A flock of merry singing-birds were sporting in the grove;
Some were warbling cheerily, and some were making love:
There were Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, Conquedle,--
A livelier set was never led by tabor, pipe, or fiddle,--
Crying, "Phew, shew, Wadolincon, see, see, Bobolincon,
Down among the tickletops, hiding in the buttercups!
I know the saucy chap, I see his shining cap
Bobbing in the clover there--see, see, see!"
Up flies Bobolincon, perching on an apple-tree,
Startled by his rival's song, quickened by his raillery.
Soon he spies the rogue afloat, curveting in the air,
And merrily he turns about, and warns him to beware!
"'T is you that would a-wooing go, down among the rushes O!
But wait a week, till flowers are cheery,--wait a week,and,
ere you marry,
Be sure of a house wherein to tarry!
Wadolink, Whiskodink, Tom Denny, wait, wait, wait!"
Every one's a funny fellow; every one's a little mellow;
Follow, follow, follow, follow, o'er the hill and in the hollow!
Merrily, merrily, there they hie; now they rise and now they fly;
They cross and turn, and in and out, and down in the middle,
and wheel about,--
With a "Phew, shew, Wadolincon! listen to me, Bobolincon!--
Happy's the wooing that's speedily doing, that's speedily doing,
That's merry and over with the bloom of the clover!
Bobolincon, Wadolincon, Winterseeble, follow, follow me!"
Many persons, I presume, have admired Wordsworth's poem on the cuckoo,
without recognizing its truthfulness, or how thoroughly, in the main,
the description applies to our own species. If the poem had been written
in New England or New York, it could not have suited our case better:--
"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;
"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.
"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!"
Logan's stanzas, "To the Cuckoo," have less merit both as poetry and
natural history, but they are older, and doubtless the latter poet
benefited by them. Burke admired them so much that, while on a visit to
Edinburgh, he sought the author out to compliment him:--
"Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove!
Thou messenger of spring!
Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat,
And woods thy welcome sing.
"What time the daisy decks the green,
Thy certain voice we hear;
Hast thou a star to guide thy path,
Or mark the rolling year?
. . . . . . . .
"The schoolboy, wandering through the wood
To pull the primrose gay,
Starts, the new voice of spring to hear,
And imitates thy lay.
. . . . . . . .
"Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year."
The European cuckoo is evidently a much gayer bird than ours, and much
more noticeable.
"Hark, how the jolly cuckoos sing
'Cuckoo!' to welcome in the spring,"
says John Lyly three hundred years agone. Its note is easily imitated,
and boys will render it so perfectly as to deceive any but the shrewdest
ear. An English lady tells me its voice reminds one of children at play,
and is full of gayety and happiness. It is a persistent songster,
and keeps up its call from morning to night. Indeed, certain parts
of Wordsworth's poem--those that refer to the bird as a mystery, a
wandering, solitary voice--seem to fit our bird better than the European
species. Our cuckoo is in fact a solitary wanderer, repeating its loud,
guttural call in the depths of the forest, and well calculated to arrest
the attention of a poet like Wordsworth, who was himself a kind of
cuckoo, a solitary voice, syllabling the loneliness that broods over
streams and woods,--
"And once far off, and near."
Our cuckoo is not a spring bird, being seldom seen or heard in the North
before late in May. He is a great devourer of canker-worms, and, when
these pests appear, he comes out of his forest seclusion and makes
excursions through the orchards stealthily and quietly, regaling himself
upon those pulpy, fuzzy titbits. His coat of deep cinnamon brown has a
silky gloss and is very beautiful. His note or call is not musical
but loud, and has in a remarkable degree the quality of remoteness and
introvertedness. It is like a vocal legend, and to the farmer bodes
rain.
It is worthy of note, and illustrates some things said farther back,
that birds not strictly denominated songsters, but criers like the
cuckoo, have been quite as great favorites with the poets, and
have received as affectionate treatment at their hands, as have the
song-birds. One readily recalls Emerson's "Titmouse," Trowbridge's
"Pewee," Celia Thaxter's "Sandpiper," and others of a like character.
It is also worthy of note that the owl appears to be a greater favorite
with the poets than the proud, soaring hawk. The owl is doubtless the
more human and picturesque bird; then he belongs to the night and its
weird effects. Bird of the silent wing and expansive eye, grimalkin in
feathers, feline, mousing, haunting ruins" and towers, and mocking the
midnight stillness with thy uncanny cry! The owl is the great bugaboo of
the feathered tribes. His appearance by day is hailed by shouts of
alarm and derision from nearly every bird that flies, from crows down
to sparrows. They swarm about him like flies, and literally mob him back
into his dusky retreat. Silence is as the breath of his nostrils to him,
and the uproar that greets him when he emerges into the open day seems
to alarm and confuse him as it does the pickpocket when everybody cries
Thief.