The Cuckoo

Delightful visitant! with thee

I hail the time of flowers,

And hear the sound of music sweet
From birds among the bowers.

The school-boy, wandering through the wood

To pull the primrose gay,

Starts, the new voice of Spring to hear,

And imitates thy lay.

What time the pea puts on the bloom,

Thou fli'st thy vocal vale,

An annual guest in other lands,
Another Spring to hail.

Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,

Thy sky is ever clear;

Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No Winter in thy year!

O could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make, with joyful wing,

Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the Spring.

1489

John Logan [1748-1788]

THE CUCKOO

WE heard it calling, clear and low,
That tender April morn; we stood
And listened in the quiet wood,

We heard it, ay, long years ago.

It came, and with a strange, sweet cry,
A friend, but from a far-off land;
We stood and listened, hand in hand,
And heart to heart, my Love and I.

In dreamland then we found our joy,

And so it seemed as 'twere the Bird That Helen in old times had heard At noon beneath the oaks of Troy.

O time far off, and yet so near!

It came to her in that hushed grove,
It warbled while the wooing throve,
It sang the song she loved to hear.

And now I hear its voice again,
And still its message is of peace,
It sings of love that will not cease-
For me it never sings in vain.

Frederick Locker-Lampson (1821-1895)

TO THE CUCKOO

O BLITHE New-comer! I have heard,

I hear thee and rejoice.

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the grass

Thy twofold shout I hear; From hill to hill it seems to pass, At once far off, and near.

Though babbling only to the Vale

Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale

Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!

Even yet thou art to me

No bird, but an invisible thing,

A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my school-boy days

I listened to; that Cry

Which made me look a thousand ways,
In bush, and tree, and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove

Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen.

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892]

THE HAWKBIT

How sweetly on the autumn scene,
When haws are red amid the green,

The hawkbit shines with face of cheer,
The favorite of the faltering year!

When days grow short and nights grow cold,
How fairly gleams its eye of gold
On pastured field and grassy hill,
Along the roadside and the rill!

It seems the spirit of a flower,
This offspring of the autumn hour,
Wandering back to earth to bring
Some kindly afterthought of spring.

A dandelion's ghost might so
Amid Elysian meadows blow,
Become more fragile and more fine

Breathing the atmosphere divine.

Charles G. D. Roberts [1860

THE HERON

O MELANCHOLY Bird, a winter's day
Thou standest by the margin of the pool,
And, taught by God, dost thy whole being school
To Patience, which all evil can allay.

God has appointed thee the Fish thy prey;
And given thyself a lesson to the Fool
Unthrifty, to submit to moral rule,
And his unthinking course by thee to weigh.
There need not schools, nor the Professor's chair,
Though these be good, true wisdom to impart;
He, who has not enough for these to spare
Of time, or gold, may yet amend his heart,

And teach his soul, by brooks and rivers fair:
Nature is always wise in every part.

Edward Hovell-Thurlow [1781-1829]

THE JACKDAW

THERE is a bird, who by his coat,
And by the hoarseness of his note,
Might be supposed a crow;
A great frequenter of the church,
Where bishop-like he finds a perch,
And dormitory too.

Above the steeple shines a plate,
That turns and turns, to indicate

From what point blows the weather;
Look up your brains begin to swim,
'Tis in the clouds-that pleases him,
He chooses it the rather.

The Green Linnet

Fond of the speculative height,
Thither he wings his airy flight,
And thence securely sees
The bustle and the raree-show,
That occupy mankind below,
Secure and at his ease.

You think, no doubt, he sits and muses
On future broken bones and bruises,
If he should chance to fall.
No: not a single thought like that
Employs his philosophic pate,
Or troubles it at all.

He sees that this great roundabout,
The world, with all its medley rout,
Church, army, physic, law,

Its customs, and its businesses
Is no concern at all of his,

And says-what says he?-"Caw."

Thrice happy bird! I too have seen
Much of the vanities of men;
And, sick of having seen 'em,
Would cheerfully these limbs resign
For such a pair of wings as thine,
And such a head between 'em.

1493

From the Latin of Vincent Bourne,
by William Cowper [1731-1800]

THE GREEN LINNET

BENEATH these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of Spring's unclouded weather,

In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat!

And flowers and birds once more to greet,

My last year's friends together.