196 ROUND THE GREAT WHITE HORSE 



Poets have an instinctive feeling for the truth of 

 natural life, and Coleridge caught and developed the 

 probability that the bird was baffled and bewildered by 

 the mist as well as the crew, and so heightened the 

 feeling of good-will between the sailors and the white 

 bird of the sea. For birds even more than mankind 

 suffer in continued fogs and mist, even without the cold 

 that generally accompanies or causes them. Men, and 

 all things that walk, can usually find their way from 

 point to point by working from one well-known land- 

 mark to the next. But a bird flying in the mist is like 

 a ship in the sea-fog. The dull, grey cloud lies 

 between it and the earth, and shuts out all guiding- 

 marks from view ; and when once it has lost its bear- 

 ings, it becomes hopeless and distracted. This is more 

 especially the case at sea, or on open plains or downs, 

 and even in the homestead they seem torpid and afraid 

 to move. The Berkshire peasants have a word for the 

 condition of bees just before winter. They are said to 

 be " droo," and this exactly describes the condition of 

 the pigeons and fowls, especially the former, in a long 

 frost fog. During such weather the white pigeons 

 sit all day long under the dovecote eaves, huddled up 

 as if asleep, not even coming to the ground to look 

 for food ; and on the high downs, where the frost -fog 

 drifts all day like frozen smoke, neither the cry of a 

 bird nor the stroke of a wing is to be heard. Great is 

 the silence of the mist. No horses are at plough, the 

 sheep are down in the straw-yards, and the wide hill- 



