"Blackbird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that he wanted to talk and he could be over-urged to talk if the right pressure was brought to bear. Janice came away, leaving the eagerly curious pecking at him—the one white blackbird in the flock. ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... to David. "How happy this is. No wonder they sing. Any one must sing working like this in great fields. Why, I even remember that the Shropshire Lad whistled once by mistake, while ploughing, on his own admission, until a fatalistic blackbird recalled him ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... assisting with their efforts in swelling the Queen's Anthem. The brook, though it had sung all night, and had need of a little respite, seemed to say—"No, I shall go warbling on; she shall have my very best treble of a ripple." And then there were minor performers in this nature-choir. The Blackbird and Redbreast, Goldfinch and Linnet, and Chaffinch, each took part with striking effect. Even the Swallow in his own quiet way twittered, and the Tomtit chattered, and the Beetle droned, and the Bee ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... task. But now she found that, once more, she had underrated the strength of her own impulses. For some time she resisted, but one day, the sun shone out strong and genial, the budding trees spread their branches to the warm air, a blackbird warbled ecstatically from among the Priory shrubberies, and Hadria passed into ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... our own England. Indeed, if you were suddenly to be transported into Circassia, you would be ready to exclaim, "Is not this England? Here are apple-trees, and pear-trees, and plum-trees, like those in my father's garden: those sounds are like the notes of the blackbird and thrush, which sing among the hawthorns in ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... traceries on wall and grass; the sweet, persistent whistle of a blackbird intensified the calm of evening. It was hard to associate any thought of violence and of devastation with the blessed sunset calm and the clean fragrance of this land of misty mountains and quiet pasture so innocently aloof from the strife and passion of ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... sweetening air The blackbird growing bold Flings out, where green boughs glisten, Three splashes of ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... Continuing our walk, we pass under the rose-crowned aqueduct, and strike into the green avenue that darkens beyond; listening to the distant water bubbling up from the deepest recesses, and to the fitful whistle of blackbird and thrush, as they flit athwart the moss-grown gravel, and perch momentarily on the heads of mutilated termini and statues; whilst the clipt trees vibrate under the wings of others extricating themselves on a piratical cruise against a whole flotilla of butterflies, which is rising and falling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... own hearth-stone, Bosomed in yon green hills alone,— secret nook in a pleasant land, Whose groves the frolic fairies planned; Where arches green, the livelong day, Echo the blackbird's roundelay, And vulgar feet have never trod A spot that is sacred ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... roots the country affords I know not; here are hogs and dogs, other land animals we saw none; the fowls we saw and knew were pigeons, parrots, cocadores, and crows, like those in England; a sort of birds about the bigness of a blackbird, and smaller birds many. The sea and rivers have plenty of fish; we saw abundance, though we catched but few, and these ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... of stirring shadow. Here close beside a red and black candle a man is driving nails into a shoe. Two children stretch their hands toward the hearth. A blackbird sleeps in its wicker cage. Water is boiling in the smoky earthenware pot from which rises a disagreeable soupy smell which mingles with that of tanner's bark and leather. A crouching dog gazes ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... coloured sand, pounded fragments and pebbles, that, as soon as they were dry, became as dull and homely as the flints upon a garden path. I have toiled at this childish pleasure for hours in the strong sun, conscious of my incurable ignorance; but too keenly pleased to be ashamed. Meanwhile, the blackbird (or his tropical understudy) would be fluting in the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the third cask from the door—the key turns upside down, mind—and let me hear you whistle till you bring me back the key. Don't tell me nonsense about your lips being dry. You can whistle like a blackbird ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... passed a cottage, it is on the Great South Road; far away from here. The house was empty; the people no doubt were gone to labour in the fields; there was a wicker cage hanging to the wall, and in the cage there was a blackbird. The sun beat on his head; his square of sod was a dry clod of bare earth; the heat had dried every drop of water in his pan; and yet the bird was singing. Singing how? In torment, beating his breast against the bars till ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... wit, 45 H' was very shy of using it; As being loth to wear it out, And therefore bore it not about, Unless on holy-days, or so, As men their best apparel do. 50 Beside, 'tis known he could speak GREEK As naturally as pigs squeek; That LATIN was no more difficile, Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle: Being rich in both, he never scanted 55 His bounty unto such as wanted; But much of either would afford To many, that had not one word. For Hebrew roots, although they're found To flourish most ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... The SONGSTERS. The Thrush, Lark, Blackbird, and Nightingale, and one or two choristers more. These are connected with the pheasants in their speckledness, and with the pies in pecking; while the nightingale leads down to the smaller groups ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... ever-changing hues of the morning, the surface of the lake was as smooth as her mirror and, like it, always reflecting beauty. Fish leaped forth and fell with a sounding splash, and the circles would widen and gradually vanish. A blackbird dipped among the silent rushes; a young fox barked importantly; a hawk flashed by. The mists swam hither and thither mysteriously, growing thinner and fainter as the gold of day grew brighter and clearer. Suddenly—in the words of the old tent-maker—the false ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... manner of one accustomed to dictate to all in and about the stables. In addition to this, there was an indescribable, but ludicrous salvo to his dignity, in the way of surliness. Some one had engaged him to carry a blackbird to town, and caused him to wait. On this subject he sang a Jeremiad in the true cockney key. "He didn't want to take the bla-a-a-ck-bud; but if the man wanted to send the bla-a-a-ck-bud, why didn't he bring ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... her father left the city, to partake of the pleasures of the country.