"Robin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be the musical oracle of the family; the father must forego his favourite old songs, written by "honest Harry Carey," (as Ritson insists on his being called); the mother is laughed to scorn if she mentions "Auld Robin Gray," "Mary's Dream," "Oh, Nanny, wilt thou gang wi' me?"—or such obsolete stuff;—and even the brothers, who might stickle ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... As Robin Hood in the forest stood, All under the greenwood tree, There was he ware of a brave young man, As fine as fine ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... purchase, dusting its gold on the black wood of wainscot and floor. He was in the gallery at the moment, studying one of his two favorite portraits, a gallant little lad in the green costume of Robin Hood. The boy's expression was imperious and radiant, and he had that perfect beauty which in any disposition appealed so powerfully to the author. But as Orth stared to-day at the brilliant youth, of whose life he knew nothing, he suddenly became aware of a human stirring at the foundations of ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... the genesis is clear, and it makes for the one-man theory. In other instances, I can quite imagine myths arising from a spectacle witnessed in common by a multitude, or an incident developing itself under the eyes of many. No single reporter of the doings in Sherwood Forest built up the Robin ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... her; but she seemed very happy. All the while she was rubbing the clothes over the wooden washboard, or wringing them out with her hands, she would be singing old-fashioned songs, such as Jimmy and Nancy, Auld Robin Gray, and another one beginning "In Springfield mountain there did dwell." ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... in the orchard. I went thither and I think it was four robins' nests which I found in as many different apple trees, one with three, two with four and one with five blue eggs. Is there anything prettier than the eggs of a robin, in ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... swift to be stemmed, This day Cary got the second ducking of the trip—a very good record in view of the roughness of the work and the smallness of the boats. During this and the day previous an otter, a crow and a robin were seen. As a rule the river was almost entirely deserted by ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... for y'rself?" continued the priest, giving me full benefit of the mischievous spirit working in him. "He, who bearded the foe in his den, now meeker than a lambkin, mild as a turtle-dove, timid as a pigeon, pensive as a whimpering-robin that's lost his mate——" ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... building her mud nest than the preacher writing his sermon. I had rather see the big moth emerge from her cocoon—fresh and untouched as a coin that moment from the die—than the most fashionable "coming out" that society ever knew. The first song sparrow or bluebird or robin in spring, or the first hepatica or arbutus or violet, or the first clover or pond-lily in summer—must we demand some mystic password of them? Must we not love them for their own sake, ere they will seem worthy of ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... away until the next evening. When he came back he had a peaceful air, but sometimes peace is not attained without effort and we have to struggle to keep it. When he had helped to unharness Robin and had given him some hay, had changed his cassock and unpacked his box, from which he took a dozen little packages of things bought on his visit to the city, it was the very time that the birds assembled in the branches to tell each other about the day. There had been a shower and the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... in his eyes when he watches a bird at its song. They are ablaze with evil. He becomes a sort of Jack the Ripper at the opera. People tell us that we should not blame cats for this sort of thing—that it is their nature and so forth. They even suggest that a cat is no more cruel in eating robin than we are cruel ourselves in eating chicken. This seems to me to be quibbling. In the first place, there is an immense difference between a robin and a chicken. In the second place, we are willing to share our chicken with the cat—at least, we ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... notes of the wood-robin and the thrush there came the faint and distant notes of the quarter hour striking on the college library. It was Leslie who heard it. Howard was still too far upon the heights to think of earthly duties ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... coat, eat the same dinner, repeat the same polite commonplaces, and be forgotten at last under the same epitaph. Forests have been the natural refuge of outlaws from the earliest time, and among the most respectable persons there has always been an ill-concealed liking for Robin Hood and the whole fraternity of the men of the bow. Truth is above all things characteristic of the dwellers in Arden, and it must be frankly confessed at the beginning, therefore, that the Forest is given over entirely to outlaws; those who have committed some grave offence against the ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... nice little man, very like a bird himself, with pointed features and kind, bright eyes; when he wore a dash of red in his neck-cloth the resemblance to a robin was striking. The children applied to him when any of their pets were ill, and had the utmost confidence in his opinion and treatment. The most difficult cases were successfully managed by him; he had even saved the life of Agatha's jack-daw ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... a nest unlike the robin's nest. Each is qualified in its own work. We know that these birds would be sorely handicapped, and would probably be downright failures in providing nests in season for eggs, if each were required to work to plans and specifications of the other ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... with the storm; the partridge, like a russet link extended over from autumn to spring, preserving unbroken the chain of summers; the hawk with warrior-like firmness abiding the blasts of winter; the robin [Footnote: A white robin, and a white quail have occasionally been seen. It is mentioned in Audubon as remarkable that the nest of a robin should be found on the ground; but this bird seems to be less particular than most in ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... them; that her old friends came to see her rarely since her marriage, as, for some reason unaccountable to Katrina, they seemed not to like her husband. We waited until we were out of sight of the house, and then seated ourselves gloomily on a wayside rock under a sheltering tree. A robin, perched on a branch above our heads, burst into mocking song. The sun still shone; I wondered ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... what he really was, a most ardent favourer of the Netherland cause, wrote at once to congratulate him on the change in her Majesty's demeanour. "The Queen is in very good terms with you now," he said, "and, thanks be to God, well pacified, and you are again her 'sweet Robin.'" ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... present time, as well as from tradition. Some of these heroes have excited the admiration of large districts by their wisdom, others by their courage or their superior dexterity with the spear and bow, like William Tell and Robin Hood, but the memory of these must soon have been obliterated for want of literature. The man who had joined Harold was a poet and a musician. He was an improvvisatore, composed verses on the incidents ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... with low swingin' branches, with no bare brown feet to press on 'em on the way up to the robin's nest overhead—empty barns, ruins, weedy gardens, long, lonesome stretches of paster and ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... and pewees and big-eyed moose-birds were aflutter with the excitement of home planning; partridges were feasting on the swelling poplar buds—and then, one glorious sunset, he heard the chirruping evening song of his first robin. ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... the man, "there never was a jumper like you. Break-Neck will keep, we'll find some more walls first." He crossed the road and entered a rough pasture. It was a day of such abounding life one could pity the worm the robin pulled. For on such a day everything seemed to have the right to live and be happy. The crows sauntered across the sky, care free as hoboes. Under foot the meadow turf oozed water, the shad-bush petals ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... this author is of considerable interest to us. He was a good natural melodist, as the examples in Coussemaker's "Adam de la Halle" show. He is also the author of the earliest comic opera of which we have any account, the play of "Robin and Marion." We shall speak of this later, in connection with the ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... birds) there will be 2048 robins, instead of the original sixteen; as this increase is quite impossible, so we must conclude either that robins do not rear nearly half their young or that the average life of a robin when reared is from accident not nearly seven years. Both checks probably concur. The same kind of calculation applied to all vegetables and animals produces results either more or less striking, but in scarcely a single instance ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... you mind the picture-books I used to bring you home, and the story of the Cock Robin you used to like so well to hear, and the skip-jack you played with, and the big doll that mammy made for you, and ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... with the summer scents floating in and the out-of-doors sounds,—a woman's voice calling a child afar off, the lowing of cattle, the rhythmic whetting of a scythe-blade, the echoing strokes of an axe, the mellow fluting of a robin,—all coming to him a little muted, as if he were no longer ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... merry song, Robin Ploughboy," called the goose-girl who tended the farmer's geese in the next field; and she leaned on the fence that divided the two, and sang with him, for she was as happy a lass as ever lived in the ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay
... Dr. Robin MacRae called this afternoon to make the acquaintance of the new superintendent. Please invite him to dinner upon the occasion of his next visit to New York, and see for yourself what your husband has done. Jervis grossly misrepresented ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... Sherwood Forest; and there, in the land of Robin Hood, where snow never falls, where rains never slant through the shuddering leaves, the jocund foresters met to sing and drink October ale. There came Little John and Will Scarlet and Alan-a-Dale in glittering garments, with smooth, ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... was a Prebendary, and because he was born on the day before St. Hugh's Feast. And then I really remember nothing more of him for a time, except for a scene in the nursery on some wet afternoon when the baby—Robin as he was at first called—insisted on being included in some game of tents made by pinning shawls over the tops of chairs, he being then, as always, perfectly clear what his wishes were, and equally clear that they were worth attending to and ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... teachers aforesaid, (represented typically in another part of this errorless book by Mr. Blattergowl,) are not, whatever else they may have to answer for, answerable for these names. The names are of the children's own choosing and bestowing, but not of the children's own inventing. "Robin" is a classically endearing cognomen, recording the errant heroism of old days—the name of the Bruce and of Rob Roy. "Bobbin" is a poetical and symmetrical fulfillment and adornment of the original phrase. "Ailie" is the last echo of "Ave," changed into the softest Scottish Christian name ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the barley, Spake these words in saddened accents: 'Woe is me, my life hard-fated, Badly have I brewed the liquor, Have not brewed the beer in wisdom, Will not live within its vessels, Overflows and fills Pohyola!' "From a tree-top sings the redbreast, From the aspen calls the robin: 'Do not grieve, thy beer is worthy, Put it into oaken vessels, Into strong and willing barrels Firmly bound with hoops of copper.' "Thus was brewed the beer or Northland, At the hands of Osmo's daughter; ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... this invitation will rejoice to accompany Shawondasee, the South-Wind, when he sends northward the robin, bluebird, and swallow. They will also wish to go with Kabibonokka, the North-Wind, as he paints the autumn woods with scarlet and sends the snowflakes through the forests. They will be glad to be a child with Hiawatha, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... last night, and I was trying to hum it this morning, in bed; I was, upon my honour. Gollop, my doctor, came in at eleven (for I'm a sad invalid, you know, and see Gollop every day), and, 'gad! there I was, singing away like—a robin." ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with household bread, stale, he at once began: "How are you going down to Robin Hill? You going to take Irene? You'd better take her. I should think there'll be a lot that'll want ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... dead and buried," they answered; and of another: "Christopher? He wore away from very weakness. And Robin went a sen'night ago with a quartain fever. This is no land ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... morning, Norman reported his reasoning, it was that a man must walk about with somebody on Commemoration week, and that it was a comfort to do so with ladies who wore their bonnets upon their heads, instead of, like most of those he met, remind him of what Cock Robin said to Jenny Wren ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... hemlock. It is the solemn call of the owl, as he sits among the limbs, looking out from between the branches with his great round grey eyes. Listen again and you will hear the voice of the catbird, the brown thrush, the chervink, the little chickadee, the wood robin, the blue-jay, the wood sparrow, and a hundred other nameless birds that live and build their nests and sing among ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... believe me, when I assure you, that for many nights after this last experience, I did not go to my room at all. I used to sit up for a while in the drawing-room after you had gone up to your bed; and then steal down softly to the hall-door, let myself out, and sit in the 'Robin Hood' tavern until the last guest went off; and then I got through the night like a sentry, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... since that thin barrier remains impassable until the whole is in ruins,—a purity recognized in the household proverb of "An apple, an egg, and a nut." Then, its range of tints, so varied, so subdued, and so beautiful,—whether of pure white, like the Martin's, or pure green, like the Robin's, or dotted and mottled into the loveliest of browns, like the Red Thrush's, or aqua-marine, with stains of moss-agate, like the Chipping-Sparrow's, or blotched with long weird ink-marks on a pale ground, like the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... gay city could not afford to linger long on Egdon Heath. That she would behold face to face the owner of the awakening voice within the limits of such a holiday was most unlikely, unless she were to haunt the environs of his mother's house like a robin, to do which ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... had looked into that carriage you would have seen it packed comfortably as a robin's nest in blossom time. There was my pink dress floating round me in rosy billows; there was Cousin E. E.'s corn-colored moire antique swelling like a balloon on her side; and there was Cousin Dempster rising like a black exclamation ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... had become more solid, and in places was touched with frost. Already had the snow begun to fall and the branches of the trees were covered with rime like rabbit-skin. Already on frosty days the robin redbreast hopped about on the snow-heaps like a foppish Polish nobleman, and picked out grains of corn; and children, with huge sticks, played hockey upon the ice; while their fathers lay quietly on the stove, issuing forth at intervals ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... manifestly the product of other skies. They affect us like translations; the very fauna and flora are alien, remote; the dog's-tooth violet is but an ill substitute for the rathe primrose, nor can we ever believe that the wood-robin sings as sweetly in April as the ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... of hyacinth in your eyes, And the freshness of June iris in your hands, And the rapture of gardenias in your bosom. But your voice is the voice of the robin Singing at dawn amid new leaves. It is like sun-light on blue water Where the south-wind is on the water And the buds of the flags are green. It is like the wild bird of the sedges With fluttering wings on a wind-blown reed Showering lyrics over the sun-light ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... day," Miss Ruth answered. "This morning I heard their cheerful twitter before a ray of light had penetrated to my room; and a welcome sound it was, for it told me the long night was over. One dear little fellow sang two or three strains before he succeeded in waking any body; then a robin joined in, in a sleepy kind of way; then two or three wrens, and then a cat-bird; and, last of all, my little weather-bird, which, from the topmost branches of the elm-tree, warbled out to me that it was a pleasant day. Oh, what a sweet ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... sleeping-room comes to mind, a creation of Moscheles. Floor covered with white bearskin rugs, furnished with a delicate tint of robin's-egg blue. Toilet table strewn with every imaginable luxury in old ivory and silver. Panels in the wardrobe and doors filled with paintings by Burne-Jones, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... Robin, when left alone in the world, with her great love for animals, finds her vocation in veterinary surgery. The a returning of a lost dog to its owner brings into her life a new interest, and through the episodes that follow ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... more posies here, on this one side of the house alone, than mother had in her whole yard," he said, after a little. "Let's see—I know that one: that's columbine, isn't it? And that's London pride, and that's ragged robin. I don't know ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... set up a great twitter. Anybody could see that he was frightened. And one of Jolly Robin's sons, perched in an apple tree near the stone wall where Mr. Chippy lived in a wild grapevine, wondered what could be ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... two stout ships, but, as so often happened, trouble began to ferment amongst the crew. A large number of these had been more or less forced to "go a-pyrating," and were anxious to avoid the consequences, so they decided to send a round-robin—that is, a petition—signed by all with their names in a circle so that no rogue could be held to be more prominent than any other, to ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... said Pledge: "that I never saw three boys imitate guilt better. If they hadn't done it, I should like to ask them why they quaked in their shoes whenever they met me, and why they sent me a round robin, asking me not ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... members of the forest blended their shades with the permanent colors of the pine and hemlock; and even the buds of the tardy oak were swelling with the promise of the coming summer. The gay and fluttering blue-bird, the social robin, and the industrious little wren were all to be seen enlivening the fields with their presence and their songs; while the soaring fish-hawk was already hovering over the waters of the Otsego, watching with native voracity for ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... and hearing are all inferior. If he were suited to the conditions he could smell an enemy; he could hear him; he could see him, just as the animals can detect their enemies. The robin hears the earthworm burrowing his course under the ground; the bloodhound follows a scent that is two days old. Man isn't even handsome, as compared with the birds; and as for style, look at the Bengal ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... "I found a robin under the flooring of the last shack," said Blythe in his usual simple way. "His wing was dragging open. I closed it up and carried him in my hand like you said about carrying a bird. I held him till the doctor came, and he said the wing wasn't broken, ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... appearances (always for the bedazzlement of the people opposite, and therefore always vulgar), I believe I should have enough left over to buy a radish to eat with my bread; and if the weather were fine, and I could eat it under a tree, and give a robin some crumbs in return for his cheeriness, would there be another creature in the world so happy? ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... throw Greenwich Village omniscience overboard and admit privately to himself that people like Peter can be both human and interesting even if they do live in the East Sixties instead of Macdougal Alley when a page comes in discreetly for Johnny Chipman. Johnny rises like an agitated blond robin who has just spied the very two worms he was keeping room for to top off breakfast. "Well" he says to the world at large. "They're only fifteen ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... with the leek. But April the 23rd is not a time of roses that we can pluck them as we pass, nor can we claim St George as a compatriot—Cappadocius nostras. We have, to be sure, a few legendary heroes, of whom King Arthur and Robin Hood are (I suppose) the greatest; but, save in some Celtic corners of the land, we have few fairies, and these no great matter; while, as for tutelary gods, our springs, our wells, our groves, cliffs, mountain-sides, either never possessed them or ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hall,[335-3] the whole story down to the Robin Redbreast; till a foolish person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... activity and bursts of energy. In his exhaustive work on the blood Hayem has given a summary of the results of the investigations of chemists and physiologists on the differences in the composition of the blood in the two sexes. Contrary to the assertion of Robin, Hayem finds that the white blood-corpuscles are not more numerous in women than in men, and he also states that the number of haematoblasts is the same in the two sexes. All chemists are agreed, however, that the number of red corpuscles is greater in men than in women. ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... night, well, and pleased with the cottage, which they call Robin's Nest. But we were saddened by the loss of a trunk—the most valuable one—containing some heavy spoons, forks, and other plate, saved from the wreck at Burlington; my wife's velvet cloak, satin ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... pour remonter les batteaux, machines pour—a great many things which you would like to see I am sure over my father's shoulder. And my aunt would like to see the new staircase, and to see a kitcat view of a robin redbreast sitting on her nest in a sawpit, discovered by Lovell, and you would both like to pick Emmeline's fine strawberries round the crowded oval table after dinner, and to see my mother look so much better in the ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... recollects hearing the MS. Journal of this John Benbow read; and that it afforded to his mind a strong confirmation of the truthfulness of Drury's Madagascar. He adds the following curious particulars anent our subject:—"Robin Drury," he says, "among those who knew him (and he was known to many, being a porter at the East India House), had the character of a downright honest man, without any appearance of fraud or imposture. He was known to a friend of mine (now living), who frequently called upon him at his house ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... windows, two pedestals, surmounted by busts of Mademoiselle Clairon and Mademoiselle Dangeville, stood, one on each side of the great regulator—made by Robin, clockmaker to the king—which dominated the bust of Moliere—after Houdon—seeming to keep guard over all this gathering ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... coal-black tribute to ceremony has discredited me with some, who argue that I am not a plain man because I do not prefer to dine in the same old pepper-and-salt. Verily the only bits of warm color in my wardrobe have been a robin's-egg-blue neck-tie, which I have never dared to wear except once at a wedding, and a pair of pajamas reserved for very occasional jaunts on yachts and sleeping cars. And now that I had the doctor's orders to take more exercise, I had been on the point of selecting an ordinary, plain, pepper-and-salt ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... not, were the outlaws his tyranny had driven to the forests, the forerunners of the Robin Hoods and Little Johns of later days, whose exploits against the Norman race awoke the enthusiasm of so many minstrels ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... the body of a sleeping robin. An owl, lodged in the fork of a tree, moved not as the men passed. It, too, was whelmed ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... the programme looked like a round robin sent out by a Turnverein bowling club, but I suppose if they were baked in the oven until translated they would mean something soft and soothing like a ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... the man wha first did shape That vile, wanchancie thing—a rape! It maks guid fellows girn an' gape, Wi' chokin dread; An' Robin's bonnet wave wi' crape, For ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... these young citizens. It was towards happy Christmas-tide that "the Governor's amiable and admired lady" (as she was styled in the local newspaper) sent out notes for her first children's party. At the top of the note-paper was a very red robin, who carried a blue Christmas greeting in his mouth, and at the bottom—written with A.D.C.'s best flourish—were the magic words, A Christmas Tree. In spite of the flourishes—partly perhaps because of them—the ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... WARNER has received countless expressions of regret on his retirement from first-class cricket. Among these he values not least a "round robin" from the sparrows at Lord's, all of whom he knows by name. In the score-book of Fate is this entry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various
... The robin and the bluebird, piping loud, Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee; The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be; And hungry crows, assembled in a crowd, Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly, Knowing who hears ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... notes; there the red flamingo watches by the shore of the lagoon, the waters dyed by the reflection of his scarlet plumage. It would require a volume to describe the vegetable and animal kingdom of Cuba, but among the most familiar birds are the golden robin, the bluebird, the catbird, the Spanish woodpecker, the gaudy-plumed paroquet, and the pedoreva, with its red throat and breast and its pea-green head and body. There is also a great variety of wild pigeons, blue, gray, and white; the English ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... bothered about robins just now. I assure you all the best Christmas stories begin like this nowadays. We may get to a robin later; I cannot say. ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... path shaded by great low-branching cottonwoods. The last rays of the setting sun sent golden bars through the leaves. The grass was deep and rich, welcome contrast to sage-tired eyes. Twittering quail darted across the path, and from a tree-top somewhere a robin sang its evening song, and on the still air floated the freshness and ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... pitiful!—pitiful the wretch whose hardihood has involved him in cruel and unusual great gloss and unsheltered tailed coat. Any man in his overcoat is wrapped in his castle; he fears nothing. But to this hunted creature, naked in his robin's tail, the whole panorama of the Avenue is merely a blurred audience, focusing upon him a vast glare of derision; he walks swiftly, as upon fire, pretends to careless sidelong interest in shop-windows as he goes, makes play with his unfamiliar cane ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... where rainbow foliage crowns the swamp, I hear in dreams an April robin sing, And memory, amid this Autumn pomp, Strays ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... 10 the session convened. The outlook was encouraging but the enemies had been busy and the very next day a "round robin" signed by 63 members of the House was sent to the General Assembly of Tennessee, where a bitter fight on ratification was in progress, which said: "We, the undersigned, members of the House of Representatives ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... morning he drew up by the roadside to listen to some lyrical robin on an apple-bough, or to make friends with the black- belted Durham cows and the cream-colored Alderneys, who came solemnly to the pasture wall and stared at him with big, good-natured faces. A row of them, with their lazy eyes and pink tongues ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... it is in England. It was not so harmonious, and sounded always as if the birds were singing in a foreign tongue. Some resemble the lark, and, indeed, there are several of that family; two have notes not unlike those of the thrush. One brought the chaffinch to my mind, and another the robin; but their songs are intermixed with several curious abrupt notes unlike any thing English. One utters deliberately "peek, pak, pok"; another has a single note like a stroke on a violin-string. The mokwa reza gives forth a screaming set of notes like our blackbird when ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... and her husband till there is peace again in the land, which we will both earnestly pray for. And you must remember, my child, that you are to pass for Maud's own son, and that you are to call her mother, and her husband, Robin, the shepherd, father. I have already explained to you what would be the terrible consequences should ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... began to strike a definite musical note. It first caught the eye and ear of its public by presenting the popular new marches by John Philip Sousa; and when the comic opera of "Robin Hood" became the favorite of the day, it secured all the new compositions by Reginald de Koven. Following these, it introduced its readers to new compositions by Sir Arthur Sullivan, Tosti, Moszkowski, Richard Strauss, Paderewski, ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... into that sleep which God gives to his beloved, and when he awoke it was the dayshine. The light streamed in through the eastern windows, there was a robin singing on his window sill, and there was no trouble in his heart but what he ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... coming in from abroad, they espied a little robin with a great spider in his mouth; so the Interpreter said, Look here. So they looked, and Mercy wondered; but Christiana said, What a disparagement is it to such a little pretty bird as the robin-redbreast is, he being also a bird above ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... name as the writer of "Auld Robin Gray" is familiar to every one who knows that most pathetic ballad, spent five years with her husband at the Cape (1797-1802). Her journal letters to her sisters are most amusing, and full of interesting observations.[11] After ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... doubtfully at his own hand, rough and gnarly, then taking hers as he would have handled a robin's egg, waggled ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Englishmen. Do the work that's nearest, Though it's dull at whiles, Helping, when we meet them, Lame dogs over stiles; See in every hedgerow Marks of angels' feet, Epics in each pebble Underneath our feet; Once a year, like schoolboys, Robin-Hooding go, Leaving fops and fogies ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... human form is the theme, the aim must of course be to give its typical perfection. No naturalist describes the defects of his specimens, though it may happen that all are imperfect. Comparatively few persons ever saw our robin in the plumage in which it is always described. Only in early spring, not very commonly then, is the black of the head and tail seen pure. But no one hesitates to call this the true color. The sculptor does not reproduce the peculiarities of his model, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... are in the old spirit, but are somewhat mournful echoes of the past. They remind us of the robin's winter song—"Hark to him weeping," say the country folk, as they listen to the music which retains the sweetness but has lost what Wordsworth calls the gushes of the summer strains. There is still an ode to Venus; its prayer not now "come to bless thy worshipper"; ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... up, the Squire had moved to a log close beside her. The March sun was pouring down upon them, and there was a robin singing, quite undisturbed by their presence, in a holly-bush near. The Squire's wilful countenance had never seemed to Elizabeth more full of an uncanny and even threatening energy. Involuntarily she withdrew ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at the corner watching! I sent them word that I should come to-night: The birds all know it, for they crowd around, Twittering their welcome with a wild delight; And that old robin, with a halting wing— I saved her life, three years ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... pasted on the wall, Of Joan of France, and English Moll, Fair Rosamond, and Robin Hood, The Little Children in the Wood, Now seemed to look abundance better, Improved in picture, size, and letter; And high in order placed, describe ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... robin is commonly announced by the newspapers, like that of eminent or notorious people to a watering-place, as the first authentic notification of spring. And such his appearance in the orchard and garden undoubtedly is. But, in spite of his name of migratory thrush, he stays with ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... such a good-for-nothin' as you was should have come to be a rich man. For there wasn't nothin' to be made of you. You would never sit still to wind more than a hank of yarn at a time, that you wouldn't. Off you went to your tomtit boxes an' your robin redbreast snares—they was all you cared about. Isn't it ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... visit was followed by another passionate vow that she would never marry. Then within three weeks she wrote again, telling of her engagement to Robin Lethbridge. ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... girls go up to the top of the hill and sit down on your sleds," said Dick. "Or, better still, go into the barn, like the robin in the song, and keep warm. Then I'll look for your ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... I begin our riding lessons on Wednesday next. We have got pretty dark-brown habits and red velvet waistcoats, and shall look like two nice little robin-redbreasts on horseback; all I dread is that she may be frightened to death, which might militate against her ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... hand—humph, humph, you go to see fashions, you are the king's jester, your name is Robin Mutton! Do you see this same ram? His name, too, is Robin. Here, Robin, Robin, Robin! Baea, baea, baea. Hath he not a ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... do with a child of eight years is shown by a poem written by Louisa at that age. The family were then living in Concord, in the house which, in "Little Women," is celebrated as "Meg's first home." One early Spring day, Louisa found in the garden a robin, chilled and famished, and ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... Canada Mayflower had exchanged its feathery white bloom; and the ruby drops of the twisted stalk hanging like jewels along its bending stem. On the three-leaved table which once carried the gay flower of the wake-robin, there was a scarlet lump like a red pepper escaped to the forest and run wild. The partridge-vine was full of rosy provision for the birds. The dark tiny leaves of the creeping snow-berry were all sprinkled over with delicate drops of spicy foam. There were few belated raspberries, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... enough of a woman physically to bully the tiny grandmother when she wished to. Her face was now prettily suffused with color due to her resentment, and her blue eyes moist with unshed tears. She glanced into the small front chamber which had been decorated with a pink paper and robin's-egg blue paint. ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... Gen. (as he sent me word) were still gone on in the prosecution of them, and saith, that except 150 horse in one body, he heares they are fled by 16 or 18 in a company, all the country over. Robin Montgomery was come out of Sterling, with 4 or 5 regiments of horse and dragoons, but was put to a stand when he heard of the issue of this businesse. Straughan and some other officers had quitted some 3 weeks or a month before this businesse, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... state: Queen ELIZABETH II (since 6 February 1952), represented by Governor General James B. CARLISLE (since NA 1993) head of government: Prime Minister Lester Bryant BIRD (since 8 March 1994); Deputy Prime Minister Robin YEARWOOD cabinet: Council of Ministers appointed by the governor general on the advice of the prime minister elections: none; the monarch is hereditary; governor general chosen by the monarch on the advice of the prime minister; following legislative elections, the leader ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... clean breast of it, mother," he ses. "He got round you too." She was goin' for the slate again, but he stops her. "It's all right, mother," he ses. "I've seen him sense you have, an' he won't trouble us no more." The old lady looks up quick as a robin, an' she writes, "Did he say so?" "No," ses Jim, laughin'. "He didn't say so. That's how I know. But he bested you, mother. You can't have it in at me for bein' soft-hearted. You're twice as tender-hearted as what I be. Look!" he ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... the city and neighborhood of Boston. Their hearts were open to the tender influence of buds and blossoms, the fresh springing grass and the bubbling brook. They watched the birds of various plumage; the oriole, who hung his basket nest from the pendant branches of the elm, the robin redbreast who built close in the thick branches of the firs, and the sparrow who was contented with a less prominent nest, as he picked up hairs from the stable or from ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... thickly inhabited with old Virginia families, who were loyal and true to the Southern cause. These people received Mosby's men into their houses as their guests, and neither danger nor want could tempt their betrayal. Robin Hood's band sought safety in the solitudes of Sherwood Forest, Marion's men secreted themselves "in the pleasant wilds of Snow's Island" and other South Carolina swamps, but the Partizan Rangers of Virginia ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... land: Lowland Scotland—particularly the Lothians—and the English bordering counties, Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Cumberland; with Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, in which were Barndale and Sherwood Forests, Robin Hood's haunts. It is not possible to assign exact dates to these songs. They were seldom reduced to writing till many years after they were composed. In the Middle Ages they were sung to the harp by wandering ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... minstrels and minstrelsy. "Chevy Chase," of which Sir Philip Sidney said it would move him like the blast of a trumpet, is one of the most ancient; but, according to Hallam, it relates to a totally fictitious event. The ballad of "Robin Hood" had probably as little origin ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Miss Daisy broke out in such a wild, merry laugh, that an early robin, perched on a tree beside the window, ceased chirping, ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... hat?" Hervey inquired. "I bet you can't sit on this without holding on. Were you in the swamp? This is my friend, Mr. Hood—Robin Hood—sometimes I call him Lid instead of Hood. Call him cap if you want to, he doesn't care," he added, ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... among foreign birds, and the linnet and bobolink, among American birds, are familiar examples of the first class; the common robin and the veery of the second; the wood-thrush, the cat-bird, and the mocking-bird, of the third; and the blue-bird, the pewee, and the purple martin, of the fourth class. It may be added, that some birds are nearly periodical in their habits of singing, preferring the morning and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various |
