"Warble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reply. The fountain's warble In the courtyard sounds alone. As the water to the marble So my heart falls with a moan From love-sighing To this dying. Death forerunneth Love to win "Sweetest eyes were ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... expression of the bluebird, and his enchanting little warble, could not be better described in a page of writing than the poet has here done in ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... scattered oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen are frequent violets found; The robin loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... these sad strains to lighter sounds give place! Bid thy brisk viol warble measures gay! For see! recall'd by thy resistless lay, Once more the Brownie shews his honest face. Hail, from thy wanderings long, my much lov'd sprite! Thou friend, thou lover of the lowly, hail! Tell, in what realms thou sport'st thy merry ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... word with endless turns and trills, like the carol of a bird, occurred only a few times in the whole Pentateuch. The child, as he listened to the interminable incantation, thought he would have sprinkled the Code with bird-songs, and made the Scroll of the Law warble. But he knew this could not be. For the Scroll was stern and severe and dignified, like the high members of the congregation who bore it aloft, or furled it, and adjusted its wrapper and its tinkling silver bells. Even ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... appear In Saffron robe, with Taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique Pageantry, Such sights as youthfull Poets dream On Summer eeves by haunted stream. 130 Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonsons learned Sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespear fancies childe, Warble his native Wood-notes wilde, And ever against eating Cares, Lap me in soft Lydian Aires, Married to immortal verse Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes, with many a winding bout Of lincked sweetnes long drawn out, 140 With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the nest, we were soon attracted by a vireo's song. Search for the singer failed to find it, until we noted that the bird on the nest seemed to be singing. Then, as we watched, over and over again the bird was seen to lift up its head and pour out the long, rich warble—a most delicious sight and sound. Are such ways usual among birds, or did we chance to see ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... use it: I wish to make my book valuable in its parts as in itself. The value of a thing depends in large measure upon its unity, its wholeness. In a work of these limits, that form of verse alone can be available for its unity which is like the song of the bird—a warble and then a stillness. However valuable an extract may be—and I shall not quite eschew such—an entire lyric, I had almost said however inferior, if worthy of a place at all, is of greater value, especially if regarded in relation to the form of setting with ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... mind for the time—just as men's misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it undisturbed. It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music—the reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... streams that smoothly flow; Ye vernal airs that softly blow; Ye plains, by blooming spring arrayed; Ye birds that warble through ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... be "fine" or "pretty," it was all one to the birds. The woods were vocal with the cackling of robins, the warble of bluebirds, and the trills of pine warblers. Flickers were shouting—or laughing, if one pleased to hear it so—with true flickerish prolixity, and a single downy woodpecker called sharply again and again. A mocking-bird near me (there is always a mocking-bird near you, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... to sit on a twig and pour forth solemn hymns, or overtures, operas, symphonies, and waltzes. Anxious questions are asked; grave subjects are settled in quick and animated debate; and only by occasional accident, as from pure ecstasy, does a rich warble roll its tiny waves of golden sound through the atmosphere. Their little bodies are as busy as their voices; they are all a constant flutter and restlessness. Even when two or three retreat to a tree-top to hold council, ...
— Buds and Bird Voices (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with Bowers here? Do you like the old grouch? So do I. I've come to tell him about a new soprano I heard at Bayreuth. He'll pretend not to care, but he does. Do you warble with him? Have you anything of a voice? Honest? You look it, you know. What are you going in ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... birds of all sorts began to warble in the trees, and with their varied and gladsome notes seemed to welcome and salute the fresh morn that was beginning to show the beauty of her countenance at the gates and balconies of the east, shaking from her locks ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... It was the voice of one Whose life-long journey was but just begun. With genial radiance shone his morning sun; The lark sprang up rejoicing from her nest, To warble praises in her Maker's ear; The fields were clad in flower-enamelled vest, And air of balm, and sunshine clear, Failed not to cheer That yet unweary pilgrim; but his breast Was harrowed with a strange, foreboding fear; ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... fountain to enrich a part of the plain. It was made good for the cultivation of a large tract; although very wild and disorderly cultivation. As we went, every spot within sight was full of interest; rich with associations; the air was warm but pleasant; the warble of the orange-winged blackbird - I don't know if I ought to call it a warble; it was a very fine and strong note, or whistle, - sounding from the rocks as we went by, thrilled me with a wild reminder of all that had once been busy life there, ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the forepart of the vessel was crowded with the bodies of natives, every one of whom was testifying the soundness of his repose by notes both loud and deep. Having selected the only spot where there was room even to sit down, I began, in a somewhat high key, to warble a lively strain calculated to cheer the drooping spirits of such of my neighbours as had that evening undergone the pang of parting from their friends. This proceeding