Three lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heard 
If others sang; but others never sang
In the great beech-wood all that May and June.
No one saw him: I alone could hear him
Though many listened. Was it but four years 
Ago? or five? He never came again.

Oftenest when I heard him I was alone,
Nor could I ever make another hear.
La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off—
As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world, 
As if the bird or I were in a dream.
Yet that he travelled through the trees and sometimes
 Neared me, was plain, though somehow distant still 
He sounded. All the proof is—I told men
What I had heard.

                                         I never knew a voice,
Man, beast, or bird, better than this. I told
The naturalists; but neither had they heard 
Anything like the notes that did so haunt me,
I had them clear by heart and have them still.
Four years, or five, have made no difference. 
Then as now that La-la-la! was bodiless sweet:
Sad more than joyful it was, if I must say
That it was one or other, but if sad
'Twas sad only with joy too, too far off
For me to taste it. But I cannot tell
If truly never anything but fair
The days were when he sang, as now they seem. 
This surely I know, that I who listened then, 
Happy sometimes, sometimes suffering
A heavy body and a heavy heart,
Now straightway, if I think of it, become
Light as that bird wandering beyond my shore.