"The magpie is much less famous for its talking qualities than the parrot, because it does not come from a distance, a…"

"I woll tell you an ensaumple of a woman that ete the good morsell in the absence of her husbonde. Ther was a woman th…"

"So have I seen, in black and white, A prating thing, a magpie hight, Majestically stalk; A stately worthless animal, …"

"Up came a magpie, And bit off her nose."

"The weary rooks to distant woods are gone. With lengths of tail the magpie winnows on To neighbouring tree, and leave…"

"... and the pie with the long tongue That pricks deep into oak warts for a worm, And says a plain word when she finds…"

"Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail, A swollen magpie in a fitful sun, Half black half white Nor knowst’ou wing fr…"

"The room was a magpie-nest of picked-at knowledge, the lair of a tinkerer to whom the universe was one vast toyshop o…"

"Invisible magpies warbled in the plane trees. Softly, gently, never running out of melodic ideas, they perched among …"

"The colour of the magpie, her father was saying, was symbolic of creation. The void, the mystery of that which had no…"