DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY 75 



a quality that very little more would make it ring 



musically. 



Sometimes when I go into this ancient abbey 

 church, or into some cathedral, and seating myself, 

 and looking over a forest of bonnets, see a pale 

 young curate with a black moustache, arrayed in 

 white vestments, standing before the reading-desk, 

 and hear him gabbling some part of the Service 

 in a continuous buzz and rumble that roams like 

 a gigantic blue-bottle through the vast dim interior, 

 then I, not following him — for I do not know where 

 he is, and cannot find out however much I should 

 like to — am apt to remember the daws out of doors, 

 and to think that it would be well if that young 

 man would but climb up into the highest tower, 

 or on to the roof, and dwell there for the space of a 

 year listening to them ; and that he would fill his 

 mouth with polished pebbles, and medals, and coins 

 and seals and seal-rings, and small porcelain cats and 

 dogs, and little silver pigs, and other objects from 

 the chatelaines of his lady admirers, and strive to 

 imitate that clear, penetrating sound of the bird's voice, 

 until he had mastered the rare and beautiful arts of 

 voice production and distinct understandable speech. 



To go back to Cowper — the poet who has been 

 much in men's thoughts of late, and who appears 



