"Cuckoo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... woke the cuckoo: and the cuckoo filled the leafy air so full of his two limpid notes that the dreams of Rodriguez heard them and went away, back over their border to dreamland. Rodriguez awoke Morano, who lit his fire: and soon they had struck their camp and were ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... meanwhile, we 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 too ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... nay, there were days when it seemed as if he were filled with icy coldness, and a keen wind was sweeping over plains of frost and snow. When one saw him again he was again like a smiling summer's day, when all the warblers of the wood joyously greet us from hedges and bushes, when the cuckoo's voice resounds through the blue sky, and the brook ripples through flowery meadows. Then it was a pleasure to hear him; his presence then had a beneficial influence, and the heart expanded at ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 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 ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seemed rather 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 ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... never weary of looking at the inscriptions on the great cliffs at the River of the Dog—the strange beauty of that name! It was like the place-names of native Ulster—Athbo, the Ford of Cows, Sraidcuacha, the Cuckoo's Lane—one name sounded to the other like tuning-forks. And the sweet strange harmony of it filled his heart, so that he could understand the irresistible charm of Lebanon—the high clear note like a bird's song. Here was the sun and the dreams of mighty things, and the palpable proximity ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Crust krusto. Crustaceous kankrogenta. Crutch lambastono. Cry (call out) krii. Cry (weep) plori. Cry out ekkrii. Cry (of animals, etc.) bleki. Crypt subterajxo. Crystal kristalo. Crystallise kristaligi. Cub (of lion) leonido. Cube kubo. Cuckoo kukolo. Cucumber kukumo. Cudgel bastonego. Cuff manumo. Cuirass kiraso. Cull kolekti. Cullender kribrilo. Culpable kulpa. Culprit kulpulo. Cultivate kulturi. Culture kulturo. Cunning ruzo. Cunning ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... 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 on the Deacon rush'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... it to 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 ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... 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 like the lapis lazuli and with ten thousand snow-white ducks and swans and with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... by now within arm's-length of the green gate. He looked with pleasure at the six virgins fluttering in their green gowns, and peeping bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked under their green bonnets. Beyond them he saw the forbidden orchard, with cuckoo-flower and primrose, daffodil and celandine, silver windflower and sweet violets blue and white, spangling the gay grass. The twisted apple-trees were in ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... of serrated foliage, with clusters of grey-green flower buds already foretelling the crimson to come; about his feet a silver army of uncurling fronds brightened the earth and softened the sharp edges of the boulders scattered down the coomb. Here the lover waited to the music of a cuckoo, and his eyes ever turned towards a stile at the edge of the pine woods, two hundred yards ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... 414 B.C. Euelpides and Pisthetaerus, disgusted with the state of things at Athens, build a new and improved city, Cloud-cuckoo-town, in the kingdom of the birds. Some see an allusion to the Sicilian expedition, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... season—now their love-time, and era of nest-building. I find flying over the river, crows, gulls and hawks. I hear the afternoon shriek of the latter, darting about, preparing to nest. The oriole will soon be heard here, and the twanging meoeow of the cat-bird; also the king-bird, cuckoo and the warblers. All along, there are three peculiarly characteristic spring songs—the meadow-lark's, so sweet, so alert and remonstrating (as if he said, "don't you see?" or, "can't you understand?")—the cheery, mellow, human tones of the robin—(I have been ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... moment Norbert's eyes caught a glimpse of the old-fashioned cuckoo clock that hung on the wall in one corner of the room. He started ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... the cuckoo brings a gale of wind with him; and of all gales in the year this is the one most dreaded by gardeners and cidermen, for it catches the fruit trees in the height of their blossoming season, and in its short rage wrecks a ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... Ennis 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 ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... Balm (Bee-balm); Brake; Carnation (Bizarre Dianthus caryophyllus); Clover (Crimson Trifolium incarnatus); Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris); Cowslip (Primula veris); Crowflower (Ragged Robin, Lychnis floscuculi); Cuckoo Buds (Butter cups, Ranunculus acris); Daisies (Bellis perennis); Eryngium M. (Sea Holly); Flax; Flower de luce (Iris Germanica, blue); Fumitory (Dicentra spectabilis; Bleeding Heart); Harebell (Campanula rotundifolia); Larksheel (Delphinium elatum, Bee Larkspur); Peony; Pinks ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... broad surface of gold, beautiful to look down upon, with islands of tenderest birch green interspersed, and willows in which the sedge-reedling chattered. They used to say in the country that cuckoos were getting scarce, but here the notes of the cuckoo echoed all day long, and the birds often flew over the house. Doves cooed, blackbirds whistled, thrushes sang, jays called, wood-pigeons uttered the old familiar notes in the little copse hard by. Even a ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... landmarks again, and got back into the "feel" of the war zone. There were the five old windmills of Cassel that wave their arms up the hill road, and the estaminets by which one found one's way down country lanes—"The Veritable Cuckoo" and "The Lost Corner" and "The Flower of the Fields"—and the first smashed roofs and broken barns which led to the area of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Through the open windows, between the massive bunches of lilacs, hawthorn, and laburnum blossoms, Julien de Buxieres caught glimpses of rolling meadows and softly tinted vistas. The gentle twittering of the birds and the mysterious call of the cuckoo, mingled with the perfume of flowers, stole into his study, and produced a sense of enjoyment as novel to him as it was delightful. Having until the present time lived a sedentary life in cities, he had had no opportunity ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... charming works of real art. Whistler gave the case of the Swiss as an excellent people with little capacity for art. But the old Swiss chalets are full of character and beauty, and there are churches in Switzerland which have all the beauty of the Middle Ages. The cuckoo clocks and other Swiss articles of commerce which Whistler despised are contemptible, not because they are Swiss, but because they are tourist trash produced by workmen who express no pleasure of their own ...
— Progress and History • Various
... England is set for ever if the Catholics exercise political power. Give the Catholics everything else; but keep political power from them. These wise men did not see that, when everything else had been given, political power had been given. They continued to repeat their cuckoo song, when it was no longer a question whether Catholics should have political power or not, when a Catholic association bearded the Parliament, when a Catholic agitator exercised infinitely more ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... present of the famous horologium-clepsydra-cuckoo clock, the dog Becerillo and the elephant Abu Lubabah sent by Harun to Charlemagne is not mentioned by Eastern authorities and consequently no reference to it will be found in my late friend Professor Palmer's little volume "Haroun ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... strangled with too much liberty. She is like a child being overfed with jam. 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 will prove ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... where the sun shines nearly every day Where the skies are ever blue. Where the folks are as happy as the day is long And there's lots of work to do. Where the soft winds blow and the gum trees grow As far as the eye can see, Where the magpie chaffs and the cuckoo-burra laughs Australia ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... cuckoos. At six o'clock she will cuckoo exactly six times, and at the sixth 'oo' Jane brisks out ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... into May, for the men were thrang with work, and the lassies at the big house haining a bit of bannock to be putting under their pillows for fear of hearing the cuckoo, when first I heard the strange whistling. It is not a very lucky thing to be hearing the cuckoo and you wanting food, and I think this is just a haver of the old folk to be making the young ones rise early on the fine clear mornings; but many's the first bite I ken was taken from below the ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... 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
... days," writes a naturalist, "since I heard the unmistakable 'Cuck, cuck, cuck' of the newly-arrived cuckoo at Hampstead." Not to be confused with the "Cook, cook, cook!" of the newly-married ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... when his 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 it lie beside her plate at breakfast, ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... 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 ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... Egbert was the ass. And he wasn't having any. He couldn't: he just couldn't. Since necessity did not force him to work for his bread and butter, he would not work for work's sake. You can't make the columbine flowers nod in January, nor make the cuckoo sing in England at Christmas. Why? It isn't his season. He doesn't want to. Nay, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... 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 ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... stand still,' he said, but for one moment Wendy saw the romantic figure come to rest on the cuckoo clock. 'O the lovely!' she cried, though Tink's face ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... itself has always seemed a part and parcel of the charm of his productions. It may be different with the rose, but the attraction of this paper drama sensibly declined when Webb had crept into the rubric: a poor cuckoo, flaunting in Skelt's nest. And now we have reached Pollock, sounding deeper gulfs. Indeed, this name of Skelt appears so stagey and piratic, that I will adopt it boldly to design these qualities. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... origin of the word "Welsh," from the Saxon "Wealh," a stranger, and the use of it in this sense by our old writers (see Brady's Introd., p. 5.: Sir T. Smith's Commonwealth of England, chap. xiii.), sufficiently explain this designation of the Cuckoo, the temporary resident of our cold climate, and the ambassador extraordinary in the revolutions of the seasons, in the words of the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... appetite, he had been attracted by the savoury smell of Abdullah's kitchen, and he had drawn nearer and nearer to our establishment, until at length by playing with the boys, and occasionally being invited to share in their meals, Cuckoo had become incorporated with ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... she might with her busy needle, the day was drearily long; and few genuine cuckoo-carols have been listened to with such grateful rejoicing as greeted those metallic gutturals that once in every sixty minutes issued from the throat of the gaudy automaton caged in the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... have such a Kind of Judge, as the Cuckoo and Nightingal once had, when they vy'd one with the other, who ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... you," said the robin. "You know there is a bird called the cowbird or cuckoo, and that bird is too lazy to build a nest for itself. So what ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... violets blue, And cuckoo buds of yellow hue, And lady-smocks all silver white, Do paint the ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... to be away, as he had told me, till the evening. I felt as though I had been let out of prison as I breakfasted joyfully on the verandah, the sun streaming through the creeperless trellis on to the little meal, and the first cuckoo of the year calling to me from the fir wood. Of the dinner and evening before me I would not think; indeed I had a half-formed plan in my head of going to the forest after lunch with the babies, taking wraps and provisions, and getting lost till well on towards bedtime; so that when the angel-visitant ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... 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
... societies. Next comes a page, headed "Pecuniary Distress of Charles the First," and containing a transcript of a receipt for some plate lent to the King in 1643. He then copies Langhorne's Owen of Carron; the verses of Canute, on passing Ely; the lines to a cuckoo, given by Warton as the oldest specimen of English verse; a translation "by a gentleman in Devonshire," of the death-song of Regner Lodbrog; and the beautiful quatrain ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... me; but as she turned to go her hump became visible, and I saw that there was an opening in it, and there popped out from this hole the green head of a parrot which the old woman carried in her hump. This creature called out, "Cuckoo," in a thin, squeaking, far-away voice, and then withdrew again into the frightful old hag's hump. Oh! when I heard that "Cuckoo!" a cold perspiration formed on my forehead; but suddenly the woman disappeared and then I realized that it ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... predecessor, I pass on to a speaker of a very very opposite personality—the well-proportioned, beauteous maiden with azure starry eyes, gilded hair, and teeth like the seeds of a pomegranate (oh, si sic omnes!), who vaunted, in the musical accents of a cuckoo, her right to work out her own life, independently of masculine companionship or assistance, and declared that the saccharine element of courtship and connubiality was but the exploded ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... spite of all the old maid guardians that ever lived. Wonder if the old lady knows how it feels to have a man kiss her? I bet she don't! I've never seen your Suffragette queen, but I don't need to after all you've told me about her. She must be a cuckoo. ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... combination, however steep and deep be the gill of its quiet incubation, a number of people and of things peep in, and will enter, like the cuckoo, at the glimpse of a white feather, or even without it, unless beak and claw are shown. And now the intruder into Pet's love nest had the right to look in, and to pull him out, neck and crop, unless he sat there legally. Whether birds discharge fraternal ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... famous than either, the chryselephantine Hera for a temple between Argos and Mycenae. The goddess was represented as seated on a throne of gold, with bare head and arms. In her right hand was the sceptre crowned with the cuckoo, symbol of conjugal fidelity; in her left, the pomegranate. There exists no certain copy of the Hera of Polycleitos. The head of Hera in Naples may, perhaps, give us some idea of the type of divine beauty ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... said, "as far as I know: 'One flew east and one flew west and one flew over the cuckoo's nest.'" I wish I could convey by words the lilt of her clear, fearless, boyish voice, the sparkle of mischief and daring in her eyes, and deep beneath, like treasures in the sea, that look of steadfastness, of praying, that made you wonder if she was really as happy and as carefree as ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... the essence, of all his experience. We are like bees foraging in the garden of the world, and hoarding the honey in the hive of memory. And no hoard is like any other hoard that ever was or ever will be. The cuckoo calling over the valley, the blackbird fluting in the low boughs in the evening, the solemn majesty of the Abbey, the life of the streets, the ebb and flow of Father Thames—everything whispers to us some secret that it has for no other ear, and touches a chord ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... which they swore were bank-notes. They did not shoot him, and when they rode off he addrest them with profound gratitude, making a congee: "Gentlemen, I wish you good night, and we are very much obliged to you that you have not used us ill!" And this is the cuckoo that has had the audacity to foist upon me ten buttons on a side and a black velvet collar—A damn'd ninth ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... horses, love their masters and keepers: many stories I could relate in this kind, but see Gillius de hist. anim. lib. 3. cap. 14. those two Epistles of Lipsius, of dogs and horses, Agellius, &c. Fifthly, for bringing up, as if a bitch bring up a kid, a hen ducklings, a hedge-sparrow a cuckoo, &c. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 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 ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... said, 'Oho! That is how it stands? So she is to be cuckoo, hey?' He sat square and intent for a moment or two, working his mouth like a man who chews a straw. Then he slapped his big hand on his knee, and rose up. 'If I cannot spike this wheel of vice, trust me never. By my soul, a plot indeed. Oh, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... there was but one Madame Warens in the world, whose image was never absent from his thoughts; with whom flowers and verdure sprung up beneath his feet, and without whom all was cold and barren in nature and in his own breast. The cuckoo, "that wandering voice," that comes and goes with the spring, mocks our ears with one note from youth to age; and the lapwing, screaming round the traveller's path, repeats for ever the same sad ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... as Gilda and Caffyn were in a corner of the exhibition of carved work at the lower end of the town, she took advantage of the blaring of two big orchestral Black Forest organs, each performing a different overture, and of the innumerable cuckoo cries from the serried rows of clocks on the walls, to go back to their conversation at the table d'hote. 'Have you asked him yet? Mabel is not engaged to him after all?' (her face fell as she gathered this). 'It is all ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Stangerson was still working, when the thing happened. I had been cleaning and putting instruments in order all the evening and was waiting for Monsieur Stangerson to go to bed. Mademoiselle Stangerson had worked with her father up to midnight; when the twelve strokes of midnight had sounded by the cuckoo-clock in the laboratory, she rose, kissed Monsieur Stangerson and bade him good-night. To me she said "bon soir, Daddy Jacques" as she passed into The Yellow Room. We heard her lock the door and shoot the bolt, so that I could ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... destroying their own parent and base offspring of the ungrateful cuckoo, who when he has grown strong slays his nurse, the giver of his strength, are degenerate clerks with regard to books. Bring it again to mind and consider faithfully what ye receive through books, and ye will find that books are as it were the creators of your distinction, without which other ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... Queensland jungles which have marked individualistic characters is that known as the koel cuckoo, which the blacks of some localities have named "calloo-calloo"—a mimetic term imitative of the most frequent notes of the bird. The male is lustrous black, the female mottled brown, and during most parts of the year both are extremely shy, though noisy enough ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the landscape-painter. Now, in this month of May, the shrubs that clung to the furrowed face of the white rock were freshly green, and the low plaint of the nightingale, and the jocund cry of the more distant cuckoo, broke the sameness of the great chorus of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Little Boy Blue's room stood a little blue clock. And every morning at five o'clock the door of the clock flew open, and a cuckoo came out. The cuckoo said, "Cuck-oo," five times, and then went into the little blue clock again, and the little door closed after him. Then Little Boy Blue knew it was time ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... To him it was only the face of a little girl. He ran, it rustled to the right, it rustled to the left, it rustled in front, it rustled behind, he rustled, she rustled, and all these sounds and the running itself excited him, and he cried: "Where are you? Say cuckoo!" Nobody answered. When he heard his own voice, he felt just a little uneasy, but he continued running; then a thought came to him, only a single one, and he murmured as he kept on running: "What am I going to say to her? What am I going to say to her?" He ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... 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 ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... 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
... as the story appears to most of us—may serve to illustrate the other, namely, a cool, conscious, workmanlike control of every element in the selection and combination of imagery. Wordsworth's naive explanation of the task performed by the imagination in his "Cuckoo" and "Leech-Gatherer" [Footnote: Preface to poems of 1815-1845.] occupies a middle ground. We are at least certain of his entire honesty—and incidentally of his ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Meddlesome Climbs to the shelf, Since no-one is looking, And mischievous elf, Pulls down the fine vases, The cuckoo-clock stops, And sprinkles the carpet With ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... look on with approving eyes, as if it was a vaudeville performance by amateurs in polite society. The cowbirds, male and female, are all free lovers. There is no mating among them. The female lays her eggs in some other bird's nest, like the English cuckoo, as if she were too busy with the duties and pleasures of society to ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... 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 ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... For the Cuckoo he miss'd,—but Cock Robin he kill'd! And all the birds mourn'd that his blood was ...
— Aunt Kitty's Stories • Various
... juicy grass which sent up mists of pollen at a touch; and with tall blooming weeds emitting offensive smells—weeds whose red and yellow and purple hues formed a polychrome as dazzling as that of cultivated flowers. She went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of growth, gathering cuckoo-spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that were underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and slug-slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky blights which, though snow-white on the apple-tree trunks, made madder stains on her skin; thus she drew quite ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... was an old joke in the Willis family. It was a cuckoo clock and had been broken for more than a year, but remained one of those things that are never attended to. Several times a week the little mother had mentioned that the dining-room clock really must be mended, but it was always forgotten. Since Hugh had been home he had often declared that ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... pied, and Violets blue, And Lady-smocks all silver-white, And Cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, Do paint the meadows ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... a parrot's, her teeth like a string of pearls, her lips like the red gourds, her neck like a pigeon's, her waist like a leopard's, her hands and feet like a soft lotus, her face like the moon, with the gait of a goose, and the voice of a cuckoo!" ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... 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 three ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... Hans; "'tis all well. I have no home—I'm one of the cuckoo tribe that has no resting-place of its own, and only now and then slips into the swallow's nest. For the short time I have to live, I shall have no trouble in finding quarters wherever I go. I can now climb up into a tree again, and look down ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... from branch of flow'ring thorn The song of friendly cuckoo warn The tardy-moving swain; Hast bid the purple swallow hail; And seen him now through ether sail, Now sweeping downward o'er the vale. And skimming ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... We had a pleasant day's walk. We passed Smollett's monument on the road (somehow these poets touch one in reflection more than most military heroes)—talked of old times; you repeated Logan's beautiful verses to the cuckoo,* which I wanted to compare with Wordsworth's, but my courage failed me; you then told me some passages of an early attachment which was suddenly broken off; we considered together which was the most to be pitied, ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... of 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 man than any wild birds ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... kissed stolen kisses in the pause of the seconds between the frank, outspoken 'Good nights.' When all the signs of ripeness are visible—the love-shades and love-notes that cannot be hidden, the unconscious caress of the eyes in a fleeting glance, the involuntary softening of voices, the cuckoo-sob in the throat—why, the night-parting kiss does not need to be seen. It has to be. Still further, oh my woman, know that I justify you ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... affair, and contained an extraordinary medley of articles—European furniture, sewing machines, barrel organs, brass cannon and cannon-balls, cuckoo clocks, bayonets, cutlasses, rifles, cases and casks of liquor, from