"On the wing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tongue. If he hesitates, and stops to think, or to look in his book for the purpose of hunting up what he has to tell them, he will be very apt to lose his chance. Teaching children, particularly young children, is like shooting birds on the wing. The moment your bird is in sight, you must fire. The moment you have the child's eye, be ready to speak. This readiness of utterance is a matter to be cultivated. The ripest scholars are often sadly deficient in it. The very habit of profound study is apt to induce the opposite quality to readiness. ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... the least of his business, in all his travels, was to travel: And they who were best acquainted with him, report of him, what St Chrysostom said of the apostle St Paul, "That he ran through the world with an incredible swiftness, and as it were on the wing," yet not without labour, nor that labour without fruit, but preaching, baptizing, confessing, disputing with the Gentiles, rooting out Idolaters, reforming manners, and throughout establishing the Christian ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... heard father say there never was a time when he couldn't go out and catch some sort of fish and sell it for enough to get us something to eat. And then this Mr. Gabriel, he had such a winning way with him, he was as quick at wit as a bird on the wing, he had a story or a song for every point, he seemed to take to our simple life as if he'd been born to it, and he was as much interested in all our trifles as we were ourselves. Then he was so sympathetic, he felt everybody's troubles, he went to the city and brought down a wonderful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... numerous than the cormorants. Though they kept out of our way, they did not appear otherwise to fear us. They looked very large on the wing, as their white feathers glanced in the rays of the setting sun; but they are not more than half the size of the cormorant. They act the useful part of scavengers on the coast, and eagerly pick up all the ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... and then, play peep with the young birds. They fly almost up to the nest, and poise themselves for an instant on the wing, just long enough to say, "Bo-peep!" and then away! almost before they can be seen. Pretty soon they return again, generally bringing some nice morsel with them. They often first alight on a small branch of the vine, below the nest, and ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... but niggardly give me sight of her; not only bought many presents to give her, but have given largely to many to know what she would have given; briefly, I have pursued her as love hath pursued me; which hath been on the wing of all occasions. But whatsoever I have merited, either in my mind or in my means, meed, I am sure, I have received none, unless experience be a jewel that I have purchased at an infinite rate, and that hath taught ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... given than that of a woodpecker for climbing trees and seizing insects in the chinks of the bark? Yet in North America there are woodpeckers which feed largely on fruit, and others with elongated wings which chase insects on the wing. On the plains of La Plata, where hardly a tree grows, there is a woodpecker (Colaptes campestris) which has two toes before and two behind, a long-pointed tongue, pointed tail-feathers, sufficiently stiff to support the bird in a vertical position on a post, but not so stiff as in the ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... reassured. One angle of light fell upon the gallery. In passing, she caught a fly on the wing, and presented it delicately to a spider established in a corner of the roof. This spider was so bloated that, notwithstanding the distance, I saw it descend from round to round, then glide along a fine web, like a drop of venom, seize its prey from the hands of the old shrew, and remount rapidly. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... homes, and sunshine hours, and seasons of holy and joyous intercourse between friend and friend, we would more habitually bear in mind "This is not to last!" In one brief and unsuspected moment Lazarus may be taken. The messenger may now be on the wing to lay low some treasured object of earthly solicitude and love. God would teach us—while we are glad of our gourds—not to be "exceeding glad;" not to nestle here as if we were to "live alway," but rather, as we are perched on our summer boughs, to be ready at ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... didn't answer me. Some one up in the black gorge above fired a rifle just as I spoke; and the bullet came singing down like a bird on the wing. Not a soul could I see, not a sound could I hear when the rolling echoes had passed away. It was just the silence of the thicket and of the great precipices which headed it—a silence which might freeze a man's heart because the danger ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... if she needed Vee," I goes on. "She's just got in the habit of havin' her 'round. That might be all right, too, if she didn't have the travel bug so bad. But with her keepin' on the wing so constant— Well, I'm no bloomin' sea-gull. And when you're engaged, this long-distance stuff ought to be ruled out. ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... revellers, and had been carelessly strolling under the pinky cloudlets bedward, after a prolonged carousal with the sons and daughters of hilarious nations, until the apparition of Virgin Luck on the wing shocked all prospect of a dead fight ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be feared, never become skilled in its use. In order to introspect one must catch himself unawares, so to speak, in the very act of thinking, remembering, deciding, loving, hating, and all the rest. These fleeting phases of consciousness are ever on the wing; they never pause in their restless flight and we must catch them as they go. This is not so easy as it appears; for the moment we turn to look in upon the mind, that moment consciousness changes. The thing we meant to examine is gone, and something ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... It was only one wonderful thought she could entertain—IT WAS NOT THE FAULT OF JORIS. This was the assurance that turned her joyful tears into gladder smiles, and that made her step light as a bird on the wing, as she ran down the stairs to find her mother; for her happiness was not perfect till she shared it with the heart that had borne her sorrow, and carried her grief through many weary ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... their songs to hear, To watch them on the wing: She'll love to know they still come near Her little ones, ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous
... Pickering carelessly, and striding after, "so I'll whisper my gentle congratulations in your ear 'on the wing.' But I'm awfully sorry for you, Ben," he added, as he ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... him constantly on the wing. Though little interested in politics, he liked to be on the edge of any political commotion. He appeared in London on the death of Queen Caroline, in 1737; and Bathurst remarked that "he was as sure to be there in a bustle as a porpoise in a storm." ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... over the blooming valleys, the waving grain sown with wild flowers, the dove-cote beneath the cottage eaves, uttering their harsh, discordant cries while on the wing. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... once," said Dr. Holtum, "and it is quite time we were all on the wing for our homes; so, shoo! shoo! shoo!" and he put out his hands, as if he were driving away a flock of birds, with the result that every one "made tracks" ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... Allan Quatermain this weapon, obsolete as it is to-day, was capable of great things within the limits of its range, and that the faith he put in it at the trial of skill at the Groote Kloof, and afterwards in the fearful ordeal of the shooting of the vultures on the wing, upon the Mount of Slaughter, when the lives of many hung upon his marksmanship, was well justified. This, indeed, is shown by ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... was Junia. To him she was the one being in the world worth struggling for; the bird to be caught on the wing, or coaxed into the nest, or snared into the net; and two of the three things he had tried without avail. The third—the snaring? He would not stop at that, if it would bring him what he wanted. How to snare her! He surveyed himself in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... prayed she might send me a message; But nought the sweet missive will bring: The breath of the morning, the sunlight, The carol of birds on the wing, Come to gladden my heart with their gladness; But joyless and tuneless each seems; And the only sad joy that is left me Is to live with my dearest ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... practice against a scepticism that amounted at times to hostility. One writer upon these subjects gives a funny little domestic conversation that happened, he says, in the year 1898, within ten years, that is to say, of the time when the first aviators were fairly on the wing. He tells us how he sat at his desk in his study and conversed with ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... playful an animal as any other." "It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water teem with delighted existence. In a spring noon, or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes myriads of happy beings crowd upon my {18} view. 'The insect youth are on the wing.' Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or purpose, testify their joy, and the exultation which they feel in their lately discovered ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... Catherine de' Medici lavished their wealth on the wing built by Francois I. at Blois. Who can look at those massive partition-walls, the spinal column of the castle, in which are sunken deep alcoves, secret staircases, cabinets, while they themselves enclose halls as vast ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... Pegasus is pretty heavy on the wing, mammy. But I will drink. I will gorge myself, truly I will. The money shall ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... and swallows is wholly made up of insects. We have all seen them in their graceful flight and have noticed how they seize their insect prey while on the wing. The martins are of little value for food, and yet, in some parts of our country they have become almost extinct because of the pursuit of them ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... perished; and fifty are not, because they are yet to come. You see therefore how narrow, how incalculably narrow, is the true and actual present. Of that time which we call the present, hardly a hundredth part but belongs either to a past which has fled, or to a future which is still on the wing. It has perished, or it is not born. It was, or it is not. Yet even this approximation to the truth is infinitely false. For again subdivide that solitary drop, which only was found to represent the present, into a lower series of similar fractions, and the actual present which ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... thing of all "her lordes faire gere" that his mother carried to the wood with her. In the use of this he became so skilful, that he could kill with it not only the animals of the chase for the table, but even birds on the wing. At length, however, Perceval was roused to a desire of military renown by seeing in the forest five knights who were in complete armor. He said to his mother, "Mother, what are those yonder?" "They are angels, my son," said she. "By my faith, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... smoking—an excellent practice if indulged in in moderation. On this occasion it answered perfectly. Charteris ran to the half-way line, and handed the ball on to the Babe. The Babe was tackled from behind, and passed to Thomson. Thomson dodged his man, and passed to Welch on the wing. Welch was the fastest sprinter in the School. It was a pleasure—if you did not happen to be one of the opposing side—to see him race down the touch-line. He was off like an arrow. Dacre's back made a ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... went to sleep. The Nightingale was of course too polite, civil, and considerate to prolong. So he simply said, "Good night to you, little Teardrop, or Dewdrop, whatever you prefer calling yourself. It is time, and more than time, for me to be on the wing. I have one or two domestic anxieties which, in the first place, I must see to; and, after that, I have an engagement among these old hawthorns ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... gone. Now she was well again, and strong on the wing. He was anxious to go on to their northern home. A second warning came from Mother Carey, ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... the true, interchangeable conversation in Mr. C. On almost every subject on which he essayed to speak, he made an impassioned harangue of a quarter, or half an hour; so that inveterate talkers, while Mr. Coleridge was on the wing, generally suspended their own flight, and felt it almost a profanation to interrupt so impressive and mellifluous a speaker. This singular, if not happy peculiarity, occasioned even Madame de Stael to remark of Mr. C. that "He was rich in a Monologue, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... their grandmothers sang when they were little girls and which one day their children's children will sing, for songs are frail immortals which fly from lip to lip throughout the ages. The lips that sing them lose their color and are silent one after the other, but the songs are always on the wing. There are songs that come down to us from a time when all the men were shepherds and all the women shepherdesses—which tell us of nothing but sheep ...
— Our Children - Scenes from the Country and the Town • Anatole France
... first inquiry by getting a lift into town from Mrs. Ormsby, young wife of the president of the First National. Alone with me in her little electric, she answered every question I cared to put, and said she would be careful to speak to no one of the matter. Three others I caught on the wing, as it were, busy at blossom festival affairs; the fete only one day off now, things were moving fast. I glimpsed Dr. Bowman down town and thought he rather carefully avoided seeing me. His wife was taking no part; the word went that she was not ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... interminable stairs they regained the apartment and went out on the balcony. It was full daylight now but not a smoke-plume trailed from tall chimneys. Not a bird was on the wing. Elevated trains stood on their tracks, ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... morning and evening hours, it is at those times of the day particularly when precautions must be taken. It was once thought that the night air caused malaria, and this had some foundation in fact, because it is in the early evening that the anopheles is on the wing. By staying in the house after sundown and by carefully screening the doors and windows, one may live in a malarial country with perfect immunity. Volunteers have lived for months in the worst malarial regions in the world without a trace of the disease, the only precaution being to keep ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... a European one, then may it come, bronzed, keen, and supple from the tropic calm! The birds of the forest are on the wing. ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... a special interview with him.... By the way, you know that the Hudson Bay flotation is going strong on the wing?" ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... spread a certain inexpressible charm over the plainest human countenance. The heath was in its thickest and deepest bloom. The bees, which the Solitary had added to his rural establishment, were abroad and on the wing, and filled the air with the murmurs of their industry. As the old man crept out of his little hut, his two she-goats came to meet him, and licked his hands in gratitude for the vegetables with which he supplied them from his garden. ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... immediate suggestion of grace. Yet every motion of the child would have been graceful, except for the fact that impulse was always predominant, giving a certain jerkiness, like the hopping of a bird, instead of the gliding of one motion into another, such as you might see in the same bird on the wing. ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the words she calmly makes them up. And I cannot help thinking that Chellalu is very like her song; here is an intelligible bit, a line or two in order, then a cheerful tumble up, and an irresponsible conclusion. The tune too seems in character—"Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing"; the swinging old Jacobite air had fitted itself to a nursery song about the brave fire-lilies, and something in its abandon to the happy mood of the moment seems ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... of adaptation be given than that of a woodpecker for climbing trees and for seizing insects in the chinks of the bark? Yet in North America there are woodpeckers which feed largely on fruit, and others with elongated wings which chase insects on the wing; and on the plains of La Plata, where not a tree grows, there is a woodpecker, which in every essential part of its organisation, even in its colouring, in the harsh tone of its voice, and undulatory ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... the Osprey was on the wing again, and a week's continuance of this fair wind would bring them into port. The next day, toward sunset, as Mr. Raleigh turned about in his regular pacing of the deck, he saw at the opposite extremity of the ship the same slight figure dangerously perched upon the taffrail, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... unknown lady. But they have no idea that I am here. How could I have entered a house which they searched this morning from cellar to garret? No, in all probability they are waiting for me to catch me on the wing ... poor fellows!... Unless they have guessed that the unknown lady was sent by me and presume that she has been commissioned to effect the exchange.... In that case, they are preparing to arrest her ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... mother of Ippegoo. We know not her maiden name, but as her dead husband had been called by the same name as the son, we will style her Mrs Ippegoo. There was also the mother of Arbalik, a youth who was celebrated as a wonderful killer of birds on the wing—a sort of Eskimo Robin Hood—with the small spear or dart. The mother of Arbalik was elderly, and stern—for an Eskimo. She was sister to the great hunter Simek. Kannoa, a very old dried-up but lively woman with sparkling black eyes, ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... interesting, but little that helps the delicate question—the possibility of publication. Her diaries are less systematic than I hoped; she only had a blessed habit of noting and narrating. She summarised, she saved; she appears seldom indeed to have let a good story pass without catching it on the wing. I allude of course not so much to things she heard as to things she saw and felt. She writes sometimes of herself, sometimes of others, sometimes of the combination. It's under this last rubric that she's usually ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... she answered: "I am sorry to leave a place where I have been so happy. Oh! why cannot we settle down somewhere and stay? I get so tired of being always on the wing. Even the birds have nests to rest in for a little while. Are we never going ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... thing That when Kent bines produce their crop, Swelldom is always "on the wing," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... Water, Plaiting mats of flags and rushes; Of the past the old man's thoughts were, And the maiden's of the future. He was thinking, as he sat there, Of the days when with such arrows He had struck the deer and bison, On the Muskoday, the meadow; Shot the wild goose flying southward, On the wing, the clamorous Wawa; Thinking of the great war-parties, How they came to buy his arrows, Could not fight without his arrows. Ah, no more such noble warriors, Could be found on earth as they were! Now ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... spirit. Aristotle had reason to say, he was the only poet who had found out "living words;" there are in him more daring figures and metaphors than in any good author whatever. An arrow is "impatient" to be on the wing, a weapon "thirsts" to drink the blood of an enemy, and the like, yet his expression is never too big for the sense, but justly great in proportion to it. It is the sentiment that swells and fills out the diction, which rises with it, and forms ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... he must have been in reverie for ages, so much had he thought sitting there, so much felt.... He had been like a gull poised on the wing, and now he dropped gently to the calm waters.... New York to-day, and in two weeks Antrim, and then a rest.... And then wider spaces than he had ever known, greater adventure.... A day would come when he would be called, as though some one had said: Shane Campbell! and then a gesture ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... heaven. A fine answer that, and Peter chuckled; too wise for thee. Go home and ponder on it. We shall lie on couches when we are not flying, he added, and being in doubt he asked Joseph if the heavenly host was always on the wing. A question that seemed somewhat silly to Joseph, though he could not have given his reason for thinking it silly. Peter called on Jesus to hasten for the disciples were half way up the principal street at a turning ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... merciful than his creatures," replied Sir Norman, with calm reverence,—"though His avenging hand is heavy on this doomed city. But, madame, time is on the wing, and the headsman will be here before ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... of Easter Monday, the wild geese and Thumbietot were on the wing. They travelled ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... for cutting off in," said Orlick. "We'd be puzzled how to bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night." ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... without a sensation; that of the grasping Croesus exists only to envy his heir; and that of the Machiavel who has no longer a voice in the cabinet, is but an unhappy spirit lingering to find its grave: but for the aged man of letters memory returns to her stores, and imagination is still on the wing amidst fresh discoveries and new designs. The others fall like dry leaves, but he drops like ripe fruit, and is valued when no longer on ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... These hours of precious time With stupid book or useless work— It is indeed a crime; But haste with me to the wood-lands green, Where forest warblers sing And bees are humming—like them, too, We must be on the wing. ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... My thoughts were on the wing, And back my fancy fled To where contentment dwelt In the neat humble shed; To shining courts From thence it ran, Where restless pride ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... what ingenuity and sureness dragon-flies distinguish, follow, and catch the smallest insects on the wing. Of all insects, they have the best sight. Their enormous convex eyes have the greatest number of facets. Their number has been estimated at 12,000, and even at 17,000. Their aerial chases resemble ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... boat sails away, like a bird on the wing, And the little boys dance on the sands in a ...
— Under the Window - Pictures & Rhymes for Children • Kate Greenaway
... found them once more on the wing. Stern laid a southerly course along the edge of the Abyss. He and Beatrice had definitely decided that the new home of humanity was not to be the distant regions of the East, involving so long and perilous a journey, but rather some location in the vast, warm, central plain ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... thought the angelic girl could not be ungrateful to the parent of her being; but don't let us tarry—I am already on the wing. ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... but a single community, but as they advance and attach city after city they grow more numerous and more resistless. I observe that when people wish to take wasps' nests—if they try to capture the creatures on the wing, they are liable to be attacked by half the hive; whereas, if they apply fire to them ere they leave their homes, they will master them without scathe themselves. On this principle I think it best to bring about the battle within the ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... being marked with yellow where the other bird is white, but by the general distribution of the colours. In this respect, M. flavo-cinctus resembles more closely the true Orioles, particularly in the yellow fascia which is formed on the wing, when closed by the junction of the apical spots ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... the cool and fragrant woods, and taken up his abode in degenerate places, a fitting change of residence to follow his change of habit from digging his prey out of the tree-trunks to catching it on the wing. ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... rede you, beware at the hunting, young men, I rede you, beware at the hunting, young men; Take some on the wing, and some as they spring, But cannily ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Oldenburg and Jones at Oxford must have come necessarily also into constant intercourse with that very secret admirer of Milton. Oxford, we do gather, was still Du Moulin's head-quarters; but he was so much on the wing thence that Oldenburg might expect to succeed him in the tutorship of at least one of the young Boyles. Oldenburg was then thirty years of age, and young Ranelagh ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... to the ship on the following morning, a large albatross alighted on the water close to the boat. As we passed it, it made several futile attempts to rise again on the wing. It is well known that this bird cannot fly while under the influence of fear, and so it appeared in this instance, for, while we were passing it, a shark thrust its head out of the water and took the unfortunate bird ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... which, we soon reached, having a fresh breeze of wind in our favour, attended with rain. When we came to the creek which was on the N.W. side of Anchor Isle, we found there an immense number of blue peterels, some on the wing, others in the woods in holes in the ground, under the roots of trees and in the crevices of rocks, where there was no getting them, and where we supposed their young were deposited. As not one was to be seen in the day, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... "The fiend is on the wing again," said Jean-Marie; "but as he passed I felt as if the finger of God touched my brow. It can ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... the early dawn, and there is no night at all. South Uist, beyond all other islands of the Hebrides, abounds in game of all kinds, and the Prince was always a keen sportsman. He delighted his followers by shooting birds on the wing, he fished (though it was only sea-fishing from a boat), and he shot red-deer on ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... exercise of man's every faculty it is curlew shooting in a mist. Perhaps he may wait for an hour or even two hours and see nothing, not even an oyster-catcher. Then at last from miles away comes the faint wild call of curlew on the wing. He strains his eyes, the call comes nearer, but nothing can he see. At last, seventy yards or more to the right, he catches sight of the flicker of beating wings, and, like a flash, they are gone. Again a call—the curlew are flighting. He looks and looks, in his excitement struggling ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... moves with more ease and grace than any other of its species except the Wood Duck, and it can run with considerable speed. In the water also it moves with great ease and rapidity, and on the wing it is one of the swiftest of its tribe. From the water it rises with a single spring and so swiftly that it can be struck only by a very expert marksman; when wounded it ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... what was left of his bread into the air, above the river; and the Duchessa, easily, deftly, threw up a hand, and caught it on the wing. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Wren is not only one of our most interesting and familiar neighbors, but it is useful as an exterminator of insects, upon which it feeds. Frequently it seizes small butterflies when on the wing. We have in mind a sick child whose convalescence was hastened and cheered by the near-by presence of the merry House Wren, which sings its sweet little trilling song, hour after hour, hardly stopping long enough to ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... to and fro— Everywhere that children go When the Spring Is on the wing And the winds of April blow— "I will never think her dead; "She will come again!" it said; And then the birds that use the vale, Broken-hearted, turned the tale Into syllables of song And chirped it half ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... to that on which we stand, is a mile away, while below its the cup is brimming with the verdure which runs up from a lovely blue lake a thousand feet below. All is beautiful, so beautiful, that it seems to take away our breath, for flowers are all about, the gorgeous butterflies are on the wing, noisy paroquets are climbing head up or head down, and there is nothing to show that we are on the edge of the crater of some tremendous volcano, but we catch sight of a thin thread of steam rising to form a cloud over a bare rock-strewn patch on one side. That tells us the fierce gases below ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... is nigh Where Wisdom's voice has found a listening heart. Amid the howl of more than winter storms, The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours, Already on the wing. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... colder as we go north. We are about opposite the north of Corsica, and a cold wind bears down on us from the Continent. Two small birds have accompanied us the whole day, resting in the rigging at times, but spending much time on the wing. I cannot make out what they are, some say chaffinches, but that is certainly a mistake, they are too small. A lark fell on deck in the forenoon utterly exhausted, lying for some time on its breast with wings spread out. It disappeared ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... was always fortunate In its greetings and adieux, Nothing flat or importunate, Nothing of the misuse That comes of the constant grinding Of one mind on another. So memory has nothing to smother, But only a few things captured On the wing, as it were, and enraptured. Yes, Morris, I am inditing— Answering at last it seems, How can you read the writing In ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... flowers of the common Broom, and these are adapted by a curious mechanism for cross-fertilisation. When a bee alights on the wing-petals of a young flower, the keel is slightly opened and the short stamens spring out, which rub their pollen against the abdomen of the bee. If a rather older flower is visited for the first time (or if the bee exerts great force on a ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... censer full of much incense, in which are placed your feeblest aspirations, your most burdened sighs—the odour-breathing cloud ascending with acceptance before the Father's throne. The answer may tarry;—these your supplications may seem to be kept long on the wing, hovering around the mercy-seat. A gracious God sometimes sees it meet thus to test the faith and patience of His people. He delights to hear the music of their importunate pleadings—to see them undeterred by difficulties—unrepelled by apparent forgetfulness and neglect. But He ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... had given offence. By this time the artist was ready, and thought it best to try Flyaway first; for he had had enough experience with children to see at a glance that this one would be as difficult to "take" as a bird on the wing. Prudy made sure the wheelbarrow was safe, and then turned ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... the rate of progress of the fever elsewhere, and partly from the present state of health in Deerbrook. There are other reasons too. I have seen some birds of ill omen on the wing hitherward ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... for such accidental rencontres. He had another habit, which was not a little annoying to John, who had several times tried in vain to break him of it—that of shooting at marks. If birds were not plenty, he would throw up a chip, and sometimes his hat, by way of shooting on the wing. ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... our attention, that this peculiar structure of the wing-feathers does not exist in the Woodcock. Nature makes no useless provisions for her creatures; and hence this nocturnal bird, which obtains his food by digging into the soil, and gets no part of it while on the wing, has no need of this contrivance. Neither stillness nor stealth would assist him in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... considerably smaller. Compared with most other birds frequenting open places, the bustard has disproportionately short legs, yet the bulk of its body renders it a conspicuous and stately object, and when on the wing, to which it readily takes, its flight is powerful and sustained. The bill is of moderate length, but, owing to the exceedingly flat head of the bird, appears longer than it really is. The neck, especially of the male in the breeding-season, is thick, and the tail, in the same sex at that time ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... night things on the wing, and strange whispering sounds came from the forests clothing the hills. Then came a distant, hollow booming like the sound of artillery, which echoed down the mountain gorges and seemed to roll away over the lowland swamps and die, inaudible, by the remote river. Yet I stood still, ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... gold-harvest the white man worked spasmodically. He was ever leaving the five-dollar diggings in hand for the fifty- or hundred-dollar-per-day claims afar off in some imaginary bush. These golden rumors were always on the wing. The country was but half explored, and many localities were rich in mystery. The white vanguard pushed north, south and east, frequently enduring privation and suffering. "John," in comparative comfort, trotted patiently after, carrying ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... still on the wing. We were at St. Louis on Sunday, where we had, in some respects, a rather remarkable day. The entire feeling of the city has been distinctly different since your visit—the sympathy ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... 276; propel &c 284; render movable, mobilize. Adj. moving &c v.; in motion; transitional; motory^, motive; shifting, movable, mobile, mercurial, unquiet; restless &c (changeable) 149; nomadic &c 266; erratic &c 279. Adv. under way; on the move, on the wing, on the tramp, on the march. Phr. eppur si muove [Galileo]; es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille [G.], sich ein Charakter in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on the wing as you soar, You have seen the loved nymph I deplore— You will know her, the fairest of damsels fair, By her large soft eye and her graceful air; Bird of the dark blue throat and eye of jet, Oh tell me, have you seen the lovely face Of my fair ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... to the other canoes, Amik and I provided ourselves with a little snack and started at once for Oo-koo-koo's old camping ground. It appeared about a three-mile paddle to the fork of the river. Nothing save the quacking of ducks rushing by on the wing, the occasional rise of a crane in front of us, the soaring of an eagle overhead, and the rippling wakes left by muskrats as they scurried away, enlivened our hurried trip. We found the leather lodge coverings ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... ours, to take care of them, and let them take care of us. They don't eat with us," he added, setting open the kitchen door, and ushering the stranger into the warm glow and smell of the interior. "Mis' Braile," he said for introduction to his wife, and explained to her, "A friend that I caught on the wing. I don't know that ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... two. I felt towards those boys as the messmates of the Ancient Mariner(1) did towards him after he had shot the albatross. But the pewees came back at last, and one of them is now on his wonted perch, so near my window that I can hear the click of his bill as he snaps a fly on the wing with the unerring precision a stately Trasteverina shows in the capture of her smaller deer. The pewee is the first bird to pipe up in the morning; and during the early summer he preludes his matutinal ejaculation of pewee with a slender whistle, unheard at any other time. He saddens ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... in the country before sunrise on a bright, clear morning in midsummer, when "the earth is awaking, the sky and the ocean, the river and forest, the mountain and plain." Who has not felt the sweet freshness of early morning before "the sunshine is all on the wing" or the birds awaken and begin to chatter and to sing? There is a hush over everything; later is heard the lowing of cattle, the twitter of birds and hum of insect life, proclaiming the birth of the new day. Passing ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... our fathers would think, From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink, To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling, But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... true is true, and what is false is false." After this I looked towards the company where the confirmators stood, and where the crowd about them shouted, "O how wise!" and lo! a dusky cloud covered them, and in the cloud were owls and bats on the wing; and it was said to me, "The owls and bats flying in the dusky cloud, are correspondences and consequent appearances of their thoughts; because confirmations of falsities so as to make them appear like truths, are represented in this world under the forms of birds of night, whose eyes are inwardly ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg |
