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1634, William Wood, “Of the Birds and Fowles both of Land and Water”, in New Englands Prospect. A True, Lively, and Experimentall Description of that Part of America, Commonly Called New England;, London: Tho Cotes, for Iohn Bellamie,, →OCLC, 1st part, page 27:
Th' Eele-murthering Hearne, and greedy Cormorant, / That neare the Creekes in moriſh Marſhes haunt.
I may mention, that I one day observed a cormorant playing with a fish which it had caught. Eight times successively the bird let its prey go, then dived after it, and although in deep water, brought it each time to the surface. […] I do not know of any other instance where dame Nature appears so wilfully cruel.
These pictures were in water colours. […] One gleam of light lifted into relief a half-submerged mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and large, with wings flecked with foam; […]
In lyke maner who will nat haue in extreme detestation the insatiable gloteny of Vitellius, Fabius Gurges, Apicius, and dyuers other, to whiche carmorantes, neither lande, water, ne ayre, mought be sufficient.
Let Fame, that all hunt after in their lyues, / Liue regiſtred vpon our brazen Tombes, / And then grace vs, in the diſgrace of death: / VVhen ſpight of cormorant deuouring Time, / Th[']endeavour of this preſent breath may buy: / That honour vvhich ſhall bate his ſythes keene edge, / And make vs heires of all eternitie.
Should by the Cormorant belly be reſtrain'd, / VVho is the ſinke a th'body.
1637, attributed to Walter Raleigh, The Life and Death of Mahomet, the Conquest of Spaine, together with the Rysing and Ruine of the Sarazen Empire, London: R H for Daniel Frere,, →OCLC, page 145:
Surfetters, and Cormorants he compared to beasts voyd of reason.
Although Raleigh is named as the author on the title page of the work, it is doubted that he is the author.
VVhy, vvhat a Cormorant in Love am I! vvho not contented vvith the ſlavery of honourable Love in one place, and the pleaſure of enjoying ſome half a ſcore Miſtreſſes of my ovvn acquiring; muſt yet take Vainlove’s Buſineſs upon my hands, becauſe it lay too heavy upon his: […]
1712, Humphry Polesworth [pseudonym; John Arbuthnot], “Of the Various Success of the Law-Suit”, in Law is a Bottomless-Pit., London: John Morphew,, →OCLC, page 11:
Law is a Bottomleſs-Pit, it is a Cormorant, a Harpy, that devours every thing; […]
His treaſur’d ſtores theſe Cormorants conſume, / VVhoſe bones, defrauded of a regal tomb / And common turf, lie naked on the plain, / Or doom’d to vvelter in the vvhelming main.
She had discovered, within a short time, that doctors were not the cormorants (often ignorant, but always insatiable) she had supposed them to be, and that certain causes produced certain effects;...