When all the world is young and apple-bloom
Is rose and white upon the orchard tree,
When all the threads of Spring’s ethereal loom
Weave a green garment for her phantasy;
That voice of youth and growth and vanished years
Comes through all time, in floating cadence, still,
Through mists of life and long-forgotten tears,
The cuckoo calling faintly from the hill.
The hidden streams in many a marshy place
Their chains of little standing pools unfold,
Like silver mirrors for Spring’s wanton face
Tossed at her feet and framed in marigold.
Hark to her footsteps down the sloping fields
Dancing in measure to the music shrill,
That, from its budding depth, the coppice yields,
The cuckoo calling faintly from the hill.
O Youth, O Time, O Change--O haunting note!
When from our life we shed mortality,
When all our joys and passions are remote,
All that the ear could hear or eye could see;
Haply, across the gulf where Time lies bound,
Some shadow of a voice may reach us still,
Like that long echo from enchanted ground,
The cuckoo calling faintly from the hill.
❦