APEIL. 113 



favourites ; while the Thrush from amidst a bush of 

 flowering Sallow, below which her blue-spotted eggs 

 repose, or the Black-cap and Willow-Wren from 

 Aspens or Poplars trembling beside the murmuring 

 rill, or old stony mill-weir, pour out their rich tones 

 and varying cadences with a vigour and delight un- 

 marked at a later period. Now, too, it is that in 

 some calm glorious gleam amidst the secluded woods, 

 just as a passing shower has swept away to sprinkle 

 distant groves and orchards, and the pausing wan- 

 derer crouched beneath the tortuous trunk of an old 

 pollard Lime, is watching anxiously the rifted clouds, 

 that the joyous note of the Cuckoo, confirming the 

 hoped for brilliant vernal noon, is heard once and 

 again, as if from some viewless form in the sky ! It 

 sweeps again upon the ear, and with it comes a host 

 of fond cherished remembrances, that for a moment 

 break the film that grief, care, and perhaps estrange- 

 ment from once loved friends, has caused slowly but 

 constantly to gather round the heart, as a breeze long 

 blowing in one direction, heaps up on the shore of 

 a lake an accumulated load of fragments, lost to the 

 eye when left to take their own wandering course far 

 over its unruffled surface. And yet who is there 

 from child to decrepid age, who does not pause to 

 imbibe pleasure or pain at the first sound of the 

 Cuckoo as it rises on the ear from the deep woods 

 just showing their primary tint of the palest green ? 



Hark ! I can hear the Cuckoo ! what a show 

 The cherry-trees in wood and orchard make ; 

 Here with their clust'ring blossoms row o'er row, 

 There drooping lovely o'er the tangled brake ; 

 A shower bas fallen, and the branches shake 

 Sprinkling the rain-drops on our heads below ; 



I 



