"Blackbird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... weed-seeds that might trouble the fruit-grower more than the missing cherries. The yellow warbler, sometimes called the wild canary, flits through bush and tree and trills its gay notes in town and country. Song-sparrows, thrushes, and bluebirds warble far and near, while the red-winged blackbird makes music in wet, swampy places. The robin, who comes to city gardens in the winter, has a summer home in the mountains or redwoods. There, too, the saucy jay screams and chatters, and flashes his blue wings as he flies, ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... died sic a death—and no a single ane amang us a' greetin for his 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 ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... 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 ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... untaught Shepherds call Pixies in their madrigal, Fancy's children, here we dwell: Welcome, Ladies! to our cell. Here the wren of softest note 5 Builds its nest and warbles well; Here the blackbird strains his throat; Welcome, Ladies! to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... One," she said 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 to his ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... Coahuila in migration. Miller (1955a:173) found this blackbird at Noria "in the flats immediately east of the Sierra del Carmen" on April 28, and reported also that Marsh took a male in worn breeding plumage on July 24 at Tanque de los Melones on La Bavia Ranch east of Fresno Mesa. Amadon and Phillips (1947:579) took two adult males at Las Delicias on August ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... killed 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 likely to enjoy its life as the greedy blackbird, ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... about it. But now that the marriage is a thing accomplished, it is all right. I had destined my niece for another sphere than a painter's world. However, when you can't get a thrush, eat a blackbird, as ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... found the banks of the river to be high and bluffy, and on one of the highlands which they passed they saw the burial-place of Blackbird, one of the great men of the Mahars, or Omahas, who had died of small-pox. A mound, twelve feet in diameter and six feet high, had been raised over the grave, and on a tall pole at the summit the party fixed a flag of red, white, and blue. The place was regarded as sacred by the Omahas, who ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... 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," ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... smeared all the way down with birdlime. This apparatus he disposes on a hedge or cover of any kind—the little owl (Civetta) sits opposite on his pole—the birds come to tease him, and fly on the birdlime twig, when, if it be a sparrow, he is effectually detained by the viscus only—if a blackbird, pop at him goes an old rusty gun. "We sometimes catch twenty tomtits before breakfast," said a modest-looking sportsman, modestly, but not shamefacedly, showing us one thrush ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... resolute. 'Well,' said the rural Apelles, 'if you will have a swan you must, but you may rely upon it when it is finished, it will be so like a red lion, you would not know the difference.' So Turner, if he were to paint a blackbird, it would be so like a canary when it was finished, you would not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... These baskets contained live fowl. In one a large melancholy turkey meditated on his approaching fate: in another, two of lighter disposition swung their long necks about and viewed the scene. One of these baskets was as pretty as the blackbird pie of famous memory. In it sat eight chickens of an age to make their debut on the platter, all settled into a fluffy, soft-gray cushion, out of which their little heads and necks and half-raised wings peeped and turned and fluttered in a manner that testified to the agitation of their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... birds began to sing; And wasn't this a dainty dish to set before the king? The king was in the parlour, counting out his money; The queen was in the kitchen, eating bread and honey; The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes, There came a little blackbird ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies • Anonymous
... make engines of one type, to make engines of another type without any intermediate course of training or instruction, and he will make no better figure with his engines than a thrush would do if commanded by her mate to make a nest like a blackbird. It is vain then to contend that the ease and certainty with which an action is performed, even though it may have now become matter of such fixed habit that it cannot be suddenly and seriously modified without rendering ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... 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
... as he spoke to a grey bird, about the size of a blackbird, which sat on a branch close above his head. This creature is called by the fur-traders a whisky-John, and it is one of the most impudent little birds in the world! Wherever you go throughout the country, there you find whisky-Johns ready to receive and welcome ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... swung ceaselessly back and forth; nay, I could even feel the kick of the oar-shaft that had escaped my fainting grasp. So real was it all that I waked groaning (as I had done many a time and oft), waked to find the kindly sun making a glory about me and a blackbird hard by a-piping most sweet to hear, while before me stood a little, thin fellow in a broad-eaved, steeple-crowned hat, who peered at me through narrowed eyes and poked at me ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... coming out into the fading light, she locked the north door behind her and went off whistling like a blackbird, if a blackbird could whistle the alto of Calkin's Magnificat in B flat. . . . Five minutes climbing of the steep brown floor of the beechwood, and she was out on uplands in the dying fires of day. It had been twilight in the valley, but here the wide plain was sunlit and the air was ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... blaw the haw an' the rowan tree, Wild roses speck our thicket sae breery; Still, still will our walk in the greenwood be— O, Jeanie, there 's naething to fear ye! List when the blackbird o' singing grows weary, List when the beetle-bee's bugle comes near ye, Then come with fairy haste, Light foot, an' beating breast— O, Jeanie, there 's ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... in those branches did sing, Blackbird and throstle and linnet, But she walking there was by far the most fair— Lovelier than all else within it, Blackbird and throstle ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... of the climate of Fernando Po, Mrs. Burton was, of course, unable to accompany him. They separated at Liverpool, 24th August 1861. An embrace, "a heart wrench;" and then a wave of the handkerchief, while "the Blackbird" African steam ship fussed its way out of the Mersey, having on board the British scape-goat sent away—"by the hand of a fit man"—one "Captain English"—into the wilderness of Fernando Po. "Unhappily," commented Burton, "I am not one of those independents who can say ce n'est que le premier ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... 