Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Owl
The large white owl that with eye is blind,
That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow,
Is carried away in a gust of wind.
E. B. Browning—Isabel’s Child. St. 19.
The Roman senate, when within
The city walls an owl was seen,
Did cause their clergy, with lustrations
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The round-fac’d prodigy t’ avert,
From doing town or country hurt.
Butler—Hudibras. Pt. II. Canto III. L. 709.
In the hollow tree, in the old gray tower,
The spectral Owl doth dwell;
Dull, hated, despised, in the sunshine hour,
But at dusk—he’s abroad and well!
Not a bird of the forest e’er mates with him—
All mock him outright, by day:
But at night, when the woods grow still and dim,
The boldest will shrink away!
O, when the night falls, and roosts the fowl,
Then, then, is the reign of the Horned Owl!
Barry Cornwall—The Owl.
St. Agnes’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold.
Keats—The Eve of St. Agnes.
The wailing owl
Screams solitary to the mournful moon.
Mallett—Excursion.
The screech-owl, with ill-boding cry,
Portends strange things, old women say;
Stops every fool that passes by,
And frights the school-boy from his play.
Lady Montagu—The Politicians. St. 4.
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;
Tu-who, a merry note.
Love’s Labour’s Lost. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 928.
It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman,
Which gives the stern’st good night.
Macbeth. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 3.
The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits.
Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 6.
O you virtuous owle,
The wise Minerva’s only fowle.
Sir Philip Sidney—A Remedy for Love. L. 77.
When cats run home and light is come,
And dew is cold upon the ground,
And the far-off stream is dumb,
And the whirring sail goes round,
And the whirring sail goes round;
Alone and warming his five wits,
The white owl in the belfry sits.
Tennyson—Song. The Owl.
Then lady Cynthia, mistress of the shade,
Goes, with the fashionable owls, to bed.
Young—Love of Fame. Satire V. L. 209.