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Bleating   Listen
adjective
Bleating  adj.  Crying as a sheep does. "Then came the shepherd back with his bleating flocks from the seaside."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bleating" Quotes from Famous Books



... to say that Nature was still trying to speak to me in her strange inarticulate voice, but I cannot forget that a flock of yearlings, which had been sheltering under a hedge, followed me bleating to the last fence, and that the moaning of the sea about St. Mary's Rock was the last sound I heard as I ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... well known that the custom was to destroy all the fish brought into Billingsgate market above a certain quantity, which led Ruskin to cry out furiously that the real prices of the world were regulated by Rascals, while the fools are bleating their folly of Supply and Demand. One may guess to-day that most of the proceedings in the ports of Boston, New York, or Gloucester would be highly criminal under this ancient law. So, in the Statute of Dogger (this ancient word meaning the ships that carry ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... wedding, which had just taken place, romantically enough, in the very heart of Herts—one of those quaint little villages where no sound seems to disturb the silence of the long summer day but the gentle bleating of horn to horn and the murmur of innumerable tyres. Both of us had been there, and Charles came round to talk to me about it a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various

... in the route, as the sterile desert of sand and pebbles was bounded by a fringe of bush amid mimosa that marked the course of the Nile, to which our way lay parallel. There was no object to attract particular attention, and no sound but that of the bleating goats driven homeward by the Arab boys, and the sharp cry of the desert sand grouse as they arrived in flocks to drink in the welcome river. The flight of these birds is extremely rapid, and is more like that of the pigeon than the grouse; they inhabit ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... slender feet. The foodless wilds Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare, Though timorous of heart, and hard beset By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs, And more unpitying men, the garden seeks, Urg'd on by fearless want. The bleating kind [sic] Eye the bleak heav'n, and next, the glist'ning earth, With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispers'd, Dig for the wither'd herb through ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... and Amomma ran away bleating. The bullet threw up a spurt of mud to the right of the ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... could see the green country stretching out for miles on every side and swimming in the warm sunlight, the dark groves of myrtle on the hills, the silver ribbon of the inland water, and the dark blue AEgean Sea. The bleating of sheep and the tinkling of the bells came up to them from the pastures below, and they imagined they could hear the shepherds piping to their flocks from one ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis

... me mad," he said afterwards. "Bleating away! What's he bleating about anyway? Can't you stop him bleating, Ethel? You seem to have influence. Bleat! Bleat! Bleat! Good Lord! And me ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton

... I went to thinking sadly on the stupidity of my performances. This field of thought was a large one and the consideration of it, patch by patch, took some time. It was market day. The bleating of flocks was about me, a pleasant smell of wool and tar and heather—and of bullocks blowing clouds of perfumed breath that condensed upon the frosty air. I was leaning my arms upon the stone dyke of the Market Hill ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... the radiant sun with farewell sweet Extend his ev'ning beam, the fields revive, The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds Attest their joy, that ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... by wind and tide to the coast of Sicilia, where it stuck in the sand. A poor shepherd, missing one of his sheep, wandered to the seaside in search of it. As he was about to return he heard a cry, and, there being no house near, he thought it might be the bleating of his sheep; and going to look more narrowly he spied a little boat from which the cry seemed to come. Wondering what it might be, he waded to the boat, and found the babe lying there ready to die of cold and hunger, wrapped in an embroidered ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... they reached the field, the wistful lamb Saw them approach, and ran from side to side The gate, pushing its eager face between The lowest bars, and bleating for pure joy. And Jesus, kneeling by it, fondled with The little creature, that could scarce find how To show its love enough; licking his hands, Then, starting from him, gambolled back again, And, with its white feet upon Jesus' knees, Nestled its head by his: ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... aristocratic, but it is none the less Athenian. Here goes a drover, clad in skins, his legs wound with woolen bands in lieu of stockings; before him and his wolf-like dog shambles a flock of black sheep or less manageable goats, bleating and baaing as they are propelled toward market. After him there may come an unkempt, long-bearded farmer flogging on a pack ass or a mule attached to a clumsy cart with solid wheels, and laden with all kinds of market produce. The roadway, be it said, ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... little, petty, dirty, mean tricks to annoy me I can and do laugh at; I should despise myself, if I could not despise and disregard them. But, like expert butchers, who, when they are about to cut the throat of their innocent victim, the bleating lamb, know well where to apply the knife, so do you know where to inflict a deadly wound in the most vital part. There is, to be sure, this distinction between you and the butcher; it is his business, it is his profession, by which he gets his daily bread; and, indeed, the sooner ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... obliged their carriage to stop. Elena, her face pressed to the window, watched the sheep crowding against the carriage wheels, and pointed to the little lambs with childish delight; and he with his face close to hers, his eyes half closed, listened to the pattering hoofs, the bleating, the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... Bo-peep fell fast asleep, And dreamed she heard them bleating; When she awoke she found it a joke, For ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... the pleasant fields traversed so oft In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain-goats bleating aloft, And knew the sweet strain that the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... He yearns—that Sire Unseen - To clasp His children? All is sweet and sane, All, all save man! Sweet is the summer flower, The day-long sunset of the autumnal woods; Fair is the winter frost; in spring the heart Shakes to the bleating lamb. O then what thing Might be the life secure of man with man, The infant's smile, the mother's kiss, the love Of lovers, and the untroubled wedded home? This might have been man's lot. Who sent the woe? Who formed man first? Who taught him first ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... peasants cast stones and blocks of wood at the Spaniards, but the horsemen all lowered their lances; the women fled and the cure with his parishioners began to shriek with horror, amid the bleating of the sheep, the cackling of the geese, and the barking ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various

... all such a windy business against the firm prejudices, the vast accumulated interests that grind race against race. We had no common purpose at all at that conference, no proposal to hold us together. So much of it was like bleating on a hillside.... ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... that in a similar plight the old-fashioned woman—or at least the ubiquitous woman of the special eternal type that fictionists call "old-fashioned"—would have been either a bleating, tremulous gazelle or a brazen siren. But Miss Webling behaved like neither of these. She took his gallantry with a matter-of-fact reasonableness, much as a man would accept the offer of another man's companionship on a tiresome journey. She gave none of those multitudinous ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... the coyotes trouble the sheep at night, two or three blankets, and a buckskin on his saddle, but nothing more. It is his special duty to keep the ponies moving and in the trail. Following him comes a flock of sheep and goats, bleating and nibbling at the bushes and grass as they slowly trot along, urged by the dust-begrimed squaw and her children. Several of the more tractable ponies carry packs of household effects stuffed into ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... and lifted up on the shoulders of strong-armed bearers, and so borne through the twilight over this seething multitude towards the apartments that were provided for me in the moon. All about me were eyes, faces, masks, a leathery noise like the rustling of beetle wings, and a great bleating and cricket-like twittering ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... of my selfe, now seemst thou wholy me, And I seeme neither like my selfe nor thee, Thankes to thy care and this unknown disguise. I like a shepheard now must learn to know, When to lead foorth my little bleating flock, To pleasing pastures, and well-fatting walkes; In stormie time to drive them to the lee; To cheere the pretie Lambes, whose bleating voice Doth crave the wished comfort of their dams; To sound my merry Bag-pipe on the downes, In shearing times, poore Shepheards festivals; ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... Scour along, nor stop, nor wait; See the serpent and the snake For the nearest highlands make; The tarantula I view, Emmet small and cricket too, All unknowing where to fly, In the stifling waters die. See the goat and bleating sheep, See the bull with bellowings deep. And the rat with squealings shrill, They have mounted on the hill: See the stag, and see the doe, How together fond they go; Lion, tiger-beast, and pard, To escape are striving hard: Followed by her little ones, See the ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... down ball-rooms, to the unspeakable terror of squadrons of turbaned old ladies. Deafening peals of bells, rung by troops of Freddy ColeMEN (which I take to be the correct plural of Coleman), were rousing night-capped nations from their slumbers in alarm, to whom flocks of frightened mayors were bleating forth bewildered orders, which resulted in perplexing everybody; and through it all, mixed up and combined with everything, the pale interesting face of Clara Saville, 138characterised by an expression of the deepest sadness, gazed at me reproachfully out of its large trustful eyes, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... hazardous maneuvering managed to get on his horse, in spite of the objections of the latter, and rode into the river. My calf was too big for such treatment, so in despair I roped it, intending to drag it over. However, as soon as I roped it, the calf started bouncing and bleating, and, owing to some lack of dexterity on my part, suddenly swung round the rear of the horse, bringing the rope under his tail. Down went the tail tight, and the horse "went into figures," as the cow-puncher ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... that, thus revealed, shewed agitated and chopped by small waves. The Chancellor's white beard shook with the cold, with fear of Cromwell, and with curiosity to know how the man looked and felt. He ventured at last in a faint and bleating voice: ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... Bo-peep fell fast asleep, And dreamt she heard them bleating, When she awoke she found it a joke, For they were still ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various

... the musical tinkle of bells and the baa-baa of sheep and the faint, sweet bleating of lambs. As he road toward these sounds a dog ran out from an oak thicket and barked at him. Next Jean smelled a camp fire and soon he caught sight of a curling blue column of smoke, and then a small peaked tent. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... the Marsh. The wan film of the winter grasses had faded off the April green before the innings became noisy with bleating, and the new-born lambs could match their whiteness with the first ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... twilight till sunset blazes on the western hills the square and street are densely thronged. A Babel of strange noises fills the dusty air: the lowing of cows and oxen; the bellowing of frightened calves; the plaintive bleating of bewildered lambs; the fierce neighing of excited horses; the yelping of curs; the crowing of imprisoned cocks, responding to each other's defiant notes; the sing-song clamor of itinerant auctioneers, standing on their wagons and displaying their tempting wares to the little knots around them; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... means those whose language is only a "bar-bar," and this is really all that the sound of an unknown tongue implied to the cultured Athenians. The neighing of horses, the howling of dogs and wolves, the mewing of cats, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cows, the chattering of monkeys and baboons is nothing more nor less than their language. And it is quite as intelligible to us as is the chattering of the Hottentots of Africa. Because we do not speak the languages ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... this afternoon. The air was invigorating, but it was so cold that my scalp was sore. With this high wintry wind, and the grey sky, and faint northern daylight, it was quite wonderful to hear such a clamour of blackbirds coming up to me out of the woods, and the bleating of sheep being shorn in a field near the garden, and to see golden patches of blossom already on the furze, and delicate green shoots upright and beginning to frond out, among last year's russet bracken. Flights of crows were passing continually between ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... only one day old; and when her mother left her sleeping under a bush for a few minutes, while she went down through the swamp to get a drink at the brook a couple of hundred feet away, the little fool woke up and thought herself deserted. She set up such a bleating as was bound to cause something to ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... timber and disappeared. The cowboy rode slowly, peering through the timber. Presently came the trample of frightened sheep—a shrill bleating, and then silence. Fadeaway loped out into the open. The sheep were running in all directions. He whistled the dog to him. Chance's muzzle dripped red. The dog slunk round behind the horse, knowing that he had done wrong, despite the fact that he had been ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... to the little tent set apart for him, and lost no time in throwing himself down upon a rug, to lie listening to the bleating of the sheep and goats, mingled with which came at times the moaning and complaining of ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... smiles of Pleasure's harlot train; To valiant toils his forceful limbs assign'd, And gave to Virtue all his mighty mind, 495 Fierce ACHELOUS rush'd from mountain-caves, O'er sad Etolia pour'd his wasteful waves, O'er lowing vales and bleating pastures roll'd, Swept her red vineyards, and her glebes of gold, Mined all her towns, uptore her rooted woods, 500 And Famine danced upon the shining floods. The youthful Hero seized his curled crest, And dash'd with lifted club the watery Pest; With waving arm ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... spindle into her hands and stood before her zeide. I saw it from the bush. She was so white, and the spindle was white, and the people were black, and the goat kept on running amongst them and bleating." ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... waves, and turned them into foam; and sometimes I beguiled time by viewing the harmless lambs; some leaping securely in the cool shade, whilst others sported themselves in the cheerful sun; and saw others craving comfort from the swollen udders of their bleating dams. As I thus sat, these and other sights had so fully possess my soul with content, that I thought, as the poet ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... father's office, Israel would serve him directly in his labor for the Pharaoh to be. He had known that Israel was oppressed, that Israel died of hard labor, and he had pitied it, as the humane soul in him had felt for the overworked draft-oxen or the sacrifices that were led bleating to the altars. Perhaps he had even casually decried the policy that sent women into the brick-fields and did men to death in a year in the mines. But his own conscience had not been hurt, nor had he taken ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... goat, taken from a neighbouring kraal, did at last arrive, being dragged bleating on to ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... by persecution, and exulting in danger, now spread its ravages over the whole of Vervignole. All over the kingdom there were seen in the fields thousands of naked men and women, nibbling the grass, bleating, lowing, roaring, neighing, and contending at night with sheep, cattle, and horses for the use of stable and manger. The inquisitor informed the Holy Father of these horrible scandals, and warned him that so long as the Protector of ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France

... the flock when the pangs of travail came upon her, the unwonted solitude filled her with apprehension. But as soon as the first feeble bleating of the lamb fell upon her ear, everything was changed. Her terrors all at once increased tenfold,—but they were for her young, not for herself; and with them came a strange boldness such as her heart had never ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... For already the cow of your mother-in-law will be lowing for food; the horse of your father-in-law will be whinnying; the milch cow of your sister-in-law will be straining at her tether; the calf of your brother-in-law will be bleating; for all will be waiting for her whose duty it is to give them hay, whose duty it ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... me—not for me, certainly. I own that I am no more than man. Little Christchurch is so pleasant to me, and Eva's smiles and happiness; and the lowing of my flocks and the bleating of my sheep are so gracious in my ears, and it is so sweet to my eyes to see how fairly I have turned this wilderness into a paradise, that I own that I would fain stay here ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope

... show!—Or scheme to cage us up Out of the sunlight; like a squirrel's heart Torn out and drying in the market-place. My mother! Do you know what mothers are?— Your children! Do you know them? Ah, not you! There's not one here but it would follow me, For all your bleating! ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody

... to sit through the twilight. The men smoked slowly and reflectively, the women sat with folded hands, watching the last glow upon the hills, and the brightening of the evening star; dreamily listening to the choir of frogs, the faint tinkle of cowbells, the bleating of folded lambs, and the continual rustle of the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... last, after infinite trouble, I managed to drive them up on to the trail, which was so narrow there was but one thing for a rational creature to do, and that was to go ahead. Then, if you'll believe me, those idiots kept bleating and getting under the horse's fore-feet; finally, one of them, the champion simpleton, tumbled over into the canyon, and I tied the legs of the other one together, and carried him home on the ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... through the trees. No trace of any damage could be seen. The gate was shut as usual. Deep silence reigned in the corral. Neither the accustomed bleating of the sheep nor Ayrton's voice could ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... stirred in. My thoughts, when I take my stand to watch by her, come to this conclusion, that, especially in women, distinction is the thing to be aimed at. Otherwise we are a weltering human mass. Women must teach us to venerate them, or we may as well be bleating and barking and bellowing. So, now enough. You have but to think a little. I must be off. It may have happened during my absence. I will write. I shall hear from you? Come and see me mount Black Norman. My respects to your father. I have no time ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... green vale that lay below. Full many a carol met my ear; The boy that drove the teeming cow. And sung or whistled in his cheer; The dog that by his master's side, Made the lone copse with echoes ring: The mill that whirling in the tide, Seemed with a droning voice to sing; The lowing herd, the bleating flock, And many a far-off murmuring wheel: Each sent its music up the rock, And woke ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... morning there had been bleating of sheep in the yard, so that one knew the creatures were being sheared, and toward evening I went along to see. Thirty or forty naked-looking ghosts of sheep were penned against the barn, and perhaps a dozen ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... not, and that was the beginning of all the bother of talk about my lord—ignorant gabble of the countryside I call it. Lord, if they only knew what I know, then, indeed—but enough. Marshal Gilles is a mighty scholar as well, and hath Henriet the clerk—a weak, bleating ass that will some day blab if my master permit me not to slice his gizzard in time—he hath him up to read aloud Latin by the mile, all out of the books called Suetonius and Tacitus—such high-flavoured tales and full of—well, of things such as ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... floundered on, and now the disturbed mother added a new cry, like the bleating of a lamb. I never should have suspected a bird of making that sound; it was a perfect "ba-ha-ha." Yet on listening closely, I saw that it was the very tremolo that gives the song of the male its peculiar thrill. Her "ba-ha-ha," pitched to his tone, and with his intervals, would be ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... came in and glittered on the quadrant and buttons, and the brass of the telescope, and on the gold lace, and the handle of the dirk, and the birds sang cheerily to greet the glorious sun, and the lowing of cows and the bleating of sheep was heard, and the crack of a carter's whip, and his "gee up" sounded not far away from under the window, Paul rubbed his eyes again and again, and, with a shout of ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston

... And truly—he would add—how was he to know? He fought his way against the rain and the gale on all fours, and crawled at last among some sheep huddled close under the lee of a hedge. They ran off in all directions, bleating in the darkness, and he welcomed the first familiar sound he heard on these shores. It must have been two in the morning then. And this is all we know of the manner of his landing, though he did not arrive unattended by any means. Only his grisly company ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... on his feet. At that moment they both started violently at the sound of something worrying at the gate; there was a rattle at the bars, a scramble, a frightened bleating among the sheep, a joyous bark—and Rag flung himself first upon ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... and the sound of water was in his ears. He could not think that there were really deserts. But he thought of the sad, lonely king, and wished that he might go to him. He came to where his sheep were feeding, and stood among them and heard their bleating; but he did not think of them. He was looking into the wide sky, and wondering if God would not send his angel to save the king; but there was no sign save the peace and wonder that had always shone there. He turned and led his flock to the fold, and when ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee

... by the village-clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town. He heard the bleating of the flock, And the twitter of birds among the trees, And felt the breath of the morning-breeze Blowing over the meadows brown. And one was safe and asleep in his bed, Who at the bridge would be first to fall, Who that ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... very patiently. One hour, two hours; but nothing stirred. Then he suddenly remembered that great lion-hunters take a little young goat with them to attract the lion by its bleating. Having forgotten to supply himself with one, Tartarin conceived the happy idea of bleating like a kid. He started softly, calling, "Meh, meh!" He was really afraid that a lion might hear him, but as no lion seemed to be paying attention, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... same time. I could hear things trundling down the stairs and hurrying along passages. Somewhere in the dark a duck was quacking, a cock was crowing, a dove was cooing, an owl was hooting, a lamb was bleating and Jip was barking. I felt birds' wings fluttering and fanning near my face. Things kept bumping into my legs and nearly upsetting me. The whole front hall seemed to be filling up with animals. The noise, together with the roaring ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... heeded. At first he boggled in his dress; But awkwardness grew less and less, Till perseverance gave success. His education scarce complete, A flock, his scholarship to greet, Came rambling out that way. The new-made wolf his work began, Amidst the heedless nibblers ran, And spread a sore dismay. The bleating host now surely thought That fifty wolves were on the spot: Dog, shepherd, sheep, all homeward fled, And left a single sheep in pawn, Which Renard seized when they were gone. But, ere upon his prize he fed, There crow'd a cock ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... the vine its fruit deny, Although the olive yield no oil, The withering fig-trees droop and die, The fields elude the tiller's toil. The empty stall no herd afford, And perish all the bleating race, Yet will I triumph in the Lord— The God of my ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... answer, and once again silence fell between them, broken only occasionally by the cry of the birds or the bleating of ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... heaven-accursed hand That let the ruffians go, But falling 'midst the horn'd and bleating band, Made ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... point. Sidney had the gift, not uncommon in the chinless, smooth-baked type of man, of being able to see a pretty girl come into the restaurant even when his back was towards the door. They had hardly seated themselves when he was beside their table bleating greetings. ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... the lamb, which was bleating like mad, laid it on the ground and holding it still, firmly but gently, with her knee, examined it with all the confidence and coolness of ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... reflection You're bargaining, ma'am, for the Voice of Affection; For the language of Wisdom, and Virtue, and Truth, And the sweet little innocent prattle of Youth: Not to mention the striking of clocks - Cackle of hens—crowing of cocks - Lowing of cow, and bull, and ox - Bleating of pretty pastoral flocks - Murmur of waterfall over the rocks - Every sound that Echo mocks - Vocals, fiddles, and musical-box - And zounds! to call such a concert dear! But I mustn't 'swear with my horn in your ear.' Why, in buying that Trumpet you buy all those That Harper, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... Honor Oak Golf Club," says a contemporary, "are arranging to play their rounds to the music of grunting pigs, cackling fowls and bleating lambs." With a little practice these intelligent animals should soon be able to convey their appreciation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various

... Upheaving, next, a rocky barrier huge To his cave's mouth, he thrust it home. That weight Not all the oxen from its place had moved Of twenty and two wains; with such a rock 280 Immense his den he closed. Then down he sat, And as he milk'd his ewes and bleating goats All in their turns, her yeanling gave to each; Coagulating, then, with brisk dispatch, The half of his new milk, he thrust the curd Into his wicker sieves, but stored the rest In pans and bowls—his customary drink. His labours thus perform'd, he kindled, last, His fuel, and discerning ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... revelry, the rumbling equipages of fashion, the rattling of accursed carts, and all the spirit-grieving sounds of brawling commerce, were unknown in the settlement of New Amsterdam. The grass grew quietly in the highways—the bleating sheep and frolicksome calves sported about the verdant ridge, where now the Broadway loungers take their morning stroll—the cunning fox or ravenous wolf skulked in the woods, where now are to be seen the dens of Gomez and his righteous fraternity of money-brokers—and flocks of vociferous ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... away into the woods, while the other Coyotes, led by Tito, stampeded the Sheep in twenty directions; then following the farthest, they killed several and left them in the snow. In the gloom of descending night the Dog and his master laboured till they had gathered the bleating survivors; but next morning they found that four had been driven far away and killed, and the Coyotes had ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton

... a place where the land mated its level with the level of the lake, they ran into a wilderness of railroad cars, in a world where life seemed to be operated solely by locomotives and their helpless minions. The bellowing and bleating trains were arriving in every direction, not only along the ground floor of the plain, but stately stretches of trestle-work, which curved and extended across the plain, carried them to and fro overhead. The travelers owned that this railroad suburb ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... embraced him, and said, "I return thanks to God, who hath given me the victory, for I have performed every thing that he hath commanded me." To which Samuel replied, "How is it then that I hear the bleating of the sheep and the lowing of the greater cattle in the camp?" Saul made answer, That the people had reserved them for sacrifices; but that, as to the nation of the Amalekites, it was entirely destroyed, as he had received it in command to see done, and that no one man was left; but that he had ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... middle of the afternoon. The fawn was bleating piteously, hungry and lonesome. The buck was surprised. He looked about in the forest. He took a circuit, and came back. His doe was nowhere to be seen. He looked down at the fawn in a helpless ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... amiable in tone. " You are a damned bleating little kid and you made a holy show of yourself before Mr. Gordner. There's where you stand. Didn't you see that he turned us out because he didn't know but what you were going to blubber or something. - you are a sucking pig, and if you want to know how I find ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... edges of lakes. She dived below the water, and we peeped in at her babies. Their floating nest was overhung by white spirea. They had silver breasts, and pale blue bills. I wondered that their little bleating cry did not call her back; but, though below the water, she seemed to know that we were near, and as long as we lingered ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... and smell of the dog, rushed jostlingly from their pen and scattered in every direction, through barnyard and garden and nearer fields. Bleating and stampeding, they ran. Link Ferris blinked after them, and broke into speech. Loudly ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune

... sudden bursting thunder Overpowers with awe and wonder— Till again begins the fuss— 'Master, Jock's aye nippin' us!' I could hear the fountains flowing, Where the light hill-breeze was blowing, And the wild-wing'd plover wailing, Round the brow of heaven sailing; Bleating flocks and skylarks singing, Echo still to echo ringing— Sounds still, still so wont to waken That no note of them is taken, Yet which seem to lend assistance To ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... Temple. It was a sort of sacred market-place, and Naomi and little Martha, as they walked about, held tight to one another when they passed the pens of sheep and oxen destined to be burnt offerings, and which were restlessly shouldering one another and lowing and bleating as if in some way they sensed their approaching doom. Here the seller of doves and pigeons kept his cotes, for many a worshiper could not afford to buy a kid or a lamb. Here, too, were the booths and stalls of ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips

... upon you, and permit you to make your debut in society as my bridesmaid? How those maddening white teeth of his glittered, as he smiled approvingly at the proposition? Whenever they gleam out, they remind me of a tiger preparing to crunch the bones of a tender gazelle, or a bleating lamb. Now you comprehend what brings me here at this unseasonable hour? Armed with your noble guardian's sanction, I crave the honour of your services as bridesmaid at my approaching nuptials. Your dress, dear, must be gentian-coloured silk to match your ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... spluttering bark of a human voice, and the next moment there was a sound as of some one running about wildly. Then down the stairs came the guest, clattering, slipping, and falling the last few steps as he clung to the rail. His eyes were shut tight, his face was dripping, and he was plaintively bleating over and over: ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... in discussing them, surpassing belief. They changed their minds on hearing my statements, and on obtaining exact information. I must give them credit for that. I believe the English Gladstonians are only suffering from ignorance. Their leader is certainly not less ignorant than the bleating flock at his heels. They smugly argue from the known to the unknown on entirely false premises. They know that when Englishmen act in this or that way, such and such things will happen. They know what they themselves would do in certain ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... the faint flush of greenness which was gathering in hedges; the shy pageant of spring unfolding, with the promised certainty of new summers which are never ending. The world looked young. As the train dashed by, new-born lambs, unused to such disturbances, tottered, bleating, after their mothers. Buds were bursting. Sap was rising. The chapped scars of winter were vanishing. Things which had seemed dead were being convulsed with life. He watched it all gladly and yet impatiently; it was for the end of the journey ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... men scares them, nor do hunters resort thither who suffer hardships in the wood, as they range the mountain crests. Moreover it is possessed neither by flocks nor by ploughed lands, but the soil lies unsown evermore and untilled, desolate of men, and feeds the bleating goats. For the Cyclopes have by them no ships with vermilion cheek, not yet are there shipwrights in the island, who might fashion decked barques, which should accomplish all their desire, voyaging to the towns of men (as ofttimes ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... lowd-piping on a hill, The whilst his flocke about him daunce apace, His hart with joy, his eares with musique fill: Anon a bleating weather beares the bace, A lambe the treble, and to his disgrace Another answers like a middle meane, Thus every one to beare a part ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield

... war-wise and ripe men of the Steerings. Bright was the gleaming of the banner-wains, though for the lack of wind the banners hung down about their staves; the sound of the lowing of the bulls and the oxen, the neighing of horses and bleating of the flocks came up to the ears of the host as they wended over ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris

... offending pitchers were slyly placed upon the floor, and, as we rose from the tables, were crushed under foot. The next morning the new set appeared. One of the classes being tired of lamb, lamb, lamb, wretchedly cooked, during the season of it, expressed their dissatisfaction by entering the hall bleating; no notice of which being taken, a day or two after they entered in advance of the Tutors, and cleared the tables of it, throwing it out of the windows, platters and all, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... followed a little mocking, bleating laugh. Then was silence again; only the rain ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... was a fawn, a waif found there one morning, having prudently adopted as a mother a large red cow, and a heavy brindled calf as a foster-brother. The instant Peninnah admired this incongruous estray, bleating its queer alien note in resonant duet with the calf in the plea for supper, a cord was slipped about its neck and it was presented in due form. In order that she might not be harassed by its tendance, a gigantic Scotch herder, ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse, And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves, Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use— Here will I sit and wait, While to my ear from uplands far away The bleating of the folded flocks is borne, With distant cries of reapers in the corn— All the live ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... Jeffers! I knew I could reckon on you to back me up—and buck me up! Of course one will be hugely encouraged by the bleating of the practical crowd—Aunt Jane and Co. 'Why waste your time writing silly novels?' And if you try to explain that novels have a real function, they merely think you've got a ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... is analyzed in an effort to discover the workings of the author's mind and heart. In these revelations we sometimes hear the rippling of the brook, and sometimes the moan of the sea; sometimes the cooing of the dove, and sometimes the scream of the eagle; sometimes the bleating of the lamb, and sometimes the roaring of the lion. In them we see the moonbeams that play among the flowers and the lightning that rends the forest; the blossoms that filter from the trees and the avalanche that carries ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... already forced Ahmed into his own motor-boat, where he was struggling vainly to crank a cold engine. Some of the others were trying to push off a boat full of bleating sheep. One man was carrying a fat sheep in his arms toward the motor-boat, splashing knee-deep in the water and shouting advice to everybody else, and in the end that was the only piece of plunder they got away with. Suddenly one man, who had been left behind to keep a look-out, came ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, the squeak of some outraged pig, mixed with the shouts of the drovers and the loud excited voices of buyers and sellers. In the midst of all this turmoil the little boys stood steadily at their post, looking up anxiously as some possible buyer elbowed his way past ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton

... that was done Fran and her mother. And since you are so frank about how you like Fran, I'll follow suit and say that I have asked Grace Noir to marry me, and I know I'll stand a better show by getting her out of the hypnotic spell of that miserable scoundrel who poses as a bleating sheep—" ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... grass; and at the end of the glades there were glimpses of brilliant color in the foliage—the glow of the laburnum, the lilac blaze of the rhododendron bushes. And how still the place was! Far off there was a dull roar of carriages in Piccadilly; but here there was nothing but the bleating of the sheep, the chirp of the young birds, the stir of the wind among the elms. Sometimes he could now catch ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... them familiar; and very often I would go and carry them some ears of barley, or a handful of rice, and feed them out of my hand; so that after my enclosure was finished, and I let them loose, they would follow me up and down, bleating after me for ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... his brinded mane; the ounce, The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw In hillocks; the swift stag from underground Bore up his branching head; scarce from his mould Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved His vastness; fleeced the flocks and bleating rose As plants; ambiguous between sea and land, The river-horse and scaly crocodile. At once came forth whatever creeps the ground, Insect ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... fallen brutes. The little one by the female appeared to be about two years old. It lay bleating and moaning on the ground, stretching out its little hands, with movements and looks so strangely resembling human, that my heart sickened with pity. The female, who had been shot through both legs, could not move. She howled most hideously when ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... brace of windows in the Hotel Metropolis, the street was not unlike a gully cut through mica, a honking tributary flowing into the great sea of Broadway. A low, high-power car, shaped like an ellipse, cut through the snarl of traffic, bleating. A woman, wrapped in a greatcoat of "baby" pelts and an almost undistinguishable dog in the cove of her arm, walked out from the Hotel Metropolis across the sidewalk and into a taxicab. An army of derby hats, lowered slightly into ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... is the time when most of the wild things are astir, and some of the tame ones, too. There was some kind of a very small frog in the swamps and marshes near Bolivar that gave forth about the most plaintive little cry that I ever heard. It was very much like the bleating of a young lamb, and, on hearing it the first time, I thought sure it was from some little lamb that was lost, or in distress of some kind. I never looked the matter up to ascertain of what particular species those frogs were. They may be common throughout ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... instance. "A ewe made a journey of nine days' length to return to her native place, with her lamb; and was tracked so completely, as to make her owners acquainted with her adventures. Nothing turned her back, and whenever her lamb lagged behind, she urged him on with her impatient bleating. When she reached Stirling, it was the day of an annual fair, and she dared not venture into the crowd; she, therefore, laid herself down by the road side, with her lamb, outside the town, and the next morning early, stole through the streets, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... seized my sword. In his odious, peevish voice he said something—I forget what nonsense—to me. Then it appeared to me as if all the sheep and goats over which he had squandered his time were bleating at me. The blood rushed to my head. The room spun round me in a circle. Black spots on a red ground danced before ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Bates, shaking his head, "'orrible; can't speak nor nothing; goes about bleating and ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... yet was this evil no natural inclination in me, for in my youth I was accounted as virtuous as any breathing. This know, I have played with the lambs all the day long, and taken delight in their pretty bleating; yet at last in my play I bit one, and the taste of its blood was so sweet unto me, that I approved the flesh, and both were so good, that since I could never forbear it. This liquorish humour drew me into the ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown



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