"Twitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... happened long before, when they weren't robin red-breasts but only robins. It is a merry, tender sort of story. They twitter it in a chuckling fashion to their children. If you prefer to hear it first-hand, creep out to the nearest holly-bush on almost any Christmas Eve when snow has made the night all pale and shadowy. If the robins have chosen ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson
... twitter; for though he fancied his own heart said it, still his ear-drum rattled, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... oft, beneath my thatch, Shall twitter near her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my meal, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... beautiful, in this part of the Correspondence; but much in a twitter,—the Queen of Sheba, not the sedate Solomon, in prospect of what is coming. He plumes himself a little, we perceive, to his d'Argentals and French Correspondents, on this sublime intercourse he has got into with a Crowned Head, the cynosure of mankind:—-Perhaps even you, my best ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in the shrill chatter as incessant as the twitter of the agitated birds, who found their night snatched from them and hardly knew whether to scold ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the burly little man, with a look of mingled surprise and pity, "my name is not Thompson. It is Twitter— Samuel Twitter, of Twitter, Slime and—, but," he added, checking himself, under a sudden and rare impulse of prudence, "why do you ask my ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... season, the Viceroy was enjoying a shoot on the Maharajah's estates. One evening, as they were dressing for dinner, there came through the stillness of the restful air the "twitter" of a tiger. Do many of my readers know what the "twitter" of a tiger is? It is a sound the Monarch of the Jungle makes and it is just like the twitter of a bird;—in fact, some declare it is only the twitter of a bird. Well, on this particular evening, the tiger ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... They were very plentiful, and so were the turtle-doves, which used to light on the basin-bank, and pick up the grain scattered there from the boats and wagons. One of the apprentices in the printing-office kept a shot-gun loaded beside the press while he was rolling, and whenever he caught the soft twitter that the doves make with their wings, he rushed out with his gun and knocked over two or three of them. He was a good shot, and could nearly always get them in range. When he brought them back, it seemed to my boy that he had committed the unpardonable sin, ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... sleigh-bells accompanied the song, like the twitter of sparrows. His voice echoed through the trees, the religious service of a human ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... his very best, and as the song was borne along on the bright morning air, and then died away, he became aware of a tender little note, a faint twitter which came from a branch immediately beneath him. He looked down, and, lo and behold, there, half concealed by spreading boughs, was a bird like himself, another Blackbird! This stranger Blackbird was very attractive-looking, but its plumage was not quite so bright or black as his own. ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... followed them as far as the boundary of the country. There the first green sprouted forth, and there they took leave of the two Reindeer and the Lapland woman. "Farewell!" said all. And the first little birds began to twitter, the forest was decked with green buds, and out of it, on a beautiful horse (which Gerda knew, for it was the same that had drawn her golden coach) a young girl came riding, with a shining red cap on her head and a pair of pistols in the holsters. This was the little robber ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... suffering no sort of discomfort; he lazily smoked his pipe and thought how much better it was to be listening to the twitter of the birds, watching the clouds of rooks wheeling over the distant wood, and resting in peace, than slaving with an 18-ft. rod and straining every muscle in the effort to dispatch the unheeded fly across the big water to the core of the pool (for fishing purposes) under the cliff. Then, down ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... time—some twenty minutes in excess of his calculations, as a glance at the sky informed him. (He carried no watch.) He hurried home in a twitter of nervousness, which increased as he drew near to his front door. In the passage he stumbled against a pail of water, all but upsetting it, and swore under his breath at his evil luck, which had deferred Mrs Penhaligon's weekly scrubbing to Tuesday (Bank Holiday ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... did make me jump. But there," she added, repentant of her unceremonious exclamation, "I don't know what possesses us all to-night. The least thing seems to make you jump. Mrs. Cooper's all of a twitter, and Laura—silly girl—is almost as bad. I suppose it's the weather being so quiet after yesterday's gale. For my own part I always do like a wind about. It seems company, particularly these long evenings if you're called on to go round the house ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... his humble office to all honours among the godless. He was shut out by some unknown circumstances from external participation in the Temple rites, and longs to be even as one of the swallows or sparrows that twitter and flit round the sacred courts. No doubt to him faith was much more inseparably attached to form than it should be for us. No doubt place and ritual were more to him than they can permissibly be to those who have ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... he put her through her nightly torture before he fell into the arms of Morpheus. She did not mind much if Polly was wakeful—she knew she should never close her eyes all night. The soft spring air floated in through the open window, and she heard the birds twitter and the frogs peep: she heard Abraham Lincoln, the old horse that she used to ride to water before she grew big enough to work, whinney over his hay; and Goliath, the young giant that had come to take ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... Pasquale Arispe with me, I struck off on our course in the gathering twilight. The first twitter of a bird in the morning brought me to my feet; I roused the others, and we saddled and were riding with the first sign of dawn in the east. Taking the outside circle myself, I gave every bunch of cattle met on my course a good start for the centre of the round-up. Pasquale ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... pool, to be almost inevitably overtaken by the strong-winged bird, it dashed forward and perched for refuge on a fold of the dazzling white shirt. The foiled shrike, with an angry and astonished twitter, flew off to a ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... see her now ... there are those, I know, who have guessed my poor secret, and who wonder that I do not "console myself," in the silly phrase of the day. How could I? The twitter of the Hawaiian girls is like that of the beach-birds in my ears, ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... themselves on their palms, stretched forward, open-mouthed. There was the rippling surface, carrying the shadow of the walls. Nothing came up. A cow could be heard lowing on the bluffs to her lost calf. The morning twitter of birds became an aggressive and ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... glow. A cock in the Beaumanoir yard woke suddenly and crowed, and the challenge was answered from La Vauroque. Jeanne Falla's pigs grunted sleepily at the disturbance. The pigeons rumbled in their cote, and the birds began to twitter in the trees about the house. And behind the white curtains ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... artillerymen had given up for the night; and a calm and tranquil silence ensued, broken only by the gentle rustle of the fitful breeze through the foliage of some firs which were dotted here and there along the precipitous sides of the ravine, the chirping of insects, the occasional twitter of a sleeping bird, or a low murmur here and there in the serried ranks of armed men which stood awaiting the order to rush forth to death or victory. The stars flooded the scene with their subdued and mellow radiance, and, but for the occasional ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... will surely quicken soon or late, The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate; So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom, Or in this world, or in the world to come: Sing, voice of Spring! Till I too blossom ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... hath such power! Still, still the streets, between their carcanets Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep: But see how gable ends and parapets In gradual beauty and significance Emerge! And did you hear That little twitter-and-cheep, Breaking inordinately loud and clear On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? 'Tis a first nest at matins! And behold A rakehell cat—how furtive and acold! A spent witch homing from some infamous dance— Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade Through shadowy railings into ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... like ribbons from a braid of hair; and the sun teased the faces of the sleepers with its morning beams, like a village girl awakening her sweetheart with an ear of wheat. Already the sparrows had begun to hop and twitter beneath the thatch, already the gander had cackled thrice, and after it, as an echo, the ducks and turkeys resounded in chorus, and one could hear the bellowing of the kine on their way to ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... secret instincts inappeasable, That did direct him well, Lured from his gelid North which wrought him wrong, Wintered of sunning song; - By happy instincts inappeasable, Ah yes! that led him well, Lured to the untried regions and the new Climes of auspicious you; To twitter there, and in his singing dwell. But ah! if you, my Summer, should grow waste, With grieving skies o'ercast, For such migration my poor wing was strong But once; it has no power to fare again Forth ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... evening shades are deepened, And I doff my hat and gloves, No sweet bird is there to "cheep and Twitter twenty million loves:" No dark-ringleted canaries Sing to me of "hungry foam;" No imaginary "Marys" Call ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... the earl nor Lady Julia having said anything on the subject. "Of course we are going," said Mrs Eames, "and it was so very kind. But I've never been out to such a house for so many years, John, and I do feel in such a twitter. I dined there once, soon after we were married; but I never ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... twittering into a laugh behind her fan. Janet met Kendal's eyes instinctively; he was burning red, and his manner was eloquent of his helplessness. Angry with herself for having waited, so long, Janet joined Elfrida just as the twitter made itself heard, and Mr. Jasper's face began to stiffen ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... that of Mrs. Whitney's costume and accent and manner. There was the note of the fashion plate, the evidence of pains, of correctness not instinctive but studied—the marks our new-sprung obstreperous aristocracy has made familiar to us all. It would have struck upon a sense of humor like a trivial twitter from the oboe trickling through a lull in the swell of brasses and strings; but Hiram Ranger had no sense of humor in that direction, had only his instinct for the right and the wrong. The falseness, the absence of the ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... Mr. Cowan put forth some questions about her qualifications, and at each answer, his colleagues were given to understand by a faint twitter of his eyes that Miss Watson ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... titter and twitter and giggle and struggle! It fanned its wings as furiously as a Zizz; it was as wild as a moon-moth in a net, or a bird you hold in your hand. And all the time, it was about to ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... heaven; The rivulets ripple with the merry tone Of wanton waters, and the breezes given To fan the budding hills are all thine own. Returning songsters from the tropic zone Their vernal love-songs in the tree tops sing, And talk and twitter in a tongue unknown Of joys that journey on thy golden wing, And God who sends thee forth to wake the world, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... worn out with the contest, the man from Tennessee fell asleep under the grateful shade of the nooning tree. So deep was the slumber that settled over exhausted body and troubled spirit that the gathering clouds, the sudden darkness, the distant muttering of thunder, the frightened twitter of the birds, passed unnoticed. A heavy drop of rain pierced the thick foliage and fell on his face, but the storm within had been too fierce for him to heed the storm without. He ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... springs and streams well in its soil, making spots of livid greenness round their rise. A hundred birds of every kind are flying and singing there. Larks sing; cuckoos call; all the tribes of linnets and finches twitter in the bushes; plovers moan; wild ducks fly past; more melancholy than all, on stormy days, the white sea-mews cry, blown so far inland by the force of the gales that sweep irresistibly over the treeless and houseless moors. There in the ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... of trees, and covered with the tenderest verdure, through which a narrow rill stole silently; and as I set my first foot on it, up jumped, with his beautiful variegated back all reddened by the sunbeams, a fine and full-fed woodcock, with the peculiar twitter which he utters when surprised. He had not gone ten yards, however, before my gun was at my shoulder and the trigger drawn; before I heard the crack I saw him cringe; and, as the white smoke drifted off to leeward, he fell heavily, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... the Witches stream, Crooked and black in the crescent's gleam; One foot high, and one foot low, Bearded, cloaked, and cowled, they go, 'Neath Charlie's Wain they twitter and tweet, And away they swarm 'neath the Dragon's feet, With a whoop and a flutter they swing and sway, And surge pell-mell down the Milky Way. Betwixt the legs of the glittering Chair They hover and ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... letters of elephantine size, informing the public that the distinguished performer already mentioned, had kindly consented to act a principal part in the entertainment of the evening. No sooner was this announced than the whole city was in one hubbub of curiosity—one twitter of delight; and Mr. Cooper had so many friends who were all at once intent upon giving him their dollar at his benefit, that the house was crammed, and there was as great an overflow from every part of it as if the renowned ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... glistening leaf, in the mid-road pool, The garden mold turned dark and cool, And the meadow's trampled acres. But hark, how fresh the song of the winged music-makers! For now the moanings bitter, Left by the rain, make harmony With the swallow's matin-twitter, And the robin's note, like the wind's in a tree: The infant morning breathes sweet breath, And with it is blent The wistful, wild, moist scent Of the grass in the marsh which the sea nourisheth: And behold! The last reluctant drop ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... of the lips that had been so firm when the hot iron burned, recalled that other Father who is always near, always tender and helpful; and, folding his hands, Rob said the heartiest little prayer he ever prayed, there on the hay, to the soft twitter of the brooding birds. It did him good; and wisely laying all his fear and doubt and trouble in God's hand, the boy felt ready for whatever was to come, and from that hour kept steadily before him the one duty that was plain—to be brave and cheerful, keep silent, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... sound reached her ears, save the sharp twitter of a sparrow now and then, the patter of Reno's feet on the ice, and the rattle of the loaded rifle against the buttons of her sweater-coat. The forest that surrounded the pond seemed uninhabited. The axes of the woodsmen did not echo here, and the boys must indeed be a great way off, for she ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... stir. He stretched his legs, and went down to the ditch to take his morning bath. The birds began to twitter in the wood, and the bellow of the stag echoed amongst the trees. It was on the point of dawn, and here came the Sun peeping up ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... blackbirds of letters—the harmless, kind singing creatures who line the hedge-sides and chirp and twitter as nature bade them (they can no more help singing, these poets, than a flower can help smelling sweet), have been treated much too ruthlessly by the watch-boys of the press, who have a love for flinging ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... spoilt poor Hall—turned his brain. He has done little or nothing since but make-believe about criticism, talk dawdle-poetry with a lisp, write irresistible verses under the name of 'Sedley' in his own magazine, twitter sentimentally about 'little Moore,' his 'dear little Moore'—puffing himself all the time anonymously in the newspaper, while he is damning himself, with unmistakable sincerity, twelve times a year in his own magazine. We do not think very highly of ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... of expectant retainers who look as if they had stepped straight out of an old Moghul picture. Or a fat and prosperous Mahomedan zemindar in a gold-embroidered velvet coat and patent-leather boots struts along the platform convoying his fluttering household of heavily veiled ladies, all a-twitter with excitement, to the purdah carriage specially reserved for them. Or a band of mendicant ascetics, their almost naked bodies smeared all over with fresh ashes and the trident of Shiva painted on their ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... energetic; he seated himself before a piano that looked as if it had led a hard nomadic existence. "Now see here!" Striking a few chords. "Suppose you try this stunt! What's the Matter with Mother? My own composition! Kerry Mackintosh at his best! Now twitter away, if you've any ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... whatever it was, had preceded him hours before. Andrew McBain had hid out, the idle women were all a-twitter; but Mary Roget Fortune was calm. She had heard the news from the very first moment, when L. W. had dropped in on McBain; but the more she heard of his riotous prodigality the more it left her cold. His return to town reminded her painfully of that other ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... me, but I can't help it," she sobbed to herself, in the corner of the carriage. "That music sets me all in a twitter, and I should have looked nice in Fan's blue tarlatan, and I know I could behave as well as any one, and have lots of partners, though I 'm not in that set. Oh, just one good gallop with Mr. Sydney ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... pictures of merit upon the walls. Here is a Corot, two Meissoniers, a Bouguereau, a Millais, an Orchardson, and two Alma-Tademas. It seems to me to be a pity to hang pictures over these walls of carved oak. Look at those birds hopping and singing in the branches. They really seem to move and twitter, don't they?" ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... farther to the east, another brightness began to grow and gather this light into its outstretched wings. In the nearest wood a soft twitter came from a single tiny bird. Another voice answered it. A different note came from a third quarter; there were three or four replies; the sky turned to blue, and began to flush; a mocking-bird flew out of the woods on her earliest quest for family provision; a thrush began to sing; ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... case: he is quite a young man, and our doctor fears that he will not pull through." But Mr. Carlyon forbore to state the fact that each night he had relieved his son, rising from his bed in the gray pearly dawn, before the first bird-twitter was heard, to take his watch beside the fever-stricken stranger. The Carlyons were men whose left hand did not know what their right hand did, and the Rev. Rupert Carlyon's ministry had been a record ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... With not so much of sweet air as hath stirred The down upon the spray, Where nests the panting bird, Dozing away the hot and tedious noon, With fitful twitter, sadly out of tune. ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... birds, after the first terror was over, did not appear disconcerted by the change of situation, but hourly fed their young as usual, and testified, by their unwearied twitter of pleasure, the satisfaction and confidence they felt. There the young birds were duly fledged, and from that window they began their flight, and entered ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... their endeavors to lure back the dancers, determined to join the excitement, and ceased playing. The leader laid down his violin, the pianist trailed up the key- board with a departing twitter and quit his stool. They all crossed the hall, headed for the crowd, some of them making ready to bet. As they approached the Bronco Kid, his lips thinned and slid apart slightly, while out of his heavy-lidded eyes there flared unreasoning rage. Stepping forward, he seized the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... truth sound bitter As one at first believes? Hark! 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... and the birds began to twitter; day was breaking. The girl was worn out and panting, and when the sun rose in the purple sky, she stopped, for her swollen feet refused to go any further; but she saw a pond in the distance, a large pond whose stagnant water looked like blood under the reflection of this new day, and she ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... with pollen and laden with honey. They find more, infinitely more, nectar than they can carry away. The days are long, and every hour is full of joy. But already the tide is at the turn. The nightingale's rapturous song has become a lazy twitter; the bird has done with courtship; it has a family in immediate prospect, if not one already screaming for food, and the musician has half lost his passion for music. It will come again next year. How swiftly all this life and colour of spring passes away! ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... beneath my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my meal, ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... touched the floor, swung round, still bending, and showed the long curve of her bare throat to the stranger, while the girls, huddled on the bench by the musicians, suddenly roused themselves and joined their voices in a shrill and prolonged twitter. The Arabs did not smile, but the deepness of their attention seemed to increase like a cloud growing darker. All the luminous eyes in the room were steadily fixed upon the man leaning back against the hideous picture on the wall and the gaudy siren curved almost ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Thornton's end of the village. There was merely twitter of birds in the silver poplar that shaded his seat, busy chatter of swallows, who were plastering up their mud nests under the eaves of the old blockhouse across the road from him. It was so quiet that he could hear a tumult at the other end of the village; it was a tumult for calm Fort Canibas. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... as he went, he became aware of a sound that was not the stir of leaves, nor the twitter of birds, nor the music of running waters, though all these were in his ears,—for this was altogether different; a distant sound that came and went, that swelled to a murmur, sank to a whisper, yet never wholly died away. Little by little the sound grew plainer, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... convenient coignes and curves The pert brown sparrows late have builded. They flit, and flirt, and prune their wings, Not awed at all by golden glitter, And make among the silent strings Their satisfied ephemeral twitter. ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... flowed on in slow and dispassionate soliloquy, became half audible, and ceased. As we gave ear to the silence, we became aware that a cool stir in the darkness was growing into a breeze. After a time, the thin crowing of game-cocks in distant villages, the first twitter of birds among the highest branches, told us that night had turned to morning. A soft patter of bare feet came along the deck, a shadow stood above us, and the low ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... halfway to Newmarket, flying through the darkness at a pace which two months previously I would not have dared venture upon in broad daylight. And right onward to St. Albans, we kept it up, reaching the ancient town just as the birds began to twitter in the hedges at the first grey light of early dawn. At St. Albans we stopped at the police-station. A man ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... wheat-sacks and water-mill. And then I get it down.... Yes, I get it down and show it to her"—this slowly and reminiscently. "And then, my lady, I look round, and there's the poor old soul, all of a twitter!" This was accelerated, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... called to see the old woman at Martha's Vineyard, and he saw the matron, the house doctor, and a staff nurse as well. His adventure was known to everybody at the hospital. Once or twice he caught looks of amused compassion, and heard a twitter of laughter. As he stood by the bed, the old woman muttered: "I knoo ez it wuzn't the work'us, my dear. He spoke to me friendly and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... three weeks at Ovrebo as things were now. I marked down a few score dozen battens, and reckoned it all out on my paper—that would have to do. But it was still too early for a man to live in the forests and hills; the flowers were come, but there were no berries yet. Song and twitter of birds at their mating, flies and midges and moths, but ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... to twitter, and from far out at sea in the direction of Dunkirk there came the muffled ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... all there is a rustling overhead in the feathery branches of the palms in the cobwebby spaces among the leaves that give the bats of Africa a home. A twitter of angry bat voices, shrill squeaks and flutters in the darkness. Then stillness—of a sudden—and the ground trembles with a far-off throbbing as a convoy of motor lorries approaching thunders past us, rumbling over the bridge and out into the ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... But Jolly Roger sat with his head and shoulders against the bole of a tree, and not until the light of the moon was driven away by the darkness that preceded dawn by an hour or two did his eyes close in restless slumber. He was roused by the wakening twitter of birds and in the cold water of a creek that ran near he bathed his face and hands. Peter wondered why there was no fire and no ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... melting out of sight into the sky, and then finding it again. This you may do in Caburn's hollow as nowhere else. The song of the lark thus followed by eye and ear—for song and bird become one—passes naturally into the music of the spheres: there exist in the universe only yourself and this cosmic twitter. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... bullocks and one of the wheels ungreased. Yet it was not unpleasing, this queer shrill, recurrent rhythm, the monotonous creak and splash of the oars, the mystery of feeling one's way in the blue gloom, through reed and water-lily beds, up this cliff-bound river, and far away the faint twitter—also recurrent ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... today And help me mourn my sweet, whom in her May Ungodly Death hath ta'en to his estate, Leaving me on a sudden desolate. 'Tis so a serpent glides on some shy nest And, of the tiny nightingales possessed, Doth glut its throat, though, frenzied with her fear, The mother bird doth beat and twitter near And strike the monster, till it turns and gapes To swallow her, and she but just escapes. "'Tis vain to weep," my friends perchance will say. Dear God, is aught in life not vain, then? Nay, Seek to lie soft, yet thorns will prickly be: ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... lit his pipe and listened. There was still a light in her window; but David St. Clair did not come. Her window stood open, and Jamie listened hard to hear if she were crying. Shortly after midnight the birds in the square began to twitter, as if it were nearly dawn. Then they went to sleep again, ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... himself go at last. It was my fault, though. I was in rather a twitter by this time, for although the whole thing was simply absurd—of course one couldn't marry a wild untamed creature like that, could one, Dilly?—I couldn't help seeing what a man he was, and feeling sorry that things couldn't have been a bit different, if only for his sake. So I gave him my ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... by footsteps sounded outside the door. There was a pause; a hurried whispering of women's voices; the twitter of a nervous laugh, and then the door was pushed softly opens and the girl to whom the one-eyed Hans had given the necklace of blue and white beads with the filigree cross hanging from it, peeped ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... Small birds twitter and peck the weeds That wave above her head, Shading her lowly bed: Their brisk wings burst light globes of seeds, Scattering the downy pride Of dandelions, wide: Speargrass stoops with watery beads: The weight from its fine tips Occasionally drips: ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... incorruptible death?—creep, like the surreptitious midget you feel yourself to be, up those long and steep inclines of polished stone, watching the gloomy darkness of the narrow walls, the far-off pinpoint of light borne by the Bedouin who guides you, hear the twitter of the bats that have their dwelling in this monstrous gloom that man has made to shelter the thing whose ambition could never be embalmed, though that, of all qualities, should have been given here, in the land it dowered, a life perpetual. Now you know the Great Pyramid. ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... doorway slow doth close. The birds begin to twitter and to sing. All nature waketh and on pointed toes Young truant Morpheus stealeth gently in. Oh, happiness of reinstalled repose, And balsam for thy cold and sweated skin! 'Twas worse than all ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... that delicious dreamy feeling when one first wakes on a summer morning, with the twitter of birds in the air, and the fresh breeze coming in at the open window—when, lying lazily with eyes half shut, one sees as in a dream green boughs waving, or waters rippling in a golden light? It is a pleasure very near to sadness, bringing tears to one's eyes like a beautiful ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll
... has covered the faded leaves of the bushes, and the haws and berries; and the flips especially, standing upright on their bare stems, seem coated with silver. The sparrows in the hedges twitter and fly away in restless groups at the children's approach; then they settle down not far off, only to go whirring up again, till at last they flutter into a garden and alight in an apple-tree with such force that the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... twitter, 'course, then—the whole town. He'd got another prize—so the paper said—an' there was a paragraph praisin' up some pictures of his in the magazine. He was our Jimmy, an' we was proud of him, yet ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... birds, love, That twitter 'mid the dew, Could sing in words and tell, love, The love I bear to you, They would not end their song, love, The night's long vigil through; But all the wings that morning brings Would soar amid the blue, And ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... if no one says a word; Not a twitter from a bird, Nor a chatter comes your way, Call again ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... was a shady little retreat that gave me a complete illusion of country; from the far side of the old wall came the song of the tropical birds belonging to Antoinette's mother, and I heard the rollicking warble and twitter of the swallows perched on the house-top, and the chirp of the common sparrows as they flew about among the trees in ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... York ear, which ought to be fairly unbiased since the New York accent is a composite of all accents, English women chirrup and twitter. But the beautifully modulated, clear-clipped enunciation of a cultivated Englishman, one who can move his jaws and not swallow his words whole, comes as near to perfection in English as the diction of the Comedie Francaise comes to ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... What he would do in this galere she knew not. She leaned back in her basket-chair and enjoyed herself quietly. The green peace, after London, was absolutely delicious. She could hear a hen clucking intermittently from the farmyard hard by, the twitter of birds from the yew-trees, the chirping voices of Tommy and the curate's little boys, who had been formally introduced to each other, and had retired to play in a paddock that was part of the rector's glebe. The rector himself was away on a holiday, and the curate was doing all the work for the ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... she, all in a twitter, 'you're never going to leave all that money here, and you away, and the child and me all alone. Can't you—can't you leave one ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... There are evenings when I quite forget myself, when I'm one of the last two left in, and get all excited. There's a sort of hum in the air, and, as you go round the room, people at the tables start applauding. Why, if you didn't know about the inner workings of the thing, you'd be all of a twitter. ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... door grows into the color of the sprouting grain, and the buds upon the lilacs swell and burst. The peaches bloom upon the wall, and the plums wear bodices of white. The sparkling oriole picks string for his hammock on the sycamore, and the sparrows twitter in pairs. The old elms throw down their dingy flowers, and color their spray with green; and the brooks, where you throw your worm or the minnow, float down whole fleets of the crimson blossoms of the maple. ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... long rangy book-shelves, he sensed with a very different feeling through his heavy oak door, the soft whirring swish of skirts and the breathy twitter of muffled voices. Faintly to his acute ears came the sound of his little daughter's temperish protest, "I won't! I won't!" and the White Linen Nurse's fervid pleading, "Oh, you must,—you must!" and the Little Girl's mumbled ultimatum, "Well, ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... hand when the hour arrived, and seated herself in a great twitter before the machine. She began bravely enough: "My dear father," and then she paused, but slowly went on till she had completed half a page of typewritten words. Miss Dorothy did not offer any suggestions, but sat at the other ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... there were vines twining all about; through the openings in the foliage shone the blue of sky and red of cliff. Patches of blossoming Bowers were here and there lit to brilliance by golden shafts of sunlight. The twitter of birds and hum of bees were almost drowned in the ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... abominable tawny sand-crabs are constantly executing diabolic waltzes on the tips of their eight legs, vanishing into the ground like imps as you approach; curlews start from behind the loose drifts of sand and float away with heartbroken cries seaward; little sandpipers twitter plaintively, running through the weeds; and great, sulky, gray cranes droop their motionless heads over the still salt ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... extracting a slightly pleasurable sensation from the transaction. He will say to himself probably, unconsciously indeed, and with no formed words, that the husband is an ass, an ass if he be in a twitter either for that which he has kept or for that which he has been unable to keep, that the lady has shewn a good deal of appreciation, and that he himself is—is—is—quite a Captain bold of Halifax. All the while he will not have the slightest ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... of his life, and she never was weary of replying. His days were full of this perpetual intercourse. So it happened that to get out alone into the absolute stillness, broken only by the rustle of the leaves, the sound of the wind as it brought them down, the twitter of the birds, the tinkle of the little stream, was a new delight to Geoff, unlike anything that had gone before. And to see miles and miles before him, to see all round, roads stretching into the unknown, houses and churches and woods, all nameless and ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... me! below this pleasant shrine Of Venus we will presently recline, Until birds' twitter beckon me away To mine own home, beyond the milky-way. I will instruct thee, for I deem as yet Of Love thou ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... there would have been no chance of their overlooking the hour. If they had been late, Miss Bird would have been spoken to, and on the distressing occasions when that had happened, it had put her, as she said, all in a twitter. ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... mountain's side, Thy progeny are seen;—young primroses, And all the varying buds of wildest birth, Dotting the green slope gaily. On the thorn, Which arms the hedgerow, the young birds invite With merry minstrelsy, shrilly and maz'd With winding cadences: now quick, now sunk In the low twitter'd song. The evening sky Reddens the distant main; catching the sail, Which slowly lessens, and with crimson hue Varying the sea-green wave; while the young moon, Scarce visible amid the warmer tints Of western splendours, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... "how all Nature welcomes the sunshine, hear the birds twitter, see the cattle slowly moving on that rise. All Nature here joins in a hymn of peace, yet far beyond those western ridges three million men lay trenched through the winter and stared in hellish hate at each ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... abroad, came in and filled the minister's study. Diana was there alone sitting by one of the open windows, busy with some work; not so busy but that she smelt the roses, and felt the glory of light and colour that was outside, and heard the hum of bees and the twitter of birds and the soft indistinguishable chirrup of insects, which filled the air. Diana sewed on, till another slight sound mingled with those—the tread of a foot on the gravel walk down below; then she lifted her head suddenly, and with that her hands and her work ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... accomplishment of her wishes as imperiously as, in organisms of another sort, hunger claims satisfaction for the body. She was by nature a flame and a bird. The riddle of her existence was involved in two words: to blaze and to fly. Besides, she had impulse and caprice; she loved to twitter, and to laugh quietly in a corner. From the thoughtfulness into which she dropped oftener and oftener, she woke up as a gladsome and petted child; that room was filled with her quick speech, her thin voice, her gestures, almost theatrical, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... choice and particular election in their affections, and that they have amongst themselves a long commerce of good will. Even those to whom old age denies the practice of their desire, still tremble, neigh, and twitter for love; we see them, before the act, full of hope and ardour, and when the body has played its game, yet please themselves with the sweet remembrance of the past delight; some that swell with pride after they have performed, and others ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... sun rose and the birds began to twitter and sing, the girl rose and looked in her mirror. There she saw the bright, happy face that she remembered as ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... two by the village clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of the birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning breeze Blowing over the ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... twitter; maybe she's fainted. I dunno, but that's ther way females do. What shall I ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... wonderfully clever; and I have no doubt that his detractors—who complain that his style is mere word-twisting, a mere inversion of the most ancient truisms—are actuated by the very basest jealousy. Let us listen, then, and be duly edified as he reads in a low, sweet voice, and the birds twitter about him in the ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... house is three to four hundred years old. The projecting upper stories are supported on great timber balks, often with the ends grotesquely carved. Under the projecting eaves the swallows build, and twitter about the diamond-paned windows which reflect so richly the sunset light. In the steep roofs there are dormer-windows, and the old tiles have mellowed to a deep rose-red, stained yellow with lichen, and sink into irregular planes and angles of beautiful, varied ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... sunlight, and away in the distance the ridges and peaks of distant mountains stood out sharply clear against the intense blue of the sky. There was great stillness everywhere,—a pause, as it seemed, in the mechanism of the universe. The twitter of a bird or the cry of some wild animal would have been a relief,—so Seaton felt, ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... soldiers brought to their knees in "Le Prophete." Not at all ineptly, Mefistofele, who does not admire the Cherubs, likens their monotonous cantillation to the hum of bees. A fourth movement consists of a concluding psalmody, in which the Cherubs twitter, Earthly Penitents supplicate the Virgin, and the combined choirs, celestial ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to say, "Blessed air of heaven, I shall breathe you once more in freedom!—Reserve all your freshness for that delicious evening when I shall inhale you, and be as free as you myself." Now when he felt it, he sighed and said nothing. The twitter of the sparrows, the pattering of rain, or the moan of the wind, sounds that he used to sit up in his bed to catch with delight, as reminding him of nature, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... have been Italy for the blue of the sky and the caressing warmth of the sun. They threw open the big window and in flooded the perfume of lilacs and the twitter of sparrows, which is the nearest to a bird song one can expect in New York. But after all, this was n't New York; nor Spain; nor even the inner woods; it was just Here. And Here is where the eyes of a man and a woman meet ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... were at work, and a wagtail that ran as with Clara's own rapid little steps. Thrush and blackbird flew to the nest. They had wings. The lovely morning breathed of sweet earth into her open window, and made it painful, in the dense twitter, chirp, cheep, and song of the air, to resist the innocent intoxication. O to love! was not said by her, but if she had sung, as her nature prompted, it would have been. Her war with Willoughby sprang ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... again hear the rattle of the dishes? The clink of the spoon against the cup? The moving up of the chairs? The chatter of the voices, each with its own peculiar pitch and quality? The twitter of a bird outside the window? The tinkle of a distant bell? The chirp of a ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... alive with musicians, each one giving out his own notes without any regard for the others, but apparently the score had been written for them all, since the innumerable strains made one divine harmony. From the full-orbed song from the maple by my window, down to the faintest chirp and twitter, there was no discord; while from the fields beyond the village the whistle of the meadow-larks was so mellowed and softened by distance as to incline one to wonder whether their notes were real or mere ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... passed away. It was early in November when he had been committed, and now it was the beginning of May. And so Lancashire was looking at its best. The sun, even through the smoke-begrimed atmosphere, was shining almost brightly, and the twitter of birds welcomed him as he left the prison a free man. To his surprise, he found outside the prison gates a number of men awaiting him, who, on his appearance, raised a shout of welcome. Paul had hoped to have escaped without notice. ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... the 'ranche,' it will be remarked that there is not one word in the foregoing description to fix locality. The mine and the ranche together seem indeed to suggest South America. But—I ask for information—do birds twitter there in willow gorges? Younger sons of noble families proverbially come off second best in this country, but if one of them found his only 'appanage' was a mine, he would surely with some justice ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... that woman out of the house quickly and without scandal. Not to let her know for a moment, for the blink and twitter of an eyelid, of her triumph. To eject her with ignominy, retaining one's own dignity in the meantime. Never to let her dream of an uneasiness that might have screamed, an anger that could have bitten and scratched and been happy in the primitive ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... ever got by digging in all my wanderings—that whenever we commenced to dig, a swarm of large and small red hornets immediately came around us, and, generally speaking, diamond birds (Amadina) would also come and twitter near, and when water was got, would drink in great numbers. With regard to the hornets, though they swarmed round our heads and faces in clouds, no one was ever stung by them, nature and instinct informing them that we were their friends. We worked and waited for two hours before one of ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... An impertinent, ridiculous twitter came from a tiny scarlet-crowned songster, as if it were trying to advise and direct the hard-pressed boy. Its solemn, round eyes stared at him, reproving and admonishing him for his foolhardiness. ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... a slender twig across a slanting beam of light, and flashed in it to and fro like a gem dropped from the sky. His minute round eye stared at the strange and tranquil creatures in the boat. After a while he sent out a thin twitter that sounded impertinent and funny in the solemn silence of the great wilderness; in the great silence full of ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... of the chiffon scarf rose to meet a passing breeze, then fell back against the softness of her arm. A great grey-winged night moth fluttered past them. From the high bough of a distant maple came the frightened twitter of little birds, wakeful in the night, and the soft, murmurous voice of the brooding ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... ventured to close my eyes again before there begins a chirp, a twitter, a general thrill of sound. All the birds are awake, and are soon in full chorus. Presently a flush of color will run around the horizon, and it will be dawn. The actual night has flown. I can hear Smith, our grocery-man around the corner, setting off into the country for his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... you find you're a broken-down critter, Who is all of a trimmle and twitter, With your palate unpleasantly bitter, As if you'd just eaten a pill— When your legs are as thin as dividers, And you're plagued with unruly insiders, And your spine is all creepy with spiders, And you're highly gamboge in the gill— When you've got a beehive in your head, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... cried Dorothy, with perfect languor, and a malicious twitter passed between two or three. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is crowing, The stream is flowing, The small birds twitter, The lake doth glitter, The green field sleeps in the sun; The oldest and youngest Are at work with the strongest; The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising; There are forty feeding like ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... surrounding trees, some of which reached out their giant arms and touched the log walls. Swallows had built nests under the eaves outside, and some on the rough projections inside, and joined their twitter to the songs of other birds and the rich organ accompaniment of ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... dissipations of Arden Court. Visitors departed, leaving Mr. Granger's gamekeepers with a plethora of sovereigns and half-sovereigns in their corduroy pockets, and serious thoughts of the Holborough Savings Bank, and Mr. Granger's chief butler with views that soared as high as Consols. All the twitter and cheerful confusion of many voices in the rooms and corridors of the grand old house dwindled and died away, until Mr. Granger was left alone with his wife and daughter. He was not sorry to see his visitors depart, though he was ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... essential charm to a New-Yorker cannot express itself in figures, nor, indeed, in any adequate manner. It is the city of his soul. He loves it with a passionate dignity which will not let him swagger like the Cockney or twitter like the Parisian. His love for New York goes frequently unacknowledged even to himself, until a necessary absence of unusual length teaches him how hard it would be to lose the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... when Brighteye wandered, singing, singing, down the lanes and main road of the river-bank, were, however, infrequent; and the surest sign of his approach, before he came in sight, was the continuous, gossiping twitter I have already described. This habit of singing and twittering was not connected with amorous sentiments towards any sleek young female; Brighteye adopted it long before he was of an age to seek a mate, and he ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... half wistful, as though the decent honest days that were no more had had their merits after all. Raffles would plan a fresh enormity, or glory in the last, with the unmitigated enthusiasm of the artist. It was impossible to imagine one throb or twitter of compunction beneath those frankly egotistic and infectious transports. And yet the ghost of a dead remorse seemed still to visit him with the memory of his first felony, so that I had given the story up long before the night of ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... your judicious appointment, no hearts who did peruse, Such a long-desiderated slice of good luck were sorry at, To a most prolific and polacious Poet-Laureate! For no poeta nascitur who is fitter To greet Royal progeny with melodious twitter. Seated on the resplendent cloud of official Elysium, Far away, far away from fuliginous busy hum You are now perched with phenomenal velocity On vertiginous pinnacle of poetic pomposity! Yet deign to cock thy indulgent eye at the petition ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... yellow sand-dunes and winding creek bordered with brown grasses and patches of mallow or green rushes, and over all the arch of blue summer sky. One or two carriages rolled along the distant road as they sat there; but otherwise; the stillness was unbroken save by the twitter of birds in the woods behind them, the chirp of sand-peeps or the scream of gulls on the beach, and the soft intermittent ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... (Lioptila capistrata). This species is strictly arboreal. As mentioned previously, it is often found in company with flocks of tits and other gregarious birds. It feeds on insects, which it picks off the leaves of trees. Its usual call is a harsh twitter. It is a reddish brown bird, rather larger than a bulbul, with a black-crested head. There is a white bar ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... arbor, holding her doll-baby, with the afternoon sun sifting through the young leaves, and making over them a shifting dapple like golden water, and felt no inclination to stir. The spring languor was over even her young limbs; the sweet twitter of birds, the gathering bird-like flutter of leaves before a soft swell of air, the rustle of her aunt's gilt-edged paper, an occasional hiss of her silken flounces, grew dim and confused. Lucina, as well ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... but the occasional twitter of some bird. If a watcher was there, he gave no sign of his presence, and quite a couple of hours must have passed away before, utterly tired out, and hearing not the slightest sound, Scarlett determined to venture so far as to get his head above ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... could be," she retorted. "I haven't seen even a bird in the grounds. I don't remember hearing a single twitter in the trees. The whole place appeared utterly ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad |