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 ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... with a small blow), I have found, on examination, that it is perfectly innocuous. A neighbouring yeoman (to whom I am indebted for some good hints) killed and opened a female viper about the 27th May: he found her filled with a chain of eleven eggs, about the size of those of a blackbird; but none of them were advanced so far towards a state of maturity as to contain any rudiments of young. Though they are oviparous, yet they are viviparous also, hatching their young within their ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... 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 that in the ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... Anna, and the kitchen door shut in his face. Would the stork also have gone away thoughtfully scratching his head with one of those long, compass-like legs of his, and muttering to himself. And here, incidentally, I fell a-wondering how the stork had carried me. In the garden I had often watched a blackbird carrying a worm, and the worm, though no doubt really safe enough, had always appeared to me nervous and uncomfortable. Had I wriggled and squirmed in like fashion? And where would the stork have taken me to then? Possibly to Mrs. Fursey's: their cottage was the nearest. But I felt sure Mrs. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... here they strayed, In the leafage dewy and boon, Many a man and many a maid, And the morn was merry June: 'Death is fleet, Life is sweet,' Sang the blackbird in the may; And the hour with flying feet While they dreamed ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... you are going," said Professor Jim Crow, for it was the old blackbird who had stopped the ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... all good landscape lovers, the beasts, birds, and insects of Nature were dear to these ancient people. One of the things Finn most cared for was not only his hounds, but the "blackbird singing on Letterlee"; and his song, on page 114, in the praise of May, tells us how keen was his observant eye for animal life and how much it delighted him. The same minute realisation of natural objects is illustrated in this book when King ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... what a fussy and suspicious personage she had married, and would not be made anxious by his extravagances; but she too distrusted the bird gazers, adding her protests to his, and such an outpouring of "chacks" and other blackbird maledictions one—happily—is not often called upon ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... or painted. The window would be open in summer, and my seat was close to it. Outside, a bee was shaking the clematis-blossom, or a red-admiral butterfly was opening and shutting his wings on the hot concrete of the verandah, or a blackbird was racing across the lawn. It was almost more than human nature could bear to have to sit holding up to my face the dreary little Latin book, with its sheepskin cover that ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... must have been concentrated on this island. Indeed, I doubt if a sweeping together of all the birds of the United States into any two of the largest States would people the earth and air more fully. There appeared to be a plover, a crow, a rook, a blackbird, and a sparrow to every square yard of ground. They know the value of birds in Britain,—that they are the friends, not the enemies, of the farmer. It must be the paradise of crows and rooks. It did me good ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... windows, and the scents of the fragrant night floated in upon us, and the sounds of the men at their meat or making merry about the township; and whiles we heard the gibber of an owl from the trees westward of the church, and the sharp cry of a blackbird made fearful by the prowling stoat, or the far-off lowing of a cow from the upland pastures; or the hoofs of a horse trotting on the pilgrimage road (and one of our watchers would ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... feathered songsters, Lift your praises loud and high, Merry lark, and thrush, and blackbird, In the grove and in the sky Make your music, shame our dumbness, Till we ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... with his sensitive nature—who can fathom the profound depths of his soul now stirred by two such entrancing sights as the high-smoking blackbird-pie won by his own prowess, and the little monarch for whose sake all this was brought about? The delicious smell excites him like draughts of rich old wine, and all the soul within him bubbles up exultingly, and he improvises on the moment. Joyfully he sings in melodious ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... way along, To beat the rhythm of his pace for him. In measured intervals, as from the glass Trickles the sand, and as the shadow long Creeps on the dial, so there follow now The mountain cock, the blackbird and the thrush, And none disturbs the other as by day, Nor coaxes him to warble ere his time. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... yer that too, Dad,' she say—Maria did. 'You didn't ought to call 'im 'Artz Mountain roller, but ha-Hartz Mountain roller. That's the way to call 'im,' she says—impident little 'ussy! But there—what's in a name, as the white blackbird said when 'e sat on a wooden milestone eating a red blackberry? Still, 'e weren't running a live-stock emporium, I expect, when 'e ask such a question as that 'ere. There's a good deal in 'ow you call a bird, or a dawg or a guinea-pig neither, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... step of the siege and relief can be followed. I was there first on a serene evening after rain; and but for some tropical trees it might have been an English scene. All that was lacking was a thrush or blackbird's note; but the grass was as soft and green as at home and the air as sweet. I shall long retain the memory of the contrast between the incidents which give this enclosure its unique place in history and the perfect calm brooding over all. And whenever any one calls ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... I, '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, ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... rewarded when afterward he gave the 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 ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... secure in the possession of an inexhaustible supply of food, sport and prosper among the reeds. The ostrich, greater bustard, the common and red-legged partridge and quail, find their habitat on the borders of the desert; while the thrush, blackbird, ortolan, pigeon, and turtle-dove abound on every side, in spite of daily onslaughts from eagles, hawks, and other ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... last, Sigurd Jarlsson. It did not appear that the Norman brought you much luck in return for your support." He glanced toward that part of the table where the black locks of Robert the Fearless shone, sleek as a blackbird's wing, in the morning sun. "The Southerner has an overbearing face," he added. "It reminds me of someone I hate, though I cannot ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... builds, as a general rule, during the early part of the rains (June to August), laying usually three or four eggs of a bright greenish-blue colour. The nest itself recalls that of the Blackbird, but it is frequently very clumsily made. On the 21st June last a boy brought me a nest of this species containing eight eggs. Two, if not three, of this clutch are easily separable from the others, being more oval and somewhat smaller, and are unquestionably ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... now; but the boys saw nothing of the lovely pearly dawn and the soft wreaths of mist which floated over the water. The birds were beginning to chirp and whistle, and as they ran on blackbird after blackbird started from the low shrubs, uttering the chinking alarm note, and flew onward like a velvet streak ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... pursued by hawks came for shelter among their friends, when the birds of prey seldom escaped the captain's gun. Among their feathered friends was a pretty little green bird, which sung very sweetly; another was exactly like the English blackbird; and a third, with a red breast, came hopping up with the familiarity of the winter visitor of old England, the dear little Robin. One of the latter perched with perfect confidence on Emma's hand, and seemed in ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... spent bullet! A bullet? Nonsense—it's a blackbird! Curious how similar the sound was! The blackbirds and the birds of softer song, the countryside and the pageant of the seasons, the intimacy of dwelling-rooms, arrayed in light—Oh! the war will end soon; we shall go back for good to our own; wife, children, or to her who is at once wife ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... sing overhead; or we have Marban, who, rich in nuts, crab-apples, sloes, watercress, and honey, refuses to go back to the court to which the king, his brother, presses him to return. Now, we have the description of the summer scene, in which the blackbird sings and the sun smiles; now, the song of the sea and of the wind, which blows tempestuously from the four quarters of the sky; again, the winter song, when the snow covers the hills, when every furrow is a streamlet and the wolves range restlessly abroad, while the birds, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... blackbird lit upon the wall, surveyed the group and burst into a jubilant song, that for a moment drowned his rival's notes. Then, as if claiming the reward, he fluttered to the grass, ate his fill, took a sip from the mossy basin by the way, and flew singing over the river, leaving a ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... down at the desk and set to work to arrange her papers. It was a warm spring evening, and the window was open. A crowd of noisy sparrows seemed to be delighted about something. From somewhere, unseen, a blackbird was singing. She read over her report for Mrs. Denton. The blackbird seemed never to have heard of war. He sang as if the whole world were a garden of languor and love. Joan looked at her watch. The first gong would sound in a few minutes. She pictured the dreary, silent dining-room with ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... common fowls, ostriches, and a bird larger than our blackbird[53]; also storks, which latter are birds of passage, and arrive in the spring and disappear at the approach of winter; ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... the blackbird, Domine Abbas," said the young monk; "often they sing thus in February, however cold it ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... right; the creature was a lady. She had a soft, throaty voice, like a blackbird when it talks to itself, and oh, a creamy accent! Miss Rolls would have given anything to extract it, like pith, from the long white stem in which it seemed to live. She would have been willing to pay well for it, and for Miss Child's length of ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... and the glittering crown, The simple plumage, or the glossy down Prompt not their loves:— the patriot bird pursues 5 His well acquainted tints, and kindred hues. Hence through their tribes no mix'd polluted flame, No monster-breed to mark the groves with shame; But the chaste blackbird, to its partner true, Thinks black alone is beauty's favourite hue. 10 The nightingale, with mutual passion blest, Sings to its mate, and nightly charms the nest; While the dark owl to court its partner flies, And owns its offspring in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... (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 down near Steindor. ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... I was born a blackbird in a bushy thicket near a meadow. My father took good care of his family and would peck about all day for insects. These he brought home to my mother, holding them by the tail so as not to mash them. He had a sweet voice, too, and every evening sang ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... know, but I should wish to mention it—how are you, you know?" Hardly less provocative of mirth was Briggs's confiding one evening to Little Dombey, that 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 ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... exception of a casual song of the lark in a fresh morning, of the blackbird and thrush at sunset, or the monotonous wail of the yellow-hammer, the silence of birds is now complete; even the lesser reed-sparrow, which may very properly be called the English mock-bird, and which kept up a perpetual clatter with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... he had much wit, H' was very shy of using it; As being loth to wear it out, And therefore bore it not about Unless on holidays, or so, As men their best apparel do. Besides, 'tis known he could speak Greek As naturally as pigs squeak: That Latin was no more difficile, Than for a blackbird 'tis to whistle. B'ing rich in both, he never scanted 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 in barren ground, He had such plenty as suffic'd To make some think ...
