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Trill   Listen
verb
Trill  v. t.  To turn round; to twirl. (Obs.) "Bid him descend and trill another pin."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Trill" Quotes from Famous Books



... Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, And cheep and twitter ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... flowers, refreshing odours fling, Cheerful he sits, and forms the banquet scene, In regal splendour on the crowded green; And as around he greets his valiant bands, Showers golden presents from his bounteous hands;[28] Voluptuous damsels trill the sportive lay, Whose sparkling glances beam celestial day; Fill'd with delight the heroes closer join, And quaff till midnight cups of ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... one of Shaheen's brothers, and as we pass the fountain, the people pour water under the mare's feet as a libation, and Handumeh throws down a few little copper coins to the children. The women in the company set up the zilagheet, a high piercing trill of the voice, and all goes merry as a marriage bell. When we reach the house of Shaheen, he keeps out of sight, not even offering to help his bride dismount from her horse. That would never do. He will stay among the men, and she in a ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... there the cloud-climb'd rock, sublime and vast, That, like some giant king, o'er-glooms the hill; Nor there the pine-grove to the midnight blast Makes solemn music! but th' unceasing rill To the soft wren or lark's descending trill, Murmurs sweet undersong mid jasmine bowers. In this same pleasant meadow, at your will, I ween, you wander'd—there collecting flowers Of sober tint, and herbs ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... in general had the sound of the English r with a slight trill; i.e. that of the ...
— Latin Pronunciation - A Short Exposition of the Roman Method • Harry Thurston Peck

... little birds live at ease, I wish not to wander from you; I'll still dwell beneath the deep roar of your trees, For I know that my Joe will be true. The trill of the robin, the coo of the dove, Are charms that I'll never forego; But resting through life on the bosom of love, ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield

... as between 'phial' and 'vial'; 'pother' and 'bother'; 'bursar' and 'purser'; 'thrice' and 'trice'{110}; 'shatter' and 'scatter'; 'chattel' and 'cattle'; 'chant' and 'cant'; 'zealous' and 'jealous'; 'channel' and 'kennel'; 'wise' and 'guise'; 'quay' and 'key'; 'thrill', 'trill' and 'drill';—or in the consonants in the middle of the word, as between 'cancer' and 'canker'; 'nipple' and 'nibble'; 'tittle' and 'title'; 'price' and 'prize'; 'consort' and 'concert';—or there is a change in both, ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... degree." All three were joyous, and were fair to see. Joss ate—and Zeno drank; on stools the pair, With Mahaud musing in the regal chair. The sound of separate leaf we do not note— And so their babble seemed to idly float, And leave no thought behind. Now and again Joss his guitar made trill with plaintive strain Or Tyrolean air; and lively tales they told Mingled with mirth all free, and frank, and bold. Said Mahaud: "Do you know how fortunate You are?" "Yes, we are young at any rate— Lovers half crazy—this is truth at least." "And more, for you know Latin ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... blown their blossomy faces Forever adrift down the years that are flown? Am I never to see them romp back to their places, Where over the meadow, In sunshine and shadow, The meadow-larks trill, ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley

... shepherdess, as soon as she found herself disengaged and alone, revolved with the utmost displeasure her present situation. "How happy," cried she, "are the virgins of the vale! To them every hour is winged with tranquility and pleasure. They laugh at sorrow; they trill the wild, unfettered lay, or wander, chearful and happy, with the faithful swain beneath the woodland shade. They fear no coming mischief; they know not the very meaning of an enemy. Innocent themselves, they apprehend not guilt and treachery in those around them. Nor have they reason. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin

... one began to speak—or was that speech? Certainly the flow of sound had little in common with the clicking tongue Ross had caught earlier. This trill of notes possessed the rise and fall of a chant or song which could have been a formula of greeting—or a warning. And the lines of warriors escorting the chanter stood to attention, ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton

... concession, I was pacing up and down moodily (only inmates of the same room are allowed to descend together, so that you gain no social advantage), when just over my head, from a window on the first story, there broke out a burst of merriment, and a half-intelligible trill of baby-language; then a little round pink face, under a cloud of fair hair, peered out at me through the bars. The utter incongruity of the whole picture struck me so absurdly, that, I believe, I did indulge in a dreary laugh. Then the child ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... a clarionet, [1] And a wild heart, throbbing in the reed, Should thrill its joy and trill its fret, And utter its heart in ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... a little song A little song to soothe my heart! I'd make it all of little things The plash of water, rub of wings, The puffing-off of dandies crown, The hiss of raindrop spilling down, The purr of cat, the trill of bird, And ev'ry whispering I've heard From willy wind in leaves and grass, And all the distant drones that pass. A song as tender and as light As flower, or butterfly in flight; And when I saw it opening, I'd let ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... complain, in piteous strain, Grief-laden, tear-evoking, shrill; Ah woe is me! woe! woe! Dirge-like it sounds; mine own death-trill I pour, yet breathing vital air. Hear, hill-crowned Apia, hear my prayer! Full well, O land, My voice barbaric thou canst understand; While oft with rendings I assail My byssine ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... many friends of youth are dead; How many visions of fair hope have fled, Since first, my Muse, we met.—So speeds away Life, and its shadows; yet we sit and sing, Stretched in the noontide bower, as if the day Declined not, and we yet might trill our lay Beneath the pleasant morning's purple wing That fans us; while aloft the gay clouds shine! Oh, ere the coming of the long cold night, Religion, may we bless thy purer light, That still shall warm us, when the tints decline O'er earth's ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... In the inland farming districts, I used to notice her, on some bright morning about Easter-day, proclaiming her arrival with much variety of motion and attitude, from the peak of the barn or hay-shed. As yet, you may have heard only the plaintive, homesick note of the Bluebird, or the faint trill of the Song-Sparrow; and Phoebe's clear, vivacious assurance of her veritable bodily presence among us again is welcomed by all ears. At agreeable intervals in her lay she describes a circle or an ellipse in the air, ostensibly prospecting for insects, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... vengeance shall proclaim, While maids and matrons on his name Shall call down wretchedness and shame, And infamy and woe.' Then rose the cry of females, shrill As goshawk's whistle on the hill, Denouncing misery and ill, Mingled with childhood's babbling trill Of curses stammered slow; Answering with imprecation dread, 'Sunk be his home in embers red! And cursed be the meanest shed That o'er shall hide the houseless head We doom to want and woe!' A sharp and shrieking ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... Trill-ll! It was not a cheer, but a subdued, breathless gasp that rose from the two camps of fans as the opposing lines rushed at each other. Dick could not help a slight groan, for Adams, of Cobber, reached the pigskin first. But Adams kicked it off over ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... alien and distracting mass of food that you have taken on board. They are like stevedores, stowing the cargo for portability. A little later, however, when this excellent work is accomplished, the bosun may trill his whistle, and the deck hands can be summoned back to the navigating bridge. The mind casts off its corporeal hawsers and puts out to sea. You begin once more to live as a rational composition of reason, emotion, and will. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... sing that at Della Scala, remember the poor devil who taught it to you in a hovel. Soaked as those old walls are with music from the most famous lips the world ever applauded, they hold no echoes sweeter than that last trill. After all, there is no passion—no pathos—comparable to a perfect contralto crescendo. It is wonderful how you Americans squander voices that would rouse all ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... to pour forth his liquid song, and from another far away came the same song like an echo. Dick looked up but he could not see the bird among the branches. Nevertheless he waved his hand toward the place from which the melody came and gave a little trill in reply. Then he ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler

... lights went out, for the fire-flies fled in every direction; but in the darkness Twinkle thought she could still hear the drone of the big bass fiddle and the flute-like trill ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

... hear the tinkle of music nor the voice of night-singing birds, which in the scenes of her girlhood had been familiar sounds. The moan of the wind in the short, hard grass was different from its whisper in the peach trees, and the shrilling of the coyotes made but rude substitute for the trill of the love-bursting mocking bird that sang its myriad song far back ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... his own deliberate time in making the explanation. Miss Hunniwell wrinkled her dainty upturned nose and burst into a trill ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the weeds that grew in among the stones were brown and shiny. The beech-woods in the distance seemed to swell and grow thicker with every second. The skies were high—and a clear blue. The cottage door stood ajar, and the lark's trill could be heard in the room. The hens and geese pattered about in the yard, and the cows, who felt the spring air away in their stalls, lowed their approval every now ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... enraptured looks Of hoary marquises and stripling dukes: Let high-born lechers eye the lively Presle Twirl her light limbs that spurn the needless veil; Let Angiolini bare her breast of snow, Wave the white arm and point the pliant toe; Collini trill her love-inspiring song, Strain her fair neck and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... she had come, for I saw her there, and she looked so blithe and young; (Not white and still, as I saw her last) and the rose that she wore was red; And her voice soared up in a bird-like trill, at the end of the song she sung, And she mimicked a soldier's warlike stride, and tossed back her ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... throughout. It cannot be that they said too much in that letter from Paris." A little trill of bitter laughter escaped her. "We are to continue to make this our home for as long as it shall pleasure us. So long shall ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... cried Gluck. "They did not gush from the holy fount of inspiration; they were composed and arranged to suit the taste of the public and the dexterity of the singers, who, if they trill and juggle with their voices, think that they have reached the summit of musical perfection. But this must no longer be. I have written for time, I shall now work for immortality. Let me interpret what the angels have whispered, and then you shall hear a language ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... in her hardened face— She had not wept for years; But the robin's trill, as some sounds will, Jarred open the door of tears. She thought of the old home far away; She heard the whr-r-r of the mill; She heard the turtle's wild, sweet call, And the wail of ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... saw in the orchards and gardens. The male is a fascinating little bird, coal- black above, while his crested head and the body beneath are brilliant scarlet. He utters his rapid, low-voiced musical trill in the air, rising with fluttering wings to a height of a hundred feet, hovering while he sings, and then falling back to earth. The color of the bird and the character of his performance attract the attention of every observer, bird, beast, or man, within ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... I know it by the trill That quivers through thy piercing notes, So petulant and shrill; I think there is a knot of you Beneath the hollow tree,— A knot of spinster Katydids,—- Do ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... never be married!" ejaculated Mellicent, in a tone of such horrified dismay as evoked a shriek of merriment from the listeners—Peggy's merry trill sounding clear above the rest. It was just delicious to be well again, to sit among her companions and have one of the old hearty laughs over Mellicent's quaint speeches. At that moment she was one of the happiest girls in all ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... wide sweeps of meadowland glistening still with the early dew; flowers blossoming everywhere, from the modest daisy and golden buttercup to the queenliest rose and fairest lily; birds singing from every bush and tree their morning trill of flute-like melody; bees humming busily hither and thither; butterflies flitting idly by or resting snugly in the heart of a flower; in short, the world of nature all awake and joying with a pure, glad joy in the golden ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... when I was but about half awake in the morning, that those robin-songs sounded the most distinctly, and I seemed to hear every note and trill which ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... suddenly as being perhaps impossible for him ever to look at Charlotte in just that fashion. He thought with a thrill of indignant pride that there was a maiden who would have the best of love as her right. Then sitting there he heard a quick tread and a trill of whistle as meaningless as that of a robin, and young Eastman himself came alongside. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... native ballads Mr. Cameron, on his part, had a good stock of Scottish songs, and would trill them out in a fine baritone voice, the audience joining with enthusiasm in the choruses of such favorites as "Bonny Dundee," "Charlie is my Darling," and ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... cigarette away, and ran her fingers through his hair, then made a gesture, almost as if pushing something away, Peter thought, and laughed her old ringing trill ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... gleeful joy, In songbirds trill, in flowerlets coy, Shall we, also, voices raise, Sing our ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various

... Queen and all her courtiers were enthralled by the music. It was not only the novelty and bird-like sweetness of the instrument itself that charmed, but also the fine taste and wonderful touch of the sailor. The warbling notes seemed to trill, rise and fall, and float about on the atmosphere, as it were, like fairy music, filling the air with melody and the soul ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... of winter's rain The dripping forests welter, The shepherd opes his door amain, And gives me food and shelter. I touch my chords, I trill my lay, The firelight glances o'er us, And wind and rain, in stormy play, Join in with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... kettle that was just about to boil. So vividly did the whole scene suggest the painted bliss of a stage setting, that it would have been hardly surprising to see her step forward among the flowers and trill out her virtuous happiness ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton

... May! How every trill Makes hearts to thrill, And every note's Aleap in our throats. Ah! Sweet lay of love! Story so tender, Old and gray; Yet sing again Love's roundelay— Ah! Love ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... I love it, the laugh of a child. Now rippling, now gentle, now merry and wild. It rings through the air with an innocent gush, Like the trill of a bird at the twilight's soft hush, It floats on the breeze like the tones of a bell, Or music that dwells in the heart of a shell. Oh, the laugh of a child is so wild and so free 'T is the merriest sound in the world ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... tremble through the grove, And sacred airs of minstrelsy divine Are harp'd around, and flutt'ring pinions move. Ah, hark! a voice, to which the vocal rill, The lark's extatic harmony is rude; Distant it swells with many a holy trill, Now breaks wide warbling from ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... how much snap and go there was to it until I heard Miss Hampton trill it out. Why, she just tosses up that perky chin of hers and turns loose the catchy melody until you felt the warm waves splashin' and saw the moonlight dancin' across the bay! I don't know where or what this Santa Lucia thing is, but she most made me homesick to go back there. ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... the records, and rotten The meshes of memory's net; When the grace that forgives has forgotten The things that are good to forget; When the trill of my juvenile trumpet Is dead and its echoes are dead; Then the laurel shall lie on the crumpet And crown ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman

... as he reached the beginning of a brilliant arpeggio, at the top of which there was a trill and a leap down of an octave and a half, the wind in the bellows of this human organ suddenly gave out, a few wildly chaotic notes elicited a roar of laughter from the table accompanied by derisive applause. This stopped as if by ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... of a young rising moon Hung in the west as you leaned on the bar And spun a thread of some sweet April tune, And wished a wish and named the falling star. We heard a brook trill in the fields afar; The air wrapped round us that entrancing fold Of vanishing sweet stuff that mortal hold Can never grasp—the mist of dreams—as down The street we went ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... took up his fiddle and his bow. His hands were still for a minute, and then the instrument began to sigh and trill. The sounds gathered in strength, soared high, then thinned and sank to no more than the whisper of a tune—and then Pat began to sing. This is part ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... understand The magic touches of a hand That seemed, beneath her strange control, To smooth the plumage of the soul And calm it, till, with folded wings, It half forgot its flutterings, And, nestled in her palm, did seem To trill a song that ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... healthy Muse, Did wisely one sweet instrument to choose— The native reed; which, tutored with rare skill, Brought other Muses[1] down to aid its trill! A cheerful song that sometimes quaintly masked The fancy, as the affections sweetly tasked; And won from England's proud and foreign[2] court, For native England's tongue, a sweet report— And sympathy—till ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... produced by it is soft and low, plaintive and melancholy, resembling in general features Chinese music, with its ever recurring and prolonged trill, its sudden rises and ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... she called, when the window had been opened wider in response to her trill, "there isn't any committee meeting this afternoon. Don't you want to go with me to see Anne Carter? Let's start early and take a walk first. It's such ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... azure plumes, the thrush clad all in brown, the robin jerking his spasmodic throat, the oriole drifting like a flake of fire, the jolly bobolink and his happy mate, the mocking-bird imitating the notes of all, the red-bird with his one sweet trill, and the busy little wren, are all making the trees in our front yard ring ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... fair calm eve on wood and wold Shone down with softest ray, Beneath the sycamore's red leaf The mavis trill'd her lay, Murmur'd the Tweed afar, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... men's houses an' I've been in jail, But when it's time for leavin' I jes hits the trail. I'm a human bird of passage and the song I trill Is, "Once you git the habit, why, you can't ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various

... silence all that train: Joy to great Chaos! let division reign:[385] Chromatic[386] tortures soon shall drive them hence, Break all their nerves, and fritter all their sense: One trill shall harmonise joy, grief, and rage, Wake the dull church, and lull the ranting stage;[387] To the same notes thy sons shall hum, or snore, And all thy yawning daughters cry, Encore! 60 Another Phoebus, thy own Phoebus, reigns, Joys in my jigs, and dances in my chains. ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... recollecting the fairies' gifts, she opened the walnut, and out of it hopped a little dwarf like a doll, the most graceful toy that was ever seen in the world. Then, seating himself upon the window, the dwarf began to sing with such a trill and gurgling, that he seemed a ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... ponies raised their heads from where they were cropping the sedge, and at the second, one of the sturdy little fellows uttered a shrill neigh, while at the third note, which turned into a trill, the little animals dashed off at a canter, scattering the sandy earth behind them as they tore after the utterer of ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn

... entertain us, nor to distract the pining lover[1]—it must have some personal purpose of its own. But, sadly enough, that purpose never seems to get fulfilled. Yet it is not down-hearted, and its Coo-oo! Coo-oo! keeps going, with now and then an ultra-fervent trill. What can it mean? ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... hints of Helicon— Bacchanalian bees that sip Where his cider-presses drip— With the winding of the horn Where his huntsmen meet the morn— With his every piping breeze Shaking from familiar trees Apples of Hesperides— With the chuckle, chirp, and trill Of his jolly brooks that spill Mirth in tangled madrigals Down pebble-dappled waterfalls— (Brooks that laugh and make escape Through wild arbors ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis

... ploughed through the gray mists—a strange and terrible sight for the Nascopees lurking in the underbrush along the shore. And while the men smoked and sang "Die Wacht am Rhein," listening to the trill of the ripples against the bows, ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... insects are awake all night, and the little workman bird sits on a tree close by you and drives coffin nails without number. With the dawn, the tree beetles again raise their chorus; the birds sing and trill more sweetly than in the evening; the monkeys bark afresh as they leap through the branches; and the leaves of the forest glisten in the undried dew. Then, as the sun mounts, and the dew dries, the sounds of the jungle die down one by one, until the silence of the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... transparent, so wasted had they become through illness; whilst her glorious fair hair, which had fallen over her shoulders, seemed like the very effulgence of the great luminary enveloping her. The trill of a bird came in from the courtyard, and quite enlivened the tremulous silence of the ward. Some child who could not be seen must also have been playing close by, for now and again a soft laugh could be heard ascending in the warm air which was ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... when he feels his tread on the softening swards of the Vale of Health, or, pausing at Richmond under the budding willow, gazes on the river glittering in the warmer sunlight, and hears from the villa-gardens behind him the brief trill of the blackbird. But the suburbs round Paris are, I think, a yet more pleasing relief from the metropolis; they are more easily reached, and I know not why, but they seem more rural,—perhaps because the contrast ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the others, which will make the tone as that of one voice, and perhaps lead you to doubt if all are singing, until convinced by the movement of their mouths. The tone will seem pretty light and thin, but will be sweet as the trill of a bird. ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard

... other lyrics—aubades, debats, and what not—are joined to them, they supply the materials of an anthology of hardly surpassed interest, as well for the bubbling music of their refrains and the trill of their metre, as for the fresh mirth and joy of living in their matter. The "German paste in our composition," as another Arnold had it, and not only that, may make us prefer the German examples; but it must ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... Sometimes he held the violin between his knees, playing on it as on a cello; then he caught it to his breast again in a sudden fury of improvisation—an arpeggio, light and running, his fingers barely touching the strings—the snatch of a theme—a trill, low and passionate—the rush of a scale. He toyed with the Stradivarius mocking it, clasping ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... conducted into his little garden, sloping down to the very brink of the Tweed, and embosomed amid natural hazel wood, the lingering remains of a once goodly forest, to see some favourite flower, or to hear him trill, with a skill and execution which would have done little dishonour to Picus himself, some simple native melody upon his Scotch flute. The in-door entertainment consisted of varied conversation, embracing the subjects of literature, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... of mercy through the streets, at so brisk a rate that his feet might have been winged by all the good spirits that wait on Generosity. They might have taken up their station in his breast, too, for he was blithe and merry. There was quite a fresh trill in his voice, when, arriving at the counting-house in St Mary Axe, and finding it for the moment empty, he trolled forth at the foot of the staircase: 'Now, Judah, what are you ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... a confused rustle of silks and a hum of voices, and now and then a silvery laugh would ring out above these like the trill of a bird in a breezy grove. Later, light airy music floated through the rooms, followed by the rhythmic cadence of feet. A thinly clad shivering little match-girl stopped on her weary tramp to her cellar and caught glimpses of the scene through the oft-opening door and between the curtains ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... Teddy asked regretfully. They went into the pushing and crowding of the streets; heard the shrill trill of the crossing policeman's whistle again; caught a glimpse of Broadway's lights, fanning lower and higher, and as the big signs ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris

... Nightingale's long trill, Silver moonlight and the rocking Of the dreaming rill; Nightly light and nightly shadow, Shadow's endless lace— Neath the moon's enchanted changes The Beloved's face. Blinking stars as flash of amber, Snowy clouds on-rush, Tears and happiness and kisses— ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi

... with you up to the ridge of the hill, And we'll talk of the way we have come through the valley; Down below there a bird breaks into a trill, And a groaning slave bends to the oar ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... towards the hills but they left their songs behind them, as it were, to be sung by the other birds. In the pastures and cultivated fields the chipping sparrows, newly arrived from the South, took up the trill with an accent of their own, and all the pine warblers sang it, each with an individuality that slightly but clearly marked him from his fellow. I think all birds show this slight but definite individuality ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... half-indignant for a moment, lapsed into a doze. Outside the window, you heard the song of a canary,—a dingy, smoke-coloured canary that seemed shedding its plumes, for they were as ragged as the garments of its master; still, it contrived to sing, trill-trill-trill-trill-trill, as blithely as if free in its native woods, or pampered by fair hands in a gilded cage. The bird was the only true artist there, it sang as the poet sings,—to obey its nature ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... hives beneath the eaves of the house. Great bronze butterflies fluttered in the sunshine, brilliant humming-birds plunged deep into the long trumpet-flowers; from the topmost bough of a locust, heavy with bloom, came the liquid trill ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... to room in the bright September sunshine—now sitting down to the piano to trill out a ballad, or the first page of an Italian bravura, or running with rapid fingers through a brilliant waltz—now hovering about a stand of hot-house flowers, doing amateur gardening with a pair of fairy-like, silver-mounted embroidery scissors—now strolling into her ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... they stood, each where he was, two figures in clay instead of one. Interrupting, awakening, torturing, sounded the thing they had so long expected; the impact of a step upon the floor of the porch without; a moment later another, uncertain, and another; a pause, and then, startlingly loud, the trill ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... silver, over the railway sheds—no, there was then no railway, but only the quiet fields and footpaths of Hincksey hamlet. Well, no matter; at any rate, the hills beyond, and Bagley Wood, were there then as now; and over hills and wood we rise, catching the purr of the night-jar, the trill of the nightingale, and the first crow of the earliest cock-pheasant, as he stretches his jewelled wings, conscious of his strength and his beauty, heedless of the fellows of St. John's, who slumber within sight of his perch, on ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... the infectious enjoyment of a schoolboy, and Lynette's laugh, sweet and gay as a thrush's sudden trill of melody, answered: ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... in spite of herself, burst into a trill of laughter which was so merry and contagious that the grave stranger beside him looked up at her with an interested and amused smile as though seeing her for the ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... opposite a wood whose trees blackened the slow dawn. Then, without a word, they ran across the road, and, in a few minutes, were lost in the thick underbrush of the little forest. It was past four o'clock and the dawn began to trill over the rim of night; the east burst into stinging sun rays, while the moving air awoke the birds and sent scurrying around the smooth green park a ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... him came such a trill of demoniacal laughter as chilled his blood. The top of the wall was concealed by the overhanging branch of a tree and his ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... enormously difficult fantasia upon melodies from Bellini's "Sonnambula," which for several years was one of his own concert pieces. In this there is a very difficult part where two melodies are going together, and a long and difficult trill. Other examples of this kind of writing are found in his "Trovatore" fantasias, his ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... only the sounds of nature invaded the quiet of the place: the drowsy hum of diligent bees, the cattle browsing in a field near by, the ecstatic trill of a bird. The world of bustle and flurry with its seething vats of evil and corruption, its sordid discontent and petulance, its ways of pain and darkness, seemed far removed from that place of peace and calm solitude. Phoebe could ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... knows And to his joy replies; To the lark's trill unfolds the rose, Clouds flush ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... she is not for me, she is not for another;' or 'Where she has sinned, there let her suffer.' That is revenge; it is the feeble device of a man who thinks in his simple soul that when beauty is gone loathing is at hand." Another light trill of laughter. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... until the evening. But when the sun was low, she loved to linger among the roses in the garden, till the bright shield of the moon was high in the east, or till the faint stars burned in their full splendour, and the nightingales began to call and trill their melancholy song from end to end of the ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... symmetry and a winning smile. So great was her natural facility she could rise with ease from the faintest sound to the most superb crescendo, could send her tones sweeping through the air with the most delicious undulations, imitating the swell and fall of a bell, and could trill like a bird on each note of a chromatic passage. She dazzled her listeners, ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... whole rooms, filled with ladies and gentlemen, are bodily carried up from the first story to the roof; a professional musician playing the while on the piano—not the old-fashioned thing our grandmothers used, but a huge instrument capable of giving forth all sounds of harmony from the trill of a nightingale to the thunders of an orchestra. And when you reach the roof of the hotel you find yourself in a glass-covered tropical forest, filled with the perfume of many flowers, and bright with the scintillating plumage of darting birds; all sounds of sweetness fill the air, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly

... of love's garden! How trill her tears, th' elixir of my senses! Ambitious sickness, what doth thee so harden? Oh spare, and plague thou me for her offences! Ah roses, love's fair roses, do not languish; Blush through the milk-white ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... The grass and wild flowers waved in the breeze that rose as the sun threw its first beams over the earth. Birds of all kinds vied with each other, as they sang their joy on that beautiful morning. The priest stood listening. Suddenly, off at one side, he heard a trill that rose higher and clearer than all the rest. He moved toward the place whence the song came, that he might see what manner of bird it was that could send farther than all the others its happy, laughing notes. As he came near, he beheld a tiny ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher

... she would again lift up her sweet voice, for it had sounded like the trill of birds in the woodland ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... so long as we're together," sang Patty with a little trill, as she danced about the room. Then she seated herself at the old, square piano, and began to sing ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... was bare to greedy spoil Of hungry eyes which n'ote therewith be fill'd. And yet through languor of her late sweet toil Few drops more clear than nectar forth distill'd, That like pure Orient perles adown it trill'd; And her fair eyes sweet smiling in delight Moisten'd their fiery beams, with which she thrill'd Frail hearts, yet quenched not; like starry light, Which sparkling on the silent ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... That's all nonsense. I say teach them the scales, to run up and down the gamut! Gradus ad Parnassum's the thing! Classical, classical! Yesterday you made your daughter play that Trill-Etude by Carl Meyer. Altogether too fine-sounding! It tickles the ear, to be sure, especially when it is played in such a studied manner. We stick to Clementi and Cramer, and to Hummel's piano-school,—the good old school. You have made a great ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... was one of the most admired in his first volume of verse; Charlotta the Fourth heard it and was blissfully sure it meant good luck for her adored Miss Shirley. The bird sang until the ceremony was ended and then it wound up with one mad little, glad little trill. Never had the old gray-green house among its enfolding orchards known a blither, merrier afternoon. All the old jests and quips that must have done duty at weddings since Eden were served up, and seemed as new and brilliant and mirth-provoking as if they had never been uttered before. ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... murmur like a shell; The muffled tramp of the Museum guard Once more went by me; I beheld again Lamps vainly brighten the dispeopled street; Again I longed for the returning morn, The awaking traffic, the bestirring birds, The consentaneous trill of tiny song That weaves round monumental cornices A passing charm of beauty: most of all, For your light foot I wearied, and your knock That was the glad reveille of my day. Lo, now, when to your task in the great house At morning through the portico ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hour is nigh, The sun has left the lea, The orange-flower perfumes the bower, The breeze is on the sea. The lark, his lay who trill'd all day, Sits hush'd his partner nigh; Breeze, bird, and flower confess the hour, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... there's Rosetti too; Trill on, ye two, the song of future years, Move, Palgrave, move, with bosom rent anew, An audience multitudinous to tears; Scratch on with quill unwearied and no fears, The world shall fling thee thy resplendent bays, For Popular Opinion safely steers His barque upon the river of thy praise. ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... Next Neighbor paused again. And at that moment the red thrush gave a little low trill, as much as to say: "Listen to me now." Then he twittered and chirped in a tentative way as if he had not made up his mind about singing, and the party on the terrace felt like clapping to ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... quotation) would automatically preserve its essential trill, the intruder churning is the more obnoxious; and unless the R can be trilled it would seem better for poets to use only the inflected forms of these words, ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English

... any pretext, I knock out the ashes from my old pipe, fill it afresh, and wait. I wait patiently, because, inevitable as Fate, inevitable as that call from out the dark void of the sky, I know there will come a trill of the telephone on the desk at my elbow; my own Polly—whose name happens to be Mary—is watching as I take ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... Musk," and "Old Dan Tucker." Oh, I put vim into it, I can tell you! And bad as my playing was, I had from the start an absorption of attention from my audience that Paderewski himself might have envied. I wound up with a lively trill in the high notes and took my whistle from my lips with a hearty laugh, for the whole thing had been downright good fun, the playing itself, the make-believe which went with it, the surprise and interest in the children's faces, the slow-breaking smile of ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... graceful movements. Squirrels[1], of which there are a great variety, make their shrill metallic call heard at early morning in the woods; and when sounding their note of warning on the approach of a civet or a tree-snake, the ears tingle with the loud trill of defiance, which rings as clear and rapid as the running down of an alarum, and is instantly caught up and re-echoed from every side ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... proclamation of its tonic a few seconds before, and could not begin the repetition till the concert-master had plucked the first note of the air on his violin. A short time before I heard Mme. Patti perform the feat of beginning the trill which accompanies the melody by the orchestra in the middle of the dance song in "Dinorah" without a suggestive tone or chord after a hubbub and gladsome tumult that seemed, to have lasted several minutes. A new bass, Signor Mirabella, appeared in "I Puritani" ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel



Words linked to "Trill" :   enunciate, enounce, say, note, shake, sing, tone, articulation, sound out



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