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 reveilU 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- 



