"Cuckoo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some ancient fortification. We landed by a spring, which came bubbling up from beneath one of these great moss-covered rocks, to lunch. It was a pleasant spot, and while we sat there dozens of small birds, of the size and general appearance of the cuckoo, save in their hooked beaks, attracted by the scent of our cold meats, came hopping tamely about on the lower limbs of the forest trees around us. They were called by our boatmen, "meat hawks," and have less fear of ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... its chief ornaments and my friend. She was a luxurious woman of great beauty, with perfect manners and a moderate sense of duty. She was the last word in refinement, perception and charm. There was something septic in her nature and I heard her say one day that the sound of the cuckoo made her feel ill; but, although she was not lazy and seldom idle, she never developed her intellectual powers or sustained herself by reading or study of any kind. She had not the smallest sense of proportion and, if anything went wrong in her entertainments—cold plates, a flat souffle, or some ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... ruff (Machetes Pugnax), green sand piper (Totanus Octaopus), snipe (Scolopax gallinago), water rail (Rallus Aquaticus), golden plover (Charadrius Pluvialis), woodcock (Scolopax Rusticola), large spotted wood pecker (Dendrocopus Major), hawfinch (Coccothraustes Vulgaris), cuckoo (Cuculus Canorus), jay (Garrulus Glandarius), French partridge (Cannabis Rufa), turtledove (Turtur Auritus), horned owl (Asio Otus), hen harrier (Circus Cyaneus), kestrel (Falco Tinnunculus), peregrine falcon (Falco Peregrinus), ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... 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 ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 as it is difficult to judge distance in Africa. No other ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... became suddenly self-assertive. The rustle of squirrels along the pine-stems, the monotonous music of the cuckoo, varied by a charge of toy pistol-shots when an inexperienced monkey alighted on a dead twig. Brutus, standing squarely between them, eyed each in turn with critical speculation, his ugly head cocked very much to one side. He instinctively mistrusted all wearers of petticoats, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... shells, which we can hardly crack with our teeth, or even with a hammer, will divide of themselves, and make way for the little tender sprout which proceeds from the kernel. There are instances, it is said, such as in the Touch-me-not (impatiens), and the Cuckoo-flower (cardamine), in which the seed-vessels, by an elastic jerk at the moment of their explosion, cast the seeds to a distance. We are all aware, however, that many seeds—those of the most composite flowers, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the eighth 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
... chimes which it sprinkled through the air, on every occasion, without any one's knowing why. Is a petty bald clock-face which merely tells the hour equal to that? For my part, I am of the opinion of the big clock of Strasburg, and I prefer it to the cuckoo ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... with funny little flowers in it which went out of fashion in America about twenty years ago. There was also a chalet in the garden, where we saw at once that we could buy cuckoo clocks and edelweiss and German lace if we wanted to. There was a big hotel full of people speaking strange languages—by this time we all sympathised with Mr. Mafferton in his resentment of foreigners in Continental hotels; as he said, one expected them to do their travelling in England. There ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... worth more than it cost: wood-thrushes and robins, golden orioles, scarlet tanagers, blackbirds, bluebirds, oven-birds, cedar-birds, veeries, vireos, song-sparrows, flycatchers, kinglets, the flicker, the cuckoo, the nuthatch, the chickadee and the rose-breasted grosbeak, not to mention jays or kingfishers, swallows, the little green heron or that cock of the walk, the ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... and wagons to the top of a barn to shade the wood from the sun's rays; some tumbling cheeses down a hill in the expectation that they would find their way to Nottingham Market, and some were employed in hedging in a cuckoo which had perched upon an old bush. Seeing men engaged in such employments as these the king's servants were convinced that the villagers were all fools, and quite unworthy the king's notice. The villagers, however, seeing that they had outwitted the king, considered themselves ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... deep-rooted instinct of creation, which the circumstances of his life had obscured, but which grew relentlessly, as a cancer may grow in the living tissues, till at last it took possession of his whole being and forced him irresistibly to action. The cuckoo lays its egg in the strange bird's nest, and when the young one is hatched it shoulders its foster-brothers out and breaks at last the nest that has ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... A cuckoo sat on a tree and sang, "Summer is coming, coming"; And a bee crept out from the hive and ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... zakukovali, i.e., "They began to cuckoo." The resemblance between the word kukla, a puppet, and the name and cry of the cuckoo (Kukushka) may be merely accidental, but that bird has a marked mythological character. See the account of the rite called "the ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... Jim had been 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 were both of them empty and credit had taken to the hills. He ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... walls, for in places they had crumbled, and admire the bracken in the hollows and the wind-blown hawthorn-trees growing on the other side of the long, winding drive. He had long wished to walk in the park and now he was there. The hawthorns were in bloom and the cuckoo was calling. The sky was dark overhead, but there was light above the trees, and long herds of cattle wandered and life seemed to Ned extraordinarily lovely and desirable at that moment. "I wonder what her dreams are? ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... fight the most, for they begin almost in the winter if the sun shines warm for an hour, and they keep on all day in the summer, and till it is quite dark and the stars are out, besides getting up before the cuckoo to go on again. Yet they are the sweetest and nicest of all the birds, and the most gentle, and do not mind our coming into their fields. So I am sure, Bevis, that you are wrong, and fighting is not wicked if you love one another. You and Mark are fond ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... debt of the poet to the birds has been dwelt upon in many poems, the best known of which are Shelley's "Skylark" and Wordsworth's "To the Cuckoo." ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... boy's ancestry, somewhere, there must have been a stream of gentle blood. He was a song-bird in a cuckoo's nest. When the military band played, his spirit was so moved that he shed tears. But when his mother died, and her body was placed in a new board coffin made by a neighbor who worked in the shipyard, he admired the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... Again I catch the cuckoo's note That faintly murmurs near, The mingled melodies that float To rapture's listening ear. While April like a virgin pale Retreats with modest grace, And blushing through her tearful veil Just shows her ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... the second of these two assumptions, viz., that some at least among migratory birds must possess, by inheritance alone, a very precise knowledge of the particular direction to be pursued. It is without question an astonishing fact that a young cuckoo should be prompted to leave its foster parents at a particular season of the year, and without any guide to show the course previously taken by its own parents, but this is a fact which must be met by any theory of instinct which aims at being complete. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... 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 dreams of mighty things, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... more or less, results of interference and disquietude. And thus, though an echo actually increases the quantity of sound heard, its repetition of the notes or syllables of sound, gives an idea of calmness attainable in no other way; hence the feeling of calm given to a landscape by the notes of the cuckoo. Understanding this, observe the anxious doubling of every object by a visible echo or shadow throughout this picture. The grandest feature of it is the steep distant cliff; and therefore the dualism is more marked here than elsewhere; the two promontories or cliffs, and two ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... on golden gales Scents hawthorn blown down happy dales; The phantom cuckoo calls forlorn From limits of the haunted morn;— Sing, elfin heart! thy notes to me Are bells that ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... a jackdaw—he chatters without knowing what he is chattering about, and pays no heed to the root of things, so busy is he with stuffing himself full with the grain. I say this to you with absolute earnestness, for I perceive you to be strange to our ways—a cuckoo that has blundered ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... Graham, author of "Carrots" and "Tell me a Story"; published by Macmillan & Co. This volume is well illustrated by Walter Crane. The cuckoo in an old clock makes friends with a lonely little girl, and causes her to have a good time, and to see many wonderful things. One of the prettiest parts of the story is the account of the making of the clock in the German home of the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... 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
... butterflies danced and fluttered over the flowers, which lifted their heads as though to drink in the rays of the sun. In every tree in the garden a thrush woke up and began to sing; sparrows chirped, jays screamed, blue-tits chattered, and the chiff-chaff uttered his strange note. In the woods a cuckoo called and blackbird fluted to blackbird in the hedge. In the stables the horses awoke and champed at their stalls; the cat jumped down and ran after a mouse which crept out from under the straw. The sentry at the courtyard gate woke up and rubbed his eyes and came smartly to attention, ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... 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 boy's ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Llangynog town at nine Without a darkening frown, And fleeter than the cuckoo's flight ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... these wanderings were brought to a final close; afterwards I often roved in imagination through distant countries famous for natural history, but felt no strong inclination to go thither, as the last adventure had terminated in such unexpected vexation. The departure of the cuckoo and swallow and summer birds of passage for warmer regions, once so interesting to me, now scarcely caused me to turn my face to the south; and I continued in this cold and dreary climate for three years. During this period I seldom or never mounted my hobby-horse; ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... 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
... 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 men cherish good resolves, and sorrow for the wasted ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... other beautiful spots of scenery among the upland, considerable portions of which, particularly in long sloping valleys, that faced the morning sun, were covered with hazel and brushwood, where the unceasing and simple notes of the cuckoo were incessantly plied, mingled with the more mellow and varied notes of the thrush and blackbird. Sometimes the bright summer waterfall seemed, in the rays of the sun, like a column of light, and the springs that issued from the sides of the more distant and ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... a woman of large body and small brain. In respect of reasoning power, she was little better than the wooden cuckoo which came out periodically from the interior of the clock that stood over her own fireplace and announced the hours. She entertained settled convictions on a few subjects, in regard to which she resembled a musical box. If you set her ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... slowly, clasping his head in his hands, "you are my daughter's affianced, are you not, and will give her high place and many famous titles, and her son shall be called Clavering, that the old name may not die but be great in England, in France, and in Italy. You must bide to marry her, lest that cuckoo, Hugh de Cressi, that cuckoo with the sharp bill, should creep into my nest. I'll not be worsted by a stripling clad in merchant's cloth who slew my only son. Take not my words ill, noble Noyon, for I am overdone with grief for the past and fear ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... success. The only European who had seen and fired at one agreed with the natives that it is of the size of a pigeon, with a long tail. I believe it is a Podargus or Night Hawk." In a subsequent note he further says—"I have since seen two birds by moonlight, one of the size and shape of a cuckoo, the other a large black bird, which I imagine to be the one ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... a cuckoo, coming to bathe in the stream, called out, 'Why, river! what has happened? You ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... 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 ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... of an honest woman,' said the portress, an old acquaintance of mine, 'I believe he swallows it all and is none the fatter for it; he is as thin and dried up as the cuckoo ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... the nest Where, as a lonely guest, First thy young head did rest, Cuckoo, so dear! Strange to the father-bird, Strange to the mother-bird, Sounded the note they heard, Tender and clear. Fleeing thy native bow'rs, Bright with the silv'ry flow'rs, Oft in the summer hours Hither thou fliest; ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... bird "the cuckoo." But only one Indian knew how the cuckoo came to be, and why it is too lazy to ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... 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 ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... Before them, on one side, the 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
... which he had plenty, this pleasant honest fool poured out his heart even in the presence of Gonerill 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 the shadow ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the winter. I am a vagrant really: or a migrant. I must migrate. Do you think a cuckoo in Africa and a cuckoo in Essex is one AND the same bird? Anyhow, I know I must oscillate between north and south, so oscillate I do. It's just my nature. All people ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... falls destroy my dreams, the nervous shock being sufficient to bridge the thousand centuries in an instant and hurl me wide awake into my little bed, where, perchance, I lie sweating and trembling and hear the cuckoo clock calling the hour in the hall. But this dream of my leaving home I have had many times, and never yet have I been awakened by it. Always do I crash, shrieking, down through the brush and fetch up with a ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... the umbilical region. Her yoni [vulva] resembles the opening lotus bud, and her love-seed is perfumed like the lily that has newly burst. She walks with swanlike [more exactly, flamingolike] gait, and her voice is low and musical as the note of the Kokila bird [the Indian cuckoo]; she delights in white raiment, in fine jewels, and in rich dresses. She eats little, sleeps lightly, and being as respectful and religious as she is clever and courteous, she is ever anxious to worship the gods and to enjoy the conversation of Brahmans. Such, then, is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... moved through thy whiteness, O City, and its dreams lay down to dreams in the freedom of thy fields! Years come and years go, but every year I see city and plain in the happy exaltation of Spring, and departing before the cuckoo, while the blossom is still bright on the bough, it has come to me to think that Paris ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... russet floors, by waters idle, The pine lets fall its cone; The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing In leafy dells alone; And traveler's joy beguiles in autumn Hearts that ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... are results 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
... reigns in this wilderness, interrupted only by the thunderings of the avalanche and by the noise which occasions the motion of the glaciers. No bird moves its wings or raises its twittering in this sorrowful region; only the melodious sighs of the cuckoo are borne thither by ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... onward, ever breathes A beauty and a fragrance, which enwreathes Within the being until every thought With a strange mystery of joy is fraught. And where the hazel forms a leafy screen Of verdant matting, the cuckoo, unseen, Chaunts forth her woodnotes through the stilly air, Whose silent motions far the accents bear. And thou hast come, sweet Nightingale! once more O'er our entranced spirits to outpour Thy liquid warblings! 'Mid the flow'rets' scent And summer's gladness rises ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... elves present, to quench his thirst, A pure seed-pearl of infant dew, Brought and besweeten'd in a blue And pregnant violet; which done, His kitling eyes begin to run Quite through the table, where he spies The horns of papery butterflies, Of which he eats; and tastes a little Of that we call the cuckoo's spittle; A little fuz-ball pudding stands By, yet not blessed by his hands, That was too coarse; but then forthwith He ventures boldly on the pith Of sugar'd rush, and eats the sagge And well-bestrutted bees' sweet bag; Gladding his palate ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... 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 who had a quarrel with his wife and left for Ditchling. After some days he returned, remarking, "I've had enough of furrin ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... nothing to hurt 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... head-waiters receiving a modest grade of the Victorian Order. Later in the day, let the King visit the National Gallery—a hall filled with picture post-cards of the most picturesque spots in Switzerland; and thence let him be conducted to the principal factory of cuckoo-clocks, and, after some of the clocks have been made to strike, be heard remarking to the President, with a hearty laugh, that the sound is like that of the cuckoo. How the second day of the visit would be filled up, I do not know; I leave that to the President's discretion. ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... the kitchen wall of an old farm-house on a mountain-side in Switzerland there hangs a tiny wooden clock. In the tiny wooden clock there lives a tiny wooden cuckoo, and every hour he hops out of his tiny wooden door, takes a look about to see what is going on in the world, shouts out the time of day, and pops back again into his little dark house, there to wait and tick away the minutes until it ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... 'Penny Magazine,' containing a single short leader on some current topic, without any pretensions to excellence; some driblets of news spread out in large type; half a column of foreign intelligence, with a column of facetious paragraphs under the heading of "The Cuckoo;" while the rest of each number consisted of advertisements. Notwithstanding the comparative innocence of the contents of the early numbers of the paper, certain passages which appeared in it on two occasions subjected the ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... to which you don't demean yourself by going!—and obliged to tell and act a string of lies, when lies happen to be just one of the vices you're not inclined to! And then afterward you find yourself let in for living years and years with a bad conscience—hating the cuckoo-child, too, more and more as it grows up. Yes!—I am quite sorry ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... do like a cuckoo," Dan admonished his brother. "Wise you are, father. Big already is your giving ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... but others did, and the years between the licensing act and 1743 find Mrs. Clive in demand as the affected lady of quality, speaker of humorous epilogues, performer in Dublin, and singer of such favorites as "Ellen-a-Roon," "The Cuckoo," and "The Life of a Beau." This period is also marked by Mrs. Clive's first professional venture with David Garrick, in his Lethe, the beginning of a relationship to become one of the most tempestuous and ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... earth when thou didst go, In life's spring-bloom, Down to the appointed house below— The silent tomb. But now the green leaves of the tree, The cuckoo, and "the busy bee," Return, but with them bring ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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 admirers, "criminal, thief and murderess," as another ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... cinnamon-backed cuckoo must be a graceful minstrel in our green hedges in July, though I am ashamed to admit I never was lucky enough to meet him. The oriole, blue jay, officer-bird, summer red-bird, indigo-bird and golden-winged woodpecker form a group of striking beauty; a most excellent idea, I would say, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... should never go again to the corner where I always found the earliest violets; and then I cried to think that the nightingale would soon be back, and how that very morning, when I opened my window, I had heard the cuckoo, and could tell that he was calling from just about ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the cuckoo," said Mary Acton. "Do you remember the young one we found last spring, sprawling all over the nest, and opening its ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... 