Painted Bird

Famous quotes containing the words painted bird, painted and/or bird:

    When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
    When our table with cherries and nuts is spread:
    Come live, and be merry, and join with me
    To sing the sweet chorus of ‘Ha, ha, he!’
    William Blake (1757–1827)

    All of our lives is a rebus
    Of little wooden animals painted shy,
    Terrific colors, magnificent and horrible,
    Close together.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of Walden Wood, and quite familiar to me at last, though I never saw the bird while it was making it.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)