Augury

"But hence, and seek the palace of the queen. / Glad news I bear thee, of thy comrades brought, / the North-wind shifted and the skies serene; / thy ships have gained the harbour which they sought, / else vain my parents' lore the augury they taught."

Augury is divination based on the behavior of birds.

A lot of people still cling to a form of augury, seeing black cats as omens of bad luck.

Cities, in adopting a name, bear it usually as a testimony of victories or as an augury of virtues.

But Cicero does not seem even to have had a religious sentiment to cover the nakedness of his political opportunism. Not only does he in the Tusculan Disputations put aside in the Platonic fashion all the Homeric tales which anthropomorphize and discredit the gods; but in his treatise On Divination he shows an absolute disbelief in all the recognized practices, including the augury which he himself officially practised; and his sole excuse is that they are to be retained “on account of popular opinion and of their great public utility.”

Not a whit, we defy augury.

In Wordsworth's first preludings there is but a dim foreboding of the creator of an era. From Southey's early poems, a safer augury might have been drawn.

No augury could be hopefuller. The Fates must indeed be hard, the Ordeal severe, the Destiny dark, that could destroy so bright a Spring!

Fortunately many of the younger men are keen enough to make a success of their work, and this gives a better augury for the future.

Evidently he did not mean to be a mere figurehead, but to carry on the old tradition of Wilsthorpe's; and that was considered to be a good thing in itself and an augury for future prosperity.