"Songster" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... listened while the little songster poured out his joy in liquid cadences that rose and fell and sparkled out upon the morning air like dancing sunbeams turned to music—so light, so rippling, so joyously alive, that the girls' hearts thrilled ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... to twitter, to fashion little crystal stanzas, and to hurl themselves about the valley as if catapults propelled them. One songster perched on the iron rail of the bridge and practised a vocal lesson, cocking his head from side to side and seeming to approve his ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... well as from alcoholic drinks as a condition of membership or soldiership, but a member of the Army must be a non-smoker before he can hold any office in its rank, or be a bandsman, or a member of a "songster brigade." And in other religious organizations there are yet a few of the "unco' guid" who look askance at pipe or cigarette as if it were a device of the devil. But the numbers of these misguided folk ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... a year Well he knew his mistress dear; Now in vain you call his name, Vainly raise his rigid frame, Vainly warm him in your breast, Vainly kiss his golden crest, Smooth his ruffled plumage fine, Touch his trembling beak with wine. One more gasp—it is the end! Dead and mute our tiny friend! —Songster thou of many a year, Now thy mistress brings thee here, Says, it fits that I rehearse, Tribute due to thee, a verse, Meed for daily song of yore Silent ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... dumb, silent, hideous agony which crushed for the moment belief and hope, a canary from the aviary beyond set up a trilling song. She listened for a second; it seemed to hurt her more. The poor bird was in captivity, as was her soul. And then, while the little songster went on, undismayed by its cage, a reaction set in. If the soft-feathered creature could sing there beyond the bars, what right had she to doubt God for one second? No—there should never be any disbelief. It was only the winter, ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... you say. Besides these, swallows of various kinds, little wrens, {87d} almost exactly like our English ones, and night- hawking goat-suckers, few birds are seen. But, unseen, in the depths of every wood, a songster breaks out ever and anon in notes equal for purity and liveliness to those of our English thrush, and belies the vulgar calumny that tropic birds, lest they should grow too proud of their gay feathers, are denied ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... went the current was not swift and we were able to pull gently along under the great cliffs in shadows made luminous by the brilliancy of the moon. A song the Major was fond of singing, Softly and Sweetly it Comes from Afar, almost involuntarily, sprang from us all, though our great songster, Jack, was not with us. Jack had an extensive repertory, an excellent voice, and a hearty, exuberant spirit. He would sing Write Me a Letter from Home, The Colleen Bawn, The Lone Starry Hours, Beautiful ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... insect-killers. It is so natural to look for them amid such luxuriant vegetation that they become conspicuous by their absence. Now and again, however, the ears are gratefully saluted by the trilling and sustained notes of some hidden songster, whose music is entirely in tune with the surrounding loveliness, but truly delightful song-birds have ever been rare in the low latitudes, where there is more of color ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... "Hark! Hark! Hear him singing!" I listened, but not a sound reached my ear. Was it strange that I felt a momentary pang? Those that look out at the windows are darkened, and all the daughters of music are brought low. Was I never to see or hear the soaring songster at Heaven's gate,—unless,—unless,—if our mild humanized theology promises truly, I may perhaps hereafter listen to him singing far down beneath me? For in whatever world I may find myself, I hope I shall ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... while it lasts, a state of happiness. But it is not comparable with the breathing joy of the leaf that feels and sees the wonderful life around it, whispering divine answers to the wooing breeze. The humble nest where it has first seen light is for many days a happy home to the tender songster, soon left behind, when the first wing-strokes waft the small body upwards to the sky, and forgotten as the first glad trill and quaver of the new-found voice roll out the prelude to the glorious life-long hymn of praise. The heart of man—your heart, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... out into a loud Bacchanalian hymn, in which Philip could find no mirth, and from which the songster suddenly paused ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... give the Maker praise. I like the lad who, when his father thought To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase Of vagrant worm by early songster caught, Cried, "Served him right!—it's not at all surprising; The worm was ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... cedar-bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove. ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... is not a resident of the peninsula. Dr. Purnell's first experiment with the Pinnated Grouse (Cupidonia cupido) has encouraged others to bring the ruffled grouse to the eastern shore of Maryland. That unapproachable songster of the south, the American Mocking-bird (Mimus polyglottus), is becoming scarce in this region, from the inroads made by bird-catchers who ship the young to northern cities. This delightful chorister is only an accidental visitor in the New England states. Indeed ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... with grave concern that I watched the gayly dressed little songster for an entire day to see if he would take upon himself the duties of the mother-bird. Nothing could have been more touching than to note the faithfulness with which he performed all the work of two birds save brooding ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... southern winds, has already made his appearance, and, on still mornings, may be heard warbling his few merry notes, as if to make the earliest announcement of his arrival. He is, therefore, the true harbinger of spring, and, though not the sweetest songster of the woods, has the merit of bearing to man the earliest tidings of the opening year, and of declaring the first vernal promises of Nature. As the notes of those birds that sing only in the night come with a double charm to our ears, because ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... marvelous songster, in speaking of whom it is difficult to avoid superlatives. He is not so conscious of is powers and so ambitious of effect as the white-eyed flycatcher, yet you will not be less astonished and delighted on hearing him. He ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... any rate nearly a hundred feet high, with all branches near the top, as though they had grown in close woods. They were quite scattering now, and lower trees and shrubs flourished in their shade, making a charming spot, and a home worthy even of this superb songster. The bird himself was remarkably friendly. Seeming to appreciate my attitude of admiring listener, he often perched on the peak of a low roof (separated only by a carriage drive from the upper "gallery" where I sat), and sang for hours at a time, with occasional lunches; or, as Lanier, his most ardent ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... lark, who has been singing since midnight in the "blank height of the dark," suddenly hushes his carol and drops headlong among the corn, as a broad-winged buzzard swings from some wooded peak into the abyss of the valley, and hangs high-poised above the heavenward songster. The air is full of perfume; sweet clover, new-mown hay, the fragrant breath of kine, the dainty scent of sea-weed wreaths and fresh wet sand. Glorious day, glorious place, "bridal of earth and sky," decked well with bridal garlands, bridal perfumes, bridal songs,—What do those four cloaked ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... were asked to dine; Not Jenny's friends alone, But every pretty songster That had Cock Robin known. They had a cherry pie, Beside some currant wine, And every guest brought something, That ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... is no less real and intense in the case of the bird pouring forth a beautiful song, or the delicate violet shedding abroad its perfume. To realise the host of enemies ever shadowing the feathered songster and its kind, we have only to remember that though four young birds may be hatched in each of fifty nests, yet of the two hundred nestlings an average often of but one lives to grow to maturity,—to migrate and to return to the region of ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... was not well-known—and feared, because of her power. A much-travelled woman, a wide reader—especially in the matter of the occult; a superb musician; a Patti and a Lind rolled into one, made her the most wonderful songster of the day. ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... singer, n. vocalist, songster, songstress, minstrel, chanter, cantatrice, cantor, prima donna, precentor, bard, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... punt, the meadows, showed me that in my absence she had come to many an understanding with those misty horizons and their vaporous outline. Nature was a mantle which sheltered her thoughts. She now knew what the nightingale was sighing the livelong night, what the songster of the sedges hymned with ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... One songster did offer some excuse for the poverty of his appearance, telling us his hard case, how that he was occupied in declaring his passion to a beauteous damsel, when she was "all over him in a minute," and, while he was making love to the pretty stars above, ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... overcome timidity and shyness. Birds naturally so impetuous are restless and uneasy under observation. One must pose in silence until his presence is forgotten or ignored. Then the delicious melody, the approving comments of the songster's companions, and the efforts of ambitious youngsters to imitate and excel, are all part of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... sung for pay in the halls of the nobility or upon the boards of the theatre. Some first-rate songsters have been produced among them, whose merits have been acknowledged, not only by the Russian public, but by the most fastidious foreign critics. Perhaps the highest compliment ever paid to a songster was paid by Catalani herself to one of these daughters of Roma. It is well known throughout Russia that the celebrated Italian was so enchanted with the voice of a Moscow Gypsy (who, after the former had displayed her noble talent before a splendid audience in the old Russian ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... brother.] The designs on wood for the "Universal Songster; or, Museum of Mirth." (3 ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... expect it to go in, after those to the Young Gent'n are completed. I do not exactly see why the Goose and little Goslings should emblematize a Quaker poet that has no children. But after all—perhaps it is a Pelican. The Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin around it I cannot decypher. The songster of the night pouring out her effusions amid a Silent Meeting of Madge Owlets, would be at least intelligible. A full pause here comes upon me, as if I had not a word more left. I will shake my brain. Once— twice—nothing comes up. George Fox recommends ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... apprehension of modern times, Petrarch [1] is the Italian songster of Laura and love. In the harmony of his Tuscan rhymes, Italy applauds, or rather adores, the father of her lyric poetry; and his verse, or at least his name, is repeated by the enthusiasm, or affectation, of amorous sensibility. Whatever may be the private taste of a stranger, his ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... greenfinches in the hedges, wood-pigeons and turtle-doves in the copses, tree-pipits about the oaks in the cornfields; every bush, every tree, almost every clod, for the larks were so many, seemed to have its songster. As for nightingales, I never knew so many in the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... inflection, which suggest all hope, and are so striking because heard while snow may be yet upon the ground; he may not have the wild abandon of the bobolink with that tinkle and gurgle and thrill; he is no pretentious songster, like a score of other birds, but he is a great part of the soul of early summer, for he is telling, morning, noon and night, how good the world is, how he approves of the sunshine, and how everything is all right! And so the young man approved much of ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... time, had at length fallen fast asleep; and the good dame's nose, could its tones have been put in regulation, might have supplied the bass of the lamented viol-de-gamba. Halbert, however, who had no temptation to give way to the charms of slumber, remained awake with his eyes fixed on the songster; not that he was better entertained with the words, or more ravished with the execution, than the rest of the company, but rather because he admired, or perhaps envied, the composure, which could thus spend the evening in interminable madrigals, when the next morning ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... of the tall maples, with look heavenward, and in a spirit of utter abandonment, he carols his simple strain. And sitting thus amid the stark, silent trees, above the wet, cold earth, with the chill of winter still in the air, there is no fitter or sweeter songster in the whole round year. It is in keeping with the scene and the occasion. How round and genuine the notes are, and how eagerly our ears drink them in! The first utterance, and the spell of winter is thoroughly broken, and the remembrance of ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... brought them in sight of the melancholy songster. Seated in a corner of the cave, with his massive head on his fore-paws, the picture of dejection, was the most enormous creature they had ever seen or dreamed about. He was rather like an elephant, but much more immense and without a trunk: a huge, ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... poor songster!" Rusty said to his wife. "All he can sing is 'Cuckoo! cuckoo!' in that silly way of his. He has no trills and runs and ripples at all! And he can't even repeat his song ten times a minute, as I give mine. He has to wait at ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and gay Lorand, was thinking that he had but one more day to live; and then—adieu to the perfumed fields, adieu to the songster's echo, adieu to the beautiful, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... group, disposed upon the lawn according to their various desires, stood and sat looking up at the brave little songster. ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... than he did, while his countrymen felt that they had a country and were not themselves the property of a master, they must have glowed with enthusiasm in reciting the fabulous labors of their ancestors, and adored the songster who could have thus elevated so endearing a subject; who could have adorned it with such an interesting variety of incidents, such weight of pathos, such majesty of sentiment and harmony of verse. But Virgil wrote and felt like a subject, not like a citizen. The real design of his poem was ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... considerable number of his successors, such as Dunbar, and Maitland of Lethington, who were learned men, and wrote with a learned air, even when writing for the people. The Reformation, as surely as it threw down every carved stone, shut up the mouth of every profane songster. Wedderburne's "Haly Ballats" may have been spared for a time by the iconoclasts, because they had helped to build up their own temple; but they could not survive long,—they were cast in a profane mould, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... since thou'rt decreed Companion of our lives to be, I'll seek the moral songster's meed, An earthly immortality; Most vain!—O let me, from the past Remembering what to man is given, Lay Virtue's broad foundations fast, Whose glorious ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... time when everything is glad, Their vernal greenery the fields renew, Each feathered songster chants with livelier tone, And lambkins leap and cloudless skies are blue, And all is gay and cheerful:—I alone Am singularly sad; Mine erstwhile happiness and calm content Yields to a sense of sorrowful surprise: Things that I ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... the sportsmen seize her; They deceive the songster, In a cage confine her, Give her ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... credential; And was received with all the due grimace By those who govern in the mood potential, Who, seeing a handsome stripling with smooth face, Thought (what in state affairs is most essential) That they as easily might do the youngster, As hawks may pounce upon a woodland songster. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... ire? I had not treated Beranger with sufficient respect, and Monsieur Taxile Delord, though a joker by trade, would not hear of any fun on this subject. His genius had shaped itself exactly on Beranger's, and he resented as a personal affront every insult offered to the songster. Of a truth, Beranger's fate was a hard one, and all my attacks on him were not half so bad as this treatment he received at the hands of Monsieur Taxile Delord. Poor Beranger! So Monsieur Taxile Delord took up the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... him. His notes were clear, loud, metallic and yet soft; their variety was astonishing, and his powers of imitation wonderful; there was not a bird of the forest that he did not imitate so exactly as to deceive. I would on no account allow this songster to be disturbed, and the consequence was that his rich note was the first thing heard at dawn of day, during the greater part of our residence in ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... than other birds. It is not large or strong, or swift on the wing, and it seems to have none of those advantages which would help it to defend itself against enemies. It is not handsome, and it is not a sweet songster, so that man is not disposed to give it much protection. He is often prompted to destroy it, because of the injury which it does to his gardens ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... written to Adam Ferguson, who will come with a whoop and a hollo. So will the Ballantynes—flageolet[77] and all—for the festival, and they shall be housed at Abbotsford. I have an inimitably good songster in the person of Terence Magrath, who teaches my girls. He beats almost all whom I have ever heard attempt Moore's songs, and I can easily cajole him also out to Abbotsford for a day or two. In jest or earnest, I never heard a better singer in a room, though his voice is not quite ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Our horses, which had been picketed at a few yards' distance in the depth of the shade, were gone. A French battalion of tirailleurs, accidentally coming on our route, had surrounded the grove, and carried off the horses unperceived, while our gallant troopers were chorusing the songster. The sentinel left in charge of them had, of course, given way to the allurements of "sweet nature's kind restorer, balmy sleep," and awoke only to find himself in French hands. Don Ignacio would have fought a legion of fiends; but seven hundred and fifty sharpshooters were a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... had been singing to very thin houses, chanced to encounter a Glow-worm at eventide and prepared to make upon him a light repast. The unfortunate Lampyris Splendidula besought the Songster, in the sacred name of Art, not to quench his vital spark, and appealed to his magnanimity. "The Nightingale who needlessly sets claw upon a Glow-worm," he said, "is a being whom it were gross flattery to term a Luscinia Philomela." ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... knew to the contrary, it was impossible they could be holding intelligent discourse. And thus, though for thousands of years, men and birds had been dwelling together in Mardi, they remained wholly ignorant of each other's secrets; the Islander regarding the fowl as a senseless songster, forever in the clouds; and the fowl him, as a screeching crane, destitute of pinions ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... The songster heard his short oration, And, warbling out his approbation, Released him, as my story tells, And found a supper ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... form one of the attractions of Bermuda. The male red bird, the Cardinal Grosbeak, a remarkably sweet songster, wears an entire suit of vivid carmine, and has a fine tufted crest of the same colour, whilst his wife is dressed more soberly in dull grey bordered with red, just like a Netley nursing sister. The blue birds have ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... it up clean, one would readily share with them, for there would be enough for all; but the dainty little epicures puncture an indefinite number of berries, merely taking a sip from each. Then the wasps and bees come along and finish the clusters. The cardinal, cat-bird, and our unrivalled songster the wood-thrush, all help themselves in the same wasteful fashion. One can't shoot wood-thrushes. We should almost as soon think of killing off our Nilssons, Nevadas, and Carys. The only thing to do is to protect the clusters; and this can be accomplished in several ways. The most ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... the village was over she walked toward the cliff. She had some idea that it would be pleasant to go up to the church town, but just where the trees and underwood came near to the shingle a little bird singing on a May-thorn beguiled her to listen. Then the songster went on and on, as if it called her, and Denas followed its music; until, by and by, she came to where the shingle was but a narrow strip, and the verdure retreated, and the rocks grew larger and higher; and, anon, she was at the ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... attractive—by melody and by bright plumage; and that most species excel in one or the other way; and that the acquisition of gay colours by a species of a sober-coloured melodious family will cause it to degenerate as a songster. He is speaking of the redstart. Unfortunately for the rule there are too many exceptions. Thus confining ourselves to a single family—that of the finches—in our own islands, the most modest coloured have the least melody, while those that have the gayest plumage ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... half devout, half defiant invocation of men who prayed with naked swords in their hands. But suddenly into the sonorous strains of Luther's Hymn broke the joyous trill of a linnet's song, and the bird alighting upon a neighboring poplar seemed challenging the unseen songster to a trial of skill. The stately hymn broke off in a little burst of laughter; and then accepting the challenge, the girl took up the linnet's strain in an unworded song, sweeter, richer, more full of joy, and love, and sunshine than his own, until the little fellow ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... sit still while she washed up and put away the dishes, singing as she worked, and whistling, too—loud, dear, ringing strains, which made a robin in the grass fly up to the perch, where, with his head turned on one side he listened, as if in wonder, to this new songster, whose notes were ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the red-eye's, differing from it mainly in tone and inflection rather than in form. In these two respects it suggests the solitary vireo, though it never reproduces the indescribably sweet cadence, the real "dying fall," of that most delightful songster. At the risk of a seeming contradiction, however, I must mention one curious circumstance. On going again to Franconia, a year afterwards, and, naturally, keeping my ears open for Vireo philadelphicus, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... passing along a high, close, board-fence, on the right-hand side of the way, when, just within this inclosure, and almost overhead, in the dark boughs of a large orange-tree, a mocking-bird began the first low flute-notes of his all-night song. It may have been only the nearness of the songster that attracted the passer's attention, but he ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... this occasion brought him so many calls for his services that he gave up everything and devoted himself to his tuneful art. "Your Mission" so gladly welcomed at Washington made him the first gospel songster, chanting round the world the divine message of the hymns. It was the singing by Philip Phillips that first impressed Ira D. Sankey with the amazing power of evangelical solo song, and helped him ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... crowd dwindled she played less feverishly, but there was nothing slipshod about her performance. The chubby songster found time to proffer brief explanations in asides. "They want the patriotic stuff. It used to be all that Hawaiian dope, and Wild Irish Rose junk, and songs about wanting to go back to every place ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... jackdaw, the jay, or the magpie, the rook in some green rookery of the Old World, or the crow of our woods, with its long, melancholy caw that seems to make the silence and solitude deeper? Compare all the sweet warblers of the songster family—the nightingales, the thrushes, the mocking-birds, the robins; they differ in the greater or less perfection of their note, but the same kind of voice ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... place was in a kind of songster's pulpit just below me, was wreathed in the complacent air of a man who has discharged a lofty duty and has done it well. He had borne himself throughout as the real master of the entire service, and as one who had ruled from an untitled throne. He cast me ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... this melody mingled with the moonlight of summer evenings, people generally were deluded into the supposition that an ethereal songster was on the wing, enrapturing them with harmonies of other spheres. But sutlers, it is well known, are men of little or no refinement, with ears for money rather than music. To their unappreciative and perverted senses the warble seemed simply a dolorous appeal for more whisky; ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... and finally, undiscovered, but pallid and remorseful, gained the casement. Softly raising his head, he peeped within. The room was full of music; he seemed to grow blind for a moment, when lo! upon the kitchen-table sat the mysterious songster, an ebony-hued negress, scouring the tinware, and singing away. Just as he was peering through the window, the ebony songster discovered him. The soldier's limbs sank beneath him, and the black specimen of ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... make no account of the insinuation that he gave up music because it hindered his success in cherry-stealing. He likes cherries, it is true; and who can blame him? But he would need to work hard to steal more than does that indefatigable songster, the robin. I feel sure he has some better reason than this for his Quakerish conduct. But, however he came by his stillness, it is likely that by this time he plumes himself upon it. Silence is golden, he thinks, the supreme ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... to awaken deep and real sentiment in us as we gaze on the tree-tops, the mountains and hillsides, the gurgling waters and sweeping billows; on sunlight, shadow, and storm. Behind the forest-leaf we suddenly discover a songster, the gleam of an oriole's breast in a bed of mantling green. Nature always rejoices. She has been singing and laughing all down the ages. She does her part grandly for the happiness of man; and as we come into closer touch with her, sentiment arises as naturally in our hearts, as does the ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... down a sweet songster with a shower of stones, panting and bleeding to the ground, they thought was the best sport in the world, and the woods rang and echoed with their whoops and cheers as each poor bird fell to the earth. A mere glimpse of one of the blue beauties as he hid among the leaves seemed ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... no easy matter, this trying to get to know the birds; but scouts are not looking for the easiest jobs, and it is great sport for them to follow some shy songster through the briery thicket until a really good look can be had, to sit stock still for half an hour to watch some unknown bird come home to her nest, or to wriggle on all fours through the grass to have a glimpse over the top of ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... "Songster sweet, begin the lay, Ever sweet and ever gay! Bring the joy-inspiring wine, Ever fresh and ever fine! With a heart-alluring lass Gayly let the moments pass, Kisses stealing while you may, Ever fresh ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... wide open, letting in the soft air of the warm June evening. Through the windows she could see the lawn surrounded by elms, limes, and walnut trees. The sun was slanting low behind them, throwing long blue shadows on the grass. A thrush sang in one of the elm trees, a brown songster carolling his vespers ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... they proceeded. The poor fellow appeared relieved from a state of great embarrassment; for, pursuing the direction of the voice—a task that to him was not much less arduous that it would have been to have gone up in the face of a battery—he soon discovered the hidden songster. ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... the south-east. The scenery of the valley is lovely and rich in the extreme. All the foliage is fresh washed and clean; young herbage is bursting through the ground; the air is deliciously cool, and the birds are singing joyfully: one, called Mzie, is a good songster, with a loud melodious voice. Large game abounds, but we do ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... well because of your fame as because of your achievements?" "Will your worship tell me who you are," replied Don Quixote, "so that my courtesy may be answerable to your deserts?" The young man replied that he was the musician and songster of the night before. "Of a truth," said Don Quixote, "your worship has a most excellent voice; but what you sang did not seem to me very much to the purpose; for what have Garcilasso's stanzas to do with the death ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... descent of this was waving, in rather a melancholy soothing strain. The song of Bong-ree, which he gave them at the conclusion of theirs, sounded barbarous and grating to the ear; but Bong-ree was an indifferent songster, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... a treat."Imagine Pinocchio's surprise! He approached the little songster and looked up. Sure enough, there on a branch of a ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... bird," replied the Dewdrop, turning in politeness half round on its pillow; "thank you for thinking of me in my loneliness." And away the songster flew, first to his home, and then, after some outstanding duties and civilities, over to his thicket among the May blossoms. The extreme beauty of the night seemed to dispel all care, and to have a decidedly inspiring effect on ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... arrived, and the cock was polite enough to-day to keep from being rude. "You are a real songster," he said, "you do as much with your little voice as it is possible to do; but there requires more noise and shrillness in any one who wishes it to be ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... hobble on high heels, with toes Not half the width that should their forms enclose; So we should be more modest when we seek To satirize them and their customs-weak, Remembering that we too are much to blame, And like them merit censure and much shame. How wisely Israel's poet songster said, That cleanliness to godliness is wed, For filthiness of body must conduct, Impurities which mental life obstruct. How well are engineers on the alert, To keep their engines free from dust and dirt, Knowing that without such great care from them, They could not do the work required ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... of darkness as—Shall I tell you the truth? You think you sing for the Dawn, but you sing in reality to be admired, you—songster, you! [With contemptuous pity.] Is it possible you are not aware that your poor notes raise a smile right through the forest, accustomed to the fluting of ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... The saucy songster is an especial favorite with American poets. Bryant does not disdain to write a long poem that has ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... thou our voice, Great Spirit! thou whose flame Kindled the Songster sweet of Israel, Who made so high to swell 15 Beyond a mortal strain ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... galley-slave the most circumstantial I have ever met," said Ferne. "If there are nets about this tree, I will wring your neck for the false songster that ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... partly through the nose, from several of the officers; and old General Chattesworth, who was frowning hard upon his dessert-plate, cried, 'Order, gentlemen,' in a stern, but very tremulous undertone. Lord Castlemallard, leaning upon his elbow, was staring with a grave and dreamy curiosity at the songster, and neither he nor his lordship heard the interruption, and on went the pleasant ditty; and as the musician regularly repeated the last two lines like a clerk in a piece of psalmody, the young ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the question often recurs, What makes the fragrant flower so different from the dead soil from which it grows? the trilling bird, so vastly superior to the inert atmosphere in which it flies? What subtle power paints the rose, and tunes the merry songster's voice? To explain this mystery, philosophers of olden time supposed the existence of a certain peculiar force which is called life, or vital force, or vitality. This supposition does nothing more than furnish a name for a thing ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... heavily in the breezeless air. As she came on the border of the lake, its waves lay dark and voiceless; only, at intervals, the surf, fretting along the pebbles made a low and dreary sound, or from the trees some lingering songster sent forth a shrill and momentary note, and ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... songster strives to raise Its highest warbling notes of praise, For all these blessings given:— Ere Sol emerges from behind The eastern hills, the lark we find Soars, as it were on wings of wind, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... alters the case. I thought you were another topical songster. Now here's a clever little piece ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 23, 1914 • Various
... Mrs. Cotter) That's a nice song to be singin' on a licensed premises, ma'am. 'Twould cause a riot if there was enough o' people about. No less than raidin' the police barracks would satisfy the likes o' that songster if he was left at large. (Opens door. Padna and Micus stagger on to the floor. They fall but get on their feet again) What ...
— Duty, and other Irish Comedies • Seumas O'Brien
... was written with red ink on the blank leaf of a "Universal Songster" he carried in ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... He sat disregarded at supper that evening, save by Valentina's ladies and the fool, who occasionally rallied him upon his glumness. Valentina herself turned her whole attention to the Count, and whilst Gonzaga—Gonzaga, the poet of burning fancy, the gay songster, the acknowledged wit, the mirror of courtliness—was silent and tongue-tied, this ruffling, upstart swashbuckler entertained them with a sprightliness that won him every heart—always ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... A strange songster was that who, pretending to be captivated by every woman he saw, was, in reality, in love with nature alone—wild, beautiful, solitary nature—her mountains and cascades, her forests and streams, her birds, fishes, and wild animals. Go to, Ab Gwilym, with thy pseudo-amatory odes, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... spirit bides with thee unseen? For now, when every songster finds his love And makes his nest where woods are deep and green, Free as the winds, thy song should mock the dove. If I were thou, my grief in moans should move At thinking—otherwhere, by others' art Charmed and forgetful—of mine ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill
... publication of a new edition. The critical estimate of Mr. Hayne's works, favorable from the outset, accords him a place among the few American writers whose works are likely to have a permanent place in public favor. As has been appreciatively said, "He is a songster of the Southern groves, and having built a nest in the wild wood (referring to his country home at Copse Hill), he is content in the companionship of his mate and his young, warbling to nature and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Regulations for Local Officers, containing precise details as to the duties of all the various non-commissioned or lay Officers, whether engaged in work for old or young. Smaller handbooks of Orders and Regulations for Bands and Songster Brigades, and for almost every other class of agents were also issued from time ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... miscellaneous kind are "The Pickwick Songster," "Sam Weller's Almanac," "Sam Weller's Song Book," "The Pickwick Pen," "Oh, what a boon and a blessing to men," etc.,—to say nothing of innumerable careless sheets, and trifles of all kinds and of every degree. Then we have adapted advertisements. ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... sir," faltered the White Linen Nurse. "No, not mad, sir,—but very far from well." Coaxingly with a perfectly futile hand she tried to lure one astonished yellow songster back from a swaying yellow bush. "Why, they'll die, sir!" she protested. ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... do a few of our birds, but continuously. They make a business of it. The sedge-bird ceases at times as if from very weariness; but wake the bird up, says White, by throwing a stick or stone into the bushes, and away it goes again in full song. We have but one real nocturnal songster, and that is the mockingbird. One can see how this habit might increase among the birds of a long-settled country like England. With sounds and voices about them, why should they be silent, too? The danger of betraying themselves to their natural enemies would ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... soft notes died away, the nightingale, with throat of pride, poured forth his melodious chants, and his most complicated, learned, and sweetest compositions to those who had met beneath the thick covert of the woods. Near the songster, in the dark background of the large trees, could be seen the glistening eyes of an owl, attracted by the harmony. In this way the fete of the whole court was a fete also for the mysterious inhabitants ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was reminded of the tempest-tossed crew of Columbus, when, after their long dubious voyage, the field birds came singing round the ship, though still far at sea, rejoicing them with the belief of the immediate proximity of land. A sharp return of winter almost silenced my little songster, and dashed the hilarity of the household; yet still he poured forth, now and then, a few plaintive notes, between the frosty pipings of the breeze, like gleams of sunshine ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... have to write out a report for this fellow!" said the policeman, who had arrested the songster... "and the 'Salad Basket'[10] passes in an hour's time! ... I shall ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... dreadful had happened. All eyes were directed towards the wreck, but nothing could be seen now but a portion of the half-submerged hull. The masts had gone by the board, and soon the coast was strewn with wreckage; she had broken all to pieces. When daylight broke, a search-party found the little songster's cold, clammy body. They wiped the yellow sand from his eyes and closed them, and in the course of the day his fellow-victims were laid at ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... true philosophy and piety, to extract good from every thing, may save themselves from wretchedness even in this land of exile. While I am writing this paragraph, a bird in my room, (not the Caubul songster that I have already alluded to, but a fine little English linnet,) who is as much a foreigner here as I am, is pouring out his soul in a flood of song. His notes ring with joy. He pines not for his native meadows—he ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... pretty an establishment as could be found anywhere upon the whole round globe. Whoever entered the little shop was greeted with such a thrilling and warbling of sweet notes that all the air seemed quivering with music, and the leader of the bird choir was a certain wonderful songster that Andreas had named the Kronprinz, and for which he repeatedly had refused quite fabulous sums. Andreas himself had bred the Kronprinz, and had given him the education that now made him such a wonder among birds, and that made him also of such great value as ...
