THE CUCKOO.

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 schoolboy 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.

And can I listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget

That golden time again.

O blessed bird! the earth we pace
Again appears to be

An unsubstantial, faery place;

That is fit home for thee.

W. Wordsworth.

THE CUCKOO.

HAIL, beauteous stranger of the grove!

Thou messenger of spring!

Now heaven repairs thy rural seat,
And woods thy welcome sing.

What time the daisy decks the green,
Thy certain voice we hear;
Hast thou a star to guide thy path,
Or mark the rolling year?

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 fliest 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.

J. Logan.

THE SONG-BIRD.

WEET bird, that sing'st away the early hours,
Of winters past or coming void of care,
Well pleased with delights which present are,
Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers;
To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers
Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare,
And what dear gifts on thee He did not spare;
A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.
What soul can be so sick, which by thy songs,
Attired in sweetness, sweetly is not driven
Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites and wrongs,
And lift a reverent eye and thought to heaven?

Sweet, artless songster, thou my mind dost raise
To airs of spheres, yea, and to angels' lays.

W. Drummond.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed-and gazed-but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

W. Wordsworth.

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