"Cuckoo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one bold push forward, and their feet would tread on their inheritance. But, as is so often the case, courage oozed out at the decisive moment, and cowardice, disguised as prudence, called for 'further information,'—that cuckoo-cry of the faint-hearted. There are three steps in this narrative: the despatch of the explorers, their expedition, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... blithe cuckoo and daisy mild, The daffodils, like elfin fays, The mystery of sunset haze O'er barren moors, his pen beguiled— ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... 'Oho! That is how it stands? So she is to be cuckoo, hey?' He sat square and intent for a moment or two, working his mouth like a man who chews a straw. Then he slapped his big hand on his knee, and rose up. 'If I cannot spike this wheel of vice, trust me never. By my soul, a plot indeed. Oh, horrible, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... the poor woman; I back her against her imbecile of a husband. He brings a charge he can't support; she punishes him by taking three years' lease of independence and kicks up the grass all over the paddock, and then comes cuckoo, barking his name abroad to have her home again. You can win the shyest filly to corn at last. She goes, and he digests ruefully the hotch-potch of a dish the woman brings him. Only the world spies a side-head at her, husbanded or not, though ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 been asleep ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... 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 head, etc. Another book in which great ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... "Up on Grefsen ridge, cold punch had flowed down the hill as good as free. Veyergang's son had given the girls at the factory an old boat from Maridal Lake and half a barrel of pitch; heard the cuckoo and had larks all night—came down again when it ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... you caught a peep of the parsonage-house, backed by woodlands, and a little noisy rill running in front. The birds were still in the hedgerows, only, as if from the very heart of the most distant woods, there came now and then the mellow note of the cuckoo. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... whip-poor-will was piping when I lay down, and I still heard one when I woke up after midnight. I heard the song sparrow and the kingbird also, like watchers calling the hour, and several times I heard the cuckoo. Indeed, I am convinced that our cuckoo is to a considerable extent a night bird, and that he moves about freely from tree to tree. His peculiar guttural note, now here, now there, may be heard almost any summer night, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... he woke the cuckoo: and the cuckoo filled the leafy air so full of his two limpid notes that the dreams of Rodriguez heard them and went away, back over their border to dreamland. Rodriguez awoke Morano, who lit his fire: and soon they had struck their camp and ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... 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, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... 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 was ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... chaffinch and blackcap; and from these there was a gradation of sounds, down to the faint lispings of the more tender melodists singing at a distance, reaching the sense like voices mysterious and spiritualised from some far unseen world. And at intervals came the fluting cry of the cuckoo, again and again repeated, so aerial, yet with such a passionate depth in it, as if the Spirit of Nature itself had become embodied, and from some leafy hiding-place cried aloud ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... the bustard, the pheasant, the heath-cock, the red-legged partridge, the small gray partridge, the pin tailed grouse, the sand-grouse, the francolin, the wild swan, the flamingo, the stork, the bittern, the oyster-catcher, the raven, the hooded crow, and the cuckoo. Besides these, the lakes boast all the usual kinds of water-fowl, as herons, ducks, snipe, teal, etc.; the gardens and groves abound with blackbirds, thrushes, and nightingales; curlews and peewits are seen occasionally; while pigeons, starlings, crows, magpies, larks, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... rate my eyes were drawn to the place as I passed; and like a cuckoo-bird emerging from the clock, ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... palaces with towers of silver and frosted pinnacles, so wonderful and beautiful that as she looked at it she forgot that there was work to be done, until the cuckoo clock on the ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... shadow and reflection which is the hope and the despair of the landscape-painter. Now, in this month of May, the shrubs that clung to the furrowed face of the white rock were freshly green, and the low plaint of the nightingale, and the jocund cry of the more distant cuckoo, broke the sameness of the great chorus of grasshoppers ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... dogs, horses, love their masters and keepers: many stories I could relate in this kind, but see Gillius de hist. anim. lib. 3. cap. 14. those two Epistles of Lipsius, of dogs and horses, Agellius, &c. Fifthly, for bringing up, as if a bitch bring up a kid, a hen ducklings, a hedge-sparrow a cuckoo, &c. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... been dreaming of a strange foreign city, full of pictures and carved woodwork, and of a high-road traversing a rich plain, shaded by apple and chestnut trees, and of something winding and glittering through the branches," leaving Nanny, who could not stand the sight of two magpies, or of a cuckoo, of a morning before she had broken her fast, sorely troubled ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... 