Hollands gin to champagne, and fiery Fiji rum to the best old French brandy. His harem consisted of the daughters of his most notable chiefs, and occupied a house near by, which was guarded day and night by men armed with breechloaders, ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... said, 'when I tell them that within a few minutes' walk of Baker Street Station, and the incessant din of Marylebone Road, such birds as the cuckoo, flycatcher, robin and wren ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... answered the city swallow, 'because, one day, when I was passing through the palace garden, I met a cuckoo, who, as I need not tell you, always pretends to be able to see into the future. We began to talk about certain things which were happening in the palace, and of the events of past years. "Ah," said he, "the only person who can expose the wickedness of the ministers and show the king how wrong ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... by rote, Lady, twas that yeare the Cuckoo sung in May: another token Lady; there raigned in Rome a great Tyrant that yeare, and many Maides lost their heads for using flesh ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... croods, the corbie cries, The cuckoo conks, the prattling pies To geck there they begin; The jargon of the jangling jays, The cracking craws and keckling kays, They deav'd me with their din; The painted pawn, with Argus eyes, Can on his May-cock call, The turtle wails, on wither'd trees, And Echo answers all. Repeating, with ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... 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 ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... parsonage-house, backed by woodlands, and a little noisy rill running in front. The birds were still in the hedgerows, only, as if from the very heart of the most distant woods, there came now and then the mellow note of the cuckoo. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... doors of 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 people wept when they saw, once more, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • 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 ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... only the noses of the horses showed beyond the stalls; but, when the vessel rolled heavily to a beam swell, their heads swung in and out like the cuckoos of cuckoo clocks. One moment, as the ship lay well over into a trough, Mac could see nothing but a long line of posts; the next, as she lifted to a sea, out shot those eighty heads. They trod backwards and forwards in regular step, and were cursed constantly by the men whose bunks were immediately ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... delightful Muirne was—she took the branch; and as to Tuiren, a man could not look at her without becoming angry or dejected. Her face was fresh as a spring morning; her voice more cheerful than the cuckoo calling from the branch that is highest in the hedge; and her form swayed like a reed and flowed like a river, so that each person thought she would ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... each turn of the mother's discourse. While Luigi is striving to make plain to her the "grounds for killing," he thinks to hear the cuckoo, and forgets all his array of facts; for April and June are coming! The mother seizes at once on this, and joins to it a still more powerful persuasion. In June, not only summer's loveliness, but Chiara, the girl he is to marry, is coming: she who gazes ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... "that's the cuckoo song to Nell; she does harm, but never does good! Well, may my blackest curse wither the man that left Nell to hear that, as the kindest word that's spoke either to her or of her! I don't blame you. Meehaul—I blame nobody but him for it all. Now a word of advice before you go in; don't let ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... clear of bird and cloud, The grass shines windless, grey and still, In dusky ruin the owl dreams on, The cuckoo echoes on the hill; Yet soft along Alulvan's walks ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... distant sky; The cloudy heavens, unblest by summer's smile; The sounding storm that sweeps the rugged isle, The chill, bleak summit of eternal snow, The wide, wild glen, the pathless plains below, The dark blue rocks, in barren grandeur piled, The cuckoo sighing to the pensive wild! Far different these from all that charm'd before, The grassy banks of Clutha's winding shore: The sloping vales, with waving forests lined; Her smooth blue lakes, unruffled ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... looked very different to when we saw it last, but it was a mild balmy winter, with primroses and cuckoo-pints pushing in the valleys, and here and there a celandine pretending ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... that linger there, 65 Over that islet paved with flowers and moss, While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine, Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own? The crane returned to her unfrozen haunt, 70 And the false cuckoo bade the spray good morn; And on a wintry bough the widowed bird, Hid in the deepest night of ivy-leaves, Renewed the vigils of a sleepless sorrow. I, left like her, and leaving one like her, 75 Alike ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... 