TO THE CUCKOO.* O BLITHE New-comer! I have heard, O Cuckoo shall I call thee Bird, While I am lying on the grass 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 ; * This was a favourite poem of the Author, and he dwells upon it in his preface to the Edition of 1815, theorising upon several of its passages. "This concise interrogation characterises the seeming ubiquity of the voice of the cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of a corporeal existence, the imagination being tempted to this exertion of her power by a consciousness in the memory that the cuckoo is almost perpetually heard throughout the season of Spring, but seldom becomes an object of sight."-W. W. Thy loud note smites my ear.-Edit. 1815. § I hear thee babbling to the valc.-Edit. 1815. The same whom in my school-boy days Which made me look a thousand ways To seek thee did I often rove And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain O blessed Bird! the earth we pace An unsubstantial, faery place; That is fit home for Thee ! 1804. YEW-TREES.* THERE is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale, * The Shaksperian grandeur of the latter part of this short poem has given it great interest with many readers. I never can forget the quivering energy of articulation with which (when walking in an avenue of very ancient Yews in Westmorland) I have heard the Poet recite the lines which describe the peculiar growth of the Yew-tree trunk.-ED. R To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea To be destroyed. But worthier still of note Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale, Joined in one solemn and capacious grove; Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved; Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope, 1803. VIEW FROM THE TOP OF BLACK COMB.* THIS Height a ministering Angel might select : That British ground commands :-low dusky tracts, And, in a line of eye-sight linked with these, To Tiviot's stream, to Annan, Tweed, and Clyde :- A dwindled object, and submits to lie At the spectator's feet.-Yon azure ridge, * Black Comb stands at the southern extremity of Cumberland, between the mouths of the Esk and the Duddon; its base covers a much greater extent of ground than any other mountain in those parts; and, from its situation, the summit commands a more extensive view than any other point in Britain. The Isle of Man : the view of this island from the coast near Bootle, is elaborately described in a letter to Sir George Beaumont. See Life I., 277. Is it a perishable cloud? Or there 1813. NUTTING.* It seems a day (I speak of one from many singled out) Motley accoutrement, of power to smile At thorns, and brakes, and brambles,—and, in truth, More ragged than need was! O'er pathless rocks, Through beds of matted fern, and tangled thickets, *Written at Goslar in Germany, 1799. This line is not in the earlier editions. |