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;

* 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
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 I can 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!

1804.

YEW-TREES.*

THERE is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single, in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of

yore:
Not loth to furnish weapons for the bands
Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched

* 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
And drew their sounding bows at Azincour,
Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.
Of vast circumference and gloom profound
This solitary Tree! a living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent

To be destroyed. But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine

Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;
Nor uninformed with Phantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane ;-a pillared shade,
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
Perennially-beneath whose sable roof

Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked
With unrejoicing berries-ghostly Shapes

May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton
And Time the Shadow ;-there to celebrate,
As in a natural temple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
United worship; or in mute repose
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves.

1803.

VIEW FROM THE TOP OF BLACK COMB.*

THIS Height a ministering Angel might select:
For from the summit of BLACK COмв (dread name
Derived from clouds and storms!) the amplest range
Of unobstructed prospect may be seen

That British ground commands :-low dusky tracts,
Where Trent is nursed, far southward! Cambrian hills
To the south-west, a multitudinous show;
And, in a line of eye-sight linked with these,
The hoary peaks of Scotland that give birth

To Tiviot's stream, to Annan, Tweed, and Clyde :-
Crowding the quarter whence the sun comes forth
Gigantic mountains rough with crags; beneath,
Right at the imperial station's western base
Main ocean, breaking audibly, and stretched
Far into silent regions blue and pale ;—
And visibly engirding Mona's Isle +

That, as we left the plain, before our sight
Stood like a lofty mount, uplifting slowly
(Above the convex of the watery globe)
Into clear view the cultured fields that streak
Her habitable shores, but now appears
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

Do we behold the line of Erin's coast?
Land sometimes by the roving shepherd-swain
(Like the bright confines of another world)
Not doubtfully perceived. Look homeward now!
In depth, in height, in circuit, how serene
The spectacle, how pure !-Of Nature's works,
In earth, and air, and earth-embracing sea,
A revelation infinite it seems;
Display august of man's inheritance,
Of Britain's calm felicity and power!

1813.

NUTTING.*

It seems a day

(I speak of one from many singled out)
One of those heavenly days that cannot die ;
When, in the eagerness of boyish hope, t
I left our cottage-threshold, sallying forth
With a huge wallet o'er my shoulders slung,
A nutting-crook in hand; and turned my steps
Tow'rd some far-distant wood, a Figure quaint,
Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds
Which for that service had been husbanded,
By exhortation of my frugal Dame-

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.