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Bleat   Listen
verb
Bleat  v. i.  (past & past part. bleated; pres. part. bleating)  To make the noise of, or one like that of, a sheep; to cry like a sheep or calf. "Then suddenly was heard along the main, To low the ox, to bleat the woolly train." "The ewe that will not hear her lamb when it baas, will never answer a calf when he bleats."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bleat" Quotes from Famous Books



... look around her. Through all the night from here, from there, came thin traces of sound, threads fretting the silence. The trotting of a horse a mile away on the Arranakilty road, the bark of a dog from near the Round House, the shaky bleat of a sheep from the fold at Ross' farm came distinct yet diminished almost to vanishing point. It was like listening to the country sounds of Lilliput. With these came the vaguest whisper of flowing water, broken now and again by a little shudder of wind ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole

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

... and giddy, went gamboling on; until suddenly, without even time for a bleat of terror, he fell crashing through the rotten ice, and disappeared from view into one ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

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

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

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

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

... incline to think; for come-back needs no facts, it is a self-feeder, and its entire absence in the anti-Englishman looks as if he had been a German. Germans do not come back when it goes against them, they bleat "Kamerad!"—or disappear. Perhaps this man was a spy—a poor one, to be sure—yet doing his best for his Kaiser: slinking about, peeping, listening, trying to wedge the Allies apart, doing his little bit towards ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister

... quickly through the wood, and when he came near where the farmer was he began to bleat like a goat. The farmer stopped and listened. Then Gilly began to baa like the sheep. "That sounds very like my goat and sheep," said the farmer. "Maybe they weren't taken at all, but just strayed off. If I can get them now, I needn't make ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum

... me. "For once I can do you a turn; but if you're going to bleat about it, I shall not. Do you want Arthur Parable, or ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... monastery you only just got the start of me in being dead. There used to be a few people in this place, but now there doesn't seem to be a dog left. All the youngsters have 'gone foreign,' and all the oldsters have gone to—'goodness knows which.' Sometimes we hear the bleat of sheep on the mountains, and sometimes the scream of seagulls overhead, and sometimes we hold a convocation of all living rooks in the elms on the lawn. We take no thought for the morrow, what we shall eat or what we shall put on, and on Sundays when the church bell rings we go out, like ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

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

... I pray you, think you question with the Jew: You may as well go stand upon the beach And bid the main flood bate his usual height; You may as well use question with the wolf Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb; You may as well forbid the mountain pines To wag their high tops and to make no noise, When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven; You may as well do any thing most hard, As seek to soften that—than which what's harder?— His Jewish heart: therefore, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... thy might!! My turn to laugh will come some day. Me hath she jilted once, you the same trick she'll play. Some gnome her lover be! where cross-roads meet, With her to play the fool; or old he-goat, From Blocksberg coming in swift gallop, bleat A good night to her, from his hairy throat! A proper lad of genuine flesh and blood, Is for the damsel far too good; The greeting she shall have from me, To ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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

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

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

... dread the raven in the sky; Night and day thou art safe,—our cottage is hard by. Why bleat so after me? why pull so at thy chain? Sleep—and at break of day I ...
— Phebe, the Blackberry Girl - Uncle Thomas's Stories for Good Children • Anonymous

... Gone was the bitter day, She heard the milky ewes Bleat to their lambs astray. Her heart cried for her lamb Lapped cold in the churchyard sod, She could not think on the happy children At play with the Lamb ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various

... enough: There's none but sheep in sight for three miles round: And they're all huddled up against the dykes, With lollering tongues too baked to bleat "Stop thief!" Look slippy! I'm half-scumfished by these walls— A weak flame, easily snuffed out: the stink Of whitewash makes me queasy—sets me listening To catch the click of the cell-door behind ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

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

... earth, each cloven hoof descends, And round and round her flexile neck she bends. Crops of the grey coral moss, and hoary thyme, Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime, Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam, Or seems to bleat ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... then busy with his early exercises of devotion, listened, as he heard the voice, now here, now there, and thought about angels and the Millennium. Solemnly and tenderly there floated in at his open study-window, through the breezy lilacs, mixed with low of kine and bleat of sheep and hum of early wakening life, the little silvery ripples of that singing, somewhat mournful in its cadence, as if a gentle soul were striving to hush itself to rest. The words were those of the rough old version of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... steeds, Winged with roseate clouds, strain up the steep. She loosely holds the reins, her golden hair, Its strings outspread by the sweet morning breeze[,] Blinds the pale stars. Our rural tasks begin; The young lambs bleat pent up within the fold, The herds low in their stalls, & the blithe cock Halloos most loudly to his distant mates. But who are these we see? these are not men, Divine of form & sple[n]didly arrayed, They sit in solemn conclave. Is that Pan, [36] Our Country God, ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley

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

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

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

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

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

... said the princess, "will not allow myself any more to play the shepherdess in my waking dreams. I have often soothed my thoughts with the quiet and innocence of pastoral employments, till I have, in my chamber, heard the winds whistle, and the sheep bleat: sometimes freed the lamb entangled in the thicket, and, sometimes, with my crook, encountered the wolf. I have a dress like that of the village maids, which I put on to help my imagination, and a pipe, on which I play softly, and suppose myself ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... toun she trotted by him; A long half-mile she could descry him; Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him, She run wi' speed: A friend mair faithfu' ne'er cam nigh ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

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

... she paced the garden paths, a faint bleat sounded at the hem of her skirt, and four unsteady legs supported a weak little body that tumbled ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood

... of the soft-handed literary people who bleat about only being able to write in carefully purged and decorated surroundings could have a look at that stateroom. In just such compartments Mr. McFee has written for years, and expected to finish that night (in the two hours each day that he is able to devote to writing) his tale, "Captain Macedoine's ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

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

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

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

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

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

... which may perhaps be derived from the Latin sinuo, as snake, sneak, snail, snare; so likewise snap and snatch, snib, snub. Bl imply a blast; as blow, blast, to blast, to blight, and, metaphorically, to blast one's reputation; bleat, bleak, a bleak place, to look bleak, or weather-beaten, black, blay, bleach, bluster, blurt, blister, blab, bladder, blew, blabber lip't, blubber-cheek't, bloted, blote-herrings, blast, blaze, to blow, that is, blossom, bloom; and perhaps blood ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... animal while his brother drove his sharp dirk into its white and throbbing throat. The kid turned its soft blue eyes upon him and gave a plaintive bleat. Its warm breath rose visible in the morning ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

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

... and irrepressible; I remember my first terror hearing the howl of weird, amorous cats; I remember the scream of a terrified, injured horse, the sheet-lightning And running away from the sound of a woman in labor, something like an owl whooing, And listening inwardly to the first bleat of a lamb, The first wail of an infant, And my mother singing to herself, And the first tenor singing of the passionate throat of a young collier, who has long since drunk himself to death, The first elements of foreign speech ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence

... "Isabel, my sweet! Red whortle-berries droop above my head, And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet; Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed 300 Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat Comes from beyond the river to my bed: Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom, And it shall comfort me within ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... trap!" cried Mr. Lion. "That goat was tied there to a tree by a rope, so he would bleat and make you come closer. Then a hunter, hidden in a tree, ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum

... the other kidnappers. The Court-room was crowded with 'respectable people,' 'gentlemen of property and standing:' they received the decision with 'applause and the clapping of hands.' Seize a lamb out of a flock, a wolf from a pack of wolves, the lambs bleat with sympathy, the wolves howl with fellowship and fear; but when a competitor for the Presidency sends back to eternal bondage a poor, friendless negro, asking only his limbs, wealthy gentlemen of Boston ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

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

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

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

... attempt to represent the roll of thunder, the noise of wind and hail, or the creaking of wheels, and pulleys, and the various sounds of flutes, pipes, trumpets, and all sorts of instruments: he will bark like a dog, bleat like a sheep, or crow like a cock; his entire art will consist in imitation of voice and gesture, and there will be very ...
— The Republic • Plato

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

... The bleat of the pacifist was heard in the land. Those who had once chanted in sanctimonious chorus, "He kept us out of war," now sang sentimental hymns invoking mercy and forgiveness for the crucifiers of children ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

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

... throw'd The sand in a kind of a sand-bar like, And I seed, a leetle ways up the road, A man squattin' down, like a big bull-toad, On the ground, a-figgerin' thar in the sand With his finger, and motionin' with his hand, And he looked like Ellick Garry. And as I driv up, I heerd him bleat To hisself, like a lamb: "Hauh? nine from eight Leaves nuthin' — and none ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

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

... like a well-grooved parrot. Mandleco turned east, then south, then south-by-east, like a compass on a binge; he looked as if he wanted to roar, but his voice came out as a frantic bleat: "Why, this is crazy! Goddam it, it's crazy! Do you realize what this will—" He confronted Arnold wildly. "What the hell does it MEAN, I say! Untenable? And who the hell ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse

... strength?—do you know what consoled him? It was, that another partook of his punishment—that another partook of his anguish—that another was to die before him. Lead two sheep to the butcher's, two oxen to the slaughterhouse, and make one of them understand that his companion will not die; the sheep will bleat for pleasure, the ox will bellow with joy. But man—man, whom God created in his own image—man, upon whom God has laid his first, his sole commandment, to love his neighbor—man, to whom God has given ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... even today, in the faculties and the seminaries, by the minister of public education and by Messeigneurs the bishops, proving the existence of God by metaphysics. That is what the elite of the French youth are condemned to bleat after their professors, for a year, or else forfeit their diplomas and the privilege of studying law, medicine, polytechnics, and the sciences. Certainly, if anything is calculated to surprise, it is that with such philosophy ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

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

... modestly appeared in the soft heavens, and Princess Anne gathered its roofs together like a camp of camels in the desert, and, with an occasional bleat or bark or human sound, seemed dozing out the soft fall night, absorbed, perhaps, in the spreading news of Mrs. Custis's death and Vesta's wedding-journey, that had to be ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

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

... tale, could have something from her. The latest story going about in connection with her reckless and unreasoned generosity was of what she had done for a band of strolling Italian musicians. She had encouraged them to bleat and bawl their wornout songs in wornout voices, under the windows of the Hotel de Paris, until it had been politely intimated to her that the shriekings and tinklings were a nuisance. Mary, who loved and understood good ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

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

... an' steamin',' he cried, in a kind of loud bleat, which added still more to his sheep-like appearance: 'Spilsby's Specials—oh, lovely—ain't they nice; my eye, fine muttin pies; who ses Spilsby's; 'ave one, miss?' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

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

... prim little maid in a ruched white cap took Joe's hat. There should have been a troglodyte attendant, instead. On the other side of swinging glass doors was much clatter and laughter and the indistinct voice of a woman above a rhythmic strumming and the bleat of a saxophone. The transition to this other side was sudden and bewildering. The glimmer burst into a glare, the dim echo swelled into a roar as the door opened, and Joe stood blinking, asking for a table for two. As he threaded his way between tables, past careening waiters swinging aloft perilous ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... head nearly to the ground that she might lay her hands on his horns, which were very large; he then lifted her gently from the ground by raising his head. If she chanced to leave her flock feeding, as soon as they discovered she was gone, they all began to bleat most piteously, and would continue to do so till she returned; they would then testify their joy by rubbing their sides against her petticoat ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... trader. "You bleat like a yowe. I said you can take it, the drink. Savvy? Wena poosa meningi ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... the rocks on high, Sweetheart mine, Echo mocks the cuckoo's cry, Sweetheart mine, From each hillock low the steers, Bleat of lambs falls on our ears, In the bushes, sweet and low, ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... for laughter. The jade has jilted me, and will you too hereafter; May Kobold, for a lover, be her luck! At night may he upon the cross-way meet her; Or, coming from the Blocksberg, some old buck May, as he gallops by, a good-night bleat her! A fellow fine of real flesh and blood Is for the wench a deal too good. She'll get from me but one love-token, That is to ...
— Faust • Goethe

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

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

... nicely packed, and addressed to "Mr. the Director of my Imperial Palace of the Louvre, at Paris. This side uppermost." The Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Italians, &c., should be free to come and visit my capital, and bleat with tears before the pictures torn from their native cities. Their ambassadors would meekly remonstrate, and with faded grins make allusions to the feeling of despair occasioned by the absence of the beloved works of art. Bah! I would offer them a pinch of snuff out ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... olive, corn-field and orchard-plot, grateful earth lies lightly over his grey temples, and the earliest flowers of spring blossom above his dust.[41] The lovely lines of Leonidas,[42] in which Clitagoras asks that when he is dead the sheep may bleat over him, and the shepherd pipe from the rock as they graze softly along the valley, and that the countryman in spring may pluck a posy of meadow flowers and lay it on his grave, have all the tenderness of an English pastoral in a land of soft outlines and silvery tones. ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

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

... your woods and orchards without birds! Of empty nests that cling to boughs and beams As in an idiot's brain remembered words Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams! Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds Make up for the lost music, when your teams Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more The feathered gleaners follow ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks

... milking was over, the old man selected a fat kid, caught it by the hind leg and dragged it, bleating in wild terror, to a gallows behind the house, where he hung it up and skilfully cut its throat, leaving it to bleat and bleed to death while he wiped his knife and went on talking volubly with his guest. The occasional visits of Ramon were the most interesting events in his life, and he always killed a kid to express his appreciation. Ramon reciprocated ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... was far off and all unlike the ceaseless rush and countless noises of the labouring ship at sea. There came a little drone of chanting from the chapel a hundred yards away, and there was now and again the bleat of a sheep, and the homely crow of the cocks, sounding as if shut up somewhere still. For a time I stayed, enjoying the unwonted calm, and then the sunlight crept into the little window, and I rose, and went out. My two comrades ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler

... the oxen lowed, The sheep's "Bleat! Bleat!" came over the road; All seeming to say, with a quiet delight, "Good ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... pebbly streams Sweeten and make soft your dreams: The purling springs, groves, birds, and well-weav'd bowers, With fields enamelled with flowers, Present their shapes; while fantasy discloses Millions of lilies mix'd with roses. Then dream ye hear the lamb by many a bleat Woo'd to come suck the milky teat: While Faunus in the vision comes to keep From rav'ning wolves the fleecy sheep. With thousand such enchanting dreams, that meet To make sleep not so sound as sweet: Nor can ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... Crow with a smirk. "Then I must stay where I can see what's going on. So I'm going to sit in that tall elm over by the stone wall. When I see the sheep begin to bunch together I'll join you at once. . . . Please bleat three times when the treat is ready, for I might ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey

... let her wash thy dainty feet With such salt things as tears, or with rude hair Dry them, soft Pharisee, that sit'st at meat With him who made her such, and speak'st him fair. 340 Leaving God's wandering lamb the while to bleat Unheeded, shivering in the pitiless air: Thou hast made prisoned virtue show more wan And haggard than ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... hours, and this so much the more readily from the circumstance that he had previously refreshed himself with a bath and clean linen. The first consciousness of his situation was accompanied with the bleat of poor Kitty. That gentle animal, intended by nature to mix with herds, had visited the cabin daily, and had been at the sick man's side, when his fever was at its height; and had now come again, as if to inquire after his night's rest. Mark held out his ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

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

... out for your wool I'll not be a fool, The very pet I'll eat; The lamb the best-looking, Without any cooking, I'll strangle from the teat; And swallow the dam, As well as the lamb, And stop her foolish bleat. Old Hornie, too,—rot him,— The sire that begot him Shall ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... there is one laugh left in her whole little shrunken body after it all; but there is, and the grin on her face reaches almost from ear to ear, as she clasps the biggest fairy in an arm very little stouter than a boy's bean blower, and hears the lamb bleat. Why, that one smile on that ghastly face would be thought worth his fifty dollars by the children's friend, could he see it. Pauline is the child of Swedish emigrants. She and Annie will not fight over their lambs and their dolls, not for ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... the farmer goes, With grateful heart, at the close of day; Harness and chain are hung away; In the wagon-shed stand yoke and plow; The straw's in the stack, the hay in the mow; The cooling dews are falling;— The friendly sheep his welcome bleat, The pigs come grunting to his feet, The whinnying mare her master knows, When into the yard the farmer goes, His cattle calling,— "Co', boss! co', boss! co'! co'! co'!" While still the cow-boy, far away, Goes seeking those that have gone astray,— "Co', boss! co', boss! ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

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

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

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

... rowers as they dipped their oars, and the rippling of the water against the sides of the boat. Up to this time the black lamb had lain quietly in Melas' arms, but now something seemed to disturb him. He lifted his head, gave a sudden bleat, and somehow flung himself out of Melas' arms directly into the basket of eels! Such a squirming as there was then! The eels squirmed, and the lamb squirmed, and if his legs had not been securely tied together he undoubtedly would ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins

... The carrion festering we snuff, And gathering down upon the breeze, Release the valley from disease; If longing for more fresh a meal, Around the tender flock we wheel, A marksman doth some bush conceal. This very morn, I heard an ewe Bleat in the thicket; there I flew, With lazy wing slow circling round, Until I spied unto the ground A lamb by tangled briars bound. The ewe, meanwhile, on hillock-side, Bleat to her young—so loudly cried, She heard it not when it replied. Ho, ho!—a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... reflection. Never tell us, that a man can walk beneath the rainbow's arch, and not think of the power that placed it there! that he can stand on the tall cliff's peak, and not drink in the fullness of God's exceeding glory—that he can hear the small lambs bleat, or inhale the perfume of the hawthorn, without thankfulness to the great Author of all! Devoid of any thing like a settled creed, he still had many vague, yet sublime conceptions of the mightiness and the goodness of a Power that fills the universe with His presence. Many there are with such ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

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

... began to bleat. A rippling crash, a splintering of wood, told of an irresistible onslaught ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

