"Cooing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you in the canoe to Deep-water Chine! It is such a delicious place! The trees dip into the water, and the birds come down to drink and bathe; and we saw a water-rat and a water-wagtail, and there was the cuckoo; and we could hear the cooing of the wood-pigeons whenever we were silent; and, oh! ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... we said nothing. Trilling of crickets ashore, sleepy cooing of nutmeg-pigeons, chatter of monkeys, hiccough of tree lizards, were as nothing in the immense, starlit silence of the night, heavily sweet with cassia and mace. Forward, the Malays murmured now and then, in ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... sportive train, To gather king-cups in the yellow mead, And prank their hair with daisies, or to pick A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook, These shades are all my own. The timorous hare, Grown so familiar with her frequent guest, Scarce shuns me; and the stock-dove unalarmed Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends His long love-ditty for my near approach. Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm That age or injury has hollowed deep, Where on his bed of wool and matted leaves He has outslept the winter, ventures forth To frisk awhile, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... watches of the night; it began to speak when you were a little, little child, with little joys and sorrows, and little prayers that you have forgotten now. Oh, it is a sweet voice, a tender voice"—her own had dropped to the cooing of doves—"It is hard to know why all the winds do not carry it, and all the leaves whisper it! Strange, strange! But the world is full of the clamour of its own foolishness, and the Voice is lost in it, except in places where people come to pray, as here to-night, ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... one corner of the building a marble campanile, formed by successive tiers of delicate arcades, springs upward into the azure sky. Flocks of gray pigeons circled about the upper gallery (where hang the bells), or rested, cooing softly in the warm air, upon the sculptured cornice bordering the white arches. It was a quiet scene of tranquil beauty, significant of repose in life and of peace in death—the church, with its wide portals, offering an everlasting home to all who sought shelter ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... darling, you love! Keep on. Mamma dear, you are giving us a lesson in pleasure. This beats all I have felt yet!" whilst Mary hugged me closer every moment, kissing my lips and cooing out her words ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... widow managed to keep life in herself and her two little ones by dint of pinching, management and contrivance on the pittance that had come to her from the estate of her impecunious father. They lived in a palace, it is true—but who does not live in a palace in Rome?—high up, where the cooing doves built their nests under the leaden eaves, and where the cold winds whistled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... birds cooing and billing, and thought we might as well begin," said Alys Brewster-Smith. "Regularity is of the highest importance in bringing up ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... elms, like the strings of A harp being played, The note of the blackbird that claps with the wings of Delight in the glade. With him in Ros-grenca the cattle are lowing At earliest dawn, On the brink of the summer the pigeons are cooing And doves ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... introduced, when he claimed the privilege of addressing the house, on the proper ground that he had been "brought up among the pigs, and knew all about them"—so we were brought up among cows and cabbages; and the lowing of cattle, the cackle of hens, and the cooing of pigeons, were sounds native and pleasant to our ears. So "Variation under Domestication" dealt with familiar subjects in a natural way, and gently introduced "Variation under Nature," which seemed likely enough. Then follows "Struggle for Existence"—a ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... by the rain. The dew sparkled on the green iris leaves beside the tiny river, and the sunshine made the fish look like lumps of living gold in the blue waters of the little lake. The birds were singing in the wistaria vine that grew over the porch, and two doves were cooing on the old stone lantern that stood by the little lake. ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... what J. P. Munroe says: "Many of the new methods . . . methods of gentle cooing toward the child's inclinations, of timidly placing a chair for him before a disordered banquet of heterogeneous studies, may produce ladylike persons, but they will not produce men. And when these modern methods go as far as to compel the teacher to divide this intellectual cake and pudding into ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... wold, Or bleat of lamb within its fold, Or cooing of love-legends old To dove-wives make not quiet less; Ecstatic chirp of winged thing, Or bubbling of the water-spring, Are sounds that more than silence ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... wet, the poor little—" Ricky was on her knees, stretching out her hand and positively cooing. The cat put down the paw he had been licking and regarded her calmly out of round, yellow eyes. Then he returned to his ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... Bhima, remembering his former wrongs, fought with him furiously. The wrathful Bhimasena could not brook that disregard by Karna. Indeed, that slayer of foes quickly shot showers of arrows at Radha's son. Those arrows, sped in that encounter by Bhimasena, fell on every limb of Karna like cooing birds. Those arrows equipped with golden wings and keen points, shot from Bhimasena's bow, covered the son of Radha like a flight of insects covering a blazing fire. Karna, however, O king, shot showers of fierce shafts in return, O Bharata. Then Vrikodara cut off, with many broad-headed arrows, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Cooing, and laughter, and gurgles, and cries, Dimples for tenderest kisses, Chaos of hopes, and of raptures, and sighs, Chaos of fears ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... her to overdo persuasion. That cooing interpolation of "your sincere friend"—too strongly honeyed—suddenly recalled the Prophet to the fact that Lady Enid was not, and could never be, his confidante in the matter that obsessed him. He therefore sat down, but with an abrupt air ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... intervals down the table. She lunched to-day on beer, Schweine-koteletten, and cabbage-salad with caraway seeds in it, and now I hear her through the open window, extemporising touching melodies in her charming, cooing voice. She is thin, frail, intelligent, and lovable, all on the above diet. What better proof can be needed to establish the superiority of the Teuton than the fact that after such meals he can produce such music? Cabbage salad ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... I not tell you?" said the stout woman to the child, cooing the words exultantly, as she arose to meet ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... then gravely chewed their cud, And hungerless in the rich pastures stood. The ass his mate abandoned, fled away, And loveless wives then cursed the direful day; And loving husbands kiss their wives no more, And doves their cooing ceased, and separate soar; And love then died in all the breasts of men, And strife supreme on earth was ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... understanding what I say, Rose smiles in answer to my smile and we remain silent; our eyes gaze without seeing and our idle hands trail in the wet grass. We hear, without listening, the hoarse, fat, cooing-voluptuous voices of the doves: in the cool air of the morning, among the leaves, the flowers and the branches, it is an undercurrent of joy rising and falling, suspended for a moment and then ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... home—the little parlour with its bits of furniture, scraggy and