In refusing an application to prevent a man keeping crowing rooster, a Queensland judge remarked yesterday: - "One of the laws of attention is that attention directed to a sensation causes an increase in the intensity of the sensation and the plaintiffs' case, we think, affords a striking illustration of this law."

He had crowed each dawn on the shadowed lawn
   Since his chickenhood departed;
From a silvern throat his clarion note
   Came full and merry-hearted.

I paid small heed to the bird, indeed,
   As he called to the dawn-light glowing;
Till a friend one day just chanced to say:
   "Gosh! Hear that vile bird crowing!"

Then the raucous note from his feathered throat
   My ear straightway offended;
And it seemed to me that his minstrelsy
   Was a mad thing never ended.

And from that day, as the morning gray
   Waxed on the skyline jagged,
I cursed anew each time he crew,
   And my nerves went raw and jagged.

Music no more his high notes bore,
   For a nuisance then I knew him;
So I sought his tracks with a murderous axe,
   And savagely I slew him.

With a severed head I saw him dead
   At my feet, with his life-blood flowing.
But lo, next morn, with day new-born,
   I woke to hear him crowing.

And he crew and crew that whole day thro'
   Till the dewy dawn descended;
And all night long, with a mournful song,
   His clarion never ended.

I hear him still, do what I will --
   Then by my fate take warning,
Lest folly may thro' all the day
   Stretch one small ill of morning.

"Den"
Herald, 7 March 1930, p4