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, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... us all things are the same as none And nothing is that is under the sun. Seven's a dozen and never is then, Whether is what and what is when, A man is a tree and a cuckoo a cow For gold galore and silver enow To magical, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... hour ago, and also that by some slip my poor knave slept not, as I had meant he should, but babbled of old things which have wellnigh turned his wits. He must not stay in this land, but back to England to feel the snow in his face, to hear the cuckoo and the lark, to serve you or Arden or Philip Sidney. What ancient news hath ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... church or bottle in a creed: and this is a proposition that needs no proving at all, because it is self-evident. There was a fellow in English Wiltshire once, they say, who planted a hedge about his field to keep in the cuckoo from her annual migration. The spirit of Cuckoo-hedging came in, in the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... my heart's bird! Slight and small the lovely cry Came trickling down, but no one heard. Parrot and cuckoo, crow, magpie Jarred horrid notes and the jangling jay Ripped the fine threads of song away, For why should peeping chick aspire To challenge their loud ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... sea lay like a silver mist; on the other the mountains, so ethereal that they looked as though at any moment they might melt away into the blue of the sky. But Mick had no heart for these things. Even when he heard the cuckoo across the fields, for the first time that year, it was with no answering thrill, but only with a dull sense that he had grown too old now to care—seeing Aunt Mary had brought back all the trouble he had tried ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... characterizes the seeming ubiquity of the voice of the cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of a corporeal existence; the Imagination being tempted to this exertion of her power by a consciousness in the memory that the cuckoo is almost perpetually heard throughout the season of spring, but seldom ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Court-opening, formula Cramming oneself Crane, herald of winter —carry ballast Cratinus, a comic poet Cress, its properties "Cretan monologues" —rhythms Crime and poverty Criticism, too low Critylla Crows, going to Cuckoo, the Curotrophos, meaning Cuttle-fish Cyclops, the, and lyre Cycni, the two Cynna, the ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... cutery corn, Apple seed and apple thorn, Wire, brier, limber lock, Three geese in a flock; Along came Tod, With his long rod, And scared them all to Migly-wod. One flew east, one flew west, One flew over the cuckoo's nest.— ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... really alien person who is head of the family. Our founder will go through the spreading record of offspring and find it mixed with that of people he most hated and despised. The antagonists he wronged and overcame will have crept into his line and recaptured all they lost; have played the cuckoo in his blood and acquisitions, and turned out ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... a slope in the midst of dense forest. This is protected on all sides by a strong 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 may be a delusion ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... (Bee-balm); Brake; Carnation (Bizarre Dianthus caryophyllus); Clover (Crimson Trifolium incarnatus); Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris); Cowslip (Primula veris); Crowflower (Ragged Robin, Lychnis floscuculi); Cuckoo Buds (Butter cups, Ranunculus acris); Daisies (Bellis perennis); Eryngium M. (Sea Holly); Flax; Flower de luce (Iris Germanica, blue); Fumitory (Dicentra spectabilis; Bleeding Heart); Harebell (Campanula ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... fact, I think Newson looks to Lowestoft as a Summer Pasture, and is in no hurry to leave it. He lives here well for nothing, except Bread, Cheese, and Tea and Sugar. He has now taken to Cocoa, however, which he calls 'Cuckoo' to my hearing; having become enamoured of that Beverage in the Lugger, where it is the order of the day. ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... but there was but one Madame Warens in the world, whose image was never absent from his thoughts; with whom flowers and verdure sprung up beneath his feet, and without whom all was cold and barren in nature and in his own breast. The cuckoo, "that wandering voice," that comes and goes with the spring, mocks our ears with one note from youth to age; and the lapwing, screaming round the traveller's path, repeats for ever the same sad ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... Leicestershire, where he had engaged himself as an usher to the school of which Mr. Crompton was master. Here he described to his old school-fellow, Hector, the dull sameness of his life, in the words of the poet: Vitam continct una dies: that it was as unvaried as the note of the cuckoo, and that he did not know whether it were more disagreeable for him to teach, or for the boys to learn the grammar rules. To add to his misery, he had to endure the petty despotism of Sir Wolstan Dixie, one of the patrons of ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... dusky-green birds, with their feathers barred across like those of a hawk or cuckoo, with lines of a darker green, started up from some grass and flew off, their long, pointed tails and rounded heads and beaks showing plainly what ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... was little change. Canterbury came down from the "cloud-cuckoo-land" in which Selwyn twitted her with dwelling. Both sides gained a better understanding of one another, and agreed to stand together on the ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... only be compared to the serenity of Mr. Prigg's benevolent countenance; and there was a calm, deeply, sweetly impressive, which could only be appreciated by a mind at peace with itself in particular, and with the world in general. Then came from a neighbouring wood the clear voice of the cuckoo. It seemed to sing purposely in honour of the good man; and I fancied I could see a ravenous hawk upon a tree, abashed at Mr. Prigg's presence and superior ability; and a fluttering timid lark seemed to shriek, "Wicked bird, live and let live;" but it was the last word the silly lark uttered, for ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... very dear to her, the least and homeliest duties pleasant; she loved her sisters with devoted friendship, and she had many little happinesses in her patient, cheerful, unselfish life. Would that I could show her as she was!—not the austere and violent poetess who, cuckoo-fashion, has usurped her place; but brave to fate and timid of man; stern to herself, forbearing to all weak and erring things; silent, yet sometimes sparkling with happy sallies. For to represent her as she was would be her noblest and ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... feeling very snug and comfortable, quietly gazing at all 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 events ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... hillside. We are glad of the crested larks that rise warbling from the 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 ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... The father and mother slept, but the little son was not asleep. I saw the flowered cotton curtains of the bed move, and the child peep forth. At first I thought he was looking at the great clock, which was gaily painted in red and green. At the top sat a cuckoo, below hung the heavy leaden weights, and the pendulum with the polished disc of metal went to and fro, and said 'tick, tick.' But no, he was not looking at the clock, but at his mother's spinning wheel, that stood just underneath it. That was the ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... their way to the fields any one of the following creatures, they must at once return home, and stay there a day and a night, on pain of illness or early death: certain snakes, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, and birds of two species, JERUIT and BUBUT (a cuckoo). Or again, if the shoulder straps of their large baskets should break on the way, if a stump should fall against them, or the note of the spider-hunter be heard, or if a woman strikes her foot by accident against any object, the party must return ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... year's villages, and join excitedly in the chorus; while the great osprey wheels overhead, and the grey falcon sits on a bare branch, still as a sentinel, each waiting for an opportunity to take toll of the nutmeg pigeons. The channel-billed cuckoo shrieks her discordant warning of the approaching wet season; and the scrub fowl utters those far-off imitations of the exclamation of civilised hens. Sundown at Kumboola towards the end of September, when the sea laps and murmurs ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... last train," said Lady Belgrade, at length, as the little cuckoo clock on the mantel ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... to play its shepherd's song; the brass Cyclops standing on the dial struck the hour; the cuckoo called, and the halberdier saluted. Then the little maid changed her toilet. She had a whole wardrobe full of clothes; she might select what she chose to wear. There was no one to tell her what to put on, or to help her attire herself. When her toilet ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... to illustrate the other, namely, a cool, conscious, workmanlike control of every element in the selection and combination of imagery. Wordsworth's naive explanation of the task performed by the imagination in his "Cuckoo" and "Leech-Gatherer" [Footnote: Preface to poems of 1815-1845.] occupies a middle ground. We are at least certain of his entire honesty—and incidentally of his total lack ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... seen it at home—for England is ever home to those who are far away—seen it in the early spring days clustering thickly in the woods and copse, heralding the cuckoo, and bringing with it a promise of ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... the members of an extensive household are represented as gathered together in one room, spreading enamel-paint over everything they can lay their hands upon. The old man is on a step-ladder, daubing the walls and ceiling with "cuckoo's-egg green," while the parlor-maid and the cook are on their knees, painting the floor with "sealing-wax red." The old lady is doing the picture frames in "terra cotta." The eldest daughter and her young man are making sly ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... a few minutes to eight, and Bertram Borstal, with steady nerves, waited for the striking of the cuckoo-clock in the prison tower. Once again a knock sounded upon the cell door, and with the utmost sang-froid he drew the key from his pocket and unlocked it. The honorary secretary of Germany entered, preceded by three ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... out the sun. She had ceased to find pleasure in the singing of the birds, the voice of the pigeon sounded to her no more than an unbeautiful falsetto growl. She was irritated by the fact that the cuckoo had only one song to sing. She tried not to hoe in time to that song, but the monotony of it possessed her. Her row of beans stretched in front of her right across the world; every time she looked along it the end seemed farther away. Every time she ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... 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. ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... plot of the most abject triviality is worked out in strict accordance with the rules of French tragedy, and in most pompous and pathetic Alexandrines. The effect of this piece was magical; the Royal Theatre ejected its cuckoo-brood of French plays, and even the Italian opera. It was now essential that every performance should be national, and in the Danish language. To supply the place of the opera, native musicians, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... eyes caught a glimpse of the old-fashioned cuckoo clock that hung on the wall in one corner of the room. He started to ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... the old landmarks again, and got back into the "feel" of the war zone. There were the five old windmills of Cassel that wave their arms up the hill road, and the estaminets by which one found one's way down country lanes—"The Veritable Cuckoo" and "The Lost Corner" and "The Flower of the Fields"—and the first smashed roofs and broken barns which led to the area ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... the landscape with flowers, While the thrush and the cuckoo sing soft from the bowers, Through the wood-shaded windings with Bella I 'll rove, And feast unrestrained on the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Dear Fanny brought me the bag. Good soul you are to think of me! Manning has promised to make Fanny a visit this morning, happy girl! Miss James I often see, I think never without talking of you. Oh the dear long dreary Boulevards! how I do wish to be just now stepping out of a Cuckoo into them! ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Cuckoo spit: liquid in the form of bubbles produced by members of the family Cercopidae and which often conceals ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... present of the famous horologium-clepsydra-cuckoo clock, the dog Becerillo and the elephant Abu Lubabah sent by Harun to Charlemagne is not mentioned by Eastern authorities and consequently no reference to it will be found in my late friend Professor Palmer's little volume "Haroun ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... 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
... promoted a Cuckoo to the rank of a Nightingale. The Cuckoo, proud of its new position, seated itself proudly on an aspen, and began to exhibit its musical talents. After a time, it looks round. All the birds are flying away, some laughing at it, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... cuckoo clock hanging in Tom Turner's cottage. When it struck one, Tom's wife laid the baby in the cradle, and took a saucepan off the fire, from which came a ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... love with Arethusa, daughter of Argus. The lady's father wanted her to marry Squire Cuckoo, who had a large estate; but Arethusa contrived to have her own way and marry Captain Rovewell, who turned out to be the son of Ned Worthy, who gave ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... their bardic clan, "is sweeter than any music of men." "The harp of the woods is playing music," said another. In Finn's Song to May, the waterfall is singing a welcome to the pool below, the loudness of music is around the hill, and in the green fields the stream is singing. The blackbird, the cuckoo, the heron and the lark are the musicians of the world. When Finn asks his men what music they thought the best, each says his say, but Oisin answers, "The music of the woods is sweetest to me, the sound of the wind and of the blackbird, and the cuckoo and the soft silence of the heron." ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... He's what we used at home to call a 'frog-hopper' after he got his wings, and a 'cuckoo-spit' before that time; but these ones are six times the ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... fault of the cuckoo, for he was a grumbling, mischief-making bird and used to spend a good deal of time talking to the daffodils. This particular spring he had taken up his abode in the oak tree, and was fond of talking of all the grand things he had ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... 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 ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... needed to destroy the legend of the cuckoo, incessantly repeated down to the days of Xavier Raspail, and to us so familiar; to elucidate its history, and to set it in its ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... for he did not know that anybody was near. But beside him stood an old woman, with a ragged mantle over her head, leaning on a staff, the top of which was carved into the shape of a cuckoo. She looked very aged and wrinkled and infirm; and yet her eyes, which were as brown as those of an ox, were so extremely large and beautiful that when they were fixed on Jason's eyes he could see nothing else but them. The old woman had a pomegranate in her hand, although the fruit was ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... birds and asks them whether they have seen his love,—the peacock, 'the bird of the dark-blue throat and eyes of jet,'—the cuckoo, 'whom lovers deem Love's messenger,'—the swans, 'who are sailing northward, and whose elegant gait betrays that they have seen her,'—the chakravaka, 'a bird who, during the night, is himself separated from his mate,'—but none responds. He apostrophises various insects, beasts and ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... 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 the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... cuckoo is heard for the first time in the season, it is customary to turn the money in the pocket, and wish. If within the bounds of reason, it is sure to be fulfilled. In reference to the pecuniary idea respecting the cuckoo, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... cuckoo, d'you mean to say you don't know she's gone on you? Lot of pains she takes to hide it. You've only got to look at ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... prints of battles and shipwrecks wafered to the walls; a couple of flower-pots in the narrow space between the window-ledge and the coping outside; a dingy canary in a wire cage; a rival mechanical cuckoo in a Dutch clock in the corner; a little bed with striped hangings; a rush-bottomed prie-dieu chair in front of a plain black crucifix, over which drooped a faded branch of consecrated palm; and some few ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... grown: I share my kopecks with the village priest, Who winnows peccadillos by the sheaf." Then Zanthon, laughing in his foxy beard: "When Amine meets me in the plane-tree walk (Where pairing little finches seek to build, We saw the cuckoo thieve their nests when boys), Shall I then tell her, in my peasant way, Your broken promise, and her troth denied?" And he was gone—gone, with the stud he bought From Schamyl's son, up by Caucasus way, Leaving me solitude to reason with. Around me, then, an odor swept—the ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... nor pipe, nor organ, From touch of cunning men, Made music half so eloquent As our hearts thrilled with then. When the blythe lark lightly soaring, And the mavis on the spray, And the cuckoo in the greenwood, Sang hymns ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... the land, flowers were blooming, and the reign of sunshine had begun. The cuckoo haunted the Hall gardens, rabbits basked in the glades, and the woods were alive ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... long as there are cuckoos so long will there be fags. Many birds are imposed upon, one of the commonest victims being the hedge-sparrow. For days a sparrow has been watched while it fed a hungry complaining intruder. It used to fly on the cuckoo's back and then, standing on its head and leaning downwards, give it a caterpillar. The tit-bit having been greedily snatched and devoured, the cuckoo would peck fiercely at its tiny attendant—bidding ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... you are?" said the policeman; and then, briskly, "You're as welcome as the cuckoo, you are so. Come in and make yourself comfortable till the men awaken, and they are the lads that'll be glad to see you. I couldn't make head or tail of what they said when they came in last night, and no one else either, for ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... pair of sandpipers flicked out of a tiny cove and flew, glancing white, with pointed wings ahead of us. Again we started them, and again, till they wearied of the chase and flew back, with a wide circuit, to their first haunt. A cuckoo in a great poplar fluted solemnly and richly as we murmured past; the world was mostly hidden from us, but now and then a church tower looked gravely over the bank, and ran beside us for a time, or the lowing of cattle ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gathered around the big table, and, grasping each other's hands, raised our glasses and drank together without speaking, for there was something—we knew not what—that lay behind Dutch Peter's little speech which made us think. Presently, when a big and gaudy German-made cuckoo clock in the room struck twelve, even reckless Charley de Buis forgot his old joke about Tom Denison's 'damned old squawking British duck,' as he called the little painted bird, and we all went outside, and sat smoking our pipes on the wide verandah, and watching the flashing torchlights ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... Cuckoo fair on April 14—Hefful being Sussex for Heathfield—that, tradition states, the old woman lets the cuckoo out of her basket and starts him on his course through the summer months. A local story tells of a Heathfield man ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... 