"Blackbird" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The cow-blackbird, it is true, executes a certain guttural performance with its throat—though apparently emanating from a gastric source—which some ornithologists dignify by the name of "song." But it is safe to affirm that ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... Where the blackbird sings the latest, Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest, Where the nestlings chirp and flee, That's the way ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... holding fast, ran by her side, keeping pace with her flying Indian pony. How beautiful and fresh the picture of her remained in his memory!—the soft white dress she wore, her black hair streaming over her shoulders, her dark eyes flashing delight, her merry laugh rivalling the trill of the blackbird which flew over their heads chattering for very joy. Before him lay the pretty brook with its rustic bridge reflecting itself in the clear water as in a mirror. That path along the bank led down to the willows where the big mossy stones lay in the stream and the silvery salmon and speckled trout ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... whistle of peculiar volume, mellowness, and flexibility was heard. The whistler was trilling 'Come lasses and lads' in tones as delightful as a blackbird's. ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... whose face Was sweet with thought and proud with race, And bright with joy at riding there. She was as good as blowing air, But shy and difficult to know. The kittens in the barley-mow, The setter's toothless puppies sprawling, The blackbird in the apple calling, All knew her spirit more than we. So delicate these maidens be In loving ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... How do the Blackbird and Thrassel with their melodious voices bid welcome to the cheerful Spring, and in their fixed months warble forth such ditties as no art or instrument can ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... his breakfast, never served to time, Mr. Lashmar drummed upon the window-pane, and seemed to watch a blackbird lunching with much gusto about the moist lawn of Alverholme Vicarage. But his gaze was absent and worried. The countenance of the reverend gentleman rarely wore any other expression, for he took to heart all human miseries and follies, and lived ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... different song-birds in the garden, and one robin. I loved the robin best of all. His song was not so beautiful as the blackbird's or so mellow as the thrush's; but they hid and ran away from me, whilst the robin sought me out and stayed with me and sang me, all to myself, a little, tiny, gentle song of which I never grew tired. If I stayed quite still, he came so close he almost touched me; but if I moved towards ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... Samson, "de rale sugar-corn, de blackbird gits. None of dem white gulls and pigeons gits dat corn. A white feller ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... What doth the blackbird in the boughs Sing all day to his nested spouse? What but the song of his old Mother-Earth, In her mighty humour of lust and mirth? 'Love and God's will go wing and wing, And as for death, is there any such thing?'— ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... waiting in that rainbow-glory fifty years ago for it to go on and say what it may of what followed. She comes out on the terrace through the high middle-window that opens on it, and now she stands in the blinding gleam, shading her eyes with her hand. It is late in July, and one may listen for a blackbird's note in vain. That song in the ash that drips a diamond-shower on the soaked lawn, whenever the wind breathes, may still be a thrush; his last song, perhaps, about his second family, before he retires for the season. The year we thought ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... wild bird. And yet imprisonment has brought out the excellencies of many men. I have learned many things in the lonely hours there. I have learned that hope is a divinity; I have learned that a surplus of determination conquers every weakness; I have learned that you cannot mate a white dove to a blackbird; I have learned that vengeance is for God and not for man; I have learned that there are some things better than a picture on a church window; I have learned that the American people, and especially the good people of Minnesota, do not strip a fallen foe; I have learned ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... that the whole bird world is ruled by the signs that the trees hang out.' And she asked me what they were, and I told her to notice next spring that as soon as the birch-leaves opened, the pheasant began to crow and the thrush to sing and the blackbird to whistle; and when the oak-leaves looked their reddest, and not a day before, the whole tribe of finches ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... man I want to know it; if I ain't, it's time my friends knowed it. Anyhow, I'm man enough to work out with some of that gang. Most of them have put it over me one time or another; Sinclair pasted me like a blackbird only the other day. They all say I'm nothing but a damned tramp. You say I have done ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... less than a blackbird: the bill is black; the lower mandible yellowish at the base: head, back, wings, and tail, blue tinged with green: the under parts of the body white, extending round the middle of the neck like a collar: ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... I'd like to have some of his white fur for my nest," remarked Rusty the Blackbird. "I think I'll ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... wanted to talk and he could be over-urged to talk if the right pressure was brought to bear. Janice came away, leaving the eagerly curious pecking at him—the one white blackbird in the flock. ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... birds with part of their sustenance, and the principal of these are two well known songsters, the blackbird and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... w'en you go along wit' me, For I show you all aroun' dere, until you 're knowin' how I come so moche to brag—me—on de Riviere des Prairies. It 's a cole October mornin', an' de maple leaf is change Ev'ry color you can t'ink of, from de purple to de green; On de shore de crowd of blackbird, an' de crow begin' arrange For de journey dey be takin' w'en ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... our approach from under the tall tree Of his delight, shaking his forelocks long In wanton play; while, overhead, his hymn, As 'twere to herald the approach of night, With all her gathering stars, the blackbird sang Melodiously, mellifluously, and Earth Look'd up, reflecting back the smiles of Heaven! For Innocence, o'er hill and dale again Seem'd to have spread her mantle, and the voice Of all but joy in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... should now awake, T'awayt the comming of your ioyous make,% And hearken to the birds love-learned song, The deawy leaves among! For they of ioy and pleasance to you sing, 90 That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring. [* Mavis, song-thrush.] [** Descant, variation.] [@ Ouzell, blackbird.] [$ Ruddock, redbreast.] [% ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... the shade, resting my burning feet and achiag bones, and I watched Nielsen as he whistled over the camp chores. Then I heard the sweet song of a meadow lark, and after that the melodious deep note of a swamp blackbird. These birds evidently were traveling north and had ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... call some hundreds of yards ahead of them was heard, and after a time it was repeated. Then the blackbird's notes rang out from behind, and then another note came from the front. Ere the voice behind could again reply a solemn "Hoot-a-hoot-a-hoo" came from ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... the squirrel up there in the oak and the rabbit under the hedge. I listen as of old to the chirp of the grasshopper in the stubble, to the hum of the bees among the foxgloves, to the song of the blackbird on the hawthorn, and, best of all—yes, best of all for brain unsteadied and nerve unstrung—I see the cows ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... and is near the last resting-place of Hetty Hutter and her mother. And far to the southwest lies a long, low, curving beach jutting sickle-shape into the lake. As a favored haunt of muskrats, it was once called Muskrat Cove, and now Blackbird Bay. Just beyond lies Fenimore, the home of Cooper's ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... sort of recklessness with her father, a complete, chosen carelessness that had the laugh of ridicule in it. He loved to make her voice go high and shouting and defiant with laughter. The baby was dark-skinned and dark-haired, like the mother, and had hazel eyes. Brangwen called him the blackbird. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... they do not leave us at the first cold blast, to find a warmer climate; the least we can do is to recompense them by feeding them when the weather is too severe! Several know me already, and are very tame. There is a blackbird in particular, and a blue tomtit, that are both ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... rose one day, having a mind to see it. 'Twas on a clear Spring morning, and a blackbird Awoke me with his warbling near my window: My dream had fashioned this into a song That some one with grey eyes was singing me, And which had drawn me so into myself That all the other shapes of sleep were gone: ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... on, ye feathered songsters, Lift your praises loud and high, Merry lark, and thrush, and blackbird, In the grove and in the sky Make your music, shame our dumbness, Till we ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney
... child, at which the broken parts came together and were made whole; that once on receiving his food in a basket, let down to his otherwise inaccessible cell, the devil vainly tried to vex him by breaking the rope; that once Satan, assuming the form of a blackbird, nearly blinded him by the flapping of his wings; that once, too, the same tempter appeared as a beautiful Roman girl, to whose fascinations, in his youth, St. Benedict had been sensible, and from which he now hardly escaped by rolling himself ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... of woodpeckers; on the habits of the snipe; on the whitethroat; on the moulting of the snipes; on the moulting of the Anatidae; on the finding of new mates by magpies; on the pairing of a blackbird and thrush; on pied ravens; on the guillemots; on the colours of the tits; on ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... me give one. I had had some experience in blackbirding before I went pearling in the Paumotus. Otoo and I were in Samoa—we really were on the beach and hard aground—when my chance came to go as recruiter on a blackbird brig. Otoo signed on before the mast; and for the next half-dozen years, in as many ships, we knocked about the wildest portions of Melanesia. Otoo saw to it that he always pulled stroke-oar in my boat. ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... creation of women. If they envy her they will hate her also; and I doubt if she will have many more friends among the fisher-lads. They will look upon her as a renegade to her order. The old women will suspect her, and the old men look askance at her with disapproving eyes. The girl will be a white blackbird; the properly colored birds will drive her out of the colony or pick her to death. It ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... the boy beneath them.[8] The life of earth is rarely thought of as distinct from the life of man. It is so in a few late epigrams. The complaint of the cicala, torn away by shepherds from its harmless green life of song and dew among the leaves, and the poem bidding the blackbird leave the dangerous oak, where, with its breast against a spray, it pours out its clear music,[9] are probably of Roman date; another of uncertain period but of great beauty, an epitaph on an old ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... I do?" asked the cook, in perplexity; "the King has ordered a blackbird pie, and your birds are the ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... himself, with his sensitive nature—who can fathom the profound depths of his soul now stirred by two such entrancing sights as the high-smoking blackbird-pie won by his own prowess, and the little monarch for whose sake all this was brought about? The delicious smell excites him like draughts of rich old wine, and all the soul within him bubbles up exultingly, and he improvises on the moment. Joyfully he sings in melodious ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... house, "go on. I will hear you out." And then, seeing him stand before her with so much obvious disrelish to the task, she was suddenly overcome with laughter. Julia's laugh was a thing to ravish lovers; she rolled her mirthful descant with the freedom and the melody of a blackbird's song upon the river, and repeated by the echoes of the farther bank. It seemed a thing in its own place and a sound native to the open air. There was only one creature who heard it without joy, and that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... personality; and it is certain that he has told a very entertaining story. There are in this volume battle, murder, sudden death, outlaws, cowboys, bears, American politics, and the author's views on the English blackbird, all handsomely illustrated, and the price is only what you would (or would not) pay for a stall to see a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... herself. Kitty, further, had a ridiculous way of eating, which Miss Abingdon could not approve. She ate mere morsels of everything and talked the whole time, very often with the air of a gourmet; and she would lay down her knife and fork, after a meal such as a healthy blackbird might have enjoyed, as though she had finished some aldermanic feast. She accepted a glass of Miss Abingdon's very special claret and never even touched it; and later, in one of the pauses of her elaborate trifling ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... the sky, Turtle-doves and linnets, fly! Blackbird, thrush, and chaffinch gay, Hither, hither, haste away! One and all come help me, quick! Haste ye, haste ye!—pick, ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... examination, that it is perfectly innocuous. A neighbouring yeoman (to whom I am indebted for some good hints) killed and opened a female viper about the 27th May: he found her filled with a chain of eleven eggs, about the size of those of a blackbird; but none of them were advanced so far towards a state of maturity as to contain any rudiments of young. Though they are oviparous, yet they are viviparous also, hatching their young within their bellies, and then bringing them forth. Whereas snakes lay chains of eggs every summer ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... nothing—nothing, save the common noises of the wood, the angry chatter of a disturbed blackbird as it flew low into hiding, or the harsh notes of a flock of starlings as they rose from the meadow. The hum of bees filled the air, and the August flies buzzed about his sweating brow, for he had lost his cap. But behind him—nothing. Already the stillness ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... his counting-house Counting out his money, The Queen was in the parlour Eating bread and honey, The maid was in the garden Hanging out the clothes, When by came a blackbird And ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... is both tender and graceful. Probably her best song is the setting of W.E. Henley's fine poem, "Dark is the Night." It is of the "Erl-King" style, but highly original and tremendously fierce and eerie. The same poet's "Western Wind" is given a setting contrastingly dainty and serene. "The Blackbird" is delicious and quite unhackneyed. "A Secret" is bizarre, and "Empress of the Night" is brilliant. With the exception of a certain excess of dissonance for a love-song, "Wilt Thou Be My Dearie?" is perfect with amorous tenderness. "Just for This!" is a delightful ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... of stirring shadow. Here close beside a red and black candle a man is driving nails into a shoe. Two children stretch their hands toward the hearth. A blackbird sleeps in its wicker cage. Water is boiling in the smoky earthenware pot from which rises a disagreeable soupy smell which mingles with that of tanner's bark and leather. A crouching dog gazes ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... the dreamy murmur of waters lost in deepest woods, and all the fairy echoes whispering when the leaves are motionless in the noonday heat; then followed notes, cool and soft as the drip of summer showers on the parched grass, and then the song of the blackbird sounding as clearly as it sounds in long silent spaces of the evening, and then in one sweet jocund burst the multitudinous voices that hail the breaking of the morn. And the lark, singing and soaring above the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... moulded into more than mortal beauty. A bright ray of the setting sun streamed full upon that face, now reposing in the awful but hallowed calm which is sometimes diffused around the bed of death. The sacred stillness was only broken by the evening song of the blackbird and the distant lowing of the cattle—sounds which had often brought pleasure to that heart, now insensible to all human emotion. All nature shone forth in gaiety and splendour, but the eye and the ear were alike closed against all earthly objects. Yet ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... figure was not inferior in height to the old one's, but his shoulders were narrower, his features less broad and full, and his hair and beard had the glossy raven hue of the blackbird's plumage. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... scorn the mounting wings, The happy heights of souls serene, I wander where the blackbird sings, And over bubbling, shadowy springs, The beech-leaves cluster, young ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... wild, Shall to the skies aspire; The gowdspink, music's gayest child, Shall sweetly join the choir: The blackbird strong, the lintwhite clear, The mavis mild and mellow; The robin pensive autumn cheer, In ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and if you hear three little twits like a blackbird's, only louder, you can answer, for it ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... and the Queen were riding Upon a Summer's day, And a Blackbird flew above them, To hear what ...
— Marigold Garden • Kate Greenaway
... of our British birds, the sole speaker occasionally drops into English, or I should never have understood what was going on. He may be a blackbird or thrush, but I doubt it, because I know all their remarks, while his are new to me. If A.A.M. heard them he would probably tell me they were those of a "Blackman's Warbler," and I should have believed him—once. Hardly now, after he has so airily ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... this is also booted to the toes. the flesh of this is preferable to either of the others and that of the breast is as white as the pheasant of the Atlantic coast.the redish brown pheasant has been previously discribed.- The Crow raven and Large Blackbird are the same as those of our country only that the crow is here much smaller yet it's note is the same. I observe no difference either between the hawks of this coast and those of the Atlantic. I have observed the large brown hawk, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... twinkled the delicate bloom of blue-eyed grass. Never in all this world was our Big Creek lovelier. It went slipping, and whispering, and lipping, and lapping over the stones, tugging at the rushes and grasses as it washed their feet; everything beside it was in masses of bloom, a blackbird was gleaming and preening on every stone, as it plumed after its bath. Oh there's no use to try—it was just SPRING when it ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... more familiar name of Crow Blackbird this fine but unpopular bird is known, unpopular among the farmers for his depredations in their cornfields, though the good he does in ridding the soil, even at the harvest season, of noxious insects and grubs should be set ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... his trussed and helpless plight, Jack Ryder grinned. He moved his head slightly. "That blackbird of ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... low wind may lift her hair, Motionless in lip and limb; E'en the fearful mouse may skim O'er the window-sill, nor stir From the crumb at sight of her; Through the lattice unheard float Summer blackbird's evening note;— E'en the sullen foe would bless That ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... the pantry, eating bread and honey The maid was in the garden, hanging out the clothes; There came a little blackbird and peck'd ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... too. And 'tis effect we have upon another. The birds had taken home their worm-cheer to the little ones in the nests, and were singing their after-supper songs, very sweetly but drowsily. 'Twas too late in the year for the Nightingale,—that I knew,—but the jolly Blackbird was in full feather and voice; and presently there swept by me a great Owl, going home to feast, I will be bound, in his hollow tree, and with nothing less than a Field Mouse for his supper, the rascal. 'Twas a wicked imagining, but ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... already written his "Tancredi" and the opera buffa, "The Italians in Algiers." His best work (besides "William Tell") was "The Barber of Seville." Other works are "Cinderella" (La Cenerentola), "The Thieving Blackbird" (La Gazza Ladra), "Moses," and "The Lady of the Lake." These operas were mostly made up of parts of others that were failures, a la Hasse. An engagement being offered him in London, he went there with his wife, and in one season ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... hardships, and adventures of Marina, Celadyne, Redmond, Fida, Philocel, Aletheia, Metanoia, and Amintas do not hold the reader from delight in descriptions of the blackbird and dove calling from the dewy branches; crystal streams lisping through banks purple with violets, rosy with eglantine, or sweet with wild thyme; thickets where the rabbits hide; sequestered nooks ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... perfectness. Not their modes of corruption, disease, or death. Not even, always, their genesis, in the more or less blundering beginnings of it; not even their modes of nourishment, if destructive; you must not stuff a blackbird pulling up a worm, nor exhibit in a glass case ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... attitude and gait would at times resemble the movements of a cock pheasant: now stealing along for a few yards, listening for the slightest sound of any animal stirring in the underwood; now standing on tiptoe for a time, with bated breath. Did a blackbird—that dusky sentinel of the woods—utter her characteristic note of warning, he would whisper, "Hark!" Then, after due deliberation, he would add, "'Tis a fox!" or, "There's a fox in the grove," and then he would steal gently up ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... attack, were to mount with the children to the rooms above, while my husband and his men were to make good their defence as long as possible against the enemy. Since I had shown my sportsmanship by bringing down accidentally a blackbird on the wing, I felt as if I could do some execution with my little pistols, which were regularly placed beside my pillow at night; and I was fully resolved to use them, if necessity required. I do not remember to have felt the slightest ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... or prairie ... with flights and songs and screams that answer those of the wild pigeon and high-hold and orchard-oriole and coot and surf-duck and red-shouldered-hawk and fish-hawk and white ibis and Indian-hen and cat-owl and water-pheasant and qua-bird and pied-sheldrake and blackbird and mockingbird and buzzard and condor and night-heron and eagle. To him the hereditary countenance descends both mother's and father's. To him enter the essences of the real things and past and present ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... of a bird awoke her. She recognized at once the sweet, shrill notes of a blackbird. Day was breaking. She began to shake, for she was chilled to the bone. The dampness of the night had made her clothes as wet as though she had been ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... the woodland That hangs upon the hill; Hark! the cock is tuning His morning clarion shrill; And hurriedly awaking From his nest amid the spray, Cheerily now, the blackbird, Whistling, greets the day. For be it ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Peacock butterfly spread its brown velvet and gorgeously eyed wings to the sun's warmth; a blackbird with brilliant yellow bill stood astride a peach twig and poured out a bubbling and incessant melody full of fluted grace notes. And on the grass oval a kitten frisked with the ghosts of last month's dandelions, racing ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... who claimed the crow would eat animal food in any form, and might not be rightly classified as a grain-eating bird, Prof. Stearns said the crow was thus classified by reason of the structure of its crop being similar to that of the finches, the blackbird, the sparrows, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... reigns among the common people, is this: you may pass through the whole South of France, as well as the county of Nice, where there is no want of groves, woods, and plantations, without hearing the song of blackbird, thrush, linnet, gold-finch, or any other bird whatsoever. All is silent and solitary. The poor birds are destroyed, or driven for refuge, into other countries, by the savage persecution of the people, who spare no pains to kill, and catch them for their own subsistence. Scarce ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... George Sand was ill, and this exasperated Musset. He was annoyed, and declared that a woman out of sorts was very trying. There are good reasons for believing that he had found her very trying for some time. He was very elegant and she a learned "white blackbird." He was capricious and she a placid, steady bourgeois woman, very hard-working and very regular in the midst of her irregularity. He used to call her "personified boredom, the dreamer, the silly ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... Blackbird was by this time prevailed on to sing, and burst out as melodious as ever, while all heads were cocked on one side ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... palace, and the grotesque animals carven on the balustrade; the green flicker of lizards on the drowsy garden-wall; the old-world sun-dial and the grotto and the marble fountain, and the cool green gloom of the cypress-grove with its delicious dapple of shadows. An invisible blackbird fluted overhead. He walked along the great walk under the stone eyes of sculptured gods, and looked out upon the hot landscape taking its siesta under the ardent blue sky—the green sunlit hills, the white nestling villas, the gray olive-trees. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... their knees. Yet their emotion never impressed me for an instant, for this reason, that it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in any sort of symbolic sacrifice. Men (I felt) might fast forty days for the sake of hearing a blackbird sing. Men might go through fire to find a cowslip. Yet these lovers of beauty could not even keep sober for the blackbird. They would not go through common Christian marriage by way of recompense ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... gaze a ruby, or what appeared to be a ruby, of such size and so lovely a colour, that his eyes were dazzled when he looked at it. The gem, though roughly polished, was uncut, but its dimensions were those of a small blackbird's egg, it was of the purest pigeon-blood colour, without a flaw, and worn almost round, apparently by the action of water. Now, as it chanced, Leonard knew something of gems, although unhappily he was less acquainted with the peculiarities of the ruby ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... hear the lark's ecstatic gush From his clear ambush in the sky; A blackbird (if it's not a thrush) Sings from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... a bright morning in May. The white swans were sailing tranquilly to and fro over the silver basin, and the mavis, blackbird, and nightingale, which haunted the groves surrounding the castle and the town, were singing as if the daybreak were ushering in a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... forests,'" she cried, "'you must find your fun'—are those the words of the song, Margot?—Oh, look, look!" she pointed joyously to a blackbird on top the swaying maple outside her window. ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... fast lines of species had been obliterated and made as meaningless as the concededly evanescent shades of variety, trooping busily over the lawn and blackening the leafless China-trees. But they have a crony never seen by us. This is the crow-blackbird of the South, or jackdaw as it is wrongly called, otherwise known as the boat-tailed grackle, from his over-allowance of rudder that pulls him side-wise and ruins his dead-reckoning when a wind is on. His wife is a sober-looking lady in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... sometimes a greenfinch, or chaffinch, now and then a robin, in one place a shrike, perhaps another is a redstart. They are fly-fishing all of them, seizing insects from the sorrel tips and grass, as the kingfisher takes a roach from the water. A blackbird slips up into the oak and a dove descends in the corner by the chestnut tree. But these are not visible together, only one at a time and with intervals. The larger part of the life of the hedge is out of sight. All the thrush-fledglings, the young blackbirds, ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Spouter. "I heard my father say he wouldn't take four hundred dollars for Blackbird. And the other animals must be worth at least a hundred and fifty dollars apiece. You know they always had pretty good ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... employer's things as of her own. The full amount of her mischiefs often does not appear at once, as she is glib of tongue, adroit in apologies, and lies with as much alertness and as little thought of conscience as a blackbird chatters. It is difficult for people who have been trained from childhood in the school of verities,—who have been lectured for even the shadow of a prevarication, and shut up in disgrace for a lie, till truth becomes a habit of their souls,—it is very difficult ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... white with blossom; and you saw the horns, Through last year's fern, of the shy fallow-deer Who come at noon down to the water here. You saw the bright-eyed squirrels dart along Under the thorns on the green sward; and strong The blackbird whistled from the dingles near, And the weird chipping of the woodpecker Rang lonelily and sharp; the sky was fair, And a fresh breath of spring stirr'd everywhere. Merlin and Vivian stopp'd on the slope's brow, To gaze on the light sea of leaf and ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... frame with the mighty pulse of her engines, Slowly the boat ascended the swollen and broad Mississippi, Bank-full, sweeping on, with nearing masses of drift-wood, Daintily breathed about with hazes of silvery vapor, Where in his arrowy flight the twittering swallow alighted, And the belated blackbird paused on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... has put dust in my milk. Do you suppose I am going to drink coffee with ashes in it? Well, I am not surprised; no one can do two things at once. She wasn't thinking of the milk! a blackbird might have flown through the kitchen to-day and she wouldn't have seen it! how should she see the dust flying! and then it was my ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... inhabitant of the Namakagun. The Chippewas, at a hunting camp we passed yesterday, said they had been on the tracks of a moose, but lost them in high brush. Ducks and pigeons appear common. Among smaller birds are the blackbird, robin, catbird, red-headed woodpecker, kingfisher, kingbird, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... well that the boys should learn how to shoot. He insisted, however, that only one gun should be taken out at a time, to diminish the danger of accidents. After that the boys took out their guns by turns when they went to work of a morning, and many a dead blackbird soon ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... sounding nearer now, and at any moment the game might appear. Sir Nicholas shifted his position again a little, and simultaneously the scolding voice of a blackbird rang out in front, and he stopped again. At the same moment a hare, mad with fright, burst out of the cover, making straight for the shelter. Sir Nicholas' hands rose, steady now the crisis had come; ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... go before a faint light stole down to guide his way, and he reached the spot where the passage was roofed in with dead branches and twigs, and as he reached it, just faintly heard, came the shrill cry of a blackbird—Pink-pink-pink!—from somewhere ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... yet another outbreak of cheering, dispersed. Followed a silence in the darkness under the platform, broken only by the distant thudding bass of the roundabout's steam organ; and then between the boards there sounded a liquid chuckle, much like a blackbird's, and ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tendency in language is to put two words of this kind which express but one idea under a single accent, and when this has taken place, no one but the student of language any longer observes what the elements really mean. When the ordinary man talks of a "blackbird" it is certainly not present to his consciousness that he is talking of a black bird, unless for some reason conversation has been dwelling upon the colour rather than other characteristics ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... by my brother's sympathy, he fumbled in his pocket, and found a sheet of note-paper. Upon this he had written a quatrain that he proposed to read to us au clair de la lune. The lines were addressed: "To My Own Blackbird." ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... but she settled down very quiet-like with Aunty Biddy here, knowing yourselves to be going to Lawrence, and I told her stay as long as she had a mind. Wisha, she 'd an old apron on her in five minutes' time, an' took hold wit' the wash, and wint singing like a blackbird out in the yard at the line. 'Sit down, Aunty!' says she; 'you 're not so light-stepping as me, an' I 'll tell you all the news from home; an' I 'll get the dinner, too, when I 've done this,' says she. Wisha, but she's the good cook for such a young thing; 't ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... cars, toy pianos; but not one of their playthings was alive, like Piccola's birdling. They were as pleased as she, and Rose hunted about the house until she found a large wicker cage that belonged to a blackbird she once had. She gave the cage to Piccola, and the swallow seemed to make himself quite at home in it at once, and sat on the perch winking his bright eyes at the children. Rose had saved a bag of candies for Piccola, and when she went ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... their speedy dispersion. So beautiful, so tranquil, looked the old monastic fane, that none would have deemed its midnight rest had been broken by the impious rites of a foul troop. The choir, where the unearthly scream and the demon laughter had resounded, was now vocal with the melodies of the blackbird, the thrush, and other songsters of the grove. Bells of dew glittered upon the bushes rooted in the walls, and upon the ivy-grown pillars; and gemming the countless spiders' webs stretched from bough to bough, showed they were all unbroken. No traces were visible on the sod where the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Were blackbird's nests and thrush's, Soon to be hidden In leaves on green leaves thickening, Boughs over ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... sight; the shadows lengthen in the valleys, the sun withdraws, one by one, his rays from the darkening foliage, the silence deepens every minute. You look behind you; the groups and clumps of trees assume colossal proportions; a blackbird at the summit of a tree bids farewell to the parting day, then silence covers all like a funeral pall. You can only hear now the last year's dead leaves crisping under foot, and far, far, away a waterfall filling the valley with its monotonous ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... September morning I well remember! Dame Nature was just donning her variegated gown of rustic-brown, while fitful airs from the realms of Jack Frost were painting the wild roses and forest leaves in cardinal hue, and the blackbird, thrush and musical nightingale flew low and sang hoarse, but continually, in their assemblages for migration to lands of sun ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... went downward through the bushes, which ever and again brushed against their sleeves, and twice over startled and arrested by a sudden dash as of an enemy; but it was nothing worse than a startled bird, blackbird or thrush, roused from its roosting sleep by the ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... similar bones in the hand of a man, wing of a bat, and fin of a porpoise, are related to similar conditions of life. No one supposes that the stripes on the whelp of a lion, or the spots on the young blackbird, are of any use to ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... Waving aloft their tow'ring branches proud, In borrow'd tinges from the eastern cloud, (Whence inspiration, pure as ever flow'd, And genuine transport in his bosom glow'd) His own shrill matin join'd the various notes Of Nature's music, from a thousand throats: The blackbird strove with emulation sweet, And Echo answer'd from her close retreat; The sporting white-throat on some twig's end borne, Pour'd hymns to freedom and the rising morn; Stopt in her song perchance the starting ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... Blackbird, Cuckoo, Thrush, Or any bird in song; And common leaves that hum all day, Without a throat ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... down a furze-lighted hill, And far as Leighlin Cross the fields are green and still; But once I hear the blackbird in Leighlin hedges call, The foolishness is on me, and ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... him first, jay and blackbird and thrush; They shriek at his coming and curse him, each one; With the clay of the vale on his pads and his brush, It's the Fallowfield fox and he's pretty near done; It's a couple of hours since a whip tally-ho'd him; Now the rookery's stooping to mob and to goad him; There's an earth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... to the spring-time chorus of the birds, lazily and listlessly watching a bough that bent and waved its fan of foliage across my face, or the twinkle of the tireless kingfisher flashing down-stream in loops of light, when a blackbird lit on a branch hard by my left hand, and, all unconscious of an audience, began to pour forth his rapture to ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... violet He listened to the chant of the birds, so joyous that it seemed impossible they sang in a world of sorrow. Hidden among the leaves, aloft in the beeches, the linnet sang with full-throated melody, and the blackbird and the thrush. In the distance a cuckoo called its mysterious note, and far away, like an echo, ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... replied. "Not yet! Maybe he isn't coming here this summer." Mr. Blackbird liked to tease little Mr. Chippy. And generally when he tried to, ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... verdant and lively of all the family of trees. Here a broad, rude stone steppeth over a lazy spring, oozing its way into grass and weeds; anon a fresh pathway divergeth, you know not whither. Meanwhile the wild blackbird startles across the way and singeth anew in some other shade. To have seen Fiammetta there, stepping in silk attire, like a flower, and the sunlight looking upon her betwixt the branches! I had not walked (in the body) with Romance before. Then suppose so much of a space cleared as maketh a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the soft voice, for gray mist was descending, Slow rose the bard and retired from the hill, The blackbird's mild notes with the thrush's were blending, Oft scream'd the plover her wild notes and shrill, Yet still from the hoary bard, Methought the sweet song I heard, Mix'd with instruction and blended with woe; And oft as I pass along, Chimes in mine ear his song, "Life's like the dew ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... from a young pig in a dish placed before Mr. Dinsmore, and the song of the blackbird from a pie Grandma Elsie ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... out with my team and my dray too, Wid a whip like a flail and such gaiters, Ohone! But the bullocks, as they eyed me, they seemed for to say too, “You may do your best, Paddy, we’re blest if we go.” “Gee whoa! Redman! come hither, Damper! Hoot, Magpie! Gee, Blackbird! Come hither, Whalebone!” ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... when the twilight's falling softly In the little green orchard; When the grey dew distills And every flower-cup fills; When the last blackbird says, 'What - what!' and goes her way - ssh! I have heard voices calling softly In the little ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... of the perching birds, includes all our common song-birds, such as the robin, bluebird, and blackbird, as well as a few ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... crime—that!—of your Parliamentary Italy! What harm had the poor things done that they should be turned out? You heard what that carabiniere said?—that they farmed half the plateau. And now look at that! I feel as I do when I see a blackbird's nest on the ground, that some beastly boy has been robbing and destroying. I want to get at ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and there, silvering the bushes, the elder offered its snowy tribute to the summer. All the insect youth were abroad, with their bright wings and glancing motion; and from the lower depths of the bushes the blackbird darted across, or higher and unseen the first cuckoo of the eve began its continuous and mellow note. All this cheeriness and gloss of life, which enamour us with the few bright days of the English summer, make the poetry in an angler's life, and convert every idler at heart into a moralist, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wren of softest note Builds its nest and warbles well; Here the blackbird strains his throat; Welcome, welcome ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... The ragworts and the wild geraniums made a yellow and purple fretwork all around him, and the colour gave him a sense of keen gladness. He faced round and entered the quivering gloom of the woods again, but his step on the gravel was sharp and firm. Every faculty of him seemed to have waked. A blackbird bugled cheerily in the underwood, and Ellington felt a strange thrill. He reached the Hall, and sat down to wait for the dressing-bell, but the hour before dinner, usually so heavy to him, went by briskly. During dinner he made no attempt at sustained ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... they eat?—To determine whether seeds would lose their vitality in passing through the digestive organs of birds, Kerner von Marilaun fed seeds of two hundred and fifty different species of plants to each of the following: blackbird, song thrush, robin, jackdaw, raven, nutcracker, goldfinch, titmouse, bullfinch, crossbill, pigeon, fowl, turkey, duck, and a few others; also to marmot, horse, ox, and pig, making five hundred and twenty separate experiments. As to the marmot, horse, ox, and pig, almost all the fruits and seeds ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... Grief with tender Joy is at strife, And Joy is wounded and nigh to death. Their quarrel is old,—as old as life,— "And Grief is right," the sad world saith. But, hark! from yonder wood The blackbird singeth gay, "Joy is in the right of it, And Grief is in the wrong of it, Whatever the world ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... two giants, who made a bet as to which of them could throw a stone farthest. The stakes were four deer. One giant, called Goli, carried a bird in his hand and threw it instead of the stone; so he won; then he returned to where the Blackbird and the Crow were standing. The Blackbird said to the Crow, "They will not do us any harm until they stoop to pick up a stone." But the Crow replied, "Maybe they bring the stone in their hands." So they flew away, ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... straddling wide forward-step, and his springy side-wise series of hops, and his impudent air, and his cunning way of canting his head to one side upon occasion, he reminds one of the American blackbird. But the sharp resemblances stop there. He is much bigger than the blackbird; and he lacks the blackbird's trim and slender and beautiful build and shapely beak; and of course his sober garb of gray and rusty black is a poor ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... out of the garden. He mounted his horse and allowed it to take him wherever it would, for he had no idea where the Wise Woman of the Wood lived, and one way was as good as another. Towards sundown, a blackbird hopped on to his horse's head and sang to him, and something in its song so reminded the King of Lady Whimsical's laughter that he put out his hand to caress it. No sooner did he touch it, however, than it turned into a squirrel, and scampered away from him ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... of a hen blackbird without any trace of feathers on its neck or back is reported by a Worcester ornithologist. The attempt on the part of this bird to follow our ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... park some rooks cawed fussily over the choice of their night quarters. Nearer, a blackbird piped an evening song. They sounded restless and plaintive to the lonely boy, and he hid his face in his hands, covering eyes and ears that he might see nothing, hear nothing. Then into his mind there surged a recollection of the dear old free ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... in a small importing store, going into partnership with one, Ah Yung. The firm ultimately became the great one of "Ah Chun and Ah Yung," which handled anything from India silks and ginseng to guano islands and blackbird brigs. In the meantime, Ah Chun hired out as cook. He was a good cook, and in three years he was the highest-paid chef in Honolulu. His career was assured, and he was a fool to abandon it, as Dantin, ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... name of the Thrush is "Mauvis." It is, of course, included in Professor Ansted's list, but with the Fieldfare, Redwing, and Blackbird, marked as only occurring in Guernsey and Sark. All these birds, however, are equally common in Alderney, Herm, and Jethou. There is also a specimen of each in ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... darkness o'er the world? Why should the heavenly constellations shine? Why should the weather evermore be fine? Why should this rolling ball go whirling round? Why should the noise of mirth and music sound? Why should the sparrow chirp, the blackbird sing, The mountains echo, and the valleys ring, With all that's cheerful, humorous, and glad, Now that my heart is smitten and ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... the time looking carefully round for nests. They very soon heard the harsh cry of the jay, who was letting all the inhabitants of the woodlands know that enemies were at hand, and away flew the birds. The blackbird was the first to take the alarm from the jay, and away he flew, crying, "Kink, kink, kink," as he started from his nest in a great ivy tod on an old pollard-tree. The lads soon found the nest, and peeped ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... Fosbrook so; and the boys tried to drag her on with a promise of a blackbird's nest; but she thought them unfeeling to such woeful distress, and first tried to reason with Bessie, then to soothe her, till at last, finding all in vain, she thought bed the only place for the child, and led her into the house, helped her, still shaking with sobs, to undress, ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the haw an' the rowan tree, Wild roses speck our thicket sae breery; Still, still will our walk in the greenwood be— O, Jeanie, there 's naething to fear ye! List when the blackbird o' singing grows weary, List when the beetle-bee's bugle comes near ye, Then come with fairy haste, Light foot, an' beating breast— O, Jeanie, there 's naething ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... back, Frivolity and Show. It is a day of Spring; I want to see my roses blow, And hear the blackbird sing. I wish to prune my apple-trees, And nail my peaches straight; Keep to the causeway, if you please— I've ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... angry scream and chatter at the approach of an enemy, darts the "ousel cock so black of hue, with orange-tawny bill." How dull a lawn would be without his pert movements when he comes down alternately with his russet wife. One blackbird with a broad white feather on each side of his tail haunted Elderfield for two years, but, alas! one spring day a spruce sable rival descended and captivated the faithless dame. They united, chased poor Mr. Whitetail over the high garden hedge, and ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... young man. The light wind bore into the chamber the sweet scents of the early summer, the chief of all of them being the savour of the new-cut grass, for about the wide meadows the carles and queens were awork at the beginning of hay harvest; and late as it was in the day, more than one blackbird was singing from the bushes of the castle pleasance. Ralph sighed for very pleasure of life before he had yet well remembered where he was or what had befallen of late; but as he stood at the window and gazed over the meadows, and the memory of all came back to him, he sighed once more ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... love' de blackbird' nes', De baby love' his mamy's bres', An' raggy-tag, aw spick-an'-span, De ladies loves de ladies' man. I loves to roll my eyes to de ladies! I loves to sympathize wid de ladies! As long as eveh I knows sugah f'om san' I's bound ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... south. At this cliff the Missouri is confined within a bed of two hundred yards; and about four miles to the south east is a large lick and salt spring of great strength. About three miles further is Blackbird creek on the north side, opposite to which, is an island and a prairie inclosing a small lake. Five miles beyond this we encamped on the south side, after making, in the course of the day, thirteen miles. The land on the north is a high rich plain. On the south it ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... a sleek blackbird that had alighted and now set to singing on the topmost twig of a lofty pear-tree near by; and with his first note Jane reappeared. And while we listened, unstirring, to that rich, undaunted voice, I had good opportunity to observe her, and not, I think, without ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... loudly, and at the same moment a huge blackbird flew out of the shrubberies behind them, and flashed across the open space toward the orchard on the other side. It whistled a long, shrill scream of warning. It was bigger by far ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the blackbird in the corn, The locust in the haying; And, like the fabled hunter's horn, Old ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... parlour with the six mahogany-backed, haircloth-seated chairs, the two narrow arm-chairs, the four ugly mirrors, and the little wire basket full of odds and ends of crockery and foreign coins—covered by the skin of a white blackbird, found on the farm and prepared for stuffing—he looked a very dapper, respectable, personable man. But my Aunt Jen would have none of his compliments on the neatness of the house or the air of ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... silence. A blackbird, evidently attracted by Mrs. Godfrey's clear, resonant voice, had perched on the stone parapet beside them and watched them in bright-eyed curiosity. Then, as Malcolm moved his arm, it flew off, with clucking notes of ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... moments she had Mary's long hair down, and was chattering like a blackbird, wreathing the pearls in and out, and saying a thousand pretty little nothings,—weaving grace and poetry upon the straight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... side, leaving the young women to loiter behind and pick mayflowers. Rhododendrons, orchids, and epigonitis rewarded their search in abundance. From the valley below came up the bleating of goats and the flute-like notes of the blackbird. ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... sometimes depart from their usual habit, and take up with the abandoned nest of some other species. The blue-jay now and then lays in an old crow's-nest or cuckoo's-nest. The crow-blackbird, seized with a fit of indolence, drops its eggs in the cavity of a decayed branch. I heard of a cuckoo that dispossessed a robin of its nest; of another that set a blue-jay adrift. Large, loose structures, like the nests of the osprey and certain ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... season of the year. Continuing our walk, we pass under the rose-crowned aqueduct, and strike into the green avenue that darkens beyond; listening to the distant water bubbling up from the deepest recesses, and to the fitful whistle of blackbird and thrush, as they flit athwart the moss-grown gravel, and perch momentarily on the heads of mutilated termini and statues; whilst the clipt trees vibrate under the wings of others extricating themselves on a piratical cruise against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... Chasing the clouds of the night away And bidding the dreams of the dawn depart Over the freshening April blue, Till the blossoms awake to welcome the May, And the world is made anew; And the blackbird sings on the dancing spray With eyes of glistening dew; "Happy, happy, happy day;" For he knows that his love is true; He knows that his love is true, my heart, He knows that his love ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... valuable teachers. From his happily idle boyhood to the close of his fruitful career, Lowell's loyalty to Cambridge and Harvard was unalterable. Other tastes changed after wider experience with the world. He even preferred, at last, the English blackbird to the American bobolink, but the Harvard Quinquennial Catalogue never lost its savor, and in the full tide of his social success in London he still thought that the society he had enjoyed at the Saturday Club was the best society ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... on where you are going," said Professor Jim Crow, for it was the old blackbird who had stopped the little ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... from somewhere among the purple shadows of the wood the rich, deep notes of a blackbird came to us, with pauses now and then, filled in with the rustle of leaves and the distant ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... heard her say that she loved birds dearly. Not wild songsters, however, who sing best in their native freedom of the skies, like the spotted-breasted, circle-carolling lark, the thicket-haunting blackbird, and the sweet-throated thrush.—It would have afforded her no pleasure to prison up one of these in a cage. But, a little fledgling that had never known what it was to roam at its own sweet will, and who, when ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... advanced towards the well known spot. The mellow voice of the thrush, and the clear pipe of the blackbird, diversified at intervals with the tender notes of the nightingale, formed the most agreable natural concert. The breast of Delia, framed for softness and melancholy, was filled with sensations responsive to the objects around her, and even the eternal ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... go a-walking to hear the linnets sing, The blackbird and the throstle a-praising Queen and King: It cheers the heart to hear them, to see the leaves unfold, The meadows covered over ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... nuisance. Of small birds there were introduced the house-sparrow, which is too prolific, and is hated by the farmers; the greenfinch, a pest; the bullfinch, a failure. The introduced skylark and the blackbird (alas! poor colonists) are not the joy of New Zealanders—the farmers hate them. The European settlers had the audacity to introduce also the most beautiful and beloved of all birds, our own perfect "Robin Redbreast," and they add want of manners to ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... garden of goodly gifts * And all manner blooms that in wreaths entwine; See the birdies warble on every bough * Make melodious music the finest fine. And each Pippet pipes[FN217] and each Curlew cries * And Blackbird and Turtle with voice of pine; Ring-dove and Culver, and eke Hazar, * And Kata calling on Quail vicine; So fill with the mere and the cups make bright * With bestest liquor, that boon benign;— This site and sources and scents I espy * ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... a jolly person, and he was full of jokes. He sat there in the top of the tall butternut tree, and pretended that he was Mister Blackbird, and he sang Mister Blackbird's song all the way through. Then he said "Meow!" and then he sang a song very much like Robert Robin's "Rain" song, then he said "Meow!" again, and laughed. It made Robert Robin very angry to have Mister Catbird ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... ruled the Arangi in bare legs, a loin cloth, and a sixpenny under-shirt, and ran cannibal blacks back and forth in the blackbird trade with an automatic strapped to his body waking and sleeping and with his head forfeit in scores of salt-water villages and bush strongholds, and who was esteemed the toughest skipper in the Solomons where only men who are tough may continue to live and esteem toughness, blinked with sudden ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... The blackbird sings upon the budding spray, I hear the clarion tones of chanticleer, And robins chirp about from break of day,— All pipe their carols to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the group seen so lately in sunlight assembled, 'Mid those walks over which the laburnum-bough trembled, And the deep-bosom'd lilac, emparadising The haunts where the blackbird and thrush flit and sing, The keenest eye could but have seen, and seen only, A circle of friends, minded not to leave lonely The bird on the bough, or the bee on the blossom; Conversing at ease in the garden's green bosom, Like those who, when Florence ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... baskets on their heads. These baskets contained live fowl. In one a large melancholy turkey meditated on his approaching fate: in another, two of lighter disposition swung their long necks about and viewed the scene. One of these baskets was as pretty as the blackbird pie of famous memory. In it sat eight chickens of an age to make their debut on the platter, all settled into a fluffy, soft-gray cushion, out of which their little heads and necks and half-raised wings peeped and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... disastrous, and she shrank from creating more trouble by her impetuosity. To hurt this man would be serious. No one could hurt Charles except himself; and even then he would always wake up in the morning singing and whistling like a happy boy or a blackbird in a ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... tiger moth's deep damasked wings" before the enraptured eyes of the noble poet. These two caterpillars and a few house-flies are all I saw, heard, or felt, by day or night, of the native fauna of England, except a few birds,—rooks, starlings, a blackbird, and the larks of Salisbury Plain just as they rose; for I lost sight of them almost immediately. I neither heard nor saw the nightingales, to my great regret. They had been singing at Oxford a short time before my visit ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Victor. "I hear a blackbird." He sorted his papers, for he was writing. "I will write an ode on your venture. What shall ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... found, however, that his particular mission in life is to purge his master's garden of all birds. This keeps him busy. As soon as he sees a blackbird on the lawn he is in full cry after it. When he gets to the place and finds the blackbird gone he pretends that he was going there anyhow; he gallops round in circles, rolls over once or twice, and then trots back again. "You didn't really ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne |
