"Wren" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deep note at the hour of nine in the evening the students are summoned to their respective colleges. The upper part of the tower displays in the bracketed canopies and carved enrichments the skilful hand of Sir Christopher Wren, whose fame was much enhanced by the erection of the gorgeous turrets which project on each side of the gateway.{1} Not caring to endure a closer attack of the togati, who had now approached me, I crossed and entered the great quadrangle, or, according to Oxford phraseology, Tom Quad. ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... when cloud and sun intermix and make an ardent silver, with lights of blue and faint fresh rose; and over them the beautiful fold of her full eyebrow on the eyelid like a bending upper heaven. Those winter mornings are divine. They move on noiselessly. The earth is still, as if awaiting. A wren warbles, and flits through the lank drenched brambles; hill-side opens green; elsewhere is mist, everywhere expectancy. They bear the veiled sun like a sangreal aloft to the wavy marble flooring ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... local name for Chelsea Hospital, a home for old and disabled soldiers. It was founded by Charles II and the buildings were designed by Wren.) ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... from the heather, and flew low. Here, too, the Doctor flushed a "White's thrush," close to an outlying belt of forest, and got into a great state of excitement about it. "The only known bird," he said, "which is found in Europe, America, and Australia alike." Then he pointed out the emu wren, a little tiny brown fellow, with long hairy tail-feathers, flitting from bush to bush; and then, leaving ornithology, called their attention to the wonderful variety of low vegetation that they were riding through; Hakeas, Acacias, Grevilleas, ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... lying back in the chair. A wren had perched itself lovingly upon his shoulder, but Hibbert knew nothing of its presence. He was fast asleep—in the long, last sleep ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... (Bishop of Worcester) was made Rector. The church was rebuilt by Wren in 1686 "in a neat, plain manner." The ancient tower remained, and was recased in 1704. The building is large, light, and airy, and is in the florid, handsome style we are accustomed to associate with Wren. At the west end is a fine ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... and the wren Cherry ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry Cold's the wind, and wet's the rain Come all ye jolly shepherds Come, cheerful day, part of my life to me Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer Come follow, follow me Come into the garden, Maud Come live with me and be my love Come not, when I am ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... marbles have crumbled and its ornaments have been removed, but it has formed the model of the most beautiful buildings of the world, from the Quirinus at Rome to the Madeleine at Paris, stimulating alike the genius of Michael Angelo and Christopher Wren, immortal in the ideas it has perpetuated, and immeasurable in the influence it has exerted. Who has copied the Flavian amphitheatre except as a convenient form for exhibitors on the stage, or for the rostrum of an orator? Who has not copied the Parthenon as the severest in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... He was so big and angry that she felt like a wren or sparrow in his hold. But the stupidity of him! the blind idiocy! She eyed him from head to foot with a bitterness and contempt unutterable—a handsome six-foot animal, with his small brain filled with smaller, worn-out prejudices! The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... the reed that grew by the river: "It is no wonder that you make such a sorrowful moaning, for you are so weak that the little wren is a burden for you, and the lightest breeze must seem like a storm-wind. Now look at me! No storm has ever been able to bow my head. You will be much safer if you grow close to my side so that I may shelter you from the wind that is now ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Robin's not a beggar, And Jenny Wren's a bride, And larks hang singing, singing, singing, Over the wheat-fields wide, And anchored lilies ride, And the pendulum spider Swings from ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... you a story about the wren. There was once a farmer who was seeking a servant, and the wren met him and ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... can He who smiles on all Hear the wren with sorrows small, Hear the small bird's grief and care, Hear the woes ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... early part of this century are easily distinguished by the flat and shallow carved scroll and arabesque work with which the sides and doors are covered. In the directions given on the primary visitation of Wren, bishop of Norwich, A. D. 1636, we find an order "that the chancels and alleys in the church be not encroached upon by building of seats; and if any be so built, the same to be removed and taken away; and that no pews ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... two made four, I felt that five times two were ten, But, as for all profounder lore, The robin redbreast or the wren, The sparrow, whether cock or hen, Knew quite as much about Quadratics, Was less confused by x and n, The deep delights ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... genuine piety. The possession of these graces prevented her from falling into more errors than she did. Still, it is certainly somewhat beyond a woman's sphere to order Christian ministers about thus: 'Now, Wren, I charge you to be faithful, and to deliver a faithful message in all the congregations.' 'My lady,' said Wren, 'they will not bear it.' She rejoined, 'I will stand by you.'[767] On another occasion she happened to have two young ministers in her house, 'when it occurred to ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the wren thy myrtles shed On gentlest Otway's infant head, To him thy cell was shown; And while he sung the female heart, With youth's soft notes unspoiled by art, Thy turtles mixed ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... brown house cuddling like a wren's nest on the edge of the longest and deepest of the tide-water coves that cut through Riverton had but four rooms in all,—the kitchen tacked to the back porch, after the fashion of South Carolina kitchens, the shed room in which Peter slept, the dining-room ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... Mary Howitt The Captain's Daughter James Thomas Fields The Nightingale and the Glow-Worm William Cowper Sir Lark and King Sun: A Parable George Macdonald The Courtship, Merry Marriage, and Picnic Dinner of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren Unknown The Babes in the Wood Unknown God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop Robert Southey The Pied ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... their thickness is rather out of proportion to their height. The highest point of the whole, as given before, is 1500 feet above the ground, while it is 2800 feet above the sea-level. Could I be buried at Mount Olga, I should certainly borrow Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph, Circumspice si monumentum requiris. To the eastward from here, as mentioned in my first expedition, and not very far off, lay another strange and singular-looking mound, similar perhaps to this. Beyond ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... altogether mistaken, in fact, were only half wrong when they coupled my name with that of pretty Lucy Plonelle. She had captivated my heart, just as a bird-catcher on a frosty morning catches an imprudent wren on a limed twig, and she might have done whatever ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... landscape, that 'Poussin' to a French ear conveyed the idea of 'chicken,' or of the young of birds in general. (Is it from 'pousser,' as if they were a kind of budding of bird?) Everybody seems to agree in feeling that this is a kind of wren among the dabchicks. Bewick's name, 'Little Gallinule,' meaning of course, if he knew it, the twice-over little Gallina;—and here again the question occurs to me about its voice. Is it a twice-over little crow, called a 'creak,' or anything like the Rail's more provokingly continuous ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... I remember the long silence that followed and the distant voices that flashed across it now and then—the call of the mire drum in the marshes and the songs of the winter wren and the swamp robin. It ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... has not the same unfettered freedom in construction. He cannot always adapt his house either to the physical or mental size of his family, but must accept what is possible with much the same feeling with which a family of robins might accommodate themselves to a wren's nest, or an oriole to that of a barn-swallow. But the fact remains, that all these accidental homes must, in some way, be brought into harmony with the lives to be lived in them, and the habits and wants of the family; and not only this, they must ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... was blocked by mauser-fire from a very ominous, black-looking kopje which stretched down into the valley from the high ground on our left. The guns came into action against this hill at a range of about two thousand yards, and it seemed as if a golden-crested wren could not have escaped if it had been unlucky enough to be there. The shrapnel kept up an almost incessant hail, covering the wooded sides of the kopje with jets of round white balls of smoke, while ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... the Common Council "an exquisite modell or draught" which found much favour with the court.(1338) Early in the following month (4 Oct.) the Common Council was informed that for the greater expedition in carrying out the work of re-building the city, the king had appointed Wren and two others to make a survey, with the assistance of such surveyors and workmen as the civic authorities should nominate. The city's choice fell upon Robert Hooke, described as "Reader of the Mathematicks ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... 