Skylarks Quotes

In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Reason for Skylarks

It was nearly morning when the giant
Reached the tree of children.
Their faces shone like white apples
On the cold dark branches
And their dresses and little coats
Made sodden gestures in the wind.

He did not laugh or weep or stamp
His heavy feet. He set to work at once
Lifting them tenderly down
Into a straw basket which was fixed
By a golden strap to his shoulder.
Only one did he drop - a soft pretty child
Whose hair was the color of watered milk.
She fell into the long grass
And he could not find her
Though he searched until his fingers
Bled and the full light came.

He shook his fist at the sky and called
God a bitter name.
But no answer was made and the giant
Got down on his knees before the tree
And putting his hands about the trunk
Shook
Until all the children had fallen
Into the grass. Then he pranced and stamped
Them to jelly. And still he felt no peace.
He took his half-full basket and set it afire,
Holding it by the handle until
Everything had been burned. He saw now
Two men on steaming horses approaching
From the direction of the world
And taking a little silver flute
Out of his pocket he played tune
After tune until they came up to him. ~ Kenneth Patchen

Sometimes John had recorded new compositions, or lines from his new poems. Sometimes he'd just record a busy night in The Green Man. Sometimes sheep, seals, skylarks, the wind turbine. If Liam were home there would be some Liam. The summer fair. The Fastnet Race. I would unfold my map of Clear Island. Those tapes prised the lid off homesickness and rattled out the contents, but always at the bottom was solace. ~ David Mitchell

Noon bells sang out with their usual ignorance of mood, marking out moments of grief and worry, elation and confusion. The bells said that at its core, human life was fundamentally a sort of organic clockwork, while the winds and skylarks that swept against the sound of metronomic iron timekeeping argued for variety, subtlety, epiphany. ~ Gregory Maguire

I turned with an inward groan to look at him. Quackenbush wasn't going to let me just do the work for him like the automaton I wished to be. We were going to have to be pitted against each other. It was easy enough now to see why. For Quackenbush had been systematically disliked since he first set foot in Devon, with careless, disinterested insults coming at him from the beginning, voting for and applauding the class leaders through years of attaining nothing he wanted for himself. I didn't want to add to his humiliations; I even sympathized with his trembling, goaded egotism he could no longer contain, the furious arrogance which sprang out now at the mere hint of opposition from someone he had at last found whom he could consider inferior to himself. I realized that all this explained him, and it wasn't the words he said which angered me. It was only that he was so ignorant, that he knew nothing of the gypsy summer, nothing of the loss I was fighting to endure, of skylarks and splashes and petal-bearing breezes, he had not seen Leper's snails or the Charter of the Super Suicide Society; he shared nothing, knew nothing, felt nothing as Phineas had done. ~ John Knowles

Two skylarks weaving a nest flew into the gaping mouths of Serafim and Old Man Tudor, and deposited their young. Leaving the chicks to chirp, the birds flew off to the field for sustenance. ~ Vladimir Lorchenkov

But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary matters are thenceforward hidden from his view. He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order, and positively as good as new. He finds himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the attentions of Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the lilies and the skylarks. He does not precisely sing, of course; but then he looks so unassuming in his open landau! If all the world dined at one table, this philosophy would meet with some rude knocks. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Skylark,Have you seen a valley green with SpringWhere my heart can go a-journeying,Over the shadows in the rainTo a blossom covered lane?And in your lonely flight,Haven't you heard the music in the night,Wonderful music,Faint as a will-o-the-wisp,Crazy as a loon,Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon. ~ Johnny Mercer

Never till this day Did life disturb the dense eternity Of joyless quiet; never skylark's song, Or storm-bird's prescient scream, or eaglet's cry, Made vital the gross fog. The very light Is but an alien that can find no welcome ~ Hartley Coleridge

He whose thoughts, like skylarks, Toward the morning sky take flight - Who hovers over life and understands with ease The language of flowers and silent things! ~ Charles Baudelaire

Skylark Have you anything to say to me? Won't you tell me where my love can be? ~ Johnny Mercer

Away from the front, where the supply lines ran, there were rest camps and first aid stations, and even patches of farmland. Often at that time of year you could hear skylarks over the fields. Soldiers remarked how strange it was that the birds should be there, but in fact the birds had been there for centuries.
The really strange thing was that the soldiers were there. ~ Hilary McKay

But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you? ~ Kahlil Gibran

Because the road is rough and long,
Shall we despise the skylark's song,
That cheers the wanderer's way?
Or trample down, with reckless feet,
The smiling flowerets, bright and sweet,
Because they soon decay? ~ Anne Bronte

I love the night passionately. I love it as I love my country, or my mistress, with an instinctive, deep, and unshakeable love. I love it with all my senses: I love to see it, I love to breathe it in, I love to open my ears to its silence, I love my whole body to be caressed by its blackness. Skylarks sing in the sunshine, the blue sky, the warm air, in the fresh morning light. The owl flies by night, a dark shadow passing through the darkness; he hoots his sinister, quivering hoot, as though he delights in the intoxicating black immensity of space. ~ Guy De Maupassant