soon had the effect of drawing all eyes upon me, and, indeed, not a few of the tongues also; for the now thoroughly ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... of Cremona, [50] asserted the free spirit of a Frank and the dignity of his master Otho. Yet his sincerity cannot disguise the abasement of his first audience. When he approached the throne, the birds of the golden tree began to warble their notes, which were accompanied by the roarings of the two lions of gold. With his two companions Liutprand was compelled to bow and to fall prostrate; and thrice to touch the ground with his forehead. He arose, but in the short interval, the throne had been ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... stopna, bonnie bird, that strain, Frae hopeless love itsel' it flows; Sweet bird, oh! warble it again, Thou'st touch'd the string o' a' my woes; Oh! lull me with it to repose, I 'll dream of her who 's far away, And fancy, as my eyelids close, Will meet ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... in the soiree kettle Out of her Ma's way, wise, wee maid! Wan was her lip as the lily's petal, Sad was the smile that over it played. Why doth she warble not? Is she afraid Of the hound that howls, or the moaning mole? Can it be on an errand she hath delayed? Hush thee, hush ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... finding jobs faster than invention can take them away—is not defeatism. To warble easy platitudes that if we would only go back to ways that have failed, everything would ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... his heirlooms, laboriously disengaging himself from his kilt. Fitfully throughout this process he would warble snatches of an air ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... the varied warble of other frogs. The little polliwogs had all been put to bed; and now, came stealing on, the season for silent thoughts. Always anxious to improve her mind, Miss Frog gazed about her to find a subject on which to fasten ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... in England, namely, the robin,—the original robin redbreast,—a slight, quick, active bird with an orange front and an olive back, and a bright, musical warble that I caught by every garden, lane, and hedge-row. It suggests our bluebird, and has similar habits and manners, though it ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... of grain and hay is carried to the stable, and barley is strewn on the snow for the birds, who are then unable to glean in the fields, and who, delighted by this unexpected provender, in their cries seem to warble forth a Christmas hymn. In some villages the little tomtegubbar or invisible genii, protecting the household, are yet remembered, and vases of milk are placed on the floor for them. Other superstitions are also joined to this religious festival. Thus in many ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... looking across the Sound towards the glory of the sunset. The thickly grassed hillside sloped down in front of me to a belt of forest from which rose the golden, leisurely chiming of the wood thrushes, chanting their vespers; through the still air came the warble of vireo and tanager; and after nightfall we heard the flight song of an ovenbird from the same belt of timber. Overhead an oriole sang in the weeping elm, now and then breaking his song to scold like an overgrown wren. Song-sparrows and catbirds sang ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... than yours, isn't she? 'cause she can walk and talk and sing and dance, and yours can't do anything, can she?" asked Jamie with pride, as he regarded his Pokey, who just then had been moved to execute a funny little jig and warble the well-known couplet, ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... cultivated may be inferred from the following passage in the folio of old Sir Joshua Barnes: "And now the ladies themselves, with many noble virgins, were meditating the various measures their skilful feet were to make, the pleasant aires their sweet voices should warble, and those soft divisions their tender fingers should strike on the yielding strings."[11] Life was lacking in physical comforts, and still more in refinement. The dining-hall became at night the sleeping place of a promiscuous crowd of retainers. ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... radiance of the sun, the twinkling of the stars; for they speak the intelligible language of sublimity itself, and tell of the kindness and protection of our Father who is in heaven. It would not be like the sweet notes of the choral songsters of the grove, for they warble hymns of gratitude to God; not like the boding of the distant owl, for that tells the profound solemnity of night; not like the hungry lion roaring for his prey, for that tells of death and plunder; not like the distant notes of the clarion, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... Aue hits the meaning of a story! how loud and clear rings the crystal of his words! Did not Heinrich von Veldeke "imp the first shoot on Teutish tongues" (graft French on German poetry)? With what a lofty voice does the nightingale of the Bird-Meadow (Walther) warble across the heath! Nor is it unpleasant to come shortly afterwards to our old friends Apollo and the Camoenae, the nine "Sirens of the ears"—a slightly mixed reminiscence, but characteristic of the union of classical and romantic material which communicates to the Middle Ages so much of their ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... converted into an amphitheatre, and the children with white caps, white handkerchiefs, and white aprons, looked like a wide flower bed. The rustling, when they all rose up to prayer, was like the rise of a flock of doves, and when they chanted the church service, it was the warble of a thousand little brooks. As ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... The vessel becoming disabled, the gun was then mounted on wheels and placed on a bluff at Ticonderoga, where it was captured by the Americans. Right glad we were that the place knows no harsher sound than the soft, melodious warble of the bluebird and cherry carol of the robin. We thought how glorious the time when all monuments may be not merely grim reminders of war, but give shelter to the "color- bearer of the ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... affecting, sustained as it was by the pathetic warble of a voice which had naturally been a fine one, and which weakness, if it diminished its power, had improved in softness. Archibald, though a follower of the court, and a pococurante by profession, was confused, if not ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Sister—Annie Tompkins. He was purty near as bad as Aristotle, though. He roped a puma up on th' Sacramentos, an' didn't punch no more fer three weeks. Well, here comes my pardner an' I reckons I'll amble right along. If yu needs any referee or a side pardner in any ruction yu has only got to warble ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... accomplished this feat in less than ten minutes), received the count on his entrance. The songs of the birds were heard in an aviary hard by, and the branches of laburnums and rose acacias formed an exquisite framework to the blue velvet curtains. Everything in this charming retreat, from the warble of the birds to the smile of the mistress, breathed tranquillity and repose. The count had felt the influence of this happiness from the moment he entered the house, and he remained silent and pensive, forgetting that he was expected to renew the conversation, which had ceased after the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of cheer, With the warble of birds overflowing, The wind through the fresh grass blowing And the ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... light at night and shade at noon, Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day. Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune; And as soft waters warble to the moon, Our answering ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... Warble not so, thou nightingale, Upon thy blooming spray, Thy sweetness now will burst my heart, I cannot ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... serious intent on his face. Some cooks sing when they make bread; the Scotchman I told you of in a previous letter invariably trilled "Stop yer ticklin', Jock," and his bread was invariably below par. But this cook does not warble. He only releases the stopper with a crack like a gun-shot, flings the liquid "doughshifter" over the lake in a devastating shower, and commences to knead, swearing softly. Anon the exorcism changes to a noise like that affected by ostlers as they tend their charges, and the lake has become ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... reached home, she placed the cage in the garden; and the bird no sooner began to warble than he was surrounded by nightingales, chaffinches, larks, linnets, goldfinches, and every species of birds of the country. And the branch of the singing tree was no sooner set in the midst of the parterre, a little distance from the house, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... felt the sweetening influences of the day and the place, of the merry sunbeams at play amid the leaves of the arbour, of the frank perfume of the honeysuckle, of the warble of the birds before they sank into the taciturn repose ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... at ease, as this was her husband's only cause of disquiet, took his hand, and with a radiant face and smile began to warble that stanza from the favourite song of "Wapping Old Stairs," in which the heroine, after rebuking her Tom for inattention, promises "his trousers to mend, and his grog too to make," if he will be constant and kind, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ever stood, in the calm of a summer evening, in Shelley's native land, listening to the lovely warble of the nightingale, making earth joyful with its unpremeditated strains, and the woods re-echo with its melody? Or gazed upwards with anxious ken towards the skylark careering in the "blue ether," far above this sublunary sphere ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... his would he have shone at those Christmas festivals, eclipsing us all! Our family, through all its different branches, has ever been famous for bad voices, but good ears; and we think we hear ourselves—all those uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, and cousins—singing now! Easy it is to "warble melody" as to breathe air. But we hope harmony is the most difficult of all things to people in general, for to us it was impossible; and what attempts ours used to be at Seconds! Yet the most woful failures ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... his pace for him. In measured intervals, as from the glass Trickles the sand, and as the shadow long Creeps on the dial, so there follow now The mountain cock, the blackbird and the thrush, And none disturbs the other as by day, Nor coaxes him to warble ere his time. I've watched it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the morning's fragrant dew, Amid the mists of even, They warble on as if they drew Their music down ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [January, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... lovely day, and all nature seemed rejoicing at the advent of spring. Flowers strewed the wayside, and the warble of the blue bird, and the lively song of the sparrow, were heard ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... Waramoff's beautiful song of the "Krasneya Sarafan," which Sarsha began at once to warble. The characteristic of Russian gypsy-girl voices is a peculiarly delicate metallic tone,—like that of the two silver bells of the Tower of Ivan Velikoi when heard from afar,—yet always marked with fineness and strength. ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... observer, he did not spy to see more than the world would when Nataly entered the dining-room at the quiet family dinner. She performed her part for his comfort, though not prattling; and he missed his Fredi's delicious warble of the prattle running rill-like over our daily humdrum. Simeon Fenellan would have helped. Then suddenly came enlivenment: a recollection of news in the morning's paper. 'No harm before Fredi, my dear. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ceased singing I heard an incessant warble of sweet, though feeble, notes and, looking above my head, saw the composer, his bride, dressed in olive and gold, weaving on the pendulous nest of moss and horse hair, near the tips of the overhanging limb. I then knew why his ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... and the sky O'erhead is both mild and serene, Save where a few drops from on high, Like gems, twinkle over the green: And glowing fair, in the black north, The rainbow o'erarches the cloud; The sun in his glory comes forth, And larks sweetly warble aloud. ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... ended The well-tuned warble of her nightly sorrow, And solemn night with slow sad gait descended To ugly hell; when, lo, the blushing morrow Lends light to all fair eyes that light will borrow: But cloudy Lucrece shames herself to see, And therefore still in ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... much in my line," said the President; "but when you sing you warble yourself into a man's heart. I'd like to ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... turn into eyes! And thou, sunshiny Water, Of blood take the guise! Let these Hyacinth boughs Be his long flowing hair, And wave o'er his brows, As thou wavest in air! 400 Let his heart be this marble I tear from the rock! But his voice as the warble Of birds on yon oak! Let his flesh be the purest Of mould, in which grew The Lily-root surest, And drank the best dew! Let his limbs be the lightest Which clay can compound, 410 And his aspect the brightest On earth to be found! Elements, near me, Be mingled and stirred, Know me, and hear me, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... we are dyed in the many-tinted glory; when the miracle of the changing year is the soul's fair seed-time; when lying in the grass, the head resting in clasped hands, while soft white clouds float lazily through azure skies, and the birds warble, and the waters murmur, and the flowers breathe fragrance, we feel a kind of unconscious consciousness of a universal life in Nature. The very rocks seem to be listening to what the leaves whisper; and through the silent eternities we almost see the dead becoming the living, the living the dead, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... her looks; all the roses of her youth were faded, yet all the graces of her beauty were not fled. She retained that sweetness and symmetry, which death itself could not destroy; and though her discourse was incoherent, her voice was still musical, resembling those feathered songsters who warble their native ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Yet for you And me their notes are blown in many a way Lost in our murmurings for that old day That fared so well, without us.—Waken to The pipings here at hand:—The clear halloo Of truant-voices, and the roundelay The waters warble in the solitude Of blooming thickets, where the robin's breast Sends up such ecstacy o'er dale and dell, Each tree top answers, till in all the wood There lingers not one squirrel in his nest Whetting his hunger on ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... Nightingales warble about it All night under blossom and star; The wild swan is dying without it, And the eagle crieth afar; The sun, he doth mount but to find it, Searching the green earth o'er; But more doth a man's heart mind it— O more, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... me you'd make a ripping sprinter. The captain of the track team 'll be on the lookout for you when you get to Plato. Course you're going to go there. The U. of Minn. is too big.... You'll do something for old Plato. Wish I could. But all I can do is warble like a darn' dicky-bird. Have a cigarette?... They're just starting to dance. Come on, old man. Come ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the great inventions of this age, Which every other century surpasses, Is one,—just now the rage,— Called "Singing for all classes," That now, alas! have no more ear than asses, To learn to warble like the birds in June— In time and tune, Correct as clocks, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... The black-clad cricket bear a second part, They kept one tune, and played on the same string, Seeming to glory in their little art. Shall creatures abject thus their voices raise? And in their kind resound their Master's praise: Whilst I, as mute, can warble ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... deals with broken vows, and faithless hearts, and blighted lives; just the sort of song that Tommy loves to warble after a good meal in the evening. It conjured to the Subaltern's eyes the picture of the dainty little star who had sung it on the boards of the Coliseum. And to conclude, Madame's voice, French, and sonorously metallic, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... gallant Moor, rich, powerful, and ardent for thy love, shall join his hand with thine, and a thousand slaves shall bow down at thy behest. All the precious things of Asia and Arabia shall be brought to delight thine eyes, the rarest birds of distant regions shall warble in unison with the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... distinctly saw him whirling far above us. Then he was lost in the obscurity, and in a few seconds there rained down upon us the notes of his ecstatic song—a novel kind of hurried, chirping, smacking warble. It was very brief, and when it ceased, we knew the bird was dropping plummet-like to the earth. In half a minute or less his "zeep," "zeep," came up again from the ground. In two or three minutes he repeated his flight and song, ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... dwelling was deep in the flood, up, up from their caverns did sally; The gay little birds of the forest began to warble, forthwith, in ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... thee, O Priapus, and thee, father Sylvanus, guardian of his boundaries! Sometimes he delights to lie under an aged holm, sometimes on the matted grass: meanwhile the waters glide along in their deep channels; the birds warble in the woods; and the fountains murmur with their purling streams, which invites gentle slumbers. But when the wintery season of the tempestuous air prepares rains and snows, he either drives the fierce boars, with many a dog, into the intercepting toils; or spreads his thin nets with ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... while Margery stood still for a moment on a dry rock, and wondered, there came a low, rippling warble to her ear from a cedar tree on the cliff above her. It had been a long winter, and Margery had forgotten that there were birds, and that birds could sing. So she wondered ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... haue bin all this day to auoid him: He is too disputeable for my companie: I thinke of as many matters as he, but I giue Heauen thankes, and make no boast of them. Come, warble, come. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... from old, How wealth might be increased, expense controlled. Now our good town has taken a new fit: Each man you meet by poetry is bit; Pert boys, prim fathers dine in, wreaths of bay, And 'twixt the courses warble out their lay. E'en I, who vow I never write a verse, Am found as false as Parthia, maybe worse; Before the dawn I rouse myself, and call For pens and parchment, writing-desk and all. None dares be pilot who ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Warble on, ye feathered songsters, Lift your praises loud and high, Merry lark, and thrush, and blackbird, In the grove and in the sky Make your music, shame our dumbness, Till we ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... and the larva is freed. It then migrates from the gullet, wanders about in the tissue until finally it may reach a point beneath the skin of the back. Here the larva matures and forms the well-known swelling or warble. In the spring of the year it works out through the skin. The next stage is spent in the ground. The pupa state lasts several weeks, when the mature fly ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... spite of the war between playwright and precisian, a Puritan youth could still in Milton's days avow his love of the stage, "if Jonson's learned sock be on, or sweetest Shakspere, Fancy's child, warble his native woodnotes wild," and gather from the "masques and antique pageantry" of the court-revel hints for his own "Comus" and "Arcades." Nor does any shadow of the coming struggle with the Church disturb the young scholar's ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... conchs, and smooth the circling waves, Surround the timorous Beauty, as she swims, 260 And gaze enamour'd on her silver limbs. —Now Europe's shadowy shores with loud acclaim Hail the fair fugitive, and shout her name; Soft echoes warble, whispering forests nod, And conscious Nature owns the present God. 265 —Changed from the Bull, the rapturous God assumes Immortal youth, with glow celestial blooms, With lenient words her virgin fears disarms, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... sentiment of the moment seized upon and rejoiced in, but at which my mind had to conceal a smile and turn its consciousness quickly elsewhere, to prevent an obtrusive reality from dimming this last addition to the picture. The gentle, unmistakable, velvet warble of a bluebird came over the hillside, again and again; and so completely absorbed and lulled was I by the gradual obsession of being in the midst of a northern scene, that the sound caused not the ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... affecting the dreams of a slumbering child as it falls gently on his face. There was a rhythm that ran through it, like poetry, yet not like average poetry, where the rhythm is forced and the lines deformed to its ungainly warble, but like heavenly poetry, where the rhythm is beyond the conscious and into the subconscious, where it inspires a feeling of quaint remembrance of itself, as if it were there and not there at the same time. And while it was soft and pleasant, it was not feminine, for ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... felt the need of new literary gods to sanction the practices of their school: Pope and Dryden were accordingly dethroned; Spenser, Shakespeare, and the young Milton, all of whom were believed to warble wildly, were invoked. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... still seemed this spectre-haunted spot in the quiet evening! There was the groaning murmur of the stream flowing down its subterranean passage, and there was the low and fitful warble of a nightingale; but this was all. Who, passing by here without foreknowledge, would suppose that on this bit of desert the great struggle between Rome and Gaul was brought to a close? What a wonderful thing is a book, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... up and down the room, overpowered by contending emotions. The severity of her voice, that voice that hitherto had fallen upon his ear like the warble of a summer bird, filled him with consternation. The idea of having offended her, of having seriously offended her, of being to her, to Henrietta, to Henrietta, that divinity to whom his idolatrous fancy clung with such rapturous devotion, in whose very smiles and accents it is no exaggeration to ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... overlooking a dark river. Behind the domes and minarets a yellow moon dreams like an odalisque, her hand on the circle of her breast; and through the torrid silence of the garden, through the odour of over-ripe fruit and the falling sound thereof, comes the melancholy warble of a fountain. Or is it the sorrow of lilies rising through the languid air to the sky? The night is blue and breathless; the spasms of the lightning are intermittent among the minarets and the domes; the hot, fierce fever of the garden waxes in the almond scent of peaches and the white odalisques ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... you have often heard Of the thrush, that gladsome bird, Who will warble any day, Be it cold or wet or gray. I suppose her mother taught her That the worms are fond of water, So that neither sleet nor slush ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... black-clad Cricket, bear a second part, They kept one tune and plaid on the same string, Seeming to glory in their little Art. Shall Creatures abject, thus their voices raise? And in their kind resound their makers praise, Whilst I as mute, can warble forth ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... all my preachments, and never be in spirits at supper. Seriously I am sorry you are out of order, but am alarmed for you at Dublin, and though all the bench of bishops should quaver Purcell's hymns, don't let them warble you into a pint of wine. I wish you were going among catholic prelates, who would deny you the cup. Think of me and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... and the career of the Servant of Society begins in earnest. The position of his parents secures for him an entrance into good houses. He is a young man of great tact and of small accomplishments. He can warble a song, aid a great lady to organise a social festivity, lead a cotillon, order a dinner, and help to eat it, act in amateur theatricals, and recommend French novels to inquiring matrons. His manners are always easy, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... bul-bul is a companionable little fellow and possessed of a cheery voice, his warble in no respects resembles the charming singing of the nightingale, and why he should be mentioned in connection with the sweet midnight songster of the English woodlands is something of a mystery. His song is a mere "clickety click" repeated rapidly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... a steep hill, and approach the hemlocks through a large sugar-bush. When twenty rods distant, I hear all along the line of the forest the incessant warble of the red-eyed vireo, cheerful and happy as the merry whistle of a schoolboy. He is one of our most common and widely distributed birds. Approach any forest at any hour of the day, in any kind of weather, from May to August, in any of the Middle or Eastern districts, and the chances are that ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... the shadowy aisle, and beneath the dim arches of an ancient abbey. One is a temple of nature; the other a temple of art. In one, the soft melancholy of the scene is rendered still more touching by the warble of birds and the shade of trees, and the grave receives the gentle visit of the sunshine and the shower; in the other, no sound but the passing footfall breaks the silence of the place; the twilight steals in through high and dusky ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... servant takes Hugo aside to tell him something, and Hagar changes the cups for two others which are harmless. Ferdinando, the 'minion', carries them away, and Hagar puts back the cup which holds the poison meant for Roderigo. Hugo, getting thirsty after a long warble, drinks it, loses his wits, and after a good deal of clutching and stamping, falls flat and dies, while Hagar informs him what she has done in a song of exquisite power ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... to the morning sky, O birds that warble as the day goes by, Sing sweetly: twice my love ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... enormous quantities of Rhine-wine and beer, whereof I imbibed my full share. After the second song I was called on to play, and lifted my poor old flute in air with tumultuous, beating heart; for I had no confidence in that or in myself. But, 'du Himmel!' Thou shouldst have heard mine old love warble herself forth. To my utter astonishment, I was perfect master of the instrument. Is not this most strange? Thou knowest I had never learned it; and thou rememberest what a poor muddle I made at Marietta in playing difficult passages; and I certainly have ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... hair." "Here is Dr. Arne's 'Sweet Echo.' Rosa used to play and sing that beautifully. And here is what he always liked to have us sing to him at sunset. We sang it to him the very night before he died." She began to warble, "Now Phoebus sinketh in the west." "Why, it seems as if I were a little girl again, singing to Papasito ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... birds has grown enthusiastic on the subject, and Bradford Torrey alone among them does it scant justice, when he says this Vireo "is admirably named; there is no one of our birds that can more properly be said to warble. He keeps further from the ground than the others, and shows a strong preference for the elms of village streets, out of which his delicious music drops upon the ears of all passers underneath. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... by he began to weary of himself. Seeing a deer he drew an arrow and stealing silently to the game was just about to shoot, when despite himself the wild, unearthly sound broke forth like a demon's warble. The deer bounded away, and the young man cursed! And when he reached Old Town, half dead with hanger, he was worth little to make laughter, though the honest Indians at first did not fail to do so, and thereby somewhat cheered his heart. But as the days went on they wearied ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... appear In saffron robe, with taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask and antique pageantry; Such sights as youthful poets dream, On summer-eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild. And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed and giddy cunning The ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... faces. He stopped still and made no sound. A lovely musical voice, a young woman's voice, grave and sweet, was heard. Christophe pricked his ears. As she went on with her words he turned again, keenly interested to see what bird could warble so. He saw Ophelia. In truth she was nothing like the Ophelia of Shakespeare. She was a beautiful girl, tall, big and fine like a young fresh statue—Electra or Cassandra. She was brimming with life. In spite of her efforts to keep within her part, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... in the drawing-room," said Arthur. "Take the bag to a dressing-room, if you please;" and, passing by the porter, he walked straight towards that apartment, from which, as the door opened, a warble ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... brought out Faith's round low laugh, so incontrovertibly merry and musical that it changed Mr. Simlins' face on the instant. It came to an end almost as soon, but short as it was it was better than the warble of any nightingale; inasmuch as the music of a good sound human heart is worth all ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... about in the cloister gardens in holy contemplation heard their seductive songs: the penitents in their cells, mortifying the flesh heard them also. Their alluring warble mingled itself with their murmured prayers; and in the heart of many a monk, who had long since renounced the world and its pleasures, the remembrance of them was gently awakened, and sweet sinful things were whispered into the ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... man of words, duly instructed, dips the pen of desire in the ink of devotedness and proceeds to spread it over the page of desolation. Then the nightingale of affection is heard to warble to the rose of loveliness, while the breeze of anxiety plays around the brow of expectation. That is what the Easterns are said to consider fine writing; and it seems pretty much the idea of the school of critics to which I ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... aims at grandeur, your make-shift efforts of magnificence? Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken keys, if one of the bunch be extant; thrummed by a thousand ancestral thumbs; dear, cracked spinnet of dearer Louisa! Without mention of mine, be dumb, thou thin accompanier of her thinner warble! A veil be spread over the dear delighted face of the well-deluded father, who now haply listening to cherubic notes, scarce feels sincerer pleasure than when she awakened thy time-shaken chords responsive to the twitterings of that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the garden lawn comes, soft and clear, The robin's warble from the leafless spray, The low sweet Angelus of the dying year, Passing ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... daisies in the field where he lay, his shoulders and naked chest pressed to the earth. A gentle wind stirred the grass, and the flute-like warble of a song bird was repeated close to his ear, over and over with a ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... and swelled and vibrated in the still November air; while in between the pauses came the warble of birds, the scream of the jay, the hoarse call of hawk and eagle, going on with their forest ways all unmindful of the new era which had been ushered ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... explained. "The wou-wou monkey cries in that peculiar warble. The presence of the animal here shows that the island has been ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... loose Luxury's enchanting smile Shall lure my steps to some romantic dale, Where Mirth's light freaks the unheeded hours beguile, And airs of rapture warble in ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... chosen to give St. Paul, that night. Thayer liked the oratorio. It seemed to him more original, more inspired, infinitely more human than the other. Moreover, it would be restful to keep silent and let the tenor warble himself to a lingering death. Even fiery chariots become monotonous in time, and an indignant mob affords a welcome variety. He had not heard the tenor since they had sung together in Berlin, two years before, and he was looking forward ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... lowest abyss of hell! O, could we descend to the regions of despair, whence "the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever;" or, transported on a seraph's wing, rise to listen only for a single moment, to those rapturous sounds which warble from immortal harps, and bespeak infinite felicity—with what feelings should we return to this probationary state! How should we be alarmed and allured—terrified and enraptured—deterred by "sights of wo," excited by scenes of glory! but, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... omnipresent bush-magpie. Here he may warble all the day long on the liquid, mellifluous notes of his Doric flute, fit pipe indeed for academic groves . . . sweetest and brightest, most cheery and sociable ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... hands with rose and lily Showering the furrows green, Childish songs that lift and warble Where the sleepers lie serene (Soft they slumber) Tell how true our hearts ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... Whose nature hiding shall e'er decline; And subdued by wine in its mainest might * Like lover drunken by strains divine,[FN216] Do thou gaze on our garden of goodly gifts * And all manner blooms that in wreaths entwine; See the birdies warble on every bough * Make melodious music the finest fine. And each Pippet pipes[FN217] and each Curlew cries * And Blackbird and Turtle with voice of pine; Ring-dove and Culver, and eke Hazar, * And Kata calling on Quail vicine; So fill with the mere and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... chanters of the wood That warble forth dame Nature's lays, Thinking your passions understood By your weak accents; what's your praise When Philomel ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... rose in old "China,"—that strange, wild warble, whose quaintly blended harmonies might have been learned of moaning seas or wailing winds, so strange and grand they rose, full of that intense pathos which rises over every defect of execution; and as they sung, Zephaniah ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the shrike. He is not classed with singing birds, and is not, I think, usually credited with being musical. But Thoreau speaks of his song, and others mention it. John Burroughs tells of a shrike singing in his vicinity in winter, "a crude broken warble,"—"saluting the sun as a robin might have done." Winter, indeed, seems to be his chosen time for singing, and an ornithologist in St. Albans says that in that season he sings by the hour in the streets ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... the party wore costumes perilously suggestive of Opera Bouffe models. Their fingers were richly begemmed; their watch-chains were laden with seals and charms. Any one of the costumes was such as might have been chosen by a tenor in which to warble effectively to a soubrette on the boards of a provincial theatre; and it was worn by these fops of the Jockey Club with the air of its being the last word in nautical fashions. Better than their costumes were their ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... leaning forward, her face alight. There was nothing visible; but a low, continuous warble, interspersed with a sort of liquid rattle, struck the ear. Taking a bunch of millet stalks from her basket, she directed Thor while he tied them to the bough of a birch that trailed its lower branches to the snow. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... warm bath, warm footcloths, warm pheasant, and warm wine. He kicked his freezing iron feet in the freezing iron stirrup. He tried to blow his nose with his freezing iron hand; but dropt his handkerchief into the mud, and his horse trod on it. He tried to warble the song of Roland; but the words exploded in a cough and a sneeze. And so dragged on the weary hours, says the chronicler, nearly all day, till the ninth hour. But never did they see coming out of the forest the men who ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... thee, high-nested in the museful shade By close-inwoven branches made, Thee, sweetest bird, most musical Of all that warble their melodious song The charmed woods among, Thee, tearful nightingale, I call: O come, and from thy dark-plumed throat Swell sadly-sweet thy melancholy note. ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... there is still such a degree of uniformity, so that, as we have said, every species may be recognized by its notes? Why does every red-eyed vireo sing in one way, and every white-eyed vireo in another? Who teaches the young chipper to trill, and the young linnet to warble? In short, how do birds come by their music? Is it all a matter of instinct, inherited habit, or do they learn it? The answer appears to be that birds sing as children talk, by simple imitation. Nobody imagines that the infant is born with a language printed upon his brain. The father and ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... did not matter; the Arabs would catch their horses or would fail to catch them, and indifferent he stood watching the moon hanging low over the landscape, a badly drawn circle, but admirably soft to look upon, casting a gentle, mysterious light down the lake. The silence was filled with the lake's warble, and the ducks kept awake by the moon chattered as they dozed, a soft cooing chatter like women gossiping; an Arab came from the wood with dry branches; the flames leaped up, showing through the grey woof of the tent; and, listening to the crackling, Owen muttered "Resinous wood... tamarisk ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... interrupted by no one, except a short call now and then from Elizabeth Hoar, who can hardly be called an earthly inhabitant; and Mr. Emerson, whose face pictured the promised land (which we were then enjoying), and intruded no more than a sunset, or a rich warble ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... I'm a sinner, To hear the sounds at a Public Dinner! One pound one thrown into the puddle, To listen to Fiddle, Faddle, and Fuddle! Not to forget the sounds we buy From those who sell their sounds so high, That, unless the Managers pitch it strong, To get a Signora to warble a song, You must fork out the blunt ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... operas are Guy Mannering and The Kniqht of Snowdon] happens to find the notes, or some lark teaches Stephens [Catherine (1794-1882): a vocalist and actress who created Susanna in the Marriage of Figaro, and various parts in adaptation of Scott.] to warble the air—we will risk our credit, and the taste of the Lady of the Lute, by preserving the verses, simple and even rude as ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... panting tow'rds the sky, A foil'd ascent, while adverse fortune flings Her strong link'd meshes o'er his flutt'ring wings, Sinks, while exalted Ignorance supine, Unheeded slumbers like the pamper'd swine; Obsequious slaves in his voluptuous bowers Young pleasures warble, while the dancing Hours In sickly sweetness languishingly move, Like new-waked virgins flush'd with dreams of love— Him, when by Death's dark angel swept away From sloth's embrace, in premature decay, Surviving friends, donation'd into grief, Shall mourn with anguish ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... feelings of unmixed generosity and kindness which have heretofore marked her conduct, the ransom would have been complete. When the leaves began to bud, and the birds to sing their sweet songs of love, and to warble their gentle burdens of gratitude for the return of their beloved spring, our mission would have been successfully terminated. The deceased husband and wife would then have been each returned to the arms of his or her rejoicing ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... sing, Sing of my endless woes, Of Life, a poisoned spring, Of Love, a scattered rose; Wail-warble those who weep, Wild-warble but the brave; To the wearied, sing of sleep, And sing, to ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... but scarcely monotonous little strain; the cedar-bird, with its smooth brown coast of Quaker simplicity, and speech as brief and simple as Quaker yea or nay; the winter-wren sending out his strange, lovely, liquid warble from the high, rocky side of Cannon Mountain; the bluebird of the early spring, so welcome to the winter-weary dwellers in that land of ice and show, ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... voice—tun'd by harmonious love, Soft as the songs that warble through the grove! Oh! sweeter joys her converse can impart! Sweet to the sense, and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... them they were hastening to the tender embraces of those they loved, would they sit together on the quarter-deck, while Miss Kelly enhanced the brilliancy of the scene by singing some of those wild, touching melodies which she had learned to warble on her own native hills. Thus, "time trod on flowers," and the incidental privations and inconveniences of a sea ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... praise of the singer, and we all did the same; all save Junker Henning, who had not failed to mark that Herdegen had striven to out-do his modest warble, and likewise the ardent eyes he turned on the lady of his choice. Hence he moved not. Ann clapped her hands but lightly, sat looking into her lap, and for some time could say not a word; indeed, if she had trusted herself to speak the game would ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in a soft and musical tenor, died away and changed to a plaintive whistle, leaving the scene more lonely than ever. For a few moments nothing was to be seen except the endless expanse of wilderness, and nothing was to be heard save the mournful warble of the singer. Then a horse and rider were suddenly framed where the sparse timber opened out upon ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... green mantle blithe Nature arrays. And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes, While birds warble welcome in ilka green shaw; But to me ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway
... warble songs divine, Sweet singers of a mourning race, The ages long your brows shall grace With crowns where bays and laurels twine! For man the grandest garland brings, To bless the tender lives that tell, And with their mystic music swell, The lays that ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; The red-breast loves to build and warble here, And little footsteps ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... far more marvellous than any known on earth. They have branches of silver and golden apples; they have magical supplies of fruit, they produce wonderful music which sometimes causes sleep or oblivion; and birds perch in their branches and warble melody "such that the sick would sleep to it." It should be noted also that, as Miss Hull points out, in some tales the branch of a divine tree becomes a talisman leading the mortal to Elysium; in this resembling the golden bough plucked by AEneas before ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... Warble me now for joy of lilac-time (returning in reminiscence), Sort me, O tongue and lips for Nature's sake, souvenirs of earliest summer, Gather the welcome signs (as children with pebbles or stringing shells), Put in April and May, the hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air, Bees, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... brown thrushes at sunrise in summer After the May-flowers have faded away, Warble to show unto every new-comer How to hush stars, yet to waken the Day: Singing first, lullabies, then, jubilates, Watching the blue sky where every bird's heart is; Then, as lamenting the day's fading light, Down through the twilight, ...
— Twilight Stories • Various |