— An Idyl Of The East Side - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... quiver, and his mother's dove; Let bards to business bend their vigorous wing, And sing but seldom, if they love to sing: 70 Else, when the flowerets of the season fail, And this your ferny shade forsakes the vale, Though one would save ye, not one grain of wheat Should pay such songster's idling at ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... call bird-life. Mr. Torrey has no puerile ambitions for birds in the hand, and a bird in the bush makes to his perception holy ground, where he takes the shoes from off his feet and watches and waits, feeling a delightful surprise in each piquant caprice of the little songster. He tells the story of his experiences and impressions simply and pleasantly, often utters a good thing without too much emphasis, and yet more often says true things, which is more difficult still. He is nowhere bookish, although he has read ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... coach-whip bird would scarcely be classed as "sweet." "The tinkle of the bell-bird in the ranges may have gratified his ear; but the likelihood is that the birds which pleased him were the harmonious thrush and the mellow songster so opprobiously named the thickhead, for no better reason than that collectors experience a difficulty in skinning it.* (* Mr. Chas. L. Barrett, a well known Australian ornithologist, and one of the editors of the Emu, knows the Promontory well, and he tells me ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... am'rous arms; Here grasses spread their undecaying charms. And every wall is eloquent with vine; Far-reaching avenues make beckoning sign, And as we stroll along their tree-lined way, The songster trills his rapture-breathing lay From where he finds inviolable shrine. And yet, within this beauty-haunted place War keeps his dreadful engines at command. With scarce a smile upon his frowning face, And ever ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... finishing the first verse the mocking bird descended to a lower branch. The feathery songster drew his head to one side and appeared to be completely enraptured at the wonderful voice of the young singer. When the last note died away upon the air, her fond brother sang ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... common of the Vireos in the greater part of its range and is a most persistent songster, frequenting groves, open woods or roadsides. Their eyes are brown, scarcely if any more red than those of any other species and I have yet to see one with red eyes outside of mounted museum specimens. They swing their ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... rein, That revels boundless, o'er the wide champaign, Imbibes the silver stream, with heat opprest To cool the fervour of his glowing breast. Here verdant boughs adorn'd with summer's pride, Spread their broad shadows o'er the silver tide: While, gently perching on the leafy spray, Each feather'd songster tunes his various lay: And while thy praise, they symphonize around, Creation ecchoes to the grateful sound. Wide o'er the heav'ns the various bow he bends. Its tincture brightens, and its arch extends: At the glad ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... (on Stage). Ladies and Gentlemen, I shall commence by an attempt to give you an imitation of that popular and favourite songster, the Thrush—better known to some of you, I daresay, as the Throstle, or Mavis! (He gives the Thrush—which somehow doesn't "go.") I shall next endeavour to represent that celebrated and tuneful singing-bird—the Sky-lark. (He does it, but the Lark doesn't quite come off.) I shall ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... tasks, at the same time looking occasionally from the window so as to detect the arrival of the van as soon as possible after it has arrived. Among other things, he may now feed his canary by opening its mouth with a button-hook and dropping in coffee beans till the little songster shows by its gratified air that it is full. A little time may be well spent among the flowers and bulbs of the apartment, clipping here a leaf and here a stem, and removing the young buds and bugs. For work among the flowers, a light pair of rather long scissors, say a foot long, can be carried ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... been reading the new poems of Tennyson. Much has he thought, much suffered, since the first ecstasy of so fine an organization clothed all the world with rosy light. He has not suffered himself to become a mere intellectual voluptuary, nor the songster of fancy and passion, but has earnestly revolved the problems of life, and his conclusions are calmly noble. In these later verses is a still, deep sweetness; how different from the intoxicating, sensuous melody of his earlier cadence! ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... form divine, was giv'n to me Sweet medicine to clear and strengthen sight, And, as one handling skillfully the harp, Attendant on some skilful songster's voice Bids the chords vibrate, and therein the song Acquires more pleasure; so, the whilst it spake, It doth remember me, that I beheld The pair of blessed luminaries move. Like the accordant twinkling of two eyes, Their beamy circlets, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... and ashes cool, My lowly banks o'erspread, And view, deep-bending in the pool, Their shadow's wat'ry bed: Let fragrant birks, in woodbines drest, My craggy cliffs adorn; And, for the little songster's ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... for the grasshopper was not strange: I only wish that the "Athenians of South America," as my fellow-townsmen sometimes call themselves in moments of exaltation, had a feeling of the samo kind—the regard which does not impale its object on a pin—for the pretty light-hearted songster of their ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... a Certain Songster Treats the Company To a Dolorous Ballad Whereby Mr. Irons Is Somewhat ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in the person of Mohammed et-Tunisee. He shot three small fowls of Carthage, one of which he gave me, I promising him a little powder in return when we came to Ghat. We noticed a small black bird with a white throat. But all through this desert we listen in vain for some songster. There is no reason for merriment ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... was about as much in it to relieve Manuel, as there would have been had a little bird perched upon the prison-wall and warbled its song of love to him while strongly secured in his cell-more tantalizing because he could hear the notes, but not see the songster. ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... small songster of habits quite similar to the brigadier we used sometimes to hear, but rarely saw, on our way over to the "Aunt Hannah lot," an adjunct of the Old Squire's farm, to reach which we crossed a tract of sparse woods. Its notes, prolonged on a very sharp, high key, resembled the words, ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... we expected to hear it break into a curious native air, when presently it stopped, and instead of the flute-like notes, some clicking, unmusical sounds like the piping of a barrel-organ out of wind and tune reached our ears. Not till then had we supposed that the songster was a bird. Again it struck up in exactly the same way as before. Though we all four looked about in the direction whence the notes came, the mysterious songster could not be discovered. Duppo was evidently telling us a long story about it, but what he said we could not ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... he must stand still. He sprang into the grave where the Prussian warrior, the German poet, was laid to rest. Yes, a great German poet lies there—a poet by the grace of God. All Germany knows him, "their songster of the spring." All Germany had read and been inspired by his lays. The Austrian and the Saxon considered the Prussian Major Ewald von Kleist their enemy, but they loved and admired the poet, Ewald von Kleist. The people are never enemies to poesy, and ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... bad rhymes and squalid images: we suspect him of an inclination to be rude to his immediate predecessors. But his extreme modernness—"Life is a cliche—I would find a gesture of my own"—is, in the case of so lively a songster, an evidence of vitality. He promises a new volume, to be called Fairies and Fusiliers, and it will be looked forward ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... to his knee the yielding horn, then sends "Through Pluto's heart the bearded arrow sure. "Not far from Enna's walls, a lake expands "Profound in watery stores, Pergusa nam'd: "Not ev'n Caisters' murmuring stream e'er heard "The songster-swans more frequent. Woods o'ertop "The waters, rising round on every side; "And veil from Phoebus' rays the surface cool. "A shade the branches form; the moist earth round, "Produces purple flowers: perpetual spring "Here reigns. While straying sportive in this grove "Here Proserpine ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... barrel-organ, argued Republicanism and flourished that day's copy of Reynolds's Newspaper, The Beauteous Bessie Bilhook—"the Queen of Serio-Comics" was scandalously autobiographic, and the old plantation songster—looking unreal with his washed face—was with difficulty dissuaded from displaying his ability to dance on the table without smashing anything. The climax was reserved for the demure one-legged gymnast, who suddenly ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Man to be alone," As said by God, in Wisdom's solemn tone. This now appeared to him a serious truth, Far more than it had done in days of youth. The birds still paired, and had their separate nest, From love responsive in each songster's breast; But, though he loved on Nature's face to gaze, And mark the beauties which each day displays, He felt a vacancy in his young breast, For he no lov'd companion then possessed. Far different was it in his native land— There, such an one might always be at hand. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... Rome. Here was an aviary, constructed of fine lattice work in wood, over-trailed with creeping plants, large enough to allow of Heliodora's entering and walking about among the multitude of birds imprisoned. At this amusement Marcian found her. Upon her head perched a little songster; on her shoulder nestled a dove; two fledglings in the palm of her hand opened their beaks for food. Since her last visit a bird had died, and Heliodora's eyes were still moist from the tears she had shed ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... deepening into night, but still the glow from the setting sun lingered in the western sky. The brave little songster had gone from the top of the elm tree, but from the shrubbery behind the church a whippoorwill was ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... other for a solution of the mystery. At length the strain died away at distance, and an interval of silence was succeded by an earnest discussion of the cause of this prodigy. One supposition only could be adopted, which was, that the strain was uttered by human organs. That the songster was stationed on the roof of the arbour, and having finished his melody had risen into the viewless ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... Oxford?—some small buzzing thing, Some starveling songster on a tiny wing,— (N.B. They call the insect Bob, I know, I heard a printer's devil call it so)— So fondly tells his admiration vast No one can call the chastened strains bombast, Though epitheted substantives immense Claim for each lofty ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... that Harry was so brave a songster, and could sing such bewitching airs: I suggested whether his musical talents could not be turned to account. The thought struck him most favorably—"Gad, my boy, you have hit it, you have," and then he went on ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... addressing the singing-boy, 'array yourself for a journey, and wait with my equipage at the garden-gate. I shall require you to accompany me in my expedition to Aricia. But first, oh! gifted and valued songster, let me reward you for the harmonious symphony that has just awakened me. Of what rank of my musicians are you ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... were ask'd to dine; not Jenny's friends alone, But every pretty songster that had ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... There to rock upon the common, Where the Sun retires to slumber; There I heard a song-bird singing, Heard the thrush simple measures, Singing sweetly thoughts of maidens, And the minds of anxious mothers. "Then I asked the pretty songster, Asked the thrush this simple question: 'Sing to me, thou pretty song-bird, Sing that I may understand thee, Sing to me in truthful accents, How to live in greatest pleasure, And in happiness the sweetest, As a maiden with her father, Or as wife beside her husband.' "Thus ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... together. Are you for war? I can stir you with a stave to set your sinews straining. Are you for the music of the wood? The thrush itself would be jealous of my note. Are you for the ditty of the lover? Here's the songster to break hearts. Since the start of time there have been 'prentices at my trade: I have challenged North and East, South and the isle-flecked sea, and they ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... the stile we had disturbed one of the birds, and we had to wait some minutes before its song again broke out much further to the right. For some reason of his own Chandrapal had found this bird the best songster of the three; and, wishing to get as near as possible, he again led the way and gave us a sign to follow. We cautiously skirted the hedge, making our way towards a point on the opposite side of the field where there was a gate, and beyond this, in the next ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... again. It makes as much of it as can be made, but with all its efforts its song is a very so-so affair, all its syllables beginning with z, and almost ending with it too. Yet, although it is not much of a songster, it is almost a sacred bird with me, in consequence of the associations connected with it. A pair had built for forty years, according to tradition, in a wheel-race near to where I was born, and had never been molested by anybody until a gentleman in the neighbourhood, ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... me, O Lord, Nor left out of me part of that great gift that goes to singing, I sure had known the meaning high of the songster's praising word, Had known upon what thoughts of thee his pearly talk he ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... there was much for grown folks, but the "Patriotic and Amatory Songster," advertised by S. Avery of Boston about the time Weems's biography was published, seems a title ill-suited to the juvenile public for whom ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... surrounding hill-sides, "Puh p'a teh, pub p'a teh"; then, raising his carrying-pole to the correct angle on the hump on his back, went merrily forward, warbling some squealing Chinese ditty. But Shanks was the songster of the party. He often madly disturbed the silence of middle night by a sudden outburst inte song, and when shouted down by others who lay around, or kicked by the man who shared his bed, and whose choral propensities were less in proportion, he would laugh wildly ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... the hours and the state of the night whenever the ship's bell sent its musical note echoing from bank to bank of the creek, and rousing the denizens of the forest around. A bird sang in the grove, tuning its lay to reproduce the notes of every songster that had warbled during the daytime. The scents from the masses of flowers, that clustered the banks and wound their tendrils round the giant trees, floated fragrantly on the night air. There was peace in the heavens ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... the right could be discerned the even surface of the cane-brake, previously mentioned, now stretching away in the distance like the unruffled bosom of some beautiful lake. A light breeze slightly rustled the leaves of the trees, among whose branches an occasional songster piped forth ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... Happy songster! Wherefore scare him From our blossom-laden bower? Rather for his music spare him All our future, flower by flower; Trust me, 'twill be cheaply buying Present song with future fruit; List the proverb, "Time is flying;—" Soon our ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... be common in Massachusetts. The Mocking-Bird is familiar in his habits, frequenting gardens and orchards, and perching on the roofs of houses when singing, like the common Robin. Like the Robin, too, who sings at all hours excepting those of darkness, he is a persevering songster, and seems to be inspired by living in the vicinity of man. In his manners, however, he bears more resemblance to the Red Thrush, being distinguished by his vivacity, and the courage with which he repels ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... financier of great success. If e'er he dozed, at break of day, The cobbler's song drove sleep away; And much he wish'd that Heaven had made Sleep a commodity of trade, In market sold, like food and drink, So much an hour, so much a wink. At last, our songster did he call To meet him in his princely hall. Said he, 'Now, honest Gregory, What may your yearly earnings be?' 'My yearly earnings! faith, good sir, I never go, at once, so far,' The cheerful cobbler said, And queerly scratch'd his ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... invests the object of its attachment. Nor is this surprising. In the country its various associations are essentially impressive and poetical. Moonlight—evening—the still glen—the river side—the flowery hawthorn—the bower—the crystal well—not forgetting the melody of the woodland songster—are all calculated, to make the heart and fancy surrender themselves to the blandishments of a passion that is surrounded by objects so sweetly linked to their earliest sympathies. But this is not all. In rural life, neither the heart nor the eye is distracted by the claims of rival beauty, ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... color, the nuthatch is a beautiful bird on account of the pleasing softness and harmonious disposition of his tints; and, in like manner, without being a songster in the strict sense of the word, his voice is so clear and far-reaching and of so pleasing a quality, that it often gives more life and spirit to the woods and orchards and avenues he frequents than that of many true melodists. ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... lyric talent. Not a few compilations of verses offer to the public the songs of many writers, some of them unknown by name. England, especially, was "a nest of singing birds," rapturously greeting the dawn, and the rimes were mostly of "love, whose month is always May." Each songster poured forth his heart in fresh, frank praise of his mistress's beauty, or in chiding of her cruelty, or in lamenting her unfaithfulness. There was something very simple and direct about it all; nothing deeply psychological until at the very end ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... ridiculous twitter came from a tiny scarlet-crowned songster, as if it were trying to advise and direct the hard-pressed boy. Its solemn, round eyes stared at him, reproving and admonishing him for his foolhardiness. Piang, on his knees, struggling with the current, was unaware of his audience. Gradually ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... was up, the puzzling songster visited the little grove under my windows, and I heard his whole song, of which it now appeared the three notes were merely the conclusion. The performance was eccentric. It began with a soft warble, apparently for his sole entertainment, then suddenly, as if overwhelmed ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... broken, poor bird?" exclaimed the young man, taking up the hapless songster, yet warm and palpitating. "To die in the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... respectable old Goat of my age, and at the point of death—for I see you licking your chops—whether, I say, such a one would dare to tell lies. But, Mr. Wolf, there is one reason why I shall be sorry to die. You may not have heard of it, but it is true nevertheless that I am a famous songster, and it will be indeed a pity that a gift so rare should be lost. Will you do me one last favour, and let me sing you a song before I die? I am sure it will delight you, and you will enjoy eating ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... like his," Mr. Meadowlark answered. And he sighed as he spoke. "To be sure, some people are kind enough to say that my singing is unusually sweet. But you know yourself that there isn't a songster anywhere that can carol ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... bill and feet, black; eye, brown; color, slate color, somewhat lighter beneath; top of head and tail, black; reddish under the wings; arrives in May, leaves in October; nests in bushes; lives in gardens and woodside thickets; has a sharp cry not unlike the mewing of a cat, but is a gifted songster. ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... time in vain for the birds to appear, we examined the nest before us, we found that it held two thrush eggs and one of the cowbird. The impertinence of this disreputable bird in thrusting her plebeian offspring upon the divine songster, to rear at the expense of her own lovely brood, was not to be tolerated. The dirty speckled egg looked strangely out of place among the gems that belonged to the nest, and I removed it, careful not to touch nest or eggs. So pertinacious is this parasite ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... is calm, the sky serene, Though wide the broad and leafy arms are spread, Yet still the scars of recent wounds are seen; Their shelter henceforth seems but insecure; The winged tribes disdain the frequent lure, Where many a songster lies benumb'd or dead; And when I would the flow'ry tendrils train, I find my late delightful ...
— Poems • Matilda Betham
... Berkshire hills, where the sweet call of this bird is constantly repeated. It is very pleasant to know that a little girl out in that beautiful region honors me so much as to recite my verse when she hears the fresh note of this charming songster, as this lady tells me her ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... any heed to Rube, sheriff," Kiddie interposed. "It's a special hobby of his to know a bird by its notes. The songster you're listenin' to now is just a whip-poor-will. It starts every evening precisely at sunset. When it quits singing, we reckon it's time to crawl into ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... your mate, and are crying for her," the girl said, stretching out her little brown hand compassionately toward the crouching songster. "Your companions have gone to the South, and you wait here, trusting that your mate will come back, and not journey to summer lands without you. Is not that so, my poor bird? Ah, would that I could go with you where there are always flowers, and ever can be heard the ripple of little ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... quality is apt to result; then the tone cannot 'float.' I have found the best way is to use the mixed vowels, one melting into the other. The tone can be started with each vowel in turn, and then mingled with the rest of the vowels. Do you know, the feathered songster I love best—the nightingale—uses the mixed vowels too. Ah, how much I have learned from him and from other birds also! Some of them have harsh tones—real quacks—because they open their bills too far, or in a special ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... us, you look extremely pale!"—"Pale! Mr Adams," says she; "O Jesus!" and fell backwards in her chair. Adams jumped up, flung his Aeschylus into the fire, and fell a-roaring to the people of the house for help. He soon summoned every one into the room, and the songster among the rest; but, O reader! when this nightingale, who was no other than Joseph Andrews himself, saw his beloved Fanny in the situation we have described her, canst thou conceive the agitations of his mind? If thou canst not, waive that meditation to behold his happiness, when, clasping her ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... his kennel is more invariably present, no caged songster more incontestably anchored. If you need his services, you have but to seek his address between the hours mentioned. You may do so with the same assurance of finding him on duty that you would feel, if ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... of this sweet songster, denotes unexpected pleasures. For the young to dream of possessing a beautiful canary, denotes high class honors and a successful passage through the literary world, or a happy ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... 'As much as I your minstrelsy, You would abhor to do me wrong, As much as I to spoil your song: For 'twas the self-same Power Divine Taught you to sing, and me to shine; That you with music, I with light, Might beautify and cheer the night.' The songster heard this short oration, And warbling out his approbation, Released him, as my story tells, And found ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various |