— English Satires • Various
... he met, in a lonely wood, a dusty, black charcoal-burner, who was burning charcoal there, and had some potatoes by the fire, on which he was going to make a meal. "Good evening, blackbird!" said the youth. "How dost thou ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... mocking blackbird's note which very nearly brought the Duke of Kent, and half-a-dozen of his compeers, upon them. However, they passed on, in spite of royal instructions to "stop and search—some of these ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... the tossing forest behind him was the heaving waves of the sea; and that the wind which moaned over the woods and murmured in the leaves, and now and then sent him a wide circuit in the air, as if he had been a blackbird on the tip-top of a spruce, was an ocean gale. What life, and action, and heroism there was to him in the multitudinous roar of the forest, and what an eternity of existence in the monologue of the river, which brawled far, far ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... has put dust in my milk. Do you suppose I am going to drink coffee with ashes in it? Well, I am not surprised; no one can do two things at once. She wasn't thinking of the milk! a blackbird might have flown through the kitchen to-day and she wouldn't have seen it! how should she see the dust flying! and then it was my coffee, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... implement, patterned after the whale spade (p. 85); a blackbird, one of those that furnished the golden-yellow feathers for ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... or cloth to rest your hand on, but is was considered effeminate, and in the excitement you were apt to forget it, anyway. Marbles were always very exciting, and were played with a clamor as incessant as that of a blackbird roost. A great many points were always coming up: whether a boy took-up, or edged, beyond the very place where his toy lay when he shot; whether he knuckled down, or kept his hand on the ground, in shooting; ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... increases. But I don't complain of that. Just think, these are not birds of passage; they do not leave us at the first cold blast, to find a warmer climate; the least we can do is to recompense them by feeding them when the weather is too severe! Several know me already, and are very tame. There is a blackbird in particular, and a blue tomtit, that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... last week of February my joy came home. I remember that it was exquisite weather, the blackbird singing his passionate song in the bare boughs fit to break your heart with its beauty. There were high, white, shining clouds on the blue, and the mountains were grey-lavender. The wall-flower clumps were in bloom in the courtyard of the Abbey, and there were many primroses ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... orange, and not unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... with the fragile, delicate flowers of early spring. He stopped frequently to look at them, and he longed to touch them, to hold them in his palm, to put them against his lips. But he looked at his big, hard hands, and then at the flowers, and so, shaking his head, walked on. The blackbird was piping and the missel-thrush singing in one or two of her seven languages, and John felt the spring joy stirring in his own heart to melody. He sat in the singing-pew at St. Penfer Chapel, and he ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... answering provoked him to laughter, and he put out a hand and tousled the thick curls in his favorite caress. One of the tresses caught in his jewelled ring; and as he bent to unfasten it, he stared at the wavy mass in lazy surprise. It was as soft and rich as the breast of a blackbird, and the fire had laid over it a ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... 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 little time he looked round. ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... preparing for the bath; whistled like a blackbird as she stood before the pier-glass before the maid hooked her into a filmy, rosy evening gown—her first touch of ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... of the woods and their balmy light— One hour on the top of a breezy hill, There in the sassafras all out of sight The Blackbird is splitting his slender bill For the ease of his heart: Do you think if he said "I will sing like this bird with the mud colored back And the two little spots of gold over his eyes, Or like to this shy little creature that flies So low to the ground, with the amethyst ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... of genial weather we hear him sing, if possible, more richly than before. His song reminds us of a coming season when the now dreary landscape will be clothed in a blooming garb befitting the vernal year—of the song of the Blackbird and Lark, and hosts of other tuneful throats which usher in that lovely season. Should you disturb him when singing he usually drops down and awaits your departure, though sometimes he merely retires to a neighboring tree and ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... were paid and tipped (grumbling, of course, for 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) ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... disturbs them. And then, of course, they know me. And if they or their children get sick I presume they find it handy to be living in a doctor's garden—Look! You see that sparrow on the sundial, swearing at the blackbird down below? Well, he has been coming here every summer for years. He comes from London. The country sparrows round about here are always laughing at him. They say he chirps with such a Cockney accent. He is a most amusing bird—very ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... them to their knees. Yet their emotion never 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
... above came the skylark's defiant challenge; from earth beneath the fussy scream of the blackbird; on all sides the tweetings, twitterings, chirrupings, chirrings and pipings of petulant finches, and, in tender modulation to the avian chorus, the deep-throated, innumerable, drowsy hum of insects. Colour and sound, love and war, it ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... delighted ganders upon a sheet of water. And he had on his person 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Imperial valley Dwarf Milo is chiefly grown for a seed crop shattering and bird invasion are very important. G. W. Dairs of the San Joaquin valley, says there is a very great difference in the different varieties regarding waste from the blackbird. The ordinary white Egyptian corn is very easily shelled, and the birds waste many times more of the grain than they eat, after it has become thoroughly ripe. The Milo maize, or red Egyptian corn, does not shell nearly so easily ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... will know about the hospital and be glad to see me coming," thought Nelly. And indeed it seemed so, for just then a blackbird, sitting on the garden wall, burst out with a song full of musical joy, Nelly's kitten came running after to stare at the wagon and rub her soft side against it, a bright-eyed toad looked out from his cool bower among the lily-leaves, and at that minute Nelly found her first patient. In one ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... doubt she had put up a hard fight for him and had every reason to be satisfied, though Gabrielle shared the honours of the mother's triumph in her own defeat. We sat there talking until all the birds were silent, but a single blackbird that made a noise in the shrubbery like that of two pebbles knocked sharply together; until the young people on the tennis court could no longer see to play, and the tall Californian poppies at the back of the herbaceous border that ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... Donkey; and the random chords changed to a crooning melody which wonderfully pleased Buddie, whose opportunities to hear music were sadly few. As for the White Blackbird, he tucked his little head under his wing and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... had heard all and made a rush for the door, where they stood behind Mrs. Steiner, gazing with intense interest at the tall, dark man who had such piercing black eyes and a moustache so large that Fritz told his aunt afterward that it looked as if a blackbird had lighted upon his upper lip and spread its wings ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... mistaken. Sally never did know what she was about,—had no plan or purpose more than a blackbird; and when Moses was gone laughed to think how many times she had made him ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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 ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... ago, saw a contest between two giants, who made a bet as to which of them could throw a stone farthest. The stakes were four deer. One giant, called Goli, carried a bird in his hand and threw it instead of the stone; so he won; then he returned to where the Blackbird and the Crow were standing. The Blackbird said to the Crow, "They will not do us any harm until they stoop to pick up a stone." But the Crow replied, "Maybe they bring the stone in their hands." So they flew away, and while they were flying the Crow said, "I am going to the mountain ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... banks of the river called neighboring Indians to council. Council Bluffs commemorates one conference, of which there were many with Iowas and Omahas and Ricarees and Sioux. Pause was made on the south side of the Missouri to visit the high mound where Blackbird, chief of the Omahas, was buried astride his war horse that his spirit might forever watch the French voyageurs passing ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... call me the Crow Blackbird, little folks, if you want to. People generally call me by ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... simple enough to me; And if you doubt it, Hear how Darius reasoned about it. "The birds can fly an' why can't I? Must we give in," says he with a grin. "That the bluebird an' ph[oe]be Are smarter'n we be? Jest fold our hands an' see the swaller An' blackbird an' catbird beat us holler? Doos the little chatterin', sassy wren, No bigger'n my thumb, know more than men? Just show me that! Ur prove 't the bat Hez got more brains than's in my hat. An' I'll back down, an' not till then!" He argued further: "Nur ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... each garment of a different material, the stockings silk, the breeches satin, the doublet soft Flanders velvet. Golden-yellow puffs and slashes stood forth in beautiful relief against the darker stuff. Even the knots of ribbon on the breeches and shoes were as yellow as a blackbird's beak. Delicate lace trimmed the neck and fell on the hands, and a clasp of real gems confined the black and yellow plumes in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... early summer, the chief of all of them being the savour of the new-cut grass, for about the wide meadows the carles and queens were awork at the beginning of hay harvest; and late as it was in the day, more than one blackbird was singing from the bushes of the castle pleasance. Ralph sighed for very pleasure of life before he had yet well remembered where he was or what had befallen of late; but as he stood at the window and gazed ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... Lake Superior. The moose is also an inhabitant of the Namakagun. The Chippewas, at a hunting camp we passed yesterday, said they had been on the tracks of a moose, but lost them in high brush. Ducks and pigeons appear common. Among smaller birds are the blackbird, robin, catbird, red-headed woodpecker, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... 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 you ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... hunting fields of the North. The departure of what was called the Grand Brigade was signalized by an artillery salute from Fort Douglas, which resounded through the wretched ruins of the houses burnt the previous year, and over the fields deserted by the Colonists and left to the chattering blackbird and the howling wolf. Almost every race of people—however small—has its bard. Among the Bois-brules was the son of old Pierre Falcon, a French-Canadian, of some influence among the natives. This young poet was a character. He had the French ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... 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 ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... birds with part of their sustenance, and the principal of these are two well known songsters, the blackbird ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... song-birds in the garden, and one robin. I loved the robin best of all. His song was not so beautiful as the blackbird's or so mellow as the thrush's; but they hid and ran away from me, whilst the robin sought me out and stayed with me and sang me, all to myself, a little, tiny, gentle song of which I never grew tired. If ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... spring forests,'" she cried, "'you must find your fun'—are those the words of the song, Margot?