Classic Poem

I.

Is the cuckoo come? Is the cuckoo come?
Seek ye its happy voice
Bidding the hills rejoice,
Greeting green summer and sweet May morn?
See you the bird,
Or hear its loved word
From dewy birch-wood or aged thorn?

II.

Is the cuckoo come? Is the cuckoo come?
Down by the reedy spring
Watching its wary wing
Wends the lone angler toward the lake,
Joy in his heart
With fancy alert,
He rears gentle visions wandering awake.

III.

Is the cuckoo come? Is the cuckoo come?
Lover of sunny streams!
Banish thy airy dreams,
Hark the wild note of the fairy-voiced bird!
Now in the glen,
And listen again,
O'er the wide hill floats the silvery word.

IV.

Is the cuckoo come? Is the cuckoo come?
Haste to thy loved resort,
Haste to thy pleasant sport,
Shake the sly palmer o'er streamlet and lake!
Hark on the wind —
Before thee — behind —
Plaintively singeth the bird of the brake!