out of the grass in an effort to poke his nose among the stars, then falling back to chirp, had almost taken away from the devil all desire to tempt him to evil doings. "Knowest thou Faust?" asks the Divine Voice; and Mefistofele tells of the philosopher's insatiable thirst for wisdom. Then he offers the wager. The scene, though brief, ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... tiptoe to extinguish the candle. All was silent: the grey light of the morning was now spreading over every object; the sun rose slowly, and Susan stood at the lattice window, looking through the small leaded, cross-barred panes at the splendid spectacle. A few birds began to chirp; but, as Susan was listening to them, her mother started in her sleep, and spoke unintelligibly. Susan hung up a white apron before the window to keep out the light, and just then she heard the sound of music at a distance in the ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... caroll'd till peep of the dawn, The Lark gently hinted 'twas time to be gone; And his clarion, so shrill, gave the company warning, That Chanticleer scented the gales of the morning, So they chirp'd in full chorus, a friendly adieu; And, with hearts beating light as the plumage that grew On their merry-thought ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... with the utmost decorum. When they gaily had caroll'd till peep of the dawn, The Lark gently hinted, 'twas time to be gone; And his clarion, so shrill, gave the company warning, That Chanticleer scented the gales of the morning. So they chirp'd, in full chorus, a friendly adieu; And, with hearts beating light as the plumage that grew On their merry-thought bosoms, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... deliver just so many warnings per diem; and invariably he got so busy chasing insects, enjoying the sun, gossiping with a friend and generally footling about that the late afternoon caught him unawares with never a chirp accomplished. So he sat in a bush and said his say over and over just as fast as he could without pause for breath or recreation. It was really quite a feat. Just at dusk, after two hours of gabbling, he would reach the end ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... George came close behind them. And around him Roger saw, emerging from the semi-dark, faces turning like his own to the summits of the mountains and the billowy splendors there. It grew so dark he could see no more. There fell a deep silence, not a sound but the occasional chirp of a bird or the faint whirr of an insect. Even the glow on the peaks was gone. Darkness, ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... Achatinella, are to be found in the mountains of Hawaii, a fact of marked interest to science in observing environmental effect upon the differentiation of species. One of these the natives call pupu kani oi or "shrill voiced snail," averring that a certain cricketlike chirp that rings through the stillness of the almost insectless valleys is the voice of this particular species. Emerson says that the name kahuli is applied to the land snail to describe the peculiar tilting motion as the snail crawls first to one side and ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... beneath, in the dim shade, where the air is choked by rotting undergrowth and tangled vegetation, the now slanting rays are powerless to penetrate, powerless to dispel the steamy miasmic exhalations. Silence, too, is the rule in that semi-gloom, save for here and there the half-frightened chirp of a bird far up among the tree-tops, or the stealthy rustle beneath as some serpent, or huge venomous insect, moves upon its way. For among the decayed wood of fallen tree trunks, and dry lichens and hoary mosses growing therefrom, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... guided on my way by the shining stars of heaven alone. The next morning just before the break of day, I came right to a large plantation, about which I secreted myself, until the darkness of the next night began to disappear. The morning larks commenced to chirp and sing merrily—pretty soon I heard the whip crack, and the voice of the ploughman driving in the corn field. About breakfast time, I heard the sound of a horn; saw a number of slaves in the field with a white man, who I supposed to be their overseer. ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... the rail managed to drag his slippers as far as the binnacle. There he stopped again, exhausted and bored. From under the lifted glass panes of the cabin skylight near by came the feeble chirp of a canary, which appeared to give him some satisfaction. He listened, smiled faintly muttered "Dicky, poor Dick—" and fell back into the immense silence of the world. His eyes closed, his head hung low over the hot brass of the binnacle top. Suddenly he stood up with ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... he knew that my sister was talking to him, would chirp away, and seem quite happy. As soon as the warm weather came, his visits were not so frequent; but, every now and then, he would make his appearance, as if to say, "Don't forget me, Helen. I may want some more crumbs when ...
— The Nursery, May 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 5 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... too often frayed and darned, and relics of some former, more opulent owners. There were multitudes of children, but they were without the gambols which characterize the young of all animals; and there was not even the chirp of a winter bird about them; their faces were prematurely aged and hardened, and their bold eyes revealed that sin had no surprises for them. And every one of these showed that intense look which marks the awful struggle for food and life upon which they had just entered. The multitude seemed, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... beat! I little thought that beat could be The harbinger of misery; And daily, when the morning beam Dawned earliest on wood and stream, When, from each brake and bush were heard, The hum of bee, and chirp of bird, From these, earth's matin songs, my ear Would turn, a sweeter voice to hear— A voice, whose tones the very air Seemed trembling with delight to bear; From leafy wood, and misty stream, From bush, and brake, and morning beam, Would ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... examine the brain of a person who has grown up in an environment rich in stimuli to the eye, where nature, earth, and sky have presented a changing panorama of color and form to attract the eye; where all the sounds of nature, from the chirp of the insect to the roar of the waves and the murmur of the breeze, and from the softest tones of the voice to the mightiest sweep of the great orchestra, have challenged the ear; where many and varied odors and perfumes have ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... week. Helen wandered through the violet-carpeted glades in a perfect day-dream. The warmth and glow had fallen on the land so unexpectedly after days of rain, and now the whole woodland was athrill with the songs of birds and the chirp and chatter of ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... accompanied the speech of the bird with a peculiar whistling sound in his throat, that was a marvelous imitation of a sparrow's chirp, and the little boy clapped his hands with delight, and ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... pine-woods above Lamteng in this month, and chirp shrilly in the heat of the day; and glow-worms fly about at night. The common Bengal and Java toad, Bufo scabra, abounded in the marshes, a remarkable instance of wide geographical distribution, for a Batrachian which is common at the level of the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... can concede," The poet cried, with glowing cheeks; "The flocks that from their beds of reed Uprising north or southward fly, And flying write upon the sky The biforked letter of the Greeks, As hath been said by Rucellai; All birds that sing or chirp or cry, Even those migratory bands, The minor poets of the air, The plover, peep, and sanderling, That hardly can be said to sing, But pipe along the barren sands,— All these have souls akin to ours; So hath the lovely race of flowers: ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... crept steadily downward, and his shadow in the vault above grew taller and more grotesque. It must be midnight; it must be two; it must be three in the morning. The loopholes, when he stood between them and the candle, were growing grey; the birds were beginning to chirp. Presently the sun would rise, and through the narrow windows he would see its beams flashing on the distant water. But the windows looked north-west, and many hours must pass before a ray would strike into his dungeon. The candle was beginning to burn low, and it seemed a pity to ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... the delight in her blue eyes matching that in Uncle Tucker's pair of mystic gray. "I'll come just as soon as I get the skimming done. We'll want some corn meal and millet seed for the chirp-babies, but the others we can leave to the maternal ministrations. I'm so full of welcome I don't see how I'm going to keep it from ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and fresh, and still; Alone the chirp of flitting birds And talk of children on the hill, And bell ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... darting over the larch, as if to inspect whether her little brood was safe, she disappeared again. In a few minutes more, she returned, skimming round to reconnoitre that all was safe, she perched upon the nest. Instantly the little nestlings were awake to the summons of her touch and chirp, and, opening their mouths wide, were ready for what she would give. She dropt a small fly into the mouth of one of them, and, having no more, flew away to provide for the other hungry mouths as fast as she could. ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... is that slight sounds, unnoticed before, are heard; the ticking of the clock, the chirp of a sparrow in the garden, the flight of a butterfly. The world becomes full of imperceptible sounds which invade that deep silence without disturbing it, just as the stars shine out in the dark sky without banishing the darkness of the night. ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... I know the gracious mother's wiles And dear delusive smiles! No callow fledgling of her singing brood But tastes that witching food, And hearing overhead the eagle's wing, And how the thrushes sing, Vents his exiguous chirp, and from his nest Flaps forth—we know the rest. I own the weakness of the tuneful kind,— Are not all harpers blind? I sang too early, must I sing too late? The lengthening shadows wait The first pale stars of twilight,—yet how ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... taken to have their statements given in such a way that they are audible and intelligible. A few lessons in elementary elocution are generally vitally necessary. The man with the bassoon voice must be tamed, and the birdlike old lady made to chirp more loudly. But all this is the self-evident preparation which must take place in every case, and while highly important is of far less interest than the development of the circumstantial evidence which is the next consideration of the ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... when laid, by warmth is made a chicken, And Christ, by grace, those dead in sin doth quicken. The egg, when first a chick, the shell's its prison; So's flesh to the soul, who yet with Christ is risen. The shell doth crack, the chick doth chirp and peep, The flesh decays, as men do pray and weep. The shell doth break, the chick's at liberty, The flesh falls off, the soul mounts up on high But both do not enjoy the self-same plight; The soul is safe, the chick ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and showers, Oh! girlish thorns and flowers, Oh! fruitless days and hours, Oh! groundless hopes and fears: The birds still chirp and twitter, And still the sunbeams glitter: Oh! barren years and ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... your trembling form, There shall your shiv'ring breast be warm: And, when your little heart grows strong, I'll ask you for your simple song; And, when you will not tarry more, Open shall be my wicket-door; And freely, when you chirp "adieu," I'll wish you well, sweet warbler! too; I'll wish you many a summer-hour On top of tree, or abbey-tow'r. When Spring her wasted form retrieves, And gives your little roof its leaves, May you (a happy lover) find A kindred partner to your ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... comic is wide; with an inflection of the voice, a bend of that curious long thin body which seems to be embodied gesture, she can suggest, she can portray, the humour that is dry, ironical, coarse (I will admit), unctuous even. Her voice can be sweet or harsh; it can chirp, lilt, chuckle, stutter; it can moan or laugh, be tipsy or distinguished. Nowhere is she conventional; nowhere does she resemble any other French singer. Voice, face, gestures, pantomime, all are different, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... in monotone Kept dropping, dropping endlessly, And as I listened, over me Crept like a mist a filmy spell; My spirit's waving wings were bound, And dreams came that were not my own. Half-sleeping, half-awake, I heard The drowsy chirp of a forest bird, And the wind came up and the grasses stirred And the curtaining woods that cluster round That resonantly-echoing well Shook all their leaves with silver sound Like voices murmuring in a shell. Was it the past that lived again In that nocturnal murmuring, ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... particular respect for Siller. Finally, just at the close of a long prayer, she happened to spy Daddy Wiggins, who was sleeping with his mouth open, and the sight was too much for Patty: she giggled out-right. It was a very faint laugh, hardly louder than the chirp of a cricket; but it reached the sharp ears of Deacon Turner, the tithing-man,—the same one who sat in church watching to see if the children behaved well, and he called right out in meeting, in a ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... to the vibration. This seems to be very often "tuned," as it were, to the sounds made by the particular species in which it is found. A cricket will at times be unaffected by any sound, however loud, while at the slightest "screek" or chirp of its own species, no matter how faint, it will start its own little ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... paint and naturally stern lineaments with a bright gleam of human feeling, "Chingachgook heard the laugh of Wah-ta-Wah, and knew it from the laugh of the women of the Iroquois. It sounded in his ears, like the chirp of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... incubated egg gradually extends its edges along the sides of the shell, as the chick enlarges, but is at the same time applied closer to the internal surface of the shell; when the time of hatching approaches the chick is liable to break this air-bag with its beak, and thence begin to breathe and to chirp; at this time the edges of the enlarged air-bag extend so as to cover internally one hemisphere of the egg; and as one half of the external shell is thus moist, and the other half dry, as soon as the mother hearing the chick ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... the household of Archias, and though a freed woman still worked in the old way, came out of the tent, he called to her the gay Greek greeting, "Rejoice!" pointed to the sparrows, and eagerly continued: "How one flies above another! how they flutter and chirp and twitter! It will be a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... little burst of laughter; and then accepting the challenge, the girl took up the linnet's strain in an unworded song, sweeter, richer, more full of joy, and love, and sunshine than his own, until the little fellow with an angry chirp and flirt of the wings flew onward to the forest where he knew no such unequal contest ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... blossoms, plucked untimely from the tree, as they had been prematurely expanded by the heat of party politics. The strain of that song was of a higher mood. In those days, when American literature spoke with faint and feeble voice, like the chirp of half-awakened birds in the morning twilight, we need not say what cordial welcome was extended to a poem which embodied in blank verse worthy of anybody since Milton thoughts of the highest reach and noblest power, or what wonder was mingled with the praise when it was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... caddis-flies. The curve of the fragment of wing also suggested its probable size when unbroken. It was perhaps two inches long. As there are little horny rings round the wing base like those which crickets have, on which they rub their legs and so "chirp," it is also quite likely that this insect of hoary antiquity did the same, and enlivened the silence of Devonian fern groves with a prehistoric hum. It is quite in keeping with modern ideas that in that ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... in a common reality—all this slipped from him. So he might have felt if the earth had dropped from his feet, and the empty blue had hung all round him, and the air had been steeped in the presence of one woman. The chirp of a robin on the bough above his head awakened him, and his awakenment was accompanied by a sigh. Here was the world in which he had lived; here the plowed field, the high road yonder, and Mary, stripping ivy from ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... the fascination of the circle? Why is it that the turning of anything, be it but a barrel-organ or a phrase, holds one as with an hypnotic power? I confess that I can never genuinely pity a knife-grinder, however needy. Think of the pleasure of driving that wheel all day, the merry chirp of the knife on the stone, and the crisp, bright spray of the flying sparks! Why, he does 'what some men dream of all their lives'! Wheels of all kinds have the same strange charm; mill-wheels, colliery-wheels, spinning-wheels, water-wheels, and wheeling waters: there may—who knows?—have been ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... 'mid the branches, and my heart Leaps with the life in that full chirp that breathes; The brown, full-breasted sparrow with a dart Is at my feet amid the swaying wreaths Of grass and clover; trooping blackbirds come With haughty step; the oriole, wren and jay Revel amid the cool, green moss in play, Then off in clouds of music; while the drum Of scarlet-crested woodpecker ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... Gallery are "a sort of small, soft, little, pretty, fine gentlemen, who having some little wit, some little modesty, some little remain of conscience and country religion, could not hector it as the former, but quickly learnt to chirp and giggle when t'other clapt and shouted." But "the Don-admirers, and Box-friends of Mr. Hobbes are men of gravity and reputation, who will scarce simper in favour of the philosopher, but can make shift to nod and nod again." Even amid this wild satire we find a piece of truth in a dark corner; ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... hand Harrow my soul? why calls thy cruel power The fields of England to my exil'd eyes, The joys which once were mine? even now I see The lowly lovely dwelling! even now Behold the woodbine clasping its white walls And hear the fearless red-breasts chirp around To ask their morning meal:—for I was wont With friendly band to give their morning meal, Was wont to love their song, when lingering morn Streak'd o'er the chilly landskip the dim light, And thro' the open'd lattice hung my head To view the snow-drop's bud: and thence at ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... till later than the time of rising for the crows, and sparrows, and hotel servants, but to sleep after sunrise is almost impossible; these abominable hoody crows and sparrows sit on the jalousies and verandah and caw and chirp most harshly. "If I were viceroy," I'd put forth a word to have the whole lot exterminated. It could be done in two seasons, then the harmless, and game birds, would have a chance. It was once done in our country in the reign of ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... sounds had ceased; and there came from the orchards, with their mulberry-trees glistening in the moonlight, and their black swaying cypress-plumes, nothing save the confused hum, the monotonous chirp, of the crickets. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... are little else; do you not chirp all over, Mohi? By my demi-god soul, were I not what I am, this wine would almost get the better ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... and effulgent that one hardly missed the sun. Considering his presence I wondered that the garden was always so full of singing birds. But the Captain never meddled with them. Probably he understood that his master would not have tolerated it for a moment. So there was always a song or a chirp somewhere. Overhead flew the gulls and the cranes. The wind in the pines always made a glad salutation. Abel and I paced the walks, in high converse on matters beyond the ken of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... illustrate the ease with which a human being can be made to look like a magnified toad—all which feats yielded high delight and satisfaction to the assembled spectators. After which, the voice of Mrs. Pott was heard to chirp faintly forth, something which courtesy interpreted into a song, which was all very classical, and strictly in character, because Apollo was himself a composer, and composers can very seldom sing their own music or anybody else's, either. This was succeeded by Mrs. Leo ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... for the reg'lars came [1] Whenever a pannie was done:— [2] Oh! who would chirp to dishonour his name, And betrays his pals in a nibsome game [3] To the traps?—Not I for one! [4] Let nobs in the fur trade hold their jaw, [5] And let the jug be free:— [6] Let Davy's dust and a well-faked claw [7] For fancy coves be the only law, [8] And a double-tongued squib to ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... proceed at a slow pace. The fatigue of riding was much lessened by having an English saddle; still it was a hard day's travelling: but the air was deliciously balmy, and the glowworm's lamp and cricket's chirp helped to cheer the weariness of a road which seemed interminable. Presently, we met country people returning from the market at Ajaccio, lights were seen more frequently on the hills, and, at last, the lantern on the pier-head—a welcome ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... does it mean when the crickets chirp, And away to the south the robins steer? When apples are falling, and leaves grow brown?— These are the signs that autumn ...
— Home Geography For Primary Grades • C. C. Long
... this went on, the darkness of night began to diminish, and the hues of the flowers in the garden, and the countenance of each of the party, became gradually visible, while the birds themselves began to chirp in the trees. It was a pleasant dawn. Several presents were made to the company by the Imperial-mother, and to the Lord-Lieutenant a robe was given in addition, as an acknowledgment of his services as judge in the competition. ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... birds sure chirp some language. Believe you me, a guy had orto carry an interpreter around with him. Me and Skinny went out to a swell English camp today to take a peep at English trainin methods; outside we sees a tipical Tommy Atkins settin down fixin sumpin wrong with his kicks; as we heaved ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone
... morn while the grass yet glittered with pearls of water, and as the birds began to chirp, Belton was led forth to die. Little did those birds know that they were chirping the funeral march of the world's noblest hero. Little did they dream that they ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... fearsome like an' won't hop quite so near, The cricket's chirp is sadder, an' the sky ain't ha'f so clear; When ev'nin' comes, I set an' smoke tell my eyes begin to swim, An' things aroun' commence to look all blurred an' faint an' dim. Well, I guess I 'll have to own up 'at I ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... she was choked by her sobs. The whole valley was deserted and silent in the dazzling light, and the overwhelming heat, and only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill, continuous chirp among the sparse, yellow grass on ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... flatterers of a woman's singing say Her voice was silvery:—to compare 't with gold Is sure a new conceit. But, sir, you praise My singing, who have not yet heard me sing." And he: "I take it that a woman's speech Is to her singing what a bird's low chirp Is to its singing: and if Philomel Chirp in the hearing of the woodman, he Knows 'tis the nightingale that chirps, and so Expects nought meaner than its sovereign song. Madam, 'tis thus your speaking-voice ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... it. They were givin' clothin' up at th' church a while sin', an' some o' th' neighbours wanted me to go an' ax for some singlets, ye see aw cannot do without flannels,—but aw couldn't put th' face on." Now, the young throstles in the cage by the staircase began to chirp one after another. "Yer yo at that! "said the old man, turning round to the cage; "yer yo at that! Nobbut three week owd!" "Yes," replied the old woman; "they belong to my grandson theer. He brought 'em in one day —neest an' ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... but just before sunset it died away to a faint sputter and crackle of rifles, and at dark ceased altogether. The moon rose in an unclouded sky over the dark tree-tops east of the camp; the crickets began to chirp in the thicket across the brook; sounds like the rapid shaking of a billiard-ball in a resonant wooden box came from nocturnal birds or tree-toads hidden in the depth of the forest; and the teeming life of the tropical wilderness, frightened into silence for a time by the uproar ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... be the boisterous revel of the forst geister, that meets his ear? or is it but the chirp of insects, replying ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... at nightfall, when the sun has sunk under the hills, and the crickets chirp,—"gone." Say it to yourself when the night is far over, and you wake with some sudden start from pleasant dreams,—"gone." Say it to yourself in some country churchyard, where your father, or your mother, sleeps under the blooming ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... If you or I, reader, had read to her in the afternoon, amid the smell of roses and eglantine, the chirp of the mavis, the hum of bees, the twinkling of butterflies, and the tinkle of distant sheep, something that combined all these sights, and sounds, and smells—say Milton's musical picture of Eden, P. L., lib. 3, and after that "Triplet ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... indications of his presence. The weather still continued calm, and I could hear any occasional sounds very distinctly. I heard what resembled the pattering of little feet, as of the rat running over the lid of an empty box; and once or twice I clearly distinguished the short, shrill cricket-like "chirp" that rats are wont to utter. I can think of no more disagreeable sound than the voice of a rat, and at that time it sounded doubly disagreeable. You may smile at my simple fears, but I could not help them. I could ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... came to him, gentle and low as usual, but with an edge to it. "I been discoverin' I'm some unpopular to-day, Brill. Malpais has been expressin' its opinion right plain. You've arrived in time to chirp in ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... faithful companion of 10 man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bullfrog 15 from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and turning suddenly in ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... lantern. The meadows, ever breathing freshness, are now saturated with dew, and I feel the damp of the night air on my heated limbs. A Cicada, a fellow-lodger in the house, attracts me by its domestic chirp back into my bedroom, and is there my social companion, while, in a happy dreaming state, I await the coming day, kept half awake by the buzz of the mosquites, the kettle-drum croak of the bull-frog, or the complaining ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various
... to chirp, and the "blacksmith" (as I named one of the first to wake, whose two sharp ringing notes exactly resemble the blows of a hammer upon an anvil) told me that it was nearly daybreak. The grey of morning had just appeared when I heard voices, and I saw Mrs. Baker coming ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... two happier and more excited girls somewhere in Canada or the United States at that moment, but I doubt it. Every snip of the scissors, as rose and peony and bluebell fell, seemed to chirp, "Mrs. Morgan is coming today." Anne wondered how Mr. Harrison COULD go on placidly mowing hay in the field across the lane, just as if nothing were ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in the woods! Silence! Deep silence! Save for the chortle of the night-jar, the tap of the snipe's beak against the tree-trunks, the snores of a weary game-keeper, the chirp of the burying-beetle, the croak of the bat, the wild laughter of the owl and the boom, boom of the frog, deep silence reigned. The crescent moon stole silently above the horizon. Wonderful, significant is that silent, stealthy approach of the moon. Red Head lumbered from his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... for my poor Suzume San to lose her tongue!" he said to himself. "She won't be able to chirp any more, and surely the pain of the cutting of it out in that rough way must have made her ill! Is ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... beautiful, as the springtime full of flowers; that a miracle had happened, was happening. The mottled blur in the sky had become a spot of brightness; sunshine filled the room; in a cage above, a tiny feathered creature began to chirp. ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... color in the foliage—the glow of the laburnum, the lilac blaze of the rhododendron bushes. And how still the place was! Far off there was a dull roar of carriages in Piccadilly; but here there was nothing but the bleating of the sheep, the chirp of the young birds, the stir of the wind among the elms. Sometimes he could now catch the ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... own body or my own head seemed a great thing in that emptiness. I note the feeling the more readily as it is the contrary of what I have read of in the experience of others. Day and night, above the roar of the train, our ears were kept busy with the incessant chirp of grasshoppers - a noise like the winding up of countless clocks and watches, which began after a while to ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hum of the gnats and the chirp of some small insects that hopped among the thorns, the air was absolutely still. Then came the yelp of a dog, very faint, and a chattering and gibbering, the snap of a whip, and voices. They grew louder, then fainter again. The noise receded up the stream and faded away. ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... was the chirp of Ariel You heard, as overhead it flew, The farther going more to dwell And wing our green to wed our blue; But whether note of joy or knell Not his own Father-singer knew; Nor yet can any mortal tell, Save only how it shivers through; The breast ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... night brings no forgetfulness. Those long voiceless nights of South Africa! Not a bird's call, nor a chirp from the tiny creatures which hide in the grass. A white moon, a wide heaven filled with strange stars, and the tall moon-flowers at the gate lifting up their mute white trumpets to ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... troat[obs3], croak, peep [frog]; coo [dove, pigeon]; gobble [turkeys]; quack [duck]; honk, gaggle, guggle [obs3][goose]; crow, caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, hummingbird]; buzz [flying insects, bugs]; hiss [snakes, geese]; blatter[obs3]; ratatat [woodpecker]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... here; Warm on my cheek the sunshine burns, And fledged birds chirp, and far and near Floats the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... red garment, and then find a man of the roads, with dusky wife and child. You speak one word, "Sarishan!" and you are introduced. These people are like birds and bees, they belong to out-of-doors and nature. If you can chirp or buzz a little in their language and know their ways, you will find out, as you sit in the forest, why he who loves green bushes and mossy rocks is glad to fly from cities, and likes to be free of the joyous citizenship of the roads, and everywhere ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... that was his own notes. Ave has all that he has written to her from Whitford under her pillow, and she kept spreading them out, and making us read them, and—oh! their braveness and cheeriness—they did quite seem to hold one up! And then poor little Minna's constant little robin-chirp of faith, "God will not let them hurt him." One could not bear to tell the child, that though indeed they cannot hurt him, it may not be in her sense! Look here! These are her slippers. She has worked on all day to finish them, that they might be done and out of sight when he came home ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Senator from Kentucky had concluded his remarks. They did so and no word of complaint reached my ears. Hour after hour during the long summer day the speech drew itself along. At length as the shadows were lengthening and the crickets began to chirp, the speech ended and the Senator took his seat. I promptly replaced my pistols and motioned the visitors to move out. They did so on excellent time. As the last man was passing out, he quietly remarked to me, 'Mister, that was all right, no fault to find, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... body or my own head seemed a great thing in that emptiness. I note the feeling the more readily as it is the contrary of what I have read of in the experience of others. Day and night, above the roar of the train, our ears were kept busy with the incessant chirp of grasshoppers—a noise like the winding up of countless clocks and watches, which began after a while to seem proper ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... river we still came across birds and insects, but the further we went the more monotonous and dead Nature became. I could never have pictured such a lifeless wood to myself. No sound of insects was to be heard, no chirp or song of bird; and not even the trail of a serpent was ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... extermination. If he did not drive away Bluebirds, whose nesting-time and nesting-place are quite the same as his own, we might not discourage his nesting proclivity, although we cannot help recognizing his cheerful chirp with generous crumbs when the snow has covered all the ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... have not been able yet to procure the third. No two birds can differ more in their notes, and that constancy, than those two that I am acquainted with; for the one has a joyous, easy, laughing note; the other a harsh loud chirp. The former is every way larger, and three-quarters of an inch longer, and weighs two drams and a half; while the latter weighs but two: so the songster is one-fifth heavier than the chirper. The chirper (being the first summer-bird of passage ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Exhilarated with liquor. Chirping glass, a cheerful glass, that makes the company chirp like ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... months. There, Peter, in the side of the wing where you see the ends of two or three bricks protruding from a circular hole in the clapboards, is the nest of a pair of wrens that year after year come back to rear a new family, and chirp and chatter away the summer, when their labors have ceased. If it were a few weeks later, you might get acquainted with the comical little occupants, who are as brisk and busy as if they were not in reality ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... the sweet chirp of a bird, gently echoed in the adjoining woods, announced that the storm had ceased, and nature resumed her wonted calm. On arising, I went to the door, and the unclouded effulgence of dawn bursting through the dripping boughs and rain-bespangled leaves, seemed to realize the ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... low, peculiar chirp, not very fierce, but bantering and confident. They quickly come to blows, but it is a very fantastic battle, and, as it would seem, indulged in more to satisfy their sense of honor than to hurt each other, for neither party gets the better ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... lifted a flint-tipped spear over his head and emitted a shriek compared to which the Rebel yell was a chirp from the weakened lungs of the dove ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... who laugh in little nooks together over each other's immoralities, and have a moral code so elastic that it will pardon anything except innocence; who gossip over each other's dresses, and each other's passions, in the self-same, self-satisfied chirp of contentment, and who never resent anything on earth, except any eccentric suggestion that life could be anything except a perpetual fete a la Watteau in a perpetual ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... up to the distant watershed of the lower bank of the Congo. From the cliff above starlings flew out to seek their feeding-haunts where the big game fed; and there was a familiar visitor near them in the black and drab stone-chat, whose scolding chirp they had so often heard in England among the gorse and bramble. The metallic cry of guinea-fowl down by the little river had a farm-yard ring; but the chatter of parrots flying overhead was still new, and so with many other calls, so that they sat munching in silence, with eyes and ears too ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... of the readers of YOUNG PEOPLE would like to hear about a young robin my papa found under a cherry-tree near the house. He thought I could raise him, and take him back to New York for a pet. But after I had kept him two days in my room, he would chirp so mournfully when he heard the other birds singing merrily outside that it made me feel so sorry, I took him and put him on a branch of the tree. Oh, I wish you could have seen him flap his wings with delight. Then the old birds came, ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sweet, The slopes in spring's new verdure lay, And, wet with dewdrops, at my feet Bloomed the young violets of May. No sound of busy life was heard Amid those forests lone and still, Save the faint chirp of early bird, Or bleat of deer along the hill. I traced the rivulet's winding way, New scenes of beauty opened round. Where woody shades of brightest green And lovely blossoms tinged the ground. 'Ah, happy valley stream,' I said, 'Calm glides thy waters 'mid the flowers, Whose fragrance round ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... innumerable stars were shining with intense brilliancy from the clear blue-black night sky; the earth sent up an aroma from countless fragrant flowers and spicy shrubs; the dew lay fresh upon all; and the chirp of myriads of little insects of the night almost rivaled the songs of birds during the day. And so the night was filled with the sparkling light of stars, the fresh coolness of dew, the rich perfume of vegetation and the low ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... May is the most beautiful of all months. Then it is, that all nature seems to awaken from its winter slumbers. The grass springs up, the little birds sing and chirp, and display their beautiful plumage. The trees shoot forth their buds, the fruitful covering of future foliage. We no longer greet each other in the warmed room, but, "Good morning," is sweetly spoken from the open window, or among the bushes of the garden. We hunt ...
— The Girl's Cabinet of Instructive and Moral Stories • Uncle Philip
... branches forming a dark network overhead, and their lofty proportions lessening in the distance, until lost in the solemn gloom beyond. A religious silence prevailed, broken only by the occasional chirp of the wren, or the soft pattering ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... shy as a nun is she; One weak chirp is her only note. Braggart, and prince of braggarts is he, Pouring boasts from his little throat: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Never was I afraid of man; Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can, Chee, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... Balzac was to contribute the scenario, Gautier the dialogue. One morning Balzac came with the scenario of the first act. "Here it is, Gautier! I suppose you can let me have it back finished by to-morrow afternoon?" And the old gentleman would chirp along in this fashion till midnight. I would then accompany him to his rooms in the Quartier Montmartre—rooms high up on the fifth floor—where, between two pictures, supposed to be by Angelica Kauffmann, M. Duval had written ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... occur in abundance, spread overhead in such extraordinary luxuriance that few of the sun's rays could penetrate the massy net-work of leaves and branches forming the roof of our fairy passage. Not a single bird could be seen, either seated or on the wing; nor was even a chirp distinguishable above the dreamy hum of millions of mosquitoes floating about, in a calm so profound, that it seemed as if the surface of the water had never been disturbed since the Creation. The air, though cool, felt ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... adieu—I've chirp'd too long, Must leave the finish of my song To some more learned bird's son; Whose mellow notes can charm the ear With no discordant chatter near; So now, dear Sir, I'm your sincere And ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... small wood sounds around her. A beech leaf, twisted like the keel of a fantastic boat, came pattering down on the dead leaves; a bird stirred in the pine behind her, and now and then a cricket gave a muffled chirp. ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... themselves may be in a condition to produce blood-poisoning, which might cause death without the assistance of any particular toxic venom. The rattlesnake, however, which is rather too common in the desert, is a different sort of a chap. If he strikes you, you may just as well make your will, and chirp your death song, as to monkey with physicians, and squander some of the good wealth which may be ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... pile of boulders near the Sixth Avenue entrance. The sun was rising. It was the first sunrise he had ever seen in New York. The effect on his imagination was startling. The red rays streaming through the park and the chirp of birds in the bushes were magic touches that transformed the world. He was back again in the South, where Nature is the one big fact of life, and the memories of the girl he had learned to love beside its beautiful waters ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... the next morning, the robin in the nest above Mary's window stretched out his left wing, opened one eye, and gave a short and rather drowsy chirp, which broke up his night's rest and restored him to the full consciousness that he was a bird with wings and feathers, with a large apple-tree to live in, and all heaven for an estate,—and so, on these fortunate premises, he broke into a gush of singing, clear and loud, which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... darkling the poplar awake, So melting her soul into music, you'd vow 'twas her passion, her own, She chanteth—her sister forgot, with the Daulian crime long-agone. Hush! Hark! Draw around to the circle . . . Ah, loitering Summer, say when For me shall be broken the charm, that I chirp with the swallow again? I am old: I am dumb: I have waited to sing till Apollo withdrew. —So Amyclae a moment was mute, and for ever a wilderness grew.— Now learn ye to love who loved never—now ye ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sometimes a serious annoyance, because it is almost impossible not to follow him mentally in his incessant repetition of "brain fever." To a few fortunate people his peculiar note does not suggest these words. Even the Indian sparrow drowns conversation with his shrill chirp, taking advantage of the ever-open doors and windows to invade the bungalow, and making determined efforts to make his nest in the most ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... just finished their meal, and were still sitting, no one speaking, as they all felt somewhat tired, when Walter, hearing a whistle or chirp close behind him, turned his head and saw standing not far off a large bird of dark plumage,—or rather with feathers, for he saw no wings,—with a helmet-like protuberance at the top of its head resembling mother-of-pearl darkened ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... door that communicated with the pantry back upon its hinges. Scarcely had this accident come to pass, than Jacko, whom I had not seen for some days, taking advantage of it, ran into the main cabin and, with the curious chirp of the ring-tail monkey, jumped on the restless table. Perceiving with the quickness of a man, that all was not right, the little animal looked into my face for inquiry, and then scratched his side, not ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... ask myself. Moreover, it was too late; and I went on dreaming with open eyes, careering on horseback through the savannas, listening at break of day to the prattle of the parrots in the guava-trees, at nightfall to the chirp of the grillos in the cane-fields, or else smoking my cigar, taking my coffee, rocking myself in a hammock,—in short, enjoying all the delights that are the very heart-blood of a guajiro, and out of the sphere of which he can see but death, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... and he said this in a letter he wrote to the town where he had sung praises in the jail! Some people would have jumped to have had this chance of going to live in a palace, but this farmer said, "Give me my farmhouse and my quiet grave beside my mother." Elevation may undo us. A sparrow could only chirp even though in a golden cage. Barzillai felt, "A rustic, like I am, seems all right among my ploughs and cattle, but I should not fit a palace." Many a man has made himself a laughing stock because he left the place he was ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... can shet my eyes now, as you sing it, And hear her low answerin' words; And then the glad chirp of the crickets, As clear as the twitter of birds; And the dust in the road is like velvet, And the ragweed and fennel and grass Is as sweet as the scent of the lilies Of Eden of old, ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... were rather weary and methinks Their chirp-like chatter did grow somewhat less, Now one would rouse herself from forty winks, Another doze in sweet unconsciousness; Indeed it was high time, as you may guess, They should disperse—they wisely thought so too, Then kissed and smiled and each one ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... of a stamp-mill on a shoulder of a hill high above the camp, drowned the whir and chirp of night insects, and from the second story of a house they passed they heard the crude banging of a piano, and a woman's strident voice wailing, "She may have seen better da-a-ys," with a mighty ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... while near the heart of nature, where no one can disturb or vex us, surrounded by pure air, the trees, the shrubbery, the flowers, and the sweet fragrance that springs from a hundred plants, enjoying the chirp of the crickets and the songs of the birds. This is ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... in earnest, and the beaming colored boy holds his lantern to guide us along the path, while Maggie whinnies after us her adieu. The grasshoppers chirp merrily in the sodden grass, and now and then a startled rabbit darts out of the wood and crosses close to our feet. The light is almost blinding as we enter the cheerful dining-room, where supper is laid on the snowy cloth, and ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... thunder. At last the tempest dies away, and in the trio and chorus, "Now cease the Conflicts," night comes on, with its song of the quail,—which Beethoven subsequently utilized in his Pastoral Symphony,—the chirp of the crickets, the croaking of the frogs, the distant chime of the evening bells, and the invocation to sleep. Of ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... grey of an Italian night. East and north the mountains that bound the plain, silent witnesses of Italy's great struggle, were hidden in the dusk, and the cypress sentinels stood up sharp and black against the darkening sky. The band had ceased to play and one heard only the chirp of grasshoppers, and across an orchard the soft sound of Italian speech, and the distant song of two soldiers in the village street. But the warm air, which just now was throbbing with a military march, seemed to be throbbing still with ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... was feeding. The wren perched upon a beam, and was no sooner perceived by the eagle, than he left off feeding, flew into a corner, and hung down his head. The little bird, on the other hand, began to chirp and appear angry, and a moment after flew upon the neck of the eagle, and pecked him with the greatest fury, the eagle all the while hanging his head in a cowardly manner, between his feet. The wren, after satisfying its ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
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