take wing

“I find him painful as a writer; like a soul ever promising to take wing into the Aether, yet never doing it, ever splashing webfooted in the terrene mud, and only splashing the worse the more he strives!”

The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol. I

“The collar had burned when he attacked the lord, but suppose Keristillax was simply to take wing and fly away?”

Fictionaut: Father Swarat

““coo-hoo-oo” of the male birds and the responsive notes of the hens; the tumult when in alarm all take wing simultaneously and wheel and circle and settle again with rustling and creaking branches, the sudden swoop with whistling wings of single birds close overhead, create a perpetual din.”

The Confessions of a Beachcomber