—Oh, look, look!" she pointed joyously to a blackbird on top the swaying maple outside her window. ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... blackbird that was hopping about, caught it with a little shriek of glee, twisted its neck, looked at the dead bird, and dropped it at the foot of a tree without giving it ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... my lady hostess, to have seen, ere this, among your many other delectables, the fulfilment of your ladyship's promise gracing the table, in the shape of the blackbird pie, wherewith we were to be regaled, at your entertainment, if your polite note of invitation was ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... with angry scream and chatter at the approach of an enemy, darts the "ousel cock so black of hue, with orange-tawny bill." How dull a lawn would be without his pert movements when he comes down alternately with his russet wife. One blackbird with a broad white feather on each side of his tail haunted Elderfield for two years, but, alas! one spring day a spruce sable rival descended and captivated the faithless dame. They united, chased poor Mr. Whitetail over the high garden ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... crowds 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
... He followed it across the moor. The blue falcon flew up in 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 ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... blackbird, sitting on a fir tree, began to sing; the horses scudded away as fast as they could, and there was once ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... 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 no value, because ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... Regularly, every day, there was a single bird, not singing, but awkwardly chirruping among the green madronas, and the sound was cheerful, natural, and stirring. It did not hold the attention, nor interrupt the thread of meditation, like a blackbird or a nightingale; it was mere woodland prattle, of which the mind was conscious like a perfume. The freshness of these morning seasons remained with me far ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bobolink, surely," said the Doctor, "and not 'only a Bobolink,' but the very bird we should be most glad to see—the first of the Blackbird and Oriole family—the harlequin in ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... replied. "Not yet! Maybe he isn't coming here this summer." Mr. Blackbird liked to tease little Mr. Chippy. And generally when ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... open window saw the ridge Of Fergus, and the peak Of utmost Cior Mohr—nor held it wrong, When vext with platitude and stirless air, To watch the mist-wreaths clothe the rock-scarps bare And in the pauses hear the blackbird's song. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... tears, upon looking at the scraps, she dressed herself, and sat by the window and watched the blackbird on the lawn as he hopped from shafts of dewy sunlight to the long-stretched dewy tree-shadows, considering in her mind that dark dews are more meaningful than bright, the beauty of the dews of woods more sweet than meadow-dews. It signified only that she was quieter. She ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tangled branches every now and then to get through, and all the time looking carefully round for nests. They very soon heard the harsh cry of the jay, who was letting all the inhabitants of the woodlands know that enemies were at hand, and away flew the birds. The blackbird was the first to take the alarm from the jay, and away he flew, crying, "Kink, kink, kink," as he started from his nest in a great ivy tod on an old pollard-tree. The lads soon found the nest, and peeped in, but instead of eggs there ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... fair. Potter Goram can stuf birds, so they look jest like they was alive. he stufed a red winged blackbird so good that the cat et it and dide. and then Potter he skun the cat and stufed her. i can skin the cat on the horizondle bar, ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... the blue, Above the barley fields at Loo, The blackbird whistles loud and clear Upon the hills at Windermere; But oh, I simply LOVE the way Our organ-grinder plays ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... sings: Puss on the hearth with velvet paws, Sits smoothing o'er her whisker'd jaws. Through the clear stream the fishes rise, And nimbly catch the incautious flies: The sheep were seen at early light Cropping the meads with eager bite. Though June, the air is cold and chill; The mellow blackbird's voice is still. The glow-worms, numerous and bright, Illum'd the dewy dell last night. At dusk the squalid toad was seen, Hopping, and crawling o'er the green. The frog has lost his yellow vest, And in a dingy ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... next from a young pig in a dish placed before Mr. Dinsmore, and the song of the blackbird from a pie Grandma ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... leaves and luxuriant flowers. And here and there, silvering the bushes, the elder offered its snowy tribute to the summer. All the insect youth were abroad, with their bright wings and glancing motion; and from the lower depths of the bushes the blackbird darted across, or higher and unseen the first cuckoo of the eve began its continuous and mellow note. All this cheeriness and gloss of life, which enamour us with the few bright days of the English summer, make the poetry in an angler's life, and convert every idler at heart ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... nest, robin red-breast! Sing, birds, in every furrow! And from each bill let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cocksparrow, You pretty elves, among yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow! To give my Love good-morrow! Sing, birds, in ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... George Sand was ill, and this exasperated 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 ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... they make up for their want of logic and reflection by the depth of their passion, the perfectness of their harmony with nature. The inspired Swabian, wandering in the pine- forest, listens to the blackbird's voice till it becomes his own voice; and he breaks out, with the very ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... head and looked eastwards. A faint grey stole over the distant horizon, and suddenly a cloud reddened before his eyes. The sun was not in sight, but was rising, and sending forerunners before his face. The cattle began to stir, a blackbird burst into song, and before Drumsheugh crossed the threshold of Saunders' house, the first ray of the sun had broken on ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... 