"Croaking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... materials at his command, he now turned his attention to the construction of the poem. He would ask questions, and the raven would always reply by croaking "Nevermore." As an answer to some questions, this would sound very terrible. Says he: "I first established in my mind the climax, or concluding query,—that query in reply to which the word 'nevermore' should involve the utmost conceivable ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... were expelled. St. Hilarion (288-371), we are told, courageously confronted and relieved a possessed camel. "The great St. Ambrose [340-397] tells us that a priest, while saying mass, was troubled by the croaking of frogs in a neighboring marsh; that he exorcised them, and so stopped their noise. St. Bernard [1091-1153], as the monkish chroniclers tell us, mounting the pulpit to preach in his abbey, was interrupted by a crowd of flies; straightway the saint uttered the sacred formula of ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... thinking you won't distract this breed bull that way, sister, he probably has a harem of six-foot heifers. I had my head thrown back and my hands stretched out supplicatingly. Meanwhile the both of us were babbling a blue streak. I was rapidly croaking something like, "Mister for God's sake save my pal he's hurt a lot worse'n I am not a hundred yards away he's dyin' mister he's dyin' o' thirst his tongue's black'n all swole up oh save him mister save my pal he's ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... train was grinding along discordantly with the brakes on, and, after a little preliminary jolting and banging over the points, drew up at a long lighted platform, where melancholy porters paced up and down, croaking "Market Rodwell!" like so many Solomon ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... condition as the coach. The driver's clothes, which were very old fashioned, hung about him in loose folds, and he gazed upon me with a strange, stony stare that was absolutely appalling; yet his lips unclosed as I worked past him, and he exclaimed in a harsh, croaking voice, 'One eye!' Thereupon two or three queer people poked their heads out of the coach window. There was one old woman with false teeth, in an unpleasant state of decay, and a voice like a parrot. 'One eye!' ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... but the frog-men, recovering from their own first surprise, were running forward with great hopping steps! The two fliers flung themselves back in a floating leap toward the reeds, but the green monsters were quick after them. A croaking cry came from one and as another raised his tube-and-handle, something flicked from it that burst close beside Norman. There was no sound or light as it burst, but the reeds for a few feet ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... good counsel Blanchard received with expressions of gratitude, yet secretly held to be but the croaking of a past generation, stranded far behind that wave of progress on which he himself was ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Annie's croaking cry, her thin arms, her quick straining of him, he all unprepared even for the mere physical yielding that alone saves such an embrace from awkwardness, found him lost. Annie felt it and stiffened, and the moment had gone never to come back. In after years, when Annie had magnified ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Colton's return the two sat out on the porch in the moonlight. The air was soft and full of the coming summer. Fire-flies darted about; the croaking of tree-toads could be heard. From the quarters of the negroes came the refrain ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... as bad as I thought their cause, for the boldness with which they silenced all opposition and all croaking, by press or by individuals, within their control. War at all times, whether a civil war between sections of a common country or between nations, ought to be avoided, if possible with honor. But, once entered ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... wended our way back in the evening, the incessant croaking of the frogs in the big lake was the only sound that broke the stillness. There was something sinister about it as if they were croaking "We are the only creatures who now live in this beautiful place, and it is we, with our ugly voices and bodies, who have triumphed ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... the charge. So, when the Jewish leader stretched his arm And waved his rod divine, a race obscene, Spawned in the muddy beds of Nile, came forth Polluting Egypt. Gardens, fields, and plains Were covered with the pest. The streets were filled; The croaking nuisance lurked in every nook, Nor palaces nor even chambers 'scaped, And the land stank, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... was not a nervous man at ordinary times, but like many country people, he had a vein of superstition running through his phlegmatic temperament, and the events of the night had swept away his calmness. The croaking of the frogs and the whispering of the trees filled him with uneasiness, and he kept glancing backwards and forwards from the lake to the wood, as though he feared the murderer might suddenly appear from the misty surface of the one or the dim ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... especially in Lower Louisiana, notwithstanding the great number of snakes that destroy them. There are some that grow very large, sometimes above a foot and a half long, and astonish strangers at first by their croaking especially if they are in ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... every cloud in the sky, every