"Redbreast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blithe as a lark, and as petted as a robin-redbreast, by no means pining, or even hankering, for any other robin. She was not the girl to give her heart before it was even asked for; and hitherto she had regarded the smuggler with pity more than admiration. For in many points she was like her father, whom she loved foremost ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... place, Master Shelton. This is my native land, this burrow in the earth. Come rain or wind—an whether it's April, and the birds all sing, and the blossoms fall about my bed, or whether it's winter, and I sit alone with my good gossip the fire, and robin-redbreast twitters in the woods—here is my church and market, my wife and child. It's here I come back to, and it's here, so please the saints, that I would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the high stars alone, Nor in the cup of budding flowers, Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone, Nor in the bow that smiles in showers, But in the mud and scum of things There alway, ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... Mansion destined soon to blaze 30 In snow white splendour, [B] [7]—think again; and, taught By old Sir William and his quarry, leave Thy fragments to the bramble and the rose; There let the vernal slow warm sun himself, And let the redbreast hop from stone ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... these special marks: first, you have learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreath your arms like a malcontent; to relish a love-song, like a robin redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his A B C; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch, like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Antony, pointing, with knobby forefinger, to the first, "is the Reverend Mother, Herself—large, and pure, and noble. . . . Nay, hop not too close, Sir Redbreast! When we enter her chamber we kneel at the threshold, till she bids us draw nearer. True, we are merely soberly-clad, holy women, whereas thou art a gay, gaudy man; bold-eyed, and, doubtless, steeped in sin. But even thou must keep thy distance, in presence of this most Reverend ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... a grey owl marched from her nest in the wall, and began picking up the crumbs. This greatly amused little Henry; and, in a few minutes after, there came a great set of sparrows, and a robin-redbreast, and two of them began to fight. And this made Henry laugh; and, on the whole, they so occupied him all day, he was less unhappy than the day before: and, when night came, he lay down near the nest of the owl and her young ones, and ...
— The Adventures of Little Bewildered Henry • Anonymous
... plunge into my cold tub, dressing afterwards in a subsequent glow, I became infected with the buoyant spirit of all these social surroundings; and felt as light- hearted and "seasonable" as Santa Claus and his wintry comrades, the church bells, little robin redbreast, dog Catch, and Bridget the maid, could either inspire ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... paven way, Where redbreast knows the white moon's ray; It sentinels the moss-grown homestead, And waits the men of ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... little Luke heard Old John the Indian speak of redbreast as Little Brother O-pee-chee. He wanted to ask the old man about the name, but did not get a chance. So the next morning he went down to the apple tree in the meadow and asked Father Redbreast ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... mutely on the little garden—tiny, but so pretty, with its green verandah, its semicircle of arbutus trees serving as a frame to the hilly landscape beyond, its one wavy acacia, woodbine-clasped, at the foot of which a robin-redbreast was hopping and singing ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... for the robin-redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole To rear him hillocks that shall keep ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... beaten by the game into marrying the solid, substantial business man beside her, who enjoyed delight in the spectacle of cats and rats walking the tight-rope in amity, and who was blissfully unaware that she was the Robin Redbreast in a cage that put all ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... I've been to the meadows," Said little Miss Turner, "With sweet robin-redbreast at play; And the daisies and daffodils Made me a bow, And said, 'How do you ...
— Harper's Young People, October 5, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... cedar waterpail from a shelf supported by other long pegs, poured its contents into a large cast-iron teakettle swinging over the fire, and whisked out of the door. Presently the notes of her hymn mingled in plaintive harmony with the sparkling but no sweeter song of a robin redbreast, twittering his delight in the warm sunshine amid the crimson apples of the tree that overhung ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... a spring's Soft and soul-melting murmurings Slept, and thus sleeping, thither flew A robin-redbreast, who, at view, Not seeing her at all to stir, Brought leaves and moss to cover her; But while he perking there did pry About the arch of either eye, The lid began to let out day, At which poor robin flew away, And ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... consider a less extreme and more familiar case. We possess a considerable number of birds which, like the redbreast, sparrow, the four common titmice, the thrush, and the blackbird, stay with us all the year round These lay on an average six eggs, but, as several of them have two or more broods a year, ten will be below the average of the year's increase. Such birds as these often live from fifteen to ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the redbreast it is bliss to hear The dulcet notes the little songster breeds; But ah, more blissful to a mother's ear The fair report of ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... others, like the pearl-bearing river-mussels, yielded to subtler demands. No doubt there was protection also—protection for sport, for utility, for aesthetic reasons, and because of humane sentiments; even wholesome superstitions have safeguarded the robin redbreast and the wren. There were introductions too—the rabbit for utility, the pheasant for sport, and the peacock for amenity. And every introduction, every protection, every killing ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... through the calm, sweet air; grey mists drape the fields and hedges. The migratory birds have left, save a few late swallows; and as I sit at work in the soft, still rain, I can hear the blackbird's melancholy trill and the thin pipe of the redbreast's winter song— the air is full of the ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... English poet to a special flower; but his poetry is usually sincere with an undercurrent of pathos, as in 'The Ruined Chapel,' 'The Winter Pear,' and the 'Song.' For lightness of touch and aerial grace, 'The Bubble' will bear comparison with any verse of its own genre. 'Robin Redbreast' has many delightful lines; and in 'The Fairies' one is taken into the realm of Celtic folklore, which is Allingham's inheritance, where the Brownies, the Pixies, and the Leprechauns trip over the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Robin Redbreast. One tradition is that the robin pecked a thorn out of the crown of thorns when Christ was on His way to Calvary, and the blood which issued from the wound, falling on the bird, dyed ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... envy and malice amongst them, for him to pronounce any of them deserving or capable of being happy; but I wonder,' says he, 'why the dove alone is absent from this meeting?' 'I know of one in her nest hard by,' answered the redbreast, 'shall I go and call her?' 'No,' says the eagle, 'since she did not obey our general summons, 'tis plain she had no ambition for a public preference; but I will take two or three chosen friends, and ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... earliest of the year, By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; The redbreast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... in England, namely, the robin,—the original robin redbreast,—a slight, quick, active bird with an orange front and an olive back, and a bright, musical warble that I caught by every garden, lane, and hedge-row. It suggests our bluebird, and has similar habits and manners, though it ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the season burns bright on the hill, Where the foliage dead falls yellow and red, Picturing vainly, but foretelling plainly The wealth of cottage warmth that comes When the frost gleams and the blood numbs, And then, bonny Robin, I'll spread thee out crumbs In my garden porch for thy redbreast pride, The song and the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the spring, mother Redbreast Made her nest in the bushes, The good lady! Made her nest in the ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... system of "Thorough" on one side of St. George's Channel, it was being carried out on the other by a mind inferior indeed to his own in genius, but almost equal to it in courage and tenacity. Cold, pedantic, superstitious as he was (he notes in his diary the entry of a robin-redbreast into his study as a matter of grave moment), William Laud rose out of the mass of court-prelates by his industry, his personal unselfishness, his remarkable capacity for administration. At a later period, when immersed in State business, he found time to acquire so complete a knowledge ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... o' that, Sir,' urged Mr. Weller, shaking his head. 'If you know'd who was near, sir, I rayther think you'd change your note; as the hawk remarked to himself vith a cheerful laugh, ven he heerd the robin-redbreast ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... machines pour remonter les batteaux, machines pour—a great many things which you would like to see I am sure over my father's shoulder. And my aunt would like to see the new staircase, and to see a kitcat view of a robin redbreast sitting on her nest in a sawpit, discovered by Lovell, and you would both like to pick Emmeline's fine strawberries round the crowded oval table after dinner, and to see my mother look so much better in the ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the robin redbreast, and the wren, [Cornelia doth this in several forms of distraction. Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the fieldmouse, and ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... village sleeps below, And faintly here is heard the flow Of Woodburn's summer rill; A place where all things mournful meet, And yet the sweetest of the sweet, The stillest of the still! With what a pensive beauty fall Across the mossy, mouldering wall That rose-tree's clustered arches! See The robin-redbreast warily, Bright through the blossoms, leaves his nest: Sweet iugrate! through the winter blest At the firesides of men—but shy Through all the sunny summer-hours, He hides himself among the flowers In ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... modern silly Johnny for the older silly Billy, while Jack Pudding is in German Hans Wurst, John Sausage. Only the very commonest names are used in this way, and, if we had no further evidence, the rustic Dicky bird, Robin redbreast, Hob goblin, Tom tit, Will o' the Wisp, Jack o' lantern, etc., would tell us which have been in the past the most popular English font-names. During the Middle Ages there was a kind of race among half a dozen favourite names, the prevailing order being ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... once upon a time, when Jenny Wren was young, So daintily she danced and so prettily she sung, Robin Redbreast lost his heart, for he was a gallant bird, So he doffed his hat to Jenny ...
— Mother Goose - The Original Volland Edition • Anonymous
... wandered these poor innocents, Till death did end their grief; In one another's arms they died, As wanting due relief: No burial this pretty pair From any man receives, Till Robin Redbreast piously Did ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... encountered waggons loaded with brushwood and logs. The ground had become more solid, and in places was touched with frost. Already had the snow begun to fall and the branches of the trees were covered with rime like rabbit-skin. Already on frosty days the robin redbreast hopped about on the snow-heaps like a foppish Polish nobleman, and picked out grains of corn; and children, with huge sticks, played hockey upon the ice; while their fathers lay quietly on the stove, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the robin in this country, my dear, is not like the little redbreast you have seen at home; our robin is twice as large; though in shape resembling the European robin; I believe it is really a kind of thrush. It migrates in the fall, and returns to us early ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... Unknown Simple Simon Unknown A Pleasant Ship Unknown "I Had a Little Husband" Unknown "When I Was a Bachelor" Unknown "Johnny Shall Have a New Bonnet" Unknown The City Mouse and the Garden Mouse Christina Rossetti Robin Redbreast Unknown Solomon Grundy Unknown "Merry Are the Bells" Unknown "When Good King Arthur Ruled This Land" Unknown The Bells of London Unknown "The Owl and the Eel and the Warming Pan" Laura E. Richards The Cow Ann Taylor The Lamb William Blake Little Raindrops Unknown "Moon, So Round ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... that two and two made four, I felt that five times two were ten, But, as for all profounder lore, The robin redbreast or the wren, The sparrow, whether cock or hen, Knew quite as much about Quadratics, Was less confused by x and n, The deep ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... likewise, over whose motherless litter a wretched slave, who has by accident killed the sow with a stone, is weeping and wringing his hands in dread of his master's fury. While St. Malo is pruning vines, he lays his cape upon the ground, and a redbreast comes and lays an egg on it. He leaves it there, for the bird's sake, till the young are hatched, knowing, says his biographer, that without God the Father not a sparrow falls to the ground. Hailoch, the prince of Brittany, destroys his church, and is struck blind. Restored to sight by ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... P. Mellinger did the honors. That man cut ice in Anchuria. He was It. He was the Royal Kafoozlum. If me and Henry was babes in the wood, he was a Robin Redbreast from the topmost bough. Him and me and Henry Horsecollar locked arms, and toted that phonograph around, and had wassail and diversions. Everywhere we found doors open we went inside and set the machine going, and Mellinger called upon the people to ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... picked the little green coronets off, so that they were smooth and glossy, and egg-shaped, and crimson on one side and yellow on the other; and then he got an empty chaffinch's nest close by and put the five hips into it, and took it home, and persuaded Alice our new parlourmaid that it was a robin redbreast's nest with eggs in it. And she believed it, for she came from ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... appear, surrounded by hawthorn and holly that "outdares cold winter's ire," and sheltering old hermits, skilled in simples and the secret power of herbs. Sometimes the poet describes a choir where the tiny wren sings the treble, Robin Redbreast the mean, the thrush the tenor, and the nightingale the counter-tenor, while droning bees fill in the bass; and shows us fairy haunts and customs with a delicacy only equaled ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... a rap at my window, and there stood Mr. Robin Redbreast, looking in as saucily as you please. "I thought you'd be there," he chirped; "and if you will look out a minute, I'll show ...
— Buttercup Gold and Other Stories • Ellen Robena Field
... their young around our gardens as if they liked us, and how heartily we admired the beauty and fine manners of these graceful birds and their loud cheery song of Fear not, fear not, cheer up, cheer up. It was easy to love them for they reminded us of the robin redbreast of Scotland. Like the bluebirds they dared every danger in defense of home, and we often wondered that birds so gentle could be so bold and that sweet-voiced singers could ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... world, his gaze is more particularly directed to this avenue, as though the form of the intelligent Mr. Mole was an object of interest. From time to time Mr. Verdant Green consults his watch in a nervous manner, and is utterly indifferent to the appeals of the robin-redbreast who is hopping about outside, in expectation of the dinner which has ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... learn vice, and in the region visited by whale ships, vice enough has certainly been taught him. Here are the dogs, who will eat old coats, or anything; and, near the dwellings, here is a snow-bunting—robin redbreast of the Arctic lands. A party of our sailors once, on landing, took some sticks from a large heap, and uncovered the nest of a snow-bunting with young, the bird flew to a little distance, but seeing that the men sat down, and harmed her not, ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... usually severe, it is attributed to this cause, and the reason given 'because the bird has no gall' is to them quite conclusive, but to me, perfectly irrelevant and unsatisfactory. A belief amongst boys, that to harm or disturb the nests of the redbreast or swallow is unlucky, appears very general throughout the kingdom; and the keen bird-nester, who prides himself on the quantity of eggs blown and strung bead-fashion, here often gets mortified by finding his trophies destroyed by the housewife who considers their presence as affecting ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... was a heavy drinker before he had the fortune left him. He surmised that the place we had stopped at last night was Haverthwaite in Lancashire. We saw a book of poems written in the Cumberland dialect, and copied the first and last verses of one that was about a Robin Redbreast: ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... how unhappy we were in her glass case," said a robin redbreast, gravely. "And as for being her property, you are a knook, and the natural guardian of all birds; so you know that Nature created us free. To be sure, wicked men shot and stuffed us, and sold us to the milliner; but the idea of our being her ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... exactly because he is not tedious, because he does not shoot into German foliosity, that Schlosser finds him 'intolerable.' I have justly transferred to Gulliver's use the words originally applied by the poet to the robin- redbreast, for it is remarkable that Gulliver and the Arabian Nights are amongst the few books where children and men find themselves meeting and jostling each other. This was the case from its first publication, just one hundred and twenty years since. 'It ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... the discernment of the spirit universal. There is but one life and one spirit, though the degrees of its manifestation are wide as the poles asunder: just as in our own body there are specialised cells for high tasks and for lowly, yet the same life pervades them all. There is a wild robin redbreast who always comes when I dig my garden, to eat the grubs that the spade turns up. He is not in the least afraid, and he often answers when I whistle to him: he is a little cousin of mine. His life is in no essentials different to my own life, except that I have the advantage ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... silly wren, the titmouse also, The little redbreast have their election, They fly I saw and together gone, Whereas hem list, about environ As they of kinde have inclination, And as nature impress and guide, Of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... began Gold and crimson turning, Robin-Redbreast sang—his breast Bright as sunset burning— 'Birdie's sweet, sweet, sweet, Sweet as dewy clover, And her praises shall be sung ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... 'madame,' no more 'Monsieur Jean,' we are living under a Republic, everybody says thou, don't they, Marius? The programme is changed. If you only knew, father, I have had a sorrow, there was a robin redbreast which had made her nest in a hole in the wall, and a horrible cat ate her. My poor, pretty, little robin red-breast which used to put her head out of her window and look at me! I cried over it. I should have liked to kill the cat. But now nobody cries any more. Everybody laughs, everybody is happy. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... who arrives shortly after Robin-Redbreast, with whom he associates both at this season and in the autumn, is the Golden-Winged Woodpecker, alias, "High-Hole," alias, "Flicker," alias, "Yarup." He is an old favorite of my boyhood, and his note to me means very much. He announces his arrival ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... in from abroad, they espied a little robin with a great spider in his mouth; so the Interpreter said, Look here. So they looked, and Mercy wondered; but Christiana said, What a disparagement is it to such a little pretty bird as the robin-redbreast is, he being also a bird above many, that loveth to maintain a kind of socialbleness with man; I had thought they had lived upon crumbs of bread, or upon other such harmless matter; I like him worse than ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... cried Joan, "just like the babes in the wood. If God hadn't sended you to find us, I s'pose robin redbreast would have comed by-and-by to cover us up wif leaves and twigs ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur |
