Part III — Fables, in Verse
Fable I The Cuckoo Traveller
A Cuckoo once, as Cuckoos use,
Who’d been upon a winter’s cruise,
Return’d with the returning spring—
Some hundred brothers of the wing,
Curious to hear from foreign realms,
Got round him in a tuft of elms.
He shook his pinions, struck his beak,
Attempted twice or thrice to speak;
At length, up-rising on his stand,
“Old England! Well, the land’s a land!
But rat me, gentlemen,” says he,
“We passage-fowl that cross the sea
Have vast advantages o’er you;
Whose native woods are all you view.
The season past, I took a jaunt
Among the isles of the Levant;
Where, by the way, I stuff’d my guts
With almonds and pistachio nuts.
’Twas then my whim some weeks to be
In that choice garden, Italy:
But, underneath the sky’s expanse,
No climate like the south of France!
You’ve often heard, I dare to swear,
How plenty ortolans are there;
’Tis true, and more delicious meat,
Upon my honour, I ne’er eat;
The eggs are good; it was ill luck
What day I had not ten to suck;
Yet notwithstanding, to my goût,
The bird’s the sweeter of the two.”
He went on, talking pert and loud,
When an old Raven, ’mongst the crowd,
Stopp’d short his insolent career—
“Why, what a monstrous bustle’s here!
You travell’d, sir! I speak to you,
Who’ve passed so many countries thro’;
Say, to what purpose is’t you roam,
And what improvements bring you home?
Has Italy, on which you doat,
Supply’d you with another note?
Or France, which you extol so high,
Taught you with better grace to fly?
I cannot see that both together
Have alter’d you a single feather:
Then tell not us of where you’ve been,
Of what you’ve done, or what you’ve seen;
While you and all your rambling pack
Cuckoos go out, Cuckoos come back.”