Explore "The Urban Chanticleer" by Joyce Kilmer on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If the rooster selected tree-tops for his roosting, crowed mournfully at the moon, and were a wild, unfriendly bird, every man's hand would be against him. But we forgive him his ugliness and conceit, not only because he is a dutiful citizen of the barnyard, but also because now, as in the days of the noble Horatio, he obligingly acts as "trumpet to the morn. " On account of this romantic and sometimes useful custom, he wears a sentimental halo. M. Rostand has made him the hero of a drama. When will some wise playwright celebrate his urban prototype, the alarm clock?
The spirit in which this question is asked is not wholly one of mockery. For the alarm clock is close to humanity; in the city household, few bits of furniture are more personal and necessary. It is a faithful servant, this loud-voiced creature of steel and glass, obedient, punctual, patient. And its association with its owner, I had almost written its master, is so peculiarly intimate as to give it a personality and an attitude toward life.