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More "Blackbird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moved the vine-leaves of the arbour; the ripe barley swayed at intervals; a blackbird was singing. And, casting glances around them, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... could the blackbird or the throstle (From the poet each has had his due) Win from me such ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... a trained ear, but keen feeling and taste for bird songs. He was quick to express preferences, and at once picked out the song of the English blackbird as being the best of the bird songs we heard. I have always had the same feeling about the blackbird's song. I do not say it is better than the songs of American birds, which I have not heard, and I think Colonel Roosevelt thought one or two of the American bird songs were better than anything we ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey
... eight feet high, and, with its sweet-smelling blooms, has made the New Zealand fields "green pictures set in frames of gold." The very birds which rise from the clover or wheat, and nest in the trees or hedgerows of furze or quickset, are for the most part English—the skylark, the blackbird, finches, green and gold, thrushes, starlings, and that eternal impudent vagabond the house-sparrow. Heavy is the toll taken by the sparrow from the oat-crops of his new home; his thievish nature grows blacker there, though his plumage often turns partly white. He learns ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Thrush is "Mauvis." It is, of course, included in Professor Ansted's list, but with the Fieldfare, Redwing, and Blackbird, marked as only occurring in Guernsey and Sark. All these birds, however, are equally common in Alderney, Herm, and Jethou. There is also a specimen of ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... two fowls they ate the duck, which was flanked by the three pigeons and the blackbird, and then the goose appeared, smoking, golden-colored, and diffusing a warm odor of hot, browned fat meat. La Paumelle who was getting lively, clapped her hands; la Jean-Jean left off answering the Baron's numerous questions, and la Putois uttered grunts of pleasure, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... tramp and the descendant of a long line of tramps, all as black and hoarse and homeless as himself. A vagabond of the blackbird world, he had, like many an unfeathered exile, only sleep to make him forget his empty craw, and only a wayside rock ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Residency every step of the siege and relief can be followed. I was there first on a serene evening after rain; and but for some tropical trees it might have been an English scene. All that was lacking was a thrush or blackbird's note; but the grass was as soft and green as at home and the air as sweet. I shall long retain the memory of the contrast between the incidents which give this enclosure its unique place in history and the perfect calm brooding over ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... and the wood-pigeon do not come here: it is no dwelling for them. They seek places where men live and sow and cultivate grain. But two creatures live here which betray the presence of man—the wasp and the blackbird; both of which come after the ripe fruit which they passionately love. Where the great wasps' nests hang from the trees, and where the blackbird's alluring whistle sounds in the hedges, there must be fruit. Timar followed the blackbird. After he had pushed through the prickly whitethorn ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... indigenous to this part of the country, but about a century ago escaped from the various missions of Upper California, at which they had been bred, and since have propagated in incredible numbers; also the grouse, the prairie hen, the partridge, the quail, the green parrot, the blackbird, and many others which I cannot name, not knowing their generic denomination. The water-fowls are plentiful, such as swans, geese, ducks of many different species, and the Canadian geese with their long black necks, which, from November to March, ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... one will know about the hospital and be glad to see me coming," thought Nelly. And indeed it seemed so, for just then a blackbird, sitting on the garden wall, burst out with a song full of musical joy, Nelly's kitten came running after to stare at the wagon and rub her soft side against it, a bright-eyed toad looked out from his cool bower among ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... unwholesomeness of the climate of Fernando Po, Mrs. Burton was, of course, unable to accompany him. They separated at Liverpool, 24th August 1861. An embrace, "a heart wrench;" and then a wave of the handkerchief, while "the Blackbird" African steam ship fussed its way out of the Mersey, having on board the British scape-goat sent away—"by the hand of a fit man"—one "Captain English"—into the wilderness of Fernando Po. "Unhappily," ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the time looking carefully round for nests. They very soon heard the harsh cry of the jay, who was letting all the inhabitants of the woodlands know that enemies were at hand, and away flew the birds. The blackbird was the first to take the alarm from the jay, and away he flew, crying, "Kink, kink, kink," as he started from his nest in a great ivy tod on an old pollard-tree. The lads soon found the nest, and peeped in, but instead of eggs there were four wretched-looking ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... the man who has been accustomed to make engines of one type, to make engines of another type without any intermediate course of training or instruction, and he will make no better figure with his engines than a thrush would do if commanded by her mate to make a nest like a blackbird. It is vain then to contend that the ease and certainty with which an action is performed, even though it may have now become matter of such fixed habit that it cannot be suddenly and seriously modified without rendering the whole performance abortive, is any argument against ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... he said, in the same slow, hopeless voice. "I forgot you men don't come down here very often and that my driver never has anything to say to anybody. Why, it's the Blackbird mine over across the divide—on the east spur. Bad, old fashioned mine she was, with crawlin' ground. Lime streaks all through the formation and plenty of water. Nobody quite knows how it happened. There was a big slip over there a few days ago on the four-hundred-foot level. ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... trusting in God." Not an unfrequent sight is to see bare-footed peasant children waiting for their turn to cross the gangway which leads to the New World. Perhaps they have nothing with them but "a pot of shamrock," or a little mountain thrush or orange-billed blackbird, in a wicker cage, to make friends with "beyant the herring-pond." It is very curious, but very Irish, that they do not at all seem to want the sympathy that is lavished upon them by the onlookers. When they are leaving their native place, ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... sport?" "Pas mal, mon cher. Not so bad," is the reply, in a tone of ill-concealed triumph; and plunging his hand into his game-bag, the chasseur produces—a phthisical snipe, a wood pigeon, an extenuated quail, and perhaps something which you at first take for a deformed blackbird, but which turns out to be a water-hen. As far as our own observations go, we do aver this to be a very handsome average of a French sportsman's day's shooting. If by chance he has knocked down a red-legged partridge, (grey ones are very scarce ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... later, while watching with a camera focused on the nest of a blackbird in Mrs. Corson's woods east of town, Raymond, who was assisting me, crept to my side and asked if it would do any harm for him to go specimen hunting. The long waits with set cameras were extremely tedious to the restless spirits of the boy, and the birds were quite tame, the light was under ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... doing something agreeable, and, by preference, two agreeable things at once. In his house he had a box of carpenter's tools, two dogs, an eagle, a canary, and a blackbird that whistled tunes, lest, even in that full life, he should chance upon an empty moment. If he had to wait for a dish of poached eggs, he must put in the time by playing on the flageolet; if a sermon were dull, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Blackbird and Thrassel with their melodious voices bid welcome to the cheerful Spring, and in their fixed months warble forth such ditties as no art or instrument can ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... much obliged for your extract (187/1. Mr. Wallace had sent Darwin a note about a tufted cock-blackbird, which transmitted the character to some of its offspring.); I never heard of such a case, though such a variation is perhaps the most likely of any to occur in a state of nature, and to be inherited, inasmuch as all domesticated ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Woodpecker Red-bellied Woodpecker Yellow-bellied Sapsucker King Bird Cat Bird Towhee Robin Meadow Lark Prairie Horned Lark Baltimore Oriole Orchard Oriole Whip-poor-will Night Hawk Pigeon Hawk Sparrow Hawk Mourning Dove Rose-breasted Grosbeak Evening Grosbeak Purple Finch Red-winged Blackbird Rusty Blackbird Bobolink Mocking Bird Starling Purple Grackle Humming Bird Yellow-breasted Chat Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Tufted Titmouse Brown Creeper House Wren Marsh Wren Brown Thrasher Wood Thrush Hermit Thrush ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... you killed a blackbird, Joe," continued our visitor; "he has spent half his time in killing slugs and snails, and lugging poor unfortunate worms out of their holes; and it seems to me that the slug or the worm is just as likely to enjoy its life as the greedy blackbird, whom people protect because ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... with his handkerchief and his fingers, and chattered to them in English, while they chattered in Welsh. By him sat another Englishman, to whom the three tuneful Snowdon guides, their music-score upon their knees, sat listening approvingly, as he rolled out, with voice as of a jolly blackbird, or jollier monk of old, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... over her unpacking; she could not sing, but she could whistle like a blackbird. When her father came up on Saturday night, he said that her eyes were brighter and her cheeks were rounder, for the country air; she would take to growing pretty instead of strong-minded, if she ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... heath-clad braes and grassy knowes. Its mountain peaks rise bare and rugged to the skies, where lordly eagles soar. Its brawling burns in their infancy dash down these rugged steeps, but as they grow older flow on through many a hazel dell, where thrush and blackbird fill the woods with melody—through many flowering pastures, where cattle browse and lambkins skip on the sunny braes. Wild-fowl breed on its reedy lochs, and moor-fowl dwell on its heather hills. Its waters ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... by-and-by you found that the sun was unobtrusively shining; then it rained, and there was rather a bitter wind; but presently it was sunny again, and you felt secure of the spring, for the birds were singing: the birds of literature, the lark, the golden-billed blackbird, the true robin, and the various finches; and round and over all the rooks were calling like voices in a dream. Full of this certainty of spring you went in-doors, and found ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... pledge from my brothers. When yon dim grey woods grow green, and the brown hollows are yellow with kingcups and primroses, the old melody you know so well shall begin again, and the thrush from the oak top shall answer to the goldentoned blackbird in the copse, saying—'Our mother is not dead, but has been sleeping. She is awake again—let all ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... crowds that scorn the mounting wings, The happy heights of souls serene, I wander where the blackbird sings, And over bubbling, shadowy springs, The ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... in its mainest might * Like lover drunken by strains divine,[FN216] Do thou gaze on our garden of goodly gifts * And all manner blooms that in wreaths entwine; See the birdies warble on every bough * Make melodious music the finest fine. And each Pippet pipes[FN217] and each Curlew cries * And Blackbird and Turtle with voice of pine; Ring-dove and Culver, and eke Hazar, * And Kata calling on Quail vicine; So fill with the mere and the cups make bright * With bestest liquor, that boon benign;— This site and sources and scents I espy * With ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... now! But, dear heart, I was the same at your age, and should be now, like enough. Fetch them all, as quick as you like. I am feared to leave Blackbird, or I'd help you ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... many gifts,—dolls that could say "mamma," bright picture books, trains of cars, toy pianos; but not one of their playthings was alive, like Piccola's birdling. They were as pleased as she, and Rose hunted about the house until she found a large wicker cage that belonged to a blackbird she once had. She gave the cage to Piccola, and the swallow seemed to make himself quite at home in it at once, and sat on the perch winking his bright eyes at the children. Rose had saved a bag of candies for Piccola, and when she went home at last, with the cage ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... birds love-learned song, The deawy leaves among! For they of ioy and pleasance to you sing, 90 That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring. [* Mavis, song-thrush.] [** Descant, variation.] [@ Ouzell, blackbird.] [$ ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... fair, Built for the royal dwelling, In Scotland far beyond compare, Linlithgow is excelling; And in its park, in jovial June, How sweet the merry linnet's tune, How blithe the blackbird's lay; The wild-buck bells from ferny brake, The coot dives merry on the lake; The saddest heart might pleasure take To see all nature gay. But June is, to our sovereign dear, The heaviest month in all the year: Too ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... And among a thousand maidens, Bring the noblest of the hundred, From a thousand unattractive; From the swamp you bring a lapwing, From the hedge you bring a magpie, From the field you bring a scarecrow, From the fallow field a blackbird. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... lustily in a young tree as she began her task; a blackbird answered from somewhere among the hawthorns with a bewildering series ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... turtle or mourning dove, sparrow, nuthatch, warbler, flicker, vireo, wren, American robin, catbird, tanager, bobolink, blue jay, oriole, grosbeck or redbird, creeper, redstart, waxwing, woodpecker, humming bird, killdeer, swallow, blue bird, blackbird, meadow lark, bunting, starling, redwing, purple martin, brown thresher, American goldfinch, chewink or ground robin, pewee or phoebe bird, chickadee, fly catcher, knat catcher, mouse hawk, whippoorwill, snow bird, titmouse, gull, ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... making a desultory sketch, away out toward Malamocco, or in among the vignoli in the northern lagoon, pausing perhaps, for a good five minutes, between grassy banks, to listen to the whistle of the blackbird in the hedge, he felt no imperative call to seize an oar and double the rate of speed on the homeward way. On the contrary, he found it a perfectly congenial occupation to lounge among the cushions of the gondola and let Pietro row him home at his own leisurely ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... over the sandy soil. Then came the "loping" dogs, coyotes, prairie wolves. Birds of all sorts assembled in one long continuous flight. The animal kingdom of that region of forest seemed to have become united in their mutual terror—wolf and hare, coyote and jack-rabbit, hawks and blackbird, prairie chicken and grey-owl; all sworn enemies in time of calm prosperity, but now, in their terror, companions to the last. And all the time, in the growing twilight of smoke, came the distant booming as of the ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... vulgar eye, and sat us down Upon the sloping cowslip-cover'd bank, Where the pure limpid stream has slid along In grateful errors through the underwood, Sweet murmuring,—methought the shrill-tongued thrush 100 Mended his song of love; the sooty blackbird Mellow'd his pipe, and soften'd every note; The eglantine smelt sweeter, and the rose Assumed a dye more deep; whilst every flower Vied with its fellow-plant in luxury Of dress.—Oh! then the longest summer's day Seem'd too, too much in ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... of her childhood—the lover of her early youth—the husband of her affections." When, she looked on the dew dancing amid the delicate tracery of the field spider's web—when the joyous whistle of the gay blackbird broke upon her ear—gazing silently on all that was really fresh and beautiful in nature—she felt that, instead of warming, it fell chilly upon her heart. And yet all was as usual—the bright sun, and the smiling landscape. Why, then, was she less cheerful? She was alone! No one she loved ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... house was himself a man of health and strength, and therefore liked to have his apartments adorned with none but folk of equal vigour and robustness. Lastly, in the window, and suspected cheek by jowl with Bobelina, there hung a cage whence at intervals there peered forth a white-spotted blackbird. Like everything else in the apartment, it bore a strong resemblance to Sobakevitch. When host and guest had been conversing for two minutes or so the door opened, and there entered the hostess—a tall lady in a cap adorned with ribands of domestic ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... reason to consider every cry of the birds or change of the night. Finn, who was always in the woods, whose battles were but hours amid years of hunting, delighted in the "cackling of ducks from the Lake of the Three Narrows; the scolding talk of the blackbird of Doire an Cairn; the bellowing of the ox from the Valley of the Berries; the whistle of the eagle from the Valley of Victories or from the rough branches of the Ridge of the Stream; the grouse of the heather of Cruachan; the call of the otter ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... the blackbird, sitting in the tree, Hear him singing, jolly as can be. Now he'll whistle a pretty little tune, Isn't it delicious in the month ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis
... hero was mistaken. Sally never did know what she was about,—had no plan or purpose more than a blackbird; and when Moses was gone laughed to think how many times she had made him ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to a grey bird, about the size of a blackbird, which sat on a branch close above his head. This creature is called by the fur-traders a whisky-John, and it is one of the most impudent little birds in the world! Wherever you go throughout the country, ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... afterward he gave the rabbit to old Jenny, and asked her to give it to the little girl—and when he heard the latter say—"Oh, what a pretty little thing! tell Paul, thanky!" After this, by slow degrees, he was enabled to approach "the little blackbird" without alarming her. And after a while he coaxed her to take a row in his little boat, and a ride on his little pony—always qualifying his attentions by saying that he did not like girls as a general thing, but that she was different from ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... "Blackbird and thrush, in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow, You pretty elves, amongst yourselves, Sing my fair love good-morrow. To give my love good-morrow, Sing ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... noble forest comrades, Who so oft, with bronze-like foreheads, Bravely have withstood my rudeness, Ye whose trunks I have to thank for Many knocks against my skull-bone, Ye alone shall hear my secret: Soon the Spring himself he cometh, And then, when the buds are bursting, Lark and blackbird sing their carols, And with fervent heat the Spring sun Brightly on your heads is shining, Then remember me, the Storm-wind, Who to-day, with boisterous fury As his ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... When a blackbird chased a crow above her, and she sat up to watch the aerial privateering, Mr. Schwirtz began ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... of the flute came quick, rather brilliant like a call-note, or like a long quick message, half command. To her it was like a pure male voice—as a blackbird's when he calls: a pure male voice, not only calling, but telling her something, telling her something, and soothing her soul to sleep. It was like the fire-music putting Brunnhilde to sleep. But the pipe did not flicker and sink. It seemed to cause a natural relaxation in her soul, a peace. Perhaps ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... parapet and reads Wordsworth, till the policeman turns her off. This is another of her favourite spots." He indicated with a look of concentrated disgust the avenue where we were standing. "This is where she likes to finish up. She comes here to listen to a blackbird." ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... house. The little girl could return now to that "very nice school" where other nice little girls went. She departed every morning beside the Laundryman, tugging at her arm, skipping and chattering like a blackbird in June. Ernestine saw her safely up the school steps and then took the car to her business. Milly, after the housekeeping and her morning duties, walked up town for her daughter and spent most of the afternoons with her, as she had not much else to do. She had suggested at the beginning helping ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... that, for all his trussed and helpless plight, Jack Ryder grinned. He moved his head slightly. "That blackbird ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... envy her they will hate her also; and I doubt if she will have many more friends among the fisher-lads. They will look upon her as a renegade to her order. The old women will suspect her, and the old men look askance at her with disapproving eyes. The girl will be a white blackbird; the properly colored birds will drive her out of the colony or pick her to death. It ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... do believe that I shall begin to sing again," replied Nancy. "I'm sure if Corbett was only once settled on shore in a nice little cottage, with a garden, and a blackbird in a wicker cage, I should try who could sing most, the bird ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... claimed the crow would eat animal food in any form, and might not be rightly classified as a grain-eating bird, Prof. Stearns said the crow was thus classified by reason of the structure of its crop being similar to that of the finches, the blackbird, the sparrows, and other ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... overbad of you," he continued, with a softening grin, "to hasten me so, and then to hear me out o' window, because Bob hath a sweeter pipe. Ah, he can whistle like a blackbird, too, and gain a lot of money; but there, what good? He sacrifices it all to the honor of his heart, first maggot that cometh into it; and he done the very same with Rickon Goold, the Methody galley-raker. We never was so softy when I were afloat. But your honor shall hear, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... The Blackbird and the Thrush, And charming Nightingale, Whose sweet jug sweetly echoes Through every grove and dale; The Sparrow and Tom Tit, And many more, were there: All came to see the wedding Of Jenny Wren, ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... prairie and open lands towards Lake Superior. The moose is also an inhabitant of the Namakagun. The Chippewas, at a hunting camp we passed yesterday, said they had been on the tracks of a moose, but lost them in high brush. Ducks and pigeons appear common. Among smaller birds are the blackbird, robin, catbird, red-headed woodpecker, kingfisher, kingbird, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... The blackbird in Dr. Pons's garden to the left, answered a rapturous thrush in the trees across the way, children's voices came from the Paris road and the sounds of ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... moor. The blue falcon flew up in the air and gave a bird-call. Birds gathered and she swooped amongst them pulling feathers off their backs and out of their wings. Soon there was a heap of feathers on the ground—pigeons' feathers and pie's feathers, crane's and crow's, blackbird's and starling's. The King of Ireland's Son quickly gathered them into his bag. The falcon flew to another place and gave her bird-call again. The birds gathered, and she went amongst them, plucking their feathers. The King's Son gathered ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... something inside giving way under the strain, Mr. Vickers restrained himself. He breathed hard, and glancing out of window sought to regain his equilibrium by becoming interested in a blackbird outside. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... ostriches, and a bird larger than our blackbird[53]; also storks, which latter are birds of passage, and arrive in the spring and disappear at the approach of ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... our own times, the Indians had lost a great many of their ancient customs, yet, at times, this old instinct of mound burial asserts itself. About the first of the century Blackbird, a celebrated chief of the Omahas, returning to his native home after a visit to Washington, died of the small-pox. It was his dying request that his body be placed on horseback, and the horse buried alive with him. Accordingly, in the presence of all his nation, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... murderous brutality to their poor children. There is a terrible reckoning coming for the "Gipsy man," who can chuckle to his fowls, and kick, with his iron-soled boot, his poor child to death; who can warm and shelter his blackbird, and send the offspring of his own body to sleep upon rotten straw and the dung-heap, covered over with sticks and rags, through which light, hail, wind, rain, sleet, and snow can find its way without ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... beauty. A bright ray of the setting sun streamed full upon that face, now reposing in the awful but hallowed calm which is sometimes diffused around the bed of death. The sacred stillness was only broken by the evening song of the blackbird and the distant lowing of the cattle—sounds which had often brought pleasure to that heart, now insensible to all human emotion. All nature shone forth in gaiety and splendour, but the eye and the ear ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... exasperated Musset. He was annoyed, and declared that a woman out of sorts was very trying. There are good reasons for believing that he had found her very trying for some time. He was very elegant and she a learned "white blackbird." He was capricious and she a placid, steady bourgeois woman, very hard-working and very regular in the midst of her irregularity. He used to call her "personified boredom, the dreamer, the silly woman, the nun," when he did not use ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... let me give one. I had had some experience in blackbirding before I went pearling in the Paumotus. Otoo and I were in Samoa—we really were on the beach and hard aground—when my chance came to go as recruiter on a blackbird brig. Otoo signed on before the mast; and for the next half-dozen years, in as many ships, we knocked about the wildest portions of Melanesia. Otoo saw to it that he always pulled stroke-oar in my boat. ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... shall, I hope, come to myself and business again, after a small playing the truant, for I find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty. To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, which I went to see. He tells me he was offered 20s. for him as he came along, he do so whistle. So to my office, and busy all the morning, among other things, learning to understand the course of the tides, and I think I do now do it. At noon Mr. Creed comes to me, and he and I to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... thrush, and the lark, and the blackbird, They taught me how to sing: And O that the hawk would lend his eye, And ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... girl (which is a long time ago), I made a discovery. The place where I made it was not very remote, being a holly-bush at the bottom of our garden; and the discovery was not a great one in itself, though I thought it very grand. I had found a blackbird's nest, with ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... ganders upon a sheet of water. And he had on his person garments of a wonderful make; these clothes of mine are by no means beautiful like those. And his face was wonderful to behold; and his voice was calculated to gladden the heart; and his speech was pleasant like the song of the male blackbird. And while listening to the same I felt touched to my inmost soul. And as a forest in the midst of the vernal season, assumes a grace only when it is swept over by the breeze, so, O father! he of an excellent and pure smell looks beautiful ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... was passed. When her parents removed she yet clung to the old spot, and, as her own mistress, chose the same scene for her residence. When one series of inmates quitted it, she still resided there with their successors, returning continually after every wandering, 'like a blackbird ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... plumb-tree and the holme, The stock-dove and the blackbird should not come, Whose mooting on the trees does make to grow ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... September morning I well remember! Dame Nature was just donning her variegated gown of rustic-brown, while fitful airs from the realms of Jack Frost were painting the wild roses and forest leaves in cardinal hue, and the blackbird, thrush and musical nightingale flew low and sang hoarse, but continually, in their assemblages for migration to ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... had lost all conception of time. Perhaps Dominique had concealed himself in a copse she knew of, where they had one afternoon eaten filberts together. She hastened to the copse, searched it. Only a blackbird flew away, uttering its soft, sad note. Then she thought he might have taken refuge in a hollow of the rocks, where it had sometimes been his custom to lie in wait for game, but the hollow of the rocks was empty. What good was it to hunt for him? ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... thought an opportunity offered for bringing in a well-prepared anecdote which he had about Cambaceres, and a hot blackbird and white feet, but unluckily a country gentleman would tell some history of a battle between poachers and gamekeepers, which fixed the attention of the company till the moment for the ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... boughs growing fruits single and composite, and small birds on branches sang with melodious recite, and the thousand-noted nightingale shrilled with her varied shright; the turtle with her cooing filled the site; the blackbird whistled like human wight[FN47] and the ring-dove moaned like a drinker in grievous plight. The trees grew in perfection all edible growths and fruited all manner fruits which in pairs were bipartite; with the camphor- apricot, the almond-apricot and the apricot ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... a thing ignorance is, and how far niggers are behind white men in pluck! Why, if these fellows knew what they were about, they might easily overhaul that little schooner, take their brothers out of her, and give the blackbird catchers such a lesson as they'd never remember and never forget, for they'd kill the lot. There ain't a ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... his nest or the young from it were in the hedge. In feeding the young birds the old ones always perch first at a short distance, and after waiting a minute proceed to their fledgelings. Should a blackbird come at full speed across the meadow and stay on a hedge-top, and then go down into the mound, it is certain that his nest is there. If a thrush frequents a tree, flying up into the branches for a minute and then descending into the underwood, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... back to her. But the day wore on, the evening sun grew golden, then faded in the purple west—but still he came not! The other dwellers in the oak returned to their homes, yet they brought no tidings of the wanderer. After a while their happy voices were hushed in sleep, the Blackbird ceased to warble his evening hymn, and all were buried in slumber, and ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... came, a calm evening of late July, the dusk upon the lawn, and most of the house-party already gone upstairs to dress for dinner. I had been standing beside the open window for some considerable time, motionless, and listening idly to the singing of a thrush or blackbird in the shrubberies—when I heard the faint twanging of the harp-strings in the room behind me, and turning, saw that Marion had entered and was there beside the instrument. At the same moment she saw me, rose from the harp ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... was told by a country boy that he had seen a blackbird with a topknot; on which Mr. O'C. very judiciously told him to watch it and communicate further with him. After a time the boy told him he had found a blackbird's nest, and had seen this crested bird near it and believed he belonged to it. He continued ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... of a linnet—almost flute-like in softness, while others prick and tingle like thistles. He is the mocking-bird of squirrels, pouring forth mixed chatter and song like a perennial fountain; barking like a dog, screaming like a hawk, chirping like a blackbird or a sparrow; while in bluff, audacious noisiness ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... the filberts. I catch once more the smell of the brier. I see again the squirrel up there in the oak and the rabbit under the hedge. I listen as of old to the chirp of the grasshopper in the stubble, to the hum of the bees among the foxgloves, to the song of the blackbird on the hawthorn, and, best of all—yes, best of all for brain unsteadied and nerve unstrung—I see the cows ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... movement, and may be said to have been evolved by love from the more brutal courtships of battle display.[60] The characteristic features of the amatory dances of birds are well known; they may be witnessed frequently during the pairing season. The male blackbird, for instance, is full of action as he woos his mate; he flirts his tail, spreads his glossy wings, hops and turns; chases the hen, and all the time chuckles with delight. Similar antics are performed by the whitethroat. The male redwing, again, struts about ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... water. Frogs and turtles warming their backs in the sunshine scampered in alarm from their logs. Lizards blinked at him. Moccasin snakes darted wicked forked tongues at him and then glided out of reach of his tomahawk. The frogs had stopped their deep bass notes. A swamp-blackbird rose in fright from her nest in the saw-grass, and twittering plaintively fluttered round and round over the pond. The flight of the bird worried Wetzel. Such little things as these might attract the attention of some Indian scout. But he hoped that in the excitement of the war preparations ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... ecstatic gush From his clear ambush in the sky; A blackbird (if it's not a thrush) Sings from a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... born a blackbird in a bushy thicket near a meadow. My father took good care of his family and would peck about all day for insects. These he brought home to my mother, holding them by the tail so as not to mash them. He had a sweet voice, too, and ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... haggard-eyed, care-worn mankind! Let these be regarded a little. Would to God I could alleviate all their sorrows, and leave them a chance to laugh! They are, miserable now. They might be as happy as the blackbird on the spray, and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... at him hard, and waited a minute. She opened the door, peered out, trembled again, crossed the threshold, and returned with the body of a blackbird. ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... HADDA PADDA (She is heard laughing). Shall I stone the raven away from his nest? Beware, you blackbird! (A small stone flies through the air, and falls down near Steindor. ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... the low wind may lift her hair, Motionless in lip and limb; E'en the fearful mouse may skim O'er the window-sill, nor stir From the crumb at sight of her; Through the lattice unheard float Summer blackbird's evening note;— E'en the sullen foe would ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... with inexpressible curiosity. In one sense it was, as he would have expressed it, "nuts" to him to see this. It told him so much, and he was beginning to have a great relish for discovering secrets. In another sense it reminded him of what he had once felt when he had heard a blackbird lamenting for her nestlings, which Matthew had crushed with a stone, and that was not a pleasant feeling. Unable to find anything very appropriate to say in order to comfort her, he began to cast about in his mind what he could do. He smiled. The lad's smile gave wondrous ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... out to the fullest possible extent in accordance with the ante mortem wishes of the dead, were the obsequies of Blackbird, the great chief of the Omahas. The account ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... a bird awoke her. She recognized at once the sweet, shrill notes of a blackbird. Day was breaking. She began to shake, for she was chilled to the bone. The dampness of the night had made her clothes as wet as though she had been through ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... death—and no a single ane amang us a' greetin for his sake?" said one of us aloud; and then indeed did we burst out into rueful sobbing, and ask one another who could carry such tidings to Logan Braes? All at once we heard a clear, rich, mellow whistle as of a blackbird—and there with his favourite collie, searching for a stray lamb among the knolls, was Lawrie Logan, who hailed us with a laughing voice, and then asked us, "Where is Wee Willie?—hae ye flung him like another Joseph into the pit?" The consternation of our faces ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... sing; And wasn't this a dainty dish to set before the king? The king was in the parlour, counting out his money; The queen was in the kitchen, eating bread and honey; The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes, There came a little blackbird and nipt ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies - Without Addition or Abridgement • Munroe and Francis
... vain dream of moody mind, That lists a dirge i' the blackbird's singing; That in gusts hears Nature's own voice complain, And beholds her tears in the gushing rain; When low clouds congregate blank and blind, And Winter's snow-muffled arms are clinging ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... by now, and the moon was up. To their right, on the crest of a rise some two hundred yards away, a low wood stood out black against the sky. As they passed it, a blackbird rose up screaming, and a brace of ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... said to David. "How happy this is. No wonder they sing. Any one must sing working like this in great fields. Why, I even remember that the Shropshire Lad whistled once by mistake, while ploughing, on his own admission, until a fatalistic blackbird recalled him ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... a young blackbird that was hopping about, caught it with a little shriek of glee, twisted its neck, looked at the dead bird, and dropped it at the foot of a tree without giving it ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... the explorers found the banks of the river to be high and bluffy, and on one of the highlands which they passed they saw the burial-place of Blackbird, one of the great men of the Mahars, or Omahas, who had died of small-pox. A mound, twelve feet in diameter and six feet high, had been raised over the grave, and on a tall pole at the summit the party fixed a flag of red, white, and blue. The place was regarded as sacred by the Omahas, who kept ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... term. But the tendency in language is to put two words of this kind which express but one idea under a single accent, and when this has taken place, no one but the student of language any longer observes what the elements really mean. When the ordinary man talks of a "blackbird" it is certainly not present to his consciousness that he is talking of a black bird, unless for some reason conversation has been dwelling upon the colour rather than ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... hither, through the sky, Turtle-doves and linnets, fly! Blackbird, thrush, and chaffinch gay, Hither, hither, haste away! One and all come help me, quick! Haste ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... woodland That hangs upon the hill; Hark! the cock is tuning His morning clarion shrill; And hurriedly awaking From his nest amid the spray, Cheerily now, the blackbird, Whistling, greets the day. For be it ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Joe say that I've half-pisoned them four or five times, but that's all envy; besides, a feller can't learn a trade without doin' a little damage to somebody or something at first. Did you ever taste blackbird pie?" ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... answering provoked him to laughter, and he put out a hand and tousled the thick curls in his favorite caress. One of the tresses caught in his jewelled ring; and as he bent to unfasten it, he stared at the wavy mass in lazy surprise. It was as soft and rich as the breast of a blackbird, and the fire had laid over it a sheen of ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... HOW TO KEEP BIRDS.—Handsomely illustrated, and containing full instructions for the management and training of the canary, mocking-bird, bobolink, blackbird, paroquet, parrot, etc. ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... whole continent must have been concentrated on this island. Indeed, I doubt if a sweeping together of all the birds of the United States into any two of the largest States would people the earth and air more fully. There appeared to be a plover, a crow, a rook, a blackbird, and a sparrow to every square yard of ground. They know the value of birds in Britain,—that they are the friends, not the enemies, of the farmer. It must be the paradise of crows and rooks. It did me good to see them so much at home about the fields and even in the towns. I was glad also ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... life, after all, is a very sad thing even to the robin? Why shouldn't it be? for he is a domestic bird of sedentary habits, and not at all suited to this African landscape. All the same, it was nice to meet him there. A blackbird started out of the scrub, chattered, and dived into a thicket, just as he would ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... a general rule, during the early part of the rains (June to August), laying usually three or four eggs of a bright greenish-blue colour. The nest itself recalls that of the Blackbird, but it is frequently very clumsily made. On the 21st June last a boy brought me a nest of this species containing eight eggs. Two, if not three, of this clutch are easily separable from the others, being more oval and somewhat smaller, and are unquestionably parasitical ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... inexhaustible supply of food, sport and prosper among the reeds. The ostrich, greater bustard, the common and red-legged partridge and quail, find their habitat on the borders of the desert; while the thrush, blackbird, ortolan, pigeon, and turtle-dove abound on every side, in spite of daily onslaughts from eagles, hawks, and other ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... trees on the frosted ground are dull. As the footpath winds by the hedge the noise of his footstep startles the blackbird roosting in the bushes, and he bustles out and flies across the field. There is more rime on the posts and rails around the rickyard, and the thatch on the haystack is white with it in places. He draws out the broad hay-knife—a vast blade, wide at the handle, the edge gradually ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... lark's ecstatic gush From his clear ambush in the sky; A blackbird (if it's not a thrush) Sings from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... one sense it was, as he would have expressed it, "nuts" to him to see this. It told him so much, and he was beginning to have a great relish for discovering secrets. In another sense it reminded him of what he had once felt when he had heard a blackbird lamenting for her nestlings, which Matthew had crushed with a stone, and that was not a pleasant feeling. Unable to find anything very appropriate to say in order to comfort her, he began to cast about in his mind what he could do. He smiled. The lad's smile ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... day, having a mind to see it. 'Twas on a clear Spring morning, and a blackbird Awoke me with his warbling near my window: My dream had fashioned this into a song That some one with grey eyes was singing me, And which had drawn me so into myself That all the other shapes of sleep were ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... bring down Jasper under the idea he's a blackbird," retorted Ernest Wilton before Mr Rawlings had got out of earshot, as he started down the river-bank with Wolf following closely at his heels, in the manner befitting well-trained dogs ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the park some rooks cawed fussily over the choice of their night quarters. Nearer, a blackbird piped an evening song. They sounded restless and plaintive to the lonely boy, and he hid his face in his hands, covering eyes and ears that he might see nothing, hear nothing. Then into his mind there surged ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... ungallant act. The oriole singing lustily in the spring would seem conscious of his coat of orange and black. These are the heraldic colors worn by the servants of Lord Baltimore. The nightingale and the whippoorwill sing unpretentiously in the quiet of eventide. The blackbird makes up for his somber dress in good deeds. He destroys insects on leaf and bark. The eagle still finds a haven of safety in giant ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... was stone dead. So was young Crow Foot; so were Ghost Dancers Catch-the-bear, Blackbird, Little Assiniboin, Chief Spotted Horn Bull; Chief Brave Thunder and Chase, another Dancer, were ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... On sweetening air The blackbird growing bold Flings out, where green boughs glisten, ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... Bluffs the explorers found the banks of the river to be high and bluffy, and on one of the highlands which they passed they saw the burial-place of Blackbird, one of the great men of the Mahars, or Omahas, who had died of small-pox. A mound, twelve feet in diameter and six feet high, had been raised over the grave, and on a tall pole at the summit the party fixed a flag of red, white, and blue. The place was regarded as sacred by the ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... has a lyre of gold, The lark's is a clarion call, And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute, But I love him ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... opportunity of realising these birds and beasts to themselves, but we are shocked at the notion of giving them a similar aid to the realisation of events which, as we say, concern them more nearly than any others, in the history of the world. A stuffed rabbit or blackbird is a good thing. A stuffed Charge of Balaclava again is quite legitimate; but a stuffed Nativity is, according to Protestant ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... air, and poised upon his wings, Unseen, the soft, enamour'd woodlark runs Through all his maze of melody; the brake, Loud with the blackbird's ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... my choice vision, I shun the West Highway, Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms From blackbird and bee; ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... blossom; and you saw the horns, Through last year's fern, of the shy fallow-deer Who come at noon down to the water here. You saw the bright-eyed squirrels dart along 195 Under the thorns on the green sward; and strong The blackbird whistled from the dingles near, And the weird chipping of the woodpecker Rang lonelily and sharp; the sky was fair, And a fresh breath of spring stirr'd everywhere. 200 Merlin and Vivian stopp'd on the slope's brow, To gaze on the light ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... time the blackbird Pipes to vespers from his perch, And from out the clattering city Pass'd ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... returned to his Indian wife and children, but remained the friend of the United States. In General Harrison's day he was United States Indian agent at Fort Wayne, but was killed in the massacre of Fort Dearborn, in 1812, by the faithless bands of Potawatomi under the chief Blackbird. ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... round him as if to make a close inspection of his figure, then began to tease him. At first I thought it was all in fun—merely animal spirit which in birds often discharges itself in this way in little pretended attacks and fights. But the blackbird had no play and no fight in him, no heart to defend himself; all he did was to try to avoid the strokes aimed at him, and he could not always escape them. His spiritlessness served to inspire the chaffinch with greater boldness, and then it appeared that the gay little ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... the King and the flower! And the girl of my heart's delight, The blackbird sings in the bower, And the nightingale sings in the night A song to the ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... divine weather. The Bishop of Carlisle has been with me two days at Strawberry, where we saw the eclipse(572) to perfection: -not that there was much sight in it. The air was very chill at the time, and the light singular; but there was not a blackbird that left off singing for it. In the evening the Duke of Devonshire came with the Straffords from t'other end of Twickenham, and drank tea with us. They had none of them seen the gallery since it was finished; even the chapel was new to the Duke, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... the morn, With blushes you adorn, And take the fresh air, whilst linnets prepare A concert on each green thorn; The blackbird and thrush on every bush, And the charming nightingale, In merry vein, their throats do strain To entertain, the jolly train Of ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... warbling wild, Shall to the skies aspire; The gowdspink, Music's gayest child, Shall sweetly join the choir; The blackbird strong, the lintwhite clear, The mavis mild and mellow; The robin pensive Autumn cheer, In all ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... 'The man forlorn Hears Earth send up a foolish noise aloft.' 'And what'll he do? What'll he do?' scoff'd The Blackbird, standing, in an ancient thorn, Then spread his sooty wings and flitted to the croft With cackling laugh; Whom I, being half Enraged, called after, giving back ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... many things in the lonely hours there. I have learned that hope is a divinity; I have learned that a surplus of determination conquers every weakness; I have learned that you cannot mate a white dove to a blackbird; I have learned that vengeance is for God and not for man; I have learned that there are some things better than a picture on a church window; I have learned that the American people, and especially the good people of Minnesota, do not strip a fallen foe; I have learned that whoever ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... o'er the world? Why should the heavenly constellations shine? Why should the weather evermore be fine? Why should this rolling ball go whirling round? Why should the noise of mirth and music sound? Why should the sparrow chirp, the blackbird sing, The mountains echo, and the valleys ring, With all that's cheerful, humorous, and glad, Now that my heart is smitten and my ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... set aside. Her mother's immediate relatives in France were scattered or dead. There was no longer any interest at Chambery in the watchmaking exile, who had dropped like a cherry-stone from the beak of the blackbird of persecution upon one of the Iles de ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... moth's deep damasked wings" before the enraptured eyes of the noble poet. These two caterpillars and a few house-flies are all I saw, heard, or felt, by day or night, of the native fauna of England, except a few birds,—rooks, starlings, a blackbird, and the larks of Salisbury Plain just as they rose; for I lost sight of them almost immediately. I neither heard nor saw the nightingales, to my great regret. They had been singing at Oxford a short time before my visit to that place. ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... but for whose salvation she was responsible. No doubt she had put up a hard fight for him and had every reason to be satisfied, though Gabrielle shared the honours of the mother's triumph in her own defeat. We sat there talking until all the birds were silent, but a single blackbird that made a noise in the shrubbery like that of two pebbles knocked sharply together; until the young people on the tennis court could no longer see to play, and the tall Californian poppies at the back of the herbaceous border that was ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... perversely determined to finish his idea. As played by Pachmann, we get it in all its peevish, sardonic humors, especially if the audience, or the weather, or the piano seat does not suit the fat little blackbird from Odessa. Op. 63, No. 3, ends this list of mazurkas in C-sharp minor. In it Chopin has limbered up, his mood is freer, melancholy as it is. Louis Ehlert wrote of this: "A more perfect canon in the octave could not have been written by one who had grown gray in the learned arts." Those last ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... if your fortunes have mended at last, Sigurd Jarlsson. It did not appear that the Norman brought you much luck in return for your support." He glanced toward that part of the table where the black locks of Robert the Fearless shone, sleek as a blackbird's wing, in the morning sun. "The Southerner has an overbearing face," he added. "It reminds me of someone I hate, ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the smell of the brier. I see again the squirrel up there in the oak and the rabbit under the hedge. I listen as of old to the chirp of the grasshopper in the stubble, to the hum of the bees among the foxgloves, to the song of the blackbird on the hawthorn, and, best of all—yes, best of all for brain unsteadied and nerve unstrung—I ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... novelties that crop up—a clever dwarf, a musical genius, a calculating boy, a cock with a 10 ft. tail, a "wonder-horse" with a mane reaching to the ground, a tailless cat, a white blackbird, a copper beech, a Greater Celandine with much cut up leaves; but this sort of mutation is common, and smaller, less brusque variations are commoner still. They form the raw materials of possible evolution. We are actually standing before an apparently ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... for them out of his humble dinner. At his cottage he was rarely without one or more tame blackbirds, which flew about the house, or in and out at the door. In summer-time he would go a-birdnesting with his children; and one day he took his little son George to see a blackbird's nest for the first time. Holding him up in his arms, he let the wondering boy peep down, through the branches held aside for the purpose, into a nest full of young birds—a sight which the boy never forgot, but used to speak of with delight to his intimate friends when he himself had grown ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... certainly a quantity of jaspers and blood-stones, and others of no value at all. "But look at these two pearl-shaped diamonds," said she; "why, they are a little fortune! and oh!" The stone that struck this fair creature dumb was a rough ruby as big as a blackbird's egg, and of amazing depth and fire. "No lady in England," said she, "has a ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... a hen blackbird without any trace of feathers on its neck or back is reported by a Worcester ornithologist. The attempt on the part of this bird to follow our present fashions is ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... rather insolent, you know, At being disappointed in your wish To supersede all warblers here below, And be the only Blackbird in the dish; And then you overstrain yourself, or so, And tumble downward like the flying fish Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob, And fall, for lack of moisture, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... of the rhodora, the club-moss, the blooming clover, not of the hibiscus and the asphodel. He knows the bumblebee, the blackbird, the bat and the wren. He illustrates his high thought by common things out of our plain New England life: the meeting of the church, the Sunday-School, the dancing-school, a huckleberry party, the boys and girls hastening home from school, the youth in the shop beginning an unconscious courtship ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... by the woodland That hangs upon the hill; Hark! the cock is tuning His morning clarion shrill; And hurriedly awaking From his nest amid the spray, Cheerily now, the blackbird, Whistling, greets the day. For be it ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... of his heart that he made his way homeward through the early morning, reflecting on the ease with which last night's marauding expedition had been conducted. He even pursed his lips together and whistled softly—a low, flute-like sound that might almost have been mistaken for the note of a blackbird. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... dear heart, I was the same at your age, and should be now, like enough. Fetch them all, as quick as you like. I am feared to leave Blackbird, or I'd help ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... my foot worse, and had to go slow and take many a rest. When the gloaming came I was on the look out for a place to pass the night. On finding a cosey spot behind a clump of bushes, I took my supper, lay down, and fell asleep, for I was dead weary. The whistling of a blackbird near my head woke me and I saw the sun was getting high. My foot was much worse, but I had to go on. Taking from my bundle of provisions as sparingly as my hunger would let me, I started. It was another fine day and had my hurt foot been well I thought I would reach my mother's ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... who worked thus during daylight that she might pursue her mission of mercy and succour at night. Thus passed some days, and then Jessica's blood grew restless; the narrow room seemed to her stifling and unendurable, and she pined for the open air, as a caged blackbird longs ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... bird ways. To be easily pleased, for instance, and always to be really doing something, and to think that whatever he was doing was a thing of vast importance. Peter became very clever at helping the birds to build their nests; soon he could build better than a wood-pigeon, and nearly as well as a blackbird, though never did he satisfy the finches, and he made nice little water-troughs near the nests and dug up worms for the young ones with his fingers. He also became very learned in bird-lore, and knew an east wind from a west wind by its smell, and he could see the grass growing ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... on the habits, movements, and foods of common birds, as crow, woodpecker, king-bird, phoebe, blackbird, etc. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... risk of something inside giving way under the strain, Mr. Vickers restrained himself. He breathed hard, and glancing out of window sought to regain his equilibrium by becoming interested in a blackbird outside. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... sail the sea. The thing looks simple enough to me; And, if you doubt it, Hear how Darius reasoned about it. "The birds can fly, an' why can't I? Must we give in," says he, with a grin, "That the bluebird an' phoebe Are smarter'n we be? Jest fold our hands an' see the swaller An' blackbird an' catbird beat us holler? Does the little, chatterin', sassy wren, No bigger'n my thumb, know more than men? Jest show me that! Ur prove't the bat Hez got more brains than's in my hat, An' I'll back down, an' not till then!" He argued further, "Nur I can't see What's the use ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... shade, And hear what music's made— How Philomel Her tale doth tell, And how the other birds do fill the choir: The thrush and blackbird lend their throats, Warbling melodious notes. We will all sport enjoy, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... and nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an undertaker eating ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Juma and his crew were paid and tipped (grumbling, of course, for the Kashmiri is a lineal descendant of the horse-leech). The shikari went to Smithson, and the sweeper and permanent coolie were transferred to the assistant forest officer, while Ayata (in charge of Freddie, the blackbird) scrambled into ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... with angry scream and chatter at the approach of an enemy, darts the "ousel cock so black of hue, with orange-tawny bill." How dull a lawn would be without his pert movements when he comes down alternately with his russet wife. One blackbird with a broad white feather on each side of his tail haunted Elderfield for two years, but, alas! one spring day a spruce sable rival descended and captivated the faithless dame. They united, chased ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... that presently that same master of his would return again to make the circuit of the garden in the company of Bainton, according to custom,—and as he stretched his four hairy paws out comfortably, and blinked his brown eyes at a portly blackbird prodding in the turf for a worm within a stone's throw of him, he was evidently considering whether it would be worth his while, as an epicurean animal, to escort these two men on their usual round on such a warm pleasant ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... replied. "Not yet! Maybe he isn't coming here this summer." Mr. Blackbird liked to tease little Mr. Chippy. And generally when he tried ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... drop showers or sunbeams over the glistening lake, while far beneath its surface a murky mass disengages itself from the muddy bottom, and rises slowly through the waves. The tasselled alder-branches droop above it; the last year's blackbird's nest swings over it in the grapevine; the newly-opened Hepaticas and Epigaeas on the neighboring bank peer down modestly to look for it; the water-skater (Gerris) pauses on the surface near it, casting on the shallow bottom the odd shadow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... patient, faithful, saucy, spirited, violet, dahlia, sheep, pansy, ox, dog, horse, rose, gentle, duck, sly, waddling, cooing, chattering, homely, chirping, puss, robin, dove, sparrow, blackbird, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... all the time she was in the house. The little girl could return now to that "very nice school" where other nice little girls went. She departed every morning beside the Laundryman, tugging at her arm, skipping and chattering like a blackbird in June. Ernestine saw her safely up the school steps and then took the car to her business. Milly, after the housekeeping and her morning duties, walked up town for her daughter and spent most of the afternoons with her, as she had not ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... laverock, warbling wild, Shall to the skies aspire; The gowdspink, music's gayest child, Shall sweetly join the choir: The blackbird strong, the lintwhite clear, The mavis mild and mellow; The robin pensive autumn cheer, In ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... not birds of passage; they do not leave us at the first cold blast, to find a warmer climate; the least we can do is to recompense them by feeding them when the weather is too severe! Several know me already, and are very tame. There is a blackbird in particular, and a blue tomtit, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... will have many more friends among the fisher-lads. They will look upon her as a renegade to her order. The old women will suspect her, and the old men look askance at her with disapproving eyes. The girl will be a white blackbird; the properly colored birds will drive her out of the colony or pick her to death. It is only natural ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... ourselves glorious at the Carlton, and 'afterwards'. We could change at my Governor's place into borrowed, stolen, and hired evening-kit, paint the village as scarlet as Sin or a trooper's jacket, and then come home, like the Blackbird, to tea. I am going, and if I can't get 'leaf' I shall return under the bread in the rations-cart. Money's the ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... as they were dry, became as dull and homely as the flints upon a garden path. I have toiled at this childish pleasure for hours in the strong sun, conscious of my incurable ignorance; but too keenly pleased to be ashamed. Meanwhile, the blackbird (or his tropical understudy) would be fluting in ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the body and wings of deep crimson, with the head, and extremity of its long indented tail, white; the legs red. It lives on the worms generated in the decayed part of old trees, and is about the size of a blackbird. Of the same size is the burong sawei, a bird of a bluish black colour, with a dove-tail, from which extend two very long feathers, terminating circularly. It seems to be what is called the widow-bird, and is ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... her packing in the morning. She sat down at the desk and set to work to arrange her papers. It was a warm spring evening, and the window was open. A crowd of noisy sparrows seemed to be delighted about something. From somewhere, unseen, a blackbird was singing. She read over her report for Mrs. Denton. The blackbird seemed never to have heard of war. He sang as if the whole world were a garden of languor and love. Joan looked at her watch. The first gong would sound in a few minutes. She ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... thrush calls, you will leave the crypt, and guard the entrance from without; allowing none, on any pretext, to pass within. When a blackbird whistles you will return, lift the stretcher, and pass with it, as heretofore, from the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... rained incessantly for days, growing ever colder and colder as it rained. The sun came out at last, but it shone in a wintry sort of way,—like a duty smile,—as if light, not heat, were its object. A keen wind blew the dead leaves hither and thither in a wild dance that had no merriment in it. A blackbird flew under an old barrel by the wayside, and, ruffling himself into a ball, remarked despondently that feathers were no sort of protection in this kind of climate. A snowbird, flying by, glanced in at the barrel, and observed that anybody ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... grey bushes with young oaks starting through them, still bare of leaves, ferns beginning to mark green lanes into the heart of the woods, and certain dark wet places where the insects had already begun to hum. But when the wood opened out the birds were talking to one another, blackbird to blackbird, thrush to thrush, robin to robin, kin understanding kin, and every bird uttering vain jargon to them that did not wear the same beak and feathers, just like ourselves, Joseph said to himself and he stood stark ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... The cow-blackbird, it is true, executes a certain guttural performance with its throat—though apparently emanating from a gastric source—which some ornithologists dignify by the name of "song." But it is safe to affirm ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... say that she loved birds dearly. Not wild songsters, however, who sing best in their native freedom of the skies, like the spotted-breasted, circle-carolling lark, the thicket-haunting blackbird, and the sweet-throated thrush.—It would have afforded her no pleasure to prison up one of these in a cage. But, a little fledgling that had never known what it was to roam at its own sweet will, and who, when offered the liberty of the air, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... into the wood, parting the tangled branches every now and then to get through, and all the time looking carefully round for nests. They very soon heard the harsh cry of the jay, who was letting all the inhabitants of the woodlands know that enemies were at hand, and away flew the birds. The blackbird was the first to take the alarm from the jay, and away he flew, crying, "Kink, kink, kink," as he started from his nest in a great ivy tod on an old pollard-tree. The lads soon found the nest, and peeped in, but instead of eggs there were four wretched-looking little objects, all eyes and beak, with ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... autumnal-tinted woods of the sailor's home lay around him, bathed in quiet sunshine; the stork's nest was empty, but the apples still clung to the wild apple-tree; though leaves had fallen, the red hips glistened, and the blackbird whistled in the little green cage that hung in the lowly window of his childhood's home; the blackbird whistled the tune he had taught him, and the old grandmother wound chickweed about the bars of the cage, as her grandson had been wont to do. And the smith's ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... stockings silk, the breeches satin, the doublet soft Flanders velvet. Golden-yellow puffs and slashes stood forth in beautiful relief against the darker stuff. Even the knots of ribbon on the breeches and shoes were as yellow as a blackbird's beak. Delicate lace trimmed the neck and fell on the hands, and a clasp of real gems confined the black and yellow plumes ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in a tone of ill-concealed triumph; and plunging his hand into his game-bag, the chasseur produces—a phthisical snipe, a wood pigeon, an extenuated quail, and perhaps something which you at first take for a deformed blackbird, but which turns out to be a water-hen. As far as our own observations go, we do aver this to be a very handsome average of a French sportsman's day's shooting. If by chance he has knocked down a red-legged partridge, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... Wit, He was very shy of using it, As being loth to wear it out. And therefore bore it not about, Unless on Holydays or so, As Men their best Apparel do. Besides, 'tis known he could speak Greek As naturally as Pigs squeak.: That Latin was no more difficile Than to a Blackbird 'tis to whistle; Being rich in both he never scanted His Bounty unto such as wanted; But much of either wou'd afford, To many that had not one Word: For Hebrew Roots altho they're found To flourish but in barren ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... the lawn," said Teddy's mother, who was standing at the window and looking out. "And just hear that blackbird! I always feel as though spring were really here when I ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... feel all the glowing life the sunshine gives and the south wind calls to being. The endless grass, the endless leaves, the immense strength of the oak expanding, the unalloyed joy of finch and blackbird; from all of them I receive a little.... In the blackbird's melody one note is mine; in the dance of the leaf shadows the formed maze is for me, though the motion is theirs; the flowers with a thousand faces have collected the kisses of the morning. ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... whole tobacco-pipe bowl full, carefully measured out of the old yellow canvas money-bag that did for a shot belt. A starling could be knocked off the chimney with this charge easily, and so could a blackbird roosting in a bush at night. But a woodpigeon nearly thirty yards distant was another matter; for the old folk (and the birdkeepers too) said that their quills were so hard the shot would glance aside unless it came with ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... bright, and rich in fruity treasure, I've heard the blackbird with delight repeat his merry measure; The ballad was a lively one, the tune was loud and cheery, And yet with every setting sun ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... it rained, and there was rather a bitter wind; but presently it was sunny again, and you felt secure of the spring, for the birds were singing: the birds of literature, the lark, the golden-billed blackbird, the true robin, and the various finches; and round and over all the rooks were calling like voices in a dream. Full of this certainty of spring you went in-doors, and found ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... in air and already stiff: a felt and a yellowhammer were side by side at the bottom of the hill. It was like the dead in gay uniforms, lying scattered after an action. A little further on there was a blackbird, to Murphy's very evident glee. He found it at once, and was for carrying it home; it was still warm. But this was no time for fooling. It was already dark and growing darker; the proper thing to do was to keep together ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... starling which has settled near his house. It is such an excellent mimic of other birds' notes that no one can help noticing its performances. A record has been kept of the variety entertainments provided by the bird. Besides its own calls, whistles, and song, it reproduces the song of the blackbird and thrush absolutely correctly, and mimics with equal nicety the calls of the curlew, the corncrake, ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... red-breast! Sing, birds, in every furrow! And from each bill let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cocksparrow, You pretty elves, among yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow! To give my Love good-morrow! Sing, birds, in ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... listening for some moments, but they could not hear a sound. The signs of the coming morning were growing plainer; there was a faint twittering in some bushes at a distance, followed by the sharp metallic chink chink of a blackbird; and then all at once, loud and clear from the farm-yard, rang out the morning challenge of ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... and his mate lived together on a tree. The Blackbird used to sing very sweetly, and one day the King heard him in passing by, and sent a Fowler to catch him. But the Fowler made a mistake; he did not catch Mr. Blackbird, who sang so sweetly, but Mrs. Blackbird, who could hardly sing at all. However, he did not know the difference, to look at her, ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... Red-wing Blackbird, Ageloeus phoeniceus, of lustrous black, with the bend of the wing red. They are still abundant in the same locality, and indeed across the whole continent to the Pacific Ocean.—Vide Cones's Key, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... was in the garden Hanging out the clothes, Then came a little blackbird And snapped ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... Poet himself, with his sensitive nature—who can fathom the profound depths of his soul now stirred by two such entrancing sights as the high-smoking blackbird-pie won by his own prowess, and the little monarch for whose sake all this was brought about? The delicious smell excites him like draughts of rich old wine, and all the soul within him bubbles up exultingly, and he improvises on the moment. Joyfully he sings in melodious tones, his ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... common noises of the wood, the angry chatter of a disturbed blackbird as it flew low into hiding, or the harsh notes of a flock of starlings as they rose from the meadow. The hum of bees filled the air, and the August flies buzzed about his sweating brow, for he had lost his cap. ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... war-dress, with silver cross on his breast and bow and arrows in his hand; then, the weight on the trunk being released, the sapling sprang back to its place and afterward rose to a commanding height, fitly marking the Indian's tomb. Chief Blackbird, of the Omahas, was buried, in accordance with his wish, on the summit of a bluff near the upper Missouri, on the back of his favorite horse, fully equipped for travel, with the scalps that he had taken hung ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... first, jay and blackbird and thrush; They shriek at his coming and curse him, each one; With the clay of the vale on his pads and his brush, It's the Fallowfield fox and he's pretty near done; It's a couple of hours since a whip tally-ho'd him; Now the rookery's stooping to mob and to goad him; There's an earth on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... there was a nest lined with grass, and in the nest there were three eggs—pale-green with reddish spots. And Diarmait knew the bird and knew the eggs, and he told the Abbot, who came noiselessly, and looked with a great love at the open house and the three eggs of the mother blackbird. ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... Ages Berti Palazzo, in Florence, Bezzi, Signor A. and Landor Bible, persecution for reading the Bier, open, used in Florence Biglow Papers, Lowell's Biographies, G. Eliot on Birmingham, my return from Blackbird, Song of the Black Down, Tennyson's house at Black Forest, Leweses in the Blackwood's Magazine, Mary Mitford on Blagden, Isa, Miss her poems her death note from Lewes inquires after and George Eliot Blandford Square, Leweses at Blaze de Bury, Madame Blessington, Lady ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... young Sits down in peace; while, in the pine grove down The rural glen, a myriad voices crown The clear-tuned solo of the warbling thrush, Or oft in chorus to a duet flush, Sung with the full-piped blackbird of the wood, Their notes are joined. The aspect and the mood Of everything is changed, as wont on day Of toil the crowded city moves to lay The bands of slumber for a time away, But brings not out the bustle and the din Which is her weekday aspect; and ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... the weeping ended her words, and I was all abashed with shame and pale with anguish. I stole quietly from my lair unheeded of any, save that one damsel said that a rabbit ran in the hedge, and another that a blackbird stirred in the thicket. Behold me, then, that my quest beginneth again amidst the tangle of lies whereinto I ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... Continuing our walk, we pass under the rose-crowned aqueduct, and strike into the green avenue that darkens beyond; listening to the distant water bubbling up from the deepest recesses, and to the fitful whistle of blackbird and thrush, as they flit athwart the moss-grown gravel, and perch momentarily on the heads of mutilated termini and statues; whilst the clipt trees vibrate under the wings of others extricating themselves ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... the palaces so fair, Built for the royal dwelling, In Scotland far beyond compare, Linlithgow is excelling; And in its park, in jovial June, How sweet the merry linnet's tune, How blithe the blackbird's lay; The wild-buck bells from ferny brake, The coot dives merry on the lake; The saddest heart might pleasure take To see all nature gay. But June is, to our sovereign dear, The heaviest month in all the year: Too well his cause of grief you know, June saw his father's overthrow, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... a sleek blackbird that had alighted and now set to singing on the topmost twig of a lofty pear-tree near by; and with his first note Jane reappeared. And while we listened, unstirring, to that rich, undaunted voice, I had good opportunity to observe her, and not, I think, ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... as fine a one as I can remember. It was in the month of May, and not likely to be otherwise than fine. The sun was shining brightly, and the birds filled the air with joyous music. The thrush and blackbird mingled their strong vigorous voices, with the mellowed trilling of the skylark, and over the fields could be heard almost continuously the call of the cuckoo—now here, now there, as the active creature plied her restless ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... the animals named, birds are most destructive, while the peanuts are in shock. Such birds as the blue-jay, crow, partridge, yellow hammer, wild turkey, and blackbird, coming, as some of them do, not singly, but in companies and flocks of hundreds and thousands at a time, carry off vast quantities, unless the planter is always on the alert, gun in hand, ready to meet them at every turn. Near ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... the mounting wings, The happy heights of souls serene, I wander where the blackbird sings, And over bubbling, shadowy springs, The beech-leaves cluster, young ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... this dreary winter time. I am still here, a pledge from my brothers. When yon dim grey woods grow green, and the brown hollows are yellow with kingcups and primroses, the old melody you know so well shall begin again, and the thrush from the oak top shall answer to the goldentoned blackbird in the copse, saying—'Our mother is not dead, but has been sleeping. She is awake again—let ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... there, listening to the pleading passion of the blackbird's note, the thrush's call to joy and hope. He loved her gentle ways. From the bold challenges, the sly glances of invitation flashed upon him in the street or from some neighbouring table in the cheap luncheon room he had always shrunk confused and awkward. Her shyness gave him confidence. ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... ought to get the V.C.," said Stalky. "Why, he might have been dead and buried by now. But he wasn't. But he didn't. Ho! ho! He just nipped through the hedge like a lusty old blackbird. Extra-special, five hundred lines, an' gated for ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... side—that summer beech-wood lullaby that seemed never to end. The other bird voices were of the willow-wren, the wood-wren, the coal-tit, and the now somewhat tiresome chiffchaff; from the distance would come the prolonged rich strain of the blackbird, and occasionally the lyric of the chaffinch. The song of this bird gains greatly when heard from a tall tree in the woodland silence; it has then a resonance and wildness which it appears to lack in the garden and orchard. In the village I had been glad to find that ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... had reached home. She was setting the table, and whistling like a blackbird. Things had gone so happily at school! Everything was so neat, and pleasant, and cosy at home! She saw her father ride into the yard, and go to the barn. ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... snow is uncovering something that has been delayed. In the garden a blackbird made a sudden cry in the hedge. I did ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... day! delightful day! Bright colors play the vales along; Now wakes at morning's slender ray, Wild and gay, the blackbird's song. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... between female and male house sparrow, or much greater brightness of the male Parus coeruleus (both of which build under cover) than of the female Parus, are related to protection. I even mis-doubt much whether the less blackness of the female blackbird ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... as our own England. Indeed, if you were suddenly to be transported into Circassia, you would be ready to exclaim, "Is not this England? Here are apple-trees, and pear-trees, and plum-trees, like those in my father's garden: those sounds are like the notes of the blackbird and thrush, which sing among the hawthorns ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... to our own times, the Indians had lost a great many of their ancient customs, yet, at times, this old instinct of mound burial asserts itself. About the first of the century Blackbird, a celebrated chief of the Omahas, returning to his native home after a visit to Washington, died of the small-pox. It was his dying request that his body be placed on horseback, and the horse buried alive with him. Accordingly, in the presence of all his nation, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... hear a blackbird." He sorted his papers, for he was writing. "I will write an ode on your venture. What shall ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... cream-coloured horses for my private use, and building up a modest fortune out of hides, horns, tallow, and other native products. At break of day I rose and saddled my horse; then, finding the dignified Nepomucino, who was the early bird (blackbird) of the establishment, told him to inform his mistress that I was going to spend the day with General Santa Coloma. After taking a mate from the old fellow, I mounted and galloped out of the ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... heard it get beyond the first bar of "Come into the garden, Maud." Ill as I was, I remember being roused to something like a flicker of animation when I was shown an exceedingly seedy and shabby-looking blackbird with a broken leg in splints, which its master (the same bird-fancying gentleman) assured me he had bought in Melbourne as a great bargain for only 2 pounds ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... no doubt his nest or the young from it were in the hedge. In feeding the young birds the old ones always perch first at a short distance, and after waiting a minute proceed to their fledgelings. Should a blackbird come at full speed across the meadow and stay on a hedge-top, and then go down into the mound, it is certain that his nest is there. If a thrush frequents a tree, flying up into the branches for a minute and then descending ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... and thorn, swarming with game, which was as highly preserved then as now, under Canute's severe forest laws. The yellow roes stood and stared at him knee-deep in the young fern; the pheasant called his hens out to feed in the dewy grass; the blackbird and thrush sang out from every bough; the wood-lark trilled above the high oak-tops, and sank down on them as his song sank down. And Hereward rode on, rejoicing in it all. It was a fine world in the Bruneswald. What was it then outside? Not to him, as to us, a world ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... trelliced boughs growing fruits single and composite, and small birds on branches sang with melodious recite, and the thousand-noted nightingale shrilled with her varied shright; the turtle with her cooing filled the site; the blackbird whistled like human wight[FN47] and the ring-dove moaned like a drinker in grievous plight. The trees grew in perfection all edible growths and fruited all manner fruits which in pairs were bipartite; with the camphor- ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... delight. Surely even Freckles's "Limberlost" could not be more beautiful than this. A persistent cuckoo was calling in the meadow close by; a thrush with his brown throat all a-ruffle trilled in a birch tree overhead, and a blackbird warbled his heart out among the hazel bushes by the fence. The girls went peeping here and there and everywhere in quest of birds' nests, and their diligent search was amply rewarded. In the hollow of a decaying stump a robin was feeding five little gaping ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... fly over the sandy soil. Then came the "loping" dogs, coyotes, prairie wolves. Birds of all sorts assembled in one long continuous flight. The animal kingdom of that region of forest seemed to have become united in their mutual terror—wolf and hare, coyote and jack-rabbit, hawks and blackbird, prairie chicken and grey-owl; all sworn enemies in time of calm prosperity, but now, in their terror, companions to the last. And all the time, in the growing twilight of smoke, came the distant booming as of the discharge of ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... only too ready with the hand of friendship, the iron grip indeed of friendship, consciously hospitable and eager for admission and endorsements. And Princhester in particular was under the sway of that enterprising weekly, The White Blackbird, which was illustrated by, which indeed monopolized the gifts of, that brilliant young caricaturist ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... recklessness with her father, a complete, chosen carelessness that had the laugh of ridicule in it. He loved to make her voice go high and shouting and defiant with laughter. The baby was dark-skinned and dark-haired, like the mother, and had hazel eyes. Brangwen called him the blackbird. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... of Pott's face, shown through the cloth that Sam has put over his head. The onions have got detached from the hank hung to the ceiling, and are tumbling on the combatants, and—a capital touch this—the blackbird, whose cage has been covered over to secure its repose, is shown in b dashing against the bars. We might ask, however, what does the cook there, and why does she ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... the centre of the earth. A whiff of perfume from the laurustinus in the drive came back, the scent of hay, and with it the sound of the mowing-machine going over the lawn. He saw the pony in loose flat leather shoes. The bees were humming in the lime trees. The rooks were cawing. A blackbird whistled from the shrubberies where he once passed an entire day in hiding, after emptying an ink-bottle down the German governess's dress. He heard the old family butler in his wheezy voice calling in vain for 'Mr. 'Enery' to come in. The tone was respectful, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Indian pony. How beautiful and fresh the picture of her remained in his memory!—the soft white dress she wore, her black hair streaming over her shoulders, her dark eyes flashing delight, her merry laugh rivalling the trill of the blackbird which flew over their heads chattering for very joy. Before him lay the pretty brook with its rustic bridge reflecting itself in the clear water as in a mirror. That path along the bank led down to the willows where the big mossy stones lay in the stream and the silvery salmon and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... So beautiful, so tranquil, looked the old monastic fane, that none would have deemed its midnight rest had been broken by the impious rites of a foul troop. The choir, where the unearthly scream and the demon laughter had resounded, was now vocal with the melodies of the blackbird, the thrush, and other songsters of the grove. Bells of dew glittered upon the bushes rooted in the walls, and upon the ivy-grown pillars; and gemming the countless spiders' webs stretched from bough to bough, showed they ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... spoke to a grey bird, about the size of a blackbird, which sat on a branch close above his head. This creature is called by the fur-traders a whisky-John, and it is one of the most impudent little birds in the world! Wherever you go throughout the country, there you find whisky-Johns ready to receive and welcome you, as ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... party, in full cry after an old blackbird (who was evidently used to the thing and enjoyed the fun, for he would wait till they came close to him, and then fly on for forty yards or so, and, with an impudent flicker of his tail, dart into the depths of the quickset), came beating down ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... searching along among the grasses and pieces of wood thrown carelessly aside against the wall could see into the room. Robins, of course, came every morning, perching on the sill and peering in with the head held on one side. Blackbird and thrush came, but always passed the window itself quickly, though they stayed without fear within a few inches ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... on her little horsehair trunk which she had packed to take to Blossy's, looking in her time-worn silk gown like a rusty blackbird, and, like a bird, she bent her head first to one side and then the other, surveying Abe in his "barrel clothes" with a ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... who was of the party, added to his collection of birds, a kingfisher, and a specimen of a glossy species about the size and colour of an English blackbird; others were seen and killed, but all common to other parts; the most rare of the latter was the large cream-coloured pigeon I have alluded ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... relation than we have to believe that the similar bones in the hand of a man, wing of a bat, and fin of a porpoise, are related to similar conditions of life. No one supposes that the stripes on the whelp of a lion, or the spots on the young blackbird, are of any use ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... snails he brought in a dormouse, and when they had eaten the dormouse he brought in two wrens, and when they had eaten the wrens he brought in two nuts full of wine, and they became very merry, and the Fairyman sang "Cooleen Dhas," and the Dwarf sang "The Little Blackbird of ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... of a large tract; although very wild and disorderly cultivation. As we went, every spot within sight was full of interest; rich with associations; the air was warm but pleasant; the warble of the orange-winged blackbird - I don't know if I ought to call it a warble; it was a very fine and strong note, or whistle, - sounding from the rocks as we went by, thrilled me with a wild reminder of all that had once been busy life there, where now the blackbird's cry sounded ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in clusters and birds warbling melodiously on the branches, whilst the thousand-voiced nightingale repeated the various strains: the turtle-dove filled the place with her cooing, and there sang the blackbird, with its warble like a human voice, and the ring-dove, with her notes like a drinker exhilarated with wine. The trees were laden with all manner of ripe fruits, two of each: the apricot in its various kinds, camphor ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... sorry w'en you go along wit' me, For I show you all aroun' dere, until you 're knowin' how I come so moche to brag—me—on de Riviere des Prairies. It 's a cole October mornin', an' de maple leaf is change Ev'ry color you can t'ink of, from de purple to de green; On de shore de crowd of blackbird, an' de crow begin' arrange For de journey dey be takin' w'en de nort' win's ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... to choose from hundred maidens, And among a thousand maidens, Bring the noblest of the hundred, From a thousand unattractive; From the swamp you bring a lapwing, From the hedge you bring a magpie, From the field you bring a scarecrow, From the fallow field a blackbird. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... feels his tread on the softening swards of the Vale of Health, or, pausing at Richmond under the budding willow, gazes on the river glittering in the warmer sunlight, and hears from the villa-gardens behind him the brief trill of the blackbird. But the suburbs round Paris are, I think, a yet more pleasing relief from the metropolis; they are more easily reached, and I know not why, but they seem more rural,—perhaps because the contrast of their repose with the stir ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... blackbird's nests and thrush's, Soon to be hidden In leaves on green leaves thickening, Boughs over ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... the open window, little Amedee saw the sycamore in the yard. A young blackbird, who did not know the place, came and perched for an instant only upon ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... honor, it is overbad of you," he continued, with a softening grin, "to hasten me so, and then to hear me out o' window, because Bob hath a sweeter pipe. Ah, he can whistle like a blackbird, too, and gain a lot of money; but there, what good? He sacrifices it all to the honor of his heart, first maggot that cometh into it; and he done the very same with Rickon Goold, the Methody galley-raker. We never was ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... them, they may have stood for dare-devil courage or constancy or devotion; I cannot tell. I may only speak of them now as I find them, which is in the garden or in the drawing-room. In their lily-leaved pool, sunk deep in the old flagged terrace, upon whose borders the blackbird whistles his early-morning song, they remind me of sundials and lavender and old delightful things. But in their cheap glass bowl upon the three- legged table, above which the cloth-covered canary maintains a stolid silence, they remind me of antimacassars ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... Italy, and in Italy only at this season of the year. Continuing our walk, we pass under the rose-crowned aqueduct, and strike into the green avenue that darkens beyond; listening to the distant water bubbling up from the deepest recesses, and to the fitful whistle of blackbird and thrush, as they flit athwart the moss-grown gravel, and perch momentarily on the heads of mutilated termini and statues; whilst the clipt trees vibrate under the wings of others extricating themselves on a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... that of the perching birds, includes all our common song-birds, such as the robin, bluebird, and blackbird, as well as a few ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... dim Their unarticulated hymn, Now walk through rippling waves of wheat, Now sink in mats of clover sweet, Or see before us from the lawn The lark go up to greet the dawn! All birds that love the English sky Throng round my path when she is by: The blackbird from a neighboring thorn With music brims the cup of morn, And in a thick, melodious rain The mavis pours her mellow strain! But only when my Katie's voice Makes all the listening woods rejoice I hear—with cheeks that flush and pale— The ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... and dismounted to enjoy the delightful sensation the shade produced: there out of its power I could best appreciate the sun shining in splendour on the wide green hilly earth and in the green translucent foliage above my head. In the upper branches a blackbird was trolling out his music in his usual careless leisurely manner; when I stopped under it the singing was suspended for half a minute or so, then resumed, but in a lower key, which made it seem softer, sweeter, ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... WATTEAU Shepherdess And I were a gipsy lad, I'd teach you tunes that the blackbird trills And show you the dance of the daffodils, The white moon rising over the hills, And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... my shieling not too small, Familiar all, fair paths invite me; Now, blackbird, from my gable end, Sweet sable ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... and my love, we will go for a while into the wood, scattering the dew, where we will see the trout, we will see the blackbird on its nest; the deer and the buck calling, the little bird that is sweetest singing on the branches; the cuckoo on the top of the fresh green; and death will never come near us for ever in ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... passed—was hallowed by some remembrance connected with the playmate of her childhood—the lover of her early youth—the husband of her affections." When, she looked on the dew dancing amid the delicate tracery of the field spider's web—when the joyous whistle of the gay blackbird broke upon her ear—gazing silently on all that was really fresh and beautiful in nature—she felt that, instead of warming, it fell chilly upon her heart. And yet all was as usual—the bright sun, and the smiling landscape. Why, then, was she less cheerful? She was alone! No one she ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... from its broad chimneys curled in dusky columns into the blue sky. The caw of the rooks that followed the plough, whose shining share turned up the aromatic soil, the merry whistle of the bonneted ploughboys, the voices of the blackbird and the mavis, made him sad, and pleased was Lemercier to leave behind him all such sounds of life, and reach the wild and solitary place where the obelisk stood—a grim and time-worn relic of the Druid ages or the Danish wars. A rough misshapen ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... being got through. Juma and his crew were paid and tipped (grumbling, of course, for the Kashmiri is a lineal descendant of the horse-leech). The shikari went to Smithson, and the sweeper and permanent coolie were transferred to the assistant forest officer, while Ayata (in charge of Freddie, the blackbird) scrambled into the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... scared when she saw me coming in with my satchel; but when I told her what I wanted, her eyes brightened up, and she laughed as easy as a blackbird sings. "Oh, is that all!" says she. "I thought it was about the children. I'll give you a note to my dress-maker. Styles all French, and so recherche." Look in the dictionary, sisters, and you will discover that this means ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... numerous, are not indigenous to this part of the country, but about a century ago escaped from the various missions of Upper California, at which they had been bred, and since have propagated in incredible numbers; also the grouse, the prairie hen, the partridge, the quail, the green parrot, the blackbird, and many others which I cannot name, not knowing their generic denomination. The water-fowls are plentiful, such as swans, geese, ducks of many different species, and the Canadian geese with their long black necks, which, from November ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Suddenly a belated blackbird lit upon the wall, surveyed the group and burst into a jubilant song, that for a moment drowned his rival's notes. Then, as if claiming the reward, he fluttered to the grass, ate his fill, took a sip from ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... yellow jug with the three beef-eaters on it, and go to the third cask from the door—the key turns upside down, mind—and let me hear you whistle till you bring me back the key. Don't tell me nonsense about your lips being dry. You can whistle like a blackbird when you choose." ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Samson, "de rale sugar-corn, de blackbird gits. None of dem white gulls and pigeons gits dat corn. A white feller ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... been asked to sing in the village choir. David sang a sweet high tenor there, and Marcia's voice was clear and strong as a blackbird's, with the plaintive ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... said the Donkey; and the random chords changed to a crooning melody which wonderfully pleased Buddie, whose opportunities to hear music were sadly few. As for the White Blackbird, he tucked his little head under his ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... any more, but worked quietly and watched the shadow, feeling sure the faint song came from it. Presently she began to hum the tune she caught by snatches; and, before she knew it, she was singing away like a blackbird. Baby stopped crying, and mamma ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... do,' said Elizabeth; 'and he said that he had seen Susan and the children go down the blind walk. Then I said Dora had talked of seeing a blackbird's nest there, and he answered, with a most comical look, 'Ah! ha! Miss Woodbourne, I fancy they be two-legged blackbirds as Susan is ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... narrow alley into a paved court. Here are oleanders in pots, and plants of Japanese spindle-wood in tubs; and from the walls beneath the window hang cages of all sorts of birds—a talking parrot, a whistling blackbird, goldfinches, canaries, linnets. Athos, the fat dog, who goes to market daily in a barchetta with his master, snuffs around. 'Where are Porthos and Aramis, my friend?' Athos does not take the joke; he ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... cher. Not so bad," is the reply, in a tone of ill-concealed triumph; and plunging his hand into his game-bag, the chasseur produces—a phthisical snipe, a wood pigeon, an extenuated quail, and perhaps something which you at first take for a deformed blackbird, but which turns out to be a water-hen. As far as our own observations go, we do aver this to be a very handsome average of a French sportsman's day's shooting. If by chance he has knocked down a red-legged ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... reaches we met with flocks of wild ducks, of the white and brown, and also of the whistling kind. The birds we had not before seen were a large dark brown species of rail, so wary that I could never get within shot of it, and a rather small blackbird with a white crest. A few of the large species of crane, called the Native Companion, were also seen. The only kind of fish taken was the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... cousin could wish, save for an angry dislike to being duped and cajoled; and, moreover, a strong curiosity to hear and see more of that little passionate bird, fresh from the convent cage. Her gesture and her eyes irresistibly carried him back to old times, though whether to an angry blackbird in the yew-tree alleys at Leurre, or to the eager face that had warned him to save his father, he could not remember with any distinctness. At any rate, he was surprised to find himself thinking so little in comparison about the splendid beauty and winning manners of his discarded spouse, though ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which she found herself and of the use of such rooms. It is interesting to note also in the first case that in her wildest delirium during an acute attack she lived through episodes of her past life. One example may be given. In the course of her delirium she thought that a "blackbird" had flown to her, touched her left wrist and taken away all her vitality. This depended on an experience of her going to Germany when a girl and meeting a young German officer whom she did not like. A few years later she went to ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... feels that they have all sought shelter from disagreeable actualities in the world of imagination. James Stephens, as he chanted his Insurrections, sang with his whole being. Let no one say I am comparing him with Shakespeare. One may say the blackbird has wings as well as the eagle, without insisting that the bird in the hedgerows is peer of the winged creature beyond the mountain-tops. But how refreshing it was to find somebody who was a poet without a formula, who did ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... stagnant water. Frogs and turtles warming their backs in the sunshine scampered in alarm from their logs. Lizards blinked at him. Moccasin snakes darted wicked forked tongues at him and then glided out of reach of his tomahawk. The frogs had stopped their deep bass notes. A swamp-blackbird rose in fright from her nest in the saw-grass, and twittering plaintively fluttered round and round over the pond. The flight of the bird worried Wetzel. Such little things as these might attract the attention of some Indian ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... not tell thee surly Winter's flown, That the brook's verge is green;—and bid thee hear, In yon irriguous vale, the Blackbird clear, At measur'd intervals, with mellow tone, Choiring [1]the hours of prime? and call thine ear To the gay viol dinning in the dale, With tabor loud, and bag-pipe's rustic drone To merry Shearer's dance;—or jest retail ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... sound of the Church bell to their ears through the window, half open to admit the breezy breath of spring; the cawing of the rooks and the song of the blackbird came with it; the sky was clear and blue, the buds ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... they ate the duck, which was flanked by the three pigeons and the blackbird, and then the goose appeared, smoking, golden-colored, and diffusing a warm odor of hot, browned fat meat. La Paumelle who was getting lively, clapped her hands; la Jean-Jean left off answering the Baron's ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... give one. I had had some experience in blackbirding before I went pearling in the Paumotus. Otoo and I were in Samoa—we really were on the beach and hard aground—when my chance came to go as recruiter on a blackbird brig. Otoo signed on before the mast; and for the next half-dozen years, in as many ships, we knocked about the wildest portions of Melanesia. Otoo saw to it that he always pulled stroke-oar in my boat. Our custom in recruiting labor was to land the recruiter on the beach. The covering boat ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... humanity alone. He abhorred the dull and savage joy of the sportsman in a lucky shot, an unerring aim, and once when I met him in the country he had just been sickened by the success of a gunner in bringing down a blackbird, and he described the poor, stricken, glossy thing, how it lay throbbing its life out on the grass, with such pity as he might have given a wounded child. I find this a fit place to say that his mind and soul were with those ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... King and the flower! And the girl of my heart's delight, The blackbird sings in the bower, And the nightingale sings in the night A song ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... with a great musical reputation, but I never heard it get beyond the first bar of "Come into the garden, Maud." Ill as I was, I remember being roused to something like a flicker of animation when I was shown an exceedingly seedy and shabby-looking blackbird with a broken leg in splints, which its master (the same bird-fancying gentleman) assured me he had bought in Melbourne as a great bargain for only 2 ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... those of a linnet—almost flute-like in softness, while others prick and tingle like thistles. He is the mocking-bird of squirrels, pouring forth mixed chatter and song like a perennial fountain; barking like a dog, screaming like a hawk, chirping like a blackbird or a sparrow; while in bluff, audacious noisiness ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... lines of species had been obliterated and made as meaningless as the concededly evanescent shades of variety, trooping busily over the lawn and blackening the leafless China-trees. But they have a crony never seen by us. This is the crow-blackbird of the South, or jackdaw as it is wrongly called, otherwise known as the boat-tailed grackle, from his over-allowance of rudder that pulls him side-wise and ruins his dead-reckoning when a wind is on. His wife is a sober-looking lady in a suit of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... father left the city, to partake of the pleasures of the country.—Scarcely had the blackbird and the thrush begun their early whistle to welcome Louisa, than the weather changed all on a sudden; the north wind roared horribly in the grove, and the snow fell in such abundance, that every thing appeared in ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... Italian style while still a boy. At twenty-one he had already written his "Tancredi" and the opera buffa, "The Italians in Algiers." His best work (besides "William Tell") was "The Barber of Seville." Other works are "Cinderella" (La Cenerentola), "The Thieving Blackbird" (La Gazza Ladra), "Moses," and "The Lady of the Lake." These operas were mostly made up of parts of others that were failures, a la Hasse. An engagement being offered him in London, he went there with ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... dainty dish to set before the king? The king was in the parlour, counting out his money; The queen was in the kitchen, eating bread and honey; The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes, There came a little blackbird and nipt ...
— The Only True Mother Goose Melodies - Without Addition or Abridgement • Munroe and Francis
... maid was in the garden, Hanging out the clothes; 'Long came a blackbird And snapt off ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... the sameness. Now, the sun, whose ardour was already melting into the tenderness of evening, shone upon a broad valley, where the grass stood high in rich meadows separated from other meadows and green cornfields by hedges, from the midst of which rose many a tall tree. The blackbird's low, flute-like note sounded above ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... startled by a rustling of the leaves behind her. She paused and looked round fearfully. A blackbird darted out of the hedge and away over the fields. Zelma smiled at her own alarm, and read on, till she reached ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... all their own, She and her mother lived alone. Safe were the two, with their frugal store, From all of the many who passed their door; For Jennie's mother was strange to fears, And Jennie was large for fifteen years; With vim her eyes were glistening, Her hair was the hue of a blackbird's wing; And while the friends who knew her well The sweetness of her heart could tell, A gun that hung on the kitchen wall Looked solemnly quick to heed her call; And they who were evil-minded knew Her nerve was ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... dusky yellow And the road a rosy white, And the blackbird's call is mellow At the falling of night; And there's honey in the heather Where we'll make our last abode, My tunes and me together At ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... of the prairie and open lands towards Lake Superior. The moose is also an inhabitant of the Namakagun. The Chippewas, at a hunting camp we passed yesterday, said they had been on the tracks of a moose, but lost them in high brush. Ducks and pigeons appear common. Among smaller birds are the blackbird, robin, catbird, red-headed woodpecker, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... turned, what time the blackbird Pipes to vespers from his perch, And from out the clattering city Pass'd into the ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... price; there was certainly a quantity of jaspers and blood-stones, and others of no value at all. "But look at these two pearl-shaped diamonds," said she; "why, they are a little fortune! and oh!" The stone that struck this fair creature dumb was a rough ruby as big as a blackbird's egg, and of amazing depth and fire. "No lady in England," said she, "has a ruby to ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... chequered with the shades of aspens and ashes and the most verdant and lively of all the family of trees. Here a broad, rude stone steppeth over a lazy spring, oozing its way into grass and weeds; anon a fresh pathway divergeth, you know not whither. Meanwhile the wild blackbird startles across the way and singeth anew in some other shade. To have seen Fiammetta there, stepping in silk attire, like a flower, and the sunlight looking upon her betwixt the branches! I had not walked (in the body) with Romance before. Then suppose so much of a space cleared as ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the land among rich, poor, ignorant or intellectual, orthodox or materialists the beautiful mature face is rarer than a white blackbird in ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... only a trained ear, but keen feeling and taste for bird songs. He was quick to express preferences, and at once picked out the song of the English blackbird as being the best of the bird songs we heard. I have always had the same feeling about the blackbird's song. I do not say it is better than the songs of American birds, which I have not heard, and I think Colonel Roosevelt thought one or two of the American ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey
... Blackbirds are injurious chiefly because they gather in such large flocks that when they descend on a field they can eat a large amount of grain in a short space of time. The greatest good accomplished by the blackbird is in the spring when it follows the plow in search of grub-worms, of which it is extremely fond. It also does much good in destroying insects in the early summer, the young birds being fed almost entirely on insect food until they ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... feathered songsters sing before February it is a sign of hard, ungenial weather. This applies particularly to the blackbird and throstle. The following ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... asked her how she felt, but she would not deign even to reply; and when a friendly blackbird, who had often picked grubs off her leaves, came and sang to her, she kept silent: a Rosa Indica was far ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... King was in his counting-house, Counting out his money; The Queen was in the parlor, Eating bread and honey; The maid was in the garden Hanging out the clothes; When up came a blackbird And nipped off her nose. (At this ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... spring forests,'" she cried, "'you must find your fun'—are those the words of the song, Margot?—Oh, look, look!" she pointed joyously to a blackbird on top the swaying maple outside her window. He whistled—she ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... gold, the ever-changing hues of the morning, the surface of the lake was as smooth as her mirror and, like it, always reflecting beauty. Fish leaped forth and fell with a sounding splash, and the circles would widen and gradually vanish. A blackbird dipped among the silent rushes; a young fox barked importantly; a hawk flashed by. The mists swam hither and thither mysteriously, growing thinner and fainter as the gold of day grew brighter and clearer. Suddenly—in ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... would linger there, listening to the pleading passion of the blackbird's note, the thrush's call to joy and hope. He loved her gentle ways. From the bold challenges, the sly glances of invitation flashed upon him in the street or from some neighbouring table in the cheap luncheon room he had always shrunk confused and awkward. Her shyness gave him confidence. It ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... tall, fine woman of forty years old. Her hair was thick and dark, her eyes a wondrous big pair and so grey as the mist, and her voice to poor Jane's was like a blackbird against a guinea-fowl. Farmer, he dropped in the shop pretty often to pass the time of day and measure her up; and for her part being a man-loving sort of woman, who had lost a good husband, but didn't see no very stark cause why she ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... of speckled starlings flew into a tree, not recognising Evelyn and Monsignor, but the blackbirds and thrushes were tamer and ran in front, watching the visitors with round, thoughtful eyes, the beautiful shape of the blackbird showing against the white background, and everybody admiring his golden bill and legs. The sparrows flew about Sister Mary John in a little cloud, until they were driven away by three great gulls ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... a stone from the roadside and aimed it at the slimy little body, but his throw erred, and the missile fell harmlessly into the wheat field beyond, startling a blackbird with scarlet marks, which soared suddenly above the bearded grain and vanished, with a tremulous cry and a flame of outstretched wings, ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... eat animal food in any form, and might not be rightly classified as a grain-eating bird, Prof. Stearns said the crow was thus classified by reason of the structure of its crop being similar to that of the finches, the blackbird, the sparrows, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... coloured sand, pounded fragments and pebbles, that, as soon as they were dry, became as dull and homely as the flints upon a garden path. I have toiled at this childish pleasure for hours in the strong sun, conscious of my incurable ignorance; but too keenly pleased to be ashamed. Meanwhile, the blackbird (or his tropical understudy) would be fluting in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The blackbird also craves a boon, Says "Bring a cherry, bring a cherry, soon, soon, soon;" And there in answer to his call The cherry blooms ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... There I was born, and when this life is o'er I hope to sleep upon the river's shore. There is the orchard which I helped to rear, It well repays my labor year by year: One apple tree towers high above the rest Where every spring a blackbird has its nest. Sweet Lily used to stand beneath the bough And smiling listen—but she comes not now. A fairer bird ne'er charmed the rising day Than she we loved thus early called away; But she is gone to sing her holy strains In lovelier ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... common fowls, ostriches, and a bird larger than our blackbird[53]; also storks, which latter are birds of passage, and arrive in the spring and disappear at the approach of winter; ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... said: 'When I was a young chap knocking about in Connemara, I often heard songs about the Stuarts, and talk of them and of the blackbird coming over the water. But they found it hard to get over James making off after the Battle of the Boyne.' And another says of James: 'They liked him well before he ran; they didn't ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... in the ebbing bayou, we looked and listened. There were sounds of sibilant dripping in the dim sedges; of alewives jumping by the side of our boat; of a sudden rush of blackbird wings; and of the evening breeze as it freshened in the bending blades. We could see the many rivulets, wine-red now in the sunset light; and the graceful swaying of great grasses, pale green and silver and tan; and the red and golden sky above: ebbing rivulets, rippling reeds, drifting ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... thoughtful members of the class instantly pronounced against it; while after a little consideration, two or three made answer that it might very well be, that, while without doubt the bird had originally obtained this name from its blackness, yet 'blackbird' was now the name of a species, and a name so cleaving to it, as not to be forfeited, even when the blackness had quite disappeared. We do not question the right of the 'New Forest' to retain this title of New, though it has now stood for eight hundred years; nor of 'Naples' to be New City (Neapolis) ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... and were made whole; that once on receiving his food in a basket, let down to his otherwise inaccessible cell, the devil vainly tried to vex him by breaking the rope; that once Satan, assuming the form of a blackbird, nearly blinded him by the flapping of his wings; that once, too, the same tempter appeared as a beautiful Roman girl, to whose fascinations, in his youth, St. Benedict had been sensible, and from which he now hardly escaped by rolling ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... only left the bantams, on which they must have found but desperate little eating, and the muffed one, I would have cared less; it being from several circumstances a pet one in the family, having been brought in a blackbird's cage by the carrier from Lauder, from my wife's mother, in a present to Benjie on his birth-day. The creature almost grat himself blind, when he heard of our having seen it roasting in a string by the legs before ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... know him; he's as suspicious as a blackbird," replied Rigou. "He is not a man at all, that priest; he doesn't care for women; I can't find out that he has any passion; there's no point at which one can attack him. The general lays himself open by his temper. A man with a vice is the servant of his enemies ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... developed into "purple emperors," or spread "the tiger moth's deep damasked wings" before the enraptured eyes of the noble poet. These two caterpillars and a few house-flies are all I saw, heard, or felt, by day or night, of the native fauna of England, except a few birds,—rooks, starlings, a blackbird, and the larks of Salisbury Plain just as they rose; for I lost sight of them almost immediately. I neither heard nor saw the nightingales, to my great regret. They had been singing at Oxford a short time before my visit to that place. The only song ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... for the greatness of the heat of the hero. And Mane addressed him three times in like manner, whose man he was? "Conchobar's man, and do not provoke me. For if thou provokest me any longer I will strike thy head off thee as one strikes off the head of a blackbird!" "No easy thing," quoth Mane, "to speak to these two." Thereupon Mane leaves them and tells his ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... bright and warm, the air was full of an invigorating freshness which soon made the girls' faces look like rosy apples, and their spirits as gay as if they had been stealing sips of new cider through a straw. Jack whistled like a blackbird as he swung and bumped about, Frank orated and joked, Merry and Molly ran races to see who would fill and empty fastest, and Jill sung to Boo, who reposed in a barrel, ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... secure in the possession of an inexhaustible supply of food, sport and prosper among the reeds. The ostrich, greater bustard, the common and red-legged partridge and quail, find their habitat on the borders of the desert; while the thrush, blackbird, ortolan, pigeon, and turtle-dove abound on every side, in spite of daily onslaughts from eagles, hawks, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and reads Wordsworth, till the policeman turns her off. This is another of her favourite spots." He indicated with a look of concentrated disgust the avenue where we were standing. "This is where she likes to finish up. She comes here to listen to a blackbird." ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... the rustle of birds through the branches, and the dreamy murmur of waters lost in deepest woods, and all the fairy echoes whispering when the leaves are motionless in the noonday heat; then followed notes, cool and soft as the drip of summer showers on the parched grass, and then the song of the blackbird sounding as clearly as it sounds in long silent spaces of the evening, and then in one sweet jocund burst the multitudinous voices that hail the breaking of the morn. And the lark, singing and soaring above the minstrel, sank mute and ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... "Not yet! Maybe he isn't coming here this summer." Mr. Blackbird liked to tease little Mr. Chippy. And generally when he ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... showers or sunbeams over the glistening lake, while far beneath its surface a murky mass disengages itself from the muddy bottom, and rises slowly through the waves. The tasselled alder-branches droop above it; the last year's blackbird's nest swings over it in the grapevine; the newly-opened Hepaticas and Epigaeas on the neighboring bank peer down modestly to look for it; the water-skater (Gerris) pauses on the surface near it, casting on the shallow bottom the odd shadow of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... skimmed over its glassy surface, or dipped in search of its finny prey, and here and there a heron might be detected standing in some shallow nook, and feasting on the smaller fry. A flight of cawing rooks were settling upon the tall trees on the right bank, and the voices of the thrush, the blackbird, and other feathered songsters burst in redundant melody from the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty. To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, which I went to see. He tells me he was offered 20s. for him as he came along, he do so whistle. So to my office, and busy all the morning, among other things, learning to understand the course of the tides, and I think I do now do it. At noon Mr. Creed ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... bound for Nassau; its blackbird crew spoke English and they willingly helped the strangers overside, laughing and shouting in a child-like display of excitement. How firm, how grateful was the feel of that stout deck! How safe the schooner's measured roll! O'Reilly's knees gave way, he clutched with strained and aching ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... from the narrow window-ledges of a straw-roofed cottage; the music gave to their blinking old eyes the same dreamy look we had read in the ruminating cattle orbs. For an aeronaut on his way to bed, I should have felt, had I been in that blackbird's plumed corselet, that I had ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... always say; they're all alike; no more idea o' savin' anything than a skunk-blackbird! I can't spare any money for gew-gaws, and you might as well understand it first as last. Go up attic and open the hair trunk by the winder; you'll find plenty there to last you for ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... hear the lark's ecstatic gush From his clear ambush in the sky; A blackbird (if it's not a thrush) Sings from a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... wonderful depths of Craythew Park, and of birds there was no end. There were game birds and song birds, from the handsome pheasants to the modest little partridges, the royalists and the puritans of the woods, from the love-lorn wood-pigeon, cooing in the tall firs, to the thrush and the blackbird, making long hops as they quartered the ground for grubs; and the robin, the linnet, and little Jenny Wren all lived there in riotous plenty of worms and snails; and nearer to the great house the starlings and jackdaws shot down in a great hurry from the holes in old trees where they ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... a bright and beautiful afternoon in March, the song of the blackbird and thrush, and the loud chirp of the titmouse, came merrily through the schoolroom window, mixed with the sounds of happy voices in the garden; the western sun shone brightly in, and tinged the white wainscoted wall with yellow light; the cat sat in the window-seat, winking at the sun, and ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hotly, came into the house, and began to re-arrange the teacups with a nervous haste; for she heard Jamie's steps on the rocky road, and his voice, clear as a blackbird's, whistling gayly "In the Bay ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... arm, she started for her walk. As soon as she was out of sight she began to run. Presently she stopped and began whistling "The Wearing of the Green," which was responded to in a moment by another voice, sweet as that of a blackbird. She looked to right and left, and presently saw a pair of laughing black eyes looking down at her from beneath the shelter of ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... a deer-skin pegged out on the ground to dry, a bundle of faggots, a bare and blackened patch of grass, strewn with wood ashes, were tokens of recent habitation, though the reiterations of the nightingale, the deep tones of the blackbird and the hum of insects, were the only ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but each garment of a different material, the stockings silk, the breeches satin, the doublet soft Flanders velvet. Golden-yellow puffs and slashes stood forth in beautiful relief against the darker stuff. Even the knots of ribbon on the breeches and shoes were as yellow as a blackbird's beak. Delicate lace trimmed the neck and fell on the hands, and a clasp of real gems confined the black and yellow plumes in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... tranquil, looked the old monastic fane, that none would have deemed its midnight rest had been broken by the impious rites of a foul troop. The choir, where the unearthly scream and the demon laughter had resounded, was now vocal with the melodies of the blackbird, the thrush, and other songsters of the grove. Bells of dew glittered upon the bushes rooted in the walls, and upon the ivy-grown pillars; and gemming the countless spiders' webs stretched from bough to bough, showed they were all unbroken. No traces were ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the corner of a marble bench, gazing with great intentness at a white flower that lay in her lap. It was the warmest and the peacefullest moment of the afternoon. The sun shone steadily; not a leaf stirred, not a shadow wavered; and the intermittent piping of a blackbird, somewhere in the green world overhead, seemed merely to give a kind of joyous rhythm ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... On trees, and all their furniture of green, Training the young boughs airily to bend, And show blue snatches of the sky between;— Or knit more close intricacies, to screen Birds' crafty dwellings, as may hide them best, But most the timid blackbird's—she that, seen, Will bear black poisonous berries to her nest, Lest man should cage the darlings of ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... rode beneath a natural avenue of trees, whose branches met overhead like the arches of a cathedral, and was scarcely conscious of their pleasant shade. She heard neither the song of the wooing thrush, nor the cry of the startled blackbird, nor the evening hymn of the soaring lark. Alike to her was the gorse-covered common, along which they swiftly speeded, and the steep hill-side up which they more swiftly mounted. She breathed not the delicious fragrance of the new-mown hay, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of Kelso."' Mr. Puff forthwith jumped up on a mass of stone, and seating himself in the proper attitude of one working with an awl, began a favourite interlude, mimicking a certain son of Crispin, at whose stall Scott and he had often lingered when they were schoolboys, and a blackbird, the only companion of his cell, that used to sing to him while he talked and whistled to it all day long. With this performance Scott was always delighted. Nothing could be richer than the contrast of the bird's wild, sweet notes, some of which he imitated with wonderful ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... BIRDS.—Handsomely illustrated, and containing full instructions for the management and training of the canary, mocking-bird, bobolink, blackbird, ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... therefore, is probably the choicest in America. She always has from twenty to twenty-five cats, and the cat-lover who obtains one of her kittens is fortunate indeed. A beautiful pair of blacks in Mrs. Locke's cattery have the most desirable shade of amber eyes, and are named "Blackbird" and "St. Tudno"; she has also a choice pair of Siamese cats called "Siam" and ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... having a mind to see it. 'Twas on a clear Spring morning, and a blackbird Awoke me with his warbling near my window: My dream had fashioned this into a song That some one with grey eyes was singing me, And which had drawn me so into myself That all the other shapes of sleep were gone: ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... early morning, reflecting on the ease with which last night's marauding expedition had been conducted. He even pursed his lips together and whistled softly—a low, flute-like sound that might almost have been mistaken for the note of a blackbird. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... of November the wonder had gone out of the life of the settlers. One by one the novelties and beauties of the plain had passed away or grown familiar. The plover and blackbird fell silent. The prairie-chicken's piping cry ceased as the flocks grew toward maturity, and the lark and cricket alone possessed the russet plain, which seemed to snap and crackle in the midnight frost, and to wither away in the ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... gladness in his face, (Silent heart-homage—plant of special grace!) At the lane's entrance, slackening oft his pace, Would Ambrose send a loving look before; Conceiting the caged blackbird at the door, The very blackbird, strain'd its little throat In welcome, with a more rejoicing note; And honest Tinker! dog of doubtful breed, All bristle, back, and tail, but "good at need," Pleasant his greeting to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... back from the war and took the business in '65. I'm not commonly to be met out this late. About fifteen minutes earlier is my time for gettin' back, unless I'm plannin' for a jamboree. But to-night I got to settin' and watchin' that sunset, and listenin' to a darned red-winged blackbird, and I guess Mrs. Higgs has decided to expect me somewheres about noon to-morrow or Friday. Say, did Johnnie send you? "When he found that John had in a measure been responsible for their journey, he filled with gayety. "Oh, Johnnie's a bird!" said he. "He's that ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... accustomed to make engines of one type, to make engines of another type without any intermediate course of training or instruction, and he will make no better figure with his engines than a thrush would do if commanded by her mate to make a nest like a blackbird. It is vain then to contend that the ease and certainty with which an action is performed, even though it may have now become matter of such fixed habit that it cannot be suddenly and seriously modified without rendering the whole performance ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... the rays of the sun. In every tree in the garden a thrush woke up and began to sing; sparrows chirped, jays screamed, blue-tits chattered, and the chiff-chaff uttered his strange note. In the woods a cuckoo called and blackbird fluted to blackbird in the hedge. In the stables the horses awoke and champed at their stalls; the cat jumped down and ran after a mouse which crept out from under the straw. The sentry at the courtyard gate ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... enrich a part of the plain. It was made good for the cultivation of a large tract; although very wild and disorderly cultivation. As we went, every spot within sight was full of interest; rich with associations; the air was warm but pleasant; the warble of the orange-winged blackbird - I don't know if I ought to call it a warble; it was a very fine and strong note, or whistle, - sounding from the rocks as we went by, thrilled me with a wild reminder of all that had once been busy life there, ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... he was not yet half awake. So she went past him on tiptoe to the window, turned the handle, and opened the white tall framework-like door. A gush of air, sweet as wine, laden with the smell of dew and spring flowers and wet lawns, stole in to meet her; and a blackbird, in the shrubbery across the garden, broke into song, interrupted himself, chattered melodiously, and scurried out to vanish in a long curve behind the yews. The very world itself of beast and bird was still but half awake, and from the hamlet outside the fence, beyond ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... and the Cat set off by herself to learn how to be happy, and to be all that a Cat could be. It was a fine sunny morning. She determined to try the meadow first, and, after an hour or two, if she had not succeeded, then to go off to the wood. A Blackbird was piping away on a thornbush as if his heart was running over with happiness. The Cat had breakfasted, and so was able to listen without any mixture of feeling. She didn't sneak. She walked boldly up under ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... out. Roxy had reached home. She was setting the table, and whistling like a blackbird. Things had gone so happily at school! Everything was so neat, and pleasant, and cosy at home! She saw her father ride into the yard, and go to the barn. ...
— Lill's Travels in Santa Claus Land and other Stories • Ellis Towne, Sophie May and Ella Farman
... birds' notes that no one can help noticing its performances. A record has been kept of the variety entertainments provided by the bird. Besides its own calls, whistles, and song, it reproduces the song of the blackbird and thrush absolutely correctly, and mimics with equal nicety the calls of the curlew, the corncrake, and ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... followed it across the moor. The blue falcon flew up in the air and gave a bird-call. Birds gathered and she swooped amongst them pulling feathers off their backs and out of their wings. Soon there was a heap of feathers on the ground—pigeons' feathers and pie's feathers, crane's and crow's, blackbird's and starling's. The King of Ireland's Son quickly gathered them into his bag. The falcon flew to another place and gave her bird-call again. The birds gathered, and she went amongst them, plucking their feathers. The King's ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... here is Rebecca Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and arrows of poplar, tipped with spikes of iron. With these we could not only split our "willow wand" at 80 yards distant, but the more skilful deemed an arrow hardly worth having until it had been baptized in the blood of blackbird or pigeon, and some of the neighbouring pigeon cotes suffered accordingly. The writer was presented with a bow made of bamboo, and arrows said to be poisoned, which a great traveller, then residing in Horncastle, ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... Where the blackbird sings the latest, Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest, Where the nestlings chirp and flee, That's the way for ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... want to know it; if I ain't, it's time my friends knowed it. Anyhow, I'm man enough to work out with some of that gang. Most of them have put it over me one time or another; Sinclair pasted me like a blackbird only the other day. They all say I'm nothing but a damned tramp. You say I have done you service—give me ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... withdrawn, And all the birds were left forlorn, In a hard time of frost and snow, Not knowing where for food to go. He would no longer give them bread, Because he had observ'd (he said) That sometimes to the window came A great blackbird, a rook by name, And took away a small bird's share. So foolish Henry did not care What became of the great rook, That from the little sparrows took, Now and then, as 'twere by stealth, A part of their abundant wealth; Nor ever more would feed his sparrows. Thus ignorance ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... clearing his pipes, chanted forth, in a bold and musical voice, a rude rigmarole called "The Royal Blackbird," which, although of no intrinsic merit, yet, as it expressed sentiments hostile to British connection and British government and favourable to the house of Stewart, was very popular amongst the Catholic peasantry of Ireland, whilst, on the contrary, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... doubtless aware, sir"—he was always scrupulous to assume knowledge on the part of his hearer, no matter how abstruse or technical the subject; it was a phase of his inherent courtesy—"was intended to represent not the cuckoo, but the blackbird. It had a double pipe for the hours, 'Pit-weep! Pit-weep!' and ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... bisekcii. Bishop episkopo. Bismuth bismuto. Bit (piece) peco. Bit (horse) enbusxajxo. Bite mordi. Bitter akra—ema. Bitters vermuto. Bitumen terpecxo. Bivouac bivako. Blab babili. Black nigra. Blackboard nigra tabulo. Black-currant nigra ribo. Black pudding sangokolbaso. Blackbird merlo. Blacken nigrigi. Blackguard sentauxgulo. Blacking ciro. Blackish dubenigra. Blacksmith forgxisto. Bladder veziko. Blade (grass) trunketo. Blade (knife) trancxanto. Blamable mallauxdinda. Blame mallauxdi. Blanch paligxi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... a break in the eastern sky; already here and there a blackbird sang in the garden boughs, and the freshness, the quietude, swept her thoughts back to the Chalet de Lognan. With a great yearning she recalled that evening and the story of the great friendship so quietly related to her in the darkness, ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... operate genially upon the birds,—those children of light and song; and they grouped blithely beneath the window and round the door, where the hand of the kind young spirit of the place had so often ministered to their wants. Every now and then, too, you might hear the shrill glad note of the blackbird keeping measure to his swift and low flight, and sometimes a vagrant hare from the neighbouring preserves sauntered fearlessly by the half-shut door, secure, from long experience, of an asylum in the vicinity of ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... OF HADDA PADDA (She is heard laughing). Shall I stone the raven away from his nest? Beware, you blackbird! (A small stone flies through the air, and falls down ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... say, now, Squire Jones. The quickest way to catch that ar' nigger 's just to lay low and keep whist. He's a pious nigger; and a nigger can't keep his pious a'tween his teeth, no more nor a blackbird can his chattering. The feller 'll feel as if he wants to redeem somebody; and seeing how 'tis so, if ye just watch close some Sunday ye'll nab the fellow with his own pious bait. Can catch a pious runaway nigger 'most any time; the brute never knows enough to keep it to himself," says a flashily ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... have fastened upon her race. The lady in question is—and evidently knows herself to be—an exception among her countrywomen for ability and acumen: an extreme self-satisfaction and vanity are revealed in the recital of her most disreputable tricks. She passes for a white blackbird, a woman of intellect caught in the harem; and it needs but little ingenuity to guess the torment she must have been to her protectors—first to the excellent Dr. Millingen, with whom she formed a love-match, and whom she abuses—and then to her second husband, Kibrizli, ambassador in 1848 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... the signs that the trees hang out.' And she asked me what they were, and I told her to notice next spring that as soon as the birch-leaves opened, the pheasant began to crow and the thrush to sing and the blackbird to whistle; and when the oak-leaves looked their reddest, and not a day before, the whole tribe of finches ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the forest suddenly encompassed them. The morning was pretty far advanced; the merry birds twittered in their dun covert, brushing the dewdrops from the boughs with their restless wings. The thrush and blackbird poured forth a more melancholy note; whilst the timid rabbit, scared from his morning's meal, rushed by and sought his burrow. The wood grew thicker, and the sunbeams that shot previously in broad slopes across their path soon became as lines ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Edna, who, strange to say, could whistle like a blackbird. "You would only have people always telling you, it is not ladylike. I don't know I'm whistling half the time when mamma tells me not to. ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... herself. Kitty, further, had a ridiculous way of eating, which Miss Abingdon could not approve. She ate mere morsels of everything and talked the whole time, very often with the air of a gourmet; and she would lay down her knife and fork, after a meal such as a healthy blackbird might have enjoyed, as though she had finished some aldermanic feast. She accepted a glass of Miss Abingdon's very special claret and never even touched it; and later, in one of the pauses of her elaborate trifling at luncheon, ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... gardens green and bright, and rich in fruity treasure, I've heard the blackbird with delight repeat his merry measure; The ballad was a lively one, the tune was loud and cheery, And yet with every setting sun I ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... tell yer that too, Dad,' she say—Maria did. 'You didn't ought to call 'im 'Artz Mountain roller, but ha-Hartz Mountain roller. That's the way to call 'im,' she says—impident little 'ussy! But there—what's in a name, as the white blackbird said when 'e sat on a wooden milestone eating a red blackberry? Still, 'e weren't running a live-stock emporium, I expect, when 'e ask such a question as that 'ere. There's a good deal in 'ow you call a bird, or a dawg or a guinea-pig ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... seem "stuck up" to successful captains of industry only too ready with the hand of friendship, the iron grip indeed of friendship, consciously hospitable and eager for admission and endorsements. And Princhester in particular was under the sway of that enterprising weekly, The White Blackbird, which was illustrated by, which indeed monopolized the gifts of, that brilliant young ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... to look at them, and he longed to touch them, to hold them in his palm, to put them against his lips. But he looked at his big, hard hands, and then at the flowers, and so, shaking his head, walked on. The blackbird was piping and the missel-thrush singing in one or two of her seven languages, and John felt the spring joy stirring in his own heart to melody. He sat in the singing-pew at St. Penfer Chapel, and he had a noble voice, so he shook the ashes out of his pipe, and clasping ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... ivy there was a nest lined with grass, and in the nest there were three eggs—pale-green with reddish spots. And Diarmait knew the bird and knew the eggs, and he told the Abbot, who came noiselessly, and looked with a great love at the open house and the three eggs of the mother blackbird. ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... different Berkeley, Grantley, and Landor Berington's Middle Ages Berti Palazzo, in Florence, Bezzi, Signor A. and Landor Bible, persecution for reading the Bier, open, used in Florence Biglow Papers, Lowell's Biographies, G. Eliot on Birmingham, my return from Blackbird, Song of the Black Down, Tennyson's house at Black Forest, Leweses in the Blackwood's Magazine, Mary Mitford on Blagden, Isa, Miss her poems her death note from Lewes inquires after and George Eliot Blandford Square, Leweses at Blaze ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... accustomed carol of the bird,—as the mew of the Cat-Bird, the lamb-like bleating of the Veery and his impatient yeoick, the chaip of the Meadow-Lark, the towyee of the Chewink, the petulant psit and tsee of the Red-Winged Blackbird, and the hoarse cooing of the Bobolink. And with some of our most familiar birds the variety of notes is so great as really to promise difficulties in the American department of the bird-lexicon. I have watched two Song-Sparrows, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... in full cry after an old blackbird (who was evidently used to the thing and enjoyed the fun, for he would wait till they came close to him, and then fly on for forty yards or so, and, with an impudent flicker of his tail, dart into the depths of the quickset), came beating down ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... she said, and heard His mate the blackbird calling, While through the sheen of the garden green May rain was softly ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... Head ought to get the V.C.," said Stalky. "Why, he might have been dead and buried by now. But he wasn't. But he didn't. Ho! ho! He just nipped through the hedge like a lusty old blackbird. Extra-special, five hundred lines, an' gated for ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... had heard all and made a rush for the door, where they stood behind Mrs. Steiner, gazing with intense interest at the tall, dark man who had such piercing black eyes and a moustache so large that Fritz told his aunt afterward that it looked as if a blackbird had lighted upon his upper lip and spread ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... vine-leaves of the arbour; the ripe barley swayed at intervals; a blackbird was singing. And, casting glances around them, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... twenty-one he had already written his "Tancredi" and the opera buffa, "The Italians in Algiers." His best work (besides "William Tell") was "The Barber of Seville." Other works are "Cinderella" (La Cenerentola), "The Thieving Blackbird" (La Gazza Ladra), "Moses," and "The Lady of the Lake." These operas were mostly made up of parts of others that were failures, a la Hasse. An engagement being offered him in London, he went there with his wife, and in one season they earned about two hundred ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... of a hen blackbird without any trace of feathers on its neck or back is reported by a Worcester ornithologist. The attempt on the part of this bird to follow our present fashions ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... inspired him. The word "inspired" offended him; I withdrew it; I said that he had been fortunate in his model, and he admitted that: to see that thin, olive-complexioned girl with fine delicate features and blue-black hair lying close about her head like feathers—she wore her hair as a blackbird wears his wing—compelled one to paint; and after admiring the face I admired the black silk dress he had painted her in, a black silk dress covered with black lace. She wore grey pearls in her ears, and pearls ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... to door is apparently intended to convey to each house a portion of its virtues, while the actual eating of the bird would be a sort of communion feast. Perhaps the custom, in a Cornish village, of eating blackbird pie on Twelfth Day should be explained in ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... of this little book, is an educated Indian, son of the Ottawa Chief. His Indian name is Mack-aw-de-be-nessy (Black Hawk), but he generally goes by the name of "Blackbird," taken from the interpretation of the French "L'Oiseau noir." Mr. Blackbird's wife is an educated and intelligent white woman of English descent, and they have four children. He is a friend of the white people, as well as of his own people. ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... trysted, here they strayed, In the leafage dewy and boon, Many a man and many a maid, And the morn was merry June: 'Death is fleet, Life is sweet,' Sang the blackbird in the may; And the hour with flying feet While they dreamed ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... brought into the world but for whose salvation she was responsible. No doubt she had put up a hard fight for him and had every reason to be satisfied, though Gabrielle shared the honours of the mother's triumph in her own defeat. We sat there talking until all the birds were silent, but a single blackbird that made a noise in the shrubbery like that of two pebbles knocked sharply together; until the young people on the tennis court could no longer see to play, and the tall Californian poppies at the back ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... counts: a blackbird sings in the garden. Mrs Bridgenorth puts The Times down in her lap and ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... perhaps well decked out with fortune's favors, passes us, "She is not a lady," and every one will know what we mean. The phrase "vulgar lady," therefore, is an absurdity; there is no such thing; as well talk of a white blackbird; the term is self-contradictory. If she is vulgar, she is not a lady; but there is such a thing as a vulgar woman, and it is a very ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Robin-redbreast! Sing, birds, in every furrow; And from each hill, let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow! You pretty elves, amongst yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow; To give my Love good-morrow Sing birds, in ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... next from a young pig in a dish placed before Mr. Dinsmore, and the song of the blackbird from a pie Grandma Elsie was beginning ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... eyes slowly closing once more; he was not yet half awake. So she went past him on tiptoe to the window, turned the handle, and opened the white tall framework-like door. A gush of air, sweet as wine, laden with the smell of dew and spring flowers and wet lawns, stole in to meet her; and a blackbird, in the shrubbery across the garden, broke into song, interrupted himself, chattered melodiously, and scurried out to vanish in a long curve behind the yews. The very world itself of beast and bird was still ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... landscape lovers, the beasts, birds, and insects of Nature were dear to these ancient people. One of the things Finn most cared for was not only his hounds, but the "blackbird singing on Letterlee"; and his song, on page 114, in the praise of May, tells us how keen was his observant eye for animal life and how much it delighted him. The same minute realisation of natural objects is illustrated in this book when King Iubdan explains to the servant ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... see," he said, in the same slow, hopeless voice. "I forgot you men don't come down here very often and that my driver never has anything to say to anybody. Why, it's the Blackbird mine over across the divide—on the east spur. Bad, old fashioned mine she was, with crawlin' ground. Lime streaks all through the formation and plenty of water. Nobody quite knows how it happened. There was a big slip over there a few days ago on the four-hundred-foot level. Thirty ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... sun was rising heavenwards; down the street past the Almshouses he heard the happy sound of a young girl laughing. The world was full of strange new things; there was a new meaning in the song of the blackbird, in the rustle of the leaves, in the whispering of the warm wind. And suddenly there came over him a sensation of how far he himself was below the splendour of it all. He had walked through life with blinded ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... herself to be—an exception among her countrywomen for ability and acumen: an extreme self-satisfaction and vanity are revealed in the recital of her most disreputable tricks. She passes for a white blackbird, a woman of intellect caught in the harem; and it needs but little ingenuity to guess the torment she must have been to her protectors—first to the excellent Dr. Millingen, with whom she formed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... spent bullet! A bullet? Nonsense—it's a blackbird! Curious how similar the sound was! The blackbirds and the birds of softer song, the countryside and the pageant of the seasons, the intimacy of dwelling-rooms, arrayed in light—Oh! the war will end soon; we shall go back ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... explained Firetop, "and all the big people had gone off hunting, and we thought we'd go too. We thought we knew where we could find some roots. So we hid ourselves and waited until Robin and Blackbird and Squaretoes had gone down to the river to hunt frogs, and then we ran back into the woods." Robin and Blackbird and Squaretoes were the ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... and tousled the thick curls in his favorite caress. One of the tresses caught in his jewelled ring; and as he bent to unfasten it, he stared at the wavy mass in lazy surprise. It was as soft and rich as the breast of a blackbird, and the fire had laid over it a sheen ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... seats—and we That through the open window saw the ridge Of Fergus, and the peak Of utmost Cior Mohr—nor held it wrong, When vext with platitude and stirless air, To watch the mist-wreaths clothe the rock-scarps bare And in the pauses hear the blackbird's song. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... quite a fancy for cooking. No doubt you'll hear Forsyth and Joe say that I've half-pisoned them four or five times, but that's all envy; besides, a feller can't learn a trade without doin' a little damage to somebody or something at first. Did you ever taste blackbird pie?" ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... another high bluff, not many miles from the cedar post of poor Floyd, that is well known as the burial-place of Blackbird, a famous chief of the O-ma-haw tribe; the manner of his burial was extremely strange. As I was pulling up the river, a traveller told me the story; and, when I had heard it, we pushed our canoe into a small creek, ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... carelessness that had the laugh of ridicule in it. He loved to make her voice go high and shouting and defiant with laughter. The baby was dark-skinned and dark-haired, like the mother, and had hazel eyes. Brangwen called him the blackbird. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... de blackbird' nes', De baby love' his mamy's bres', An' raggy-tag, aw spick-an'-span, De ladies loves de ladies' man. I loves to roll my eyes to de ladies! I loves to sympathize wid de ladies! As long as eveh I knows sugah f'om san' I's bound to be a ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... certainly are. We took dinner with Mr. Vanwart, brother-in-law to Washington Irving, and shall not soon forget the elegant hospitality of his mansion. He resides about two miles from the town; and his lawn gave us a fine view of the English thrush and blackbird, of which birds there were plenty on the grass. It was so cold that we had to have fires, although the 19th of July. Mr. Vanwart was one of the saved, when the Atlantic was lost in the Sound, November 26, 1846; and he made the kindest inquiries after you and the family, and said that when he ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... had accompanied them to the big meadow. Nebbie also knew that presently that same master of his would return again to make the circuit of the garden in the company of Bainton, according to custom,—and as he stretched his four hairy paws out comfortably, and blinked his brown eyes at a portly blackbird prodding in the turf for a worm within a stone's throw of him, he was evidently considering whether it would be worth his while, as an epicurean animal, to escort these two men on their usual round on such a warm pleasant morning. For it was ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... evolved by love from the more brutal courtships of battle display.[60] The characteristic features of the amatory dances of birds are well known; they may be witnessed frequently during the pairing season. The male blackbird, for instance, is full of action as he woos his mate; he flirts his tail, spreads his glossy wings, hops and turns; chases the hen, and all the time chuckles with delight. Similar antics are performed by the whitethroat. The male redwing, again, struts about before his female, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... business again, after a small playing the truant, for I find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty. To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, which I went to see. He tells me he was offered 20s. for him as he came along, he do so whistle. So to my office, and busy all the morning, among other things, learning to understand the course of the tides, and I think I do now ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Grumbelo strode angrily out of the garden. He mounted his horse and allowed it to take him wherever it would, for he had no idea where the Wise Woman of the Wood lived, and one way was as good as another. Towards sundown, a blackbird hopped on to his horse's head and sang to him, and something in its song so reminded the King of Lady Whimsical's laughter that he put out his hand to caress it. No sooner did he touch it, however, than ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... to which of them could throw a stone farthest. The stakes were four deer. One giant, called Goli, carried a bird in his hand and threw it instead of the stone; so he won; then he returned to where the Blackbird and the Crow were standing. The Blackbird said to the Crow, "They will not do us any harm until they stoop to pick up a stone." But the Crow replied, "Maybe they bring the stone in their hands." So they flew away, and while they were flying the Crow said, "I am going to the mountain to ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... I often roam I can behold my cot, my humble home; There I was born, and when this life is o'er I hope to sleep upon the river's shore. There is the orchard which I helped to rear, It well repays my labor year by year: One apple tree towers high above the rest Where every spring a blackbird has its nest. Sweet Lily used to stand beneath the bough And smiling listen—but she comes not now. A fairer bird ne'er charmed the rising day Than she we loved thus early called away; But she is gone to sing her holy strains In lovelier gardens ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... haw an' the rowan tree, Wild roses speck our thicket sae breery; Still, still will our walk in the greenwood be— O, Jeanie, there 's naething to fear ye! List when the blackbird o' singing grows weary, List when the beetle-bee's bugle comes near ye, Then come with fairy haste, Light foot, an' beating breast— O, Jeanie, there 's naething ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... had I Philomela's tongue, The thrush's note, or warbling song Of blackbird, lark, or linnet; I'd then more gratitude display, Striving to raise a sweeter lay, I'd sing the fleeting hours away, Nor silent be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... the less, from Song's excess, Sings the blackbird late and early: Nor the bobolink's trill the less Laughs for very happiness, Gurgling ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... United States. In General Harrison's day he was United States Indian agent at Fort Wayne, but was killed in the massacre of Fort Dearborn, in 1812, by the faithless bands of Potawatomi under the chief Blackbird. ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... broom To bind thy flowing hair; For thee the eglantine shall bloom, Whose fragrance fills the air. We'll sit beside yon wooded knoll, To hear the blackbird sing, And fancy in his merry troll The joyous voice ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... in search of its finny prey, and here and there a heron might be detected standing in some shallow nook, and feasting on the smaller fry. A flight of cawing rooks were settling upon the tall trees on the right bank, and the voices of the thrush, the blackbird, and other feathered songsters burst in redundant ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Hubbard, who claimed the crow would eat animal food in any form, and might not be rightly classified as a grain-eating bird, Prof. Stearns said the crow was thus classified by reason of the structure of its crop being similar to that of the finches, the blackbird, the sparrows, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... upon two fat sparrows, and again we had a blackbird for dinner. He had killed it that morning from his window, while shaving, for I saw the lather dried on the stock ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... the use of such rooms. It is interesting to note also in the first case that in her wildest delirium during an acute attack she lived through episodes of her past life. One example may be given. In the course of her delirium she thought that a "blackbird" had flown to her, touched her left wrist and taken away all her vitality. This depended on an experience of her going to Germany when a girl and meeting a young German officer whom she did not like. A few years later she went to Germany and met the officer again. ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... blue sky and took a seat on a convenient dead tree, where he could see all that went on. Ol' Mistah Buzzard began to grin as soon as he saw that tin pail on Buster's neck. Then came others,—Redtail the Hawk, Scrapper the Kingbird, Redwing the Blackbird, Drummer the Woodpecker, Welcome Robin, Tommy Tit the Chickadee, Jenny Wren, Redeye the Vireo, and ever so many more. They came from the Old Orchard, the Green Meadows, and even down by the Smiling Pool, for the voices of Sammy Jay and Blacky the Crow carried far, and at the sound of them everybody ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as of her own. The full amount of her mischiefs often does not appear at once, as she is glib of tongue, adroit in apologies, and lies with as much alertness and as little thought of conscience as a blackbird chatters. It is difficult for people who have been trained from childhood in the school of verities,—who have been lectured for even the shadow of a prevarication, and shut up in disgrace for a lie, till truth becomes a habit of their souls,—it ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for there was plenty of time before five o'clock, and he stopped every few moments to examine some wayside plant, and to listen with the ardor of a true lover of nature to the merry voices of the thrush and blackbird singing a ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... slime, and stagnant water. Frogs and turtles warming their backs in the sunshine scampered in alarm from their logs. Lizards blinked at him. Moccasin snakes darted wicked forked tongues at him and then glided out of reach of his tomahawk. The frogs had stopped their deep bass notes. A swamp-blackbird rose in fright from her nest in the saw-grass, and twittering plaintively fluttered round and round over the pond. The flight of the bird worried Wetzel. Such little things as these might attract the attention of some Indian scout. But he hoped that in the excitement ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... fully developed; not strikingly beautiful, but with a lovely reddish-brown tint on her face, indicative of healthy, warm, rich pulsations. She possessed a contralto voice, of a quality like that of a blackbird, and it fell to her and to Frank to sing. She was dressed in a fashion perhaps a little more courtly than was usual in the gatherings at Mr Palmer's house, and Frank, as he stood beside her at the piano, could not restrain his eyes from straying every now and then a way ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... yer that too, Dad,' she say—Maria did. 'You didn't ought to call 'im 'Artz Mountain roller, but ha-Hartz Mountain roller. That's the way to call 'im,' she says—impident little 'ussy! But there—what's in a name, as the white blackbird said when 'e sat on a wooden milestone eating a red blackberry? Still, 'e weren't running a live-stock emporium, I expect, when 'e ask such a question as that 'ere. There's a good deal in 'ow you call a bird, or a dawg or a guinea-pig neither, if you want to pass 'im on to a customer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... or purple grackle (Quiscalus quiscula). Blackbird, European. Bluebird (Sialia sialis). Bobolink (Dodichonyx oryzivorus). Buzzard, or ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... think that whatever he was doing was a thing of vast importance. Peter became very clever at helping the birds to build their nests; soon he could build better than a wood-pigeon, and nearly as well as a blackbird, though never did he satisfy the finches, and he made nice little water-troughs near the nests and dug up worms for the young ones with his fingers. He also became very learned in bird-lore, and knew an east wind from a west wind by its smell, and he could see the grass growing ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... that language is Poetry. Here annually, from year to year, I had renewed my friendship with the first primroses and violets, and listened with the untiring ear of love to the spring roundelay of the blackbird, whistled from among his bower of May blossoms. Here, I had discoursed sweet words to the tinkling brook, and learned from the melody of waters the music of natural sounds. In these beloved solitudes all the holy emotions which stir the human heart in its ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... and adventures of Marina, Celadyne, Redmond, Fida, Philocel, Aletheia, Metanoia, and Amintas do not hold the reader from delight in descriptions of the blackbird and dove calling from the dewy branches; crystal streams lisping through banks purple with violets, rosy with eglantine, or sweet with wild thyme; thickets where the rabbits hide; sequestered nooks on which the elms and alders throw long shadows; circles of green grass made by dancing elves; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the human lark or thrush that he "shake out his carols" in the same free and spontaneous manner as his winged prototype? Kingsley has shown how surely the old minnesingers and early ballad-writers have learned of the birds, taking their key- note from the blackbird, or the wood-lark, or the throstle, and giving utterance to a melody as simple and unstudied. Such things as the following were surely caught from the ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... sheet of water. And he had on his person garments of a wonderful make; these clothes of mine are by no means beautiful like those. And his face was wonderful to behold; and his voice was calculated to gladden the heart; and his speech was pleasant like the song of the male blackbird. And while listening to the same I felt touched to my inmost soul. And as a forest in the midst of the vernal season, assumes a grace only when it is swept over by the breeze, so, O father! he of an excellent and pure smell ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... blue above throbs with the tremulous song of innumerable larks; the measured chant of cuckoos awakens the woods; and through the thickets a whole world's gladness sings itself forth from the throat of thrush and blackbird. Through the whole land between the four seas benediction is everywhere; blue-bells and the rosy fingers of heath deck the mountain-tops, where the grouse are crooning to each other among the whins; down the hillsides into every valley pour gladness and greenness and song; ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... and his humanity was not for humanity alone. He abhorred the dull and savage joy of the sportsman in a lucky shot, an unerring aim, and once when I met him in the country he had just been sickened by the success of a gunner in bringing down a blackbird, and he described the poor, stricken, glossy thing, how it lay throbbing its life out on the grass, with such pity as he might have given a wounded child. I find this a fit place to say that his mind and soul were with those who do the hard work of the world, in fear of those ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was mistaken. Sally never did know what she was about,—had no plan or purpose more than a blackbird; and when Moses was gone laughed to think how many times she had made him ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... roam. And so it was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue: from a dewy copse dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note: the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers: a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude a boat slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... last night. At dusk the squalid toad was seen, Hopping and crawling o'er the green; The whirling wind the dust obeys, And in the rapid eddy plays; The frog has changed his yellow vest, And in a russet coat is dressed. Though June, the air is cold and still, The mellow blackbird's voice is shrill. My dog, so altered in his taste, Quits mutton-bones on grass to feast; And see yon rooks, how odd their flight, They imitate the gliding kite, And seem precipitate to fall, As if they felt the piercing ball. 'Twill surely rain, I see with sorrow, Our ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... starling," I said. "Can't you see its nice shiny black-and-green plumage, and its yellow bill like a blackbird? Leave the poor little thing ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... tangled branches every now and then to get through, and all the time looking carefully round for nests. They very soon heard the harsh cry of the jay, who was letting all the inhabitants of the woodlands know that enemies were at hand, and away flew the birds. The blackbird was the first to take the alarm from the jay, and away he flew, crying, "Kink, kink, kink," as he started from his nest in a great ivy tod on an old pollard-tree. The lads soon found the nest, and peeped in, but instead of eggs there were four wretched-looking little objects, all eyes and beak, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... met their hunting parties on Minnesota river. Toward the end of the eighteenth century they were nearly destroyed by smallpox, their number having been reduced from about 3,500 to but little over 300 when they were visited by Lewis and Clark, their famous chief Blackbird being one of those carried off by the epidemic. Subsequently they increased in numbers; in 1890 their population was about 1,200. They are now on reservations, mostly owning land in severalty, and are citizens of the United States and of ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... what a thankful gladness in his face, (Silent heart-homage—plant of special grace!) At the lane's entrance, slackening oft his pace, Would Ambrose send a loving look before; Conceiting the caged blackbird at the door, The very blackbird, strain'd its little throat In welcome, with a more rejoicing note; And honest Tinker! dog of doubtful breed, All bristle, back, and tail, but "good at need," Pleasant his greeting to the accustomed ear; But of all welcomes pleasantest, most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... kept singing something about a man named "Sylvester," and he kept singing out the same thing over and over again, till Aunty May said, "Oh, dear, I can't hear myself speak. Edith, will you quiet the blackbird?" And Aunty Edith called to George not to sing so loud, and he said, "Yas, 'm, Miss Edith"; and the next minute it began ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... for nearly a minute. While he waited, I watched a pair of swans flit ghost-like over the silken surface of the lake. Between us and a dark bank of wood the lights of the house flamed red. The melancholy even-song of a blackbird wailed out from a shrubbery beside us. Then Herbert Brande wrote in his note-book, and tearing out the page, he handed it to me, saying: "That is the address of the last ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... home their worm-cheer to the little ones in the nests, and were singing their after-supper songs, very sweetly but drowsily. 'Twas too late in the year for the Nightingale,—that I knew,—but the jolly Blackbird was in full feather and voice; and presently there swept by me a great Owl, going home to feast, I will be bound, in his hollow tree, and with nothing less than a Field Mouse for his supper, the rascal. 'Twas a wicked imagining, but I could not help thinking, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... round baskets on their heads. These baskets contained live fowl. In one a large melancholy turkey meditated on his approaching fate: in another, two of lighter disposition swung their long necks about and viewed the scene. One of these baskets was as pretty as the blackbird pie of famous memory. In it sat eight chickens of an age to make their debut on the platter, all settled into a fluffy, soft-gray cushion, out of which their little heads and necks and half-raised wings peeped and turned and fluttered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... wild, Shall to the skies aspire; The gowdspink, Music's gayest child, Shall sweetly join the choir; The blackbird strong, the lintwhite clear, The mavis mild and mellow; The robin pensive Autumn cheer, In all her ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... he wanted to talk and he could be over-urged to talk if the right pressure was brought to bear. Janice came away, leaving the eagerly curious pecking at him—the one white blackbird ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... lady; the sun has quite set, and the birds are silent and at roost, except the old blackbird, who whistles late, and the wakeful robin, who sometimes bandies music with the nightingale.—Would you ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... spring-time 'tis eerie, when winter is over, And birds should be glinting owre forest and lea, When the lint-white and mavis the yellow leaves cover, And nae blackbird sings loud frae the tap ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Jack Poynter,' returned the man, taking off his paper cap and rubbing up his bristly gray hair. 'We call Jack "The Blackbird" among us; he is a famous whistler, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... red-breast and the wren,' cautiously, suspiciously, picking up a crumb on the wing, with the little keen bright eye fixed on the window; then they would stop for two pecks; then stay till they were satisfied. The shyer birds, tamed by their example, came next; and at last one saucy fellow of a blackbird—a sad glutton, he would clear the board in two minutes,—used to tap his yellow bill against the window for more. How we loved the fearless confidence of that fine, frank-hearted creature! And surely he loved us. I wonder the practice is not more general. 'May! May! naughty May!' She has frightened ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... hazel coppice— A boy and a girl, if the good fates please, Making love, say,— The happier they! Draw yourself up from the light of the moon, And let them pass, as they will too soon, With the bean-flower's boon, And the blackbird's ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... creatures, and where we find one nest, four or five others may be looked for near by. The red-winged blackbird is a mormon in very fact, and often a solitary male bird may be seen guarding a colony of three or four nests, each with an attending female. A sentiment of altruism seems indeed not unknown, as I have seen a female give a grub to one of a hungry nestful, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... her little horsehair trunk which she had packed to take to Blossy's, looking in her time-worn silk gown like a rusty blackbird, and, like a bird, she bent her head first to one side and then the other, surveying Abe in his "barrel clothes" with ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... unlike the accustomed carol of the bird,—as the mew of the Cat-Bird, the lamb-like bleating of the Veery and his impatient yeoick, the chaip of the Meadow-Lark, the towyee of the Chewink, the petulant psit and tsee of the Red-Winged Blackbird, and the hoarse cooing of the Bobolink. And with some of our most familiar birds the variety of notes is so great as really to promise difficulties in the American department of the bird-lexicon. I have watched two Song-Sparrows, perched near each other, in whom the spy-glass could show not the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... our domain; and they attract at least their full share of attention, as they strut about the lawns in their glossy clerical suits. One of the gardeners tells me that they sometimes kill the sparrows. I hope they do. The crow blackbird's attempts at song are ludicrous in the extreme, as every note is cracked, and is accompanied by a ridiculous caudal gesture. But he is ranked among the oscines, and seems to know it; and, after all, it is only the common fault ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... punei andu, another variety, has the body and wings of deep crimson, with the head, and extremity of its long indented tail, white; the legs red. It lives on the worms generated in the decayed part of old trees, and is about the size of a blackbird. Of the same size is the burong sawei, a bird of a bluish black colour, with a dove-tail, from which extend two very long feathers, terminating circularly. It seems to be what is called the widow-bird, and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... it. As soon as I got to the trees I stopped and dismounted to enjoy the delightful sensation the shade produced: there out of its power I could best appreciate the sun shining in splendour on the wide green hilly earth and in the green translucent foliage above my head. In the upper branches a blackbird was trolling out his music in his usual careless leisurely manner; when I stopped under it the singing was suspended for half a minute or so, then resumed, but in a lower key, which made it seem ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... well be," went on the garden maid, "but the truth of the matter is that I cannot smell, because a blackbird has ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... the arbors and bees were humming in the flowers. From the fields down along the brook came a blended song of swamp-blackbird and meadow-lark. A clarion-voiced burro split the air with his coarse and homely bray. The sheep were bleating, and a soft baa of little lambs came sweetly to Helen's ears. She went her usual rounds with more than usual zest and thrill. Everywhere was color, activity, life. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... The Blackbird and the Thrush, and charming Nightingale, Whose sweet jug sweetly echoes through every ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... little girl could return now to that "very nice school" where other nice little girls went. She departed every morning beside the Laundryman, tugging at her arm, skipping and chattering like a blackbird in June. Ernestine saw her safely up the school steps and then took the car to her business. Milly, after the housekeeping and her morning duties, walked up town for her daughter and spent most of the afternoons ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... of a whole continent must have been concentrated on this island. Indeed, I doubt if a sweeping together of all the birds of the United States into any two of the largest States would people the earth and air more fully. There appeared to be a plover, a crow, a rook, a blackbird, and a sparrow to every square yard of ground. They know the value of birds in Britain,—that they are the friends, not the enemies, of the farmer. It must be the paradise of crows and rooks. It did me good to see them so much at home about the fields and even in the towns. I was glad also to ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... primroses, and cowslips; all the trees bursting into leaves, and the hedges already clothed with their vernal livery; the mountains covered with flocks of sheep and tender bleating wanton lambkins playing, frisking, and skipping from side to side; the groves resound with the notes of blackbird, thrush, and linnet; and all night long sweet Philomel pours forth her ravishingly delightful song. Then, for variety, we go down to the nymph of Bristol spring, where the company is assembled before ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the lark's ecstatic gush From his clear ambush in the sky; A blackbird (if it's not a thrush) Sings from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... for him, and we let him loose in the plain below. I also picked up a dead bird, of a species common in the desert, with white head or cap, and white tail, except the upper feathers; all the rest, legs and bill, black. It is about the size of a lark, but has a head like a blackbird. We supposed the one found had died from want of water, though it may have been killed by the mother of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... traveller ordinarily delights to linger. She rode beneath a natural avenue of trees, whose branches met overhead like the arches of a cathedral, and was scarcely conscious of their pleasant shade. She heard neither the song of the wooing thrush, nor the cry of the startled blackbird, nor the evening hymn of the soaring lark. Alike to her was the gorse-covered common, along which they swiftly speeded, and the steep hill-side up which they more swiftly mounted. She breathed not the delicious fragrance of the new-mown hay, nor listened to the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... something had not Wenna herself by accident kicked against the missing brooch. As it was, the time lost by this misadventure was grievous to Mabyn, who now insisted on leading the way, and went along through the bushes at a rattling pace. Here and there the belated wanderers startled a blackbird, that went shrieking its fright over to the other side of the valley, but Mabyn was now too much preoccupied to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... emperors," or spread "the tiger moth's deep damasked wings" before the enraptured eyes of the noble poet. These two caterpillars and a few house-flies are all I saw, heard, or felt, by day or night, of the native fauna of England, except a few birds,—rooks, starlings, a blackbird, and the larks of Salisbury Plain just as they rose; for I lost sight of them almost immediately. I neither heard nor saw the nightingales, to my great regret. They had been singing at Oxford a short time before my visit to that place. The only song I heard ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mended at last, Sigurd Jarlsson. It did not appear that the Norman brought you much luck in return for your support." He glanced toward that part of the table where the black locks of Robert the Fearless shone, sleek as a blackbird's wing, in the morning sun. "The Southerner has an overbearing face," he added. "It reminds me of someone I hate, though I cannot ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... pursue her mission of mercy and succour at night. Thus passed some days, and then Jessica's blood grew restless; the narrow room seemed to her stifling and unendurable, and she pined for the open air, as a caged blackbird longs ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... speedy dispersion. So beautiful, so tranquil, looked the old monastic fane, that none would have deemed its midnight rest had been broken by the impious rites of a foul troop. The choir, where the unearthly scream and the demon laughter had resounded, was now vocal with the melodies of the blackbird, the thrush, and other songsters of the grove. Bells of dew glittered upon the bushes rooted in the walls, and upon the ivy-grown pillars; and gemming the countless spiders' webs stretched from bough to bough, showed they were all unbroken. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... snow this morning. Alas! for the deluded birds we have been listening to for days past; thrushes, larks, and as, I believe, blackbirds, though there is a tradition in these parts that no man ever heard the blackbird sing before the 15th of February. I suspect it grew out of the date of St. Valentine's Day. We had some lovely music, however, within doors this morning; and, in spite of the snow and the chill wind, a little fairy of a girl, with her ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... With blushes you adorn, And take the fresh air, whilst linnets prepare A concert on each green thorn; The blackbird and thrush on every bush, And the charming nightingale, In merry vein, their throats do strain To entertain, the jolly train Of those of ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... and cajoled; and, moreover, a strong curiosity to hear and see more of that little passionate bird, fresh from the convent cage. Her gesture and her eyes irresistibly carried him back to old times, though whether to an angry blackbird in the yew-tree alleys at Leurre, or to the eager face that had warned him to save his father, he could not remember with any distinctness. At any rate, he was surprised to find himself thinking so little in comparison ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... colors of a shell Upon the hills, when every little creek Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell, When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak, We shall live well—we shall live ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... thought a Fairy's should be; her eyes were deep and dark as Laddie had said, her hair hung from a part in the middle of her forehead over her shoulders, and if she had been in the sun, it would have gleamed like a blackbird's wing. She was just as Laddie said she would be; she was so much more beautiful than you would suppose any woman could be, I stood there dumbly staring. I wouldn't have asked for any one more perfectly beautiful ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... straw-roofed cottage; the music gave to their blinking old eyes the same dreamy look we had read in the ruminating cattle orbs. For an aeronaut on his way to bed, I should have felt, had I been in that blackbird's plumed corselet, that I had had a gratifyingly ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... till the weeping ended her words, and I was all abashed with shame and pale with anguish. I stole quietly from my lair unheeded of any, save that one damsel said that a rabbit ran in the hedge, and another that a blackbird stirred in the thicket. Behold me, then, that my quest beginneth again amidst the tangle of lies whereinto ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... well that our people should have an opportunity of realising these birds and beasts to themselves, but we are shocked at the notion of giving them a similar aid to the realisation of events which, as we say, concern them more nearly than any others, in the history of the world. A stuffed rabbit or blackbird is a good thing. A stuffed Charge of Balaclava again is quite legitimate; but a stuffed Nativity is, according to Protestant ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... a broken arrow, a deer-skin pegged out on the ground to dry, a bundle of faggots, a bare and blackened patch of grass, strewn with wood ashes, were tokens of recent habitation, though the reiterations of the nightingale, the deep tones of the blackbird and the hum of insects, were the only sounds ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... next to Lady Doraine, and he was as gay as a blackbird, and I heard Octavia saying to Lady Greswold that Carry had better hurry up and get that house in Park Street, or Lady Doraine would have it instead. Then we all went to bed, and Lord Valmond squeezed my hand and looked as silly as anything, and Jane ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... Red-headed Woodpecker Red-bellied Woodpecker Yellow-bellied Sapsucker King Bird Cat Bird Towhee Robin Meadow Lark Prairie Horned Lark Baltimore Oriole Orchard Oriole Whip-poor-will Night Hawk Pigeon Hawk Sparrow Hawk Mourning Dove Rose-breasted Grosbeak Evening Grosbeak Purple Finch Red-winged Blackbird Rusty Blackbird Bobolink Mocking Bird Starling Purple Grackle Humming Bird Yellow-breasted Chat Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Tufted Titmouse Brown Creeper House Wren Marsh Wren Brown Thrasher Wood Thrush Hermit Thrush Wilson Thrush Water Thrush Chimney Swift Bank Swallow Rough-winged ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... to school both ways, saving a dollar and a quarter a month. Have found a cheaper laundry; one dollar more saved. Cut down fruit bill; one dollar more. Blacked my white straw sailor with shoe-blacking, trimmed it with two neckties and an old blackbird badly molted; result perfectly hideous, but the sugar-bowl, clothing, and sundry fund are out of debt and doing well. Had my faded gray dress dyed black, and trimmed the jacket with pieces of my moth-eaten cock's-feather boa; perfectly ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... of striking plumage are the Bluejay, the Bluebird, the Baltimore Oriole, the Scarlet Tanager, the Cedar Waxwing, and Red-winged Blackbird. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... description of solitude, the very reverse of melancholy. Mile after mile have I repeatedly roamed along the outer Pomoerium of those solitary rampires, and encountered perhaps a goatherd and his pretty flock, the tinkle of whose bells formed the only accompaniment to the honey notes of the blackbird:—or, perhaps, in sonorous solemnity, some great Bell would suddenly boom upon the silence, and be taken up in various tones from a hundred quarters, no vestige, mean time, of Minster or Monastery being visible; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Wentworth Higginson The Butterfly Alice Freeman Palmer Fireflies Edgar Fawcett The Blood Horse Bryan Waller Procter Birds Moira O'Neill Birds Richard Henry Stoddard Sea-Birds Elizabeth Akers The Little Beach Bird Richard Henry Dana The Blackbird Frederick Tennyson The Blackbird Alfred Edward Housman The Blackbird William Ernest Henley The Blackbird William Barnes Robert of Lincoln William Cullen Bryant The O'Lincon Family Wilson Flagg The Bobolink Thomas Hill My Catbird William Henry Venable The Herald Crane Hamlin ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... waters lost in deepest woods, and all the fairy echoes whispering when the leaves are motionless in the noonday heat; then followed notes, cool and soft as the drip of summer showers on the parched grass, and then the song of the blackbird sounding as clearly as it sounds in long silent spaces of the evening, and then in one sweet jocund burst the multitudinous voices that hail the breaking of the morn. And the lark, singing and soaring above the minstrel, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... larger than the slight falcon. These powerful birds are flown at herons and hares, and are the only hawks that are fully a match for the fork-tailed kite. The merlin and hobby are both small hawks and fit only for small birds, as the blackbird, &c. The sparrow-hawk may be also trained to hunt; his flight is rapid for a short distance, kills partridges well in the early season, and is the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... homeward through the early morning, reflecting on the ease with which last night's marauding expedition had been conducted. He even pursed his lips together and whistled softly—a low, flute-like sound that might almost have been mistaken for the note of a blackbird. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... silvery, and green, when a breeze of sufficient strength sweeps across it. The larks are so multitudinous that no distinct song can be caught, and amidst the confused melody comes the note of the thrush and the blackbird. A constant under-running accompaniment is just audible in the hum of innumerable insects and the sharp buzz of flies darting past the ear. Only those who live in the open air and watch the fields and sea from hour to hour and day to day know what they are and what they mean. ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... vessel?" said Candace, looking down from the tower of her ample corpulence on the small, quiet man whom she had been fledging with the ample folds of a worsted comforter, out of which his little head and shining bead-eyes looked, much like a blackbird in a nest,—"I de weaker ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... thee surly Winter's flown, That the brook's verge is green;—and bid thee hear, In yon irriguous vale, the Blackbird clear, At measur'd intervals, with mellow tone, Choiring [1]the hours of prime? and call thine ear To the gay viol dinning in the dale, With tabor loud, and bag-pipe's rustic drone To merry Shearer's dance;—or jest retail ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... (She is heard laughing). Shall I stone the raven away from his nest? Beware, you blackbird! (A small stone flies through the air, and falls down near ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... consented to my taking two of them and a blackbird that one of the mountaineers had given me. And so we returned ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... maidens, And among a thousand maidens, Bring the noblest of the hundred, From a thousand unattractive; From the swamp you bring a lapwing, From the hedge you bring a magpie, From the field you bring a scarecrow, From the fallow field a blackbird. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... to break up her whole existence, and render her unfit for her daily task. But now she found that, once more, she had underrated the strength of her own impulses. For some time she resisted, but one day, the sun shone out strong and genial, the budding trees spread their branches to the warm air, a blackbird warbled ecstatically from among the Priory shrubberies, and Hadria passed into the garden ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... an unfrequent sight is to see bare-footed peasant children waiting for their turn to cross the gangway which leads to the New World. Perhaps they have nothing with them but "a pot of shamrock," or a little mountain thrush or orange-billed blackbird, in a wicker cage, to make friends with "beyant the herring-pond." It is very curious, but very Irish, that they do not at all seem to want the sympathy that is lavished upon them by the onlookers. ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... links together some bird- like refrain: but they make up for their want of logic and reflection by the depth of their passion, the perfectness of their harmony with nature. The inspired Swabian, wandering in the pine- forest, listens to the blackbird's voice till it becomes his own voice; and he breaks out, with the very carol ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... And now we hear in woodlands dim Their unarticulated hymn, Now walk through rippling waves of wheat, Now sink in mats of clover sweet, Or see before us from the lawn The lark go up to greet the dawn! All birds that love the English sky Throng round my path when she is by; The blackbird from a neighboring thorn With music brims the cup of morn, And in a thick, melodious rain The mavis pours her mellow strain! But only when my Katie's voice Makes all the listening woods rejoice I hear—with cheeks that flush and pale— ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... made for us bows of lancewood, and arrows of poplar, tipped with spikes of iron. With these we could not only split our "willow wand" at 80 yards distant, but the more skilful deemed an arrow hardly worth having until it had been baptized in the blood of blackbird or pigeon, and some of the neighbouring pigeon cotes suffered accordingly. The writer was presented with a bow made of bamboo, and arrows said to be poisoned, which a great traveller, then residing in Horncastle, had ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... the most verdant and lively of all the family of trees. Here a broad, rude stone steppeth over a lazy spring, oozing its way into grass and weeds; anon a fresh pathway divergeth, you know not whither. Meanwhile the wild blackbird startles across the way and singeth anew in some other shade. To have seen Fiammetta there, stepping in silk attire, like a flower, and the sunlight looking upon her betwixt the branches! I had not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... silence for some time, but as they were dropping down into the hot, dry, treeless foot-hills the ranger turned to explain: "I'm going to leave the main road and whip out over the mesa just above the Blackbird Ranch, so don't be surprised by my change of plan. They are a dubious lot down there at the Blackbird, and have a telephone, so I'd just as soon they wouldn't see us at all. They might send word to Abe. It'll take a little longer, and the road is rougher, but our chances for ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Kelso."' Mr. Puff forthwith jumped up on a mass of stone, and seating himself in the proper attitude of one working with an awl, began a favourite interlude, mimicking a certain son of Crispin, at whose stall Scott and he had often lingered when they were schoolboys, and a blackbird, the only companion of his cell, that used to sing to him while he talked and whistled to it all day long. With this performance Scott was always delighted. Nothing could be richer than the contrast of the bird's wild, sweet notes, some of which he imitated with wonderful skill, and the accompaniment ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
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