CHANTICLEER 193 



so brief, piercing, and emphatic that it could only 

 have proceeded from that peppery, uppish little 

 bird the bantam* And of the three syllables, the last, 

 which should be the longest, was the shortest, 

 " short and sharp like the shrill swallow's cry," or 

 perhaps even more like the shrieky bark of an en- 

 raged little cur ; not a reveilte and silvern morning 

 song in one, as a cockcrow should be, but a challenge 

 and a defiance, wounding the sense like a spur, and 

 suggesting the bustle and fury of the cockpit* 



If this style of crowing was known to Milton, 

 it is perhaps accountable for the one bad couplet 

 in the " Allegro " : 



While the cock with lively din 

 Scatters the rear of darkness thin* 



Someone has said that every line in that incom- 

 parable poem brings at least one distinct picture 

 vividly before the mind's eye* The picture the first 

 line of the couplet I have quoted suggests to my mind 

 is not of crowing Chanticleer at all, but of a stalwart, 

 bare-armed, blowsy-faced woman, vigorously beating 

 on a tin pan with a stick ; but for what purpose 

 whether to call down a passing swarm of bees, or to 

 summon the chickens to be fed I never know* It 

 is only my mental picture of a " lively din*" As to the 

 second line, all attempts to see the thing described 

 only bring before me clouds and shadows, con- 