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; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... with the infant Christ in the folk-lore of Europe and the East. In Normandy, the wren is called Poulette de Dieu, Oiseau de Dieu, "God's Chicken," "God's Bird,"—corresponding to the old Scotch "Our Lady's Hen,"—because, according to legend, "she was present at the birth of the Infant Saviour, made her nest in his cradle, and brought moss and feathers to form a coverlet for ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... door with his eyes on Dolly's, and made a conscience-stricken attempt to sit up and wave one paw in deprecation, doubtless prepared with a plausible explanation of his singular appearance, which much resembled that of 'Mr. Dolls' returning to Jenny Wren after ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... respectfully, while she replied, "My lady, it would ill become me to make free with such as you, but I have many small causes of trouble, which, even if you did hear, you could not comprehend. The brown wren would not go for counsel to the gay parrot, however wise and great the parrot might be, but seek advice from another brown wren, because it would understand and feel exactly the cares and troubles of its ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... sacred, excepting at one time of the year, for should anyone take this wee birdie's life away, upon him some mishap will fall. The wren ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... she can leave the scene. Her appearances are fitful; she keeps to the hearth when the grandees hold the floor. You see nothing of her at Holland House, which Tom may use as his inn, or at Bowood, if she can help herself, which in the country is his house of call. She is the Jenny Wren of this little cock-robin; she wears drab, too often mourning; but you find that she counts for very much with Tom. He loves to know her at his back, loves to remind himself of it. He is always happy to be home again in her faithful arms. Through ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... line toward the skies, their slender branches forming a dark network overhead, and their lofty proportions lessening in the distance, until lost in the solemn gloom beyond. A religious silence prevailed, broken only by the occasional chirp of the wren, or the soft pattering of some ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... up out of the ground and caught Ricardo by the throat! In vain he strove to separate the teeth, when the crow, stooping from the heavens, became the Princess Jaqueline, and changed Dick into a wren—a tiny bird, so small that he easily flew out of the jaws of the Giant and winged his way to a tree, ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... wind in the tree tops The flowers in the glen, Of the birds—the brown robin, The wood dove, the wren, They talked—but their thoughts Were ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... turned aside and entered the tufts and wild parsley by the hedge. Thence the call has come without a moment's pause, "crake, crake," till the thick hedge seems filled with it. Tits have visited the apple tree over my head, a wren has sung in the willow, or rather on a dead branch projecting lower down than the leafy boughs, and a robin across under the elms in the opposite hedge. Elms are a favourite tree of robins—not the upper branches, but those ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... greater severity of form and a commendable rigidity of line. He has learned like so many moderns that the ruled line offers greater advantages in pictorial structure. You shall find his approach to the spirit of Christopher Wren is as clear and direct as his feeling for the vastiness of New England speechlessness. He has come up beyond the dramatisation of emotion to the point of expression for its own sake. But he is nevertheless to be included ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... hereof was to prevent witch-craft [to keep the fairies out]; for lest witches should draw or prick their names therein, and veneficiously mischief their persons, they broke the shell, as Dalecampius hath observed." This is what Sir Thomas Browne tells us about eggshells. And Dr. Wren adds, "Least they [the witches] perchance might use them for boates to sayle in by night." But I, who have no fear of witches, would not break them,—rather use them, try what an untold variety of forms we may make out of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... there intending to say nothing, but the scene moved him to a few words. He remembered once standing in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, and seeing therein the name of the architect, Sir Christopher Wren, inscribed, and under it this inscription: "Stranger, if you would see his monument look about you." And the thought came to him that if you would see the monument of him who lies there, look about you and see it built in stones of living hearts. He thanked God for the ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... the mother began anew where it stopped, and completed it. Then the young one resumed the tune and finished it. This done, the mother sang over the whole series of notes a second time with great precision; and a second of the young attempted to follow her. The wren pursued the same course with this as with the first; and so with the third and fourth. It sometimes happened that the young one would lose the tune three, four, or more times in the same attempt; in which case the mother uniformly began where they ceased, and sung the remaining ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... "Yon wood-wren has had enough to make him sad, if only he recollects it, and if he can recollect his road from Morocco hither he maybe recollects likewise what happened on the road: the long weary journey up the Portuguese coast, and through the gap between the Pyrenees and the Jaysquivel, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... wife. It was used as a fortress in the Civil Wars, and was considerably battered. The first Duke of Devonshire about the year 1700 rebuilt the mansion, employing the chief architects, artists, designers, and wood-carvers of his time, among them Sir Christopher Wren. In the grounds, not far from the bridge over the Derwent, is the "Bower of Mary Queen of Scots." There is a small, clear lake almost concealed by foliage, in the centre of which is a tower, and on the top a grass-grown garden, where are also several fine trees. Here, under guard, the ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... side of the courtyard, where the brick is of a deeper shade than the rest. King William's taste in the matter of architecture knew no deviation; his model was Versailles, and as he had commissioned Wren to transform the Tudor building of Hampton into a palace resembling Versailles, so he directed him to repeat the experiment here. The long, low red walls, with their neat exactitude, speak still of William's orders; a building of heterogeneous growth, with a tower here ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... Not since Wren's Dome has whispered with man's prayer Have angels leaned to wonder out of Heaven At such uprush of intercession given, Here where to-day one soul two nations share, And with accord send up thro' trembling air Their vows to strive as Honour ne'er has striven Till back to hell ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... pretty pass, indeed, when the commuters are to be dispossessed in this way by a lot of birds, orioles and tomtits and yellow-bellied nuthatches. Some of these days a wren will take it into its head to build a nest on the railroad track and we'll all have to walk to town. Or a chicken hawk will settle in our icebox and we'll ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... let him ring the bells, He can do nothing else. Chanticlere our cock Must tell what is of the clock By the astrology That he hath naturally Conceived and caught, And was never taught. . . . . To Jupiter I call Of heaven imperial That Philip may fly Above the starry sky To greet the pretty wren That is our Lady's hen, Amen, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... but was dreadfully disfigured. For many days he hovered between life and death. Jennie Wren, the dolls' dressmaker, came, and she and Lizzie nursed him. As soon as he could speak he made them understand that before he died he wanted Lizzie to marry him. A minister was sent for, and with him came John Rokesmith and Bella. So the sick man was married to Lizzie, ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... the bogle wags, a thing of jest And open scorn; the very pipits mock it; A jenny wren, I'm told, has built her nest In ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... company of scientists had been in the habit of meeting at some place in London to discuss philosophical and scientific subjects for mental advancement. In 1648, owing to the political disturbances of the time, some of the members of these meetings removed to Oxford, among them Boyle, Wallis, and Wren, where the meetings were continued, as were also the meetings of those left in London. In 1662, however, when the political situation bad become more settled, these two bodies of men were united under a charter from Charles II., and Bacon's ideas were practically expressed ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... development. All this will be clearly and logically explained by the professors of the academies. They will further add that after the accession of the Stuarts the building art gradually declined, with only a few flashes of brilliant light in the works of Inigo Jones and Wren. The Commonwealth was prudish in art as in manners, and the Restoration was a reign of revel and wild license. The social worlds of William and Mary and of Queen Anne, stiff, starched, and formal, left their impress upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... o'clock Caesar's gig was at the door of "The Manx Fairy" to take the bride and bridegroom home. They had sung "Mylecharane," and "Keerie fu Snaighty," and "Hunting the Wren," and "The Win' that Shook the Barley," and then they had cleared away the tables and danced to the fiddle of John the Clerk and the clarionet of Jonaique Jelly. Kate, with wild eyes and flushed cheeks, had taken part in everything, but always fiercely, violently, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... know the tricks of wind and tide That make and mean disaster, And balk 'em, too, the Wren and me, Off on the Old Man's Pastur'. Day out and in the blackfish there Go wabbling out and under, And nights we watch the coasters creep From light to ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... whilst it is reckoned wicked to kill either of these (not but that there is an ancient custom of "hunting the wren" still kept up, we believe, in some parts of this country,) it is considered unlucky to kill a Swallow, or House-Martin. The King-fisher is the Halcyon of the ancients, who imagined that during the process of incubation by the female ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... out is to make the entrance doorway too small for them to enter. A hole an inch in diameter will admit a wren or chickadee and bar out a sparrow, but it will also keep out most of the other birds. The usual doorway should be two inches in diameter. It is surprising how soon after we build our bird house we find a tiny pair making their ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... but a reflective description. Yet how it illuminates! If we had never thought of it before we know now, once and for all, the essential difference between a Gothic church and one of Wren's building. And further, since Mrs. Woods is writing of an age that slighted Gothic for the architecture of Wren and his followers, we get a brilliant side-flash to help our comprehension. It is a hint only, but it assures ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Yang-tse-kiang; the Southern lady suspected her of literary gifts; the architect walked with her through the woods to the rustic shelter where the Vicomte had kissed her hand, and told her that he now comprehended the feelings of Christopher Wren when he conceived St. Paul's Cathedral, of Michael Angelo when he painted the Sistine Chapel. Even the serious young lawyer succumbed, though not without a struggle. When he had first seen Miss Leffingwell, he confessed, he had thought her frivolous. He had done her an injustice, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... remains of the reigns of Augustus, Nero, Vespasian, and Constantine. In High Street, leading from the Cathedral to the Cross, is the Guildhall, erected from a design by a pupil of the great Sir Christopher Wren, and considered to be one of the most handsome brick-fronted structures in the kingdom. It is decorated with statues of Charles I., Charles II., Queen Anne, and with emblematic figures of Justice, Peace, Labour, &c.; whilst over the doorway is the city coat of arms, ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... royalists and the puritans of the woods, from the love-lorn wood-pigeon, cooing in the tall firs, to the thrush and the blackbird, making long hops as they quartered the ground for grubs; and the robin, the linnet, and little Jenny Wren all lived there in riotous plenty of worms and snails; and nearer to the great house the starlings and jackdaws shot down in a great hurry from the holes in old trees where they had their nests, and many of them came rushing from their headquarters ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... and the winter wren, the white-throated sparrow and the brown creeper, all may be looked for between the 20th of September and the passing of the month, though as for the brown creeper those two ardent bird students, Frederic H. Kennard and Fred McKechnie ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... events of the day was the sight of the winter wren, the first time he had been seen this winter. He was working among the stumps of trees at the brink of the river, under the ice which had been left clinging to the trees when the high water receded. There was no mistaking his beautiful coat of cinnamon brown, ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... the Dawn. But in this savage Jungle Book all the characters are animals, and Reeargar is no more the Dawn than is the kangaroo rat. In savage myths animals, not men, play the leading roles, and the fire-stealing bird or beast is found among many widely scattered races. In Normandy the wren is the fire-bringer. {196c} A bird brings fire in the Andaman Isles. {196d} Among the Ahts a fish owned fire; other beasts stole it. The raven hero of the Thlinkeets, Yehl, stole fire. Among the Cahrocs two old women possessed it, and it was stolen by the coyote. Are these theftuous ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... unreasonably irritating to him. He could not bear to hear him speak with trembling voice and gleaming eyes of the grand mountains and the silent corries around Ben-Nevis, the red deer trooping over the misty steeps, and the brown hinds lying among the green plumes of fern, and the wren and the thrush lilting in ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... example at the church of St. Alban, Wood Street, Cheapside. This church was rebuilt by Sir C. Wren, and finished 1685; showing that the hour-glass was in use subsequent to the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... have contracted, have they, for a house? And a nest is under way for little Mr. Wren?" "Hush, dear, hush! Be quiet, dear! quiet as a mouse. These are weighty secrets, and we must ...
— Confidences - Talks With a Young Girl Concerning Herself • Edith B. Lowry
... no mean antagonists. Then, too, the one with the cudgel wielded it skillfully. Time and again Jimsy avoided a heavy blow which, if successful, must have injured him seriously. The girls, screaming, rushed off, carrying "the Wren," as the woman called her, with them. They dashed at top speed back to the spot where the aeroplanes had ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... and printer of which was John Walter, of Printing House Square, a quiet, little, out-of-the-way nook, nestling under the shadow of St. Paul's, not known to one man in a thousand of the daily wayfarers at the base of Wren's mighty monument, but destined to become as famous and as well known as any spot of ground in historic London. This newspaper boasted but four pages, and was composed by a new process, with types consisting of words and syllables ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the 7th of October 1759. His other works are catalogues of English printers, of the collection of coins which belonged to the earl of Pembroke, of some two thousand English portraits, and Parentalia (1750), a memoir of the Wrens, undertaken in conjunction with Sir Christopher Wren's grandson, Stephen Wren. Part of his correspondence in bibliography is included in Nichols's Literary ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... declared on his death-bed was null and void; who refused to come and keep house for a childless old man, who would have treated her in every respect as an honored guest; who flew off like a fussy little wren, when her affluent cousin offered to provide for her; and who, last of all, rejects one of nature's noblemen—the best match in the city—the deuce knows for what; I consider non compos mentis, and quite unable to take care ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... the Gleason cottage. A movable sprinkler was playing busily on the front lawn and, observing that the surrounding sod was well soaked, with lazy deliberation he shifted it to a new quarter. As he approached the house a mother wren flitted away before his face, and at the new suggestion he stood peering up at the angle under the eaves for the nest that he knew was near about. Once, standing there with the hot afternoon sun beating down upon him, he whistled in imitation of the tiny bird's call; nothing developing, ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... longlegs doesn't tickle the baby with his long cow-pointing leg and make her laugh so she gets the hiccoughs, I'll tell you in the next story about Uncle Wiggily and the brown wren. ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... Birds! or, rather, for the Hawk Has surely not the same God as the Wren, O God of ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... period, suffering alike from the silence of Cowper and the song of Hayley. You may accept the fact as natural, that Zwingli and Luther, without knowing each other, preached the same reformed gospel; that Newton, and Hooke, and Halley, and Wren arrived independently of each other at the great law of the diminution of gravity with the square of the distance; that Leverrier and Adams felt their hands meeting, as it were, as they stretched them into the outer darkness beyond the orbit of Uranus, in search of the dim, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cloud-climb rock, sublime and vast, That like some giant king, o'er-glooms the hill; Nor there the pine-grove to the midnight blast Makes solemn music! But the unceasing rill To the soft wren or lark's descending trill Murmurs sweet under-song 'mid jasmine bowers. In this same pleasant meadow at your will, I ween, you wander'd—there collecting flow'rs Of sober tint, and herbs of ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... some difference betwixt Little-faith and the King's Champion. All the King's subjects are not His champions, nor can they, when tried, do such feats of war as he. Is it meet to think that a little child should handle Goliath as David did? Or that there should be the strength of an ox in a wren? Some are strong, some are weak; some have great faith, some have little. This man was one of the weak, and therefore he went to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... around, The squeaking pigs her bounty own'd; Nor to the waddling duck or gabbling goose Did she glad sustenance refuse; The strutting cock she daily fed, And turkey with his snout so red; 30 Of chickens careful as the pious hen, Nor did she overlook the tom-tit or the wren, While red-breast hopp'd before her in the hall, As if she common mother were ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... do, nor did he particularly interfere with my concerns, as the manner of other uncles (so I am told), is. He just took as little notice as possible of me, and as long as I went regularly to Mrs Wren's grammar-school in the village, and as long as Mrs Hudson kept my garments in proper order, and as long as I showed up duly on state occasions, and didn't bring more than a square inch of clay on each heel (there was a natural ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... cam' to the wren's nest, And keekit in, and keekit in: 'O weel's me on your auld pow! Wad ye be in, wad ye be in? Ye' se ne'er get leave to lie without, And I within, and I within, As lang 's I hae an auld clout, To row ye in, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... not enough to do, and was altogether very unhappy, I used to wander about the streets and wonder how I could be so much alone when there were so many possible friends. Just above Ludgate Railway Viaduct, as you go to St. Paul's, there is a church on your left, a Wren church, very plain, of white and blackened stone, and an odd lead spire at the top. It has hardly any ornament, but just over the central doorway, under a sort of pediment, there is a little childish angel's head, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Victorian architecture, and mud and great warehouses and factories, chimneys, shot towers, advertisements on the south. The northward skyline grows more intricate and pleasing, and more and more does one thank God for Wren. Somerset House is as picturesque as the civil war, one is reminded again of the original England, one feels in the fretted sky the ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... United States there are a great many birds. Many of them live in the woods; others are found in the fields. Some are seen in the gardens, and a few are kept in our houses. The eagle builds her nest upon the highest rock, while the wren forms her snug and tiny nest in the way-side hedge. The swallow plasters her nest upon the gable of the house or under the eaves of the barn. Out in the wheat-field we hear the whistle of the quail. The noise of the ducks and geese ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... thy ways! We want again The twitter of the bluebird and the wren; Leaves ever greener growing, and the shine Of ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... son of Clustveinad, (though he were buried seven cubits beneath the earth, he would hear the ant, fifty miles off, rise from her nest in the morning). Medyr the son of Methredydd, (from Gelli Wic he could, in a twinkling, shoot the wren through the two legs upon Esgeir Oervel in Ireland). Gwiawn Llygad Cath, (who would cut a haw from the eye of the gnat without hurting him). Ol the son of Olwydd; (seven years before he was born his father's swine were carried off, and ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... haunt of the Winter Wren. This is the only place and these the only woods in which I find him in this vicinity. His voice fills these dim aisles, as if aided by some marvellous sounding-board. Indeed, his song is very strong for so small a bird, and unites ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... I will not stirre from this place, do what they can. I will walke vp and downe here, and I will sing that they shall heare I am not afraid. The Woosell cocke, so blacke of hew, With Orenge-tawny bill. The Throstle, with his note so true, The Wren and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and then of the combined forces formed in 1682 by the union of this organisation and the "Duke of York's Company." This was the house into which Nance Oldfield came as a modest debutante. It had been built from the designs of Wren, to replace the old theatre destroyed by fire ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... his words to be taken undiluted," said Mr. Barrymore. "If it hadn't been for Palladio, there would have been no Inigo Jones and no Christopher Wren, therefore if you'd had a Capitol at all, it wouldn't be what it is now. And to understand the colonial architecture of America, you have to go back ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... English birds as they appear in books. I know the lark of Shakespeare and Shelley and the Ettrick Shepherd; I know the nightingale of Milton and Keats; I know Wordsworth's cuckoo; I know mavis and merle singing in the merry green wood of the old ballads; I know Jenny Wren and Cock Robin of the nursery books. Therefore I had always much desired to hear the birds in real life; and the opportunity offered in June, 1910, when I spent two or three weeks in England. As ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... merrymakers in the farmyard might make matters far from merry for him. For Freddie Firefly feared all birds. At night he used his trusty light to frighten Mr. Nighthawk or Willie Whip-poor-will. But he didn't intend to run any risk in the daytime, with Jolly Robin or Rusty Wren. ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... centuries had passed from the creation of Magdalen Tower that the central gateway into Christ Church was surmounted by the well-known Tom Tower, erected by Sir Christopher Wren to hold "Great Tom", a mighty bell which once belonged to Osney Abbey. This was the first of the domes to rear its head. But it was not long left solitary. Seventy years afterwards the great dome of the Radcliffe Camera rose up in the space between All Souls and Brasenose colleges, ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... "Here the wren of softest note Builds its nest and warbles well; Here the blackbird strains his throat; Welcome, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... Larix to other trees. In my garden this Pinus is never without them, but I never saw a bird perch on Thuja occidentalis or Juniperus sabina, although the thick foliage of these latter trees affords birds a better shelter than the loose leafage of other trees. Not even a wren ever finds its way to one of them. Perhaps the scent of the Thuja and the Juniperus is offensive to them. I have spoiled one of my meadows by cutting away the bushes. It formerly bore grass four feet high, because many umbelliferous plants, such as Heracleum spondylium, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... of Europe not a nest of such a colony could have lived an hour within reach of such a population; for the baya bird has no peculiar respect paid to it by the people here, like the wren and robin-redbreast in England. No boy in India has the slightest wish to molest birds in their nests; it enters not into their pastimes, and they have no feeling of pride or pleasure in it. With us it is different—to discover birds' nests ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... tranquillity. The rivulet Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice In its own being. Softly tread the marge, Lest from her midway perch thou scare the wren That dips her bill in water. The cool wind, That stirs the stream in play, shall come to thee. Like one that loves thee nor will let thee pass Ungreeted, and shall give its ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... gravely, "that your change of dress betokens the neighbourhood of those pretty girls of whom you spoke in an earlier meeting. According to the Darwinian doctrine of selection, fine plumage goes far in deciding the preference of Jenny Wren and her sex, only we are told that fine-feathered birds are very seldom songsters as well. It is rather unfair to rivals when you unite ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lookout station), has just been built. A stage ahead, architecturally, of the log meeting-house with clay-filled chinks, thatched roof, oiled-paper windows, earthen floor, and a stage behind the charming steeple style made popular by Sir Christopher Wren, and now multiplied in countless graceful examples all over New England, the Old Ship is entirely unconscious of the distinction which is awaiting it—the distinction of being the oldest house for public worship in the United States which still stands on ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... enthusiastic about them, I rather disposed to think that the abuses which invariably accompanied them made their final extinction altogether advisable. We put our respective theories in practice next morning with the most perfect consistency; for Hannah drove indignantly from the door the wren-boys, just as ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... wheaten straw, The wren his little note doth swell, And every living thing that flies, Of his true love doth ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... little wren Came scolding to his nest of moss; We knew him by his peevish cry, He always sung so very cross. His quiet little mate would lay Her eggs in peace, and ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... was being discussed by Hooke, Wren, Halley, and many others. All of these men felt a repugnance to accept the idea of a force acting across the empty void of space. Descartes (1596-1650) proposed an ethereal medium whirling round the sun with the planets, and having local ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... birds which serve our purpose. We admire the brilliant plumage of the jay, cardinal and goldfinch. We love the mellow notes of the woodthrush, and of the veery, the clear, rollicking outpourings of the bobolink, the musical love song of the brown thrasher, the cheerful scolding of the wren. We are fond of the birds who busy themselves taking the insects out from among our grain and from off our fruit trees. We can only understand the value of the bird to nature when he is valuable to us. So, because the English sparrow does little that is to our advantage and much that is to ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... of birds that are very ready to use the nesting places you make. These are the Robin, Wren, and Phoebe. But each bird wants its own kind exactly right, or will not ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... ourselves on what We feel, and not what we achieve; The world may call our children fools, Enough for us that we conceive. A little wren that loves the grass Can be as proud as any lark That tumbles in a cloudless sky, Up near the sun, till he becomes The apple ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... The little wren is very small, The humming-bee is less; The ladybird is least of all, And beautiful in dress. The pelican she loves her young, The stork its parent loves; The woodcock's bill is very long, And innocent are doves. In Germany they hunt the ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... Floppart's body during her wild but brief career. Bones did not wish to recapture her. He wished her dead, and for that end loudly reiterated the calumny as to madness. Floppart circled round the grand cathedral erected by Wren and got into Cheapside. Here, doubling like a hare, she careered round the statue of Peel and went blindly back to St. Martin's-le-Grand, as if to add yet another link to the chain of fate which bound her arch-pursuer to the General Post-Office. ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne |
