 | Poems at Home and Abroad |  |
67
The Chorus of the Dawn
How merrily with ceaseless tuneThe chaffinch greets this first of June;
The warbler lifts a quavering voice
To bid the brotherhood rejoice;
The cushat coos, the cuckoo cries
Across the valley-paradise;
With soft insistence from afar
A lamb is bleating on Nab Scar;
Far off the kine their trumpets blow,
The cocks at dreamy distance crow;
The moor-hens in the reed-bed hear,
And sailing forth on Rydal mere,
Leave silver light in arrowy track
Upon its mirror ebon-black.
Filled with innumerable wings
The sycamore beside me sings,
Wherefrom a thrush perched high above
Sends down such ecstasy of love,
68
With eddying pause must stay to hear.
I too, though voiceless, still may tune
My heart to greet the first of June,
And join on this high upland lawn
The choral greeting of the dawn.
| Poems at Home and Abroad | |