"Blackbird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Bluffs the explorers found the banks of the river to be high and bluffy, and on one of the highlands which they passed they saw the burial-place of Blackbird, one of the great men of the Mahars, or Omahas, who had died of small-pox. A mound, twelve feet in diameter and six feet high, had been raised over the grave, and on a tall pole at the summit the party ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... want to know it; if I ain't, it's time my friends knowed it. Anyhow, I'm man enough to work out with some of that gang. Most of them have put it over me one time or another; Sinclair pasted me like a blackbird only the other day. They all say I'm nothing but a damned tramp. You say I have done you ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... Head ought to get the V.C.," said Stalky. "Why, he might have been dead and buried by now. But he wasn't. But he didn't. Ho! ho! He just nipped through the hedge like a lusty old blackbird. Extra-special, five hundred lines, an' gated for ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... had heard all and made a rush for the door, where they stood behind Mrs. Steiner, gazing with intense interest at the tall, dark man who had such piercing black eyes and a moustache so large that Fritz told his aunt afterward that it looked as if a blackbird had lighted upon his upper lip and spread ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... vine-leaves of the arbour; the ripe barley swayed at intervals; a blackbird was singing. And, casting glances around them, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... twenty-one he had already written his "Tancredi" and the opera buffa, "The Italians in Algiers." His best work (besides "William Tell") was "The Barber of Seville." Other works are "Cinderella" (La Cenerentola), "The Thieving Blackbird" (La Gazza Ladra), "Moses," and "The Lady of the Lake." These operas were mostly made up of parts of others that were failures, a la Hasse. An engagement being offered him in London, he went there with his wife, and in one season they earned about two hundred ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... of a hen blackbird without any trace of feathers on its neck or back is reported by a Worcester ornithologist. The attempt on the part of this bird to follow our present fashions ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... blackbird chased a crow above her, and she sat up to watch the aerial privateering, Mr. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... inspired him. The word "inspired" offended him; I withdrew it; I said that he had been fortunate in his model, and he admitted that: to see that thin, olive-complexioned girl with fine delicate features and blue-black hair lying close about her head like feathers—she wore her hair as a blackbird wears his wing—compelled one to paint; and after admiring the face I admired the black silk dress he had painted her in, a black silk dress covered with black lace. She wore grey pearls in her ears, and pearls ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... to door is apparently intended to convey to each house a portion of its virtues, while the actual eating of the bird would be a sort of communion feast. Perhaps the custom, in a Cornish village, of eating blackbird pie on Twelfth Day should be explained in ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... of this little book, is an educated Indian, son of the Ottawa Chief. His Indian name is Mack-aw-de-be-nessy (Black Hawk), but he generally goes by the name of "Blackbird," taken from the interpretation of the French "L'Oiseau noir." Mr. Blackbird's wife is an educated and intelligent white woman of English descent, and they have four children. He is a friend of the white people, as well as of his own people. ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... trysted, here they strayed, In the leafage dewy and boon, Many a man and many a maid, And the morn was merry June: 'Death is fleet, Life is sweet,' Sang the blackbird in the may; And the hour with flying feet While they dreamed ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... brought into the world but for whose salvation she was responsible. No doubt she had put up a hard fight for him and had every reason to be satisfied, though Gabrielle shared the honours of the mother's triumph in her own defeat. We sat there talking until all the birds were silent, but a single blackbird that made a noise in the shrubbery like that of two pebbles knocked sharply together; until the young people on the tennis court could no longer see to play, and the tall Californian poppies at the back ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... counts: a blackbird sings in the garden. Mrs Bridgenorth puts The Times down in her lap and ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... perhaps well decked out with fortune's favors, passes us, "She is not a lady," and every one will know what we mean. The phrase "vulgar lady," therefore, is an absurdity; there is no such thing; as well talk of a white blackbird; the term is self-contradictory. If she is vulgar, she is not a lady; but there is such a thing as a vulgar woman, and it is a very ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Robin-redbreast! Sing, birds, in every furrow; And from each hill, let music shrill Give my fair Love good-morrow! Blackbird and thrush in every bush, Stare, linnet, and cock-sparrow! You pretty elves, amongst yourselves Sing my fair Love good-morrow; To give my Love good-morrow Sing birds, in ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... next from a young pig in a dish placed before Mr. Dinsmore, and the song of the blackbird from a pie Grandma Elsie was beginning ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... eyes slowly closing once more; he was not yet half awake. So she went past him on tiptoe to the window, turned the handle, and opened the white tall framework-like door. A gush of air, sweet as wine, laden with the smell of dew and spring flowers and wet lawns, stole in to meet her; and a blackbird, in the shrubbery across the garden, broke into song, interrupted himself, chattered melodiously, and scurried out to vanish in a long curve behind the yews. The very world itself of beast and bird was still ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... landscape lovers, the beasts, birds, and insects of Nature were dear to these ancient people. One of the things Finn most cared for was not only his hounds, but the "blackbird singing on Letterlee"; and his song, on page 114, in the praise of May, tells us how keen was his observant eye for animal life and how much it delighted him. The same minute realisation of natural objects is illustrated in this book when King Iubdan explains to the servant ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... the forest suddenly encompassed them. The morning was pretty far advanced; the merry birds twittered in their dun covert, brushing the dewdrops from the boughs with their restless wings. The thrush and blackbird poured forth a more melancholy note; whilst the timid rabbit, scared from his morning's meal, rushed by and sought his burrow. The wood grew thicker, and the sunbeams that shot previously in broad slopes across their path soon became as lines of intensely-chequered light piercing ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... envy her they will hate her also; and I doubt if she will have many more friends among the fisher-lads. They will look upon her as a renegade to her order. The old women will suspect her, and the old men look askance at her with disapproving eyes. The girl will be a white blackbird; the properly colored birds will drive her out of the colony or pick her to death. It ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... see," he said, in the same slow, hopeless voice. "I forgot you men don't come down here very often and that my driver never has anything to say to anybody. Why, it's the Blackbird mine over across the divide—on the east spur. Bad, old fashioned mine she was, with crawlin' ground. Lime streaks all through the formation and plenty of water. Nobody quite knows how it happened. There was a big slip over there a few days ago on the four-hundred-foot level. Thirty ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... sun was rising heavenwards; down the street past the Almshouses he heard the happy sound of a young girl laughing. The world was full of strange new things; there was a new meaning in the song of the blackbird, in the rustle of the leaves, in the whispering of the warm wind. And suddenly there came over him a sensation of how far he himself was below the splendour of it all. He had walked through life with blinded ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... herself to be—an exception among her countrywomen for ability and acumen: an extreme self-satisfaction and vanity are revealed in the recital of her most disreputable tricks. She passes for a white blackbird, a woman of intellect caught in the harem; and it needs but little ingenuity to guess the torment she must have been to her protectors—first to the excellent Dr. Millingen, with whom she formed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... spent bullet! A bullet? Nonsense—it's a blackbird! Curious how similar the sound was! The blackbirds and the birds of softer song, the countryside and the pageant of the seasons, the intimacy of dwelling-rooms, arrayed in light—Oh! the war will end soon; we shall go back ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... explained Firetop, "and all the big people had gone off hunting, and we thought we'd go too. We thought we knew where we could find some roots. So we hid ourselves and waited until Robin and Blackbird and Squaretoes had gone down to the river to hunt frogs, and then we ran back into the woods." Robin and Blackbird and Squaretoes were the ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... and tousled the thick curls in his favorite caress. One of the tresses caught in his jewelled ring; and as he bent to unfasten it, he stared at the wavy mass in lazy surprise. It was as soft and rich as the breast of a blackbird, and the fire had laid over it a sheen ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... seats—and we That through the open window saw the ridge Of Fergus, and the peak Of utmost Cior Mohr—nor held it wrong, When vext with platitude and stirless air, To watch the mist-wreaths clothe the rock-scarps bare And in the pauses hear the blackbird's song. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... quite a fancy for cooking. No doubt you'll hear Forsyth and Joe say that I've half-pisoned them four or five times, but that's all envy; besides, a feller can't learn a trade without doin' a little damage to somebody or something at first. Did you ever taste blackbird pie?" ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... another high bluff, not many miles from the cedar post of poor Floyd, that is well known as the burial-place of Blackbird, a famous chief of the O-ma-haw tribe; the manner of his burial was extremely strange. As I was pulling up the river, a traveller told me the story; and, when I had heard it, we pushed our canoe into a small creek, ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... carelessness that had the laugh of ridicule in it. He loved to make her voice go high and shouting and defiant with laughter. The baby was dark-skinned and dark-haired, like the mother, and had hazel eyes. Brangwen called him the blackbird. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... de blackbird' nes', De baby love' his mamy's bres', An' raggy-tag, aw spick-an'-span, De ladies loves de ladies' man. I loves to roll my eyes to de ladies! I loves to sympathize wid de ladies! As long as eveh I knows sugah f'om san' I's bound to be a ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... certainly are. We took dinner with Mr. Vanwart, brother-in-law to Washington Irving, and shall not soon forget the elegant hospitality of his mansion. He resides about two miles from the town; and his lawn gave us a fine view of the English thrush and blackbird, of which birds there were plenty on the grass. It was so cold that we had to have fires, although the 19th of July. Mr. Vanwart was one of the saved, when the Atlantic was lost in the Sound, November 26, 1846; and he made the kindest inquiries after you and the family, and said that when he ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... had accompanied them to the big meadow. Nebbie also knew that presently that same master of his would return again to make the circuit of the garden in the company of Bainton, according to custom,—and as he stretched his four hairy paws out comfortably, and blinked his brown eyes at a portly blackbird prodding in the turf for a worm within a stone's throw of him, he was evidently considering whether it would be worth his while, as an epicurean animal, to escort these two men on their usual round on such a warm pleasant morning. For it was ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... evolved by love from the more brutal courtships of battle display.[60] The characteristic features of the amatory dances of birds are well known; they may be witnessed frequently during the pairing season. The male blackbird, for instance, is full of action as he woos his mate; he flirts his tail, spreads his glossy wings, hops and turns; chases the hen, and all the time chuckles with delight. Similar antics are performed by the whitethroat. The male redwing, again, struts about before his female, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... business again, after a small playing the truant, for I find that my interest and profit do grow daily, for which God be praised and keep me to my duty. To my office, and anon one tells me that Rundall, the house-carpenter of Deptford, hath sent me a fine blackbird, which I went to see. He tells me he was offered 20s. for him as he came along, he do so whistle. So to my office, and busy all the morning, among other things, learning to understand the course of the tides, and I think I do now ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Grumbelo strode angrily out of the garden. He mounted his horse and allowed it to take him wherever it would, for he had no idea where the Wise Woman of the Wood lived, and one way was as good as another. Towards sundown, a blackbird hopped on to his horse's head and sang to him, and something in its song so reminded the King of Lady Whimsical's laughter that he put out his hand to caress it. No sooner did he touch it, however, than ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... to which of them could throw a stone farthest. The stakes were four deer. One giant, called Goli, carried a bird in his hand and threw it instead of the stone; so he won; then he returned to where the Blackbird and the Crow were standing. The Blackbird said to the Crow, "They will not do us any harm until they stoop to pick up a stone." But the Crow replied, "Maybe they bring the stone in their hands." So they flew away, and while they were flying the Crow said, "I am going to the mountain to ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... I often roam I can behold my cot, my humble home; There I was born, and when this life is o'er I hope to sleep upon the river's shore. There is the orchard which I helped to rear, It well repays my labor year by year: One apple tree towers high above the rest Where every spring a blackbird has its nest. Sweet Lily used to stand beneath the bough And smiling listen—but she comes not now. A fairer bird ne'er charmed the rising day Than she we loved thus early called away; But she is gone to sing her holy strains In lovelier gardens ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... haw an' the rowan tree, Wild roses speck our thicket sae breery; Still, still will our walk in the greenwood be— O, Jeanie, there 's naething to fear ye! List when the blackbird o' singing grows weary, List when the beetle-bee's bugle comes near ye, Then come with fairy haste, Light foot, an' beating breast— O, Jeanie, there 's naething ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... had I Philomela's tongue, The thrush's note, or warbling song Of blackbird, lark, or linnet; I'd then more gratitude display, Striving to raise a sweeter lay, I'd sing the fleeting hours away, Nor silent be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... The blackbird's song at even-tide, And hers, who gay ascends, Filling the heavens far and wide, Are sweet. But none so blends, As thine, With calm decay, ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... the less, from Song's excess, Sings the blackbird late and early: Nor the bobolink's trill the less Laughs for very happiness, Gurgling ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... United States. In General Harrison's day he was United States Indian agent at Fort Wayne, but was killed in the massacre of Fort Dearborn, in 1812, by the faithless bands of Potawatomi under the chief Blackbird. ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... broom To bind thy flowing hair; For thee the eglantine shall bloom, Whose fragrance fills the air. We'll sit beside yon wooded knoll, To hear the blackbird sing, And fancy in his merry troll The joyous voice ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... in search of its finny prey, and here and there a heron might be detected standing in some shallow nook, and feasting on the smaller fry. A flight of cawing rooks were settling upon the tall trees on the right bank, and the voices of the thrush, the blackbird, and other feathered songsters burst in redundant ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Suddenly a belated blackbird lit upon the wall, surveyed the group and burst into a jubilant song, that for a moment drowned his rival's notes. Then, as if claiming the reward, he fluttered to the grass, ate his fill, took a sip from the mossy basin ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... Hubbard, who claimed the crow would eat animal food in any form, and might not be rightly classified as a grain-eating bird, Prof. Stearns said the crow was thus classified by reason of the structure of its crop being similar to that of the finches, the blackbird, the sparrows, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... upon two fat sparrows, and again we had a blackbird for dinner. He had killed it that morning from his window, while shaving, for I saw the lather dried on the stock ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... the use of such rooms. It is interesting to note also in the first case that in her wildest delirium during an acute attack she lived through episodes of her past life. One example may be given. In the course of her delirium she thought that a "blackbird" had flown to her, touched her left wrist and taken away all her vitality. This depended on an experience of her going to Germany when a girl and meeting a young German officer whom she did not like. A few years later she went to Germany and met the officer again. ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... blue sky and took a seat on a convenient dead tree, where he could see all that went on. Ol' Mistah Buzzard began to grin as soon as he saw that tin pail on Buster's neck. Then came others,—Redtail the Hawk, Scrapper the Kingbird, Redwing the Blackbird, Drummer the Woodpecker, Welcome Robin, Tommy Tit the Chickadee, Jenny Wren, Redeye the Vireo, and ever so many more. They came from the Old Orchard, the Green Meadows, and even down by the Smiling Pool, for the voices of Sammy Jay and Blacky the Crow carried far, and at the sound of them everybody ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... choice vision, I shun the West Highway, Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms From blackbird ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... Rowena fluttering along the highroad like a red-winged blackbird! Are you going to fly home, or drive ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... as of her own. The full amount of her mischiefs often does not appear at once, as she is glib of tongue, adroit in apologies, and lies with as much alertness and as little thought of conscience as a blackbird chatters. It is difficult for people who have been trained from childhood in the school of verities,—who have been lectured for even the shadow of a prevarication, and shut up in disgrace for a lie, till truth becomes a habit of their souls,—it ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for there was plenty of time before five o'clock, and he stopped every few moments to examine some wayside plant, and to listen with the ardor of a true lover of nature to the merry voices of the thrush and blackbird singing a ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... slime, and stagnant water. Frogs and turtles warming their backs in the sunshine scampered in alarm from their logs. Lizards blinked at him. Moccasin snakes darted wicked forked tongues at him and then glided out of reach of his tomahawk. The frogs had stopped their deep bass notes. A swamp-blackbird rose in fright from her nest in the saw-grass, and twittering plaintively fluttered round and round over the pond. The flight of the bird worried Wetzel. Such little things as these might attract the attention of some Indian scout. But he hoped that in the excitement ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... fully developed; not strikingly beautiful, but with a lovely reddish-brown tint on her face, indicative of healthy, warm, rich pulsations. She possessed a contralto voice, of a quality like that of a blackbird, and it fell to her and to Frank to sing. She was dressed in a fashion perhaps a little more courtly than was usual in the gatherings at Mr Palmer's house, and Frank, as he stood beside her at the piano, could not restrain his eyes from straying every now and then a way ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... yer that too, Dad,' she say—Maria did. 'You didn't ought to call 'im 'Artz Mountain roller, but ha-Hartz Mountain roller. That's the way to call 'im,' she says—impident little 'ussy! But there—what's in a name, as the white blackbird said when 'e sat on a wooden milestone eating a red blackberry? Still, 'e weren't running a live-stock emporium, I expect, when 'e ask such a question as that 'ere. There's a good deal in 'ow you call a bird, or a dawg or a guinea-pig neither, if you want to pass 'im on to a customer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... or purple grackle (Quiscalus quiscula). Blackbird, European. Bluebird (Sialia sialis). Bobolink (Dodichonyx oryzivorus). Buzzard, or ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Blackbird in the summer trees, The Lark upon the hill, Let loose their carols when they please, Are quiet ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... think that whatever he was doing was a thing of vast importance. Peter became very clever at helping the birds to build their nests; soon he could build better than a wood-pigeon, and nearly as well as a blackbird, though never did he satisfy the finches, and he made nice little water-troughs near the nests and dug up worms for the young ones with his fingers. He also became very learned in bird-lore, and knew an east wind from a west wind by its smell, and he could see the grass growing ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... murderous brutality to their poor children. There is a terrible reckoning coming for the "Gipsy man," who can chuckle to his fowls, and kick, with his iron-soled boot, his poor child to death; who can warm and shelter his blackbird, and send the offspring of his own body to sleep upon rotten straw and the dung-heap, covered over with sticks and rags, through which light, hail, wind, rain, sleet, and snow can find its way without ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... that language is Poetry. Here annually, from year to year, I had renewed my friendship with the first primroses and violets, and listened with the untiring ear of love to the spring roundelay of the blackbird, whistled from among his bower of May blossoms. Here, I had discoursed sweet words to the tinkling brook, and learned from the melody of waters the music of natural sounds. In these beloved solitudes all the holy emotions which stir the human heart in its ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... and adventures of Marina, Celadyne, Redmond, Fida, Philocel, Aletheia, Metanoia, and Amintas do not hold the reader from delight in descriptions of the blackbird and dove calling from the dewy branches; crystal streams lisping through banks purple with violets, rosy with eglantine, or sweet with wild thyme; thickets where the rabbits hide; sequestered nooks on which the elms and alders throw long shadows; circles of green grass made by dancing elves; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the human lark or thrush that he "shake out his carols" in the same free and spontaneous manner as his winged prototype? Kingsley has shown how surely the old minnesingers and early ballad-writers have learned of the birds, taking their key- note from the blackbird, or the wood-lark, or the throstle, and giving utterance to a melody as simple and unstudied. Such things as the following were surely caught from the ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... born a blackbird in a bushy thicket near a meadow. My father took good care of his family and would peck about all day for insects. These he brought home to my mother, holding them by the tail so as not to mash them. He had a sweet voice, too, and ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... sheet of water. And he had on his person garments of a wonderful make; these clothes of mine are by no means beautiful like those. And his face was wonderful to behold; and his voice was calculated to gladden the heart; and his speech was pleasant like the song of the male blackbird. And while listening to the same I felt touched to my inmost soul. And as a forest in the midst of the vernal season, assumes a grace only when it is swept over by the breeze, so, O father! he of an excellent and pure smell ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... blue above throbs with the tremulous song of innumerable larks; the measured chant of cuckoos awakens the woods; and through the thickets a whole world's gladness sings itself forth from the throat of thrush and blackbird. Through the whole land between the four seas benediction is everywhere; blue-bells and the rosy fingers of heath deck the mountain-tops, where the grouse are crooning to each other among the whins; down the hillsides into every valley pour gladness and greenness and song; ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... and his humanity was not for humanity alone. He abhorred the dull and savage joy of the sportsman in a lucky shot, an unerring aim, and once when I met him in the country he had just been sickened by the success of a gunner in bringing down a blackbird, and he described the poor, stricken, glossy thing, how it lay throbbing its life out on the grass, with such pity as he might have given a wounded child. I find this a fit place to say that his mind and soul were with those who do the hard work of the world, in fear of those ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sound of the Church bell to their ears through the window, half open to admit the breezy breath of spring; the cawing of the rooks and the song of the blackbird came with it; the sky was clear and blue, the ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was mistaken. Sally never did know what she was about,—had no plan or purpose more than a blackbird; and when Moses was gone laughed to think how many times she had made him ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... roam. And so it was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue: from a dewy copse dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note: the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers: a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude a boat slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... last night. At dusk the squalid toad was seen, Hopping and crawling o'er the green; The whirling wind the dust obeys, And in the rapid eddy plays; The frog has changed his yellow vest, And in a russet coat is dressed. Though June, the air is cold and still, The mellow blackbird's voice is shrill. My dog, so altered in his taste, Quits mutton-bones on grass to feast; And see yon rooks, how odd their flight, They imitate the gliding kite, And seem precipitate to fall, As if they felt the piercing ball. 'Twill surely rain, I see with sorrow, Our ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... starling," I said. "Can't you see its nice shiny black-and-green plumage, and its yellow bill like a blackbird? Leave the poor little thing ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... tangled branches every now and then to get through, and all the time looking carefully round for nests. They very soon heard the harsh cry of the jay, who was letting all the inhabitants of the woodlands know that enemies were at hand, and away flew the birds. The blackbird was the first to take the alarm from the jay, and away he flew, crying, "Kink, kink, kink," as he started from his nest in a great ivy tod on an old pollard-tree. The lads soon found the nest, and peeped in, but instead of eggs there were four wretched-looking little objects, all eyes and beak, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... met their hunting parties on Minnesota river. Toward the end of the eighteenth century they were nearly destroyed by smallpox, their number having been reduced from about 3,500 to but little over 300 when they were visited by Lewis and Clark, their famous chief Blackbird being one of those carried off by the epidemic. Subsequently they increased in numbers; in 1890 their population was about 1,200. They are now on reservations, mostly owning land in severalty, and are citizens of the United States and of ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... what a thankful gladness in his face, (Silent heart-homage—plant of special grace!) At the lane's entrance, slackening oft his pace, Would Ambrose send a loving look before; Conceiting the caged blackbird at the door, The very blackbird, strain'd its little throat In welcome, with a more rejoicing note; And honest Tinker! dog of doubtful breed, All bristle, back, and tail, but "good at need," Pleasant his greeting to the accustomed ear; But of all welcomes pleasantest, most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... vain dream of moody mind, That lists a dirge i' the blackbird's singing; That in gusts hears Nature's own voice complain, And beholds her tears in the gushing rain; When low clouds congregate blank and blind, And Winter's snow-muffled arms are clinging Round Autumn's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... kept singing something about a man named "Sylvester," and he kept singing out the same thing over and over again, till Aunty May said, "Oh, dear, I can't hear myself speak. Edith, will you quiet the blackbird?" And Aunty Edith called to George not to sing so loud, and he said, "Yas, 'm, Miss Edith"; and the next minute it began ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... for nearly a minute. While he waited, I watched a pair of swans flit ghost-like over the silken surface of the lake. Between us and a dark bank of wood the lights of the house flamed red. The melancholy even-song of a blackbird wailed out from a shrubbery beside us. Then Herbert Brande wrote in his note-book, and tearing out the page, he handed it to me, saying: "That is the address of the last ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... home their worm-cheer to the little ones in the nests, and were singing their after-supper songs, very sweetly but drowsily. 'Twas too late in the year for the Nightingale,—that I knew,—but the jolly Blackbird was in full feather and voice; and presently there swept by me a great Owl, going home to feast, I will be bound, in his hollow tree, and with nothing less than a Field Mouse for his supper, the rascal. 'Twas a wicked imagining, but I could not help thinking, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... round baskets on their heads. These baskets contained live fowl. In one a large melancholy turkey meditated on his approaching fate: in another, two of lighter disposition swung their long necks about and viewed the scene. One of these baskets was as pretty as the blackbird pie of famous memory. In it sat eight chickens of an age to make their debut on the platter, all settled into a fluffy, soft-gray cushion, out of which their little heads and necks and half-raised wings peeped and turned and fluttered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... wild, Shall to the skies aspire; The gowdspink, Music's gayest child, Shall sweetly join the choir; The blackbird strong, the lintwhite clear, The mavis mild and mellow; The robin pensive Autumn cheer, In all her ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... he wanted to talk and he could be over-urged to talk if the right pressure was brought to bear. Janice came away, leaving the eagerly curious pecking at him—the one white blackbird ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... lady; the sun has quite set, and the birds are silent and at roost, except the old blackbird, who whistles late, and the wakeful robin, who sometimes bandies music with the nightingale.—Would you ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... blackbird, * lark, * yellowhammer, * robin, *wren, * golden-crested wren, * goldfinch, * chaffinch, * *greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge, accentor), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw, *blackcap, * garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... spring-time 'tis eerie, when winter is over, And birds should be glinting owre forest and lea, When the lint-white and mavis the yellow leaves cover, And nae blackbird sings loud frae the tap ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Jack Poynter,' returned the man, taking off his paper cap and rubbing up his bristly gray hair. 'We call Jack "The Blackbird" among us; he is a famous whistler, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... red-breast and the wren,' cautiously, suspiciously, picking up a crumb on the wing, with the little keen bright eye fixed on the window; then they would stop for two pecks; then stay till they were satisfied. The shyer birds, tamed by their example, came next; and at last one saucy fellow of a blackbird—a sad glutton, he would clear the board in two minutes,—used to tap his yellow bill against the window for more. How we loved the fearless confidence of that fine, frank-hearted creature! And surely he loved us. I wonder the practice is not more general. 'May! May! naughty May!' She has frightened ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... hazel coppice— A boy and a girl, if the good fates please, Making love, say,— The happier they! Draw yourself up from the light of the moon, And let them pass, as they will too soon, With the bean-flower's boon, And the blackbird's ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... creatures, and where we find one nest, four or five others may be looked for near by. The red-winged blackbird is a mormon in very fact, and often a solitary male bird may be seen guarding a colony of three or four nests, each with an attending female. A sentiment of altruism seems indeed not unknown, as I have seen a female give a grub to one of a hungry nestful, ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... her little horsehair trunk which she had packed to take to Blossy's, looking in her time-worn silk gown like a rusty blackbird, and, like a bird, she bent her head first to one side and then the other, surveying Abe in his "barrel clothes" with ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... unlike the accustomed carol of the bird,—as the mew of the Cat-Bird, the lamb-like bleating of the Veery and his impatient yeoick, the chaip of the Meadow-Lark, the towyee of the Chewink, the petulant psit and tsee of the Red-Winged Blackbird, and the hoarse cooing of the Bobolink. And with some of our most familiar birds the variety of notes is so great as really to promise difficulties in the American department of the bird-lexicon. I have watched two Song-Sparrows, perched near each other, in whom the spy-glass could show not the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... our domain; and they attract at least their full share of attention, as they strut about the lawns in their glossy clerical suits. One of the gardeners tells me that they sometimes kill the sparrows. I hope they do. The crow blackbird's attempts at song are ludicrous in the extreme, as every note is cracked, and is accompanied by a ridiculous caudal gesture. But he is ranked among the oscines, and seems to know it; and, after all, it is only the common fault ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... punei andu, another variety, has the body and wings of deep crimson, with the head, and extremity of its long indented tail, white; the legs red. It lives on the worms generated in the decayed part of old trees, and is about the size of a blackbird. Of the same size is the burong sawei, a bird of a bluish black colour, with a dove-tail, from which extend two very long feathers, terminating circularly. It seems to be what is called the widow-bird, and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... it. As soon as I got to the trees I stopped and dismounted to enjoy the delightful sensation the shade produced: there out of its power I could best appreciate the sun shining in splendour on the wide green hilly earth and in the green translucent foliage above my head. In the upper branches a blackbird was trolling out his music in his usual careless leisurely manner; when I stopped under it the singing was suspended for half a minute or so, then resumed, but in a lower key, which made it seem ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... well be," went on the garden maid, "but the truth of the matter is that I cannot smell, because a blackbird has ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... the arbors and bees were humming in the flowers. From the fields down along the brook came a blended song of swamp-blackbird and meadow-lark. A clarion-voiced burro split the air with his coarse and homely bray. The sheep were bleating, and a soft baa of little lambs came sweetly to Helen's ears. She went her usual rounds with more than usual zest and thrill. Everywhere was color, activity, life. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... The Blackbird and the Thrush, and charming Nightingale, Whose sweet jug sweetly echoes through every ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... little girl could return now to that "very nice school" where other nice little girls went. She departed every morning beside the Laundryman, tugging at her arm, skipping and chattering like a blackbird in June. Ernestine saw her safely up the school steps and then took the car to her business. Milly, after the housekeeping and her morning duties, walked up town for her daughter and spent most of the afternoons ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... turtle or mourning dove, sparrow, nuthatch, warbler, flicker, vireo, wren, American robin, catbird, tanager, bobolink, blue jay, oriole, grosbeck or redbird, creeper, redstart, waxwing, woodpecker, humming bird, killdeer, swallow, blue bird, blackbird, meadow lark, bunting, starling, redwing, purple martin, brown thresher, American goldfinch, chewink or ground robin, pewee or phoebe bird, chickadee, fly catcher, knat catcher, mouse hawk, whippoorwill, snow bird, titmouse, gull, eagle, buzzard, or any wild ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... of a whole continent must have been concentrated on this island. Indeed, I doubt if a sweeping together of all the birds of the United States into any two of the largest States would people the earth and air more fully. There appeared to be a plover, a crow, a rook, a blackbird, and a sparrow to every square yard of ground. They know the value of birds in Britain,—that they are the friends, not the enemies, of the farmer. It must be the paradise of crows and rooks. It did me good to see them so much at home about the fields and even in the towns. I was glad also to ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... primroses, and cowslips; all the trees bursting into leaves, and the hedges already clothed with their vernal livery; the mountains covered with flocks of sheep and tender bleating wanton lambkins playing, frisking, and skipping from side to side; the groves resound with the notes of blackbird, thrush, and linnet; and all night long sweet Philomel pours forth her ravishingly delightful song. Then, for variety, we go down to the nymph of Bristol spring, where the company is assembled before ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the lark's ecstatic gush From his clear ambush in the sky; A blackbird (if it's not a thrush) Sings from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... for him, and we let him loose in the plain below. I also picked up a dead bird, of a species common in the desert, with white head or cap, and white tail, except the upper feathers; all the rest, legs and bill, black. It is about the size of a lark, but has a head like a blackbird. We supposed the one found had died from want of water, though it may have been killed by the mother of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... traveller ordinarily delights to linger. She rode beneath a natural avenue of trees, whose branches met overhead like the arches of a cathedral, and was scarcely conscious of their pleasant shade. She heard neither the song of the wooing thrush, nor the cry of the startled blackbird, nor the evening hymn of the soaring lark. Alike to her was the gorse-covered common, along which they swiftly speeded, and the steep hill-side up which they more swiftly mounted. She breathed not the delicious fragrance of the new-mown hay, nor listened to the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... something had not Wenna herself by accident kicked against the missing brooch. As it was, the time lost by this misadventure was grievous to Mabyn, who now insisted on leading the way, and went along through the bushes at a rattling pace. Here and there the belated wanderers startled a blackbird, that went shrieking its fright over to the other side of the valley, but Mabyn was now too much preoccupied to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... emperors," or spread "the tiger moth's deep damasked wings" before the enraptured eyes of the noble poet. These two caterpillars and a few house-flies are all I saw, heard, or felt, by day or night, of the native fauna of England, except a few birds,—rooks, starlings, a blackbird, and the larks of Salisbury Plain just as they rose; for I lost sight of them almost immediately. I neither heard nor saw the nightingales, to my great regret. They had been singing at Oxford a short time before my visit to that place. The only song I heard ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mended at last, Sigurd Jarlsson. It did not appear that the Norman brought you much luck in return for your support." He glanced toward that part of the table where the black locks of Robert the Fearless shone, sleek as a blackbird's wing, in the morning sun. "The Southerner has an overbearing face," he added. "It reminds me of someone I hate, though I cannot ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... pursue her mission of mercy and succour at night. Thus passed some days, and then Jessica's blood grew restless; the narrow room seemed to her stifling and unendurable, and she pined for the open air, as a caged blackbird longs ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... speedy dispersion. So beautiful, so tranquil, looked the old monastic fane, that none would have deemed its midnight rest had been broken by the impious rites of a foul troop. The choir, where the unearthly scream and the demon laughter had resounded, was now vocal with the melodies of the blackbird, the thrush, and other songsters of the grove. Bells of dew glittered upon the bushes rooted in the walls, and upon the ivy-grown pillars; and gemming the countless spiders' webs stretched from bough to bough, showed they were all unbroken. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... snow this morning. Alas! for the deluded birds we have been listening to for days past; thrushes, larks, and as, I believe, blackbirds, though there is a tradition in these parts that no man ever heard the blackbird sing before the 15th of February. I suspect it grew out of the date of St. Valentine's Day. We had some lovely music, however, within doors this morning; and, in spite of the snow and the chill wind, a little fairy of a girl, with her ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... With blushes you adorn, And take the fresh air, whilst linnets prepare A concert on each green thorn; The blackbird and thrush on every bush, And the charming nightingale, In merry vein, their throats do strain To entertain, the jolly train Of those of ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... and cajoled; and, moreover, a strong curiosity to hear and see more of that little passionate bird, fresh from the convent cage. Her gesture and her eyes irresistibly carried him back to old times, though whether to an angry blackbird in the yew-tree alleys at Leurre, or to the eager face that had warned him to save his father, he could not remember with any distinctness. At any rate, he was surprised to find himself thinking so little in comparison ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... colors of a shell Upon the hills, when every little creek Is shot with silver from the Chesapeake In shoals new-minted by the ocean swell, When strawberries go begging, and the sleek Blue plums lie open to the blackbird's beak, We shall live well—we shall live ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... thought a Fairy's should be; her eyes were deep and dark as Laddie had said, her hair hung from a part in the middle of her forehead over her shoulders, and if she had been in the sun, it would have gleamed like a blackbird's wing. She was just as Laddie said she would be; she was so much more beautiful than you would suppose any woman could be, I stood there dumbly staring. I wouldn't have asked for any one more perfectly beautiful ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... straw-roofed cottage; the music gave to their blinking old eyes the same dreamy look we had read in the ruminating cattle orbs. For an aeronaut on his way to bed, I should have felt, had I been in that blackbird's plumed corselet, that I had had a gratifyingly ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... till the weeping ended her words, and I was all abashed with shame and pale with anguish. I stole quietly from my lair unheeded of any, save that one damsel said that a rabbit ran in the hedge, and another that a blackbird stirred in the thicket. Behold me, then, that my quest beginneth again amidst the tangle of lies whereinto ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... well that our people should have an opportunity of realising these birds and beasts to themselves, but we are shocked at the notion of giving them a similar aid to the realisation of events which, as we say, concern them more nearly than any others, in the history of the world. A stuffed rabbit or blackbird is a good thing. A stuffed Charge of Balaclava again is quite legitimate; but a stuffed Nativity is, according to Protestant ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... a broken arrow, a deer-skin pegged out on the ground to dry, a bundle of faggots, a bare and blackened patch of grass, strewn with wood ashes, were tokens of recent habitation, though the reiterations of the nightingale, the deep tones of the blackbird and the hum of insects, were the only sounds ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... war-dress, with silver cross on his breast and bow and arrows in his hand; then, the weight on the trunk being released, the sapling sprang back to its place and afterward rose to a commanding height, fitly marking the Indian's tomb. Chief Blackbird, of the Omahas, was buried, in accordance with his wish, on the summit of a bluff near the upper Missouri, on the back of his favorite horse, fully equipped for travel, with the scalps that he had taken hung to ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... next to Lady Doraine, and he was as gay as a blackbird, and I heard Octavia saying to Lady Greswold that Carry had better hurry up and get that house in Park Street, or Lady Doraine would have it instead. Then we all went to bed, and Lord Valmond squeezed my hand and looked as silly as anything, and Jane ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... Red-headed Woodpecker Red-bellied Woodpecker Yellow-bellied Sapsucker King Bird Cat Bird Towhee Robin Meadow Lark Prairie Horned Lark Baltimore Oriole Orchard Oriole Whip-poor-will Night Hawk Pigeon Hawk Sparrow Hawk Mourning Dove Rose-breasted Grosbeak Evening Grosbeak Purple Finch Red-winged Blackbird Rusty Blackbird Bobolink Mocking Bird Starling Purple Grackle Humming Bird Yellow-breasted Chat Blue-gray Gnatcatcher Tufted Titmouse Brown Creeper House Wren Marsh Wren Brown Thrasher Wood Thrush Hermit Thrush Wilson Thrush Water Thrush Chimney Swift Bank Swallow Rough-winged ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... to school both ways, saving a dollar and a quarter a month. Have found a cheaper laundry; one dollar more saved. Cut down fruit bill; one dollar more. Blacked my white straw sailor with shoe-blacking, trimmed it with two neckties and an old blackbird badly molted; result perfectly hideous, but the sugar-bowl, clothing, and sundry fund are out of debt and doing well. Had my faded gray dress dyed black, and trimmed the jacket with pieces of my moth-eaten cock's-feather boa; perfectly ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... of striking plumage are the Bluejay, the Bluebird, the Baltimore Oriole, the Scarlet Tanager, the Cedar Waxwing, and Red-winged Blackbird. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... description of solitude, the very reverse of melancholy. Mile after mile have I repeatedly roamed along the outer Pomoerium of those solitary rampires, and encountered perhaps a goatherd and his pretty flock, the tinkle of whose bells formed the only accompaniment to the honey notes of the blackbird:—or, perhaps, in sonorous solemnity, some great Bell would suddenly boom upon the silence, and be taken up in various tones from a hundred quarters, no vestige, mean time, of Minster or Monastery being visible; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Wentworth Higginson The Butterfly Alice Freeman Palmer Fireflies Edgar Fawcett The Blood Horse Bryan Waller Procter Birds Moira O'Neill Birds Richard Henry Stoddard Sea-Birds Elizabeth Akers The Little Beach Bird Richard Henry Dana The Blackbird Frederick Tennyson The Blackbird Alfred Edward Housman The Blackbird William Ernest Henley The Blackbird William Barnes Robert of Lincoln William Cullen Bryant The O'Lincon Family Wilson Flagg The Bobolink Thomas Hill My Catbird William Henry Venable The Herald Crane Hamlin ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... waters lost in deepest woods, and all the fairy echoes whispering when the leaves are motionless in the noonday heat; then followed notes, cool and soft as the drip of summer showers on the parched grass, and then the song of the blackbird sounding as clearly as it sounds in long silent spaces of the evening, and then in one sweet jocund burst the multitudinous voices that hail the breaking of the morn. And the lark, singing and soaring above the minstrel, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... larger than the slight falcon. These powerful birds are flown at herons and hares, and are the only hawks that are fully a match for the fork-tailed kite. The merlin and hobby are both small hawks and fit only for small birds, as the blackbird, &c. The sparrow-hawk may be also trained to hunt; his flight is rapid for a short distance, kills partridges well in the early season, and is the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... homeward through the early morning, reflecting on the ease with which last night's marauding expedition had been conducted. He even pursed his lips together and whistled softly—a low, flute-like sound that might almost have been mistaken for the note of a blackbird. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... silvery, and green, when a breeze of sufficient strength sweeps across it. The larks are so multitudinous that no distinct song can be caught, and amidst the confused melody comes the note of the thrush and the blackbird. A constant under-running accompaniment is just audible in the hum of innumerable insects and the sharp buzz of flies darting past the ear. Only those who live in the open air and watch the fields and sea from hour to hour and day to day know what they are and what they mean. ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... vessel?" said Candace, looking down from the tower of her ample corpulence on the small, quiet man whom she had been fledging with the ample folds of a worsted comforter, out of which his little head and shining bead-eyes looked, much like a blackbird in a nest,—"I de weaker ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... thee surly Winter's flown, That the brook's verge is green;—and bid thee hear, In yon irriguous vale, the Blackbird clear, At measur'd intervals, with mellow tone, Choiring [1]the hours of prime? and call thine ear To the gay viol dinning in the dale, With tabor loud, and bag-pipe's rustic drone To merry Shearer's dance;—or jest retail ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... (She is heard laughing). Shall I stone the raven away from his nest? Beware, you blackbird! (A small stone flies through the air, and falls down near ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... consented to my taking two of them and a blackbird that one of the mountaineers had given me. And so we returned ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... maidens, And among a thousand maidens, Bring the noblest of the hundred, From a thousand unattractive; From the swamp you bring a lapwing, From the hedge you bring a magpie, From the field you bring a scarecrow, From the fallow field a blackbird. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... to break up her whole existence, and render her unfit for her daily task. But now she found that, once more, she had underrated the strength of her own impulses. For some time she resisted, but one day, the sun shone out strong and genial, the budding trees spread their branches to the warm air, a blackbird warbled ecstatically from among the Priory shrubberies, and Hadria passed into the garden ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Samson, "de rale sugar-corn, de blackbird gits. None of dem white gulls and pigeons gits dat corn. A white ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... an unfrequent sight is to see bare-footed peasant children waiting for their turn to cross the gangway which leads to the New World. Perhaps they have nothing with them but "a pot of shamrock," or a little mountain thrush or orange-billed blackbird, in a wicker cage, to make friends with "beyant the herring-pond." It is very curious, but very Irish, that they do not at all seem to want the sympathy that is lavished upon them by the onlookers. ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... could the blackbird or the throstle (From the poet each has had his due) Win from me such perfectly colossal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... links together some bird- like refrain: but they make up for their want of logic and reflection by the depth of their passion, the perfectness of their harmony with nature. The inspired Swabian, wandering in the pine- forest, listens to the blackbird's voice till it becomes his own voice; and he breaks out, with the very carol ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... shade, And hear what music's made— How Philomel Her tale doth tell, And how the other birds do fill the choir: The thrush and blackbird lend their throats, Warbling melodious notes. We will all sport enjoy, which others ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... And now we hear in woodlands dim Their unarticulated hymn, Now walk through rippling waves of wheat, Now sink in mats of clover sweet, Or see before us from the lawn The lark go up to greet the dawn! All birds that love the English sky Throng round my path when she is by; The blackbird from a neighboring thorn With music brims the cup of morn, And in a thick, melodious rain The mavis pours her mellow strain! But only when my Katie's voice Makes all the listening woods rejoice I hear—with cheeks that flush and pale— ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... made for us bows of lancewood, and arrows of poplar, tipped with spikes of iron. With these we could not only split our "willow wand" at 80 yards distant, but the more skilful deemed an arrow hardly worth having until it had been baptized in the blood of blackbird or pigeon, and some of the neighbouring pigeon cotes suffered accordingly. The writer was presented with a bow made of bamboo, and arrows said to be poisoned, which a great traveller, then residing in Horncastle, had ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... one will know about the hospital and be glad to see me coming," thought Nelly. And indeed it seemed so, for just then a blackbird, sitting on the garden wall, burst out with a song full of musical joy, Nelly's kitten came running after to stare at the wagon and rub her soft side against it, a bright-eyed toad looked out from his cool bower among the ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... the most verdant and lively of all the family of trees. Here a broad, rude stone steppeth over a lazy spring, oozing its way into grass and weeds; anon a fresh pathway divergeth, you know not whither. Meanwhile the wild blackbird startles across the way and singeth anew in some other shade. To have seen Fiammetta there, stepping in silk attire, like a flower, and the sunlight looking upon her betwixt the branches! I had not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... silence for some time, but as they were dropping down into the hot, dry, treeless foot-hills the ranger turned to explain: "I'm going to leave the main road and whip out over the mesa just above the Blackbird Ranch, so don't be surprised by my change of plan. They are a dubious lot down there at the Blackbird, and have a telephone, so I'd just as soon they wouldn't see us at all. They might send word to Abe. It'll take a little longer, and the road is rougher, but our chances for ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Kelso."' Mr. Puff forthwith jumped up on a mass of stone, and seating himself in the proper attitude of one working with an awl, began a favourite interlude, mimicking a certain son of Crispin, at whose stall Scott and he had often lingered when they were schoolboys, and a blackbird, the only companion of his cell, that used to sing to him while he talked and whistled to it all day long. With this performance Scott was always delighted. Nothing could be richer than the contrast of the bird's wild, sweet notes, some of which he imitated with wonderful skill, and the accompaniment ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... rather insolent, you know, At being disappointed in your wish To supersede all warblers here below, And be the only blackbird in the dish. And then you overstrain yourself, or so, And tumble downward like the flying fish Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob, And fall for lack of moisture ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron |
