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Bleat   Listen
Bleat

noun
1.
The sound of sheep or goats (or any sound resembling this).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Bleat" Quotes from Famous Books



... earnest protest against it. Roosting shags and waterfowl fly screaming away. In the swamp a bittern booms; and strange wailing cries come from the depths of the bush. On the farm dogs bark energetically, cattle bellow, horses neigh, sheep bleat, pigs grunt, ducks quack, and turkeys gobble. Frightful is the din that goes echoing among the woods. And then the outraged bridegroom gets out his gun, and commences rapid file-firing ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

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

... them,—thou hast thy music too, While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden croft; And gathering swallows ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... The effect of her laugh is an extravagance; though the effect of the reverberation of voices in some parts of these mountains is very striking. There is, in 'The Excursion,' an allusion to the bleat of a lamb thus re-echoed and described, without any exaggeration, as I heard it on the side of Stickle Tarn, from the precipice that stretches ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... times from the cliffs, and a multitude of bats and owls flickered in the depths. A continuous falling of waters, an infinite sighing of night winds, the swaying and tossing which is always heard in the midmost mountain solitudes, the crumbling of hill gravel and the bleat of a goat on some hill-side, all made a cheerful accompaniment to the scraping of his ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

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

... passed, and April came with her suns and rains and again the waters brimmed full in the valleys. Under the clear, shining sky the lambing went on, and the faint bleat of sheep brooded on the hills. In a land of young heather and green upland meads, of faint odours of moor-burn, and hill-tops falling in clear ridges to the sky-line, the veriest St. Anthony ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... horse upon the hillside, the low cry of a young cow, the bleat of a sheep, all added to his feeling of dread, until the sweat streamed down his body, as he swung ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... which one is accustomed to regard as of a timid and inoffensive nature. When I set out at a brisk pace to walk to the house I have spoken of, in order to make some inquiries there, a few of the sheep that happened to be near began to bleat loudly, as if alarmed, and by and by they came hurrying after me, apparently in a great state of excitement. I did not mind them much, but presently a pair of horses, attracted by their bleatings, also seemed ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... Ambrose; "my good woman hath been in a mortal fright about thee, and would have me come out to seek after thee. Such are the women folk, Master Headley. Let them have but a lad to look after, and they'll bleat after him like an old ewe that ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... and anon from some remote chamber in the house behind him came the faint, gasping cry of a day-old baby. That cry drowned the cooing of the doves, the song of the robin, and the chirping of the dwellers in the grass; to Jimmy the bleat of the little human lamb sounded like the roar of a lion. He could endure penal servitude on his Saturday, with a patience born of something approaching a philosophy; he could wear a checked gingham apron, even as a saint wears ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White

... a sort of bleat that drove the last of the pea-green mist out of that room with the dead ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... half-battalion of the Scots Fusiliers returning to camp from exercise, marching at ease. Each company was headed by a piper who swung and swaggered, blowing deep into the lungs of his instrument. As one company passed, the measured bleat and squeal of the pipes faded and merged into a sound heralding the approach of another. The gorgeous uniforms were absent; but even the shabby khaki, stained with the soil of long marches and hard fights, could not ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... roused the soldier fills his hand With sword and fire, and ravages the land, In crackling flames a thousand harvests burn, A thousand villages to ashes turn. To the thick woods the woolly flocks retreat, And mixed with bellowing herds confusedly bleat. Their trembling lords the common shade partake, And cries of infants found in every brake. The listening soldier fixed in sorrow stands, Loth to obey his leader's just commands. The leader grieves, by generous pity swayed, To ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... downhill. It was very slow progress. Ralph stopped continually to consult his compass, and occasionally gave a loud "cooee", in case they might find some wandering shepherd or countryman who would be able to help them. There was no answer to his calls, however—only the occasional bleat of a sheep that sounded far off and muffled through the mist. They knew there was neither cottage nor farm within hail, and unless they could strike the road they might wander on hour after hour over the moors, ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... if you wish for happiness complete, Look for it in some hamlet distant far. Forget—where catkins blow and lambkins bleat— Globe, Evening News, Pall Mall, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various

... absorbing, exclusive idea. Devotion does not fix them. They are diffusive, observant, often apparently indifferent, sometimes positively EXHIBITIVE. They adjust their draperies, whisper to their neighbors, took vacant about the mouth. The beat of a drum or the bleat of a calf outside disturbs and distracts them. An untimely comer dissipates their attention. They are floating, loose, incoherent, at the mercy of trifles. The most inward, vital part of religion does not often show itself ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

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

... spring's new verdure lay, And, wet with dewdrops, at my feet Bloomed the young violets of May. No sound of busy life was heard Amid those forests lone and still, Save the faint chirp of early bird, Or bleat of deer along the hill. I traced the rivulet's winding way, New scenes of beauty opened round. Where woody shades of brightest green And lovely blossoms tinged the ground. 'Ah, happy valley stream,' I said, ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes

... night has passed, the day-star fades from sight, And morning's softest tint of rose and gold Tinges the east and tips the mountain-tops. The silent village stirs with waking life, The bleat of goats and low of distant herds, The song of birds and crow of jungle-cocks Breathe softest music through ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... rock, and looked up at the broad yellow moon, and wondered what she was, and thought that she looked at him. And he watched the moonlight on the rippling river, and the black heads of the firs, and the silver-frosted lawns, and listened to the owl's hoot, and the snipe's bleat, and the fox's bark, and the otter's laugh; and smelt the soft perfume of the birches, and the wafts of heather honey off the grouse moor far above; and felt very happy. You, of course, would have been very cold sitting there on a September night, without ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... was out on such a night—on some errand, or in at a neighbour's—to crouch in the hedge and leap silently out upon her was huge delight; and it was well worth braving the grim possibilities of the hedges in order to extort from her the anger in the bleat of terror which, as a rule, was all that her paralysed heart permitted, ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... caught sight of several deer; we could also hear them at intervals, behind the copses that surrounded us, the males uttering a strange whistling sound, similar to that produced by blowing into the barrel of a gun, while this was occasionally replied to by the goat-like bleat of the females. ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... head upon a coin, While, as an aureole crowns a burning lamp, Above all beauty of the body and brain Shone beauty of a soul benign with love. Even as a tawny flock of huddled sheep, Grazing each other's heels, urged by one will, With bleat and baa following the wether's lead, Or the wise shepherd, so o'er the Moldau bridge Trotted the throng of yellow-caftaned Jews, Chattering, hustling, shuffling. At their head Marched Rabbi Jochanan ben-Eleazar, High priest in Prague, oldest and most revered, To greet the star of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

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

... 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 here ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton

... a soul in sight. Only the cows, their red, burnished coats gleaming like the skin of a horse-chestnut in the hot sun, cast ruminative glances at her white-cloaked figure as it passed, and occasionally a peacefully grazing sheep emitted an astonished bleat at the unusual vision and skedaddled ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... Lane? Is the fault in ourselves? Can it be that we have deteriorated so much as that? Nerves, nerves, nerves! . . . These many centuries the world has had neuralgia; and what has come of it is that Robert Elsmere is an ideal, and the bleat of the sentimentalist might almost be mistaken for the voice ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... the vast black mass—black even in the black of night—where the people are. There is the sudden burst and s-s-swish of the rockets as they rush up into the night, and fall in showers of colours on the black mass and the water; and there is the hoarse roar of many voices, mingled with the bleat of many goats. I stand and look, and know what is going on. They are killing those goats—thirty thousand of ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

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

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

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

... snow-cloud, it seemed to him as if one minute of these months at Rome would yield him gold enough to make the brightness of a year; he longed for the smell of the wet clay in Story's studio, where the songs of the birds, and the bleat of a goat coming through the little door to the left, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... cool and long, The eyes that smiled through lavish locks, Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song, And bleat of flocks. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... I saw all the sheep so near that I wonder we had not been aware in the house of every bleat and tinkle. And there, within a stone's-throw, on the first long gray ledge that showed above the juniper, were William and the shepherdess engaged in pleasant conversation. At first I was provoked and then amused, and a thrill of ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett

... a comfortable picture, full of the brilliant greens of springtime, the mellow tints of summer, the red and russet of autumn days, the blue and white of winter. I could hear, also, sounds intimately associated with the scenes before me; the bleat of little lambs, the low of cattle, the ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough

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

... the yard. An aged darkey was swinging an axe at the woodpile and two little pickaninnies were gathering a basket of chips. Already the air was filled with the twilight sounds of the farm—the lowing of cattle, the bleating of calves at the cowpens, the bleat of sheep from the woods, and the nicker of horses in the barn. Through it all, Crittenden could hear the nervous thud of Raincrow's hoofs announcing rain—for that was the way the horse got his name, being as black as a crow and, as Bob claimed, always knowing when falling weather was ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

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

... gradually absorbed into the national character, as far as conversation is concerned. "They have not become woolly, nor do they wear horns, but the nobility are eternally bellowing forth the astounding deeds of their ancestors, whilst the muttonish middle classes bleat a timorous approval.... Such subjects constitute their fund of amusing small talk," &c. From the foregoing elegant description of conversation, he passes onwards to the subject of gentility, and describes a young honourable, on board a steamer, who refused to shut a window ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... reed I tuned on the hill, My grief for the rough slopes of Sunnach so still, The wind in the fir tree and bleat of the ewe Are lost in the wild cry my heart makes for you. The brown floors I danced on, the sheds where I lay, Are gone from my mind like a wing in the bay: Dear lady, I'd herd the wild swans in the skies If they knew of lake water ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... had an amiable low; And some such strange bull leap'd your father's cow, And got a calf in that same noble feat, Much like to you, for you have just his bleat. ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]

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

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

... of lambs playing around. You see, a sheep and a lamb don't always go together like a cow and a calf. Sheep are awful monotonous, and I guess the lambs know it. So they go off in a bunch and have a good time. And when one of them gets hungry he lets a bleat out of him and starts for the bunch of sheep. They are all tuned up to a different sound; so are the sheep. And the lamb and the sheep know each other by sound. Well, the sheep will hear that and she'll let out her sound and get an ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... number of wrong sorts of voices which should be mentioned to be shunned—the "white" voice, the "throaty" voice, the "nasal" voice, and the "bleat." The nasal quality is the most difficult to correct. Many teachers, especially the French, make a point of placing the voice in the nasal cavity on the pretext of strengthening it, and this nasal quality, partly on account of the sound of many of the French words, is only too ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... till over the plain he is rising amain and they're at it again! praising and praising such low songs raising that no one hears them but the sun who rears them! and the sheep that bite them awake or asleep are the quietest sheep with the merriest bleat! and the little lambs are the merriest lambs! they forget to eat for the ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald

... He had the sight of fair pastures, of trees making a twinkling twilight on the sward, of grassy savannahs and pleasant slopes of hills; the air was illuminated by the glorious plumage of flying birds; the bleat of goats broke the stillness in the valleys; there was a golden regale for his eye, and his other senses were gratified with the perfumes of rich flowers and engaging concerts among the trembling leaves. Above all, there was the soothing warmth of a delicious climate. But out upon ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... of shame and cruelty now prevailed all through the valleys. Two examples may suffice, although by no means the worst in some respects. A woman takes refuge in a cave, with her little babe and a goat, which furnished the means of their subsistence. Unfortunately the poor animal was heard to bleat by some of the soldiers who happened to be near. These wretches seized the child and, in the presence of its mother, threw it over the precipice, and then led the mother herself to a jutting crag that she might die there in the greatest ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold

... you came in? Show pity to others, we then can talk of pity to yourself. You can be the one thing or the other, but I will be no party to half-way houses. If you're a striker, strike, and if you're a bleater, bleat!" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... notify our boat he would hand us any directions which he might think it proper to give us at the moment of starting. A second question from us failed to elicit any answer at all, save a plaintive bleat from his wife to the effect that her husband was in a very violent temper already, and that she hoped we would do nothing to make it worse. A third attempt, later in the day, provoked a terrific crash, ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

