TO THE CUCKOO

  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!

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.

NUTTING

------It seems a day
(I speak of one from many singled out),
One of those heavenly days that cannot die;
When, in the eagerness of boyish hope,
I left our cottage threshold, sallying forth               5
With a huge wallet o’er my shoulders slung,
A nutting-crook in hand, and turned my steps
Toward some far-distant wood, a Figure quaint,
Tricked out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds,
Which for that service had been husbanded,                10