dots-menu
×

Home  »  English Poetry I  »  53. Spring’s Welcome

English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

John Lyly

53. Spring’s Welcome

WHAT bird so sings, yet so does wail?

O ’tis the ravish’d nightingale.

‘jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu!’ she cries!

And still her woes at midnight rise,

Brave prick-song! Who is’t now we hear?

None but the lark so shrill and clear;

Now at heaven’s gate she claps her wings,

The morn not waking till she sings.

Hark, hark, with what a pretty throat

Poor robin redbreast tunes his note!

Hark how the jolly cuckoos sing

Cuckoo! to welcome in the spring!

Cuckoo! to welcome in the spring!