WESTERN WATERS 151 



But it is time to draw these rambling remarks 

 to a conclusion. If it were always 



" Truth the poet sings, 



That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier 

 things," 



then, indeed, to recall the river, and the northern 

 breezes, in a September session in London, with 

 the thermometer at 85, and the echoes of voices 

 condemned by the long-suffering Speaker for 

 tedious iteration and irrelevancy still ringing in 

 one's ears, would be a penance too severe. But 

 for me, my thoughts recall the pleasures of hope 

 as well as those of memory. In fancy I am 

 already plodding along the well-known banks, 

 the whistle of the curlew and the plover sounding 

 in my ears. The snipe startle me as they rise 

 under my feet; the great herons flap lazily away 

 as I turn a corner just above them ; the mer- 

 ganser brings its numerous family up the stream 

 between the high banks into the very pool I am 

 fishing, and then the whole troop, suddenly 

 " spying strangers," dive about and separate, dis- 

 turbing my sport for the time, but giving me a 

 pleasure quite as great in watching them. The 

 grouse crow upon the oat-stubbles beside me, or 

 the old black-cocks dash over my head in flocks 

 of ten or fourteen. Perhaps there may be a 

 hen harrier beating the moss beside me, with 

 the regularity of a pointer, or a merlin hawking 



