"Whip-poor-will" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... among the race in ghosts, spirits, haunts and conjuration. Many believe in them yet. I can never forget the fright of the time my young master, William was going off to the war. The evening before he went, a whippoorwill lighted on the window sill and uttered the plaintive 'whip-poor-will.' All the slaves on the place were frightened and awed and predicted bad luck to Master Will. He took sick in war and died, just wasted away. He was brought back in rags toward the end of ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... swallows scream, Or hens will cackle clear. In robin's song, the whip-poor-will Pours forth ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... into a pervading gray, which seemed to cover the rocks and woods like a mantle. Clad in this somber robe, the wooded height which rose to the north seemed the more forbidding. Not a sound was to be heard but the voice of a whip-poor-will somewhere. Even Hervey's buoyant nature was ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... whistle of quails innumerable broke upon us in the twilight, succeeding to the calls of rose-breasted grosbeaks and a goodly company of daylight followers; in this darkening hour, the low, plaintive note of the whip-poor-will is heard on every hand, now and then interrupted by the hoarse bark of owls. There is a gentle tinkling of cowbells on the Ohio shore, and on both are human voices confused by distance. All pervading is the deep, sullen roar of a great wing-dam, ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... night, The path of gold and white The moon had cast across the river's breast, The shores in shadows clad, The far-away, half-sad Sweet singing of the whip-poor-will, all soothed ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... make their notes clear, and let us know they had come. The little grey phebe-birds, the robins and the blue birds were the first harbingers of spring. As night put on its shade their little notes were hushed in the darkness, then the whip-poor-will took up the strain. He would come, circle around and over our house and door yard and then light down. He too came to visit us, he had found our place again. In fact, he found us every spring after we settled ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... coming on. The birds made no noise; only the whip-poor-will repeated over and over again its melancholy refrain in the marsh beyond the meadow. The brook ran slowly, and its voice was so hushed and tiny that you might have thought that it was saying its ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field |
