"Cuckoo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the plumage of the birds. The master artists are all here; and the expectations excited by the robin and the song sparrow are fully justified. The thrushes have all come; and I sit down upon the first rock, with hands full of the pink azalea, to listen. With me the cuckoo does not arrive till June; and often the goldfinch, the kingbird, the scarlet tanager delay their coming till then. In the meadows the bobolink is in all his glory; in the high pastures the field sparrow sings his ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Rabbits twinkled into the furzes where Waldron's three fox terriers ran before the party; and now and then a brave buck coney would stand upon the nibbled knoll above his burrow and drum danger before he darted in. It was a haunt of the cuckoo and peewit, the bunting and ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Gotham, they found some of the inhabitants engaged in endeavouring to drown an eel in a pool of water; some were employed in dragging carts upon a large barn, to shade the wood from the sun; and others were engaged in hedging a cuckoo, which had perched itself upon an old bush. In short, they were all employed upon some foolish way or other, which convinced the king's servants that it ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... poet's eyes To all earth's beauty—wood, and lake, and skies, And golden mists that up the valleys creep. Sweet Duddon's stream and Rydal's grassy steep, The "snow-white lamb," his cottage-maiden's prize, The cuckoo's note, and flowers, in which his wise And gentle mind found "thoughts for tears too deep"— These, Wordsworth! thou hast left; but oh, on these, And the deep human sympathies that flow Link'd with their beauty, an immortal train, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... old pep out of you. I was above one and saw his wing crumple, then fall. A man is so utterly helpless he must merely sit there and wait to be killed, and when you're flying the same type of machine it doesn't help your confidence any. I was glad they condemned mine, for I've put my old "cuckoo" through some awful tests and it's about ready to ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... she to th' door, and her tire-woman a-holding of her robes, and two footmen going before, and in she comes—like as though Riches and Death had a' th' same right to enter a poor man's house without knocking. And saith she to me, saith she, a-filling up o' the room with her finery, like a cuckoo ruffling out its feathers in another ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... powers, And Sigils framed in planetary hours: Expense, and After-Thought, and idle Care, And Doubts of motley hue, and dark Despair; Suspicious, and fantastical Surmise, And Jealousy suffused, with jaundice in her eyes, Discolouring all she view'd, in tawny dress'd, Down-look'd, and with a cuckoo on her fist. Opposed to her, on the other side advance 490 The costly feast, the carol, and the dance, Minstrels and Music, Poetry and Play, And balls by night, and tournaments by day. All these were painted on the wall, and more; With acts and monuments of times before: And others added by prophetic ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... me to tell you that she rides ("a-horseback, you cuckoo!") between twelve and sixteen miles almost every day. I cannot clearly tell whether she has grown thinner or I have grown ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... 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 ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... when seized, its turning its head aside, when it has had enough food, its crying when alone and hungry, are not, for the most part, deliberate methods invented by the infant to maintain its own welfare, but are almost as automatic as the number of sounds omitted by the cuckoo clock at midnight. ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... cuckoo sat on a tree and sang, "Summer is coming, coming"; And a bee crept out from the hive ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot
... chip-squirrels chirrup, and the red squirrels mock; then the hen-hawks chatter and shriek in the air, and the crows caw and clamor; the thrushes and swamp robins bandy their boasts in challenges of music; the blue jay gossips, and the cuckoo cries. ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... being. He found in its phenomena an answer to his longings and the high expression of every fervour of his soul. We cannot understand this, because the Indian chased the ethereal, the weird, the sublime, the mysterious: we chase the dollar. He heard the voice of nature; we listen for the cuckoo clock of commerce. ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... grass, and of the buntings and chaffinches that make their small merry music in every thicket, and of the black and white chats that shift their burden of song from stone to stone beside the path, and of the cuckoo that tells his name to us from far away, and of the splendid bee-eaters that glitter over us like a flock of winged emeralds as we climb the rocky hill toward the north. We are glad of the broom in golden flower, and of the pink and white rock-roses, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... but not to, our destination. After leaving it we walked through the streets of a low-roofed village, then followed a path bordered with wild mignonette and apple trees that wound up the side of a hill covered with vineyards. A couple of chattering magpies ran before us, an invisible cuckoo was heard between snatches of Italian melody warbled by the tenor sotto voce and the little ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... "blessed bird" and "sweet messenger of spring," the "cuckoo," imposed upon the poetic ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... of sensibility, our tenderness, sympathy, awe, terror, love of beauty, and all the other emotions in this momentous catalogue. The starry heavens have one side for the astronomer, as astronomer, and another for the poet, as poet. The nightingale, the skylark, the cuckoo, move one sort of interest in an ornithologist, and a very different sort in a Shelley or a Wordsworth. The hoary and stupendous formations of the inorganic world, the thousand tribes of insects, the great universe of plants, from those whose size and form and hue make us afraid as if they were ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... illustration. The garrulous man, paradoxical as it may seem to say it, is a kind of pickpocket without intending to steal anything—nay, rather he is fain to please you by placing something in your pocket—though too often it is like the egg of the cuckoo in the nest ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... animals manifested mental phenomena long before man existed. While as yet there was no brain capable of working out a mathematical problem, the economy of the six-sided figure was exemplified by the instinct of the bee. Ere human musician had whistled or piped, the owl hooted in B flat, the cuckoo had her song of a falling third, and the chirp of the cricket was in B. The dog and the elephant prefigured the sagacity of the human mind. The love of a human mother for her babe was anticipated by nearly every humbler mammal, the carnaria not excepted. The peacock ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... English names of Ash, to propagate Balsams Bee, remedy for sting of Botanical names Butter, rancid Calendar, Horticultural Calendar, Agricultural Carts, Cumberland Cattle, to feed Clover crops College, agricultural Cropping, table of Cuckoo, note of Diseases of plants Drainage reports Evergreens, to transplant, by Mr. Glendinning Farming in Norfolk, high Farming, Mr. Mechi's, by Mr. Wilkins Farming, rule of thumb, by Mr. Wilkins Fruit trees, to root prune Gardeners' Benevolent Institution, by Mr. Wheeler Gardening, villa ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... whole Midsummer holiday in his jaws. "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 was nearly ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... in so smart and fluent a manner, the Praenestine [king] directs some witticisms squeezed from the vineyard, himself a hardy vine-dresser, never defeated, to whom the passenger had often been obliged to yield, bawling cuckoo ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... common errors which Sir Thomas Browne set himself to refute, were such as these: That dolphins are crooked, that Jews stink, that a man hath one rib less than a woman, that Xerxes's army drank up rivers, that cicades are bred out of cuckoo-spittle, that Hannibal split Alps with vinegar, together with many similar fallacies touching Pope Joan, the Wandering Jew, the decuman or tenth wave, the blackness of negroes, Friar Bacon's brazen head, etc. Another book in which great ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... but with interesting modifications as to the bird which gives the signal to try the divination. In Westphalia it is at sight of the first swallow that the peasant looks to see if there be a hair under his foot. According to Gay, in England it is the cuckoo. ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... story. It will be read with delight by every child into whose hands it is placed.... The author deserves all the praise that has been, is, and will be bestowed on 'The Cuckoo Clock.' Children's stories are plentiful, but one like this is not to be met with ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... frequented by gods and Gandharvas. And then he beheld (some) lovely spots in the Himalayan mountains, frequented by Devarshis and Siddhas and inhabited by hosts of Apsaras, resounded here and there with (the warbling of) birds—the chakora, the chakrabaka, the jibajibaka and the cuckoo and the Bhringaraja, and abounding with shady trees, soft with the touch of snow and pleasing to the eye and mind, and bearing perennial fruits and flowers. And he beheld mountain streams with waters glistening ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... on the parapet, legs swinging, fussing with a pair of binoculars and informing the two people behind him—who were not listening—that he could distinguish a black-billed cuckoo from a ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... spread over the earth; the fragrance which exhaled from bush and tree, made it feel happy as it sat there clothed in its fresh, bright plumage. All creation seemed to speak of beneficence and love. The bird wanted to give utterance to thoughts that stirred in his breast, as the cuckoo and the nightingale in the spring, but it could not. Yet in heaven can be heard the song of praise, even from a worm; and the notes trembling in the breast of the bird were as audible to Heaven even as the psalms of David before they had fashioned ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... white blossoms lighting up each branch to the very summit of them; the hawthorn bushes here and there covered with snowy bloom; the children playing, and the swallows darting to and fro overhead; the distant shout of the cuckoo, and the deep low tone of the church clock just striking the hour—this was the threshold of home to him; the outer court, which was dearer to him and more completely his own than any other place in the wide world ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... month of all the year in Glebeshire. The days are warm but not too hot; the sky is blue but not too blue, the air is soft but with a touch of sharpness The valleys are pressed down and overflowing with flowers; the cuckoo cries across the glassy waters of blue harbours, and the gorse is honey-scented among ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... weary of looking at the inscriptions on the great cliffs at the River of the Dog—the strange beauty of that name! It was like the place-names of native Ulster—Athbo, the Ford of Cows, Sraidcuacha, the Cuckoo's Lane—one name sounded to the other like tuning-forks. And the sweet strange harmony of it filled his heart, so that he could understand the irresistible charm of Lebanon—the high clear note like a bird's song. Here was the sun and the ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... away, and the spring with its sunshine followed. The trees were green again, and the meadows were gay with primroses and white anemones, and in the wood the cuckoo sang lustily; and soft, warm breezes were all abroad, making every heart beat more cheerily; and one rejoiced that life ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... "click" and a "whirr-rr," the doors of the little carved clock on the wall new open and a cuckoo came out and ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... Cross-roads; from every corner of the Duchy. He matched Helleston's May-dance with at least a score of similar May-day observances in different towns and villages of Cornwall. He quoted the Padstow Hobby-horse, the Towednack Cuckoo-feast, the Madron Dipping Day, the Troy May-dragon, and proved that the custom of ushering in the summer with song and dance and some symbolical rite of purgation was well-nigh universal throughout Cornwall. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 the two reports ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the mangroves, ere they repair last 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 among the rocks, and great white pigeons gather in thousands ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... if they had complained, Some with their notes another manner feigned." CHAUCER: Pie Cuckoo and the Nightingale, modernised by ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sleep for cold, though I was heaped with coverings, while my skin was all puckered with gooseflesh. I could eat nothing solid, without suffering immediately from violent hiccough, so that much of my time was spent lying prone on my back upon the hearthrug, awakening the echoes like a cuckoo. Miss Marks, therefore, cut off all food but milk-sop, a loathly bowl of which appeared at every meal. In consequence the hiccough lessened, but my strength declined with it. I languished in a perpetual catarrh. I was roused to a conscious-ness that I was not considered well by the fact that ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... thee from the beginning it would be all well," said the mother stork. "Turn thy thoughts now to thine own family. It is almost time for our long journey; I begin now to tingle under the wings. The cuckoo and the nightingale are already gone, and I hear the quails saying that we shall soon have a fair wind. Our young ones are quite able to go, I ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... my father and I took ours in the large parlour, where the stiff, high-backed chairs eyed one another in opposite rows across the wide oaken floor, shiny and hard as marble, and slippery as glass. Except the table, the sideboard and the cuckoo clock, there was no ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and the murmurs and the scents of the sea. They associate themselves with the dreamy indescribable moments when crossing the wet grass of secluded misty meadows, passing the drowsy cattle and the large cool early morning shadows thrown by the trees, we have suddenly come upon cuckoo flowers or marigolds, every petal of which seems burdened with a ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... tell ye, Jerry, ye cuckoo," whispered Connie, "she'd beat him? He's gettin' the Thick 'Un, just ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... elms, ashes, and horse-chestnuts, and overshadowing brakes, covered with maples, alders, and hazels. The other spaces among the trees were enlivened by patches of yellow flowering and odorous gorse. Mixed with the warblings of innumerable feathered songsters were heard the cheering notes of the cuckoo; and the newly-arrived swallows were seen chasing the flies along the plain, or skimming over the surface of the river. Already had Richard's depression yielded to the exhilarating freshness of the morning, and the same kindly influence produced ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... art, perfecting their dainty cities; while their tougher neighbors are dominating the globe, imposing their language and customs on the conquered peoples or the earth. One feels this on the Riviera. It reminds you of the cuckoo who, once installed in a robin's nest, that seems to him convenient and warmly located in the sunshine, ends by kicking out all the ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... die before their day A Nun among the Maidens, thou and they. Each hath some fond sweet office that doth strike One of our trembling heartstrings musical. Is not the hawthorn for the Queen of May? And cuckoo-flowers for whom the cuckoo's voice Hails, like an answering sister, to the woods? Is not the maiden blushing in the rose? Shall not the babe and buttercup rejoice, Twins in one meadow? Are not violets all By name or nature for the breast of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... bridle-path. Watch at the western gate of the park. His horse will be waiting for him there to carry him to Cambridge. After his tender leave-taking he will come to his exit a clear mark on the white garden-path for a steady hand holding a pistol. So you can whistle 'Good-night, cuckoo,' as you haste to o'ertake ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... green meadows, Farewell, sunny shore, The herdsman must leave you, The summer is o'er. We go to the hills, but you'll see us again, When the cuckoo calls, and the merry birds sing, When the flowers bloom afresh in glade and in glen, And the brooks sparkle bright in the sunshine of Spring. Farewell, ye green meadows, Farewell, sunny shore, The herdsman must leave you, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... set out I 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 link between the ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... the fur cap on pussy-willow, paint in pink the petals of arbutus, and sweep in soft strains her Orphean lyre. "The voice of the turtle is heard in our land." The snow-bird that tarried through [25] the storm, now chirps to the breeze; the cuckoo sounds her invisible lute, calling the feathered tribe back to their summer homes. Old robin, though stricken to the heart with winter's snow, prophesies of fair earth and sunny skies. The brooklet sings ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... cottage 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
... Imagine, in our dear country, an Englishman being allowed to mount the platform and spout, undisturbed, English propaganda in deadly opposition to German interests. The so-called liberty of the Englishman is like the cuckoo in his political nest. Countries must be governed. They cannot govern themselves. The time of war ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... be so proud to have you they won't be able to contain themselves? They'll turn the whole place upside-down for you. I know them. They'll pretend it's nothing, but mother won't sleep at night for thinking how to arrange things for the best, and as for my cuckoo of an uncle, if you notice something funny about your feet, it'll be the esteemed alderman licking your boots. You'll have the time of your life. In fact they'll ruin your character for you. There'll be ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... 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 wise. ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... be. Though there's more than one. You little children think there's only one cuckoo, one fox, one giant, one devil, and one reddleman, when ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... 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 most of the legislators fled over the Blue Ridge to ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... 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 Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... clamour, a misty sea of sound in which individuality appeared and disappeared. For a time a distant cuckoo was very perceptible, like a landmark looming up over a fog, like the cuckoo in the ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... the blazing root they heard: "Cuckoo! cuckoo!" as plain as ever the spring-bird's voice came over the moor on a ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... interrogation 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, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... bedraggled, and with the other thrusting her umbrella in the very teeth of the hostile winds, might be seen crossing the intersected streets, and vanishing amid the subterranean recesses of some kitchen area, or tramping onward amidst the mazes of the metropolitan labyrinth, till, like the cuckoo, "heard," but no longer "seen," the echo of her retreating pattens made a dying music to the reluctant ear; or indeed, at intervals of unfrequent occurrence, a hackney vehicle jolted, rumbling, bumping over the uneven stones, as if groaning forth its ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by numerous springs and rivulets, so that it is well cultivated, and produces much grain. The whole appearance of Lahuri Nepal, and its vegetable productions, strongly resemble those of the wilder parts of Britain; and, during my stay, I was entertained with the note of an old acquaintance, the cuckoo. The air of the higher part of the valley where we encamped is much cooler than that of Kathmandu, and was so sharp to our relaxed habits, that our winter clothing became comfortable, although Chitlong is situated ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... grown up man, an uncouth ill-looking ungainly fellow, who did no work, smoked and loafed about, but was the idol of his mother. He resembled neither parent in the least, and, except that such vagaries of nature are not unknown, it might have been supposed that some cuckoo ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... H——r's name. Senior, self-called, can I forget the day, When titt'ring under-graduates mock'd thy sway, And drove thee foaming from the Hall away? Gods, with what raps the conscious tables rung, From every form how shrill the cuckoo sung![36] Oh! sounds unblest—Oh! notes of deadliest fear— Harsh to the tutor's or the lover's ear, The hint, perchance, thy warmest hopes may quell, And cuckoo mingle with the thoughts of Bel."[37] At that loved name, with fury doubly keen, Fierce ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... beauty and worth of birds. Shelley, in his "Skylark", describes in glowing verse "the unbodied joy" that "singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest". Wordsworth hears the blithe new comer, the Cuckoo, and rejoices ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... greensward slopes to a wheat-field that is like a wall of gold. Here I lie and laze away the time, or dip into a favorite book, Stevenson's Letters or Belloc's Path to Rome. Bees drone in the wild thyme; a cuckoo keeps calling, a lark spills jeweled melody. Then there is a seeming silence, but it is the silence of a ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... 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 ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... cometh after, Month of all the Loves (and mine); Month of mock and cuckoo-laughter,— May the jocund cometh after. Beaks are gay on roof and rafter; Luckless lovers peak ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... 