"Rook" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The rook croaked homeward heavily, The west was clear and warm, The smoke of evening food and ease Rose like a blue tree in the trees When he came ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... went in at one ear and out at the other, and were all cast upon the sea; and the poor King, seeing that his son was as immovable as a rook upon a belfry, gave him a handful of dollars and two or three servants; and bidding him farewell, he felt as if his soul was torn out of his body. Then weeping bitterly, he went to a balcony, and followed his son with his eyes until he ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... the thought of these veiled ladders on which we all live, like climbing monkeys! Many a black-coated clerk in a flat may comfort himself for his sombre garb by reflecting that he is like some lonely rook in an immemorial elm. Many a wealthy bachelor on the top floor of a pile of mansions should look forth at morning and try (if possible) to feel like an eagle whose nest just clings to the edge of some awful cliff. How sad that the word "giddy" ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... "But that a rook by wearing a pied feather, The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff, A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot On his French garters, should affect a humour! O, it is ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... And rook and daw and stare their pinions spread Incontinent; for, so they judged the matter, Some scowling foe stood there, and off ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... apiece; and under its influence became boastful. Insensibly the adventure of the beaver hat came to wear the aspect of a dashing practical joke. It encouraged us to exchange confidences of earlier deeds of derring-do, of bird-nesting, of rook-shooting, of angling for trout, of encounters with poachers. I remember crossing my knees, holding up my glass to the light, and remarking sagely that some poachers were not at all bad fellows. Hartnoll agreed that it depended how you ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... brook, rook; drake, rake; flute, lute; pearl, earl; plane, lane; wheel, heel; spine, pine; ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... packed up a bundle of articles, crept down again, and went out of the house. She had a place of refuge in these cases of necessity, and her father knew it, and was less alarmed at seeing her depart than he might otherwise have been. This place was Rook's Gate, the house of her grandmother, who always took Margery's part when that young woman was particularly in ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... again, I listened at the window, but all was quiet outside. "Let him blow!" I thought, undressed myself, and got into the magnificent bed, where I seemed to be fairly swimming in milk and honey! The old linden in the court-yard rustled, a rook now and then flew off the roof, and at last, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... dark bright eyes of the little Jan first came to be of tender interest with Mrs. Lake, she fully hoped, and constantly prophesied, that he would be "as black as a rook;" a style of complexion to which she gave a distinct preference, though the miller was fair by nature as well as white by trade. ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... beautiful, surpassing their relatives found in other parts of the world. There are numerous varieties, differing in size—from the trogon viridis, scarcely larger than a sparrow, to the beautiful trogon, with its handsome tail, the size of a rook. Often they are to be seen in the depths of the forest, sitting motionless for hours together, simply moving their heads, watching apparently for insects, or sometimes scanning the neighbouring trees for fruit. Having selected a ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... certain extent confirmed by Mr. MacCulloch, who says he is very doubtful as to the occurrence of the Jay in the Island, and adds that the local name for the Mistletoe Thrush is "Geai." Mr. Gallienne, in a note to Professor Ansted's list, confirms the scarcity of the Jay, as he says the Rook and the Jay are rarely seen here, although they are indigenous to Jersey. The local name "Geai" may perhaps have misled him as to the occasional appearance of the Jay. I have never seen a ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... the Rook and the sorrowful Crow, To tell birds the cause why in mourning they go, Ever since their old loves their embraces forsook; And all seemed to pity the Crow ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... honey of love my spirits thirst could stay. I sit at the chess with her I love, and she plays with me, With white and with black; but this contenteth me no way. Meseemeth as if the king were set in the place of the rook And sought with the rival queens a bout of the game to play. And if I looked in her eyes, to spy the drift of her moves, The amorous grace of her glance would doom ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... Oh, you! Did I say the 'root' had been striking then, or rather, that the seeds, whence the roots take leisure and grow, they had been planted then—and might not a good heart and hand drop acorns enough to grow up into a complete Dodona-grove,—when the very rook, say farmers, hides and forgets whole navies of ship-wood one day to be, in his summer storing-journeys? But this shall do—I am not going to prove what may be, when here it is, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... roads, Often with both hands had to lug them out? Us, who, not having jujubes for our coughs, Took day-long foot-baths in the freezing Danube? Who just had leisure when some officer Came riding up, and gayly cried "To arms! The enemy is on us! Drive him back!" To eat a slice of rook—and raw at that, Or quickly mix a delicate ice-cream With melted snow and a dead horse's blood? ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand
... little room very simply furnished with green furniture and an old bureau—for Banghurst was simple in all his private ways. It was hung with little engravings after Morland and it had a shelf of books. But as it happened, Banghurst had left a rook rifle he sometimes played with on the top of the desk, and on the corner of the mantelshelf was a tin with three or four cartridges remaining in it. As Filmer went up and down that room wrestling with his intolerable dilemma he went ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... since gone to his rest, but his name remains green among the villagers. To-day the traveler can see his elevated grave at Tigme[a]rook, about six miles east of the village of Tigara, at which place his career came to a sudden end through the agency of an arrow driven by ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... was an expert cement-mixer and knew just how to load and unload the tool-car, two sinecures of sorts, nothing was ever said to him. If any one dared to reprove him, myself for instance (a mere interloper to Jimmie), he would reply: "Yeh! Yeh! I know-a my biz. I been now with Misha Rook fifteen year. I know-a my biz." If you made any complaint to Rourke, he would merely grin and say, "Ha! Jimmie's the sharp one," or perhaps, "I'll get ye yet, ye fox," but more than that nothing was ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... servility which they are most appropriately used to describe, are so unfamiliar to contemporary novel-readers that we think few will master two hundred pages of this dialect in the present edition. On the whole, after renewing our old acquaintance with Mr. Jeames, with Captain Rook and Mr. Pigeon, with Mr. Stubbs of the Fatal Boots, and others of the same kidney, we doubt whether these immature character sketches, which all belong to the author's first and most Hogarthian manner, do not range below the legitimate boundaries of literature as ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... He sleeps in his turret with a complaining flag- staff over his head, and has some leads outside on which, any fine morning when he is down here, his black figure may be seen walking before breakfast like a larger species of rook. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... can hardly tell,—aw'll be sunken iv aw can tell. It's very thin pikein'; but very little does for me, an' aw've nought but mysel'. Yo see'n, aw get a bit ov a job neaw an' then, an' a scrat amung th' rook, like an owd hen. But aw'll tell yo one thing; aw'll not go up yon, iv aw can help it,—aw'll not." ("Up yon" meant to the Board of Guardians.) "Eh, now," said the woman of the house, "aw never see'd sich a man as him i' my life. See yo, he'll sit an' clem fro mornin' to neet ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... own idea of it is that K. O. was trying you out on purpose. And I'll wager the K. O. was glad to find a rook sentry so thoroughly alive to his job. Though I doubt if you'll get commended in orders for just being awake. But that reminds me of something that happened to me, in the Philippines," laughed Brimmer. "I was sergeant of the guard out there, and one night the colonel of another regiment ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... Marshall County, Mississippi. Born during slavery. I b'long to Master John Rook. He died during the Civil War. Miss Patsy Rook raised me. I put on her shoes, made up her bed, fetched ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Sir James spared no pains to win their good will. He gave the Terror a rook-rifle and Erebus boxes of chocolate. If he chanced on them when motoring in the afternoon he would carry them off, bicycles and all, in his car and regale them with sumptuous teas at the Grange; and at Colet House ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... ago—I can't say when exactly, but it was before I came down here—this unnatural son introduced to the parental abode (which I think is either No. 5 or No. 6 in a row of young chestnuts abutting on the high road) a rook of more than dubious reputation, whom he persuaded his unsuspecting sire to put up for the night. And there the rook has been ever since. As I said, I have neither heard nor seen him, but I'm positive he's there. I am ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... for the last time before wrapping them up for the messenger, she felt something hard among them. It was a tiny parcel wrapped in a piece of a fine kerchief, tied round with a tress of dark hair, and within, Susan knew by the feeling, a certain chess rook which had been won by Cis when shooting at the butts a week or ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stiff, and speaking by rote, or talking politics. How glad I used to be to get on horseback again! But to see these—why, it is like the shepherd's glimpse at the pixies!—as one reads a new book, or watches what one only half understands—a rook's parliament, or a gathering of sea-fowl ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spirits? Why on earth should you ever be out of spirits? Is your last box of Doucet dresses a failure, or did Judy rook you out of everything at ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... see something fit to make us think. Far off on the clear gray sky appears a wavering speck which rises and falls and sways from side to side in an extraordinary way. Nearer and nearer the speck comes, until at last we find ourselves standing under a rook which flies with great difficulty. The poor rascal looks most disreputable, for his tail has evidently been shot away, and he is wounded. He drops on to a perch, but not before he has run the gauntlet of several lines ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... pagoda; Pacauca; Balanjar, a-muck; Pariah; Govi; Avarian; Abraiaman; Choiach; proques; Tembul and Betel; Sappan and Brazil; Balladi; Belledi; Indigo baccadeo; Gatpaul, baboon; Salami cinnamon; [Greek: komakon]; rook (in chess); Aranie; Erculin and Vair; Miskal. —— (of Proper Names), Curd; Dzungaria; Chingintalas; Cambuscan; Oirad; Kungurat; Manzi; Bayan; Kinsay; Japan; Sornau; Narkandam; Ceylon; Ma'bar; Chilaw; Mailapur; Sonagarpattanam; Punnei-Kayal, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Colonel Warren, my host, and under his roof, the morning after my arrival, I first definitely felt that I had left the West behind me, when I found that a noise by which I had been just awakened, and which sounded like the cawing of a rook, was that of the muezzin borne from a neighboring minaret and requesting me ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... Wood-Pecker's. Of the nests of Rooks, it may be sufficient to observe, that they are often found to the number of six, or even more in a cluster. Crows' nests are always solitary; they are similar in structure to those of the rook. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... of his voice died away in the echoes of the cloisters, but of other answer there was none. At that instant a rook, no doubt one of the birds he had disturbed, came diving down, and flapped its wings across the burial-ground. The sight of something, moving there, almost startled Charles out of his senses, and the matter was not much mended when he discovered ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... last birthday. Next, his unmarried sister—nearly eighty. Next, his man-servant, Mr. Rook—well past sixty. And last, his man-servant's wife, who considers herself young, being only a little over forty. That is the household. Mrs. Rook is coming to-day to attend Emily on the journey to the North; and I am not at all sure that ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... experiment also shows that they help comrades in distress. If a Wolf or a Rook be ill or injured, we are told that it is driven away or even killed by its comrades. Not so with Ants. For instance, in one of my nests an unfortunate Ant, in emerging from the chrysalis skin, injured her legs so much that she lay on her back quite helpless. ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... getting to the end of it. At a distance, when our smoke-sail yard was manned; we looked like a parcel of larks spitted, with one great goose in the midst of us. "Doey, get beyond me, zur; doey, Mr Rattlin," he would say. "Ah! zur, I'd climb with any bragger in this ship for a rook's nest, where I ha' got a safe bough to stand upon; but to dance upon this here see-sawing line, and to call it a horse, too, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Cock then blew his horn, To let the neighbors know, This was Robin's wedding-day, And they might see the show. And first came parson Rook, With his spectacles and band, And one of Mother Hubbard's books He held within ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... the table with a small rook-rifle in her hands. The breech was open. She looked down the barrel, holding up the weapon so that the light ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... forced smile, and took up the spare gun with an expression of countenance which a metaphysical rook, impressed with a foreboding of his approaching death by violence, may be supposed to assume. It might have been keenness, but it looked remarkably like misery. The old gentleman nodded; and two ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... surprise at the statement. "He's a strange mixture, is Mr. Hilton. He's a fair nailer with a revolver. I've seen him hit a penny three times straight off at twelve paces, and, when in the mind, he would bowl over running rabbits with a rook rifle. Yet he never joined the shooting parties in October. Said it made him ill to see graceful birds shattered by clumsy folk. All the same, he would ill-treat a horse something ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... that ripped out from the defenders of the camp. Half of the marksmen fired to the right of the rook, ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... passion of the nocturn, make it the work of an informing genius. As for the gruesome bird, he is unlike all the other ravens of his clan, from the "twa corbies" and "three ravens" of the balladists to Barnaby's rumpled "Grip." Here is no semblance of the cawing rook that haunts ancestral turrets and treads the field of heraldry; no boding phantom of which Tickell sang ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... what I meant by coming aft all salt, like a head sea, making the deck wet after he'd squeegeed it down. Another told me to wait till the second mate caught me. "I'd be sorry then," he said, "that ever I spilt the slush;" with other sea-jests, all of them pretty brutal. It is said that if a strange rook comes to a rookery the other rooks peck it to death, or at any rate drive it away. I know not if this be true of rooks (I know that sparrows will attack owls or canaries, whenever they have a chance), but it is true enough of human beings. We all hate ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... filled up. But the original difficulty remains; for if your farmers had not killed your sparrows and rooks, what would have become of those which now immigrate into your parish? in the middle of England one is too far distant from the natural limits of the rook and sparrow to suppose that the young are thus far expelled from Cambridgeshire. The check must fall heavily at some time of each species' life; for, if one calculates that only half the progeny are reared and bred, how enormous is the increase! One has, however, no business ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... as soon as it ceased raining—and, though there were many cabins along the road, few were better than this. At length, after passing the walls of an old church, in the midst of older tombs, we saw the roofless towers of Dunluce Castle, on the sea-shore. It stands on an isolated rook, rising perpendicularly two hundred feet above the sea, and connected with the cliffs of the mainland by a narrow arch of masonry. On the summit of the cliffs were the remains of the buildings where the ancient lords kept their vassals. An old man, who takes care of it ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... walking up and down the floor, stamping his lance as he went. He is the leader we have been waiting for. But it is not always thus that he speaks, Joseph interposed, I have heard him myself say: it is as hard for a rich man to enter heaven as it would be for a cow to calve in a rook's nest. As he went to and fro Nicodemus muttered: there is much to be said for this revision of his words. Jesus wishes to reach the imagination of the poor that know not swords. And he spoke for a long time of the indolence of the ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... the grasshopper says, "but I am in fear of being pounced upon by a hungry bird. What bird have I most reason to fear?" The ants answer: The rook, ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... his head against a wall like a hooded rook as he was. So giddy had he become at the sight of this creature, even more enticing than a siren rising from the water. He noticed the animals carved over the door and returned to the house of the archbishop with his head full of diabolical ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... runs into riot in a short time, though even then his early impressions do not altogether fade. But if we lay hold of him, bring him to our Homes, surround him with Christian influences, by God's help we make a man of him, and the raw recruit, the 'rook' as they call him, not only develops into a veteran ready to go anywhere and do anything for Queen and country, but into a Soldier of the Cross, ready to do ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... garrison duty, even could I have got back my commission, which was not very likely. So I put soldiering out of the question; and yet, when I had done so, I was infernally puzzled to think of any thing better. I had no fancy to turn rook, and rove from place to place in search of pigeons—no uncommon resource with younger brothers of an idle turn and exhausted means. I had fallen in with a few birds of that breed, and had come to the conclusion that to save themselves work and trouble, they had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... deeper stillness all about him. When the wind was rumbling in the chimney, and sometimes crooning, sometimes howling, in the house. When the old trees outside were so shaken and beaten, that one querulous old rook, unable to sleep, protested now and then, in a feeble, dozy, high-up "Caw!" When, at intervals, the window trembled, the rusty vane upon the turret-top complained, the clock beneath it recorded that another quarter of an hour was ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... where the Norsemen fled before the face of Even the Great. On this oak, whose leaves shine in the moon, the birds gather each night, the birds of the sea and the land, both of white and black feather. Among them is an old grey rook and a young crow. The birds sing such a beautiful song that the great sea keeps silence to hear it. All of them sing except the rook and the crow. Now the crow says: "Sing, little birds, sing; sing, little birds of the land, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... then blew his horn, To let the neighbors know, This was Robin's wedding-day, And they might see the show. And first came Parson Rook, With his spectacles and band, And one of Mother Hubbard's books He ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... time, a rupture rook place in Europe between England and Spain, which turned the attention of the colony to a different object, and afforded Governor Moore an opportunity of exercising his military talents, and a new prospect of enriching himself by Spanish plunder or Indian captives. ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... and essential force being much dimmed by obscure expression, and even slightly staggering continuity of thought. The Rooks may be properly supposed to have taught men to dispute, but not to write. The Swallow teaches building, literally, and the Owl moping, literally; but the Rook does not teach pamphleteering literally. And the 'of old' is redundant, for rhyme's sake, since Rooks hold parliaments now as much ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... burrows by ingeniously-concerted operations. Mr. Bernard[17] has described the interesting way in which the Rook hunts voles or field-mice in Thuringia. His curiosity was excited by the way in which numerous rooks stood about a field cawing loudly. In a few days this was explained: the field was covered with rooks; ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... judgment of Heaven upon him. In his rage for improvement the fellow dared anything. Without my orders he cut down an old rookery which was sacred in the country, and had a prophecy regarding it, stating, 'When the rook-wood shall fall, down goes Hackton Hall.' The rooks went over and colonised Tiptoff Woods, which lay near us (and be hanged to them!), and Cornichon built a temple to Venus and two lovely fountains on their ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a scene more silent and more desolate. There was no sign of life, and not a sound save the occasional cawing of a rook. Advancing towards the abbey, they passed a pile of buildings that, in the summer, might be screened from sight by the foliage of a group of elms, too scanty at present to veil their desolation. Wide gaps in the roof ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... young rook goes without saying. An older bird would not have given a second glance to the thing. Indeed, one would have thought his own instinct might have told him that broken glass would be a mistake in a bird's nest. But its glitter drew him too strongly for ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... seems anxious to avail themselves of my services. My tapes are dirtier and my white hat grows less "sea-going" every day and even you, Eli, are being forgotten. The company commander still carols sweetly in the morning about "barrackses" and fire "distinguishers," rookies still continue to rook about the camp in their timid, mild-eyed way, while week-old sailors with unwashed leggins delight their simple souls with cries of 'twenty-one days.' New goats have sprung up to take your place in the life of the camp and ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... an example of a chess rook's path that is not re-entrant, but between two squares that are at the greatest possible distance from one another. For if it were desired to move, under the condition of visiting every square once and once only, from one corner square to the other ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... river. One serene evening the idle members amused themselves with chasing each other through endless mazes, and in their flight they made the air sound with an infinitude of discordant noises. In the midst of these playful exertions it unfortunately happened that one rook, by a sudden turn, struck his beak against the wing of another. The sufferer instantly fell into the river. A general cry of distress ensued. The birds hovered with every expression of anxiety over ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... fed you, and thought for you with this head. And you think to steal a march upon a man like me? I see you through and through [I know you like the clock]; I read your thoughts like print. Brodie, you thought, has money, and won't do the job. Therefore, you thought, we must rook him to the heart. And therefore, you put up your idiot cockney. And now you come round, and dictate, and think sure of your Excise? Sure? Are you sure I'll let you pack with a whole skin? By my soul, but I've a mind to ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man. And I think he died afterwards. He was a Baptist. Your uncle Silas knowed a family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well. Yes, I remember now, he DID die. Mortification set in, and they had to amputate ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... close of the third book (a most beautiful one) of Goldsmith sitting looking out of window at the Temple trees, you speak of the "gray-eyed" rooks. Are you sure they are "gray-eyed"? The raven's eye is a deep lustrous black, and so, I suspect, is the rook's, except when the light shines full ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... society, openly avowed, that friendship must not interfere with business; which being paraphrased, means simply that a consideration of money goes before any consideration of affection known to this cold-blooded gang, that they have not even the honour of thieves, and will rook their nearest and dearest as readily as a stranger? I hope I would go as far as most to serve a friend; but I declare openly I would not put on my hat to do a pleasure to society. I may starve my appetites and control my temper for the sake of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cook crows, keep well his comb, For the fox and the fulmart they are false both. When the raven and the rook have rounded together, And the kid in his cliff shall accord to the same. Then shall they be bold, and soon to battle thereafter. Then the birds of the raven rugs and reives, And the leal men of Lothian, are louping ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... throws light upon the mystery, Cadet! A woman was to have an interview with Caroline at midnight! Good God, Cadet! not two hours before we arrived! And we deferred starting in order that we might rook the Signeur de Port Neuf! Too late! too late! Oh cursed word that ever seals our fate when we propose a good deed!" and Bigot felt himself a man injured and neglected ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... morning meal, Was wont to love their song, when lingering morn Streak'd o'er the chilly landskip the dim light, And thro' the open'd lattice hung my head To view the snow-drop's bud: and thence at eve When mildly fading sunk the summer sun, Oft have I loved to mark the rook's slow course And hear his hollow croak, what time he sought The church-yard elm, whose wide-embowering boughs Full foliaged, half conceal'd the house of God. There, my dead father! often have I heard Thy hallowed ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... fruitfulness of wood and wold, Of flowery upland, and of orchard-lawn, Lit by the lingering evening's softened gold, Or flushed with rose-hued radiance of the dawn; Bird-music beautiful; the robin's trill, Or the rook's drowsy clangour; flats that run From sky to sky, dusk woods that drape the hill, Still lakes that draw the sun; All, all are mirror'd in his verse, and there Familiar ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... but being noisy, and not altogether cleanly in their habits, the ladies of the family grew weary of them and wished to remove them. Accordingly, the colony was driven away, and made their present settlement in a grove behind the house. Ever since that time not a rook has built in the ancient grove; every year, however, one or another pair of young rooks attempt to build among the deserted tree-tops, but the old rooks tear the new nest to pieces as often as it is put together. Thus, either the memory of aged individual rooks or an authenticated tradition ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... insecurely fastened, and "put up" Blicks's ready ruffians to the more dangerous work. In his various disguises, and under his many names, he found his way into those upper circles of "fast" society, where animals turn into birds, where a wolf becomes a rook, and a lamb a pigeon. Rich spendthrifts who affected male society asked him to their houses, and Mr. Anthony Croftonbury, Captain James Craven, and Mr. Lionel Crofton were names remembered, sometimes with pleasure, oftener with regret, by many a broken man of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... she talked to me of the new song she had learned? An expedition against Mexico, an attack upon the dominions of the King of Spain with whom we are at peace? Or a revolution in the country west of the Ohio? The one's a misdemeanour; the other's treason." He moved a rook. "Most like 'twas both—the first to mask the second. The boldest, simplest, most comprehensive stroke; there, there would show the mind ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... Paez to hold the attention of the royalists, and, besides that depletion, had to suffer the loss of many of his plainsmen who refused to accompany him across the Andes. But Colonel Rook, the head of the British Legion, assured Bolivar that he would follow him "beyond Cape Horn, if necessary." After spending a month painfully wading through the flooded plains, he ascended the Andes and crossed them, in spite of inexpressible suffering. ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... the castle before it was too late. I carried the lady into her rook, and they ran for a surgeon and a midwife. It was no good, however, for in five minutes the count came out and said the countess had just been happily delivered. The dean looked as if a weight ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... pollard elm—common eggs, but within each a speck that is not to be found in the cut diamond of two hundred carats—the dot of protoplasm, the atom of life. There was one row of pollards where they always began laying first. With a big stick in his beak the rook is blown aside like a loose feather in the wind; he knows his building-time from the fathers of his house—hereditary knowledge handed down in settled course: but the stray things of the hedge, how ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... the parapets, with an inclination of only 1 in 22 in the steepest place. A bridge was thrown over the deep chasm forming the channel of the Ogwen, the embankment being carried forward from the rook cutting, protected by high breastworks. From Capel-Curig to near the great waterfall over the river Lugwy, about a mile of new road was cut; and a still greater length from Bettws across the river Conway and along the face of Dinas Hill to Rhyddlanfair, a distance ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... Thrush, * blackbird, * lark, * yellowhammer, * robin, *wren, * golden-crested wren, * goldfinch, * chaffinch, * *greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge, accentor), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw, *blackcap, * garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff, * wood warbler, tree-creeper, * reed bunting, * sedge warbler, coot, water hen, little grebe (dabchick), tufted duck, wood pigeon, stock dove, * turtle dove, peewit, tit (? coal-tit), * cuckoo, * nightjar, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... we come to bigger birds—ducks and puffins. Puffins have beaks like poll parrots, and are about the size of a rook; they have neat white shirt-fronts, and their beaks are red and yellow and blue, but they have silly faces, as if they thought of nothing but their own fine clothes. They live near water on cliffs, and sometimes use an old rabbit burrow for a ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... eats rook-pie, and cares for nothing else but a sound digestion. The spiritualist also eats rook-pie, but after the repast he will sentimentalise over dead rooks, without losing his belief in an all-merciful Providence. He will assure you, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... her standing straight and pale, High pedestalled on some rook-haunted tower: She has two earrings, silver and vermeil, And eyes like stars that shine ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... learn the ebb of time From yon dull steeple's drowsy chime, Or mark it as the sunbeams crawl, Inch after inch, along the wall. The lark was wont my matins ring, The sable rook my vespers sing: These towers, although a king's they be, Have not a hall of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and beauty in the scene; so much of brightness and mirth in the sunny landscape; such blithesome music in the songs of the summer birds; such freedom in the rapid flight of the rook, careering overhead; so much of life and joyousness in all; that, when the boy raised his aching eyes, and looked about, the thought instinctively occurred to him, that this was not a time for death; that Rose could surely never die when humbler things were all so glad and gay; that graves were for ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... sleepy country side, to have a garden to work in, to have a wife and children, to chatter quietly every evening over the details of existence. We must have the azaleas out to-morrow and thoroughly cleansed, they are devoured by insects; the tame rook has flown away; mother lost her prayer-book coming from church, she thinks it was stolen. A good, honest, well-to-do peasant, who knows nothing of politics, must be very nearly happy;—and to think there are people who would educate, who would draw these people out ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Ch'un exclaimed. "Instead of bracing up your energies now to rook some money out of our venerable senior, you turn your thoughts ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... before that I had been looking on a map of the Rhine, and remarked to myself that this small island, little more than a mere rook in the stream, was so situated as to command the bridge between Eslar and the German bank, and I could not help wondering that the Austrians had never taken the precaution to strengthen it, or at least place a gun there, to enfilade the bridge. Now, to my extreme astonishment, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Padyane, Syne ran a fiend to fetch Makfadyane, Far north-wast in a neuck; Be he the coronach had done shout, Ersche men so gatherit him about, In hell great room they took. Thae tarmigants, with tag and tatter, Full loud in Ersche begoud to clatter, And roup like raven and rook. The Devil sae deaved was with their yell, That in the deepest pot of hell He ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... done thousands of years ago. Speckled birds were hopping by the sides of the road; it was the magpie, the bird of ancient fable. Flocks of what I at first took for the crow of our country were stalking in the fields, or sailing in the air over the old elms; it was the rook, the bird made as classical by Addison as his cousin the raven ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... the hedge and upon the "shore" of the ditch, enclosing the place in a high wall of foliage. In the branches are the rooks' nests, built of small twigs apparently thrown together, and yet so firmly intertwined as to stand the swaying of the tree-tops in the rough blasts of winter. In the spring the rook builds a second nest on the floor of the old one, and this continues till five or six successive layers may be traced; and when at last some ruder tempest strews the grass with its ruin, there is enough wood to fill a ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... on an island (Findon) sprinkled with trees, and with a park-like bank sloping to the water. This was refreshing to the eye after having seen nothing but bare rook for many days. The meeting was at our friend's house who owned the pretty little farm. It was sweet and refreshing; and afterwards a number of these people accompanied us to the boat, and did not quit their standing till we were out of sight. ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... how full and plain the Word of God is against this sin, and them that use it. And therefore Mr. Badman, for that he used by these things thus to rook and cheat his neighbours, is rightly rejected from having his name in and among the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... observed that sedate and clerical bird, the rook, may perhaps have noticed that when he wings his way homeward towards nightfall, in a sedate and clerical company, two rooks will suddenly detach themselves from the rest, will retrace their flight for some distance, and ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... look to the thickening rook, An' watch by the midnight tide; I ken the wind brings my rover hame, An' the sea that he glories to ride. Oh, merry he sits 'mang his jovial crew, Wi' the helm heft in his hand, An' he sings aloud to his boys in blue, As ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a sign of an effort in that direction. The only object that threw any light upon the character of the room's owner was a large perch, placed in the window to catch the air and sun, upon which a tame and, apparently, decrepit rook hopped dryly from side to side. The bird, encouraged by a scratch behind the ear, settled upon Denham's shoulder. He lit his gas-fire and settled down in gloomy patience to await his dinner. After sitting thus ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... vojo, strato. "-stead," rodo. roar : (winds and waves) mugxi. roast : rost'i, -ajxo. rob : rabi. robe : vesto, robo. robust : fortika. rock : sxtonego, roko; balanci, luli. rod : vergo. "fishing-," hokfadeno. rogue : fripono, kanajlo. roll : rul'i, -igxi; kunvolvajxo, (bread) bulko. roof : tegmento. rook : frugilego. root : radik'o, enradiki. rope : sxnurego. rot : putri. round : ronda; cxirkaux. rouse : eksciti, veki. row : vico; remi. rubbish : rubo, forjxetajxo. ruby : rubeno. rudder : direktilo. rue : ruto; bedauxregi, penti. ruin : ruin'o, -igi. rule : regi, regado; regulo. ruler : registo; ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... world centres." The reading-room was well supplied with "commercial organs." The talk was that of Wall Street; and the pupils (from fifty to a hundred lads) were principally engaged in rooking or trying to rook one another for nominal sums in what was called "college paper." We had class hours, indeed, in the morning, when we studied German, French, book-keeping, and the like goodly matters; but the bulk of our day and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ingenuity To discover the secret of this noble game. Let them learn the name of every piece. Its proper position, and what is its movement. Let them make out the foot-soldier of the army, The elephant, the rook, and the horseman, The march of the vizier and the procession of the King. If they discover the science of this noble game, They will have surpassed the most able in science. Then the tribute and taxes ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... sequestered wood. The Elm is its favorite, on which it usually builds; but such is its attachment to locality that since the incident alluded to in the following Poem took place the Rooks have, many of them, built in fir trees at a little distance from their former habitation. The habits of the Rook are well worthy the attention of all who delight in ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... Shad," protested Sir Ralph. "I have roared with laughter at his last play. Never did any one so hit the follies of town and country. His rural Put is perfection; his London rook ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... out of many people of the lower sort that crowded the terrace before the garden. Now the rain fell, and all was desolation. A yeoman in brown fustian ran bending his head before the tempestuous rain. A rook, blown impotently backwards, essayed slowly to cross towards the western trees. Her eyes followed him until a great gust blew him in a wider curve, backwards and up, and when again he steadied himself he was no more than a blot on the wet ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... he does not recollect that a ploughman's mind wants to lie fallow a little, and can't give a crop every year. It is hard to make rope when your hemp is all used up, or pancakes without batter, or rook pie without the birds; and so I found it hard to write more when I had said just about all I knew. Giving much to the poor doth increase a man's store, but it is not the same with writing; at least, I am such a poor scribe that I don't find it come because I pull. If ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... his meal Prepared, the children each made tidy; she With smiling comfort means to soothe her man, By labour wearied, through the evening hours. They whirl their life web, humming like a wheel, These airy insects. Birds have ceased to sing, But twitter faintly, settling to their rest; And not a rook's caw rends the placid air. I must begone; but ere I go, will kneel To kiss this ivy—modest earthly type, That would with constant verdure grace her name, As I enshroud her memory with my love! For She has been the blessing that has nerved ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... simple child. The same prejudices and generous beliefs had been hers, but held loosely with a child's comprehension. But now this old world had been awakened to arms against a dazzling new world of love and pleasure. She was led captive by emotion, but the cold rook of scruple remained. She had read of women surrendering all for love, but she felt dismally that this happy gift had been denied her. Criticism, a fierce, vulgar antagonism, impervious to sentiment, not to be exorcised ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... awful staircase commanding a burial-ground, and I have a whole clerk to myself, and he has nothing to do but look at the burial-ground, and what he will turn out when arrived at maturity, I cannot conceive. Whether, in that shabby rook's nest, he is always plotting wisdom, or plotting murder; whether he will grow up, after so much solitary brooding, to enlighten his fellow-creatures, or to poison them; is the only speck of interest that presents itself ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... have a melancholy temper. You ought to live out of doors, dig potatoes, make hay, shoot, hunt, tumble into ditches, and come home muddy and hungry for dinner. It would be much better for you than moping in your rook tower, and hating everything." ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... her what bird she thought I meant. She said, 'A nightingale.' This made me so angry that I nearly flung her to the ground: 'No, fool! ... Rook!' ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... still nests on the moor, although the eggs are taken every season. But the old birds are very wary, and manage to keep out of shot. The common rook, however, of late years, has got a bad name, as having taken up the marauding habits of the genuine crow. Owing to the improved cultivation of land, there is not now the supply of grubs on which the rook used to feed, and they have taken to hunting for the eggs of partridge and pheasant, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... among other things proposed teaching me to play at chess, which game he understood something of. I made an attempt, though almost against my inclination, and after several efforts, having learned the march, my progress was so rapid, that before the end of the first sitting I gave him the rook, which in the beginning he had given me. Nothing more was necessary; behold me fascinated with chess! I buy a board, with the rest of the apparatus, and shutting myself up in my chamber, pass whole days and nights in studying all the varieties ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... have been more thoroughly honest in its intention: the frigid rhetoric at the end was as sincere as the bark of a dog, or the cawing of an amorous rook. Would it not be rash to conclude that there was no passion behind those sonnets to Delia which strike us as the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... and of stone are nothing in number to the gods in the air. You breathe not a breath without inhaling, you touch not a leaf without ruffling a spirit. There are gods of heaven, and gods of earth; gods of sea and of land; gods of peace and of war; gods of rook and of fell; gods of ghosts and of thieves; of singers and dancers; of lean men and of house-thatchers. Gods glance in the eyes of birds, and sparkle in the crests of the waves; gods merrily swing in the boughs of the trees, and merrily sing in the brook. Gods are ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Noronha we steered for Pernambuco—perhaps, next to Rio, the port of the greatest importance in the Brazils. On going into the harbour with a strong breeze blowing, the pilot from gross carelessness gave the Triton so hard a blow against a rook that an ugly hole was knocked in her bottom. It seemed for a moment that the masts would have gone by the board; but the ship, bounding off the rock, glided on as if nothing had happened. It was a great trial for the temper of Captain Frankland; ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... on the wood in thuds, "God, God." The cry of the rook, "God," answers it The crack of the fire on the hearth, the voice of the brook, say the same name; All things, dog, cat, fiddle, baby, Wind, breaker, sea, thunderclap Repeat in a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... itself into many little cataracts; and saw ye ever such a fairy one as that flowing through below an ivied bridge into a circular basin overshadowed by the uncertain twilight of many checkering branches, and washing the rook-base of a Hermitage, in which a sin-sickened or pleasure-palled man might, before his hairs were grey, forget all the gratifications and all the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... I met Will Blanchard an hour agone. Gwaine in the dispensary, he was. The li'l bwoy's queer—no gert ill, but a bit of a tisseck on the lungs. He got playin' 'bout, busy as a rook, in the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the hope that it might serve as a lifebelt. The second item, upon which Speug prided himself very much, was a climbing match, and for this he had selected a tree which seemed to be designed for the purpose, since it had a rook's nest on its highest branch, and no branches at all for the first twenty feet. The conditions were, that every boy above twelve should have his chance, and the boy who climbed to the top, put his hand into the rook's nest, and came ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... together and make their nests on tall firs or oak trees; sometimes they build on rocks near the sea coast. It is said, too, that they will occasionally build on the ground. The heron's nest is not unlike that of the rook, only larger and broader; it is made of sticks and lined with wool and coarse grass; the female lays four or five eggs of a green colour, her long legs are tucked under her. Rooks and jackdaws sometimes take up their quarters near to a heronry, and do you know they ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... land nor in the water, in field or forest, was there a woman to be found. Vain things were plenty—there was the turkey, and the swan, and the blue jay, and the wood-duck, and the wakon bird; and noisy, chattering, singing creatures, such as the daw, and the thrush, and the rook, and the prairie-dog, abounded—indeed there were more of each than was pleasing to the ear—but of women, vain, noisy, laughing, chattering women, there were none. It was, indeed, quite a still world ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones |
