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Bleat   Listen
Bleat

verb
(past & past part. bleated; pres. part. bleating)
1.
Talk whiningly.
2.
Cry plaintively.  Synonyms: baa, blat, blate.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Bleat" Quotes from Famous Books



... Shafto, doubled up in a cramped position on a machan, felt painfully stiff and was obliged to deny himself the comfort of a cigarette. There was no sound beyond the bleat of the victim—unwittingly summoning its executioner, the buzz of myriads of insects, the bass booming of frogs and the stealthy, mysterious movements of night birds and small animals. Then by degrees the moon waned and the stars faded—though ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... man can walk beneath the rainbow's arch, and not think of the power that placed it there! that he can stand on the tall cliff's peak, and not drink in the fullness of God's exceeding glory—that he can hear the small lambs bleat, or inhale the perfume of the hawthorn, without thankfulness to the great Author of all! Devoid of any thing like a settled creed, he still had many vague, yet sublime conceptions of the mightiness ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... gratitude, lay down with his front paws on the edge of her skirt with his head dropped down upon them, and took a nap—with one eye opening now and then to see that the goats were all right, and with his ears lifting to catch the meaning of every stray bleat ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... possible, live to execute them. She would make no attempts upon her life henceforward. Weeks and months passed on. The snow came, and lay long, and melted away. Beyond the garden wall she saw sprinklings of young grass among the dark heather; and now the bleat of a lamb, and now the scudding brood of the moor-fowl, told her that spring was come. Long lines of wild geese in the upper air, winging steadily northwards, indicated the advancing season. The whins within view burst into blossom; and the morning breeze which dried the dews wafted ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau

... he came, his wings apparently motionless, he gathered greater and greater speed, and shot like a rocket straight for the lambs. He seemed to have come and gone like a great shadow, and just one plaintive, agonized bleat marked his passing-and two little lambs were left where ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... ever. The priest himself, a lord and prince, will come out in his golden cope, and chant in the royal speech of that great empire which is no more. For ourselves, a mournful company, bereft of human speech, of the only speech that God would care to hear, what else can we do but low and bleat with the guileless friends who never scorn us, who, in winter-time will keep us warm in their stable, or cover us with their fleeces? We will live with dumb ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skillful. His house was mean, and he did not improve it: his care was of his grounds.... In time his expences brought clamours about him, that overpowered the lambs' bleat and the linnets' song; and his groves were haunted by beings very different from ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... young, Though I speak without a tongue. Nought but one thing can confound me, Many voices joining round me; Then I fret, and rave, and gabble, Like the labourers of Babel. Now I am a dog, or cow, I can bark, or I can low; I can bleat, or I can sing, Like the warblers of the spring. Let the lovesick bard complain, And I mourn the cruel pain; Let the happy swain rejoice, And I join my helping voice: Both are welcome, grief or joy, I with either sport and toy. Though ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... like a Zulu lover's kiss. The flying-fishes scatter; the chattering magpies scream, The topaz hummers dart and dip; their jewelled feathers gleam. The mud-grimed hippos bellow; the dove-eyed elands bleat, When the clank of steel disturbs them, and the beat of sandalled feet. The pirate crew is out to-night, no rest is for their souls, The blood of martyrs moves them; they charge a million tolls. On! On! Their souls must hasten. On! On! Their shapes must ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston

... devil's the gude of this eternal bleat? You'm allus snarlin' an' gnashin' your teeth 'gainst God, like a rat bitin' the stick ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... recesses of Panther Gorge; yes, time enough. But there was the fawn. The cry of the hound was repeated, more distinct this time. The mother instinctively bounded away a few paces. The fawn started up with an anxious bleat. The doe turned; she came back; she couldn't leave it. She bent over it, and licked it, and seemed to say, "Come, my child; we are pursued; we must go." She walked away toward the west, and the little thing skipped after her. It was slow going for ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... for a whole flock. Nor was Baba insensible of the fondness of her little mistress, since she would follow her wherever she went, would come and eat out of her hand, skip, and frisk round her, and would bleat most piteously whenever Flora was obliged to ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin

... dull society sinners, Who chatter and bleat and bore, Are sent to hear sermons From mystical Germans Who preach from ten to four: The amateur tenor, whose vocal villainies All desire to shirk, Shall, during off-hours, Exhibit his powers To Madame Tussaud's waxwork: The lady who dyes a chemical yellow, Or stains her ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... in the night the goats would bleat, babies cry, and the "boys" and "mammies" talked, sang, quarrelled, beat tom-toms, and squeezed mournful groans out of the accordion of civilization. One would have thought we had anchored off a busy village rather than at a place where, before that night, the inhabitants had been only the beasts ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... to be still, mother," said Mary, with a piteous, hopeless voice, like the bleat of a dying lamb; "but I did not think he could die! I never thought of that!—I never thought of it!—Oh! mother! mother! mother! oh! what shall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... the fox stole the little lamb, took it to the wolf, and went away. The wolf devoured it, but was not satisfied with one; he wanted the other as well, and went to get it. As, however, he did it so awkwardly, the mother of the little lamb heard him, and began to cry out terribly, and to bleat so that the farmer came running there. They found the wolf, and beat him so mercilessly, that he went to the fox limping and howling. "Thou hast misled me finely," said he; "I wanted to fetch the other lamb, and the country folks surprised me, and have beaten me to a jelly." ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... For the last sixty years the work done in literary and pictorial art has been immense; the soil has been worked along and across, in every direction; and for many a year nothing will come to us from France but the bleat ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... the Princess, "will not allow myself any more to play the shepherdess in my waking dreams. I have often soothed my thoughts with the quiet and innocence of pastoral employments, till I have in my chamber heard the winds whistle and the sheep bleat; sometimes freed the lamb entangled in the thicket, and sometimes with my crook encountered the wolf. I have a dress like that of the village maids, which I put on to help my imagination, and a pipe on which I play softly, and suppose myself ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson

... the headlong paths of the torrents. Mile after mile the traveller looks in vain for the smoke of one hut, for one human form wrapped in plaid, and listens in vain for the bark of a shepherd's dog or the bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile the only sound that indicates life is the faint cry of a bird of prey from some stormbeaten pinnacle of rock. The progress of civilisation, which has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with harvests or gay with apple ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... book, and candle,—candle, book, and bell,— Forward and backward, to curse Faustus to hell! Anon you shall hear a hog grunt, a calf bleat, and an ass bray, Because it ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... Room of the Great Knife was now cleared of all but Cap'n Bill, who was tied in his frame, and of Trot and the moaning Boolooroo, who lay hidden behind the benches, the goat gave a victorious bleat and stood in the doorway to face any enemy that might appear. Trot had been as surprised as anyone at this sudden change of conditions, but she was quick to take advantage of the opportunities it afforded. First she ran with her rope to the goat, ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum

... town shone in the subdued light,—the only bright spot in the landscape, which elsewhere seemed to be overlaid with a tint of dark, transparent gray. It was wonderfully silent. Not a bird twittered; no bleat of sheep or low of cattle was heard from the grassy fields; no shout of children, or evening hail from the returning boats of the fishers. Over all the land brooded an atmosphere of sleep, of serene, perpetual peace. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... very still in the little stuffy rose-coloured room and the street noises of New York came up to them—a loose chain flapping against the mud guard of a Taxi; the jolt of a flat-wheeled Eighth Avenue street car the roar of an L train; laughter; the bleat of a motor horn; a piano in the apartment next door, or upstairs ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... brush and knew it for red cedar. Patches of it grew thick on the high ridges, matted close for cover. As the travelers crept under it they heard the rustle of shoulder against shoulder, the moving click of horns, and the bleat of yearlings for their mothers. They had stumbled in the dark on the bedding-place of ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... sat on the deck and sang something very mournful in a falsetto voice; as he did so his profile was funnier than any caricature. Everybody looked at him and laughed, while he took not the slightest notice. He sang falsetto and then began singing tenor. My God, what a voice! It was like the bleat of a sheep or a calf. The Chinese remind me of good-natured tame animals, their pigtails are long and black like Natalya Mihailovna's. Apropos of tame animals, there's a tame fox cub living in the toilet-room. It sits and looks on as one washes. If it sees no one for ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... a horse upon the hillside, the low cry of a young cow, the bleat of a sheep, all added to his feeling of dread, until the sweat streamed down his body, as ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... least knowledge of their whereabouts or guessed that those responsible for the signal-fire were Colonel Gideon Ward and Eleazar Bodge. He followed behind, steeling his soul to meet those victims of the complicated plot. An astonished bleat from Hiram Look, who led the column, announced them. Colonel Ward was doubled before the fire, his long arms embracing his thin knees. Eleazar Bodge had just brought a fresh armful of driftwood to heap on ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... to himself he was on the lounge in Doctor Gordon's office. Emma was just disappearing with a pitcher in the direction of the kitchen, and he felt something cool on his forehead. He smelled aromatic salts, and heard a piteous little voice, like the bleat of a wounded lamb, in his ears, and kisses on his cheeks, and a soft hand rubbing his own. "Oh, darling," the little voice was saying, "oh, darling, are you much hurt? Are you? Please speak to me. It is Clemency. Oh, he is dead! He is dead!" Then came wild sobs, and Emma rushed into ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... now came to the end of our road; and alighting, we tied our steeds to the willows and alders scattered along the streamlet's bank. Each one (laden with the pic-nic baskets) then hastened onward, for the low deep bleat of the "Deer" was sounding in our ears. We directly came to a sawmill, with a high broken bank in front. Over this impediment our path lay, and over it must we go. Accordingly we did go; and, descending the other side, the "Deer" was before us. An amphitheatre of towering summits ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... gather about their shepherd and bleat for pasture and shelter. They answered his prayer for him. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... he alone were lord of the whole place. "Rammie, rammie, what have you done with your wool?" asked the wild geese, who rode by up in the air. "That I have sent to Drag's woollen mills in Norrkoeping," replied the ram with a long, drawn-out bleat. "Rammie, rammie, what have you done with your horns?" asked the geese. But any horns the rammie had never possessed, to his sorrow, and one couldn't offer him a greater insult than to ask after them. He ran ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... his new realm, a low bleat came to him from a sheltered hollow close by, and, looking down, he saw a small white ewe with a new-born lamb nursing under her flank. Here was his new realm peopled at once. Here were followers of his own kind. He stepped briskly down ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... and women in couples. I had the notion of going into the Luxembourg Gardens, where I saw all manner of phantasmagorias, that stirred my heart extraordinarily. Ellegies are bursting from me, I bleat and I coo; I am undergoing a metamorphosis, and am half lamb half turtle dove. Look at me a bit, I must have ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... boa at Prince's Skating Club'—that we may pass. 'Surely Jimmy will not break his mother's heart'—that appears to be irrelevant. 'If the lady who fainted on Brixton bus'—she does not interest me. 'Every day my heart longs—' Bleat, Watson—unmitigated bleat! Ah, this is a little more possible. Listen to this: 'Be patient. Will find some sure means of communications. Meanwhile, this column. G.' That is two days after Mrs. Warren's lodger arrived. It sounds plausible, does it not? The mysterious one could understand English, ...
— The Adventure of the Red Circle • Arthur Conan Doyle

... over the greyhounds' heads, hoping to scare them into submission, but they seemed to draw fresh stimulus from each report, and yelped and bounded faster. A little more and the end would be. Then we saw a touching sight. The hindmost fawn let out a feeble bleat of distress, and the mother, heeding, dropped back between. It looked like choosing death, for now she had not twenty feet of lead. I wanted Eaton to use his gun on the foremost hound, when something unexpected happened. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton

... he thought; and then he gave quite a start, for the goat beside him suddenly set up a loud bleat and began to advance farther beneath the glacier, its pattering hoofs on the stone ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... above with a strange spectral glare, and coiling about them like the trailing garments of an army of ghosts. From the unseen abysses all round came the growl and wash of wave on rock and shingle, from the cliff above Pegane came the frightened bleat of a lamb, and an invisible gull went squawking over their heads on his ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... moonlit and cloudless. A platform had been constructed in a comfortable and conveniently placed tree, and thereon crouched Mrs. Packletide and her paid companion, Miss Mebbin. A goat, gifted with a particularly persistent bleat, such as even a partially deaf tiger might be reasonably expected to hear on a still night, was tethered at the correct distance. With an accurately sighted rifle and a thumbnail pack of patience cards the sportswoman awaited ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... thoughts of Mr. Vyse, had seen round, through, over, and beyond Mr. Vyse, had weighed Mr. Vyse, grouped him, and finally dismissed him as having no possible bearing on the subject under discussion. That bleat of Tibby's infuriated Helen. But Helen was now down in the dining-room preparing a speech about political economy. At times her voice could be heard declaiming ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... presence. When people wish to speak of what belongs to everyone alike they sometimes say, "It's as free as the air you breathe"—this wonderful air, which we cannot see, but which helps to make the sky so blue, without which no fire could burn, no robin sing to its mate, no lamb bleat after its mother, no merry voices of boys and girls at play be heard. God has indeed made it free to us; but let us never forget that we are, as His creatures, dependent upon Him for every ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... striking his breast with his clenched, gauntleted hand as his eyes followed with the vivacity of actual sight the course of the march of the squadron of horse to the point of their triumphant vanishment. Despite the vehemence of the phrase the intonation was a very bleat of desperation. For it was a rich and rare opportunity thus wrested from him by an untoward fate. In all the chaotic chances of the Civil War he could hardly hope for its repetition. It was part of a crack body of regulars—Tolhurst's squadron—that he had contrived to drive into this trap, ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... in her green mantle blithe Nature arrays. And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes, While birds warble welcome in ilka green shaw; But to me ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway

... little fawn, not taller than a rabbit, was bounding about through the grass, running around the prostrate body of its mother, and uttering its tiny bleat. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... forcibly. The country people, those belonging to the Mornet, declare that at night one can hear talking going on in the sand, and also that two goats bleat, one with a strong, the other with a weak voice. Incredulous people declare that it is nothing but the screaming of the sea birds, which occasionally resembles bleatings, and occasionally human lamentations; but belated fishermen swear that they have met ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... The contrary is of course probable, but it is not demonstrated. If you have, the world wants you more than you want it. It not only a desire, but a passion, for every spark of genius that shows itself among us; there is not a bull-calf in our national pasture that can bleat a rhyme but it is ten to one, among his friends and no takers, that he is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... prospect of draggin' down a pay envelope reg'lar and being able to look the rent agent in the face. But say, what does he do but scrape his foot and wriggle around like he'd been asked to swallow a non-skid headache tablet. At last he gets out this bleat about how he'd always held his art to be too sacred a thing for him to commercialize and he really didn't know whether he could bring himself to drawin' ad. pictures or not. He'd have to have time to think ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

... twenty minutes; and Tinker's skill, sureness, and lightness of movement was the prettiest sight. Sometimes, with a snorting bleat, Billy would turn sharply at the end of his charge, and charge again; then the concentration on the matter in hand, which his father had so carefully cultivated in Tinker, proved a most fortunate possession: ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson

... definite than a fulmination against the Press, ending up with the remark that if we would notify our boat he would hand us any directions which he might think it proper to give us at the moment of starting. A second question from us failed to elicit any answer at all, save a plaintive bleat from his wife to the effect that her husband was in a very violent temper already, and that she hoped we would do nothing to make it worse. A third attempt, later in the day, provoked a terrific crash, and a subsequent message from the Central Exchange that Professor Challenger's receiver had ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... communication with a still more remote form of language. More recent periods derive new light from the Etruscan tombs and the Assyrian bricks. Linguists deem themselves in sight of something better than the "bow-wow" theory, and are no longer content to let the calf, the lamb and the child bleat in one and the same vocabulary of labials, and with no other rudiments than "ma" and "pa" "speed the soft intercourse from pole to pole." As yet, that part of mankind which knows not its right hand from its left is the only one possessed of a worldwide lingo. The flux that is to weld all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... and long, The eyes that smiled through lavish locks, Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song, And bleat of flocks. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... was of his grounds. When he came home from his walks, he might find his floor flooded by a shower through the broken roof; but could spare no money for its reparation. In time his expences brought clamours about him, that overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and his groves were haunted by beings very different from fawns and fairies. He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... supporting them in order to retain their support. And if in private he never hesitated to speak of the people in terms of contempt, on the platform he was a different man. Then he would assume a high-pitched voice, shrill, nasal, labored, solemn tones, a tremolo, a bleat, wide, sweeping, fluttering gestures like the beating ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... one else's case? Saving some one else's seat? Hearing with a solemn face People of importance bleat? No, I think we should not still Waste our time ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... led her pony back, mounted, and made a wide detour until she struck the trail above. Already she could hear the distant bleat of sheep which told her that the herd was entering the pass. Recklessly she urged her pony forward, galloping into the saddle between the peaks without regard to the roughness of the boulder-strewn path. A voice from above ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... answering now," was the stern answer. "To come here and prate to me of my dead father's dissoluteness and of an ancient quarrel between him and yours, to bleat of my trumped-up course of piracy and my own ways of life as a just cause why I may not wed your sister whilst the real consideration in your mind, the real spur to your hostility is not more than the matter of some few paltry pounds a year that I hinder you from pocketing. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... up those hands of innocence — go, scare your sheep together, The blundering, tripping tups that bleat behind the old bell-wether; And if they snuff the taint and break to find another pen, Tell them it's tar that glistens so, and daub ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... be some traveler seeking shelter." Rose-red hastened to unbar the door, and thought she saw a poor man standing in the darkness outside; but it was no such thing, only a bear, who poked his thick black head through the door. Rose-red screamed aloud and sprang back in terror, the lamb began to bleat, the dove flapped its wings, and Snow-white ran and hid behind her mother's bed. But the bear began to speak, and said: "Don't be afraid: I won't hurt you. I am half frozen, and only wish to warm myself a little." "My ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river shallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... the process. Her face shone from the effects of constant soaping, and was absolutely void of expression. From morn till night she rushed breathlessly from one duty to another, rated continuously by Mrs McNab's strident voice, with never so much as a bleat of protest. When waiting at table, she snored loudly from nervousness, and the big red fist trembled as she carried the dishes to and fro, but her face remained blankly expressionless as before. Margot smiled at her radiantly every time that they met, and ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the Boche, because those atrocities form part of their lives. They are not tucked away in reports of Commissions, and vaguely referred to as "too awful." Later on, perhaps, we shall be unreserved in our turn. But they do not talk of them with any babbling heat or bleat or make funny little appeals to a "public opinion" that, like the Boche, has gone underground. It occurs to me that this must be because every Frenchman has his place and his chance, direct or indirect, to diminish the ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling

... to die. And how Chad had nursed him and how the two had always been together ever since. Through the door of the kitchen, Chad could see the old mother with her crane and pots and cooking-pans; outside, he could hear the moo of the old brindle, the bleat of her calf, the nicker of a horse, one lusty sheep-call, and the hungry bellow of young cattle at the barn, where Tall Tom was feeding the stock. Presently Rube stamped in with a back log and Dolph ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... accustomed to regard as of a timid and inoffensive nature. When I set out at a brisk pace to walk to the house I have spoken of, in order to make some inquiries there, a few of the sheep that happened to be near began to bleat loudly, as if alarmed, and by and by they came hurrying after me, apparently in a great state of excitement. I did not mind them much, but presently a pair of horses, attracted by their bleatings, also seemed struck at my appearance, and ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... shot, Nell's scream, and a short, shrill bleat resounded at the same moment. Stas jumped towards Nell, and covering her with his own body, he aimed again ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... could also hear them at intervals, behind the copses that surrounded us, the males uttering a strange whistling sound, similar to that produced by blowing into the barrel of a gun, while this was occasionally replied to by the goat-like bleat of ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... for her carbine and drew it from its scabbard, but she was not quick enough to shoot it before it had jumped for the lamb it had been stalking. The coyote missed his prey, but the lamb, which had been feeding a little apart from the others, ran into the herd with a terrified bleat and the whole band fled on ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... together. Lift," cried the doctor; and as this was done the sheep gave a dismal bleat, and hung from the pole, with its head and legs out,—a ridiculous-looking object, which made Nic smile, but Brookes's face made the smile expand, so soured and puckered did it become, for the sheep was heavy, the farm buildings were some distance ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... had an amiable low, And some such strange bull leapt your fathers Cow, A got a Calfe in that same noble feat, Much like to you, for you haue iust his bleat. Enter ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... prayers he undressed and lay down, and at once, as soon as it was dark, there rose before his mind his dead father, his mother, his native village Lesopolye . . . the creak of wheels, the bleat of sheep, the church bells on bright summer mornings, the gypsies under the window—oh, how sweet to think of it! He remembered the priest of Lesopolye, Father Simeon—mild, gentle, kindly; he was a lean little man, while his son, a divinity student, ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... said Jack. "Sometimes it's you that goes loco, and threatens to step off your base, and then another time I feel myself side-slipping and have to lean on you to hold my own. That's just how it should be with partners—give and take, with never a bleat if ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... on all sides by huge mountain walls. The most sequestered, the most dreary place, I have yet seen. Here, though unwilling, the dusk of the December day having set in, I lay down the staff of wayfare. And as I enter the little village, I am greeted by the bleat of sheep and the low of the kine. The first villager I meet is an aged woman, who stands in her door before which is a pomegranate tree, telling her beads. She returns my salaam graciously, and invites me, saying, 'Be kind to tarry overnight.' But ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... green door of a mosque. As the hand of the city had reached out for Habib through the city gate, so now the prayer, throbbing like a tide across the pillared mystery of the court, reached out through the doorway in the blaze.... And he heard his own voice, strange in his mouth, shallow as a bleat: ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... the bitters of life with a placid smile. Nothing is on all hands completely blessed. A premature death carried off the celebrated Achilles; a protracted old age wore down Tithonus; and time perhaps may extend to me, what it shall deny to you. Around you a hundred flocks bleat, and Sicilian heifers low; for your use the mare, fit for the harness, neighs; wool doubly dipped in the African purple-dye, clothes you: on me undeceitful fate has bestowed a small country estate, and the slight inspiration of the Grecian muse, and ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... loitering around, Longing to share that mossy seat: Each Herring tries to sing what she has found That makes Life seem so sweet. Thus, with a grating and uncertain sound, They bleat, and ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll

... Waking the meadows white With hoar, the iron road Agleam with splintered light, And ice where water flowed: Till, when the low sun drank Those milky mists that cloak Hanger and hollied bank, The winter world awoke To hear the feeble bleat Of lambs on downland farms: A blackbird whistled sweet; Old beeches moved their arms Into a mellow haze Aerial, newly-born: And I, alone, agaze, Stood waiting for the thorn To break in blossom white, Or burst in a green flame.... So, in a single ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... utterances: "Oh, quite so, Sir! Our elder brother Mr. Pao has," he continued, "already read up to the third book of the Book of Odes, up to where there's something or other like: 'Yiu, Yiu, the deer bleat; the lotus leaves and duckweed.' Your servant wouldn't ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... too, threttanello![760] I want to imitate Cyclops and lead your troop by stamping like this.[761] Do you, my dear little ones, cry, aye, cry again and bleat forth the plaintive song of the sheep and of the stinking goats; follow me with erected organs like ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... Tuppence at length, making a grimace. "Little fool. Everything you want—everything you've ever hoped for, and you go and bleat out 'no' like an idiotic little sheep. It's your one chance. Why don't you take it? Grab it? Snatch at it? What ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... then making her way through the goats she once more clasped Snowflake round the neck, saying in a gentle soothing voice, "Sleep well, Snowflake, and remember that I shall be with you again to-morrow, so you must not bleat so sadly any more." Snowflake gave her a friendly and grateful look, and then went leaping joyfully ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri

... the sweet reed I tuned on the hill, My grief for the rough slopes of Sunnach so still, The wind in the fir tree and bleat of the ewe Are lost in the wild cry my heart makes for you. The brown floors I danced on, the sheds where I lay, Are gone from my mind like a wing in the bay: Dear lady, I'd herd the wild swans in the skies If they knew of lake water as blue as ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... and the oxen lowed, The sheep's "Bleat! bleat!" came over the road; All seeming to say, with a quiet delight, "Good little girl, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... A tremulous bleat answered, but as he neared the flock it scattered swiftly, the errant leaders darting shyly behind the looming outlines of sassafras bushes. Again he called, and again the plaintive cry responded, growing fainter as several fleeter ewes sped past him to ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... weighed upon his feet. Behind him moved a face whose physiognomy indicated a lusty goat-nature. And I saw at times long, hairy hands seize assistingly the strings of the violin on which Paganini was playing. They often guided the hand which held the bow, and then a bleat-laugh of applause accompanied the melody, which gushed from the violin ever more full of sorrow and anguish. They were melodies which were like the song of the fallen angels who had loved the daughters of earth, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... longer. He drank and turned into a sheep. He began to bleat and ran after his sister. Long they wandered, ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous

... sea is agitated, and the surf breaks over Square Rock. All round the horizon, landward as well as seaward, the view is shut in by a mist. Sometimes I have a dim sense of the continent beyond, but no more distinct than the thought of the other world to the unenlightened soul. The sheep bleat in their desolate pasture. The wind shakes the house. A loon, seeking, I suppose, some quieter resting-place than on the troubled waves, was seen swimming just now in the cove not more than a hundred yards from ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... pleasure is over." "Oh, but all the same, we would sooner have had the cow!" Gordon adds, "The other child of twelve years old, like her parents did not care a bit. A lamb taken from the flock will bleat, while here you see not the very slightest vestige of feeling." Such an incident shows how the human heart can, under certain circumstances, degenerate to being "without natural affection." It is not the people who are to blame, but their cruel ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... low, indeed: and softly bleat, You lambing ewes about her feet, Lest you should wake the child from sleep! No other hour so still and sweet Shall fall for Mary's heart to keep Until her death hour on her creep, Sing soft, the ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... wrong, with hatred rife; Oh, blessed night! with sober calmness sweet, The sad winds moaning through the ruined tower, The age-worn hind, the sheep's sad broken bleat— All nature groans opprest with toil and care, And wearied craves for rest, and ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... giving the lamb tenderly into my arms, and halting upon his staff; speaking warily and weightily as I never heard a man speak before or since. 'Nay; the lambkin must have fallen before I came by. But I heard the mother bleat, and I knew, by the sound, that she was in distress. Therefore I turned towards the crag upon which she stood, and, looking down, I perceived the lamb fallen among the brambles beneath ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... the return of his companion, for whom he has been neighing. The mother calls incessantly for her lost young ones; for instance, a cow for her calf; and the young of many animals call for their mothers. When a flock of sheep is scattered, the ewes bleat incessantly for their lambs, and their mutual pleasure at coming together is manifest. Woe betide the man who meddles with the young of the larger and fiercer quadrupeds, if they hear the cry of distress from their young. Rage leads to the violent exertion of all ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin

... it he drew back, knowing what I was going to do just as I suddenly knew it. It was a moment when he seemed to me to bleat—yes, that's the word—to bleat ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... cocks contend together in defiance; and yet from this Olympian station, except for the whispering rumour of a train, the world has fallen into a dead silence and the business of town and country grown voiceless in your ears. A crying hill-bird, the bleat of a sheep, a wind singing in the dry grass, seem not so much to interrupt, as to accompany, the stillness; but to the spiritual ear, the whole scene makes a music at once human and rural, and discourses pleasant reflections ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... gasped, in a sort of bleat that drove the last of the pea-green mist out of that room with the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... deserted for an hour or two; the cattle, too many to be removed, began to low and bleat because they missed their customary attention; only in the Priory of St. Denys did things go on as usual; there the bells rang out for vespers and compline, and the foreign brethren went on their way as if the events of the day had ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... woodpile and two little pickaninnies were gathering a basket of chips. Already the air was filled with the twilight sounds of the farm—the lowing of cattle, the bleating of calves at the cowpens, the bleat of sheep from the woods, and the nicker of horses in the barn. Through it all, Crittenden could hear the nervous thud of Raincrow's hoofs announcing rain—for that was the way the horse got his name, being as black as a crow and, as Bob claimed, always knowing when falling weather was at hand and ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... diligent student of commercial matters: rivalries of Banks; Foreign and Municipal Loans, American Rails, and Argentine; new Companies of wholesome appearance or sinister; or starting with a dram in the stomach, or born to bleat prostrate, like sheep on their backs in a ditch; Trusts and Founders; Breweries bursting vats upon the markets, and England prone along the gutters, gobbling, drunk for shares, and sober in the possession of certain of them. But when, as Colney says, a grateful England has conferred the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... their shrill vituperation and, crowding about him, began to bleat their explanations and appeals. But he threw out his arms, pushed them back a safe distance from the panting Dominick and roared them into silence, brandishing his fists, as he would have quelled ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... was ready with the rope, he gave the word, and the gate was opened; the cow ran in immediately, and, hearing her calf bleat, went into the cow-house, the door of which was shut upon her. A minute afterward Humphrey cried out to them to haul upon ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... rapture on the lonely shore, there was indeed rapture here high above it, blown upon by the sweet, soft winds. I heard the bleat close at hand. Turning, I saw a she-goat with little kid scarce a foot high. She crossed a patch of cactus. The kid essayed to follow here, but found the way too thorny. He bleated—a tiny, pin-pointed ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... out as the stranger approaches the nest, looking like angry coals of brilliant fire, returning several times to the attack with the utmost velocity, at the same time uttering a curious, reverberating, sharp bleat, somewhat similar to the quivering twang of a dead twig, and curiously like the real bleat of some small quadruped. At other times the males may be seen darting high up in the air, and whirling about each other in great anger and with ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... approached and stood near her. Golda caressed the animal's neck, and Meir did the same smiling. The goat gave a short bleat, jumped aside, and in the twinkling of an eye was biting at one ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... and the oxen lowed, The sheep's "bleat, bleat!" came over the road; All seeming to say, with a quiet delight, "Good little girl, ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett

... to waft us at its pleasure toward the Scottish coast. We passed the sharp promontory of Siddick; and skirting the land within a stone-cast, glided along the shore till we came within sight of the ruined Abbey of Sweetheart. The green mountain of Criffell ascended beside us; and the bleat of the flocks from its summit, together with the winding of the evening horn of the reapers, came softened into something like music over land and sea. We pushed our shallop into a deep and wooded bay, and sat ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various

... is beauty all, and grateful song around, Joined to the low of kine, and numerous bleat Of flocks thick-nibbling through the clovered vale: And shall the hymn be marred by thankless man, Most favored; who, with voice articulate, Should lead the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... him on the Varsity, and forty-'leven coaches stood over his defenseless form and hammered football into him for eight solid hours on Wednesday and Thursday. And Bi took it all like a little woolly lamb, without a bleat. But it just made you sick to think what was going to happen to Bi when Jordan got to ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... an angel be allowed to rest upon this paper if it were not fit that it should be so?" I demanded in my anger. "Colonel, am I to hear you bleat about doves and lovers when a glance of your eye ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... the little trench in which I had been lying. From time to time a wall fell in the village, and the cattle, scared away by the battle, began to resume confidence and return. I heard a goat bleat in a neighboring stable. A great shepherd's dog wandered fearfully among the heaps of dead. The horse, seeing him, neighed in terror—he took him for a wolf—and the ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... Chiron sprung from Phillyron, And Amythaon's son Melampus. See! From Stygian darkness launched into the light Comes raging pale Tisiphone; she drives Disease and fear before her, day by day Still rearing higher that all-devouring head. With bleat of flocks and lowings thick resound Rivers and parched banks and sloping heights. At last in crowds she slaughters them, she chokes The very stalls with carrion-heaps that rot In hideous corruption, till men learn ...
— The Georgics • Virgil

... Genius of Farce, who presides so particularly over all Irish affairs, put it into the lamb's head to bleat. The sound at first did not strike Tom Durfy as singular, they being near a high hedge, within which it was likely enough a lamb might bleat; but Biddy, shocked at the thought of being discovered in the ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... them struck me forcibly. The country people, those belonging to the Mornet, declare that at night one can hear talking going on in the sand, and then that one hears two goats bleat, one with a strong, the other with a weak voice. Incredulous people declare that it is nothing but the cry of the sea birds, which occasionally resembles bleatings, and occasionally human lamentations; but belated fishermen swear that they have met ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... then, thou need'st not dread The raven in the sky; Night and day thou'rt safe; Our cottage is hard by. Why bleat so after me? Why pull so at thy chain? Sleep, and at break of day, I will ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... you wish for happiness complete, Look for it in some hamlet distant far. Forget—where catkins blow and lambkins bleat— Globe, Evening News, Pall ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various

... holy bell, nor pastoral bleat, In former days within the vale. Flapped in the bay the pirate's sheet, Curses were on the gale; Rich goods lay on the sand, and murdered men, Pirate and ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... artificial hymns of which we are to speak in their place, the memory of the joyful country life comes over him. He praises Hiero, because Hiero is to restore peace to Syracuse, and when peace returns, then 'thousands of sheep fattened in the meadows will bleat along the plain, and the kine, as they flock in crowds to the stalls, will make the belated traveller hasten on his way.' The words evoke a memory of a narrow country lane in the summer evening, when light is dying out ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... an accomplishment of his, but in their courting days she had expressed herself pleased at his attempts, and of this he took care, in his turn, to remind her. It was his idea that if the game were played at all, she should take a hand also. If he was to blither, it was only fair that she should bleat back. As he explained, for the future they would both be lovers all their life long; and no logical argument in reply could she think of. If she tried to write a letter, he would snatch away the paper her dear hands were pressing and fall to kissing it—and, of course, smearing ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome

... crippled I'll get him that much easier," said Briskow, and at the purposeful expression upon his weather-beaten face Mrs. Ring uttered a faint bleat of terror. She pawed at him as he undertook to ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... seemed to arrest the advance of the timid sheep: they waited in a closely-packed flock, looking around. But presently the old leader gave a deep bleat, and they moved forward towards the water. "Shriek! Shriek!" cried the Plover from the bushes, screaming as they rose and flew away; and suddenly the flock of sheep broke and hurried back to the open plain. At the same instant Dot ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... blade, they break ground late; like spring-wheat, many seeds have perished in the hard winter glebe. Oh, my lord! though we galvanize corpses into St. Vitus' dances, we raise not the dead from their graves! Though we have discovered the circulation of the blood, men die as of yore; oxen graze, sheep bleat, babies bawl, asses bray—loud and lusty as the day before the flood. Men fight and make up; repent and go at it; feast and starve; laugh and weep; pray and curse; cheat, chaffer, trick, truckle, cozen, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... raised to strike. BLUENOSE never stirred, but his breath came and went, and his eyelids blinked strangely, like the flutter of a sere leaf against the wall. There came a roar of voices, and, in the tumult, the Captain's sword flashed quickly, and fell. Then, with a broken cry like a sheep's bleat, the great seamed face fell separate from the body, and a fountain of blood rose into the air from the severed neck, and splashed heavily upon the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various

... tried To act grown-up and graceful and high-bred, But dropped, k'whop! and scraped the buggy-shed, Leaving a tuft of woolly, foxy hair Under the sharp-end of a gate-hinge there. Then, all ignobly scrambling to his feet And whinneying a whinney like a bleat, He would pursue himself around the lot And—do the whole thing over, like as not!... Ah! what a life of constant fear and dread And flop and squawk and flight the chickens led! Above the fences, either side, were seen The neighbor-houses, set in plots of green Dooryards and greener gardens, ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley

... wonderful it is.' Reding: 'Wonderful is the right word, it is very wonderful. You say, "How can he manage it? It's very wonderful for a bass;" but it is not pleasant in itself. In like manner, I have always felt a disgust when Mr. So-and-so comes forward to make his sweet flute bleat and bray like a haut-bois; it's forcing the poor thing to do what it was ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis

... under the door, I kept pretty cosy, what with the straw-bands round my legs and the warm breath of the cows: for we kept five. There was no wind outside, but moonlight and a still, frozen sky, like a sounding board: so that every note of the music reached me, with the bleat of Laban's sheep far up the hill, and the waves' wash on the beaches below. Inside the chall the only sounds were the slow chewing of the cows, the rattle of a tethering-block, now and then, or a ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... thirty feet deep? Amidst, and almost above, the terrible anxiety about our own individual safety,—for the snow was over the roof of many of the station-houses,—came the pressing question, "Where are the sheep?" A profound silence unbroken by bleat of lamb, or bark of dog, or any sound of life, had reigned for many days, when a merciful north-westerly gale sprung, up, and releasing the heavily-laden earth from its white bondage, freed the miserable remnant of our flocks and herds. At least, I should say, it freed those ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... that mantling on her womanly face. The blue distances overhead were deepening with sundown, and the great sweeps of field and wild were sombre with the hill shadows that began to fall. In a copse near where she stood a little bird was busy with her fledglings, and from a meadow came the plaintive bleat of a late yeaned lamb. From the distant village the wind carried to her ears the cry of an infant—a cry that lingered and echoed and started strange melodies in the awakening soul of Miriam. Child of the hills as she was, never before in all her thirty years of ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... burnished coats gleaming like the skin of a horse-chestnut in the hot sun, cast ruminative glances at her white-cloaked figure as it passed, and occasionally a peacefully grazing sheep emitted an astonished bleat at the unusual vision and skedaddled away ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... bleat of sheep comes from the hill, Faint sounds of childish play are in the air. The river murmurs past. All else is still. The very graves ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... delightful spot. The road to Llangollen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham; and on passing a certain point you come all at once upon the valley, which opens like an amphitheatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on either side, with 'green upland swells that echo to the bleat of flocks' below, and the river Dee babbling over its stony bed in the midst of them. The valley at this time 'glittered green with sunny showers,' and a budding ash-tree dipped its tender branches in the chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was to walk along the high road that overlooks the delicious ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... year, I hear the young lambs bleat, The clamouring birds i' the copse I hear, I hear the waving wheat, Together laid ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell

... and blaize the trees well as they proceeded and wait at that place untill our arrivall with the party. the hunters as usual wer dispatched early this morning. the does now having their fawns the hunters can bleat them up and in that manner kill them with more facility and ease. the indians pursue the game so much on horseback in this neighbourhood that it is very shye. our hunters killed 4 deer and a bear today. at 4 P.M. Drewyer Shannon and Whitehouse returned. Drewyer brought with him three ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... very slow progress. Ralph stopped continually to consult his compass, and occasionally gave a loud "cooee", in case they might find some wandering shepherd or countryman who would be able to help them. There was no answer to his calls, however—only the occasional bleat of a sheep that sounded far off and muffled through the mist. They knew there was neither cottage nor farm within hail, and unless they could strike the road they might wander on hour after hour over the moors, only getting farther and farther out of their way. Tired out with ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... curious-looking creature over there on the knoll was defying him, was challenging him. At this time of year his blood was hot and quick for any challenge. He gave vent to a short, harsh, explosive cry, more like a grumbling bleat than a bellow, and as unlike the buffalo's challenge as could well be imagined. Then he fell to thrashing the nearest bushes violently with his antlers. This, for some reason unknown to the mere ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... syrups sweet, O fountain of Bandusian onyx, To-morrow shall a goatling's bleat Mix with ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams

... put extra work upon her without consulting her, and there was an exceedingly obnoxious boy of about fourteen who sat upon the corner of a table and, with the assurance of a mounted gendarme, put all sorts of questions to me in a voice that would change suddenly from a bark to a bleat. I was seized with such a longing to knock him off his perch that I presently kept my eyes fixed upon the frying-pan so that I might not be tempted beyond my strength. The father was evidently too weak to contend with his horrible ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... Even now it is a lonely part of the south land, that silent valley down which, from its source up amongst the Cheviots, the Rede flows eastward. Bog and heather and bracken still occupy the ground to right and to left of it, and there are few sounds besides the bleat of sheep or the cries of wild birds to break the silence of the hills and moors. But when the Reeds held power the hills often echoed to the lowing of driven cattle, to the hoof-beat of galloping horses, and to the sounds of a ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... breeze, Or peeping through the sheltering trees, On a light gate, loosely hung, Laughing children gaily swung; Oft their glad shouts, shrill and clear, Came upon the startled ear. Blended with the tremulous bleat, Of truant lambs, or voices sweet, Of birds, that take us by surprise, And mock ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... huge breast of rock, a solemn bleat; Sent forth as if it were the Mountain's voice! As if the visible Mountain made the cry! Again!"—The effect upon the soul was such As he expressed; for, from the Mountain's heart The solemn bleat appeared to come; there was No ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... reindeer,' said the other elephant; 'he's dead. Never saw anything so sad in my life. He skipped so, and made a noise like that, and then he died.' The elephant jumped up and down, trying the light skip of the reindeer and gave a great roar for the bleat of the dying animal, 'What,' said the first elephant, 'did he skip so, and cry that way?' And he tried it. 'No, not that way but this way,' said the other; and he went through it again. By this time every animal in the show had begun to roar with laughter. 'What on earth are you doing?' said ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... fled faster than the wind, Nor deign'd, in three-score miles, to look behind; While every band for orders bleat in vain, And fall in slaughtered heaps ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... a field between the road and a swamp. Watching my opportunity, while the bird was in the air, I hastened across the field, and stationed myself against a small cedar. He was still clicking high overhead, but soon alighted silently within twenty yards of where I was standing, and commenced to "bleat," prefacing each yak with a fainter syllable which I had never before been near enough to detect. Presently he started once more on his skyward journey. Up he went, in a large spiral, "higher still and higher" till the cedar ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... brothers jumped up, thinking they heard her steps, but in the thick darkness they could scarcely see their own hands, nor could they tell where the river lay, nor where the mountain. One by one the kids came home, and at every bleat someone hurried to open the door, but no sound broke the stillness. Through the night no one slept, and when morning broke and the mist rolled back, they sought the maiden by sea and by land, but never a trace of her could be ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... These animals are very dangerous, and will attack men, and their skins are so hard as not to be pierced with spears, unless pushed with much force and valour. These animals resemble lions, and their young bleat like kids. One day that our men went to this rock for amusement, they saw at least three thousand of these animals, old and young. On this rock also, there are great numbers of birds as large as ducks which do not fly, having no feathers in their wings, and which bray like ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... neighbours come, in sledge approach, Britzka, kibitka, or in coach. Crush and confusion in the hall, Latest arrivals' salutations, Barking, young ladies' osculations, Shouts, laughter, jamming 'gainst the wall, Bows and the scrape of many feet, Nurses who scream and babes who bleat. ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... Bleat out afresh, ye hills! ye mossy rocks, Retain the sound; the broad responsive low, Ye valleys raise; for the great Shepherd reigns, And his ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... for laughter: Me by the nose she led, and now she'll lead you after. Her paramour should be an ugly gnome, Where four roads cross, in wanton play to meet her: An old he-goat, from Blocksberg coming home, Should his good-night in lustful gallop bleat her! A fellow made of genuine flesh and blood Is for the wench a deal too good. Greet her? Not I: unless, when meeting, To smash her windows ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... prostrate nations would howl with rage as my gendarmes took off the pictures, nicely packed, and addressed to "Mr. the Director of my Imperial Palace of the Louvre, at Paris. This side uppermost." The Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Italians, &c., should be free to come and visit my capital, and bleat with tears before the pictures torn from their native cities. Their ambassadors would meekly remonstrate, and with faded grins make allusions to the feeling of despair occasioned by the absence of the beloved ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... my lungs could bleat like buttered pease! But bleating of my lungs hath caught the itch, And are as mangy as the Irish seas, That doth engender windmills ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... by a joyous bleat from the goat, which had at last forced the door of the stable open. Two bounds and the animal was close to her, bending its forelegs, and affectionately rubbing its horns against her. To the priest, with its pointed beard ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... of green. The few trees grew near brooks running down from the moors and the higher ground. The air was full of pleasant sounds prophesying of the coming summer. The rush, and murmur, and tinkle of the hidden watercourses; the song of the lark poised high up in the sunny air; the bleat of the lambs calling to their mothers—everything inanimate was full of ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

... a' the town she trotted by him; A lang half-mile she could descry him; Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him, She ran wi' speed: A friend mair faithfu' ne'er cam nigh him, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... February, when the mornings are as brilliant and full of hope as any in the year. The rooks were busy building in the great elms by the river; the wattles just below the lambing-pens were already turning red. Spring was coming: the colour of the sky, the voices of the larks, the bleat of the lambs, all told the same story. Of course winter would return: it always did. But, for the moment, there was a passing exhibition of beauties in store, a reflection of things that should be. By the afternoon ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry

... he did not believe in miracles—but a few feet behind his mother there now stood a divine presence. Believe it or not, there she was, the miracle! All the bashfulness of his lifetime—it had often made existence well-nigh insupportable—came crowding into that one moment. The feeblest little bleat of a spring lamb too weak to stand up for the first time would have been a deafening roar in comparison with the silence which now penetrated to the marrow of his bones. He faced the two women at bay, with one hand resting on ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... answered the provost; "but let us wait until Big Cripple comes. When he shall have proved to everybody that" Germain is a spy, enough said: the sheep will bleat no more; his breath shall ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... gauze is stretched athwart The shadowy hill-sides and dark forest-flanks; A soothing quiet broods upon the air, And the faint sunshine winks with drowsiness. Far sounds melt mellow on the ear: the bark, The bleat, the tinkle, whistle, blast of horn, The rattle of the wagon-wheel, the low, The fowler's shot, the twitter of the bird, And even the hue ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... Like the fable of the wolf and the lamb, it was all the same; bleat as I pleased, my defence was useless, and I could not avert my ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... me, a peculiar noise, between a snort and a violent bleat. Turning, I saw a buck deer, and, from the cord and bell around his neck, recognised him as one Billy, the property of Steve's eldest boy. He was spoken of as ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... goat followed her on eager feet, And therewithal an air so grave and mild, Coupled with such a deprecatory bleat Of injured confidence, that soon the Child Filled the lone shore with louder merriment, And e'en the Cyclops' heavy ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... as if they wanted to eat him up. You see he had run away, just gone away from the Good Shepherd and his mother and his home, when he did not need to. And now he wanted to get back, but he didn't know how; and then he began to complain and to bleat (that's his way of crying), and to run this way and that, but he ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker

... fibres—when the bluebells and the foxgloves and all the wood-flowers rest upon their stems—when the songsters of the grove, with heads comfortably tucked under their warm wings, sleep soundly in their nests, or in the angles of the branches—when the young fawns, lost in some wild ravine, bleat for their mothers whom they never will see more; and the gorged wolves, their muzzles red with blood, are stretched snoring in their dens and lurking-places—then it is the heavy boars, shaking off their laziness, leave their sombre retreats—take to the open country, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... colour of his life to that of a snow-cloud, it seemed to him as if one minute of these months at Rome would yield him gold enough to make the brightness of a year; he longed for the smell of the wet clay in Story's studio, where the songs of the birds, and the bleat of a goat coming through the little door to the left, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... critic of the Western City "Times" gave me one wild look; then from his throat there came a sound like the sudden bleat of a young sheep in pain. It caused Carpenter to start, and Madame Planchet to start, and for the first time since we entered the place, the birds of paradise gave signs of life elsewhere than in the ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair

... although by no means the worst in some respects. A woman takes refuge in a cave, with her little babe and a goat, which furnished the means of their subsistence. Unfortunately the poor animal was heard to bleat by some of the soldiers who happened to be near. These wretches seized the child and, in the presence of its mother, threw it over the precipice, and then led the mother herself to a jutting crag ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold

... after this, I think, that we met the Satyr and the Ape-man. The Satyr was a gleam of classical memory on the part of Moreau,—his face ovine in expression, like the coarser Hebrew type; his voice a harsh bleat, his nether extremities Satanic. He was gnawing the husk of a pod-like fruit as he passed us. Both ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... "the child that had only recovered from the measles" began to wail. It was then he had his first good taste of the teacher's floggings. "A little boy must not look where it is forbidden. A little boy must not bleat ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich

... no sound but the rattling of the oarlocks, the chant of the rowers as they dipped their oars, and the rippling of the water against the sides of the boat. Up to this time the black lamb had lain quietly in Melas' arms, but now something seemed to disturb him. He lifted his head, gave a sudden bleat, and somehow flung himself out of Melas' arms directly into the basket of eels! Such a squirming as there was then! The eels squirmed, and the lamb squirmed, and if his legs had not been securely tied together he undoubtedly would ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins

... cliffs, and a multitude of bats and owls flickered in the depths. A continuous falling of waters, an infinite sighing of night winds, the swaying and tossing which is always heard in the midmost mountain solitudes, the crumbling of hill gravel and the bleat of a goat on some hill-side, all made a cheerful accompaniment to the scraping of his boots on ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... by which the cock crows, enables the dog to bark, the baby to cry, the horse to neigh, the sheep to bleat and the cow to low, just as in our own rubber goods. The same end is accomplished in the one case as in the other. The two, three or twenty cash doll does for the Chinese girl what the two, three or twenty ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland

... inquisitively at the Keeper of the Fires. As the man waved the animal back from the sacred ground, the goat lowered its head and threatened to charge, suddenly recollected its mate lying in the shade a few feet away, and began to bleat absent-mindedly. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... sword! Swift messengers, and sharp, Reapers that leave no gleanings. In their path Silence and desolation fiercely stalk. —O'er trampled hills, and on the blood-stain'd plains There is no low of kine, or bleat of flocks, The fields are rifled, and the ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney



Words linked to "Bleat" :   let loose, baa, utter, kick, cry, kvetch, let out, blat, emit, sound off, quetch, blate, complain, plain



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