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Trilling   /trˈɪlɪŋ/   Listen
Trilling

noun
1.
United States literary critic (1905-1975).  Synonym: Lionel Trilling.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Trilling" Quotes from Famous Books



... busy plucking the feathers off a bird and dropping them on a sheet placed for that purpose on the floor. She is trilling to herself in the lightness of her heart. We may remember that Tweeny, alone among the women, had dressed wisely for an island when they fled the yacht, and her going-away gown still adheres to her, though in fragments. A score of pieces have been ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie

... grass near by. Lewis's riding crop and gloves lay on his knee. He cast his hat upon the grass. Little birds hopped about on the ground and flitted here and there in the trees, twittering. A mocker, trilling in sudden ecstacy of life, spread a larger melody through all ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... soubrette trilling snatches of her topical song as she creamed off her make-up, came to them through the sulky gloom of the corridor. Behind the closed door of Miss De Voe's dressing room, the gabble of the pink satin ponies was like hash in the chopping. Overhead, moving scenery created a remote sort of thunder. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... ones,—devil a hole in one of them! How many pair of stockings had you? Three and an odd one. You have two dozen this minute. How many pocket handkerchiefs? One,—devil a more! You could only blow your nose two days in the week, and now you may every hour of the twenty-four! And as to the trilling articles of small value, snuff-boxes, gloves, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... will blossom ere long, And gay robin redbreast be trilling a song: But, always before them, I'm sure to be here: 'Tis first Pussy Willow ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1875 • Various

... growing darkness; and slowly, out of the plain, the yellow moon soared up and touched the river and the meadows with mystic light; while far off, in the rose-thickets of the gardens, the first notes of a single nightingale floated upon the scented breeze, swelling and trilling, quivering and falling again, in a glory of angelic song. The faint air fanned her cheek, the odours of the box and the myrtle and the roses intoxicated her senses, and as the splendid shield of the rising ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... of the old fir, bearing its heavy mantle of ivy from base to topmost twig, and not twenty yards from the window, a thrush sits and sings. You must watch him carefully ere you assure yourself that those sweet, trilling notes of peerless music come from that tiny throat. A rare lesson in voice production he will teach you. Deep breathing, headnotes clear as a bell and effortless, as only three or four singers in Europe can produce them, without the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... pea-fowl stalked over the parterre in all the pride of their rainbow plumage. In the fountain appeared the tall form of a flamingo, his scarlet colour contrasting with the green leaves of the water-lily. Songsters were trilling in every tree. The mock-bird, perched upon the highest limb, was mimicking the monotonous tones of the parrot. The toucans and trogons flashed from grove to grove, or balanced their bodies under the spray of the jet d'eau; while the humming-birds ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... reflected here and there on the dark water; they quivered and were broken up on the surface—and from that alone it could be seen that the river was flowing rapidly. It was still. Drowsy curlews cried plaintively on the further bank, and in one of the bushes on the nearest side a nightingale was trilling loudly, taking no notice of the crowd of officers. The officers stood round the bush, touched it, but the nightingale went ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... these birds of sea and shore, and their interesting habits, you will wish to protect them from stone or gun, and their nests from the egg collector. You will listen to the lark and linnet, and be glad that the happy songster trilling such sweet notes is free to fly where he wishes, and is not pining in a cage. And you, little girl, will not encourage the destruction of these pretty creatures by wearing a sea-gull or part of some dead ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... any one who knew Miss Buchanan would know from its expression that she liked Franklin Kane. 'Well,' she said, as he drew his chair to the opposite side of the tea-table—very cosy it was, the fire shining upon them, and the canaries trilling intermittently—'Well, here we are, abandoned. We'll make the best ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... the man with dragging footsteps hopeless, wishing himself dead, Crept away from sight of plenty, starved in place of being fed, Wandered farther from the mansion, till he reached a purling brook, Babbling, trilling broken music by a green and shady nook, Here sweet Flossie found him fainting; in her hands were food and drink; Pale like death lay he before her, yet the child-heart did not shrink; Then the rags from off his forehead, she with ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... words sounded like a rally call. With that the girl fled down the hall, trilling the merriest sort ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... grew up, again and again She'd tell, after trilling that air, Of her youth, and the battles on Leipzig plain And of all that was suffered there! . ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... *direct So did our sexton, and our fermerere,* *infirmary-keeper That have been true friars fifty year, — They may now, God be thanked of his love, Make their jubilee, and walk above. And up I rose, and all our convent eke, With many a teare trilling on my cheek, Withoute noise or clattering of bells, Te Deum was our song, and nothing else, Save that to Christ I bade an orison, Thanking him of my revelation. For, Sir and Dame, truste me right well, Our orisons be more effectuel, And more we see of Christe's secret things, Than *borel ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... leaping prismatic flame than a vast expanse of water. Then the old gold, red, and orange colored sails of the boats, gliding like magic through the water, add their picturesque touches to the scene. The sound of boatmen calling to one another with their soft musical voices is like the trilling of the nightingale from some leafy bower. Having felt the charm of those magical scenes you will enjoy the ocean at Newport ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... Her trilling laughter smote upon his reverie, and he stepped to the screen-door, through which he could see her running down the path to the beach. At her heels ran two of her sailors, Papehara and Mahameme, in scarlet lava-lavas, with naked sheath-knives ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... but with a chill at her heart which made the outward chill only depressing. The golden sunlight beamed through the dripping boughs like a Shechinah, or visible divine presence, and the birds were chirping and trilling their new autumnal songs so sweetly, it seemed as if their throats, as well as the air, were all the clearer for the rain; but Caterina moved through all this joy and beauty like a poor wounded leveret painfully dragging its little body through the sweet clover-tufts—for ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... of the morn of the year, Chanting your lays in the bosky dell, Higher and fuller your round notes swell, Till the Fauns and the Dryads peer forth to hear The trilling lays of your feathery band: Ye came not, alas, ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous

... as Jonathan strode out of the woods into a plain beyond, where he was to meet Wetzel at sunset. A smoky haze like a purple cloud lay upon the gently waving grass. He could not see across the stretch of prairie-land, though at this point he knew it was hardly a mile wide. With the trilling of the grasshoppers alone disturbing the serene quiet of this autumn afternoon, all nature seemed in harmony with the declining season. He stood a while, his thoughts becoming the calmer for the silence and loneliness ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... so long as men and women exist as such. The fascination of the motion, the magic of the music, the hour, the lights; the nearness, the touch of hands, the leaning, the support, the starting off in fresh bewilderments; the trilling down the gamut of the hall; the pauses and recommencements; even the little incidents of collision and escape; the trips, slips, and quick recoveries; the breathless words whispered in the ear, and the laughter; the dropped handkerchief, the crushed fan, the faithless hair-pin—these, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... reflection that one has made a smart reply-one sleeps comfortably after it. And they both went to sleep; but the Poet could not sleep. His thoughts welded forth like the tones from the violin, trilling like pearls, rushing like a storm through the forest. He recognized the feeling of his own heart-he perceived the gleam ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... in her trust fora doubt so dreadful; but her step grew heavier day by day—her cheek so very, very pale, except at the post-man's hour, when it would burn with a feverish brightness, and then fade to its former pallid hue again; her sweet voice was heard no longer trilling forth those thrilling melodies which had gladdened the heart of young and old to hear. The visits to Dream-dell were less and less frequent, for now how each remembrance so fondly connected with that spot, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... sweetness most appealing in the trilling of their notes: It is innocence that's pouring from their little baby throats; And I gaze at them enraptured, for my joy's a real thing Every evening when the kiddies and ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... close of the song the dancers who are to represent the Daisies give a trilling shout and appear from the rear of the open space, skipping; their leader holds the end of a long green rope, which is caught hold of by each ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher

... ready along the whole line. Jacquelin, Mariette, and Josette received orders to appear in full dress. The garden was raked. The old maid regretted that she couldn't come to an understanding with the nightingales nesting in the trees, in order to obtain their finest trilling. ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... put him in mind of listening to the wild cry of a lost soul, while Myra Longman could hear only the songs of angels in the exquisite tones which fell, pure and sweet, from the red lips. Tess knew nothing of breath power, nothing of trained trilling tones, but nature had given her both and like the birds of ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... at one another in amaze. Were their ears deceiving them? But no; the trilling notes came nearer. Involuntarily they pressed forward a few paces, and then came to a dead stop. ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... pleasant evening in the latter end of June, when our heroe was walking in a most delicious grove, where the gentle breezes fanning the leaves, together with the sweet trilling of a murmuring stream, and the melodious notes of nightingales, formed altogether the most enchanting harmony. In this scene, so sweetly accommodated to love, he meditated on his dear Sophia. While his wanton fancy roamed unbounded over all ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... view on the other side. The woodland, being so near the city, was not dense, but the girls thought they had never seen foliage so vividly green nor grass so soft and luxuriant. The beckoning shadows of the trees, the fragrance of the dew-drenched flowers, the trilling music of a thousand carefree, joyous little songsters, all combined in one irresistible appeal ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... ripe or you are poaching on somebody else's preserves. The best results can be obtained about the midnight hour, when the dew is on the rose, the jasmine bud drunken with its own perfume and the mock- bird trilling a last good night to his drowsy mate. You entice your best girl into the garden to watch Venus' flaming orb hanging like the Kohinoor pendant from the crescent moon. You pause beneath the great gnarled live oak, its myriad leaves rustling softly as the wings of seraphs. Don't be in a hurry, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... gorgeous tinted wild flowers, sweet scented violets, and glossy green of the running pine. The children heeded not time, nor the distance they were placing between themselves and the camp, but wandered on. The wild birds were trilling the most delicious music, which burst on the ear enchantingly, and was the only sound that broke the solemn stillness that reigned around, save the soft gurgling of the water, as it glided over its pebbly bed. The forest was dense, ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... swimming with a new mischief which she was trying to hide from him. In that laugh there was something which was not like Melisse. Slight as the change was, he noticed it; but instead of displeasing him, it set a vague sensation of pleasure trilling like a ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... things, remarked it wonderingly; and with one accord we threw ourselves upon the grass and drank in the bounteous melody. It was not different in quality so much as in quantity. Such a flood of it! Such magnificent copiousness! Such long, trilling, deferring, accelerating preludes! Such sudden, ecstatic overtures would have intoxicated the dullest ear. He was really without a compeer, a master artist. Twice afterward I was conscious of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... A delicious, trilling laugh greeted the panic of his first words. Then the clear, sweet voice, serious again, replied, "So you swam ashore from the boat ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... laughed the pie lady as she whistled again, this time just like a canary trilling when it swings at the top of its cage in the sunshine. Curly laughed, too, and then the lady went to the oven to take out ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis

... in silence through a long glass-walled hall, a sort of conservatory, with palms and caged canaries chirping and trilling. ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... murderers, by catching some fish which we broiled to satisfy our carnivorous appetites. It was delightful to float in that tiny boat, gazing through the green canopy of leaves at the great white clouds sailing over like ships upon the sea, listening to the ecstatic trilling of the orioles, and the flute-like melodies of the mockingbird ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... the measure the sound was broken capriciously, the book had been thrown down, and the singer herself stood balancing in the doorway between the rooms, a hand on either side,—still lightly trilling her scales, smiling, beaming, blue-eyed, rosy. The sunbeam that entered behind the shade swinging in the wind fell upon the beautiful masses of her light-brown hair, and illumined all the shifting color ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... unless the singer is blessed with a natural trill, which is a rare gift. We begin with quarter notes, then add eighths and sixteenths. This exercise, if practiced daily, will produce the desired result. It is taken on each tone of the voice—trilling ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... his drooping spirits by eating heartily of three dozen insects of different kinds and sizes, he felt so cheerful that he couldn't help trilling a few songs. It was almost evening; and he was glad not to let the sun go down without thanking him in that way for shining so brightly ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey

... and not likely to be otherwise than fine. The sun was shining brightly, and the birds filled the air with joyous music. The thrush and blackbird mingled their strong vigorous voices, with the mellowed trilling of the skylark, and over the fields could be heard almost continuously the call of the cuckoo—now here, now there, as the active creature plied her restless wing from one hedge-tree to another. There was a ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... lay over the salt meadows; the fairy trilling of the little owl had ceased. Marsh-fowl were sleepily astir; the last firefly floated low into the shrouded bushes and its lamp glimmered a ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... whirl of clouds eddied over the Pass behind the Holy Cross Mountain; the opal peak radiant and dazzling above the Valley; the air a burst of yellow sunlight quivering in the smoking rain mist; the red battlement rocks above dripping and bare; and somewhere a song sparrow trilling to the tinkle of the subsiding waters. A roil of cloud ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... consider oaths again as very injurious to morality. For first, they conceive it to be great presumption in men to summon God as a witness in their trilling ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... day when a lark sprang suddenly from a field of long grass and went soaring up and up in the clear sunshine till it looked only like a speck, and at last could scarcely be seen, but yet all the time kept trilling and singing its ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland

... opalescent slumber, sweetly tired of the joy which had pervaded it all day. For in the dawn of the perfect morn, it had arisen, stretched out its arms in glorious happiness to greet the Saviour and said its hallelujahs, merrily trilling out carols of bird, and organ and flower-song. But the evening ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... the nightingale is trilling Songs of love to lovers' ears, Which, to hearts with sorrow thrilling, Seem but sighs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... and trilling some blithe air, Opened my wardrobe, wondering what to wear. Momentous question! femininely human! More than all others, vexing mind of woman, Since that sad day, when in her discontent, To search for leaves, our fair first mother went. All undecided ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... mortal weeks having thus been wasted in diplomatic trilling—Barneveld was admitted to his Majesty's dressing-room. The Advocate at the king's request came without his colleague, and was attended only by his son. No other persons were present in the chamber save Buzanval and Beringen. The king on this occasion confirmed what ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... farther on—there were country lanes and by-ways, sleepy-looking farms, and picturesquely careless houses. Below them there was a great fish entrepot, with fishing-boats plying up and down, brawny fishermen trilling their musical half-chant, half-song, as ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... beaches are enticing to the idle man. It would be hard to find a walk more solitary and at the same time more exciting to the mind. Crowds of ducks and sea-gulls hover over the sea. Sandpipers trot in and out by troops after the retiring waves, trilling together in a chorus of infinitesimal song. Strange sea-tangles, new to the European eye, the bones of whales, or sometimes a whole whale's carcase, white with carrion-gulls and poisoning the wind, lie scattered here and there along the sands. The waves come in slowly, vast and green, curve ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... foot-paths. Slowly along one of these, a bright-gowned merchant rode a white pony, his bells tinkling in the stillness of sea and land. Everywhere, like other bells more tiny and shrill, sounded the trilling ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... time he had passed through the trial untaxed. He was slowly recovering from a sense of disappointment similar to that felt by a metropolitan at some Arcadian retreat, when he stands on the lonely platform at nightfall, listening to the trilling of the frogs increasing as the rumble of the train diminishes in the distance, and experiences a wild impulse to return at once to the fulness of life from which he ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... Robert's side. It was Tayoga trilling forth a melody, wonderfully clear and penetrating, a melody that carried far ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... rain-bath, and showing along its green ridges those first, faint signs of yellow that foretell a coming ripeness, the grass-mantled prairie lay beneath the warm noon sun. The little girl, cantering over it toward the sod shanty on the farther river bluffs, frightened the trilling meadow-larks, as she passed, from their perch on the dripping sunflowers, and scattered the drops on the wild wheat-blades with the hoofs of her ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... at Easter-tide." (11/9.) It is there that he finds his "Ideal," in the incense of the perfumes "which are softly exhaled from the shapely flowers, from their censers of gold," in the heart of all creatures, "chaffinch and siskin, skylark and goldfinch, tiny choristers" piping and trilling, "elaborating their motets" to the glory of Him who gave them voice and wings on the fifth day of Genesis. He fraternizes with all, with his dogs and his cats, his tame tortoise, and even the "slimy and swollen frog"; the "Philosopher" of the Harmas, whose murky eyes he loves to interrogate ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... sacredness, it had come to stand for something of pain. On his walk that morning he had noted many things with new eyes—the flowers gladdening the face of nature; the trees rearing their proud heads and standing each in his own place—each doing his own work; the birds trilling their songs of praise and stirring in the soul those holy aspirations whose feet scarce touch the earth and whose face is set toward heaven—all these doing the Father's work and answering with the quick response of perfect ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... the hillside sounds the bell of a cow; nearer still calls "Bob White;" robins are piping; the wrens are chirping; a hungry crow dismally cawks, and all these sounds mingle with the music of the millions of trilling nameless tiny insects concealed in the deep grasses below me and in the fluttering ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford

... I started to write literary criticism, and in 1951 I published a critical biography of Anderson. It came shortly after Lionel Trilling's influential essay attacking Anderson, an attack from which Anderson's reputation would never quite recover. Trilling charged Anderson with indulging a vaporous sentimentalism, a kind of vague emotional meandering in stories that ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... like a grasshopper, then suddenly falls to a series of low guttural notes, and ascends, like the rolling of a drum, to another series of high notes, rapidly trilled. Almost without a pause, he recommences with his querulous insect-chirp, and proceeds through the same trilling and demi-semiquavering as before. He is not particular about the part of the song which he makes his closing note, but will leave off right in the middle of a strain, when he appears to be in the height of ecstasy, to pick up a spider or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... Jigger. Byng would probably get over his disappointment—he'd only feel that he hadn't been used fairly, and he's used to that; but Jigger wouldn't sleep to-night, and it's essential that he should. Think of how much happiness and how much pain you can give, just by trilling a simple little song with your little voice oh, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the barley. We have not little green lizards at large in England; the only one ever seen at Redwater was in the apothecary's bottle. Still what a bower that is! What a blushing, fluttering bower, trilling with song, glancing and glowing with the bronze mail of beetles and the softened glory of purple emperors! What a thing it was to examine; how you could look in and discover afresh, and dwell for five minutes at a time on that hollow ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... a great singer," continued this world-defying skeptic, "trilling like a thrush, scampering over the scales, I see a clumsy lot of ah, ah, ahs, awkwardly, uncertainly ambling up the gamut, saying, 'were it not for us she could not sing thus—give ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... with any love of the country in them to endure the passages of political philosophy in the sure hope of a prettier page to come. Everybody, too, can enjoy the love music, the hammer and anvil music, the clumping of the giants, the tune of the young woodsman's horn, the trilling of the bird, the dragon music and nightmare music and thunder and lightning music, the profusion of simple melody, the sensuous charm of the orchestration: in short, the vast extent of common ground between The Ring and the ordinary music we use for play and pleasure. ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... deem, That Trojan Ripheus in this round was set Fifth of the saintly splendours? now he knows Enough of that, which the world cannot see, The grace divine, albeit e'en his sight Reach not its utmost depth." Like to the lark, That warbling in the air expatiates long, Then, trilling out his last sweet melody, Drops satiate with the sweetness; such appear'd That image stampt by the' everlasting pleasure, Which fashions like itself all lovely things. I, though my doubting were as manifest, As is through glass the hue that mantles it, In silence waited not: for to my lips "What ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... a dainty slip of a girl, with pretty, graceful presence. She resembles a canary bird just poised for flight as she faces her audience, golden haired and singing without the least effort, her high tones clear and true, trilling the bird notes and enthralling the guests. She is the best soprano ever heard ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... heard that her father's vessel would be at the dock in a trifle over an hour and her heart was light and happy. Somehow all her misgivings seemed to flee away, now that he was coming. She flew from one room to another like a wild bird, trilling snatches of song, and looking prettier ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... was his to see the budding beauties now shut out from his sight. The hum of the honey-bee was heard, and the air was rife with the sweet sounds of later spring. On the branch of a tree without, a robin was trilling a song. It had sung there all the morning, and now it had come back again, singing a second time to Richard, who thought of the soft nest up in the old maple, and likened that robin and its mate to himself ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... officer might well have been expecting to hear just that. But he pulled off his own arm band before he turned to his fellows with a spurt of the twittering speech they used among themselves. While the two civilians were still trilling, the officer edged forward an inch or so and stared at Dalgard intently ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... now softening away into night. Yonder to the East, reposes a dark grove. A gentle breeze fans through its foliage, the leaves laugh and whisper, the perfumes of flowers are diffusing through the air birds make melodious with their songs, the trilling stream mingles its murmurs, and nature would seem gathering her beauties into one enchanting harmony. In the foreground of the grove, and looking as if it borrowed solitude of the deep foliage, in which it is half buried, rises ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... lark in the pasture you'll meet with her, Songs like his own sweetly trilling, Carrying now for some poor folk a treat with her, Small mouths with lollypops filling: And while, as he stands in a puzzle, She strokes the fierce bull on his muzzle, The calves and the lambs Run deserting their dams In her kind ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... breeze was fluttering at his window blind; a honeysuckle vine tapped lightly on the pane. Birds were trilling, warbling, whistling. From the street came the rumbling of wagons, merry cries of greeting, and the barking of dogs. What was it made him feel so young and strong and light-hearted? The breeze brought him the smell of June roses, fresh and sweet with dew, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... Estanquet, Down by a leafy brooklet, The limpid stream Enshadowed sheen, Lapped o'er the pebbles murmuring. Last summer sat a maid, with gathered flowers, She was engaged in setting, Within her grassy bowers; She sang in joy her notes so thrilling, As made the birds, their sweet songs trilling, Most jealous. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... an extraordinary aptitude for a priori reasoning with a passionate devotion to Opera Bouffe. It was difficult, in fact, to decide whether the inner nature of Ward was more truly expressing itself when he was firing off some train of scholastic paradoxes on the Eucharist or when he was trilling the airs of Figaro and plunging through the hilarious roulades of the Largo al Factotum. Even Dr. Pusey could riot be quite sure, though he was Ward's spiritual director. On one occasion his young penitent came to him, and confessed that a vow which ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... welcome. Rising barristers might be wanted to become Solicitors-General. The pet Orpheus of the hour, the young tragic actor who was thought to have a real Hamlet within him, the old painter who was growing rich on his reputation, and the young painter who was still strong with hope, even the little trilling poet, though he trilled never so faintly, and the somewhat wooden novelist, all had tongues of their own, and certain modes of expression, which might assist or injure the Palliser Coalition,—as the Duke's Ministry ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... woods of the White Mountains the wild flowers were springing joyously and the birds were pouring out the fulness of life and joy and love from trilling throats. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... years. He knew the air; it was "The Rising of the Lark." Heavens! what a bitter contrast to his own thoughts! But he stood rooted, as if spell-bound, to hear it to the end. The lark's upward flight was over; and Elsley heard him come quivering down from heaven's gate, fluttering, sinking, trilling self-complacently, springing aloft in one bar, only to sink lower in the next, and call more softly to his brooding mate below; till, worn out with his ecstasy, he murmured one last sigh of joy, and sank into the nest. The picture flashed through Elsley's brain as swiftly as the notes did ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... been Jennka's increased their steps; timorously glanced at it sidelong, out of the corner of the eye; while others even crossed themselves. But late in the night the fear of death somehow subsided, grew bearable. All the rooms were occupied, while in the drawing room a new violinist was trilling without cease—a free-and-easy, clean-shaven young man, whom the pianist with the cataract had searched out somewhere and brought ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... sleep from your pillow, Young dreamer arise, On the leaves of the willow The dew-drop still lies, And the mavis is trilling His song from the brake, And with melody ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... saw that her hands were exquisitely formed and as expressive as her voice. Her German was the musical tongue of the Viennese, possessing none of the gutturals and sputterings. When she crowned it with the gay little trilling laugh my views on the language underwent a lightning change. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to see her open the flat, silver case that dangled at the end of the cannon-ball chain, take out a cigarette, light it, and smoke it there in that little German dining room. She wore the most ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... action of her alert young body was so beautifully graceful that you forgot her modern costume and could imagine her a nymph in classic draperies. Her arms kept motion with her tripping feet, and both were in time with the tune that she was trilling. It seemed a spontaneous expression of gaiety as natural as the flight of a dragon-fly or the sporting of a kitten. Her dark hair flew out behind her, her eyes shone and sparkled, and her cheeks flushed with unwonted color. For the moment ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... indisposed; she had not gone down to the priory, but sat inhaling the rich fragrance of the night as the gentle breeze wafted it from a thousand flowers. Star after star peeped out; one sweet-voiced nightingale began her song, trilling through the air; another enviously took up the strain. Hilda thought the earth had never seemed so much like heaven, and she imagined the tuneful birds sang their vesper song in union with the monks, whose solemn and plaintive chant awoke the echoes of the priory church. Her heart was full of ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... in leaf—only some tiny green shoots. "We shall not have any lilac this year till the middle of May. Was there ever such a season?" Larks were everywhere, ascending in short flights, trilling as they ascended; and Evelyn listened to their singing, thinking it most curious—quaint cadenzas in which a note was wanting, like in the bagpipes, a sort of aerial bagpipes. But on a bare bough a thrush sang, breaking out presently into a little tune of five notes. "Quite ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... was picking a tiresome way around the boys at leap-frog, and the mothers and babies and baby-carriages. She did not notice the smells, or feel the bumps she got from those who ran against her. She thought she was in the blue drawing-room at Newport, where a famous Hungarian count was trilling the soft prelude to a csardas on the piano, and Mr. Stuyvesant had just introduced her to the future Mayor, who was spellbound by her charms, and was by her side, a captive. She reached out her hand, and it ...
— Different Girls • Various

... who was strolling along under the hedge, heard a Blackbird trilling on a branch. Quick as thought she jumped and seized the little fellow, and was about to gobble him down then and there. But the Blackbird began ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown

... her voice, clear, though somewhat sharp, broke out in a lightsome French song, trilling through the door still ajar: I glanced in, doubting my senses. There at the table she sat in a smart dress of "jaconas rose," trimming a tiny blond cap: not a living thing save herself was in the room, except indeed some gold fish in a glass ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... digging. It was a curious contrast to the indifference with which he usually accompanied us, but it proved that he had his enthusiasms, if he did not share ours. We could not but be amused, notwithstanding the delicious trilling notes that drew us grew fainter and fainter, and we despaired of seeing our songster till the important affairs of that mouse should be settled. Arguments were of no avail with the four-footed sportsman, a rival attraction failed to attract, and commands ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... modern times the case is the same. Genius, which is plenitude of power, adapts itself to all facts. It will receive the outline of a story and weave upon it a wonderful web, which the story shall interpret. But an opera of Mozart's reveals to the voiceless player its whole magnificence. Trilling Prima Donnas and silvery Italian are the addenda and vocabulary. They are the "this is the man, this the beast" written under the picture. The severe beauty of the art is immediately injured by any encroachment upon the others. The highest praise awarded to the most successful of ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... burst in, trilling with laughter. 'First, are two flawed sapphires—one of two ruttees and one of four as I should judge. The four-ruttee sapphire is chipped at the edge. There is one Turkestan turquoise, plain with black veins, and there ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... pale as the wet sky, fell from her waist outward in the manner of a child's frock, and there was a lightness, there was brightness in the clear eyes. The intense youth of her heart was evanescent; it seemed constantly rising upwards like the breath of a spring morning—a morning when the birds are trilling. The face sharpened to a tiny chin, and the face was pale, although there was bloom on the cheeks. The forehead was shadowed by a sparkling cloud of brown hair, the nose was straight, and each little nostril was ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... had leaped a full octave, and with a mingled sound of pipes and flutes went trilling deliriously on a high note until the listeners held their breath with delight. Then abruptly the piping stopped, ending in a queer, unfinished way that tantalized their ears for many minutes afterward, and held them motionless, spellbound, waiting ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey

... accompaniment, she sang, at my suggestion, that same wild gipsy air which had so stirred me once before in the wood. But to-day, confined within these surrounding walls, her voice seemed to me even more glorious, so softly pure and plaintively sweet, anon soaring in trilling ecstasy—until the swelling glory sank, languished to a sigh and was gone; and I for one lost in awed wonder and delight. For to-day she sang with all that tender, unaffected sweetness, all that passionate intensity that was ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... was now very near, though hidden from sight by the bushes, and he was trilling forth old airs of home that made the pulses in the lad's throat ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... Now faint and far, like plaintive cry for help Piercing the ear of Sleep. Each knight o' the spur, Watchful as brave, and emulous in noise, With mighty pinions beats a glad reveille. All feathered nature wakes. Man's drowsy sense Heeds not the trilling band, but slumbrous waits The tardy god of day. Ah! sluggard, wake! Open thy blind, and rub thy heavy eyes! For once behold a sunrise. Is there aught In thy dream-world more splendid, or more fair? With crimson ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... womanly life. The magnificent voice is only in keeping with the magnificent proportions of the singer. A voice which has no grate, no strain, which flows without effort,—which does not labor eagerly up to a high note, but alights on it like a bird from above, there carelessly warbling and trilling,—a voice which then without effort sinks into broad, rich, sombre depths of soft, heavy chest-tone,—can come only with a physical nature at once strong, wide, and fine,—from a nature such as the sun of Italy ripens, as he does ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the expedition; the height however of some principal points had been previously obtained, and is marked on the chart; these in two instances were verified by geometrical measurement, and the difference was found to be too trilling to be noticed. The conveyance of such delicate instruments is always attended with great risk, and in our case peculiarly so, our means being only those of horseback. I am afraid that a method of constructing those instruments, so as to place them beyond the reach of injury ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley

... heavy with the scent of rockets and phlox and ragged pinks and candy-tuft. Through the sweet-scented dusky silence some small and very wakeful bird was trilling. Great misty-winged moths came whirring and hovering among the blossoms, pale blurs in the darkness, and everywhere the drifting lamps of fireflies lighted and died out ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... had followed his; for the first time in Somerset's experience, she produced a double eyeglass; and as soon as the full merit of the works had flashed upon her, she gave way to peal after peal of her trilling and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a gay and mischievous happiness, as he turned the handle at the back of his clock slowly, slowly, till at last it would turn no more. Then there tinkled forth to join the "Pastorale" the clear, trilling melody of ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... between his fingers with the manual dexterity that one sometimes sees in stupid persons. His head was quite empty of all thought, and he did not whistle over his work as another man might have done. The canary made up for his silence, trilling and chittering continually, splashing about in its morning bath, keeping up an incessant noise and movement that would have been maddening to any one but McTeague, who seemed to have no nerves ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... was standing by his door with his arms akimbo, enjoying the morning breezes, and slowly trilling a little song to himself, which was neither better nor worse than the songs which hedgehogs are in the habit of singing on a blessed Sunday morning. Whilst he was thus singing half aloud to himself, it suddenly occurred to ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers



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