"Curlew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... round in the Race, and they're whistling whisht and low, And they come from the lonely heather, where the fur-edged fox-gloves blow, And the moor-grass sways to and fro, Where the yellow moor-birds sigh, And the sea-cooled wind sweeps by. Canst hear the curlew's whistle through the darkness wild and drear,— How they're calling, ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... fisherman's picked up and brought in a boat with 'Curlew' painted on her stern, and he saw spars and wreckage driftin' near the empty boat. There's been a hurricane out there. It—it ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... repentance indeed! What are you staring at, you fool? Here has been that wild curlew, Bess Ferguson, with an awful tale of how you have gambled and lost an hundred pounds, and half killed an unlucky cousin. Who the deuce is the man? A nice godchild you are! A proper rage I am in, and Dr. Rush tells me I am never to get ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Below on the strand, As white as the pages I turn with my hand; And the curlew afar, From his storm-troubled lair, Laments with the cry Of a soul in despair. Our Father, forget not Our mariners' state; Their ships are so slender, Thy seas are ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... found all manner fruits in view and birds of every kind and hue, such as ringdove, nightingale and curlew; and the turtle and the cushat sang their love lays on the sprays. Therein were rills that ran with limpid wave and flowers suave; and bloom for whose perfume we crave and it was even as saith of it the poet in these ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... him returning with a brace and a half of birds that looked very much like large snipe. So he thought them, but that question was set at rest by the zoologist, who pronounced them at once to be the American "Curlew" of Wilson (Numenius longirostris). Curlew or snipe, they were soon divested of the feathery coat, and placed in Lanty's frying-pan. Excellent eating they proved, having only the fault that there was ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... melody. Farther ahead still it travelled, till the lonely dingo heard it as he prowled, and, sitting on his haunches, raised his throat towards the skies and poured forth a melancholy howl in unison, rousing the suspicions of the night curlew that everything was not as it should be, and inducing him in turn to give utterance to his cry, mournful and weird as the wail of an outcast soul, to warn his fellows to be on the alert, and to add to the unspeakably awe-inspiring solemnity of the ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... silvern glory pilfered from a splendid moon; on the left the riding lights of a visiting squadron of American warships; on the right the myriad slanted sails of the coral-fishers' boats, beating out toward Capri, with the curlew-calls of the fishermen floating back in shrill snatches to meet a jangle of bell and bugle from the fleet; in the immediate foreground a competent and accomplished family troupe of six Neapolitan troubadours —men, women and children—some ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... from Toppid Mountain, when the sky is clear after rain, you can trace the outline of the Curlew hills, our southern limit of view from Knocknarea. Up to the foot of the hills spreads a level country of pastures dappled with lakes, broken into a thousand fantastic inlets by the wasting of the limestone rock. The daisies are the stars in that green sky. Just beyond the young stream ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... Grosbeak Sparrow Hawk Bobolink White-headed Eagle Meadow Lark Great Horned Owl Bluejay Snowy Owl Ruffed Grouse Red-headed Woodpecker Great Blue Heron Golden-winged Woodpecker Bittern Barn-swallow Wilson's Snipe Whip-poor-will Long-biller Curlew Night Hawk Purple Gallinule Belted Kingfisher Canada Goose Kingbird Wood Duck Woodthrush Hooded Merganser Catbird Double-crested Cormorant White-bellied Nuthatch Arctic Tern Brown Creeper Great Northern Diver Bohemian Chatterer Stormy Petrel Great Northern ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... bell on Sundays. A mile beyond the kirk the road leaves the valley by a precipitous ascent, and brings you a little after to the place of Hermiston, where it comes to an end in the back-yard before the coach-house. All beyond and about is the great field, of the hills; the plover, the curlew, and the lark cry there; the wind blows as it blows in a ship's rigging, hard and cold and pure; and the hill-tops huddle one behind another like a herd of cattle into ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the lazy day: Jovial wind of winter Turn us out to play! Sweep the golden reed-beds; Crisp the lazy dyke; Hunger into madness Every plunging pike. Fill the lake with wild-fowl; Fill the marsh with snipe; While on dreary moorlands Lonely curlew pipe. Through the black fir forest Thunder harsh and dry, Shattering down the snow-flakes Off the curdled sky. . . . . . Come; and strong within us Stir the Viking's blood; Bracing brain and sinew: Blow, thou wind ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... his majesty's ship Curlew had boarded the Columbine about the 20th April, the master of which vessel had died a few weeks previously. The doctor on board the Columbine had received letters from Mr. Lander dated from king Obie's palace at Eboe, about three weeks after they had sailed from the entrance of the river ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... t' lass that had wakkened t' larks an' gotten 'em to sing so canty. Efter a while shoo lowered t' wand a bit an' pointed to t' moors, an' then, by t' Mess! curlews gat agate o' singin.' Soom fowks reckons that t' song o' t' curlew is dreesom an' yonderly, but I love to harken to it i' t' springtime when t' birds cooms back to t' moors frae t' sea. An' so did t' lass. When shoo heerd t' curlews shoo started laughin' an' dashed t' watter ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... Duck Island were in keeping with its general appearance, melancholy and depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the curlew, the scream of the passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, were all beyond powers of written expression. The aspect of these mournful fowls was not at all cheerful or inspiring, as the boat containing the Irishman and lieutenant ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... doubt the jaundice, from him to the birds. After that, by way of giving a final bloom to his complexion, he took some hairs of a red bull, wrapt them in gold leaf, and glued them to the patient's skin. The ancients held that if a person suffering from jaundice looked sharply at a stone-curlew, and the bird looked steadily at him, he was cured of the disease. "Such is the nature," says Plutarch, "and such the temperament of the creature that it draws out and receives the malady which issues, like a stream, through ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... verge of the forest and watch for the coming of our foes. And when they be come, 'tis sure they will plant outposts and sentinels within the green, so be ye wary to smite outpost and sentinel suddenly and that none may hear within the camp nor take alarm; when 'tis done, cry you thrice like unto a curlew that we may know. Are ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... and Aillinn were lovers, but Aengus, the Master of Love, wishing them to be happy in his own land among the dead, told to each a story of the other's death, so that their hearts were broken and they died. I hardly hear the curlew cry, Nor the grey rush when wind is high, Before my thoughts begin to run On the heir of Ulad, Buan's son, Baile who had the honey mouth, And that mild woman of the south, Aillinn, who was King Lugaid's heir. Their love was never drowned in care Of this or that thing, nor grew ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... crimson islets forever shifted shapes in a sea of gold. A rosy light suffused the earth. In it the water turned to the pink of a shell, the marshes became ethereal and far away, earth and sky seemed one. The flashing wings of gull and curlew were like fairy sails faring to ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... think it is funny to pretend that you think I said curlew you are very much mistaken. I have a very great many things to do, more things than a little boy like you can count, and I can't spend all the morning with you. So I am going to write on this slate: "The curfew ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... I wonder that the stone-curlew, Charadrius oedicnemus, should be mentioned by the writers as a rare bird: it abounds in all the champaign parts of Hampshire and Sussex, and breeds, I think, all the summer, having young ones, I ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... and there is Uncle Mansie," said Jessie, as the two men climbed over the ship's rail and swarmed down into the boat. Then up went the brown sail, and the little Curlew sped blithely past the whaling ships and across the broad bay, and it was not long ere she was moored alongside our ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... haunches all moulded into innumerable glens and shelvings and variegated with heather and fern. The air comes briskly and sweetly off the hills, pure from the elevation, and rustically scented by the upland plants; and even at the toll, you may hear the curlew calling on its mate. At certain seasons, when the gulls desert their surfy forelands, the birds of sea and mountain hunt and scream together in the same field by Fairmilehead. The winged, wild things intermix their wheelings, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... broke they passed the gate, which, there being peace in the land, was already open. Fifteen minutes later they were on the lonely Westleton Heath, where for a while naught was to be heard save the scream of the curlew and the rush of the wings of the wild-duck passing landward from the sea. Presently, however, another sound reached their ears, that of horses galloping behind them. Grey Dick pulled rein ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... winds blowing over it, and all the ripples are iris-hued; but you long for some brave blast that shall scoop great hollows in it, and shake out the briny beads from its lifted waters, and drive wild scuds of spray among the screaming curlew. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... now, loiterers? The cushat and the curlew have left the hill, and yet ye are abroad. 'Tis time the maiden were at home and looking ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... sleep if he liked, at the fire. Joe went to sleep—HOW, I don't know. Then Dad sat beside him, and for long intervals would stare silently into the darkness. Sometimes a string of the vermin would hop past close to the fire, and another time a curlew would come near and screech its ghostly wail, but he never noticed them. Yet ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... curlew and crested hern, Kingfisher, mallard, water-rail and tern, Chaffinch and greenfinch, warbler, stonechat, ruff, Pied wagtail, robin, fly-catcher and chough, Missel-thrush, magpie, sparrow-hawk, and jay, Built, those far ages gone, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various |
