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Warble   Listen
verb
Warble  v. t.  (past & past part. warbled; pres. part. warbling)  
1.
To sing in a trilling, quavering, or vibratory manner; to modulate with turns or variations; to trill; as, certain birds are remarkable for warbling their songs.
2.
To utter musically; to modulate; to carol. "If she be right invoked in warbled song." "Warbling sweet the nuptial lay."
3.
To cause to quaver or vibrate. "And touch the warbled string."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Warble" Quotes from Famous Books



... to lighter sounds give place! Bid thy brisk viol warble measures gay! For see! recall'd by thy resistless lay, Once more the Brownie shews his honest face. Hail, from thy wanderings long, my much lov'd sprite! Thou friend, thou lover of the lowly, hail! Tell, in what realms ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... With mask and antique pageantry; Such sights as youthful poets dream, On summer-eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild. And ever, against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed and giddy cunning The melting voice through mazes running ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... antique Pageantry, Such sights as youthfull Poets dream On Summer eeves by haunted stream. 130 Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonsons learned Sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespear fancies childe, Warble his native Wood-notes wilde, And ever against eating Cares, Lap me in soft Lydian Aires, Married to immortal verse Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes, with many a winding bout Of lincked sweetnes long drawn out, 140 With wanton heed, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... speaking, have no legs—as Adrian Harley said was the case with the women in Richard Feverel's poems. He must never be seen to walk in prose, for his part is, 'pinnacled dim in the intense inane,' to hang aloft and warble the unpremeditated lay, without erasure or blot. This is, I am sure, not fanciful, for two or three modern instances, which I am far too considerate to name, illustrate its truth. Unless you are a very great person indeed, the surest way to lose a reputation as poet is to gain one ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... a rumour was in circulation to the effect that it was very beautiful, and that, locking herself in her chamber, early in the morning, while everything in the city was still sleeping, she loved to warble ancient ballads to the strains of a lute, upon which she herself played. Despite the pallor of her face, Valeria was in blooming health; and even the old people, as they looked on her, could not refrain from thinking:—"Oh, how happy will be that young man for whom this ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... That crowds and hurries and precipitates With fast, thick warble his delicious notes, As he were fearful that an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul Of all its ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... funeral hymn. The only difficulty would be in keeping Aunt Becky Burnham from pitching it in a key where nobody but a soprano skylark, accustomed to warble at a great height, could possibly sing it. It was generally given at the grave, when Elder Weeks officiated; but it never satisfied Aunt Hitty, because the good elder always looked so unpicturesque when he threw a red ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... love-affair culminates as the stars come out and the perfumed wind casts down great shadows from the swinging branches overhead, while indulgent duennas gossip on, oblivious of dew; and at midnight the mocking-birds begin to bubble and warble a wild sweet melody everywhere throughout the dark and listening city. For one brief month, you see, it is politics and power set down in Paradise—let only the envious say as strangely out of place as the serpent there. And finally the festivities of this almost ideal spring season, where ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... bluebird!" said he. "I have not," said the woman. "Then you will never hear it," said the bird-lover; never hear it with that inward ear that gives beauty and meaning to the note. He could probably have taken her in a few minutes where she could have heard the call or warble of the bluebird; but it would have fallen upon unresponsive ears—upon ears that were not sensitized by love for the birds or associations with them. Bird-songs are not music, properly speaking, but only suggestions of music. A great many people whose attention ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... and the songbirds warble, His dust to dust is laid, In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of marble To shame his ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... of September, and leaving in March and April. The habits of these birds of the central regions are very similar to those of the eastern, but more wary and silent. Even their love song is said to be less loud and musical. It is a rather feeble, plaintive, monotonous warble, and their chirp and twittering notes are weak. They subsist upon the cedar berries, seeds of plants, grasshoppers, beetles, and the like, which they pick up largely upon the ground, and occasionally scratch for among the leaves. During ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various

... bush-magpie. Here he may warble all the day long on the liquid, mellifluous notes of his Doric flute, fit pipe indeed for academic groves . . . sweetest and brightest, most cheery and sociable of ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... You fear the application of even Gilead's balm. You are weak and languid, and I will not weary you with discussion; but spring will soon be here; genial, rejoicing spring. You will revive with its flowers, and your spirit warble with its singing birds. Then we will walk abroad in the hush of twilight—and if you will promise to listen, I will preach you a daily sermon, with nature for ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... hearers ever stood, in the calm of a summer evening, in Shelley's native land, listening to the lovely warble of the nightingale, making earth joyful with its unpremeditated strains, and the woods re-echo with its melody? Or gazed upwards with anxious ken towards the skylark careering in the "blue ether," far above ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... [dove, pigeon]; gobble [turkeys]; quack [duck]; honk, gaggle, guggle [obs3][goose]; crow, caw, squawk, screech, [crow]; cackle, cluck, clack [hen, rooster, poultry]; chuck, chuckle; hoot, hoo [owl]; chirp, cheep, chirrup, twitter, cuckoo, warble, trill, tweet, pipe, whistle [small birds]; hum [insects, hummingbird]; buzz [flying insects, bugs]; hiss [snakes, geese]; blatter[obs3]; ratatat [woodpecker]. Adj. crying &c. v.; blatant, latrant[obs3], remugient[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... vows, and faithless hearts, and blighted lives; just the sort of song that Tommy loves to warble after a good meal in the evening. It conjured to the Subaltern's eyes the picture of the dainty little star who had sung it on the boards of the Coliseum. And to conclude, Madame's voice, French, and sonorously metallic, was heard in the dining-room striking up the "Marseillaise." ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... It was made good for the cultivation of a large tract; although very wild and disorderly cultivation. As we went, every spot within sight was full of interest; rich with associations; the air was warm but pleasant; the warble of the orange-winged blackbird - I don't know if I ought to call it a warble; it was a very fine and strong note, or whistle, - sounding from the rocks as we went by, thrilled me with a wild reminder of all that had once been busy life there, where ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... decline; And subdued by wine in its mainest might * Like lover drunken by strains divine,[FN216] Do thou gaze on our garden of goodly gifts * And all manner blooms that in wreaths entwine; See the birdies warble on every bough * Make melodious music the finest fine. And each Pippet pipes[FN217] and each Curlew cries * And Blackbird and Turtle with voice of pine; Ring-dove and Culver, and eke Hazar, * And Kata calling on Quail vicine; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... that there is still such a degree of uniformity, so that, as we have said, every species may be recognized by its notes? Why does every red-eyed vireo sing in one way, and every white-eyed vireo in another? Who teaches the young chipper to trill, and the young linnet to warble? In short, how do birds come by their music? Is it all a matter of instinct, inherited habit, or do they learn it? The answer appears to be that birds sing as children talk, by simple imitation. Nobody imagines that the infant is born with a language printed upon his brain. ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... every difficulty. She felt her voice improving, and when she sang to herself the old songs she was no longer satisfied with the old degree of accuracy. A world of which she had had no suspicion was opening to her; music began to mean something quite different from the bird-warble which was all that she had known. Moreover, she began to have an inkling of the value of her voice. Mrs. Ormonde had scarcely with a word commended her singing, and had spoken of the lessons as something that might be useful, with no more emphasis. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... warble-fly. They deposit their eggs on the legs of cattle during the fall. The animal, licking the parts, takes the eggs into its mouth. These eggs gradually migrate into the gullet, where they hatch and burrow through the tissues, and in the early ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... ye streams that smoothly flow; Ye vernal airs that softly blow; Ye plains, by blooming spring arrayed; Ye birds that warble through ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... antiquity—having begun no doubt with Adam—or its modes of production; as, when created grandly by the whistling gale, or exasperatingly by the locomotive, or gushingly by the lark, or sweetly by the little birds that "warble ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... decked wi' flow'rs, Mony tinted, fresh an' gay, An' the birdies warble blythely, For my Faether made them sae; But these sights an' these soun's Will as naething be to me, When I hear the angels singin' In my ...
— The Birds' Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... "that is all I want." And she was left to the stillness of her darkened room, the blinds idly flapping to and fro in the soft evening breeze, and letting in the rustling sound of the branches which waved close to her window, and the thrush's gurgling warble, and the distant hum ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... sang—the song that made his little mate's black beady eyes twinkle and shine as she sat in the tussock; for she felt so proud to think how her mate could warble:— ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn

... another, and in fact behave as exactly as they will next spring when fully grown. Young linnets also begin to sing before losing their youthful plumage, learn to sing well during the moulting season, and often continue to warble right on into the winter; in a mild winter young linnets will sing just as well as old ones. The young woodlark begins to sing as soon as its first moulting is nearly over, and not only does this when perching, but flies aloft like the adult ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... we warble in the night are those that show we have real faith in. God. Many men have just enough faith to trust God as far as they can see Him, and they always sing as far as they can see providence go right; but true faith can sing when its possessors cannot see. It can take hold of God ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... He roped a puma up on th' Sacramentos, an' didn't punch no more fer three weeks. Well, here comes my pardner an' I reckons I'll amble right along. If yu needs any referee or a side pardner in any ruction yu has only got to warble up ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... flecked with patches of unwholesome iridescence and crossed by steamers and barges that steer in ghostly fashion about the dusky waters, I marvel that so few of our poets have responded to its beauty and signification. They find it easier, doubtless, to warble a spring song or two. The fierce pulsations of industry, the shiftings of gold that make and mar human happiness—these are themes reserved for the bard of the future who shall strike, bravely, a new chord, extracting from the sombre facts of city life a throbbing, many-tinted romance, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... cannot live forever on the Heights of Make-Believe. And Albert, as he breathed the Spring, and remembered that no one was by to see, relaxed, became himself, and began to warble ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... three hours a grasshopper must die: No living thing, whate'er its food, feasts there, But the cameleon, who can feast on air. 300 No birds, except as birds of passage, flew; No bee was known to hum, no dove to coo: No streams, as amber smooth, as amber clear, Were seen to glide, or heard to warble here: Rebellion's spring, which through the country ran, Furnish'd, with bitter draughts, the steady clan: No flowers embalm'd the air, but one white rose,[112] Which on the tenth of June by instinct blows; By instinct blows ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... of Waramoff's beautiful song of the "Krasneya Sarafan," which Sarsha began at once to warble. The characteristic of Russian gypsy-girl voices is a peculiarly delicate metallic tone,—like that of the two silver bells of the Tower of Ivan Velikoi when heard from afar,—yet always marked with fineness and strength. This is sometimes startling ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... from the bedside and seated herself at the window, which she opened. There she sat, looking at the clouds as they floated by, dark as her own prospects were. The morning dawned and saw her still there. It was a beautiful morning, but the warble of the bird in a tree near by, as he poured forth his morning song, awoke no echo in the heart of the soldier's wife. All was cheerless within her. The brightness of the morning only acted like a gleam of light at the mouth of a cavern. It ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams

... hand—somehow he felt as if, in spite of all he had just heard, she must be there as usual to welcome him with that serene sweet smile which was the sunshine of his life. The empty desolate air of the room smote him with a sense of bitter pain,—only the plaintive warble of her pet thrush, who was singing to himself most mournfully in his gilded cage, broke the heavy silence. He looked about him vacantly. All sorts of dark forebodings crowded on his mind,—she must have met with some accident, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... grandeur, your make-shift efforts of magnificence? Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken keys, if one of the bunch be extant; thrummed by a thousand ancestral thumbs; dear, cracked spinnet of dearer Louisa! Without mention of mine, be dumb, thou thin accompanier of her thinner warble! A veil be spread over the dear delighted face of the well-deluded father, who now haply listening to cherubic notes, scarce feels sincerer pleasure than when she awakened thy time-shaken chords responsive to the twitterings of that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... when Red awoke, arrows of gold were shooting through the holes in the old barn, and outside, the bird life, the twittering and chirping, the fluent whistle and the warble, the cackle and the pompous crow, were in ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips

... down the muddy road, avoiding the puddles which the sun turned into pools of liquid flame. He heard the catbirds mewing in the alders; he heard the evening carol of the robin—that sweet, sleepy, thrushlike warble which always promises a melody that never follows; he picked a spray of rain-drenched hemlock as he passed, crushing it in his firm, pale fingers to inhale the fragrance. Now in the glowing evening the bull-bats were soaring and tumbling, ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... had reached his climax and was circling. Once we distinctly saw him whirling far above us. Then he was lost in the obscurity, and in a few seconds there rained down upon us the notes of his ecstatic song—a novel kind of hurried, chirping, smacking warble. It was very brief, and when it ceased, we knew the bird was dropping plummet-like to the earth. In half a minute or less his "zeep," "zeep," came up again from the ground. In two or three minutes he repeated his flight and song, and thus kept it up during the half-hour or more that ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... rain has pattered and murmured, have I heard the notes of the Robin and the Wood-Thrush; the Red-Eyed Flycatcher has pursued his game within a few feet of my window, darting with a low, complacent warble amid the dripping leaves, looking as dry and unruffled as if a drop of rain had never touched him; the Cat-Bird has flirted and attitudinized on my garden-fence; the House-Wren stopped a moment between the showers, and indulged in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... Nan, "and now I'll sing you the song of the Barlow family; they won't sing it themselves, but when you learn it, you and I can warble ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells

... May, Persuasive adviser of love, With smiles that would rival the ray, Nimbly trips to the bow'r in the grove; Where sweetly I warble the song Which beauty's soft glances inspire; And, while melody flows from my tongue, My soul is ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins

... said Steve, "but they're down there in the Square now stackin' up drive impedimenta and such, red banners, and so forth, tuning up to warble the hymn to free Russia. Hurry if you want ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... out the word with endless turns and trills, like the carol of a bird, occurred only a few times in the whole Pentateuch. The child, as he listened to the interminable incantation, thought he would have sprinkled the Code with bird-songs, and made the Scroll of the Law warble. But he knew this could not be. For the Scroll was stern and severe and dignified, like the high members of the congregation who bore it aloft, or furled it, and adjusted its wrapper and its tinkling silver bells. Even the soberest musical signs were ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... The slab walls had been plastered and whitewashed, and a wide verandah ran all along the front. Round the house were acres of garden, with great clumps of willows and acacias, where the magpies sat in the heat of the day and sang to one another in their sweet, low warble. ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... arched over her bright eyes like black cords, such as our maidens buy nowadays, for their crosses and ducats, off the Moscow pedlars who visit the villages with their baskets; that her little mouth, at sight of which the youths smacked their lips, seemed made to warble the songs of nightingales; that her hair, black as the raven's wing, and soft as young flax, fell in curls over her shoulders, for our maidens did not then plait their hair in pigtails interwoven with ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... winter's crust of rime Milder spring can soften; Ere to greet the blither time Robins warble often; O'er the undulating wild, Rising like a hardy child, There the Mayflower sweet, unseen, Spreads its ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle

... friend," Roncivalli answered. The liquid Italian played against the German guttural like the warble of a flute answering the snarl of a violoncello. "I am doing what I know. Until our friend Rossano came to England I had a place from which he was good enough to depose me. You may say what you like, Herr Sacovitch, but the independence ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... began at the tops of the other trees. Its top in summer-time was a famous resort for the bluejay and his bride. Here, far beyond the reach of shot, in warm spring days the jay would sing and dance before his mate, spread his bright blue plumes and warble the sweetest fairyland music, so sweet and soft that few hear it but the one for whom it is meant, and books know nothing at ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... it powerful quick if we don't grab it while it's passin'; it's a good long name, and what if it does make a chap sling the muscles of his jaw to warble it? All the better; it'll make him think well of his town, which I prophesy is going to be the ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... of finding jobs faster than invention can take them away—is not defeatism. To warble easy platitudes that if we would only go back to ways that have failed, everything would be ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... anon." The servant takes Hugo aside to tell him something, and Hagar changes the cups for two others which are harmless. Ferdinando, the 'minion', carries them away, and Hagar puts back the cup which holds the poison meant for Roderigo. Hugo, getting thirsty after a long warble, drinks it, loses his wits, and after a good deal of clutching and stamping, falls flat and dies, while Hagar informs him what she has done in a song ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... we are watching him the grosbeak ceases his ringing tones and drops into that dreamy, soft, melodious warble, which is characteristic of this songster as it is of the catbird. But he leaves when a belted kingfisher comes ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... open-face coats, neither. Just some good clothes that have got class will do fine. And we can git a shave there, and go to the Frolic and have some regular chow, bo, and listen to the tra-la-la girlies warble whilst we eat. Come on. Be a regular ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... earliest of the year, By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; The red-breast loves to build and warble here, And little ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... I may enter her list of knights. But I intend to warble about the beauty of another lady! and the mad fool who would bring her misfortune. I confess to thee, Madonna, that I'm afraid! What shall I do? Give me your advice. ...
— Zanetto and Cavalleria Rusticana • Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, Guido Menasci, and Pietro Mascagni

... walked up and down the room, overpowered by contending emotions. The severity of her voice, that voice that hitherto had fallen upon his ear like the warble of a summer bird, filled him with consternation. The idea of having offended her, of having seriously offended her, of being to her, to Henrietta, to Henrietta, that divinity to whom his idolatrous fancy clung with such rapturous devotion, in whose very smiles and accents ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... Warble on, ye feathered songsters, Lift your praises loud and high, Merry lark, and thrush, and blackbird, In the grove and in the sky Make your music, shame our dumbness, Till we ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney

... old "China,"—that strange, wild warble, whose quaintly blended harmonies might have been learned of moaning seas or wailing winds, so strange and grand they rose, full of that intense pathos which rises over every defect of execution; and as they sung, Zephaniah Pennel straightened his tall form, before bowed on his ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... The fiercest beasts; love through the waves attends Swift gliding dolphins and the sluggish whales. That little bird which sings.... Oh, had he human sense, 'I burn with love,' he'd cry, 'I burn with love,' And in his heart he truly burns, And in his warble speaks A language, well by his dear mate conceived, Who answering cries, 'And I ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... sweetest bards Confine their charming song To summer's animating heats, Content to warble young? ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... the cover of the box. He pulls the cover off, and up jumps the obedient slave and his wife! The obedient slave and his dear Julia fall out of the box. Great applause. They rush to the footlights and kneel. Quick music by the orchestra, in which the bass drum don't warble so much as she did. "I'm free! I'M FREE! I'M FREE!!" shrieks the obedient slave, "O I'm free!" The stage is suddenly lighted up in a gorgeous manner. The obedient slave and his dear Julia continue kneeling. The dead mariner blesses them. The Goddess of Liberty ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... till the pain of thy transport O'erpowers each dying tone! Thou canst not warble a measure That is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... peasant of the poetic world, not a fine lady of Marie Antoinette's Petit Trianon playing at rustic artlessness. The voice and the singing were but the natural expression of that charming maidenhood. The full volume, the touching sweetness of tone, the exquisite warble, the amazing skill and the marvellous execution, with the perfect ease and repose of consummate art, and the essential womanliness of the whole impression, were indisputable and supreme. To a person sensitive to music and of a certain ardor of temperament there ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... hair." "Here is Dr. Arne's 'Sweet Echo.' Rosa used to play and sing that beautifully. And here is what he always liked to have us sing to him at sunset. We sang it to him the very night before he died." She began to warble, "Now Phoebus sinketh in the west." "Why, it seems as if I were a little girl again, singing to Papasito ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... of filial duty, and her musical accomplishments. She loves a man whom her father wishes her to lure to his death by her singing, and she sings entrancingly enough to bring about the meeting between her lover's back and her father's knife. That she does not warble herself into the position of "particeps criminis" in a murder she owes only to the bungling of the old man. Having done this, however, she turns physician and nurse and brings the wounded man back ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... confusedly; the dark bank of Brierley Park with its giant trees rose up against the sky, there was no gleam on the little river, the outlines of nearer trees and bushes were merged and indistinct; but what a hum and stir and warble and chitter of happy creatures! how many creatures to be happy! and what a warm breath of incense told of the blessings of the summer day in store for them! For them, and not for Dolly? It smote her hard, the question and the answer. It was for her too; it ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... alternate curves and graceful sallies, they pursue and circumvent each other. First one hops a few feet, then the other, each one standing erect in true military style while his fellow passes him and describes the segment of an ellipse about him, both uttering the while a fine complacent warble in a high but suppressed key. Are they lovers or enemies? the beholder wonders, until they make a spring and are beak to beak in the twinkling of an eye, and perhaps mount a few feet into the air, but ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... to swell, And woods the blue-bird's warble know, The yellow violet's modest bell Peeps from last ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith

... runs out into the old clearing, or down through the pasture, you find other and livelier birds,—the robins, with his sharp, saucy call and breathless, merry warble; the bluebird, with his notes of pure gladness, and the oriole, with his wild, flexible whistle; the chewink, bustling about in the thicket, talking to his sweetheart in French, "cherie, cherie!" and the song-sparrow, perched on his favourite ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... here, With the flowers thou dost appear; Yes, sweet little Whippowil, Thou art singing by the rill; Where the silver moonbeam plays Thou dost chant thy hymn of praise; Thy shrill voice I love to hear, And I'd have thee warble near. Come, sweet bird, the moonlight shines Through the verdant row of pines, Standing by our cottage door, Come, where thou hast sang before, When I heard thy thrilling note On the twilight breezes float, Ming'ling with the cheerful song Of our happy fireside throng. Loved ones, that to me are ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower

... thicket of lilac bushes, a wood-dove greeted her with its first morning warble ... and where she vanished, the milk-white sky flushed ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... spring, we know that the zephyrs are about to whisper, that the groves are to recover their verdure, the linnets to warble forth their notes of love, and the flocks and herds to frisk over vales painted with flowers: yet, who is there so insensible of the beauties of nature, so little delighted with the renovation of the world, as not to feel his heart bound at ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... nonsense which they have imbibed from Platitude professors; and this nonsense they retail at home, where it fails not to make some impression, whilst the daughters scream—I beg their pardons—warble about Scotland's Montrose, and Bonny Dundee, and all the Jacobs; so we have no doubt that their papas' zeal about the propagation of such a vulgar book as the Bible will in a very little time be terribly diminished. Old Rome will win, so ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... von Aue hits the meaning of a story! how loud and clear rings the crystal of his words! Did not Heinrich von Veldeke "imp the first shoot on Teutish tongues" (graft French on German poetry)? With what a lofty voice does the nightingale of the Bird-Meadow (Walther) warble across the heath! Nor is it unpleasant to come shortly afterwards to our old friends Apollo and the Camoenae, the nine "Sirens of the ears"—a slightly mixed reminiscence, but characteristic of the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... and he broke into another verse of the interminable song—one of the series that cowboys love to warble. ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... the museful shade By close-inwoven branches made, Thee, sweetest bird, most musical Of all that warble their melodious song The charmed woods among, Thee, tearful nightingale, I call: O come, and from thy dark-plumed throat Swell sadly-sweet thy melancholy note. ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... taught by their unfailing instinct that summer has departed, and winter is near. They no more warble their rich melodies, or flit in and out of the bowery recesses of the honeysuckles or peep with knowing look under the eaves, or into the arbour. Other purposes prompt to other acts, and they are taking their farewell of the pleasant ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various

... out Faith's round low laugh, so incontrovertibly merry and musical that it changed Mr. Simlins' face on the instant. It came to an end almost as soon, but short as it was it was better than the warble of any nightingale; inasmuch as the music of a good sound human heart is worth ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... last desperate attempt to lighten the general gray of the sky with broad shafts of orange, and as they watched, it settled slowly and then dipped behind the dim blue of the distant hills. As at a signal, a bird in a thicket somewhere over beyond them began a long throaty warble. Another answered over to the left. Faint, liquid trip-hammerings, ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... lonely grief. Leave them, O Muse! for thou anon wilt find Many a fallen old Divinity Wandering in vain about bewildered shores. Meantime touch piously the Delphic harp, 10 And not a wind of heaven but will breathe In aid soft warble from the Dorian flute; For lo! 'tis for the Father of all verse. Flush every thing that hath a vermeil hue, Let the rose glow intense and warm the air, And let the clouds of even and of morn Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills; Let the red wine within the goblet boil, Cold ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... he may recompense thee, O Priapus, and thee, father Sylvanus, guardian of his boundaries! Sometimes he delights to lie under an aged holm, sometimes on the matted grass: meanwhile the waters glide along in their deep channels; the birds warble in the woods; and the fountains murmur with their purling streams, which invites gentle slumbers. But when the wintery season of the tempestuous air prepares rains and snows, he either drives the fierce boars, with many a dog, into the intercepting toils; or spreads his thin ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... sore back is a small hardish swelling or warble" this must at once be attended to, either by folding the saddle-cloth in some appropriate way, or by picking out the saddle-stuffing, so as to ease all pressure from off it; otherwise, it will get larger and larger, and a single day will convert ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... vireo, which was on the nest, we were soon attracted by a vireo's song. Search for the singer failed to find it, until we noted that the bird on the nest seemed to be singing. Then, as we watched, over and over again the bird was seen to lift up its head and pour out the long, rich warble—a most delicious sight and sound. Are such ways usual among birds, or did we chance to see ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... wild swan's death-hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear The warble was low, and full and clear; And floating about the under-sky, Prevailing in weakness, the coronach [6] stole Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear; But anon her awful jubilant voice, With a music strange and manifold, Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold; ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... across the Sound towards the glory of the sunset. The thickly grassed hillside sloped down in front of me to a belt of forest from which rose the golden, leisurely chiming of the wood thrushes, chanting their vespers; through the still air came the warble of vireo and tanager; and after nightfall we heard the flight song of an ovenbird from the same belt of timber. Overhead an oriole sang in the weeping elm, now and then breaking his song to scold like an overgrown wren. Song-sparrows ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... but you had another argument For staying; how the lovely dale for you Was mountain air and winged warble too. ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... the morning be "fine" or "pretty," it was all one to the birds. The woods were vocal with the cackling of robins, the warble of bluebirds, and the trills of pine warblers. Flickers were shouting—or laughing, if one pleased to hear it so—with true flickerish prolixity, and a single downy woodpecker called sharply again and again. A mocking-bird ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... a delightful spring: the birds warble, but you do not understand their song? Well, hear ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... naturally as if it were her native clement, and now as she stepped upon the marble floor of the lofty hall she involuntarily cut a pirouette, exclaiming, "Oh, but isn't this jolly! Seems as if I'd got back to Heaven. What a splendid room to sing in," and she began to warble a wild, impassioned air which made Richard pause and listen, wondering whence came the feeling which so affected him carrying him back to the hills ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... No writer on birds has grown enthusiastic on the subject, and Bradford Torrey alone among them does it scant justice, when he says this Vireo "is admirably named; there is no one of our birds that can more properly be said to warble. He keeps further from the ground than the others, and shows a strong preference for the elms of village streets, out of which his delicious music drops upon the ears of all passers underneath. How many of them hear it and thank the singer, is ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various

... of thy loveliness and virtue. A gallant Moor, rich, powerful, and ardent for thy love, shall join his hand with thine, and a thousand slaves shall bow down at thy behest. All the precious things of Asia and Arabia shall be brought to delight thine eyes, the rarest birds of distant regions shall warble in unison with the lays ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... child of twelve, whose disposition was so gentle that she received the name of Agnes, and whose ear was naturally so attuned to all sweet sounds, that she was considered capable of being taught to accompany her own warble on the said wonderful instrument. When her parents removed her in due time from school, still she sang God's praises among the echoes of the woods— not only sang herself, but taught to others the hymns she had learned in her Ursuline ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... It was the voice of one Whose life-long journey was but just begun. With genial radiance shone his morning sun; The lark sprang up rejoicing from her nest, To warble praises in her Maker's ear; The fields were clad in flower-enamelled vest, And air of balm, and sunshine clear, Failed not to cheer That yet unweary pilgrim; but his breast Was harrowed with a strange, foreboding fear; Deeming the life to come, at best, But ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen are show'rs of violets found: The redbreast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... took up the real music lessons, and taught him how to whistle and how to warble and trill. "Good Cheer! Good Cheer!" intoned the king. "Coo Cher! Coo Cher!" imitated the Cardinal. These songs were only studied repetitions, but there was a depth and volume in his voice that gave promise of future greatness, when age should have developed him, and experience ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter

... onyx stone! What fruits, with no curculio to sting the rind! What flowers, with no slug to gnaw the root! What atmosphere, with no frost to chill and with no heat to consume! Bright colors tangled in the grass. Perfume in the air. Music in the sky. Bird's warble and tree's hum, and waterfall's dash. Great scene of ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... opera, or any elaborate and intricate piece of music, we think not how vast were the pains and attention bestowed upon every note and cadence; what efforts for perfection in a solo, what panting for a warble, what travail for a trill! Taken separately, and at rehearsals, in disjointed fragments of sound, how different are they from that volume of sweet concords which is produced when they are all breathed forth in order, to the accompaniment of flutes and recorders, in one full gush of melody! This ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... duke clapped hearty praise of the singer, and we all did the same; all save Junker Henning, who had not failed to mark that Herdegen had striven to out-do his modest warble, and likewise the ardent eyes he turned on the lady of his choice. Hence he moved not. Ann clapped her hands but lightly, sat looking into her lap, and for some time could say not a word; indeed, if she had trusted herself to speak the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... youthful and sweet, Scatter the blossom under her feet! Break, happy land, into earlier flowers! Make music, O bird, in the new-budded bowers! Blazon your mottos of blessing and prayer! Welcome her, welcome her, all that is ours! Warble, O bugle, and trumpet, blare! Flags, flutter out upon turrets and towers! Flames, on the windy headland flare! Utter your jubilee, steeple and spire! Clash, ye bells, in the merry March air! Flash, ye cities, in rivers of fire! ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson

... the air. Spare us the Greek, come down from your Yale and Harvard heights to the level of my ignorance, and warble for me in English some of your Sicilian lark's melodies. At least I have heard of Amaryllis ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... lest they turn and sting you. All do not, like the fabled phoenix, warble sweet melodies in their agony; sometimes they spit venom—venom you must breathe whether you will or no, for you cannot seal their mouths, though you may fetter their limbs. You can lock the door upon them, but they burst ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... beauties of animate and inanimate Nature, pleasantly affect the senses. But the chief influence there—the crowning glory of the groves—is the songs, the charming music of the birds, as they warble from tree to tree, untrammelled by the forms of art, their sweetest melodies. How often do their lightsome, inspiriting carollings ring out upon the morning air, persuasively calling us from our couches to listen in delight to Nature's minstrelsy! "After man," says a ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... its lips so mute and cold, Cold as chiselled marble, They will now to harp of gold Glad Hosannas warble. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... bear a second part, They kept one tune, and played on the same string, Seeming to glory in their little art. Shall creatures abject thus their voices raise? And in their kind resound their Master's praise: Whilst I, as mute, can warble forth ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... the purple west—but still he came not! The other dwellers in the oak returned to their homes, yet they brought no tidings of the wanderer. After a while their happy voices were hushed in sleep, the Blackbird ceased to warble his evening hymn, and all were buried in slumber, and ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer

... he explained. "The wou-wou monkey cries in that peculiar warble. The presence of the animal here shows that the island has ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... For fairy sprites, like many other creatures, Bear fleeting memories, that come and go; Nor can they oft recall familiar features, By absence touched, or clouded o'er with woe. Then rest content with sorrow: for there be Many that must that lesson learn with thee; And still thy wild notes warble cheerfully, Till, when thy tiny voice begins to fail, For thy lost bliss sing but one parting wail, Poor little sprite! and then ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler



Words linked to "Warble" :   warbler, yodel, warble fly, sing, animal disease, trill



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