"Bird's-nest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his aunt, Lady Jane, for Sundays and holidays; and soon knew every bird's-nest about Queen's Crawley, and rode out with Sir Huddlestone's hounds, which he had admired so on his first well-remembered visit to the home of his ancestor. In fact, Rawdon was consigned to the entire guardianship of his aunt ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... remarked how, in the process of our brain-building, as the house of thought in which we live gets itself together, like some airy bird's-nest of floating thistle-down and chance straws, compact at last, little accidents have their consequence; and thus it happened that, as he [185] walked one evening, a garden gate, usually closed, stood open; and lo! ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the branches, he saw something like little balls within it, which were spotted, and of an oval shape. They lay close to each other, on something very soft. "Bless me," said Gregory, "this must be certainly what I have heard some people call a bird's nest, and the balls must be eggs. They are indeed less than our eggs, but then our hens are larger than ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... BIRD'S NEST. A round top at a mast-head for a look-out station. A smaller crow's nest. Chiefly used in whalers, where a constant look-out is kept for whales. (See ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... my expectations! Although the Square Tower was so ancient that in some places it was actually crumbling away—not the sign of a leaf, not the vestige of a bird's nest could I see anywhere; the walls were abominably, brutally bare. However, it was not long before my disappointment gave way to delight; for the air that blew in through the open window was so sweet, so richly scented with heather and honeysuckle, and the view of the broad, sweeping, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... form, bearing much the same relation to the true character as a "churchwarden gothic" building does to Canterbury Cathedral; the colours were varied. The initial was pale gold, the h pink, the o black, the u blue, and the first letter was somehow connected with a bird's nest containing the young of the pigeon, who were waited on by the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... our leader. Between the roofs we could see the low half-moon, hanging like a tilted bird's nest in the dark blue sky, while a group of stars fluttered near it like young birds. The Cathedral clock ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... notion that the brute creation is endowed with the faculty of reason: 'birds build by instinct; they never improve; they build their first nest as well as any one they ever build.' GOLDSMITH. 'Yet we see if you take away a bird's nest with the eggs in it, she will make a slighter nest and lay again.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, that is because at first she has full time and makes her nest deliberately. In the case you mention she is pressed ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... heights, would repeat a name. Jeanne and Julien would look where he pointed, but see nothing, until at last they discovered something gray, like a mass of stones fallen from the summit. It was a little village, a hamlet of granite hanging there, fastened on like a veritable bird's nest and almost invisible on ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... mercies extend to a bird's nest," or, "for goodness be Thy name remembered," or he who says, "we give thanks, we give thanks,"(29) is to be silenced. If a man pass up to the ark (where the rolls of the Law are kept) and make a mistake, another must pass up in his stead; nor may he in such a moment refuse. "Where does ...
— Hebrew Literature
... with the breath of startled antelopes Which speed before them over swelling slopes. Now like a serpent writhing o'er the moor, The column curves and makes a slight detour, As Custer leads a thousand men away To save a ground bird's nest which ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a novelty in the extreme to see Henry Knight, to whom Elfride was but a child, who had swayed her as a tree sways a bird's nest, who mastered her and made her weep most bitterly at her own insignificance, thus thankful for a sight of her face. She looked down upon him, her face glistening with rain and ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... on the second day, some rashes recently torn up, were seen near the vessels. A plank, evidently hewn by an ax, a stick skillfully carved by some cutting instrument, a bough of hawthorn in blossom,—and lastly, a bird's nest built on a branch which the wind had broken, and full of eggs, on which the parent bird was sitting amid the gently-rolling waves,—were seen floating past on the waters. The sailors brought on board these living ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... to portray it in the absence of the original. If one should ask him, "What's the shape of the milkweed butterfly's wing, and the color of the spice-bush swallowtail, Peter Champneys? What does the humming-bird's nest look like? What's the color of the rainbow-snake and of the cotton-mouth moccasin? What's the difference between the ironweed and the aster?"—Ask Peter things like that, and lend him a bit of paper and a pencil, and he literally had ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... it is in most creatures; and I am convinced that every spring a large number of those which have survived the Southern campaign return to their old haunts to breed. A Connecticut farmer took me out under his porch, one April day, and showed me a phoebe bird's nest six stories high. The same bird had no doubt returned year after year; and as there was room for only one nest upon her favorite shelf, she had each season reared a new superstructure upon the old as a foundation. I have heard of a white robin—an ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... about half ebb, the surrounding shoal was dry. On it were some thousand curlews and gulls, and some pelicans; but all too shy to allow of his approach within musket shot. Upon one of the trees was stuck the cap of a small whale's skull, and in one of the sockets of the eyes was a bird's nest apparently ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... all the finest part of it. I happened to be looking after a bird's nest in a field next to the garden: I heard the young ladies in high chat: but, as the sound did not seem to be very harmonious, curiosity led me to see what they were at. I instantly climbed up into a tree, and scarce had I taken my seat, when the engagement began. I saw Sally Delia strike ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... the circumstances of his life had obscured, but which grew relentlessly, as a cancer may grow in the living tissues, till at last it took possession of his whole being and forced him irresistibly to action. The cuckoo lays its egg in the strange bird's nest, and when the young one is hatched it shoulders its foster-brothers out and breaks at last the nest that ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... said to be sixty different varieties, each sufficiently individualized in size and other peculiarities to be easily identified by ornithologists. Some of these birds are actually no larger in body than butterflies, and with not so large a spread of wing. A humming-bird's nest, composed of cotton interlaced with horse-hair, was shown the author at Buena Esperanza, a plantation near Guines. It was about twice the size of a lady's thimble, and contained two eggs, no larger than common peas. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... hills looked like green thickets. Sometimes the guide would point to some steep height, and mention a name; Jeanne and Julien would look, at first seeing nothing, but at last discovering the summit of the mountain. It was a village, a little granite hamlet, hanging and clinging like a bird's nest to the vast mountain. Jeanne got tired of going at a walking pace for ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... Hattie Krakow untied her black alpaca apron, pinned a hat as nondescript as a bird's nest at an unrakish angle, and slid ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... she will be very eager to go too, she adopts a system of manoeuvres to conceal her design. She brings down her bonnet and shawl by stealth, and before the chaise comes to the door she sends Mary out into the garden with her sister, under pretense of showing her a bird's nest which is not there, trusting to her sister's skill in diverting the child's mind, and amusing her with something else in the garden, until the chaise has gone. And if, either from hearing the sound of the wheels, or from any other ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... talents of the Epeirae are displayed to even better purpose in the industrial business of motherhood than in the art of the chase. The silk bag, the nest, in which the Banded Epeira houses her eggs, is a much greater marvel than the bird's nest. In shape, it is an inverted balloon, nearly the size of a Pigeon's egg. The top tapers like a pear and is cut short and crowned with a scalloped rim, the corners of which are lengthened by means of moorings that fasten the object to ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... element must have felt these angry vibrations: they ceased from singing, and together we climbed out of the wood, to see Schlingen below us, tucked in a circle of hills, the white houses shining in the sunlight, "for all the world like eggs in a bird's nest", as Herr Erchardt declared. We descended upon Schlingen and demanded sour milk with fresh cream and bread at the Inn of the Golden Stag, a most friendly place, with tables in a rose-garden where hens ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... a-holding of her robes, and two footmen going before, and in she comes—like as though Riches and Death had a' th' same right to enter a poor man's house without knocking. And saith she to me, saith she, a-filling up o' the room with her finery, like a cuckoo ruffling out its feathers in another bird's nest, saith she, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... tall man hastening after him. "Stop and take me with you, and take me into your service, and you won't regret it!" "Who are you," said the prince, "and what can you do?" "My name is Long, and I can extend myself. Do you see a bird's nest in that pine yonder? I will bring you the nest down ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... met with no special adventures by the way, except that when they reached the great pine-tree, Phonny proposed to climb up, for the purpose of examining a small bunch which he saw upon one of the branches, which he thought was a bird's nest. It was the same pine-tree that marked the place at which a road branched off into the woods, where Mary Bell had lost her way, several years before. Malleville was very unwilling to have Phonny climb up upon such a high ...
— Mary Erskine • Jacob Abbott
... painter, Hunt, have been of birds' nests; of which, in painting, it is perfectly possible to represent the intricate fibrous or mossy structure; therefore, the effort is a legitimate one, and the art is well employed. But to carve a bird's nest out of marble would be physically impossible, and to reach any approximate expression of its structure would require prolonged and intolerable labor. Therefore, all sculpture which set itself to carving birds' nests as ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... narrative of out-door observation which, so far as it goes, fulfils Milton's definition of poetry, "simple, sensuous, passionate." He may not write sonnets to the lake, but he will walk miles to bathe in it; he may not notice the sunsets, but he knows where to search for the black-bird's nest. How surprised the school-children looked, to be sure, when the Doctor of Divinity from the city tried to sentimentalize, in addressing them, about "the bobolink in the woods"! They knew that the darling of the meadow had no more personal acquaintance with the woods than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... near this hedge that Mr. Jerome was standing when Sally found him. He had set down the basket of strawberries on the gravel, and had lifted up little Lizzie in his arms to look at a bird's nest. Lizzie peeped, and then looked at her grandpa with round blue eyes, and then ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... (pl. II) and its kindred, the hala-pepe (pl. III); the scarlet pompons of the lehua (pl. XIII) and ohi'a, with the fruit of the latter (the mountain-apple); many varieties of fern, including that splendid parasite, the "bird's nest fern" [Page 20] (ekaha), hailed by the Hawaiians as Mawi's paddle; to which must be added the commoner leaves and lemon-colored flowers of the native hibiscus, the hau, the breadfruit, the native banana and the dracaena (ti), plate V; and lastly, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... he said. "I feel like a boy who has marked down something rare in the way of a bird's nest. We will go back to Brunswick Square exactly the same way as you approached it on the ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... got up a tree, could he, or into a bird's nest?" said the girl. She offered the suggestion timidly, yet her brother did not laugh at her. There was this strange feeling that the hider might be anywhere—simply anywhere. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... boxes of spools in partnership; and when they would go up the Seine on little excursions on Sunday afternoons, they would bring back rich spoils in the way of swan feathers, butterflies, "snake-feeders" and tiny shells. Then once they found a bird's nest, and as the mother bird had deserted it, they carried it home. That was a red-letter day, for the garret collection had increased to such an extent that a partition was made across the corner of a room by hanging up a strip of cloth. And all ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... to their prows, Embarked their guests and launched their light canoes; In one placed Christian and his comrades twain— But she and Torquil must not part again. She fixed him in her own.—Away! away! They cleared the breakers, dart along the bay, And towards a group of islets, such as bear The sea-bird's nest and seal's surf-hollowed lair, They skim the blue tops of the billows; fast They flew, and fast their fierce pursuers chased. 230 They gain upon them—now they lose again,— Again make way and menace o'er the main; And now the two canoes in chase divide, And follow different courses ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... understood, but he was not listening. He interrupted with a story that had nothing to do with what Feitel was talking about. He told Feitel that last year he saw a bird's nest in a high tree. He tried to reach it, but could not. He tried to knock it down with a stick, but could not. He threw stones at the nest, until he brought down ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... but we will try to find something instead," said Kallolo, giving me his blowpipe and bow to hold. He then climbed up the tree till he reached the bird's nest, from which he extracted two eggs, and brought them down safety. They were considerably larger than a duck's egg, white and granulated all over, though the bird itself did not appear to be above the size of an ordinary duck. It was, I found, ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... cities rise around you; Here the cliffs that tower east and west, Honeycombed with human habitations, Have no hiding for the sea-bird's nest: Here the river flows begrimed and troubled; Here the hurrying, panting vessels fume, Restless, up and down the watery highway, While ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... he hunted as he had hunted with his ape people in the past, as Kala had taught him to hunt, turning over rotted logs to find some toothsome vermin, running high into the trees to rob a bird's nest, or pouncing upon a tiny rodent with the quickness of a cat. There were other things that he ate, too, but the less detailed the account of an ape's diet, the better—and Tarzan was again an ape, the same fierce, brutal anthropoid that Kala had taught him to be, and that he had been ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... is there as bright as ever, scarlet within and white outside; but the name is painted off, because the little dears are in their graves. Two nicer children were never seen, clever, and sprightly, and good to learn; they never even took a common bird's nest, I have heard, but loved all the little things the Lord has made, as if with a foreknowledge of going early home to Him. Their father came back very tired one morning, and went up the hill to his breakfast, and the children got into the boat and pushed off, in imitation ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... went on, contrariwise, to tender me the advice you did. This makes it evident that I have laboured under a mistaken idea! Had I not made this discovery the other day, I wouldn't be speaking like this to your very face to-day. You told me a few minutes back to take bird's nest congee; but birds' nests are, I admit, easily procured; yet all on account of my sickly constitution and of the relapses I have every year of this complaint of mine, which amounts to nothing, doctors have had to be sent for, medicines, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... his face was dreadfully sad, others it was so determined a little child could see the force in it, and once he was radiant. That day the Swamp Angel was with him. I can't tell you what she was like. I never saw any one who resembled her. He stopped close here to show her a bird's nest. Then they went on to a sort of flower-room he had made, and he sang for her. By the time he left, I had gotten bold enough to come out on the trail, and I met the big Scotchman Freckles lived with. He ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... dell we found, When early Summer wove her crown, A bird's nest on the mossy ground, From blooming ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... trailed its drowsy length into the open country where the roads were filled with grass and dust. He noticed with a pang that the ivy had been torn from the church and that the glazed brick walls flaunted a nudity that was almost immodest. He had remembered it as a bower of shade—a gigantic bird's nest. He saw that ancient elms were rapidly decaying, and when he reached the judge's garden he found that the syringa and the lilacs had vanished. The garden had faced the destroyer in the plough, and trim vegetables thrived where gaudy blossoms ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... checks. No nice quiet pepper-and-salt, you understand, but the checkerboard kind, the oilcloth kind, the kind that looks like the marble floor in the Boston post-office. They was pretty tolerable seedy, and so was his hat. Oh, he was a last year's bird's nest NOW, but when them clothes was fresh—whew! the northern lights and a rainbow mixed wouldn't have been more'n a cloudy day ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... decorations added to his queer appearance; scarred by deep gashes on chest and arms, his body was daubed with red ochre, and his ribs picked out with white; on his head a kind of chignon formed of grass, hair, and string held his matted locks in place, like a bird's nest on his crown; he had neither beard nor whiskers, and was not blessed with ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... Eve plucked the fruit of knowledge, when she and Adam were driven from the garden of Paradise, a spark from the avenging angel's flaming sword fell into the bird's nest and kindled it. The bird died in the flames, but from the red egg there flew a new one—the only one—the ever only bird Phoenix. The legend states that it takes up its abode in Arabia; that every hundred years it burns itself ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... never told a philistine. The elect they informed under the voice, as one might betray a bird's nest. It was but a step from the crumbling Hotel St. Louis, and but another or so from the spires of St. ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... I should wonder at myself if it were so. Have we not been all in all to one another from the time when we first peeped into the bird's nest, waded in the brook, ran after the butterflies, and prattled to each other that we would marry fine gentlemen, and played at being ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and Honey Pudding Apple and Lady Finger Pudding Apple Slump Apple Snow Apple Tapioca Pudding Auflauf Bird's Nest Pudding Black Bread Pudding Blanc Mange Bohemian Cream Boiled Custard Bread Pudding Brown Betty Caramel Custard Cherry Pudding Chestnut Pudding Chocolate Cornstarch Pudding Chocolate Custard Corn Pudding Cornmeal Pudding Cup Custard for Six Dessert with Whipped Cream Dimpes ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... have a great, masterful man like this take charge of one, and Ma sighed gratefully as she lay back. "It does kinda feel like a bird's nest," she declared. "And you kinda look like a robin, too; you're ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... thought he saw some monkeys among the leaves, and Turk began to be restless, smelling about, and barking very loud. Fritz was gazing up into the trees, when he fell over a large round substance, which he brought to me, observing that it might be a bird's nest. I thought it more likely to be a cocoa-nut. The fibrous covering had reminded him of the description he had read of the nests of certain birds; but, on breaking the shell, we found it was indeed a cocoa-nut, ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... our hearts. We long watched abstractedly the green and slimy water as it was slowly swept beneath the narrow arch of the bridge. It carried along on its surface sometimes the white petals of the lily, and sometimes an empty and downy bird's nest which the wind had blown from a tree. We soon saw the body of a poor little swallow, turned on its back, and with extended wings, floating down. It had, doubtless, been drowned when skimming over the water ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... collection is a specimen of the taylor bird's nest, composed of a single large leaf, of a fibrous rough, texture, about six inches long independent of the stalk, five inches and a half in breadth, and ending in a point. The sides of this leaf are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... bleeding, but signally a victor, took quiet possession of the treetop, the conquest of which he had so valiantly achieved. He parted some of the branches, cut away others, and intertwining the softer twigs, something like a bird's nest, made for himself a very comfortable bed. There was an abundance of moss, dry, pliant, and crispy, hanging in festoons from the trees. This, spread in thick folds over his litter, made as luxuriant a mattress as one could desire. His horse-blanket being laid down upon this, the weary ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... and wood-peckers. Besides these there are falcons, owls, or "spectre birds," sweet-voiced butcher birds, storks, fly-catchers, and doves, and the swallow which builds the gelatinous edible nest, which is the foundation of the expensive luxury "Bird's Nest Soup," frequents the verdant islands on the coast. [*Mr. Newbold is ordinarily so careful and accurate that it is almost presumptuous to hint that in this particular case he may not have been able to verify the statements of the natives by ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... Friar Lawrence' cell; There stays a husband to make you a wife: Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks, They'll be in scarlet straight at any news. Hie you to church; I must another way, To fetch a ladder, by the which your love Must climb a bird's nest soon when it is dark: I am the drudge, and toil in your delight; But you shall bear the burden soon at night. Go; I'll to dinner; hie you ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... some persons have a curious affinity with the gentle and good in creation—who can watch and even handle a bird's nest without making it be deserted, whom bees do not sting, and horses, dogs, and cats love so as to reveal their best instincts in a way that seems fabulous. In spite of the Lyra Innocentium, I think this is less often the case with children than with such grown ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... assisting in spinning. Mothers of three or more children were not compelled to work, as the master felt that their children needed care. From early childhood boys and girls were given excellent training. A boy who robbed a bird's nest or a girl who frolicked in a boisterous manner was severely reprimanded. Separate bedrooms for the two sexes were maintained until they married. The girls passed thru two stages—childhood, and at sixteen they became "gals". Three years later they might marry if ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... her, was fain to search the woods and fields and the seashore for those small treasures, without money and without price, with which nature is lavish toward the poor who love her and attend her carefully, such as the first flowers of the season, nuts and seed-vessels, and sometimes an empty bird's nest and a stray bright feather and bits of bright stones, which might, for her baby fancy, be as good as my brother's gold and silver, and shells, and red and russet moss. All these I offered her from time to time as reverently and shyly as any true lover; though she was but a baby tugging with ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... progress was further impeded by a wood-pigeon dwelling impressively on the notes "Take two cows, Taffy; Taffy take TWO!" and then dashing out, flapping and grey, in their faces, rather to Barbara's alarm, and then by Armine's stumbling on his first bird's nest, a wren's in the moss of an old stump, where the tiny bird unadvisedly flew out of her leafy hole full before their eyes. That was a marvel of marvels, a delight equal to that felt by any explorer the world has seen. Armine and Barbara, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for birds and animals revived. He had favourite dogs, and cows, and horses; and again he began to keep rabbits, and to pride himself on the beauty of his breed. There was not a bird's nest upon the grounds that he did not know of; and from day to day he went round watching the progress which the birds made with their building, carefully guarding them from injury. No one was more minutely acquainted with the habits of British birds, the result of a long, loving, and ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... done; All your childish ways I've run, All your joys and pangs I've had— All that make you gay or sad; I have sported in the brook, Truant from my work or book; Chased the butterfly and bee, Robb'd the bird's nest on the tree; Damm'd the brook and built my mill; Flew my kite from hill to hill; Sported with my top and ball— Childish joys, I know them all. Childish sorrows, too I've felt— Anguish that my heart would melt; Tears have wet my burning cheek, Caused by thoughts I could not speak. Mysteries ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... done, and herself free to take up the old life with a clear conscience. But almost the first letters from the rancho demanded her! Little Rafael had painfully written to know where he could find this poem and that to which she had introduced him. Marty had sent her a bird's nest, running over with ants when it was opened in Cornelia's breakfast-room, but he never knew that. Jose had written for advice as to seeds for Manzanita's garden. And Austin had written he missed her, it was "rotten" ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... but this is not so. There are entire crow-folk who lead honourable lives—that is to say, they only eat grain, worms, caterpillars, and dead animals; and there are others who lead a regular bandit's life, who throw themselves upon baby-hares and small birds, and plunder every single bird's nest they set eyes on. ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... Objects.—A bird's nest in an adjacent meadow; a ground-hog's hole; a musk-rat's home; crayfish or clams in the stream near by; a pine (or other) tree; a toad's day-resort; the soil of a field; the pests of a neighbouring orchard; a stone-heap ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... went. Cousin Dempster has made a good deal of money in Washington—contracting, or something—and he got a spick-span new open carriage for this high occasion—a carriage made soft as a bird's nest with brown satin cushions, and that glittered outside like a crow's back whenever ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... were to examine the boys were perched up in a high pulpit so profusely trimmed with evergreen that it looked like a bird's nest; they were remarkably pleasant-looking men, and their eyes twinkled merrily under their Christmas wreaths. Father Anselmus was a little the taller of the two, and Father Ambrose was a little the broader; and that was about all the difference ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... a fellow knows every bird's nest In the fields for miles around, Where the squirrels play in the sunshine, Where the prettiest flowers are found; When he knows a pair of robins That will fly to his hands for crumbs, He hates to be penned in a school-room, And he's ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... satisfactory. One might parallel it with the case of hatching birds' eggs. Most birds sit upon their eggs themselves, and supply the necessary warmth from their own bodies. But any alternative plan that attains the same end does just as well. The felonious cuckoo drops her foundlings unawares in another bird's nest: the ostrich trusts her unhatched offspring to the heat of the burning desert sand: and the Australian brush-turkeys, with vicarious maternal instinct, collect great mounds of decaying and fermenting leaves ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... and way of holding yourself is capital. And it is just poor old Isaac's stiff way of stooping his long rheumatic back. What is this hanging from the branch of the tree? Not a bird's nest, surely.' ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... child, you don't know what you are doing."—"No, indeed, ma'am, I don't—what am I doing?" She took the wreath of cotton wool from my passive hand and showed me, wrapped up in it, a humming-bird, luckily unhurt, unsquelched. The humming-bird's nest is more beautiful than the creature itself. Poor Lord Liverpool—no one can wish ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... endowed with the faculty of thinking or reasoning about what he does, is enabled by patience and industry to correct the mistakes into which he at first falls, and to go on constantly improving. A bird's nest is, indeed, a perfect structure; yet the nest of a swallow of the nineteenth century is not at all more commodious or elegant than those that were built amid the rafters of Noah's ark. But if we compare the wigwam of the savage with the temples and palaces of ancient Greece and Rome, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... caused her to forget her terror. Peeping in among the branches of a small tree, she espied what she called a "live bird's nest." Never having seen any young birds before, she wondered at first "who had picked off their feathers." The wee things seemed to be left to themselves while their ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... to a page, told him to go out and shoot a man in the outer court; which was no sooner accomplished than the little urchin returned to announce his success, with a look of glee such as one would see in the face of a boy who had robbed a bird's nest, caught a trout, or done any other boyish trick. The king said to him, "And did you do it well?" "Oh, yes, capitally." He spoke the truth, no doubt, for he dared not have trifled with the king; but the affair created hardly any interest. I never ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... We had Bird's Nest Bud-ball Yet-bean War; and Shark's Fin, Loung-fong Chea; and Duck, Gold-silver Tone Arp; eggs with Shrimp Yook; cake called Rose Sue; and Ting Moy, which was a Canton preserve; and various other things that ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... birds!" yelled Green, starting forward, and bending down he flung the wretched boy over on to his back so as to extricate the bird's nest. ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... Mr Bang at this juncture, while he looked over the edge of his cot on the stramash below, "saw ever any man the like of that? Why, see there—there, just under your candle, Tom—a bird's nest floating about with a mavis in it, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... doubt we shall find him,' said Mr. Falkirk, dryly. 'How did you get into this bird's nest, child?' ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... fledg'd bird's nest may know, At first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair well or grove he sings in now, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... morning had been made heavy to Maggie, and Tom's persistent coldness to her all through their walk spoiled the fresh air and sunshine for her. He called Lucy to look at the half-built bird's nest without caring to show it to Maggie, and peeled a willow switch for Lucy and himself, without offering one to Maggie. Lucy had said, "Maggie, shouldn't you like one?" ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... wins my admiration To view the structure of this little work— A bird's nest. Mark it well, within, without; No tool had he that wrought; no knife to cut, No nail to fix, no bodkin to insert, No glue to join; his little beak was all; And yet how neatly finished!—What nice hand, And every implement and means of art, And twenty years' apprenticeship to ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... can be found in England. A thatched cottage suggests a very rude dwelling indeed; but this had a pleasant parlor and drawing-room, and chambers with lattice-windows, opening close beneath the thatched roof; and the thatch itself gives an air to the place as if it were a bird's nest, or some such simple and natural habitation. The occupants are an elderly clergyman, retired from professional duty, and his sister; and having nothing else to do, and sufficient means, they employ themselves in beautifying this sweet little ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... time, from amidst the green foliage which twined about the dead tree, they heard a feeble, plaintive cry from several little throats, "te-derry, te-derry." Frank and Fanny were much amused. They had never seen a bird's nest so low before, and they had been forbidden to climb the trees; but now Frank saw, that by placing one large stone upon another, he could reach up, so as to look into the nest. He did so, and found there were six little birds in it. But Fanny begged ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... the king of the fishes. Once more the young man, like the Finnish Ilmarinen in Pohjola, subdued the mighty fish, and went back triumphant. The third adventure, as in 'Nicht Nought Nothing,' was to climb a tree of extraordinary height in search of a bird's nest. Here, again, the youth succeeded, and finally conspired with the daughters to slay the old magician. Lastly the boy turned the magician into a sycamore tree, and won his daughter. The other daughter was given to the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... was now explained. The man had undoubtedly possessed the bird's nest which communicates its charm of invisibility to its possessor, though not equally so to his shadow; and this nest he had now thrown away. I looked all round, and soon discovered the shadow of this ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... green it possessed, but it differed in that a green string hung from the end of its leaf, an umbilic cord supporting a greenish urn, streaked with jasper, a sort of German porcelain pipe, a strange bird's nest which tranquilly swung about, revealing an interior ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... jewel of the just. Shining nowhere but in the dark, What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust, Could men outlook that mark! He that hath found some fledged bird's nest, may know, At first sight, if the bird be flown; But what fair field, or grove, he sings in now, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... found some fledg'd bird's nest may know At first sight if the bird be flown; But what fair Dell or Grove he sings in now, That is to ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... my thoughts! Your theme lies lowly as the ground-bird's nest; Why seek, with wings so feeble and unused, To soar above the clouds and front the stars? Descend from your high venture, and to scenes Of the ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... gambolled in the meadow, plucking the sweet wild grasses—and often and often they clambered up the mountain side, knee deep in the heather, searching for frechans and wild honey, and sometimes they found a bird's nest—but they only peeped into it, they never touched the eggs or allowed their breath to fall upon them, for next to their little mother they loved the mountain, and next to the mountain they loved the wild birds who made the spring and summer weather ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... she fancied in those days, one of them, Cyprian Eveleth had given it a name which became current among the young people, and indeed furnished to Gifted Hopkins the subject of one of his earliest poems, to wit, "The Fire-hang-bird's Nest." ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Chinese lines of the highest merit. They take the utmost care of our Gothic cathedrals for us. They put our dearest racial possessions into museums and admire them very much indeed. They teach our young men to fly kites and eat bird's nest soup. They do all that a well-bred people can do to conceal their habit and persuasion of a racial superiority. But they keep up their "prestige." ... You know, we shouldn't love them. It really isn't a question of whether they rule well or ill, but that the position is against certain ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... thinkin' 't I'd like to bet you two dollars to a last year's bird's nest,' I says, 'that if all them fellers we seen this afternoon, that air over fifty, c'd be got together, an' some one was suddinly to holler "LOW BRIDGE!" that nineteen out o' twenty 'd duck ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... for an aboriginal's hut. For other words expressing the same thing, see list under Humpy. In the dialect of the South-East of South Australia oorla means a house, or a camp, or a bird's nest. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... miniature Bo-peep crook, enables the solitary white or pink widely open flower to droop from the tip, thus protecting its precious contents from rain, and from crawling pilferers, to whom a pendent blossom is as inaccessible as a hanging bird's nest is to snakes. This five-petalled waxen flower, half an inch across or over, with its ten white, yellow-tipped stamens, and green, club-shaped pistil projecting from a conspicuous round ovary, never nods more than six inches above ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... get out alone," said she; "I have such a prize;" and she held in her hand a bird's nest, with its three little white ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... roads, whistling as he went, and occasionally tossing his battered cap in the air. He often lingered on his way, now to cut down a particularly tempting switch from the hedge, now to hunt for a possible bird's nest. It was very nearly six o'clock when he reached the back avenue, swung himself over the gate, which was locked, and ran softly on the dewy grass in the direction of the laurel bush. Old Betty had given him most careful instructions, and he was far too sharp ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... pulling up on the brow of a slope at the bottom of which lay Lawford brook, and pointing to the top of the opposite slope; "the nest is in one of those high fir-trees at this end. And down by the brook there I know of a sedge-bird's nest. We'll go and ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... give several instances of various birds which have been known occasionally to lay their eggs in other birds' nests. Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo, and that she occasionally laid an egg in another bird's nest. If the old bird profited by this occasional habit through being enabled to emigrate earlier or through any other cause; or if the young were made more vigorous by advantage being taken of the mistaken instinct of another species than ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... however, and he allowed himself to be taken possession of by his cousin, Margaret Talbot, who, with the easy skill of a spoiled beauty, dismissed several other cavaliers upon his approach. They wandered about for a time, and finally entered a tiny boudoir fitted up to represent a bird's nest in tufted blue satin, with an infinite number of teacups so arranged as to be cunningly suggestive of eggs whose parents had ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... lining is made of the silky down on dandelion-balls woven together with horse-hair. In this dainty nest are laid four or five creamy white eggs, speckled with lilac tints and red-browns. The unwelcome egg of the Cow-bird is often found in the Yellow-bird's nest, but this Warbler builds a floor over the egg, repeating the expedient, if the Cow-bird continues her mischief, until sometimes ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... certain: a mare roaming in a meadow with a foal at its side, a bird's nest full of young ones, squeaking, with their open mouths and enormous heads, made her quiver with the ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... recommendation in its own way. Tolstyakov, a friend of mine, is always obliged to take off his pudding basin when he goes into any public place where other people wear their hats or caps. People think he does it from slavish politeness, but it's simply because he is ashamed of his bird's nest; he is such a boastful fellow! Look, Nastasya, here are two specimens of headgear: this Palmerston"—he took from the corner Raskolnikov's old, battered hat, which for some unknown reason, he called a Palmerston—"or this jewel! Guess ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... wild flowers, seven various specimens of fungi, nine different sorts of berries, twelve species of birds noticed, also rabbits and squirrel, one bird's nest and one perfect fossil—not a bad record for an autumn foray!" said Linda, proudly ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... the storms, the inundations which destroy nests by the million in America, and the sudden changes of weather which are fatal to the young mammals. Each storm, each inundation, each visit of a rat to a bird's nest, each sudden change of temperature, take away those competitors which appear so ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... Hunting.—A thoughtful person will, of course, be careful in approaching a wild bird's nest, otherwise much mischief may be done in a very short time. I have known "dainty eggs" and "darling baby-birds" to be literally visited to death by well-meaning people, with the best of intentions. The parents become discouraged by constantly recurring alarms and desert the ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... Pudding Barley (Pearl) and Apple Pudding Barley Soup Batter, Celery Batter, Jam Pudding Batter, Potato Batter, Pudding Batter, Sweet Batter, Vegetable Bean, French, Omelet Bean Pie Beans, Butter, with Parsley Sauce Belgian Pudding Bird's Nest Pudding Biscuits— Butter Chocolate Cocoanut Blackberry Cream Blancmange Blancmanges Blancmange, Chocolate Blancmange, Eggs Blancmange, Lemon Blancmange— Orange Mould (1) Orange Mould (2) Blancmange, Semolina Blancmange, Tartlets ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson
... the little boy, who was trying in vain to scramble up one of the posts of the piazza, in order to reach a humming-bird's nest, which hung in the tendrils of a creeper overhead, and which a light puff of wind now set swinging, so as to attract the child's eye. What child ever saw a humming-bird thus rocking—its bill sticking out like a long needle on one side, and ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... the moon? Nay, by the mass, then should I fall soon; Yet I keep not to climb so high; But to climb for a bird's nest, There is none between east and west, That dare thereto venter better than I: But to venter to heaven—what, and my feet slip? I know well then I should break my neck, And, by God, then had I the worse side; Yet had I liever be by the nose tied In a wench's arse ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... of Cromwell, or to earlier days. There was a hall, hung round with many old family portraits in antique dresses, and an immense dairy—the pride of Aunt Betsy's heart—and a garden, in which I was once shown a humming-bird's nest; and cousin Rebecca's mantelpiece, over a vast old fireplace, heaped with mosses, birds' nests, shells, and such curiosities as a young girl would gather in the woods and fields; and the cider-press, in ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... as "Annie Laurie." Because of its happy absurdity the name long clung to Jane; but despite such small jests every one respected her sterling traits,—every one, that is, except Senora Vigil, who lived hard by in a mud house like a bird's nest, and who cherished a ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... to gaze Upon the huge tree, dark and lone, The withered finger of the crone Marked out, and glancing in the rays Of morn, beheld a serpent coil Its glossy length, with easy toil, Up the brown trunk, till close it hung Above the wild bird's nest and young; While round and round, with scream of dread, The frighted bird in anguish fled; And vainly sought to drive the foe From his dark aim ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... emotion, that gave a moment's happiness. The delight caused by the discovery of a fine argol may be compared to that of a sportsman finding the trace of his game—of a child contemplating the long sought for bird's nest—of an angler, who sees a fish quivering at the end of his line; or, if we may be allowed to liken great things to small, we would compare it to the enthusiasm of a Leverrier finding a planet at ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... monkeys grinned on the branches, golden flowers had sprung to life on the ends of the twigs, a lovely jewel-like lantern crowned the whole, and as to sweets, everybody- servants and all—had some delightful devices containing them, whether drum, bird, or bird's nest. ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in Japan. We had chicken and duck and pigeon and veal and pigeon eggs and soup and fish and little oysters that grow in the ground (very delicious and delicate) and nice little vegetables and bamboo sprouts mixed in with the others, and we had shrimps cooked, and shark's fin and bird's nest (this has no taste at all and is a sort of very delicate soup, but costs a fortune and that is its real reason for being). It is gelatine which almost all dissolves in the cooking. We had many more things than these, and the boy in a dirty white coat and an old ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... Twing, advancing to the side of the rebel, "look here then!" With a dexterous movement and a slight struggle from the boy, he lifted the hat. A half-dozen apples, a bird's nest, two birds' eggs, and a fluttering half-fledged bird fell from it. A wave of delight and astonishment ran along the benches, a blank look of hopeless bewilderment settled upon the boy's face, and the gravity of the situation disappeared forever in the irrepressible burst of laughter, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... had for a long period saved the government the burden of caring for an additional income of 100,000 pounds a year. And the same little word, if published in its connection, would render Bessemer's perforation device of far less value than a last year's bird's nest. He felt proud of the young woman's ingenuity, and promptly suggested the improvement at ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... detected, he is tempted to lie, to conceal his fault and avoid punishment; and here again we see how one sin leads to another. The temptations to cruelty are many. Sometimes they appear in the form of a bird's nest, placed by a fond and loving mother on the high bough of a tree, to secure her ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... the inns were always full of travelers, and that they being hungry, there had sprung up, near by, the shops of butchers, bakers, charcoal dealers, and bird's nest sellers. Since these worthy men could not go naked, tailors, shoemakers and umbrella and fan dealers had settled there, and as they do not sleep in the open air, even in the Celestial Empire, carpenters, masons ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... like it,' said Douglas, rolling over on the grass and tickling Bobby's bare legs with a bunch of grass; 'I know the man, and he has an awful temper! Sam told me he thrashed a boy who was taking a bird's nest out of his orchard; and he has a large glass room with skeletons and bits of people's bodies lying all about. I think he likes to get children in there, and then he keeps them prisoners, and never ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... attention and excited the curiosity of the whole court, and even of the queen, who could only learn from the palmer's attendant that his melancholy seemed to originate in the discovery of something in a bird's nest. With this strange report she was compelled to be satisfied, till Sir Isumbras, with the hope of dissipating his grief, began to resume his usual exercises in the field, but no sooner had he quitted his chamber than the "squires" by her command broke ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... of the Rhine, and Clara. Lewis, the Little Emigrant. The Easter Eggs, and Forget-me-not. The Cakes, and the Old Castle. The Hop Blossoms. Christmas Eve. The Carrier Pigeon, the Bird's Nest, etc. The Jewels, and the Redbreast. The Copper Coins and Gold Coins, etc. The Cray-Fish, the Melon, the Nightingale. The Fire, and the Best Inheritance. Henry of Eichenfels; or, the Kidnapped Boy. Godfrey, the Little ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... toy, His sisters' sport, his wild bird's nest; And climbing to his mother's breast, Enjoys ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... creatures that we have long been accustomed to call "dumb," and the sign language of the lower orders of these dependent beings. The church owes it to her mission to preach and to teach the enforcement of the "bird's nest commandment;" the principle recognized by Moses in the Hebrew world, and echoed by Cowper in English poetry, and Burns in the "Meadow Mouse," and by our own Longfellow in songs ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... Like a bird's nest it clung to the side of the hill, and, across a valley, looked at a sister hill a quarter of ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... rocks are burning, and the great snow mountain and the sky! O look, look! the high rock up there is red with flame! O the beautiful, fiery snow! Stand up, Peter! See, the fire has reached the great bird's nest! look at the rocks! look at the fir trees! Everything, everything is ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... guess so! He'd show them what sort of a proposition they had tackled. Sneaking, underhanded scoundrels! taking advantage of a mere boy. Meet those notes? You bet he would; and then he'd go down there and boost those stocks until M. & D. looked like a last year's bird's nest. He thrust the letter in his pocket and walked buoyantly ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... flowers or whether, in these niches, they merely found a comfortable place to rest. "There's an intimate relation, by the way, between birds and architecture. It's said that the first architectural work done in the world consisted in the making of a bird's nest. Some critics think that architecture had its start in the making of a bird's nest. Have you ever watched birds at work on their nests? If you have, you must know that they go about the job like artists. In ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... cabman to drive me there, I hesitated, believing it to be in a bad part of the city. 'There are no bad parts,' he said, 'except towards the Arch of Triumph and Neuilly. The rest of Paris is as quiet as a bird's nest.' The church was very full of men as well as women. It was a solemn, devout crowd; every woman wore a plain black dress, every face was anxious, grave, and grieved, but none looked frightened. As the aged priest ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... locusts, wasps, and vicious spiders, were visible everywhere; while the omnipresent mosquito was ever looking out for a victim. The curious nest of the tailor-bird, which sews leaves together and builds a dainty nest inside of them, was pointed out to us, and specimens of the weaver bird's nest, with entrance tubes over two feet in length. There were also pendent nests built by a species of wasp in the trees, which indicated a nefarious design to infringe upon bird architecture. The peacock is found wild here ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... his snoring, which kept them awake, Thor thrice dealt him fearful blows with his hammer. These strokes, instead of annihilating the monster, merely evoked sleepy comments to the effect that a leaf, a bit of bark, or a twig from a bird's nest overhead had fallen upon his face. Early on the morrow, Skrymir left Thor and his companions, pointing out the shortest road to Utgard-loki's castle, which was built of great ice blocks, with huge glittering icicles as pillars. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... not really "Back Home" we gaze upon when we go there by the train. It is a last year's bird's nest. The nest is there; the birds are flown, the birds of youth, and noisy health, and ravenous appetite, and inexperience. You cannot go "Back Home" by train, but here is the magic wishing-carpet, and ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... curiously and ingeniously arranged with seats in tiers upon an inclined plane that quite a numerous audience can find room within it. The "fauteuils d'orchestre," or orchestra-chairs, are the front row of benches, nearest the stage. The "parterre" is the back rows. There is a little bird's nest of a gallery at the rear of the room, where the spectators cannot stand up without striking the ceiling with their heads. At the sides of the space set apart for the musicians are two queer little private boxes, perched up against the wall like old-fashioned pulpits, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... once been a large barn, but being grown old, the wood was kept there. My sister and I used to peep about among the faggots to find the eggs the hens sometimes left there. Birds' nests we might not look for. Grandmamma was very angry once, when Will Tasker brought home a bird's nest, full of pretty speckled eggs, for me. She sent him back to the hedge with it again. She said, the little birds would not sing any more, if their eggs were taken ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... dark, and finer than the finest spun silk, and fell all over her shoulders and down her back to the stone she sat on. He let his fingers stray in and out among it; and it felt like the soft, warm down that lines a little bird's nest to his skin. Finally, he touched her neck and allowed his hand to rest there, it was such a soft, warm neck. At length, but reluctantly, for his little rebellious heart was not yet wholly subdued, he raised his eyes to her face. Oh, ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... more than a tinder-box and a piece of rag, immediately make a fire. They sought beneath the tufts of grass and bushes for a few dry twigs, and these they rubbed into fibres; then surrounding them with coarser twigs, something like a bird's nest, they put the rag with its spark of fire in the middle and covered it up. The nest being then held up to the wind, by degrees it smoked more and more, and at last burst out in flames. I do not think any other method would have had a chance of ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... some fledged bird's nest may know At first sight if the bird be flown; But what fair dell or grove he sings in now, ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... twilight deepened round us. Still and black The great woods climbed the mountain at our back; And on their skirts, where yet the lingering day On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay, The brown old farm-house like a bird's nest hung. With home-life sounds the desert air was stirred: The bleat of sheep along the hill we heard, The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet well, The pasture-bars that clattered as they fell; Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle lowed; the gate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... to the farther significances of the title, may find one to lead him safely through richer labyrinths of thought than mine: and ladder enough also,—if there be either any heavenly, or pure earthly, Love, in his own breast,—to guide him to a pretty bird's nest; both in the Romances of the Rose and of Juliet, and in the Sermons of St. ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... Miss Letitia about the fall of the bird's nest which she had noticed on her trip to get Arethusa, and Miss Letitia agreed with her sister that it was a blessing that the wind had blown it down before it rained, else the gutter would surely have flooded again. They discussed with ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... are said to be medicinal to them. Weeds that yield neither pasturage for bee nor herd, yet afford seeds to the fall and winter birds. This is true of most of the obnoxious weeds of the garden and of thistles. The wild lettuce yields down for the humming-bird's nest, and the flowers of whiteweed are used by ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... go back in body—to the year 1268. It is a year which makes no great stir in the history books, but it will serve us well. In those days, as in our own, Venice lay upon her lagoons, a city (as Cassiodurus long ago saw her[B]) like a sea-bird's nest afloat on the shallow waves, a city like a ship, moored to the land but only at home upon the seas, the proudest city in all the Western world. For only consider her position. Lying at the head of the Adriatic, half-way between East and West, on the one great sea thoroughfare of medieval commerce, ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... with ashes, and wear cords round their necks for a hundred days in token that they are not eating good food.[581] They imagine that as soon as the soul quits the body at death, it mounts into a tree where there is a bird's nest fern, and sitting there among the fronds it laughs and mocks at the people who are crying and making great lamentations over his deserted tabernacle. "There he sits, wondering at them and ridiculing them. 'What are they crying for?' he says; 'whom are they sorry for? Here am ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... let you go?" Says sweet Greane, weeping "Who will climb with me The rocks to find the bird's nest? who will play At arms, forgetting that I am a girl, And helping me ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... we find that an engine made after any old and well-known pattern is now made with much more consciousness of design than we can suppose a bird's nest to be built with. The greater number of the parts of any such engine, are made by the gross as it were like screw and nuts, which are turned out by machinery and in respect of which the labour of design is now no more felt than is the design of him who first ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... of Breke—but to give too many details would spoil the intending-reader's pleasure. So, as Hamlet observes, "Breke, Breke my heart, for I must hold my tongue!" The Earth Girl first sees the light, such as it is, in a cavern, and is brought up on raw eggs fresh from the sea-bird's nest, uncooked herbs, and raw fish. No tea, coffee, milk, or liquors of any description, were within reach of this unhappy family of three, consisting of Pa, Ma, and the Infant Phenomenon. How they slaked their thirst is not clearly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... miles of Caltura, on the western coast, are inland caves, the resort of the Esculent Swift[1], which there builds the "edible bird's nest," so highly prized in China. Near the spot a few Chinese immigrants have established themselves, who rent the royalty from the government, and make an annual export of their produce. But the Swifts are ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... drawing the curtain to shade the light, left the room that she might be perfectly quiet. And when she returned to the drawing-room, she inquired of the other children what they had been doing, and received a full account of the feast, and the bird's nest, and all the ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury |
