Spring by William Shakespeare
(song from Love's Labour's Lost)
When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are plowmen’s clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
My first impression of William Shakespeare's Spring was that it had a very musical and whimsical quality. This made perfect sense when I read the footnote saying that Spring was actually a verse of a song from Love's Labour's Lost. In this scene, the village idiots/goofballs of the play are doing the comical singing.
However, the greatest sounds of the poem come not from the singing itself or the allusion to sound (the cuckoos mocking and singing, the unpleased married ear, and the merry larks) but rather from the purposed arrangement and structure of the words within the poem-- the scansion. Spring is not quite the typical Shakespearean sonnet, but comes very close to the mark. It contains nearly 14 lines (it has 18-20, depending if you count the two "cuckoos"), it ends with a couplet, and has a rhyme scheme of abab ccdd efef ccdd (similar, but not quite the same). The lines in Spring contain either 8 or 9 syllables (with the majority being 8). This establishes a subtle rhythm and is partially the reason for its sing-song quality. I honestly cannot figure out the meter of the poem, I can't say that I am experienced enough. I know that Shakespeare prefers Iambic Pentameter, but this does not seem to be the case within this poem.
The end rhymes in Spring, such as blue/hue, white/delight, and clocks/smocks, seem to carry the reader lightly from one verse to the next. The sound of this movement, when spoken aloud or sung, pairs nicely with the silly and mocking quality of the lyrics (the mocking of the cuckoo bird is related to the word cuckold: a word for a man whose wife is cheating on him). Finally, repetition is important to the sound quality of poetry/music. In Spring, "cuckoo" is repeated often as are the lines "The cuckoo then, on every tree,// Mocks married men; for thus sings he,//Cuckoo;//Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear//Unpleasing to the married ear!" The repetition enhances the sounds of mockery as well as the human imitation of the cuckoo's sound.
