"Cicada" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "We pronounce thee happy, Cicada, For on the tops of the trees, Drinking a little dew, Like any king thou singest, For thine are they all, Whatever thou seest in the fields, And whatever the woods bear. Thou art the friend of the husbandmen, In no respect ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... auditory organ may result in reducing the effect of a steam-engine whistle to an agreeable whisper! It is thought that the vibrations are felt rather than heard, in the sense that we use the word "hear"; if one has ever had a cicada zizz in one's hand, the electrical shocks which seem to go up the arm help the belief in this idea. To many of us the song of the cicada—softened by distance—will ever be pleasant on account of its associations. ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... high overhead, by some earlier association, always recalls that matchless singer, some of whose notes Nature has never regained in all these later years. The whir of the cicada and the white light on the remote country road are real to us today, though one went silent and the other faded out of Sicilian skies two thousand years and more ago, because both are preserved in the ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... persistent repetition of the same notes in the minor key is by no means monotonous and ends with haunting the ear, occupying the thought and touching the soul. Like the distant frog-concert and chirp of the cicada, the creak of the water- wheel and the stroke of hammers upon the anvil from afar, the murmur of the fountain, the sough of the wind and the plash of the wavelet, they occupy the sensorium with a soothing effect, forming a barbaric music full ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... so contemptible as that of what is hourly before our eyes. I do not so much wonder at the fellow who inquired if America was a very large town, as at him who, finding the froth of the Cicada spumaria L. on almost every blade in his garden, wondered where were all the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... sang them. The principal objection to them is that they are rather too short to bear repetition for half an hour as is the custom, there is another music going on—a music that cannot be written and will be difficult to describe—I mean the song of the "Cicada Stridulantia" in walnut trees above me. This insect—the balm cricket—is in appearance a burlesque, just such a house fly as you might imagine would be introduced in a pantomime; and its cry is as loud and incessant as it is peculiar. To describe it, fancy to begin with a number of strange ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... to the south, he saw everything at the height of Summer. The trees were fully green, and luscious fruits weighed down their branches, while over all was the drowsy hum of the cicada. ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... after hour, in those idle summer days, when nature was in a mood that suggested grace and peace, when the waves lapsed along the shore and the cicada sang in the hedge, did Father Damon unfold to Edith his ideas of the spiritualization of modern life through a conviction of its pettiness and transitoriness. How much more content there would be if the poor could only believe ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 172. Cicada zonalis (n.s.) C. capite thoraceque flavis, hoc macularum fascia nigrarum punctisque posticis variegato, abdomine atro fascia antica rubra analibusque tribus albis, lamellis basalibus subviridibus, elytris hyalinis ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... to dawn, the birds are astir, the cicada have begun their music; flocks of parrots and macaws, and other winged inhabitants of the forest, pass by in numbers, seeking their morning repast; beautiful long-tailed and gilded moths like butterflies fly over the tree-tops. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... compelled to acknowledge a mournful truth. Despotism has its moments of secure tranquillity. Her reign seems like the hour which precedes the tempest, and whose silence enables the traveler, stretched upon the faded grass, to hear at a mile's distance, the song of the cicada. Some fine morning an honest woman, who will be imitated by a great portion of our own women, discerns with an eagle eye the clever manoeuvres which have rendered her the victim of an infernal ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... hills on either side with a fine range to the north of the camp, apparently composed of limestone, with abundance of junipers, and the Iris of Dund-i-Golai very common. Hares, rock pigeons, Alauda. Myriads of Cicada, and the Jerboa rat. The Turnuk river is again occasionally in sight, valley apparently little cultivated. Stipa very common, as well as Iris, Festuca vivipara, Astragali sp., and Artemisia. Cloudy evening, followed by a stormy ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... sultry. Though the windows of the chamber were wide open, and the muslin curtains looped back, not a breath of air was stirring. Only the shrill chirp of the cicada and the muffled croaking of the frogs in some distant marsh broke the night silence. The heavy scent of magnolias, overpowering even the strong smell of drugs in the sickroom, suggested death and funeral wreaths, sorrow and tears, the long ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... is simply a poetic and profound illustration of what love can do always and everywhere. A famous poet was singing to his lyre. One of its strings snapped. The melody would have been lost, had not a cricket (properly, cicada) flown on to the lyre and chirped the missing note. The note, thus sounded, was more beautiful than as produced by the instrument itself, and, to the song's end, the cricket remained to do the work of the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... passed in that hush of purity and peace; sounds came and went outside, the rattle of a cart far away, the sawing of the first cicada in the coarse grass twenty yards away beyond the wall; some one behind the priest was breathing short and thick as under the pressure of an intolerable emotion, and yet the figure stood there still, without a movement or sway to break the carved motionlessness of the alb-folds or the perfect ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... entomologist, entomologic, chrsalis, pupa, cicada, cocoon, credpitaculum, entomophilous, entornophily, entomtaxy, entomotomy, insecticidal, insectifuge, insectile, larva, lepidopterist, larvarium, stridor, stridulate, stridulation, silphology, stridulatory, nymph, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... silent, hoping that the singer might not have gone, but there was no sound except a cicada chirping near her. She swung round in her chair, looking in the direction from which it came. "Listen to him. Jolly little chap! They are the first things I listen for when I get to Port Said. They mean the East ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... certainly not harmonious, concert. Flocks of parrots and blue macaws flew overhead, the different kinds of cawing and screaming of the various species making a terrible discord. Then arose the strangely sounding call of the cicada, or cricket, one of the largest kind, perched high on the trees, setting up a most piercing chirp. It began with the usual harsh jarring tone of its tribe, rapidly becoming shriller, until it ended in a long and loud whistling note. Comparatively small as are these wonderful performers, ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... the silver bow," said she, "have you not made a mistake in choosing this place for a dwelling? These rich plains around us will not always be as peaceful as now; for their very richness will tempt the spoiler, and the song of the cicada will then give place to the din of battle. Even in times of peace you would hardly have a quiet hour here: for great herds of cattle come crowding down every day to my lake for water; the noisy ploughman, driving his team afield, disturbs ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... country, or goes into the country in the summertime, is sure to know the humming of the so-called locust. It is an unfortunate fact that the word locust may have several meanings. It is properly applied to one group of the grasshoppers. The creature most commonly called a locust is a cicada, or harvest fly. When the weather gets quite warm the cicada starts his love song. He has two long flaps to his vest, and under each flap he has a vibrating drum head. This is set shivering by a muscle on its under side. The female cicada ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... southern forest has its voices, moonlit or dark. All through the livelong night sings the mock-bird—screams the "loreto." From dark till dawn, you hear the hoarse baying of the "coyote," and the dismal howl of the gaunt gray wolf. The cicada fills the air with its monotonous and melancholy notes. In all these sounds there is a breathing, a wild voluptuousness that tells you you are wandering in the clime of the sun—amidst scenes like those rendered classical ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... new chum," said Mr. Orban, bursting into peals of laughter, accompanied by Bob, "that isn't an electric bell; it's a cicada." ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... The cicada, you see, has no wing covers. Nor are its upper wings, half wing cover, and half wing, like those of so many ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... said Mr Oliphant, "the force of habit. I'm so used to the sound, that I was utterly unconscious of it. It is made by the cicada, an insect very common in this country. And now, where do you suppose we're coming to? This little village or township before us is Norwood, and then comes Kensington. I've no doubt it will strike you as one of the oddest things in this ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... dark. I hear the sambur-stag belling from the mountain-side, and the monotonous call of the coel, or Indian cuckoo. Afar a peacock calls from a ruined tomb, and through all the jungle concert runs the continuous screech of the cicada. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... males, compound in females, arising from the base of secondaries in many Lepidoptera, whose function it is to unite the wings in flight: in Cicada the triangular lateral piece on the mesonotum which connects with the trochlea: the anal area of secondaries ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... central fountain. Here on the fountain are Beauty and the Beast, Beauty clad in a summer hat and nothing else, the Beast clothed in ugliness. (p. 100.) Never mind the story. This is Beauty, and Beauty needs no story. Four airy pipers, suggestive at least of the song of the cicada on long, hot afternoons, support the fountain figure. Around the basin of the pool is carved in low relief a cylindrical frieze of tiger, lion and bear, and, wonder of wonders, Hanuman, the Monkey King of Hindoo mythology, leading the bear with one ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... Ant-lion White ants Anecdotes of their instinct and ravages (text and note) V. Hymenoptera.—Mason Wasps Wasps Bees Carpenter Bee Ants Burrowing ants VI. Lepidoptera.—Butterflies Sylph Lycaenidae Moths Silk worms (text and note) Wood-carrying Moths Pterophorus VII. Homoptera Cicada VIII. Hemiptera Bugs IX. Aphaniptera X. Diptera.—Mosquitoes General character of Ceylon insects List ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... know, believes the moth emerges underground, and works its way to the surface as it fights to escape a cocoon. I consider this an utter impossibility. Remember the earth-encrusted cicada cases you have seen clinging to the trunks of trees, after the insect has reached the surface and abandoned them. Think what would happen to the delicate moth head, wings, and downy covering! I am willing to ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... undoubted piety, and it may well excuse a little communicativeness when we remember that of the generation he had served so well, few survived to speak his praise. At all events, there was one benefactor whom he never forgot; and the chirrup of the old Cicada softened into something very soft and tender every time he mentioned the name ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... derived from its wonderful note. It is said 'to chant like a Buddhist priest reciting the kyo'; and certainly, upon hearing it the first time, one can scarcely believe that one is listening to a mere cicada. The minminzemi is followed, early in autumn, by a beautiful green semi, the higurashi, which makes a singularly clear sound, like the rapid ringing of a small bell,—kana-kana-kan a-kana- kana. But the most ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... toads, Nat; and that chirruping whirring is something in the cricket or cicada way. If we heard a jaguar or puma, it would most likely be a magnified tom-cat-like sort ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... animal and I study it alive; you turn it into an object of horror and pity, whereas I cause it to be loved; you labour in a torture-chamber and dissecting-room, I make my observations under the blue sky, to the song of the Cicadae (The Cicada Cigale, an insect akin to the Grasshopper and found more particularly in the south of France.—Translator's Note.); you subject cell and protoplasm to chemical tests, I study instinct in its loftiest manifestations; you ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... a death-like silence wide around, Broke only by the unvaried torrent's sound, Or prayer-bell by the dull cicada drown'd. 1820. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... summons which bids the guests to enter. One by one they advance and take their places. In the tokonoma hangs a kakemon,—a wonderful writing by an ancient monk dealing with the evanescence of all earthly things. The singing kettle, as it boils over the brazier, sounds like some cicada pouring forth his woes to departing summer. Soon the host enters the room. Each in turn is served with tea, and each in turn silently drains his cup, the host last of all. according to established etiquette, the chief guest now asks permission to examine the tea-equipage. Rikiu places the ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... conferences more than she cared to admit. All that Kami said was, 'Continuez, mademoiselle, continuez toujours,' and he had been repeating the wearisome counsel through the hot summer, exactly like a cicada,—an old gray cicada in a black alpaca coat, white trousers, and a huge ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... weather was hot, and the sun very strong. The heated air was full of the sounds of insects; some of them comfortable, like the buzzing of bees, some of them strange and unusual to us. One cicada had a sustained note, in quality about like that of our own August-day's friend, but in quantity and duration as the roar of a train to the gentle hum of a good motor car. Like all cicada noises it did not usurp the sound world, but constituted itself an ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... thou gav'st a field to till; I have a larger on my window-sill. A farm, d'ye say? Is this a farm to you, Where for all woods I spay one tuft of rue, And that so rusty, and so small a thing, One shrill cicada hides it with a wing; Where one cucumber covers all the plain; And where one serpent rings himself in vain To enter wholly; and a single snail Eats all and exit fasting to the pool? Here shall my gardener be the dusty mole. My only ploughman the . . . mole. Here ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson |