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 fashions ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... say I wouldn't have it?" answered "dear" pettishly, as she reached into another box containing an assortment of wings, quails, tails, and parts of various birds jumbled up together. Picking out a pair of blackbird's wings she placed them jauntily against the rim of an untrimmed hat which ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... such a noise, that the great ugly black snakes lifted up their heads, and stared at them with their wicked spiteful-looking eyes, and the little ducklings swimming among the water-lilies, gathered round their mother, and a red-winged blackbird perched on a dead tree gave alarm to the rest of the flock by calling out, Geck, geck, geck, as loudly as he could. In the midst of their frolics, Nimble skipped into a hollow log—but was glad to run out again; for a porcupine covered with sharp spines was there, ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... I'm not commonly to be met out this late. About fifteen minutes earlier is my time for gettin' back, unless I'm plannin' for a jamboree. But to-night I got to settin' and watchin' that sunset, and listenin' to a darned red-winged blackbird, and I guess Mrs. Higgs has decided to expect me somewheres about noon to-morrow or Friday. Say, did Johnnie send you? "When he found that John had in a measure been responsible for their journey, he filled with gayety. "Oh, Johnnie's a bird!" said he. "He's ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... Berington's Middle Ages Berti Palazzo, in Florence, Bezzi, Signor A. and Landor Bible, persecution for reading the Bier, open, used in Florence Biglow Papers, Lowell's Biographies, G. Eliot on Birmingham, my return from Blackbird, Song of the Black Down, Tennyson's house at Black Forest, Leweses in the Blackwood's Magazine, Mary Mitford on Blagden, Isa, Miss her poems her death note from Lewes inquires after and George Eliot ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... but much larger than the slight falcon. These powerful birds are flown at herons and hares, and are the only hawks that are fully a match for the fork-tailed kite. The merlin and hobby are both small hawks and fit only for small birds, as the blackbird, &c. The sparrow-hawk may be also trained to hunt; his flight is rapid for a short distance, kills partridges well in the early season, and is the best of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... had the luck to cure old M. Pillerault. Poulain made his rounds on foot, scouring the Marais like a lean cat, and obtained from two to forty sous out of a score of visits. The paying patient was a phenomenon about as rare as that anomalous fowl known as a "white blackbird" in ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... me, A blackbird's lay sings to me; Above my lined booklet The thrilling birds chant ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... on, the evening sun grew golden, then faded in the purple west—but still he came not! The other dwellers in the oak returned to their homes, yet they brought no tidings of the wanderer. After a while their happy voices were hushed in sleep, the Blackbird ceased to warble his evening hymn, and all were buried ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... to the marshes or the fields, and when the fowlers had brought down a blackbird, a snipe, or a lark, she caught it up and presented it to the King with the same message. She repeated this trick again and again, until one morning the King said to her, "I feel infinitely obliged to this Lord Pippo, and am desirous of ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... war-dress, with silver cross on his breast and bow and arrows in his hand; then, the weight on the trunk being released, the sapling sprang back to its place and afterward rose to a commanding height, fitly marking the Indian's tomb. Chief Blackbird, of the Omahas, was buried, in accordance with his wish, on the summit of a bluff near the upper Missouri, on the back of his favorite horse, fully equipped for travel, with the scalps that he had ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... he said, 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 ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... had grown accustomed to the working garb of father and brother. He was, moreover, handsome to a degree that is not ordinary. The curly hair from which he had lifted his fur cap was black and glossy as a blackbird's plumage, and the moustache, which did not cover the full red lips, matched the hair, save that it seemed of finer and softer material. His brown eyes had the glow of health and ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... stealth come feeling for our faces— We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed, Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed, Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses. Is it ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... his pipes, chanted forth, in a bold and musical voice, a rude rigmarole called "The Royal Blackbird," which, although of no intrinsic merit, yet, as it expressed sentiments hostile to British connection and British government and favourable to the house of Stewart, was very popular amongst the Catholic ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... "Dark is the Night." It is of the "Erl-King" style, but highly original and tremendously fierce and eerie. The same poet's "Western Wind" is given a setting contrastingly dainty and serene. "The Blackbird" is delicious and quite unhackneyed. "A Secret" is bizarre, and "Empress of the Night" is brilliant. With the exception of a certain excess of dissonance for a love-song, "Wilt Thou Be My Dearie?" is perfect with amorous tenderness. "Just for This!" is ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... had cleared away by now, and the moon was up. To their right, on the crest of a rise some two hundred yards away, a low wood stood out black against the sky. As they passed it, a blackbird rose up screaming, and a brace of wood-pigeons ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... that our people should have an opportunity of 