vulgar, but sweet with the presence of the wife and her homely occupations; then the children—the chicks—cooing and chattering, creating such hope and fond anxiety! Why then did he not have wife and children? Of all worldly possessions they are the easiest to obtain. Because he had created a soul that irreparably separated him from these, the ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... sex sense is a sign of maturity. It is the calling for a mate. All animals have this sense and nearly all animals have a mating season. The billing and cooing of the birds in the springtime is an expression of this sense—the love sense. It is possessed by every little insect. Only by knowing their habits do we see the expression of it. This sense is nothing of which one should be ashamed. It was ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... foolish brains, Billing and cooing is all your cheer; Sighing and singing of midnight strains, Under Bonnybells window panes,— Wait till you come to ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... be pardoned. Impossible, I repeat it, to say to that creature, face to face, "Art thou the master of demoniac arts, and the instigator of secret murder?" As if from redundant happiness within himself, he was humming, or rather cooing, a strain of music, so sweet, so wildly sweet, and so unlike the music one hears from tutored lips in crowded rooms! I passed my hand over my ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... because they were so unpractical; even in bohemia, where practicality is the last virtue to flourish, their improvidence was surprising; but really they were not children at all—they had been married for three years, though to watch their billing and cooing, you would have supposed them to ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... a clinging way even in sleep, and his speech, though very direct for his age, is soft and cooing; he says "mother" in a lingering tone that might belong to a girl, and there are what are called feminine ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Mike, as he brought a bundle of sticks and piled them up on the fire he had lit. "Sure, Pablo and I can do all the work, without you throubling yourself. There's Misthress Ashatea and the young chief billing and cooing at her tent-door like two turtle-doves; and if they were to see you moving about, maybe they'd think it necessary, out of courtesy, to come and help you—and it would be ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... purpose. So sensitive to outside impressions is this child that he quickly responds to the least suggestion and with the least effort. Early in the morning, when the chill of night is still on the sands, he toddles into Khalid's tent cooing and warbling his joy. A walking jasmine flower, a singing ray of sunshine, Khalid calls him. And the mother, on seeing her child thus develop, begins to recuperate. In this little garden of happiness, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... fills the woods with song— The ring-dove, sick for love, is cooing sweet; The lark, scorning the daisies, soars to greet The sun, while the brown swarms of bees among The flowery meadows skim in haste along. Once more the young year glories in the feat Of driving winter off with vernal heat And tepid ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... 'groans.' And one of my doves shook its pretty head and ruffled its feathers and shut its eyes, and became subject to pap and nursing and other infirmities for two or three days, until I was in great consternation for the result. But it is well again—cooing as usual; and so indeed we all are. But indeed, I can't write a sentence more without saying some of the evil it deserves—of the utilitarianisms of this corrupt age—among some of the chief of which are ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... was not lying; and this was all Alessandro had to comfort himself with, through his long night of watching. No, not all; one other thing comforted him,—the notes of two wood-doves, that at intervals he heard, cooing to each other; just the two notes, the call and the answer, "Love?" "Here." "Love?" "Here,"—and long intervals of silence between. Plain as if written on a page was the thing ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... find a tree, no shrub, but a big living elm in tower of leaf and panoply of spreading bough, to be cool under. Pigeons from the big dovecot in front of the house afforded to a leisure mind a sufficiency of general conversation, or formed a cooing chorus of approval if anybody wished to talk himself; but one thing clearly prohibited in these warm, green places was to be active. The actively inclined had to pass through the gate in the hedge, and there, by turning to the left, they would find a back-water with a whole ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... shift of the wind, stood near the Chateau. It was the home of a whole colony of snow-white pigeons, which fluttered in and out of it, wheeled in circles round the tall chimney-stacks, or strutted, cooing and bowing together, on the high roof of the Chateau, a picture ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... delight, my dear: Then 'neath night's spangled veil, my dear, Come list t' the young heart's tale sincere; Yon orb of light, so chaste and bright, Love's magic yields within her sphere. Then through the shady grove, my love, Let's wander with the cooing dove, Till the starry night, to morning's light, Shall break upon our wooing, love. As life's young dream shall pass, my love, Together let us gaily row, And day by day, in sportive play, Enjoy life's Meeting gloss, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Mouland, whose few forlorn walls grouped about the village church made a pathetic picture as they glowed luminously in the setting sun. A flock of doves were cooing in the blackened ruins. Now I was on the home-stretch; and, that there might be no mistake with my early morning comrades, I cried out in German, "Here comes a friend!" With broad smiles on their faces, they were waiting there ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... came from the end of the corridor in a roar that made Oliver feel as if he had been cooing. The roar irritated him—they might be a little more mannerly. He clutched the bars and discovered to his pleased surprise that they would rattle. He shook them as hard as he could like ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... yield to the wooing lips; of vowels that flow and murmur, each after its kind; the peremptory b and p, the brittle k, the vibrating r, the insinuating s, the feathery f, the velvety v, the bell-voiced m, the tranquil broad a, the penetrating e, the cooing u, the emotional o, and the beautiful combinations of alternate rock and stream, as it were, that they give to the rippling flow of speech,—there is a fascination in the skilful handling of these, which the great poets and even prose-writers have not ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... who played the flute, had established himself. Like all poor players, he affected the low, mournful notes, as plaintive as the distant cooing of the dove in lowering, weather. He played or rather tooted away in his "blues"-inducing strain hour after hour, despite our energetic protests, and occasionally flinging a club at him. There ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... of him. I meant, my love, something in surplices, not in camp-meetings, of course. Think of those lovely pink cheeks in a high collar and Bishop's sleeves, wouldn't he be too sweet for anything?" and she laughed one of her little cooing laughs. "Nor a doctor," she continued, with a slight interrogation in her tone, "nor a shopkeeper, nor a painter"—and she shot a quick glance from under her arching eyebrows at her companion —but Mrs. Horn's face gave no sign—"nor ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... decidedly graceful, and rather pathetic: if ever the language natural to man was found, the medium in circulation before our sickly machinery of speech came to be invented, it was in this concert of persuasive action and tender cooing notes. The main body of the Siriniris marched pellmell along with the porters, whom this vicinage made exceedingly uncomfortable, and who were perspiring ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... uncle," said Philippe, whose phraseology had a flavor of his affinities in Paris, "you love this girl, and you are devilishly right. She is damnably handsome! Instead of billing and cooing she makes you trot like a valet; well, that's all simple enough; but she wants to see you six feet underground, so that she may marry ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... voices of the field? The hedgebird's twitter and the soft dove's cooing, All the small songs of nesting, pairing, wooing, Where each reveals What joy ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... see such billing and cooing betwixt France and England, and when I think the Emperor of Russia may not desire to have so near his territory a set of men who read Paine's Rights of Man, and whistle 'Yankee doodle,' I feel disposed to settle the matter at once by force of gunpowder. I consider the President ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... nothing; but I soon perceived that I was to them of no more consequence than a fly on the wall. If they saw me, which sometimes seemed doubtful,—for love is blind,—they evidently thought me too sensible, or too old, to mind a little billing and cooing. And they were right in their opinion. What was I in Florida for, if not for the study of natural history? And truly, I have seldom seen, even among birds, a pair less sophisticated, less cabined and confined by that disastrous knowledge of good and evil which is commonly understood to have resulted ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... hear her, and I will do her pleasure if thou ask me so to do." Then Agatha cast down her eyes, and her speech was so low and sweet that it was as the cooing of a dove, as she said: "O my Lord, what is this ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... fathomed the fathomless depths of love. Man is the rugged and wrinkled oak, And woman the trusting and tender vine— That clasps and climbs till its arms entwine The brawny arms of the sturdy stoke. [67] The dimpled babes are the flowers divine That the blessing of God on the vine and oak With their cooing and blossoming ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... of their house on Washington Square—sometimes with guests scattered all about her, the men with their arms folded, balanced breathlessly on the edges of sofas, the women with their hands in their laps, occasionally making little whispers to the men and always clapping very briskly and uttering cooing cries after each song—and often she sang to Anthony alone, in Italian or French or in a strange and terrible dialect which she imagined to be the speech of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... these mountains; and the whole house, in the strong, beating sunlight, and standing out above a grove of stunted cork-trees, thickly laden and discoloured with dust, looked like the sleeping palace of the legend. The court, in particular, seemed the very home of slumber. A hoarse cooing of doves haunted about the eaves; the winds were excluded, but when they blew outside, the mountain dust fell here as thick as rain, and veiled the red bloom of the pomegranates; shuttered windows and ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the duke obtained for me the thing we wanted; and shall you, my dearest life, be ordered to drink the Baden waters next year? The billing and cooing of the "handsome disconsolate," compared with the accents of our happy love—so true and changeless for now ten years!—have given me a great contempt for marriage. I had never seen the thing so near. Ah, dearest! what ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... you! Fancy that! You're too modest." Delamater adopted the cooing note of a dove. "'Pon my word, you're too modest. If you could hear the things I hear—" He paused, not knowing exactly what to say he had heard, but his vagueness, the very eloquence of his hesitation, caused Allie's face to light up. This was the second compliment ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... man often and often stood at the window, and looked out upon the sea, and down into the cypress-trees, among the thick branches of which he heard the doves cooing. He loved to hear them coo, and so did the little old monk. One day early in January he saw that the turtle-doves had built a nest just in sight; he watched the birds taking it by turns to sit on the eggs, and his heart was full of love to them; they turned up their ...
— The Pearl Story Book - A Collection of Tales, Original and Selected • Mrs. Colman
... its actual presence to his eyes. Then, in a flash, the truth came upon him. He fell upon his knees by the bedside and put out his arms for the child. He held it. He felt its soft breath against his cheek. A cooing murmur, as if of tiny happiness, came from its parted lips. It turned its little face, flushed like a rose, against the breast of Maurice, and nestled ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Francoise as a little temple of Venus. It would be overflowing with the offerings of the milkman, the fruiterer, the greengrocer, come sometimes from distant villages to dedicate here the first-fruits of their fields. And its roof was always surmounted by the cooing of a dove. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... bright vista. As his perambulator rolls out of the gate of St. James's Palace, he stretches out his tiny hands to the scarlet sentinels. An obsequious retinue follows him over the lawns of the White Lodge, cooing and laughing, blowing kisses and praising him. Yet do not imagine his life has been all gaiety! The afflictions that befall royal personages always touch very poignantly the heart of the people, and it is not too much to say that all England watched ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... streaming moustache. In addition to their ten thousand francs a year, which enabled them to live as they liked, he earned a little money by painting pretty fans, flowery with roses and little women deftly postured. And so their life had hitherto been a game of love, an everlasting billing and cooing. Towards the close of the previous summer they had become quite intimate with the Froments, through meeting them well-nigh ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... had left behind. That part of the squire's character, which was so tender, and almost feminine, seemed called forth by the helpless situation of the little infant, who stretched out his arms to his father with the same earnest cooing that happier children make use of to their mother alone. Augharad was almost neglected, while the little Owen was king of the house; still next to his father, none tended him so lovingly as his sister. She was so accustomed to give way to him that ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... arms often during the day, and slept at her bosom during the night. It had grown to know its nurse, and to recognize her presence and caresses by those soft, low sounds, half cooing and half complaining, with which very young babes first try to utter their emotions ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... and find them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean; the winds blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with ineffable beauty and harmony ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... like ebonies; and beyond it lay a bower of trelliced boughs growing fruits single and composite, and small birds on branches sang with melodious recite, and the thousand-noted nightingale shrilled with her varied shright; the turtle with her cooing filled the site; the blackbird whistled like human wight[FN47] and the ring-dove moaned like a drinker in grievous plight. The trees grew in perfection all edible growths and fruited all manner fruits which in pairs were bipartite; with the camphor- apricot, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... had expected to find a couple of turtle-doves cooing in a cage, they were certainly disappointed. Mr. and Mrs. Locke Harper had apparently settled down into an ordinary husband and wife, resuming serenely their place in society, and behaving towards each other, and the world in general, just like sensible old married people. Their friends, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... protected by a strong railing or balustrade and shaded by the overhanging branches of a large and beautiful hackberry tree. It made an ideal lounging-place, upon a soft spring afternoon, when all the river banks were a mass of tender green, and the soft cooing of doves filled the air. We usually took Minor with us to bait our hooks and assist generally, and often went home by starlight with a ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... went on lightly—"that a man like Bayne Trevors, hard as nails and as free of sentiment as a mule, should fancy little cooing, innocent-like pigeons? You'll hear ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... girl smiled again as she took the jerkstrap from his hand and tied it down short to her own sled. Then she leaped upon her sled again and, with some cooing words spoke to her reindeer. The deer tossed his antlers and trotted quietly away, leaving Johnny to spring upon his own sled and ride in increasing wonderment ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... penetrating that he was not able to hear what she said. The noisy laughter of Lina was alone sufficiently shrill to ring out with its joyous note above every kind of clucking, chirping, hooting, whistling, and cooing. ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... windows, through the diamonds of one of which I saw two of the most beautiful, enormous, ogling black eyes in the world, looking down upon the interesting stranger. Pigeons were flapping, and hopping, and fluttering, and cooing about. Happy pigeons, you are, no doubt, fed with crumbs from the henne-tipped fingers of Zuleika! All this court, cheerful in the sunshine, cheerful with the astonishing brilliancy of the eyes peering ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... air is still; there is no sound but the churring of a grasshopper on the river bank, and somewhere the timid cooing of a turtle-dove. Feathery clouds stand motionless in the sky, looking like snow scattered about. . . . Gerassim, the carpenter, a tall gaunt peasant, with a curly red head and a face overgrown with hair, is floundering about in the water ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... refuge from all the human noises of the world. The other sounds did not worry me, although they often drew me from my work. The splash of a fish would take me to the water's edge, where I would watch the small pikes lying like straight roots that jut from the banks under water. The cooing of the little brown turtles in the trees overhead, the movements of a pair of kingfishers that would often settle close by upon an old stump, the magpies and jays, and especially the oriels, would make my thoughts wander amongst the leaves while the ink was ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... field. I was on the point of dozing off again when a pair of pigeons settled on the window-sill and began to coo. It is a pretty sound when you are in the mood for it. I wrote a poem once—a simple thing, but instinct with longing—while sitting under a tree and listening to the cooing of a pigeon. But that was in the afternoon. My only longing now was for a gun. Three times I got out of bed and "shoo'd" them away. The third time I remained by the window till I had got it firmly into their heads ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the ground, touched with autumnal tints, was beginning to fade, and the sounds of insects (mushi) were growing faint, and both Genji and Ukon were absorbed by the sad charm of the scene. As they meditated, they heard doves cooing among ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... his arrival was a godsend to Ina Klosking. When she first came home to her native place, and laid her head on her mother's bosom, she was in Elysium. The house, the wood fires, the cooing doves, the bleating calves, the primitive life, the recollections of childhood—all were balm to her, and she felt like ending her days there. But, as the days rolled on, came a sense of monotony and excessive tranquillity. She was on ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Burton's translation is the frequent occurrence of passages in cadenced prose, called in Arabic "Saj'a," or the cooing of a dove. These melodious fragments have a charming effect on the ear. They come as dulcet-surprises, and mostly occur in highly-wrought situations, or they are used to convey a vivid sense of something exquisite in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... was so bewildered by her riches that she sat on the floor with the little red stocking in her lap, laughing and cooing to herself amid the few things she had drawn out. When she came to Seraphina's bonnet she was quite overcome. She turned it over and over, and smoothed out the little white feather that had once adorned one of Grandma Bascom's chickens, until the two boys with their stockings, ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... gossamer tenor; that golden optimist, the Baltimore oriole, piped his cheery recitative in the tops of the trees; chickadees supplied the minor strains and tufted titmice the alto; four or five turtle doves soothed the ear with their meditative cooing; while the calls and songs of numerous jays and a few yellow-breasted chats made a kind of trombone accompaniment. Surely it is worth one's while to hie early to the haunts of the birds to hear ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... my dear father!" she exclaimed in broken and ecstatic tones, her voice sounding to me like the soft cooing of a dove, as she flew and nestled herself into the outstretched arms of the colonel, who had also turned round at her approach, some sympathetic feeling having warned him of her coming, telling him who it was even before ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... no answer to his thoughts in the stillness of the grove, unless it were the cooing of a dove, or the faint thudding of the sheep issuing again into sunlight. But slowly that stillness stole into Miltoun's spirit. "Is it like this in the grave?" he thought. "Are the boughs of those trees the dark earth over ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... reflected, were behaving in rather an odd manner. Then, scratching his head thoughtfully, he cracked his whip and drove hurriedly on. Once again, rumble, rumble, rumble; and no other sounds but far away echoes and the gentle cooing of a soft night breeze through the forked and ragged branches of the sad and stately pines. On, on, on, the light uncertain and the horses brisk. Suddenly the driver hears something—he strains his ears to catch the meaning of the sounds—a ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... or boisterous boys; we never see a crowing, cooing baby. The children are born old. The babies have a sad and dejected look, as if this world were a "dreary wilderness of woe," and they grieve they were ever born. Poor little ones in the Southland! how many are gathered home ere a twelve months' stay on earth. Besides this weary, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... summer's lovely green or autumn's wampum dyes, with morning's glittering dews or evening's fire-flies' transient gleams, illuminating the darkest places; the distant murmur of the waterfall, the sympathetic cooing of the wild ducks, the cedar-scented air, all tended to thrill the Indian bosom with sensations not less melancholy, not less pleasing, than the present unsurpassed and magnificent view charms ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... A cooing dove (just one) murmured her dreamy threnody and then was silent. Far in the distance a wood thrush was sounding his vesper bell softly—the "Angelus" of the wildwood. Whether it be morning, and they are clearer and more liquid heard ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... orchard, composed of several hundred trees, well kept, as evenly matched as might be, out of weedless ground. From some hidden bough, a robin voiced his happiness, and yellowbirds flew hither and thither, and there was billing and cooing and nesting. Along the low stone wall a wee ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... 'Niagara' and 'Goldau,' and by the nom de plume he thought proper to publish them under, namely, 'Jehu O. Cataract.' But portions of his poetry repudiate this thunderous parentage, and are soft as the whispering zephyr or the cooing of doves. The gentleness of strength has a double beauty: its own, and that of contrast. Still, the predominating character of Neal's poetry is the sweep of the wild eagle's wing and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... of the bishop, of the King or of Cleves; an army of wood-pigeons and stock-doves with silver collars about their necks was at one time let fly into the hall, and the swish of their wings and afterwards their cooing among the golden rafters of the high ceiling made pleasing sound and mingled with the voices of sweet singing from the galleries at each end of the hall, near the roof. The players spoke their parts bravely, and, because this play was beloved among all others at the Court, ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... turtle doves to thee, one day, My dust will show, congealed in death; And, cooing wearily, they'll say: 'In grief and loneliness she drew ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... high reed in the phrase of the heroic strain, lightly, quickly and, it seems, mockingly aimed. In gently railing triumph returns the pretty song of the wheel, with a new buoyant spring. Drums and martial brass yield to the laughing flutes, the cooing horns and the soft rippling harp with murmuring strings, to return like captives in the train at the ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... so comfortably off, the son of seven mothers started with a light heart to marry the Princess; but when passing the white hind's palace he could not resist sending a bolt at some pigeons which were cooing on the parapet, and for the third time one fell dead just beneath the window where the white Queen was sitting. Looking out, she saw the lad hale and hearty standing before her, and grew whiter than ever ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... men were engaged in carrying old Kapus into the house, a proceeding which kept the festive throng waiting outside, she tripped up daintily to Elsa, and said in soft, cooing tones: ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... denizens of the forests bound forth with renewed life and vigour to sing a morning hymn of praise to their Maker—involuntarily or voluntarily, who can tell which, and what right has man to say dogmatically that it cannot be the latter? Thousands of cooing doves, legions of chattering parrots, made the air vocal; millions of little birds of every size and hue twittered an accompaniment, and myriads of mosquitoes and other insects filled up the orchestra with a high pitched drone, while alligators and other aquatic monsters beat ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... among signs of the blacks, too, for five days, but had not seen any thing of them, although we could hear the devils cooing at nightfall, calling to each other. We kept regular watch and watch at first—four sentinels, and every man sleeping with his gun ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... ran on in her pretty house-wifely manner, cooing like the doves she talked of, plotting the arrangement of the parlor opposite, of the long dining-room stretching athwart the house in the rear, and of the kitchen under a roof of its own, still farther back,—he all the while giving ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... and uncontrollable anger. "It's perfectly untrue about Denis," she said indignantly. "I never dreamt of playing what you beautifully call the same game with him." Recovering her calm, she added in her ordinary cooing voice and with her exacerbating smile, "You've become very protective towards poor Denis all of ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... the Image with its garland of flowers she knelt down, and prayed to the Virgin Mother of our Lord, and commended her soul and the soul of her dear babe to our Lady and her divine Son; and the babe stretched out its little hands to the Image, cooing and babbling ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... there and apparently unharmed, but to catch him was another matter. I approached him in the most cautious manner, talking and cooing to him all the time, and at last I caught him, and the little fellow was so glad to be with friends once more, he curled himself in my hands, and put two little wet paws around a thumb and held on tight. It was raining, and he was soaking wet, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... accord with a whim of the sea had floated and was now held aloft slantwise to the lips of the wind, firm in the branching tines of stag's-horn coral. A rustic pipe—giving forth a sonorous moan, now cooing and crooning, now bold and confident, and again irresolute and unschooled. Not too sure of instrumentalism, oft the note was hesitating, soliciting a compliant ear as became a modest wooer of the muses, polishing his unceremonious serenade ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... at the window, dancing a baby up and down. "Where did grandmother pick up that baby?" they exclaimed, and rushed into the house. There they heard the strange story, and truly astonished they were. "Can this be grandfather?" cried Sarah. "This little cooing baby, my own grandfather, who ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... baby into his arms, where he lay cooing into the men's faces as they gathered around. The Patriarch, in slow, carefully chosen words, gave the babe ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... an Antelope was lying with her fawn at the foot of the flowering Mimosa. The weather was intensely sultry, and a Dove, who had sought shelter from the heat among the leaves, was cooing above ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... heat of the summer afternoon the Red House was taking its siesta. There was a lazy murmur of bees in the flower-borders, a gentle cooing of pigeons in the tops of the elms. From distant lawns came the whir of a mowing-machine, that most restful of all country sounds; making ease the sweeter in that it is taken while others ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... sitting at the entrance of the grotto, and bowing his head, he penetrated into the interior of the cavern, imitating the cry of the owl. A little plaintive cooing, a scarcely distinct cry, replied from the depths of the cave. Aramis pursued his way cautiously, and soon was stopped by the same kind of cry as he had first uttered and this cry sounded ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... that a party of rebels were firing on our horses in rear. The horses knew it, though, and shewed it in their eyes. The sun came watery through the clouds just before sunset; I remember during the lulls in the wicked coughs of rifle fire hearing doves cooing gently ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... sleeps, Where the waters are stagnant, the white vapor creeps, Where the musk of Magnolia hangs thick in the air, And the lilies' phylacteries broaden in prayer; There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death, Though the mist is miasm, the Upas tree's breath, Though no echo awakes to the cooing of doves,— There is peace: yes, the peace that the ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... which I have choked, and what the total inefficacy of ginger has been, and I have been heard at the piano-forte tuner's across the street, where the poor mistaken children have even supposed it to be pigeons cooing at a distance,—and now to be told—" Here Camilla put her hand to her throat, and began to be quite chemical as to the formation of new ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... betrothed without much billing and cooing, and Peterkin came in with Mary Jane and made a speech half-an-hour long to his future son-in-law, and settled just when they were to be married and what ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... she says in a soft, cooing voice, "and I will see Giddy in the next room. Come on, Rover—down, old boy—your wet paws have done damage enough to ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... a nest it was which they had found! the air was heavy with the scent of flowers, and quivering with the murmur of the stream, the humming of the colibris and insects, the cheerful song of birds, the gentle cooing of a hundred doves; while now and then, from far away, the musical wail of the sloth, or the deep toll of the bell-bird, came softly to the ear. What was not there which eye or ear could need? And what which palate could need either? For on the rock above, some strange tree, leaning forward, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... cried, and now there was softness enough in the cooing notes, "my Gawd! It looks as though you had ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... groaning, sighing, crying, screaming, shrieking, and laughing, by the dog in barking, growling, and whining, by the horse in snorting and neighing, by the sheep in bleating, by the cat in mewing, by the dove in cooing, by the duck in quacking, and by the goose in hissing, we sometimes attempt to represent by words; but, as written words are the ocular representatives of articulate sounds, they cannot be made clearly to denote ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... the old couple bustled about the bright carpeted room, making it comfortable, and cooing over the return of their prodigal, till a heaven of homeness was ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... Polly!" cried Gabriella; and without stopping to explain, she ran upstairs and into the nursery, where little Frances was cooing with delight in ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... said Anthea as the voice of the Lamb came cooing through the open door, just as she had heard it in her heart ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... a little space, broken only by the soft cooing of a far-away dove. Then Betty looked up with a satisfied smile. The anxious pucker smoothed out of Lloyd's forehead, and Allison ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... thou, love, he mine? For I will give unto thee, my love, Gay knots and ribbons so fine. I'll woo thee, love, on my bended knee, And I'll pipe sweet songs to none but thee. Then it's hark! hark! hark! To the winged lark And it's hark to the cooing dove! And the bright daffodil Groweth down by the rill, So come ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Swarthy). The responses of the oracle of Dod[o]na, in Ep[i]ros, were made by old women called "pigeons," who derived their answers from the cooing of certain doves, the bubbling of a spring, a rustling of the sacred oak [or beech], and the tinkling of a gong or bell hung in the tree. The women were called pigeons by a play on the word pel[i]ae, which means ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Minnie pushes it over about two every morning. The result is that we have to mount guard over the breach all day. We build everything up again at night, and Minnie sits there as good as gold, and never dreams of interfering. You can almost hear her cooing over us. Then, as I say, at two o'clock, just as the working party comes in and gets under cover, she lets slip one of her disgusting bombs, and undoes the work of about four hours. It was a joke at first, but we are getting fed up now. That's the worst ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... sitting in a dim twilight where everything seems confused. The physical eye appears to see, but the light never quite pierces the dimness nor reflects its beauty there. If the ears hear the song of birds, the cooing of babes, the heart- beat in the organ tone, then the swift little messengers that fly hither and thither in my mind and yours, carrying echoes of sweetness unspeakable, tread more slowly here, and never quite reach the spirit in prison. A spirit in prison, indeed, but ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... this hot afternoon, haunted by presentiments, by vague terror for herself and him; while the child tottered about her, cooing, shouting, kissing, and all impulsively, with a ceaseless ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unreasonable, but each knew that the other could never descend to dishonor, so their quarrels had always one ending, and seemed, after they were over, to draw them closer together and to feed their love. One could not think of them as timid and gentle creatures, billing and cooing their affection; one rather imagined the lion and his lioness, whose very love was fierce and perilous. No power from without could separate these two nor make them quail. Alone and united Dundee and his wife could stand undismayed and self-sufficient, with all Scotland against them. Nothing ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... Master Morgan. I like thy spirit, and, beshrew me, 'twill serve thee better with a sensible maiden than any amount of pretty speeches and cooing verses. 'Tis a poor man that hath not faith in himself. In wooing, as in fighting, 'tis the brave heart and the honest soul that gain the clay; and the quick, strong arm serves the world better than the glib tongue. But let us get to this ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... scents which belong to an early summer morning in the country. What nice, curious noises, too, all mixed up together! The bees buzzing in the flowers beneath, the little winds rustling in the leaves, the cheerful chirps and scraps of song from the birds, the crow of a distant cock, the deep, low cooing of the pigeons in the stable-yard near. Anna longed to be out-of-doors, among these pleasant sights and sounds; she suddenly turned away, and began to dress herself quickly. The stable clock struck seven just as she was ready, and she ran down-stairs into the garden with a delightful sense ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... Fifty-third Street. He strolled up a block toward Lake Park Avenue. It was hot. He wished the bus wasn't sick. Might go in swimming, though. He considered this idly. Hurried steps behind him. A familiar perfume wafted to his senses. A voice nasal yet cooing. Miss Bauers. Miss Bauers on pleasure bent, palpably, being attired in the briefest of silks, white-strapped slippers, white silk stockings, scarlet hat. The Green Front Grocery and Market closed for a half day each Thursday afternoon during July and August. Nicky had not availed himself ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... of the finest and richest blue, whose throats and long tails change in the light to a golden brown, are chasing the prince oriels, clothed in their glossy feathers of black and orange; Kolo doves, of a changeable violet hue, are gently cooing by the side of the birds of paradise, in whose brilliant plumage are mingled the prismatic colors of the emerald and ruby, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... asked her, and they're going to be married. It's enough to make you die laughing to see the two middle-aged doves cooing in there." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... produced a small pasteboard box which he opened guardedly, mindful of the numberless bright little eyes that were watching every move. All about him now sounded the whir and flutter of wings, the cooing of doves, the saucy twitter of the sparrows. Sir Lancelot, alert and eager, occupied one arm of the wheel chair. Another bushy-tailed little fellow, less venturesome, sat back on his haunches five feet away. A third squirrel chattered noisily on ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... promoting the match between Julia and the captain, having had them together at her country seat the moment she found there was an attachment growing up between them: the good lady being never so happy as when she has a pair of turtles cooing ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... she bent every energy to the task, and at last, passing one arm beneath his neck she managed to sit behind him, holding him in such a position that he rested easier, and his convulsive movements ceased entirely. With his head upon her bosom she rocked to and fro, uttering a low, cooing sound, as if ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... men went off to their ploughing, or grass cutting for the cows' evening meal. A woman came down occasionally to fill her waterpot in evident fear and trembling. A swarm of minas (the Indian starling) hopped and twittered round my feet. The cooing of a pair of amatory pigeons overhead nearly lulled me to slumber. A flock of green parrots came swiftly circling overhead, making for the fig-tree at the south end of the tank. An occasional raho lazily rose among the water-lilies, and disappeared with an indolent flap of his tail. ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the kite that roosts in the dove's nest,' he answered with a bitter laugh, 'but very ill for the dove. Montezuma, my uncle, has been cooing yonder,' and he pointed to the palace of Axa, 'and the captain of the Teules has cooed in answer, but though he tried to hide it, I could hear the hawk's shriek in his pigeon's note. Ere long there will be ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... Almond-Tumbler the colour of the plumage; in common Tumblers, the manner of tumbling; in the Barb, the breadth and shortness of the beak and the amount of eye-wattle; in Runts, the size of body; in Turbits the frill; and lastly in Trumpeters, the cooing, as well as the size of the tuft of feathers over the nostrils. These, which are the distinctive and selected characters of the several breeds, are ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... chance?" How stupid of her to repeat his words on that cooing note of interrogation! It was just such a lead as the Brant girl might ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... he was writing those pages. In one, and that the most material instance, his speculations not only might be, but were at that very time, entirely overset. Their war-cry for peace with France was the same with that of this gentle author, but in a different note. His is the gemitus columbae, cooing and wooing fraternity; theirs the funereal screams of birds of night calling for their ill-omened paramours. But they are both songs of courtship. These Regicides considered a Regicide peace as a cure for all their evils; and so far as I can find, they showed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... were needed to tell me about flowing water and fish, how hawks raised their broods and kept house, about the softly cooing doves of the spice thickets, the cuckoos slipping snakelike in and out of the wild crab-apple bushes, or the brown thrush's weird call from the thorn bush. I knew what they said and did, but their ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... other ornamental fancies. In the capitals, groups of figures alternate with bursting fronds of ferns, unfolding vine leaves, and fantastic playing monsters. In the centre of the quadrangle stands an old column, on which is S. Mary Magdalen with her ointment-pot, and doves were fluttering and cooing as an old canon scattered crumbs to ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... in one hand, she flitted up the pathway like an unconscious humming-bird garnering the sweets from every blossom. A little farther on the pathway bent among the trees, and she would be hidden from his sight; but still he stood and studied her every movement, drank in the soft, cooing melody of her voice as she sang, and then there came a sweet, solemn strain from the brown, sunlit walls just visible through the trees, and reverent voices and the resonant chords of the organ thrilled ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... but it takes faith to believe they have not just escaped from a cage; they are uncommonly pretty colour, at any rate, against the blue and white sky; they have taken the same flight at the same time these last three days, and a dove is cooing near, a deliciously soothing sound. Persians say it cannot remember the last part of its lost lover's name, so that is why it always stops in the middle of ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... want to go out into the world. I want to be where everything is bright and moving. It's my nature, and what's the use of fighting nature? You and Millie can sit here like two doves billing and cooing all day. I must use my wings. I'd die in a cage, even though the cage was home. But never fear, I'll come back to it every night, and love it in my way just as much as you do in yours. You must put me in a store, mamma, where there are crowds ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... the slow fumbling summer leaves, Cooing and calling All winged and avid things Waking the early flies, keen to the scent... Green-jeweled iridescent flies Unerringly steering— Swarming over the blackened lips, The young day sprays with ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... locks cover foolish brains, Billing and cooing is all your cheer, Sighing and singing of midnight strains Under Bonnybells' window-panes. Wait till you've come ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their nests in. Almost every compartment was occupied; and, as we walked along the shore, a long line of ducks flew out one after another. The surface of the water also was perfectly white with drakes, who welcomed their brown wives with loud and clamorous cooing. When we arrived at the farmhouse, we were cordially welcomed by its mistress. The house itself was a great marvel. The earthen wall that surrounded it and the window embrasures were occupied by ducks. On the ground, the house was fringed with ducks. On the turf-slopes of the roof ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... go out we hear a flutter of wings, and a flock of white doves rise from the ground and alight on the roof, cooing softly. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... stage-procession with the vain paraphernalia of a tea that never came. Our host still smiled from his cushions, resigned to Oriental delays. To distract the impatient westerners, a servant unhooked from the wall the cage of a gently-cooing dove. It was brought to us, still cooing, and looked at me with the same resigned and vacant eyes as the ladies I had just left. As it was being restored to its hook the slaves lolling about the entrance scattered respectfully at the approach ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... and all spangled over with stars. It was one of the Aiken nights that smells of red cedar. We passed more than one pair of soft-voiced darkies who appeared to lean against each other as they strolled, and from whom came sounds like the cooing of doves. Once far off we heard shouting and a pistol shot, and presently one came running and crossed our path far ahead, but whether a white man or a black we could ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... over there in the brush a soft, persuasive cooing, a sound so subtle and wild and unobtrusive that it requires the most alert and watchful ear to hear it. How gentle and solicitous and full of yearning love! It is the voice of the mother hen. Presently a faint timid "Yeap!" which almost ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... floating on Maria's sight, and the first smile of intelligence remembered, as none but a mother, an unhappy mother, can conceive. She heard her half speaking cooing, and felt the little twinkling fingers on her burning bosom—a bosom bursting with the nutriment for which this cherished child might now be pining in vain. From a stranger she could indeed receive the maternal aliment, Maria was grieved at the thought—but ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... among the avenues of young cocoanut-palms, saw a hornbill, followed it in its erratic flights to the high forest on the edge of the plantation, heard the cooing of wild pigeons and located them in the deeper woods, followed the fresh trail of a wild pig for a distance, circled back, and took the narrow path for the bungalow that ran through twenty acres of uncleared cane. The grass was waist-high and higher, and as she rode along she ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... bliss for you!" laughed a man in Franciscan attire, a rough rascal disguised as one of those priests called "God's fools" or "Christ's fools." "A week ago, when I married them, they were billing and cooing. But to your holes, children! When the king returns he would not have his guest gaze upon such scarecrows and trollops. Disperse, and Beelzebub take you!" And as the group scattered the sound of beating horses' hoofs died away in ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... speaks in the watches of the night; it began to speak when you were a little, little child, with little joys and sorrows and little prayers that you have forgotten now. Oh, it is a sweet voice, a tender voice"—her own had dropped to the cooing of doves—"it is hard to know why all the winds do not carry it, and all the leaves whisper it! Strange, strange! But the world is full of the clamour of its own foolishness, and the voice is lost in it, except in places where people come to pray, as here to-night, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... of them in one of his comedies as in one of Mr. Anthony Trollope's novels. And they are generally very good. What can be more delicious than the "spooning" in Home, if it is not the billing and cooing in Ours? But what can be more commonplace or more objectionable than the frequent remarks about love and Cupid scattered through his plays? Tom Stylus says in Society, "Love is an awful swindler—always drawing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... tones. "Oh!" for the first time perceiving that Violet stood near her with the baby in her arms, "mamma and baby too! and how pleased baby looks at the tree!" for the little one was stretching her arms toward it, and cooing and smiling, her pretty blue eyes ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... the room looking at the curiosities. I was glad no customers came in to interrupt; but luckily there wasn't much danger at that hour, as it wasn't yet half-past two, and people had scarcely finished their luncheons. As I talked, she gave little exclamations almost like the cooing of a dove; and the most desperate thing in our story seemed to be, in her opinion, the fact that we ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... had come to a space clear of trees. We stopped a moment, and I heard calls exchanged and a gate opened; and then my horse's feet passed from turf to a very rough, irregular pavement. The sound of horses in their stalls at one side, the cooing of pigeons at the other, the gate, the rude paving, the remote situation, all taken together informed me that we were in an enclosed farm-yard. We stopped a second time, and my ankle ropes being then detached from each other, I was hauled down from the horse. The men with me ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... love, That skirted the meadow so green; Where the cooing was heard of the stock-dove, And the sunlight just glinted between. The trees, that with branches entwining Made shade, where we wandered in bliss, And our eyes with true love-light were shining,— When you gave ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... name, the Loulia, has a gentle, seductive, cooing sound—drifts broadside to the current with furled sails, or glides smoothly on before an amiable north wind with sails unfurled. Upon the bloomy banks, rich brown in color, the brown men stoop and straighten themselves, and stoop again, and sing. The sun gleams on their ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... baby laughed at her knee. How brightly glowed the fire! I wanted to linger for a week, a month, a year,—as I do now, thinking it all over,—and when I strolled to the porch,—hearing the pigeons cooing at the barn; the water streaming down the dam; the melancholy monotony of the pine boughs;—there only lacked the humming mill-wheel, and the strong grip of the miller's hand, to fill the void corner ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... though, one monkey stopped pulling the other monkey's tail, and the other monkey stopped trying to pull the green feathers out of the parrot's tail, and it was quiet in the animal store, except for the cooing of the pigeons and the ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... Bettina's eyes. The night wind came to me, odor-laden from the roses, only to show me how poor a thing it was compared with Bettina's breath upon my cheek and its sweetness in my nostrils. Now and then a belated bird sang its sleepy song, only to remind me of the melody of her lullabies, and the cooing dove moaned out its plaintive call lest I forget the pain in her breast while selfishly remembering the ache in my own. Then I thought of what the Good Book says about "bright clouds," and I prayed that my pain ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... agitation of love when from its cage it beheld its dear mistress enter the room, but it had never occurred to me before this to attribute such a feeling to a dove. I ought, I suppose, to have known better, as I now do. At this very moment it is cooing away like mad at its declaration of undying love from its favourite haunt on the mantelpiece of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... as the cooing of a dove in the spring, to its mate; pure as the purling of a brook among meadow flowers; rich as the deep notes of a nightingale in his passion for the moon. And for the song, it was the heart-breaking cry of a young Rhaetian peasant who, lying near death in a strange ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... deep), for the space of three days. At the end of that time Fate cast him upon the Mount of the Bereft Mother, where he landed, giddy and tottering like a chick unfledged, and at the last of his strength for hunger and thirst; but, finding there streams flowing and birds on the branches cooing and fruit-laden trees in clusters and singly growing, he ate of the fruits and drank of the rills. Then he walked on till he saw some white thing afar off, and making for it, found that it was a strongly fortified castle. So ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... over there in the brush a soft, persuasive cooing, a sound so subtile and wild and unobtrusive that it requires the most alert and watchful ear to hear it. How gentle and solicitous and full of yearning love! It is the voice of the mother hen. Presently a faint, timid "Yeap!" which almost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... it has a good romp with it, smothering it with kisses, calling it all the beauties and darlings and pets and jewels she can think of, and talking any amount of nonsense at the top of her voice—the baby all the while cooing, chirping, or even screaming with delight—at such a time, I say, I can easily fancy that the angels are looking on approvingly and enjoying the scene. And why not? "Of such is the kingdom ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... white cheek, close against the dusky face of her nurse, and I heard her say in a sweet lisping tone: 'Oh, Binah, I love you. When I go to Heaven, I will take you with me. Oh, B-i-n-a-h!' she said this last word just like the cooing ...
— The Little Nightcap Letters. • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... Marie through the wood. Neither of them had ever been so far before; but Una had coaxed her old Nurse first up one winding path, then down another—begging her to walk just as far as the bluebells they could see in the distance, or to the tall fir-trees where they could listen to the wood-pigeons cooing overhead, or "just a little further," on the chance of catching a glimpse of the cuckoo they had heard calling all the afternoon—until old Marie had sat down on the stump of a tree, fanning herself with a handkerchief, and declaring that she could ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... note, like the hum of a spinning-wheel. The male commences this performance about dusk, and continues it at intervals during a great part of the night. It is effected while the breast is inflated with air, like that of a cooing Dove. The Piramidig has the power of inflating himself in the same manner, and he utters this whizzing note when one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the grove; tiny, wonderfully plumaged widow-birds swung on the thin manioc stalks, changing color and glittering like jewels, and from the high cocoa trees came the sounds of the African cuckoos and the gentle cooing ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz |
