HOW I BECAME A FALCONER. 81 
CHAPTER V. 
Is CHIEFLY ON THE GOSHAWK. 
THE thunder-storm passed over my seca oiathood on Tuesday, the 
19th of May, but it did not come well down. The first lightnings 
which I saw dimly in Derbyshire and Staffordshire scarcely fulfilled 
their promise; and when the rain reached here, though it was 
welcomed with thankfulness and blessings, we were disappointed 
that it did not pour more thoroughly. It was indeed delightful 
while it lasted ; it was like those sermons, so curiously rare, which, 
occupying a full half-hour in their delivery, leave one sorrowing 
that they are so short. It was unlike them only ina third parti- 
cular; for to me the charm of a storm begins with its anticipation, 
is continued while it lasts, and is consummated in the relief that it ia 
over. It is awful, but it is most glorious, to be “dazzled by the 
livid-flickering fork, and deafened with the stammering cracks and 
claps :” 
Till now the storm, its burst of passion spent, 
Moaning and calling out of other lands, 
Had left the ravaged woodland yet once more 
To peace. 
{ think to sit out of doors, and to listen to that ‘moaning and 
calling out of other lands,’’ when all is over, when the earth smells 
fresh from the rain, and all the sweetbriars and gillyflowers are 
alive with fragrance, is to pick out of existence, for our great 
enjoyment, some of its most golden hours. 
I wrote no more that evening, poor as the storm was. Let us look 
for a tempest some day, to be more idleinatill! ButI thought that 
I had not done much to amuse, in the last of these chapters, these 
rey 
