"Goldfinch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cousin. Here he is running gleefully to Jesus, with his skin garment full of newly gathered fruit. The Christ-child, seated on his grandmother's knee, beside his mother, stretches out his hands for the gift, his face shining with simple, child-like pleasure. At another time Saint John brings a goldfinch to the Virgin's knee, and the two children lean lovingly against her, Jesus turning his earnest eyes towards the bird, which he thoughtfully strokes. A very pretty incident is embodied in the Aldobrandini Madonna, where the Christ-child reaches from ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... goldfinch that became very tame, perching on his owner's hands and taking seed from her lips. Goldfinches should never be kept in bell-shaped cages—which make them giddy—but should have one with a square flat top. Along this they will run head downward. They are such active birds that they need ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... a prison's gloom, I chearful sung, nor murmur'd at my doom, Where heroes bold and patriots firm could dwell, A Goldfinch in Content his note might swell; But death more gentle than the law's decree, Hath paid ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... ether and drive against the stars. And every thistle-head by the roadside holds hundreds of these sky rovers,—imprisoned Ariels unable to set themselves free. Their liberation may be by the shock of the wind, or the rude contact of cattle, but it is oftener the work of the goldfinch with its complaining brood. The seed of the thistle is the proper food of this bird, and in obtaining it myriads of these winged creatures are scattered to the breeze. Each one is fraught with a seed which it exists to sow, but its wild careering and soaring does not fairly begin till its ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... themselves. The male chaffinch, for instance, will place himself in front of the female that she may admire at her ease his red throat and blue head; the bullfinch swells out his breast to display the crimson feathers, twisting his black tail from side to side; the goldfinch sways his body, and quickly turns his slightly expanded wings first to one side, then to the other, with a golden flashing effect.[78] Even birds of less ornamental plumage are accustomed to strut and show ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... Go start the walls Of Hell with horror ringing, Say "In the greenwood of his soul There was a goldfinch singing, ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... images of nature, for conveying an ethical lesson. What feeling almost unknown in early poetry is common in Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner, Wordsworth's Hart-Leap Well, Burns's To a Mouse, On Seeing a Wounded Hare Limp by Me, A Winter Night, and Cowper's On a Goldfinch Starved to Death ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... acquaintance grows rapidly. Early spring is a good time to begin, when the first birds return from their winter sojourn. The teacher and pupils may now learn to recognize the birds, because there are only a few, and these are easily seen, as the robin, blue-bird, junco, meadow-lark, goldfinch, bronzed grackle, sapsucker, blue ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... The Goldfinch who lives in Europe is one of the gaudiest of the little feathered brothers. He is a very Joseph of birds in his coat of many colors, and folk often wonder how he came to have feathers so much more gorgeous than his kindred. ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... no craven spirit, is money the only thing for a man to seek who feels in his heart the least spark of poetry? In my town, where everyone works, leave me as I am. Every summer, happier than a king, I lay up my small provision for the winter, and then I sing like a goldfinch under the shade of a poplar or an ash-tree, only too happy to grow grey in the land which gave me birth. One hears in summer the pleasant zigo, ziou, ziou, of the nimble grasshopper, or the young sparrow pluming his wings to make himself ready for flight, he knows not ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles |