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

... arctic air, Shines, gentle Barometz, the golden hair; Rested in earth, each cloven hoof descends, And round and round her flexile neck she bends. Crops of the grey coral moss, and hoary thyme, Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime, Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam, Or seems to bleat a vegetable lamb." ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

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

... answered. "During it he drew back, knowing what I was going to do just as I suddenly knew it. It was a moment when he seemed to me to bleat—yes, that's the ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

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

... spot some distance off the road, but Kitty's city-bred eyes could make out nothing. Just then there came a feeble bleat, and in a second Blue Bonnet had slipped from the saddle and ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs

... raucous and death-telling and terrifying that even the hardened hunters leaped with affright. At the same moment a dark object shot through the air and landed on the back of the creature in the shallow pit. The tiger was abroad! There was a wild bleat of terror and agony, a growl fiercer and shorter than the first hoarse cry of the tiger, and, then, for a moment silence, but only for a moment. Snorts, almost as terrible in their significance as the tiger's roar, came from the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... green mantle blithe Nature arrays. And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes, While birds warble welcome in ilka green shaw; But to me it's ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway

... saying, "Rudolph isn't an ophthalmic bat. But God keep us all respectable! is Rudolph's notion of a sensible morning-prayer. So he just preferred to see nothing and bleat out edifying axioms. That is one of his favorite tricks. No, it was a comedy for my benefit, I tell you. He will allow a deal for the artistic temperament, no doubt, but he doesn't suppose you fetch along a white-lace parasol when you go to watch a sunset—especially ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

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

... oxen lowed; The sheeps "Bleat! bleat!" came over the road— All seeming to say with a quiet delight, ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous

... was nobody there, I am sure, who would have been much shocked if, in the circumstances, our jackdaw had been even blasphemously profane. A man in his condition may say almost anything and may expect to be forgiven, but at this most inadequate bleat we yelled with laughter, and the poor jackdaw stood staring at us with eyes of suffering wonder for a full three minutes before we could rouse ourselves to attend ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

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

... their whereabouts or guessed that those responsible for the signal-fire were Colonel Gideon Ward and Eleazar Bodge. He followed behind, steeling his soul to meet those victims of the complicated plot. An astonished bleat from Hiram Look, who led the column, announced them. Colonel Ward was doubled before the fire, his long arms embracing his thin knees. Eleazar Bodge had just brought a fresh armful of driftwood to heap on ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

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

... greyhounds' heads, hoping to scare them into submission, but they seemed to draw fresh stimulus from each report, and yelped and bounded faster. A little more and the end would be. Then we saw a touching sight. The hindmost fawn let out a feeble bleat of distress, and the mother, heeding, dropped back between. It looked like choosing death, for now she had not twenty feet of lead. I wanted Eaton to use his gun on the foremost hound, when something unexpected happened. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton

... de same marster 'til I was grown, dat is fifteen, and Thad got to lookin' at me, meek as a sheep and dumb as a calf. I had to ask dat nigger, right out, what his 'tentions was, befo' I get him to bleat out dat he love me. Him name Thad Guntharpe. I glance at him one day at de pigpen when I was sloppin' de hogs, I say: 'Mr. Guntharpe, you follows me night and mornin' to dis pigpen; do you happen to be in love wid one of these pigs? If so, I'd like to know which ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... they went, across a little branch, and there the big cur lay flat again in the grass. A faint bleat came from the hill-side beyond, where Satan could see another woods—and then another bleat, and another. And the cur began to creep again, like a snake in the grass; and the others crept too, ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... alike they sometimes say, "It's as free as the air you breathe"—this wonderful air, which we cannot see, but which helps to make the sky so blue, without which no fire could burn, no robin sing to its mate, no lamb bleat after its mother, no merry voices of boys and girls at play be heard. God has indeed made it free to us; but let us never forget that we are, as His creatures, dependent upon Him for ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... of the Plover seemed to arrest the advance of the timid sheep: they waited in a closely-packed flock, looking around. But presently the old leader gave a deep bleat, and they moved forward towards the water. "Shriek! Shriek!" cried the Plover from the bushes, screaming as they rose and flew away; and suddenly the flock of sheep broke and hurried back to the open plain. At the same instant Dot could hear the sharp ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... an old man, sitting in a shop, and making toys. Once he had been a soldier, but now he was able to do nothing but sit at his work bench carving, and gluing, and painting playthings for children. The Child went in and watched him work. There were wooly lambs that would bleat, and toy horses with harnesses on the shelves of the toy shop. There were dolls with blue eyes, and dolls with brown eyes, and dolls that could talk, and dolls that could walk, all waiting there for Christmas Eve. ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... swift sure rush and a savage snarl, he brought the little deer from hiding. There was a short, swift chase, an agonized bleat or two, and Black Bruin had a breakfast that well repaid him for ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... beating upon Percy's ear-drums, drowned until too late the quick pad-pad of hoofs from the opposite direction. Engrossed in watching the steamer, he had forgotten everything else. A nasal, threatening bleat, rising suddenly behind, roused him to a sense of ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... spectral glare, and coiling about them like the trailing garments of an army of ghosts. From the unseen abysses all round came the growl and wash of wave on rock and shingle, from the cliff above Pegane came the frightened bleat of a lamb, and an invisible gull went squawking over their heads on ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