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

... somewhere every second of the day and darkness—through jungles, across swamps, down mountains, over plains, out of valleys. It is a cry of warning, a cry to disarm foes. It is an outcry of good as against evil—the squawk of a hen to her chicks, the bleat of a sheep to her lambs, the grunt of a sow to her sucklings, the bellow of a cow to her calf, the purr of a cat to her kittens, the whine of a dog to her puppies, the drum of a partridge to her young. A cry from the heart to the heart, an appeal of flesh to its own flesh, ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... fat-head!" Patrick snapped and rang off. A quarter of an hour later he was called to the phone once more and the familiar bleat of Jimmy tickled his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various

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

... not taller than a rabbit, was bounding about through the grass, running around the prostrate body of its mother, and uttering its tiny bleat. ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

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

... are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river-sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... plain shadowing. Half-way up The purple heath is seen, but bare its brow, And deep-intrenched, and all beneath it spread With massy fragments riven from its top. 100 Amidst the crags, and scarce discerned so high, Hangs here and there a sheep, by its faint bleat Discovered, whilst the astonished eye looks up, And marks it on the precipice's brink Pick its scant food secure:—and fares it not Ev'n so with you, poor orphans, ye who climb The rugged path of life without a friend; And over broken crags bear hardly on, With ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... less in love; The parrot, though he mocked the dove, Died when she died, and proved his love. When merry springtime comes, we hear How all things into love must stir; How birds would rather sing than eat, How joyful sheep would rather bleat: And daffodils nod heads of gold, And dance in April's sparkling cold. So in our early love did we Dance much and skip, and laugh with glee: But let none think our love is flown If, when we're married, little's shown: E'en though our lips be dumb ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies

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

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

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

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

... lurch, and who had, contrary to all custom, remained away so long, for the goats could tell the time without mistake. As soon as Greenfinch caught sight of the three missing friends amid the flowers she set up an extra loud bleat, whereupon all the others joined in a chorus of bleats, and the whole company came trotting towards the children. Peter woke up, rubbing his eyes, for he had been dreaming that he saw the chair again with its beautiful red padding ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri

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

... tootsey weetsy darlin'," I've heard her say to a bright-eyed, gentle lamb, her especial delight. The little creature would run to her and bleat by way of telling her it was hungry, and when she had fed it it would rub its pretty head against her knee and look love at her, just as I have seen babies look ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea

... the right, at not so very great a distance, came the bleat of a goat, while further away still could be heard the awe-inspiring roar of ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman

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

... garden at The Leasowes enjoyed a higher reputation even than his poetry, and it is well known how he strained his slender means in the effort to outshine his neighbors. "In time," says Johnson, "his expenses brought clamours about him that overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and his groves were haunted by beings very different from fauns ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... the cool of eventide, Gracefully festooned with myrtle, In her sampan she would glide Forth to spear the snapping turtle; And her voice was blinding sweet, Piercing as the parrakeet, Fruity as old Manzanilla, With a soupcon of the bleat Of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various

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

... were soon lost to sight as they soared overhead, singing faintly as they rose; the rooks gave prolonged and melancholy caws as they took their early flight, and the cocks crowed querulously in the yard, while now and then there was a pitiful bleat from the old ewe ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... breathing freely, for the deep-toned bleat of the goat arose, and he looked out, to see that it ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... finish the corporal story. The squad were perfect lambs in Knudsen's hands, none daring to bleat, while all around us the other squads were disputing in undertones and going wrong amid storms of discontent. When we had got back to the tent, and had lost our emergency non-com., Knudsen began to praise him for an excellent corporal. "He was good so long ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... the poor old gentleman in a tremulous bleat, "Mr. Carrados, there is another now—Sir Benjamin Gump. He insists on seeing me. You will not—you ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah

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

... and constraining, reaching so far across the dark water, that a hand before his lips smothered its iteration in his throat. "Bee-have!" Holvey hissed in his ear, and as the child struggled into a sitting posture his involuntary bleat, "Mamma!" was so meekened by fear and plaintive recollection and submissive helplessness that it could scarcely have been distinguished a boat's ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

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

... awakened; slyly they were drawn forth, with gentle whispered calls of 'Nan, nan, nan!' and insidious and soothing words, but more especially with the aid of scraps of carrot, sparingly but judiciously distributed. An occasional low, querulous bleat from a youthful nanny awakened from dreams of clover-fields, or a hoarse, imperious inquiry in a deep baritone 'baa' from a patriarchal he-goat, was the only noise that followed the invasion. Then, when the animals within ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson



Words linked to "Bleat" :   quetch, sound off, emit, blate, utter, complain, baa, cry



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