"Twittering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more observant I became. The sun lolling up in a red ball, the birds, twittering and flying about while the heat of the day is not severe, showed themselves in a new light; and thus the 20th June is ushered in so complaisantly, when all the world of men appear merely tired and watchful, that the contrast makes one wonder, and at nine o'clock once more our Ministers Plenipotentiary ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... enough to be a listener. This was given some years ago in an old apple-orchard by a flock of fox-colored sparrows, who, perhaps for that occasion only, had the "valuable assistance" of a large choir of snow-birds. The latter were twittering in every tree, while to this goodly accompaniment the sparrows were singing their loud, clear, thrush-like song. The combination was felicitous in the extreme. I would go a long way ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... snatch her pretty red slippers, and as soon as she was out of sight of the house she put them on. It made her feel less miserable. The sun was now rising and when its rays shone on her she began to sing. With her old friends, the birds, twittering all about her, ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... of men. Nothing to look upon but the four walls of the room, which, in spite of its cosiness, he only associates with dreams, nightmares, and dull memories of sleepless nights, and chilly mornings. Nothing to listen to but the twittering of the canary downstairs, and the distant wrangling of children in the nursery: no one to speak to but the harassed housewife, wanted in a dozen places at once, and the pert housemaid, whose noisiness ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... enough question to ask and, to them, hovering twittering upon high heels a trifle worn to one side, a simple one for her to answer. She looked at them in that humorous, kindly way of hers, looked at their silly, excited, made-up faces with noses sticking out stark, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... twittering on the eaves At daybreak, when the mower whets his scythe, And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait Stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... procession starts into the woods. The sun shines almost unobstructedly into the forest, for there are only naked branches to bar it; the snow is soft and beginning to sink down, leaving the young bushes spindling up everywhere; the snowbirds are twittering about, and the noise of shouting and of the blows of the axe echoes far and wide. This is spring, and the boy can scarcely contain his delight that his out-door life ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... green, the flowers are all in bloom, Spring is here. The faint gray streaks of the dawn are in the sky and soon the whole East is suffused with a roseate flush. There is a hush of expectancy in the air, the breeze is soft, the birds are twittering drowsily in the tree-tops, and then in a flood of golden splendor "the morning sun comes peeping over the hills." Instantly all nature is alive, the birds pour forth their sweet melodies, the drowsy hum of the bees floats lazily on the air; ...
— Silver Links • Various
... River, deep and still, just beneath my feet. It is a lovely, cloudless morning, and going to be a very hot day. I am writing my letter on the banks of the river in the shade of green trees and shrubs, with birds singing and twittering, and building their nests round me; it is spring-time here, you know, or early summer. Here and there, sauntering or sitting, are groups of our khaki soldiers enjoying mightily a good rest after the hard work, marching ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... First glimmers white o'er Lesser Asia, And little birds are twittering in the grass, And all the sea lies hollow and gray with mist, And in the streets the ancient watchmen doze, The master woke with cold. His feet were chill, And reft of sense; and we who watched him knew The fever had not wholly left his brain, For ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... morning Annie Forest opened her eyes with that strange feeling of indifference and want of vivacity which come so seldom to youth. She saw the sun shining through the closed blinds; she heard the birds twittering and singing in the large elm-tree which nearly touched the windows; she knew well how the world looked at this moment, for often and often in her old light-hearted days she had risen before the maid came to call her, and, kneeling by the deep window-ledge, had looked out at the bright, fresh, ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... dark greenery autumn had hung out a banner to herald her coming—a scarlet sumach. A yellowing maple leaf fell at Helen's feet as she passed. Along the water's edge where the birches grew thick arose a great twittering and chattering. The long southern flight was already being discussed. Away out beyond the island a canoe drifted along on the golden water. Some one seated in it was picking a mandolin and ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... rested on the valley now. Only from the trees came the plaintive twittering of birds which had come in from frozen weeds and fence-rows and at the thresholds of the boughs were calling to one another. It was not their song, but their speech; there was no love in it, but there was what for them perhaps corresponds to our sense of ties. It most resembled ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... wane, and a freshness blew across the veldt. Somewhere on the very top of the kopje a bird uttered a twittering note. She turned her face, listening for the answer, and found Burke seated on another boulder ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... gave way, and sleep came down upon their eyelids; deep, unbroken sleep, which lasted till the broad sunlight breaking through the leafy curtains of their forest-bed, and the sound of waving boughs and twittering birds, once more wakened them to life and light; recalling them from happy dreams of home and friends, to an aching sense of loneliness and desolation. This day they did not wander far from the valley, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... breakfast in her own room. It was ten o'clock, and a glorious September morning, and the sparrows were twittering on the terrace outside as though they considered it highly improper for any one to have breakfast between four walls when Nature had provided such a splendid feast on ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... of the night was gone by this time, and the day was at the point of dawn; the sparrows in the eaves were twittering, and the tide, which was at its lowest ebb, was heaving on the sand far out in the bay with the sound as of a rookery awakening. Philip remembered afterwards that his mother cried so much that he was afraid, and that when he had been dressed she ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... laughed softly to herself. Dear old Robbie Belle! Quinine on this wonderful day! Listen! That was the twittering of swallows under the eaves. A squirrel peered in at her window, his bright eyes twinkling. It was too bad that he did not enjoy music. But perhaps he did after all. Hark! that was a robin. And listen! There sounded the full-throated whistle of a brown thrush. The world was ringing with ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... of water seemed to possess a new beauty in the early morning sunlight, and the white Casino, of which the minarets were reflected in its blue depths, might have been a dream palace. Nothing broke the intense stillness but the loud, sweet twittering of the birds in the ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the King and the Princess to talk things over, Earl Omolo went out and caught a Robin, changed it into a smart soldier, and sent him off recruiting. Very shortly there were thousands of Robins twittering to be enlisted. ...
— The Great Red Frog • Mosnar Yendis (AKA Sidney Ransom)
... King Eric Blood-axe "sitting bolt upright and glaring" at the son of Skallagrim as he delivers the panegyric which is to save his life, and the composition of which had been so nearly baulked by the twittering of the witch-swallow under his eaves. The "long" kisses of Kormak and Steingerd, and the poet's unconscious translation of AEschylus[175] as he says, "Eager to find my lady, I have scoured the whole house with the glances ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... mournful months when vegetables and animals are alike coerced by cold, man is tributary to the howling storm and the sullen sky, and is, in the phrase of Johnson, a "slave to gloom;" but when the earth is disencumbered of her load of snows, and warmth is felt, and twittering swallows are heard, he is again jocund and free. Nature renews her charter to her sons.... Hence is enjoyed, in ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... visits any part of the room, trying each fresh thing with his bill to see if it is good to eat, and then perching on it to see if it good to sit upon. He mistakes his own reflection in the looking- glass for another canary, and sits on the pin-cushion twittering and making love to himself for half an hour at a time. To watch him is one of my greatest amusements, especially just now when I am in bed so much. Sometimes he hides and keeps so still that I have not the least idea where ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... was the legend of St. Servan, who had a robin which perched on his shoulder, and fed from his hand, and joined in with joyful twittering when the Saint sang his hymns and psalms. Now the lads in the abbey-school were jealous of the Saint's favourite pupil, Kentigern, and out of malice they killed the robin and threw the blame on Kentigern. Bitterly ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... too, beautifully enough, what we had been doing clumsily. It was living, intent on its own conscious life, the sap hurrying, the scent flowing, the bud waxing. The yellow-hammer poising and darting along the hedge, the sparrow twittering round the rick, the cock picking and crowing, were all intent on life, proclaiming that they were alive and busy. Something vivid, alert, impassioned was going forward everywhere, something being effected, something uttered—and yet the cause how utterly hidden from ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the narrow yard, where the grass lay like a veil, there was a curious deadening of sounds, as if the traffic had become suddenly muffled in the languorous softness of spring. Out of this imaginary stillness floated the sharp twittering of sparrows and the bright laugh of a child at play in one of the neighbouring yards. Above the grim outlines of the city the sky shone divinely clear and blue, flecked by a single cloud, soft as ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... rattled over stock and stone on the public highway. The coffin in its covering of straw tumbled out of the van, and was left on the high-road, while horses, coachman, and carriage flew past in wild career. The lark rose up carolling from the field, twittering her morning lay over the coffin, and presently perched upon it, picking with her beak at the straw covering, as though she would tear it up. The lark rose up again, singing gaily, and I withdrew behind the red ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... going into the old red-walled garden for tea, with some novel under my arm, the cathedral bell ringing for Evensong just over the wall across the Green, then slowly dropping to its close, then the faint murmur of the organ. Some bird twittering in a tree overhead, buttered toast in a neat pile placed carefully over hot water to keep it warm; honey, heavy home-made cake, perhaps the local weekly paper with the "Do you know that ..." column demanding one's critical attention. One's annoyed ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... his lameness decreased as his excitement waxed greater, or it seemed to, and he considered it less. The birds stopped twittering their vesper songs, and huddled fearfully in their shelters. A peal of thunder was followed quickly by another. The rocks took up the echo and prolonged the sound. Between, the flashes of lightning, ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... as if balanced in the air, with its beak bent down on its breast, watching the fish beneath; presently it darted like an arrow into the water; returned with an empty bill, and then went off, with its clear, sharp, twittering note, as if to console itself for ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... of ocean. It is the most narrowly local and stay-at-home of all birds, never leaving the very fringe and margin, not of sea, but of land, haunting only the last edge and precipice of the coast, nesting on those upright walls of granite or chalk, and creeping, flying, and twittering among the crumbling stones, the water-worn boulders, and the tufts of sea-pink and samphire. When the winter storms slam the roaring billows against the cliff faces and the spray flies up a hundred feet from the exploding mass, the little sea-larks only mount to higher levels of the cliff, never ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... of Parisian life, small in itself, but subtle and suggestive as the premonition of spring awakened by the twittering of the sparrows in the tall, leafless trees, and the throbbing song of a caged canary that floated down from a window above a shop. It was suggestive of that Parisian life that is as restless as the sea, as uncontrollable, as possessed ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... singing softly to himself very often, in a fancied seclusion? When other birds are cheerily out-of-doors, on some bright morning of May or June, one will often discover a solitary Cat-Bird sitting concealed in the middle of a dense bush, and twittering busily, in subdued rehearsal, the whole copious variety of his lay, practising trills and preparing half-imitations, which, at some other time, sitting on the topmost twig, he shall hilariously seem to improvise before all the world. Can it be that he is really in some slight disgrace ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... bare and unmarked save for what might well have been the pressure of my own head. My breath came more freely, and I turned to the window. The sun had just risen, the golden tree-tops were touched with light, faint threads of mist hung here and there across the sky, and the twittering of birds sounded clearly through the ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... to see them at Selborne. Eheu fugaces! Thank fortune, the swift still glues his nest, and rolls his distant thunders night and day in the wide-throated chimneys, still sprinkles the evening air with his merry twittering. The populous heronry in Fresh Pond meadows has wellnigh broken up, but still a pair or two haunt the old home, as the gypsies of Ellangowan their ruined huts, and every evening fly over us riverwards, clearing their throats with ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... guardian of the peace,—a meek and gentle flicker mounts the highest tree and cries "pe-auk! pe-auk!" as loud as he can shout, a squirrel on one side shrieks at the top of his voice, veeries call anxiously here and there, while a vireo warbles continuously overhead, and a redstart "trills his twittering horn." ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... subdued little woman, sat opposite him and contributed to the conversation twittering little broken phrases of assent. Her life had been made up of scenes like this. She was of the sweet and pliable type, which, with the best intentions in the world, has made life hard for ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... and where was Alan? The thought of the festal morning and the due salutations reawakened his desire for his friend, and he began to call for him by name. As the sound of his voice died away, he was aware of the greatness of the silence that environed him. But for the twittering of the sparrows and the crunching of his own feet upon the frozen snow, the whole windless world of air hung over him entranced, and the stillness weighed upon his mind with a horror ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... multitudinous chirping or twittering issued from them at intervals as long as they were moving; but sometimes they ceased from motion, and then all ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... voices crying out of the heart strings of the gods, all sighing still for the things that might not be. And the dirge and the voices crying, go drifting away from the Path of Stars, away from the Midst of Things, till they come twittering among the Worlds, like a great host of birds that are lost by night. And every note is a life, and many notes become caught up among the worlds to be entangled with flesh for a little while before they pass again on their journey to the great Anthem that roars at the End of ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... being unable to obtain it for himself, will lead men to the places where the wild bees have hidden their stores of rich, wild honey. Whenever this bird sees a man, he will fly close to him, hovering around, uttering a twittering sound; then he will go off in the direction of the place (generally a tree) where the honey is, flying backward and forward in a zigzag fashion. Then back he will come, twittering in the same manner, as if to say, ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... and flowers Showed bright on rocky bank, And fountains welled beneath the bowers, Where deer and pheasant drank. He saw the glittering streams, he heard The rustling bough and twittering bird. ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... an old bachelor, wedded to trout-fishing and tobacco-smoke; familiar with nothing but whist, yarn stockings, flannels and shooting-jackets; without the least possible relish for landscape or color, for the twittering of birds, or the swarming of bumble-bees and forest-leaves; with no sense of poetry, and a mortal hatred of rigmarole, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... hung low over the pines; all the scrubby foreland ran molten gold in every tufted furrow; flock after flock of twittering little birds whirled into the briers and out again, scattering inland into ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... stillness of the scene was now unbroken, save by the twittering of some belated swallow, the chirp of the cricket, or the evening hymn of the forest songsters, ere they sank to grateful rest. All was peace without, but troubled and anxious was the heart of the solitary occupant of that apartment, who, though for a moment aroused from deep, ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... about fourteen years old his father died. 'Twas of a Sunday afternoon that we stowed un away. I mind the time: spring weather and a fair day, with the sun low, and the birds twittering in the ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... woodsy odors. Spears of sunlight made bright blobs on the brown grass; and every littlest bush and shrub wore a shimmering halo, as you see the blessed ones backgrounded in old pictures. There was a bird twittering somewhere; occasionally a twig snapped with a quick, secret sharpness; and once a thin brown rabbit took to his ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Jane Austen lived. But when you tramp that five miles from Overton, where the railroad-station is, to Steventon, where she was born, it doesn't seem like it. Rural England does not change much. Great fleecy clouds roll lazily across the blue, overhead, and the hedgerows are full of twittering birds that you hear but seldom see; and the pastures contain mild-faced cows that look at you with wide-open eyes over the stone walls; and in the towering elm-trees that sway their branches in the breeze crows hold a noisy caucus. And it comes to you that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... girl of fourteen, sick, with face of the purest alabaster, and of features as fine as were ever traced for Venus Anadyomene, with large, solemn, dreamy eyes, watching a robin that was perched on the proscenium and was twittering. ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... out of the little woodyard into the lane at the back of the house. It was but about a mile and a half to Broxton over the opposite slope, and their road wound very pleasantly along lanes and across fields, where the pale woodbines and the dog-roses were scenting the hedgerows, and the birds were twittering and trilling in the tall leafy boughs of oak and elm. It was a strangely mingled picture—the fresh youth of the summer morning, with its Edenlike peace and loveliness, the stalwart strength of the two brothers in their rusty working clothes, and the long ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... He was an evil-browed ruffian in a fur cap, with a broad broken nose and little shifty red eyes; and after I had told him what I wanted he took me through a horrible little den, stacked with piles of wooden, wire, and wicker prisons, each quivering with restless, twittering life, and then out into a back yard, in which were two or three rotten old kennels and tubs. "That there's him," he said, jerking his thumb to the farthest tub; "follered me all the way 'ome from Kinsington Gardens, he did. Kim out, ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... for one moment ceasing to cheer him up. It was a fine bright morning in October as they wandered forth. There wasn't a living thing about the farm except the birds, and even they seemed sad in their twittering. Could it be possible that they knew ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... window. The building stood high on a large wooded bluff overlooking a deep gorge. The landscape before her interested her exceedingly, and took her in fancy to the wilderness of Mottville. The busy birds fluttered to and fro, twittering sleepily to each other, and for a short time the watcher forgot her anxiety in the ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... lips because her grandfather had forbidden her to whistle and if she held her mouth almost normal he couldn't tell when he looked out into the garden whether it was Felice or the birds who were twittering. ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... me in! Trees are bare, but birds begin Twittering to the peeping leaves, On the bough beneath the eaves Wait,—one lilac bud I saw. Icy hillsides feel the thaw; April chased off March to-day; Now I ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... fourth chance - unless it be very bad indeed. Now I write you from my mosquito curtain, to the song of saws and planes and hammers, and wood clumping on the floor above; in a day of heavenly brightness; a bird twittering near by; my eye, through the open door, commanding green meads, two or three forest trees casting their boughs against the sky, a forest- clad mountain-side beyond, and close in by the door-jamb a nick of the ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... before mentioned, are almost all without glass; or, if they have them, it is for show rather than for use: the universal custom is, to sleep with them open. It is nothing uncommon to have the swallows flying into your chamber, and awakening you by early dawn with their twittering. When these windows open into gardens, nothing can be more pleasant: the purity of the air, the splendor of the stars, the singing of nightingales, and the perfume of flowers, all concur to charm the senses; and I never ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... sight. Silvia sat by our bedroom window twittering soft, cooing nonsensical nothings to Diogenes, who was clasped in her arms, his flushed little face pressed ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... compulsion no longer spurred me; but my thoughts still drove in a wild whirl. There was a glassy reflection of a faded moon on the water, and daybreak came rustling through the trees which nodded and swayed overhead. A twittering of winged things arose in the branches, first only the cadence of a robin's call, an oriole's flute-whistle, the stirring wren's mellow note. Then, suddenly, out burst from the leafed sprays a chorus of song that might have rivaled angels' melodies. The robin's call was a gust of triumph. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... sweet twittering of birds, the breath of syringas and roses, and a faultless sky. It was a ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... bugle-call sounded from the sentry at the top of Crow Nest, and a faint twittering of a little bird was heard in a tree skirting the hollow. The dawn was coming, lifting the dew-mist from the lap of the earth; a faint light was streaking the east, as the Queen, gathering her shining band, with Charley in the midst, rose in the air, and flitted away to the cottage ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... went twittering on: "Where you're concerned, trust us to be anxious, dear Mr. Farvel. That's how we came to guess. Isn't ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... ferry-chain over our heads; and on we went passing by a bank clad with oak trees on our left hand, till the stream narrowed again and deepened, and we rowed on between walls of tall reeds, whose population of reed sparrows and warblers were delightfully restless, twittering and chuckling as the wash of the boats stirred the reeds from the water upwards in the still, ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... the unapproachable artist. Heaven forbid that I should shatter the sacred silence that such things produce, by any profane repetition! They leave behind them, every one of them, an echo, a vibration, a dying fall, leaving us enchanted and trembling; as when we have been touched, before the twittering of the birds at dawn, by the very fingers of ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... most helpless of men,' The year before, his oration on the American Scholar had filled Carlyle with delight. It was the first clear utterance, after long decades of years, in which he had 'heard nothing but infinite jangling and jabbering, and inarticulate twittering and screeching.' Then Carlyle enjoined on his American friend for rule of life, 'Give no ear to any man's praise or censure; know that that is not it; on the one side is as Heaven, if you have strength ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... sauntered forth quite sad at heart, when an unexpected familiar twittering greeted my ear, and I turned northward to see my little friends circling about the stables. Life closer to the front had evidently not offered any particular advantages, and in a few days' time their constant comings and goings from certain specific points told me that they had come back ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... A cheerful chirping and twittering in the space behind him caused him to turn sharply away from the books and bottles. Then he saw that he was no longer alone. Half a score sparrows, busy, bustling little bodies, had come in by the open window, and were strutting about amongst ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... notes on the spicy air; two purple pigeons, with rainbow necklaces, cooed and fluttered up and down from the church belfry, and close under the projecting roof of the granite vault, a pair of meek brown wrens were building their nest and twittering softly ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... dull, hot afternoon, trying to write; but it was a lazy day; the robins had forgotten to sing, the little sparrows that live up in the oaks had stopped twittering, and the very honey bees were humming drowsily, when Chicken Little came up with a wreath of white clover around her head, and begged for a story. The older children wanted one, also, and so I had to tell ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... a song or poem is cuicatl. It is derived from the verb cuica, to sing, a term probably imitative or onomatopoietic in origin, as it is also a general expression for the twittering of birds. The singer was called cuicani, and is distinguished from the composer of the song, the poet, to whom was applied the term cuicapicqui, in which compound the last member, picqui, corresponds strictly to the Greek poiaetaes, ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... one evening in the early spring, after the sun had dipped below the line of the high hedge-row, though it was still shining in level rays through it. No sound had disturbed the deep silence for a long time, except the twittering of birds among the branches; for up here even the sea could not be heard when it was calm. I suppose my face was sad, as most human faces are apt to be when the spirit is busy in its citadel, and has left ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... beach, and hiding their canoe beneath a giant spruce, they followed where a little trail beckoned them on and up the mountain side. For hours they climbed, wending their way through lonely, silent woods, the twittering wren the only life they saw or heard. At times they lost the trail, as it was overgrown with fern and berry bush. But once the leading klootsmah stopped and signed to her companions to keep still. Halting, they waited while she pointed to the root fangs of a cedar tree, where well within the hollow ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... left the house too late, his daughter had broken in on him with her twittering and fondling—but she is a ray ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... of the one who had been everything to him. She had requested that this should be her last resting-place where the storms of winter could not reach the spot, and where the wind would make music in the trees overhead. The day was very bright when they laid her there, and the birds were singing and twittering about them. But for him there was no sunshine, for his heart was almost breaking with grief. He knew that his father felt badly, too, for his voice faltered as he began to read the Burial Service. The grave was covered with snow now, and he wondered if his father ever visited ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... languid this evening to pursue his duty of being a captivating (though strictly moral) male. He ambled back to the bridge-tables. He was not much thrilled when Mrs. Frink, a small twittering woman, proposed that they "try and do some spiritualism and table-tipping—you know Chum can make the spirits come—honest, he ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... she fluttered about the warm room in search of her mittens, and then she turned down the lamp, chucked a log in the stove, put on the dampers like a prudent householder, and, having made quite sure that the door was latched, scampered off to town in vast and twittering delight with the nipping frost, with the roistering wind, the fluffy snow, the stars, the whole of God's clean world, and with herself, too, and with the blessed ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... by the feet of generations of mistresses and dairy-maids. Its only light came through a small window shaded with shrubs and ivy, which stood open, and let in the scents of bud and blossom, weaving a net of sweetness in the gloom, through which, like a silver thread, shot the twittering song of a bird, which had inherited the gathered carelessness and bliss of a long ancestry in ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... was so close that the bedroom was in twilight even at midday. On the farm he could tell by the feeling—an intangible thing, but infallible. He could gauge the very quality of the blackness that comes just before dawn. The crowing of the cocks, the stamping of the cattle, the twittering of the birds in the old elm whose branches were etched eerily against his window in the ghostly light—these things he had never needed. He had known. But here, in the unsylvan section of Chicago which bears the bosky name of Englewood, the very darkness ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... sunshine and the flower-scented silence, broken only by the twittering of birds nesting in the ivy, her Grace lay soft asleep, her son resting on her arm, when Anne stole to look at her and her child. Through the night she had knelt praying in her chamber, and now she knelt again. She kissed the new-born thing's curled rose-leaf ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... glorious summer twilight. The air was sweet with the odor of lilacs and honeysuckle. One by one the stars shone softly out in the velvet sky, across which troops of swallows swooped and darted, twittering softly on the wing. Near the western horizon the golden glow of sunset still lingered. It was a night for poets to sing of, a night to revel in and to remember; but it was assuredly not a night for study. Gaslight heated one's room to the ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... Presently a silence fell upon the little school-house. Through the open door a cool, restful breath stole gently as if nature were again stealthily taking possession of her own. A squirrel boldly came across the porch, a few twittering birds charging in stopped, beat the air hesitatingly for a moment with their wings, and fell back with bashfully protesting breasts aslant against the open door and the unlooked-for spectacle of the silent occupant. Then there was another movement ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... caressing Tartar, who slobbered with exceeding affection. A faint twittering commenced among the trees round. Something fluttered down as light as leaves. They were little birds, which, lighting on the sward at shy distance, hopped ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... easefully, and dropped into a reclining posture. The tree he had chosen to rest under was a mighty elm, whose broad branches, thick with leaves, formed a deep green canopy through which the sunbeams filtered in flecks and darts of gold. A constant twittering of birds resounded within this dome of foliage, and a thrush whistled melodious phrases from one of the highest boughs. At his feet was spread a carpet of long soft moss, interspersed with wild thyme and groups of delicate harebells, and the rippling of a tiny stream into a hollow cavity ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... quilt Bernard decided he must marry Ethel with no more delay. I love the girl he said to himself and she must be mine but I somehow feel I can not propose in London it would not be seemly in the city of London. We must go for a day in the country and when surrounded by the gay twittering of the birds and the smell of the cows I will lay my suit at her feet and he waved his arm wildly at the gay thought. Then he sprang from bed and gave a rat ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... scruple, what vague and scarcely perceptible remorse torments me now, when, as formerly, as in other days of my youth, as in childhood itself, I feel an effusion of tenderness, a sort of ecstasy of enthusiasm, on penetrating into some leafy grove, on hearing the song of the nightingale, or the twittering of the swallows, or the tender cooing of the dove; on looking at the flowers, on beholding the stars. I imagine, at times, that there is in all this something of sensual pleasure, a something that makes me forget, for the moment ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... diligently for water. Numerous rock-holes were to be seen, but all were dry, and my hopes of making this our base from which to prospect in various directions were at first short-lived; but before long I was overjoyed to hear the twittering of a little flock of Diamond sparrows—a nearly certain sign that water must be handy; and sure enough I found their supply at the bottom of a narrow, round hole, down which I could just ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... said. He called it the friendly eye. Being friendly to people, he said, was as if you had a candle in your heart and the light shines through your eyes. Oh, Mrs. Schuneman, I do believe Germania is going to like it here." For Germania was twittering as if she did find her ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... the whole of the enemy, assail him with abuse scarcely more unendurable than a pelting with thorny rose-buds. "You there! You there! Why did you do us this injury? A curse upon you! A curse upon you!" As Parsifal undismayed leaps down into the garden, they fall to twittering like angry sparrows: "Ha! You bold thing! Do you dare to brave us? Why did you beat our beloved?" And the raw boy, acquitting himself rather neatly for such a beginner: "Ought I not to have beaten them? They were barring my passage to ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... great respect; and for sincere, sad seekers, who can find no rest for the sole of their foot, I have a great respect; but for these Border State men, who are neither here nor there, on whom you never can lay your hand, because they are twittering everywhere, I have a profound contempt. I wish people to be either one thing or another. I desire them to believe something, and know what it is, and stick to it. I have no patience with this modern outcry against creeds. You hear people inveigh against ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... from them, and the thimble still upon her finger, was guarantee for her mortality. And in a few minutes she opened her soft, dark eyes, and smiled at her vacant hands. Then she glanced at the windows; the curtains were beginning to stir, the gulf breeze had sprung up, the birds were twittering, ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, The cock's shrill clarion,[362-7] or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... flying and twittering. A yellow omnibus was drawn up to the gates of the school; the horses stamped and neighed, and bit each other, as French horses always did in those days. The driver ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... or the clamorous sea-birds and the screaming hawks. These suited better the rugged, warlike character of the times and the simple, powerful souls of the singers themselves. Homer must have heard the twittering of the swallows, the cry of the plover, the voice of the turtle, and the warble of the nightingale; but they were not adequate symbols to express what he felt or to adorn his theme. Aeschylus saw in the eagle "the dog of Jove," and his verse cuts like a sword ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... far as I know. He was going home one moonlight night by a footpath through the woods when he heard a very strange noise a little distance ahead, a low whistling sound, very sharp, like the continuous twittering of a little bird with a voice like a bat, or a shrew, only softer, more musical. He went on very cautiously, until he spied two hedgehogs standing on the path facing each other, with their noses almost or quite touching. ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... the distance and died away, and again there was night and silence. Suddenly the long singing drone of a steamer's signal came across the city from the river, once, twice, thrice; and presently the sparrows began their twittering in the bushes near the verandah, an unexpected unanimous bird talk that died as suddenly and as irrelevantly away. A conservancy cart lumbered past, creaking, the far shrill whistle of an awakening factory cut the air from Howrah, the first solitary foot smote through the ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the bald head of Thunder Mountain. The scent of the harvest in the meadows blended with the odor of burning pine that came from the ranch house, where Flick built the fire for supper. On the hill the pines were still, but the brook babbled on, and there was an incessant low twittering ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... will be at the corner watching! I sent them word that I should come to-night: The birds all know it, for they crowd around, Twittering their welcome with a wild delight; And that old robin, with a halting wing— I saved her life, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... smile which closed the gates and said, with an irony not lost upon Katie, at least: "Why I fancy we can have a new rug, if that is the thing most essential to our happiness." Clara had cried: "Oh Wayne—you dear!" and twittered and fluttered around, but the twittering and fluttering did not bring that light back to Wayne's face. He went over to the far side of the room and began reading the paper, and that grim little understanding smile—a smile at himself—made Katie yearn to go over and ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... card party out on the terrace, she determined to give the ladies a delightful surprise. For weeks before it she despoiled the garden, keeping her plans miraculously secret, and storing her treasures away in a waste-basket, in lieu of the cornucopia. And then, when the ladies were twittering away happily beneath, she stepped out upon her porch clad only in a Liberty scarf borrowed from her mother's wardrobe—the young creature in the picture confined itself to a ribonny dress which floated charmingly about it—and discharged her ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... anything that could go wrong would go wrong. Lillian used a word; it was not a ladylike word at all. The Svants looked at them as though wondering what could possibly be the matter. Then they went into a huddle, arguing vehemently. The argument spread, like a ripple in a pool; soon everybody was twittering vocally or blowing on flutes and Panpipes. Then the big horn started blaring. Immediately, Gofredo snatched the hand-phone of his belt radio and began speaking urgently ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... name the most virtuous man on this planet, I should say a prospector in the bush—a bishop is nothing to him. But I own that when he goes to town the digger becomes a very devil let loose. Think of the surroundings here—innocent twittering birds, silent arboreous trees, clear pellucid streams, nothing to ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... there was quiet for a minute, only the soft sound of brushing. Then Red began that pretty little twittering which bore to their laughter when in full force the same relation that the first faint chit, chit, chit of a bird bears ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... looking over the scene. Not a soldier stirred in his plaid; the army was drugged by the heavy fir-winds from the forest behind. The light of the morning flowed up wider and whiter from the Cowal hills, the birds woke to a rain of twittering prayer among the bushes ere ever a man stirred more than from side to side to change his dream. It was the most melancholy hour I ever experienced, and I have seen fields in the wan morning before many a throng and bloody day. I felt "fey," as we say at home—a premonition that here was no ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... Stubby rose and stretched his one good arm and the other that was visibly twisted and scarred between wrist and elbow, above his head, "let's go downstairs and prattle. I see a car in front, and I hear twittering voices." ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... with all the abandon of extreme youth. Precious little sleep is obtained, for fleas innumerable take liberties with my person. A flourishing colony of swallows inhabiting the roof keeps up an incessant twittering, and toward daylight two muezzins, one on the minaret of each of the two mosques near by, begin calling the faithful to prayer, and howling "Allah. Allah!" with the voices of men bent on conscientiously doing their duty by making themselves heard by every ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... he came for me the dawn was beginning to break; the morning star was shining in the sky; the earliest birds were twittering, and cocks answered each other from distance to distance; but not a human being was to be seen. We crossed ploughed fields and stubble to find the road, and I felt the truth of my guide's augury of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... guerilla warfare seems always going on amongst these Blue Tits. If one was in the basket and remaining perfectly still, I knew two or three others were meditating a sudden combined assault, but it seemed as if the steady gaze of the titmouse in possession kept them at bay for a time. At length a twittering scrimmage ensued, and the combatants disappeared. I once coaxed a Blue Tit to live in the dining-room for a few days, and he made himself very happy, constantly flitting about in search of insects, running ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... chipmunk, do you know All you mean to me?— She and I and Long Ago, And you there in the tree; With that nut between your paws, Half-way to your twittering jaws, Jaunty with your striped coat, Puffing out your furry throat, Eyes like some big polished seed, Plumed tail curved like half ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... as it was. A flight of becassines were whirled past me, twittering in a panic as they fought their way out of sudden squalls. I turned to look back. Already my sunken tracks were obliterated under a glaze of water, but I felt I was safe, for I had gained harder ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... we build a bower of dawn, The golden-winged bird is gone, And morn may gild, through shimmering leaves, Only the swallow-twittering eaves. What art may house or gold prolong A dream ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... approaching it, a sound, familiar indeed but far from musical, struck the ear, and added another proof and a fresh charm to the fidelity of the picture drawn by the poet. The swallows were merrily "twittering" about the gable-ends, and it did the heart good to stand watching the probable successors of those active little visiters, whose predecessors had possibly attracted the notice of the bard. It is well known that these birds, like the orchard oriole, return year after year to the same ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... hollow space formed by the sheltering cliffs behind. It was mid-winter, as we have said, yet pink cyclamens and strong-scented double narcissi were blooming freely, whilst from the dark boughs of the ilex trees overhead there fell upon the ear the pleasant twittering of innumerable birds, for happily the cruel snare and the gun are strictly forbidden in this sacred spot, so that his "little sisters, the birds," that the gentle Saint of Assisi loved so tenderly, can ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... was no sign of the wanderers. The doctor lit a cigar and watched the shadows creep up the side of the mountains. He listened to the last twittering of the birds and then a silence, profound and deep, ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... behind and Lady Cynthia sank into the cushions by his side. They drove away from the house, Francis with a backward glance of regret. The striped sun-blinds had been lowered over all the windows, thrushes and blackbirds were twittering on the lawn, the air was sweet with the perfume of flowers, a boatman was busy with the boats. Out beyond, through the trees, the river ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... climbers, instinctively finds the pendulous tips of slender elm boughs the best place for his nest, yet often in apple-blossom time he becomes so enamored of them that the white snow of their falling petals leaves him building on the twigs from which they scatter. In July the incessant, cry-baby twittering of the young orioles is thus as common a sound of the orchard and pasture as it is of the elm-shaded street. Other apple tree nest-hangers are the vireos, yellow throated, red-eyed and white-eyed, all of whom love to build on the low-swinging tips of the benedictory ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... was not the greatest height at which bird life was encountered. In the Grand Basin, at sixteen thousand five hundred feet, Walter was certain that he heard the twittering of small birds familiar throughout the winter in Alaska, and this also was in the mist. I have never known the boy make a mistake in such matters, and it is not essentially improbable. Doctor Workman saw a pair of choughs at twenty-one thousand feet, ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... smiles of strange men upon the road whom she would never see again became her social intercourse. The lost smiles of kind Americans, the lost, mocking whistles of Frenchmen, the scream of a nigger, the twittering ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... about in worlds not realized, when the near-by group dissolved and moved rapidly toward us. Miss Browne, exultant, beaming, was in the van. She set her substantial feet down like a charger pawing the earth. You might almost have said that Violet pranced. Aunt Jane was round-eyed and twittering. Mr. Tubbs wore a look of suppressed astonishment, almost of perturbation. What's his game? was the question in the sophisticated eye of Mr. Tubbs. But the Scotchman had when he chose a perfect poker face. The great game of bluff would have suited him ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... Sheldon did think herself happy. Those occasional complaints were the minor notes in the harmony of her life, and only served to make the harmony complete. She read her novels, and fed a colony of little feeble twittering birds that occupied a big wire cage in the breakfast-parlour. She executed a good deal of fancy-work with beads and Berlin-wool; she dusted and arranged the splendours of the drawing-room with her own hands; and she took occasional walks ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... arrived late in the afternoon, and when I took them out upon the terrace the sun was reddening the moor, and even the rough, gray towers of the castle were stained rose-color. There was that lovely evening sound of birds twittering before they went to sleep in the ivy. The glimpses of gardens below seemed like glimpses of rich tapestries set with jewels. And there was such stillness! When we drew our three chairs in a little group together and looked out on it all, I felt ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have gone is a mournful, or a delightful, place— as one views it. To the gregarious individual who seeks and misses his kind, the place is loneliness itself after the flight of the gay birds who for a time strutted about in gorgeous plumage twittering the time away; to the man who loves to be in close and undisturbed contact with nature, who enjoys communing with the sea, who would be alone on the beach and silent by the waves, the flight of the throng is a relief. ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy |