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 ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume, The cherry-trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London!) And there they say, when dawn is high and all the world's a blaze of sky The cuckoo, though he's very shy, will sing ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... fiddle out of tune, As the cuckoo is in June, From the candlesticks of Lothbury And the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Schoenhausen summer, as the cry of war is also dying. It is really going to be summer again, and on a very long walk, from which I am returning home dead tired, I took much pleasure in the small green leaves of the hazel and white beech, and heard the cuckoo, who told me that we shall live together for eleven years more; let us hope longer still. My hunt was extraordinary; charming wild pine-woods on the ride out, sky-high, as in the Erzgebirge; then, on the other side, steep valleys, like the Selke, only the hills were much higher, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... nor organ, From touch of cunning men, Made music half so eloquent As our hearts thrilled with then. When the blythe lark lightly soaring, And the mavis on the spray, And the cuckoo in the greenwood, Sang ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... diffused, and is a summer visitor all over North America, even within the Arctic Circle, where, for a brief space of time, it revels in the ardent heat of the short-lived summer of the North. Like the cuckoo, she follows the summer ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... 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 learning and ingenuity ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... 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 game birds come ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... 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 handsome, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... cuckoo (both species) is supposed by all hunters to foretell rain, when its "Kow, kow, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... intrigued by no precocious rook, who Haunts the high hall garden calling "Maud;" Mine's no "blithe newcomer" like the cuckoo Wordsworth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... The Deserted Village, the coloured prints, and ballads, and even The Twelve Good Rules, that decorate the walls: the humble library that fills the deal shelf "beside the cuckoo clock"; the few devotional works, including the illustrated Bible, bought in parts with the weekly sixpence; the choice notes by learned editors that raise more doubts than they close. "Rather," ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... nightingale. The birds haunted the district in great numbers, and the time of their singing was the time when Snarley "let out his line" to its furthest limits. His love of the nightingale was coupled, strangely enough, with a hatred equally intense for the cuckoo. To the song of the cuckoo in early spring he was fairly tolerant; but in June, when, as everybody knows, "she changeth her tune," Snarley's rage broke forth into bitter persecution. He had invented a method of his own, which I shall not divulge, for snaring these birds; and whenever ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... that separated the wood from the orchards and plantations of fruit trees, and pausing for a minute to look down on the more than half-hidden village, invariably the first loud sounds that reached my ear were those of the cuckoo, thrush, and blackbird. At all hours in the village, from early morning to evening twilight, these three voices sounded far and near above the others. I considered myself fortunate that no large tree near the cottage had been made choice of by a song-thrush as ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... 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 ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... were to come forward and pretend those parts. The lights—the orchestra lights—came up a clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell—which had been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which ministered to its warning. The actors were men and women painted. I thought the fault was in them; but it was in myself, and the alteration which those many centuries—of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... 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 the Literary Gazette, in a letter to Mr. Loudon, says, "about fifteen years ago I obtained a cuckoo from the nest of (I think) a hedge sparrow, at Old Brompton, where I then resided. It was rather curious, as being within ten yards of my house, Cromwell Cottage, and in a narrow and much frequented ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... on the performance of your opera. You may safely expect various disagreeables in connection therewith, which are inseparable from musical work. The great thing is to remain cheerful, and to do something worth doing. The cuckoo take ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... the Hindoo type;—that is, she should have the complexion of chocolate and cream; "her face should be as the full moon, her nose smooth as a flute; she should have eyes like unto lotuses, and a neck like a pigeon's; her voice should be soft as the cuckoo's, and her step as the gait of a young elephant of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various |
