I came across this poem or song, which I already knew, in Robert Gibbings lyrical and beautiful book “Sweet Thames, Run Softly.” I heard a cuckoo very clearly a couple of weeks ago beside the Thames near Goring on our walk along the Ridgeway, the iron age route across England. I know the poem from reading it on the Tube thanks to Transport for London, who scatter poems across the Tube network. It’s a perfect poem to read on a crowded, smelly tube because in its simplicity it catches perfectly the joy of being out in the English countryside in the Spring. The song, which was found in Reading Abbey, is from the mid-13^th century and is the oldest known musical composition featuring six-part polyphony. (You can hear many versions on Youtube.) The “Oxford History of Music” says it exhibits “ingenuity and beauty in a degree still difficult to realise as possible to a 13^th century composer.

Sumer is icumen in,
Loud sing cuckoo!
Groweth seed and bloweth mead
And springeth the wood now.
Sing cuckoo!

Ewe bleateth after lamb,
Cow loweth after calf,
Bullock starteth, buck farteth,
Merry sing cuckoo!

Cuckoo, cuckoo!
Well singest thou cuckoo,
Nor cease thou never now!

Sing cuckoo now, sing cuckoo!
Sing cuckoo, sing cuckoo now!