Thomas Hardy (Томас Гарди (Харди))

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. If You Had Known
2. When Oats Were Reaped
3. The Seven Times
4. The Dead Bastard
5. The Dance at the Phœnix

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