Bird Specimens

Famous quotes containing the words bird and/or specimens:

    What bird so sings, yet so does wail?
    O, ‘tis the ravished nightingale!
    “Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu,” she cries,
    And still her woes at midnight rise.
    Brave prick-song! who is’t now we hear?
    None but the lark so shrill and clear;
    John Lyly (1553–1606)

    A tattered copy of Johnson’s large Dictionary was a great delight to me, on account of the specimens of English versifications which I found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and thinking what a charming occupation it must be to “make up” verses.
    Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)