"Blithe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... young lady was at home. Oh! them were blithe times, when young Lord Hope came a courting, and we could see them driving like turtle doves through the park and down the village; or, walking along by the hedges and gathering hyacinths and violets. It was a sorry time, though, when he took her ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... run the machine home and there ponder the disposition of his blithe companion with the ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... something more: a footloose lad of Twist Tickle—free to sail and wander, to do and dream, to read the riddles of my years, blithe and unalarmed. 'Tis beyond the will and wish of me to forget the day I lay upon the Knob o' Lookout, from afar keeping watch on the path to Whisper Cove—the taste of it, salty and cool, the touch of it upon my cheek and in my hair, the sunlight and scampering wind: the simple haps and accidents, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... the Giver of a', There 's been naething unworthy o' him that 's awa'! Then here is to them that are far frae us a', The friend that ne'er fail'd us, though farest awa'! Health, peace, and prosperity wait on us a'; And a blithe comin' hame to the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... was regained. Dick vaulted into the saddle (he seldom used the stirrup), and away they went again, blithe as ever. Then a long strip of tangled forest appeared. Dick diverged here. It was easier to skirt it than to crash through it. Presently a broad deep river came in view. There was no looking for a ford, no checking the pace. In they went with sounding ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... the road from Ghent to Melle in blithe ignorance, we three women. The day before, the enemy had held the corner ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... infinite homage toward the Almighty; for, as Emerson says: "In the woods we return to reason and faith. Then I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes)—which Nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egoism vanishes. . . . I am the lover of ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... expended on ornament. All its lines, save those of the stretchers and stays which stood for rigidity, were fluent. It was not made to model or measurement, but developed under the maker's hard hands and tough fingers—a tribute to his artistry and skill. On the water it was as blithe as a bubble. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... fills the whole atmosphere with the scent of a spice-garden; and when it faded into a soft brown, dying delicately, beautiful to the last, there appeared the brambles, trailing every where, with their pretty yellowing leaves and their delicious berries. How blithe, even like a mere "callant," big Malcolm was, when, leaving the earl on the sunny hill-side under Miss Cardross's charge, he used to wander off, and come back with his hands all torn and scratched, to feed his young ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... Blithe were Havelok and Goldborough that day as they moved amidst the groups of men who shared in the sports which the people of Denmark ever loved, and once more Havelok cast the stone further than any one there could throw it. His first act, after he had been proclaimed king, was to make ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... gate. Here, at least, in one of those modest retreats, which generations ago slipped into the remoter valleys of young Kentucky for their voluntary exile, she would find help! Many an afternoon when the world was blithe she had been wont to stop and listen to the mellow peal of its bell floating across her mountains on an easterly evening breeze, and in all of this torturing night of wandering she imagined it was calling. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... children took the little dog down to the gate, happily. They were sobered, however, when Mr. Traill appeared, looking very grand in his Sabbath clothes. He inspected Bobby all over with anxious scrutiny, and gave each of the bairns a threepenny-bit, but he had no blithe greeting for them. Much preoccupied, he went off at once, with the animated little muff of a dog at his heels. In truth, Mr. Traill was thinking about how he might best plead Bobby's cause with the Lord Provost. The note that was handed him, on leaving the Burgh ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... need a heart of flint To watch the blithe lambs caper o'er the lea, And, watching them, refrain from thoughts of mint, Of new potatoes, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... A blithe saint was Francis. He loved to laugh; he loved to sing; and he loved to hear the music of laughter and of song as it rippled from the lips of others. Every description that has come down to us lays stress on the sunshine that played about his lofty forehead ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... returns,—blithe, hopeful, winsome as ever. He is puzzled, however, by the grave manner of the Squire, when he takes him aside, after the first hearty greetings, and says, "Phil, my lad, how fares it with the love matter? Have things come ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... lets me range Where cool Praeneste, Tibur's hill, Or liquid Baiae proffers change. Me to your springs, your dances true, Philippi bore not to the ground, Nor the doom'd tree in falling slew, Nor billowy Palinurus drown'd. Grant me your presence, blithe and fain Mad Bosporus shall my bark explore; My foot shall tread the sandy plain That glows beside Assyria's shore; 'Mid Briton tribes, the stranger's foe, And Spaniards, drunk with horses' blood, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... elaborated, Alaire was doubled over her saddle. It was the first spontaneous laugh she had had for days, and it seemed to banish her worries magically. Alaire was not of a melancholy temperament; gaiety was natural to her, and it had required many heartaches, many disappointments, to darken her blithe spirit. ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... Proctor, who was afterwards stricken out of life untimely. He lost his fortune in the crash of Overend and Gurney's company, and he immediately forgot his luxurious habits and turned to work with blithe courage. How he worked only those who knew him can tell, for no four men of merely ordinary power could have achieved such bewildering success as he did. But a man who is on the downward slope of life cannot fare like the lamented Proctor; he must endure the pangs of neglect, until ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... as these, however, did not occupy their minds for long. Just as Tom had declared, they were out for fun, and the fun could be found almost anywhere by these blithe young folk. ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... it was to see this gallant company riding beneath the trees; and pleasant was it, also, to listen to the blithe sound of their voices, amid which Anne Boleyn's musical laugh could be plainly distinguished. Henry was attended by his customary band of archers and yeomen of the guard, and by the Duke of Shoreditch and his followers. On reaching the haye, the king dismounted, and assisting ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... off at full speed after Mrs Merryboy, senior, who had an inveterate tendency, when attempting to reach Mrs Frog's bower, to take a wrong turn, and pursue a path which led from the garden to a pretty extensive piece of forest-land behind. The blithe old lady was posting along this track in a tremulo-tottering way when captured by Bob. At the same moment the breakfast-bell rang; Mr Merryboy's stentorian voice was immediately heard in concert; silvery ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... myself together and left them alone. I might have gone in and talked to Sara...two old folks gently reviewing their youth while the young folks courted outside...but I did not. I prowled about the pine wood, and tried to forget how blithe and handsome that curly-headed boy, Frank, was, and what a flash had sprung into his eyes when he had seen Betty. Well, what of it? Was not that what I had brought him there for? And was I not pleased at the success of my scheme? ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of power, yet blithe and debonair, Rallying his friends with pleasant banter gay, Or half a-dream chaunting with jaunty air Great words of Goethe, catch of Beranger, We see the banter sparkle in his prose, But knew not then the undertone that flows So calmly sad, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... English polish, but she imagined, very fearlessly, that the spark was out. She was not a nature that was easily alarmed or daunted; beneath her look of delicate fragility was a very sturdy confidence, and she had the implicit sense of security instinct in the kitten whose blithe days have known nothing but kindness. Yet she felt ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Thompson!" Steve was making for the door, with apologies. "You're not in the way a bit. Sit down, man! Your six thousand won't be a starter, Joe. I've got some four thousand myself, in red, red gold. All I have in the world—wish it was more." His blithe insouciance was ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... salt stream that rings us, ness and bay, The nation's old sea-soul beats blithe and strong; The black foam-breasters taste Biscayan spray, And where 'neath Polar dawns the narwhals throng:— Free hands, free hearts, for labour and for glee, Or village-moot, when thane with churl unites Beneath the sacred tree; While wisdom tempers force, and ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... chance have these blithe fellows been disjointed? If a gloomy mood prevails in you—as might come from a bad turn of the market—you fancy that the evil daughter of Herodias still lives around the corner, and that she has set out her victims to ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... you find such people so fickle and uncertain in their spirits; Now on the mount, then in the valleys; now in the sunshine, then in the shade; now warm, then frozen; now bonny and blithe, then in a moment pensive and sad; as thinking of a portion nowhere but in hell. This will cause smiting on the breast; nor can I imagine that the Publican was as yet farther than thus far in the Christian's progress, since yet he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... blithe laugh and tossed another peeling to the yellow rooster, who had dropped the role of harbinger of evil and was posing as ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... sprays, The last spoil of the fields! The city's gates Fly up; now needs not the petard to burst them: The walls are crowded with rejoicing people; Their shouts ring through the air: from every tower Blithe bells are pealing forth the merry vesper Of that bloody day. From town and hamlet Flow the jocund thousands; with their hearty Kind impetuosity our march impeding. The old man, weeping that he sees this day, Embraces his long-lost son: a stranger He revisits his old home; with spreading boughs ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... wisps of human semblance, into the criminal dock. Shame, disgrace, social pariahdom; unutterable pain to dear ones; an ever-gaping wound in fierce family pride; a stain on two generations; an incurable malady of a once blithe spirit; woe, disaster, and ruin—such is the punishment awarded by men and women to her who disobeys the social law and, perhaps with equal lack of volition, obeys the law physiological. The latter is generally considered the ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... heard her sparkling story. You consider yourself happy because you are sitting by her and helping her to a lady-finger, or a macaroon, for which she smiles. But I was her theme for ten mortal minutes. She was my bard, my blithe historian. She was the Homer of my luckless Trojan fall. She set my mishap to music, in telling it. Think what it is to have inspired Urania; to have called a brighter beam into the eyes of Miranda, and do not think so much of passing Aurelia the ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... lively Thyrsus-swinger, And the wild car the exulting Panthers bore, Announced the Presence of the Rapture-Bringer— Bounded the Satyr and blithe Fawn before; And Maenads, as the frenzy stung the soul, Hymn'd, in their madding dance, the glorious wine— As ever beckon'd to the lusty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... bloom again My heart will bound, my blood will beat, To hear the redbird so repeat, On boughs of rosy stain, His blithe, loud song,—like some far strain From out the past,—among the bloom,— (Where bee and wasp and hornet ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... laid away, To be quickly found on the following day. Then, ere she starts, so blithe and gay, She tarries ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... over the mead and over the hithe, And away to the wild-wood wend we forth; There dwell we yeomen bold and blithe Where the Sheriff's word is nought of worth. Bent is the bow on the lily lea Betwixt the thorn and ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... more, beyond the prime of a blithe April day, The Northman's mailed "Invincibles" steamed up fair Charleston Bay; They came in sullen file, and slow, low-breasted on the wave, Black as a midnight front of storm, and silent ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... knit, and of surprising strength for a man of his inches. I afterwards found that he was possessed with more than an ordinary amount of physical endurance, for no matter how much work he crowded into a long summer's day, he was always as blithe as a cricket when work was over, and we sat by the old cannon to smoke an evening pipe and chat together about our ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... and savage and sordid side of existence with a passionate hatred, he enjoyed all its better—which he believed to be its larger—part with an infectious relish. Never have I known a more blithe and friendly spirit; never a nature to which Literature and Society—books and men—yielded a more constant and exhilarating joy. He had unstinted admiration for the performances of others, and was wholly free from jealousy. His temperament indeed was not equable. He had ups and downs, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... case "Mr. Croftangry had grown a rich man in foreign parts, and was free of his troubles with messengers and sheriff-officers, and siclike scum of the earth, and Shanet MacEvoy's mother's daughter be a blithe woman to hear it. But if Mr. Croftangry was in trouble, there was his room, and his ped, and Shanet to wait on him, and tak payment when ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... chapter a day I mean to do; they are short; and perhaps in a month The Sea Cook may to Routledge go, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! My Trelawney has a strong dash of Landor, as I see him from here. No women in the story, Lloyd's orders; and who so blithe to obey? It's awful fun boys' stories; you just indulge the pleasure of your heart, that's all; no trouble, no strain. The only stiff thing is to get it ended—that I don't see, but I look to a volcano. O sweet, O generous, O human toils. You would like my blind beggar ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... declared, "had befallen young Master Bligh, once the hopeful heir of his parents and of the lands of Botathen. Whereas he had been from childhood a blithe and merry boy, 'the gladness,' like Isaac of old, of his father's age, he had suddenly of late become morose and silent—nay, even austere and stern—dwelling apart, always solemn, often in tears. The lad had at first repulsed all questions as to the origin of this great change, but of ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... royalty: Hear me, ye bright ones, for a poet's love, And let light fall upon my swelling soul, To crest each rising thought with purity! There was a time—in youth, ere yet the sands Of life clogged 'neath satiety, but ran Lighter than blithe rills down a mountain's side; There was a time, when in my soul a voice Rang faintly like a huntsman's horn afar, Sounding along a forest; and I arose, And listed, as the bounding Antelope Starts at the echo of a falling bough. Louder it ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Silenus, shaking a green stick 105 Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew: And Dryope and Faunus followed quick, Teasing the God to sing them something new; 110 Till in this cave they found the lady lone, Sitting upon a seat ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... ony, and blithe as she 's bonny; For guileless simplicity marks her its ain; And far be the villain, divested of feeling, Wha 'd blight, in its bloom, the sweet flower o' Dumblane. Sing on, thou sweet mavis, thy hymn to the e'ening, Thou 'rt dear to the echoes of Calderwood glen; Sae dear to this bosom, sae artless ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... She loved their gaiety, liked to touch their sturdy little limbs. That evening, Lily, who was ready for her performance early, was having fun with them. Dressed in her pink tights, she looked like a blithe nymph playing with ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... betwixt Kingston and Hounslow, for it was across country, and the narrow lanes twisted and twined so that, had it not been for the sun, I should soon not have known if I was going north, south, east, or west. Except a few yokels trudging to their work, and now and then a blithe milkmaid calling to her cows, I met no one. These looked hard at me, and wondered what such a one as I, in cloak and sword and hat, wanted there at that hour. But I let them guess, and pushed on, along the river's bank, to Twickenham, and then over the ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... beautiful Eleanor, perhaps, but with no such grave light of the spirit in her eyes. This she touched with her finger tips. But her look was bent upon the second, the portrait of a young man whose attitude, defying the conventional pose of old-fashioned photography, showed how blithe and merry and full of life he ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... order, if possible, to shame the household and fill it with remorse and unpleasantness. Yet ordinarily he was not a very prompt man, nor did he delight in giving pain. On the contrary, he was apt to be casual, blithe and agreeable. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... one, now another of the mourners would look wanly up, with cast-back hood, as though listening; and anon all were listening on their way, first in wonder, then in rapture; for the soul of their friend was singing to them: they heard his voice, but clearer and more blithe than they had ever known it—a voice etherealised by a triumph of joy that was not yet for them to share. But presently the voice receded, its echoes dying away into the sphere whence it came. It ceased; and the mourners were ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... as if her hope unloosed had The chains of grief, wherein her thoughts lay fettered, Upon her minions looked she blithe and glad, In that deceitful lore so was she lettered; Not glorious Titan, in his brightness clad, The sunshine of her face in lustre bettered: For when she list to cheer her beauties so, She smiled away the ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... one to Hanalei, and another to Mauna Kea, Hawaii. I felt better quite soon; the horse in gait and temper turned out perfection—all spring and spirit, elastic in his motion, walking fast and easily, and cantering with a light, graceful swing as soon as one pressed the reins on his neck, a blithe, joyous animal, to whom a day among the mountains seemed a pleasant frolic. So gentle he was, that when I got off and walked he followed me without being led, and without needing any one to hold him he allowed me to mount on either side. In ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Mrs. Dowling's spirits had strikingly recovered even before the pair passed from the corridor: she moved almost bouncingly beside her embittered son, and her eyes and all the convolutions of her abundant face were blithe. ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... she now did, the sound of it was worth going miles to hear. There are all shades of temperament and character in laughter, which is the one thing of which we are least self-conscious; hers revealed not only a sense of humor, rare in her sex, but a blithe, happy nature, which made allies at once of those upon whose ears her merriment fell. Trowbridge's eyes sparkled with his ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... shearer's covert from the sun, Thence in our rustic dialect was called The CLIPPING TREE, a name which yet it bears. There, while they two were sitting in the shade, 170 With others round them, earnest all and blithe, Would Michael exercise his heart with looks Of fond correction and reproof bestowed Upon the Child, if he disturbed the sheep By catching at their legs, or with his shouts 175 Scared them while they ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Jenny brings him ben; A strappan youth; he taks the mother's eye; Blithe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en; The father craks of horses, pleughs, and kye. The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy, But blate an' laithfu', scarce can weel behave; The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy What makes the ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... skies as blue, thy crags as wild: Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, Thine olives ripe as when Minerva smiled, And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields; There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air; Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; Art, Glory, Freedom fail, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... tell of a thing called Rest? Have you never known what it is to be tired, my Lector?—not tired at the end of a busy day, but tired in the morning, tired in the Memnonian sunlight, when larks and barrel-organs start on their blithe insistent rounds. No, the man who is tired of a morning sings not music-hall songs in his bedroom as he dashes about in his morning bath. But will you never want to go to bed, Lector? Will you be always like the children who hate to be sent to bed, and think that when they ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... and holy saint whose patient humility springs from principle rather than from fear; another likes a blithe-tempered, healthy girl with no nonsense about her, full of fun and ready for everything, and is not particular as to the strict order or economy of the housekeeping, provided only she is at all times willing to be his pleasant playmate and ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... lay the land of old, Where men dwelt blithe and blameless, clothed and fed With joy's bright raiment, and with love's sweet bread,— The whitest flock of earth's maternal fold, None there might wear about his brows enrolled A light of lovelier fame than rings your head, ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... folded their perfumed petals under the Syrian dew, wherewith God nightly baptized them in token of his ceaseless guardianship, and the sinless world of birds, the "fowls of the air," those secure and blithe, yet improvident, little gleaners in God's granary, nestled serenely under the shadow of the Almighty wing; but was the all-seeing, all-directing Eye likewise upon that desolate and destitute young mourner who sank to rest ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... his way. As if a spell, upon them thrown, Had changed their agile limbs to stone, Each in the spot where it first view'd Th' approaching wand'rer mutely stood. Ere silence had oppressive grown The old man's voice thus found a tone; "I too was once as blithe and gay— My days as lightly flew away As if I counted all their hours Upon a dial-plate of flowers; And gentle slumber oft renew'd The joyance of my waking mood, As if my soul in slumber caught The radiance of expiring thought; As if perception's ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... Company, and if I put not myself out, he will do it for me. If I be relieved at once, and one of the Council appointed in my place, I shall go home to look after certain of my interests there. Then shall I be but a private gentleman, and if I can serve you, Ralph Percy, I shall be blithe to do so; but now, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... do anything now," said Davie to himself in the greatest distress; yet somehow when he came to think of it, it seemed to be with a great deal of hope since Dr. Marks was to be appealed to. And when breakfast-time came, and with it Joel so blithe and hungry, David fell to on his own breakfast with a ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never: Then sigh not so, But let them go, And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe Into, ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... which case all her New England ancestry took flight and she would lie as magnificently as her father before her. And he had the same charm of manner, the same daring, the same ready laughter, the same vivacity. But what is lightsome and blithe in her, was debonaire in him. He won men's hearts always, or, failing that, their bitterest enmity. No one was left cold by him in passing. Contact with him quickened them to love or hate. Therein Paula differs, being a woman, I suppose, and ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... left Entraygues the bells in the church-tower were ringing—not the monotonous ding-dong with which French people generally have had to content themselves since the Revolutionists turned the old bell-metal into sous, but a blithe and joyous peal of high silvery tones that seemed to belong to the blue air, and to be the voices of the little spirits that flutter about the morning's rosy veil. My design was to reach the abbey of Conques ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... were perfectly happy in each other, and almost invariably together both in and out of doors. The Eyethorne woods still attracted them almost daily; for although the trees were barren of leaves and desolate, the robin still made blithe music there, and the wren and thrush were sometimes heard, and even the mournful cawing of the rooks, and the weird melodies of the wind in the naked trees inspired their hearts with a mysterious gladness. And on days when ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... has happened! I can see adoring yokels pulling their forelocks to him! He'll fit beautifully into that background!" Thus her tongue, running ripplingly on, while her heart, suddenly released from its numb depression, wired her blithe reassurance. "He's coming back,—coming back to me—coming ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the trees, and the summer sky was bright and blue, Jenny came to the cottage, a joyous, loving bride, believing her own husband the best in the world, and wondering if there was ever any one as happy as herself. And Jenny was very happy. Blithe as a bee she flitted about the house and garden, and if in the morning a tear glistened in her laughing eyes as William bade her adieu, it was quickly dried, and all day long she busied herself in her household matters, studying ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... young sir, 'ardly that!" said he, rubbing his chin with the shaft of his hammer. "No, 'ardly a poet, p'raps,—but thereabouts. My verses rhyme an' go wi' a swing, which is summat, arter all, ain't it? I made the song I was a-singing so blithe an' 'earty—did ye ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... laughed as the cool shock scattered the night's languor and the wine-fumes. What mattered anything?—what they did, or what they suffered, or what news the home-coming boats might bring? They were blithe for the moment and lusty for the day's work, and with night again would come drink and song of the amorous gods; or if by chance the Singer should choose another note and tell of Procris or of Philomela, they could weep softly for others' woes and, so ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... shocks his system had now been continually sustaining for several years, was the condition to which the Commissioner could see he had been reduced, which he could only characterise as that of one who, once blithe, gay, happy, and active, was now a complete physical and mental wreck, to whom if he could see no prospect of coming relief, the gloom of life appeared to stretch away as a vast wilderness, with a prospect of such overwhelming depression, that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... invite all her kinsmen for a midsummer visit, which the king, not dreaming of her evil purpose, immediately hastened to do. Two minstrels, Werbel and Swemmel, were sent with the most cordial invitation. Before they departed Kriemhild instructed them to be sure and tell all her kinsmen that she was blithe and happy, and not melancholy as of yore, and to use every effort to bring not only the kings, but also Hagen, who, having been at Etzel's court as hostage in his youth, could best act as ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... on my pages Priam at the altars nor Medea's and Niobe's woes, nor Itys in the hidden chambers, and the nightingales among the leaves; for of all these things former poets wrote abundantly; but mingling with the blithe Graces, sweet Love and the Wine-god; and grave looks become ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... like to write here the name of a friend, Charles Flamache of Brussels. He was 21 years old. He was an artist who had already tasted fame. He had known the love of woman. That his destiny might be fulfilled he died, the blithe, brave boy, in front of Liege. It was the right death at the right time—ere yet the massed Prussians had rolled in fire and blood over his fair small land. Wherefore, ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... ground, Hoping she may tread on them. And bright flowers on slender stem Gaze up at her as she passes Brushing lightly through the grasses. Oh! my Princess, birds above Echo back our songs of love, As through this enchanted land Blithe we ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... life ye've taen the grue, An' winnae blithely hirsle through, Ye've fund the very thing to do - That's to drink speerit; An' shune we'll hear the last o' you - An' blithe to hear it! ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did dwell on a green, Who for her beauty may well be a queen, A blithe bonny lass, and dainty was she, And many one called her ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... isn't so bad, after all?" There was no time for explanation. She passed on into the jeweller's with another smile on her mobile face. He had to do his stammering to himself, annoyed at the quip of triumph, at the blithe sneer, over his young vaporings. This trivial annoyance was accentuated by the effusive cordiality of the great Lindsay, whom he met in the elevator. Sommers did not like this camaraderie of manner. He had seen Lindsay snub ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... pleasantest mood imaginable. Hippias not only came aboveground, he flew about in the very skies, verting like any blithe creature of the season. He remembered old legal jokes, and anecdotes of Circuit; and Richard laughed at them all, but more at him—he was so genial, and childishly fresh, and innocently joyful at his own transformation, while a lurking ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to hearth, bustled buxom Mrs. Bassett, flushed and floury, but busy and blithe as the queen bee of this busy little hive ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... where he had no friends. And he had never told his name, nor, what was a great deal worse, asked for hers! Here my lady frowned, for such indifference was wholly new in her experience. But on went long-legged Barnabas, all unconscious, striding through sunlight and shadow, with step blithe and free—and still (Oh! Barnabas) with never a look behind. Therefore, my lady's frown grew more portentous, and she stamped her foot at his unconscious back; then all at once the frown vanished in a sudden smile, and she instinctively ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... the class, walked Antoinette Holiday, a little lady of quality, as none who saw her could have helped recognizing. Her uncle, watching the procession from the steps of a campus house, smiled and sighed as he beheld her. She was so young, so blithe-hearted, so untouched by the sad and sordid things of life. If only he could keep her so for a little, preserve the shining splendor of her shield of innocent young joy. But, even as he thought, he knew the folly of his wish. Tony ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... "How blithe soe'er his manner, / how fair soe'er is he, Well could he cause of sorrow / to stately woman be, If he gan show his anger. / In him may well be seen He is in knightly virtues / a thane ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... there had been no rupture, he would be as blithe as a lark at this moment, and might outlive you and M. le President and me. ... The ways of Providence are mysterious, let us not seek to fathom them," he added to palliate to some extent the hideous idea. "It cannot be ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... But husband thou thy pleasures, and give scope To all her subtle play: by nature led A thousand shifts she tries; to unravel these The industrious beagle twists his waving tail, Through all her labyrinths pursues, and rings Her doleful knell. See there with countenance blithe, And with a courtly grin, the fawning hound Salutes thee cowering, his wide-opening nose 240 Upward he curls, and his large sloe-black eyes Melt in soft blandishments, and humble joy; His glossy skin, or yellow-pied, or blue, In lights or shades ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Fails at last, for his senses reel, His nerves collapse, and, with sleep-sealed eyes, Prone and helpless a log he lies! A hundred hearts beat placidly on, Unwitting they that their warder's gone; A hundred lips are babbling blithe, Some seconds hence they in pain may writhe. For the pace is hot, and the points are near, And Sleep hath deadened the driver's ear; And signals flash through the night in vain. Death is in charge of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... dancing with merriment. She and Raymond had just played a trick upon unsuspecting Miss Briggs with magnificent success. She was breathless with delight, could hardly speak for bursts of laughter, and danced up and down the room, looking so gay and blithe and like the Lettice of old, that her father wont off to his study with a heartfelt sigh of relief. Hilary was right. The child was happy enough. If she were a little quieter than usual it was only natural and fitting under the circumstances. He dismissed ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... looks are blithe and sweet, And what is best of a', [all] Her reputation is complete, And ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... hats even to their canvas shoes. The hands of the farmer and his son were uncovered; but the mother and her little daughter wore white lisle gloves. They also carried parasols—the mother's of the shade of her dress, the girl's pale blue. No family in America could possibly have looked more "blithe and bonny" than did that one in "Sunday" clothes, ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... her loom, with shuttle and beam, and sings at her work with so blithe a heart? Elster Whitney. And her shuttle shall fly, and her beam shall bang, from hour to hour, till the day is well nigh done. Who roams the forest, with dog and gun, and follows the chase with heart so bold? Jervis Whitney. And his dog shall bound, and his gun shall ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... that ensued the blithe jingling of bells was heard, accompanied by the merry sound of ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Why, with a trip and a courtesy, As if to say,—"Good day, good day," Out steps a tiny bird! And though no soul were near to hear He'd pipe that same blithe word. ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... the garbage of the pit, Whose names, half entered in the book of Life, Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier wife, The Sin still blithe on ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... last, is, that the devil knows his own interest too well, to let thee off so easily. Thou thyself tallest me, that we cannot repent when we will. And indeed I found it so: for, in my lucid intervals, I made good resolutions: but as health turned its blithe side to me, and opened my prospects of recovery, all my old inclinations and appetites returned; and this letter, perhaps, will be a thorough conviction to thee, that I am as wild a fellow as ever, or in the way to ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... are few, My faithful friends! Hence I feel great sorrow That the man well-matched with me I have found To be sad in soul and sorrowful in mind, 20 Concealing his thoughts and thinking of murder, Though blithe in his bearing. Oft we bound us by oath That the day of our death should draw us apart, Nothing less end our love. Alas, all is changed! Now is as naught, as if never it were, 25 Our faith and our ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... seen Esther Hargrave twice. She is a charming creature, but her blithe spirit is almost broken, and her sweet temper almost spoiled, by the still unremitting persecutions of her mother in behalf of her rejected suitor—not violent, but wearisome and unremitting like a continual dropping. The unnatural ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... in his accustomed blithe habit; it might have been merely a morbid fancy of Rainham's which traced a note of anxiety, of concealed uneasiness, in his accent, that the bare ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... night, of hem so longe y-sought, How blithe un-to hem bothe two thou were! Why ne hadde I swich on with my soule y-bought, Ye, or the leeste Ioye that was there? 1320 A-wey, thou foule daunger and thou fere, And lat hem in this hevene blisse dwelle, That is so heygh, that al ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... folk'll be blithe to see him—if it was not for the occasion of his coming! If there's aught a body can ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... bent of frame, But the glad spirits, tall and straight, who 'spite of time and all its care, Have kept the power to laugh and sing and in youth's fellowship to share. They that can walk with boys and be a boy among them, blithe and gay, Defy the withering blasts of Age because they have ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... there is the personal reference. "Meaning me, sir?" Your victim with a blithe heart babbles of this or that. You let him meander here and there, watching him as if you were in ambush. Presently he comes into your spring. "Of course," you say, "I saw what you were driving at just this minute, when you mentioned mustard in ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... centre of things lay to the east, so he struck out along Madison, trying not to show the terror with which the grim, roaring, clamorous city filled him. He jingled the small coins in his pocket and strode along, on the surface a blithe and carefree jackie on shore leave; a forlorn and ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... the rich abundance of the same in which some more delicately-constituted organisms habitually revel. If we would understand of what development emotional delight is capable, we should watch the skylark. As that 'blithe spirit' now at heaven's gate 'poureth its full heart,' and ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... laugh again, but he knew that his laughter was hollow. It is hard to be blithe and all but broke. Nor had he pled this latter state to urge himself upon them. Anybody could draw that conclusion now, if he wanted to, just from ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... the mightiest gods, and best beloved, Towards our town are winging! For lo! Demeter and Demetrius This glad day is bringing! She to perform her Daughter's solemn rites; Mystic pomps attend her; He joyous as a god should be, and blithe, Comes with laughing splendor. Show forth your triumph! Friends all, troop around, Let him shine above you! Be you the stars to circle him with love; He's the sun to love you. Hail, offspring of Poseidon, powerful god, Child of Aphrodite! ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... his people, a stark and a jealous horde— Not to be schooled by the cudgel, scarce to be cowed by the sword; Blithe to turn at their pleasure, bitter to cross in their mood, And set on the ways of their choosing as the ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... runs in tune: Half sunk i' th' blue, the powdery moon Shows whitely. Hark, the bobolink's note! I hear it, Far and faint as a fairy spirit! Yet all these pass, and as some blithe bird, winging, Leaves a heart-ache for his singing, A frustrate passion haunts me evermore For that which closest dwells to beauty's core. O Love, canst thou this heart of ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... of his hope, Hanson's blithe self-confidence returned. He threw back his head and straightened his shoulders, the light of an exultant purpose flashing in the steel of his eye. "Pleasant for Bob!" he remarked in vindictive satisfaction; but as he had still an end to gain, he did not permit his mind to gloat ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... omens blithe and bright, on festive New-Year's Day, First in the year old Janus comes, and foremost in my lay! Twin-headed god, source of the year that silent glides away, Who only of the Olympian throng canst ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... exception on the banks of the Niagara. Mary Lawson, the daughter of the village miller and merchant of the little hamlet of Youngstown, that nestled under the wing of Fort Niagara on the American side of the river, was as blithe and bonnie a lass of eighteen summers as ever gladdened a father's heart. Admirers Mary had in plenty, but the must eligible of them all, in the opinion of the village gossips, was young Ensign Roberts, attached to the American forces ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... to Oliver's club, where he sometimes slept, and also to the rooms which he called his "chambers" in the city. A little silence overspread the group of guests from the Kenyons' house. Other visitors, of whom there were not many, looked blithe enough; but gloom was plainly visible on the faces of the bride's friends. And a little whisper soon ran from group to group—"The bridegroom has ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... us to do the work," said Glencoe bitterly, "and then blithe they'll be to hansel the profits. We can gang back to Scotland as quick as we like when we've ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... sea below; the red rocks and green forests blazed around; and we sat enjoying the genial silence, not of darkness, but of light, not of death, but of life, as the noble heat permeated every nerve, and made us feel young, and strong, and blithe once more. ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... be kept as it is, even as it is now; that Philae could be preserved even as it is now! The spoilers are there, those blithe modern spirits, so frightfully clever and capable, so industrious, so determined, so unsparing of themselves and—of others! Already they are at work "benefiting Egypt." Tall chimneys begin to vomit smoke along ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... Thou welcome and bewildering guest! Blithe troubadour, whose laughing note Brings Spring into a poet's throat,— Flute, feathered joy! thy painted bill ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... at the Ranch, so it was not surprising that Lincoln should privately experiment on Coyotito. The deadly strychnine was too well guarded to be available. So Lincoln hid some Rough on Rats in a piece of meat, threw it to the captive, and sat by to watch, as blithe and conscience-clear as any professor of chemistry ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... change the current of the game in his favor. How brightly the sunshine flooded the room! What a glorious world it was, after all! Through the open window poured the rich, full-throated song of a meadow lark, and the burden of its blithe song was, "How good is this life the ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... pastimes and short-lived sorrows, were over, and the cousins returned to spend the long-looked for and happy vacation at home. The curly-headed rosy-cheeked boys had expanded into fine tall lads of sixteen; blithe of heart, and strong of limb, full of the eager hopes and never-to-be-realized dreams of youth. With what delight they were welcomed by the Colonel! With what pride he turned them round and round, ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... better work to do now; he's the man for us; let us choose him Doge to stem this current of adversity. You will urge by way of objection that he is now almost eighty years old, that his hair and beard are white as silver, that his blithe appearance, fiery eye, and the deep red of his nose and cheeks are to be ascribed, as his traducers maintain, to good Cyprus wine rather than to energy of character; but heed not that. Remember what conspicuous bravery this Marino Falieri showed as admiral of the fleet in the Black Sea, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... their way to the Grand Portage. Then they dropped an offering at Saint Anne's shrine, and pointed their craft against the current. These rovers of the wilderness were buoyant of heart, and they lightened the weary hours of their six weeks' journey with blithe songs of love and the river. When the snow fell and ice closed the river, they would tie their 'husky' dogs to sledges and travel over the desolate wastes, ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... overflowing garners; measure full, And blest to grateful souls. Through the low air A myriad wings circle in restless sort; And from the rustling woods there comes a sound Of dropping nuts and acorns—welcome store To little chipmunk and to squirrel blithe: Dependants small on Nature's wide largesse. How doth the enchanting picture fill our souls With faith! Sweet Indian maid, we turn with thee And greet gray Winter with ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... struck a delicious note of coolness against the throbbing blue sky and the flaming costumes of the peasants come up from the environs. Through a corner of the praca one saw poplars and elms and the fresh gleam of the river. The nasal hum of many voices sounded blithe and busy. At the bazaar entrance, where old women vended flowers and fruit, Gabriel reined ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Mr Fledgeby sped on his errand of mercy through the streets, at so brisk a rate that his feet might have been winged by all the good spirits that wait on Generosity. They might have taken up their station in his breast, too, for he was blithe and merry. There was quite a fresh trill in his voice, when, arriving at the counting-house in St Mary Axe, and finding it for the moment empty, he trolled forth at the foot of the staircase: 'Now, Judah, what ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... thy youth, even when care oppressed thee, A fair Venetian painting, the blithe work Of a light-beaming Titian, that revealed Pure shining joy ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... refreshing rains, For the sun which ripens the golden grains, For the beaded wheat and the fattened swine, For the stalled ox and the fruitful vine, For the tubers large and cotton white, For the kid and the lambkin frisk and blithe, For the swan which floats near the river-banks,— Lord God of ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... word to the folk in Breadalbane.... Just say that I came by an honest end.... Cheer up, lad. You'll live to see happy days yet.... But keep mind of me, Andrew.... Man, I liked you well, and would have been blithe to keep you ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... hither and thither, occasionally being out of sight completely. The Russian sailors, following a northern custom, skated in file, maintaining their rank by means of a long pole passed under their right arms, and in this way they described a trackway of singular regularity. The two children, blithe as birds, flitted about, now singly, now arm-in-arm, now joining the captain's party, now making a short peregrination by themselves, but always full of life and spirit. As for Ben Zoof, he was here, there, and everywhere, his imperturbable good temper ensuring him a smile ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... clatter are away, Where does the little Echo stay? Perched on a rock to watch for him? Or keeping a lookout from some limb? If he were to push his boat to land, Would he find her footprint on the sand? Or would she come to his blithe "hello," Red as a rose, or white as snow? Ah no, ah no! Never ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... Taka's cheek; With perfumed oil her fingers gave caress And waked the hidden pictures in the grain, The yellow sand, the dusky amber girl, The brown perfected in the shining globe. Earth's monotones are justified in this. Close to her lolled small Hopa, blithe and gay As a young cricket, teasing all the rest With her sharp wit; often she dropped her work— The threading of bright flowers into wreaths— To look across the waves, and suddenly She called, "A sail, a little sail," ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... infant fair, Pondling of a happy pair, Every morn and every night Their solicitous delight; Sleeping, waking, still at ease, Pleasing, without skill to please; Little gossip, blithe and hale, Tattling many a broken tale, Singing many a tuneless song, Lavish of a heedless tongue. Simple maiden, void of art, Babbling out the very heart, Yet abandoned to thy will, Yet imagining no ill, Yet too innocent to blush; Like the linnet in the bush, To the mother-linnet's ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... The trumpets flourished brave, The cannon from the ramparts glanced, And thundering welcome gave. A blithe salute, in martial sort, The minstrels well might sound, For, as Lord Marmion crossed the court, He scattered angels round. "Welcome to Norham, Marmion! Stout heart, and open hand! Well dost thou brook thy gallant roan, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... I can see him all day long And hear his wild, spontaneous song, Before my window in his cage, A blithe canary sits and swings, And circles round on golden wings; And startles all the vicinage When from his china tankard He takes a dainty drink To clear his throat For as sweet a note As ever yet was ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... and indifferent copy of Raphael's "St. Cecilia;" there were, too, several gouache drawings of local scenery: a fiery night-view of Vesuvius, a panorama of the Bay, and a very blue Blue Grotto. The whole was blithe, sunny, Neapolitan; sufficiently unlike a sitting-room in Redheck House, Bartles, Lancashire, which Mrs. Baske had in her mind as ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... not love me any longer? Remember old years and do not break your oath with me, Jehane, since God abhors nothing so much as unfaith. For your own sake, Jehane,—ah, no, not for your sake nor for mine, but for the sake of that blithe Jehane, whom, so you tell me, time ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... Hungry Bum She plays the Girl Philanthropist — Each pinchbeck, boy Millenium She swings, a Bangle, at her wrist — Blithe Parrot and Pert Egoist, You threaten her with Night and Sorrow? Hermiones will aye persist! More ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... overbrimming with flowers, Four little feet tripping through the blithe hours; Two little maidens, so happy and bright, Busy all day, and so ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... still rings freshly and musically in our remembrance. And the recollection of it is doubtless all the more vivid because of the mirthful retrospect having relation to one of the most recent of Dickens's blithe home dinners in his last town residence immediately before his hurried return to Gad's Hill in the summer of 1870. Although we were happily with him afterwards, immediately before the time came when we could commune with him no more, the occasion referred to is one ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... whole-length portrait (exhibiting a pensive and penetrating aspect), is prefixed to his "English Improver Improved;" and which work Professor Martyn terms "an original and incomparable work for the time." Dr. Beale calls him "honest Captain Blithe." ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... ever sung in Po, A shriller nightingale than ever bless'd The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome. Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud, While he did chant his rural minstrelsy: Attentive was full many a dainty ear, Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue, While sweetly of his Fairy Queen he sung; While ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... marshalled their force, and it was by far the larger. The day was hot and sunny; so King Hacon slipped off his mail coat and raised his helm, and egged on his men to the onset laughing, and thus cheered his warriors by his blithe bearing. Then the fight began, and it was most stubborn. When the missiles were all thrown, King Hacon drew sword and stood in front under the banner, and hewed right and left; never did he miss, or, if he missed his ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... Rose of Love entwine Round the cheek-flushed god of wine: As the rose its gaudy leaves Round our twisted temples weaves, Let us sip the time away, Let us laugh as blithe as they. ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... go you must, Flowerless and chill the winter draweth nigh; Closed are the blithe and fragrant lips which made All summer long perpetual melody. Cheerless we take our way, but not afraid: Will there not ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... brought a resolve to visit Briar Hills. Except for the afternoons when Jerry fished, he went there daily. He was delighted at my wish to accompany him. We drove over in the motor in the flush of the afternoon, Jerry blithe again, I silent, wondering at the inexhaustible springs of youth, forgetting that it was merely May and Jerry on his way to the ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... smooth-wheeled car A virgin bride conducted; then burst forth Aloud the marriage song; and far and wide Long splendors flash'd from many a quivering torch Borne in the hands of slaves. Gay blooming girls Preceded, and the dancers followed blithe: These, with shrill pipe indenting the soft lip, Breath'd melody, while broken echoes thrill'd Around them; to the lyre with flying touch Those led the love-enkindled dance. A group Of youths was elsewhere imaged, to the flute Disporting; some in dances, and in song; In ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... later dean of Reims; and a distinguished group of lesser men; but from the time when Thomas entered the household "there was none dearer to the archbishop than he." "Slight and pale, with dark hair, long nose, and straightly-featured face, blithe of countenance, keen of thought, winning and lovable in conversation, frank of speech, but slightly stuttering in his talk," he had a singular gift of winning affection; and even from his youth he was "a prudent son of the world." It was Theobald who had first brought the Canon ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... fraternity affair—Sigma Chi or Delta Tau or Deke. Or mayhap those lads wear a "Fiji" pin on their waistcoats; I seem to recall spring hay-rides as an expression of "Fiji" spirit in my own days at Madison, when I myself was that particular blithe Hellenist with the guitar, and ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... have an air too, and brave it is and blithe; I think I may have heard it that day at Bablockhythe; And where the Eynsham weir-fall breaks out in rainbow spray The Evenlode comes singing to join the ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... mourning for a love that might never be restored by the unkind depths. A vision of yesterday and to-day! Turning to the sea, she breathed a prayer for the salvation of Grace Vernon, her eyes dimming as she thought of the blithe, cheery girl who had become so dear to her, and who was all the world ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... Sometimes now one wakes to a morning when the window is a golden square, a fine greeting to a good earth, and the whistle of a starling in the apple tree just outside is as tenuous as a thread of silver; the smell of coffee brings one up blithe as a boy about to begin play again. Yet something we feel to be wrong—a foggy memory of an ugly dream—ah, yes; the War, the War. The damned remembrance of things as they are drops its pall. The morning paper, too, I see, has the information that our men are again ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... understanding that she must board herself. It did not take Madeline long to calculate that twelve times three were thirty-six, more than a tenth of what her grandfather must borrow. It seemed like a little fortune, and blithe as a singing bird she flitted about the house, now stopping a moment to fondle her pet kitten, while she whispered the good news in its very appreciative ear, and then stroking her grandfather's ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... a military band passed glittering. A brave sound floated up, and again he laughed, loving the tune, the clash and glitter of the band, the movement of scarlet, blithe soldiers beyond the park. People were drifting brightly from church. How could it be Sunday! It was no time; it was Romance, going back ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... days, tender, happy, blithe as a bird; a song on her lips whenever she went about the house; a caress in her very touch for the dear old people who had been father and mother to her in her loneliness; realizing only vaguely what it was going to be to them when she was gone and they were all alone ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... of us," sang Lucile, cheerily. "And if my nose does not deceive me, there issueth from the regions of various kitchens a blithe and savory odor—as of fresh muffins, golden-yellow eggs, just fried to a turn, and ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... adventure, too many such hours seem to have owed their inspiration to the Scottish peasant's chief bane, the Highland whisky. In his eager search after the old ballads of the Border, Scott had many a blithe adventure, which ended only too often in a carouse. It was soon after this time that he first began those raids into Liddesdale, of which all the world has enjoyed the records in the sketches—embodied subsequently in Guy Mannering—of Dandie Dinmont, his pony Dumple, and the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... They to the dome where smoke with curling play Announced the dinner to the regions round, Summon'd the singer blithe, and harper gay, And ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... subjected before he can enter the service of Uncle Sam, and to the disciplined order of the lives of the men at Sibley, maladies of any serious nature were almost unknown. It was a gloriously healthy post, as everybody admitted, and, to judge from the specimen of young-womanhood that came singing, "blithe and low," out among the roses this same joyous morning, exuberant physical well-being was not restricted to ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... quick. Unlike the Epic and Drama, it has no preferred verse or meter, but leaves the poet free to choose or invent appropriate forms. In this species of verse Arnold was not wholly at ease. As has been said, one searches in vain through the whole course of his poetry for a blithe, musical, gay or serious, offhand poem, the true lyric kind. The reason for this is soon discovered. Obviously, it lies in the fundamental qualities of the poet's mind and temperament. Though by no means lacking in emotional sensibility, Arnold was too intellectually self-conscious ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... blithe and bright into the room where Bel sat, basting machine work; the eyes went ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... which a player might perchance be in need on issuing forth. And presently a coach appeared at the corner of the street, and stopped there, whereupon a gentleman got out of it, gave the driver and footman some commands, and while the conveyance remained where it was, approached alone, at a blithe gait, and took post near us, though more in the light shed by the ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... landlady, a blithe, bustling housewife, hastening herself to suply the guest with liquor—"Thou knowest well enow what the strange man wants, and it's thy trade to be a civil man. Thou shouldest know, that if the Scot likes a small pot, he pays a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... the old familiar spot: One feels long vanished memories steal o'er him; The other sees, yet recognizes not His blithe companion in the form ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson |
