Poem by Thomas Hardy

The Spring Call

Down Wessex way, when spring’s a-shine,
The blackbird’s ‘pret-ty de-urr!’
In Wessex accents marked as mine
Is heard afar and near.

He flutes it strong, as if in song
No R’s of feebler tone
Than his appear in ‘pretty dear’,
Have blackbirds ever known.

Yet they pipe ‘prattie deerh!’ I glean,
Beneath a Scottish sky,
And ‘pehty de-aw!’ amid the treen
Of Middlesex or nigh.

While some folk say – perhaps in play –
Who know the Irish isle,
’Tis ‘purrity dare!’ in treeland there
When songsters would beguile.

Well: I’ll say what the listening birds
Say, hearing ‘pret-ty de-urr!’ –
However strangers sound such words,
That’s how we sound them here.

Yes, in this clime at pairing time,
As soon as eyes can see her
At dawn of day, the proper way
To call is ‘pret-ty de-urr!’ 

1. Genitrix Laesa
2. V.R. 1819–1901
3. Song from Heine
4. Over the Coffin
5. Song to an Old Burden

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