—Scarcely had the blackbird and the thrush begun their early whistle to welcome Louisa, than the weather changed all on a sudden; the north wind roared horribly in the grove, and the snow fell in such abundance, that every thing ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... twenty-one he had already written his "Tancredi" and the opera buffa, "The Italians in Algiers." His best work (besides "William Tell") was "The Barber of Seville." Other works are "Cinderella" (La Cenerentola), "The Thieving Blackbird" (La Gazza Ladra), "Moses," and "The Lady of the Lake." These operas were mostly made up of parts of others that were failures, a la Hasse. An engagement being offered him in London, he went there with his wife, and in one season they earned about two hundred thousand francs, which laid the foundation ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... the common noises of the wood, the angry chatter of a disturbed blackbird as it flew low into hiding, or the harsh notes of a flock of starlings as they rose from the meadow. The hum of bees filled the air, and the August flies buzzed about his sweating brow, for he had lost his cap. But behind him—nothing. Already the stillness of the ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... "Blackbird and thrush, in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow, You pretty elves, amongst yourselves, Sing my fair love good-morrow. To give my love good-morrow, Sing birds, in ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... something agreeable, and, by preference, two agreeable things at once. In his house he had a box of carpenter's tools, two dogs, an eagle, a canary, and a blackbird that whistled tunes, lest, even in that full life, he should chance upon an empty moment. If he had to wait for a dish of poached eggs, he must put in the time by playing on the flageolet; if a sermon were dull, he must read in the book of Tobit or divert his mind with sly ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... garments of a wonderful make; these clothes of mine are by no means beautiful like those. And his face was wonderful to behold; and his voice was calculated to gladden the heart; and his speech was pleasant like the song of the male blackbird. And while listening to the same I felt touched to my inmost soul. And as a forest in the midst of the vernal season, assumes a grace only when it is swept over by the breeze, so, O father! he of an excellent and pure smell looks beautiful when fanned by the air. And his mass of hair is neatly ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... could not fathom what Aggie meant by that expression, as it certainly was not appropriate to the domestic circle at The Towers, consisting, as it did, of one rheumatic Anglo-Indian worm, and one able-bodied blackbird. ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... blackbird," observed Miss Byng; "see him there on the bush with pink blossoms. He's all black except his bill, and that looks as if it had been dipped in an omelet, as ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... ray of light is seen to fall on Florence, kneeling at the altar with her timid head bowed down. The morning luminary is built out, and don't shine there. There is a meagre tree outside, where the sparrows are chirping a little; and there is a blackbird in an eyelet-hole of sun in a dyer's garret, over against the window, who whistles loudly whilst the service is performing; and there is the man with the wooden leg stumping away. The amens of the dusty clerk appear, like Macbeth's, to stick ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... impressed me for an instant, for this reason, that it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in any sort of symbolic sacrifice. Men (I felt) might fast forty days for the sake of hearing a blackbird sing. Men might go through fire to find a cowslip. Yet these lovers of beauty could not even keep sober for the blackbird. They would not go through common Christian marriage by way of recompense to the cowslip. Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals. Oscar Wilde ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... doctor, readjusting his spectacles. "Here is a splendid one. No: a blackbird has been digging his beak into that. And into this one too. Really, my dear, I'm afraid that my garden friends and foes have been tasting them all. No, here is one with nothing the matter, save the contusion consequent from its fall from the ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... Robert's attention. There was something odd about him—something distressful and indignant. Whilst he prayed he made jerky, irritable movements which fluttered out the wings of his gown, so that with his sleek black hair and pointed face he looked like a large angry blackbird, trapped ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... at him hard, and waited a minute. She opened the door, peered out, trembled again, crossed the threshold, and returned with the body of a blackbird. ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... nest, Robin-redbreast! Sing, birds, in every furrow; And from each hill, let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow! You pretty elves, amongst yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow; To give my Love good-morrow Sing ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... these peculiar treasures, no one will be looked at more frequently, or will provoke a greater variety of opinions as to its intrinsic worth. Why should I be ambitious? Shall I write verses? I am not likely to surpass Mr. Tennyson or Mr. Browning in that walk. Shall I be a musician? The blackbird singing this moment somewhere in my garden shrubbery puts me to instant shame. Shall I paint? The intensest scarlet on an artist's palette is but ochre to that I saw this morning at sunrise. No, no, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... bring down Jasper under the idea he's a blackbird," retorted Ernest Wilton before Mr Rawlings had got out of earshot, as he started down the river-bank with Wolf following closely at his heels, in the manner befitting well-trained dogs of high degree ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the blackbird Pipes to vespers from his perch, And from out the clattering city Pass'd into ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... sake?" said one of us aloud; and then indeed did we burst out into rueful sobbing, and ask one another who could carry such tidings to Logan Braes? All at once we heard a clear, rich, mellow whistle as of a blackbird—and there with his favourite collie, searching for a stray lamb among the knolls, was Lawrie Logan, who hailed us with a laughing voice, and then asked us, "Where is Wee Willie?—hae ye flung him like another Joseph into the pit?" The consternation of our faces could not be misunderstood—whether ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... jolly person, and he was full of jokes. He sat there in the top of the tall butternut tree, and pretended that he was Mister Blackbird, and he sang Mister Blackbird's song all the way through. Then he said "Meow!" and then he sang a song very much like Robert Robin's "Rain" song, then he said "Meow!" again, and laughed. It made Robert Robin very angry to have Mister Catbird spoiling a good ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... melancholy sight; the shadows lengthen in the valleys, the sun withdraws, one by one, his rays from the darkening foliage, the silence deepens every minute. You look behind you; the groups and clumps of trees assume colossal proportions; a blackbird at the summit of a tree bids farewell to the parting day, then silence covers all like a funeral pall. You can only hear now the last year's dead leaves crisping under foot, and far, far, away a waterfall filling ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... cried La Fontaine, "is that Vanel, that determined blackbird, knowing that I was coming to Saint-Mande, implored me to bring him with me, and, if possible, to present him to ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hear the blackbird in the corn, The locust in the haying; And, like the fabled hunter's horn, Old tunes ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... her toes, her face magic with passion and mischief. "Give me time, Mr. James, give me time!" she cried, and her head fell back on her long white throat, while her laughter jetted in shaking, shy, thin gusts like a blackbird's song. And then she ceased. Her head fell forward. Her gown dropped from her outstretched hands, which she pressed against her bosom. A second past she had filled with spring this office damp with autumn; now she made it more asperous and grey than had November, for her season had changed ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... park some rooks cawed fussily over the choice of their night quarters. Nearer, a blackbird piped an evening song. They sounded restless and plaintive to the lonely boy, and he hid his face in his hands, covering eyes and ears that he might see nothing, hear nothing. Then into his mind there surged a recollection of the dear old free days at home, never ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... the Sam Huggs the Nimrod Wildfires, the Ralph Stackpoles, the Tom Bruces, and the Earthquakes, which so abound in most of those fictions whose locale is the Western country. But that naturalist who should attempt, by ever so minute a description of a pied blackbird, to give his readers a correct idea of the Gracula Ferruginea of ornithologists, would not more utterly fail of accomplishing his object, than have the authors whose creations we have named, by delineating such individual ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... in the garden, Hanging out the clothes; There came a little blackbird, And snipped ...
— Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading - Selected from English and American Literature • Horace Elisha Scudder, editor
... enraptured eyes of the noble poet. These two caterpillars and a few house-flies are all I saw, heard, or felt, by day or night, of the native fauna of England, except a few birds,—rooks, starlings, a blackbird, and the larks of Salisbury Plain just as they rose; for I lost sight of them almost immediately. I neither heard nor saw the nightingales, to my great regret. They had been singing at Oxford a short time before my visit to that place. The only song I heard was ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... slime, and stagnant water. Frogs and turtles warming their backs in the sunshine scampered in alarm from their logs. Lizards blinked at him. Moccasin snakes darted wicked forked tongues at him and then glided out of reach of his tomahawk. The frogs had stopped their deep bass notes. A swamp-blackbird rose in fright from her nest in the saw-grass, and twittering plaintively fluttered round and round over the pond. The flight of the bird worried Wetzel. Such little things as these might attract the attention of some Indian scout. But he hoped ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... indeed ever dubious. As for his wife, she had been dead twelve years. Some said he had joked her out of life, others that she had gone into consumption. He was a reader—perhaps the only one in all the village, and could whistle like a blackbird. To work hard, but without too great method, to drink hard, but with perfect method, and to talk nineteen to the dozen anywhere except at home—was his mode of life. In a word, he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... him. He had not known that there could be anything so intensely beautiful. Over the great Abbey the sun was rising heavenwards; down the street past the Almshouses he heard the happy sound of a young girl laughing. The world was full of strange new things; there was a new meaning in the song of the blackbird, in the rustle of the leaves, in the whispering of the warm wind. And suddenly there came over him a sensation of how far he himself was below the splendour of it all. He had walked through life with blinded eyes; with dulled senses he ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... dined nobly together upon two fat sparrows, and again we had a blackbird for dinner. He had killed it that morning from his window, while shaving, for I saw the lather dried on the ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... declared Spouter. "I heard my father say he wouldn't take four hundred dollars for Blackbird. And the other animals must be worth at least a hundred and fifty dollars apiece. You know they always had pretty good ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... green and bright, and rich in fruity treasure, I've heard the blackbird with delight repeat his merry measure; The ballad was a lively one, the tune was loud and cheery, And yet with every setting sun I listened for ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... wander by the woodland That hangs upon the hill; Hark! the cock is tuning His morning clarion shrill; And hurriedly awaking From his nest amid the spray, Cheerily now, the blackbird, Whistling, greets the day. For be it ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... blackbird, outside, sittin' on a limb,— Gosh! I wish it wasn't Sunday, p'raps I wouldn't go for him. Sis says stonin' birds is wicked, but she's got one on her hat,— S'pose that makes it right and proper, if yer kill 'em just for that. There's that dudey city feller, ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... when the climax came, a calm evening of late July, the dusk upon the lawn, and most of the house-party already gone upstairs to dress for dinner. I had been standing beside the open window for some considerable time, motionless, and listening idly to the singing of a thrush or blackbird in the shrubberies—when I heard the faint twanging of the harp-strings in the room behind me, and turning, saw that Marion had entered and was there beside the instrument. At the same moment she saw me, rose from the harp and came forward. During the day ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... the Kashmiri is a lineal descendant of the horse-leech). The shikari went to Smithson, and the sweeper and permanent coolie were transferred to the assistant forest officer, while Ayata (in charge of Freddie, the blackbird) scrambled into the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... use of such rooms. It is interesting to note also in the first case that in her wildest delirium during an acute attack she lived through episodes of her past life. One example may be given. In the course of her delirium she thought that a "blackbird" had flown to her, touched her left wrist and taken away all her vitality. This depended on an experience of her going to Germany when a girl and meeting a young German officer whom she did not like. ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... doubt his nest or the young from it were in the hedge. In feeding the young birds the old ones always perch first at a short distance, and after waiting a minute proceed to their fledgelings. Should a blackbird come at full speed across the meadow and stay on a hedge-top, and then go down into the mound, it is certain that his nest is there. If a thrush frequents a tree, flying up into the branches for a minute and then descending into ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... stimulating and valuable teachers. From his happily idle boyhood to the close of his fruitful career, Lowell's loyalty to Cambridge and Harvard was unalterable. Other tastes changed after wider experience with the world. He even preferred, at last, the English blackbird to the American bobolink, but the Harvard Quinquennial Catalogue never lost its savor, and in the full tide of his social success in London he still thought that the society he had enjoyed at the Saturday Club was the best society in the world. To deracinate Lowell was impossible, and ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... do?" asked the cook, in perplexity; "the King has ordered a blackbird pie, and your birds are the only ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... a whistle of peculiar volume, mellowness, and flexibility was heard. The whistler was trilling 'Come lasses and lads' in tones as delightful as a blackbird's. ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... like a furred fish, to his hole in the bank; and we glide rapidly over meadows where lately "the mower whet his scythe," through beds of frozen cranberries mixed with meadow grass. We skate near to where the blackbird, the pewee, and the kingbird hung their nests over the water, and the hornets builded from the maple in the swamp. How many gay warblers following the sun, have radiated from this nest of silver-birch and thistledown. ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... life in a new environment bring a multitude of minor changes with them. To begin with little things, our climate, our birds, our trees, our daily contact with nature, are all different. Your mellow fluting blackbird, your wise thrush that sings each song twice over, your high-fluttering larks we do not know. Our blackbird creaks discordantly, our plaintive lark sings from the meadow tussock, our thrush chimes his heavenly bell from forest dimness. And this accounts, may I suggest in passing, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... At this cliff the Missouri is confined within a bed of two hundred yards; and about four miles to the south east is a large lick and salt spring of great strength. About three miles further is Blackbird creek on the north side, opposite to which, is an island and a prairie inclosing a small lake. Five miles beyond this we encamped on the south side, after making, in the course of the day, thirteen miles. The land on the north is a high rich plain. On the south it is also ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... on a mass of stone, and seating himself in the proper attitude of one working with an awl, began a favourite interlude, mimicking a certain son of Crispin, at whose stall Scott and he had often lingered when they were schoolboys, and a blackbird, the only companion of his cell, that used to sing to him while he talked and whistled to it all day long. With this performance Scott was always delighted. Nothing could be richer than the contrast of the bird's wild, sweet notes, some of which he imitated with wonderful ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... HADDA PADDA (She is heard laughing). Shall I stone the raven away from his nest? Beware, you blackbird! (A small stone flies through the air, and falls ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... a rustling of the leaves behind her. She paused and looked round fearfully. A blackbird darted out of the hedge and away over the fields. Zelma smiled at her own alarm, and read on, till she reached ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... surrounds me, A blackbird's lay sings to me; Above my lined booklet The thrilling birds ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... shieling not too small, Familiar all, fair paths invite me; Now, blackbird, from my gable end, Sweet sable friend, thy notes ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... that scorn the mounting wings, The happy heights of souls serene, I wander where the blackbird sings, And over bubbling, shadowy springs, The beech-leaves cluster, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... of this little book, is an educated Indian, son of the Ottawa Chief. His Indian name is Mack-aw-de-be-nessy (Black Hawk), but he generally goes by the name of "Blackbird," taken from the interpretation of the French "L'Oiseau noir." Mr. Blackbird's wife is an educated and intelligent white woman of English descent, and they have four children. He is a friend of the white people, as well as of his own people. Brought up as an Indian, ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... passed, lying in the snow, claws in air and already stiff: a felt and a yellowhammer were side by side at the bottom of the hill. It was like the dead in gay uniforms, lying scattered after an action. A little further on there was a blackbird, to Murphy's very evident glee. He found it at once, and was for carrying it home; it was still warm. But this was no time for fooling. It was already dark and growing darker; the proper thing to do was to keep together and make for ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... size is rather less than a blackbird: the bill is black; the lower mandible yellowish at the base: head, back, wings, and tail, blue tinged with green: the under parts of the body white, extending round the middle of the neck like a ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... cars, toy pianos; but not one of their playthings was alive, like Piccola's birdling. They were as pleased as she, and Rose hunted about the house until she found a large wicker cage that belonged to a blackbird she once had. She gave the cage to Piccola, and the swallow seemed to make himself quite at home in it at once, and sat on the perch winking his bright eyes at the children. Rose had saved a bag of candies for Piccola, and when she went home at ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... the wonder of it should prove more than they could bear perhaps, a blackbird whistled with a burst of flying laughter at them from the shrubberies. Laughter and dancing both were part of wonder. The Tramp at once moved forward, chuckling in his beard; he waved his arms; his step was lighter, quicker; he was singing softly to himself: ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... most verdant and lively of all the family of trees. Here a broad, rude stone steppeth over a lazy spring, oozing its way into grass and weeds; anon a fresh pathway divergeth, you know not whither. Meanwhile the wild blackbird startles across the way and singeth anew in some other shade. To have seen Fiammetta there, stepping in silk attire, like a flower, and the sunlight looking upon her betwixt the branches! I had not walked ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... out at last, but it shone in a wintry sort of way,—like a duty smile,—as if light, not heat, were its object. A keen wind blew the dead leaves hither and thither in a wild dance that had no merriment in it. A blackbird flew under an old barrel by the wayside, and, ruffling himself into a ball, remarked despondently that feathers were no sort of protection in this kind of climate. A snowbird, flying by, glanced in at the barrel, and observed that anybody who minded ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... on our garden of goodly gifts * And all manner blooms that in wreaths entwine; See the birdies warble on every bough * Make melodious music the finest fine. And each Pippet pipes[FN217] and each Curlew cries * And Blackbird and Turtle with voice of pine; Ring-dove and Culver, and eke Hazar, * And Kata calling on Quail vicine; So fill with the mere and the cups make bright * With bestest liquor, that boon benign;— This site and sources and scents I espy * With Rizwan's ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... was divided into four sections: 1, Hawk people, under the chief Standing Hawk (now dead). 2, Blackbird people, under the chief Wajina-gahiga. B, Starling or Thunder people. 4, Owl and ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... rubies and the black like ebonies; and beyond it lay a bower of trelliced boughs growing fruits single and composite, and small birds on branches sang with melodious recite, and the thousand-noted nightingale shrilled with her varied shright; the turtle with her cooing filled the site; the blackbird whistled like human wight[FN47] and the ring-dove moaned like a drinker in grievous plight. The trees grew in perfection all edible growths and fruited all manner fruits which in pairs were bipartite; with the camphor- apricot, the almond-apricot ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... The blackbird also craves a boon, Says "Bring a cherry, bring a cherry, soon, soon, soon;" And there in answer to his call The cherry blooms on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... of a minute, I have heard it imitate the woodlark, chaffinch, blackbird, thrush, and sparrow.... Their few natural notes resemble those of the nightingale, but their song is of greater compass and more varied."—Ashe, Travels in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... animals carven on the balustrade; the green flicker of lizards on the drowsy garden-wall; the old-world sun-dial and the grotto and the marble fountain, and the cool green gloom of the cypress-grove with its delicious dapple of shadows. An invisible blackbird fluted overhead. He walked along the great walk under the stone eyes of sculptured gods, and looked out upon the hot landscape taking its siesta under the ardent blue sky—the green sunlit hills, the white nestling ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... DEAR DAD,—In some rustic nook reclining, silken tresses softly twining, Far-off bells so faintly ringing, While we list the blackbird singing, Merrily his roundelay. There! I composed those lines this morning during the process of shaving. I don't think they are very bad. I put them at the beginning of my letter so as to make sure that you will read them, a process of which I might reasonably be doubtful had I left ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... Mr. ROOSEVELT of a negative personality; and it is certain that he has told a very entertaining story. There are in this volume battle, murder, sudden death, outlaws, cowboys, bears, American politics, and the author's views on the English blackbird, all handsomely illustrated, and the price is only what you would (or would not) pay for a stall to see a musical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... Never could the blackbird or the throstle (From the poet each has had his due) Win from me such perfectly colossal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... replied. "Not yet! Maybe he isn't coming here this summer." Mr. Blackbird liked to tease little Mr. Chippy. And generally when he tried ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... she said, and heard His mate the blackbird calling, While through the sheen of the garden green May rain was softly ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... painted plumage gay, In hundreds haunt the grove; O'er marsh and moor, the loon and heron, The coot and plover rove; But I miss the lark's glad matin song, And the thrush and blackbird's lay, The summer songsters, sweet and wild, In the Green Isle, far away. Along the blue horizon line The "bluffs" rise 'gainst the sky, But in dreams I see Old Erin's coast— Her mountains wild and high Slieve Gallon, ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... himself. When in the woods, Tom's attitude and gait would at times resemble the movements of a cock pheasant: now stealing along for a few yards, listening for the slightest sound of any animal stirring in the underwood; now standing on tiptoe for a time, with bated breath. Did a blackbird—that dusky sentinel of the woods—utter her characteristic note of warning, he would whisper, "Hark!" Then, after due deliberation, he would add, "'Tis a fox!" or, "There's a fox in the grove," and then he would steal gently up to try to get a glimpse of reynard. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... of a hen blackbird without any trace of feathers on its neck or back is reported by a Worcester ornithologist. The attempt on the part of this bird to follow our present ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... perpetuated) known as Saint David Street. Nor is the town so large but a holiday schoolboy may harry a bird's nest within half a mile of his own door. There are places that still smell of the plough in memory's nostrils. Here, one had heard a blackbird on a hawthorn; there, another was taken on summer evenings to eat strawberries and cream; and you have seen a waving wheatfield on the site of your present residence. The memories of an Edinburgh boy are but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glades of mighty oak and ash, holly and thorn, swarming with game, which was as highly preserved then as now, under Canute's severe forest laws. The yellow roes stood and stared at him knee-deep in the young fern; the pheasant called his hens out to feed in the dewy grass; the blackbird and thrush sang out from every bough; the wood-lark trilled above the high oak-tops, and sank down on them as his song sank down. And Hereward rode on, rejoicing in it all. It was a fine world in the Bruneswald. What was it then ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... she cam' there, An', oh, the scene was passing fair! For what in Scotland can compare Wi' the Carse o' Gowrie? The sun was setting on the Tay, The blue hills melting into gray; The mavis' and the blackbird's lay Were sweetly heard ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of river awakened her interest; Blackbird Island was clearly described: Buffalo Island harked back many years into tradition; Dogtooth Island was a matter of river shape; but Saladin, Tow Head and Orient Field stirred her imagination, for they might ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... of their own room upstairs, Briggs said his head ached ready to split, and that he should wish himself dead if it wasn't for his mother, and a blackbird he had at home Tozer didn't say much, but he sighed a good deal, and told Paul to look out, for his turn would come to-morrow. After uttering those prophetic words, he undressed himself moodily, and got into bed. Briggs was in his bed too, and Paul in his bed too, before the weak-eyed ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... of my manhood and the prime of my devilishness in which Oxford renegades and racing younger sons had nothing on me, I found myself master and owner of a schooner so well known that she shall remain historically nameless. I was running blackbird labour from the west South Pacific and the Coral Sea to the plantations of Hawaii and the nitrate mines ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... all the scene was shaken with a babel of bird notes in which you could hear a cardinal whistling, and a blue finch piping. Back somewhere among the high branches a dove cooed and then a horse neighed shrilly. That set a blackbird crying, "T'check," and a whole flock answered it. The crows began to caw and a lamb bleated. Then the grosbeaks, chats, and vireos had something to say, and the sun rose higher, the light grew stronger and the breeze rustled the ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... straddling wide forward-step, and his springy side-wise series of hops, and his impudent air, and his cunning way of canting his head to one side upon occasion, he reminds one of the American blackbird. But the sharp resemblances stop there. He is much bigger than the blackbird; and he lacks the blackbird's trim and slender and beautiful build and shapely beak; and of course his sober garb of gray and rusty black is a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... birds, the sole speaker occasionally drops into English, or I should never have understood what was going on. He may be a blackbird or thrush, but I doubt it, because I know all their remarks, while his are new to me. If A.A.M. heard them he would probably tell me they were those of a "Blackman's Warbler," and I should have believed him—once. Hardly now, after he has so airily exposed his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... whisky-jacks used to eat out of the pemmican bags left in the boats; so I lay down close to one, under cover of a buffalo-skin, and in three minutes had made prisoner of another of these little inhabitants of the forest. They are of a bluish-grey colour, and nearly the size of a blackbird; but they are such a bundle of feathers that when plucked they do not look much larger than a sparrow. They live apparently on animal food (at least, they are very fond of it), and are not considered very ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... to put two words of this kind which express but one idea under a single accent, and when this has taken place, no one but the student of language any longer observes what the elements really mean. When the ordinary man talks of a "blackbird" it is certainly not present to his consciousness that he is talking of a black bird, unless for some reason conversation has been dwelling upon the colour rather than ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... hearken to the birds love-learned song, The deawy leaves among! For they of ioy and pleasance to you sing, 90 That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring. [* Mavis, song-thrush.] [** Descant, variation.] [@ Ouzell, blackbird.] [$ Ruddock, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... October 1, when pheasant shooting begins, a white pheasant was seen, and although he disappeared for a time, he fell eventually to the gun of the tenant. He was a beautiful bird, and was considered worth stuffing as a rarity. Albinism is not uncommon in the blackbird; I have seen two partial instances lately; one was constantly visible in my garden and meadows, with head nearly all white, and the other I saw in the public garden at Bournemouth, with the peculiarity still more developed. A white martin, or swallow, came into the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... that, now! But, dear heart, I was the same at your age, and should be now, like enough. Fetch them all, as quick as you like. I am feared to leave Blackbird, or I'd help ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... the air and gave a bird-call. Birds gathered and she swooped amongst them pulling feathers off their backs and out of their wings. Soon there was a heap of feathers on the ground—pigeons' feathers and pie's feathers, crane's and crow's, blackbird's and starling's. The King of Ireland's Son quickly gathered them into his bag. The falcon flew to another place and gave her bird-call again. The birds gathered, and she went amongst them, plucking their feathers. The King's Son gathered them and the blue falcon flew to another place. Over ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... enjoyed, had been that of "The King in his counting house, counting out his money," and "The Queen in her kitchen, eating bread and honey," and "The Girl hanging out the clothes," and "The Saucy Blackbird that snipped off her nose." In playing these, the children had aprons full of what seemed to be real coins, the size of crowns, or five-shilling pieces, each worth a dollar. These had "head and tail," beside letters on them and the boy supposed they ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... and carried out to the fullest possible extent in accordance with the ante mortem wishes of the dead, were the obsequies of Blackbird, the great chief of the Omahas. The account is given ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... and broad Mississippi, Bank-full, sweeping on, with tangled masses of drift-wood, Daintily breathed about with whiffs of silvery vapor, Where in his arrowy flight the twittering swallow alighted, And the belated blackbird paused on the ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... To hear the Blackbird, Cuckoo, Thrush, Or any bird in song; And common leaves that hum all day, Without a throat ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... since, in the neighborhood of Ronen and in the valley of Monville, the blackbird was for some time proscribed. The beetles profited well by this proscription; their larvae, infinitely multiplied, carried on their subterranean labors with such success, that a meadow was shown me, the surface of which was completely dried up, every herbaceous ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... returned the man, taking off his paper cap and rubbing up his bristly gray hair. 'We call Jack "The Blackbird" among us; he is a famous whistler, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... softest note Builds its nest and warbles well; Here the blackbird strains his throat; ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... was not inferior in height to the old one's, but his shoulders were narrower, his features less broad and full, and his hair and beard had the glossy raven hue of the blackbird's plumage. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... if you could work as well as she does, and show as strong a pair of arms as she can. I haven't seen a prettier picture for some time than she made of herself this morning, up to the elbows in suds, singing like a blackbird whilst she scrubbed ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... Blackbird with bright yellow head and breast is very abundant in some parts of the west, where they nest in large colonies in sloughs and marshes, being especially abundant in the Dakotas and Manitoba. The nests are made of strips of rushes, skillfully woven together ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... vervain, which was termed "pigeon's-grass." Once more, the cuckoo, according to an old proverbial rhyme, must eat three meals of cherries before it ceases its song; and it was formerly said that orchids sprang from the seed of the thrush and the blackbird. Further illustrations might be added, whereas some of the many plants named after well-known birds are ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... was met by a vigilance committee of red-shouldered blackbirds. He did not stop to eat any of them, but darted up, and they after him. On up he went, round and round in a rapid, mounting spiral, till only one of the daring redwings followed. I watched. Up they went, higher than I had ever seen a blackbird venture before. And against such unequal odds! But the hawk was scared and had not stopped to look back. He circled; the blackbird cut across inside and caught him on almost every round. And still higher in pure bravado the redwing forced him. I began to ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... realising these birds and beasts to themselves, but we are shocked at the notion of giving them a similar aid to the realisation of events which, as we say, concern them more nearly than any others, in the history of the world. A stuffed rabbit or blackbird is a good thing. A stuffed Charge of Balaclava again is quite legitimate; but a stuffed Nativity is, ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... of the blackbird Quickens the unclasping hands of hazel, Somewhere the wind-flowers fling their heads back, Stirred by an impetuous wind. Some ways'll All be sweet with white and blue violet. (Hush ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... to take your "Blackbird,"[66] the sweetest, I am sure, that ever sung, and prune ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... myself and business again, after a small playing the truant, for I find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty. To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, which I went to see. He tells me he was offered 20s. for him as he came along, he do so whistle. So to my office, and busy all the morning, among other things, learning to understand the course of the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... rabbit to old Jenny, and asked her to give it to the little girl—and when he heard the latter say—"Oh, what a pretty little thing! tell Paul, thanky!" After this, by slow degrees, he was enabled to approach "the little blackbird" without alarming her. And after a while he coaxed her to take a row in his little boat, and a ride on his little pony—always qualifying his attentions by saying that he did not like girls as a general thing, but that she was different ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... 'The man forlorn Hears Earth send up a foolish noise aloft.' 'And what'll he do? What'll he do?' scoff'd The Blackbird, standing, in an ancient thorn, Then spread his sooty wings and flitted to the croft With cackling laugh; Whom I, being half Enraged, called after, giving ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... wi' buzz an' hum, Into ma garden voes do come; The waspies starm ma gabled wall An' into t' trenches t' grub do crawl. The blackbird, sparrer, tit, an' thrush Do commandeer each curran' bush, While slugs off lettuce take their smack, And maggots turn the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... 190 This open glen was studded thick with thorns Then white with blossom; and you saw the horns, Through last year's fern, of the shy fallow-deer Who come at noon down to the water here. You saw the bright-eyed squirrels dart along 195 Under the thorns on the green sward; and strong The blackbird whistled from the dingles near, And the weird chipping of the woodpecker Rang lonelily and sharp; the sky was fair, And a fresh breath of spring stirr'd everywhere. 200 Merlin and Vivian stopp'd on the slope's brow, To gaze on the light sea of leaf and bough Which glistering plays all ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... Yellow-bellied Sapsucker King Bird Cat Bird Towhee Robin Meadow Lark Prairie Horned Lark Baltimore Oriole Orchard Oriole Whip-poor-will Night Hawk Pigeon Hawk Sparrow Hawk Mourning Dove Rose-breasted Grosbeak Evening Grosbeak Purple Finch Red-winged Blackbird Rusty Blackbird Bobolink Mocking Bird Starling Purple Grackle Humming Bird Yellow-breasted Chat Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Tufted Titmouse Brown Creeper House Wren Marsh Wren Brown Thrasher Wood Thrush Hermit Thrush Wilson Thrush Water Thrush Chimney Swift Bank Swallow Rough-winged ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... will bring my quotations to a close with the following, which seeks to prove the contrary. Dr. C. B. GARRETT ("The Human Voice," J. and J. Churchill, London, 1875, p. 17) says, "It is recorded that the larynx of a blackbird was removed by severing the windpipe just below it; that the poor 'thing continued to sing, though in a feebler tone.' This proves that notes can be formed behind the instrument and before the air reaches it." This argument, however, is of ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... to fix it," said Earl, "eggs or calf's blood I wont quarrel with you about the eggs, though I never heerd o' blue ones afore, 'cept the robin's and bluebird's and I've heerd say the swamp blackbird lays a handsome blue egg, but I never happened to see the nest myself; and there's the chippin' sparrow; but you'd want to rob all the bird's nests in creation to get enough of 'em, and they aint here in sugar time, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... dinner-time. Our way lies under yonder arch, and up the narrow alley into a paved court. Here are oleanders in pots, and plants of Japanese spindle-wood in tubs; and from the walls beneath the window hang cages of all sorts of birds—a talking parrot, a whistling blackbird, goldfinches, canaries, linnets. Athos, the fat dog, who goes to market daily in a barchetta with his master, snuffs around. 'Where are Porthos and Aramis, my friend?' Athos does not take the joke; he only wags his stump of tail and pokes his nose into ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... him; he's as suspicious as a blackbird," replied Rigou. "He is not a man at all, that priest; he doesn't care for women; I can't find out that he has any passion; there's no point at which one can attack him. The general lays himself open by his temper. A man with a vice is the servant of his enemies if they know how to ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... in the same slow, hopeless voice. "I forgot you men don't come down here very often and that my driver never has anything to say to anybody. Why, it's the Blackbird mine over across the divide—on the east spur. Bad, old fashioned mine she was, with crawlin' ground. Lime streaks all through the formation and plenty of water. Nobody quite knows how it happened. There was a big slip over there a few days ago on the four-hundred-foot level. Thirty odd ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... a gay air of bravado; passing from one chanty to another in a voice fluty as a blackbird. Stane smiled to himself. He liked her spirit, and he knew that that would carry her through the difficulties that lay before them, even when the flesh was inclined to failure. But presently the springs of song dried up, and when the silence had lasted ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... bonny golden broom To bind thy flowing hair; For thee the eglantine shall bloom, Whose fragrance fills the air. We'll sit beside yon wooded knoll, To hear the blackbird sing, And fancy in his merry troll The joyous voice ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... was opened The birds began to sing: Was that not a dainty dish To set before the king? The king was in his counting-house, Counting out his money, The queen was in the parlour, Eating bread and honey; The maid was in the garden, Hanging out the clothes; Down came a blackbird, And snapt ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... and rushes are cleverly interwoven. In others, the parts are firmly fastened by a thread, which the bird makes of hemp, wool, hair, or, more commonly, of spiders' webs. Other birds—as, for instance, the blackbird and the lapwing—after they have constructed their nests, plaster the inside with mortar; they then stick upon it, while quite wet, some wool or moss to give warmth; but all alike construct their nests so as ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous
... named, birds are most destructive, while the peanuts are in shock. Such birds as the blue-jay, crow, partridge, yellow hammer, wild turkey, and blackbird, coming, as some of them do, not singly, but in companies and flocks of hundreds and thousands at a time, carry off vast quantities, unless the planter is always on the alert, gun in hand, ready to meet them at every turn. Near the James, ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... creation of women. If they envy her they will hate her also; and I doubt if she will have many more friends among the fisher-lads. They will look upon her as a renegade to her order. The old women will suspect her, and the old men look askance at her with disapproving eyes. The girl will be a white blackbird; the properly colored birds will drive her out of the colony or pick her to death. It is ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... blackbird sings the latest, Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest, Where the nestlings chirp and flee, That's the way ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... mais de quoi parler,' etc. Well: a Blackbird is singing in the little Garden outside my Lodging Window, which is frankly opened to what Sun there is. It has been a singular half year; only yesterday Thunder in rather cold weather; and last week the Road and Rail ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... and images connected with them. Some one is apostrophizing a friend, whose ghost he is convinced will be found haunting an English lane, with its adjoining corn-field and hazel coppice: where in the early summer the blackbird sings, and the bean-flower scents the air. And he declares at the same time that Italy is the land of his own love, whether his home there be a castle in the Apennine, or some house on its southern shore; among "wind-grieved" ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... in the wonderful depths of Craythew Park, and of birds there was no end. There were game birds and song birds, from the handsome pheasants to the modest little partridges, the royalists and the puritans of the woods, from the love-lorn wood-pigeon, cooing in the tall firs, to the thrush and the blackbird, making long hops as they quartered the ground for grubs; and the robin, the linnet, and little Jenny Wren all lived there in riotous plenty of worms and snails; and nearer to the great house the starlings and jackdaws shot down in a great hurry from the holes in old trees ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... in the house. The little girl could return now to that "very nice school" where other nice little girls went. She departed every morning beside the Laundryman, tugging at her arm, skipping and chattering like a blackbird in June. Ernestine saw her safely up the school steps and then took the car to her business. Milly, after the housekeeping and her morning duties, walked up town for her daughter and spent most of the ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Jimmy. "I never waste time wishing I could do things it was never meant I should do. It's funny where Old Mr. Toad is. He said that he was coming down here to sing, and Redwing the Blackbird seemed to be expecting him. I've looked everywhere I can think of without finding him, but I don't believe in giving up without another try. Stop your dreaming and come help ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... Musset. He was annoyed, and declared that a woman out of sorts was very trying. There are good reasons for believing that he had found her very trying for some time. He was very elegant and she a learned "white blackbird." He was capricious and she a placid, steady bourgeois woman, very hard-working and very regular in the midst of her irregularity. He used to call her "personified boredom, the dreamer, the silly woman, the nun," when he did not use terms which we cannot ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... Head ought to get the V.C.," said Stalky. "Why, he might have been dead and buried by now. But he wasn't. But he didn't. Ho! ho! He just nipped through the hedge like a lusty old blackbird. Extra-special, five hundred lines, an' gated for a ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... a blackbird, Joe," continued our visitor; "he has spent half his time in killing slugs and snails, and lugging poor unfortunate worms out of their holes; and it seems to me that the slug or the worm is just as ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... gentle massage that stimulated her purring, apparently at the expense of her color and size, for in a few moments she also dwindled until she became a very small, coal-black kitten, changing in a twinkling to a blackbird, when he cast her carelessly toward the ceiling. It was well done; in all India no magician could have done ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... on her little horsehair trunk which she had packed to take to Blossy's, looking in her time-worn silk gown like a rusty blackbird, and, like a bird, she bent her head first to one side and then the other, surveying Abe in his "barrel clothes" with a critical but ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... together in a carriage, after breakfast, on a soft yet frosty morning, such as often gives to this region a winter sparkle and mildness like the Florida climate. They passed several tidal creeks, as the Duck and the Little Duck, the Blackbird and the Apoquinimink, and, as they advanced, the barns became larger, the hedges more tasteful and trimmed like those in the French Netherlands, the leafless peach orchards stretched out like the tea-plants in China. Two or three little towns studded the roadside, the woods gave way altogether ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Baltimore orioles, chipping sparrows, robins, English sparrows, meadow larks, crows, golden-winged woodpeckers, and quail eat the army worm, but of all these helpers, none is so valuable for this work as the red-winged blackbird and the crow blackbird. ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... though the dodo once inhabited it, and perhaps still exists among some of the thick jungles in the interior, into which no human being has as yet penetrated. The only songster is called a martin. He is somewhat larger than a blackbird, and pied like a magpie. He is a lively, chattering fellow, very good-looking into the bargain, and, from his sociable qualities, a great favourite with everybody. There are several species of amadavides, or love birds, of the finch tribe, with red beaks, which, as they live ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the nest there were three eggs—pale-green with reddish spots. And Diarmait knew the bird and knew the eggs, and he told the Abbot, who came noiselessly, and looked with a great love at the open house and the three eggs of the mother blackbird. ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... green, Training the young boughs airily to bend, And show blue snatches of the sky between;— Or knit more close intricacies, to screen Birds' crafty dwellings, as may hide them best, But most the timid blackbird's—she that, seen, Will bear black poisonous berries to her nest, Lest man should cage the darlings ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... weather. The Bishop of Carlisle has been with me two days at Strawberry, where we saw the eclipse(572) to perfection: -not that there was much sight in it. The air was very chill at the time, and the light singular; but there was not a blackbird that left off singing for it. In the evening the Duke of Devonshire came with the Straffords from t'other end of Twickenham, and drank tea with us. They had none of them seen the gallery since it was finished; even the chapel was new to the Duke, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... alight on a telegraph wire stretching across the park. Examining the picture in BIRDS I was somewhat disappointed to find that the live specimen was not so brilliantly marked as in the picture. Presently, however, another Blackbird alighted near, who seemed to be the veritable presentment of the photograph. Then it occured to me that I had seen the Red Wing before, without knowing its name. It kept repeating a rich, juicy note, oncher-la-ree-e! its tail tetering at quick intervals. A few days later I observed a large number ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... be a rare blackbird, Senor Francisco," returned my friend, vainly endeavoring to recover his customary gravity. "By Saint Cristobal! I have not laughed so heartily for a year past as at this poor black fool. Faith, I sought to enlist him in the service of His Most Christian Majesty, yet ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... fall gently and sadly through the calm, sweet air; grey mists drape the fields and hedges. The migratory birds have left, save a few late swallows; and as I sit at work in the soft, still rain, I can hear the blackbird's melancholy trill and the thin pipe of the redbreast's winter song— the air is full of the ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... circumstance so called. The selaya, or punei andu, another variety, has the body and wings of deep crimson, with the head, and extremity of its long indented tail, white; the legs red. It lives on the worms generated in the decayed part of old trees, and is about the size of a blackbird. Of the same size is the burong sawei, a bird of a bluish black colour, with a dove-tail, from which extend two very long feathers, terminating circularly. It seems to be what is called the widow-bird, and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... flashed, golden-green, on soot-blackened branches of chestnut, plane, and lime. And there were flowers everywhere—in squares and window-boxes and parks; in florists' and milliners' windows; in the baskets of flower-sellers and in women's hats. The paper-boy—blackbird of the London streets—whistled a livelier stave. Girls hurried past smiling at nothing in particular. They were glad to be ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... he kept singing something about a man named "Sylvester," and he kept singing out the same thing over and over again, till Aunty May said, "Oh, dear, I can't hear myself speak. Edith, will you quiet the blackbird?" And Aunty Edith called to George not to sing so loud, and he said, "Yas, 'm, Miss Edith"; and the next minute it began louder ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... showers or sunbeams over the glistening lake, while far beneath its surface a murky mass disengages itself from the muddy bottom, and rises slowly through the waves. The tasselled alder-branches droop above it; the last year's blackbird's nest swings over it in the grapevine; the newly-opened Hepaticas and Epigaeas on the neighboring bank peer down modestly to look for it; the water-skater (Gerris) pauses on the surface near it, casting on the shallow bottom the odd shadow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various |
