I had just got back to bed again when an owl began
to screech. That is another sound I used to think attractive--so
weird, so mysterious. It is Swinburne, I think, who says that you
never get the desired one and the time and the place all right
together. If the beloved one is with you, it is the wrong place or
at the wrong time; and if the time and the place happen to be right,
then it is the party that is wrong. The owl was all right: I like
owls. The place was all right. He had struck the wrong time, that
was all. Eleven o'clock at night, when you can't see him, and
naturally feel that you want to, is the proper time for an owl.
Perched on the roof of a cow-shed in the early dawn he looks silly.
He clung there, flapping his wings and screeching at the top of his
voice. What it was he wanted I am sure I don't know; and anyhow it
didn't seem the way to get it. He came to this conclusion himself at
the end of twenty minutes, and shut himself up and went home. I
thought I was going to have at last some peace, when a corncrake--a
creature upon whom Nature has bestowed a song like to the tearing of
calico-sheets mingled with the sharpening of saws--settled somewhere
in the garden and set to work to praise its Maker according to its
lights. I have a friend, a poet, who lives just off the Strand, and
spends his evenings at the Garrick Club. He writes occasional verse
for the evening papers, and talks about the "silent country, drowsy
with the weight of languors.
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