Bird Specimens

Famous quotes containing the words bird and/or specimens:

    “Yet I would bear my shortcomings
    With meet tranquility,
    But for the charge that blessed things
    I’d liefer not have be.
    O, doth a bird deprived of wings
    Go earth-bound wilfully!”
    —Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

    “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)