Then from some remote farmstead there came the sound of a
dog barking. It rang through the night like the distant shout of a friend.
It seemed to fill the whole arch of heaven with its reverberations and to
flood the valley with the sense of companionship. It brought me news from
the farm. The day's tasks were over, the cattle were settled for the night,
the household were at their evening meal, and the watch-dog had resumed his
nocturnal charge. His bark seemed to have in it the music of immemorial
things--of labour and rest, and all the cheerful routine and comradeship of
the fields.
It is only in the country that one enjoys the poetry of natural sounds. A
dog barking in a suburban street is merely a disturber of the peace, and I
know of nothing more forlorn than the singing of a caged bird in, let us
say, Tottenham Court Road. Wordsworth's Poor Susan found a note of
enchantment in the song of the thrush that sang at the corner of Wood
Street, off Cheapside. But it was only an enchantment that passed into
deeper sadness as the vision of the green pastures which it summoned up
faded into the drab reality:
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