How merrily with ceaseless tune
The 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,
That even the beck that seeks the mere
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, pp. 67-8)