III. THE DABCHICKS. l6l 



Erudition in weather and star ; 

 For they say, '"Twill be dry, — 

 '' The Swallow is high," 



•.' 60 Or, " Rain, for the Chough is afar." 



^'Twas the Rooks who taught men 

 Vast pamphlets to pen 

 Upon social compact and law, 

 And Parliaments hold. 



As themselves did of old, 

 66 Exclaiming ' Hear, Hear,' for ' Caw, Caw.' 



6or Afar. I did not know of this weather sign ; nor, I 

 suppose, did the Duke of Hamilton's keeper, who shot the 

 last pair of Choughs on Arran in 1863. (' Birds of the West 

 of Scotland,' p. 165.) I trust the climate has wept for them ; 

 certainly our Coniston clouds grow heavier, in these last years. 



63. Social. Rightly sung by the Birds in three syllables ; 

 but the lagging of the previous line (probably intentional, 

 but not pleasant,) makes the lightness of this one a little 

 dangerous for a clumsy reader. The 'i-al' of 'social' does 

 not fill the line as two full short syllables, else the preceding 

 word should have been written '■on,' not 'upon.' The five 

 syllables, rightly given, just take the time of two iambs ; 

 but there are readers rude enough to accent the ' on ' of upon, 

 and take * social ' for two short syllables. 



64. Hold. Short for 'to hold'— but it is a licentious 

 construction, so also, in next line, 'themselves' for 'they 

 themselves.' The stanza is on the whole the worst in the 

 poem, its irony and essential force being much dimmed by 

 obscure expression, and even slightly staggering continuity 

 of thought. The Rooks may be properly supposed to have 

 taught men to dispute, but not to write. The Swallow 

 teaches building, literally, and the Owl moping, literally ; 

 but the Rook does not teach pamphleteering literally. And 

 the ' of old ' is redundant, for rhyme's sake, since Rooks hold 

 parliaments now as much-as ever they did. 



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