"Lark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... epoch of my life and Barty's that I should like to go through our joint lives day by day, hour by hour, microscopically—to describe every book we read, every game we played, every pensum (i.e., imposition) we performed; every lark we were punished for—every meal we ate. But space forbids this self-indulgence, and other considerations make it unadvisable—so I will resist ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... part opens with the aria, "On mighty Pens," describing in a majestic manner the flight of the eagle, and then blithely passes to the gayety of the lark, the tenderness of the cooing doves, and the plaintiveness of the nightingale, in which the singing of the birds is imitated as closely as the resources of music will allow. A beautiful terzetto describes with inimitable grace the gently ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... over, "bubbling and blistering with the stew," followed a pudding that's still famous. Although down the centuries the recipe has been kept secret, the identifiable ingredients have been itemized as follows: "Tender steak, savory oyster, seductive kidney, fascinating lark, rich gravy, ardent pepper and delicate paste"—not to mention mushrooms. And after the second or third helping of pudding, with a pint of stout, bitter, or the mildest and mellowest brown October Ale in a dented pewter pot, "the ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... Grosvenor-square, And the furr'd Beauty comes to winter there, She bids old Nature mar the plan no more; Yet still the seasons circle as before. Ah, still as soon the young Aurora plays, Tho' moons and flambeaux trail their broadest blaze; As soon the sky-lark pours his matin song, Tho' Evening lingers at the mask so long. There let her strike with momentary ray, As tapers shine their little lives away; There let her practise from herself to steal, And look the happiness she ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... eternal swishin' of the surf on the beach, babblin' of 'Peace! Peace! Peace!' an' maybe once in a while the royal voice lifted in one of them sad slumber songs of the South Seas—creepy and dirgelike and beautiful. My girl could sing circles around a sky lark. I taught her how to sing 'John Brown's Body Lies A-Smoulderin' in th' Grave,' though she didn't have no more notion o' what she was ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... lion, and then dawn comes and they can hold their gains in the light. Therefore in every trench in every war the garrison is prepared in that menacing hour, watching in greater numbers than they do the whole night through. As the first lark lifts from meadows they stand there in the dark. Whenever there is any war in any part of the world you may be sure that at that hour men crowd to their parapets: when sleep is deepest in cities they ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... ships as 'deserters from His Majesty's service.' One day this trouble-maker brought his dinghy alongside one of the vessels. A sailor on deck, who saw Captain Mackenzie in the boat and was eager for a lark, picked up a nine-pound shot, poised it carefully, and let it fall. There was a splintering thud. Captain Mackenzie suddenly remembered how dry it was on shore, and put off for land as fast as oars would hurry him. Next day he sent a pompous challenge to the commander of the ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... the part of a sensible man, and he refused to lend himself to it; but the thought that a house might swim into his purse on a tear caused him a peculiar irritation of the glands, which made him look like a sick lark to whom a clyster is being applied with an oiled pinhead—the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Fairy), who sprinkles dew on the sleeping children as he sings. The beginning of his song is like that of the Sandman, but its second part consists of the melody of "Fulfilment" instead of that of "Promise." Gretel is the first to awake, and she wakes Hansel by imitating the song of the lark. He springs up with the cry of chanticleer, and lark's trill and cock's crow are mingled in a most winsome duet, which runs out into a description of the dream. They look about them to point out the spot where the angels ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a jolly miller once Lived on the river Dee; He worked and sang from morn till night, No lark more blithe than he. And this the burden of his song For ever used to be, "I care for nobody, no, not I, And nobody cares ...
— The Baby's Opera • Walter Crane
... poets sing a dirge: The year must perish; all the flowers are dead; The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail Runs in the stubble, but the lark has fled! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... summer-time looked down between them, the chimney-smoke was blacker than ever and across by the lake fence some young people were pulling mushrooms and laughing. Bonita looked over toward the buildings. Then she cropped grass again, for only a gurgling meadow-lark broke the ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... simple-hearted, shy man, who never did himself justice, except with two or three who saw most of him. Their affection has been enough for him—enough to make him think now that his life has been a very happy one. There!" cried Hope, as a lark sprang up almost from under the feet of the party—"There is another member of Deerbrook society, ladies, who is anxious to make your acquaintance." There were two or three larks hovering above the meadow at this moment, and others were soaring further off. The air was ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... snow-bird, with its white breast, and soft, bright eyes, that haunts the dusky fir-trees and dazzling hill-side slopes when no other bird dare show itself,—a quiet, shy creature, full of innocent trust and endurance, its chirp and low repetition dearer than the gay song of lark or robin, because ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... they will attain these culminating heights of spiritual exaltation. Nor will they be able long to remain there. The lark, the eagle, the airman, have all to come to earth again. And they spend most of their lives on the earth. But the lovers will have known what it is to soar. They will have found their wings. They will have seen heaven once, and breathed its air. ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... you me fair? that fair again unsay. Demetrius loves your fair. O happy fair! Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue's sweet air More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. Sickness is catching: O, were favour so, Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go; My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye, My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody. Were ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... how long I had been thus honourably employed. This was a question which I had anticipated, and, therefore, very readily replied "Only two or three days;" that I had left Portsmouth for what we called "a lark," and I thought ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... gaiety in flight, a human lark with a song. But a gloomy Italian is oppressive and almost terrible. Despite the training of years Amedeo's smile flickered and died out. A ferocious expression surged up in his dark eyes as he turned rather bruskly to scrutinize without hope the few remaining clients. But ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... sea-caves and forests, and the animality therein, its giants and dwarfs and sirens, its mankind and its godkind—surely it is nearer to life! Or go into the meadows with Beethoven, and listen to the lark and the blackbird! We are nearer life lying by a shady brook, hearing the quail in the meadows and the yellow-hammer in the thicket, than we are now, under this oppressive sky. This street is like Klinsor's garden; here, too, are flower-maidens—patchouli, jessamine, violet. Here is the languorous ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... the Heavenly Lark arise And cheer our solemn round— The Jest beheld with streaming eyes ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... lines from that gentleman's narrative: "In proportion as we got deeper into the desert, the soil became more and more arid; at daybreak I could still discover a few withered plants of Caligonum and Salsola, and not far from the same spot I saw a lark and another bird of a whitish colour, the last living things that we beheld in this dismal solitude.... The desert had now completely assumed the character of a land accursed, as the natives call it. Not the smallest ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... after crash; and in the rare moments of stillness, in this nerve-shattering prelude to the Great Push, I could hear the sweet warblings of a lark, as it rose higher and higher in the ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... her, Hector Bracondale knew that now he must be very, very careful in what he said. He must lull her fears to sleep again, or she would be off like a lark towards high heaven, and he ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... groans. The boy flung up his manacled hands to shield himself, and the light from a street lamp showed blood flowing where the chains had cut. The whole proceeding was so unprovoked, so sickening in its cruelty, that Kirk, who until this instant had looked upon the affair as a rather enjoyable lark, flew into a fury and, disregarding his own captors, leaped forward before the policeman could strike a third time. He swung his fist, and the man with the club hurtled across the street as if shot from a bow, then lay still in the gutter. With another ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... she knew we were going back to the Professor. Bock careered mightily along the wayside. And I had much time for thinking. On the whole, I was glad; for I had much to ponder. An adventure that had started as a mere lark or whim had now become for me the very gist of life itself. I was fanciful, I guess, and as romantic as a young hen, but by the bones of George Eliot, I'm sorry for the woman that never has a chance to be fanciful. Mifflin was in jail; aye, but he might ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... we went to a church called Notre Dame in the morning—not nearly such a snug place as Rugby Chapel, and they charge a penny apiece for the chairs. So we cut the inside and thought we'd go up to the top. It wasn't a bad lark, and you get a stunning view. The swimming baths looked about the size of a sheet of school paper. There was a door open into the belfry, and as nobody was about, we never thought it would be any harm to have a ring up. We couldn't get the big bell to go, but ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... been found out! It wouldn't have done. But it has cheered me up many a time when I have had the miserables and felt as if I'd like to cut sojering and make for home. It was nice to have a young officer somewheres about your own age ready for a lark. Poor old Mother Smithers, and that brown juice—what do they call it—cutch and gambia?—as dyes things brown. The officers' clean shirts as was washed in ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... treasures Nature strews With lavish hand around; My precious gems are sparkling dews, My wealth the verdant ground. Mine are the songs that freely gush From hedge, and bush, and tree; The soaring lark and speckled thrush Discourse ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... with the lark as usual, was down among the ducks, giving Farmer Burrell a useful hand. She delighted in doing so. From a country grandfather she had inherited a love of animals and of the early freshness of the morning that found eager expression, now that she had the chance of giving it full rein. Then, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... yours that magisterial skill whereby God put all Heaven in a woman's eye, Nature's own mighty and mysterious art That knows to pack the whole within the part: The shell that hums the music of the sea, The little word big with Eternity, The cosmic rhythm in microcosmic things— One song the lark and one the planet sings, One kind heart beating warm in bird and tree— To hear it beat, who knew so ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... remember—and the vole would creep to the entrance of his burrow, and sit in the welcome warmth till the sun declined and hunger sent him to his granary for a hearty meal. These brief, spring-like hours, when the golden furze blossomed in the hedge-bank near the field-vole's home, and the lark, exultant, rose from the barren stubble, were, however, full of danger to Kweek if he but dared to lift his head above the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... well look like a thunder-cloud," said Coleman, "if that was the notion he had got in his head; what a jolly lark, to be sure!" ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... scarlet. "No," she answered, "it's two of them and I can't decide. One is rich and homely as a hedge fence and always says 'drawring' and 'reel,' but has lots of money and a fair enough family back of him. The other is handsome and oh, my! gay as a lark, but he had about run through with a fortune, and I'm afraid he will flirt now that the restraint of my serious ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... however, that he is extremely well just now, to speak generally, and that this habit of regular exercise (with occasional homoeopathy) has thrown him into a striking course of prosperity, as to looks, spirits and appetite. He eats 'vulpinely' he says—which means that a lark or two is no longer enough for dinner. At breakfast the loaf perishes by Gargantuan slices. He is plunged into gaieties of all sorts, caught from one hand to another like a ball, has gone out every night for a fortnight together, and sometimes ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... D'Etrees. Seven of the largest Smyrna ships fell into the hands of M. de Cotlegon, and four he sunk in the bay of Gibraltar. The value of the loss sustained on this occasion amounted to one million sterling. Meanwhile Rooke stood off with a fresh gale, and on the nineteenth sent home the Lark ship of war with the news of his misfortune; then he bore away for the Madeiras, where having taken in wood and water, he set sail for Ireland, and on the third day of August arrived at Cork with fifty sail, including ships of war ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... just by way of a lark, His militia he never would call out, He then made them shoot at a mark Till they had shot all their powder and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... just the same as anyone else. I thought he was some swell of the town out for a lark. His hat was pulled down over his eyes, and I could ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... had our lark at the Bundah Royal Hotel, and were coming home to tea at the station, all in good spirits, but sober enough, when, just as we were crossing one of the roads that came through the run—over the 'Pretty Plain', as they called it—we heard ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... letters, which she did not venture to send him when they were written, for she was timid and feared that he would make fun of them, and she sang the whole day through, like a lark that is intoxicated with the sun, so that Monsieur d'Etchegorry scarcely recognized ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... is surely here. Here no Press Commissioner sits on the hillside croaking dreary translations from the St. Petersburg press; here no Pioneer sings catches with Sir John Strachey in Council. But here the lark sings in heaven for evermore, the sweet corn grows below, and the villager, amid these quiet joys with which the earth fills her lap, dreams his low life.—ALI ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... bubbled to the brim. With a bow, Pankburn took the natural cup, threw his head back, and held it back till the shell was empty. He drank many of these nuts each day. The black steward, a New Hebrides boy sixty years of age, and his assistant, a Lark Islander of eleven, saw to it that he ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... on by the operator, are procured in this way. I allude to hawks, which constantly dash at the call, or play-birds, of the netsman. I remember seeing, taken in a lark net on the racecourse of Corfu—one of the Ionian Isles—a most beautiful male specimen of the hen harrier (Circus cyaneus, Macg.); and here in England I have received, within the last few years, one great grey shrike (Lanus excubitor, 1.), four ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... means "lark," is the name given among the lower classes in Denmark to a spirit bottle of a peculiar shape. There is no word that ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... up and a glint of golden glorious sunshine came through; but it looked garish and it closed again and the white clouds trailed away, their lower fringes clinging to the hill tops like veils of gossamer woven by time to deck the bride of Spring. A lark rose at the edge of the crowd of weeping women and children as if unmindful of the tragedy over which it sang so rapturously, and he noted its fluttering wings and swelling throat as it soared in circles ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... in bed and the light was out, Sally told her everything. Janet made no comments. She listened with her eyes glaring out into the darkness, sometimes moistening her lips as they became dry. The unconscious note in Sally's voice thrilled her; it was like that of a lark thanking God for the morning. She felt in it the pulse of the great force of sex—nature rising like a trembling god of power out of the drab realities of ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... the aeroplane of a helicopter, to raise it vertically in the air. The helicopter idea continues to fascinate some inventors, and it would be rash to condemn it, but the most it seems to promise is a flight like that of the lark—an almost vertical ascent and a glide to earth again. A machine of this kind might conceivably, at some future time, become a substitute, in war, for the kite balloon; it is not ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... trenches, and the colt's-foot on the edge of the ditch was in bloom. All the weeds that grew in among the stones were brown and shiny. The beech-woods in the distance seemed to swell and grow thicker with every second. The skies were high—and a clear blue. The cottage door stood ajar, and the lark's trill could be heard in the room. The hens and geese pattered about in the yard, and the cows, who felt the spring air away in their stalls, lowed their approval ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the moors seem a wilderness, featureless, solitary, saddening. My sister Emily had a. particular love for them, and there is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The distant prospects were Anne's delight, and when I look round, she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon. In the hill-country silence, their poetry comes by lines and stanzas into my mind: once I loved it; now I dare not read ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... us to apprehend the Psalmist's meaning. 'The light of Thy face' is 'secret.' What a paradox! Can light conceal? Look at the daily heavens—filled with blazing stars, all invisible till the night falls. The effulgence of the face is such that they that stand in it are lost and hid, like the lark in the blue sky. 'A glorious privacy of light is Thine.' There is a wonderful metaphor in the New Testament of a woman 'clothed with the sun,' and caught up into it from her enemies to be safe there. And that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... again he would be four years old. Twice in the night he had asked if he was It; so when the dawn at last showed with a lovely pinkness in the lacy folds of the curtains, and the note of a far-away meadow-lark called him into the glory of birthday happiness, he wanted to be very certain that this famous period of his life had ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... complete content. Suddenly from the groves here and there about the garden, there came the sound of warbling birds. There were many different notes, even Letty could distinguish that—there was the clear song of the lark, the thrilling melody of the nightingale—even, most welcome of all to Letty, the soft coo of the dove—there were these and a hundred others—but all in perfect tune together. And as she listened, the music seemed to come nearer and nearer, till looking up, Letty saw the whole band ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... as the lark with upland voice the early sun doth greet, And the nightingale from shadowy boughs her vesper hymn repeat; For as the pattering shower on the meadow doth descend, And far as the flitting clouds with the sudden sunbeams ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... mind by varied paths toward Jerusalem the Holy. Flowers bloom in this terrestrial paradise, once beautiful and verdant with waving trees; singing birds enchant the ear; the turtle-dove soothes with its soft note; the crested lark sends up its song toward heaven, and the grave and stately stork inspires the mind with thought, and leads it on to meditation and repose. Life here was once idyllic, charming; here were once no rich, no poor, no high, no low. It was a world of ease, simplicity, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in a whisper to Cecilia, said, "I suppose, Miss Beverley, you will rise with the lark to-morrow morning? for your health, I mean. Early rising, you know, is vastly good ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... nevertheless the name is not an appropriate one, for though the bird certainly does scream, and that louder than the peacock, its scream is only a powerful note of alarm uttered occasionally, while the notes uttered at intervals in the night, or in the day-time, when it soars upwards like the lark of some far-off imaginary epoch in the world's history when all tilings, larks included, were on a gigantic scale, are. properly speaking, singing notes and in quality utterly unlike screams. Sometimes when walking across Regent's ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... amongst the Greeks,' I said—notes; 'yes, your sculptors of Athens were, unquestionably'—notes again. 'And what of it? Punch is a—Punch is a—well, you all know what Punch is!' Then it began to dawn upon them that this was a little lark. So I hurriedly threw notes under the table and suggested that on an occasion like the present it was our duty to first propose the health of the Queen! We did. Then the Prince of Wales, the Army and Navy, the Reserve Forces, the Bishops and Magistrates. All these were replied to, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... how she loved me I never had a chance to escape From the day she first saw me. But then after we were married I thought She might prove her mortality and let me out, Or she might divorce me. But few die, none resign. Then I ran away and was gone a year on a lark. But she never complained. She said all would be well That I would return. And I did return. I told her that while taking a row in a boat I had been captured near Van Buren Street By pirates on Lake Michigan, And kept in chains, so I could not write her. She cried and kissed me, and ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... betake us when the day's work is over? (Ah, red is the rose-bush in the lane.) Happy is the maid that knows the footstep of her lover— (Sing the song, the Eden song, again.) Who shall listen to us when black sorrow comes a-reaping? (See the young lark falling from the sky.) Happy is the man that has a true heart in his keeping— True hearts flourish when the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... it the Lark next morning, And I watched it soar and soar; But its pinions grew faint and weary, And it ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... lark was up and singing, And the hare was out and feeding on the lea; And the merry merry bells below were ringing, When my child's laugh rang ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... a question which makes me say it virtually of myself. That is a way you keen lawyers have. Very well; I shall be an honest witness, even against myself. That I wasn't up with the lark this morning goes without saying. The larks that I know much about are on the wing after dinner in the evening. The forenoon is a variable sort of affair with many people. Literally I suppose it ends at 12 M., but with me it is rounded off by ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... As the lark ascends from its low bed on fluttering wing, and salutes the morning skies; so Mr. Wordsworth's unpretending Muse, in russet guise, scales the summits of reflection, while it makes the round earth its footstool, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... through brush and thickets, they slid like a couple of youngsters on a lark. Pan found the gateway between bluff and slope even more adaptable to his purposes than it had appeared from a distance. The whole lay of the land was miraculously advantageous to the drive ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... then corporal of the Voltigeurs, became, during the Restoration, one of the three guards of Montcornet's estate in Aigues, Bourgogne, under head-keeper Michaud; he detected Mere Tonsard in her trespassing. He was a valuable servant; gay as a lark, rather loose in his conduct with women, without any religious principles, and ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... Other brigades went to Lark Hill, to Pond Farm, to Sling Plantation, and to West Down, North and West Down, South ... one could lose a whole army in ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... become an ermine!" "Thou wilt never thus escape me, As a serpent I will follow." Then the beauty of the Northland, Wailed and wept in bitter accents, Wrung her hands in desperation, Spake once more to Ilmarinen: "Surely, if thou dost not free me, As a lark I'll fly the ether, Hide myself within the storm-clouds." "Neither wilt thou thus escape me, As an eagle I will follow." They had gone but little distance, When the courser shied and halted, Frighted at some passing object; ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... 174, edition of 1715, where it is stated that Rene, King of Sicily and Duke of Anjou, who died in 1480, introduced the red-legged partridge into the latter country. Attempts have been made, and I believe with success, to naturalize the European lark on Long Island, and the English sparrow has been introduced into various parts of the Northern States, where he is useful by destroying noxious insects and worms not preyed upon by native birds. The humming-bird ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... cheerfully round in search of tidbits, is retrieved from under the hooves of Mrs. Curtis's horse, which is about to go out and dance. The dogcatcher's wagon is drawn up ready to rush forth, and the trained terrier which accompanies it is leaping with excitement. He regards it as a huge lark, and knows his cue perfectly. When the right time comes he makes a dash for a clown dressed as an elderly lady and tears off her skirt. One of the amateurs was allowed to ride behind the kicking mule, but to his great chagrin the mule did not kick as well as usual. Here are Charley ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... the floor; At dawn of morn, to view his store The farmer came. The hooting guest His self-importance thus express'd: 'Reason in man is mere pretence: How weak, how shallow is his sense! To treat with scorn the bird of night, Declares his folly, or his spite. Then too, how partial is his praise! The lark's, the linnet's chirping lays 20 To his ill-judging ears are fine; And nightingales are all divine. But the more knowing feathered race See wisdom stamped upon my face. Whene'er to visit light I deign, What flocks of fowl compose my train! Like slaves they crowd my flight ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... of the cricket, the song of the lark, the call of the sentinel crane, the watchword with which the migratory geese keep their squadrons together, the howling of jackals, the lowing of cows, the hum of the hive, the chatter of the drawing-room, and ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... above you, almost as unceasing as the light of a star. This strain indeed suggests some rare pyrotechnic display, musical sounds being substituted for the many-colored sparks and lights. And yet I will add, what perhaps the best readers do not need to be told, that neither the lark-song, nor any other bird-song in the open air and under the sky, is as noticeable a feature as my description of it might imply, or as the poets would have us believe; and that most persons, not especially ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... I said hurriedly, "I understand." Gold was creeping into the sky. A lark rose, triumphant. A pool amongst the reeds blazed like a brazen shield. The Spring day had flung back her doors. I saw that suddenly fatigue had leapt upon my friend. He tottered on his little seat, then his face, grey in the ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... no longer have troubled him greatly to leave all houses behind him for a season. A great purple foxglove could do much now—just at this phase of his story, to make him forget—not the human face divine, but the loss of it. A lark aloft in the blue, from whose heart, as from a fountain whose roots were lost in the air, its natural source, issued, not a stream, but an ever spreading lake of song, was now more to him than the memory of any human voice he ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... came a splendid cock-a-doodle, all in black and gold, like a herald, blowing his trumpet, and marching with a very dignified step. Then came a rook, in black, like a minister, with spectacles and white cravat. A lark and bullfinch followed,—friends, I suppose; and then the bride and bridegroom. Miss Wren was evidently a Quakeress; for she wore a sober dress, and a little white veil, through which her bright eyes shone. The bridegroom ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... hug and love, Esteem it much, yea, value it above Things of a greater bulk: yea, with delight, Say, My lark's leg is better ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sparkling brown eyes with the imp of mischief always lurking in them, or her merry laugh that made every one want to laugh with her, or the adventurous spirit that made her eager to embark on any kind of lark, it would be hard to tell—perhaps her popularity arose from a combination of all of these. But the fact remains that everybody loved her and she had not an enemy, except, perhaps, Amanda Peabody—but ...
— Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall - or, Leading a Needed Rebellion • Janet D. Wheeler
... cooked a royal supper. When four healthy boys are off on a lark of this sort the subject of eating is always one of their chief concerns, which must account for the space which it occupies in records ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... the Forest road. Though early in the season, it was warm and genial weather; the trees were budding into leaf, the hedges and the grass were green, the air was musical with songs of birds, and high above them all the lark poured out her richest melody. In shady spots, the morning dew sparkled on each young leaf and blade of grass; and where the sun was shining, some diamond drops yet glistened brightly, as in unwillingness to leave so fair a world, and have such brief existence. Even ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... torrents, or other streams that backwater from the Great River had converted into inland lakes; the air sweet with the fragrance of the wild crab and blossoming grape; wood-thrush and oriole, meadow-lark and cardinal-bird, making the woods ring with their melodies—this ride through Upper Louisiana in the early springtime was one long joy to eye and ear and nostril. Farther north the spring was less advanced, only little leaves on the trees, and for flowers a carpet, sometimes ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... stopped, with the bell-rope in his hand, to listen to the sound of music close at hand. A woman's voice, fresh and clear as the song of a sky-lark, was singing "Wapping Old Stairs," to the accompaniment ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the end of my task; but one question troubles me. I think of the "young men and maidens meek" who will read this book, and I wonder what they will make of it. We have had a lark together; we have gone romping down the vista of the ages, swatting every venerable head that showed itself, beating the dust out of ancient delusions. You would like all your life to be that kind ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... was besieging her Father's City. She stole away her Father's Hair, on which the Fate of the City depended, and carried it to Minos; for which Fact she was rewarded by her Lover with Contempt only. She is by some said to have been changed into a Lark: But Ovid, who here seems to confound two Stories together, makes her Transformation to have been into a Rock, which lies between Sicily and Italy; where the dashing of the Waves against the Rock representing the Sound of the Barking of Dogs, gave rise to the ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... are crushed by wheels, The lark's eggs scattered, their owners fled; And the hedgehog's household the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... working man was incited to contemplate the beauty of the night's rest that followed on the exhaustion of the day. It was proved to him that if his day was dull at least his sleep was sound. The ideal of society was the cheery artisan and the honest blacksmith, awake and singing with the lark and busy all day long at the loom and the anvil, till the grateful night soothed them into well-earned slumber. This, they were told, was better than the distracted sleep ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... the campus at double-quick, students poured out of the library and joined the battalion. Others came tumbling out of the fraternity houses in Buckeye Lane, anxious to join in the lark. Before entering Main Street, Fred gave his last orders, which were accepted without question from an alumnus whom they had all learned to know of late as a sympathetic and stimulating visitor to the Gym, and the adviser for the Thanksgiving football game in which they had scored ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... was hymning now. On the tops of the sweet old honeysuckles the cat-birds; robins in the low boughs of maples; on the high limb of the elm the silvery-throated lark, who had stopped as he passed from meadow to meadow; on a fence rail of the distant wheat-field the quail—and many another. I walked to and fro, receiving the voice of each as a spear hurled at my body. The sun sank. The shadows rushed on and deepened. ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... a reaction, and Phoebe was prostrated with grief and alarm. Her brother never doubted now that Reginald had run to Cape Town for a lark. But Phoebe, though she thought so too, could not be sure; and so the double agony of bereavement and desertion tortured her by turns, and almost together. For the first time these many years, she was so crushed she could not go about her business, but lay on a little sofa ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... wife went on grumbling, and declaring that to cut the Easter cake before reaching home was a sin and not the proper thing. In the east the first rays of the rising sun shone out, cutting their way through the feathery clouds, and the song of the lark was heard in the sky. Now not one but three kites were hovering over the steppe at a respectful distance from one another. Grasshoppers began churring ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the outer world with any comfort to my inner self, while the circumstances of the society around me are oppressive to my spirit. When our war was raging all around me I was light-spirited as the lark that mounts ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... sweetness and the power of His felt presence. We do not want Pharisaic fasting, but we do want that the reason for not fasting shall not be that Christians like eating better, but that their religion must be joyful because they have Christ with them, and therefore cannot choose but sing, as a lark cannot choose but carol. 'Religion has no power over us, but as it is our happiness,' and we shall never make it our happiness, and therefore never know its beneficent control, until we lift it clean out of the low region of outward forms and joyless service, into the blessed heights of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... an awful lark to bolt," said Gully, with a chuckle. "But," he added, seriously, "if you really mean it, by George, I'll go too! Wilson has just given me a thousand lines; and I'll be ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... forth, were cawing cheerily on their homeward flight, "beguiling the way with pleasant intercourse." The lesser birds were flitting towards the bushes; and through the lingering mist-wreath, floating still and tranquilly on the moist meadows, came forth at times a solitary twitter, as though the lark had alighted softly and joyously on her nest. The glow and the brightness of evening were gone when Marian passed the threshold of her home, uncertain yet as to the fate of Egerton and the course she should pursue. She allayed, as well as she was able, the fretfulness and impatience ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... have as beautiful heads as one could find in an assembly of Europeans. All have very fine forms, with small hands and feet. None of the West-coast ugliness, from which most of our ideas of the Negroes are derived, is here to be seen. No prognathous jaws nor lark-heels offended the sight. My observations deepened the impression first obtained from the remarks of Winwood Reade, that the typical Negro is seen in the ancient Egyptian, and not in the ungainly ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... matter with you? How queer you are! I tell you, I don't think it was you, but old fatty Dicksee; I've seen him sneaking about the yard a good deal lately, watching me, and he must have found out where we kept the key, and he has nailed it for some lark, or to tease me. Yes, that's it. You see if, next time we go, we don't find a dead dog, or a dead cat, or something nasty, tucked in the bin. Some of 'em served me that way before, when Bob Hopley's old donkey died, and they put in its ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... hour is nigh, The sun has left the lea, The orange flower perfumes the bower, The breeze is on the sea. The lark, his lay, who thrilled all day, Sits hushed, his partner nigh, Breeze, bird, and flower, confess the hour, But where ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nine o'clock, we had just finished our breakfasts, and the hands had been turned up, when the last lighter, with the rum on board, came alongside. She was a sloop of fifty tons, called the Lark, and belonged to three brothers, whose names I forget. She was secured to the larboard side of the ship; and the hands were piped 'clear lighter.' Some of our men were in the lighter slinging the casks, others at the yard tackle and stay-falls hoisting in, some in the spirit-room stowing away. ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... waiter arrived with three plates balanced on one arm, and the remark: "I 'urried up the pudden, sir. You'll find plenty o' lark ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... aft, life's craft undone! Crank plank, split spritsail—mark, sea's lark! That grey cold sea's old sprees, begun When men lay dark i' the ark, no spark, All water—just ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... apparently, for the perpetual enjoyment of all its inhabitants. The child gathers flowers in the meadow, or runs up and down a green bank, or looks for birds' nests every spring day. The boy and girl hear the lark in the field and the linnet in the wood, as a matter of course: they walk beside the growing corn, and pass beneath the rookery, and feel nothing of its being a privilege. The sailor beholds the stars every bright night of the year, and is familiar with the thousand hues ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... in the full blaze of the noonday. A merciless sun flamed like a furnace in the cloudless sky; and over the vast expanse of dry burnt herbage lay a veil of misty, tremulous heat. Every pool of water flashed like a mirror in the sun-rays; the drone of myriad insects rose from the ground; the lark's clear music rained down from the sky; and the ex-sailor, trudging along the white and dusty highway, almost persuaded himself that he was back in some tropical land, less gorgeous, but quite as sultry, as the one he had left. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... seen her with that team. And by George," he exclaimed, "I bet my head the other one was Olive! Of course it was. And she paid toll! Well, well, if that isn't a good one! Olive paying toll! I wish I had been here to take it! That truly would have been a lark!" ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... paid off clear of the rent, and all that's due, you'll get the new LASE signed; I'll promise you that upon the word and honour of a gentleman." And there's no going beyond that, you know, sir. So my boy came home as light as a feather, and as gay as a lark, to bring us the good news; only he was afraid we might not make up the rent, guineas and all; and because he could not get paid for the work he done, on account of the mistake in the overseer's tally, I sold the cow to ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... that is not the lark, whose notes do beat The vaulty heaven so high above our heads: I have more care to stay, than ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... things besides himself to Gudrid. He stood for home; he stood for Halldis and Orme who had loved her well; and he stood for the days when no heavy fate hung between her and the blue sky. He stood to her as to us the song of a lark may stand, when we are shut up within the walls of a town. She would have married him gladly, but for the Fate; but she no longer thought ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... They, too, are well off—they do not have to think what they ought to say and do. Yonder the butcher, with his dog, is driving a calf out of the village. The dog's voice is quite different from the lark's—but then a lark's singing would never drive ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... just as the sun came up with his great, round, red face, for there was a light smoky haze floating above the eastern horizon, and threw his light like a stream of crimson flame across the water; and the meadow lark perched upon his fence stake, the blackbird upon his alderbush, the brown thrush on the topmost spray of the wild thorn, and the bob-o'-link, as he leaped from the meadow and poised himself on his fluttering wings in mid air, all sent up a shout ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... and regarded the early trip ashore in the nature of a lark, and cast aside his white coat, to help row in his resplendent sweater, while the cook went about laying the table for breakfast, his round yellow face devoid of any interest in ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... Gilliland in Boston and the Western Electric in Chicago, there came to be a group of mechanics and high-school graduates, very young men, mostly, who had no reputations to lose; and who, partly for a living and mainly for a lark, plunged into the difficulties of this new business that had at that time little history and less prestige. These young adventurers, most of whom are still alive, became the makers of industrial history. They were unquestionably the founders of the present science ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... the case; they had come to escort De Roberval and his household thus far on their northward way. The two young men learned where Roberval was to pass the night, and also that he intended to depart early the following morning, and each returned to his rooms, determined to be up with the lark in order to obtain at least a glimpse of the fair lady who had ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... the fruit trees' budding promise as she patted along the railroad, and perhaps some old thrill shot again as a meadow-lark uttered his short, rich madrigal from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Warren, a boy slightly taller than Tim and perhaps a year older, ready at all times for a lark, followed his barefoot guide, but on the look-out, half suspecting it was one of Tim's tricks. They threaded their way through a maze of carts and circus paraphernalia, out to the edge of the grounds; past a line of small tents, used as the ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... boys only got together and wore uniforms for a big lark," was the reply to his question. "I ought to know what boys is like, havin' ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... — and in this trait, was remotely followed, a generation later, by another famous young man, Robert Louis Stevenson — a tropical bird, high-crested, long-beaked, quick-moving, with rapid utterance and screams of humor, quite unlike any English lark or nightingale. One could hardly call him a crimson macaw among owls, and yet no ordinary contrast availed. Milnes introduced him as Mr. Algernon Swinburne. The name suggested nothing. Milnes was always unearthing new coins ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams |