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 might be clearly distinguished the Voice of the Lord. Such utterances, ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... of the bell, the back-gate was usually opened, and the Doctor was wont to come forth as punctually as a cuckoo of a clock at the striking of the hour; but a deviation was observed on this occasion. Formerly, Mrs. Pringle and the rest of the family came first, and a few minutes were allowed to elapse before the Doctor, laden with grace, ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... personation; representation &c. 554; semblance; copy &c. 21; assimilation. paraphrase, parody, take-off, lampoon, caricature &c. 21. plagiarism; forgery, counterfeit &c. (falsehood) 544; celluloid. imitator, echo, cuckoo|, parrot, ape, monkey, mocking bird, mime; copyist, copycat; plagiarist, pirate. V. imitate, copy, mirror, reflect, reproduce, repeat; do like, echo, reecho, catch; transcribe; match, parallel. mock, take off, mimic, ape, simulate, impersonate, personate; act ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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, and getting lost till well on ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... swallows as they twittered past, or stayed on the sharp, high top of the pear tree; to the vehement starlings, whistling and screeching like Mrs. Iden herself, on the chimneys; chaffinches "chink, chink," thrushes, distant blackbirds, who like oaks; "cuckoo, cuckoo," "crake, crake," buzzing and burring of bees, coo of turtle-doves, now and then a neigh, to remind you that there were horses, fulness and richness of musical sound; a world of grass and leaf, humming like a hive ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... the men and the women had been forbidden in the fiercest terms by Monsieur le Directeur: nevertheless conversation spasmodically occurred, thanks to the indulgent nature of the Wooden Hand. The Wooden Hand must have been cuckoo—he looked it. If he wasn't I am totally at a loss ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... 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 successful, their enemies often discovering their hiding ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... insolence—because you treat my soldiers like paupers—because you are one of those who do no more to have the right to live than the purple butterfly that flies in the sun, and who oust the people out of their dues as the cuckoo kicks the poor birds that have reared it, out of the nest of down, to which it never has carried a twig or ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... inert mother, 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, ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... his own France, he still reigned over the whole world. Before long he embarked in the same little cockleshell of a boat he had had in Egypt, sailed round the beard of the English, set foot in France, and France acclaimed him. The sacred cuckoo flew from spire to spire; all France cried out with one voice, 'LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!' In this region, here, the enthusiasm for that wonder of the ages was, I may say, solid. Dauphine behaved well; and I am particularly pleased to know that her ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... Robert of Lincoln William Cullen Bryant The O'Lincon Family Wilson Flagg The Bobolink Thomas Hill My Catbird William Henry Venable The Herald Crane Hamlin Garland The Crow William Canton To the Cuckoo John Logan The Cuckoo Frederick Locker-Lampson To the Cuckoo William Wordsworth The Eagle Alfred Tennyson The Hawkbit Charles G. D. Roberts The Heron Edward Hovell-Thurlow The Jackdaw William Cowper The Green Linnet William Wordsworth To the Man-of-War-Bird Walt ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... lark flies away to the cuckoo," snarled the old man, with flecks of froth gathering at the corners of his mouth; for the sight of this ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... flower by the end of December,—rye was in ear by the middle of March, and vines, in sheltered situations, blossomed about the end of that month,—so that an assured and unchecked spring was established at least four or five weeks earlier than usual;—yet neither the cuckoo nor the swallow arrived a single day before their accustomed periods. They are indeed, beautifully and wisely directed,—"Yea, the stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... arrived, The telltale cuckoo; spring's his confidant, And he lets out her April purposes!) 140 Or—better go at once to modern time, He has—they have—in fact, I understand But can't restate the matter; that's my boast: Others could reason it out to you, and prove Things they ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... feathers." The bird went and alighted on a fountain, which said: "Bird, why are you plucking out your feathers so?" The bird answered as the others had done, and the fountain said: "And I, as fountain, will dry up." A cuckoo went to drink at the fountain, and asked: "Fountain, why have you dried up?" And the fountain told him all that had happened. "And I, as cuckoo, will put my tail in the fire." A monk of St. Nicholas passed by, and said: "Cuckoo, why is your tail in the ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... almost universal character of this law it would be strange if these peculiar forms of dependence did not appear in the avian community. We do find such developments in that department of creation. Across the waters there is one bird that has won an unenviable reputation as a parasite: the European cuckoo relies almost wholly on the efforts of its more thrifty neighbors to hatch and rear its young, and thereby perpetuate the species. Strangely enough, our American cuckoos are not given to such slovenly habits, but build their own nests and faithfully perform the duties ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... just 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
... who has grounnds for his opinin. D'ye think, because Dockers Short, an' Bist, an' Kinyon, an' Cuckoo, an' Jackdaw, an' Starling, an' Co., don't know the dire effecks of calomel an' drastics on the buddy, I don't know't? Her eye, her tongue, her skin, her voice, her elastic walk, all tell me she has not been robbed of her vital resources. 'Why, if she had taken that genteel old thief Short's rimidies ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... (469/1. See "Expression of the Emotions," page 99.) I want to show that this expression is common to all or most of the families of birds. I know of this only in the fowl, swan, tropic-bird, owl, ruff and reeve, and cuckoo. I fancy that I remember having seen nestling birds erect their feathers greatly when looking into nests, as is said to be the case with young cuckoos. I should much like to know whether nestlings do really thus erect their feathers. I am now at ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... should love to stroke you both, but I'm not sure how Joyeuse would take it. So I'll stroke you down verbally instead. I admired your attack on Sir Edward immensely, though of course I don't agree with a word of it. Your description of him building a hedge round the German cuckoo and hoping he was isolating it was rather sweet. Seriously though, I regard him as one of ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... readily could the practised observer distinguish the skull of the tuneful, melodious canary from that of the chirping, inharmonious sparrow. Nor could he fail to mark the constant difference between the form of the head of a song thrush and that of the jackdaw; or to discern how the cuckoo's head is hollow where the organ of the love of offspring is located, whilst the same part presents a striking protuberance in the partridge. In the dolphin, the porpoise, the seal, and many other animals, the male could there be distinguished from the female by the form of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... crop. If they encounter on 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
... 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 ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... 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
... 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
... can do that," the boy protested, then turned suddenly a deep red. "Oh, lor, I didn't mean that! Hi, Dinah!" He turned to cover his embarrassment and sent a deafening yell at the sun-bathed facade of the hotel. "Are you never coming, you cuckoo? ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... not try to 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 ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... them back, when the man, looking up, caught sight of a bundle of oaten pipes among the miscellaneous wares. He plucked one to him, and in a moment the air was full of tender liquid notes—a thrush's roundelay. Then a blackbird called and his mate answered; a cuckoo cried the spring-song; a linnet mourned with lifting cadence; a nightingale poured ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... years a great many birds tried to sit on the tree, and wished to build their nests in it, but whenever they came the bulbul sent them away, saying, "This fruit is not good. Don't come here." One day a cuckoo came and said, "Why do you send us away? Why should we not come and sit here too? All the trees here are not yours." "Never mind," said the bulbul, "I am going to sit here, and when this fruit is ripe, I shall eat it." Now the cuckoo knew that this tree was the cotton-tree, ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... and commenced to search the upper regions. But the same absolute quiet reigned above as below. Only the loud ticking of a cuckoo-clock at the head of the stairs ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... possible that the tree can yield so much. A similar but 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 six times the size of the English. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... leave Lafayette in Hanover County, take his cavalry, dash to Charlottesville, break up the assembly then meeting there, and capture Jefferson. By hard riding on the nights of June 3 and 4 Tarleton nearly made it to Charlottesville undetected. But he stopped at Cuckoo Tavern in Louisa County, where he was spotted by militia Captain John Jouett, Jr. Guessing Tarleton's mission, Jack Jouett rode madly through the night over the back roads he knew well, and beat Tarleton's men to town. At Jouett's warning ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... but 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... of English grammar, that all singular nouns ending with a vowel preceded by an other vowel, shall form the plural by simply assuming an s: as, Plea, pleas; idea, ideas; hernia, hernias; bee, bees; lie, lies; foe, foes; shoe, shoes; cue, cues; eye, eyes; folio, folios; bamboo, bamboos; cuckoo, cuckoos; embryo, embryos; bureau, bureaus; purlieu, purlieus; sou, sous; view, views; straw, straws; play, plays; key, keys; medley, medleys; viceroy, viceroys; guy, guys. To this rule, the plurals of words ending in quy, as alloquies, colloquies, obloquies, soliloquies, are commonly made ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Lang, tells, in savage fashion, the story of the introduction of Christianity, we learn how the maiden Marjatta, "as pure as the dew is, as holy as stars are that live without stain," was feeding her flocks and listening to the singing of the golden cuckoo, when a berry fell into her bosom, and she conceived and bore a son, whereupon the people despised and rejected her. Moreover, no one would baptize the infant: "The god of the wilderness refused, and Wainamoinen would have had the young child ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... 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 ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... 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 becomes an object ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot |
