"Rook" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rock, estimated to weigh eight or ten tons, is so nicely poised upon another rook, upon a high point about fifty rods west of the lake, that a gentle pressure of the hand will cause ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... Crow may be considered the representative, in America, of the European Rook, which he resembles in many of his habits, performing similar services, and being guilty of the same mischievous deeds. It is remarkable that in Europe, where land is more valuable than in this country, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... without disporting 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 guilt of the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Rook's Rough, just as Ben put 'em in, 'Twas Fan found the rogue who was curled in the whin; She pounced at his brush with a drive and a snap, "Yip-Yap, boys," she told 'em, "I've found him, Yip-Yap;" And they put down their noses ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... 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 real ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... the house; 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 ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Paris, in which he aptly compared it, in its uses, to the trunk of an elephant. In its manners it is gentle and familiar, and when approached raises a cry which may be compared to a hoarse croaking. In its gait it resembles the rook, and walks much better than most of ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... 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, completely ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Bruce and Mathilda his wife." The two beautifully carved figures of a knight and his lady that lie in the Bruce Chapel are not Bruces for the surcoat of the man is adorned with the arms of the Rockcliffes—an heraldic chess-rook and three lions' heads. Both the knight and his lady wear the collar of SS, the origin of which is still wrapped in obscurity. Traces of gilding are visible in several places on the wings of the ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... rook has built, and the song-birds quire, And over the faded lea The lark soars glorying, gyre on gyre, And he ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... nest, or eyrie, is high up on the ledge of some precipice, where hardly any enemy can come. Of course it is a very large nest; but it is not carefully or nicely built. It is a rough affair, like the rook's nest; a lot of sticks and twigs, and heath or grass, with a more comfortable hollow in the middle, which is padded with softer materials. Here the young are reared; and here the male bird brings home prey for the female and the ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... is up; hark! how it howls! methinks Till now I never heard a sound so dreary; Doors creak, and windows clap, and night's foul bird, Rook'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... where to move the pieces and how to tell me what Grandy has moved—then, we shall tie a handkerchief over my eyes—as we do when you and I play hide the thimble—my hands shall not touch the men at all. I shall say 'Pawn to Queen's Rook's square' and you shall put this little man here—this is the Queen's Rook's square—" It must have been the oddest game in the world, really, between that stern old man and the blindfolded invalid ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... me, or my wife, or servant Saurea—do your best, swindle us, rook us, I promise you your interests won't suffer, ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... that I 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
... 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 ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... deceyuable eloquence & takyng of money deceyueth, & so he is made oonly. The iij. scil. e kny3t, hath iij. poyntes, & goth erwith; [he] betokenyth gentilmen at rennyth aboute, & ravisshith, and ioyeth for her kynrede, & for habundaunce of richesse. The fourth, scil. e rook, he holdith length & brede, and takith vp what so is in his way; he betokenyth okerers and false merchaunt3, at rennyth aboute ouer all, for wynnyng & lucre, & rechith not how thei geten, so that thei haue hit. ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... equip two brigantines and a fly-boat. Thither came, fast and frequent, the gamesters, in their different forms and calling. This, light, young, gay in appearance, the thoughtless youth of wit and pleasure—the pigeon rather than the rook—but at heart the same sly, shrewd, cold-blooded calculator, as yonder old hard-featured professor of the same science, whose eyes are grown dim with watching of the dice at midnight; and whose fingers ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... of 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
... Archoeopteryx differed in some remarkable peculiarities of its structure from all existing members of the class of Birds. This extraordinary Bird (fig. 182) appears to have been about as big as a Rook—the tail being long and extremely slender, and composed of separate vertebrae, each of which supports a single pair of quill-feathers. In the flying Birds of the present day, as before mentioned, the terminal vertebrae of the tail are amalgamated to form a single bone ("ploughshare-bone"), ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... state of things is your own particular business. Even at this distance I seem to hear you rasping it: "Salvation, damnation, damnation, salvation!'' And the jolly earth smiles in the perfect evenglow, and the corn ripples and laughs all round you, and one young rook (only fledged this year, too!), after an excellent simulation of prostrate, heart-broken penitence, soars joyously away, to make love to his neighbour's wife. "Salvation, damnation, damn — '' A shifty wriggle of ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... bird on these downs, as in so many other places in England, is the rook, and let us humbly thank the gods who own this green earth and all the creatures which inhabit it that they have in their goodness left us this one. For it is something to have a rook, although he is not a great bird ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... 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 ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... started forward to the old forsaken shepherd's hut in which the king had taken refuge. They climbed the rook as nimbly as cats, and now the old boards cracked and groaned and flew in every direction, and were received with shouts of joy by the surrounding soldiers. Suddenly a guard officer stepped from the hut, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... married Mary Alabama, the daughter of Dr. P.B. Ruff, he settled on his grandfather's plantation now known as Kinards. While living here his wife died, and a few years afterwards he married Lavinia Elizabeth, the daughter of Dr. William Rook. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... 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 pistol you like dogs. Out of this! Out, I say, and soil ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... us, we gotta eat, and Jimmy—he can cook! (He makes a stew that tastes as good as mother used to make.) An' when he starts to flappin' cakes, why, every hungry rook Is droolin' at the mouth for them, ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... 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.
... 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 ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... hope is in the Lord, My works I count but dust; I build not there, but on his word, And in his goodness trust. Up to his care myself I yield; He is my tower, my rook, my shield, And ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... 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
... see them in the earliest French romances, have little in common with their Celtic prototypes, as we dimly catch sight of them in Irish, Welsh, and Breton legend. Chretien belonged to a generation of French poets who rook over a great mass of Celtic folk-lore they imperfectly understood, and made of what, of course, it had never been before: the vehicle to carry a rich freight of chivalric customs and ideals. As an ideal of social conduct, the code of chivalry ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... drove to with Mrs. Mannering in a hired fly. I don't call it very polite to the hostess, do you? This afternoon she amused herself from her bedroom window by shooting at rabbits just beyond the wire fence of the lawn with a rook rifle; she did not hit any rabbits, but she got a gardener in the leg, and the man was very angry, and bled a great deal, and had to be taken away, and I think it was very careless of her, ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... wonder,' remarked the Queen, 'that birds of taste are rare in the Metropolis, and that, on the Embankment especially, a rook would be regarded as a kind of prodigy. Nowhere has the manufacture of permanent scarecrows been conducted with more ingenious success. But tell me, my accomplished fowl, have Britons any other arts? Long ago the men used to paint themselves blue, but, as far as I have remarked, the ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... She wint away just two minutes be the clock before the pig, and wos buried the day afther. There's no more news as I knows of in the parish, except that your old flame Mary got married to Teddy O'Rook, an' they've been fightin' tooth an' nail ever since, as I towld ye they would long ago. No man could live wid that woman. But the schoolmaster, good man, has let me off the cow. Ye see, darlin', I towld him ye wos buildin' a palace in the say, to put ships in afther they wos wrecked on ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... beginning of March, coming back from a long walk on the hills, I heard the bleat of the lamb and the impatient cawing of the rook that could not put its nest together in the windy branches, and as I stopped to listen it seemed to me that something passed by in the dusk: the spring-tide itself seemed to be fleeting across the tillage towards ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... had been nearly brought up to the point. It is painful to come to the conclusion, but Isabella's admirer, though a country gentlemen, was nothing of a sportsman, and rather a poor creature. When Mr. Pickwick and his followers were up early and out at the rook shooting, we find no Trundle. He was lying a-bed, no doubt. Stranger still, when the whole party went in for a day to Muggleton for the cricket match, Trundle was the only one who stayed behind. He ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... and there I saw my fairest Eleanor Audley. The Queen and the Duke of Somerset—rest his soul—would have had us wedded. On the love day, when all walked together to St. Paul's, and the King hoped all was peace, we spoke our vows to one another in the garden of Westminster. She gave me this rook, I gave her the jewel of my cap; I read her true love in her eyes, like our limpid northern brooks. Oh! she was fair, fairer than yonder star in the sunset, but her father, the Lord Audley, was absent, and we could go no ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... summoning rook to build, Dunnock his beak with moss has filled, Robin is bowing in coat-tails ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... wind up roun' the hill, an' look All down the thickly-timber'd nook, Out where the squier's house do show His grey-wall'd peaks up drough the row O' sheaedy elems, where the rook Do build her nest; an' where the brook Do creep along the meaeds, an' lie To catch the brightness o' the sky; An' cows, in water to their knees, Do stan' ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... utmost 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 which the King hath demanded I will cheerfully ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... instant on wings of canvas and sticks of steel. How sublime and, indeed, almost dizzy is 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 ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... that night while 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 of ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... The word is Persian, with many meanings, e.g. a cheek (Lalla "Rookh"); a "rook" (hero) at chess; a rhinoceros, etc. The fable world-wide of the wundervogel is, as usual, founded upon fact: man remembers and combines but does not create. The Egyptian Bennu (Ti-bennuphoenix) may have been a reminiscence of gigantic ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... an elbow hug; A maid that comes to a look; A boy to carry a rimy log From over the frozen brook— And, a fig for the cawing rook, Or ghosts in the ruddy gloam! For the kettle sings on the blackened hook, And hey! for the sweets ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... And there within the Chief-priest's fair abode They cast aside their trouble's heavy load, Scarce made aweary by the sultry day. The earth no longer laboured; shaded lay The sweet-breathed kine, across the sunny vale, From hill to hill the wandering rook did sail, Lazily croaking, midst his dreams of spring, Nor more awake the pink-foot dove did cling Unto the beech-bough, murmuring now and then; All rested but the restless sons of men And the great sun that wrought this happiness, And all the vale with fruitful hopes did bless. So in a marble ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... back wound up one against England, and being all holds full of her own troubles. As I said, the strong way he laid it all before 'em blasted 'em, and when he'd done it was like a still in the woods after a storm. A little man—but they all looked little—pipes up like a young rook in a blowed-down nest, "Nevertheless, General, it seems you will be compelled to fight England." Quick Big Hand wheeled on him, "And is there anything in my past which makes you think I am averse to fighting ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... with family cares, feeding the little ones, and teaching them to fly, there is not much time for singing. It is said that every bird has a different note or call. I wonder how many you know? I fancy I can guess: the cock, the rook, the swallow, the thrush, the blackbird, the lark; if you do not know the notes or calls of all these, try ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... life of a whole continent 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 to see them so much at home about ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... have 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 ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... higher," hastening up to get a first glimpse of the coming monarch, careless of food, flooding the fresh air with song. Steadily plodding rooks labour along below us, and lively starlings rush by on the look-out for the early worm; lark and swallow, rook and starling, each on his appointed round. The sun arises, and they get them to it; he is up now, and these breezy uplands over which we hang are swimming in the light of horizontal rays, though the shadows and mists still lie on the wooded ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... 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
... may be used in connection with the Nature Study lessons. To supplement the observational studies of birds, read from the Third Reader, "The Robin's Song", "The Red-winged Blackbird", "The Sandpiper", "To the Cuckoo", "Bob White", "The Lark and the Rook", "The Poet's Song". ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... which we are accustomed to connect with the communication of an idea from one mind to another, can we deny that they have a language of their own, though it is one which in most cases we can neither speak nor understand? How can we say that a sentinel rook, when it sees a man with a gun and warns the other rooks by a concerted note which they all show that they understand by immediately taking flight, should not be credited both with reason and the ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... is that O'Brien was without doubt the man who fired at you, looking to the type of gentleman he is, and the fact that you ran into him immediately afterwards, and especially the fact that he actually does possess an old rook rifle. He thinks he may have done it out of sheer Irish deviltry, you offering so convenient a target, just as they pot landlords in his own happy country. A man can hardly have drunk as heavily as he must have done ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... can recall the picture of the grey old house of God rising calm before me, of a rook wheeling round the steeple, of a ruddy morning sky beyond. I remember something, too, of the green grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of strangers straying amongst the low hillocks and reading the mementoes graven on the few mossy head-stones. I noticed ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... there was quite a crowd of small birds, finches chiefly, but a few thrushes and hedge-sparrows; there were seven or eight turtle-doves, five jays, and, queerest of all companions for doves and pheasants, a carrion crow. I thought at first he must be a rook, but there was no doubt about it. I looked up as I walked away, and over me sailed five herring gulls, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Identity of the Green with the Wood Sandpiper The Stoat The Marsh Titmouse Creeper Wrens' Nests Alarm-note of one Bird understood by other Species of Birds Dates of the appearance of some Spring Birds in 1832, at Clitheroe The Rook Serviceable to Man.—Prejudice against it Sandpipers On Birds Dressing their Feathers with Oil from a Gland Mocking powers of the Sedge-warbler The Water Ouzel Scolopax, Sabines, Sabine's Snipe Fish and other River Phenomena Lampreys On the Spawning of the Minnow Eels ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... 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
... 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 will there poise and linger; conveying to mere men the fancy that it is ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... lying on the pier to the topmost round of the topmost ladder, that one might have fancied it was out a bird's-nesting, and was (as indeed it was) a wonderful climber. And mentioning birds, the place was not without some music from them too; for the rook was very busy on the higher levels, and the gull with his flapping wings was fishing in the bay, and the lusty little robin was hopping among the great stone blocks and iron rings of the breakwater, fearless in the faith of his ancestors, and ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... hostility, 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 he entertained them with stories of the African forest ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... One on 'em belonged to a man as I once knowed; leastways I remember him as a young chap. He was underkeeper at the Hall. The young woman he wanted to marry wouldn't 'ave 'im, so he shot hisself wi' a rook gun. I knowed it was 'im by the 'ole in 'is 'ead, no bigger nor a pea. Just think o' that! No bigger nor a big pea, I tell yer, and as round as if it had been done wi' a punch. I told my missis about it when I went 'ome to my tea. I says, 'Do yer remember 'Arry Pole, the young keeper in the ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... 