mangrove, root and spray, and every bending bulrush, was perfectly reproduced in the reflected world below. Plaintive cries of wild-fowl formed appropriate melody, to which chattering groups of monkeys and croaking bull-frogs contributed a fine tenor ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... of laughter. To most of those onlookers this seemed a part, a delightfully arranged part, of the entertainment. Only those nearest, and the farrier was one of them, realized that the strange old man with the croaking voice was an alien to that scene. A half-crazed old man who felt called upon to deliver his "message" of warning to a sinful world, at all times, seasons, and places. He had stumbled upon this as a fine field and, unbalanced though his mind was, it had yet been ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... would return within a year and three days. After he left that castle he arrived at a city where the king's daughter was very ill because the frogs which were in a fountain near the palace gave her no rest with their croaking. The lad perceived that the frogs croaked because the princess had thrown a cross into the fountain, and as soon as it was removed the girl recovered. The king, too, wished the lad to marry her, but he again said that he would return within a year and three days. ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... screeching of cockatoos and parrots, the hissing of the frilled lizard, and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the dense undergrowth. And then at night, the melancholy wailing of the curlews, the dismal howling of dingoes, the discordant croaking of tree-frogs, might well shake the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... indistinct. Whatever was pinkish of it was now hidden by a skerry of weedy boulders. But he perceived that it was made up of seven rounded bodies distinct or connected, and that the birds kept up a constant croaking and screaming, but seemed afraid to approach it ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... "Ricardo, I want you to go to school, so that you may learn something about our religion." Ricardo was willing enough, so he took his Catechism and set out. Instead of going to the school, however, he went to a neighboring pond and listened to the merry croaking of the frogs. When eleven o'clock came, he went home and told his mother about the real school. The poor woman was very happy, thinking that her son was spending his time wisely. Ricardo took great delight in joining the chorus of the frogs, for his mother gave him food ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... throats near and far that the whole valley of the Dordogne was filled with warbling. As the birds grew drowsy the frogs came out to spend a happy night on the margins of the pools and the brooks, until their joyful screaming and croaking was a universal chorus. I was by the side of the broad river that flowed calmly through the fairest meadows. The face of the stream, the pools in the road, the grass and the leaves, were brightened with the orange glow ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... that reach to their knees, pointed shoes that turn up at the toes, white Turkish trousers, and the regulation Afghan turban. The night is most lovely, and frogs innumerable are in the lowlands round about us, croaking their appreciation of the mellow moonlight, the balmy air, and the overflowing waters of the river. For hours they favor us with a musical melange, embracing everything between the hoarse bass croak of the full-blown bull-frog, to the tuneful "p-r" of the little ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... two high-balls.' Then he turned on Ahuna. 'Go and let yourself die, old heathen, survival of darkness, blight of the Pit that you are. But don't die on these premises. I desire merriment and laughter, and the sweet tickling of music, and the beauty of youthful motion, not the croaking of sick toads and googly-eyed corpses about me still afoot on their shaky legs. I'll be that way soon enough if I live long enough. And it will be my everlasting regret if I don't live long enough. Why in hell ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... was no sheep—that peculiar croaking cry that was heard now here, now there, as if the utterer were dashing in all directions. That was followed by a hollow trumpeting, and a short, harsh whistle, and a strange clanging sound from far away, while close at hand there was a soft, plaintive whistling ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... Progress is not in proportion to the amount of scientific knowledge on deposit in any country, but to the extent of its diffusion. No nation in the world grapples with its own evils so promptly as ours. It is but a few years since there was a general croaking about the physical deterioration of young men in our cities,—and now already the cities and the colleges are beginning to lead the rural districts in this respect. The guaranty of reform in American female health is to be found in the growing popular conviction ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... customer in the shop but Jacques Three, of the restless fingers and the croaking voice. This man, whom he had seen upon the Jury, stood drinking at the little counter, in conversation with the Defarges, man and wife. The Vengeance assisted in the conversation, like a regular member ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... said a word of murder?" said Barry, with a hoarse and croaking voice—"isn't she dying as she is?—and isn't she better dead than alive? It's only just not taking so much trouble to keep the life in her; you're so exceeding clever you know!"—and he made a ghastly attempt at smiling. "With any other doctor she'd have been dead long since: leave her to ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... were heard, devils were flying about in the air; the heavens were shrouded in a pall of gloom. When the funeral cortege started from Eisleben, a vast flock of ravens had gathered and accompanied the corpse croaking incessantly and uttering dismal cries all the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... in a room below whose striking he could hear each hour. Between each time it struck he felt as if weeks elapsed. Sometimes it was months. He had begun to be light-headed and to think queer things. Once or twice he heard a man talking in a croaking wail, and after a few minutes realised that it was himself, and that he did not know what he had said, though he knew he had been arguing with Linthicum, who was proving to him that his claim was too rotten to have a ghost of a chance. By the time the afternoon ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... lateen-sailed vessels moored alongside the Marino. Above it rose the fortress-town, with its towers and battlements. The sound of the church bells tolling for vespers rose, softened by distance, up the valley. Ravens were croaking over the ruins of the convent, and lizards frisking on the banks and the marble steps on which we reposed. It was a fitting spot for a Sunday afternoon's meditation—our ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... croaking voice, and she looked up and saw a great frog with goggle eyes looking at her and speaking ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... lucence. The minor sounds of the ranch near by seemed to be surrounded by a sea of silence outside. Single sounds came very clearly across it. And behind everything, after a few moments, I made out a queer, monotonous background of half-croaking calling. For some time this puzzled me. Then at last my groping recollection came to my assistance. I was hearing the calling of myriads ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... the grim, hoarse laugh which was habitual to him, and which people compared to the croaking of a raven; it was a hearty, open laugh, like ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... travelled from every direction to join it. It is dark bluish-gray, and no sun-ray can penetrate it. It is full of the ghastliest noises, the most frightful shrieks, the grimmest laughter, and most ill-luck-boding croaking! All on the playground are glad when it finally resolves itself into a storm of fluttering and croaking: of crows and ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the oncoming express dinned in his ears. It was close now, and suddenly—suddenly as a darting bird—Dinah was on her feet. Billy found his voice in a hoarse, croaking cry, but almost ere it left his lips he saw Scott leap into view and run down ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... there came a sudden outburst of bells in various parts of the city and simultaneously they heard the hoarse croaking of a whistle ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... everywhere swarmed with large and troublesome ants, and enormous earthworms. In the evening, the noise of the great Cicadae in the trees was almost deafening. They burst suddenly into full chorus, with a voice so harshly croaking, so dissonant, and so unearthly, that in these solitary forests I could not help being startled. In general character the note was very similar to that of other Cicadae. They ceased as suddenly as they commenced. On the following morning ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... too | much of this Timon-like | croaking; See his face | wrinkle now, Laughter pro |-voking. Now he cries | lustily— Bravo, my | hearty one! Lungs like an | orator Cheering ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... keeping near the gulls. He argued it out carefully in his mind, unconsciously talking aloud, and when he had decided what he was going to do he nodded his head in complete agreement. And then he laughed—a strange, croaking laugh and apostrophised a gull which was circling above his head. "How damn funny, old bird," he said still chuckling; "how damn funny. . . ." The humour of the situation had struck him suddenly. After the long years in France to be drowned like a ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... injury, but prompt to forgive; Grenville's character was stern, melancholy, and pertinacious. Nothing was more remarkable in him than his inclination always to look on the dark side of things. He was the raven of the House of Commons, always croaking defeat in the midst of triumphs, and bankruptcy with an overflowing exchequer. Burke, with general applause, compared him, in a time of quiet and plenty, to the evil spirit whom Ovid described looking down on the stately temples and wealthy haven of Athens, and scarce able to refrain ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a jangle of meaningless noises had never been heard by human ears. There were spluttering and bubbling, jerking and rasping, whistling and screaming. There were the rustling of leaves, the croaking of frogs, the hissing of steam, and the flapping of birds' wings. There were clicks from telegraph wires, scraps of talk from other telephones, and curious little squeals that were unlike any known sound. The lines running east and west were noisier than the lines running north and ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... visions of his incalculable interest keeping him awake of nights, thought it time to bestir himself. On the tenth night of her wedded life Lit-lit was awakened by the croaking of a raven, and she knew that Snettishane was waiting for her by the river bank. In her great happiness she had forgotten her pact, and now it came back to her with behind it all the childish terror of ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... get round his bed, and talk to him for all the world as Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar did to poor old pauper Job. Yes, Job's comforters were Old Plain Talk, and Old Prudence, and Old Conscience, to your poor old father. Friends? I should like to know who you call foes? With their everlasting croaking and reproaching they tormented poor Old Honesty, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... croaking, and insects all in green livery, with gilt buttons, contributed to Nature's Great Boston Jubilee of music with their hum. How ridiculous it seems that insects should have a hum!—and yet the Bee has its Hum in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... tenderly to the seashore and laid it upon the deck of the majestic ship, Ringhorn, which had been his. Then they stood waiting to see who would come to the funeral. Odin came, and on his shoulders sat his two ravens, whose croaking drew clouds down over the Asa's face, for Thought and Memory sang the same sad song that day. Frigga came,—Frey, Gerda, Freyja, Thor, Hoenir, Bragi, and Idun. Heimdall came sweeping over the tops of the mountains on Golden Mane, his swift, bright steed. AEgir the Old groaned ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... commonplace and vulgar way. And, 11, the man worthy of immortality was just at the point of death, without a friend to soothe or deplore him; only withered old Maintenon to utter prayers at his bedside, and croaking Jesuit to prepare him, with heavens knows what wretched tricks and mummeries, for his appearance in that Great Republic that lies on the other side of the grave. In the course of his fourscore splendid miserable years, he never ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Amphibians, scaled and tailed, And drab as a dead man's hand. We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees Or trailed through the mud and sand, Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet, Writing a language dumb, With never a spark in the empty dark To hint ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... the ground, and waited breathlessly for further developments. The weird silence was maintained save for the distant croaking of bullfrogs ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... lead us to suppose that men lived in those days, nor lions, nor tigers, nor even birds to fly among the trees; but these grand forests were almost silent, except when a huge animal something like a gigantic newt or frog went croaking through the marsh, or a kind of grasshopper chirruped on the land. But these forms of life were few and far between, compared to the huge trees and tangled masses of ferns and reeds which covered the whole ground, or were reflected in the bosom of the large pools and lakes round ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... scarcely be excus'd. Even as a band of new beginners; All mercy, now, must be refus'd To such a set of croaking sinners. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... and sadness in Allerley Tower; The taper is glimmering with murky snot, The raven croak-croaking with rusty throat, And the cricket click-clicking at midnight hour; And the woman mope-moping by the bed, Still nodding and nodding ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... The night is full of interesting little sounds that will not, at first, let you sleep—the rustle of little wild things in the hedges, the barking of dogs in distant farms, the chirp of crickets and the croaking of frogs. And in the morning the birds wake you, and you curl down warm among the hay and look up at the sky that is growing lighter and lighter, and breathe the chill, sweet air, and go to sleep again wondering how you have ever been ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... soul; struggle, as with life-and-death energy, to get back thy soul! Know that; 'religion' is no Morrison's Pill from without, but a reawakening of thy own Self from within:—and, above all, leave me alone of thy 'religions' and 'new religions' here and elsewhere! I am weary of this sick croaking for a Morrison's-Pill religion; for any and for every such. I want none such; and discern all such to be impossible. The resuscitation of old liturgies fallen dead; much more, the manufacture of ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... could scarcely be excused, Even as a band of raw beginners; All mercy now must be refused To such a set of croaking sinners. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... I said. As the Spaniards have it, 'Only a fool goes travelling,' and I'm not too notorious for my wisdom, even in Augustine. If it be the custom of the people here to go mad, I'll not sit in a corner croaking, 'Repent and be wise!' If the Varicks and the Butlers set the pace, I promise you to keep the quarry, Mistress Folly, in view—perhaps outfoot you all to Bedlam!... But, cousin, if you, too, run this uncoupled race with the pack, I mean to pace you, ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... grave, pacific air, Where never mountain zephyr blew: The marshy levels lank and bare, Which Pan, which Ceres never knew: The Naiads, with obscene attire, Urging in vain their urns to flow; While round them chant the croaking choir, And haply soothe some lover's prudent woe, Or prompt some restive bard ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... anger. "There you go again—both of you!" he exclaimed. "I might suppose after all these years you would place some reliance on my judgment; but, no, you will keep up your croaking until our troops are dictating terms ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... condescending to accept this jewel. I am informed it is wanted, to pay off I know not what encumbrances and arrears—Pshaw!—I care not—I have never yet troubled myself about wants, nor do I wish to begin. My father lived fast, and died soon. Well! And is not that better than croaking and crawling over this dirty globe, haunted by razors, halters, and barebones, sobbing in your sleep, groaning when awake, vegetating in sorrow, and dying in the sulks? Let me kick my heels in mirth and sunshine. Or, if clouds intervene, let pleasure ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the deep voice of the enchantress, mingled with the croaking of the raven, and the screeching of the owls, as she rushed from her cave, crying—"It shall be as ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... find a gaunt, limping figure, covered in a gray army greatcoat with no distinguishing marks, stalking along. Accompanied by orderlies carrying camp stools and table; night glasses and electric torches, halting repeatedly, hidden men taking down in writing the short, croaking sentences escaping between the thin compressed lips, the "Geist of Metz" prowls round measuring every foot of ground fifty miles east, west, north, and south of his beloved Metz. The steel tipped arrow ever pointing at the heart ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... believe that this irascible stranger was as providential as the croaking ravens that fed the prophet, and he promptly sought the gate and entered. An old man looked up in some surprise. He was short in stature and had the stoop of one who is bending under the weight of years and infirmities. His features ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... crevices of the rocks. They found a jellyfish—a pulpy translucent mass; and once even caught a sight of a seal in the hollow of a breaker, with sleek and shining head, his barbels bristling, and heard his hoarse croaking bark as he hunted ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... between the men might have been even less. One stood apart from the group. He was similarly dressed but instead of a drawn sword, he carried a drum hung about his chest. This fellow drawled out signals the tone of which suggested a mighty easy-life, and then croaking a strange song, he would strike the drum. The tune was outlandishly unfamiliar. One might form the idea by thinking it a combination of the ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... then suddenly the thunder growled, and rain and hail fell in torrents. The Queen put her royal mantle over her head, and all the princesses did the same with their trains. Mayblossom was just about to follow their example when a terrific croaking, as of an immense army of crows, rooks, ravens, screech-owls, and all birds of ill-omen was heard, and at the same instant a huge owl skimmed up to the Princess, and threw over her a scarf woven of spiders' webs ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... sir," replied the baronet, with a sneer of contempt, "only you have mistaken your man. I am no subject for your craft—not to be deceived by your hypocrisy—and laugh to scorn your ominous but impotent croaking. Only before you go, remember the conditions I have offered the scoundrel who robbed me; and if the theological intricacies of your crooked creed will permit you, try and get him to accept them. It will be better for him, and better for you too. Do this, and you ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... he had presumably returned. We were not many minutes on the road, though we sometimes stopped to lay hold of each other and hearken. But there was no unusual sound—nothing but the low wash of the ripple and the croaking of the inmates ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fashionable vice, which only poverty and ruin can correct or cure. The clergy must, however, be greatly delighted at the following picture of the cloth, drawn by one of their holy brotherhood. "The Bath church," says the satirist, "is filled with croaking ravens, chattering jays, and devouring cormorants; black-headed fanatics and white-headed 'dreamers of dreams;' the aqua-fortis of mob politics, and the mawkish slip-slop of modern divinity; rank cayenne pepper, and genuine powder of post!" Really a very flattering ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Pierre has been croaking and prophesying evil, and although I in no way agree with him, it ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... ominous; And would they had not happened! As, to-day, The fate of some your servants: who, declining Their way, not able, for the throng, to follow, Slipt down the Gemonies, and brake their necks! Besides, in taking your last augury, No prosperous bird appear'd; but croaking ravens Flagg'd up and down, and from the sacrifice Flew to the prison, where they sat all night, Beating the air with their obstreperous beaks! I dare not counsel, but I could entreat, That great Sejanus would attempt the ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... Silently the old man stepped towards the postern, and after some difficulty unlocked it. But so soon as he threw it open the storm drove a thick mass of snow-flakes into the hall; a raven was disturbed and flew in croaking and screaming and dashed with its black wings against the window, but regaining the open postern it disappeared downwards into the chasm. The Freiherr stepped out into the corridor; but one single glance downwards, and he started back trembling. "A ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... cushioned seat in Front of bird, and bust, and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking What this ominous bird of yore— What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, Gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking "Nevermore." ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... be cool and not enough to be cold. And the grass is going to be dry and the strawberries ripe; and all the pretty ladies and gentlemen are going to drive over from miles and miles around, and spend so much money that they will have none left to take them home. What is the use of croaking? If things go wrong, it's bad enough to have to bear them at the time; but until then imagination is our own, and we will make the most of it. It will not pour, my dear Raven; so don't let me hear you say so again! Make up your mind that this ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Romans, they have made the movements of the crow the basis of their auguries; and there is no end to the vicissitudes of good and evil fortune which may not be predicted from the direction of their flight, the hoarse or mellow notes of their croaking, the variety of trees on which they rest, and the numbers in which they are seen to assemble. All day long they are engaged in watching either the offal of the offices, or the preparation for meals in the dining-room; ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Dick, how you are worried! This is the day.—you will easily guess how anxious I shall be; but you seem pretty sanguine yourself, which is my only comfort, for Richardson's letter is rather croaking. You have never said a word of little Monkton:—has he any chance, or none? I ask questions without considering that, before you receive this, every thing will be decided—I hope triumphantly for you. What a sad set of venal rascals your favorites the Blacks must ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... possible," cried Libby, pulling in his useless oars, and leaning forward upon them, "that she has gone on letting you think I believed there was going to be a storm? She knew perfectly well that I didn't mind what Adams said; he was always croaking." She sat looking at him in a daze, but she could not speak, and he continued. "I see: it happened by one chance in a million to turn out as he said; and she has been making you pay for it. Why, I suppose," he added, with a melancholy smile ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his father, who declared they were all croaking, and that the boy would be as well as ever to-morrow. He went and sat by the cot, and talked merrily of the pony that Alwyn was to ride, and the yachting they would have in the summer; and the little fellow smiled and was pleased, but went to sleep in the midst. Then ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and village church with its sentinel cypress-trees. A frog was croaking in a runlet; there was a faint spicy scent of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... drunken fall, I stood, freezing and breathless, in the same spot, looking into the room, which wore, in my eyes, a strange, unearthly character. Mr. Smith was cowering darkly in the window, and, after a silence, spoke to me in a croaking, sulky tone, which was, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... his pocket, and puts it in her hand. She instantly clutches it tight, and rises to her feet with a croaking laugh of satisfaction. ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... we are, croaking over our petty disappointments, and forgetting the worst share that falls upon papa. Failing this money, how will he ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... pickerel vanishes at a glance, shoals of minnows glide, black and bearded pouts frisk aimlessly, soft water-lizards hang poised without motion, and slender pickerel-frogs cease occasionally their submerged croaking, and, darting to the surface with swift vertical strokes, gulp a mouthful of fresh air, and down again ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... croaking sound he got to his feet, looked irresolutely at her for a moment, and then went to the side where his dory lay. She next saw him rowing dazedly to the Nettle B., and then she turned her face from the ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... silence of the frogs,[14]" which, whenever the lady was confined, bound the peasants to spend their days and nights in beating the swamps with long poles to save her from being disturbed by their inharmonious croaking. And if this or any other feudal right was dispensed with, it was only commuted for a money payment, which ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... returned at night. The croaking of frogs has greeted me from the depths of the damp meadow. My heart, do not burst!... Do not burst like the lilacs of the flower-garden whose ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... have!" cried the Frog. "Really it is quite like a croak, and croaking is of course the most musical sound in the world. You will hear our glee-club this evening. We sit in the old duck pond close by the farmer's house, and as soon as the moon rises we begin. It is so entrancing that everybody lies awake to listen to us. In fact, it ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... have had a great horror of braying orators, and relates a number of anecdotes about them, such as this: A preacher who had a detestable voice, but thought he had a very sweet one, bawled out to no purpose. You would say the croaking of the crow in the desert was the burden of his song, and that this verse of the Kuran was intended for him, "Verily the most detestable of sounds is the braying of an ass." When this ass of a preacher brayed, it made Persepolis tremble. The people of the town, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... 'Three Corbies' croaking the most grim and dismal notes in all the wide, wild range of ballad poetry, as they feast on the ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... the evil day came, as come it would, the people would start up, as from a dream, and ask themselves if these things could have been true. All his eloquence was in vain. He was looked upon as a false prophet, or compared to the hoarse raven, croaking omens of evil. His friends, however, compared him to Cassandra, predicting evils which would only be believed when they came home to men's hearths, and stared them in the face at their own boards. Although, in former times, the House had listened with the utmost attention to every word that fell ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Skani side, plundering and harrying wherever he put ashore. Now as he was sailing his course off the skerries of east Gautland put he ashore and offered up a great sacrifice, and whiles this was solemnized came two ravens flying up, loudly croaking, & for this reason deemed the Earl that Odin had accepted his sacrifice, and that good fortune would favour him in his battles. Even so burned he all his ships and came ashore with every man of all his host, and carried war throughout the land. Against him ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... at Limmeridge, Mr. Hartright," he said in a querulous, croaking voice, which combined, in anything but an agreeable manner, a discordantly high tone with a drowsily languid utterance. "Pray sit down. And don't trouble yourself to move the chair, please. In the wretched state of my nerves, movement of any kind is exquisitely painful ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... the kitchen doorway, they mouthed it, curly-headed, croaking synchronous challenge. They scraped their shoes on a scraper near the door; one peered furtively under a covered dish on the table while the other washed hands and face in a tin basin under the grape-arbor. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sprang up and cried out in the night, "I will, I swear it to you, mother.... I will!" And in assurance thereof he shot a ball into the air, so that the echo rolled through the silence awfully and the ravens flew croaking from ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... By the croaking of the toad, In their caves that make abode; Earthy Dun that pants for breath, With her swelled sides full of death; By the crested adders' pride, That along the clifts do glide; By thy visage fierce and black; By the death's-head on thy back; ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... channels, scarcely to be recognised amidst the surrounding scrub. A week before, these holes were hopelessly dry; but a recent thunder-storm had filled them; and had also made the ground soft and heavy, and had called into life thousands of small frogs, which, by an incessant croaking, testified their satisfaction ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... every night of't, and the Ravens With their unlucky throates never leave croaking Some danger ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... at its height at the rise of the Moon. O Karna, thou challengest Dhananjaya, the son of Pritha, to battle even like a calf challenging a smiting bull of keen horns and neck thick as a drum. Like a frog croaking at a terrible and mighty cloud yielding copious showers of rain, thou croakest at Arjuna who is even like Parjanya among men. As a dog from within the precincts of the house of his master barks at a forest-roaming tiger, even so, O Karna, thou barkest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... I know," said his mother, "that if once I let you out, I should find you croaking at a choir practice ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this in an Age of Gold,—Age, at least, of Paper and Hope! Meanwhile, trouble us not with thy prophecies, O croaking Friend of Men: 'tis long that we have heard such; and still the old world keeps ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... towards them. You never saw any place more desolate from a distance, nor one that less belied its promise near at hand. Some crows and gulls flew away croaking as I scrambled in. The snow had drifted into the vaults. The clachan dabbled with snow, the white hills, the black sky, the sea marked in the coves with faint circular wrinkles, the whole world, as it looked from a loop-hole in Dunure, was cold, wretched, and out-at-elbows. If you had ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Danglar, "and they weren't in the empty money-belt that you beat it with like a scared cat after croaking Deemer!" ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... been apprenticed to their trade, and had been allowed free scope for the development of their ubiquitous genius. I looked at the old rascal who tallied the bags with me, envisaged in parchment, and clothed in picturesque remnants, and heard his croaking "Cincuo saco, Senor," or "Cuarro saco, Senor," as he bade me note the varying numbers on the hook, and I wondered inwardly whether the Holy Office had experimented during the sixteenth century ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... Cassel and will get him to execute a deed of conveyance assigning to me, with no restrictive covenants, the freehold of one of those mills, for I have coveted a mill ever since I succumbed to the enchantments of Lettres de mon moulin. True, Flanders is not Provence, and the croaking of the frogs, croak they never so amorously, among the willows in the plains below is a poor exchange for the chant of the cigale. But these mills look out over a landscape that is now dearer to me than Abana and Pharpar, ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan |
