Careful Words

cattle (n.)

The cattle are grazing,

Their heads never raising;

There are forty feeding like one!

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The Cock is crowing.

O Mary, go and call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

Across the sands o' Dee!

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875): The Sands of Dee.

  Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797): Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 344.

  The cattle upon a thousand hills.

Old Testament: Psalm l. 10.