r 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