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, according to ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... believe in such a relation than we have to believe that the similar bones in the hand of a man, wing of a bat, and fin of a porpoise, are related to similar conditions of life. No one supposes that the stripes on the whelp of a lion, or the spots on the young blackbird, are of any use to ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... very busy, for three weeks, sketching innumerable corbels, gargoyles, goblins, arches, weather-worn saints and sinners. And in the Cathedral I found the original of the maid in the garden a-hanging out the clothes. She is a fair sinner, and the blackbird is a demon volatile, who, having lighted on her shoulder, snaps her by the nose to get her soul. The motive often occurs in ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... The blackbird and the thrush, That made the woods to ring, With all the rest, are now at hush, And not a note ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... bright picture-books, trains of 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 till 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, ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... heavy one; there was a certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather had changed to fair; the day, one of the last of the treacherous May-time, was warm and windless, and the air had the brightness of the hawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad to think of poor Touchett, it was not too sad, since death, for him, had had no violence. He had been dying so long; he was so ready; everything had been so expected and prepared. There were tears in Isabel's eyes, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... 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
... undulating uplands to the east. Ben Gairn was blushing a rosy purple, purer and fainter than the flamboyant hues of sunset, when the Reverend Richard Cameron looked out of his bedroom window in the little whitewashed manse of Cairn Edward. His own favourite blackbird had awakened him, and he lay for a long while listening to its mellow fluting, till his conscience reproached him for lying so long a-bed on such ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... obliterated and made as meaningless as the concededly evanescent shades of variety, trooping busily over the lawn and blackening the leafless China-trees. But they have a crony never seen by us. This is the crow-blackbird of the South, or jackdaw as it is wrongly called, otherwise known as the boat-tailed grackle, from his over-allowance of rudder that pulls him side-wise and ruins his dead-reckoning when a wind is on. His wife is a sober-looking lady in a suit of steel-gray, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... me now, The fruit is gathered in, Not even seen a grazing cow, Nor heard the blackbird's din. The heath is brown, and ivy pale, The woodbine berries red, And withered leaves borne on the gale Sink down on ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... freshness of the spring, With odorous lime and silver hawthorn twined, And mossy rest and woodland wandering. There's not a thought of you but brings along Some sunny glimpse of river, field, and sky; Your voice sets words to the sweet blackbird's song, And many a snatch of wild old melody; And as I date it still our love arose 'Twixt the last ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... grey bushes with young oaks starting through them, still bare of leaves, ferns beginning to mark green lanes into the heart of the woods, and certain dark wet places where the insects had already begun to hum. But when the wood opened out the birds were talking to one another, blackbird to blackbird, thrush to thrush, robin to robin, kin understanding kin, and every bird uttering vain jargon to them that did not wear the same beak and feathers, just like ourselves, Joseph said to himself and he stood stark before a hollow into ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... know 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 ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... among a thousand maidens, Bring the noblest of the hundred, From a thousand unattractive; From the swamp you bring a lapwing, From the hedge you bring a magpie, From the field you bring a scarecrow, From the fallow field a blackbird. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... of spruces; and springing noiselessly up, his bow was braced, his arrow fitted, and a stricken bird was fluttering at their feet in a few seconds. The flutterings of the fallen bird were more than equalled by those of Foster's heart, as he held the still quivering crow-blackbird which his arrow had brought from the highest twig of a tall spruce. Proud and exultant, yet tears glistened in his eyes as he silently gazed upon the soiled plumage of the bird's beautiful neck and breast, and felt its last faint gaspings ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... make,% And 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.] [$ ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... the palaces so fair, Built for the royal dwelling, In Scotland, far beyond compare Linlithgow is excelling; And in its park in genial June, How sweet the merry linnet's tune, How blithe the blackbird's lay! The wild buck's bells from thorny brake. The coot dives merry on the lake,— The saddest heart might pleasure take, To see a scene ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... The dewy scents of the May morning were filling the air with their nameless and numberless tokens of rich nature's bounty. The voice of a cataract, close at hand, made merry down the rocks along with the song of the blackbird, woodpecker and titmouse. And still, as Eleanor stood there and looked and listened, the rush and the stir of sweet life grew more and more; the spring breeze wakened up and floated past her face bringing the breath ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... would be heard again on every side—that summer beech-wood lullaby that seemed never to end. The other bird voices were of the willow-wren, the wood-wren, the coal-tit, and the now somewhat tiresome chiffchaff; from the distance would come the prolonged rich strain of the blackbird, and occasionally the lyric of the chaffinch. The song of this bird gains greatly when heard from a tall tree in the woodland silence; it has then a resonance and wildness which it appears to lack in the garden and orchard. In the village I had ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson |
