"Bleat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which may perhaps be derived from the Latin sinuo, as snake, sneak, snail, snare; so likewise snap and snatch, snib, snub. Bl imply a blast; as blow, blast, to blast, to blight, and, metaphorically, to blast one's reputation; bleat, bleak, a bleak place, to look bleak, or weather-beaten, black, blay, bleach, bluster, blurt, blister, blab, bladder, blew, blabber lip't, blubber-cheek't, bloted, blote-herrings, blast, blaze, to blow, that is, blossom, bloom; and ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... palmy shadows cool and long, The eyes that smiled through lavish locks, Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song, And bleat of flocks. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... on light, her wind-swift steeds, Winged with roseate clouds, strain up the steep. She loosely holds the reins, her golden hair, Its strings outspread by the sweet morning breeze[,] Blinds the pale stars. Our rural tasks begin; The young lambs bleat pent up within the fold, The herds low in their stalls, & the blithe cock Halloos most loudly to his distant mates. But who are these we see? these are not men, Divine of form & sple[n]didly arrayed, They sit in solemn conclave. Is that Pan, [36] Our Country God, surrounded ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... upon the hillside, the low cry of a young cow, the bleat of a sheep, all added to his feeling of dread, until the sweat streamed down his body, as he swung along ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... and almost before Finn's sticky mouth could open in a bleat of protest, the Master's hand had returned him to the warm dugs. Again came the harsh, suspicious nose of the foster about Finn's tail, and this time a low growl followed the resentful sniff, and blind, helpless, unformed little jelly that Finn was, instinct ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... soon lost to sight as they soared overhead, singing faintly as they rose; the rooks gave prolonged and melancholy caws as they took their early flight, and the cocks crowed querulously in the yard, while now and then there was a pitiful bleat from the old ewe which had ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... threttanello![760] I want to imitate Cyclops and lead your troop by stamping like this.[761] Do you, my dear little ones, cry, aye, cry again and bleat forth the plaintive song of the sheep and of the stinking goats; follow me with erected organs like lascivious goats ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... sword! Swift messengers, and sharp, Reapers that leave no gleanings. In their path Silence and desolation fiercely stalk. —O'er trampled hills, and on the blood-stain'd plains There is no low of kine, or bleat of flocks, The fields are rifled, and the ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... Bleat out afresh, ye hills! ye mossy rocks, Retain the sound; the broad responsive low, Ye valleys raise; for the great Shepherd reigns, And his unsuffering kingdom yet ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... he suddenly exclaimed. "I's de double Grandes' Arrangeh whut is!" A faint bleat sounded from the darkness. "Shut up, Lily! Fo' I gits th'oo arrangin', yo' an' me bofe rides de mule does ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... sorrowful because of your sufferings; they are small indeed when the ensuing transcendent glory is considered. You are not alone in your tribulation and your complaint at injustice; the whole creation suffers with you and cries out against its subjection to the wicked world. Every bleat of the flock, every low of the herd, is an outcry against the ungodly as enemies of God and not worthy to enjoy the creatures' ministrations; not even to receive a morsel of bread or a drink of water. Along this line ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... notify our boat he would hand us any directions which he might think it proper to give us at the moment of starting. A second question from us failed to elicit any answer at all, save a plaintive bleat from his wife to the effect that her husband was in a very violent temper already, and that she hoped we would do nothing to make it worse. A third attempt, later in the day, provoked a terrific crash, and a subsequent message ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... filled the little trench in which I had been lying. From time to time a wall fell in the village, and the cattle, scared away by the battle, began to resume confidence and return. I heard a goat bleat in a neighboring stable. A great shepherd's dog wandered fearfully among the heaps of dead. The horse, seeing him, neighed in terror—he took him for a ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... deserted for an hour or two; the cattle, too many to be removed, began to low and bleat because they missed their customary attention; only in the Priory of St. Denys did things go on as usual; there the bells rang out for vespers and compline, and the foreign brethren went on their way as if the events of the day had no importance ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... injure; then were foiled The masters, Chiron sprung from Phillyron, And Amythaon's son Melampus. See! From Stygian darkness launched into the light Comes raging pale Tisiphone; she drives Disease and fear before her, day by day Still rearing higher that all-devouring head. With bleat of flocks and lowings thick resound Rivers and parched banks and sloping heights. At last in crowds she slaughters them, she chokes The very stalls with carrion-heaps that rot In hideous corruption, till men learn With earth to cover them, in pits to hide. For e'en the fells ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... the corporal story. The squad were perfect lambs in Knudsen's hands, none daring to bleat, while all around us the other squads were disputing in undertones and going wrong amid storms of discontent. When we had got back to the tent, and had lost our emergency non-com., Knudsen began to praise him for an excellent corporal. ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... Edinburgh is, at times, deceptive; there is a note among the chimney pots that suggests Howe Street; though I think the shrillest spot in Christendom was not upon the Howe Street side, but in front, just under the Miss Graemes' big chimney stack. It had a fine alto character - a sort of bleat that used to divide the marrow in my joints - say in the wee, slack hours. That music is now lost to us by rebuilding; another air that I remember, not regret, was the solo of the gas-burner in the little front room; a knickering, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came in? Show pity to others, we then can talk of pity to yourself. You can be the one thing or the other, but I will be no party to half-way houses. If you're a striker, strike, and if you're a bleater, bleat!" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "the child that had only recovered from the measles" began to wail. It was then he had his first good taste of the teacher's floggings. "A little boy must not look where it is forbidden. A little boy must not bleat ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... struck me forcibly. The country people, those belonging to the Mornet, declare that at night one can hear talking going on in the sand, and then that one hears two goats bleat, one with a strong, the other with a weak voice. Incredulous people declare that it is nothing but the cry of the sea birds, which occasionally resembles bleatings, and occasionally human lamentations; ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... had an amiable low, And some such strange bull leapt your fathers Cow, A got a Calfe in that same noble feat, Much like to you, for you haue iust his bleat. Enter ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... The pastoral bleat, the drone of bees, The flail-beat chiming far away, The cattle-low at shut of day, The voice of God in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... an amiable low; And some such strange bull leap'd your father's cow, And got a calf in that same noble feat, Much like to you, for you have just his bleat. ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... hastened to unbar the door, and thought she saw a poor man standing in the darkness outside; but it was no such thing, only a bear, who poked his thick black head through the door. Rose-red screamed aloud and sprang back in terror, the lamb began to bleat, the dove flapped its wings, and Snow-white ran and hid behind her mother's bed. But the bear began to speak, and said: "Don't be afraid: I won't hurt you. I am half frozen, and only wish to warm myself a little." ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... forcibly. The country people, those belonging to the Mornet, declare that at night one can hear talking going on in the sand, and also that two goats bleat, one with a strong, the other with a weak voice. Incredulous people declare that it is nothing but the screaming of the sea birds, which occasionally resembles bleatings, and occasionally human lamentations; ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... the ground that she might lay her hands on his horns, which were very large; he then lifted her gently from the ground by raising his head. If she chanced to leave her flock feeding, as soon as they discovered she was gone, they all began to bleat most piteously, and would continue to do so till she returned; they would then testify their joy by rubbing their sides against her ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... curiously comforting, and suddenly his fear vanished. With his long, mobile muzzle he began to tug appealingly at a convenient fold of the man's woollen sleeve. Smiling complacently at this sign of confidence, the man left him, and started the team at a slow walk up the trail. With a hoarse bleat of alarm, thinking he was about to be deserted, the calf followed after the sled, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... To the schoolmaster mild, Our spirits went out To the fawn-footed child. His beckoning led Our troop to the brush. We found nothing there But a wind and a hush. He sat by a stone And he looked on the ground, As if in the weeds There was something profound. His pipe seemed to neigh, Then to bleat like a sheep, Then sound like a stream Or a waterfall deep. It whispered strange tales, Human words it spoke not. Told fair things to come, And our marvellous lot If now with fawn-steps Unshod we advanced To the ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... thinking they heard her steps, but in the thick darkness they could scarcely see their own hands, nor could they tell where the river lay, nor where the mountain. One by one the kids came home, and at every bleat someone hurried to open the door, but no sound broke the stillness. Through the night no one slept, and when morning broke and the mist rolled back, they sought the maiden by sea and by land, but never a trace of ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... bleating piteously, hesitated on the very edge of the chasm. Fadeaway swung his hat and laughed as the little creature reared and leaped out into space. There had been but little noise—an occasional frightened bleat, a drumming of hoofs on the mesa, and they were swept ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... night duly arrived, moonlit and cloudless. A platform had been constructed in a comfortable and conveniently placed tree, and thereon crouched Mrs. Packletide and her paid companion, Miss Mebbin. A goat, gifted with a particularly persistent bleat, such as even a partially deaf tiger might be reasonably expected to hear on a still night, was tethered at the correct distance. With an accurately sighted rifle and a thumbnail pack of patience cards the sportswoman awaited the coming of ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... quick enough to shoot it before it had jumped for the lamb it had been stalking. The coyote missed his prey, but the lamb, which had been feeding a little apart from the others, ran into the herd with a terrified bleat and the whole band fled ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... King. "They would not kill a baby. They are lambs, ducks, kids, doves. They bleat. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... young, Though I speak without a tongue. Nought but one thing can confound me, Many voices joining round me; Then I fret, and rave, and gabble, Like the labourers of Babel. Now I am a dog, or cow, I can bark, or I can low; I can bleat, or I can sing, Like the warblers of the spring. Let the lovesick bard complain, And I mourn the cruel pain; Let the happy swain rejoice, And I join my helping voice: Both are welcome, grief or joy, I with either sport ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... quantity of grass was placed in a large bladder, and a gill of the gastric fluid of a sheep introduced. In ten minutes the neck of the bladder emitted a contented bleat. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... a wet, thick thing flopped and drooled beyond the door, apparently immune to the attacks of the hospital staff. There were shouting orders involving the undine. The salamander in Dave's chest crept deeper and seemed to bleat at each cry of the monstrous thing beyond ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... here and there in search of the author of the disturbance. At last its eyes discovered tiny little Ajor, and then she hurled the stick at the diminutive head. With a cry that sounded not unlike the bleat of a sheep, the colossal creature shuffled into the ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Behind him moved a face whose physiognomy indicated a lusty goat-nature. And I saw at times long, hairy hands seize assistingly the strings of the violin on which Paganini was playing. They often guided the hand which held the bow, and then a bleat-laugh of applause accompanied the melody, which gushed from the violin ever more full of sorrow and anguish. They were melodies which were like the song of the fallen angels who had loved the daughters of earth, and being exiled from the kingdom of the blessed, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Behold ye the bulls, with how lordly a flank they besprawl on the broom! —Yet obey the uxorious yoke and are tamed by Dione her doom. Or behear ye the sheep, to the husbanding rams how they bleat to the shade! Or behear ye the birds, at the Goddess' command how they sing unafraid!— Be it harsh as the swannery's clamour that shatters the hush of the lake; Be it dulcet as where Philomela holds darkling the poplar awake, So melting ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... nor pastoral bleat In former days within the vale; Flapped in the bay the pirate's sheet; Curses were on the gale; Rich goods lay on the sand, and murdered men: Pirate and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... was ready with the rope, he gave the word, and the gate was opened; the cow ran in immediately, and, hearing her calf bleat, went into the cow-house, the door of which was shut upon her. A minute afterward Humphrey cried out to them to haul upon the ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... of this eternal bleat? You'm allus snarlin' an' gnashin' your teeth 'gainst God, like a rat bitin' ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Let them stand still as they are. They've been worked to their full value; all the fruit has dropped off of them already. Don't you see how they straggle along aimlessly, alone, untended? Why, I do believe they're dumb with age; they don't even bleat at being away from the rest of the flock. They seem perfectly harmless—just silly. Let's ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... the trader. "You bleat like a yowe. I said you can take it, the drink. Savvy? Wena poosa meningi ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... in the little stuffy rose-coloured room, and the street noises of New York came up to them—a loose chain flapping against the mud guard of a taxi; the jolt of a flat-wheeled Eighth Avenue street car; the roar of an L train; laughter; the bleat of a motor horn; a piano in the apartment next door, ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... naming his authority, who, to judge by some of his remarks, was apparently a facetious globe-trotter. It is of course possible that these young folks are much attached to each other. Even sheep are "miserable if separated only for an hour;" they bleat pathetically and are disconsolate, though there is no question of an "absorbing passion for one." What kind of love unites these Paharia lads and lasses may be inferred from the further information given in Dalton's book that "they work together, go to market together, eat together, and sleep together;" ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... boa at Prince's Skating Club'—that we may pass. 'Surely Jimmy will not break his mother's heart'—that appears to be irrelevant. 'If the lady who fainted on Brixton bus'—she does not interest me. 'Every day my heart longs—' Bleat, Watson—unmitigated bleat! Ah, this is a little more possible. Listen to this: 'Be patient. Will find some sure means of communications. Meanwhile, this column. G.' That is two days after Mrs. Warren's lodger arrived. It sounds plausible, does it not? The mysterious one could understand English, ...
— The Adventure of the Red Circle • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Lamb uttered a bleat of delight when she saw her old friend restored to his natural shape. The others were all there, not having found the Goose. The fat Gillikin woman, the Munchkin boy, the Rabbit and the Glass Cat crowded around the Wizard and asked what ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... graceful and high-bred, But dropped, k'whop! and scraped the buggy-shed, Leaving a tuft of woolly, foxy hair Under the sharp-end of a gate-hinge there. Then, all ignobly scrambling to his feet And whinneying a whinney like a bleat, He would pursue himself around the lot And—do the whole thing over, like as not!... Ah! what a life of constant fear and dread And flop and squawk and flight the chickens led! Above the fences, either side, were seen The neighbor-houses, ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... did not painfully displease me. It was a canting, sentimental, shallow little book, yet something about it cheered my gloom and made me smile; I was amused with the gambols of this unlicked wolf-cub muffled in the fleece, and mimicking the bleat of a guileless lamb. Portions of it reminded me of certain Wesleyan Methodist tracts I had once read when a child; they were flavoured with about the same seasoning of excitation to fanaticism. He that had written it was no bad man, and while perpetually betraying the trained ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... are vain. Tell me, oh you fellow-lovers, ye amorous dear brutes, tell me, when ever you lay languishing beneath your coverts, thus for your fair she, and durst not approach for fear of honour? Tell me, by a gentle bleat, ye little butting rams, do you sigh thus for your soft, white ewes? Do you lie thus conceal'd, to wait the coming shades of night, 'till all the cursed spies are folded? No, no, even you are much more blest than man, who is bound ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... bowlders, when the craving is strong upon them, they seek such as these to run about, vociferating, as if they said, In such a place our God has been wont to bless us, come now, let us greatly entreat Him. This one quavering bleat, unmistakable to the sheepman even at a distance, is the only new note in the sheep's vocabulary, and the only one which passes with intention from himself to man. As for the call of distress which a leader raised by hand may make to his master, it is not new, is not common to flock usage, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... soft-dying day,— And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... Black Nanny be?" muttered Ready, stopping a little while; at last he heard a bleat, in a small copse of brush wood, to which he directed his steps, followed by the dogs. "I thought as much," said he, as be perceived Nanny lying down in the copse with two new-born kids at her side. "Come, my little fellows, ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... true that there are many patriots, who, while they bleat about the "cause of liberty," act in so interested a manner that they are evidently looking ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... to get straight, or lacked what is so pithily termed "come-back." The latter, I incline to think; for come-back needs no facts, it is a self-feeder, and its entire absence in the anti-Englishman looks as if he had been a German. Germans do not come back when it goes against them, they bleat "Kamerad!"—or disappear. Perhaps this man was a spy—a poor one, to be sure—yet doing his best for his Kaiser: slinking about, peeping, listening, trying to wedge the Allies apart, doing his little bit towards making friends enemies, just as his breed ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... over, the old man selected a fat kid, caught it by the hind leg and dragged it, bleating in wild terror, to a gallows behind the house, where he hung it up and skilfully cut its throat, leaving it to bleat and bleed to death while he wiped his knife and went on talking volubly with his guest. The occasional visits of Ramon were the most interesting events in his life, and he always killed a kid to express his ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... great bell silenced her. Another solemnly followed, and when a third completed the signal to land, the staggering footsteps of the vanished girl dragging old Joy with her in full retreat were a relief to every ear. As madame turned to say good night a last bleat came out ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... thou need'st not dread The raven in the sky; Night and day thou'rt safe; Our cottage is hard by. Why bleat so after me? Why pull so at thy chain? Sleep, and at break of day, I will come to ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... earnest, and before a large company. As I was just now saying, he will attempt to represent the roll of thunder, the noise of wind and hail, or the creaking of wheels, and pulleys, and the various sounds of flutes, pipes, trumpets, and all sorts of instruments: he will bark like a dog, bleat like a sheep, or crow like a cock; his entire art will consist in imitation of voice and gesture, and there will ...
— The Republic • Plato
... into brush and knew it for red cedar. Patches of it grew thick on the high ridges, matted close for cover. As the travelers crept under it they heard the rustle of shoulder against shoulder, the moving click of horns, and the bleat of yearlings for their mothers. They had stumbled in the dark on the bedding-place of a flock ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... her green mantle blithe Nature arrays, An' listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes, While birds warble welcome in ilka green shaw; But to me it's ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... A tremulous bleat answered, but as he neared the flock it scattered swiftly, the errant leaders darting shyly behind the looming outlines of sassafras bushes. Again he called, and again the plaintive cry responded, growing fainter as several fleeter ewes ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... and candle,—candle, book, and bell,— Forward and backward, to curse Faustus to hell! Anon you shall hear a hog grunt, a calf bleat, and an ass bray, Because ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... the next little ridge Hare heard Silvermane snort as he did when led to drink. There was a scent of water on the wind. Hare caught it, a damp, muggy smell. The sheep had noticed it long before, and now under its nearer, stronger influence began to bleat wildly, to run faster, ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... stretched athwart The shadowy hill-sides and dark forest-flanks; A soothing quiet broods upon the air, And the faint sunshine winks with drowsiness. Far sounds melt mellow on the ear: the bark, The bleat, the tinkle, whistle, blast of horn, The rattle of the wagon-wheel, the low, The fowler's shot, the twitter of the bird, And even the hue of converse ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Plover seemed to arrest the advance of the timid sheep: they waited in a closely-packed flock, looking around. But presently the old leader gave a deep bleat, and they moved forward towards the water. "Shriek! Shriek!" cried the Plover from the bushes, screaming as they rose and flew away; and suddenly the flock of sheep broke and hurried back to the open plain. At the same instant Dot could hear the ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... gasped, in a sort of bleat that drove the last of the pea-green mist out of that room with the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... sort of dragging bleat. She did not smile; perhaps she felt such an approach to waggery unworthy of him. Perhaps she was holding him up to the dignity of the natural scene, and to the importance of the occasion ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... to mind their own business," he said. "Good heavens—what a storm in a teacup it is! They couldn't bleat louder if I'd ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... blossom seems; He'll no way hide, whateer his fate may be, Then to his mouth he sets a trumpet clear, And clearly sounds, so all the pagans hear. Throughout the field rally his companies. From Occiant, those men who bray and bleat, And from Argoille, who, like dogs barking, speak; Seek out the Franks with such a high folly, Break through their line, the thickest press they meet Dead from that ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... three years old. They send her to school to keep her warm and out of mischief. She sat on the very front row, right under Perry's eye. The poor child didn't understand why Teacher Thomas should stare so at her, and she let out one long, unending bleat. This gave me a chance to send Lulu Ann Nummler out of the room in charge of the infant, and I rested easier when Perry drew his Prince Albert around him once ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... things! Not all so quiet, though! There is a party of these young lambs as wide awake as heart can desire; half a dozen of them playing together, frisking, dancing, leaping, butting, and crying in the young voice, which is so pretty a diminutive of the full-grown bleat. How beautiful they are with their innocent spotted faces, their mottled feet, their long curly tails, and their light flexible forms, frolicking like so many kittens, but with a gentleness, an assurance of sweetness and innocence, which no kitten, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... pointed to a spot some distance off the road, but Kitty's city-bred eyes could make out nothing. Just then there came a feeble bleat, and in a second Blue Bonnet had slipped from the saddle and ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... completing a picture, the joyous freshness of which seemed almost heavenly to me in my extreme weakness. The air, too, was full of the chirping of millions of insects and lizards, the lowing of distant cattle, the bleat of sheep, the rifle-like crack of waggon-drivers' whips, the voices and laughter of men close beneath my window, and a multitude ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... the soft heavens, and Princess Anne gathered its roofs together like a camp of camels in the desert, and, with an occasional bleat or bark or human sound, seemed dozing out the soft fall night, absorbed, perhaps, in the spreading news of Mrs. Custis's death and Vesta's wedding-journey, that had to be ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... more miserable than it found him. Ever and anon from some remote chamber in the house behind him came the faint, gasping cry of a day-old baby. That cry drowned the cooing of the doves, the song of the robin, and the chirping of the dwellers in the grass; to Jimmy the bleat of the little human lamb sounded like the roar of a lion. He could endure penal servitude on his Saturday, with a patience born of something approaching a philosophy; he could wear a checked gingham apron, even as a saint ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... vituperation and, crowding about him, began to bleat their explanations and appeals. But he threw out his arms, pushed them back a safe distance from the panting Dominick and roared them into silence, brandishing his fists, as he would have quelled a ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... accomplishment of his, but in their courting days she had expressed herself pleased at his attempts, and of this he took care, in his turn, to remind her. It was his idea that if the game were played at all, she should take a hand also. If he was to blither, it was only fair that she should bleat back. As he explained, for the future they would both be lovers all their life long; and no logical argument in reply could she think of. If she tried to write a letter, he would snatch away the paper her dear ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... miserable glance behind her. She was still crawling away. On the ground beside the porch young Sim raised a strange bleat, which expressed both his fright and his lack of wind. Presently the monster, with a fashionable amble, ascended the ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... Sweet Musick went with us both all the Wood thro', The Lark, Linnet, Throstle, and Nightingale too; Winds over us whisper'd, Flocks by us did bleat, And chirp went the Grasshopper under our Feet. But now she is absent, tho' still they sing on, The Woods are but lonely, the Melody's gone: Her Voice in the Consort, as now I have found, Gave ev'ry thing ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... between Chirk and Wrexham; and on passing a certain point you come all at once upon the valley, which opens like an amphitheatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on either side, with 'green upland swells that echo to the bleat of flocks' below, and the river Dee babbling over its stony bed in the midst of them. The valley at this time 'glittered green with sunny showers,' and a budding ash-tree dipped its tender branches in the chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was to walk along the high road that overlooks the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... exclaimed, "of producing beauty for sheep to bleat and monkeys to leer at! What's the good of producing it in America at all? ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... Soon I shall have my time for laughter. The jade has jilted me, and will you too hereafter; May Kobold, for a lover, be her luck! At night may he upon the cross-way meet her; Or, coming from the Blocksberg, some old buck May, as he gallops by, a good-night bleat her! A fellow fine of real flesh and blood Is for the wench a deal too good. She'll get from me but one love-token, That is to ...
— Faust • Goethe
... dream for little Bo-Peep; As she lay on the grass, her flock of sheep, With scatter and clatter and patter of feet, Came hastening from all ways hither, thither; First one would bleat, then another would bleat, Then "b-a-a—a-a!" ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... heads, hoping to scare them into submission, but they seemed to draw fresh stimulus from each report, and yelped and bounded faster. A little more and the end would be. Then we saw a touching sight. The hindmost fawn let out a feeble bleat of distress, and the mother, heeding, dropped back between. It looked like choosing death, for now she had not twenty feet of lead. I wanted Eaton to use his gun on the foremost hound, when something unexpected happened. The flat was crossed, the Blacktail reached a great high ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... slowly; Shafto, doubled up in a cramped position on a machan, felt painfully stiff and was obliged to deny himself the comfort of a cigarette. There was no sound beyond the bleat of the victim—unwittingly summoning its executioner, the buzz of myriads of insects, the bass booming of frogs and the stealthy, mysterious movements of night birds and small animals. Then by degrees the moon ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... dipped their oars, and the rippling of the water against the sides of the boat. Up to this time the black lamb had lain quietly in Melas' arms, but now something seemed to disturb him. He lifted his head, gave a sudden bleat, and somehow flung himself out of Melas' arms directly into the basket of eels! Such a squirming as there was then! The eels squirmed, and the lamb squirmed, and if his legs had not been securely tied together he undoubtedly would have flopped right into the water, and then this story ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... hands of innocence — go, scare your sheep together, The blundering, tripping tups that bleat behind the old bell-wether; And if they snuff the taint and break to find another pen, Tell them it's tar that glistens so, and ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... as she paced the garden paths, a faint bleat sounded at the hem of her skirt, and four unsteady legs supported a weak little body that tumbled ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... hoar, the iron road Agleam with splintered light, And ice where water flowed: Till, when the low sun drank Those milky mists that cloak Hanger and hollied bank, The winter world awoke To hear the feeble bleat Of lambs on downland farms: A blackbird whistled sweet; Old beeches moved their arms Into a mellow haze Aerial, newly-born: And I, alone, agaze, Stood waiting for the thorn To break in blossom white, Or burst in a green flame.... So, in a single night, Fair ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... think you question with the Jew: You may as well go stand upon the beach And bid the main flood bate his usual height; You may as well use question with the wolf Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb; You may as well forbid the mountain pines To wag their high tops and to make no noise, When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven; You may as well do any thing most hard, As seek to soften that—than which what's harder?— His Jewish heart: therefore, I do beseech you, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... the powerful shall be made amidst the waves of the Adriatic, under a blind leader; they shall beset the goat—they shall profane Byzantium—they shall blacken her buildings—her spoils shall be dispersed; a new goat shall bleat until they have measured out and run over fifty-four feet nine inches and a half."[563] Dandolo died on the first day of June, 1205, having reigned thirteen years six months and five days, and was buried in the church of St. Sophia, at Constantinople. Strangely enough ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... mournful and tender. The old dog cut an ancient caper or two and then drew up sharp, ashamed of his levity, and walked a few dignified paces by his master's side. The sheep ran forward in little pattering rushes; they began to bleat, and ghostly flocks and herds answered them from under the sea. "Baa! Baaa!" For a time they seemed to be always on the same piece of ground. There ahead was stretched the sandy road with shallow puddles; the same soaking ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... even today, in the faculties and the seminaries, by the minister of public education and by Messeigneurs the bishops, proving the existence of God by metaphysics. That is what the elite of the French youth are condemned to bleat after their professors, for a year, or else forfeit their diplomas and the privilege of studying law, medicine, polytechnics, and the sciences. Certainly, if anything is calculated to surprise, it is that with such philosophy Europe is not yet atheistic. The persistence of the theistic ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... be still, mother," said Mary, with a piteous, hopeless voice, like the bleat of a dying lamb; "but I did not think he could die! I never thought of that!—I never thought of it!—Oh! mother! mother! mother! oh! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... her wash thy dainty feet With such salt things as tears, or with rude hair Dry them, soft Pharisee, that sit'st at meat With him who made her such, and speak'st him fair. 340 Leaving God's wandering lamb the while to bleat Unheeded, shivering in the pitiless air: Thou hast made prisoned virtue show more wan And haggard than a vice ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... obstinacy reached the explosive climax just as he had peeled a luscious banana. He sacrificed it, and Jimmy appeared the next instant with a moustache and dripping beard of squashed fruit as an adornment to his astonished face. Then he opened his mouth to pour forth his soul in an agonising bleat. Tom got in a second shot with the banana skin. With a report like unto that which one makes by bursting an air-distended paper bag, the missile plastered Jimmy's cavernous mouth, smothered his squeal, and sat him down so suddenly that Tom thought his "wind" had stopped ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... dearer son of rhyme; Let them, as far as decency permits, Without suspicion, play the fool with wits, 'Gainst fools be guarded; 'tis a certain rule, Wits are false things, there's danger in a fool. Let them, tho' modest, Gray more modest woo; Let them with Mason bleat, and bray, and coo; Let them with Franklin, proud of some small Greek, Make Sophocles disguis'd, in English speak; Let them with Glover o'er Medea doze; Let them with Dodsley wail Cleone's woes, Whilst he, fine feeling creature, all in tears, Melts, as they melt, ...
— English Satires • Various
... not taller than a rabbit, was bounding about through the grass, running around the prostrate body of its mother, and uttering its tiny bleat. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... not enough The carrion festering we snuff, And gathering down upon the breeze, Release the valley from disease; If longing for more fresh a meal, Around the tender flock we wheel, A marksman doth some bush conceal. This very morn, I heard an ewe Bleat in the thicket; there I flew, With lazy wing slow circling round, Until I spied unto the ground A lamb by tangled briars bound. The ewe, meanwhile, on hillock-side, Bleat to her young—so loudly cried, She heard it not when it replied. Ho, ho!—a feast! I 'gan to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... and the oxen lowed, The sheep's "bleat, bleat!" came over the road; All seeming to say, with a quiet delight, "Good little girl, good night, ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... I remember the way he looked at us every time he wanted money. We've been a lot of sheep and we've been sheared good and proper! But we needn't bleat ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... holy bell, nor pastoral bleat, In former days within the vale. Flapped in the bay the pirate's sheet, Curses were on the gale; Rich goods lay on the sand, and murdered men, Pirate and wreckers kept ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... his prayers he undressed and lay down, and at once, as soon as it was dark, there rose before his mind his dead father, his mother, his native village Lesopolye . . . the creak of wheels, the bleat of sheep, the church bells on bright summer mornings, the gypsies under the window—oh, how sweet to think of it! He remembered the priest of Lesopolye, Father Simeon—mild, gentle, kindly; he was a lean little man, while his son, a divinity student, ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Hesperides that Hercules brought back from Africa into Greece, which were, according to the ancient tradition, in fact goats and sheep which the Greeks, from the sound of their voice, called [Greek: maela]: indeed, much in the same way our country people, using a different letter (since the bleat of a sheep seems to make more of the sound of bee than of me) say that sheep "be-alare," whence by the elision of a letter as often happens, is derived the word belare ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... eyes followed with the vivacity of actual sight the course of the march of the squadron of horse to the point of their triumphant vanishment. Despite the vehemence of the phrase the intonation was a very bleat of desperation. For it was a rich and rare opportunity thus wrested from him by an untoward fate. In all the chaotic chances of the Civil War he could hardly hope for its repetition. It was part of a crack body of regulars—Tolhurst's squadron—that he had contrived to drive into this trap, ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of thick white fleece advanced with a continuous undulating motion, a compact and unbroken surface, like a muddy wave pouring over the pavement. A sharp quavering bleat would mingle with the tinkling bells to be answered by other voices, fainter and more timid; from time to time, the mounted shepherds, riding at either side or behind the flock, gave a sharp word of command, or used their ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... and went, and his eyelids blinked strangely, like the flutter of a sere leaf against the wall. There came a roar of voices, and, in the tumult, the Captain's sword flashed quickly, and fell. Then, with a broken cry like a sheep's bleat, the great seamed face fell separate from the body, and a fountain of blood rose into the air from the severed neck, and splashed heavily upon the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... guarantee that she would, if possible, live to execute them. She would make no attempts upon her life henceforward. Weeks and months passed on. The snow came, and lay long, and melted away. Beyond the garden wall she saw sprinklings of young grass among the dark heather; and now the bleat of a lamb, and now the scudding brood of the moor-fowl, told her that spring was come. Long lines of wild geese in the upper air, winging steadily northwards, indicated the advancing season. The whins within view burst into blossom; and the morning breeze which dried the dews wafted their fragrance. ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... longshore sailormen who endeavour to temper its fury to the shorn landsman by palming off a final verse, which gives one to understand that the previous stanzas have been only 'Johnny's' little fun, and which makes him bleat: ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... awaked, as so often, by Lenichen's little bleat; and he rose triumphantly, and took his crust ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... Tuppence at length, making a grimace. "Little fool. Everything you want—everything you've ever hoped for, and you go and bleat out 'no' like an idiotic little sheep. It's your one chance. Why don't you take it? Grab it? Snatch at it? What more do ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... after hour while his brothers and sisters were playing, and look up at the mountains or on to the altar, and wish and pray and vex his little soul most woefully; and his ewes and his lambs would crop the grass about the entrance, and bleat to make him notice them and lead them farther afield, but all in vain. Even the dear sheep he hardly heeded, and his pet ewes Katte and Greta and the big ram Zips rubbed their soft noses in his hand unnoticed. So the summer passed away—the summer that is so short in the mountains, and yet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... are coming fast over the hill, Run fast, little lamb, do not baa, do not bleat, For the gray wolves are hungry, they come here to kill, And the lambs shall ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... seemed to him as if one minute of these months at Rome would yield him gold enough to make the brightness of a year; he longed for the smell of the wet clay in Story's studio, where the songs of the birds, and the bleat of a goat coming through the little door to ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... red carnelian when the water was out of it. I loved its basin; and the goats would go down to lick the salt. They had more sense than D'Aulnay de Charnisay, for they knew where to venture. I thought D'Aulnay de Charnisay was one of our goats by his bleat, until I looked down and saw him part sunk in a quicksand at the bottom of the channel. The tide was already frothing in like yeast upon him. How gloriously the tide shoots up that tide-creek! It hisses. It comes like thousands of horses galloping one behind the other and tumbling over each other,—fierce ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... had Mary, sweet, With a fleece that shamed the driven snow. Not alone Mary went when she moved her feet (For a little lamb had Mary, sweet), And it tagged her 'round with a pensive bleat, And wherever she went it wanted to go; A little lamb had Mary, sweet, With a fleece that shamed the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... sinners, Who chatter and bleat and bore, Are sent to hear sermons From mystical Germans Who preach from ten to four: The amateur tenor, whose vocal villainies All desire to shirk, Shall, during off-hours, Exhibit his powers To Madame Tussaud's waxwork: The lady who dyes a chemical yellow, Or stains her grey hair puce, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... invited by the Prince himself, who then proposed to marry her, but on the wedding day, her husband, having tracked her out, contrived that another Ghul in the form of a man should present him to the king in the form of a sheep, pretending that he had been reared in a harem, and would bleat so loud that nobody could sleep, unless he was tethered in the women's apartments. At night the Ghul carried off Dalal from beside the prince to the adjoining room, but she begged to be allowed to retire for a few moments, when she called upon Saint Zaynab for help, who sent one of her sisters ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... front paws on the edge of her skirt with his head dropped down upon them, and took a nap—with one eye opening now and then to see that the goats were all right, and with his ears lifting to catch the meaning of every stray bleat from a ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... fat-head!" Patrick snapped and rang off. A quarter of an hour later he was called to the phone once more and the familiar bleat of Jimmy tickled his ear. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... the year, when the fawns are young. The Indian wanted to find the little one after he had shot the dam, so he sounded a decoy whistle, to imitate the call of the doe, and the harmless thing answered it with a bleat, thinking no doubt it was its mother calling to it. This betrayed its hiding-place, and it was taken unhurt by the hunter, who took it home, and gave it to my little friend Ellen to feed and ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... they wanted to eat him up. You see he had run away, just gone away from the Good Shepherd and his mother and his home, when he did not need to. And now he wanted to get back, but he didn't know how; and then he began to complain and to bleat (that's his way of crying), and to run this way and that, but he didn't get on ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... prevailed all through the valleys. Two examples may suffice, although by no means the worst in some respects. A woman takes refuge in a cave, with her little babe and a goat, which furnished the means of their subsistence. Unfortunately the poor animal was heard to bleat by some of the soldiers who happened to be near. These wretches seized the child and, in the presence of its mother, threw it over the precipice, and then led the mother herself to a jutting crag that ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... ravine in which the hut stands rise lofty hills so steeply from the water's edge that in places we can find no footing for our horses, and have to ride in the river. At this time of the year the sheep are all upon the hills; so you do not hear even a bleat: but in winter, they come down to the sunny, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... critic of the Western City "Times" gave me one wild look; then from his throat there came a sound like the sudden bleat of a young sheep in pain. It caused Carpenter to start, and Madame Planchet to start, and for the first time since we entered the place, the birds of paradise gave signs of life elsewhere than in the eye-muscles. The ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... contend together in defiance; and yet from this Olympian station, except for the whispering rumour of a train, the world has fallen into a dead silence and the business of town and country grown voiceless in your ears. A crying hill-bird, the bleat of a sheep, a wind singing in the dry grass, seem not so much to interrupt, as to accompany, the stillness; but to the spiritual ear, the whole scene makes a music at once human and rural, and discourses pleasant reflections ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ground for trails; she was nervous and anxious, evidently seeking. Thor remembered a trick that Corney had told him. He gently stooped, took up a broad blade of grass, laid it between the edges of his thumbs, then blowing through this simple squeaker he made a short, shrill bleat, a fair imitation of a Fawn's cry for the mother, and the Deer, though a long way off, came bounding toward him. He snatched his gun, meaning to kill her, but the movement caught her eye. She stopped. Her mane bristled a little; she sniffed and looked inquiringly at him. Her big soft eyes ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... noises of the dawn: The drowsy stir of birds, surprised from sleep, The faint applause of leaves above the lawn, The bleat, far off, of closely-cabined sheep,— Are like dim perfumes blowing down the stairs, All sweetly prescient of the coming day,— And less like sounds, than little tender airs Gone softly shod and ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... that a man can walk beneath the rainbow's arch, and not think of the power that placed it there! that he can stand on the tall cliff's peak, and not drink in the fullness of God's exceeding glory—that he can hear the small lambs bleat, or inhale the perfume of the hawthorn, without thankfulness to the great Author of all! Devoid of any thing like a settled creed, he still had many vague, yet sublime conceptions of the mightiness and the goodness of a Power that fills ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... the same contagious merriment. "Come thou home now," he said to Ambrose; "my good woman hath been in a mortal fright about thee, and would have me come out to seek after thee. Such are the women folk, Master Headley. Let them have but a lad to look after, and they'll bleat after him like an old ewe that ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cast away Crooks and pipes and ribbons so gay— Flocks and herds that bleat and low; Into Parliament you ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... glebe. Oh, my lord! though we galvanize corpses into St. Vitus' dances, we raise not the dead from their graves! Though we have discovered the circulation of the blood, men die as of yore; oxen graze, sheep bleat, babies bawl, asses bray—loud and lusty as the day before the flood. Men fight and make up; repent and go at it; feast and starve; laugh and weep; pray and curse; cheat, chaffer, trick, truckle, cozen, defraud, fib, lie, beg, borrow, steal, hang, drown—as in the laughing and weeping, tricking and ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... seen, White cots on the meadows green. Open to the sky and breeze, Or peeping through the sheltering trees, On a light gate, loosely hung, Laughing children gaily swung; Oft their glad shouts, shrill and clear, Came upon the startled ear. Blended with the tremulous bleat, Of truant lambs, or voices sweet, Of birds, that take us by surprise, And ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... prevent the lifted blow: The generous horse from the full manger turns his head, Does his loved floods and pastures scorn, Hates the shrill trumpet and the horn, Nor can his lifeless nostril please With the once-ravishing smell of all his dappled mistresses; The starving sheep refuse to feed, They bleat their innocent souls out into air; The faithful dogs lie gasping by them there; The astonished shepherd weeps, and breaks ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... to gather about their shepherd and bleat for pasture and shelter. They answered his prayer for him. He came ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... which persented 'im with 'is bleedin' paw. After some 'esitation, ANDROCLES examined the paw, as repperesented before you. (Winds the machinery up, whereupon the lion opens his lower jaw and emits a mild bleat, while ANDROCLES turns his head from side to side in bland surprise.) This lion is the largest forestbred and blackmaned specimen ever imported into this country—the other lion standing beyind (disparagingly), has nothing whatever to do with the tableau, 'aving been shot recently ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... their whereabouts or guessed that those responsible for the signal-fire were Colonel Gideon Ward and Eleazar Bodge. He followed behind, steeling his soul to meet those victims of the complicated plot. An astonished bleat from Hiram