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

... supporting them in order to retain their support. And if in private he never hesitated to speak of the people in terms of contempt, on the platform he was a different man. Then he would assume a high-pitched voice, shrill, nasal, labored, solemn tones, a tremolo, a bleat, wide, sweeping, fluttering gestures like the beating ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... not believe in miracles—but a few feet behind his mother there now stood a divine presence. Believe it or not, there she was, the miracle! All the bashfulness of his lifetime—it had often made existence well-nigh insupportable—came crowding into that one moment. The feeblest little bleat of a spring lamb too weak to stand up for the first time would have been a deafening roar in comparison with the silence which now penetrated to the marrow of his bones. He faced the two women at bay, with one ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... flowers and syrups sweet, O fountain of Bandusian onyx, To-morrow shall a goatling's bleat Mix with the sizz ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams

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

... four acres, where the market is held every Saturday, and where once a year is also held that great event of Nottingham, the Michaelmas goose fair. Here also disport themselves at election-times the rougher element, who, from their propensity to bleat when expressing disapprobation, are known as the "Nottingham lambs," and who claim to be lineal descendants from that hero of the neighboring Sherwood Forest, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... water in some fountain, rising sparkling into the sunlight by its own inward impulse. He is His own motive; and came to a forgetful and careless world, like a shepherd who goes after his flock in the wilderness, not because they bleat for him, while they crop the herbage which tempts them ever further from the fold and remember him and it no more, but because he cannot have them lost. Men are not conscious of needing Christ till He comes. The supply creates the demand. He is like ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

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

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

... little head was raised high upon the long neck as the animal stupidly looked here and there in search of the author of the disturbance. At last its eyes discovered tiny little Ajor, and then she hurled the stick at the diminutive head. With a cry that sounded not unlike the bleat of a sheep, the colossal creature shuffled into the water and was ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

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

... revise his plans. There was a good deal of the loafer, but it was all soft. Releasing his hold when Archie's heel took him shrewdly on the shin, he received a nasty punch in what would have been the middle of his waistcoat if he had worn one, uttered a gurgling bleat like a wounded sheep, and collapsed against the wall. Archie, with a torn coat, rounded the corner, ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

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

... by the fold, sore beat With winds, at midnight howls amid the rain. The lambs beneath their mothers safely bleat. He, mad with rage, and faint with famine's pain, Thirsts for their blood, and ramps at them in vain; So raves fierce Turnus, as his eyes survey The walls and camp. Grief burns in every vein, As round he looks for access and a way To shake the Teucrians ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... of thick white fleece advanced with a continuous undulating motion, a compact and unbroken surface, like a muddy wave pouring over the pavement. A sharp quavering bleat would mingle with the tinkling bells to be answered by other voices, fainter and more timid; from time to time, the mounted shepherds, riding at either side or behind the flock, gave a sharp word of command, or used their long staves. The splendour of the moonlight lent to this passage ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... chiming from a wold, Or bleat of lamb within its fold, Or cooing of love-legends old To dove-wives make not quiet less; Ecstatic chirp of winged thing, Or bubbling of the water-spring, Are sounds that more than silence bring Itself ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

