To The Cuckoo

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Title:     To The Cuckoo
Author: William Wordsworth [More Titles by Wordsworth]

  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,                             5
  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,                               10
  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,                          15
  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.                               20
  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;                             25
  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                                       30
  An unsubstantial, faery place;
  That is fit home for Thee!

 

NOTES:

1. O BLITHE NEW-COMER. The Cuckoo is migratory, and appears in England in the early spring. Compare _Solitary Reaper_, l. 16.

I HAV HEARD. i.e., in my youth.

3. SHALL I CALL THEE BIRD? Compare Shelley.

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert.
_To a Skylark_.

4. A WANDERING VOICE? Lacking substantial existence.

6. TWOFOLD SHOUT. Twofold, because consisting of a double note. Compare Wordsworth's sonnet, _To the Cuckoo_, l. 4:

"With its twin notes inseparably paired."

Wordsworth employs the word "shout" in several of his Cuckoo descriptions. See _The Excursion_, ii. l. 346-348 and vii. l. 408; also the following from _Yes! it was the Mountain Echo_:

Yes! it was the mountain echo,
Solitary, clear, profound,
Answering to the shouting Cuckoo;
Giving to her sound for sound.

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NOTES:

TO THE CUCKOO

COMPOSED IN THE ORCHARD AT TOWN-END 1802: PUBLISHED 1807

Wordsworth, in his Preface to the 1815 edition, has the following note on ll. 3, 4 of the poem:--"This concise interrogation characterises the seeming ubiquity of the cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of 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." The cuckoo is the bird we associate with the name of the vale of sunshine and of flowers, and yet its wandering voice brings back to him the thought of his vanished childhood. We have already noticed the almost sacred value which Wordsworth attaches to the impressions of his youth, and even to the memory of these impressions which remains with him to console his maturer life. The bird is a link which binds him to his childhood:

"And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again."

In other poems, especially in the _Intimaticns of Immortality_, he speaks of "the glory and the freshness of a dream," which hallowed nature for him as a child, and which grew fainter as the "shades of the prison-house began to close upon the growing Boy".

[The end]
William Wordsworth's poem: To The Cuckoo

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