Look, who led the column, announced them. Colonel Ward was doubled before the fire, his long arms embracing his thin knees. Eleazar Bodge had just brought a fresh armful of driftwood ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... they went, across a little branch, and there the big cur lay flat again in the grass. A faint bleat came from the hill-side beyond, where Satan could see another woods—and then another bleat, and another. And the cur began to creep again, like a snake in the grass; and the others crept too, and little Satan crept, though it was all a sad mystery to ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... partook of his punishment—that another partook of his anguish—that another was to die before him. Lead two sheep to the butcher's, two oxen to the slaughterhouse, and make one of them understand that his companion will not die; the sheep will bleat for pleasure, the ox will bellow with joy. But man—man, whom God created in his own image—man, upon whom God has laid his first, his sole commandment, to love his neighbor—man, to whom God has given a voice to express his thoughts—what is his first cry when he hears his fellow-man is ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... cried the doctor; and as this was done the sheep gave a dismal bleat, and hung from the pole, with its head and legs out,—a ridiculous-looking object, which made Nic smile, but Brookes's face made the smile expand, so soured and puckered did it become, for the sheep was heavy, the farm buildings were some distance away, and the ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... see things i'th' same leet—for instance, a pompus chap wor once tawkin' to me abaat his father. "My father," he said, "was a carver and gilder, an' he once carved a calf so naturally that you would fancy you could hear it bleat." "Well, aw didn't know thi father," aw sed, "but aw know thi mother once cauved one, for aw've heeard it bleat." Yo' should just ha' seen him when aw sed soa!—didn't he pull th' ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... Chinaman sat on the deck and sang something very mournful in a falsetto voice; as he did so his profile was funnier than any caricature. Everybody looked at him and laughed, while he took not the slightest notice. He sang falsetto and then began singing tenor. My God, what a voice! It was like the bleat of a sheep or a calf. The Chinese remind me of good-natured tame animals, their pigtails are long and black like Natalya Mihailovna's. Apropos of tame animals, there's a tame fox cub living in the toilet-room. It sits and looks ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the yard. An aged darkey was swinging an axe at the woodpile and two little pickaninnies were gathering a basket of chips. Already the air was filled with the twilight sounds of the farm—the lowing of cattle, the bleating of calves at the cowpens, the bleat of sheep from the woods, and the nicker of horses in the barn. Through it all, Crittenden could hear the nervous thud of Raincrow's hoofs announcing rain—for that was the way the horse got his name, being as ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... small beginnings reared, though many a gift, Sent for that work's behoof, had fed the poor In famine time laid low. Moorlands he saw By cornfields vanquished; marked the all-beauteous siege Of pasture yearly threatening loftier crags Loud with the bleat of lambs. Their shepherd once Had roved a bandit; next had toiled a slave; Now with both hands he poured his weekly wage Down on his young wife's lap, his pretty babes Gambolling around for joy. A hospital Stood by the convent's gate. With moistened ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... my beloved, an old Milesian story!— High, and embosom'd in congregated laurels, Glimmer'd a temple upon a breezy headland; In the dim distance amid the skiey billows Rose a fair island; the god of flocks had blest it. From the far shores of the bleat-resounding island Oft by the moonlight a little boat came floating, Came to the sea-cave beneath the breezy headland, Where amid myrtles a pathway stole in mazes Up to the groves of the high embosom'd temple. There in a ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... pleasure is over." "Oh, but all the same, we would sooner have had the cow!" Gordon adds, "The other child of twelve years old, like her parents did not care a bit. A lamb taken from the flock will bleat, while here you see not the very slightest vestige of feeling." Such an incident shows how the human heart can, under certain circumstances, degenerate to being "without natural affection." It is not the people who are to blame, but their cruel conquerors. Not many miles away from this ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... the fields and the woods. We pass through a dense flock of sheep. The warm round backs, the gentle, anxious faces push and hustle, while the thousand slender legs mingle and raise clouds of dust along the roadside. The timid voices bleat through space; and a pungent scent fills our nostrils. We are now going down into the valley. The village appears, among the trees: a cluster of red and grey roofs; little narrow gardens; white clothes ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... grateful earth lies lightly over his grey temples, and the earliest flowers of spring blossom above his dust.[41] The lovely lines of Leonidas,[42] in which Clitagoras asks that when he is dead the sheep may bleat over him, and the shepherd pipe from the rock as they graze softly along the valley, and that the countryman in spring may pluck a posy of meadow flowers and lay it on his grave, have all the tenderness of an English pastoral in a land of ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... Petulance . . . for forgetting that I could still hear the Lark sing her Morning Hymn, scent the Meadow-sweet and new-mown Hay, detect the Bee at his Industry, and the Woodpecker at his Mischief, discern the Breath of Cows, and hear the Lambs bleat, and the Rivulet ripple continually! Come! let us ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... grounds. When he came home from his walks, he might find his floors flooded by a shower through the broken roof; but could spare no money for its reparation. In time his expenses brought clamours about him that overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song, and his groves were haunted by beings very different from fauns and fairies. He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. It is said that, if he had lived a little longer, he would ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... then strutted about as though he alone were lord of the whole place. "Rammie, rammie, what have you done with your wool?" asked the wild geese, who rode by up in the air. "That I have sent to Drag's woollen mills in Norrkoeping," replied the ram with a long, drawn-out bleat. "Rammie, rammie, what have you done with your horns?" asked the geese. But any horns the rammie had never possessed, to his sorrow, and one couldn't offer him a greater insult than to ask after them. He ran around a long time, and butted ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... sluggish clod, thinking how noble and delightful it was to be a free spirit, to wander about in angelic company, quite secure, though seemingly in the midst of peril. I had now nothing to console me, save the Muse, and she being half angry, would do nothing more than bleat ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... moreover, 'Isabel, my sweet! Red whortle-berries droop above my head, And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet, Around me beeches and high chesnuts shed Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat Comes from beyond the river to my bed: Go shed one tear upon my heather-bloom, And it shall comfort ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant |
