The cuckoo

One summer does not a swallow or a cuckoo make! It's a marmite thing with cuckoo clocks. You either love them or hate them. Personally I love them and the more bells and whistles the better. A trumpeter, a musical carousel, a chimney sweep who pops out of the chimney, a working water wheel - as many automata as possible. That is not to say they are my favourite jobs. They are very fiddly with cheap mechanisms and lots of thin wires than malfunction if not set correctly.

O blithe New-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near.

Though babbling only to the Vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my school-boy days
I listened to; that Cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen.

And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.

O blessèd Bird! the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, faery place;
That is fit home for Thee!

William Wordsworth