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 or not, though the main fault was his, and she had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... have heard the cuckoo before the first of May, declares a well-known ornithologist, are usually the victims of young practical jokers. The conspicuous barring of the bird's plumage should, however, make ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... a line to say I am well and happy. I am here in my dear forest all day in the open air. It is very be—no, not beautiful exactly, just now, but very bright and living. There are one or two song birds and a cuckoo; all the fruit-trees are in flower, and the beeches make sunshine in a shady place. I begin to go all right; you need not be vexed about my health; I really was ill at first, as bad as I have been for nearly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pied, and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo buds of yellow hue Do paint the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... small bird like a nightingale, was so much esteemed in Provence that there were feasts at which that bird alone was served, prepared in various ways; but of all birds used for the table none could be compared to the young cuckoo taken just as it was ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... principle of our Government. Governor Perry and other provisional governors and orators proclaim that "this is the white man's Government." The whole copperhead party, pandering to the lowest prejudices of the ignorant, repeat the cuckoo cry, "This is the white man's Government." Demagogues of all parties, even some high in authority, gravely shout, "This is the white man's Government." What is implied by this? That one race of men are to have the exclusive right forever to rule this nation, and to ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... about with a pretty cawarring. You've spun a yarn as long as all the posts and rails round my seven acres, and I dunna see as you've yet hedged in so much as th' owd wise men o' Gotham did, and that's a cuckoo. I've heard just one sensible word, and that was to recommend a cast-iron pulpit, in preference to a wooden 'un. As to a church-rate to repair th' owd steeple-house, why, my advice is to pull th' owd thing down, stick and stone, and mend your roads with it. It's ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... angel's eyes," said Brother John; and he smiled in the strangest way, as he gazed up into the blue sky. "So I looked at the two sparks and felt happy, as one does in spring time when the cold weather is gone, and the warm sun shines, and the cuckoo sings again. Then, by-and-by, I saw the face to which the eyes belonged. First, it shone white and thin like the moon in the daylight; but it grew brighter and brighter, until it hurt one's eyes ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... loathsome—the word implies that they are mutually loathsome—and that they are the veriest trash and refuse. He compares them to so many polecats, opossums, and crows, and finally likens them to the rain-crow (cuckoo; Coccygus), which is regarded with disfavor on account of its disagreeable note. He grows more bitter in his denunciations as he proceeds and finally disposes of the matter by saying that all the seven clans alike are uhisa't[)i] ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... pied and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... 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, then, is a quality of much art. It is even to ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... for the open fireplace, several pictures, a check "for unnecessary things" from one of the women's clubs, another for wall-decoration from teachers, students and graduates of the Albany Library School, fifty Japanese color-prints of chrysanthemums from the Pratt Institute children's room, a cuckoo clock that is still going, though it demands a vacation about once a year, and a Boston fern that is now in flourishing condition. A large Braun photograph of the Madonna del Granduca came later from the Pittsburgh School ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... 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 can be made; ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... for so rude an earth; but the wild hyacinths droop their blue bells under the wood, and the cowslips rise in the grass. The nightingale sings without ceasing; the soft 'coo-coo' of the dove sounds hard by; the merry cuckoo calls as he flies from elm to elm; the wood-pigeons rise and smite their wings together over the firs. In the mere below the coots are at play; they chase each other along the surface of the water and indulge in wild evolutions. Everything is happy. ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... Cuckoo Clock on the nursery wall went, "Whirrr!" the little door opened, and the little bird put out his head and cried, "Cuckoo! ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... 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 when the full-fledged recipient of its misplaced ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... 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 so ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... by a cuckoo, coming to bathe in the stream, called out, 'Why, river! what has happened? You are as salt ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... staircase of six steps and a landing—but after some three years he too was taken ill, and died before the kitchen fire. He kept his eye to the last upon the meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over on his back with a sepulchral cry of 'Cuckoo!' Since then ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... some colored 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 articles of household furniture of the humblest ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... bank, the wimpling burn, [winding] The cuckoo on the milk-white thorn, The wanton lambs at early morn Shall welcome ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... "Cuckoo! cuckoo!" The cry came from inside the farmhouse. And since the windows were wide open, Rusty could easily hear it from the tree ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey
... its name on account of the similarity of its note to that of the Cuckoo-clock, was one of the earliest sufferers of the housing problem, which it successfully solved by depositing its eggs in the nests ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... general effect of arrogant self-esteem. He was an illustration of the ancient mystery—how is it that a man with such a face, and such insolence written all over him, can become a leader of other men and persuade them to hatch the eggs of treachery that he lays like a cuckoo in their nests? ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... climbed the hill, and after an hour or two on the plateau strolled back again, facing the sunset through a vista of moss-covered live-oaks and sweet gums. Those quiet, incurious hours are among the pleasantest of all my Florida memories. A cuckoo would be cooing, perhaps; or a quail, with cheerful ambiguity,— such as belongs to weather predictions in general,—would be prophesying "more wet" and "no more wet" in alternate breaths; or two or three night-hawks would be sweeping back and ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... more real than himself. The picture is better, perhaps, than the bricks were, yet it is not enlivening. The only other objects in the room worth mentioning are, a particularly small book-shelf in a corner; a cuckoo-clock on the mantel-shelf, an engraved portrait of Queen Victoria on the wall opposite in a gilt frame, and a portrait of Sir Robert Peel in a frame of rosewood ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 with some store Of emmets' eggs; what would he ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... do?" repeated Phil. "Why, everything, my gentle cuckoo. Dost thou not yet know that Indians generally, and the Mayubuna in particular, have a very wholesome dread and horror of thunderstorms, believing, as they do, that the evil spirits come abroad and hold high revel upon such occasions? If an Indian ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... that the root of the cuckoo-pint (arum) was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, and eaten in severe snowy weather. After observing, with some exactness, myself, and getting others to do the same, we found it was the thrush kind that searched it out. The root of ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... board the same nutshell of a skiff that he sailed in from Egypt, passes under the noses of the English vessels, and sets foot in France. France recognizes her Emperor, the cuckoo flits from steeple to steeple; France cries with one voice, "Long live the Emperor!" The enthusiasm for that Wonder of the Ages was thoroughly genuine in these parts. Dauphine behaved handsomely; and I was uncommonly pleased to learn that people here shed tears of joy on ...
— The Napoleon of the People • Honore de Balzac
... thee! Seek for sweet surprise In the young children's eyes. But I have learnt the years, and know the yet Leaf-folded violet. Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell The cuckoo's fitful bell. I wander in a grey time that encloses June and the wild hedge-roses. A year's procession of the flowers doth pass My feet, along the grass. And all you sweet birds silent yet, I know The notes that stir you so, Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear ...
— Poems • Alice Meynell
... ticks loudly, shows the hours, minutes, and seconds, strikes, cries "cuckoo!" and perhaps shows the phases of the moon. When the clock is wound up, all the phenomena which it exhibits are potentially contained in its mechanism, and a clever clockmaker could predict all it will do after an ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... she 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 ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... 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 rotundifolia); Larksheel (Delphinium ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... inhabitants out into the night and rain, the shades of my little children who used to sit round the fire of winter evenings, or by the window in the long, exquisite summer days. It is like long, long ago, when Nella and Cuckoo and Darling died. ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... maligned by Wilkes—and thus most effectually damaged the character of the plain-spoken councillor with the Queen and many of her advisers; notwithstanding that he plaintively besought her to "allow him to reiterate his sorry song, as doth the cuckoo, that she would please not condemn ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and the parcel bore the same stamp, the same markings which she had seen duplicated in Janet Willoughby's boudoir! Red as a rose was Claire as she stared at the bold masculine writing of the address, tore open the wrappings of the box, and drew forth a carved cuckoo clock with the well-known chalet roof and long pendulum and chains. It was an exquisite specimen of its kind, the best that could be obtained, but for the moment Claire had no attention to spare for the gift itself; she was absorbed ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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 to ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... remained the head clerk, then an empty room, which, for the sake of secrecy, separated the notary's sanctum from the other offices, such was this laboratory of all kinds and sorts. Two o'clock had just struck by an old cuckoo clock, placed between the two windows of the office; agitation seemed to reign among the clerks, which some fragments of their ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... pearl-blue, steel, and burnished silver. At other times some lovely kingfisher, with elongated tail, settled almost within reach. Then it would be a green barbet, with bristle-armed beak and bright blue and scarlet feathers to make it gay. Or again, one of the cuckoo trogons, sitting on some twig, like a ball of feathers of bronze, golden green, ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... nor hear. She had gone forward with a boy on either side of her, and Susan walking backwards in front, all telling the story of a cuckoo,—or gowk, as Sara called it in Purday's language,—which they had found in a water-wagtail's nest in a heap of stones; how it sat up, constantly gaping with its huge mouth, while the poor little foster-parents toiled ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this accidental experiment set me on trying my skill in the mechanical arts. Accordingly I took down and cleaned my landlady's cuckoo-clock, and in so doing, silenced that companion of the spring for ever and a day. I mounted a turning-lathe, and in attempting to use it, I very nearly cribbed off, with an inch-and-half former, one of the fingers which the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... winter I won't have much time to waste on you and Amy, trying to develop a sense of humor in you," said Herb. "I'm going to build a radio set of my own that will be a cuckoo." ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... 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 piers below them, ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... For you trow, nuncle, The hedge sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, That it had its head bit off by its young. So out went the candle, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... "It's a cuckoo's, sir. I know all about it, except where he was born, and who were his parents, and how he got his money. And Hareton Earnshaw has been cast out like ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... (Tetrao urogallus) is found in the Balkan and Rhodope forests, the wild pheasant in the Tunja valley, the bustard (Otis tarda) in the Eastern Rumelian plain. Among the migratory birds are the crane, which hibernates in the Maritza valley, woodcock, snipe and quail; the great spotted cuckoo (Coccystes glandarius) is an occasional visitant. The red starling (Pastor roseus) sometimes appears in large flights. The stork, which is never molested, adds a picturesque feature to the Bulgarian village. Of fresh-water fish, the sturgeon (Acipenser sturio and A. huso), ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... 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 ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... 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
... letter was calculated to arrive. In his mind's eye he saw the Grand Hotel at Vevey, a Waldorf-Astoria set in snowy mountains with attendant Swiss yodelling on inaccessible summits, or getting marvels of melody out of little hand-bells, or making cuckoo clocks in top-swollen chalets. The letter would be brought to her on a silver salver, exciting perhaps the stately curiosity of Mrs. Quintan and questions embarrassing to answer. It was a pity he used that railroad envelope! Or would ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... 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 ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... the other's eyes follow him as he left the room. "And that about lets me out," he told himself; "he thinks I've gone cuckoo, now." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... fir-planks fell, and the church, from the time of the pestilence, was discovered; the sun again shone bright through the openings of the doors and windows, on the brass candelabra and the altar, where the communion-cup still stood. The cuckoo came, sat there, and sang: "Many, many years ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... I stop to pick'em up, out he goes. Yesterday he came in and asked me what I thought of a man who wouldn't break his word for half a million. Half a million, mind you! I just asked him who it was, and out he went again. He pops in and out of my office like a figure on a cuckoo-clock." ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... poor sneaking citizens of London, who would see a man of valour eat his very hilts for hunger, ere they would draw a farthing from their long purses to relieve them. O, if a band of the honest fellows I have seen were once to come near that cuckoo's ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... revealed itself through 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
... comforts and luxuries. Low divans of rich and soft material, ottomans and rugs of Persian and Turkish wool, statues and statuettes of marble, graceful forms, filled the corners and the niches. Birds of many colors sang in golden cages, and curious cuckoo-clocks chimed the hours. Laura's mamma was a fine musician, and her harp and piano were always ready to yield sweet tones. The library shelves held books of all kinds and colors; and the cabinets of richly carved wood, before the glass doors of which Laura often ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... looked up at old Baldy from the Lodge and she had heard that from old Baldy one looked down upon the Lodge and the river and the opening valley. She had been told that from old Baldy the Martin chalet resembled a cuckoo clock. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... 