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

... threttanello![760] I want to imitate Cyclops and lead your troop by stamping like this.[761] Do you, my dear little ones, cry, aye, cry again and bleat forth the plaintive song of the sheep and of the stinking goats; follow me with erected organs like ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... and, as the place went up in a rush of flames and sparks, the assault from outside ceased, the enemy drawing off under cover of the mist; and an hour later silence fell upon the horrible scene of carnage, not even a bleat arising ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... and the maiden came not. Many times the father and brothers jumped up, thinking they heard her steps, but in the thick darkness they could scarcely see their own hands, nor could they tell where the river lay, nor where the mountain. One by one the kids came home, and at every bleat someone hurried to open the door, but no sound broke the stillness. Through the night no one slept, and when morning broke and the mist rolled back, they sought the maiden by sea and by land, but never a trace of her could be ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... miserable glance behind her. She was still crawling away. On the ground beside the porch young Sim raised a strange bleat, which expressed both his fright and his lack of wind. Presently the monster, with a fashionable amble, ascended the steps ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane

... amidst the waves of the Adriatic, under a blind leader; they shall beset the goat—they shall profane Byzantium—they shall blacken her buildings—her spoils shall be dispersed; a new goat shall bleat until they have measured out and run over fifty-four feet nine inches and a half."[563] Dandolo died on the first day of June, 1205, having reigned thirteen years six months and five days, and was buried in the church of St. Sophia, at Constantinople. Strangely enough it ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... falsetto voice; as he did so his profile was funnier than any caricature. Everybody looked at him and laughed, while he took not the slightest notice. He sang falsetto and then began singing tenor. My God, what a voice! It was like the bleat of a sheep or a calf. The Chinese remind me of good-natured tame animals, their pigtails are long and black like Natalya Mihailovna's. Apropos of tame animals, there's a tame fox cub living in the toilet-room. It sits and looks on as one washes. If it sees no one for a long ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

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

... and kill for the mere sake of doing it, as a sheep-killing dog strangles fifty lambs in a night for the fun of hearing them bleat? Isn't there a bigger game? a game of mutual joys and hopes, of ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... the meadows green. Open to the sky and breeze, Or peeping through the sheltering trees, On a light gate, loosely hung, Laughing children gaily swung; Oft their glad shouts, shrill and clear, Came upon the startled ear. Blended with the tremulous bleat, Of truant lambs, or voices sweet, Of birds, that take us by surprise, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... adored Polly, was dutifully kind to her mother, and had stood by T. Snow, Jr., in many an hour of tribulation with fraternal fidelity. Though he had long blushed, sighed, and cast sheep's eyes at the idol of his affections, only till lately had he dared to bleat forth his passion. Polly loved him because she couldn't help it; but she was proud, and wouldn't marry till Aunt Kipp's money was hers, or at least a sure prospect of it; and now even the prospect of a prospect was destroyed by that irrepressible Toady. They were talking of this as ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... whistle by which the cock crows, enables the dog to bark, the baby to cry, the horse to neigh, the sheep to bleat and the cow to low, just as in our own rubber goods. The same end is accomplished in the one case as in the other. The two, three or twenty cash doll does for the Chinese girl what the two, three ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland

... down from the moors and the higher ground. The air was full of pleasant sounds prophesying of the coming summer. The rush, and murmur, and tinkle of the hidden watercourses; the song of the lark poised high up in the sunny air; the bleat of the lambs calling to their mothers—everything inanimate was full ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

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

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

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

... Finn's sticky mouth could open in a bleat of protest, the Master's hand had returned him to the warm dugs. Again came the harsh, suspicious nose of the foster about Finn's tail, and this time a low growl followed the resentful sniff, and blind, helpless, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson



Words linked to "Bleat" :   emit, utter, baa, cry, complain, plain, quetch, kick, kvetch, let out, sound off, let loose



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