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 more than ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... have lately seen at Moreham Mains. But, be that as it may, the heart of the man and the fancy of the poet are the two grand considerations for which I live: if miry ridges and dirty dunghills are to engross the best part of the functions of my soul immortal, I had better been a rook or a magpie at once, and then I should not have been plagued with any ideas superior to breaking of clods and picking up grubs; not to mention barn-door cocks or mallards, creatures with which I could almost exchange lives at any time. If you ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... * 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), ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... I used to stand in the stable and my coat was brushed every day till it shone like a rook's wing. It was early in May, when there came a man from Squire Gordon's, who took me away to the hall. My master said, "Good-by, Darkie; be a good horse, and always do your best." I could not say "good-by", ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... partridges were it not for the rooks and magpies. Hedges wherein the birds can hide their nests are few and far between in the wall country, so the keen-eyed rook spies out many a nest in the spring of the year. For this reason and because they eat the corn, the farmers hate them. We cannot share their feelings. We should be sorry to see the old rookery in the garden diminished in the slightest ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... "A rook, I dare say! And what business had you to think, coming trespassing here on my ground, and breaking the hedges! I'd have you up for that, if for nothing else, ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Nor was it till the hour of sunset that everything was in due order, the straps set fast, the keys duly turned in the locks—the labels—"Mr. Eustace Greyne: Passenger to Algiers: via Marseilles"—carefully written out in a full, round hand. Rook's tickets had been bought; so now everything was ready, and the last evening in England might be spent by Mr. Greyne in the drawing-room and by Darrell in the servants' ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... Pride; and, what was sillier, Easy and Friendly was Familiar. Or, if he tuned his lofty lays, With solemn air to Virtue's praise, Alike abusive and erroneous, They call'd it hoarse and inharmonious. Yet so it was to souls like theirs, Tuneless as Abel to the bears! A Rook[5] with harsh malignant caw Began, was follow'd by a Daw;[6] (Though some, who would be thought to know, Are positive it was a crow:) Jack Daw was seconded by Tit, Tom Tit[7] could write, and so he writ; A tribe of tuneless ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... than done. Clambering from rock to rook, always observant and watchful, the resolute youth pursued his way. Suddenly, however, he stood still, and threw himself ...
— Harper's Young People, November 25, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to a stranger, the little bushy-tailed animal rose from its place under the tree and came to him, and the rook, cawing once, flew down from its branch and settled ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a rook's nest?" said a gentleman to a boy of seven years old; he looked very grave, and having pondered upon the question for some minutes, answered, "I do not know what you mean by the word go." Fortunately for the boy, the gentleman who asked the question, was not a captious querist; ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... courtship of Dame Christian Custance [Constance], a widow of repute and wealth as well as beauty, by the gull and coxcomb, Ralph Roister Doister, whose suit is at once egged on and privately crossed by the mischievous Matthew Merrygreek, who plays not only parasite but rook to the hero. Although Custance has not the slightest intention of accepting Ralph, and at last resorts to actual violence, assisted by her maids, to get rid of him and his followers, the affair nearly breeds a serious quarrel between herself and her plighted lover, Gawin Goodluck; ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... trogons—a genus of scansorial birds—are the most 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 ripe one, they dart off now and then at long intervals to ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... marshy piece of ground in quest of wild-ducks and snipes; but, when it was shot, had just knocked down a rook, which it was tearing in pieces. I cannot make it answer to any of our English hawks; neither could I find any like it at the curious exhibition of stuffed birds in Spring Gardens. I found it nailed up at the end of a barn, which is ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... such a door, lived 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 ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... sturgeons, with their lancet spine; and the sea garters. The next two cases include the remaining specimens of the spiny-finned fish. Among these are the wolf fish; the curiously formed tobacco-pipe fish; the big-headed dolphins or anglers; the hand fish, with its long fins; and the rook fish. ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... Captain Yorke," I said, "as Guest here leaves me to do all the talking, I'll tell you why we are so far up to the northward, out of our usual beat. We heard in Samoa that a big ship, named the Sarawak had run ashore and been abandoned at Rook Island, in Dampier Straits, between the west end of New Britain and the east coast of New Guinea, and both Guest and myself know her to be one of the largest ships out of Liverpool; she left Sydney for Hongkong about six months ago with a general cargo. ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... a Royston rook {206} went among the crows (black birds), and they asked him, "Where did you steal your white coat?" And he told (them), "I stole it from a fool of a pigeon." Then he went among the pigeons and said, ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... of them, what strange stories you have picked up about our country, and this river? We have plied here, men and boys, for years; and to be sure we cannot say that we never saw a swan: there are some here and there towards the fens, which make a low dull noise: but as for any harmony, a rook or a jackdaw, in comparison of them, may be looked upon ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... might have been the father and leader of them all, got up on a low post, and with wide-open beak poured forth a long series of most impressive caws. One always wonders at the meaning of such displays. Is the old bird addressing the others in the rook language on some matter of great moment; or is he only expressing some feeling in the only language he has—those long, hoarse, uninflected sounds; and if so, what feeling? Probably a very common one. The rooks appeared happy and prosperous, feeding in the meadow grass in that June weather, with ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... man, with grave, but gentle look— His silence sweet with sounds With which the simple-hearted Spring abounds: Lowing of cattle from the abbey grounds, Chirping of insect, and the building rook, Mingled like murmurs of a dreaming shell; Quaint tracery of bird and branch and brook Flitting across the pages of his book, Until the very words a freshness took— Deep in his cell, Sate the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... check and mate! Thou mad'st it easy, friend. Thou never shouldst Have sacrificed the knight, for thus my rook Escaped, attacking thee. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... was dark as a rook's wing, but far away down the street burned a little light, like a red star truant from heaven. The Prince riding by descried it for a lanthorn, with an old man sleeping ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Padyane:[144] Syne ran a fiend to fetch Makfadyane, Far northwast in a neuck; Be he the coronach[145] 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.[146] The Devil sae deaved[147] was with their yell; That in the deepest pot of hell He smorit[148] them ...
— English Satires • Various
... 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 do they know? The great blackbird has planted ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... walking down Nassau Street, and a steam-boiler or something burst under the sidewalk and broke his leg? The first thing old Backbite said when he heard of it was, 'H'm! been drinking, I suppose.' Now here's Billings with a despatch. What is it, bully rook?" he hailed, as the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... we landed 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 ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... us dahn on top o' t'grass, Clois to a runnin' brook, An' harken'd t'watter wagtails sing Wi' t'sparrow, thrush, an' rook. ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... that led down to the river. Yes, there were several rabbits out. With the white marguerites and the dew cobwebs, it was all moon-flowery and white; and the rabbits being there made it perfect. He wanted one badly to model from, and for a moment was tempted to get his rook rifle—but what was the good of a dead rabbit—besides, they looked so happy! He put the glasses down and went towards his greenhouse to get a drawing block, thinking to sit on the wall and make a sort of Midsummer Night's Dream sketch of flowers and rabbits. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Colony.' That 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 ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... 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 those I love; but society shall take me as I choose ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... courting, before the sexes are paired, the male bird is usually the most eager, but after marriage the female often becomes the wooer. Of this I have seen some marked instances." Selous mentions especially the plover, kestrel hawk, and rook. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... rook of Nizhni Novgorod!" the strangers' coachman shouted. Selifan tightened his reins, and the other driver did the same. The horses stepped back a little, and then came together again—this time getting a leg ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... to Chesterfield, in the autumn of the year 1831, I first conceived the notion of writing this story. Wishing to describe, somewhat minutely, the trim gardens, the picturesque domains, the rook-haunted groves, the gloomy chambers, and gloomier galleries, of an ancient Hall with which I was acquainted, I resolved to attempt a story in the bygone style of Mrs. Radcliffe,—which had always inexpressible charms for me,—substituting an old English ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... away as ever, and, getting out of bed, he drew the curtains, seeking the landscape, still hidden in the mist, only a few tree-tops showing over the grey vapour—the valley filled with it—and over the hidden hill one streak of crimson. A rook cawed and flew away into the mist, leaving Owen to wonder what the bird's errand might be; and this rook was followed by others, and seeing nothing distinctly, and knowing nothing of himself or of this woman whom he had loved so long, he returned to his bed frightened, counting his years, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... 16-49. I may remind the reader that the O. Egyptian "Rokh," or "Rukh," by some written "Rekhit," whose ideograph is a monstrous bird with one claw raised, also denotes pure wise Spirits, the Magi, &c. I know a man who derives from it our "rook" beak ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... their broad-bladed spears—wheeled and manoeuvred. By the Nile all the tops of the palm-trees were crowded with daring riflemen, whose positions were indicated by the smoke-puffs of their rifles, or when some tiny black figure fell, like a shot rook, to the ground. In the foreground the gunboats, panting and puffing up the river, were surrounded on all sides by spouts and spurts of water, thrown up by the shells and bullets. Again the flotilla drew near the narrow channel; ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... shining points which, upon this side, sink In dark, yet still are there; this ragged crane Spreading his wings at seeing us with vain Terror, forsooth; the trees, a pulpy stock Of toadstools huddled round them; and the flock— Black wings after black wings—of ancient rook By rook; has not the whole scene got a look As though we were the first whose breath should fan In two this spider's web, to give a span Of life more to three flies? See, there's a stone Seems made for us to sit on. Have men gone By here, and passed? ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... from the churchyard, embracing the vicarage-house, a comfortable residence, surrounded by a large walled-in garden, well stocked with fruit-trees, and sheltered by a fine grove of rook-haunted timber, extended on the one hand over the village, and on the other over the Abbey, and was bounded by the towering and well-wooded heights of Whalley Nab. On the side of the Abbey, the most conspicuous objects were the great north-eastern ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... habits of the rook, and the vast increase of these birds of late years in certain parts of Essex, has been productive of great mischief, especially in the vicinity of Writtle and of Waltham. Since February last, notwithstanding a vigilant watch, the rooks have stolen sets ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... I am not. Will forgets that I have other fish to fry and tails to butter; and 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 ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... word against 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 is to the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... 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 by generous impulse—such ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... old rook (gambler),' says the writer before quoted, 'take up a young fellow in a tavern upon this very bet. The bargain was made that the rook should have seven always, and the young gentleman six, and throw continually. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... parrots, so similar in their peculiar utterance. Or, take as an example the web-footed family: Do not all the geese and the innumerable host of ducks quack? Does not every member of the crow family caw, whether it be the jackdaw, the jay, or the magpie, the rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the crow of our woods, with its long, melancholy caw that seems to make the silence and solitude deeper? Compare all the sweet warblers of the songster family—the nightingales, the thrushes, the mocking-birds, the robins; they ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... for it, Miss Lorton," said the gentleman's voice. "There, before you, is something better than theory. It is an indisputable fact. There is my king, with your queen immediately in front of him, and your rook in the distance guarding that strong-minded lady. And where is my queen? Why, gadding about with knights and bishops, when she ought to have been standing by the ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... 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. For three months, however, ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... a wedding; and I was just in time to see it, for the procession was passing at that moment. First came a splendid cock-a-doodle, all in black and gold, like a herald, blowing his trumpet, and marching with a very dignified step. Then came a rook, in black, like a minister, with spectacles and white cravat. A lark and bullfinch followed,—friends, I suppose; and then the bride and bridegroom. Miss Wren was evidently a Quakeress; for she wore a sober dress, and a little white veil, through which her ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... a 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 ragged boys who had been marshalled to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... was examining the spoor of the game by the fountain, I suddenly detected an enormous old rook-snake stealing in beneath a mass of rock beside me. He was truly an enormous snake, and, having never before dealt with this species of game, I did not exactly know how to set about capturing him. Being ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Winkle rook-shooting. The pair set out with their guns, preceded by the fat boy and followed by Mr. Pickwick, Snodgrass and the corpulent Tupman. Winkle, who disliked to admit his ignorance of guns, showed it in a painful way. His first ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... 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
... cousin, that this is a sort of paradise. I hear very little of the birds down where I live; and I may as well admit that I don't bother my head about them. Besides, there are one or two awkward customers among them, such as the crow, for instance, and the rook and the jackdaw, who all belong to the same family. Not to speak of the stork and the buzzard, for whom a ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... call me the "Raw Recruit," The joke of the awkward squad, The rook of the rookies to boot, And a bumpkin, a dolt and a clod; But this much I'll plead in defense I seem popular with these chaps, For they keep me a'moving thither and hence ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy |