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 ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... enlightenment here and there to the effect that this old tumble-down part of the ancient wall is the celebrated Arcade, which formed part of the wall of the King's Palace; and this queer old lane running up through the walls like a sewer is Cuckoo lane; and that is Bugle street, where in olden times the warden blew; and here are the remains of Canute's palace, with its elliptical and circular arches and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... for years, that the root of the cuckoo-pint (arum) was frequently scratched out of the dry banks of hedges, and eaten in severe snowy weather. After observing, with some exactness, myself, and getting others to do the same, we found it was the thrush kind that searched it out. The root of the arum ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... your cuckoo Parabhritika, or for your blosshom Pallavaka or for all the month of May! Who's going to save you when I'm ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... spot of light upon the wall slowly moved as the sun rose higher, till the ivory cross was left in shadow, but still the slumberer slept on, heedless, too, of the twittering of the swallows under the eaves, and the call of the cuckoo ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... 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 ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... open your folded wrapper, Where two twin turtle-doves dwell! O cuckoo-pint, toll me the purple clapper That hangs in your clear ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... 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, others abusing it. Our Cuckoo grows angry, and hastens to the Eagle ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... and more than one of them offered to follow the plow in hopes of becoming the son-in-law of the farmer. The first condition that the cunning peasant set on each new servant was this: "I engage you," he would say, "for a year—that is, till the cuckoo sings the return of spring; but if, from now till then, you say once that you are not satisfied, I will cut off the end of your nose. I give you the same right over me," he added, laughing. And he did as he said. Prague was full of students with the ends of their noses glued on, which ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... She accosted him in the soft tones that had from the first so charmed him, contrasting with her sister's voice as the tones of a reed-pipe contrast with those from metal, or as the full voice of the cuckoo with the shrill chirp of the sparrow. The soft voice was very serious, the manner more than ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... an exploring expedition, leaving Lucien still fast asleep. We returned, about eleven o'clock, with a dozen birds, among which we had a greenish-yellow woodpecker, with a bright red tuft on its head; also a Cuculus vetula, a species of cuckoo, which feeds on lizards and ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... her one eternal cuckoo-cry, "I'm sure it's all a mistake—a hideous mistake; and we'll be good friends again some day. Please ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... 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 ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... preparation, which may broadly be described as instinctive. In the eighth chapter of The Origin of Species Darwin says,[160] "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 in ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... 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 his appreciation ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... oaks and your beeches. I remember the cuckoo's reply To the ring dove that moaned where the reaches Of the Windrush are blue with ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... editions; which the reader would grudge to hear explained to him. [Account of them in Orlich, ii. 273-278 (from various RUTOWSKI Papers; and from the contemporary satirical Pamphlet, "MONDSCHEINWURFE, Mirror-castings of Moonshine, by ZEBEDAUS Cuckoo,) beaten Captain of a beaten Army."] Of the final or acted edition, some loose notion, sufficient for our purpose, may be collected from the following fractions ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in her own mind just where in my new room each bit of my beloved furniture shall be located—the mahogany chest of drawers, the old secretary, the four-post bedstead, the haircloth trunk, the oak book-case, the corn-husk rocker, the cuckoo clock, the Dutch cabinet—yes, each blessed piece has already had its place assigned to it, even to the old red cricket which Miss Anna Rice sent me from her Connecticut home twelve years ago. I am indeed the most fortunate of men; for who but my ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... of the emotions of Shelley and Poe, for instance, with their marvelous music and exquisite intonings of feeling, furnish us with important information. They are the facts of the sex life, as much as the song of the nightingale, or the mocking laughter of the cuckoo pursued by its mate. So Sappho and Elizabeth Browning, to take only two samples, have contributed some of the feminine reaction. The erotic motive in literature has but paralleled the erotic motive in life, with all of its vagaries, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... him to fell the forests, burn the branches, and plant the barley in the land thus cleared. While obeying these directions in the main, Wainamoinen allowed the birch to stand, declaring there must be some place where the cuckoo and the eagle could build their nests. These two birds, greatly pleased by this attention, watched Wainamoinen as he sowed his seed, and heard him chant a prayer to Ukko, Father of Heaven, to send ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... may fill in their vivacious language, the courteous terms the people apply to each other, such as "you ass, pig, monkey, cuckoo, chump, blockhead, fungus," or, on the other side, "my honey, my heart, my dove, my life, my sparrowkin, my dainty cheese." But to go more fully into matters like these would carry us ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... 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 is time once ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins |
