"Blithe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... censer with the other. Men of inferior genius, Victor Hugo and Mr Gladstone, take refuge in humanitarianism. Humanitarianism is a pigsty, where liars, hypocrites, and the obscene in spirit congregate; it has been so since the great Jew conceived it, and it will be so till the end. Far better the blithe modern pagan in his white tie and evening clothes, and his facile philosophy. He says, "I don't care how the poor live; my only regret is that they live at all;" and he gives ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... life ye've taen the grue, An' winnae blithely hirsle through, Ye've fund the very thing to do - That's to drink speerit; An' shune we'll hear the last o' you - An' blithe to hear it! ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... about again, blithe and pretty; and to be rid of this pack. He thought of his mother-in-law and the nurse ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... laughing at their pranks, and heartily enjoying the winter sunshine, the fresh wind, and the girlish pastime. As Treherne slowly approached, he watched her with lover's eyes, and found her very sweet and blithe, and dearer in his sight than ever. She had shunned him carefully all the day before, had parted at night with a hasty handshake, and had not come as usual to bid him good-morning in the library. He had taken no notice of the change ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup Whoever tasted lost his upright shape, And downward fell into a grovelling swine?) This Nymph, that gazed upon his clustering locks, With ivy berries wreathed, and his blithe youth, Had by him, ere he parted thence, a son Much like his father, but his mother more, Whom therefore she brought up, and Comus named: Who, ripe and frolic of his full-grown age, Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields, 60 At last betakes him to this ominous wood, And, in thick shelter of black ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... is blithe and gay—except for one depressing thought. The nearer you get to the New York custom-house, the heavier becomes the load of luggage on your mind. Dresses, hats, wraps, lingerie, so gaily bought in Paris, lie withering like Dead Sea fruit in the forlorn ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... the ocean air, For prudery knows no haven there; To find mock-modesty, please apply To the conscious blush and the downcast eye. Rich in the things contentment brings, In every pure enjoyment wealthy, Blithe as a beautiful bird she sings, For body and mind are hale and healthy. Her eyes they thrill with right goodwill - Her heart is light as a floating feather - As pure and bright as the mountain rill That leaps and laughs in the Highland heather! ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... common phrase, "had made a clean breast of it," he became quite himself again. He had settled the point which had been worrying his mind, and doubtless considered himself established as a man of sentiment in my opinion. Before we had finished our morning's stroll, he was singing as blithe as a grasshopper, whistling to his dogs, and telling droll stories; and I recollect that he was particularly facetious that day at dinner on the subject of matrimony, and uttered several excellent jokes ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed in the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of universal being circulate through me; I am a part or particle of God. I am the lover of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... and soiled and torn! Poor kind wild eyes so dashed with light quick tears! Poor perfect voice, most blithe when most forlorn, That rings athwart the sea whence no man steers Like joy-bells crossed with death-bells in our ears! What far delight has cooled the fierce desire That like some ravenous bird was strong to tire On that frail flesh and soul consumed ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... rights by this new parent whom their boys are bound to serve,—this anything but Alma Mater,—the war school of the nation. As for Miss Nan, though she made it a point to declaim vigorously at the fates that prevented her seeing more of her brother, it was wonderful how well she looked and in what blithe spirits she spent her days. Regularly as the sun came around, before guard-mount in the morning and right after supper in the evening, she was sure to be on the south piazza of the old hotel, and when presently the cadet uniforms ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... the first train which pointed its nose to the East, and he would never again have essayed the writing of Western stories or musical verse which sung the joys of galloping blithely off to the sky-line. He had just been galloping off to a sky-line that was always just before and he had not been blithe; nor did the memory of it charm. Of a truth, the very thought of things Western made him ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... profit. Come back, Thompson!" Steve was making for the door, with apologies. "You're not in the way a bit. Sit down, man! Your six thousand won't be a starter, Joe. I've got some four thousand myself, in red, red gold. All I have in the world—wish it was more." His blithe insouciance ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... canvas shoes. The hands of the farmer and his son were uncovered; but the mother and her little daughter wore white lisle gloves. They also carried parasols—the mother's of the shade of her dress, the girl's pale blue. No family in America could possibly have looked more "blithe and bonny" than did that one in "Sunday" clothes, ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... yields, For the cooling dews and refreshing rains, For the sun which ripens the