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 very properly ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... while in our meadows we purposely propagate tender fodder plants, like grasses and clovers, we find on the margins of our pastures and by our roadsides only protected species; such as thistles, houndstongue, cuckoo-pint, charlock, nettles (once more), and thorn bushes. The cattle or the rabbits eat down at once all juicy and succulent plants, leaving only these nauseous or prickly kinds, together with such stringy and innutritious weeds as chervil, plantain, and burdock. Here ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... appetite, he had been attracted by the savoury smell of Abdullah's kitchen, and he had drawn nearer and nearer to our establishment, until at length by playing with the boys, and occasionally being invited to share in their meals, Cuckoo had ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... not bear to see even an instant's pause, and he came out of the shadow, and bade them, with harsh words, go on grinding, and cease not except for so long as the cuckoo was silent, or while he himself sang a song. Now it was early summer-time, and the cuckoo was calling all the day and most of ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... then a rapturous mystical ode to the Cuckoo; in which the author, striving after force and ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the magic 'twould seem, Of the tones that still through the air did stream. No sound they made; they were quiet as death; To hearken the song-birds held their breath, The lark dropped earthward, the cuckoo was still, As the voice re-echoed from hill ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... Carolina wren. Thryothorus ludovicianus. Yellow-billed cuckoo. Coccyzus americanus. Crested ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... up to him with sparkling eye as an old acquaintance: the cuckoo haunts him with sounds of early youth not to be expressed: a linnet's nest startles him with boyish delight: an old withered thorn is weighed down with a heap of recollections: a grey cloak, seen on some wild moor, torn by the wind, or drenched in the rain, afterwards becomes an object ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... about the simple round of her childish pursuits. Every morning she goes demurely to school to fix her thoughts on "button holes and spelling books." Perhaps it is a dame school like that in "Water Babies," with a "shining clean stone floor and curious old prints on the wall and a cuckoo clock in the corner," Here some dozen children sit on benches "gabbling Chris-cross," while a nice old woman in a red petticoat and white cap hears them from the ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... said, "as far as I know: 'One flew east and one flew west and one flew over the cuckoo's nest.'" I wish I could convey by words the lilt of her clear, fearless, boyish voice, the sparkle of mischief and daring in her eyes, and deep beneath, like treasures in the sea, that look of steadfastness, of praying, that made you wonder if she was really as happy and as carefree as she seemed ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... eagle. The 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 ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... of the caterpillars in rolling up the leaves is not only to conceal themselves from birds and predatory insects, but also to protect themselves from the cuckoo-flies, which lie in wait in every quarter to deposit their eggs in their bodies, that their progeny may devour them. Their mode of concealment, however, though it appear to be cunningly contrived and skilfully executed, is not always ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... Sometimes, on a 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 ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... paddock was damp, yet still following after them, he added, "Yea, Sue, considering all, it is better those two were apart for a year or so, till we see better what is this strange nestling that we have reared. Ay, thou art like the mother sparrow that hath bred up a cuckoo and doteth on it, yet it mateth ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... underparts also scarlet. The others—which I assume to be the females—replace the black with ashy olive, the wings being barred with yellow, the underparts yellowish. The very familiar note of the cuckoo, somewhere up in the jungle, reminds ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... way through scattered timber and the litter of fresh carpentry-work, the man who was busy there and who certainly had outstayed his time took up his kit and disappeared around the corner of the house. Neither noted him. The cuckoo-clock was chirping out its five small notes from the cheerful interior, and the Curator was ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... had of late years been excused from it, and it gave her the opportunity she wanted of a consultation with Mr. Dutton. He was her prime adviser in everything, from her investments (such as they were) to the eccentricities of her timepieces; and as the cuckoo-clock had that night cuckooed all the hours round in succession, no one thought it wonderful that she should send a twisted note entreating him to call as early as he could in the afternoon. Of course ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Cuckoo sings in April, The Cuckoo sings in May, The Cuckoo sings in June; In July ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... who unwittingly rears the cuckoo's spurious offspring, tending with care the ultimate destroyer of its own young, does so in perfect ignorance of the results about to follow the misplaced affection. The cravings of the interloper are satisfied to the detriment of its own offspring; and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... claim to be a Christian Church at all," said the general; "it is like the cuckoo, which, hatched in the nest of the hedge-warbler, by degrees forces out the other fledglings, and usurps their place. So did paganism treat Christianity; although, fostered by God, the latter was enabled to exist, persecuted ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... schoolfellows and I, to grace the festival to the best of our power (for fine white and purple liveries had been given to all of us in the morning), contrived a merry mask with store of cockle-shells, shells of snails, periwinkles, and such other. Then for want of cuckoo-pint, or priest-pintle, lousebur, clote, and paper, we made ourselves false faces with the leaves of an old Sextum that had been thrown by and lay there for anyone that would take it up, cutting out holes for the eyes, nose, and mouth. Now, did you ever hear the like ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Such was the reputation of Chaucer that a great many writings were attributed to him—a way to increase their reputation, not his. The more important of them are: "The Court of Love"; the "Book of Cupid," otherwise "Cuckoo and Nightingale"; "Flower and Leaf," the "Romaunt of the Rose," such as we have it; the "Complaint of a Lover's Life"; the "Testament of Love" (in prose, see below, page 522); the "Isle of Ladies," or "Chaucer's Dream"; various ballads. Most of those works (not the "Testament") ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... 'smurring' rather than raining, all day long: and I think that Flower and Herb already show their gratitude. My Blackbird (I think it is the same I have tried to keep alive during the Winter) seems also to have 'wetted his Whistle,' and what they call the 'Cuckoo's mate,' with a rather harsh scissor note, announces that his Partner may be on the wing to these Latitudes. You will hear of him at Mr. W. Shakespeare's, it may be. There must be Violets, white and blue, somewhere about where he lies, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... or two of the songs, which, though not as numerous then as in some later periods, show that the great tradition of English secular lyric poetry reaches back from our own time to that of the Anglo-Saxons without a break. The best known of all is the 'Cuckoo Song,' of the thirteenth century, intended to be sung in harmony ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... THE cuckoo and the coo-dove's ceaseless calling, Calling, Of a meaningless monotony is palling All my morning's pleasure in the sun-fleck-scattered wood. May-blossom and blue bird's-eye flowers falling, Falling In a litter through the elm-tree shade are scrawling Messages of true-love down the dust of the ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... certain animals have a singularly close resemblance to certain others, though they be quite distinct in kind. It is a problem which perplexes us still, when we are astonished and even deluded by the likeness between a wasp and a hover-fly, a merlin and a cuckoo. In certain extreme cases we call it 'mimicry', and invoke hypotheses to account for this 'mimetic' resemblance; and those of us who reject these hypotheses must fain take refuge in others, as far-reaching in their way. This at least we know, that Speusippus seized upon a real problem of ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... 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 ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... 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 was time ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... Through the wood the cuckoo was calling—the bird which reverses the law of good children, and insists on being ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... holiday costume. Through the open windows, between the massive bunches of lilacs, hawthorn, and laburnum blossoms, Julien de Buxieres caught glimpses of rolling meadows and softly tinted vistas. The gentle twittering of the birds and the mysterious call of the cuckoo, mingled with the perfume of flowers, stole into his study, and produced a sense of enjoyment as novel to him as it was delightful. Having until the present time lived a sedentary life in cities, he ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... probably had its limits, and in such scenes, being overtaxed, 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 ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... there, Had left his footsteps, and reform'd the year: The sunny hills from far were seen to glow With glittering beams, and in the meads below The burnish'd brooks appear'd with liquid gold to flow. At last they heard the foolish Cuckoo sing, Whose note proclaim'd the holiday ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of gold and green Rainbow sheen Mesh the maze of flower and fern, Cuckoo-grass and meadow-sweet, And the wheat Where the crimson ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... accusing him frequently to the Achaeans, he was rejected, and fell into contempt, people now seeing that it was a contest between a counterfeit and a true, unadulterated virtue, and, as Aesop tells us that the cuckoo once, asking the little birds why they flew away from her, was answered, because they feared she would one day prove a hawk, so Lydiades's former tyranny still cast a doubt upon the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... song of some birds: the intervals employed by these are generally the same as those on which human melody is founded, the 8th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd major. Reinach, however, observes that Beethoven, who in his Pastoral Symphony has reproduced the song of the nightingale, the cuckoo, and the quail, makes their melodies to differ from those ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... Wren family, must always strike naturalists as an absurdity; and, I suppose, we may not ask how it was the banns were not forbidden, since the Messrs. Wren, with the children, and the whole creation of birds—with the single exception of a blackguard cuckoo—have jubilantly acquiesced ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... of wild flowers for May to take home to mamma. Here are a few cowslips with their drooping golden bells and delicious scent; I am afraid we shall not find enough to make a cowslip ball. Here is cuckoo-flower, which, as old Gerarde says, "doth flower in April and Maie, when the cuckoo doth begin her pleasant notes without stammering." Old Gerarde, by the way, ought to have said "his pleasant notes," for it is the male bird alone that cries "cuckoo." Its ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... sought to taunt me with his happier lot. Oh, how I envied him! No lessons, no tasks, no hateful 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: ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... moss-grown boulder sitting, Watching the graceful swallows flitting, Hearing the cuckoo's note. Sheep on the hills around me feeding, While in their piteous accents pleading, The lambkins' bleatings float. —Oh, dear! a fly gone ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... pet aversion had been the cuckoo clock; now here I was, at last, right in the creature's home; so wherever I went that distressing "HOO'hoo! HOO'hoo! HOO'hoo!" was always in my ears. For a nervous man, this was a fine state of things. Some sounds are hatefuler than others, but no sound ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... noticed among the groups of girls who smiled at our fellowship—old Mourteen says we are like the cuckoo with its pipit—a beautiful oval face with the singularly spiritual expression that is so marked in one type of the West Ireland women. Later in the day, as the old man talked continually of the fairies and the women they have taken, it seemed that there was a possible ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... together; winter fireside sketches; a glowing landscape of a hot summer afternoon passed with him in the bosom of Nunnely Wood; divine vignettes of mild spring or mellow autumn moments, when she had sat at his side in Hollow's Copse, listening to the call of the May cuckoo, or sharing the September treasure of nuts and ripe blackberries—a wild dessert which it was her morning's pleasure to collect in a little basket, and cover with green leaves and fresh blossoms, and her afternoon's delight to administer to Moore, berry by berry, and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... of Skelt 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. Skeltery, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to such an extent that evidence of its ruling force appears in every chapter of his life. He occasionally introduced a joke into his compositions. Thus, in the 'Pastoral Symphony,' we come across a trio between a nightingale, a quail, and a cuckoo. Again, in other works, such as the No. 8 Symphony, the bassoons are brought in unexpectedly, in such a manner as to produce a humorous effect. He never missed an opportunity of playing off a joke upon any of his friends, both in season and out of season, and he always showed ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... of flowers! I do not speak of those, the exquisite grace and beauty of whose names is so forced on us that we cannot miss it, such as 'Aaron's rod,' 'angel's eyes,' 'bloody warrior,' 'blue-bell, 'crown imperial,' 'cuckoo-flower,' blossoming as this orchis does when the cuckoo is first heard, [Footnote: In a catalogue of English Plant Names I count thirty in which 'cuckoo' formed a component part.] 'eye- bright,' 'forget-me-not,' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... it for her. And others he sang, too—"The Merry Cuckoo" and "The Bailiff's Daughter". The last she liked so well that he sang it three times over, and ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... the lark has sprung, Still trilling as he flies; The linnet sings as there he sung; The unseen cuckoo cries, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... say, that Wagner made music pictorial, it should be remembered that there is nothing new in the aim, only in the continuity of its success. Haydn, in his "Creation," evoked landscapes, giving them precision by an almost mechanical imitation of cuckoo and nightingale. Trees had rustled and water flowed in the music of every composer. But with Wagner it may be said that the landscape of his music moves before our eyes as clearly as the moving scenery with which he does but ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... Jasper; the cuckoo is a pleasant, funny bird, and its presence and voice give a great charm to the green trees and fields; no, I can't say I wish exactly to get rid of ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... which the road to Mellstock branched off from the homeward direction. By diverging to that village, as he had intended to do, Farfrae might probably delay his return by a couple of hours. It soon appeared that his intention was to do so still, the light swerving towards Cuckoo Lane, the by-road aforesaid. Farfrae's off gig-lamp flashed in Henchard's face. At the same time Farfrae discerned ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... of the country-side, and the old sweet sounds of waking birds, and the old sweet fall of summer showers, and the grace of a hedgerow bough, and the glow of the purple heather, and the note of the cuckoo and cushat, and the freedom of waste and of woodland, are all things dead, and remembered of no man:—then the world, like the Eastern king, will perish miserably of famine and of drought, with gold ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... butterfly moon! Where the heavy-lidded Buddhas dream To the sound of the cuckoo's call.... The white wings of moon-butterflies Flicker down the streets of the city, Blushing into darkness the useless wicks of round lanterns in the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... in the pause of the seconds between the frank, outspoken 'Good nights.' When all the signs of ripeness are visible—the love-shades and love-notes that cannot be hidden, the unconscious caress of the eyes in a fleeting glance, the involuntary softening of voices, the cuckoo-sob in the throat—why, the night-parting kiss does not need to be seen. It has to be. Still further, oh my woman, know that I justify ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... had risen above the shoulders of the crowd, nearly opposite Mr. Brooke, and within ten yards of him, the effigy of himself: buff-colored waistcoat, eye-glass, and neutral physiognomy, painted on rag; and there had arisen, apparently in the air, like the note of the cuckoo, a parrot-like, Punch-voiced echo of his words. Everybody looked up at the open windows in the houses at the opposite angles of the converging streets; but they were either blank, or filled by laughing listeners. The most innocent echo has an impish mockery ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... in some genera and wax in others, in a third division emit, when in the larval state, a great quantity of froth, in which they lie concealed, as in the common "cuckoo-spit" of our meadows. ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... coloring can exceed that which is presented in the plumage of the golden-tailed humming or fly-bird (Trochilus chrysurus, Cuv.) which haunts the warm primeval forests, but it is still more frequently found in the pure atmosphere of the ceja-girded Montanas. The silky cuckoo (Trogon heliothrix, Tsch.) retires into the thickest masses of foliage, from which its soft rose-colored plumage peeps out like a flower. The cry of the voracious chuquimbis[86] accompanies the traveller from his first steps in the Montanas to his entrance into the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... had chosen as a companion, he acquired knowledge of the plumage and the cries and the habits of birds, and whither he was to seek their nests: it had become his ambition to possess all the wild birds' eggs, one that was easily satisfied till he came to the egg of the cuckoo, which he sought in vain, hearing of it often, now here, now there, till at last he and the shepherd lad ventured into a dangerous country in search of it and remained there till news of their absence reached Magdala and Dan set ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... instance, at 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 of the proper instinct ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... own eggs, nor provide an artificial incubator; but go quietly and drop an egg into the nest of another bird, and allow this bird to act as a nurse, hatching the egg and finding food for the young bird. The most notable example of this habit among birds is the case of the European cuckoo. This bird never builds a nest, or shows the least love or even recognition of its young. The cuckoo always selects the nest of a bird much smaller than itself, and as its eggs are much smaller than those usually laid by a bird of its size, they are no larger than those which properly ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... made her descend. She looked extraordinarily mystified, and I explained that the Bank's country branches are the only ones where gold is still to be had. * * * * * She and an empty milk-can and I were all that got out at the little station in the hills. However, a cuckoo introduced himself boldly by name. He seemed so near he might have been in the booking-office. But the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... was to be away, as he had told me, till the evening. I felt as though I had been let out of prison as I breakfasted joyfully on the verandah, the sun streaming through the creeperless trellis on to the little meal, and the first cuckoo of the year calling to me from the fir wood. Of the dinner and evening before me I would not think; indeed I had a half-formed plan in my head of going to the forest after lunch with the babies, taking wraps and provisions, ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... ache and seems to dry my soul up. I can't help thinking of cool green shadows, and musky little valleys of gloom with a brook purling over mossy stones. I long for the solemn greenery of great elms, aisles and aisles of cathedral-like gloom and leaf-filtered sunlight. I'd love to hear an English cuckoo again, and feel the soft mild sea-air that blows up through Louis's dear little Devonshire garden. But ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... sets out with three nines, and a wood-cuckoo (hawk), and a hound of tie with them, until he goes to the territory of the Ulstermen, so that he meets with Conall Cernach (Conall the Victorious) at Benna Bairchi (a mountain on the ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... sparrow surrounds her nest with thorns as a defence against apes and serpents. The eggs of the cuckoo, as regards size, colour, and marking, invariably resemble those of the birds in whose nests she lays. Sylvia ruja, for example, lays a white egg with violet spots; Sylvia hippolais, a red one with black spots; Regulus ignicapellus, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... graceful and pretty in melody as it is arch in sentiment. With the dialogue which follows, a variation of the closing cadence of the song is sweetly blended by the orchestra. Hansel crowns Gretel Queen of the Woods with the floral wreath, and is doing mock reverence to her when a cuckoo calls from a distance. The children mimic the cry, then playfully twit the bird with allusions to its bad practice of eating the eggs of other birds and neglecting its own offspring. Then they play at cuckoo, eating ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Marius readily. He shook himself with a quick breath. "And the task will be no easy one, father mine. I do not feel myself at all a cuckoo stealing into a nest ready feathered. What I get I shall pay for, in degree, if not in kind. There will be three men's work in handling ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... it was, with a shiny clean stone floor, and curious old prints on the walls, and an old black oak sideboard full of bright pewter and brass dishes, and a cuckoo clock in the corner, which began shouting as soon as Tom appeared; not that it was frightened at Tom, but that it was ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... elevated to a starry firmament of importance, from wellnigh the lowest position of insignificance in the camp, attained by his general worthlessness and shiftlessness—of mind and demeanor—which qualities had passed into a proverb of the place. Procrastination, like a cuckoo, had made its nest in his pockets, where the hands of Jim would hatch its progeny. Labor and he abhorred each other mightily. He had never been known to strike a lick of work till larder and stomach ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... of rapture fell upon us both as we went down that winding road. The call of the cuckoo resounded from side to side, clear and sonorous like a bell, it echoed and re-echoed across our path under the luminous dome of the tranquil sky and over the hedges of flowering thorn, snow-white and ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... know nothing whatever about anything, so the only thing for everybody to do was to put off lunch and wait for the arrival of the next tram, which occurred at 1.37. In consequence, all the doors in Tilling flew open like those of cuckoo clocks at ten minutes before that hour, and this pleasant promenade was full of those who so keenly admired ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... and fifteen Cigarettes in it (Melachrino and Mixed American); a cuckoo-clock (without cuckoo); five walking-sticks; numerous suits of clothes (one lot suitable for Charitable Purposes); some books—all VERY CURIOUS indeed—comprising the works of an Eminent Cambridge Professor, and other scholastic ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... an arch in an overgrown laurel hedge. She had glimpses of unkempt grass paths and unclipped topiary work which had lost its original form. Among a tangle of weeds rose the heads of clumps of daffodils, stirred by a passing wind of spring. In the park beyond a cuckoo was calling. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... A cuckoo was shot; this bird would seem to be as in Europe attended by the Yunx, at least a cry very similar to that of that bird was heard. Lysimachia of ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith |
