![]() ![]() Each squadron of them was in different voice, some larking, some triumphant, some in sentiment or glee. The lines of these creatures, wavering like smoke upon the sky as they breasted the sunrise, were all at once in music and in laughter. He wanted to cry a chorus to life, and, since a thousand geese were on the wing about him, he had not long to wait. The dawn, the sea-dawn and the mastery of ordered flight, were of such intense beauty that the boy was moved to sing. Shore birds of every sort populated the tide line, filling it with business and beauty. The black-guard of crows rose from the pine trees on the dune with merry cheers. ![]() A cloud of tiny dunlin, more compact than starlings, turned in the air with the noise of a train. The redshanks scuttled and prodded like mice. The mallard toiled from land, against the wind. The widgeon, who had slept on water, came whistling their double notes, like whistles from a Christmas cracker. The curlew, who had been piping their mournful plaints since long before the light, flew now from weed-bank to weed-bank. The sun, as it rose, tinged the quick-silver of the creeks and the gleaming slime itself with flame. It’s beautifully written, for one thing, detailed and evocative, freely fanciful: I hoped it would, because of all the marvellous episodes in Wart’s education (the tyrannical pike, the totalitarian ants, the philosophical badger), his time with the geese is the most sublime. ![]()
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