golden grains, For the beaded wheat and the fattened swine, For the stalled ox and the fruitful vine, For the tubers large and cotton white, For the kid and the lambkin frisk and blithe, For the swan which floats near the river-banks,— Lord God of ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... were wine And all the pulses music; when his heart, Singing, bade heaven and wind and sea bear part In one live song's reiterance, and they bore: Fear to go crownless of the flower he wore When the winds loved him and the waters knew, The blithest life that clove their blithe life through With living limbs exultant, or held strife More amorous than all dalliance aye anew With the bright breath and strength of their large life, With all strong wrath of all sheer winds ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... (Wildly) Oh, My God! Can it be possible I have To die so suddenly? So young to go Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground! To be nailed down into a narrow place; To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost. How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be— What? O, where am I? Let me not go mad! Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world; The wide, grey, lampless, deep, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... driver remained on the box. The guide, evidently there by appointment and sharply on time, leaped to the sidewalk, glanced at his watch, snapped the case shut with a satisfied nod, and stood with his eyes on the hotel entrance. One tiny black figure came forth, greeted him with a blithe "Bongjure," and intrepidly began the perilous ascent of the ladder he hastened to place against the side of the coach for her convenience. It was Aunt Nancy, dressed as she had been the night before, but immaculately neat, and reflecting in her face the brightness of the morning. I greeted her, ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... that bubbles on the lip often mantles over brackish depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace. You know that the bosom can ache beneath diamond brooches, and how many blithe hearts dance under coarse wool. But I do not allude merely to these accidental contrasts. I mean that about equal measures of trial, equal measures of what men call good and evil, are allotted to all; enough, at least, to prove the identity of our humanity, and to show that ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... troubles pass Like little ripples down a sunny river; Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass, Cut down, and up again as blithe ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... hours ago, while yet the morn was blithe, Nor sharp athirst had drunk the beaded dew, A reaper came, and swung his cradled scythe Around this stump, and, shearing slowly, drew Far round among the clover, ripe for hay, A circle clean and grey; And here among the scented swathes ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... meadow was creeping, Bright on the dewy buds glistened the sun, When from his couch, while his children were sleeping, Rose the bold rebel and shouldered his gun. Waving her golden veil Over the silent dale, Blithe looked the morning on cottage and spire; Hushed was his parting sigh, While from his noble eye Flashed the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... waited on the ambassadors, and found that all the other guests had assembled. Marcoline, as blithe and smiling as before, first accosted M. Querini, and then did the polite to all the company. A few minutes before dinner Mattio brought in his master's spectacles on a silver tray. Marcoline, who was sitting next to M. Querini, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... on the top of the Perch Rock how blithe garcon Carterette had been! Danger had seemed nothing to her. She had the temper of a man in her real enjoyment of the desperate chances of life. He had never seen her so buoyant; her animal spirits had never leapt so high. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... played a trick upon unsuspecting Miss Briggs with magnificent success. She was breathless with delight, could hardly speak for bursts of laughter, and danced up and down the room, looking so gay and blithe and like the Lettice of old, that her father wont off to his study with a heartfelt sigh of relief. Hilary was right. The child was happy enough. If she were a little quieter than usual it was only natural and fitting under ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wind lay the land of old Where men dwelt blithe and blameless, clothed and fed With joy's bright raiment and with love's sweet bread, The whitest flock of earth's maternal fold. None there might wear about his brows enrolled A light of lovelier fame than rings your ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... blithe whistling stopped together. Evening poems by Dyer, Warton, and Collins had tended to be "pretty," but here again Gray resisted temptation and regretfully omitted a stanza designed to precede immediately ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... lark, companion meet, Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet Wi' spreckled breast, When upward springing, blithe to greet ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... go to meet the boys coming home from school," said her aunt, in a low tone of deep feeling. But she would not sadden their blithe young hearts, and added cheerfully, "Just the same as ever, I see: how well I know the outline ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you find such people so fickle and uncertain in their spirits; Now on the mount, then in the valleys; now in the sunshine, then in the shade; now warm, then frozen; now bonny and blithe, then in a moment pensive and sad; as thinking of a portion nowhere but in hell. This will cause smiting on the breast; nor can I imagine that the Publican was as yet farther than thus far in the Christian's progress, since yet he was smiting upon ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... momentary silence that ensued the blithe jingling of bells was heard, accompanied by the merry sound of tabor ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Then I remember not; And if forgetting, recollecting, How near I had forgot! And if to miss were merry, And if to mourn were gay, How very blithe the ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... many years, and I saw no reason why his genial temper and buoyant heart should not remain with him to the end of his life. Yet within six months the man changed completely. He grew suddenly old and shrunken; the great blithe laugh that pealed through the house was silenced, the look of suave contentment with himself and with the world about him vanished from his face, and in its place I saw a nervous, troubled glance as of one who suspects a lurking foe ready to spring at his throat. ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... that manor up the Lithe; Riding the Downs had made his body blithe; Stalwart he was, and springy, hardened, swift, Able for perfect speed with perfect thrift, Man to the core yet moving like a lad. Dark honest eyes with merry gaze he had, A fine firm mouth, and wind-tan on his skin. He was to ride and ready to begin. He ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... table to hearth, bustled buxom Mrs. Bassett, flushed and floury, but busy and blithe as the queen bee of this busy little hive ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... was a tiny boy, My days and nights were full of joy; My mates were blithe and kind!— No wonder that I sometimes sigh, And dash the tear-drop from my eye. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... past. "Blithe as a knight in his bridal array," Thayer was echoing the call of his future destiny. Because he had won a single battle, there was no reason he ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... with the cheerful morn, No lark more blithe, no flower more gay And like the bird that haunts the thorn, So merrily sung ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... cheerily, | insect, sing; Blithe be thy | notes in the | hickory; Every | bough shall an | answer ring, Sweeter than | trumpet of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... spend the day in showing you my Aquarium;—the merry antics of the blithe Minnows; the slow wheeling of the less vivacious Sticklebacks; the beautiful siphon of the Quahaug and the Clam; the starry disk of the Serpula; the snug tent of the Limpet; the lithe proboscis of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... be, and a slender "willow-wand of a laddie," as Mrs Stirling still declared; but there was a tinge of healthy colour on cheek and lip, and instead of the look that reminded Lilias of the shadow creeping round to the gate of the kirk-yard, there came back to his face and blithe look of earlier days. His very voice and smile seemed changed; and his laughter, so seldom heard for many a weary month, was music ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... black In gradual depths as shaded Taka's cheek; With perfumed oil her fingers gave caress And waked the hidden pictures in the grain, The yellow sand, the dusky amber girl, The brown perfected in the shining globe. Earth's monotones are justified in this. Close to her lolled small Hopa, blithe and gay As a young cricket, teasing all the rest With her sharp wit; often she dropped her work— The threading of bright flowers into wreaths— To look across the waves, and suddenly She called, "A sail, a little sail," and all Followed her pointing fingers. Far away, Tossed ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... A blithe saint was Francis. He loved to laugh; he loved to sing; and he loved to hear the music of laughter and of song as it rippled from the lips of others. Every description that has come down to us lays stress on the sunshine that played about ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... said Lundi Druro, looking at Tryon with the blithe and friendly smile that made all men like him. ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... ears caught the sound of bells and laughing voices, and in a few minutes up drove the Lorenski sledge in its gayest trappings, with Constanza, the Russian countess, and the young cousins, all looking blithe and rosy in the frosty air, while Emerich and Theodore sat in true hunter's trim, and Father Cassimer himself in charge of the reins, with the well-covered pork beside him. They had two noble horses of the best Tartar blood, unequalled in the province, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... mind and the charm which it had for his contemporaries, one must begin with the ideal of life that was present before his inward eye as a splendid dream. It is not his own in particular. The whole Renaissance cherished that wish of reposeful, blithe, and yet serious intercourse of good and wise friends in the cool shade of a house under trees, where serenity and harmony would dwell. The age yearned for the realization of simplicity, sincerity, truth ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... the inevitable demand. He was a cheerful fellow in his sorry business, blithe as an old stager of an undertaker at a first-class funeral. He chatted about the crisis, and, as a matter of course, brought all the latest news from State Street. Monroe listened to one piece of news, but had ears for no more. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... soul"[24]—is the doctrine which is to regenerate the world. God, in their view, is nothing till he attains self-consciousness in man. "The universal does not attract us till housed in the individual. Who heeds the waste abyss of possibility? Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mere egotism vanishes. The currents of the universal being circulate through me. I am part or particle of God." "I stand here to say, 'Let us worship the mighty and transcendent ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... are gone, but enchantment still lingers, These green knolls around, where thy young life began, Sweetest and last of the old Celtic singers, Bard of the Monadh-dhu', blithe Donach Ban! ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... feel anxious, either, regarding the girl's state of mind or body. She was so blithe and cheerful that he could scarcely recall the picture of that girl who had waited upon him in the cheap restaurant on Scollay Square. Here was ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... thou, at call of vernal breeze, And beckoning bough of budding trees, Hast left thy sullen fire; And stretched thee in some mossy dell, And heard the browsing wether's bell, Blithe echoes rousing from their cell To swell the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... traveling suit of gray and blithe in the clear Western air, tripped from the express, all Rockvale was there to meet her. Hal Haines, mighty man that he was in the region, was red with pride as the girl who could stop the express at Rockvale gave him her ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... ten o'clock when Emil Einstein sprang down the stairway of the eastern terminus of the Brooklyn Bridge. The lad was blithe at heart as he turned to the left and, passing through the seething press of the crowds congested under the electric lights of Sands and Fulton Streets, carefully reconnoitered a gorgeous saloon on the corner of Layte and ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... you up the mountain go, Up to the dreary mountain-top, I'll tell you all I know. 'Tis now some two-and-twenty years Since she (her name is Martha Ray) Gave, with a maiden's true good will, Her company to Stephen Hill; And she was blithe and gay, And she was happy, happy still Whene'er she thought ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... till yon, wull ye?' And again I found the spell upon me. It was not the voice after all, but the great soul behind that thrilled and compelled. She was seeing, feeling, living what she sang, and her voice showed us her heart. The cosy fireside, with its bonnie, blithe blink, where no care could abide, but only peace and love, was vividly present to her, and as she sang we saw it too. When she came ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... chill no later than yesterday,—the chill of the unknown. They had not attended the lectures on the "Greek bucks." Indeed, profiting by their privilege of voluntary recitations, they had dropped in but seldom on Philosophy 4. These blithe grasshoppers had danced and sung away the precious storing season, and now that the bleak hour of examinations was upon them, their waked-up hearts had felt aghast at the sudden vision of their ignorance. It was on a Monday noon that this feeling came ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... went to sleep 'mong them that sleep alway; And the blithe little lad began anew to sing... Sorrow is like a fruit: God doth not therewith weigh Earthward the branch strong yet but for ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Nelly's looks are blithe and sweet, And what is best of a', Her reputation is complete, And ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of generations young Never dies at halyards the blithe chorus sung; While in sands, sounds, and seas where the storm-petrels cry, Dropped mute around the globe, these halyard singers lie. Short-lived the clippers for racing-cups that run, And speeds in life's ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... Mistress Margaret McBride," said I in as blithe a voice as I could be mustering, "why am I to be finding you in cold lobbies, and carrying you to ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... 'In the blithe days of honey-moon, With Kate's allurements smitten, I lov'd her late, I lov'd her soon, And call'd her dearest kitten. But now my kitten's grown a cat, And cross like other wives, O! by my soul, my honest Mat, I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... frolic Moments, purple-pinion'd, dance Around, and scatter roses as they play; And the blithe Graces, hand in hand, advance, Where, with her loved compeers, she ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... book, "Under the Greenwood Tree," is a blithe, bright woodland comedy and it would have been convenient for a cut-and-dried theory of Hardy's growth from lightness to gravity, had it come first. It is, rather, a happy interlude, hardly representative of his main interest, save for its clear-cut characterizations ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... be exchanged for morning walks to the summit of some mountain; to make his bow to Aurora, and listen to the joyous carol of the larks chanting high in the air their hymns of praise, or listening to their blithe little brothers of song, awakening in the bushes, and fluttering, amidst a shower of pearls and rubies—those dewy gems which hang in the sunny rays upon every branch. "Ah, it is all over with me!" wheezed the plethoric banker, when the junior doctor of the consultation ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... children here. I'm very sorry;—I love little children. I used to know some once, with broad, full chests; plump, round limbs; feet that knew how to run, and hands that could venture to go through an entry without drawing on a kid glove,—blithe, merry little children, who got up and went to bed with the sun; who fed on fresh, new milk, and stepped on daisies, and knew more about butter-cups and clover blossoms, than parties and fashions,—little guileless children, who danced and jumped ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... nursling; now this breast once thine Shall rear again no children; never now 1010 Shall any mortal blossom born like thee Lie there, nor ever with small silent mouth Draw the sweet springs dry for an hour that feed The blind blithe life that knows not; never head Rest here to make these cold veins warm, nor eye Laugh itself open with the lips that reach Lovingly toward a fount more loving; these Death makes as all good lesser things now dead, And all the latter hopes that flowered from these And fall as these fell fruitless; ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and things down on that table, Becky," her mistress told her, ignoring the man's blithe folly. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... fetters and his perilous plight, Guy looked as blithe and gay as he was wont to do in the tiltyard of the ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... glow of gratitude to the blithe Tommy Gould. What would he have done with that baggage out here in this lonesome wilderness of ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... restored to life and liberty, and no bird in the sky, no deer on the mountain, felt more blithe and happy than he ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... singing of children mainly, it would seem, and of a new kind; so novel indeed in its effect, as to bring suddenly to the recollection of Marius, Flavian's early essays towards a new world of poetic sound. It was the expression not altogether of mirth, yet of some wonderful sort of happiness—the blithe self-expansion of a joyful soul in people upon whom some all-subduing experience had wrought heroically, and who still remembered, on this bland afternoon, the hour of ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... better sport," said the crabbed old watchmaker. "I am blithe, though, that it's neither of the twa loons themselves.— What are ye bringing a corpse here for, ye fause villains?" he added, addressing the two apprentices, who, at the head of a considerable mob of their own ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... even prescribe, much variety, in the building of the sentence for instance, or in the manner, argumentative, descriptive, discursive, of this or that [23] part or member of the entire design. The blithe, crisp sentence, decisive as a child's expression of its needs, may alternate with the long-contending, victoriously intricate sentence; the sentence, born with the integrity of a single word, relieving the sort of sentence in which, if you look closely, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... "You were as blithe a maiden as ever trod on air," he returned smiling sadly. "Don't I remember how you used to chase me around that old garden. When we go back let us try another ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... once he thought of that still churchyard now; He looked away from earth, and loved the sky. One earthly notion only clung to him:— He thanked God that he died not in the cold; "For," said he, "I would rather go abroad When the sun shines, and birds are singing blithe.—It may be that we know not aught of place, Or any sense, and only live in thought; But, knowing not, I cling to warmth and light. I may pass forth into the sea of air That swings its massy waves around the earth, And I would ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... Unlike the Epic and Drama, it has no preferred verse or meter, but leaves the poet free to choose or invent appropriate forms. In this species of verse Arnold was not wholly at ease. As has been said, one searches in vain through the whole course of his poetry for a blithe, musical, gay or serious, offhand poem, the true lyric kind. The reason for this is soon discovered. Obviously, it lies in the fundamental qualities of the poet's mind and temperament. Though by no means ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... feasts among the guests, but at the evening tide He speaks to Garci's daughter within her bower aside: 'Now God forgive us, lady, and God His Mother dear, For on a day of sorrow we have been blithe ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Thames-streete, and there agreed for four or five tons of corke, to send this day to the fleete, being a new device to make barricados with, instead of junke. By this means I come to see and kiss Mr. Hill's young wife, and a blithe young woman she is. So to the office and at noon home to dinner, and then sent for young Michell and employed him all the afternoon about weighing and shipping off of the corke, having by this means an ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... will prove excellent for future setlings. After three years growth (being cropped the second and third) the first years increase will be 'twixt eight and twelve foot long generally; the third years growth, strong enough to make rakes and pike-staves; and the fourth for Mr. Blithe's trenching plow, and other like utensils of ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... laugh whose blithe, final sigh was always its most winning note. Then, with tremendous gravity, she said, "You are very indiscreet, dear, to let me ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... Our warwinning woof. Woof erst for king youthful Foredoomed as his own, Forth now we will ride, Then through the ranks rushing Be busy where friends Blows blithe give ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... Simeon, give no ear to other than my say. How bitter from the convent 'twas to part and fare away! Ay, and the monks, for on the Day of Palms a fawn there was Among the servants of the church, a loveling blithe and gay. By God, how pleasant was the night we passed, with him for third! Muslim and Jew and Nazarene, we sported till the day. The wine was sweet to us to drink in pleasance and repose, And in a garden of the garths of Paradise we lay, Whose streams beneath the ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... us proceed, howe'er (our plan explained:) A pretty servant-girl a man retain'd. She pleas'd his eye, and presently he thought, With ease she might to am'rous sports be brought; He prov'd not wrong; the wench was blithe and gay, A buxom lass, most ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... funny stories, more or less gently guying the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war," for it is the proud boast of the British army that this is a noncoms' war. Doubtless the stories have small basis in fact, but the currency of these blithe stories reflects the popular mind. Thus they say that when General Haig and his staff came down to review the Canadian troops and pin a carload of hardware on their men for bravery in battle, medals of one sort and another, the Canadian General ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... than by his poems with the fitness of his title, The Children's Poet. One cannot fail to find, in such words as those in the following extract from a letter, the gentleness of his regard for children: "My little girls are flitting about my study, as blithe as two birds. They are preparing to celebrate the birthday of one of their dolls; and on the table I find this programme, in E.'s handwriting, which I purloin and send to you, thinking it may amuse you. What a beautiful ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... the theory of the former that is arid, abstract, and claustral. Of these two philosophies so nearly identical at bottom, the one pursues Self-improvement - a churlish, mangy dog; the other is up with the morning, in the best of health, and following the nymph Happiness, buxom, blithe, and debonair. Happiness, at least, is not solitary; it joys to communicate; it loves others, for it depends on them for its existence; it sanctions and encourages to all delights that are not unkind in themselves; if it lived to a thousand, it would not make excision ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... three days' banquet, ere they uttered the purpose of their embassy. For it was customary of old thus to welcome guests. When the feast had been prolonged three days, the princess came forth to make herself pleasant to the envoys with a most courteous address, and her blithe presence added not a little to the festal delights of the banqueters. And as the drink went faster Westmar revealed his purpose in due course, in a very merry declaration, wishing to sound the mind of the maiden in talk of a friendly sort. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... early and late, Would I had like you seven or eight; Two uncles like you, blithe and gay, To stand at my back in the ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humored fellows said "Good morning, sir! A Merry Christmas to you!" And Scrooge said often afterward, that of all the blithe sounds he ever heard, those were the blithest ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... the lively Irishman. He jumped to the conclusion that O'Dowd, while aligned with the others in the flesh, was not with them in spirit. His blithe heart was a gallant one as well. The lovely prisoner at Green Fancy had a chivalrous defender among the conspirators, and that fact, suddenly revealed to the harassed Barnes, sent a thrill ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Once I was blithe and gay as any of you dear young people. I had a home, and parents, and sisters. There were three of us, as pretty and as merry as any to be found in the country around. We merrily grew up into happy maidens, as merry as could be found, and the glass told us, even if others had been ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... the child, whispering in his ear, asks why her mother bade her not remind him that the morrow was the mother's fete-day. The presence of the blithe all-hoping young, looking on with innocent unconscious eyes at the veiled tragedy of love turned to bitter discord, gives to such scenes their last touch of piteousness. Diderot, however, observed the day, and presented a bouquet which was neither well or ill received. At the birthday dinner ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... of us," sang Lucile, cheerily. "And if my nose does not deceive me, there issueth from the regions of various kitchens a blithe and savory odor—as of fresh muffins, golden-yellow eggs, just fried to a turn, and luscious, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... here with the deep mellow note of the blackbird, poured out from beneath some low stunted bush; nor thrilled with the wild warblings of the thrush, perched on the top of some tall sapling; nor charmed with the blithe carol of the lark as we proceed early afield; none of our birds at all rivalling these divine songsters in realising the poetical idea of the "music of the grove;" while "parrots' chattering" must supply the place of "nightingales' singing" in the future amorous lays of our sighing Celadons. We ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... and the trees seemed gradually to stand out from the darkness in a ghostly beauty. Suddenly birds began to sing all around them in a splendid chorus. From their feet a lark sprang up with a rustle of wings and, mounting proudly upon the air, chanted blithe canticles to greet the morning. They stood upon ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... retreats of infamy and ease, Where, all forgotten but the power to please, Each maid may give a loose to genial thought, 670 Each swain may teach new systems, or be taught: There the blithe youngster, just returned from Spain, Cuts the light pack, or calls the rattling main; The jovial Caster's set, and seven's the Nick, Or—done!—a thousand on the coming trick! If, mad with loss, existence ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... eagerness and expectancy. While I still was drinking my coffee—in the excellence and delicate service of which I recognized the friendly hand of Mise Fougueiroun—there came a knock at my door; and, upon my answer, the Vidame entered—looking so elate and wearing so blithe an air that he easily might have been mistaken for a frolicsome ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... income from a certain trust fund. His plan also incorporated the hope to save every penny of that income for the possible "rainy day." He was now thirty; in each of several New York banks he had something like $4,000 drawing three per cent. interest while he picked his blithe way through the world on $2,500 a year, more or less, ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... chances might change the current of the game in his favor. How brightly the sunshine flooded the room! What a glorious world it was, after all! Through the open window poured the rich, full-throated song of a meadow lark, and the burden of its blithe song was, "How good is this ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... Ninian, exceedingly relieved, "blithe am I to see you, lad. You will tell us the truth of this ill news that has upturned the auld province. By your gloomy face I see that the major part is overtrue. The Earl is dead, and he awes me for twenty-four peck of wheaten meal, forbye ten firlots of malt and other sundries, whilk ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... blithe minstrelsy; In willow bough or alder bush Birds sing, o'er golden filigree Of pebbles 'neath the ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... particularly, roused it. He was so long, so limp, so graceful, lounging there in his corner. His socks and his tie were of such a charming shade of blue and his hair such a charming shade of light mouse-colour. He was vague and blithe, immersed in his own thoughts, which, apparently, were pleasant and superficial. When his eyes met Althea's, he smiled at her, and she thought his smile the most engaging she had ever seen. For the rest, he ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... fond heart delighted hears her praise, As with unconscious loveliness she strays, 'Such,' let me say, with tears of joy the while, 'Such was the softness of my Mary's smile; Such was her youth, so blithe, so rosy sweet, And such her mind, unpractis'd in deceit; With artless elegance, unstudied grace, Thus did she gain in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... she found that he actually was to be her neighbour she was far from quarrelling with the destiny that made him so. He was so blithe and gay of heart, so blandly impudent, the very wine seemed to shine the redder for his presence. It was not in her nature to flirt with any man, but it was utterly impossibly not to enjoy his society. Less and less did she believe that his butterfly pursuit of ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... small stockings hang below; Five small stockings in a row. From his pocket blithe St. Nick Fills the waiting stockings quick; Some with sweetmeats, some with toys, Gifts for girls, and gifts for boys, Mounts the chimney like a bird, And the bells ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... nor with a more distinct revelation of a new spirit, than in this poem. It is retrospective and contemplative, but it is also full of the buoyancy of youth, of the consciousness of poetic skill, and of blithe anticipation. Its tender reminiscence and occasional fond elegiac strain are but clouds of the morning. Its literary form is exquisite, and its general impression is that of bright, elastic, confident power. It was by no means, however, a first work, nor ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... for my manly heart doth yearn.— Bardolph, be blithe;—Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins; Boy, bristle thy courage up; for Falstaff he is dead, And we ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... little midinette Who goes to work each morning daily; I choose to call her Blithe Babette, Because she's always humming gaily; And though the Goddess "Comme-il-faut" May look on her with prim expression, It's Pagan Paris where, you know, The queen of ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... anything now," said Davie to himself in the greatest distress; yet somehow when he came to think of it, it seemed to be with a great deal of hope since Dr. Marks was to be appealed to. And when breakfast-time came, and with it Joel so blithe and hungry, David fell to on his own breakfast ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... fragrant earth; which draw from her Their own nutrition; which are born and die, Yet, in their seed, immortal; such the flowers With which young Maia pays the village maids That hail her natal morn; and such the groves Which blithe Pomona rears on Vaga's bank, To feed the bowl of Ariconian swains Who quaff beneath her branches. Nobler still Is Beauty's name where, to the full consent Of members and of features, to the pride 540 Of colour, and the vital change of growth, Life's holy flame ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... spirit in her eyes. This she touched with her finger tips. But her look was bent upon the second, the portrait of a young man whose attitude, defying the conventional pose of old-fashioned photography, showed how blithe and merry and full of ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin |
