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THE CUCKOO, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Forth I wandered, years ago
Last Line: Cuckoo-clock.
Subject(s): Clocks; Time


FORTH I wandered, years ago,
When the summer sun was low,
And the forest all aglow
With his light:
'Twas a day of cloudless skies;
When the trout neglects to rise,
And in vain the angler sighs
For a bite.

And the cuckoo piped away --
How I love his simple lay,
O'er the cowslip fields of May
As it floats!
May was over, and of course
He was just a little hoarse,
And appeared to me to force
Certain notes.

Since Mid-April, men averred,
People's pulses, inly stirred
By the music of the bird,
Had upleapt:
It was now the end of June;
I reflected that he'd soon
Sing entirely out of tune,
And I wept.

Looking up, I marked a maid
Float balloon-like o'er the glade,
Casting evermore a staid
Glance around:
And I thrilled with sweet surprise
When she dropt, all virgin-wise,
First a courtesy, then her eyes,
To the ground.

Other eyes have p'raps to you
Seemed ethereally blue,
But you see you never knew
Kate Adair.
What a mien she had! Her hat
With what dignity it sat
On the mystery, or mat,
Of her hair!

We were neighbours. I had doff'd
Cap and hat to her so oft
That they both of them were soft
In the brim:
I had gone out of my way
To bid e'en her sire good-day,
Though I wasn't, I may say,
Fond of him: --

We had met, in streets and shops;
But by rill or mazy copse,
Where your speech abruptly stops
And you get
Dithyrambic ere you know it --
Where, though nothing of a poet,
You intuitively go it --
Never yet.

So my love had ne'er been told!
Till the day when out I strolled
And the jolly cuckoo trolled
Forth his song,
Naught had passed between us two
Save a bashful 'How d'ye do'
And a blushing 'How do you
Get along?'

But that eve (how swift it passed!)
Words of fire flew from me fast
For the first time and the last
In my life:
Low and lower drooped her chin,
As I murmured how I'd skin
Or behead myself to win
Such a wife.

There we stood. The squirrel leaped
Overhead: the throstle peeped
Through the leaves, all sunlight-steeped,
Of the lime:
There we stood alone: -- a third
Would have made the thing absurd: --
And she scarcely spoke a word
All the time.

Katie junior (such a dear!)
Has attained her thirteenth year,
And declares she feels a queer
Sort of shock --
Not unpleasant though at all --
When she hears a cuckoo call:
So I've purchased her a small
Cuckoo-clock.






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