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 @3you@1 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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO OUR MOCKING-BIRD; DIED OF A CAT, MAY, 1878 by SIDNEY LANIER TO MUSIC [TO BECALM HIS FEVER] by ROBERT HERRICK THE REVENGE OF RAIN-IN-THE-FACE by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW ORANGE BUDS BY MAIL FROM FLORIDA by WALT WHITMAN EFFICIENCY by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS CYNTHIA SPORTING by PHILIP AYRES EXTEMPORE, ON MR. WILLIAM SMELLIE by ROBERT BURNS |