To Mountain Tarn 



And so with the gulls. There are noble forms 

 among them. A soft play of light shades is in 

 their plumage, grey and blue, toning the white. 

 Quaint ways have many. In all is a majesty of 

 flight denied to the crows. For a certain com- 

 mand of the wing, for motion without jerk or 

 effort, for an almost lazy power, the gull is 

 supreme. 



Divers may be dipping beyond, or sandpipers 

 running over the bank, but they are unseen. 

 The gull is in the foreground and the sea beyond, 

 that is all the two simple elements in the seaside 

 picture. The gull rides the waves like a white 

 cloud, or rests on the sands at the ebb. The 

 painter comes and puts on his canvas the sea, 

 and then he puts in the gulls. Only that and 

 nothing more the sea and the gulls. If he could 

 paint a sound, it would be the trumpeting of the 

 herring-gull. 



Just as he might go into the country and paint 

 the grey old tower, and then fill in the jackdaws ; 

 or paint the manor-house with its rich woodlands, 

 and fill in the rooks. If he could paint sound he 

 would put in the idyllic caw. Just as he might 

 look over the hedgerow and paint the field and 

 the team and the peasant, and then fill in both 

 gull and crow. 



177 



