"Robin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seem safe to assume that there is hardly any one who does not know by sight at least a few birds. Nearly every one in the eastern United States and Canada knows the Robin, Crow, and English Sparrow; in the South most people are acquainted with the Mockingbird and Turkey Buzzard; in California the House Finch is abundant about the towns and cities; and to the dwellers in the Prairie States ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... all, including the commander of the Rough Riders. In his own letter Roosevelt protested against the treatment of his men in the matter of rations, clothing, and hospital accommodations, and in the other letter, called by the officers a Round Robin, there was a protest about remaining in Cuba longer, with the fever getting worse every day. These letters were made public through the press of the United States, with the result that the troops were ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... outer London of his time was well-nigh as wild and wooded as the least frequented parts of Warwickshire to-day. The halcyon or kingfisher, the white-breasted water-ouzel, the skylark, the "ruddock" or robin-redbreast, the wren, the green plover, the woodcock—these serve for some of his moods; but he mentions eagle, kite, hawk, buzzard, owl, falcon, cormorant, and a number of others, always with discretion and with the full measure of knowledge vouchsafed to his time. ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... hearing are all inferior. If he were suited to the conditions he could smell an enemy; he could hear him; he could see him, just as the animals can detect their enemies. The robin hears the earthworm burrowing his course under the ground; the bloodhound follows a scent that is two days old. Man isn't even handsome, as compared with the birds; and as for style, look at the Bengal tiger—that ideal of grace, physical perfection, and majesty. Think ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in words like these:—"It is too delightful to think that I shall see the leaves fall and hear the robin sing next autumn at Shrewsbury. My feelings are those of a schoolboy to the smallest point; I doubt whether ever boy longed for his holidays as much as I do to see you all again. I am at present, although nearly half the world is between me and home, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... unhappy temper was originally raised by the follies of some people who got money by it,—that is to say, by printing predictions and prognostications,—I know not; but certain it is, books frighted them terribly; such as 'Lily's Almanack,' 'Gadbury's Astrological Predictions,' 'Poor Robin's Almanack,' and the like; also several pretended religious books, one entitled, 'Come out of Her, my People, lest Ye be Partakers of her Plagues'; another called 'Fair Warning'; another, 'Britain's Remembrancer'; and many such, all or most part of which ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... and dialect, that "the north countrie" became par excellence the ballad land: Lowland Scotland—particularly the Lothians—and the English bordering counties, Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Cumberland; with Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, in which were Barndale and Sherwood Forests, Robin Hood's haunts. It is not possible to assign exact dates to these songs. They were seldom reduced to writing till many years after they were composed. In the Middle Ages they were sung to the harp by wandering minstrels. In later times ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the robin in the cherry tree by the door sat high up on a twig and chirped a good-night song to his nestlings. "Cherries are ripe, cherries are ripe, cherries are ripe in June," sang the robin. At least that is what Leneli told the baby he said, and surely ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Hastings' remark to the king, the plot failed. Hilyard escaped, to stir up the peasantry, who knew him as Robin of Redesdale. Warner's fate was inclusion in the number of astrologers and alchemists retained by the Duchess of Bedford, who also gave a place amongst her maidens to Sybill, to whom Hastings had proffered his devoted attachment, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... most notorious is the Owl, of which there are many species, varying from the size of an Eagle down to the little Acadian, which is no larger than a Robin. The resemblance of the Owl to the feline quadrupeds has been a frequent subject of remark. Like the cat, he sees most clearly by twilight or the light of the moon, seeks his prey in the night, and spends the principal part ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... nearly half a mile along the edge of the cliff. The rime lay thick upon the pines and firs—every little needle had its separate coat of white whereon the sun's rays glistened. The quiet sea, too, shone like some gigantic emerald, and in the sweet stillness the song of a robin perched upon the bending bough of a young ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... bearing of her head was less erect. "I do not remember what I dreamed," she murmured, "but full well I know that it was not because Norman Leofwinesson is slain that I shed tears in my sleep." For a while she drooped there, her eyes on the open window, outside of which a robin was singing blithely among the cherries. But all at once she seized the pillow with a kind of fierceness, and turned it over and piled the others on top of it, crying under her breath, "How dared he! How dared he! I will shed no tears for him while I am awake. I will remember only that ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... called "A Merry Jest, how the Ploughman learned his Paternoster." The scene purports to be laid in France, and the general outline may have been taken from the French; but it is substantially English, with allusions to Kent, Robin Hood, and so forth, and it certainly illustrates the theme upon which we are. This ploughman was in fact a farmer or husbandman, and the account of his dwelling and garden-stuff is very interesting. We are told that his hall-roof was full of bacon-flitches, and his store-room ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... her room. In a moment she returned, the blank check in her fingers, and handed it to him. It was of a delicate robin's-egg blue, with "The Tuscarora Trust Company" printed across the face in a darker shade, and her monogram, in ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... Scrooge. "Green body and yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the top of his head; there he is! Poor Robin Crusoe he called him, when he came home again after sailing round the island. 'Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin Crusoe?' The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't. It was the Parrot, you know. ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... troubles of the French Revolution then broke out, and fired the extreme Radical spirit of the poetical editor. His writings attracted the attention of the Government, and he was sent to prison, where he wrote several poems—Ode to the Evening Star, Pleasures of Imprisonment, and Verses to a Robin Redbreast. ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... in our ear, That dandelions | are blossoming near, That maize | has sprouted, that streams | are flowing, That the river is bluer | than the sky, That the robin | is plastering his nest | hard by; And if the breeze kept the good news back, For other couriers | we should not lack; We could guess it all | by yon heifer's | lowing,— And hark! how clear | bold chanticleer, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... caused the jay to pick up the wren in its bill and continue its flight, and neither wren nor jay was seen by me again. This incident furnishes unimpeachable testimony against the character of the blue-coated Robin Hood. There was no faltering or hesitancy in his conduct, but he seized and carried off his little victim as if he were to the manner born, and had become hardened by practice in ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... different from the love-stones of selfish humanity! The exquisite poetic idyl of a bird's life and love—is it not a thing to put us inferior creatures to shame—for are we ever as true to our vows as the lark to his mate?—are we as sincere in our thanksgivings for the sunlight as the merry robin who sings as blithely in the winter snow as in the flower-filled mornings of spring? Nay—not we! Our existence is but one long impotent protest against God, combined with an insatiate desire to get the better of one another in ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... you were digging in the field near the river, three months ago, you found a robin redbreast caught ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... her place, if the neighbor in whom you have trusted goes back on you and decides to keep chickens, if the chariot wheels of the uninvited guest draw near when you are out of provender, and the gaping of your empty purse is like the unfilled mouth of a young robin take courage if you have enough sunshine in your heart, to keep a laugh on your lips. Before good nature, half the cares of daily living will fly away like midges ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... silence of Raffaelino's eager, dreamy eyes, misty with the student's unutterable sadness and delight; of old Ambrogio, with his semicircle of children round him, lifting their fresh voices at his word; of the little robin that came every day upon the waterpipe, and listened, and thrilled in harmony, and ate joyfully the crumbs which the old maestro daily spared to it from his scanty meal—when I think of those hours, it seems to me that they ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... children," said Mrs. Hirst, "I cannot have your meddlesome little fingers here. Robin, put down that hat immediately! Wilfred, you're not to open that bag! No, Kitty, my pet, you mustn't peep inside parcels. Milly, take them away, and make them wash their hands. I didn't expect you all home ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... as he was sometimes called, Robin Goodfellow) was a shrewd and knavish sprite, that used to play comical pranks in the neighboring villages; sometimes getting into the dairies and skimming the milk, sometimes plunging his light and airy form into the ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Rodriguez went to the woman and gave her twenty-four hours in which to clear out of the place. No one seems to have enquired into the truth of the story, or to have asked Thornbury and Elliot what business it was of theirs; they had it entirely their own way. I propose that we should all sign a Round Robin, go to Rodriguez in a body, and insist upon a full enquiry. Something's got to ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... the grove, little birds live at ease, I wish not to wander from you; I'll still dwell beneath the deep roar of your trees, For I know that my Joe will be true. The trill of the robin, the coo of the dove, Are charms that I'll never forego; But resting through life on the bosom of love, Will ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... and be forgotten at last under the same epitaph. Forests have been the natural refuge of outlaws from the earliest time, and among the most respectable persons there has always been an ill-concealed liking for Robin Hood and the whole fraternity of the men of the bow. Truth is above all things characteristic of the dwellers in Arden, and it must be frankly confessed at the beginning, therefore, that the Forest is given over entirely to outlaws; those who have committed ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... "have gained a loss," or by the loss. Every thing is settled for Holland, and nothing but a cough, or a caprice of my fellow-traveller's, can stop us. Carriage ordered, funds prepared, and, probably, a gale of wind into the bargain. N'importe—I believe, with Clym o' the Clow, or Robin Hood, "By our Mary, (dear name!) thou art both Mother and May, I think it never was a man's lot to die before ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... January is a most propitious month for the tenderfoot nature-lover. Such was the year which has just passed. During the first part of the month the weather was almost springlike; so bright and balmy that a robin was seen in an apple-tree, and the brilliant plumage of the cardinal was observed in this latitude. Green leaves, such as wild geranium, strawberry and speedwell, were to be found in abundance beneath their covering of fallen forest leaves. Scouring rushes vied with evergreen ferns in arresting ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... quiet. Carl skipped slowly and unhappily to the group of box-elders beside the workshop and stuck his finger-nails into the cobwebby crevices of the black bark. He made overtures for company on any terms to a hop-robin, a woolly worm, and a large blue fly, but they all scorned his advances, and when he yelled an ingratiating invitation to a passing dog it seemed to swallow its tail and ears as it galloped off. No ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... to Andrinopoli, a very great and ancient towne, which standeth in a very large and champion [Footnote: Flat—"the Champion fields with corn are seen," (Poor Robin, 1694).] countrey, and there the great Turks mother doth lye, being a place, where the Emperours of the Turkes were wont to ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... those of our whippoorwill and those of our big chuck-will's-widow of the Gulf States, but not identical with either. There were other birds which were nearly akin to familiar birds of the United States: a dull- colored catbird, a dull-colored robin, and a sparrow belonging to the same genus as our common song-sparrow and sweetheart sparrow; Miller had heard this sparrow singing by day and night, fourteen thousand feet up on the Andes, and its song suggested the songs of both of our sparrows. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... characteristic impression of himself upon that nation of spectators who had witnessed his performance. He was the noblest artist in his own profession that the world had seen—in archery he was the Robin Hood of Rome; he was in the very meridian of his youth; and he was the most beautiful man of his own times Ton chath eauton hathropon challei euprepestatos. He would therefore have looked the part admirably of the dying gladiator; ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... distinguished the brown thrush, robin, turtle-dove, linnet, gold-finch, large and small blackbird, wren, and some others. As they came along, the whole party were of opinion that this river was the true Missouri; but Captain Lewis, being fully persuaded that it was neither the main stream, nor that which it would be advisable ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... worth the man wha first did shape [Woe to] That vile wanchancie thing—a rape! [dangerous] It maks guid fellows girn an' gape, [growl] Wi' chokin' dread; An' Robin's bonnet wave ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Mary's Lamb Sarah Josepha Hale The Star Jane Taylor "Sing a Song of Sixpence" Unknown Simple Simon Unknown A Pleasant Ship Unknown "I Had a Little Husband" Unknown "When I Was a Bachelor" Unknown "Johnny Shall Have a New Bonnet" Unknown The City Mouse and the Garden Mouse Christina Rossetti Robin Redbreast Unknown Solomon Grundy Unknown "Merry Are the Bells" Unknown "When Good King Arthur Ruled This Land" Unknown The Bells of London Unknown "The Owl and the Eel and the Warming Pan" Laura E. Richards The Cow Ann ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... designs in colour, square spots of robin's-egg blue, set in ornate frames of gilt, whose corners were elaborate mouldings of fruit and flowers, with fat cupids hovering in angelic comfort. On the ceilings were coloured traceries with more gilt, leading to a centre where spread a cluster of lights—incandescent ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... crowning delight of that morning was the sudden appearance of a robin in a tree close to Lloyd's window. He was searching his breakfast. At every moment he came and went between the tree-tops and the grass-plots, very important, very preoccupied, chittering and calling the while, as though he would never tire. ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... Robin to the pond, caught up the skates and went behind a tree and put them on, and was soon skating across the pond. After a while she went to Robin, who was standing by the bank, looking full ...
— Pages for Laughing Eyes • Unknown
... to learn that he begged us to find a place in Fifeshire, and as near St. Rules or Strathdee as convenient; for in that case he could accept an invitation he had just received to visit his friend Robin Anstruther, at ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... opened disclosed a pearl almost as large as a robin's egg. It possessed the faint yellowish tinge which is recognized in the East as belonging to ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... side of the fireplace, peas were simmering. The table was spread, and there was white bread and jersey butter and raspberries. Adam, with Lassie's puppies crawling over him, sat in the doorway, and watched Robin put the finishing ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... the bridegroom, which, as the age became more refined, fell into disuse. All the old plays are silent on the custom; the earliest notice of which occurs in the old ballad of the wedding of Arthur O'Bradley, printed in the Appendix to "Robin Hood," ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... away until the next evening. When he came back he had a peaceful air, but sometimes peace is not attained without effort and we have to struggle to keep it. When he had helped to unharness Robin and had given him some hay, had changed his cassock and unpacked his box, from which he took a dozen little packages of things bought on his visit to the city, it was the very time that the birds assembled in the branches to tell each other about the day. There had been ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... more sensible to the grace of the action than to the thing itself; of which, besides approving the sentiment, I am glad, for if my Lady Cardigan(922) is as happy in drawing a straw, as in picking straws, you will certainly miss your green coat. Yet methinks you would make an excellent Robin Hood reform'e, with little John your brother. How you would carol Mr. Percy's old ballads under the greenwood tree! I had rather have you in my merry Sherwood than at Greatworth, and should delight ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... prepared to search farther afield for objects on which to expend her genius. She followed Susy into the octagon hall, but, seeing the wide front doors open, went out, and, crossing a by no means well-kept field, entered the paddock, where the colts, Joe and Robin, had disported themselves before their sale. The paddock was skirted by a copse of small fir-trees, and Antonia sniffed the air as she walked towards it. Antonia was in a rusty black dress, with very little material in the skirt, ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... History of Reynard the Fox, the Chevalier Faublax; to these I may add, the Battle of Auhrim, Siege of Londonderry, History of the Young Ascanius, a name by which the Pretender was designated, and the Renowned History of the Siege of Troy; the Forty Thieves, Robin Hood's Garland, the Garden of Love and Royal Flower of Fidelity, Parismus and Parismenos; along with others, the names of which shall not appear on these pages. With this specimen of education before our eyes, is it not extraordinary that the people of Ireland should be in general, so ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... fatherly robin that became Tania's particular friend. He used to hop about near her window and nod and chirp to her as though to reassure her. "Your friends will come for you to-day, I am quite sure of it," he used to say, until one day Tania really spoke aloud to him ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... me that my older and less sensitive years have never known such a night. The world was stifling in a deluge of gray, cold mists, unstirred by a breath of air. A robin with feathers all ruffled, and head hidden, sat on the gate-post, and chirped a little mournful chirp, like a creature dying in a vacuum. The very daisy that nodded and drooped in the grass at my feet seemed to ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... left one to guess what had become of Mr Booms's knuckles, and a light jaunty necktie to embellish the "dicky." Then, with a plaintive sigh, he produced a blue figured waistcoat, and after it a coat shaped like the coat of a robin to cover all. Finally there appeared a hat, broad-brimmed, low-crowned, and dazzling in its glossiness, a pair of gay dogskin gloves, a crutch walking-stick, a pink silk handkerchief, and then this joint work of art ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... individual who exercised so singular a control over his followers, and over the district in which he lived, had changed since his early, dreamy days, or since the period of his honest exertions as a drover. Rob Roy had become in repute with Robin Hood of the Lowlands. His personal appearance added greatly to the impression of his singular qualities. The author of "the Highland Rogue" describes him as a man of prodigious strength, and of such uncommon stature as to approach almost ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... narratives that are made in these little circular audiences." Then, we have as an instance of no one member of human society but that would have some little pretension for some degree in it, "like him who came to Will's Coffee-house upon the merit of having writ a posie of a ring." And, "Robin, the porter who waits at Will's, is the best man in town for carrying a billet: the fellow has a thin body, swift step, demure looks, sufficient sense, and knows ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... main glad to get a bit of red in there," said Jan, in a low voice, to Master Swift; "but Robin Hood must be ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of the Morning Tales From Shakespeare The Story of a Bad Boy Swiss Family Robinson An Old-Fashioned Girl Andersen's Fairy Tales Alice in Wonderland Favorite Fairy Tales Grimm's Fairy Tales Robinson Crusoe Treasure Island Arabian Nights Hans Brinker Water Babies Little Women Black Beauty Robin Hood Little Men Kidnapped ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... Robin, a bachelor profest, At love and lovers laughs, And o'er the bowl with reckless jest, His pretty spinster quaffs; Then, whilst all sobbing, Janet cries "She scorns the scornful swain!" With angry haste her wheel she plies, And—snaps the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... understand that the worthy lady had come forth to the forest to collect her widow's dues of honey, and had tarried on her way for a little friendly discourse. But methought that "little" must have had some strange meaning, inasmuch as the housewife's withered cheeks were of the color of a robin's breast. Hereupon I threatened her with my finger, and enquired of her whether she had not betrayed more to the evil-tongued old woman than she ought, but she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... impossible for a fond parent to incite his only son to the performance of an act that would endanger his life. I therefore spoke to him kindly, but, at the same time, with the firmness necessary to enforce the commands of a father, and said—"Ye are too young, Robin, to become a participator in scenes of war and horror. Your young bosom, that is yet a stranger to sorrow, must not be exposed to the destroying bullet; nor your bonny cheek, where the rose-bud blooms, disfigured with the sabre or the horse's hoof. Ye must not break your mother's heart, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... dawned. The intense cold had abated though the air remained crisp and keen. A venturesome robin perched upon the bare bough of a cherry tree that grew near one of the sitting-room windows, and gave vent to his short and frequent song. Sally ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... sun came from his lodge like a painted warrior. The air grew warm and pleasant, and the bluebird and the robin sang ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... meditatively at a fat robin pecking into the grass in search of a late dinner. To "just go and see him" was not as simple to the conspirators as it sounded, slipping from ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... in the romance of Tristram and Iseult, where a love-potion plays a prominent part. But, although knightly love and valor are the stock topics, we occasionally come across a theme of Christian humility, like Sir Isumbras, or of democracy, as in the Squire of Low Degree and in the Ballads of Robin Hood. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... mind him so much up there," said Robin, and he ventured to take one of her hands in his own,—"but he always has so much of you; he nestles under your chin and is caressed by your sweet lips,—he has all, and ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... that the iron hand which was made for him afterward, and which he wore for more than half a century, was nearly as clever a member as the fleshy one had been. I was glad to get a facsimile of the letter written by this fine old German Robin Hood, though I was not able to read it. He was a better artist with his sword than with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... nest of a sleeping-room comes to mind, a creation of Moscheles. Floor covered with white bearskin rugs, furnished with a delicate tint of robin's-egg blue. Toilet table strewn with every imaginable luxury in old ivory and silver. Panels in the wardrobe and doors filled with paintings by Burne-Jones, classic ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... said, by Gabrielle as a menagerie for her pets. A strange assortment they often were for a little girl. Inheriting her mother's exquisite tenderness of feeling towards helpless animals, Gabrielle would splinter and bandage up the little legs of any baby robin or sparrow that had met with an accident from trying its wings too early, would nurse it till well, and then let it fly away. At one time she had in the play-house a little regiment of twelve toads, a red squirrel, and a large turtle. Aunt Mary never wished ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... his eyes and doing his utmost to assume the expression of a martyr. "If anything goes wrong, put the blame on little Johnnie. Cock Robin wasn't in the ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... Mourning dove. Zenaidura macroura. Red-headed woodpecker. Melanerpes erythrocephalus. Blue jay. Cyanocitta cristata. Cardinal grosbeak. Cardinalis cardinalis. American robin. Merula migratoria. Golden-wing woodpecker. Colaptes auratus. ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... to notice or admire her picturesque rambling dress, which inadvertency provoked her into telling us that the gentlemen at Ballston, or some other fashionable watering-place, had declared she looked in it quite like Robin Hood's maid Marian. The gorgeous summer sunsets and clear moonlight nights, soon wearied her—for we were too much occupied with the beauties of nature to notice her fine attitudes, or beautiful eyes cast up imploringly to heaven, while she recited, in a half theatrical manner, passages ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... colour has greatly preoccupied the French military authorities, who have been seeking an invisible blue; and the range of their experiments is proved by the extraordinary variety of shades of blue, ranging from a sort of greyish robin's-egg to the darkest navy, in which the army is clothed. The result attained is the conviction that no blue is really inconspicuous, and that some of the harsh new slaty tints are no less striking than ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... ruins,—a purity recognized in the household proverb of "An apple, an egg, and a nut." Then, its range of tints, so varied, so subdued, and so beautiful,—whether of pure white, like the Martin's, or pure green, like the Robin's, or dotted and mottled into the loveliest of browns, like the Red Thrush's, or aqua-marine, with stains of moss-agate, like the Chipping-Sparrow's, or blotched with long weird ink-marks on a pale ground, like the Oriole's, as if it bore inscribed some magic clue to the bird's darting flight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... had heard Welcome Robin singing in the Old Orchard quite as soon as Peter Rabbit had, and that song of "Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheer!" had awakened quite as much gladness in his heart as it had in Peter's heart. It meant that Mistress Spring really had arrived, and that over ...
— The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack • Thornton W. Burgess
... and several stacks of hay surrounded by a fence, and a row of portable granaries. And beyond these stretched the open prairie, limitless and beautiful in the clear morning sunshine. Above it arched a sky of robin-egg blue, melting into opal and pale gold down toward the rim of the world. I breathed in lungfuls of clear, dry, ozonic air, and I really believe it made me a little light-headed, it was so exhilarating, so champagnized with the invisible ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... and when HE also scolded, had much the best of it. He was a noble fellow, this Violin!—a Tyrolese, the handiwork of the illustrious Steiner. There was something mysterious in his great age. How many hands, now dust, had awakened his strings ere he became the Robin Goodfellow and Familiar of Gaetano Pisani! His very case was venerable,—beautifully painted, it was said, by Caracci. An English collector had offered more for the case than Pisani had ever made by the violin. But Pisani, who cared not ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... biography we learn that Haggart was born in Golden Acre, near Canon-Mills, in the county of Edinburgh in 1801, his father, John Haggart, being a gamekeeper, and in later years a dog-trainer. The boy was at school under Mr. Robin Gibson at Canon-Mills for two years. He left school at ten years of age, and from that time until his execution seems to have had a continuous career of thieving. He tells us that before he was eleven ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Thisbe, so as to draw the latter within the region of modern farce, is not less original than droll. How far it may have expressed the Poet's judgment touching the theatrical doings of the time, were perhaps a question more curious than profitable. The names of Oberon, Titania, and Robin Goodfellow were made familiar by the surviving relics of Gothic and Druidical mythology; as were also many particulars in their habits, mode of life, and influence in human affairs. Hints and allusions scattered through many preceding writers might be produced, showing that the old superstition ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... poets, and yet they have a vogue which any poet might envy. They reign and shine by virtue of what may be called a happy accident. Thus, Lady Ann Barnard is known, in the world of verse, only by her 'Auld Robin Gray,' just as Miss Elliott and Mrs. Cockburn are known only by their respective 'Flowers of the Forest.' We remember Oldys merely by his 'Busy, curious, thirsty fly,' Sir William Jones by his 'What constitutes a State?' ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... plain as the Yale captain giving orders in the football dialect. Now, boys,' says Bassett, 'this is an early rising town. They tell me the citizens are all up and stirring before daylight. I asked what for, and they said because breakfast was ready at that time. And what of merry Robin Hood? It must be Yoicks! and away with the tinkers' chorus. I'll stake you. How much do you ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... I was at the Academy of Music, and that the orchestra were tuning their instruments for the overture. A louder strain than usual caused me to start up, and I saw through the open window a robin on a maple bough, with its tuneful throat swelled to the utmost. This was the leader of my orchestra, and the whole country was alive with musicians, each one giving out his own notes without any regard ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... few simple flowers, you behold Julia Fabens, and she has quite outgrown the bend in her good form, which hard work brought on at Mason's, and looks more mature, and hardy; and she is diligent as a parent robin, and rosy and glad as the sweet ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... winds and waterfalls are delightfully enriched with bird song, especially in the nesting time of spring and early summer. The most familiar and best known of all is the common robin, who may be seen every day, hopping about briskly on the meadows and uttering his cheery, enlivening call. The black-headed grosbeak, too, is here, with the Bullock oriole, and western tanager, brown song-sparrow, ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... town runs the River Trent. From Nottingham I went fourteen miles to Mansfield and attended a missionary meeting. I was in the house which was the birth-place of the great Chesterfield, and passed through Mansfield forest, the scene of Robin Hood's ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... ballad-singers. The feats of "Elym of the Clough," "Randle of Chester," and "Sir Topaz," which had faded under the kind keeping of the minstrels, were now refreshed and brought more boldly in the new version before the sense. Robin Hood and Friar Tuck had their honours enlarged by the new dynasty; more maidens and heroes were inspired by their misfortunes. Drayton's allusions to the propagation of Robin's fame may give an idea of the diffusion of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... the stranger; nature herself seemed to delight in aiding their efforts, for though I arrived in a deluge, I scarce ever saw a cloud afterwards. As the morning light stole through my open window in undimmed transparency, the robin, the blue-bird, the mocking-bird, the hosts of choral warblers, held their early oratorio in the patriarchal elms. If unskilled in music's science, they were unfettered by its laws, and hymned forth their wild and varied notes as though calling upon man to admire ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... her brown eyes met his in one of her flashing glances. She mentioned Hornbrook Creek in her low, caressing voice as though it were only an item of landscape, and the report of the engineers might have been a pirate's round-robin, hidden in an old sea chest from the way she spoke of it. It was inconceivable that she had prepared for this interview. She touched her pompadour lightly with the back of her hand—the smallest of hands—and he was so lost in admiration of the witchery ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... remarked Nugent, the master's mate, as he struggled ineffectively to find the left sleeve of his jacket. "The word has already been passed; I passed it myself when Master Cock-robin there," pointing to Copplestone, "came and roused us out. And, as to candles, I'm afraid we haven't any; the rats appear to have eaten the last two we had in the locker. However—ah, here comes the cocoa. Put the pot down there, Cupid—never mind if it does ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... was the block and the axe, and the armour and the jewels. "St George for Merrie England!" had been shouted in the Holy Land, and men of the same blood as himself had been led against the infidel by men of the same brain and muscle as George Washington. Robin Hood was a reality, and not a schoolboy's myth like Ali ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... is beating unseen, beneath fur or feathers, close beside us. The chicadees are chattering merrily in the upland grove, the blue-jays scream in the hemlock glade, the snow-bird mates the snow with its whiteness, and the robin contrasts with it his still ruddy breast. The weird and impenetrable crows, most talkative of birds and most uncommunicative, their very food at this season a mystery, are almost as numerous now as in summer. They always seem like some race of banished ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... over each temple as he nodded and swayed his head to the flourishes of "the gaberlunzie man" (the measure which Halliday had chosen for his words); so when the song was finished, and I had drank a health to Robin's muse, I stepped across to where he sat, and said I wished to speak with him alone. He put down his jug of punch, and followed me into my own room. I closed the door and told him, that as I understood him to be in the Channel trade, I applied ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... there isn't any," Betty assured her, taking her by the arm and leading her decidedly forward. "You don't suppose there is a whole Robin Hood's band in ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... with a company of banditti; but I cannot say that this excitement was caused by aversion alone. The truth was, the Bad Madigans fascinated me. They stood out from all the others, proudly and disdainfully like Robin Hood and his band, and I could not get over the idea that they said: "Fetch me yonder bow!" to each other; or, "Go slaughter me a ten-tined buck!" I felt that they were fortunate in not being held down to hours like the rest of us. Out of bed at six-thirty, at table by seven, tidying ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... she drew out a rug, spread it close to her best-loved tree, then sitting upon it leaned against the trunk, feet crossed and hands clasped loosely behind her head. The chirp of sparrows and twitter of small birds, the clear song of robin and the cat-bird's call fell after a while unheeding on her ears, and the drowsy hum of insects was lost in the dreaming that possessed her. From the garden of old-fashioned flowers some distance off the soft breeze flung ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... green of the different members of the forest blended their shades with the permanent colors of the pine and hemlock; and even the buds of the tardy oak were swelling with the promise of the coming summer. The gay and fluttering blue-bird, the social robin, and the industrious little wren were all to be seen enlivening the fields with their presence and their songs; while the soaring fish-hawk was already hovering over the waters of the Otsego, watching with native voracity for the appearance ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... years, while a faint groan of misery escaped his lips from time to time before the last metal loop had been forced over its stud and then drawn into its place, the last buckle drawn tight, and the armed cheek-straps of the great Robin helmet passed beneath the ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... she's an heiress, auld Robin's a laird, And my daddie has nought but a cot-house and yard; [garden] A wooer like me maunna hope to come speed, [must not] The wounds I must hide that will ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... of art was treated by Henry Bunbury freely, and with marked success, and the list would be a long one if we were to attempt to chronicle all. "Edwin and Ethelinda," "Black-eyed Susan," "Auld Robin Gray" (a charming colour-print, also engraved by Bartolozzi), "Adelaide in the Garden" (by the same engraver), the charming "Songstress," "Charlotte and Werther's meeting," "Margaret's Tomb," "The Girl of Snowdon," "The Girl of Modena," "Marianna," "Cicely," and that ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... led the van, moving down through a defile, into which, after a time, his whole army found themselves crowded. Meantime, the Prince of Wales had planted his army just where he would tempt John into that trap and had set his archers in good position. These men were clad in green, like Robin Hood's men, and carried bows seven feet long and so thick that few men of modern days could bend them. A cloth-yard shaft from one of these would fly with tremendous force. Edward had placed these archers in ambush, behind green ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... parted noiselessly, as though the effect were prearranged; a blue sky shone through on a glint of bluer water; and, wonder of wonders, there through the grimy dirty roar of Adams Street a single, joyful robin note flew ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... The robin on my lawn He was the first to tell How, in the frozen dawn, This miracle befell, Waking the meadows white With hoar, the iron road Agleam with splintered light, And ice where water flowed: Till, when the low sun drank Those milky mists that cloak Hanger ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... when he watches a bird at its song. They are ablaze with evil. He becomes a sort of Jack the Ripper at the opera. People tell us that we should not blame cats for this sort of thing—that it is their nature and so forth. They even suggest that a cat is no more cruel in eating robin than we are cruel ourselves in eating chicken. This seems to me to be quibbling. In the first place, there is an immense difference between a robin and a chicken. In the second place, we are willing to share our chicken with the cat—at least, we are willing to share the skin ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... No April robin, Nor clacking bobbin, Can make of Dobbin A Pegasus; But Nature's pleading To man's unheeding, Your subtile reading Made clear ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... we have the blue wild hyacinth (Scilla nutans), the red campion (Lychnis dioica), the pure white great starwort (Stellaria Holosteum), and the yellow dead-nettle (Lamium Galeobdolon), all distinct and well-contrasted flowers. In damp meadows in summer we have the ragged robin (Lychnis Floscuculi), the spotted orchis (O. maculata), and the yellow rattle (Rhinanthus Crista-galli); while in drier meadows we have cowslips, ox-eye daisies, and buttercups, all very distinct both in form and colour. So in cornfields we have the scarlet poppies, the purple corn-cockle, the yellow ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the solemn, dreaming house in the late summer sunshine; he observed a robin issue out from a lime tree and inspect him sideways; and then another robin issue from another lime tree and drive the first one away. Then he noticed a smear of dust on his own left boot, and flicked it off with a handkerchief. Then, as he put his handkerchief away again, he saw ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... In fact, a whole cycle of parish life passes before us in these accounts. "Paid the carpenters 5s. for a barrow to carry the people that died of the sickness to church to bury them." "For a coat for the whipper, and making, 3s." "For too payre of glovys for Robin Hode and Mayde Maryan, 3d." "Received for the May- pole, 1 pound 4s." "Paid Robert Warden, the constable, which he disbursed for carrying away the witches, 11s." ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... grammar-school; but Lancelot, a bright-faced little fellow in knickerbockers, was a pupil of whoever would or could teach him at home, as was the little girl who was clinging to his leg, and whose name of Robina seemed to have moulded her into some curious likeness to a robin-redbreast, with her brown soft hair, rosy cheeks, bright merry eyes, plump form, and quick loving audacity. Above her sat a girl of fifteen, with the family features in their prettiest development—the chiseled straight profile, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... A robin flicked down out of the cypress tree and perched on the gate top, looked up at Cleek with bright, sharp eyes, flung out a wee little trill, and ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... fortune left him. He surmised that the place we had stopped at last night was Haverthwaite in Lancashire. We saw a book of poems written in the Cumberland dialect, and copied the first and last verses of one that was about a Robin Redbreast: ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... from business men is to deal directly with the business men themselves and stop feeling, what many people feel partly from habit, perhaps, that the only way the crowd can get to what it wants is to go way over or way back or way around by Robin Hood's barn ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... exist upon the earth; and, combined with the most exquisite beauty of plumage, render this one of the most perfectly lovely of the many lovely productions of nature. My transports of admiration and delight quite amused my Aru hosts, who saw nothing more in the "Burong raja" than we do in the robin ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... whoever has read the new Preface to "Barnaby Rudge" must remember several of his old friends in that line. He had quite a fund of canary-bird anecdotes, and the pert ways of birds that picked up worms for a living afforded him infinite amusement. He would give a capital imitation of the way a robin-redbreast cocks his head on one side preliminary to a dash forward in the direction of a wriggling victim. There is a small grave at Gad's Hill to which Dickens would occasionally take a friend, and it was quite a privilege ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... common in the northeast, and in Pennsylvania it is, with the exception of the Robin, the commonest of the Thrushes. In the eastern, as in many of the middle states, it is only a migrant. It is usually regarded as a shy bird. It is a species of more general distribution than any of the small Thrushes, being found entirely across the continent ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... Perthichoaren, Denbighshire, wherein were found the remains of Platycnemic man—so named from his having sharp shin-bones; Cefn, St. Asaph; Uphill, Somerset; King's Scar and the Victoria Cave, Settle; Robin Hood's Cave and Pinhole Cave, Derbyshire; Black Rock, Caldy Island, Coygan Caves, Pembrokeshire; King Arthur's Cave, Monmouth; Durdham Downs, Bristol; and sundry others, near Oban, in the valleys of the Trent, Dove, and Nore, and of the Irish ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... spread consternation among the overseers, and they have addressed a "round robin" to the Commandant, praying to ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... us from a village in Essex. It appears that in spite of the proximity of several letter-boxes, a water-pump and a German machine-gun, a robin has deliberately built its nest in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, is the leader of the fairy band. He is the Ariel of the MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM; and yet as unlike as can be to the Ariel in the Tempest. No other poet could have made two such different characters out of the same fanciful materials ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... been pre-arranged in this fashion, without a hint of such an intention having been given to me, that the officers should sign a round-robin to their lieutenant-colonels; the latter should support and forward the petition, together with a letter from themselves; the colonel should then forward this general and irresistible expression of public opinion to me, together with a long epistle ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... remember our first meeting? It was one evening last spring. You were in your garden. The snow had not all gone, but your hands were full of pale, early flowers. You wore a white shawl over your shoulders and head. Your face was turned upward a little, listening to a robin's call in the leafless trees above you. I thought God had never made anything so lovely and love-deserving. I loved you ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is he I suppose who paints the red rose, And the rest of the flowers which every one knows, And the same red will do (or a similar hue), For Robin and little Red ...
— Christmas Roses • Lizzie Lawson
... many kinds, and no kind at all for you. You be a fisher's daughter, and you must choose a husband of your own sort—none better, thank God! The robin would go to the eagle's nest, and a poor sad time it had there. Gentlemen marry gentlemen's daughters, Denas, and if they don't, all sides ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... sharpened, the old familiar sounds returned, the chirping of the titmice, the starling's discord, the sniggering of the robin, the squirrel's bullying cough. How he had hated the squirrel—a midget incarnation of mischief, whose whole life was spent in practical joking. How often had he heard that hateful cough shot into his ear, as My Lady Shadowtail whisked past him, ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... absent—that I came down-stairs. A soft, bright, autumn morning, mild as spring, coaxing a wandering robin to come and sing to me, loud as a quire of birds, out of the thinned trees of the Abbey yard. I opened the window to hear him, though all the while in mortal fear of Jael. I listened, but caught no tone of her sharp voice, which usually came ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... declined, the party wound in and out of the curves of the Cherwell. The silver river, brimming from a recent flood, lay sleepily like a gorged serpent between the hay meadows on either side. Flowers of the edge, meadow-sweet, ragged-robin and yellow flags, dipped into the water; willows spread their thin green over the embattled white and blue of the sky; here and there a rat plunged or a bird fled shrieking; bushes of wild roses ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a peacock-eye," said Philip, dashing after a lovely butterfly, which kept on gently just before him for a time, and then settled nicely in reach upon a robin-run-rake by the hedge-side. Philip stole cautiously forward, cap in hand, and then made a dab down to secure the brightly-painted prize; but, with one or two flaps from those gorgeous wings, it was out of reach, over ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... one of the thorns that pierced his brow. As it did so, the blood spurted out after the thorn, and splashed the breast of the bird. Ever since that day the bird has had a splash of red on its bosom, whence it is called robin-redbreast. Certainly the love of the Bethany home drew from the breast of Jesus many a thorn, and blessed his heart with many ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... but presently they came to high banks that showed such masses of bluebells, ragged Robin, great stitchwort and the like that Belinda was not to be restrained. She clamoured to stop the car and go up the bank and pick her hands full, and so they drew up by the roadside and Sir Richmond and Miss Grammont sat down near the car while ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... was in store for the stern old lord of Walderne. The third child, Mabel, the youngest daughter, fell in love with a handsome young hunter, a Saxon outlaw of the type of Robin Hood, who delivered her from a wild boar which would have slain or cruelly mangled her. The old father had inspired no confidence in his children: she met her outlaw again and again by stealth, and eventually became the bride of Wulfstan, last representative of the old English family who had ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... kindly and socially helped into the many glasses sent up for it by Lord Mahon: there was also some beautiful singing by Broadhurst, Wilson, Templeton, and Messrs. Jolly, Stansbury, Chapman, and other vocalists. The Shepherd, too, treated us with an original song, the burden of which was 'Robin's awa.' It is a lament for Burns as the best of the minstrels; but it was brought in by a laugh, in consequence of the toast-master calling for silence for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... way; here is the gate, This little creaking wicket; Here robin calls his truant mate From out the lilac-thicket. The walks are bordered all with box,— Oh! come this way a minute; The snowball-bush, beyond the phlox, Has chippy's nest hid in it. Look at this mound of blooming pinks, This balm, these mountain daisies; And can you guess what grandma thinks The ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... from love and hate Of worldly folk; then should he sleep secure. Then wake again, and yield God ever praise, Content with hips and haws and brambleberry; In contemplation passing out his days, And change of holy thoughts to make him merry. Who when he dies, his tomb may be a bush, Where harmless robin dwells with ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin |
