"Twitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the mocking-bird. Indeed, a policeman whom I found staring at one would have it that he was a mocking-bird. "Don't you see he is? And he's been singing, too." I had nothing to say against the singing, since the shrike will often twitter by the half hour in the very coldest weather. But further discussion concerning the bird's identity was soon rendered needless; for, while we were talking, along came a sparrow, and dropped carelessly into a hawthorn ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... the path sedately, "hastening slowly," for we can not help stopping to listen to the soft twitter of the birds, to admire the golden laburnums; we even wait to let a sparrow hop leisurely down ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... very near the toes of one of the sparrows, and he flew. There was a twitter, then a stir all over the tree; but nothing further happening, they tucked in their heads again and ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... heard a droning, Like a gnat's small plaintive lay, Somewhere in the dark behind him Where the "Ancient Persons" lay, Heard a little ghostly twitter Like a voice addressing him, Turned and saw his father staring Just above the basket rim, Staring at Hasan, his strong son, With his filmy red-rimmed eyes, "What's ado, Oh! ancient father?" Cried ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... truckled to Dan But keep a good tongue, or you'll find to your smart From rhyming in cars, you may swing in a cart. You found out my rebus with very much modesty; But thanks to the lady; I'm sure she's too good to ye: Till she lent you her help, you were in a fine twitter; You hit it, you say;—you're a delicate hitter. How could you forget so ungratefully a lass, And if you be my Phoebus, pray who was your Pallas? As for your new rebus, or riddle, or crux, I will either explain, or repay it by trucks; Though ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... traveller who has been taken ill at 'The Plough.' It is a sad case: he is quite a young man, and our doctor fears that he will not pull through." But Mr. Carlyon forbore to state the fact that each night he had relieved his son, rising from his bed in the gray pearly dawn, before the first bird-twitter was heard, to take his watch beside the fever-stricken stranger. The Carlyons were men whose left hand did not know what their right hand did, and the Rev. Rupert Carlyon's ministry had been a record of humble, unobtrusive acts of good-will and kindness to man, woman, and child; nay, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... riot during the day, has blown itself out by evening, and the birds have gone to sleep with heads tucked under their wings, or settled with soft breasts over nestlings that twitter soft "good nights" to mother love. The dark shadows of evening steal the daylight, and canon and ravine lose their rugged outlines, blending into soft, shadowy browns and purples. The moon peeps over the hilltop, ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... associations of sounds rather than their actual quality which make them pleasant or unpleasant. The twitter of sparrows is, in itself, as prosaic a sound as there is in nature, but I never hear it on waking without a feeling of inward peace. It seems to link me with some incredibly remote and golden morning, and with a child in ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... not. She leaned back in her basket-chair and enjoyed herself quietly. The green peace, after London, was absolutely delicious. She could hear a hen clucking intermittently from the farmyard hard by, the twitter of birds from the yew-trees, the chirping voices of Tommy and the curate's little boys, who had been formally introduced to each other, and had retired to play in a paddock that was part of the rector's glebe. The rector himself ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... yet that was often sad, with a strange sadness of the desert and of desire among the sands. Even now, in the maze around this cafe, there was another maze of sound, the tripping notes of Eastern dance tunes, the wail of the African hautboy, the twitter of little flutes that set the pace for the pale Circassians, the dull murmur ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... called to see the old woman at Martha's Vineyard, and he saw the matron, the house doctor, and a staff nurse as well. His adventure was known to everybody at the hospital. Once or twice he caught looks of amused compassion, and heard a twitter of laughter. As he stood by the bed, the old woman muttered: "I knoo ez it wuzn't the work'us, my dear. He spoke to me friendly and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... has returned many, many times from the shallow drinking-place by the brook to his half-built nest. Sometimes the pair of them cling to the mortar they have fixed under the eave, and twitter to each other about the progress of the work. They dive downwards with such velocity when they quit hold that it seems as if they must strike the ground, but they shoot up again, over the wall and the lime trees. ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... for fear of arousing something or somebody out of sleep, or of breaking the wonderful spell of the place. Pausing under those trees, and feasting one's eyes upon the lovely, rural scene, not a sound reaches the ear except the twitter of the birds, and perhaps the faint jingle of a cow-bell. Mrs. Pitt gave a start at the sound of John's voice, when he ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... but I beg leave to affirm, that the solemn operations of nature are subjects of contemplation, not of ridicule. Therefore I make it my earnest request to the merry fellows, and giggling girls about town, that they would not put themselves in a high twitter, when they go to visit a general lying-in of his first child; his officers serving as midwives, nurses and rockers dispensing caudle; or if they behold the reverend prelates dressing the heads and airing the linnen at court, I beg they will remember that these offices ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... she was visitin' her kin. Mandy Ann tole me 'bout him,—how he walked an' talked to Miss Dory, till when he went away her face was white as the gown she put on when she hearn he was comin'. You see, Mandy Ann was on de boat wid him, an' tole her. She was all of a twitter, like you've seen de little hungry birds in de nest when dar mudder is comin' wid a worm,—an' she was jess as cold an' slimpsy an' starved when he went away as dem little birds is when de mudder is shot on de wing an' never comes wid de worm. You know what I mean. She s'pected ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... his little guest would come up in snatches to the lonely watcher, and at evening, when the vesper-bell was ringing and the great grey bats slid out of their hiding-places in the belfry roof, the bright-eyed bird would return, twitter a few sleepy notes, and nestle into the arms that were waiting for him. Those were happy days for the Dark Image. Only the great bell of the Cathedral rang out daily its mocking message, "After ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... do not fall to express it. It is this poetry which we find in certain customs and beliefs, in the various legends and songs. When Le Champi returns to his native place, he finds the whole country murmuring with the twitter of birds ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... passed a wooded headland, came a sleepy twitter, from some little pink and yellow bill barely withdrawn from its enfolding wing—to be followed by another, and another, and another, till both shores were aquiver with that plaintive chirrup, ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... began to stir. He stretched his legs, and went down to the ditch to take his morning bath. The birds began to twitter in the wood, and the bellow of the stag echoed amongst the trees. It was on the point of dawn, and here came the Sun peeping up over ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... all the sap of sentiment has been squeezed by the rubbing and friction of years. Poetry, the feeling if not the words of poetry,—is he not dead to it, even as the pavement is dead over which his wheels trundle? Oh, my young friend! thou art ignorant in this—as in most other things. He may not twitter of sentiment, as thou doest; nor may I trundle my hoop along the high road as do the little boys. The fitness of things forbids it. But that old man's heart is as soft as thine, if thou couldst but read it. The body dries up and withers away, and the bones ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... graveyard; birds sang in the surrounding trees, some of which reached out their giant arms and touched the log walls. Swallows had built nests under the eaves outside, and some on the rough projections inside, and joined their twitter to the songs of other birds and the rich organ accompaniment ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... his book, suffering no sort of discomfort; he lazily smoked his pipe and thought how much better it was to be listening to the twitter of the birds, watching the clouds of rooks wheeling over the distant wood, and resting in peace, than slaving with an 18-ft. rod and straining every muscle in the effort to dispatch the unheeded fly across the big water to the core of the pool (for fishing ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... and long black veil, was sitting by the bedside reading her book of hours; through the window could be seen a strip of blue sky crossed by some budding tree in the convent garden, little birds were beginning to chirp and twitter amongst the branches. The spring had come in these last days whilst Madelon had been lying there, and in the midst of the glad resurrection of all nature, she too was stirring and awakening to consciousness, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... sing of the immortal gods, of war and sacrifice, while the flame mounts to manhood's cheek, red as the fires of Troy: They twitter of lovies and dovies, of posies and goose-liver pie, while pretty men applaud and sentimental maids get moonsick. Cincinnatus no longer waits for the office to seek the man: He sells his brace of bullocks and buys a political boom. No more the Spartan ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and the birds began to twitter; day was breaking. The girl was worn out and panting; and when the sun rose in the purple sky, she stopped, for her swollen feet refused to go any farther; but she saw a pond in the distance, a large pond whose stagnant water looked like blood under the reflection of this ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... excited effort to see down into the yard, and Mrs. Dow only nodded somewhat jealously, and said that she guessed 'twas nobody would do her any harm. She rose ponderously, while Betsey hesitated, being, as they would have said, all of a twitter. "It is a lady, certain," Mrs. Dow assured her; "'tain't often ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... not sleep. Thousands of aching demons in his weary limbs promised him surcease if he would. Every stir in nature, each drowsy twitter of the birds, coaxed him to relax his watchfulness, but he resisted. Time seemed a paralytic as Carter waited the passing of the day. A score of times his head bent forward in weariness. He could feel pain pass from him like a sigh, only to be called back as in reaction he ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... instead of hedge-rows, which were covered thickly with pale primroses, shining with the same hue as the moon above them. As I passed the scattered cottages, here and there a dog yapped a shrill, snarling hark, and woke the birds, till they gave a sleepy twitter in their new nests. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... have some work to do in the village after selling her bundle of sticks and twigs. It was during these long days that little Gretchen had taught herself to sing the song which the wind sang to the pine branches. In the summer time she learned the chirp and twitter of the birds, until her voice might almost be mistaken for a bird's voice; she learned to dance as the swaying shadows did, and even to talk to the stars which shone through the little square window when Granny came home too late or ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... shone like a jewel, and far aloft in the heavens were the white streamers of morn. Moorhens were plashing at the loch's edge, and one tall heron rose from his early meal. The world was astir with life: sounds of the plonk-plonk of rising trout and the endless twitter of woodland birds mingled with the far-away barking of dogs and the lowing of the full-uddered cows in the distant meadows. Abashed and enchanted, the girl listened. It was an elfin land where the old witch voices of hill and river were not ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... comes to see his sheaves. The owl his silent soul relieves; "Reason in man is sheer pretence, Would he—were he endowed with sense— Treat owls with scorning? He can praise The birds that twitter on the sprays: Linnets, and larks, and nightingales, Yet in the nobler owl he fails. Should I, by daylight, view my reign, Those birds would cluster in my train; Why do they pounce upon the wing, Save that they ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... giving way to these extravagances, which Moll had not the heart to rebuff,—for in her full, warm heart she was as overjoyed to see him there as he her,—Don Sanchez and I paced up and down the spacious hall, I all of a twitter lest one or other of the servants might discover the familiarity of these two (which must have been a fine matter for curious gossip in the household and elsewhere), and the Don mighty sombre and grave (as foreseeing an ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... house upon the hill In summer time strange voices fill; With ceaseless rustle of the leaves, And birds that twitter in the eaves, And all the vines entangled so The village lights no ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... hear the rattle of the dishes? The clink of the spoon against the cup? The moving up of the chairs? The chatter of the voices, each with its own peculiar pitch and quality? The twitter of a bird outside the window? The tinkle of a distant bell? The chirp of a ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... of the Semitic races broke it by twittering into a laugh behind her fan. Janet met Kendal's eyes instinctively; he was burning red, and his manner was eloquent of his helplessness. Angry with herself for having waited, so long, Janet joined Elfrida just as the twitter made itself heard, and Mr. Jasper's face began to ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... the Montagues, and Philip hoped that he would find Ruth in a different mood. But she was never more gay, and there was a spice of mischief in her eye and in her laugh. "Confound it," said Philip to himself, "she's in a perfect twitter." ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... sailors every night put in from all the world to rest from going up and down the seas, to behold again the vision of far-off intimate hills that lift their orchards high above the fields facing the sunlight, and for a while again to speak with the souls of old. But about the dawn dreams twitter and arise, and circling thrice around the Happy Isles set out again to find the world of men, then follow the souls of the sailors, as, at evening, with slow stroke of stately wings the heron follows behind the flight of multitudinous rooks; but the souls ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... two-winged doorway slow doth close. The birds begin to twitter and to sing. All nature waketh and on pointed toes Young truant Morpheus stealeth gently in. Oh, happiness of reinstalled repose, And balsam for thy cold and sweated skin! 'Twas worse than all the nightmares, blessed wight; This vigil ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... a rustling overhead in the feathery branches of the palms in the cobwebby spaces among the leaves that give the bats of Africa a home. A twitter of angry bat voices, shrill squeaks and flutters in the darkness. Then stillness—of a sudden—and the ground trembles with a far-off throbbing as a convoy of motor lorries approaching thunders past us, rumbling ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... ungreased. Yet it was not unpleasing, this queer shrill, recurrent rhythm, the monotonous creak and splash of the oars, the mystery of feeling one's way in the blue gloom, through reed and water-lily beds, up this cliff-bound river, and far away the faint twitter—also recurrent ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... But he did not know it, neither the earl nor Lady Julia having said anything on the subject. "Of course we are going," said Mrs Eames, "and it was so very kind. But I've never been out to such a house for so many years, John, and I do feel in such a twitter. I dined there once, soon after we were married; but I never ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... least it seemed so to Sara, and nothing had ever been quite so beautiful to her as the things she saw as she stood on the table—her body half out of the skylight—the sparrows twittering with sunset softness on the slates. The sparrows always seemed to her to twitter with a sort of subdued softness just when ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the old, Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold— Far to the left he saw the huts of men, Half hid in mist that hung upon the fen; Before him swallows, gathering for the sea, Took their short flights, and twitter'd on the lea; And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done, And slowly blacken'd in the sickly sun; All these were sad in nature, or they took Sadness from him, the likeness of his look, And of his mind—he ponder'd for a while, ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... giving out his own notes without any regard for the others, but apparently the score had been written for them all, since the innumerable strains made one divine harmony. From the full-orbed song from the maple by my window, down to the faintest chirp and twitter, there was no discord; while from the fields beyond the village the whistle of the meadow-larks was so mellowed and softened by distance as to incline one to wonder whether their notes were real ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... likely to be up to notice it. So he lit his pipe and listened. There was still a light in her window; but David St. Clair did not come. Her window stood open, and Jamie listened hard to hear if she were crying. Shortly after midnight the birds in the square began to twitter, as if it were nearly dawn. Then they went to sleep again, ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... twitter to get rid of him, I suppose I was pretty abrupt and tactless. He began to get angry, and then by some unlucky chance his eye fell on that car. He recognized it, too, and, being in a savage mood, he began making fun of the doctor. "Old Goggle-eyes" he called him, and "Scatchy," and oh, the awfullest ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... he thought, as he went up to his sitting-room. "I wish I wasn't all of a twitter. I wish I ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... if no one says a word; Not a twitter from a bird, Nor a chatter comes your way, Call again ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... the song, like the twitter of sparrows. His voice echoed through the trees, the religious service of a human soul ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... yellow sand-dunes and winding creek bordered with brown grasses and patches of mallow or green rushes, and over all the arch of blue summer sky. One or two carriages rolled along the distant road as they sat there; but otherwise; the stillness was unbroken save by the twitter of birds in the woods behind them, the chirp of sand-peeps or the scream of gulls on the beach, and the soft ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... now ... there are those, I know, who have guessed my poor secret, and who wonder that I do not "console myself," in the silly phrase of the day. How could I? The twitter of the Hawaiian girls is like that of the beach-birds in my ears, after ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... of a spring afternoon diffused itself over all. The trees stood motionless without a murmur in their boughs. The sharp emerald leaves of the beeches drooped drowsily, as though lulled to sleep by the light, the warmth, and the silence. The twitter of birds sounded at rare intervals from the thickets, and only the cry of the water-fowls on the marshes and the somnolent hum of insects filled the air. Above the blue line of rails stretching in an endless chain of ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... tired of their endeavors to lure back the dancers, determined to join the excitement, and ceased playing. The leader laid down his violin, the pianist trailed up the key- board with a departing twitter and quit his stool. They all crossed the hall, headed for the crowd, some of them making ready to bet. As they approached the Bronco Kid, his lips thinned and slid apart slightly, while out of his heavy-lidded eyes there flared unreasoning rage. Stepping ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... natives themselves are not allowed to come in, and visitors only on production of a ticket costing twenty-four shillings, which admits to all the temples of Egypt; and, as it happens, there is no one but ourselves. The sparrows twitter overhead in the holes and crannies of the pillars, and the great grey and black crows wheel silently against the blue sky, throwing moving ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... the peace at my heart was the most entire I had ever felt. And he loosened my hands, and drew me to him and kissed me, saying "My love!" And as I felt—yes, actually felt—the pressure of his lips upon mine, and felt the spring shining upon me, and heard the very echo of the twitter of the birds, saw the light fall upon the water, and smelled the scent of the acacias, and saw the ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... glad we have come with a flitter and twitter Once more on the housetop to meet, to meet, to meet? Make haste little primroses, cowslips, and daisies, we're Longing your faces to greet, ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... eastern sky. All nature was stirring, refreshed with the balmy dew and coolness of the night. Far up in the higher branches of the Weymouth pines, the wrens were awake, calling to each other with tentative twitter, and pluming themselves the while for another ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... open forest: it is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here to rest in Scandinavian forest-solitude, and sought itself out a glade where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep: hence this stillness, as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a pine-tree moves: of what does the Southern summer dream here in the North, ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... forming it for nobler uses, and in opening the way for poetry which should be Italian in sentiment as well as in words. At the north of Italy the influence of the trouveres was felt in like manner. Everywhere the desire for expression was manifest. The spring had come, the young birds had begun to twitter, but no full song was yet heard. Love was the main theme of the poets, but it had few accents of sincerity; the common tone ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... evenings when I quite forget myself, when I'm one of the last two left in, and get all excited. There's a sort of hum in the air, and, as you go round the room, people at the tables start applauding. Why, if you didn't know about the inner workings of the thing, you'd be all of a twitter. ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... singing, singing, down the lanes and main road of the river-bank, were, however, infrequent; and the surest sign of his approach, before he came in sight, was the continuous, gossiping twitter I have already described. This habit of singing and twittering was not connected with amorous sentiments towards any sleek young female; Brighteye adopted it long before he was of an age to seek a ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... in letters of elephantine size, informing the public that the distinguished performer already mentioned, had kindly consented to act a principal part in the entertainment of the evening. No sooner was this announced than the whole city was in one hubbub of curiosity—one twitter of delight; and Mr. Cooper had so many friends who were all at once intent upon giving him their dollar at his benefit, that the house was crammed, and there was as great an overflow from every part of it as if the renowned master Betty ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... seconds after the echoes of the report died away there was perfect silence in the forest: not a leaf seemed to stir or a bird to twitter; even the very insects ceased their chirring, as though they were wondering what had happened. Then, almost as though at a given signal, the forest resounded with loud trumpetings of alarm and the crashing of heavy bodies through the undergrowth, as the rest of the unseen herd began to ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... itself in its green, gorgeous array; now that King Day shines in all his glory through the mist by day, and the moon and stars appear in their brilliancy in the evenings; now that, as if in harmony with the artistic rendering of Easter anthems by your choirs, the thrush and the blackbird twitter forth the disappearance of the foggy winter with its snow, sleet and wet; now that the flocks of fleecy sheep, which for the past four months have been in hiding and conspicuous by their absence, come forward again ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... hills. The bursting barn in the foreground, heaped with grain that fringed its eaves and bristled from its windows and doors until its unlovely bulk was hidden in trailing feathery outlines; the gentle flutter of wings and soothing twitter of swallows and jays around its open rafters, and the drifting shadows of a few circling crows above it; the drowsy song of bees on the wild mustard that half hid its walls with yellow bloom; the sound of faintly-trickling water in one of those old ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... boys and girls, with a very, very few farmer youth of marriageable age, and more rustic and seafaring elders long past it, all in the Sunday best which they had worn to the graduation exercises at the High School, where we took them mostly up. The womenkind were in a nervous twitter of talk and laughter, and the men tolerantly gay beyond their wont, "passing the time of day" with one another, and helping the more tumultuous sex to get settled in the overcrowded open car. They courteously made ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... she said with a laugh, "I have absolutely nowhere to go. The town bores me to tears. People read, sing, and twitter at the Azhoguins', but I cannot bear them lately. Your sister is shy, Miss Blagovo for some reason hates me. I don't like the theatre. What ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... account of her name, and it is a piece of good luck that she cooks extraordinarily well. There is also a maid, but we don't know her name, so we call her Magnolia. I'm really writing all this rot to get myself into the "twitter-twitter" mood. One of the characters in my new comedy talks like a character in a book by E. F. Benson, and I have to work myself up into a state of babbling fatuity before I can write ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... setting his jaw against the prospect, and calling himself an old fool, while his heart beat loudly, and then seemed to stop beating altogether. He had seen the dawn lighting the window chinks, heard the birds chirp and twitter, and the cocks crow, before he fell asleep again, and awoke tired but sane. Five weeks before he need bother, at his age an eternity! But that early morning panic had left its mark, had slightly fevered the will of one ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... twilight fell from the leaden sky, and the shadows began to skulk behind the bushes, and the birds gathered to their nests with sleepy twitter, she tripped over a little stone, fell weakly to the ground, and lay still. She had not the strength to get to ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... motion] Agitation — N. agitation, stir, tremor, shake, ripple, jog, jolt, jar, jerk, shock, succussion^, trepidation, quiver, quaver, dance; jactitation^, quassation^; shuffling &c v.; twitter, flicker, flutter. turbulence, perturbation; commotion, turmoil, disquiet; tumult, tumultuation^; hubbub, rout, bustle, fuss, racket, subsultus^, staggers, megrims, epilepsy, fits; carphology^, chorea, floccillation^, the jerks, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... leaving Mr. Granger's gamekeepers with a plethora of sovereigns and half-sovereigns in their corduroy pockets, and serious thoughts of the Holborough Savings Bank, and Mr. Granger's chief butler with views that soared as high as Consols. All the twitter and cheerful confusion of many voices in the rooms and corridors of the grand old house dwindled and died away, until Mr. Granger was left alone with his wife and daughter. He was not sorry to see his visitors depart, though he was a man who, after his own fashion, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... constantly engaged in weaving garlands there, and the swains keep such a piping on those familiar notes,—Amore, dolore, crudele, and miele. Poor little poets! they knew no other tunes. Do not now weak voices twitter from a hundred books, in unconscious imitation of ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... Oh! when the wheezing zephyr brought glad news Of your judicious appointment, no hearts who did peruse, Such a long-desiderated slice of good luck were sorry at, To a most prolific and polacious Poet-Laureate! For no poeta nascitur who is fitter To greet Royal progeny with melodious twitter. Seated on the resplendent cloud of official Elysium, Far away, far away from fuliginous busy hum You are now perched with phenomenal velocity On vertiginous pinnacle of poetic pomposity! Yet deign to cock thy indulgent eye at the petition Of one consumed by ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... ridges and peaks of distant mountains stood out sharply clear against the intense blue of the sky. There was great stillness everywhere,—a pause, as it seemed, in the mechanism of the universe. The twitter of a bird or the cry of some wild animal would have been a relief,—so Seaton felt, though ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... twig across a slanting beam of light, and flashed in it to and fro like a gem dropped from the sky. His minute round eye stared at the strange and tranquil creatures in the boat. After a while he sent out a thin twitter that sounded impertinent and funny in the solemn silence of the great wilderness; in the great silence ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... the boys went on along the side of the common toward the dense furze clump, Green hectoring, throwing stones at everything he saw, from the donkeys and geese to the yellow-hammers which flitted along the hedge, stopping now and then to twitter out their quaint little song about "a little bit o' bread and no cheese," and looking as much like canaries as they could as they perched upon ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... shelter she drew out a rug, spread it close to her best-loved tree, then sitting upon it leaned against the trunk, feet crossed and hands clasped loosely behind her head. The chirp of sparrows and twitter of small birds, the clear song of robin and the cat-bird's call fell after a while unheeding on her ears, and the drowsy hum of insects was lost in the dreaming that possessed her. From the garden of old-fashioned flowers some distance off the soft breeze flung ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... turning from left to right, he employed the side-stroke. From that, he went to the breast-stroke. Last of all, he floated, dove, swam under water so long that the girls began uneasily to fly back and forth, to twitter with alarm. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... was surprised with what I supposed to be the notes of a bird, under or upon the sill of a window. My impression was, that they somewhat resembled the notes of a wild duck in its nocturnal flight, and, at times, the twitter of a redbreast, in quick succession. To be satisfied on the subject, I carefully removed the shutter, and, to my surprise, found it was a garden snail, which, in drawing itself along the glass, had produced sounds similar to those elicited ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... dry country. When there was no wind, the silence of the nights was impressive, with no sound save the lapping of the water against the banks. Sometimes a bird in the trees above would start up with a twitter, then quiet down again. On occasions the air chambers in our boats would contract on cooling off, making a noise like the boom of a distant gun, every little sound being magnified by the utter ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... scene—the quiet so profound, broken only by the bell-like dropping of a fountain—and the twitter of birds, hung in gilded cages, among the blossoms, had an overpowering charm even to a man so blase as the General. He paused in astonishment, looking around with pleasant interest—for an instant, forgetful of the person he was seeking. ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... evening, but as an hour of morning it has few apologists. It is the early bird that catches the worm; but this should merely set one thinking before he thrusts out a foot into the cold morning, whether he may justly consider himself a bird or a worm. If no glad twitter rises to his lips in these early hours, he had best stay unpecked ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... his sweetest, his very best, and as the song was borne along on the bright morning air, and then died away, he became aware of a tender little note, a faint twitter which came from a branch immediately beneath him. He looked down, and, lo and behold, there, half concealed by spreading boughs, was a bird like himself, another Blackbird! This stranger Blackbird was very attractive-looking, ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker
... horses of the Asiatics grew restive, flocks of birds flew into the garden, and occupied all the trees, with noisy twitter. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... he became aware of a sound that was not the stir of leaves, nor the twitter of birds, nor the music of running waters, though all these were in his ears,—for this was altogether different; a distant sound that came and went, that swelled to a murmur, sank to a whisper, yet never wholly died ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... his long rangy book-shelves, he sensed with a very different feeling through his heavy oak door, the soft whirring swish of skirts and the breathy twitter of muffled voices. Faintly to his acute ears came the sound of his little daughter's temperish protest, "I won't! I won't!" and the White Linen Nurse's fervid pleading, "Oh, you must,—you must!" and ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... swallow, neighbor swallow, Starting on your autumn flight, Pause a moment at my window, Twitter softly your good-night; For the summer days are over, All your duties are well done, And the happy homes you builded Have ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... a hustle and confusion of noise. Clocks began to strike, doors began to slam, dogs began to bark, cocks began to crow and hens to cluck; a breeze sprang up outside and set the branches of the trees swaying and creaking; the doves began to coo upon the roofs, the swallows to twitter under the eaves, flies came out and buzzed about the window, mice squeaked in the wainscot and ran scampering along the rafters. The fountain in the garden leapt up sixty feet into the air, and the goldfish swam among the water-lily leaves; ants left their nests and foraged ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... are stretched forth below, Tattered by thronging mad torrents descending; Beneath them the naked rocks downward are bending, Still deeper, the wild shrubs and sparse herbage grow; But yonder the forests stand verdant in flora And birds are a'twitter ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... 'doorkeepers in the house of the Lord.' He knew what he was saying when he preferred his humble office to all honours among the godless. He was shut out by some unknown circumstances from external participation in the Temple rites, and longs to be even as one of the swallows or sparrows that twitter and flit round the sacred courts. No doubt to him faith was much more inseparably attached to form than it should be for us. No doubt place and ritual were more to him than they can permissibly be to those who have heard ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a sparrow, Rayther hear a robin twitter; Tho' they may net be thi marrow, May net fly ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... is this I hear of your fine charities, master Israel?" said Ben Aboo. "Ah, do not look surprised. There are little birds enough to twitter of such follies. So you are throwing away silver like bones to the dogs! Pity you've got too much of it, Israel ben Oliel; pity you've got too ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... The stream is flowing, The small birds twitter, The lake doth glitter, The green field sleeps in the sun; 5 The oldest and youngest Are at work with the strongest; The cattle are grazing, Their heads never raising; There are ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... replied the burly little man, with a look of mingled surprise and pity, "my name is not Thompson. It is Twitter— Samuel Twitter, of Twitter, Slime and—, but," he added, checking himself, under a sudden and rare impulse of prudence, "why do you ask my ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... did titter and twitter and giggle and struggle! It fanned its wings as furiously as a Zizz; it was as wild as a moon-moth in a net, or a bird you hold in your hand. And all the time, it was about to ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... cynical, half wistful, as though the decent honest days that were no more had had their merits after all. Raffles would plan a fresh enormity, or glory in the last, with the unmitigated enthusiasm of the artist. It was impossible to imagine one throb or twitter of compunction beneath those frankly egotistic and infectious transports. And yet the ghost of a dead remorse seemed still to visit him with the memory of his first felony, so that I had given the story up long before the night ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... peddler on his way through the village at home stirs all the women-folk to chattering about the latest news from the whole countryside. In the thicket beside us a chorus of feathered singers were all a-twitter, each trying to outdo his neighbour; but one saucy fellow piped the merriest tune of all, mingling in a delicious medley the sweetest notes of all the rest. Of a sudden, as I listened, there was a soft rustle in the undergrowth, and out from a clump of myrtles bounced ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... morning, when dawn was scarcely breaking, the swallow began to twitter, and Fido to pull the blankets. "Let us go, master—let us go," said the two companions, in their language, which Graceful understood by the gift of the fairies; "the tide is already rising on the beach, the birds are singing, the flies are humming, ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... The black flowers of the sedges are powdered with yellow pollen; and dark green sword-flags are beginning to spread their fans. But just across the road, on the topmost twigs of birch poles, swallows twitter in the tenderest tones to their loves. From the oaks in the meadows on that side titlarks mount above the highest bough and then descend, sing, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... Lizzie's bed, and looked so pretty in her sleep that Abby came three times to wake her, and three times went away again, unable to spoil so perfect a picture. At last, however, the dark eyes opened of their own accord, and Marie began to chirp and twitter, like a bird at daybreak in its nest; only instead of daybreak, it was eight o'clock in the morning, a most shocking hour for anybody to be getting up. But Abby had been in the habit of spoiling her sister, who had a theory that she was never able ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... more delicious to the rapidly invigorating boy, never was water fresher, sweeter, and cooler than that of which he partook. Then a good long hour's rest was taken as they all lay about listening to the hum of insects, the whistle, twitter, and shrieking of birds; and beneath it all, as it seemed, came the softened bass from ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... a kind of twitter ever since, for there seems something very formidable in the idea of appearing as an authoress ! I ever dreaded it, as it is a title which must raise more expectations than I have any chance of answering. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... provision depots. Outside of this, in any direction one chooses to go, the scenery is attractive and beautiful; the trees are tall and thick and abundant, meeting overhead, and enclosing cool, shady avenues, which seem to wind in an endless stretch through the forest shades. Birds twitter and carol sweetly as they flit unseen from twig to twig of the tall waving elms, and one would be apt to forget the existence of human beings, were it not for an occasional interruption of this peaceful monotony, in the way of a cozy cottage, whose gables ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... about how they were to commence hunting. They wanted to kill nothing but wild beasts. They did not notice the birds which hopped around them and perched on the boughs of the trees; they would have been sorry to hurt them, for they liked to listen to their twitter. It seemed as if the birds knew this; they showed no fear, but sang as if they were going to split their throats; the nightingales, however, trilled only from their craws, that their songs might be the sweeter. While they stood there consulting, the prince ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... I could follow, and light Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill, And cheep and twitter ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... of a cock and bull Must have a most uncommon skull. It chanced then on a winter day, But warm and bright and calm as May, The Birds conceiving a design To forestall sweet Saint Valentine, In many an orchard, copse and grove, Assembled on affairs of love, And with much twitter, and much chatter, Began to agitate the matter. At length a Bullfinch, who could boast More years and wisdom than the most, Entreated, opening wide his beak, A moment's liberty to speak; And silence ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... captive priestess, she alway Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands 130 Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry Amid their barbarous twitter! In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter! Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain That we and Waring meet again Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid All fire and shine, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... have no doubt that his detractors—who complain that his style is mere word-twisting, a mere inversion of the most ancient truisms—are actuated by the very basest jealousy. Let us listen, then, and be duly edified as he reads in a low, sweet voice, and the birds twitter about him ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... went out of the room with a little hysterical twitter like a scared bird, and the two men were left alone. Silence came over them again. Both men looked moodily ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Viceroy was enjoying a shoot on the Maharajah's estates. One evening, as they were dressing for dinner, there came through the stillness of the restful air the "twitter" of a tiger. Do many of my readers know what the "twitter" of a tiger is? It is a sound the Monarch of the Jungle makes and it is just like the twitter of a bird;—in fact, some declare it is only the twitter of a bird. Well, on this particular evening, the tiger must ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... into, or its location. How we were to get out did not appear, nor for the time being did this greatly concern us; and soon after supper the camp was wrapped in slumber, undisturbed by any coyote duet, or, on this occasion, even the twitter ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... all on such a day are the reveries that come and go over the heart, under the shade of a noble oak that lifts its crowned head to the clouds, while birds twitter love-songs among its branches, and lovers lie dreaming on the green ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... loquacious throng Flutter and twitter, prodigal of time, And little masters make a toy of song Till grave men weary of the sound ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... the craftsmen's hammers in the goldsmiths' workshops and on the walls of churches, the party-cries of armed factions in the narrow streets, the organ-roll of Dante's verse, the crackle of the fagots around Arnold of Brescia, the twitter of the swallows to which St. Francis preached, the laughter of the ladies listening on the hillside to the quips of the Decameron, while plague-struck Florence howled beneath them—all this and much ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... from the start. The young farmer's mind is on his work. We suspect he has capacities outside of his cornfield and yuca patch, but to this point in the record before us he gives no clue. He is a farmer, and nothing else. The bright-winged birds flit and gleam and twitter in the evergreen woods about him, but his hand is on the plough and his ear drinks in only the music of his panting team. From his window, looking eastward, he sees the advance beams of the sun flung across the savanna: he takes the hint, and hurries out to look ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the beach-comber. "Never heard of the parties. They're superstitious beggars, these Kanekas. You've heard of buying a thing 'for a song'? Well, I got my station for a whistle. They believe that spirits twitter and whistle, and you'll hardly get them to go out at night, even with a boiled potato in their hands, which they think good against ghosts, for fear of hearing the bogies. So I just went whistling, 'Bonny Dundee' at nights all round the location I fancied, and after a week of that, not ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... lips is the gibbering mirth of the corpse torn from its cerements, and erect, as though the last trump had sounded, and the dead had arisen. No fresh flowers bloom in these dreary spots; no merry birds twitter there; no streamlets lapse sweetly with musical murmurs beneath the waterflags or the drooping boughs of trees. See! the blighted and withered plants are like the deadly nightshade—true flowers of war, blooming, or trying to bloom, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... in the dark. You did make me jump. But there," she added, repentant of her unceremonious exclamation, "I don't know what possesses us all to-night. The least thing seems to make you jump. Mrs. Cooper's all of a twitter, and Laura—silly girl—is almost as bad. I suppose it's the weather being so quiet after yesterday's gale. For my own part I always do like a wind about. It seems company, particularly these long evenings if you're called on to go ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... might reach her heart; at times he made a rather formal call upon the entire Nesbit family, which he was obviously encouraged to repeat by the elders. But Morty was inclined to hide in the thicket of his sorrow and twitter his heart out to the cold stars. Tom Van Dorn pervaded the Nesbit home by day with his flowers and books and candy, and by night—as many nights a week as he could buy, beg or steal—by night he pervaded the Nesbit home ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... like the surreptitious midget you feel yourself to be, up those long and steep inclines of polished stone, watching the gloomy darkness of the narrow walls, the far-off pinpoint of light borne by the Bedouin who guides you, hear the twitter of the bats that have their dwelling in this monstrous gloom that man has made to shelter the thing whose ambition could never be embalmed, though that, of all qualities, should have been given here, in the land it dowered, a life perpetual. Now ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... stiller things than the stillness of a summer's noon such as this, a summer's noon in a broken woodland, with the deer asleep in the bracken, and the twitter of birds silent in the coppice, and hardly a leaf astir in the huge beeches that fling their cool shade over the grass. Afar off a gilded vane flares out above the grey Jacobean gables of Knoll, the chime of a village clock falls faintly on the ear, ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green |
