A blue tit from a neighbourly silver birch softly mimics the trills after the last line.
QUEEN MAB (half opening her eyes):
O tiresome bird, one primrose does not bring
The warm sweet days for which I yearning wait.
Know, I have seen the hillside amber-pied
With primroses, and yet a fierce gale swept
Adown the dale. Primroses are brave,
But, tho' they blossom, leave me to my dreams.
Once more she nestles among the jade-green moss and sleeps for a week.
THE THRUSH (louder and clearer):
Queen Mab! Queen Mab!
From thy faerie dream
Has sped a laugh
Like a sunny gleam
Which springs to earth
A daffy-down-dill
That merrily flouts
At the purling rill,
Thy laugh has sped
O'er the hillside grey:
Queen Mab! Queen Mab!
Listen my lay!
The cuckoo calls wistfully from down-dale, but QUEEN MAB does not hear him.
QUEEN MAB (stretching her small white arms and yawning dreamily):
Methinks the air feels warmer, and the sky
Seems bluer, yet mine eyes are loath to ope.
I will not wake at once:
How the birds sing!
I did not think the world held so much song.
That note's a blackbird's; that's a finch's call;
A wren has whispered secrets to his mate;
Two doves are cooing where green curtains hang,
Half shyly, lest their love-songs should be heard;
Yet, 'tis not spring until the cuckoo cries.
The cuckoo's voice is heard nearer, coming from Bolton Abbey, and a second voice answers,