That raven on the left-hand oak
(Curse on his ill-betiding croak)
Bodes me no good.
Gay.—Fable XXXVII. Farmer’s Wife and the Raven.
CRUEL.—I must be cruel, only to be kind.
Shakespeare.—Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4. (To his Mother.)
CRY.—The author raises mountains seeming full,
But all the cry produces little wool.
King.—Art of Cookery, Line 195; Swift, Prol. to a Play.
CRYING.—We came crying hither,
Thou know’st, the first time that we smell the air
We wawl and cry.—
When
we are born, we cry, that we are come
To this great stage of fools.
Shakespeare.—King Lear, Act IV. Scene 6. (The King to Gloster.)
And when I was born, I drew in the common air, and fell upon the earth, which is of like nature, and the first voice which I uttered was crying, as all others do.
Wisdom of Solomon.—Chap. VII. Verse 3.
CUCKOO.—How sweet the sound of the cuckoo’s note!
Whence is the magic pleasure of the sound?
Grahame.—Birds of Scotland, Part II. Line 1.
The cuckoo then on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he,
Cuckoo!
Cuckoo! Cuckoo! O word
of fear,
Unpleasing sound to the married ear.
Shakespeare.—Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V. Scene 2. (A Song at the end of the act.)
CUCKOO.—The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,
Whose note full many a
man doth mark,
Shakespeare.—Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III. Scene 1. (Bottom, singing.)
Why do you weep, you cuckoo?
Riley’s Plautus, Vol. I. The Pseudolus, Act I. Scene 1.