"Wren" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kingfishers—the first victim falling to my gun on a day of rain, as it darted across a field to avoid the windings of a brook. I also became a specialist at finding their nests. Birds are so conservative! They are at your mercy, if you care to study their habits. The golden-crested wren builds a nest which is almost invisible; once you have mastered the trick, no gold-crest is safe. I am sorry, now, for all those plundered gold-crests' eggs. And the rarer ones—the grey shrike, that buzzard of the cliff (the most perilous scramble of all my life), the crested ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... beloved, hear from me Tales of the woods or open sea. Let our aspiring fancy rise A wren's flight higher toward the skies; Or far from cities, brown and bare, Play at the least in open air. In all the tales men hear us tell Still let the unfathomed ocean swell, Or shallower forest sound abroad ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Nottingham House still standing, probably the south side of the courtyard, where the brick is of a deeper shade than the rest. King William's taste in the matter of architecture knew no deviation; his model was Versailles, and as he had commissioned Wren to transform the Tudor building of Hampton into a palace resembling Versailles, so he directed him to repeat the experiment here. The long, low red walls, with their neat exactitude, speak still ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... show something for it," said Fred; "they allow me a lark's diet instead of a wren's, I can hold up my head like other people now, and I actually made my own legs and the table's carry me to the window yesterday, which is what I call getting on. But I do not think it is so with mamma. A fortnight ago she used to be up by ten or eleven o'clock; ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bays, but in 1789 the two southernmost bays were pulled down: In this room the fine fifteenth century oaken roof, with its carved ornaments, has been preserved, but at Salisbury the roof is modern, with a plaster ceiling. Lincoln's new library, designed by Wren and erected in 1674, is next to this old room. According to a 1450 catalogue now preserved at Lincoln the library contained one hundred and seven works, more than seventy of which now remain. Among the most important manuscripts are a mid-fifteenth century copy of old ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... Johnson, Victor Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and some other poets. Nay, he liked Beethoven, which places him higher in the musical scale than Scott, who did not rise above a Border lilt or a Jacobite ditty. The Wren songs, entitled The Window, were privately printed by Sir Ivor Guest in 1867, were set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and published by Strahan in December 1870. "A puppet," Tennyson called the song-book, "whose only merit is, perhaps, that it can dance ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... not have asked her to be Jennie Wren, because she really has a lame foot; but when they told her about it, she said right off, "O, how I wish I could be that!" She has not only the lame foot, but the wonderful "golden bower" of sunshiny ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... preservation of birds, concerning which he was rabid. His liking for birds began with Miss Sally Ruth's pigeons and the friendly birds in our garden. And as he learned to know them his love for them grew. I have seen him daily visit a wren's nest without once alarming the little black-eyed mother. I have heard him give the red-bird's call, and heard that loveliest of all birds answer him. And I have seen the impudent jays, within reach of his hand, swear at him unabashed and unafraid, ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... one Abraham Blackleach, a great curiosity; for, though the figures of him and his wife are cumbent, they are very graceful, designed by Vandyck, and well executed. Kent designed the screen; but knew no more there than he did any where else how to enter into the true Gothic taste. Sir Christopher Wren, who built the tower of the great gateway at Christ Church, has catched the graces of it as happily as you could do: there is particularly a niche between two compartments of' a window, that ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... of his attacks. Any thing new and preposterous is sure of drawing attention. Affirm that you see a man standing upon one leg, on the pinnacle of Saint Paul's[336]—or that the ghost of Inigo Jones had appeared to you, to give you the extraordinary information that Sir Christopher Wren had stolen the whole of the plan of that cathedral from a design of his own—and do you not think that you would have spectators and ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... wood-wren has had enough to make him sad, if only he recollects it, and if he can recollect his road from Morocco hither he maybe recollects likewise what happened on the road: the long weary journey up the Portuguese ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... most common of our winter birds. There are some others sometimes seen, such as the Tree-Sparrow, Blue-Jay and Golden Crowned Wren, but space forbids an account of their ways and songs. I hope what I have told you of the winter birds will induce you to study and observe more closely their ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... Not since Wren's Dome has whispered with man's prayer Have angels leaned to wonder out of Heaven At such uprush of intercession given, Here where to-day one soul two nations share, And with accord send up thro' trembling air Their vows to strive as Honour ne'er has ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... dat come wus Khyernel Wren. Uh-huh! Uh-huh! De nex' dat come wus Khyernel Wren, An' he dance a reel wid de ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... had been occupied with the same subject. Sir Christopher Wren had many years before endeavored to explain the planetary motions "by the composition of a descent toward the sun, and an impressed motion; but he at length gave it over, not finding the means of doing it." In January, 1683-1684, Dr. Halley had concluded from Kepler's law of the periods ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... would not deny that the element of struggle and self-contradiction, represented by that cross, has a necessary place at a certain evolutionary stage. But surely the cross is the lower development and the sphere the higher. After all it is easy enough to see what is really wrong with Wren's architectural arrangement." ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... the chosen haunt of the winter wren. This is the only place and these the only woods in which I find him in this vicinity. His voice fills these dim aisles, as if aided by some marvelous sounding-board. Indeed, his song is very strong for so small a bird, and unites in a remarkable ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... reputation—sell flags in Leicester Square on flag days?" The girl's attention seemed to be concentrated on a patch of reeds where a water-hen was becoming vociferous. "Or do you pursue the line taken up by a woman I met last time I was on leave? She was a Wraf or a Wren or something of that kind, and at the time she was in mufti. But to show how up to date she was she had assimilated the jargon, so to speak, of the mechanics she worked with. It almost gave me a shock when she said to me in a confidential aside at a mutual friend's house, 'Have you ever sat down ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... come it was gone, and we could see it ahead of us beating and lashing the hot sands. Clouds of earthy steam rose enveloping us, but as these cleared away the air was as cool and pure and sweet as in a New England orchard in May. On a bush by the trail a tiny wren appeared and burst into song like a vivacious firecracker. Rock squirrels darted here and there, and tiny cactus flowers opened their sleepy eyes and poured out fragrance. And then, by and by, it was evening and we were truly ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... mutilated victims of the egotism and the fatuity of kings were imprisoned there together under the rules and regulations of charity, the cruellest of all rules and regulations. And all was done meanly—that is, all that interested George. Christopher Wren, who was building St. Paul's and fighting libels and slanders at a salary of two hundred a year, came down to Greenwich and for years worked immortally for nothing amid material difficulties that never ceased to multiply; and he too was beaten ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... shall catch, kill, injure, pursue or have in his possession either dead or alive, or purchase, expose for sale, transport or ship to a port within or without the state a 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 ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... had heard something of the fabulous tale of the wren sitting upon the eagle's wing, and he had applied it to a linnet. Gibber's familiar style, however, was better than that which Whitehead has assumed. Grand nonsense is insupportable[1180]. Whitehead is but a little man to inscribe ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... English Nightingale': "What do you think of me? Do I sing by rote? Or by note? Have I a parrot's echo-throat? Oh no! I caught my strains From Nature's freshest veins. . . . . . "He A match for me! No more than a wren or a chickadee! Mine is the voice of the young and strong, Mine the soul of the brave and free!" This self-appreciation is confirmed by the greatest authority on birds, Audubon: "There is probably no bird in the world that ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... never without them, but I never saw a bird perch on Thuja occidentalis or Juniperus sabina, although the thick foliage of these latter trees affords birds a better shelter than the loose leafage of other trees. Not even a wren ever finds its way to one of them. Perhaps the scent of the Thuja and the Juniperus is offensive to them. I have spoiled one of my meadows by cutting away the bushes. It formerly bore grass four feet high, because many umbelliferous plants, such as ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... so conspicuous from without is the portion least used within. When it was designed by Christopher Wren, the general belief was that such buildings should be lofty, that the observer might be raised toward the heavenly bodies whose motions he was to watch. More modern science has taught its disciples better; and in Greenwich—which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... makes a lovely human face uninformed by intellect seem less permanently attractive than many a homelier countenance. He grows tired of seeing the feathered fairies perpetually weaving their aerial ballet-dance about the flowers, and finds it a relief to watch the little finch or wren or flycatcher of shy temper and obscure protective colouring. Perhaps it possesses a graceful form and melodious voice to give it aesthetic value, but even without such accessories he can observe it day by day with increasing interest and pleasure; and it only adds ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... which is without exception the highest and the handsomest in England, being from the ground 410 feet, and yet the walls so exceeding thin that at the upper part of the spire, upon a view made by the late Sir Christopher Wren, the wall was found to be less than five inches thick; upon which a consultation was had whether the spire, or at least the upper part of it, should be taken down, it being supposed to have received some damage by the great storm in the year ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... generations must still tower proudly above the common herd in every respect; I want no plaything for a wife, but a woman, such as you yourself were in youth—tall, dignified and handsome. My heart goes forth to no gold-crested wren but to a really royal maiden.—Of what use to waste words! Paula, the noble daughter of a glorious father, is my choice. It came upon me just now like a revelation; I ask your blessing on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... commendable rigidity of line. He has learned like so many moderns that the ruled line offers greater advantages in pictorial structure. You shall find his approach to the spirit of Christopher Wren is as clear and direct as his feeling for the vastiness of New England speechlessness. He has come up beyond the dramatisation of emotion to the point of expression for its own sake. But he is nevertheless to be included among the arrived water-colorists, because ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... tenants was illustrated by the fact that on my arrival several farmers brought produce to the kitchen "because we heard that the landlord had guests." The village was very kind in its reception of the foreign visitor. A meeting was called in the temple. I told the story of Wren's Si monumentum requiris circumspice and pointed a rural moral. Some months afterwards I received a request from my host to write a word or two of preface to go with a report of my address which he was giving to each of his tenants as a ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... ever thought to welcome the ingenious, sprightly Wren? With his pretty, joyous carol, which should thrill the heart of men? Now that is music, mind you! And how small the throat that sings! Besides, he lets your fruit alone, and lives on other things! ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... chooses, And the Christmas-tree refuses? There's a puzzle for your mother? I'll present you with another! Tell me why, you question-asker, Cruel, heartless mother-tasker— Why, of all the trees before her, Gathered round, or spreading o'er her, Jenny Wren should choose the apple For her nursery and chapel! Or Jack Daw build in the steeple High above the praying people! Tell me why the limping plover O'er moist meadow likes to hover; Why the partridge with such trouble Builds her nest where soon the stubble Will betray ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... that absurd air of being out of it which has since become the unfailing characteristic of an exhibition of home-made arts and crafts. In the seventeenth century we again got into touch with the movement and the genius of Inigo Jones and Wren gave us some admirable architecture. In the eighteenth we produced two painters of note, Blake and Crome, both of whom suffered desperately from their deplorable surroundings. What was interesting in Constable and Turner was seized and made use of more quickly and far more ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... our own country called a willow-wren (Motacilla) runs up the stem of the crown-imperial (Frittillaria coronalis) and sips the pendulous drops within its petals. This species of Motacilla is called by Ray Regulus non ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... the cathedral church." If the people of Ely had heard about the "reformation" of the cathedral church at Peterborough, as carried out by the soldiers of the Parliament in July of the preceding year, they were certainly well advised in taking this hint. Bishop Wren—an eager opponent of the Puritans—was at the time in prison, where he ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... for us? Look around you! I cannot but say, as that monument in St. Paul's says of the architect of that splendid pile, Sir Christopher Wren. All of him that could die sleeps under the marble, but above his mouldering ashes there is this inscription: "Here lies the body of Sir Christopher Wren, architect of St. Paul's. Reader, would you see his monument, then look around you." [Applause.] There could be no higher evidence of the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... But when the wren chatters about the coming of a baby girl, the birds chirp merrily. They sing of the grains she will scatter when she grinds the corn ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... thinness and scantiness by a vivid energy of colour; while straight across the court, beyond the rich patchwork of the roofs and the picturesque outlines of the chimneys, a delicate piece of white stone-work rose into air—the spire of one of Wren's churches, as dainty, as perfect, and as fastidiously balanced as the hand of man ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is none here but we two? When didst thou see the starveling schoolmaster? That rat, that shrimp, that spindle-shank, That wren, that sheep-biter, that lean chitty-face, That famine, that lean envy, that all-bones, That bare anatomy, that Jack-a-Lent, That ghost, that shadow, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... London, revelling in the treasures of her museums and collections, and in making excursions to places in the neighbourhood and to Oxford. I was absorbed by St. Paul's, saw it from end to end, and from top to bottom, stood in the crypt, where Sir Christopher Wren lies buried,—Si monumentum requiris, circumspice—mentally compared Wellington's burial-place here with that of Napoleon on the other side of the Channel, then went up to the top of the building and looked out to every side over London, which I was already so well acquainted with that ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... covered with signatures of the scholars,—some of them famous, for the school was begun as long ago as the time of Henry VIII, who was the founder. The visitor may see the name of the poet, Dryden, on one of the desks; he was a pupil there, as were also Sir Christopher Wren, the architect; Ben Jonson; Southey, the poet; and ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... knotted lash; every smack of which made a report like a pistol. He was a tight square-set young fellow, in the customary uniform—a smart blue coat, ornamented with facings and gold lace, but so short behind as to reach scarcely below his waistband, and cocked up not unlike the tail of a wren. A cocked hat, edged with gold lace; a pair of stiff riding boots; but instead of the usual leathern breeches he had a fragment of a pair of drawers that scarcely furnished an apology ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Flavian amphitheatre; who erects an edifice after the style of the Thermae? All artists, however, copy the Parthenon. That, and not the colossal monuments of the Caesars, reappears in the capitals of Europe, and stimulates the genius of a Michael Angelo or a Christopher Wren. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... knew that the time was come. He looked at Roderick, who slept wearily on his bed, and it seemed to him as though suddenly a small and shadowy thing, like a bird, leapt from the boy's mouth and on to the bed; it was like a wren, only white, with dusky spots upon it; and the priest held his breath: for now he knew that the soul was out of the body, and that unless it could return uninjured into the limbs of the child, nothing could avail the boy; and then he said quietly in his heart to God that ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... are associated with the infant Christ in the folk-lore of Europe and the East. In Normandy, the wren is called Poulette de Dieu, Oiseau de Dieu, "God's Chicken," "God's Bird,"—corresponding to the old Scotch "Our Lady's Hen,"—because, according to legend, "she was present at the birth of the Infant Saviour, made her nest in his cradle, and brought moss and feathers to form a coverlet ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... not altogether mistaken, in fact, were only half wrong when they coupled my name with that of pretty Lucy Plonelle. She had captivated my heart, just as a bird-catcher on a frosty morning catches an imprudent wren on a limed twig, and she might have done whatever ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... parrot tribe held the most conspicuous place. They were of all colors and sizes, from the large, awkward-looking mackaw, with his hoarse, discordant note, to the little, delicate-looking paroquet, dumb as a barnacle, and not bigger than a wren. The monkeys, of all sizes, forms, and colors, continually chattering and grimacing, as fully represented the four-footed animals as the parrots did the bipeds. We found there the mongoose, but little larger than a squirrel; an animal almost as intelligent ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... her hart. She will helpe you to cleanse your trees of caterpillars, and all noysome wormes and flyes. The gentle robin red-breast will helpe her, and in winter in the coldest stormes will keepe a part. Neither will the silly wren be behind in summer, with her distinct whistle (like a sweete recorder) to cheere ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... at the office, Christy. I've made it as fit for me as the nest for the wren. I'll spend a few more years here, and then I'll go out on pension. I won't live in the town, I've seen a place in the country I'd like, and the people will be leaving it in a ...
— Three Plays • Padraic Colum
... rendered helpless by having no voice or ballot to protect herself. God never made an animal that he did not give it some means of defense. While I am writing this I am in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I find this a city of eighty-two thousand. The PRESIDENT of the board of education is P. W. Wren, who is president of the Connecticut Breweries and owner of one of the largest wholesale whiskey houses in the state. This is as consistent as if one were to start a ranch to raise chickens, ducks, pigs and ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... be, by a missing feather in his tail, that heads the foray on our strawberries and cherries. We recognize afar off either of the pair of "flickers," or yellow-shafted woodpeckers, which have set up their penates in the heart of the left-hand garden gatepost. The wren whose modest tabernacle occupies the top of the porch pilaster we have little difficulty in "spotting" when we meet her in a joint stroll along the lawn-fence. Her ways are not as the ways of other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... fact, very little to do with the public affairs of his kingdom. He liked to build palaces and ships, and he expended vast sums, not very judiciously, on these plans. Sir Christopher Wren, the famous architect, planned one of these palaces, and Charles, when he went to see it, complained that the rooms were too small. Sir Christopher walked about with a self-important air, looking up at the ceiling, and said that he thought they were high enough. Sir Christopher ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... obey the laws of their instincts, and fulfil their destinies. Thus, myriads of pigeons, and ducks, and geese, etc., are to be found in the virgin woods, while the companionable and friendly robin, the little melodious wren, the thrush, the lark, the swallow, the marten, and all those pleasant little winged creatures, that flit about our dwellings and grounds, and seem to be sent by Providence, expressly to chant their morning and evening hymns to God in our ears, most ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... described as "hopping around a bit," or chirping, calling, singing until the air was melodious with sound. The birdman's surprise, a new note differing from the others, a loud clear gurgling song, brought me to my feet and I went on down the path listening. It was different from the note of a wren which it resembled, that of a Lincoln sparrow, I was sure, a rarity at the Manor, only one specimen of which Jerry possessed. But midway in my pursuit of the elusive bird I saw movement in the path in front of me and I caught a glimpse of leather leggins ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... bright yellow under its throat. I saw some of them alive in a cage in the market with many other kinds of small birds, and several pairs of those pretty grass or zebra paroquets, which are called here by the very inharmonious name of "budgerighars." I admired the blue wren so much—a tiny birdeen with tail and body of dust-coloured feathers, and head and throat of a most lovely turquoise blue; it has also a little wattle of these blue feathers standing straight out on each side of its head, which gives it a very pert appearance. Then there is the emu-wren, all ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... leaving are— Excitement. Foreboding of Wren's and fellows there. Sorrow at leaving Eton. Pride as being an old Etonian. Certain pleasure in leaving for many trivial matters. Feeling of importance. Frightful longing for ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... world; that there was such a superstitious, idolatrous, bloody people in the world. Wherefore the people that shall be born, that shall live to serve God in these happy days, they shall see Antichrist only in its ruins; they shall, like the sparrows, the little robins, and the wren, sit and sing, and chirrup one to another, while their eyes behold this dead hawk. 'Here [shall they say] did once the lion dwell; and there was once a dragon inhabited: here did they live that were the murderers of the saints; and there another, that did used to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... should I repine, Since all the roving birds are mine? The thrush and linnet in the vale, The sweet sequester'd nightingale, The bulfinch, wren, and wood-lark, all Obey my summons when I call: O! could I form some cunning snare To catch the coy, coquetting fair, In Cupid's filmy web so fine, The pretty girls should all ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... Saint Hugh of Lincoln Was a boy in Avalon, He knew the birds and their houses And loved them every one, Merle and mavis and grosbeak, Gay goshawk, and even the wren,— When he took Saint Benedict's service It wasn't the least different then! "They taught me to sing to my Lord," quo' he, "And to dig for my food i' the mould And whithersoever my wits might flee, To come ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... child's pail, he thought it was for sitting in, and he sat so hard in it that he could scarcely get out of it. Also he found a balloon. It was bobbing about on the Hump, quite as if it was having a game by itself, and he caught it after an exciting chase. But he thought it was a ball, and Jenny Wren had told him that boys kick balls, so he kicked it; and after that he ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... Parnel—the wild, the witty, and the whimsical Garth—Gay, whose fables may vie with those of La Fontaine, in native humour, ease, and simplicity, and whose genius for pastoral was truly original. Dr. Bentley stood foremost in the list of critics and commentators. Sir Christopher Wren raised some noble monuments of architecture. The most remarkable political writers were Davenant, Hare, Swift, Steele, Addison, Bolingbroke, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... it. The nuisance of it is, that the brute will go and put the Boers up to everything as to our strength, supplies, ammunition, and goodness knows what else. But, look here, I'm going on now to see how Sam Wren is." ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... was always, and not least in his final Puritan phase, a supreme artist. Poetry has been by far our greatest artistic achievement and he is by far our greatest poetic artist. No artist in any other field, no Inigo Jones or Wren, no Purcell, no Reynolds or Turner, holds such unquestioned eminence in any other art as he in his. If {17} the world asks us where to look for the genius of England, so far as it has ever been expressed on paper, we point, of ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... similar projection formed the library and study. A smaller square crowned the edifice as a cupola, while cubes of varying dimensions were half visible at the back. Against the warm, red brick a Wren portico in white-painted wood, together with the white facings of the windows, produced an effect of vivid spotlessness, tempered by the variegated foliage of climbing vines. The limitations of the open lawn were marked by nothing ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... workers, the thinkers in ink, the thinkers in stone and color, the thinkers in force and homely matter, the men who are bringing the globe up towards the Creator's imagination and purpose; and on this mission the leaders of mechanic art would go side by side with Shakespeare and Milton, Angelo and Wren, Newton and Cuvier. ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... from the Front Court to the staircase of the Octagon Room (the original entrance to the Observatory as erected by Sir Christopher Wren), a small porch-shelter has been often desired. I proposed to fix there a fan-roof of quadrantal form, covering the upper flat stone of the external steps.—On a critical examination of the micrometer-screws of the Transit Circle it was found that the corrections, which range from -1 deg.38" to ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... that dreary period, suffering alike from the silence of Cowper and the song of Hayley. You may accept the fact as natural, that Zwingli and Luther, without knowing each other, preached the same reformed gospel; that Newton, and Hooke, and Halley, and Wren arrived independently of each other at the great law of the diminution of gravity with the square of the distance; that Leverrier and Adams felt their hands meeting, as it were, as they stretched them into the outer darkness ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... rolled Never forth such notes, nor told Hours so blithe in tones so bold, As the radiant mouth of gold Here that rings forth heaven. If the golden-crested wren Were a nightingale—why, then, Something seen and heard of men Might be half as sweet as when Laughs ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... pearl-bearing river-mussels, yielded to subtler demands. No doubt there was protection also—protection for sport, for utility, for aesthetic reasons, and because of humane sentiments; even wholesome superstitions have safeguarded the robin redbreast and the wren. There were introductions too—the rabbit for utility, the pheasant for sport, and the peacock for amenity. And every introduction, every protection, every killing out ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... wren, little Robin. Are you sure, now, you won't be after fancying every deer that skips by you a divil, and every bush ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... two gipsies were no mean antagonists. Then, too, the one with the cudgel wielded it skillfully. Time and again Jimsy avoided a heavy blow which, if successful, must have injured him seriously. The girls, screaming, rushed off, carrying "the Wren," as the woman called her, with them. They dashed at top speed back to the spot where the aeroplanes had been left, ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... of the pretty but gaudy parrot tribe, our most beautiful birds may be said to be the wren (Malurus longicaudus, Gould), the grosbeak (Estrelda bella, Lath.), the king-fisher (Alcyone Diemenensis, Gould), the diamond birds (Pardalotus species), and the satin fly-catcher (Myiagra nitida, Gould). None of the birds equal the songsters of Europe, although many have sweet notes, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... ministers of religion generally, have particularly distinguished themselves in our country's history. Amongst them we find the names of Drake and Nelson, celebrated in naval heroism; of Wollaston, Young, Playfair, and Bell, in science; of Wren, Reynolds, Wilson, and Wilkie, in art; of Thurlow and Campbell, in law; and of Addison, Thomson, Goldsmith, Coleridge, and Tennyson, in literature. Lord Hardinge, Colonel Edwardes, and Major Hodson, so honourably ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... nothing; her dainty close-set ears heard all—the short, dry note of a chewink, the sweet, wholesome song of the cardinal, the thrilling cries of native jays and woodpeckers, the heavenly outpoured melody of the Florida wren, perched on some tiptop stem, throat swelling under the ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... I'm not too old to begin life over again,' or thinking it. Look at him! Even you wouldn't have been such a joke. I've a mind to kick the life out of him. One little kick with bare toes. Life? There's no life in him—nothing but a jenny-wren." ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... as sweetly as the lark, When neither is attended; and, I think, The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many things by season, seasoned are To their right ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... makes love between the showers in a barefaced way. That old fool of a tanner knows it, and has no more right feeling than if he were a boy. Aha, my Robin, fine robin as you are, I shall catch you piping with your Jenny Wren tonight!" The lieutenant shared the popular ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... places by stone walls; the furze brakes rooted up, and the whole aspect and nature of the country changed. Is it to be wondered at that those kinds of birds that love shelter and quiet have deserted us? You know, too, how every bird—from the Wren to the Eagle—is popped at as soon as it shows itself, in places where there are no game laws and every man ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... Wren, now," said Pete. "Look at the bogh smiling in his sleep. Just like a baby mermaid on the egg of a dogfish. But where's the ould man at all? Has he seen it? We must have it in the papers. The Times? Yes, and the 'Tiser too. 'The beloved ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... like the quail, there are some eccentrics, such as Jenny wren, which have despised their tails, and there are specialists also which require them for other purposes than flying. The woodpecker's tail is quite useless as a rudder, for he is a woodman and has altered and adapted it for a portable stool ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... caves appear, surrounded by hawthorn and holly that "outdares cold winter's ire," and sheltering old hermits, skilled in simples and the secret power of herbs. Sometimes the poet describes a choir where the tiny wren sings the treble, Robin Redbreast the mean, the thrush the tenor, and the nightingale the counter-tenor, while droning bees fill in the bass; and shows us fairy haunts and customs with a delicacy only ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... house. He showed me his work there—a manuscript on the table, and also some proofs. They were part of Our Mutual Friend, which was then appearing in monthly numbers; and on that morning a proof of one of the illustrations had arrived from Mr. Marcus Stone. It was the one in which 'Miss Wren fixes her idea.' I was then about sixteen or seventeen, and Dickens said, 'You are setting out in life; mind you always fix your idea.' He asked me what I was going to be, and I said a farmer. He said, 'Better be that than an author or ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... on the whole must be, that it wants freshness and natural development. This indeed will be most freely admitted by those who feel most strongly that all the old cunning of the master hand is yet in the wayward loving Bella Wilfer, in the vulgar canting Podsnap, and in the dolls' dressmaker Jenny Wren, whose keen little quaint weird ways, and precocious wit sharpened by trouble, are fitted into a character as original and delightfully conceived as it is vividly carried through to the last. A dull coarse web her small life seems made of; but even from its taskwork, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... her Book of Verses—wren-like notes, Shy franknesses, blind gropings, haunting fears; At times across the chords abruptly floats A mist of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Palatinate, was once an ecclesiastical peculiar; it consists of four streets between South and East Streets. In West Street is the Prebendal school at which Selden commenced his education. This street has a very fine specimen of seventeenth-century architecture, built by Wren and dated 1696. There are several good old residences of about this date ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... Lord Danby persuaded Charles to keep them. In 1698 they were barely saved from fire at Whitehall, and finally, by command of William III., they were properly repaired and a room was built at Hampton Court to receive them, by the architect, Sir Christopher Wren. At present they are in the South Kensington Museum, London. Of the original ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... Nightingale.} {SN: Robin-red-brest.} {SN: Wren.} One chiefe grace that adornes an Orchard, I cannot let slip: A brood of Nightingales, who with their seuerall notes and tunes, with a strong delightsome voyce, out of a weake body, will beare you company ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... minute." She concluded her business with Joe; finished it briskly and to her own satisfaction. With her bright brown eyes and her alert manner and her quick little movements she made you think of a wren—a businesslike little wren—a very early wren that is highly versed in the ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... and printer of which was John Walter, of Printing House Square, a quiet, little, out-of-the-way nook, nestling under the shadow of St. Paul's, not known to one man in a thousand of the daily wayfarers at the base of Wren's mighty monument, but destined to become as famous and as well known as any spot of ground in historic London. This newspaper boasted but four pages, and was composed by a new process, with types consisting of words and syllables ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... inexplicable on any other hypothesis. The same is the case with the sex-totems of the Kurnai tribe. In addition to the clan-totems all the boys have the Superb Warbler bird as a sex-totem, and call it their elder brother; and all the girls the Emu-wren, and call it their elder sister. If the boys wish to annoy the girls, or vice versa, each kills or injures the other's totem-bird, and such an act is always followed by a free fight between the boys and girls. [150] Sex-totems are a peculiar ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... Mrs. Shelton wen a little wren kept trying ter git in de house an I kep a shosin hit arway wen he got in somehow jes as soon as hit did Mrs. Shelton called me en I had a telegram from Chicago my neice war dead. She by dat I nos dat am bad luck. I dont like wrens ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... sure; no such fishing anywhere, they believed; in fact, everything the country boy could wish for was to their hand. Collect?—I should think they did: eggs, from those of the birds of prey to the tiny dot of the golden-crested wren; butterflies and moths, from the Purple Emperors that were netted as they hovered over the tops of the scrub oaks, and hawk-moths that darted through the garden, the only level place about the bottom of the glen. Fishing too—the artist who ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... descends in a series of cascades, and there is a mighty roar of waters. For many yards I have for a companion a little wren, that flies from twig to twig through the well-nigh naked hedge along the wayside, now hidden behind a bramble's crimson-spotted leaf, now mingled with a tracery of twigs and thorns. I can almost believe it to be the same wren that kept up with me years ago in English lanes, and ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... good Baron, Has been but comfortless; and yet that place, When the tempestuous wind first drove us hither, Felt warm as a wren's nest. You'd better turn And under covert rest till break of day, Or till the storm abate. (To MARMADUKE aside.) He has restored you. No doubt you have been nobly entertained? But soft!—how came he forth? The Night-mare Conscience Has driven ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... themselves to your memory of seasons and places, so that A song, a call, a gleam of color, set going a sequence of delightful reminiscences in your mind. When a solitary great Carolina wren came one August day and took up its abode near me and sang and called and warbled as I had heard it long before on the Potomac, how it brought the old days, the old scenes back again, and made me for the moment ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... occasionally become slightly mixed, is still excellent, and having been born in the first year of the present century I consequently can remember both the Plague and Fire of London. The latter is memorable to me as having been the cause of my introduction to Sir CHRISTOPHER WREN, an architect of some note, and an intimate friend of Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS, and the late Mr. TURNER, R.A. Sir CHRISTOPHER had but one failing—he was never sober. To the day of his death he was under the impression that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... woman,' said the Prince; 'I came forth from my mother's agony, helpless as a wren, like other nurselings. This, which you forgot, I have still faithfully remembered. Is it not one of your English poets, that looked abroad upon the earth and saw vast circumvallations, innumerable troops manoeuvring, warships at sea and a great dust of battles ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... facility. It seemed like a rainbow in the heavens, the base of which appeared to rise in the centre of Africa, and the other extremity seemed to stoop into great Britain. A most noble bridge indeed, and a piece of masonry that has outdone Sir Christopher Wren. Wonderful must it have been to form so tremendous an arch, especially as the artists had certain difficulties to labour against which they could not have in the formation of any other arch in the world—I mean, the attraction of the moon and planets: Because the arch was of so great ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... Wren, the housekeeper, opening the windows in the upper rooms of the mansion to let in the night air, which was stirring over the valley with a delicious mountain chill on its wings. All around in the trees and shrubbery the katydids ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... parrot, though cockatoos are plentiful; no scrub turkey though the megapode scampers in all directions in the jungle; no common black crow, nor butcher bird, though other shrikes (the magpie for instance) come and go; no wren, no finch, no lark? Scrub turkeys (TALLEGALLA LATHAMI), mound builders like the megapode, are plentiful all along the coast, at certain seasons visiting the scrub which margins the opposite beach, but they are not found on these islands. The blue ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Charlotte to Harry. "So steaming, so savoury, so juicy, The feast," said fat Charley to Lucy. "Quadrilles and Charades might come on Before dinner," said Martha to John. "You'll find the roast beef when you're dizzy, A settler," said Walter to Lizzy. "Oh, horrid! one wing of a wren, With a pea," said Belinda to Ben. "Sublime!" said—displaying his leg— George Frederick Augustus to Peg. "At Christmas refinement is all fuss And nonsense," said Fan to Adolphus. "Would romps—or a tale of a fairy— ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... consideration—to direct our transatlantic ignorance into veritable "paths of pleasantness and peace." Access to the Middle Temple from Fleet Street is had by way of another gate-house, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1684, soon after the Great Fire. It is in the style of Inigo Jones, of reddish brick, with stone pointing. There are several other entrances,—many of them known only to the initiated,—through intricate courts and passages debouching ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... thoughts so extravagant, that your own break away from their usual grooves, and surprise you by their activity. You feel pleased at your own inventiveness and originality, when you are really like the wren when it took a lift on the eagle's shoulder. Old Peterson, you remember, used to have a similar effect upon you in the ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... how kind they all were! indeed, though it was a busy season with every bird, each anxious to finish its work, yet I heard an old Rook one day ask little Jenny Wren 'if he should help her,' as he met her trying to drag a large wisp of straw with all ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... plenty for everybody, no need to get there first and snatch at the best places. There was no hurry, life had just begun. They seemed to have dug a hole in space and curled up cosily inside it. They whispered curious natural things to one another. "A wren is settling on my hair," said Judy: "a butterfly on my neck," said Uncle Felix: "a mouse," Tim mentioned, "is making its nest in my trousers pocket." And the Tramp kept murmuring in his voice of wind and water, "I'm full of air and ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the wither'd leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay And from the wood-top calls the crow, through ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... grace. K. Edw. Traitors, away! what, will you murder me, Of choke your sovereign with puddle-water? Gur. No, but wash your face, and shave away your beard, Lest you be known, and so be rescued. Mat. Why strive you thus? your labour is in vain. K. Edw. The wren may strive against the lion's strength, But all in vain: so vainly do I strive To seek for mercy at a tyrant's hand. [They wash him with puddle-water, and shave his beard away. Immortal powers, that know the painful cares That ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... Banks, you know, I'm speakin' uv: He lives way out on old Line Fork, As good a place as in New York; Out where the birds sing lays of love, The wren, the thrush, the turtle dove— Sometimes, it seems, because of Wes, Who loves their ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... always imagine in the equatorial forest—the song that will set you dreaming while you are basking under palm trees—the actual traveller will find the greatest disappointment of all in that respect. With one or two exceptions, such as the Troglodytes fuscus, a small brown wren which emits sweet musical notes, most birds of the Amazon have grating voices and harsh piercing whistles, or monotonous deep repetitions of two or three funereal notes which are more apt to drive you insane than to fascinate you. Among the most ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... wild untended park, daffodils were springing. Helbeck was conscious of it all; his eye and ear were on the watch for the signs of growth, and for the birds that haunted the river, the dipper on the stone, the grey wagtail slipping to its new nest in the bank, the golden-crested wren, or dark-backed creeper moving among the thorns. He loved such things; though with a silent and jealous love that seemed to imply some resentment towards other things and forces ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the builder of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived more than ninety years, not for himself, but for the public good. Reader, if you seek ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... to be desired when one may, when he dines or designs, touch elbows with such choice spirits as Ictinus, Michael Angelo, Vitruvius, Vignola, Piranesi, San Gallo, Bramante, Christopher Wren, Inigo Jones, Charles Bulfinch, Viollet le Duc, Gamier Freres (N.B.—There is only one of ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 08, August 1895 - Fragments of Greek Detail • Various
... architecture, and mud and great warehouses and factories, chimneys, shot towers, advertisements on the south. The northward skyline grows more intricate and pleasing, and more and more does one thank God for Wren. Somerset House is as picturesque as the civil war, one is reminded again of the original England, one feels in the fretted sky the quality ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... God of Birds! or, rather, for the Hawk Has surely not the same God as the Wren, O ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... speech was in the form of a long poem, which she recited from memory, looking very wild and lovely. The Toast was silver-cake, with Veerie wine. Pirlaps himself, although he was toastmaster, responded to a Toast called "Sara's Questions—Bless Their Hearts!" and his Toast was chocolate-cake, with Wren wine. The Snoodle was too young to make a speech, but they had taught him to respond to a simple little Toast, "On Being Older than Snoodles," and it was very charming to hear him lisp, "How do you do, Toast?" like the others. His Toast was a plum-cake; ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... just been built. A stage ahead, architecturally, of the log meeting-house with clay-filled chinks, thatched roof, oiled-paper windows, earthen floor, and a stage behind the charming steeple style made popular by Sir Christopher Wren, and now multiplied in countless graceful examples all over New England, the Old Ship is entirely unconscious of the distinction which is awaiting it—the distinction of being the oldest house for public worship ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... displease him, for since talking with Eustace and with Marian Jacks (the widow), he suspected that the match was remarkable for its fitness. Mrs. Jacks had a large fortune—well, one could resign oneself to that. "After all, Mam'zelle Wren, there's nothing to be uneasy about. Arnold Jacks is sure to marry very soon (a dowager duchess, I should say), and on that score there'll be no awkwardness. When the Wren makes a nest for herself, I shall convert this house into ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... nation. Decades for the man and centuries for the nation; these are the measuring periods for real achievement. But all this is on the human side. Correggio and Titian in painting; Bacon and Bailey in sculpture; Raphael and Michael Angelo in sculpture and painting; and Sir Christopher Wren in architecture,—the works of art of such as these elevate and purify one's thought and feeling. But the profoundest impressions that come to one from travel, come alone from the works of nature. The Crystal Palace ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... electric pulse, charged with the burden of human thought, from continent to continent, from the Old World to the New, is a testimonial to his greatness.... The Latin inscription in the church of St. Paul's in London, referring to Sir Christopher Wren, its architect,—'If you would behold his monument, look around you,'—may be applied in a far more comprehensive sense to our friend, since the great globe itself has ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... and solitary. The poor birds are destroyed, or driven for refuge, into other countries, by the savage persecution of the people, who spare no pains to kill, and catch them for their own subsistence. Scarce a sparrow, red-breast, tomtit, or wren, can 'scape the guns and snares of those indefatigable fowlers. Even the noblesse make parties to go a la chasse, a-hunting; that is, to kill those little birds, which they eat as ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... loved was the little house wren. This bird was exceedingly tame and friendly. It was a very sweet and strong singer. It loved to make its nest in or near his shelter. There it would build and rear its young, within reach of his hands, while its throat was ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... And Jenny Wren's a bride, And larks hang singing, singing, singing, Over the wheat-fields wide, 10 And anchored lilies ride, And the pendulum spider Swings from side ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... back to life is a not infrequent incident in the lives of Irish saints. We have already seen Ciaran resuscitating a horse. Mo-Chua restored twelve stags (VSH, ii, 188); but perhaps the most remarkable feat was that of Moling, who, having watched a wren eating a fly, and a kestrel eating the wren, revived first the wren and then the fly (VSH, ii, 200). Saint Brynach's cow having been slain by a tyrannical king, was restored to life by the saint ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... in my last Note was simply this—that two persons, viz. Messrs. Christopher Wren and Chamberlayne, have asserted that the title "Defender of the Faith" had been used by our monarchs anterior to 1521; and in support of their assertions, cite the Black Book of the order of the garter, and several charters granted to the University of Oxford: that is, each gives a distinct ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... me; but this time the insect engaged my particular attention because it was not alone, being accompanied by a green caterpillar bigger than herself, which she held beneath her body as she travelled along on the window-sill so near my face. "So, so! my little wren-wasp, you have found a satisfactory cranny at last, and have made yourself at home. I have seen you prying about here for a week and wondered where you would ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... unbroken line toward the skies, their slender branches forming a dark network overhead, and their lofty proportions lessening in the distance, until lost in the solemn gloom beyond. A religious silence prevailed, broken only by the occasional chirp of the wren, or the soft pattering ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... robin-redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... feature of the Abbey, as seen from the outside, of which I have not spoken—the western towers. These were built as far as the roof by Abbot Islip, who witnessed the erection of Henry VII.'s Chapel. Two hundred and thirty years afterwards Sir Christopher Wren restored Islip's work, and designed the upper portions. The edifice is not yet complete, as the square central tower requires a lofty spire ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... year two-and-a-half acres of arable land in Settle and a meadow called Howbeck ynge were let to one William Hulle by the indenture of the cantarist. The cantarist or chantry priest was James Carr. Six years later, Hugh Wren, William Preston and James Carr, capellani, were made joint owners of "unum messuagium et unam bovatam terrae ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... his house near Bunhill Fields, in warm sunny weather to enjoy the fresh air"—a suggestive picture. What thoughts must have been travelling through his mind, undisturbed by external things! How many of the passers knew that they flitted past the greatest glory of the age of Newton, Locke, and Wren? For one who would reverence the author of "Paradise Lost," there were probably twenty who would have been ready with a curse for the apologist of the killing of the King. In-doors he was seen by Dr. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... Flycatcher has pursued his game within a few feet of my window, darting with a low, complacent warble amid the dripping leaves, looking as dry and unruffled as if a drop of rain had never touched him; the Cat-Bird has flirted and attitudinized on my garden-fence; the House-Wren stopped a moment between the showers, and indulged in a short, but spirited, rehearsal under a large leaf in the grape-arbor; the King-Bird advised me of his proximity, as he went by on his mincing flight; and the Chimney-Swallows have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... made New Hampshire Taunted the lofty land With little men;— Small bat and wren House in the oak:— If earth-fire cleave The upheaved land, and bury the folk, The southern crocodile would grieve. Virtue palters; Right is hence; Freedom praised, but hid; Funeral eloquence ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... whichever of them could fly | | swift, but soon got tired, and | highest was to be the king of | | were passed by others of | all. Well, just as they were on | | stronger wing. But the eagle | the hinges of being off, what | | went up beyond them all, and | does the little rogue of a wren | | was ready to claim the victory, | do but hop up and perch himself | | when the gray linnet, a very | unbeknown on the eagle's tail. So | | small bird, flew from the | they flew and flew ever so high, | | eagle's back, where it had | till the eagle was miles ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... silver chime of bells had pealed! The frozen songs within the breast Of silent birds that hid in leafless woods, Melt into rippling floods Of gladness unrepressed. Now oriole and blue-bird, thrush and lark, Warbler and wren and vireo, Confuse their music; for the living spark Of Love has touched the fuel of desire, And every heart leaps up in singing fire. It seems as if the land Were breathing deep beneath the sun's caress, Trembling with tenderness, While all the woods expand, ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... little book Full of a hundred tales, Like the gilt page the good monks pen, That is all smaller than a wren, Yet hath high towns, meteors, and men, ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... of life in the Great City? A few old halls of the City companies remain, but most of them have given way to modern palaces; a few City churches, very few, that escaped the Great Fire, and every now and again we hear threatenings against the masterpieces of Wren, and another City church has followed in the wake of all the other London buildings on which the destroyer has laid his hand. The site is so valuable; the modern world of business presses out the life of these fine old edifices. They have to make way for new-fangled erections built in the modern ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... not been produced by a stroke of genius on the part of any one man. There has been no Michael Angelo, no Sir Christopher Wren, whose epitaph bids the reader to look around for a monument; but the whole has been a matter of slow, steady growth, advancing by hair's breadth; and, as the result of continual efforts to adapt means to ends, an inorganic evolution has been effected, resulting in the survival ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... thought, though only as a dilettante, of old St. Paul's, the morning star and focal beacon of England through centuries and dynasties, from old Augustine and Mellitus, up to those Paul's Cross sermons whose thunders shook thrones, and to noble Wren's masterpiece of art, he asked, 'Whither all this? Coleridge's dictum, that a cathedral is a petrified religion, may be taken to bear more meanings than one. When will life return to this ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... insure the stability of the tower. In the choir transepts these additional features take the form of an inverted arch, above the main arch. The vaulting of the tower roof is also in the perpendicular style and shows excellent groined work. Both Sir Christopher Wren and Francis Price, call its four main pillars the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... The robin-red-breast and the wren, We cannot harken these For dreadful thunder of the guns That echoes overseas; And evermore our vision turns To those who follow far The bright white light of Liberty Through the ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... are the harvesters tossing their sheaves; The robin darts out from his bower of leaves; The wren peereth forth from the moss-covered eaves; And the rain-spattered urchin now gladly perceives That the beautiful bow bendeth over ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... including the outlawing and disqualification of about 120 persons of both nations named as Delinquents—the Marquis of Newcastle, the Earls of Derby and Bristol, Lords Cottington, Digby, Hopton, Colepepper and Jermyn, with Hyde, Secretary Nicholas, and Bishops Wren and Bramhall, in the English list, and the Marquises of Huntly and Montrose, the Earls of Traquair, Nithsdale, Crawford, Carnwath, Forth, and Airlie, Bishop Maxwell, and MacDonald MacColkittoch, in the Scottish list. As bearers of these fell Propositions to the King the Lords appointed ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... man has just cause for pride, as far as our gifts can ever be a cause for pride, who finds himself able, in a design of his own, to rival even the simplest arrangement of parts in one by Sanmicheli, Inigo Jones, or Christopher Wren. ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... neighbouring woods to shade the alleys. Artificial fountains spouted among the flower beds. A new court, not designed with the purest taste, but stately, spacious, and commodious, rose under the direction of Wren. The wainscots were adorned with the rich and delicate carvings of Gibbons. The staircases were in a blaze with the glaring frescoes of Verrio. In every corner of the mansion appeared a profusion of gewgaws, not yet familiar to English eyes. Mary had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the cow-pox, has often laid the basis of medical treatment. Certain it is that it is extremely pleasant and grateful to breathe the sweet fragrance of the fir deep in the woods, listening to the soft caressing sound of the wind that passes high overhead. The willow-wren sings, but his voice and that of the wind seem to give emphasis to the holy and meditative silence. The mystery of nature and life hover about the columned temple of the forest. The secret is always behind a tree, as of old time it was always ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... least I can show something for it," said Fred; "they allow me a lark's diet instead of a wren's, I can hold up my head like other people now, and I actually made my own legs and the table's carry me to the window yesterday, which is what I call getting on. But I do not think it is so with mamma. A fortnight ago she used to be up by ten or eleven o'clock; now ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pretty pass, indeed, when the commuters are to be dispossessed in this way by a lot of birds, orioles and tomtits and yellow-bellied nuthatches. Some of these days a wren will take it into its head to build a nest on the railroad track and we'll all have to walk to town. Or a chicken hawk will settle in our icebox ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... to the end. It was mainly through him that Hunt came to Pisa in June, 1822, to join with Byron in 'The Liberal'. But he doubted whether the alliance between the "wren and the eagle" could continue ('Life of Shelley', vol. ii. p. 519). Keats, on the other hand, lost his faith in Hunt. In a letter to Haydon (May, 1817), speaking ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... to us the passion, the peevishness, the anger, the memory, and affections of the small canary-wren? the consciousness of identity and the dreams of the dog? the reasoning powers of the elephant? the wondrous instincts, passions, government, and civil policy, and modes of communication of ideas of the ant ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... shins and overturning many individuals, but without hurting a hair of Floppart's body during her wild but brief career. Bones did not wish to recapture her. He wished her dead, and for that end loudly reiterated the calumny as to madness. Floppart circled round the grand cathedral erected by Wren and got into Cheapside. Here, doubling like a hare, she careered round the statue of Peel and went blindly back to St. Martin's-le-Grand, as if to add yet another link to the chain of fate which bound her arch-pursuer to the ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... and the wren Cherry ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry Cold's the wind, and wet's the rain Come all ye jolly shepherds Come, cheerful day, part of my life to me Come, cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer Come follow, follow me Come into the garden, Maud Come live with me and be my ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... Ypres Inn, by Wring-wren Lane, Old John of Gaunt would dine: He scarce had opened an oyster or twain, Or drunk one flagon of wine, When, all along the Vintry Ward, He heard the trumpets blow, And a voice that roared—"If thou love thy lord, Tell John of Gaunt ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Marbles crystal as the dew, Each with rainbows twisted through, Marbles gay in painted clay, Flashing, twinkling in your way, When the walk has blossomed so, Surely every one must know None need wonder who has heard Robin, wren, or Peter-bird; Sure the sign as song ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... observable, that Fowls, for the most part, lay a greater number of Eggs than Birds, even many more than they can sit upon at one time. I have known about thirty Eggs lay'd by one common Poultry-Hen, but it is seldom that any Bird lays more than five or six, except the Wren, and the Tom-tit, and the Pigeon not more than two. Again, the Poultry, contrary to others of the winged Race, are armed with Spurs; and it is observable, that the Cocks of the common Poultry distinguish themselves from diurnal Fowls, by crowing or singing in the Night, as the Nightingale distinguishes ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... wall mass and dome of St. Paul's, the roof and towers of Westminster Abbey, unlike the lone spire of old Trinity in New York, still rise above all the buildings around them as far as the eye can reach, just about as they did in the days of Sir Christopher Wren. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... in their gayest dress, were bidding farewell to the sunshine and the wind and each other, hundreds of robin-redbreasts—"God's birds"—hopped like little flames about the ground, and in a hollow tree near the cottage door a pretty red-brown wren and his mate had found shelter for a long time, and reared several broods. As for the saucy, chattering, busy, fearless sparrows, they had feather-lined nests wherever a sparrow's nest could be placed, and that is almost everywhere—on ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sighing branches; beside them ran the clear waters of the river, slightly murmuring as they rolled away to the land, which our nation gave to their good brother Miquon[C]. All was so hushed in the camp of the Unamis that the lowest note of the wren could have been heard from limit ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones |
