5880. Lady Hobart to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 184–185.
[London]
[Postmark: 22 March 1867]
Dear Mr Browning,
I have this morning received a note from Mr Bright asking me to forward to you the enclosed copy of Logan’s Poem “To The Cuckoo”. [1] Surely it is very beautiful & I fancy you will agree in thinking it more beautiful than even Wordsworth’s Cuckoo. [2] Just at this moment of political agitation it is refreshing to see the man most keenly interested in the contest able to throw his heart so entirely into the enjoyment of a beautiful Poem. [3]
Yrs very truly
M C Hobart.
Address: Robert Browning Esqre / 19. Warwick Crescent / Upper Westbourne Terrace / W.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
Enclosure:
For Mr Browning.
To the Cuckoo
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Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove!
Thou Messenger of Spring!
Now heaven repairs thy rural seat,
And woods thy welcome sing.
Soon as the daisy decks the green,
Thy certain voice we hear,—
Hast thou a star to guide thy path,
Or mark the rolling year?
Delightful visitant! with thee
I hail the time of flowers,
And hear the sound of music sweet
From birds among the bowers.
The schoolboy, wandering through the wood
To pluck the primrose gay,
Starts, thy* curious voice to hear
And imitates thy lay.
What time the pea puts in the bloom,
Thou fliest thy vocal vale,
An annual guest in other lands,
Another spring to hail.
Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No Winter in thy year!
Oh, could I fly, I’d fly with thee!
We’d make with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o’er the globe,
Companions of the Spring.
John Logan
1748–1788
*In the American edition the line is “Starts, thy most curious voice to hear,” & in the last line of the poem, for “Companions” the same edition has “Attendants.”
JB.
1. “Ode to the Cuckoo” (Poems, 1781) by John Logan (1748–88), Scottish poet.
2. “To the Cuckoo” (1807).
3. RB has added the following memorandum: “Pro memoria. March 23. ’67. / I met Mr Bright, for the first time, at Lord Hobart’s, where we dined in company with the Duke & Dss. of Argyle, Dean & Lady A.S[tanley], Lord Strangford, Mr Herbert & Ly. Anna Feilding. There was an argument about the respective worth of Wordsworth’s Poem ‘To the Cuckoo,’ and this of Logan’s, as quoted by Mr Bright: I thought the latter immeasurably inferiour, of course. The next day, March 21. 1867, he copied and sent this to Ly. Hobart. My objection had gone mainly to what proves to be an error of the quoter’s—the epithet ‘songster’—which should have been ‘stranger.’ / Robert Browning.”
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