"Cuckoo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cuckoo sat on a tree and sang, "Summer is coming, coming"; And a bee crept out from the hive and began ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... the well-known objects in the room—at the picture of the little girl reading, which hung opposite her bed, at the book-shelf with all the brightly-covered books she was so fond of, at her canary hopping restlessly in his cage, at the cuckoo clock, and finally at the little clog in the middle of the mantel-piece. But when she came to this her eyes opened wide, she sat up, rubbed them, and looked at it again; for all in a minute, just as we remember a dream, there came back to her the dreadful ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... the ancient mystery—how is it that a man with such a face, and such insolence written all over him, can become a leader of other men and persuade them to hatch the eggs of treachery that he lays like a cuckoo in their nests? ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... aquaticum, mustard, sinapis, scurvy-grass cochlearia hortensis, horse-radish cochlearia armoracia, cuckoo-flower, cardamine, dog's-grass, dandelion, leontodon taraxacon, cellery ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... still,' he said, but for one moment Wendy saw the romantic figure come to rest on the cuckoo clock. 'O the lovely!' she cried, though Tink's face was still distorted ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... "when I am so worn out with poverty and hard work—not like the lovely Mrs. Q., who has nothing to do all day except spend the money that I ought to have. I'll tell you what it is, my fine fellow: you had better be careful, or I'll have that pretty cuckoo out of her soft nest, and pluck her borrowed feathers off her, like the monkey did to ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... lovely day in June, we were allowed to go down to our river, and we used to sit for hours among the flags which grew beside it, hidden by the tall reeds and the yellow flowers, making little green boats out of the broad leaves of the flags, while the sound of "Cuckoo, cuckoo" came from ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... wearied of their toil and asked for a little rest, Frodi answered: "Ye shall sleep no longer than the cuckoo is silent, or while I speak one stave." Then the giant-maids ...
— The Edda, Vol. 2 - The Heroic Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 13 • Winifred Faraday
... of summer, and I saw a kingfisher across the watermeadows coming along. Oh, and there's a cuckoo back in the fir plantation, singing with a May voice. It must have ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... time the men of Gotham would have kept the Cuckoo so that she might sing all the year, and in the midst of their town they made a hedge round in compass and they got a Cuckoo, and put her into it, and said, "Sing there all through the year, or thou shalt have neither meat nor water." The Cuckoo, as ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... that the root of the cuckoo-pint (arum) was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, and eaten in severe snowy weather. After observing, with some exactness, myself, and getting others to do the same, we found it was ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... stockade twelve feet high for leopards abound and when game is difficult to find do not hesitate to enter villages and carry off people. Here we halt for lunch and then on again through the forest full of cuckoo pheasants. These are not much more difficult to shoot than hand reared birds at home although they fly higher to clear the tall trees. They do not, however, appear to travel very quickly but this ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... when the dingles of April flowers Shine with the earliest daffodils, When, before sunrise, the cold clear hours Gleam with a promise that noon fulfils,— Deep in the leafage the cuckoo cried, Perch'd on a spray by a rivulet-side, "Swallows, O Swallows, come back again To swoop ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... of digestions would dare to include these prickly, strong-jawed, meatless insects in a bill of fare. Now and then I have found an ani, or black cuckoo, with a few in its stomach: but an ani can swallow a stinging-haired caterpillar and enjoy it. The most consistent feeder upon Attas is the giant marine toad. Two hundred Attas in a night is not an uncommon meal, the exact number being verifiable by ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... ceremonious processions may have moved over this ancient causeway! From the branch of a maple that sent its roots into the more defined grade came the dreamy notes of a mourning dove, from a walnut tree a cuckoo uttered his queer song that perhaps was the same as these strange people listened to; indigo buntings sent their high pitched breezy song from the tops of the trees, while the warbling vireo seemed to be saying, "who were they?" and ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... itself has always seemed a part and parcel of the charm of his productions. It may be different with the rose, but the attraction of this paper drama sensibly declined when Webb had crept into the rubric: a poor cuckoo, flaunting in Skelt's nest. And now we have reached Pollock, sounding deeper gulfs. Indeed, this name of Skelt appears so stagey and piratic, that I will adopt it boldly to design these qualities. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... drivel; whereas 'Uncle Silas' is good and strong from first to last. Le Fanu has never been so popular as, in my humble judgment, he deserves to be, but of course modern readers were better acquainted with him than with Godwin. Yet nine out of ten were always heard repeating this cuckoo cry about the latter's superiority, until the 'Iron Chest' came out, and Fashion induced them to read Godwin for themselves; which has ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... of North Queensland jungles which have marked individualistic characters is that known as the koel cuckoo, which the blacks of some localities have named "calloo-calloo"—a mimetic term imitative of the most frequent notes of the bird. The male is lustrous black, the female mottled brown, and during most parts of the year both are extremely shy, though noisy enough ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Leech's Master Slender," she continues, "was picturesquely true to the gawky, flabby, booty squire.... His mode of sitting on a stile, with his long ungainly legs dangling down ... ever and anon ejaculating his maudlin cuckoo cry of 'Oh sweet Ann Page,' was a delectable treat." Without disrespect to Leech's memory, it may be said that others of his friends did not form a similarly favourable opinion of ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... beginning it would be all well," said the mother stork. "Turn thy thoughts now to thine own family. It is almost time for our long journey; I begin now to tingle under the wings. The cuckoo and the nightingale are already gone, and I hear the quails saying that we shall soon have a fair wind. Our young ones are quite able to ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... be well on into May, for the men were thrang with work, and the lassies at the big house haining a bit of bannock to be putting under their pillows for fear of hearing the cuckoo, when first I heard the strange whistling. It is not a very lucky thing to be hearing the cuckoo and you wanting food, and I think this is just a haver of the old folk to be making the young ones rise early on the fine clear mornings; but ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... poetry was "awakening the mind's attention . . . by directing it to the loveliness and wonders of the world before us." His best poetry is about things out of doors and their influence on people's minds. You may like to read "Fidelity," "To the Cuckoo," "The Solitary Reaper," "The Reverie of Poor Susan," and others that ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... Cricket with its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounding through the house, and seeming to twinkle in the outer darkness like a star, Dickens, and no other could, by any chance, have conjured up the forms of either Caleb Plummer, or Gruff-and-Tackleton. The cuckoo on the Dutch clock, now like a spectral voice, now hiccoughing on the assembled company, as if he had got drunk for joy; the little haymaker over the dial mowing down imaginary grass, jerking right and left with his scythe in front of a Moorish palace; the hideous, hairy, red-eyed jacks-in-boxes; ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... he was sitting with a girl on his knee, and had just read to her these enchanting lines in which he speaks of hearing the cuckoo call. ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... natural history and a whole lot of other subjects at the same time, and one can't remember everything, can one? I used to know the difference between the Sardinian dormouse and the ordinary kind, and whether the wry-neck arrives at our shores earlier than the cuckoo, or the other way round, and how long the walrus takes in growing to maturity; I daresay you knew all those sorts of things once, but ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... on Spring and all her flowers, The birds no longer charm from tree to tree; The cuckoo had his home in this green world Ten days before his voice ...
— Foliage • William H. Davies
... it was good for something: it painted well, sang divinely, furnished Iliads. But invisible butchery, under a pall of smoke a furlong thick, who is any the better for that? Poet with his note-book may repeat, "Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri;" but the sentiment is hollow and savours of cuckoo. You can't tueri anything but a horrid row. He didn't say, "Suave etiam ingentem caliginem tueri ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Like a faithful hound I shall follow your lead! I shall clothe my remorse in so plaintive a lay Till finally you shall believe me indeed. Each moment we spent here in ecstasy I shall call up again to your memory! Each flower that blooms shall speak it anew, The cuckoo and swallow shall sing it to you! The trees that grow here in the forest so green Shall whisper thereof ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... mother slept, but their little son did not sleep; where the flowered cotton bed-curtains moved I saw the child peep out. I thought at first that he looked at the Bornholm clock, for it was finely painted with red and green, and there was a cuckoo on the top; it had heavy leaden weights, and the pendulum with its shining brass plate went to and fro with a 'tick! tick!' But it was not that he looked at; no, it was his mother's spinning-wheel, which stood directly under the clock; this was the dearest ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... banquet table, in the hearing of all the guests, this monk now said, for he was fearless and thought that his words would have more effect if they were heard by many, "People are in the habit of saying that the cuckoo is the worst of birds because he does not rear his young in his own nest, but here sits a man who does not provide for his home and his children, but seeks his pleasure with a strange woman. Him will I call the worst of men."—Unn then rose up. "That, Berg, ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... satisfactory. One might parallel it with the case of hatching birds' eggs. Most birds sit upon their eggs themselves, and supply the necessary warmth from their own bodies. But any alternative plan that attains the same end does just as well. The felonious cuckoo drops her foundlings unawares in another bird's nest: the ostrich trusts her unhatched offspring to the heat of the burning desert sand: and the Australian brush-turkeys, with vicarious maternal instinct, collect great mounds of decaying and fermenting leaves and rubbish, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... least, Darwin had pictured in his imagination the steps by which a "strange and odious instinct" may have been developed from comparatively innocent beginnings. He was referring to the ejection by the young cuckoo of its companions from the nest. "I can see no special difficulty in its having gradually acquired, during successive generations, the blind desire, the strength and structure necessary for the work of ejection." "The first step towards the acquisition ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... the Imperial City, banished far To this plague-stricken spot, where desolation Broods on from year to heavy year, nor lute Nor love's guitar is heard. By marshy bank Girt with tall yellow reeds and dwarf bamboos I dwell. Night long and day no stir, no sound, Only the lurking cuckoo's blood-stained note, The gibbon's mournful wail. Hill songs I have, And village pipes with their discordant twang. But now I listen to thy lute methinks The gods were parents to thy music. Sit And sing to us again, while I engrave Thy story on my ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise In the young children's eyes. But I have learnt the years, and know the yet Leaf-folded violet. Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell The cuckoo's fitful bell. I wander in a grey time that encloses June and the wild hedge-roses. A year's procession of the flowers doth pass My feet, along the grass. And all you sweet birds silent yet, I know The notes that stir you so, Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear Beginnings ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... of the breeze through the grass, and the sudden scream of a startled jay. Doves went happily from tree to tree and I never put my gun up. I had heard a very familiar sound, and wanted to be assured that my ears were not deceived. No, I was right; I could hear the cuckoo, calling through the depth of the forest, as though it were my favourite Essex copse at home. It was pleasant, indeed, to hear the homely notes so far from any other object, even remotely, ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... our Government. Governor Perry and other provisional governors and orators proclaim that "this is the white man's Government." The whole copperhead party, pandering to the lowest prejudices of the ignorant, repeat the cuckoo cry, "This is the white man's Government." Demagogues of all parties, even some high in authority, gravely shout, "This is the white man's Government." What is implied by this? That one race of men are to have the exclusive right forever to rule this nation, and to exercise ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... confined to WILLIAM, for we read that ALEXANDER used often to "sit by us and amuse us and himself by making all sorts of things out of pasteboard, or contriving how to make a twelve-hour cuckoo clock go a week." This ability of ALEXANDER'S was turned later to the best account when he became his brother WILLIAM'S right hand in the manufacture of reflectors, eye-pieces, and stands in England. His abilities were great, ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... so black of hue, With orange-tawny bill; The throstle with his note so true: The wren with little quill; The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, The plain-song cuckoo gray' - ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... she might with her busy needle, the day was drearily long; and few genuine cuckoo-carols have been listened to with such grateful rejoicing as greeted those metallic gutturals that once in every sixty minutes issued from the throat of the gaudy automaton caged in the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... pretensions, that the proposed Chamber of Deputies, which was not to make laws affecting education, religious corporations, the registration of births and marriages; or to confer civil rights on non-catholics, or to touch the privileges and immunities of the clergy, might have suited Cloud-cuckoo-town, but would not suit the solid earth, were facts easy to recognise, but no one had time to pause and consider. It was sufficient to hear Pius proclaim that in the wind which was uprooting oaks and cedars ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... is a-coming in, Loud sing cuckoo; Groweth seed and bloweth mead, And springeth the wood ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... mounted his own hill. The chequered April day was declining, and the dipping sun was flooding the western plain with quiet light. Rooks were circling round the hill, filling the air with long-drawn sound. A cuckoo was calling on a tree near at hand, and the evening was charged with spring scents—scents of leaf and grass, of earth and rain. Below, in an oak copse across the road, a stream rushed; and from a distance came the familiar rattle ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... arrived; and though winter lingered in spates, the song of the skylark and the thrush heralded the spring. When the dream-like voice of the cuckoo should be heard once more, Peter and Margaret had determined to take a long summer trip. They were to go first to Perth, where Captain Thorkald was stationed, and then to Glasgow and see Ronald. But God had planned another journey for Peter, even one to a "land very far off." ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... more suggestive than Rosmersholm, there is not one which gives the unbeliever more opportunity to blaspheme. This ancestral house of a great rich race, which is kept up by the ministrations of a single aged female servant, stands in pure Cloud-Cuckoo Land. The absence of practical amenities in the Rosmer family might be set down to eccentricity, if all the other personages were not equally ill-provided. Rebecca, glorious heroine according to some ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... thy Song Has well reveng'd unhappy Priam's Wrong; Waste, in thy hidden Cave, the Festive Day, With mock Machaon, and Patroclus G—— Sleep, (l) Sleep in Peace the Works, for Wapping born! No more thy Cuckoo Note shall wake the Morn; In Ease, and Avarice, and aukward State, The Fool of Fortune, shalt thou hail thy Fate; Slumbring in Quiet o'er Lampoons half writ, Which, ripe in Malice, only ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... on a bathing subject. It is called "The Passing of Arthur." The picture shows the Masters on the bank at Cuckoo Ware, while one small natational Candidate is still in a punt shiveringly awaiting the command to jump in again and swim the regulation distance. From the title, it may be taken for granted that this ARTHUR did "pass" after all. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... of interference and disquietude. Thus, though an echo actually increases the quantity of sound heard, its repetition of the note or syllable gives an idea of calmness attainable in no other way; hence also the feeling of calm given to a landscape by the voice of a cuckoo." ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... cottage you can read "The Butterfly" from a first edition; and then you can go sit in the orchard, white with blossoms, and see the butterflies that suggested the poem. And if your eye is good you can discover down by the lakeside the daffodils, and listen the while to the cuckoo call. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... having any. He couldn't: he just couldn't. Since necessity did not force him to work for his bread and butter, he would not work for work's sake. You can't make the columbine flowers nod in January, nor make the cuckoo sing in England at Christmas. Why? It isn't his season. He doesn't want to. Nay, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... your shoes and stockings, Chick, and turn your coat inside out. Here, I'll hold the baby; yer Mammy's nursing the other one. Shove that beer can under the stove, and hide that there cuckoo clock." ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... who always regarded this daughter of hers somewhat as a cuckoo in the nest, was in a complaining mood this morning. She sat in her dressing-gown embroidering peonies on a lambrequin and aired her grievances. Kate, writing notes at the old-fashioned black walnut writing desk, looked up at the climaxes of her mother's address, bit her ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... much smaller homopterous insect, of the family 'Cercopidae', is known in England as the frog-hopper ('Aphrophora spumaria'), when full grown and furnished with wings, but while still in the pupa state it is called "Cuckoo-spit", from the mass of froth in which it envelops itself. The circulation of sap in plants in our climate, especially of the graminaceae, is not quick enough to yield much moisture. The African species is five or ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... he had plenty, this pleasant honest fool poured out his heart even in the presence of Goneril herself, in many a bitter taunt and jest which cut to the quick: such as comparing the king to the hedge-sparrow, who feeds the young of the cuckoo till they grow old enough, and then has its head bit off for its pains; and saying, that an ass may know when the cart draws the horse (meaning that Lear's daughters, that ought to go behind, now ranked before their father); and that Lear was no longer Lear, but ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... streamlet flowing through the 'Mash,' a meadow which was almost a water-meadow; and the other inside a withy-bed. She pulled the 'cat's-tails,' as she learned to call the horse-tails, to see the stem part at the joints; and when the mowing-grass began to grow long, picked the cuckoo-flowers and nibbled the stalk and leaflets to essay the cress-like taste. In the garden, which was full of old-fashioned shrubs and herbs, she watched the bees busy at the sweet-scented 'honey-plant,' and sometimes ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... the lark so shrill and clear; Now at heaven's gates she claps her wings, The Morn not waking till she sings. Hark, hark, with what a pretty throat Poor Robin-red-breast tunes his note. Hark how the jolly cuckoos sing 'Cuckoo' to welcome in the spring, 'Cuckoo' to welcome in ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... common errors which Sir Thomas Browne set himself to refute, were such as these: That dolphins are crooked, that Jews stink, that a man hath one rib less than a woman, that Xerxes's army drank up rivers, that cicades are bred out of cuckoo-spittle, that Hannibal split Alps with vinegar, together with many similar fallacies touching Pope Joan, the Wandering Jew, the decuman or tenth wave, the blackness of negroes, Friar Bacon's brazen ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... rude an earth; but the wild hyacinths droop their blue bells under the wood, and the cowslips rise in the grass. The nightingale sings without ceasing; the soft 'coo-coo' of the dove sounds hard by; the merry cuckoo calls as he flies from elm to elm; the wood-pigeons rise and smite their wings together over the firs. In the mere below the coots are at play; they chase each other along the surface of the water and indulge in wild evolutions. ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... cheering for me as though Pipistrello were a king or a hero. The populace is always thus—the giddiest-pated fool that ever screamed, as loud and as ignorant as a parrot, as changeful as the wind in March, as base as the cuckoo. The same people threw stones at me when they brought me to this prison—the same people that feasted and applauded me then, that first day of my return to Orte. To-day, indeed, some women weep, and the little child brings me half a pomegranate. That is more remembrance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... leafy wet woodlands, Cuckoo and nightingale brown, Sing to the sound of the rain on green ground— The rain on green leaves dripping down! Fresh with the rain of the May-time, Rich with the promise of June, Deep in her heart, where the little leaves part, Love, like a ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... the weedy earth a rivulet break And purl along the untrodden wilderness; There the shy cuckoo comes his thirst to slake, There the shrill jay alights his plumes to dress; And there the stealthy fox, when morn is gray, Laps the clear ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... lunatic, who goes about the city chanting, like a cuckoo, 'Put yourself in his place—put yourself ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... derives from cuculus, cogul, cocu, a cuckoo, has taken a queer twist, nor can I explain how its present meaning arose from a shebird which lays her egg in a strange nest. Wittol, on the other hand, from Witan, to know, is rightly applied to one whom La Fontaine calls "cocu et content," ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... on the performance of your opera. You may safely expect various disagreeables in connection therewith, which are inseparable from musical work. The great thing is to remain cheerful, and to do something worth doing. The cuckoo take the rest!— ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... psychologies and motivations as on the details of their exploits, but don't slight the latter. The result is a balanced and fascinating account, particularly useful when read immediately before or after Cliff Stoll's {The Cuckoo's Egg}. It is especially instructive to compare RTM, a true hacker who blundered, with the sociopathic phone-freak Mitnick and the alienated, drug-addled crackers who made the Chaos Club notorious. The gulf between {wizard} ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... dear," she answered. "I used to do that way with god-mother's picture when I was a lonely little thing at the Cuckoo's nest. I'd whisper my troubles and show her my treasures, and feel that she kept watch over me while I slept. It comforted me many a time, when there was no one else to go to, and is one of my dearest recollections now ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... wild outcries, in which wind and wave and leaves and the song of the cuckoo speak the same word, as if all came from the same heart of things; and, through it all, the remembrance: 'God will not undo what he is doing'; have indeed, and supremely, the 'Celtic note.' 'I love the strand, but I hate the sea,' says the Black Book ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... boy, borne down by a weight that was too heavy for his years. He walked with his hands behind his back, his hatless head bowed, regarding his feet and the last year's leaves on which he walked. A cuckoo across the valley called with the insistence of one who will ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... sensible by half. When he used to write to her she'd creep up the lane and look back over her shoulder, and slide out the letter, and read a word and stand in thought looking at the hills and seeing none. Then the cuckoo would cry—away the letter would slip, and she'd start wi' fright at the mere bird, and have a red skin before the quickest man among ye could say, "Blood ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... one summer morn, When all was on the wing: I heard the cuckoo tell his name, I heard the lark to sing. I left the Tower upon the hill Dedicated to the Queen, And for old Keighley back again, Charmed ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... four or five emphatic notes for a finish. "Now, if you listen, you'll hear the next wren answer him!" said Father Payne. In a moment the same little song came like an echo from a bush a few yards away. "The wren sings in stricter time than any bird but the cuckoo," said Father Payne—"four quavers to a bar. That's very important! Those two ridiculous creatures will go on doing that half the morning. They are so excited that they build sham nests, you know, about now—quite useless piles ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at Gotham, they found some of the inhabitants engaged in endeavouring to drown an eel in a pool of water; some were employed in dragging carts upon a large barn, to shade the wood from the sun; and others were engaged in hedging a cuckoo, which had perched itself upon an old bush. In short, they were all employed upon some foolish way or other, which convinced the king's servants that it ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... was not a single lyric, but a beautiful incident taken from some epic poem.[81] A messenger comes with a token to a lady at home, by which she may credit his message; he bids her take ship as soon as she hears the voice of the cuckoo, and go out to him who has all things ready about him to give her a ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... of the land. Now hath he bidden me Earnestly to urge thee to sail the sea When thou hast heard on the brow of the hill The mournful cuckoo call in the wood. Then let no living man keep thee From the journey, or hinder thy going. Betake thee to the sea, the home of the mew, Seat thee in the boat, that southward from here Beyond the road of the sea ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... should be beautiful, after the Hindoo type;—that is, she should have the complexion of chocolate and cream; "her face should be as the full moon, her nose smooth as a flute; she should have eyes like unto lotuses, and a neck like a pigeon's; her voice should be soft as the cuckoo's, and her step as the gait of a young elephant of pure blood." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Astur polionotus, the Hoary-backed Goshawk; the Passeres Edoliisoma dispar, a Caterpillar Shrike, the skin of a male of which from Great Banda is in the Leyden Museum, and Motacilla melanope, the Grey Wagtail. Of picarian birds there have been found Cuculus intermedius, the Oriental Cuckoo; Eudynamis cyanocephala sub-species everetti, a small form of the Koel, and Eurystomus australis, the Australian Roller. Joao de Barros, in his Asia, mentions the parrots of the Banda Islands,[5] and ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... contrived in spite of all the old maid guardians that ever lived. Wonder if the old lady knows how it feels to have a man kiss her? I bet she don't! I've never seen your Suffragette queen, but I don't need to after all you've told me about her. She must be a cuckoo. ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... she walked along that had it not been for Professor Wunsch she might have lived on for years in Moonstone without ever knowing the Kohlers, without ever seeing their garden or the inside of their house. Besides the cuckoo clock,—which was wonderful enough, and which Mrs. Kohler said she kept for "company when she was lonesome,"—the Kohlers had in their house the most wonderful thing Thea had ever seen—but ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... repeated Phil. "Why, everything, my gentle cuckoo. Dost thou not yet know that Indians generally, and the Mayubuna in particular, have a very wholesome dread and horror of thunderstorms, believing, as they do, that the evil spirits come abroad and hold high revel upon such occasions? If an Indian happens to ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... expressing the greatest anxiety and expectation. Perfect stillness reigned for some minutes, only the regular strokes of the pendulum were heard from the clock on the wall; and, as the hands pointed to the expiration of the hour, a cuckoo sprang out of the tree painted over the dial, and eleven times her hoarse, croaking ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... happier lot. Oh, how I envied him! No lessons, no task, no school; nothing but holiday, frolic, green fields, and fine weather. Had I been then more versed in poetry, I might have addressed him in the words of Logan to the cuckoo: ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... her hump became visible, and I saw that there was an opening in it, and there popped out from this hole the green head of a parrot which the old woman carried in her hump. This creature called out, "Cuckoo," in a thin, squeaking, far-away voice, and then withdrew again into the frightful old hag's hump. Oh! when I heard that "Cuckoo!" a cold perspiration formed on my forehead; but suddenly the woman disappeared and then I realized that ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... grass, and of the buntings and chaffinches that make their small merry music in every thicket, and of the black and white chats that shift their burden of song from stone to stone beside the path, and of the cuckoo that tells his name to us from far away, and of the splendid bee-eaters that glitter over us like a flock of winged emeralds as we climb the rocky hill toward the north. We are glad of the broom in golden flower, and of the pink and white rock-roses, and ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... trees are in blossom, and flowers are coming out, and butterflies, and the sun shines. Now it rains. It rains and the sun shines. There is a rainbow. Oh, what fine colours! Pretty bright rainbow! No, you cannot catch it; it is in the sky. It is going away. It fades. It is quite gone. I hear the cuckoo. He says, Cuckoo! cuckoo! He is come to tell us it is spring. Do you know the nursery rhyme about ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... beautiful. The day had been fine and warm; but at the coming on of night, the air grew cool, and in the mellowing distance smoke was rising gently from the cottage chimneys. There were a thousand pleasant scents diffused around, from young leaves and fresh buds; the cuckoo had been singing all day long, and was but just now hushed; the smell of earth newly-upturned, first breath of hope to the first labourer after his garden withered, was fragrant in the evening breeze. It was a time when most ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... cheese, some love no fish, and some Love not their friends, nor their own house or home; Some start at pig, slight chicken, love not fowl, More than they love a cuckoo, or an owl; Leave such, my CHRISTIANA, to their choice, And seek those who to find thee will rejoice; By no means strive, but in humble-wise, Present thee to them in thy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... only trouble that Lord Tubby had was about his son, whom he loved very much, although they were not in the least alike, for the young Prince was as thin as a cuckoo. And what vexed him more than all was, that though the young ladies throughout all his lands did their best to make the Prince fall in love with them, he would have nothing to say to any of them, and told his father he did ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... and one sighs for Regent Street and the "Rag and Famish," flaxen ringlets, and roast beeL A twelvemonth might pass pleasantly on the Rock; but after that the "damnable iteration" of existence must jar on the nerves like the note of a cuckoo. Still, as my philosopher of the cemetery remarked, there are worse places—far worse, Assouan and Aden, for example; so let not the gallant gentleman repine whom Fate has assigned to a round of duty in Sutlersville. For Tommy ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... trictrac. At three hundred. At the long tables or ferkeering. At the unlucky man. At feldown. At the last couple in hell. At tod's body. At the hock. At needs must. At the surly. At the dames or draughts. At the lansquenet. At bob and mow. At the cuckoo. At primus secundus. At puff, or let him speak that At mark-knife. hath it. At the keys. At take nothing and throw out. At span-counter. At the marriage. At even or odd. At the frolic or jackdaw. At cross or pile. At the opinion. At ball ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... kitchen clock, which ticks loudly, shows the hours, minutes, and seconds, strikes, cries "cuckoo!" and perhaps shows the phases of the moon. When the clock is wound up, all the phenomena which it exhibits are potentially contained in its mechanism, and a clever clockmaker could predict all it will do after an ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... eternal cuckoo-cry, "I'm sure it's all a mistake—a hideous mistake; and we'll be good friends again some day. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... ill-looking ungainly fellow, who did no work, smoked and loafed about, but was the idol of his mother. He resembled neither parent in the least, and, except that such vagaries of nature are not unknown, it might have been supposed that some cuckoo ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... traced. May include a modified {shell} restricting the cracker's movements in unobvious ways, and 'bait' files designed to keep him interested and logged on. See also {back door}, {firewall machine}, {Venus flytrap}, and Clifford Stoll's account in "{The Cuckoo's Egg}" of how he made and used one (see the {Bibliography} in Appendix ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Eighteenth Century made many of those jolly little wall clocks called Wag-on-the-Wall. These clocks may be still picked up in out-of-the-way towns. In construction they are very much like the old cuckoo clock which has come to us from Switzerland, and the tile clock which comes from Holland. These clocks with long, exposed weights and pendulum, have not the dignity of the French wall clocks, which were as complete in themselves as fine bas ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... indicator. A bird of the Cuckoo kind, found in the interior parts of Africa; it has a shrill note, which the natives answer by a soft whistle; and the birds repeating the note, the natives are thereby conducted to the wild Bee-hives, ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... can resolve it by rote, Lady, twas that yeare the Cuckoo sung in May: another token Lady; there raigned in Rome a great Tyrant that yeare, and many Maides lost their heads ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... Indian cuckoo. It is sometimes called Parabhrita (nourished by another) because the female is known to leave her eggs in the nest of the crow to be hatched. The bird is a great favorite with the Indian poets, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... the nest, while Linny made a soft lining of hair inside. And at last the little home was finished, and three pretty eggs laid snugly inside; when one day, while Robert and Linny had gone to stretch their wings by a short flight around the garden, an ugly old Cuckoo, who had seen the Bobolinks flying in and out of the tree, came and laid a big egg in the nest; for Cuckoos are lazy birds, and never build houses for themselves, but steal places to lay their eggs, and let somebody else take care of ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... convert Mary, and often exhorted her to penitence; she bore this pretty well for some time, being overawed by old reminiscences of sisterly superiority: but at last her vanity rebelled. "Repent! and Repent!" cried she. "Why you be like a cuckoo, all in one song. One would think I had been and robbed a church. 'Tis all very well for you to repent, as led a fastish life at starting: but I never done nothing as I'm ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... delight the boy had; he knew the magic of sound, which spoke to his heart in a way that it speaks to but few; the sounds of the earth gave up their sweets to him; the musical fluting of owls, the liquid notes of the cuckoo, the thin pipe of dancing flies, the mournful creaking of the cider-press, the horn of the oxherd wound far off on the hill, the tinkling of sheep-bells—of all these he knew the notes; and not only these, but the rhythmical swing of the scythes ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... it be, under the influence of the old methods,—not until legislators and politicians give over the business of tampering with the currency,—till they give over the vain hope of "hedging the cuckoo," to use Locke's figure,—and the principle of FREEDOM be allowed to adjust this, as it has already adjusted equally important matters. Let the governments adhere to their task of supplying a pure standard of the precious metals, and of exacting it in the discharge of what is due to them, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... between, primroses clustering under the roots of the trees, daffodils gilding the grass above, and the banks verdant with exquisite feather-moss. Such a springtide wood was joy to all, especially as the first cuckoo of the season came to add to their delights and set them counting for the augury of happy years, which proved so many that Mysie said they would not know what to ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... accustomed to hear him prate, Mr. Quisque seemed to listen to him without surprise, pleasure, or pain. It was what he expected. It was the man. A machine that had no more meaning than a Dutch clock; repeating cuckoo, as it strikes. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... "the cuckoo's gone long ago, the swallows are taking flight, and it is getting time for me to pack up ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... what 'e's doing," said the voice of Uncle Jim, dropping for a moment to sorrow, and then with a great increment of wrathfulness: "Come out of my nest, you blinking cuckoo, you, or I'll cut your silly insides out! Come out of it—you pock-marked rat! Stealing another man's 'ome away from 'im! Come out and look me in the face, you squinting son ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... the city swallow, 'because, one day, when I was passing through the palace garden, I met a cuckoo, who, as I need not tell you, always pretends to be able to see into the future. We began to talk about certain things which were happening in the palace, and of the events of past years. "Ah," said he, "the only person who can expose the wickedness of the ministers and show ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... a plant of the natural order Araceae, which shares with the Cuckoo Pint (Arum) the representation in Britain of that order of Monocotyledons. The name is derived from acorus, Gr. akoros, the classical name for the plant. It was the Calamus aromaticus of the medieval druggists and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... it," responded the narrator, "because one day when I was passing by the palace garden, I met and had a chat with a cuckoo, who, as you know, is a conjuror, and can foretell what will happen. As we were discoursing with each other on the affairs of the palace, he said ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... your teeth!' I cried, staggering as if the wine were in my head. 'And cuckoo, too! Another word, ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... similar examples which, with a large number of habitual superstitious presuppositions, make only false causality. Pearls mean tears because they have similar form; inasmuch as the cuckoo may not without a purpose have only two calls at one time and ten or twenty at another, the calls must mean the number of years before death, before marriage, or of a certain amount of money, or any other countable thing. Such notions are so firmly rooted in the peasantry ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... eyes soft and imploring on the judge. That venerable and shrewd old man, learned in human nature as well as in law, comprehended in a moment, and said kindly, "You misunderstand him. Witnesses do not read letters out in court. Let the letter be handed up to me." This was fortunate, for the court cuckoo, who intones most letters, would have read all the sense and pathos out of this, with his ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Can't you see they'll be so proud to have you they won't be able to contain themselves? They'll turn the whole place upside-down for you. I know them. They'll pretend it's nothing, but mother won't sleep at night for thinking how to arrange things for the best, and as for my cuckoo of an uncle, if you notice something funny about your feet, it'll be the esteemed alderman licking your boots. You'll have the time of your life. In fact they'll ruin your character for you. There'll be ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... spring, the children would delight in gathering the sweet-scented meadow flowers—the water ranunculus, with its golden cups, the modest daisy, the pink cuckoo-flower, and the yellow cowslips; while overhead the bees kept up a constant humming; they have found their way from the straw hives in the garden and are diving into the delicious blossoms of the apple and cherry trees, robbing many a one of ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... is a good lad and a loyal," said the housewife, feasting her eyes on the piece of pine wood where it was throned above the chimney with a cuckoo clock in oak and a ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... wood holds nearly every species of the larger woodland and riverine birds common to southern England. The hobby breeds there yearly. The wild pheasant, crow, sparrow-hawk, kestrel, magpie, jay, ringdove, brown owl, water-hen (on the river-bounded side), in summer the cuckoo and turtle-dove, are all found there, and, with the exception of the pigeons and kestrels, which seek their food at a distance during the day, they seldom leave the shelter of its trees. One other species frequents the more open parts of the cover in yearly greater numbers; this is the common ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... euphemism), I climbed the hill, and after an hour or two on the plateau strolled back again, facing the sunset through a vista of moss-covered live-oaks and sweet gums. Those quiet, incurious hours are among the pleasantest of all my Florida memories. A cuckoo would be cooing, perhaps; or a quail, with cheerful ambiguity,— such as belongs to weather predictions in general,—would be prophesying "more wet" and "no more wet" in alternate breaths; or two ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... NEST 45 Shrike. Lanius ludovicianus. Golden-winged Woodpecker. Colaptes auratus. Least Flycatcher. Empidonax minimus. Yellow-billed Cuckoo. Coccyzus Americanus. ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... in early June, When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er, Before the roses and the longest day— When garden walks and all the grassy floor With blossoms red and white of fallen May And chestnut flowers are strewn— So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry, From the wet field, through the vext garden trees, Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze: "The bloom is gone, and with ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... didapper is reverenced because it foretells the approach of rain. Linnunrata (bird-path) is the name given to the Milky-way, due probably to a myth like those of the Swedes and Slavs, in which liberated songs take the form of snow-white dovelets. The cuckoo to this day is sacred, and is believed to have fertilized the earth with his songs. As to insects, honey-bees, called by the Finns, Mehilainen, are especially sacred, as in the mythologies of many other nations. Ukkon-koiva (Ukko's dog) is the Finnish name for the butterfly, and ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... hear what?" asked Jenny, emerging suddenly from her private interior world like a cuckoo from a clock. She received an explanation, smiled, nodded, cuckooed at last "I see," and popped back, clapping shut the ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... as a thing of permanent mirth. So it was hardly surprising, in face of the dominant direction of her thoughts to-night, that, when the Miss Minetts' name punctuated Theresa's discourse recurrent as a cuckoo-cry, remembrance of their merrily inglorious retirement from the region of Faircloth's Inn should present itself. Whereupon Damaris' serious mood was lightened as by sudden sunshine, and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a duet of little cuckoo clocks, both in unison, both in time, both with that fascinating touch of the nasal Parisienne voice. Sally was enchanted with ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... blazing root they heard: "Cuckoo! cuckoo!" as plain as ever the spring-bird's voice came over the moor on ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... continually to the hidden growth as they unfolded the visible. In this, they were like the other revelations of God the Infinite. All the wild lovely things were coming up for their month's life of joy. Orchis-harlequins, cuckoo-plants, wild arums, more properly lords-and-ladies, were coming, and coming—slowly; for had they not a long way to come, from the valley of the shadow of death into the land of life? At last the wanderers came upon a whole company of bluebells—not what Hugh would have called ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... away, and the spring with its sunshine followed. The trees were green again, and the meadows were gay with primroses and white anemones, and in the wood the cuckoo sang lustily; and soft, warm breezes were all abroad, making every heart beat more cheerily; and one rejoiced that ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... know him," retorted Peter. "I had forgotten the sound of his voice, that's all. Tell me, Kitty, is it true that Mrs. Cuckoo is no better than Sally Sly the Cowbird and goes about laying her eggs in the nests of other birds? I've heard ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... of the word "Welsh," from the Saxon "Wealh," a stranger, and the use of it in this sense by our old writers (see Brady's Introd., p. 5.: Sir T. Smith's Commonwealth of England, chap. xiii.), sufficiently explain this designation of the Cuckoo, the temporary resident of our cold climate, and the ambassador extraordinary in the revolutions of the seasons, in the words of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... while he embarked again in the very same nut-shell of a boat that he had left Egypt in, passed right under the bows of the English vessels, and set foot once more in France. France acknowledged him; the sacred cuckoo flew from spire to spire; and all the people cried, "Long live ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... and sunshine, appeared in view. We had a pleasant day's walk. We passed Smollett's monument on the road (somehow these poets touch one in reflection more than most military heroes)—talked of old times; you repeated Logan's beautiful verses to the cuckoo,* which I wanted to compare with Wordsworth's, but my courage failed me; you then told me some passages of an early attachment which was suddenly broken off; we considered together which was the most to be pitied, a disappointment in love where the attachment ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... chapter of "The Origin of Species" Darwin says ("Origin of Species" (6th edition), page 205.), "I will not attempt any definition of instinct... Every one understands what is meant, when it is said that instinct impels the cuckoo to migrate and to lay her eggs in other birds' nests. An action, which we ourselves require experience to enable us to perform, when performed by an animal, more especially by a very young one, without experience, and when performed by many individuals ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Pluck me next an old Cuckoo; Emblem of the happy fates Of easy, kind, cornuted mates. Pluck him well—be sure you do— Who wouldn't be an old Cuckoo, Thus to have his plumage blest, Beaming on a ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... chosen as leader, and stands up, generally with his back against a wall or post, while a second player, who is the cuckoo, bends down, as for leapfrog, with his head against the leader. The other players stand around in a circle, each placing a finger on the back of the cuckoo. The leader then "counts off" the fingers of the players with the following rhyme, indicating a finger ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... tropics. But one species, the ruby-throated, is widely diffused, and is a summer visitor all over North America, even within the Arctic Circle, where, for a brief space of time, it revels in the ardent heat of the short-lived summer of the North. Like the cuckoo, she follows the summer wherever ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... and his face fell forward upon them, and they heard a groan. Then in the short silence which followed, another and a very different sound broke upon their ears. Seven clear calls from the cuckoo-clock rang out from the room beyond, followed ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... whole garden was clothed in its first green leaves; the loud buzz of summer insects was not yet heard; the leaves rustled gently, chaffinches twittered everywhere; two doves sat cooing on a tree; the note of a solitary cuckoo was heard first in one place, then in another; the friendly cawing of rooks was carried from the distance beyond the mill pond, sounding like the creaking of innumerable cart wheels. Light clouds floated dreamily over this ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... succeeded by his son Shujaku, a child of eight, whose mother was a daughter of Fujiwara Mototsune. In accordance with the system now fully established, Fujiwara Tadahira became regent. History depicts this Tadahira as an effeminate dilettante, one of whose foibles was to have a cuckoo painted on his fan and to imitate the cry of the bird whenever he opened it. But as representative of the chief aristocratic family in an age when to be a Fujiwara was to possess a title superior to that conferred by ability ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... that islet paved with flowers and moss, While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine, Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own? The crane returned to her unfrozen haunt, 70 And the false cuckoo bade the spray good morn; And on a wintry bough the widowed bird, Hid in the deepest night of ivy-leaves, Renewed the vigils of a sleepless sorrow. I, left like her, and leaving one like her, 75 Alike abandoned and abandoning (Oh! unlike her in this!) the gentlest youth, Whose love had made my ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Castor and Pollux, or the Zeus who deceived Hera by means of a feigned marriage with an inanimate object, or the Zeus who was afraid of Attes, or the Zeus who made love to women in the shape of an ant or a cuckoo, is a being whose myth is felt to be unnatural and bewildering.(3) It is this IRRATIONAL and unnatural element, as Mr. Max Muller says, "the silly, senseless, and savage element," that makes mythology the puzzle which men have so long found it. For, observe, Greek myth does not represent ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... Chester is wonderfully interesting and beautiful. At one part it overlooks a wide level field, over which the annual races are run. I noticed that here as elsewhere the short grass was starred with daisies. They are not considered in place in a well-kept lawn. But remembering the cuckoo song in "Love's Labour's Lost," "When daisies pied ... do paint the meadows with delight," it was hard to look at them ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... never weary of looking at the inscriptions on the great cliffs at the River of the Dog—the strange beauty of that name! It was like the place-names of native Ulster—Athbo, the Ford of Cows, Sraidcuacha, the Cuckoo's Lane—one name sounded to the other like tuning-forks. And the sweet strange harmony of it filled his heart, so that he could understand the irresistible charm of Lebanon—the high clear note like a bird's song. Here was the sun and ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... I took a pistol and vigorously stripped the sheets off the cuckoo who had got into my nest. I saw the face of a young man whom I did not know, his head covered with a nightcap, but the rest perfectly naked, as indeed was my mistress. He turned his back to me to get his shirt which he had thrown on the floor, but seizing him by the arm I held him firmly, with ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... mis-understanding, during which they come near tearing the two human envoys to pieces, they listen to the exposition of the latters' plan. This is nothing less than the building of a new city, to be called Nephelococcygia, or 'Cloud-cuckoo-town,' between earth and heaven, to be garrisoned and guarded by the birds in such a way as to intercept all communication of the gods with their worshippers on earth. All steam of sacrifice will be ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king; Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring, Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing, Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... ago when there were not so many people on the earth as there are now, and the birds and animals had things about their own way, a Cuckoo gave ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... walks about, frowning to himself. Suddenly he takes out his pipe, plays "cuckoo" to himself very solemnly, and is immensely relieved thereby. He comes back to the MOTHER with ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... your heart if you could see it now—so very lovely, the oak trees so early, nearly in leaf already. Your beloved blue hyacinths will soon be out, and the cuckoo has come, but it is long since Susie has been out. She only stands at an open window, but she must try next week to go into the garden; and she is finding a real pleasure in making extracts from your writings, for you, often wondering "will ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin
... history, and all the vivacity of romance. Scott's second novel, "Guy Mannering," was attacked with some viciousness in the periodical of which he was practically the founder, and already the critic was anxious to repeat what Scott, talking of Pope's censors, calls "the cuckoo cry of written out'!" The notice of "Waverley" in the "Edinburgh Review" by Mr. Jeffrey was not so slight and so unworthy of the topic. The novel was declared, and not unjustly, to be "very hastily, and in many places very unskilfully, written." ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... had jumped out from behind its cloud like a cuckoo in a clock, and fallen full upon the drifting boat, now hardly fifty yards away. In the bottom of it lay a man, sprawled over his useless oars, his upturned face very white in the moonlight, limp legs huddled under him anyhow. Something in the abandon of his position suggested that he would ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... and plump arms were set off by a brown dress, which he stared down on when he did not look into her pale face. She felt each movement of his eyes. She had come from the other room, and from thoughts of death; she heard a little cuckoo clock upstairs announce that it was seven o'clock, and the little thing reminded her of all that was now past. One thing with another made her turn from him with tears in her eyes as she said, "I cannot possibly think of such things how." She rose and walked towards ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... amount of ticking is going on, and now that our eyes have become accustomed to the light, we can see numerous clocks on brackets and tables; these are of all sorts and sizes, including a 2s. 11d. "Bee" clock, cuckoo clocks, and even one large "grandfather." In between and about them, on the floor and on the shelves, are lamps large and lamps small, some brass, some china, ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... this accidental experiment set me on trying my skill in the mechanical arts. Accordingly I took down and cleaned my landlady's cuckoo-clock, and in so doing, silenced that companion of the spring for ever and a day. I mounted a turning-lathe, and in attempting to use it, I very nearly cribbed off, with an inch-and-half former, one of the fingers which ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... sparrow, and the lark, The plain-song cuckoo gray, Whose note full many a man doth mark, And dares not answer nay;— for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? Who would give a bird the lie, though he cry 'cuckoo' ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... from bush and tree, made it feel happy as it sat there clothed in its fresh, bright plumage. All creation seemed to speak of beneficence and love. The bird wanted to give utterance to thoughts that stirred in his breast, as the cuckoo and the nightingale in the spring, but it could not. Yet in heaven can be heard the song of praise, even from a worm; and the notes trembling in the breast of the bird were as audible to Heaven even as the psalms of David before they had fashioned themselves ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... West I remember she had a very pretty mezzo-concertina voice, but she's been so long away helping Stub Wilson to make Milwaukee famous that nowadays her top notes sound like a cuckoo clock after ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... deter him from going to sea. He was known to have more than once stayed alone on board a water-logged vessel while he sent his comrade on shore for help; and in his little room at home, with its white-painted windows, and geraniums, and Dutch cuckoo-clock, there stood above the roll of charts and telescope on the wall a bracket with more than one silver goblet upon it, which, like the telescope, were presents in acknowledgment of his services ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... pen. First prize Lakenfelders, breeding pen. Second prize Lakenfelders, breeding pen. Third prize Lakenfelders, breeding pen. Fourth prize Campines, pullet. First prize Campines, breeding pen. First prize Cuckoo Cochins, cock. First prize Cuckoo Cochins, cockerel. First prize Cuckoo Cochins, hen. First prize Cuckoo Cochins, pullet. First prize Rose Comb Blues, cock. First prize Rose Comb Blues, cockerel. First prize Rose Comb Blues, hen. First prize Rose Comb Blues, pullet. First ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... "privileged" to pass the six weeks of Lent at Cashel (in free quarters), to use fire and force in compelling tribute from north Leinster; and to obtain a supply of cattle from Connaught, at the time "of the singing of the cuckoo." The Connaught King had five other singular "prohibitions" imposed on him—evidently with reference to some old Pagan rites—and his "prerogatives" were hostages from Galway, the monopoly of the chase in Mayo, free quarters in Murrisk, in the same neighbourhood, and to marshal his border-host ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... told against her. As Portia she appeared to great advantage; but when Lorenzo says, 'This is the voice, or I am much deceived, of Portia,' and Portia replies, 'He knows me, as the blind man knows the cuckoo, by the bad voice,' the audience laughed outright, and Woffington, conscious of her deficiency, with great good-humour joined with them in their merriment." The incident is mentioned in the Table Talk (1825) of Richard Ryan, to which book Daly refers. Mrs. Siddons made ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... them seemed going into his mouth unceasingly. I kept him till late in the fall, when he disappeared, probably going south, and I never saw him again." My correspondent also sends me some interesting observations about the cuckoo. He says a large gooseberry-bush standing in the border of an old hedge-row, in the midst of open fields, and not far from his house, was occupied by a pair of cuckoos for two seasons in succession, and, after an interval of a year, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... Boy Blue's room stood a little blue clock. And every morning at five o'clock the door of the clock flew open, and a cuckoo came out. The cuckoo said, "Cuck-oo," five times, and then went into the little blue clock again, and the little door closed after him. Then Little Boy Blue knew it ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... said confidentially, "I forgot to ask what your fare was for." He said this in a sort of husky whisper, and as Dorothy looked up at him it seemed something like listening to an enormous cuckoo-clock with a bad cold ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... quickly, "Maintenant il faut mettre le—" he paused for the word—"le—table-cloth." The children grasped his meaning from the comprehensive gesture. Rapidly he outlined chairs, a delightful baby's cradle, a clock with cuckoo complete, a fire-place, until at length a complete pictorial inventory had been made of the contents of the living-room of just such a cottage as had obviously been buried beneath the rubbish heap upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... discover beauties in nature? One can be so happy in a wood! What a charming thing to hear a leaf sing! I know few things more delightful than to watch the triumph of the month of May when the nightingale, the cuckoo, and the lark open the spring in our forests! And then, later, come those beautiful crystal days of autumn—days that are neither warm, nor yet are they really cold! And then the trees—how eloquent they can be made; with a little teaching they ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... communion. They tell me that we would not be alone,— We cried when we were parted; when I wept, Her smile lit up the rainbow on my tears, Stay'd on the clouds of sorrow; that we loved The sound of one another's voices more Than the grey cuckoo loves his name, and learn'd To lisp in tune together; that we slept In the same cradle always, face to face, Heart beating time to heart, lip pressing lip, Folding each other, breathing on each other, Dreaming together (dreaming of each other ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... 4 o'clock. In the house of the Hon. John M. Rose, on the bank of Stony Creek, was a clock in every room of the mansion from the cellar to the attic. Mr. Rose is a fine machinist, and the mechanism of clocks has a fascination for him that is simply irresistible. He has bronze, marble, cuckoo, corner or "grandfather" clocks—all in his house. One of them was stopped exactly at 4 o'clock; still another at 4.10; another at 4.15, and one was not stopped till 9 P.M. The "grandfather" clock did not stop at all, and is ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... column rests on a strong three-sided bone called the sacrum, or sacred-bone, which is wedged in between the hip bones and forms the keystone of the pelvis. Joined to the lower end of the sacrum is the coccyx, or cuckoo-bone, a tapering series ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... friend, fly, hero, woman, bee, mouse, cuckoo, fox, ox, man, thief, fairy, mosquito, wolf, shepherd, ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... be depended on. Indeed, there are few better places to study ornithology than in the orchard. Besides its regular occupants, many of the birds of the deeper forest find occasion to visit it during the season. The cuckoo comes for the tent-caterpillar, the jay for frozen apples, the ruffed grouse for buds, the crow foraging for birds' eggs, the woodpecker and chickadees for their food, and the high-hole for ants. The redbird comes, too, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs |
